Second Sight (15 page)

In this receptive state, I was primed to reexperience the intuitive side of myself. To do that, I had two weeks of dream groups, meditation, introduction to the use of healing rituals, energy work (the laying on of hands), and two days of silence and fasting. Far from the stresses of my ordinary life, I had a chance to acclimate to the renewed flow of my images and dreams. It was like learning to ride a bicycle all over again. I was awkward at first, hesitant to experiment. But with the encouragement of Brugh and the rest of the group, I slowly opened up.

Working with Brugh, I also got a firsthand demonstration of how the psychic and the medical could be blended in a positive way. One day, Brugh arranged for a cancer patient, referred by a person who had previously attended his conferences, to come for what he termed a “healing session.” Debbie, a thin, very attractive brunette in her late thirties, hair cut short in a page-boy, wearing designer jeans, polished cowboy boots, and a T-shirt, came to our morning group and sat down on a pillow next to Brugh. Except that her hair was thinning, which I recognized as a sign that she was taking chemotherapy, there was nothing to suggest she was ill. She said she'd been looking forward to this session for weeks. A flight attendant and mother of a five-year-old daughter, Debbie had been diagnosed with leukemia three years before. Despite treatment with Interferon, an experimental drug, her white blood counts were still abnormal, indicating that the illness hadn't improved. Now Debbie was facing a bone-marrow transplant, a risky surgical procedure that had a chance of saving her life. Traditional medicine could offer no more. This was where Brugh came in.

Brugh interviewed Debbie in front of the entire group. I couldn't get over how brave she was, revealing intimate details of her life with great candor. Though I was impressed with Debbie, what had the most impact on me was the thoroughness of Brugh's approach. Starting with a complete medical history, he went on to an appraisal of her psychological makeup far more sophisticated and subtle than any I had seen in medical school. Guided by his intuition, he uncovered areas in Debbie that might have taken years to emerge in traditional psychotherapy.

Remarkably, I saw Brugh pose questions that weren't based on information Debbie provided. Rather, they came from his intuitions. The most stunning example took place about halfway through the interview. While Debbie was talking about the progression of the leukemia, Brugh abruptly asked, “Have you ever lost a child?” Debbie turned pale and, in a whisper, answered “Yes.” She'd given birth to a stillborn infant twenty years before, when she was eighteen. The incident had been so painful that she had blocked it out for years.

Brugh saw in this the essence of a mind-body link, that there was a strong emotional component to Debbie's illness. Over the next hour, I watched him deftly uncover a lifelong pattern of losses for which she had never grieved: the grandmother who raised Debbie dying when she was fourteen; the death of a good friend a few years later; her two divorces; and the death of her son. Debbie's pattern had been to check out and not deal with her feelings. She'd pop a quaalude, snort cocaine, or, as a flight attendant, hop on a plane to escape. Although she had finally left drugs behind after enrolling in a hospital recovery program, she had never dealt with her unresolved feelings of guilt, self-blame, and unworthiness. And all of these, Brugh felt, contributed to the subsequent development of her leukemia. More so he believed that by dealing with the losses she could positively alter the course of the disease.

A master navigator, Brugh cut through Debbie's resistance and identified her blind spots. I studied his every move, noting how he incorporated the intuitive with his medical and therapeutic expertise, the art with which he wove these approaches together.

Watching Brugh, I was given a template for how I might have handled Christine. He showed me that it was possible to listen psychically while at the same time remaining medically astute. There were other doctors at the conference who, like me, wanted to use the psychic in their work. In this I was not alone, and I planned to keep up contact with them to pursue this new course after we left.

Before heading back to Los Angeles, I had seen that Brugh's eclectic philosophy incorporated the essence of many religions, above all the concept of unconditional love. This was the underpinning of what he had done with Debbie, the spirit with which he approached her life. For Brugh, psychic experiences weren't an end in themselves, but rather an extension of a compassionate spiritual awareness. Through meditation, that awareness could be nurtured and trained. No intellectual construct, unconditional love was a way of being in the world, a great gift Brugh was able to transmit in words and through his hands. I'd met many healers, like Jack and others in Thelma's lab, but no one who could so powerfully generate this force and bring it to bear with such impact on others.

I had received a taste of unconditional love, the spiritual link I had been missing for so long. During the conference I got glimpses of what it meant to be open-hearted, to see the best in others, and to help reach to their truest needs. It was such a relief, suddenly, not to judge or criticize everyone I met. I'd gotten so used to focusing on people's faults I developed a kind of blindness, rooted in fear, that I engaged in automatically.

I'd no idea how long it would take to move beyond my self-centeredness, the number of surrenders it would entail to allow that love in. Unconditional love is something achieved after very dedicated spiritual work, and I was just beginning. Nonetheless, I'd found the promise of what I was looking for, and in Brugh I had a new kind of role model. Returning home, ready to continue the integration of the psychic into my life, I couldn't foresee that the glow of the love I felt would soon dim in the ordinary world, without Brugh and the others to generate and reinforce it. My greatest challenge would be to learn how to renew and sustain such love in myself.

Three weeks after my return was the anniversary of my grandfather's death. On Friday night, after lighting a Yahrzeir candle in his memory, I wanted to do something special to commemorate the occasion. I had never been particularly observant of my religion, with the exception of attending services with my parents on the Jewish holidays. But shortly before sunset, I decided to take a walk to an Orthodox synagogue in Venice Beach. I was greeted at the doorway by a short, studious-looking man in his midthirties who seemed to be in a position of authority. He had bushy auburn hair and was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a yarmulke, and a blue and white silk tallis draped over his shoulders. Directing me to an empty seat in the women's section, he then went to sit down on the opposite side with the other men. After the service, he approached me, introduced himself as Richard, and invited me to his home for a Shabbat dinner.

We soon became romantically involved. Richard was a successful entertainment attorney and had recently divorced. He was also a devout Jew, trying to balance his religious beliefs with his busy career. I quickly fell in love, and every Friday for the next three months I returned to the synagogue to pray with the group, a scarf covering my head as was the Orthodox custom. Afterward, since Richard didn't drive on Shabbat, we'd walk to one of the congregants' homes nearby for dinner.

I knew little about the Orthodox Jewish community, never having been exposed to it before. One Friday evening, Richard started asking me questions about my family, and the conversation made its way to my grandfather. Having recently returned from Brugh's retreat, I felt quite open about discussing almost anything, so I told Richard about the dream I'd had that predicted my grandfather's death. When I recounted this, however, I could see Richard's expression change; he then too politely inquired if I had had any other such experiences. Undaunted, I enthusiastically shared them with him, overlooking his obvious discomfort, trusting that he would understand. He didn't. When the night ended and he left, a wall stood between us.

A long letter arrived from Richard the next week, saying he couldn't see me anymore. Heartbroken, I called and asked him why. He said I was a psychiatrist and he didn't want to be in a relationship with a woman who had such a demanding career, but I didn't believe him; I knew there was another reason. Ruth, my friend and a member of the same synagogue, had appeared open-minded, so I asked her if she knew what had happened. It was just as I suspected. Ruth told me Richard had been so disturbed about my premonitions that he had consulted his rabbi. An elderly man of European descent, the rabbi told Richard that I was a witch and that he should cut off all contact with me. I continued going to the synagogue for a little while, but word had gotten around. People who had previously been friendly now became distant. I stopped getting invitations to attend Shabbat dinners. For all practical purposes, I'd been blackballed.

Before Brugh's workshop, such a humiliation would have dissuaded me from my pursuit of the psychic. But now I was more resilient. Though wounded by Richard's withdrawal and the synagogue's response, I didn't use this as an excuse to reject my abilities.

An opportunity to test my new resolve presented itself almost immediately. Anna, one of my patients, was a receptionist who worked for a cardiologist in my office building. Divorced, she'd lived alone for years in a small house in Culver City. She was in her early sixties, short, with sleek gray hair and clear blue eyes. Born and raised in Orange County, she had lived a quiet life, had never traveled, and followed a daily routine of work and coming home to watch TV.

Anna entered therapy to sort through a tumultuous relationship with her son. While seeing me, however, she developed a particularly aggressive type of lung cancer that rapidly metastasized to her brain. Even after massive doses of radiation and chemotherapy, the cancer didn't respond. Over a period of six months, she went from being a healthy, vital woman to being bedridden. Shortly after one of the chemotherapy treatments, she suffered a partial stroke, which rendered her unable to walk.

Following her stroke, Anna found it too strenuous to come to my office, but we stayed in phone contact. Despite her recent setbacks, the oncologist hadn't given up hope that she might still go into remission. One evening I visited Anna at her home. Prior to this meeting, we hadn't spoken much about the possibility of her death; the focus had always been on her recovery. But it didn't matter that her physical condition was more stable than it had been for months. Early that morning, she had had a premonition that she was going to die. This was not a vague impression or merely a fear. As we spoke together that evening, it was clear that Anna knew without a shred of doubt that within twenty-four hours her life would be over. And this absolute knowing horrified her.

In the past, I would have reassured Anna that her anxiety about dying was natural, considering the severity of her illness. After she had vented her feelings, I would then have emphasized recent gains. But I had a strong instinct that Anna's premonition was right: It rang as true as what I had felt six months before about Christine. Now, instead of questioning it, I made the choice to trust both Anna and myself. I didn't listen to the part of me that warned, “Don't risk it. You're going to make a big mistake.” I had followed that voice before and paid too high a price. This time, rather than trying to diffuse or ignore the premonition, I allowed it to guide me. Once that decision was made, I heard a voice in my head that instructed, “Direct Anna toward her own death.”

At first I didn't understand, but then an idea came to me. If I did a guided meditation with Anna to help her approach her death, if I brought her face to face with it, I knew she would somehow be consoled. I had only been meditating a few months, though, and had never tried this before. Even so, I felt strangely confident, certain I was taking the right tack, as if I were being directed by an intelligent force and shown what to do.

As for Anna, she was so distraught that she hesitantly consented to go along with me. I asked her to lie down on her bed and close her eyes. Then I began by leading her through some breathing exercises to help relieve her stress. When she seemed more at ease, as gently as I could I said, “Picture your own death. Tell me what it looks like.”

Anna flinched. I knew this would be hard for her. Anna didn't consider death to be peaceful; rather, she saw it as a painfully final separation from her loved ones. “I'm afraid to even imagine it,” she said. “What if there isn't anything there?” I tried to reassure her, and then, eyes still closed, she went on. “All I see is darkness. An empty void. Nothing. A dreadful silence. I'm cold, numb. I don't like it here.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She squeezed my hand. “I want to stop,” she said.

I quietly urged her to go on, to keep focusing on her vision. Even though it was uncomfortable, I believed something important was there for her. I hoped she would stay with it and not give up. For some time, Anna remained alone in the darkness. I sat without speaking, sensing she was okay but not wanting to interrupt her. Five or ten minutes passed.

Then, abruptly, Anna began to speak. “It's very strange,” she said. “I can see a faint golden light, a glow like embers in a fire coming from behind the darkness. It's exquisite, I can't keep my eyes off of it. It keeps getting brighter and brighter, pulling me in.” As Anna continued to watch the light approach, a great tranquillity overtook her. Her breathing slowed; her body was still and calm. She remained like this for about a half hour. By the time the meditation had ended, her fear was gone.

“You're right,” she whispered and cracked open her eyes for a few seconds. “If this is death, it's nothing to be afraid of.” Then she drifted off into a deep sleep.

I found this striking, not only because of what Anna had said, but also because she wasn't a religious person and was unfamiliar with metaphysical literature and had no belief in an afterlife. Still, she'd had an instant recognition of her death as radiant light, could feel its brilliance and serenity. Without any prompting from me, she'd confirmed both my own direct experience and accounts of healers who had been with the dying.