It had been about a week of times passage when I got a phone call from Florence asking me to come to a group meditation. I had never been to a meditation group before. Funny thing, prior to meeting Florence I would awake at 3 in the morning and I would get up and sit quietly. I would feel a hint or two of energy at first, but it lead to flood gates opening. It became a refuge for me. Something I didn’t understand at the time but craved it none the less.
Florence had been walking the Buddhist path and was committed to that at the time. Later, she would absorb that and it would simply become a fraction of who she was. So, I had decided to go to this meditation and she told me where it was and how to get there and I told her I would meet her there. Before I went to this meditation I had to go down to a store for something. I decided to walk. It was a sunny cold Spring morning and I had decided to take a short cut to the store through the alley behind a local hotel. As I walked along something stopped me. I was deep in thought and snapped out of it long enough to look up from my daze and see straight ahead. I could see about half a city block away from me this spotted dog. It looked like a Pit Bull. It was. It started to growl at me and then started to run towards me. After a split second I threw caution to the wind and started to run. I did not run from this dog. I ran towards it. As this dog jumped at me I jumped over the dog. I was running fast and knew if that dog hooked me I was going to be in trouble.
I cleared the Pit Bull by about 4 feet but did a summer sault and landed on my shoulder on the pavement. I felt my skin rip. I felt my upper arm snap. I was damaged and in pain. The dog decided to turn around and come back towards me as I lay there. I pulled myself to a sitting up position and looked directly into the dogs eyes as it started to rip at my pant leg. I pointed at the dog and said “GO”. The dog released my leg and ran home. I staggered my way to the emergency room and was tended to and bandaged and released. The doctors told me that I would go chronic after and to be careful. The pain drove me crazy. I could not move my arm properly. It was not a good scene.
So, I got back to my little apartment and I was ready to just take a pile of painkillers and forget about what had happened when I remembered the group meditation invitation. What the heck, I thought. Maybe I will go and just relax and maybe even sleep through the meditation, it can’t hurt. So, I went. I drove out to this house. I was as nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of rockers, but a kind man named Alan welcomed me into his home where the group was to meet. Florence had not arrived yet, but she would. We started the meditation and after about 5 minutes she showed up with a friend of hers who also came regularly. They entered quietly and sat. I was wearing a long sleeved shirt to hide my earlier mishap.
After an hour had gone by, meditation started to conclude and I looked over to see Florence. She was still there with her eyes closed and a big smile. A smile of peace and contentment. I smiled to myself and then I heard her speak before she opened her eyes. “Who has a ruined shoulder here tonight, she said? I thought, what the heck. I hadn’t told anyone about it and it had just happened earlier and we hadn’t spoken. I kept quiet. I was embarrassed. Then again she spoke out. “Who is hurting here? I can feel your pain, come and sit on the floor in front of me”. I was in agony and thought to myself, why not, go for it. I went and sat cross legged on the floor in front of her. Then it happened. She took her hands and placed them over my upper arm. It felt like oven mitts were on me. Hot oven mitts. The heat coming out of her hands was a warmth I will never forget. She merely placed her hands on my upper arm and I started to hear crunching and clicking and weird funny sensations went into me. Whatever this woman had done or whatever energy moved through her touched me deeply. It shot straight to my core and began a healing process. For the rest of the visiting session she sat behind me with a warm oven mitt hand on my upper back. It was my psychic shield that she was activating unbeknownst to me.
That warm healing hand was connected to something and I wanted to know what. The hand that touched me was the hand of love. I knew I had been touched by love. This night would set off a future that intertwined us forever. I had only just begun to wake up. This process would continue over years and still does to this day. These were my first encounters with Florence. I knew nothing of her writings, those were secrets she did not share with very many. I would be introduced to the writings a few weeks later.
My experiences with Florence span years. Without her help I would still be on the outside of myself looking in. There were normal times, ego times and heartbreak times as well as fun times and a ton of laughter and joy. But far beyond that are the sacred times. The Holy times. I saw and experienced the spirit world beyond my comprehension. Being a walking wounded soul, it was a lifeline and my stories will boggle your mind. What I have shared is microscopic to this point. One of my gifts has been total recall of memory. So much so that I went about having painful memories hypnotized out of my consciousness because the pain was too great for me to take. But when the dam breaks, the flood gates open and you can’t stop a gift. None of the memory erasers worked and I had to face my demons. I had to love them and let them go.
Thank you for your interest, I will write more about my story later. I could write a billion pages……
