Mother Teresa tells us to find the divine in each person, the divine in all its distressing disguises.
“If you really want to do something,” she said, “go out on the streets. Find someone living there who believes they are alone and convince them that they are not.”
I remember the first time I saw a homeless person sleeping in the street in New York City. I was a child on my way to a Broadway musical with my parents, when we literally stumbled over someone.
“Dad stop. There’s a man that needs your help. We’ll have to go to the show later. Look at him. He’s fallen to the sidewalk and is staying there.”
My father shook his head, giving my hand a tug. “We can’t stop for every bum in New York or we’ll never get anywhere.”
“But how do you know he’s a bum? Maybe he’s a good person who just fell down and got dirty? It’s getting dark and cold. What will happen to him?”
Father’s well groomed hand shown in sharp contrast to the crusted skin of the man on the ground. “It’s the way of the world, Karen. Get used to it.”
But I never did get used to it and doubt I ever will. How easy it is for us to react and judge, and how different life would be if we stopped to tend our brothers and sisters. How often I have heard words like, “They’re just a bunch of street people, losers and drug addicts. They’re not contributing to society. You can’t help them because they don’t want to be helped. They could work if they wanted to. They’re just a bunch of stinking vagrants, thieves and boozers. They should get a job like everybody else.”
So, let’s back up a little. None of us comes into this world as a dirty drugged out homeless person. We come in as innocent beings full of light, dependent on those around us to feed, comfort, house and nurture our spirits. When that doesn’t happen, we go into hiding, and when hiding isn’t enough and bad things keep happening over and over again, we become smaller, fearful and broken, finally believing that life and all the beautiful things in it belong to someone else.
The solution is rarely a question of providing a disadvantaged person a job, rather it’s a matter of slowly building trust, so they are able to overcome self-loathing, beliefs of not deserving, and fears that have been rooted in physical and emotional trauma. Wounding that manifests in self-sabotaging acts, like addictions and bitterness need to be addressed before life can be successful. Because all healing is first a healing of the heart.
One late evening in my thirties, I was riding around the streets of Portland, Oregon in a shopping cart. Yep, that’s what I said, a shopping cart. I no longer remember who was doing the pushing but know there must have been a few glasses of Merlot involved. We’d come from giving a late night performance at Storefront Theater and needed to let off steam. I was sitting on my coat, balancing a bouquet of roses I’d been given at the end of the show and acting silly and loud.
“Look at me. I’m the queen of the grocery cart, the queen of the city. And all I survey is my kingdom.”
I saw a woman sitting against a storefront window as we rounded the corner on airborne wheels. “Over there,” I said. “Take me over there!” I was a tad too trapped and tipsy to leave the cart, so I bent over the front.
“Here, these are for you dear lady. Now you can be the queen of the city.” She stared up at me, confused. “Take them,” I said. “I’ve come all this way to give them to you.”
“No.” She cast her eyes down. “I don’t deserve them.”
“Oh, but you do. You most definitely do.”
She refused, so I tossed the long green stems and blood red blooms near her blanket, where they surprised me by scattering against the cement like garbage. That’s what burned into my senses, the way a symbol of love and celebration in my reality transformed into trash when they landed in hers, like they’d passed through an energetic field that changed all meaning and relevance.
We create different realities by our thoughts and beliefs but we are not really different: the homeless person, the housewife, the corporate president or bus driver. We like to think we are because of our station in life and all we’ve achieved but inside we’re the same.
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to one another.” Mother Teresa.
I first saw Ram Dass in the late 70’s, when he came to Ohio State University to speak about his trip to India and the ways it transformed his consciousness and character. He spoke about his time as a Harvard Professor, his friendship with Timothy Leary and finding his Hindu teacher.
Oh, last week was such a hard week. Everything went wrong; I was overwhelmed and found lack of harmony at every turn. Ugh! I wanted a ticket to La-La-Land where everybody gets along and life runs smoothly all the time.
I sat on the sand like a kid, examining and fingering each rock. Some were perfect and round, others jagged with veins of white running through the center. They were every shape, variety and color. I unzipped the pocket of my fleece and pulled out a magic marker. Each rock would represent a burden I carried that I wanted to release.
I learned a lot from my residency as a therapist, but very little came from the books I read. It was the personal realizations that moved me to insight more than any training skills. Specifically, I learned that the judgments and criticisms of others that I was so quick to make in the privacy of my own mind were destructive and misplaced, saying more about my lack of development than anything else. 
I was in my last year at boarding school before I picked up a book and read it from cover to cover. Before that, words were a collection of tiny line drawings in black ink, placed against a light background and bunched together in clusters of illegible form. Much of my childhood was spent alone in my room with one illness or another. School became a place I rarely went, so my mother hired tutors to keep me in the educational loop. I didn’t fully realize that I couldn’t read, because I’d been taught the mechanics in school, I simply could not gain entry.
This is what happens each time I sit to write. I ask myself to look at life straight, without skipping over the shadow places, or pretending I don’t hear what I hear, or see what I see.
My massage therapist, Jean, recommended a book by Crowley and Lodge called, 
Henley continued to move through our lives with regularity. Utterly oblivious to the material world, he became a serious student of metaphysics. He also became convinced that I had special healing powers, which I certainly did not, at least not the kind he imagined. In the evening he knocked on the door to request a healing treatment for his balding head. This consisted of seating himself in front of the woodstove and offering non-stop conversation, while I placed my hands above his head, and sent the heat from my palms into his thinning patches of remaining hair. I had no faith in my abilities, but he was positive I had powers from another world. It couldn’t hurt and his conversation was interesting, so I became his healer. (His hair never did grow, by the way.)
How does one heal, prosper and thrive? 
I have a place in my heart that will not heal. It grows but does not diminish. Coming to the ocean helps me empty it when it gets too full. The pain is an ache, a heart break, an intolerable hurt that makes me wish I could throw it up and out.
Many people envision their ideal writing room as the retreat house I live in. It is removed from the distractions of the city, looks into a forest of trees through a wall of windows, and is so still I can match the beat of my heart with the ticking clock. There is an abundance of light to balance winter’s grey and every piece of furniture pleases and comforts me. This has been my nest for four years now, a space that healed me when I fragmented. I saw too many clients in the city and had no resting place. I was the surgeon of the heart who dug deep into hemorrhaging spirits and torn dreams. I removed abscesses and lanced tumors. The colors of my days were drop-dead blood-tired red. The flood of clients that moved through my office door has been reduced to a select few who come by word of mouth and are willing to travel to the country.
Fasting makes the veil between the worlds thin, so more is revealed. I am on my sixth day now, full of curiosity and readiness to see what is delivered. My morning has been beautiful. I slipped on my old grey sweater, pulled blue jeans under my dress and laced hiking boots. What a combination, very odd and very me. I am grateful to be able to walk along the hillside, pass into the woods and be swallowed deep inside her belly. She always feeds me and is gentle. I feast on a million shades of green and listen to the songs of the birds and the buzzing of a single black and orange bee. How grateful I am for this gift of time and communion. I could be stuck in a cubicle, in front of a computer, in traffic, in a bad marriage or in the bloody wars brought by the last administration. How fortunate indeed.
What does it mean to need?
It was late – almost midnight. My friend John and I had gone to the theater in downtown Seattle. We were waiting for buses to arrive, to take us home in different directions. He offered to ride on my bus, to see me safely home, but I discouraged the idea. For heaven’s sake, John, the buses hardly run at this hour. You’d be on a bus all night long if we did that. I’m a big girl, so go on your way. I appreciate your concern, but no. It’s not at all necessary.
I saw a Clint Eastwood movie last night and came away completely satisfied. What is it about these movies? Clint is the equalizer, like Bruce Willis and Tony Soprano. They are the warriors, the ones who put things right by finding quick, immediate solutions to injustice. There is no guilt, or long involvement with the grinding gears of a glacial legal system. They take matters into their own hands and do what needs to be done.
Dave had been a business client for years. He exemplified upper management, drove a Cadillac, and looked like a model for GQ magazine. It was 1992. I was living in an old farm house on the crest of a mountain in the Columbia River Gorge. My clients commented on the peaceful drive along the Sandy River, telling me what an important inner transition it was. I imagined Dave motoring along the river, as I rummaged through my closet, wondering what to wear. Deep in the corner hung the Native American ceremonial dress I was married in, more costume than daily wear, more dust catcher than useful. I kept it for its power and beauty. To my surprise, I found myself grabbing it from the hanger and slipping it over my head. 
Dave was reluctant to leave. I insisted. My world was falling apart. My boundaries were shattered. After he left, I paced like an animal. I shivered, felt feverish and sick. I went to the bathroom to find a homeopathic to calm myself, looked in the mirror and saw for the first time the irony of my attire. I had put on my Indian print wedding dress to meet my Native American husband from another dimension. I ripped off the dress, got a shovel and buried it deep in the yard. I didn’t want to have anything to do with a garment that could transport me instantly from one reality to another. I wanted to be in control. I went to bed and stayed there for several days. My body burned, my energy circuits fried.
Nancy had lots of psychiatric labels when she came to see me; bi-polar and borderline personality to name a few. She was thirty years old, severely overweight and had an attachment disorder that compelled her to phone her father several times every hour. Nancy came for healing at her father’s request.
I have always seen spirits. For some reason, I vibrate with a higher energy frequency, an openness and sensitivity that allows sight into realms that don’t exist for most people. I have been called to remove disruptive spirits from houses and from clients like Nancy in the past. I do it by quieting, closing my eyes, and allowing them to come into vision. I witness their story, all of which plays like a movie inside my head. I am not always successful in this work, but when there is success, the spirit moves on and their absence changes the person’s life for the better. The spirit I saw in Nancy felt large, male and violent. I didn’t feel that I was strong enough or capable enough to move him out, so I began to research someone who might do it for me.
Chetanananda was returning from a year in Tibet. The term Swami, means teacher and bringer of light in Tibetan Buddhism. I had not met him before, but encouraged Nancy’s father to seek an audience and explain the situation. He and Nancy went together and I came later. The Swami is a large bodied man, over six feet tall, who has devoted his life to spiritual practice and mastery. We talked about spirits and spirituality. He confirmed my vision and agreed to meet with Nancy for three puja’s, or healing rituals, where he would release the spirit. I was extremely grateful, since it is rare for the Swami to attend the healing of an individual.
Heal Your Life & Free Your Voice with Karen Banfield 