By spring, 1999, I was still working through the trauma of the previous year. I still had a lot of grief to process and my mind was still healing.
One morning, I stopped at a bookstore. Through the previous year, I found bookstores to be therapeutic. I found so many things to explore and interact with. Initially, the mass of books on the shelves might appear as a great conflict of themes and ideas displayed. That same mass of information allowed me to find titles and combinations of books that gave inspiration to help heal a soul or to at least provide some grounding and comfort.
Sometimes information finds you.
I was browsing through the psychology section of books. Using my right index finger, I scanned a row of books, holding my head sideways to read some of the titles. As my finger scanned down the row, I felt the energy grow stronger in my index finger, like a magnet. Then the feeling became weaker. So, I moved my hand back to the left a few books to where the feeling felt stronger again. I noticed the title of the book was “Modern Woman in Search of Soul” by Dr. June Singer. “Seems appropriate,” I thought.
I opened the book and saw a heading on the left page. It said The Visionaries. I read that passage which blew my mind:
“In every age there have been those few — madmen or geniuses, prophets or shamans, visionaries or fools — who have seen through the surface of ordinary consciousness and looked directly into the interior. These individuals have almost unanimously reported that they did not make a conscious decision to do so. It has seemed to them that they were “chosen” in some inexplicable way. They were called, they heard their names, and the responded. To them have been given visions of another world, a world without boundaries, out of space and out of time. Such people are around today, but they do not ordinarily proclaim themselves. One has to be prepared to recognize them when they appear, or else they pass unnoticed like a breeze in the morning. They are the latest of a long line carried on by the likes of Ezekiel, St. John of the Cross, Hildegarde of Bingen, Dante, Milton, Blake, and many others. They serve as teachers for those who know that it is possible to transcend the ego world and look in upon another…”
Dr. June Singer, Modern Woman in Search of Soul, 1990, P. 106
I was stunned. The passage described my experience quite well. The section describing looking through the surface of this physical veneer and seeing a world that has no boundaries and no “separateness” described parts of my experience in Banff. I had seen a system that didn’t end, not just physically, but emotionally, historically, and energetically also.
It surprised me to see that content typed on a page. It’s one thing to have an experience such as that. It’s something else to try to describe it and integrate it. It was completely foreign to me to realize that someone else understood that journey and had words for it.
What also impressed me was how I came across that passage. The energy I felt led me to that book. I was amazed at how this passage seemed to literally find me, instead of the other way around. Sure, I had experienced exceptionally improbable events of synchronicity. This was on the upper range of valuable experiences.
Continued Resonance
This sequence of events impressed me then and still does. Whatever forces in the universe that we don’t quite understand led me to “find” that passage that afternoon. Or as I have said, that passage found me.
I sat down at a table and took out a piece of paper from my bag and copied that section along with the book information. I didn’t buy the book that day, but I since have.
When I finally bought the book, I noticed the subtitle on the front cover, “Modern Woman in Search of Soul: A Jungian Guide to the Visible and Invisible Worlds.” I smiled at the duality at the mention of two worlds.* That certainly lent itself to a relationship with the dual / binary element of so-called “bipolar disorder.”
Mine was more of a “tripolar rebalancing” — mind, body, and soul. And that last element, soul, was also right there in the title of the book.
Many times over the years, I have reread that passage. And I continue to appreciate how it came into my life at a time when I needed it.