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Cucumber pickles



I think the cucumbers are sweet. I don't know. I haven't tasted them. 

I used a lot more sugar than salt.

I added shaved ginger and shaved garlic and mustard seeds. 

I'm assuming they'll be delicious. Like nothing you've ever tasted. 

This was done so the cucumbers don't rot away in the crisper like the previous cucumbers did. I'm in a phase where I cannot keep up with the vegetables that I buy. 

I'm tired of wasting them.

The pineapple is simply cut into pieces and chilled before it rotted on the counter like the previous pineapple. It's just pineapple in a jar.

My taste buds aren't right. 

Everything tastes weird.

I'm like a six-year-old all over again, objecting to everything that I taste. 

I could pray. 

Would you like to hear something strange?

Some dozen years ago I was admitted to hospital for a lung biopsy.

But I got more sick with pneumonia before the procedure.

I recall being so fevered they brought in a refrigerated blanket. 

This blanket was a very real blessing. 

Apparently it's considered a drastic measure. Akin to being dunked in cold water. I didn't know this but apparently patients object to this procedure. But I loved it. Finally, I was cool.

Later that same day I asked them if they could bring back the refrigerated blanket. The nurse said that she'd ask but nobody ever asks for that thing twice. It would be unprecedented. They did not bring back the cold blanket. So I suffered through the night. 

I was having difficulty breathing. Each breath was a task. My mind was on each breath. I thought maybe I could turn up the oxygen myself, just turn the dial behind my head, but instead I asked the nurse if she would advance the oxygen. 

She took a few tests first. She became alarmed and called in other nurses. The nurses sensed an emergency. Suddenly the room was filled with orderlies who were lifting me onto a gurney. 

I've never experienced anything like this.

They're quite militaristic about how they coordinate to use the sheet to lift my body in a single motion have me positioned. Smooth as silk. The man pushing the gurney out of the room into intensive care was exceedingly precise with every single one of his movements. Very forceful jerks of the gurney, very precise movements into the elevator and through crowded hallways and into the room. I was mightily impressed with their precision. They are very well practiced.

The doctor scheduled to do the biopsy decided to go ahead with the procedure since I was already hooked up in intensive care. That would be in a few hours. 

I had visitors. My parents. People from work. My two brothers. 

A group of Catholic practitioners showed up and asked me if I'd like to have them pray.

I said, "Sure." 

Previously, the admission woman asked me if I pray and I told her yes, but right now I didn't know what to pray for. 

"What do you mean?" 

     "I mean that I don't know if I should ask God to help me get through this or to help me die well. I don't know what I want. I don't know what God wants for me." 

"Maybe you should pray for God's will to be done."

     "That's brilliant! It's so obvious. Why didn't I think of that myself? It's the perfect thing for a religious-minded person to pray. They put themselves aside and ask for God's will to be done." 

I cannot express what an obvious epiphany that was. Of course. That's what I'll pray.

And now Catholic ghouls who hang out in hospitals and visit strangers in emergency care show up with their rather macabre way to interject themselves into my personal crisis. Ordinarily I would dismiss them and do all my praying myself. I don't think I need a group thing. 

The thing that I leaned that night was never dismiss the power of sincere group prayer. It really does get the attention of celestial intelligences. 

I had them pray for God's will to be done. Whatever that is, I'm for it. 

They changed my attitude. 

They really are beautiful people. 

They prayed for me then they went their way.

The specialist showed up with his team, they administered a universal sedative and I was out.

Not really. 

Thats when the action began.

A group of beings appeared and began talking to me. 

There was one main guy with several assistants around him. 

His form, their forms, were emanations of light.

As he told me how I must heal myself more and more people arrived.

They self-organized around the activity. The ones most interested were closest while the ones with lesser intense interest organized themselves behind them. 

They organized in concourses keeping a respectful distance. They could not possibly fit in the room. The room that my body was in meant nothing to them. The walls did not exist for them. 

As the session proceeded more and more people showed up and took their places to observe. There were far more people present than the tiny room could contain. They expanded in concourses upon concourses in all directions well beyond the walls of the room. There were thousands of beings observing what the main guy was doing. 

He was talking to me.

But he was telling me too much. He was going too fast. My mind could not process all that he said.

"Slow down! I cannot keep up with you. I'm missing most of what you are telling me. I am missing all of this!"

     "Don't worry about comprehending. I'm not talking to your mind. I'm telling your body how to heal itself given the situation you're in."

"I cannot follow." 

     "You don't need to follow. We're talking directly to your internal organs. We're giving instructions to your organelles. We're talking directly to your cells. We are communicating with your body at various levels, with your mind and with your soul.  Just relax. Everything is going along fine." 

"Why are you guys even here? Why did you show up now?

     "You invited us."

"I did? When did I invite you?"

     "When the prayer group showed up to pray, that opened a channel to us and gave us permission to work with you. It is God's will that we help you. That's why we are here. You called for us."

"Oh. I didn't realize it would turn out like this. I didn't know this is how you work. You're telling me that I can relax?"

     "Yes. Just relax. We're reorganizing your body best as possible given your situation. We're reprogramming your body to fit your new situation." 

"Oh. Okay. I'll just shut up and let you do it." 

      "That's best." 

They worked through the night. They poured information into me continuously through the night. They gave me way more precise information than my mind could follow but I no longer concerned myself with that. I just let them do what they're trained to do. I was passive thereafter. I watched them work as the thousands of others came to watch them work. They were brilliant. They are amazing. They are a very real miracle. I watched a miracle performed on me.

As the night wore on the people in the back began to peel off. Row after row after row of people disappeared and dispersed. Finally it was only the main guy and his main assistants and a few other observers. 

Finally everyone disappeared. 

I was alone.

I laid there and contemplated the phenomenal event that just occurred with my body the center of attention and my mind and my soul separated from that observing, finally united again.

I heard footsteps approaching.

Louder and louder. Finally, there. In the room with me.

A woman entered the room.

"You're a human. I'll betcha ten dollars." 

She laughed.

     "No bet. And what exactly makes you think I'm a human?"

"You're the first person in here all night who has footsteps. I'm in the material world and so are you. I am returned to my reality with physical people with weight." 

      "You're right. I am human and I'm in the material world just like you."

I told her what happened. This was singularly the most outstanding psychic event of my lifetime. Of all those out of body experiences, all those psychic exercises I did, all the dream recording I did, all the distinguishing between types of dreams and psychic events. Day after day, night after night, for years. All the effort over years of practicing to get good at this sort of thing, this was the most outstanding of all. This was the most concrete. The thing that just happened was more real to me than the actual material reality I'm now in. This concrete thick kludgy hard world with walls and floors is half the reality of the night that just passed. I am now in half-ass fake reality. I just now saw the very real spiritual reality. The real spiritual thing is more real than this. That's why all those people showed up. This was an unusual event for them too. They usually don't operate with their subject being so aware of their work. For them, I was unusual.

"That's the drugs talking. You were sedated."

     "Goddamnit." 

"What?" 

     "I just now was given a view of the hereafter. It's why I am not afraid. I know better than I know anything else that this reality we're in right now is the shadow of the real thing that exists beyond this concrete world. All that we know is the shadow cast by that greater reality. The thing that we think is the only real thing, is actually the shadow cast by the even more real thing and by the light that exists beyond the light of this world. And then you come along and tell me it's all just drugs talking. "

     "There really were people filling this room. They really were talking to you and telling you how to heal yourself. They really did tell you to shut up and relax and let them do their work. The nurses to the specialist told me this morning they never had a patient talk so much as you did. You would not shut up. The doctor removed his instruments from your mouth and re-inserted them through your nose because he was afraid you chew through his equipment. Usually people are out, but you were yakking your brains out. The things that you saw really did happen. In this material world." 

     "This is what is so goddamn clever and tricky. The real material things you describe occurring, the behavior you describe the principals observing, are the shadow of the even more real events that occurred overlapping them. You're describing the shadow that is this low-energy material world that we're in that seems so ultimately real. Last night I saw the real spiritual world that casts this shadow. And now the shadow is telling me, no, the shadow is the real thing and spiritual reality is drugs. But the truth of reality is reversed. The drugs of this world can help us access that reality. That spiritual reality is more real than this one. This reality we're in is the shadow of that reality. 

I am stuck in the shadows and I long for the real thing. I do not fear death. Because death is the thing that frees me to live the more full spiritual life. This physical world is the anchor to that. " 

I could just cry.

Thank you, God, for having me live.

I'll do the best here that I can. 

I don't know your reasons for keeping me here but I accept your task. I look forward to the day this life ends and my next life, the more real one begins. Thank you for letting me see it. I'll hang out here for as long as you like.

Apparently there are things we can learn here that come in compressed form that all takes much longer in the spiritual realms. There is advantage to staying alive in this clunky thick heavy error-stricken reality that is not possible anywhere else. So just relax and hang with it while it lasts.

This nurse that I'm speaking to took an interest in me. 

She returned with a book that she bought in the hospital gift shop about angels. 

Everything that I told her, she referenced as angels. I did not. Those beings were not angels. Angels are a whole different order of beings created in perfection. Maybe a few angels showed up to watch awhile then left, but the ones working and studying were not angels. They were a different order of beings. I don't know what, but I do know angels are different. 

The book was like candy.

I read it in ten minutes. 

This hospital is St. Joseph's and they're way big on religious approach. Crucifixes all over the place. Creches too. Statues everywhere as Catholics do. 

From their point of view, the people I saw and interacted with through the night were angels. From my point of view they weren't quite that perfect. They were an intermediate order. Various orders, actually. They had various motives. 

And all of that happened because the prayer group showed up to pray. 

That's what those people did for me. 

They gave me a treasure that I'll keep with me the rest of my life and beyond. They are a bridge to another world that's more real than this one. 

While the doctors of this world all believe that world is the product of their own drugs. What an amazing depressing paradox.

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Something serious happened and everything is different now.