I think a lot about the karma I may have with those people dearest to me—mother, father, brother, daughter, lovers, and friends—because my love has always contained an element of judgment. I think I never allowed anyone to be unconditionally themselves. I remember once being deeply in love with a man who told me he never felt that he was living up to my expectations. I felt the same way about him. I feel the same way about my daughter too, and I love her as much as anyone.

  Independence has likely always been a karmic sticking point for me too, especially when it comes to romantic love. Most men are protective, which makes me feel more like a possession than an equal partner. With my parents I always felt like a daughter, as opposed to my own person. I was always my father’s little girl, even when I was 60. That’s not true with an animal, so perhaps we don’t have as much karma with them. Animals take us at face value based on who we are right here and now.

  My mother was extremely withholding with her emotions. She said it was more diplomatic to be that way. That may be why I’m so direct. My father was not diplomatic. He didn’t curb his feelings at all. He was all feeling. Interestingly, my mother was full of male energy, or yang, and my father embodied female energy, or yin.

  I believe at one point in our evolutionary history we humans had better balance between yin and yang. The older I get, and the more I go within myself, the more balanced I feel, which may be why I feel such an affinity for that balance in Terry. She is a female dog, so she is allowing, passive, understanding, and spiritually attuned. At the same time, she is also protective and linear. But her female aspects allow her to hold contradictory points of view without becoming confused.

  When I examine the unconditional love I feel for Terry, there is one thing about this relationship that causes me grief: I don’t know what I will do when Terry passes over. I never felt this way with my mother, my father, or my friends. When they died, I knew they were on a journey to a higher level of understanding. Terry already understands, so when she goes I know I will feel that some part of me will have gone with her. It will be difficult to live without Terry’s constant reminders that I am capable of unconditional love. I will miss her unconditional love, but not as much as I will miss mine.

  As time passes I’m forced to confront the prospect of Terry’s death, and to reexamine what I know about death itself. Intellectually I realize that what we perceive as death is just a change of form. But because I’m physical, I will miss Terry deeply. Sometimes I think I’ll get another dog right away. Even now, while Terry is still in my life, I find myself wanting to surround myself with animals. I want birds in the house, and I want a cat; because of Terry, I would be happy living with a menagerie. It’s wonderful to relate to living things that don’t speak, that don’t judge, and don’t blame. They are always an instant removed from timelessness. They point the way to a state of being we humans can only aspire to.

  Terry

  Since my MM is my child I hope I can teach her that growing up is essential to aging well. And the older she gets the further inside herself she should look. The more deeply she learns to love, the younger she’ll be when she dies.

  Shirley

  I read somewhere that where there is no resistance there is no harm. On this Easter weekend more than two thousand years ago, Jesus said if I defend myself, I am attacked. What does that mean? Is having defenses really folly? I once asked the Dalai Lama who his greatest spiritual teacher was, and he said Mao Zedong—leader of the nation that invaded Tibet, forcing the Dalai Lama into exile and torturing and killing many Tibetan Buddhist monks. Too many of us see other people as potential threats, instead of teachers. All of our structures and our laws, our codes, our morality and our legal definitions, our penalties, our armaments, even our ethics are based on an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I think we don’t understand that these are Karmic concepts. The laws of Karma are perfect: if we hurt another that hurt will return to us. Energy always returns to the source. Each time we defend ourselves we’ve made the fear real, and our terror justified. It’s a terrible catch-22. Is that what Jesus meant when he said turn the other cheek and if you are hit, turn it again? He might have been crucified, but he didn’t die.

  Years ago, on a trip home from India I happened to be seated next to the former Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. As we peered out the airplane window at the concrete towers of Manhattan, he told me the city below him looked overwhelming. “I could find that frightening,” he said. “But instead I imagine that I am standing in the doorway of the hut in India where I lived as a child; the doors are flung open, allowing the winds of change to blow about my feet, but not to knock me over.” After we landed, I went to swat an insect that somehow had gotten into the cabin, and he said, “Don’t kill that gnat, you don’t know what or who it might have been.”

  Does the transmigration of souls mean we all spend lifetimes as animals? Will we possibly be animals again? If so, we should certainly take a closer look at how we treat them.

  Is it true that when we are born into a human body that it is perfect and capable of immortality if the mind does not abuse it?

  Let’s say for a moment that sickness is a decision made by the mind. If this is so, we are not the victims of illness, but its perpetrators. Like a blockage in our veins that keeps blood from circulating through the heart, sickness is a barrier we create against God, peace, and the energy of the natural world, perhaps to learn how much power we have. Sickness is self-deception because we’ve succumbed to the delusion that what God created—the body and even consciousness itself—is not perfect and whole. But for some of us, sickness is the only time we allow ourselves to slow down, the only excuse we’ll accept for extricating ourselves from the overwhelming pressures of everyday life.

  Sickness is not only a defense against God’s perfection, but also against the solace of friends and family. We go to extraordinary lengths to prove the lie that we are not meant to be happy, that we are sinful and estranged from God. Even if we accept that sickness is just another reality we create, it’s still easy to fall into the trap of thinking that this reality too, is beyond our control. A wise person once said to me that we would do anything to erect sandbags against the tide of happiness rising around us. Sometimes it takes a new life, like Terry, or another person, to help us drag the sandbags down, to help us surrender to the tidal wave of happiness.

  I wonder how animals respond to human sicknesses. Do our pets take on some of the burden we place on ourselves with our own minds? I have some arthritis in my right knee, and lately it has been giving me some trouble. When I first noticed this, Sheba began to limp on her right side. Are animals trying to help absolve us of our limitations? And if our dogs live seven to every one of our years, are they dying more quickly because they take on our beliefs that the body is imperfect? Could animals live forever as our companions if we also thought we could?

  What would it be like if we believed that everything is planned by God for our happiness? If so, would sorrow, pain, and tragedy really be necessary? If we believed in our plan of happiness I think we’d have a happier world. We’re taught that Easter is a time for resurrection and salvation. Well, perhaps it’s time to rise again, and shed our old beliefs. Perhaps when Jesus said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he meant, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do to themselves.” Wouldn’t we be reborn if we listened to the God within us? Wouldn’t that be our salvation?

  I’m trying to learn not to plan; I’m trying to learn just to let it happen. I’m trying not to have a schedule for the next day. In these ways I’m experimenting with taking my guidance from God. I’m going to ask God to resolve my travel plans to Ireland.

  Terry

  On this Easter weekend I want MM to realize that she can be reborn every moment. The body is perfectly prepared to respond to that idea. But she has to mean it in her soul. When she really means it her world will be filled with Easter light.

  When MM is worried it’s because she is “conflicted.” Sometimes I’m a mirror for her when she’s conflicted. At those times she looks at me huddled in my little corner and I think she realizes I’m reflecting her mood because I want her to see what it looks like. It’s not a pretty sight. Maybe I’ll run over and jump into her lap. Then she will pet me and maybe she’ll understand.

  Shirley

  Because I’m so interested in the mind-body-soul connection, I decided to explore psychic surgery for the arthritis in my joints. I was fascinated by the whole process, and assisted several psychic surgeons in Brazil and the Philippines. When I first asked my psychic surgeon in Brazil how it worked, he said, “The body is only an illusion. My real work is on the aura, on the electromagnetic frequency of the body, not on the flesh. But for you to understand, to believe the healing, I have to give you the illusion of my hands entering your body. But in fact, there is no penetration of the flesh at all, because the flesh is not real. You just believe it is.”

  Time and again I saw that patients would not believe they were healed unless the body was invaded. The doctors not only cured the sickness by working on the body’s aura, but also by reinforcing the counter-dream of healing the body. I saw psychic healers remove eyes and cleanse the disease behind them. I saw them take out hearts to repair valves. The body was an illusion, but the healing had to be physical for the patient’s mind to believe it.

  When I assisted in these surgeries, I knelt beside patients from many countries whose languages I did not speak, but during the procedure we could communicate. As witness to their healing I felt the melding of my spirit with theirs. What I saw strengthened my conviction that we are perfect in the first place—and in the second, and in the third.

  Terry

  Sickness is separation from God and healing is the other dream, the one that delivers us back to God. When MM thinks about leaving the steady joy she feels with me, even if only temporarily, for that movie in Ireland, she feels the sharp edges of sickness coming on. Sickness is a kind of lie. We natural beings may take on the sickness of our human companions, but we know why we do it. We love them.

  We do not lie about love. We don’t pretend to be happy when we’re not. We don’t pretend anything. We are capable of shrewdness, but not deceit. I can be manipulative to get what I want, but I can’t lie about anything. When we’re hurt, we show it. When we’re joyful, we show that too. A lot of what we display depends on our human companions.

  Shirley

  It’s Easter morning, and Terry is in my arms. I tell myself I should get up and be productive, but here she is, sleeping with her little face next to mine. Her body is stretched out next to me so I can feel her breathing. She begins to twitch. Is she reflecting the dream I just had of being trampled by huge horses? Their hooves came down on me again and again, yet I was still alive. I take Terry in my arms, her body now jerking violently. Is she having my dream or am I having hers? She wakens, and then places her head under my chin. She lies back, almost in a back-bend with her little feet up in the air, completely unself-conscious, at one with herself, with me, and with the new Easter day outside. Birdsong begins to filter in through the window, along with a pervasive feeling of all-oneness.

  I lie here with Terry, ruminating. Should I have had more children? Should I have adopted the children I wanted to when I was younger? Is that the impulse Terry is bringing out in me? Or is she bringing out a desire to adopt children now? I imagine what this morning would be like with a houseful of children. No, I’m too old to adopt children now. I’ve earned this peace and quiet. When I was younger, raising my daughter, my child-rearing friends and I got so bogged down in the details of life that a moment like this, lying with a dog in my arms on an Easter morning, feeling that everything is, as my mother would say, one with God, would not have been possible.

  I wonder whether mothers who adopt feel that their new baby was meant for them rather than the birth mother. I think so. Certainly, when we adopt animals, they are meant to be with us. I have adopted Terry instead of a child. I’ve also adopted the other dogs on the ranch. Sheba was the first one that I saved from her fate at the pound. Then I adopted the rest. They all know it, just as they know that Terry is royalty with Egyptian blood, who is here for unearthly reasons.

  I am the wind in the weeping willow by the waterfall. I am the dust blowing in from Colorado. I am the fly buzzing against the screen. Terry and I are having this life dream together. Birds chirp, the wind wafts, trees rustle, the flowers smell, dogs bark, the clouds roll by, and Terry and I are in such bliss that nothing would be worth ending this until it ends itself. Finally we get up from reality into the dream we say is real. We both stretch and rise out of bed.

  Now I feel hunger. Now I need to go to the bathroom. Now I feel pain in my back. I start thinking: I need to eat and take my vitamins; I must return phone calls, and wish others Happy Easter; I have to make the most of this day. Then I regain my sanity, and remind myself that I know a happier way to live.

  Is this what happens when you get older, when you’ve done most everything, when you’ve had the experience of being the belle of the ball and you discover that doesn’t provide happiness? Overachievement makes me realize I really don’t have to achieve anything at all. Am I becoming a happy, peaceful recluse? Do I not like leaving my ranch because the pace of life outside perturbs me? I look out at a faraway hill and it reminds me of the light from within my mountain that played games with me as I sat bug-eyed. It happened at midnight, when I was out walking with a married couple who are close friends. We all saw a luminescence coming from within Sierra Madre. It moved and danced before our eyes as though a spotlight from within the earth was directed at us. We watched for hours, wondering what it wanted us to know. I thought of my mother’s vision of lights within the earth.

  Dr. John Mack of Harvard once interviewed a man claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrials, who told this captive the tragic history of their planet. One of their gods was an enormous boulder, within which was stored all the ancestral knowledge of that race. Over time the citizens of that planet learned how to make genetic material and decided it was the future, choosing to move away from the wisdom they had gathered and stored in the boulder since the dawn of time. The boulder watched helplessly as the planet’s inhabitants became more and more warlike, unable to interfere with the free will of its people. Eventually civil war destroyed the planet, and now, according to the abducted man, its refugees were roaming the universe looking for a new home.

  Here on the ranch I know I am surrounded by eons of vast knowledge. From mountains to pebbles, from trees to shrubs, everything has a conscious and probably cosmic energy. Nothing stays the same, not even the past; everything we see is altered by the way we see it. Even history, because it snakes back to the present, keeps growing and changing. And what about God? Is God different now than He/She was at the beginning?

  If God is perfect and all creations complete, then there’s nothing to do but let God’s plan unfold. If I am peaceful, the world will be. Whenever I feel anxiety about what to do next, I open the sliding door, let Terry out, call the other dogs, and push myself out of the house into the air, sunshine, and sun-bleached colors of the arroyo. Soon the inner turmoil quiets down, and I feel myself beginning to take guidance from above, a most miraculous frame of mind. On this Easter weekend, when others remember sin and redemption, I turn to the wisdom of nature in search of peace.

  As we walk away from the ranch house I check the water storage tank. In the Southwest water is gold. Here in New Mexico a drought has been in effect for several years, causing a bark beetle infestation in the pine trees by compromising their immune systems. Even though I have a productive well I’m considering also installing a rain-catching system from my roof. I think of the stream of snowmelt that runs down from the mountains, and I wonder how long it will last.

  Cottonwoods sparkle in the light of the sun and I marvel at these trees that guzzle water from the ground yet exude it right back into the world around them. A sharp wind comes up, blowing my hat off, its string under my chin nearly ripping my earrings from my pierced ears. I hear there’s a tornado blowing in the eastern part of the state, which is uncommon in New Mexico, and again I wonder what nature is trying to tell us.

  Sunlight flashes against the crystals littered across my land. Everywhere I look I see white and pink quartz crystals, as though a volcano of diamonds erupted hundreds of thousands of years ago, scattering its glittering treasure over the landscape. Could that have been the light I thought I saw within the mountain? No, I’m looking for Earth logic when a deeper logic drives a technology not yet understood by us.

  Rising above us is my Sierra Madre. They say that because Madre is a female mountain no man must ever climb it without a woman by his side. It is also said that this mountain serves as a magnetic homing device for UFOs. Perhaps that’s why there are so many petroglyphs on this land. Usually they depict five concentric circles, which, according to the Hopi, means that in the future we will be going into the fifth world where we will be able to live among all five dimensions.

  The dogs scamper ahead and I trudge up to what I’ve named Crystal Picnic Hill, a relatively high point on the property. My body has a history, as it did on the Camino in Spain. As we climb, my feet have memory, my ankles have memory, my lower back has memory, and I feel as if I’m trekking back in time. I glimpse kaleidoscopic shards of the past—of ancient civilizations and wars fought with laser light. I see earthquakes and inundation from roiling seas. I see magnificent buildings destroyed and crystal pyramids floating on rainbow clouds of light. Hovercraft take off and land, teachers address throngs eager to learn, and multidimensional beings are worshiped in gleaming sanctuaries. Everything around me comes alive, as though animated by strange unearthly harmonies, echoes of a language from long ago. Colors accompany the tones, all vibrating and throbbing in melodious synchrony that will take on the shapes and forms of future life on earth.