Where the Two Worlds Touch
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really want
Don’t go back to sleep
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
don’t go back to sleep
…..Rumi
I am a person who has always had a fascination with perception and reality, and how little we “know” of these things. Probably because I was born legally blind and didn’t know it until I was told I couldn’t “see” after Kindergarten, I have always been attracted to visual art. Pondering the role of the senses has led me on a continuing journey to explore and understand what role they may play in this lifetime, and perhaps beyond. I have spent most of my life as a photographer and filmmaker, and 2 years ago I answered a calling to become certified as an End-of-Life Doula. In this profound and life-changing work, I refer to myself as a Transitional Guide and Grief Coach. There are many titles for the sacred work that we, as a growing group, may refer to, but it is all based in assisting others to transition through death - physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. How and why I came to be called to this work is probably the cumulation of much I may never fully comprehend, but I do know where it began for me…
In the mid-1950’s in Brooklyn NY, my Italian grandfather, Oreste, purchased a 21-room Victorian house so he and my grandmother Louise, along with their twin daughters Phyllis and Teresa and their families, could all live together, happily ever after…
The complicated and profound nature of life is such that not all dreams end up where we mere mortals might think they will, and neither did this one….
Just a year or so after the family settled into the beautiful old house, my 24-year old Uncle Jerry was struck by lightning while driving a jeep during training in the National Guard. He was killed instantly at the age of 24. To compound the tragedy, his wife, my Aunt Terry was nine months pregnant when it occurred. Their daughter, my cousin JeriLouise, was born 19 days later.
Flash forward a couple of years and I am born.
Jeri and I, daughters of twins, knew we were soul sisters from the get go. In fact, I end up with the name Karen, but it had been earmarked for her long before she was born. Since her father was struck down so close to her birth, she was given a name to honor him instead. I am then born, and given the name Karen. Why that choice was made, no one seems to remember now, but it probably was as simple as they still liked the name. Little did anyone know that it was part of a deeper bond that was perhaps pre-determined?
Jeri and I are inseparable as very young children; we complete one another through our natural joint intuition in thoughts, feelings and actions. In the consensual reality, we never meet her father obviously, but divine innocence saves us from preventing his crystal clear communication from coming through unseen and unknown channels. Of course we were very young children, with no “understanding” of death, and none of what I tell you here was conscious for us in the moment, it just was. To this day, we have this bond. We have proof because we experienced it together. That’s how I know it’s still true, as far away in time as it is now, over 50 years later.
Jerry’s spirit was able to manifest within our joint consciousness, and he spent much time with us, and even played games with us. There were two specific locations within the house where Jerry resided, and we knew to find him there. This was as concrete to us as any imaginary friend is for a child. In modern society, we accept the fantasy of imaginary friends in childhood, but are culturally convinced as we grow older and the imagination wanes, that which is not “real” dissipates and the “true reality” is what we are conditioned to reside in. Most of us fall in line with that construct as we age. In my family, the adults also knew that Jerry never left the house, it was a collective understanding but we rarely spoke about it. Due to multiple unforeseen circumstances, we ended up as a predominantly female family during my childhood. I suppose these ideas are the things that women were once burned at the stake for even pondering!
I kept that origin story as a secret for many years, but for no particular reason. I don’t think anyone ever told me that I shouldn’t discuss it, but somehow along the way I learned that most people felt uncomfortable, or fell silent, if a discussion of communication with someone who was not alive came up. You know when people look at you in a certain way, an instinctual retreat occurs “Maybe I should keep that to myself!” Many years later, I decided to share this story with others in a group workshop I engaged in during graduate school training with the Actors Studio at the New School for Social Research.
The actress Ellen Burstyn, who is also an ordained Sufi minister, was a brilliant and compassionate instructor, and her combined understanding of acting technique and advanced consciousness truly spoke to me. Up until that time, I thought I was studying acting because I was a film director who came from a visual background, and I wanted more exposure to the “actors language”. It was during this workshop that I had the first epiphany about how mystical and metaphysical an actor’s work really can be. She began the class with a metaphor about the acorn being the embodiment of the promise of the full oak tree. It appears as it’s own little entity, but encoded within it is the blueprint for the miraculous tree that it can one day become. Everything that it needs to know to grow into that tree which can live for hundreds of years, is already in existence when the acorn appears. It is the seed of knowledge of the future life to come. “So why wouldn’t the same be true of a human life?”, I thought at the time. “Is this physical shell that holds the spirit and the soul only the seed from which the eternity of us can emanate from?”
We were then split into small groups, and asked to choose and share a deep dark secret with another person which we had not necessarily verbalized before. Unless you have done this type of exercise, it is hard to understand the instantaneous trust that intimacy with essential strangers can bring. If we can bring ourselves bravely to that task, there can be a big pay off. For me, it was coming out of the closet with my spiritual self.
I didn’t think about it, I just spoke and whispered the whole story of Jerry’s death, and Jeri’s birth, and my relationship to both of them. To this day, more than 25 years later, I can still hold the image in my mind’s eye of the expression on the face of the young man I shared it with. In that moment it changed both of us. We had acknowledged something together that was unspoken and never to be dealt with again between us. After that encounter, we moved around one another in a knowing and altered way. We had shifted into a different level of understanding and communication. Words or even human interaction was not necessary for us to be forever bonded in some form of the divine human comedy that transcends all we know in our limited understanding of ourselves. It was the first time that I consciously thought; “What if we are spiritual creatures having a human experience?” How much more there is for us to explore in this lifetime!
For most of my life since early childhood, I have found myself wanting to scream “WAKE UP” to those who must deny what possibilities we might find beyond our known understanding of consciousness, perception and the limitations of human experience. At least I feel it is the best part of our quest while twisted in this mortal coil to question and explore these constructs, and delve into unknown territory. Question! Question it all! If nothing else, it is loads of fun to ponder, and perhaps we might find some potential answers to our own individual existential conundrums.
For me this is the journey we are on in this lifetime, and it only occupies my waking and sleeping consciousness more and more as I move ever closer to my own transition. In the meantime, it is my honor and privilege to assist those that travel before me.
