My Past, Present and Future Lives

It was the beginning of October. I had recently celebrated another birthday-- a bench mark year. As a gift to myself, I decided to have a psychic reading conducted by a woman who sets up shop in New York City’s Union Square Park, located in Manhattan. As we were getting started, another customer stopped by. He was an Indian (as in India). The psychic asked him "Where have you been.  I was here looking for you earlier?”  

Soon the three of us were having a spiritual gab fest. When it was my turn to share, I took them on a fast track of all the roads I’d taken on my "spiritual journey", beginning from the time I was five years old when I began astral traveling.  I continued running through the trails and errors of the faiths I’d delved in, as if they were pools for me to swim in. I shared that when I was twelve years old, one summer my mother had signed me up with the Fresh Air fund, and I was sent off to all Jewish camp that was strictly kosher. I had no idea why they didn’t serve bacon for breakfast. And as far as what borsch was, I didn’t even want to know the answer. I starved for the two weeks I was there.

I was the only colored person in the whole camp, I chimed. Colored was an old fashion word, of course, but somehow it seemed to work in the moment. Timing – history being the arbiter of my way of placing me somewhere, in the world and specifically in America, when certain words such as Colored had applied to my race..

But in spite of my cultural/religious shock that summer of years ago, I tell the Indian and Psychic “Once I had wanted to become a Jew and before that a Roman Catholic,” I added. The latter was at the time I had a best friend named Marion Leatherberry who was a Catholic and a few years older then me. It was the singing of choir that had most inspired my desire to convert to this religion. The music sounded like it came from heaven, I had thought. 

In my adult life, it was Islam and then Buddhism to which I belonged to for the longest periods.

Veering bit off the track of our conversation, I shared, “Well, my father was from Jamaica. I think. Because I had never actually met him, or rather I was so young when he died, I don’t remember him at all, but my mother told me that my father was a West Indian man and a Moslem. I just assumed that meant he was a Jamaican. “So that made me both.  I had once supposed.” I continued, “I was never a Christian you know." I said this with such fervor, as if having not been baptized placed meat best in a special Believer category, or at worst an Agnostic.

As I continued to speak, I noticed that the Indian looked at me curiously. The Psyche who was seated next to me in an identical beach chair to the one I was in, which she sets up in the park for her readings,  slid her eyes sideways over to me after I had shared,  “Now I channel an old woman.  I call her Wela.”

It all began in 2000.  I was home, sitting at the head of my bed meditating, asking whomever to fulfill my needs. I started rocking back and forth. My body began lifting off the top of my mattress.  I began to speak. At first the words sounded tiny as if were coming from a long, long way, and filtered through the mesh of a short wave radio.   My mouth felt as if it was full of cotton. I was mumbling foreign sounds -- a polycot of some sort. After days of being downloaded the American English language I usually speak began to come through. The voice coming out of me though was not mine.
 
The Indian listened intently, as I shared my adventure. He looked down at me, curiously too. He had a half smile on his face. I wasn’t sure what it meant.  When my story telling was over he proceeded to speak in a quiet reassuring voice, as if he were bringing me down from a window ledge I was about to jump from. In his British English, tinted with his native lingua, he said, "I have something to tell you -- they are telling me to tell you this. Your guardian angel is the Goddess Durga.   She is here to guide you on your spiritual journey." My mental response to this edict was: "Who in the world are you? Who are they? I am already on my spiritual journey brother man." 
 
The Indian man continued speaking to me. I watched him cupping his right ear with his right hand, as if he were listening to someone stationed at a command center somewhere out in space.  "Ah, they are saying that you must set up an altar in your home, dedicated to the Goddess Durga.”
 
 
Hearing this, I felt a bit shaken by what was taking place in the park. In that this convergence of three souls, our timing of being the park at just the right moment and running into one another was no coincidence.  I had looked for the Psychic, earlier. Hadn’t found her. So I left there, to take a sweater I had bought at the store, Anthoropolgy; when I had walked back through the park the Psychic was there. And then this Indian guy who had walked out of the ethers showed up, presenting himself as the messenger of whoever; all of this took place in the spin time it takes for evening to turn into night.

In the dark, the three of us continued to talk about things mystical and esoteric -- seen and unseen. Thrown into this mix of my thousand questions to the Indian was "Are there any correlations to this Goddess Durga and other belief systems, say ancient Egypt’s pantheon of gods and goddesses – Isis, perhaps? 
 
The Indian replied, "As a matter of fact, there is.”
 
"Good ", I responded and then immediately, I swan back to my memories of having a spark of enlightenment, during my visit to Isis’s temple. Sharing, “It was amazing...."
 
The Psychic was ready now. Her tarot cards were stacked on top of the T.V. dinner table she customarily unfolds and plants firming on the dark grey stone pathway, to conduct her spiritual readings for anyone like me who is brave enough to walk up to her,  take a chance on hearing about their past, present and future lives, costing only for twenty dollars. 
 
"Shuffle the cards?’ says the Psychic in her lovely yet powerful voice, baring a close resemblance to the sound of my strict eight grade music teacher, Miss Walker’s voice. I assume the role of the obedient student and do as I am told. Then the Psychic seamlessly moved back to the private conversation she and the Indian were having a moment ago.

I grabbed hold of the pile of stiff as boards, hard to shuffle, hand-size tarot cards with indecipherable symbols printed on one side. I laid them back down on top of the metal table top when I am done.
 
"Now cut them with your left hand,” the Psychic slipped this instruction in between her conversation with the Indian. I obeyed. Time ticked on. We were completely shrouded in darkness by now, three of us silhouettes, in the Park, lit from behind, by the bright lights beaming from the store fronts across the street, on the west side of the park.  Suddenly I blurted out to the Indian, who was still receiving messages from the Beyond, "Who is this 'they' who is speaking to you? “ 

I stared up into his dark good looking face, barely able to make out his features. But the whites of his eyes sufficed as they stared down at me like two 25 watt light bulbs, the kind you put in your refrigerator. He offered in a slightly dragging holy murmur, “It is now.  Your duty. To worship. Goddess Durga.” He went on to explain that she is my protector, that I was to learn about her and to tell her what my needs are.

“She will help you.” He then instructed me that I should pray to her only one minute a day for what I want and to keep a spiritual journal. “Never stop. Never go back. Adding, “You will live a very long time. You will not have a future life here,” (meaning on this planet).  Your past lives are over..."

”It’s a big universe out there”, I thought. 


Moi, Mahmoudah