THE NEXT PERCEPTIONS ARTICLE WILL APPEAR NOVEMBER 3RD, A CONTINUATION OF THE FOLLOWING OCTOBER ARTICLE.

At first it was nothing more than a vague restlessness during the day, then tossing and turning at night, waking so many times to check the clock that I stopped bothering to count. I don’t know exactly when my restlessness slid into a stage of depression. Nor had I realized when an outright inability to sleep for more than an hour or two the entire night had settled upon me, but it had. And the dreams…they were strange and convoluted; not nightmares exactly. That is, not until that terror-filled nightmare.

I awoke from it in the dark morning hours of September 11, feeling groggy and depressed, my muscles aching from lack of sleep. It was only 3:10 a.m. I just lay there, feeling drained from the emotion, staring up through the blackness toward the ceiling until the morning’s light began to curl through the curtains, trying not to move so as not to disturb my husband.

At sunrise I dragged myself out of bed and made my way down the stairs to the salon. With a sigh, I sat myself down in a chair facing our living room and began to stare out through the living room’s tall Victorian windows, out to our late 19th century porch. People used to sit out on that porch way back when and watch the horse drawn carriages roll by, I mused. I could suddenly imagine a single rider on horseback as well, sitting straight in the saddle and calling out as he passed by to whoever sat on the porch, easily able to carry on a casual conversation as he went.

I sighed again. Well, that doesn’t happen any more, I thought, wishing I could just step back in time – if only for today. People are far too busy now, too caught up in the helter skelter of today’s fast paced world to take the time to sip tea on the front porch and chat with a passer by. In my depressed state I figured we should all slow down, get off this merry-go-round we call living.

Little did I know that in less than half an hour our fast spinning world would come to a grinding halt as everyone outside of what would come to be called “Ground Zero” would sit like so many statues in front of our televisions or beside our radios, eyes glazed, swollen and red from our tears, our hearts breaking every time we saw a rerun of those horizontal wings disappearing into the smoking World Trade Center.

“Didn’t sleep again?” my husband said as he handed me a cup of tea and sat down across from me.

I shook my head and continued to stare out that left window, the one I saw in my nightmare.

“What’s wrong, honey?” he said. “What’s really wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Hans,” I answered. “I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. I hate to say this, but I think I might be depressed. No, it’s more that than. I…I feel, I don’t know…oppressed. That’s it. I actually feel oppressed.”

“Oppressed?”

“Yes, I feel oppressed.” I stood up and walked over into the library and grabbed the dictionary to check out the full meaning of the word, an old habit of mine when I keep using a word to try and capture a feeling psychically. “It says here that it means to burden or keep down by harsh and unjust use of force or authority,” I read, walking back into the salon, “whatever the heck that is supposed to mean.”

I threw the dictionary on the table and sat back down, and went back to staring out the window, a strange chill curling down my spine. “And nightmares are coming now,” I said as I waved a hand at the window. “Last night I had this terrible, awful dream that I was sitting right where I am now when suddenly a man jumped out in front of the window on the porch with a huge curved knife clutched in his hand. He paused, looked deep into my eyes and I into his. Terror ran through my blood. In my dream I somehow knew he saw it, my fear, and it caused him to fly into action. Then, his face distorted with rage, he began slicing the knife right through the wall between those two windows. He jumped around as he attacked the wall but never took his eyes off me. I ran and hid, but it did no good. He found me wherever I went, slicing that awful knife right through the walls. No matter what I did I couldn’t get away from him.” I shuddered then. “Maybe I suddenly developed some chemical imbalance in my brain or something because you know this is so unlike me. And it is getting worse by the minute.”

“Let me take you to breakfast,” Hans said. “Maybe it will make you feel a little better and we can talk about things.”

It happened during breakfast. The first plane hit the World Trade Center while we sat in a small café devoid of television or radio.

I was home by 9:20. I walked into the house to the sound of the phone ringing. The terrible news traveled over the wires in the wind of a breathless, terrified voice. Only then did I realize that I had experienced the same sleeplessness, a similar depression beginning one week before the Oklahoma City bombing. And a similar nightmare; it came just prior to that disaster as well. I wondered why neither one of us had made the connection.

Two days later a picture of Mohammed Atta appeared on the front page of USA Today. My nightmarish description of him had been so concise even my husband recognized him. “That’s the man in your dream, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I answered, feeling the torment wash through me all over again, as though the nightmare had been a physical happening. “He’s a pivotal person in all this,” I responded quietly, an inner knowing pervading my being. “That’s why it was his face I saw.”

I wasn’t alone in my precognitions. E-mail began to flood in from all parts of the country. From Sedona, Arizona, from Washington D.C., from Texas, to Minnesota, they wrote of their strange precognitive grief – of bursting into tears for no apparent reason, of a sense of doom and gloom, a sense of something ending, a terrible sense of something about to happen, a sense of unease…all coming from healthy, well-balanced people not used to experiencing such things. Whatever their particular form of unease, it gave way to the reality of September 11th, and to shock, horror and grief, just as had I experienced.

One particular woman wrote of her experience in the days prior to September 11th, her feelings mirroring those of the people who had escaped the twin towers, who, still in shock, reported their first hand experiences from the street, still covered in blood and debris. “But if we can get this much,” the woman queried, “why then can’t we get enough to have prevented it from happening in the first place?”

I confess, I don’t know all the answers, only God knows them. I am convinced, having been intuitive all my life, that we are only given what we are supposed to know at the time. Perhaps we were not supposed to prevent it – at least not at our current levels of consciousness. But what has happened does fit into the core of a tremendous metaphysical change that is taking place in the world, one that is causing us to reach new, paradigm shifts of consciousness that will eventually lead us into a level of enlightenment whereby we can and will prevent such events. Ultimately, the human part of us will reach a consciousness wherein such terrible events cease to exist – people will be too enlightened to think of starting them. That is when we reach total enlightenment. I wonder, then, would there be a need to even experience the human condition under such perfect terms. I think not.

Such a horrible event as what happened on September 11th, when we are in the thick of it, is a very difficult thing to try and make sense of because of the emotional level we currently exist in. But your questions flood in without ceasing nonetheless – and they are all similar in content – and they are all filled with pain and fear. So at the risk of being entirely misunderstood, I will attempt to explain myself regarding the metaphysical aspects, with the intention of offering hope in what seems to many, a hopeless situation.

There is within us, whether we are biological males or females, what is called divine feminine or masculine energy. The feminine energy is a place of intuition; it is where we learn to look to first for direction from our Higher Self. Here is where we learn to trust our gut feelings when it comes to making decisions. Here is where creativity lies that will give us new and creative answers that are peaceful in nature.

The male aspect of us is the place of action.

In balance with these two energies, we learn to go within, hear the still small voice of direction and then turn to the male aspect of ourselves to take proper action. Proper action comes out of turning first to the feeling nature, shift it over to the intellect and take action. Historically, when a tribe, nation or world is run by feminine energy (I do not mean run by women, I am speaking of feminine energy first before action), war comes last – if at all. The Knights of the Round Table are the first and fine examples of this divine feminine energy of which I write. These knights knew how to fight with the best of them. They were great warriors. But they came first to the table, all as one (feminine action). They talked out a problem, they met in unison, they agreed to agree and they agreed to act as a unit without fear of losing independence or autonomy.

After that, they took right (male) action. And that right action might have meant riding into battle. More than likely it would mean teaching entire villages new farming methods, helping a group of people learn to manage a village independent of a feudal tyrant. They would defend a village from greedy landlords, but by and large their role was one of creating peace. These knights were our first step toward undertanding balance.

We have lived for over 7000 years under what is metaphysically termed “patriarchal rule.” Since the Knights of the Round Table we have been slowly trying to shift toward the balance of energy. The pendulum began to sway with women trying to be equal to men. Now women are learning that it is the men who must be given permission to become more like the woman, whose layers are deep, filled with intuition, nurturing, creative solutions.

A shift took place in 1996 wherein we shifted over to what is called “divine feminine order” – a place for this balance to exist that will lead us to peace and to living together in a large world grown small with respect and kindness.

Whenever there is a shift upward in energy, the lower energies will fight against it for all they are worth, for it means change that is permanent and excludes hatred and the very tenets they live by.

The energy in the Middle East has not changed for over two thousand years. This is what war over there is really about in the long run - it is much deeper than the surface emotions of terrorists hating Americans. The internal or metaphysical pressure to break that energy began around 1989 – hence the Gulf War, our first rending of a fabric that has withstood change for thousands of years (I can still recall the evening news with videos from Iraq of young soldiers running in circles carrying dead cats in their mouths and shaking them violently; the byline being that the cats represented hated Americans).

But wherever there is change, there will always be resistance to change. And this change is meant to be profound, for it will change the very fabric of the lives of these Middle Easterners.

I think it no coincidence that it was 1996 that the shift to divine feminine energy came to pass and that is the very same year that Osama bin Laden was exiled to Afghanistan. I think it no coincidence that women in Afghanistan were suddenly denied an education and routinely slaughtered in public if caught teaching or learning. I think it no coincidence that women were suddenly forced to wear clothing that covered them entirely, even their eyes – for that suppression is an outward sign of the patriarchal rule denying feminine energy. Feminine energy, the energy of nurturing, creativity, and intuition that leads to change in enormous proportion. Make these females lower than animals, cover them up, and make them disappear until all you see are men. And in the end what you see are men waving guns, taking action, bombing, shooting, killing - their violence out of control. Do you see the correlation? When a man or a nation is not grounded in gentle feminine energy, violence prevails.

As the Taliban falls, as bin Laden falls (and they will), as women are allowed to learn and to teach, a new kind of freedom will prevail. It will ultimately be called peace.

We as a nation, must act first from our divine feminine energy. It is time that we examine our selves and our own lives. We must go deep within. How are you living on a daily basis? Do you live in peace? Do you respect others? Are you kind? Do you spread gossip? Do you try and destroy someone by your action? Do you sit down and go within before taking action or do you react emotionally (there is a big difference between feelings and emotions – feelings come from the feminine aspect of us).

As we go within we must ask ourselves – what must I do as an individual, right where I live? And what must I turn over to our nation to do? Who is it we need to defend ourselves from?

Not the Afghans.

We need to, and we must, defend ourselves from world terrorism before it invades other neighborhoods, yours for instance. Terrorism is already holding the world hostage and we must do something. Yes, after we go within, then we must take action. There are those who say war never settled anything. But that is not true. It gave the United States its very independence that you live under to this day. It ended slavery. It kept the Nazis from ruling the world.

We as a nation must go first to the round table of discussion, like the knights. We must decide the action before we take it. And I feel that this is just what the controlling powers of these United States are doing at this time. I see evidence of great spiritual growth as a nation here. I have seen the photographs of bags of wheat slung over a weary Afghan’s tired shoulder with “USA” emblazoned across the bag, and with thousands more stacked behind him.

I recently heard the words of Colin Powell as he spoke of sending in food to the Afghans, first as a way to feed them, but also as a way to give them hope. He spoke of helping them toward independence when this is all over. Finally, he said, “We will fight terrorism with hope.” This brought tears to my eyes, for he was speaking, in metaphysical terms, directly from his divine feminine energy – and he did not make those decisions alone.

Like the knights of the round table, some of whom went out to help the farmers of the village replant what a tyrant tore up while at the same time other knights went out looking for the tyrant who had to be stopped, so are we looking to our hearts first – but we must take action against the perpetrators who will be stopped no other way – that is their level of enlightenment. I am not worried that we have been reduced to their level. On the contrary, I am filled with great hope that we will raise our enlightenment even higher.

In this terrible time we have pulled together in ways that have warmed our hearts, in spite of our pain. We are tenderer to others – let it be this way always and let it only get better.

With satellite television, our daily “local” news coverage comes out of New York City. Every night the focus is on the people and of events that do not make the national news. I thought one interview especially poignant. It was with the minister of St. Paul’s Trinity Church, one of the oldest churches in New York City. It is near “Ground Zero,” yet somehow, the building managed to go unscathed, its gothic spires stretching upward as grandly and as proudly as before the disaster. “Something has changed here in New York City,” said the minister. “It’s the people. They come in now, asking if there is anything they can do, if we need anything. They are warm, loving, caring. And of all things…cheerful.”

Here is an example of a giant step toward the nurturing feminine energy I have addressed. Use it first for guidance, take action later…your action will then be right action.

*Note: The above article and Onions and Orchids on this same website are written as complimentary pieces for this month.