A personal narrative about my how my early experiences in life led me to the life-changing exhilaration of working with my spirit…

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1. Early Impetus

My life changed significantly when I learned to work with my spirit over 25 years ago, and I could then view my existence in a whole new perspective.  Perhaps my story will inspire you to work with your spirit as you search for meaning in your life.

Ever since I was a young child I pondered the reason for my existence.  How did we come to be on this planet and for what purpose are we here?  Burdened with a childhood steeped in deep religious doctrine, I began to break away at the age of 8, at least in my thoughts, from the notion that God was the most important factor in my life.  It was at that time that I remember lying in bed and saying to myself: “I’m not worthy to be married to God.”  I had just decided that I didn’t want to be a nun, as my mother had been nurturing me to be up to that point.

It wasn’t the first time that I had questioned catholic doctrine as a child, like in the first grade.  My teacher was telling my class all about how our religion doesn’t worship pagan gods, statues or idols.  I put up my hand and asked the legitimate question: “But what about all the statues in our church?”  That question met with firm facial disapproval by the teacher, as she quickly changed the subject.

Later on in 1966, at the age of 10, I was still trying to meet the standards that every “good” catholic girl is supposed to strive for.  I had excelled in my catholic studies and was already “confirmed” by the bishop.  In the spring I volunteered to teach religious doctrine by introducing the catechism to 1^st grade catholic children who were attending the local protestant school.  Two other students had also volunteered and we met in the church basement on Wednesdays after school.  After our class on the third week, I decided to show my fellow instructors how to make prank calls on the phone in the basement kitchen, like one of my sisters had done a few days earlier.  We were laughing away at one of the calls, when a voice came on the phone, obviously the priest who had picked up the receiver upstairs, telling us to stay right were we were.

An endless minute later, Father LeFaive came charging down an interior stairway (that I never knew existed) and broke open the door.  He was livid with anger, asking who was responsible for talking on his phone.  Being the ultimate honest child, I admitted my guilt and the priest told the other children to go home.  He pointed to a tray of plastic glasses on the counter of the kitchen, and ordered me to bring it upstairs for him.  I climbed the stairs with the tray of plastic glasses with such fear of punishment that I could barely breathe.  I knew that I was in deep trouble when the priest told my mother what I had done.

To my surprise, when we entered the upstairs doorway, we entered into the priest’s kitchen, not into the church itself.  My heart was pounding with fear by then, as the good father told me to put the tray down on the counter.  Then he told me to go through the archway leading into the hallway but, instead of turning right and going into the vestry, he pointed over my shoulder to go through the doorway straight ahead.  As I entered the room I saw that it was the priest’s bedroom.  The bed was immediately to my left, while I remember looking at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall.  I wondered what he was going to do, as I watched him in the mirror.

Well, it didn’t take but a few seconds upon entering the room, when Father LeFaive told me to lie down on the bed.  Of course, I did so immediately.  He was, after all, my priest.  I saw him undoing his belt, and so I thought that he was going to beat me.  However, as I was entering a state of panic, he told me to close my eyes and go to sleep.  I remember peaking through my almost-closed eyelids at what the priest was doing, and I went into some sort of altered state as I left my body to the sexual punishment meted out by that sick man of god (I omitted the capitalization on purpose).  When I returned to consciousness, my clothes were back on and we were in the vestry.  Father LeFaive looked me square in the eyes and said to me, in no uncertain terms: “Run home now, or you’ll be late.  You can’t tell anyone what happened.  If you ever tell your mother or anyone, the devil will punish your entire family!”

Wow!  That kind of ended my belief in any kind of benevolent deity.  So my search for a real meaning to my life began in earnest.  When I was a disgruntled teenager (no wonder!) I asked my mother on a few occasions why the priest would have taken me into his bedroom.  My mother would be so indignant when I brought up that subject that it took a lot of courage for me to break into such conversations.  Her response was always to shrug and say that I must have seen the inside of the priest’s house from the vestry or gone in when my younger brothers were altar boys.  Then, as I would try to relate the exact details to explain what had happened, she never listened, and always insisted that I was mistaken.  Her religious beliefs blinded her to my plight, and our relationship became intolerable.

Something similar had happened when I was 6 years old, on my first sleepover at one of my classmate’s.  Our moms were best friends; my mother was the choir leader at our little church in the village, and her mother sang alongside her.   My friend’s father was one of the two village policemen, and he used to sit in his easy chair in the livingroom and shout out orders.  During the night, as my friend and I lay asleep in her bed together, I woke up to find that her father was pulling me down to the foot of the bed.  I asked him what he was doing, and he told me to go back to sleep.  I watched as he pulled my girlfriend down, then I went back to sleep.  In the morning, when my friend’s mother asked me how I slept, I told her that her husband had “come in and woke us up”.  She dismissed my statement stating that he had just gone to use the bathroom.  When my mother arrived to pick me up, I immediately told her about being awakened in the middle of the night, and the other woman looked at her and explained that he had just gone to use the bathroom.

As I grew into adulthood I always remembered these events vividly, but I never dealt with the emotional impact that they had on me.  What kind of a world was I living in, when the people that I was supposed to trust and idealize as protectors were raping me in the middle of the night or in a church, as they pleased?  My mother, who was supposed to be my most trusted guardian, could only dismiss my allegations as some sort of imaginary concoction or misinterpretation of the events.  As a result of my fear of reprisal from the church and my mother’s non-action, I learned to keep things to myself after that.  Since these two very notable experiences had happened during my primary development years, I was hardly able to deal with them on my own.  I was nicknamed “Gluck”, short for “Gloria the Suck”, because I was always crying for my mother.

As a result of my early childhood experiences, I was extremely shy. Although I was able to articulate my viewpoints with my close friends, I was unable to master any form of communication with groups.  Instead, I would utter some silly phrase or out-of-context comment that would make others look at me strangely.  As a teenager I decided that I wasn’t going to follow the path that everyone else was heading for.  I couldn’t, because I had these terrible secrets, and felt I would never fit in.  So I abandoned the ideals that had been presented to me as a child, and began to search for more meaning in my life.  I felt there was something terribly hypocritical about the trappings of a so-called normal life, so I decided that I would seek that which was real.  At least what was real to me.

I wanted to know about my purpose here.  I didn’t want a fairy tale.  Then at age fifteen, I had some of the most profound five minutes of my life, when I was presented with the seeds to my quest for substance in my existence.

2. Early Flat Screen Presentation

If only I had known how to work with my spirit when I was a child!  It would have made my life so much simpler, happier and meaningful.  Instead I had been subjected to intense early religious conditioning, and had already begun to condition others when I was stripped of my innocence at such a young age.  In retrospect, I realize that had to undergo those experiences in order to search outside known boundaries to find my way.

As a child I always strived for excellence in whatever I did.  My schoolwork was impeccable.   When I skipped the 5^th grade and entered into the 6^th (at age 10), my marks continued at the top of the class.  Then I entered junior high and my shyness became intolerable.  As I excelled in my classes, my new classmates greeted me with gests.  I wanted to fit in and to be popular, and my marks began to reflect this attitude.  Although I was still getting above average grades, I couldn’t stand to stand out as an intellectual.

I took two tests in secondary school that had any significance as I emerged from that educational experience.  One was a test that predicted what sort of profession best suited me.  I was surprised to find that I should work toward being a scientist.  The second test was a North American IQ test that was distributed in 1970-1 when I was fifteen.  When I was called to the guidance counselor’s office to learn my test score, he told me that I had scored a 98.5 out of 100, and that this represented that I was in the top 1.5% of all the students that had taken the test.   I was embarrassed and probably blushed.  Then he asked me if I had cheated.  What?  How could he possibly accuse me of having cheated on an IQ test for which each student was tested in a controlled setting.  When I replied that I had not and could not have cheated, the counselor told me that it seemed impossible.  As I sat there in disbelief, Mr. Delorme told me that the only other student in the entire school that had received the same score was the 12-year-old new student from Scotland.  Yes, the genius that everyone made fun of and that eventually started acting like a clown to stop the jeers and teasing.  I repeated my statement that I had not cheated, and the counselor looked at me with disdain.  I was humiliated as I left his office.  I had just been falsely accused of cheating, and felt like I was being punished.

Later that school year in May of 1971, I was out with my girlfriends walking around at the newest fast food place around 7:00 in the evening.  We had just sat down to have something to eat inside the Red Barn Restaurant when I heard someone calling my name: “Gloria!”  I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone calling me.  Again I heard my name: “Gloria!”  I looked around again and asked my girlfriends if they knew who was calling me, but they shrugged and continued to talk.  Finally, again I heard my name: “Gloria!”  And I looked up at the wall in front of me.

There on the wall was a sort of movie screen that had opened up.  On the screen I saw the person that had been calling me.  He walked up to the front of the screen and started speaking directly to me with his eyes focused on me, but his lips didn’t move.  His voice was clear and he spoke in perfect English into my mind.

As the speaker spoke to me I looked around the room that he was standing in on the apparent screen.  There on both sides of the room were what appeared to be light-gray-colored control panels with colored lights on them.  Seated in front of the panels were five other people.  Everyone was wearing garnet-colored jumpsuits with a short standup collar and a V-shape pattern on the chest.  Two of the others were females, but they all looked like a different race of people.  They all had simian-style faces, with straight black hair that was pushed back from their faces and cropped at the shoulders.  Physically they all had healthy adult forms, just like humans.

When the speaker made contact with me, they all looked up and seemed to all be listening in on our conversation.  Just as they all turned to look at me, another male being walked into the room through an open doorway and, with his hands behind his back, he stood at the back of the room and watched.  It was all quite friendly and calm.

The speaker continued to speak into my mind and I felt a connection to someone long known or awaited.  I was transfixed upon the screen as the communication continued.  As they prepared to end our communication, I was left with the following phrase: “This life you lead is a test.  In order to pass, you must learn the natural law.”  I also somehow understood that they would be continuing to observe me from their vantage point.

Once the screen disappeared, I looked at my girlfriends and asked: “Did you see that?”  They said they hadn’t seen anything and wondered what I was talking about.  I was astonished and asked in wonder: “You mean you didn’t see those people right there?”  I pointed up at the wall, and they looked at me strangely.  No, they hadn’t seen anyone up on the wall and I should keep my voice down, because people were looking at me.  So I asked: “So, what was I doing?”  My girlfriends told me in hushed voices that I was staring up at the wall for five minutes, and that my face was all red.  That was it.

The next few moments made me question what I had just seen and heard, because my girlfriends were obviously not in on the conversation.  So, if they didn’t see or hear it, then I had been the only subject of the communication.  Fine.  I would deal with this on my own.  The thing that bothered me most was that I had been in telepathic communication for five minutes, but could only remember the parting message: “This life you lead is a test.  In order to pass, you must learn the natural law.”

After whispering to my girlfriends about what had happened to me and receiving their feedback to keep it quiet, that’s what I did.  I never spoke about it to anyone again for years, thinking that it was better that people didn’t know about my contact experience.  It wasn’t until 15 more years had passed that I was able to begin to digest and deal with what had occurred in the restaurant.  Furthermore my experience was a confirmation that more exists outside our normal realm of existence than is apparent.

More thoughts on this experience:
…Learn the Natural Law

3. Living with Abuse

Although I sometimes pondered my telepathic and visual encounter with those beings, I wasn’t able to talk about it for fear of being ridiculed.  My solution was to set it aside in my mind and hope to deal with it later, as I had done with the early abuse events.  As I grew older, however, I still found it difficult to fit in and seemed to spend a lot more time alone.

During my last year of secondary school, after which I had planned to go on to university to study to become a teacher, my math teacher announced to all the students that, since there was a surplus of teachers in the system, anyone who planned to become a teacher should think of another career.  I was going to pursue a teaching career because I thought I would be able to afford the one-term university requirement. Since I really didn’t know what else I wanted to do and I certainly wasn’t going to go back to the student counselor’s office, I decided to enter the work force.  I didn’t want to continue to live at home and sponge off of my parents, so I found a job as a sales clerk in a trendy clothing store.  It wasn’t long before I moved to a nearby city to share an apartment with my sister.

After a few months my sister was offered a job in Vancouver, British Columbia, so she left and I lived on my own for several months.  Then I followed my sister out west, when her firm offered me a job as a junior accounting clerk at their head office in Vancouver.  I lived with my sister for a month until she moved in with her boyfriend, and I had to find my own apartment.  After a year the firm moved to New Jersey.  Since I didn’t want to move east, I found other work and saved my money, so that I could travel.

During the summers that I was turning 19 and 20, I made a couple of solo trips to Europe, where I traveled to France, Spain and the Netherlands.  My main interest was to take in the culture, but I also met many people along the way.  At the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam I saw the largest painting I had ever imagined: Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.  While in France I toured Versailles when the palace was still in restoration.  In Madrid I visited El Prado, in Barcelona I enjoyed Gaudi’s architectural works and in Granada I was fascinated by El Alhambra before it was restored.  Apart from my cultural tours I spent several weeks in southern Spain on the Balearic Islands of Mallorca and Ibiza.

Just prior to making my first trip to Europe I met a married man who was twice my age.  When I returned we dated and he showed me a carving of a woman’s face made from a deer horn.  He told me that a woodsman had carved it for him and that it represented his ideal woman.  For the first 5 years I was hopeful about our relationship, although he had a small son from his marriage and kept promising to divorce his wife.  I wasn’t really keen on getting married, because I didn’t really believe in the fairy tale but, after 7 years, Mr. Corcoran convinced me to tie the knot.  That was one of the worst decisions of my life.

Before the marriage my ex was intent upon coaching me in life.  Even though he had very little to show for his own accomplishments, I was young and impressionable and allowed his guidance.  At the age of 20 he helped me to buy my first property, a farm in eastern Ontario, Canada where I started my first company, a concrete-breaking and excavating venture.  By the time I was 24 I was the general contractor for the development of a subdivision adjacent to Whistler Mountain, B.C., the site of the recent 2010 Winter Olympics.  I bought a house and started taking university courses at Simon Fraser University during the winter months.  I loved going to classes and studying.  It gave me energy and resilience, while the darkness of my relationship developed.

My ex-husband turned out to be abusive, both psychologically and physically.  Not only was I part-time mother to his son but I was, on many occasions, host to his ex-wife when she returned from her trips around the world.   My ex expected me to welcome her because she was Jesse’s mother.  At that time the experience of pseudo-motherhood was exhilarating; my stepson became my best friend; and I loved the periods of time when he was with us.  Although I had hoped to have children myself, it was fortunate that I did not succeed with that man.

The first incident of abuse made me feel like I was somehow to blame for making my ex-husband angry.  His niece had come to visit and was staying with us for a few days.  As my ex and I lay in bed on the first evening of her visit, he asked me very casually what I was thinking.  I mistakenly told him what was on my mind – “Wouldn’t it be nice if my two youngest brothers could come to visit?”  Out of nowhere came a punch to one side of my upper face.  I screamed out and he went into a rage.  He had always come across with the demeanor of a nice guy, especially with all of his many friends and family.  His niece called from the next room to see if everything was okay, and he told her it was.  The next day I had a swollen black eye that I had to cover up with sunglasses so that I could attend my university classes.  What kind of person was this?  How could he possibly hurt me?  I had always told myself that, if a man ever hit me, I’d leave him immediately.  That was one promise to myself that I sadly never kept.

The second time that my ex hit me was about 2 years later, after we had gone to a popular bar in the Whistler Town Center.  It was the first time that I was asked to go to that establishment, since it was full of after-work men from the various construction sites.  I remember chatting for a few minutes with one of the subcontractors on our job then, in the truck afterward, my husband stopped and turned off the ignition.  He started pummeling my face with his closed fists, as I raised my hands to try and fend off his blows.  I learned at that moment that he was an insanely jealous and angry man.  I didn’t know what to do, other than remain quiet and sobbing, as he ranted on about how I had embarrassed him by talking to another man.  I was terrified.  I was too afraid of him; of what I would do next; and of failing in the relationship.  Yes, I was afraid to fail in the relationship.  I somehow blamed myself for what had happened.

However, I was also afraid that I might have permanent damage to my face the next morning when I woke up covered in bruises.  I slipped away to the nearest town, 40 miles away, with the excuse of going to the bank and grocery store.  While there, I went to the emergency unit of the Squamish Hospital to ask a doctor to check out my wounds.  The female doctor told me that I was going to be all right, but that she was bound to report any such abuse to the police.  I begged her not to do that, since I was terrified that my husband would have killed me in retaliation.  I don’t know whether the incident was ever reported, but I never received a visit from the RCMP.

Along with the physical violence, there was constant psychological abuse from my ex who turned out to be an incorrigible alcoholic.  While I was attending university, he always came adorned with plenty of alcohol and friends at exam time. As a teenager I had become accustomed to partying with my friends on weekends but, with my ex, it had become the life of an alcoholic and I had no friends of my own.  Once, when I tried to quit smoking, he offered me a cigarette after three months, and I accepted.  He would never allow me to succeed or be happy at anything.  It all had to be for him, or not at all.

The third and last time that my ex hit me was when one of his friend’s friends asked us over for drinks one evening during the holidays.  I chatted with one of the guys, who happened to be a dentist.  My ex had made certain that I had my teeth repaired when we first met, kind of like making sure that the horse you bought had good teeth.  I remember telling the dentist that the dentist that repaired my teeth had asked me out for drinks after one visit.  After I said that, I walked by my ex and he punched me right in the solar plexus.  Out of breath, I stumbled out of the house and walked several blocks to our place, where I decided that I would try and hide from him.  I was still in shock and started to walk aimlessly away.  After a couple of hours I had to face him again but, by then, my trust had turned to fear.  I was becoming conditioned by the abuse and would continue to try and please him.

In 1983, just after I had completed a successful semester at university, my ex-husband decided that he would take me far away from the city, to the middle of nowhere, so that his control could be absolute. When I finally gained the courage to leave him, it would be like living a nightmare, only I would be fully awake and would have to survive the terror alone.

4. Uncertain Circumstances

In retrospect, if I had known the upcoming circumstances of leaving the city with my ex-husband, I might never have made the journey.  It was, however, exactly the result of having been placed in such a precarious situation that I discovered the spiritual realm and the significance of working with my spirit.

During the summer of 1983 we moved to a small rural village called Lac La Hache (translated ‘Axe Lake’), located just north of the town of 100 Mile House and about 300 miles north of Vancouver, B.C.  My ex had bought a cabin with no running water and no telephone connection on a dirt road about a quarter-mile from the main highway.

Shortly after we moved in, my ex drove to the city and returned with his son, Jesse, who was then 10 years old.  Most of the day they were outside shooting gophers with slingshots and practicing ax throwing and archery in the nearby woods and fields.  My ex had been raised on a farm and learned to hunt as a child.  One day they brought home a dead gopher in a box and placed it on the back fence, saying it was to dry for a few months so that they could examine the bones.  Before doing that, though, my ex had cut off the rodent’s tail and nailed it to the side of the house.  I thought all this to be very strange but, since it was a guy’s thing, I wasn’t supposed to understand.  Jesse’s mother came to pick him up and seemed puzzled at why we were living under such conditions, especially noting the water tanks above the basements stairs that supplied our ‘running’ water.

Our next-door neighbor had a structure with several long poles tied together at the top, and he had tied his very large ever-barking dog to a chain.  He told me that the pole structure was for hanging deer, and I was horrified to think that I would have to view this from my kitchen window.  His dog, he explained, had been abused, so it was dangerous and couldn’t be released.  I decided to thwart that man’s cruelty by showing some kindness.  One day, while my ex was on one of his many trips to the city, I saw some deer on the edge of the fence that separated our properties from the forest, so I ran outside and shouted at them to go away.  Several times when my ex was away, I saw the dog off the chain and invited him over with the scent of a meat snack, which he would gently snatch from my extended hand.

There wasn’t much for me to do in that place, and my ex always seemed to be going somewhere without me.  I remember someone saying to me one day that I should be careful not to get cabin fever, because it happened a lot up there.  I laughed, but wondered what that meant.  Sometimes, when we went to town to buy groceries, we would have lunch at the hotel or at the local popular diner.  While at the hotel I was watching one of the waiters who seemed to be having some sort of meltdown, while other people were talking to him.  I asked my ex what he thought was going on, and he said that the owner of the hotel was in the habit of bringing homeless youths from Vancouver Island to work and live.  He added that the owner was someone who had the means to build the only landing strip along the highway so that he could land his Leer jet when he visited.  This person was rumored to own 25,000 acres, including the town.

One morning I woke up with a burning itching sensation on the top of my left foot.  I pulled off my sock and saw that there was a half-inch long triangular-shaped scrape there.  I wondered how I could have hurt my foot at that spot and not known it.  Then I thought that maybe a spider had bitten me, and I had just scratched the skin off.  I showed it to my ex and he shrugged.  The wound took at least a week to heal.

Later that year, my ex brought his son up to stay with us during the holidays.  I remember how cold it was to go outside in -40F (and C) to quickly toboggan down a nearby hill.  The cabin wasn’t very well insulated, and when it got really cold, the windows would ice over.  It was dreadful, to say the least.

The next month, in January 1985, my ex announced that I was to go down to Vancouver to stay with Jesse for a couple of weeks while his mother went to the Dominican Republic on holiday.  On the way back to town with Jesse, my ex announced that he also had to go out of town, so I would be staying with Jesse on my own.  I never questioned him anymore, since his answers were always so elusive and, besides, it meant being in the city away from that ridiculous cabin near the woods.  I enjoyed being in the city again; it was my first time back in over a year.

Jesse’s mother, a former nurse, had made a practice of traveling around the world to learn various healing methods in the hope of setting up her own practice. She had lived in Ecuador where she set up a sensory deprivation chamber, and had studied acupressure in China. When she returned from her trip to the Dominican Republic, she told me that she had also gone to Haiti to sit in on a voodoo ceremony. When she mentioned the voodoo ceremony, I recalled the shrunken two-toed sloth that she had brought back from the Amazon years before as a gift for my ex.  She startled me when she said that she thought that my ex should be more spiritual.  I didn’t know what she meant by that, and just nodded in agreement.  Since my ex was now back at the cabin, I was expected to return the 500 miles by bus.  My car had been sold to raise money to buy the cabin and a rental car was not an option at the time.

Before I got on the bus in Vancouver I bought a Psychology Today magazine to read en route.  I read an article that sparked something in my mind and lead to a realization about my life.  The article referred to some studies that found that individuals who had been raped had suffered ongoing trauma, especially if they had never received therapy from the event.  The study showed that, if a person went for more than 5 years without getting help, their symptoms would compile and cause significant psychological damage.  I suddenly realized that I had never received help from the times when I was assaulted as a very young child and, moreover, that I had been raped as a teenager, such as by my best friend’s brother after high school and again, more violently, while on one of my trips to Europe.  I had survived all of that, but had never considered any further consequences.  I just kept going as best I could, without ever telling anyone.

Upon my return from the city, I gasped when my ex announced that we were going to join the local gym, and that we had an appointment that afternoon to take a tour.  Although I had attended aerobics classes at the university, there had never been any mention of a gym in our lives up to that point.  Although puzzled I was enthusiastic, since I have always made a point of staying in shape.  That afternoon we met with a charming woman who showed us around the facility just outside of town.  Before that, I never even knew the facility existed.  My ex was so interested in this gym that I asked him when and where he decided to join.  His response was garbled and then he demanded: “Do you want to join or not?”  Despite the unusual offer and my ex’s sudden change of mind about fitness, I agreed to a one-year membership.  Interestingly, I would never set foot in that building again.

The next thing I knew, my ex had to leave on another trip to the city and would be gone for about a week.  He brought me some supplies, including some food, cigarettes and a gallon of wine.  There I was, all alone at the cabin, with no telephone, no vehicle and almost no money.  The only money that I had at the time was a hundred dollar bill that I had hidden away for emergency use.  At least I had that.  It was now bitter winter and I spent almost all of my time indoors because of the cold.  When my ex returned from his trip, the bizarre sequence of events that followed could only be described as scenes from a scary movie in which I was the one running for my life.

5.  Fight and Flight

While I spent a week alone in that remote cabin, the events that ensued could only be described as inexplicable.  I would soon come to realize that my ex-husband was not the person that he purported to be.  From somewhere in his past was emerging an insidious nature and I would come to the realization that I must oppose him.

My mind kept returning to the magazine article, as I tried to keep busy in the cabin.  I hadn’t spoken to my ex about it, because I was afraid of his response.  I found that I wasn’t very hungry and just ate the bare minimum to placate my hunger.  It was also getting harder to sleep, as my anxiety was building up.  If one rape event could cause so much psychological damage, what about the ones that I had tried to bury, not to mention several near-rape scenarios that I had wrangled my way out of.  Why was I such a target?  The duality of my upbringing to be chaste while being forced to accept rape had conditioned me to be submissive and interfered with my ability to make rational decisions.

Then I thought of my ex’s strange conduct.  There was the deer horn carving, the isolated location, the gopher bones and tail, the frequent trips away, his ex’s trip to a voodoo ceremony, and now the gym membership.  It was spelling out something very treacherous and fear started to set in.  I finally realized that I could no longer trust the man, and that I had to confront him with some questions.

One afternoon, as I was reflecting upon some of the unsound decisions I had been making throughout my life to date, I made a commitment to myself to stand up for myself.  It had suddenly occurred to me that I had placed myself in the position that I was in, because I had always been afraid of conflict.  That decision to fight back brought with it the courage I needed to face my ex.

By the time my ex returned from his latest jaunt to an undisclosed location, I was very agitated. To my surprise, his eyes were no longer blue, but were a sickly grayish color with little dots on them. I questioned him about his destination, who he was with and why he kept leaving me all alone.  He failed to give me any explanation but, instead, started to throw accusations back at me.  As I continued to argue, he went to bed and fell asleep.  I was also very tired, but I couldn’t stand to be with him.  I sat at the kitchen table and continued to make plans to leave him.

As I got up from the table to cross the room, I suddenly had the thought that someone was there in the room with me.  I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone.  Then I felt someone pushing me down on the floor.  There was a weight pressing down on my shoulders that made me buckle my head down with bent knees.  As that presence continued its downward thrust, I remembered how I had earlier made a commitment to fight.  So, I pushed back against whatever it was that was forcing me to the floor.  I could feel a strong resistance as I kept pushing myself back up onto my feet.  I remember saying out loud: “I will not give in.  I will fight you!”  At that instant the force released and I stood up quickly.

From the bedroom I heard my ex call out.  As I entered the room, I saw that he was lying awake and looking at me in confusion.  I told him that he had better change his ways, or he would slide into the abyss.  I tried to pull him toward me, but he moved away from me, to the other side of the bed, where he started to slide off to the floor.  His forehead was furled up in confusion.  I remember going to the window to crack it open, but there was a loud whistling wind, so I closed it.

That night I barely slept at all.  After my encounter with what I could only perceive as an unseen force, I was shaken.  When my ex awoke, I reviewed the events of the previous night with him over breakfast. His forehead was furled up, like during the night, and I couldn’t stand to look at his gray spotted eyes.  I asked him: “Who are you? You’re not my husband, so who are you?”  He would only look at me in confusion.  He kept going back into the bedroom to sleep.

In the late afternoon my ex announced that he was going to town and that he would be back in a few hours.  When I demanded to know where he was going, was it to the gym, he refused to respond.  Instead, he just looked at me with those mottled gray eyes.  Again, I asked him who he was, but he turned and started down the stairs to the back door.  I called to him to stop, so that we could talk, but he kept going down the stairs.   I grabbed the hanger from his coat and pleaded with him to come back in and answer my questions.  As I grabbed his shoulder, he turned around and pulled hard on my sleeve. I lost my balance and slid on the stairs.  I banged the back of my head and, for the first time in my life, I saw stars.  This took me by surprise, and I gasped for him to leave me alone.  He gave me another blank stare from those gray eyes, then left the house without speaking.

Although I had been in situations where I was afraid of being injured or punished by my abusers, right then I became terrified for my life.  Suddenly I felt that whatever ominous presence had possessed my husband was going to kill me when he returned.  So I panicked and started throwing together some personal belongings to take with me.  I hastily packed a few clothes and some of my university notebooks into a boarding bag and slipped the hundred dollars into my purse.  I dressed as warmly as I could and headed out the door.

As I pushed through the thigh deep snow along the side of the property to eliminate my tracks from plain view, I couldn’t think of any other way to elude my ex than to ask one of the neighbors for help.  If I kept walking down the road, he was likely to spot me upon his return to the cabin.  I crossed the road and trudged over the snow to the front door of a neighbor that I had never actually seen or spoken with before.  When the man opened the door, he looked very surprised to see me standing there and called to his wife.  They asked me to come inside and sit down, as I explained to them that I was very afraid of my husband that I needed to know if they could give me a ride to the bus station in town.  After about 20 minutes, another man arrived at the house and the neighbors said that he was going to town and would give me a lift.  I was starting to feel very uncomfortable about these people, who seemed to be taking too long to decide what they were going to do.  They all had enlarged pupils, which I found very strange.  I was, however, more afraid of my ex during those moments, so I accepted the 20-mile ride to 100 Mile House.

On the way in the car the stranger talked about his family and how much they enjoyed living in the area.  He asked me if I was certain that I wanted to leave my husband, and I nervously explained that I was afraid that he was going to hurt me.  When we arrived at the bus station at 7 o’clock, it had already closed.  Without waiting for him to suggest another destination, I asked him to drive me back to a motel that was a few blocks away on the main highway.

When I walked up to the motel desk, the manager came to greet me.  Again his pupils were dilated.  I didn’t know what that meant, but it really gave me the creeps.  I paid him and took the key to my room.  Once inside, I felt better.  The next morning I would take the bus to Vancouver and safety.  I was exhausted.  Then I remembered that I hadn’t eaten since lunch and it was already 10:00 p.m.

Across the highway was a convenience store with blue paint framing its doorway.  I pulled on my coat and boots to go over to find something to eat.  Inside the store the clerk said hello as I walked to the back of the store to find a drink in the cooler.  Then I noticed a bunch of teenagers enter the store together. They greeted the clerk and started looking intently at merchandise on the shelves.  I looked at each of them and realized that they were actually watching me.  This greatly disturbed me as walked over to the clerk to pay for some mini-donuts and orange juice.

As I was paying the clerk, I noticed that his pupils were also dilated.  The alarm bells went off.  I asked him pointblank: “What are all these people here for?”  His response was that they were doing inventory.  I said that I didn’t believe that they would actually be doing inventory at 10:00 at night.   He then asked me to step outside for a moment.  I was only too glad to go outside, as I thought he was going to help me understand what was happening.

Once outside in the parking lot, the clerk started to yell at me: “We saw you last night, beating up on your husband!”

“What do you mean?  How could you possibly know anything about my husband and me?  How could you see me last night?  We were home by ourselves!  I’ve never seen you before!”

The clerk yelled back: “We saw you beating up on your husband and you won’t get away with it!”

Suddenly I froze in my tracks.  This couldn’t be happening!  I turned and looked straight ahead as I walked back across the highway to the motel and locked the door to my room.  Whatever dark force was after me, my ex was either in on it, or the entire town was possessed and was causing his strange behavior.  At that moment I had no idea what I was going to.  I only knew that I had to get out of that place.

6. Finding Freedom

As soon as I reentered the motel room, I realized that I had to somehow protect myself from all these people, including my husband, who seemed to have some sort of hidden agenda about me.  There was no reasonable explanation for what the convenience store clerk had said.  How could that stranger know that my ex and I had been arguing the night before? Although I was already shaken enough from the earlier events of that evening, I felt that I was in greater danger than I could imagine.  A surge of anxiety hit me.

While these thoughts were racing through my mind, I started to think about anyone who might be able to help me.  I thought back on my university courses in Spanish literature in which the metaphysical world was often described.  In one of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories, Borges y Yo, he described his himself as being two people, one who walks in the flesh and one who exists on another level.  I felt like this fittingly described the predicament I had inadvertently found myself in.

Whatever I was experiencing, in some way it was happening on two levels.  The unseen force that had pressed me down toward the floor, the change in my ex-husband’s eyes, the dilated pupils of everyone I had encountered earlier that day, and then the store clerk’s bizarre statements.  What did it all mean?  Who were these people and what could they possibly want with me?  What had happened to my ex-husband and was he aware of his alteration?  Then I was hit with the possibility of having been victimized by the people that ran the town.  Maybe they were preying on me, because of my ex’s secret involvement with them.  Or maybe it was something else.

My next thought was that I wasn’t safe in that motel room, so I would have to leave immediately.  I gathered up the few things that I had brought with me, and started to walk down the highway.  I decided that I would try and hitch a ride with a truck driver, since there was no other traffic at that time of night.  A couple of trucks drove by, but didn’t stop.  As I walked down the highway I could hear the constant howling of the wind in my ears, similar to what I had heard the night before at the cabin.

As I passed the sign that read: “You are now leaving 100 Mile House”, suddenly the howling wind stopped and I felt relieved and almost peaceful.  I calculated that, if I had to walk all the way to the next little town, it would have taken me at least until morning.  I was determined to walk the 7-mile distance, and pulled my woolen hat over my ears.  There was no traffic; it was mid-February and no one was on the road at that time of night.  I looked up at the sky full of stars and wondered if those beings that I had seen when I was a teenager could possibly be aware of my predicament.  I hadn’t thought about them for many years, yet the memory brought me some comfort.

Then I noticed a police car drive by.  I continued to walk, hoping that they would leave me alone.  They drove past on the other side of the highway, slowing down to take a look at me.  The driver opened his window and asked where I was going.  I indicated with my hand that I was heading in the direction to which I was walking.   They drove away again.

By this time I was concerned about who these policemen might be and if they might have been sent by the townspeople.  The car came up behind me again, and followed me slowly up the highway for about five minutes.  I then decided that I would cross the road, so that they wouldn’t drive up beside me.  I started walking in the same direction and noticed that the police car had stopped.

Then I sensed that someone was behind me.  I started to walk faster, and could definitely feel someone coming up behind me.  As I turned to look at who was following me, I saw a very tall upright being with large curly horns on his head.  It looked like a satyr from Greek mythology.  Whatever it was, it must have been at least seven feet tall.  Then, as it reached out to grab my shoulder, I saw a police officer in uniform.  He started pulling me across the road to the police vehicle, as I protested.  Once we arrived at the car, the other officer got out and together they tried to push me into the back seat of their cruiser, as I placed my hands and legs against the car to prevent them from pushing me inside.  They were ripping my jacket apart, when one of them pulled off my hat and pulled my hair really hard.  I released my grip and they tossed me into the cruiser.

I spent that night in the hospital, where I was observed by a couple of psychologists; one was a bit sinister, while the other seemed friendly.  In the morning my ex just happened to show up in my room.  Oddly, his eyes were once again blue, but much bluer than they had been previously.  I refrained from commenting, but asked him how he knew that I was there.  He said that he had gone to see his lawyer the night before, when I had disappeared from the cabin, and that the lawyer had told him that morning that I had been admitted.  Since I wasn’t aware of any lawyer in that town, I suspected that he was lying.

Even though I knew that my ex could not be trusted, I figured that I had to go along with him, since I had no other way out of town.  The next day my ex announced that we were leaving to go down to Vancouver.  When he picked me up at the hospital he had already packed my suitcase, so I never had to return to the cabin.  We drove most of the way in silence.  It was like I never even knew the man.

En route, I told my ex that I wanted to go and visit my family, because I felt so ashamed of myself for the way that I had been living my life.  We also discussed the times when he had hit me, and he told me that he couldn’t recall those incidents at all.  He said that he simply blacked out and didn’t remember.  I couldn’t believe anything he said at that point.

When we arrived in the city, my ex decided that he would check me into an outpatient clinic for the weekend.  I spent three days being interviewed by psychiatrists and being subjected to group therapy.  I was well aware that I couldn’t discuss what had happened at the cabin and in 100 Mile House and just tried to rest.  I learned that I had lost 15 pounds during the previous two weeks, and acknowledged that I needed to look after myself better.

Then my ex returned with the good news that I would be on a flight the next morning.  We stayed in a hotel that night; it was Valentine’s Day and I pretended that it was a special time.  When he offered me a glass of wine at dinner, I could barely raise the glass to my lips without shaking.  It all had to stop.

During the flight I reviewed the events that had just transpired and could think of no apparent reason for them.  Yet I knew that I had to find someone to help me to deal with what I then called supernatural phenomena. The person I would seek would be someone whose knowledge surpassed what the medical community understood.  I didn’t really know who I was looking for, but I knew that I had to find the right person.

When I arrived in the city where I had been raised, I asked one of my sisters if she knew of anyone in the area who dealt with supernatural events.  She told me that there was someone teaching parapsychology at the local college and that might be a good place to start.

That was the turning point in my life, for that was how I met Leo Jean.  Soon I would learn more about myself than I ever imagined.  And I would finally learn to work with my spirit.

7. Spiritual Recognition

Upon meeting Leo Jean I immediately had life changing experiences that brought me from existing as a vulnerable victim to living as a confident person who is fully responsible for my entire being.   It wasn’t until I saw my spirit for the first time, though, that I really felt a connection to my place in the universe.

My first contact with Leo Jean was so exhilarating!  When I arrived at his office, his large Boxer dog growled hello to me.  Leo told me not to worry, because his dog was providing him with some information about me.  I asked if Leo’s accent was French and he stated that he was Belgian.  He said had intentionally kept his accent although he had left Belgium when he was very young.  When I had phoned to make the appointment, I remember saying before we hung up: “We’re going to be such good friends!”  I felt a little embarrassed about that statement at the time, but it turned out to be so true.

As I started to tell him about the recent events that had unfolded, I felt that I could trust Leo with the entire truth of my situation.  I told him about how my then-husband seemed to have been taken over by some supernatural force, and Leo looked me straight in the eye as he told me that he would help me to comprehend what had occurred.  Then I told him about the simian-like beings that I had encountered when I was a teenager.  He told me that we would deal with all that later.  I also asked Leo if it were possible to learn how to use the other 90% of my brain, and he nodded and stated that we would look into it.

Then Leo suggested that we get to work to help me regain my equilibrium.  First, Leo asked if I would permit him to remove all the negativity from me, including that which had damaged my electromagnetic field.  Then he asked me if I would allow him to help me to close my damaged spiritual openings, so that he could perform a healing. Even though I didn’t know what that meant at the time, I agreed because I believed that Leo knew what he was doing.

Once Leo had worked to close and heal my spiritual openings, and to realign my electrical and electromagnetic fields, he then directed me to close my eyes very gently and to mentally ask my spirit to show itself.  No sooner had the thought crossed my mind that I wanted my spirit to show itself, than it happened.  With my eyes closed, I saw a tiny spark of brilliant white light twinkle, then fade into the distance of my mind’s eye vision.  Wow!  That was my spirit!

For the next few minutes, I was flabbergasted.  For all of my life, previous to this moment, I had been searching for something that would give my life meaning.  Now here it was – my spirit!  I was in awe that I actually had a spirit that could respond to me.  The fairy tale was definitely over.  Now I had the most fundamental element of all with which to pursue my life.  All the fear that religions had instilled in their followers about the consequences of being a non-believer was instantly identified.  As I had always suspected, even as a child, it was all just coercive conditioning.

After that healing session, I felt like such a weight had been lifted from me!  I felt happy again.  It was a distantly familiar feeling that I hadn’t felt since I was at least three years old.  I felt invigorated and bubbly.  I smiled so much that day that my face ached from not having used those facial muscles for so long.

That night I received a call from my then husband.  When I told him about my appointment with Leo, he became very upset and demanded to know why I would ever go to see someone like that.  He implied that those types of people are only interested in preying on troubled women.  I assured him that he was wrong and that he should be happy that I was feeling so much better.  My soon-to-become ex was definitely worried.

Leo had invited me to attend one of his evening classes at the college and I was only too pleased to sit in.  Toward the end he asked if everyone had brought their spoons, because he was going to teach the class about mind power.  The students held up their spoons, and Leo directed them how to use their minds to twist their spoons at the neck.  There were many “Ooh’s” and “Ah’s” as the students focused their mental energy at the spoons and twisted them.  I had never seen anything like it before, and was excited about such a different approach to using one’s mind.

A few days later, Leo invited me to meet with some people that had been working with him for a while.  Some of the people were learning to use their psychic skills to help others in the group.  After the others had left, one of the ladies, a registered nurse, told me that she would like to help me.  She asked Leo to help her look at my ex, so that they could help determine what danger he presented.  She asked for my ex’s name and “looked” at him.  She said she saw a tall man with long stringy hair.  I said that my ex had never worn his hair long.

Only then did I remember that he had told me very early in our relationship that he had lived in England for three years and had let his hair grow while there.  I was impressed by how this woman could perceive him directly.  She said that he had been delving into some very dark knowledge during that time and seemed genuinely disturbed by him.  My ex had always told me that I was never to read about, talk about or even think about anything paranormal.  And here was this woman, telling me that my ex had acquired great knowledge of a dark nature.  I felt a cold chill go up my neck.

Then Leo told the nurse that he was going to have to go into a spiritual battle, because my ex and his ex-wife were now attacking him at the higher level.  Right then I had a déjà vu, as if I had already known that Leo would fight my ex at the higher level.  Leo made the statement that my ex’s ex was even stronger than my ex and that she would have to be dealt with immediately.  I was pretty scared for a few minutes, then the fear turned to relaxation as the negativity subsided.  Leo was stopping the attack of negative energy that those people were directing toward me.

Within two days, my ex phoned to say that he would be arriving in town that night to pick me up.  I immediately called Leo and told him that I was still afraid of my ex.  Leo asked me if I wanted to go back with him and I stated that I clearly did not, but that I was terrified of him.  Leo said that he would allow me to stay with him until he left.  I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to get away from my ex!

That night Leo picked me up and took me to stay with him and his family.  The following day my ex showed up at the door and I hid with my head under a pillow, so that I wouldn’t be able to hear his voice.  I was trembling with fear at the thought of having to see my ex again.  After about fifteen minutes, Leo came to tell me that my ex had left, but that he was probably wasn’t going to give up that easily.  I spent a few days indoors so that he wouldn’t be able to approach me on the street.

After we knew that my ex had left town, Leo told me that he had left something for me.  I was puzzled as he showed me my ex’s wedding ring inside a small bottle.  He took it out and balanced it on its edge on the table.  It was vibrating!  I asked what was wrong with it and Leo said that my ex had placed a curse on the ring.  What we were seeing was the effect of the strong negative energy level within the element of the ring.  If I were to touch my ex’s ring, I would once again fall under his influence and would feel compelled to return to him.  I certainly didn’t want that, so I never touched the ring and immediately got rid of it.  It was interesting that, as I got rid of the ring, I got rid of Mr. Corcoran.

Only then did I begin to realize how little love and respect I had for myself before Leo opened my mind to the unseen reality around us.  Throughout my life I had systematically been giving away my positive energy to the predators that had exploited my good intentions in life.  With so little self-respect, my own self-worth had diminished and I felt trapped within the negative circle of guilt, shame and helplessness that I had drawn for myself.  Over the next few months everything would change, as I began to learn about my spirit and the immense potential that it had always offered but that I had never acknowledged.

8.  Free to Choose

During the next while I spent as much time with Leo as I could.  I was beginning to make great strides toward recovering from the ordeal I knew as my previous life.  What had happened to me was that, although I had a positive spirit when I was born, I had been constantly subjected to negativity that caused my spirit to lose its positive energy.  Luckily, my spirit was still strong enough to direct me to Leo who had enough knowledge to help me.

Of course I was intrigued by the concept that a person’s spirit, also known as their soul, has energy, just like a thought has energy.  A spirit’s energy can be positive or negative and a person is subject to that energy. Not everyone has a positively-oriented spirit at birth.  In other words, if your spirit thrives on negative energy, then your spirit will respond to negativity.  If your spirit thrives on positive energy, then your spirit will respond to the pure white light of the universe, which is pure positive energy.  It will react and respond according to how you deal with energy from people, places, things and thoughts.

It wasn’t long before I was able to regain control over the addictions I had accepted earlier in life.  Within two months of meeting Leo I was able to quit smoking after having smoked for 15 years, then half my life.  Leo simply made a suggestion that, if I wanted to quit, I alone had to make the decision to do so.  After one memorable struggle through a winter blizzard to go and buy cigarettes, I made that decision with a firm commitment to myself.  Then, each time I had the urge to light up, I simply went back to my commitment and was able to stop myself from giving in.  The cigarettes were no longer in control of me.  After several months I was able to say a final “No, thanks.” to the alcohol that was often offered to me.  I felt so much better about myself for having finally defeated those destructive tendencies!

Once I had regained my equilibrium, Leo asked if I would like to train to be his assistant.  I immediately replied that I could think of no better way to spend my life than to help others who experienced problems of a spiritual nature.  Two years later Leo and I set up an office together and I began to work with people as Leo’s assistant.  As I worked with Leo to solve the plethora of problems faced by our many clients, I realized that certain patterns of human spiritual behavior were emerging.  No one else was dealing with the types of spirits that Leo engaged.

Before too long I made the decision to confront both my abusive ex-husband and the priest that had raped me as a child.  In January of 1988 I went alone to the local courthouse where I petitioned for and was granted a divorce.   The next month, in terrible icy conditions, Leo and I drove all the way from Ontario, Canada to the west coast so that I could face my ex.  I had obtained his address and phone number before we set out and, when we arrived, I called to say that I would be at his house within 5 minutes to meet with him.  On the phone, my ex stated that he had been advised by his doctor not to speak with me, because of his high blood pressure.  When we drove up in front of his house, my ex was leaving with a friend.  He kept his back to me as he walked to his car and I saw that he was actually afraid to face me.  That was a very telling experience, for I realized then that a bully and wife-beater is a coward.  I’m happy to say that I never saw that man again.

The following year I gathered up my courage to phone the Catholic Diocese to find out if Father Lefaive was still alive, and found that he was in a nearby city.  I then called the police to ask how to lay a charge of rape against a priest that was committed in childhood.  The desk sargeant told me that I would have to contact the local courthouse. At the courthouse the clerk told me that, without corroboration, namely someone else who could support my allegations, they couldn’t help me because the statute of limitations had run out.  No one knew about the rape, because I had been threatened with harm to my entire family if I spoke about it!  So I decided to confront that perverted priest in person.

Although I had spoken with the priest and made an appointment to meet with him, when Leo and I arrived he was not at the church as had been arranged.  The next day I called Father Lefaive and spoke with him on the phone.  I asked him if he remembered when he had taken me upstairs from the basement into his bedroom in 1966.  He didn’t recall that.  Then I told him that I was awake during the entire time.  He hastily uttered: “I categorically deny that!”  He dropped the phone and then the line when dead.  After hearing countless legal denials during all of the subsequent scandals of the RC church, it was apparent that the priest had a prepared response.  From my standpoint, in having made those very important attempts to confront my abusers, I had actually overcome my inner fear that had grown exponentially over time.

Later that same year, while I was at the library looking up the names of global organizations that were involved with parapsychology, I glanced at the town of 100 Mile House.  As I read the name of the organization and its director, I saw the name: “Emissaries of the Divine Light”, with Lord Exeter as its head.  Lord Exeter of the House of Lords was the person who had been given the 25,000 acres of land by the Queen of England.  He was operating a cult-like organization in 100 Mile House, B.C.  The directory listed branches in Maple, Ontario and Boulder, Colorado.  I wondered if my ex had known about that cult when he lived in England and had offered me to them in exchange for something.  It was notable that Lord Exeter had used the concept of light for his own dark purpose.  I no longer felt like a victim, but like a survivor.

As I continue to work with my spirit, I feel privileged to be working so closely with Leo Jean.  Over the years he has helped me to determine the solutions to so many problems that I never recognized as having been so detrimental to my well-being.  I’ve learned that my spirit is dependent on me to freely choose whether I accept a negative path or a positive path in life.  Within this positive realm that I’ve chosen is an attainable complex beauty that can only be compared to the ongoing discoveries in the elegant multiverse.  As far as I’m concerned, my existence revolves around the star that is my spirit.

Gloria Romlewski
December 10, 2011 

Visit my website to start working with your spirit…OnlyPositiveKnowledge.com