Caterina’s Story and Soul Portraits

Part 1–Spiritual TRUTH #1

The year 1962, when I was 15 yrs old, I remember my mother bringing home from a rummage sale, a tattered 8 x 11 paperback book of a collection of black and white photos with quotes, titled “The Family of Man”, copyright 1955. This was a collection of 503 photos from 68 countries from a”the greatest photographic exhibition of all time” for the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, created by Edward Steichen. The prologue was by Carl Sandburg, including this poem:

There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men.

There is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women. 

There is only one child in the world and the child’s name is All Children.

The photos were organized by the themes that all people everywhere share: love, marriage, birth, children playing, death, war, anger, friendship, work, play, family, suffering, joy, laughter, loneliness, nature, animals, loss, families. I treasured and treasure this book to this day. It was a gift of grace to that 15 yr old, letting her know she was not alone in how she felt and that she was understood. This book expressed in words and pictures what I felt within my being.

This book spoke to my heart and expressed what I knew in my heart, knew in every cell of my body, to be true: The Oneness of All Life. The unity of the human family. We are all connected. 

It wasn’t until years later, to my great surprise and also dismay, that I realized that not everyone shared that same feeling, that same deep knowledge of that Truth.

I now know that is a huge demarcation line: those that see themselves in “The Other” and those that see themselves totally separate from “The Other”. This lens makes all the difference in how we live and see life and the choices and values we each live by. This lens can make the difference between inner peace and joy or inner despair and emptiness. It also, obviously makes a HUGE difference in how we each treat other people, whether from kindness, caring, empathy and love, or suspicion, hatred, cruelty, coldness and destructively with detachment.

Of the many spiritual truths that I would be awakening to throughout my life, this Truth came in with me at birth. It has been my banner throughout my life. For decades I have had a world flag, with the picture of the earth from space, displayed on the front on my house with the words “All One” beside it.

Part of my life’s work is to assist others in awakening to this Truth.

A Hasidic Tale

The rabbi put this question to his students: “How can we determine the hour of dawn when the night ends and the day begins?” “When from a distance you can distinguish between a dog and a sheep,” suggested one. “No,” answered the rabbi. “When you can distinguish between a fig tree and a grapevine,” offered another. “No.” “Tell us, ” the students said. The teacher answered: “When you look into the face of a human being and have enough light to recognize in him your brother. Up until then, it is night and darkness is still with us.”

Part 2 –Spiritual TRUTH #2

The year is 1980. I am 33 yrs, married for 12 yrs, mother of a 3 yr old, and a student finishing my Masters’s Degree in counseling. It is December, late at night. My husband and daughter are both sleeping and I am up late reading, taking advantage of the quiet. I had taught 4th grade for 7 years, (women at that time had 4 options: housewife, nurse, secretary, teacher) then, getting my courage up,  left that secure, known job, to start work in a Women’s Program at Brevard Community College in Florida, before a job change for my husband had us moving to San Antonio, TX, where I started graduate school.

The last few years of working in the Women’s Program and then with the graduate school had led to a lot of personal growth and introspection. I was getting familiar with going within for reflection. of going into that Still Time, that realm of all possibilities.  I remember I was reading something along those lines that night when unexpectedly the energy in the room changed and the room totally filled with a bright but soft white light. There was a feeling of calmness and total peace. There was a profoundly Loving Presence in the room and I could hear an Inner Voice of that Being talking to me telepathically. “You are TOTALLY loved and ACCEPTED just as you are.” It wasn’t just hearing the words. The warmth of those words flooded my body, filling my every cell. There was a profound KNOWING, an experiencing, of that Truth. That total acceptance and unconditional love filled me to overflowing. There was no doubt. No question. Nothing to do, nothing to earn, just receive and open to this gift of amazing grace. 

Like most of us, we each universally struggle with our egos, our childhoods of not feeling “good enough”. Feeling “less than”. Feeling conditional acceptance based on our doing and performing, meeting other people’s expectations, and always coming up short.

This “visitation”, this mystical experience of connecting with the Divine, the sacred, was profound in its impact. It totally removed all those inner doubts and feelings of “not being good enough” that plague and limit all of us, myself included, before that night. This incredible gift of grace freed me to serve others now from a whole new space. I now carried Spiritual TRUTH # 2, within my cells, within my Being, never to be questioned again. I could now bring that message to others, as a truth for them too. The reality is that this is true for ALL of us. It simply comes with us when we are born into this human life. We are all children of the Divine. We are all accepted and unconditionally loved beyond what we can possibly imagine. The problem is that this Truth gets buried under our human ego and gets forgotten as we live in the density of this earthly time. However, it is always there to be re-discovered and re-connected to by any and all of us at any time. This Truth is within each of us in the sacred divine spark within our hearts. It is patiently waiting for us to be still and open to our Truth.

I believe this gift of the amazing grace of love, this Truth, was awakened within me so that I could pass it on in my counseling work and with all the lives I would be touching in my service of bringing the sacred into this world.

Part 3 –Spiritual TRUTH #3 and #4

The broken heart is the doorway into the soul.

The first 2 Truths were given, they were gifts of grace, brought in with me at birth, and through growth and going within.

The next several Spiritual Truths, that revealed themselves, were earned through long, dark nights of pain, fear and devastation. This is one of the spiritual truths so many of us are amazed to discover. In the midst of the pain are pearls of wisdom, that make our life richer, with more depth and meaning than ever before. Look for those pearls of wisdom and meaning in your own journeys through the darkness.

1986, was the second year of my husband’s job layoff, his midlife crisis, betrayal with an affair, and ultimately his decision to leave the marriage in 1987. I was devastated. I was scared. I was angry. I was depressed. My heart was broken. My life as I had known it was ending. I had a beloved daughter to take care of. I had to keep going. I felt very alone. I held onto the words from the old hymn, “In The Garden”, where Jesus says, “He walks with me and he talks with me and He tells me I am His own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known.” I bought a large picture of a beautiful garden and would put myself in that setting for comfort, for strength, for encouragement. I challenged myself every morning to say thanks for the blessings that were still there. I hung up a sign that said, “Give Thanks In All Things” and thought about Corie ten Boon’s book The Hiding Place and her story about the fleas turning out to be what saved their lives in the barracks in the concentration camp where they did Bible study with a smuggled-in Bible. I challenged myself to trust and every morning read this verse that I had posted on the wall: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all the ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” ~Proverbs 3:5-6

I took one day at a time, and if that was too much, I’d focus on the next minute or the next hour. I’d look for those gifts of grace. The definition of a “good day” was that my daughter and I both woke up well, so she could go to school and I could go to work.” The definition of a “very good day” was that plus, there were no bills in the mail that day! At the end of each day, I would focus on my gratitudes.

This time of being left, abandoned, feeling so alone,  brought up all the memories of my being 12 yrs old, the oldest of 3 children, with a brother 4 yrs younger and another brother, just a baby. Our father, age 44, was in ICU at the hospital, near death. He had gone into the hospital very dehydrated with a gallbladder attack. He caught a staph infection in the hospital and was spiking very high fevers. Basically he was given weeks to live. However, this very stubborn Norwegian, a very dedicated husband and father to his children, was determined to live. Which he did, miraculously for almost another 16 yrs, till that baby almost graduated from high school. However, the combination of everything, killed his optic nerve leaving him totally blind, at age 44 yrs. He was in and out of the hospital and at Mayo Clinic during those 16 yrs, near-death again and again. Our family marks its years as “before Dad’s blindness” and “after Dad’s blindness”.

I felt orphaned. Dad was at the hospital for what felt like forever. I was a Daddy’s girl and loved my father dearly. Mom was stretched very thin, trying to be all things to all people: being at the hospital with Dad, being at the university library researching trying to find answers, being at home to care for her 3 children, one of which a baby, helping out her mother, who lived with us and cared for us when Mom was away, taking care of her mother in law, who lived about a mile away, working all hours of the night as the bookkeeper for the family’s Cabinet Shop business, with the shop behind the house, supervising the 2 other men who worked in the shop. I don’t know how she functioned at all.

I was at that challenging pre-teen developmental time of the first year of junior high, of what would now be called middle school. I helped care for my 2 brothers, including the baby brother, whom I adored. It was a tough time. It was an uncertain time. It was a scary time. What was going to happen? Would Dad live? What was going to happen to our family? We all pulled together and just kept going day by day. The safety, security of my childhood was over. I now learned the life truth of “bad things can happen to good people”. I didn’t understand.

This was a spiritual crisis time for me, too. I was asking the classic question of, “what kind of God lets good people suffer?” I kept praying for my Dad’s eyesight to be restored and didn’t’ understand why my prayers weren’t being answered. Years later, I learned that my 8 yr old brother was doing and feeling the same thing. In a “spiritual reading” years later, I was told, to my total surprise, that my brother’s and my prayers were what kept Dad alive. That my father’s soul had chosen to be blind in this lifetime “in order to see inwardly”. Our prayers could not go against what his soul intended. I learned through this reading that we don’t know and see “the big picture” and that our assumptions can be very inaccurate and incomplete. So, life was also continuing to teach me “smaller spiritual truths” along the way, too.

The marriage separation occurred in 1987, the legal divorce in 1988, when my now ex-husband of 20 years, then with very short notice, moved across the country. I was now raising our daughter totally alone. Any family we had was across the country. It was a humbling experience. I had to learn to reach out for help from friends in order to get through. I learned a new level of gratitude and the awareness of the give and take, the truth of the inter-dependency of us all. Valuable learnings. Life needs and takes cooperation and teamwork. And “family” can take on the definition of “heart connection”.

Two gifts of grace fell into my hands during that 1987 time. The White Eagle book, “Heal Thyself” and the “Messages From Michael” book by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. In times where you may wonder how you will ever go on, look for those gifts of grace. They are there. These 2 books were to have a profound impact on me, in ways that I never would have expected.

October of 1989, one year to the day of the legal divorce, I was attending my first spiritual weekend retreat, that was an Edgar Cayce, ARE (Association of Research and Enlightenment), retreat with the theme of “Dream Healing” at beautiful Camp Waldemar int the Texas Hill Country. Unknown to me, I was about to have life-changing Spiritual TRUTHS #3 AND #4 be awakened within me. 

We were divided into groups and one person within the group would be selected to be the focus one who would be the one “dreamed about” and the others in the group would be the ones “dreaming for” that person. The focus one was to write the question they wanted to be answered on a piece of paper, fold it up and put it under their pillow that night. The others would be asking to be given messages in their dreams to share with the focus person the next morning, to help answer the question of the focus person, without knowing what that question was until the next morning when they all met together for their sharing.

I was very moved when I was selected by the workshop leader to be the focus one in our group. He then instructed the focus person in each group to temporarily give each of the others something of their’s to hold: a watch, a ring, etc. Then off to our dreaming time we went, with the instructions to have a notebook, pen, and flashlight by our beds to write down any information we received during the night in our dreams.

WOW! What a night. My question, that was under my pillow was, “Will my broken and betrayed heart (from the marriage ending) ever mend?” I found it very ironic that this was occurring 1 year to the day of the legal divorce. I also felt so incredibly grateful, blessed, and moved to be the one chosen to be dreamed about.

All night, I had messages and insights coming into my mind. I could feel I was being lifted to a whole other level of consciousness. I got up very early and sat outside, to watch the sunrise over the beautiful fields, tall cypress trees, and river, with a pair of beautiful white swans swimming in the river. (I have a large picture of them over my bed to this day.) Words cannot express what happened next.

As I was watching the sunrise, it was like my whole being merged with the sunlight as one and I was taken up into a whole other level of being. I started to feel completely filled with bliss, a joy, a wholeness that was truly out of this world. An Inner Voice said to me, “You are being given a sneak preview of Heaven so that you can go and learn how to get here deliberately and then teach others how to do the same.” The pain, fears, suffering, and heartache of this earthly world just disappeared, they didn’t exist. It was like they were never real. It was like the mist clearing, with the sun burning all of that away. Those couldn’t exist at this level of Light, Love, pure Being. Talk about an answer to my question of, “Will my broken heart ever heal?” Yikes! Profound. Life-changing. Beyond words. Again, mystical experiences of Oneness cannot be captured in words. They are an experience with a profound KNOWING deep within one’s being.

(Note: Perspective from 26 years later.

When the Inner Voice said at that time, “You are being given a sneak preview of heaven, now learn how to get here deliberately and then teach others.” I figured at that was referring to my counseling work and “my” doing the “Let There Be Light!” project the spring of 1994. Now, at this Covid-19 time and my Soul saying, do this Vision Holders website and project, I can now see THIS is what they were telling me to do, this is what they were referring to!  So interesting how God’s plans and timings work. Who would have guessed! Twenty-six years later and age 73! I have a Jewish friend who shared with me a saying from the Talmud, “We make plans and God laughs!”. You have got to be kidding. But, I can see now with hindsight, this timing is perfect, exactly how it was meant to be. WOW! This truly is an example of learning to “Let go and Let God”, walking in surrender, trust, and peace. WOW, yet another learning at a deeper level. The unfolding journey of our soul’s learning and evolving never stops.) 

The closest to what I experienced that morning with that mystical experience is what I’ve found in reading since then, the numerous stories of people describing their near-death experiences. This Spiritual TRUTH #3 was similar to that. Heaven is very real–an awareness of pure Bliss, Peace, Love, and Light. The traumas, sufferings, losses and fears of this world are gone. Simply and completely gone. They don’t matter anymore. I would never see the earthly life and the world the same ever again. I had been taken into the realm of the upper circle on the figure 8 image that I use to describe our life’s journey from the human ego to the awareness of the soul, that is within every single one of us. This kind of experience is never to be forgotten.

(Note: I recently read that the higher end of the 5-D vibrations have the feelings of bliss that we experience as heaven when we have near-death experiences. If that is accurate, that would be awesome, having experienced those feelings of pure bliss. What incredible energy to live there, vs experiencing it for a short time. If that is what we are working towards and can bring into reality–WOW! Awesome beyond words.)

Spiritual TRUTH #4 was still waiting to be added to the list that same incredible morning. After breakfast, where I continued to by flying high, our small dream group met to share with each other. I told them what my question was and they shared what messages they had each been given to pass on to me. I attempted to share with them my experience of merging with the Light and living a brief time of heaven. Their messages to me were mind-blowing in their accuracy and insights. I had never met any in my group before this. They knew nothing about me other than the personal item of jewelry, etc that I had been instructed to give each for overnight. They had no way of knowing any of the things they shared with me. What each shared just affirmed all the messages I had been given during the night. It was truly the reality of how telepathically connected we all are as One, on a higher level (that I now understand is the morphogenic field of Higher Consciousness, which is what the Grid of Light and Love taps into also and becomes a communication link up for the Lightworkers).  Not only did Heaven become real to me that weekend, but that there are Higher Beings in heaven working with us, through us, communicating with us, also became very real. We ARE NOT ALONE. We are surrounded by Higher Beings of Light and Love who respond to us, care about us, talk to us, want to connect with us, guide us, help us, work through us. We just need to open up to them, to receive. Prayer is not one way. It is two-way communication. Spiritual TRUTH #4 now added to my consciousness.

I was now launched into my 40’s. For the first year after that weekend, it took a long period of time to learn to live the balance of the Sufi saying,”feet on the ground and head in the heavens”. It was disorienting at first to incorporate and ground these Spiritual TRUTHS 3 and 4 into the physical body and the demands of daily regular life. Learning to keep those new euphoric, blissful awarenesses and at the same time function on the day to day, pay the bills, wash dishes, do laundry, pick up groceries, etc, etc. It took practice to be able to do “the figure 8 of ego to soul, back to ego, back to soul” learning to fluidly be able to be in both worlds at the same time. I developed an awareness and appreciation of the role and importance of BALANCE. The challenge of balancing all the dualities, integrating the wisdom of both parts, and integrating them into “the middle way” as Buddha would say. (Note: I have since learned that is one of our core missions as soul going into physical bodies: to learn to live in awareness of both the physical and spiritual parts of our nature and to learn to balance them).

I made a commitment, after that weekend, that my soul growth was now the highest commitment in my life. This was October of 1989. The bible verse, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”, took on a whole new meaning. I became friends with my dream group, who it turned out knew each other from Sufi dancing, also called Dances of Universal Peace. I became involved with their group. That next spring I attended a spiritual Sufi meditation retreat of silence and was given the Sufi name that means, “Light”, which thrilled me. My favorite bible verse has always been the one quoted on Christmas Eve from the beginning of the book of John, about the Light coming into the World and the Darkness has not overcome it. I have always held that close in my heart.

I grew up with my mother getting the Christopher News Notes and they have the guiding motto, “Light your candle rather than curse the darkness.” That theme about BEING the LIGHT in a world of darkness has been and is my core guiding principle in my life.

Part 4–Spiritual TRUTHS #5 and #6 and #7 and #8

Sometimes it’s good that we don’t know what’s coming in our future. Little did I know what was ahead for my daughter and me. As “head of household” now, I was working two jobs to be able to stay in the house. I had always worked or been in grad school, but I had previously had the luxury of my income being the supplemental one, not the core one. I developed a whole new understanding and respect for what it means to have the responsibility of being self-sufficient and caring for the family. It can feel very heavy. I had previously been buffered from that reality in my first marriage.

When my daughter finished middle school, as a single parent, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Whew, we made it through this!” That sigh came too soon. Just 2 months into her Freshman year, her right hand and wrist started giving her problems big time. My stomach still drops, just thinking about that time again now. It was so scary. I so wished my former husband was there to handle this. He was “the medical one”. Due to my 12yr old’s trauma about my Dad’s illness and hospital stays, I froze with anything to do with medical and hospitals. It was hard for me to function at all. My mind and body would just shut down. I had to struggle against that happening.

From birth, my daughter’s right hand and wrist had been strange, with a lot of pain and at times not working right. She had to brace that hand and wrist often. The whole thing was weird and the doctors had no idea what was going on. One said, “might be carpal tunnel syndrome but don’t do surgery until or unless you have to”. Both wrists had issues but the right was her dominant hand so created more of a problem.

Well, that time that had been predicted by that one doctor seemed to have arrived. We saw a series of doctors, did a series of tests, and the decision was made to proceed with the carpel tunnel surgery on her right wrist. Everything was still weird and not “normal”. I had to try to force my mind to work and not go numb, paralyzing with my 12 yr old self’s fear. I had to be the Adult here and had to make the decisions. It was up to me. A mother so wants to protect her children and keep them from harm. The helpless feeling of seeing their child suffer is so hard. Thank God for friends, who help support us at times like this. The comfort and strength they lend us are beyond words.

Surgery was done and appeared successful. However, something was really, really wrong. When the sling was removed, Lisa’s arm dropped down like a dead, lifeless limb on a tree. Nothing made sense. There was no explanation. Recalling this, I can feel the physical sensations of horror for both of us, staring at this dead arm. Again, totally strange. Weird. Surgery had been fine. She had no feeling in the arm. She couldn’t move the arm, hands, or fingers. This made no sense at all to anyone. The days, weeks, months ahead became a blur. Doctor appointment to doctor appointment, specialist to specialist. Having to drop out of school and set up homeschooling. Just trying to cope. Just trying to survive day-to-day. Lisa was a trooper, so brave, so strong, so courageous.

When we hit dead end after dead end with traditional western medicine with no answers at all, it was time to start thinking “outside of the box”. Because of my spiritual learning and growth that I had totally thrown myself into the last couple of years, I was now aware of the “alternative world of healing”, that I previously knew nothing about. With no answers, this Mother Lion was determined to do everything I possibly could to help my daughter have the use of her arm and hand back again. The more the specialists didn’t have answers, the more arrogant and condescending they became. I needed to buffer her from their coldness and potential psychological damage to her as well.

I sought out all the alternative healing methods I could and put them all into motion. This was not a controlled study—this was, “Please God, let something work!”. Well, this prayer was being heard and responded to. One of the things we connected with was with a person coming into San Antonio occasionally, from Austin,  to do what was called, “Network Chiropractic”, that was being held at a large room at a local yoga center. The large room was filled with several massage tables, where we took turns being on the tables. Lisa had gone before me and was sitting out in the car, while I had my turn.

I recall that there were some slight, gentle adjustments made on my foot alignment, and then shortly afterward, my whole body started having a mind of its own. Strong energy started flowing through my body, oscillating back and forth in a sideways direction from my waist up to the top of my head and out my crown chakra. An Inner Voice telepathically conveyed that this was releasing the trauma from my 12 yr old self with the cell memories of my father’s hospitalizations and blindness, nearly dying again and again.

Again, that same energy picked up at my waist and oscillating sideways back and forth, moved down my body and out my root chakra. The voice said that was the rest of that clearing. Next strong energy started flowing into my crown chakra, down into my right shoulder, and started down my right arm. During this, I was saying, “I want total healing for my daughter. The energy got to my elbow and stopped. Again I strongly, insistently stated, “I want TOTAL healing.”. The energy moved down to the wrist and again stopped. Again, I repeated, “I want TOTAL HEALING, for her arm, her wrist, her hand, her fingers.” The energy slowly, slowly started to move into my hand and then ever so slowly into each finger. My body was shaking from the energy. There was a current going through me, but it was not painful, it just was strong and oscillating, vibrating.

During this, the Inner Voice continued to give me information. “This healing energy is there all the time, for all people to access. But, you have to have faith and unconditional love to access it. And, it has to be in the agreement of the other person’s Highest Self, their Soul self.” Then I recalled the bible verse where Jesus said to his disciples, “You are going to do all I am doing (referring to his miracles)  and more.” Yikes! You mean these aren’t just words! You mean this is REAL!!! Spiritual TRUTH #5—“we”, as containers,  can co-create miracles when we open ourselves up with pure love, faith, and trust and tap into that Divine Healing Energy from a Higher Realm and bring it through us to help another. Nothing like a mother’s love for her child to have that determination, love, and pure heart energy.

As the healing energy went all the way into my hand and every finger, I was filled with profound, deep gratitude that filled my being with relief, with joy, with thanks, with praise for the Holy, for the Divine. The bible verse came in about giving thanks as if it is already done. Having faith, knowing that it is done, it is complete. Spiritual TRUTH #6 is the faith, the deep knowing, the trusting that creating happens on a higher realm before it shows in the physical realm of earth. There is no room for doubt. Part of this co-creating is to hold that Divine energy, that belief, that vibration, firmly in one’s being, knowing it is TRUTH. 

Even, though at that moment, Lisa was sitting in the car, with her arm still looking like a dead tree limb waiting to be cut off, I KNEW, I KNEW she was going to be fine and gave thanks accordingly, from that place within me. And eventually, she was and is to this day. 

Spiritual TRUTH # 7. I now also understood that souls may come into life together, with soul agreements, with soul contracts to fulfill.

Lisa’s arm crisis ended up helping me further heal and release the trauma that my body still held from my 12 yr old’s experience with my father’s nearly dying, resulting in blindness and trauma. Apparently, Lisa and I had an agreement to be together this lifetime where I could experience and know the divine power of miracles that can be co-created, with the Divine Healing Energy through love, faith, trust.

The weeks after that involved extensive physical therapy to rebuild the muscles that had atrophied. A few days after that weekend experience, Lisa got her very first motion in her elbow. Slowly, slowly motion returned. The sensation came back into the arm. Eventually, the day came, where she could lift her arm and brush her bangs back with her hand.

One of the other healing alternatives we were doing somewhere during this time, started to give us answers as to what might be going on. I don’t remember the exact sequence in all of this, more the specifics of the events. I connected with a person who did “past life regressions”. If Lisa’s arm hadn’t been totally useless, and if we weren’t hitting total dead ends with traditional western medicine, there is no way Lisa would have agreed to any of this “weird Mom, woo-woo stuff”. But we both were desperate.

Well, this turned out to be absolutely fascinating. Lifetime after lifetime, “Lisa” had her arm cut off, smashed, hand cut off, etc, etc. Several of those lifetimes, she was around this same age of 14yrs. One of the core ones, that she resisted going back into,  was where she was a fireman rescuing children from a burning orphanage. The roof fell on in “her”/ him and crushed her/ his arm. It was interesting for me too, to hear Lisa tell my brother, who was visiting us later, details from various lifetimes that didn’t come up in the sessions. With each past life session, her energy started to improve, her appetite improved.

After all of this, I recalled a clear and distinct memory that stood out in my mind from her infancy. She was sitting in her baby carrier on the floor in front of me. This was the day she discovered her hands. She lifted her arm, with elbow bent, and moved her hand towards her face and back away again, opening and closing her fingers slowly, over and over. She was totally mesmerized. She repeated this again and again, turning her wrist, looking at her hand from all angles, opening and closing her fingers over and over. I watched in awe, fascinated by what I was witnessing. She was in awe with her hand, with her motions. And I was in awe watching her. Now, years later, looking at this from the lens of this experience, this memory took on a whole new meaning. Eerie. It’s like she was in awe, that this lifetime, she was coming in with her arm and hand intact and working.

And yes, from then on, it did.

Spiritual TRUTH #8. Reincarnation is real. Lisa’s past life experiences made so much sense. Now everything fits into place. Traumas from previous lives can be carried over in cell memory into later lives, to be triggered and awakened to be dealt with again, with the potential for healing this time around. Soul contracts may be a part of that healing. 

The next several years continued to be challenging, but for new reasons. Lisa, ages 14-19 yrs of age, was confronted with death after death over and over, throughout those years. It was very, very hard for both of us. I think the number got up to 13-15. We both became numb. One of them, a car accident, Lisa could have been with them, except that her school schedule was different and she had to be back in San Antonio for exams. It was everything: murder, suicide, mostly car accidents, post-surgery complications of her most beloved teacher. It just didn’t stop. We made it through.

Years later, at 32 yrs, Lisa would need all the resiliency that all of that developed in her. That is her own story, told in her blog and book: Lessons From the End of A Marriage. I admire and respect my daughter so much. She is a gift to the lives she touches through her teaching and her writing.

Part 5 –Spiritual Truth #9

The story continues in  “The Vision Holders” story, where one more Spiritual Truth from the decade of my 40’s comes through. This was truly experiencing becoming a co-creator, working with Higher Energies and Beings, and living in the “creating of miracle” level. The energy involved with following Divine Guidance in creating “Let There Be Light!“, the forerunner of the current Vision Holders project, was an incredible experience that opened my mind to the realm of “all possibilities” when we align with the Higher Will. This level is totally beyond the fears and inadequacies of the ego. They are left far behind as if they never existed. I was able to experience living in this higher vibrational energy for an extended period of time, while most intensely working on “Let There Be Light!”. The White Eagle quote below became very real to me.

Our stories are sacred. They are both unique and universal with the same themes for all of us. They all involve the Human Journey of the Ego to the Soul, to hopefully learning to balance the two and then create and serve others.

“With (the Universal) Christ anything can be accomplished: the mistake that so many people make is to depend on their own power. For the secret is to enter the heart-chamber, the inner self, the place of tranquility and stillness, and there pray. Any soul able to commune with God is ready to manifest God.”

Affirm: I am in God and God is in me. With the power of God, I can do anything.”

~White Eagle

Caterina’s Soul Portraits