A story told is a memory eternal...In the summer of '86 a charity fayre was held to promote an understanding of alternative and complimentary medicine. I had no knowledge of it until the day before, when a promoter called to say there were two floor spaces left. So, I took them both, one for acupuncture and the other for the more esoteric healing arts like 'hands on'.
It was a busy weekend, the summer had proved its worth that year and people coming in and out were full of the forthcoming holiday spirit. My partner had set up in the acupuncture area and I decided that I would use the other space a little selfishly to just watch and listen, so my table was bare apart from my grandfathers singing bowl and my business cards. Looking obviously out of place, my meagre table sat in the midst of all the wonderful paraphernalia of complementary medicine; but that was ok, I was there to watch.
Sunday morning at 11 am and he came through the door right opposite me, a frail form in a wheelchair being pushed by his helper. I guessed it was the helper who had come to see what was going on, because his charge appeared to have an advanced type of motor neuron disease.
As they went around the hall I became fascinated by the way people reacted; a small few tried to reach out and engage the man in the wheelchair but many found something else to busy themselves with as he passed by. Shopkeepers, I thought; here to sell their wares and go home knowing a good days work had been down, their apparently healthy clients content with their purchase of herbal soaps and relaxing music. Whilst in their midst was one lone man locked into a world they would not see even when looking.
The crowd had increased in the time it took for his helper to go around the stalls, and I heard a plaintive wail begin. The wheelchair man was obviously distressed, maybe it was just too many people, but the sound grew louder and louder. Having been paralysed from the neck down for three years I knew that sound, issuing up from a darkness so deep that you feel lost within it; and I closed my eyes.
I closed my eyes not because I didn't want to see but because I needed to see, to see past the frowns of the people trying to get out of his way in their haste at non confrontation. To see past what they were afraid of, and without realising it I had picked my bowl up and began to play.
Grandfathers bowl made a new sound for me, two notes together, one high and piercing and the other deep and penetrating; core music I had never heard or felt, only played. I stopped hearing anything except that sound which seems to go one for eternity; and when I opened my eyes he was there right in front of me, quietly looking.
His name was Freddie and his helper John, and John wanted to know what I was doing with the bowl because Freddie had stopped and relaxed immediately. I told John the story of the singing bowl, we exchanged phone numbers and I watched as Freddie was wheeled away. The lady on the stall near me commented that people like that shouldn't be allowed in - should they?
I started to visit Freddie and those like him at his hospice, and on my third visit I brought him his very own bowl, one I'd found in a market stall. It had a good sound, clear and clean, and Freddie obviously liked it because they weren't allowed to remove it from his side without him becoming agitated. I taught John how to play it, change its tone and how adding water could bring a different quality; John loved the bowl too. He would close his eyes and play and I would watch the smile creep up from his heart to his lips, to show itself as joy.
Freddie died 14 months later.
At his funeral John read a section from Freddies favourite book; whilst in the background was a cd of John playing Freddies bowl, a bowl John still plays with his eyes closed.
It's only a story, isn't it.
I don't care about your spiritual journey, I do care how you manifest it in your life; and the moment you think your journey 'out there' is more important than what you do here...
Then we have lost
Lost the reason WHY we chose to be spirit-being-human
Lost the means to help each other in a realistic way
Lost Lost Lost
CLOSE YOUR EYES..................OPEN
Before it's too late
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