It Takes Two to Know One
An unexpected experience in the midst of a challenging time in my life.
One of the most significant experiences on my spiritual path happened when I was only twenty-five, married and the mom of a one-year-old son. The year was 1985. The three of us were living in Carmel, California, working as caretakers for a wealthy attorney. We lived in a tiny, two-story white stucco cottage with blue shutters. From the outside, it had that California charm: quaint, rustic, cozy, charming—almost out of a fairy tale. At first glance, it seemed perfect for us.
The inside was simply decorated: off-white paint on the walls, beige carpeting, tile countertops, white wooden cabinets and a small sink, stove and refrigerator in the kitchen. The leaded windows and cute café table felt more European than American.
The stairs on the rear wall of the cottage led up to a loft-style bedroom, perfect for our futon and the few other belongings we had.
Our duties were simple: mow the grass, weed the gardens, clean his house and do some household tasks (ironing, cooking, laundry) as needed. To be living in such a beautiful place with free rent and practically no other expenses seemed too good to be true.
The trouble began with the fleas. On one of the first evenings in the cottage as we sat watching the small television in our living room, we started getting bitten. Not once, not twice, but many times. Thinking it was mosquitoes, we didn’t worry too much about it. But then my husband’s left leg began to swell up. At this time, we also started noticing bugs jumping on us. Fleas! Dozens and dozens of them.
After talking with the attorney, he arranged to have the house flea bombed. This quickly took care of the fleas. Not long after that, I started noticed large numbers of what are called pill bugs or roly polys crawling all over the house. In bed, I would feel them dropping on me. We discovered that the roof wasn’t fully sealed allowing all kinds of creepy crawlies to come into the house and drop onto us while sleeping.
I’m not sure why, but this triggered me and created a high stress reaction. I wasn’t a fan of bugs crawling on me, and I started having trouble sleeping because of it.
When we asked the attorney to repair the roof, he was defensive and said that no one else who had lived there ever complained. He said we were making a big deal out of it.
This amped up my stress levels to an extreme. Soon, I was so stressed that my body broke out in an itchy rash, covering almost every inch of my skin.
I stayed up late into the night trying different methods of healing: visualizations, working with crystals, praying, and so on. At this time, I also began reading A Course in Miracles. I would spend hours every night reading it, hoping to find something to bring my peace back.
My sense of reality began to be severely compromised. I felt myself become ungrounded, wobbly and uncertain. The lack of sleep was compromising my thinking. I was losing my sense of self. Strong spiritual visions were coming to me. I was having powerful dreams. I was suffering terribly.
I went to visit a psychic, but she didn’t say anything that really helped.
We had recently joined the local Unity church, so I decided to make an appointment with the minister there. I’d been up most of the night, and when I walked into her office everything felt fuzzy and dream-like.
She was in her mid-thirties with bobbed curly brown hair. Her eyes, were a soft, light brown with long lashes. She wore casual jeans and cherry-colored blouse. Nothing about her felt formal or distant which put me at ease. It was more like meeting a friend for coffee.
As we settled into the two grey wingback chairs in her cozy office, I looked around. The lush brown carpet and creamy walls cocooned me and the tightness in my chest and stomach loosened. Her solid, dark brown wooden desk was uncluttered and professorial. Simple things happened in this room. Someone calm spent time here. It was clean and bug-free.
I sighed.
After we got settled, she asked me to share a little about why I had wanted to see her. As I began to tell her about the incidents of the past couple of weeks—the words spilling out everywhere in a rush—something made me stop. The story suddenly sounded lifeless and hollow. Instead, I just looked into her eyes. Time stopped. The room disappeared. All I saw were those eyes. They seemed infinite and eternal. I felt as though I could disappear into them.
For what could have been eons, neither of us spoke. Then I noticed tears running down her cheeks and realized she was having the same experience I was.
In her eyes I saw myself looking back at me. Our separate physical bodies completely vanished—I was looking at myself AND I was being looked at by myself. I felt completely alone in that room. There weren’t two of us, but only one. ONLY ONE!
I don’t know how long we strayed from the time-space continuum, but eventually, we were brought back into the duality. We exchanged only a few words, my original intention in requesting this meeting forgotten. Instead, bathed in the warm light of love, we hugged and acknowledged that we would see each other soon in church, both of us too overwhelmed to speak of what had just transpired.
Afterward, as I drove home, I knew my life would never be the same. The elation, however, evaporated quickly when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to share my experience because I couldn’t imagine anyone being able to really understand. Plus, I had to go back to my life of wife, mother and caretaker with no way to integrate what I’d seen. Instead of answers, I now had even more questions burning inside of me.
My quest continued….
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That sounds like an amazing experience, Victoria! I can see though how it might be hard for people to understand it because it was so subjective.
And hey--what happened with the pill bugs?