Ever since I first heard the word 'Colorado', it seemed almost magical
to me, coupled with the great chain of Rocky Mountains. I
had hungered to go there from childhood, like there was something
special there for me I was destined to experience.
My first genuine hint of anything outside
the southern standard-fare of beliefs I grew up with [except for Mary
Baker-Eddy's Science of Mind and church] was through reading Thomas
Surgrue's There Is a River, a biography of Edgar Cayce, the
deep-trance medium of the early 20th century. I was 19, and this
totally exploded my worldview into an incandescent wowww .. YES-YES-YESS!!
It was a clear wake up call. Amazingly, I had known
absolutely nothing of anything like this in terms of what I had grown up
with, but it all felt so like Coming Home in a big way to learn of
things like experiences of this nature, of mediums and psychic and
healing gifts and spirituality that was not confined to a church,
temple, etc.
From about that time, I 'knew' I would find
a major teacher for me in Colorado. When I was 22, I moved to
Denver [via Chicago, another adventure], hoping to find that
teacher. I was there for two years and jobs were hard to come by
for someone with no education or skills other than waiting tables.
The teacher I had hoped to find had not appeared, and disappointed, I
had decided to move back to Chicago where I had a better chance to get a
good job and reinvolved with the spiritual community I had been with
before I moved to Denver. Having given notice at work, I figured a
paycheck should get me back to Chicago and into a job and a room
somewhere [speaking of being happy with a breadcrumbs style of living, I
was definitely a 'free spirit' of those times!].
It was two weeks before I was to go, when a
friend told me about this 'biofeedback workshop' and said I just had
to go with her. I said, no way, since I had barely enough to
get a bus back to Chicago. But she stubbornly persisted, so there
went $50 to the four winds, and we showed up for this weekend event
right there in Denver.
At this point is where the story unfolded about how
I initially met Laurel_ Elizabeth
Keyes, the 'tiger' in question. At the moment I originally
spotted her toward the back of the auditorium, I was attracted to
her. But I felt this about a lot of old/elderly people. I
kind of felt sorry for her, figuring she was just shy, or maybe she came
in late and didn't want to disturb anyone. So, when the workshop
leader suggested we pick partners, I immediately went back and 'adopted'
her. And we spent the whole weekend doing psychic experiments
together.
Here is what I eventually learned about my new friend Laurel. At
lunch the first day, we wandered amid tables of mostly books we could
buy, and there I spied 2-3 books written by Laurel Elizabeth
Keyes! She was right there and I said, "You wrote
these?" And she immediately downplayed them and wandered off
with a book in her own hands. One of her books was about Toning, a
healing modality she said she didn't create but rather, 'rediscovered',
a process of using vocalized sound to heal. Later I learned she
and the two men who led the workshop had indeed known each other,
something I had decided with not the most positive motives initially
[see "She's Your
Grandmother!"]. And I was right! But it turns out
they had been asking her for months if she would come observe their
workshop and give them some feedback.
Laurel just 'chanced' to go the same weekend my friend had practically
twisted my arm to get me there, and so shortly before I was to have
moved back to Chicago, feeling I had failed to find the teacher I had
long anticipated there.
The books, especially the one about toning, instantly fascinated me, and
I soon learned from the book or Laurel that she had been teaching and
mentoring a spiritual healing group for about ten years.
Eventually she invited me to come to her long-standing Tuesday class,
and fortunately my work schedule allowed me to do this easily. I
had found my teacher! Here I had thought, as this whole thing
started out, that I had sought her out in a gesture of sympathy, not
knowing I had indeed 'picked' the Teacher I had been intuiting all this
time, or at least I feel she was and is, who these men had been hoping
for months would come critique their work. Tiger by
the tail. So funny, so perfect -- synchronicities always are
delightful, by definition! I ended up staying in Denver,
spending about four years with her and her Fransisters. She was
one of the most important people in my life and opened my eyes in
many ways to the Larger
Life Reality.
Oh, and she had grown up with the likes of all sorts of Indian Sadhus
and other similarly fascinating characters from her earliest years and
had herself been a student of the inimitable A. K. Mozumdar and
Paramahamsa Yogananda! Professionally she counseled not only the
living, but also the so-called dead, which is why she was surprised not
to realize this when I brought to her attention that my grandmother had
passed on about two years previous to my meeting Laurel.
But if you showed up at the old, familiar church on the corner of
anytown, USA for a Sunday service and saw Laurel amid the many other
elders, you would not be able to pick her out of the crowd. She
led an otherwise seeming ordinary life in a very modest and old
neighborhood not far from the University of Denver. Very humble
and low-key. Yet people like William Tiller, the physicist from
Stanford University, was a welcome friend who did research with her,
and a famous Swami, Muktananda, instantly recognized and honored her as
his equal.
Tiger by the tail, indeed. I didn't say all this to impress you,
at least not in the way some might imagine. One of the most
beautiful and powerful things I learned through this woman's very
unexceptional lifestyle and demeanor, was the ancient wisdom never to
take for granted that things are as they appear. Through people
like Laurel, and even my mother for starters, one of the most telling
characteristics of such a great soul is this quiet humility and
unpretentiousness.
What great being lurks in any pair of eyes that meets yours, in any
heart you may by chance encounter, in any most casual gesture from a
stranger who appears only to steady you at a difficult moment or lift
your spirits .. and is gone? So do I feel humbled and blessed by
Laurel and others. Surely, so do we all, and for all of us at
times we might never imagine, if we but knew!
