To Connect Is Simply a Practice and a Process

REMINDER from Mano:

Mary Jane had the awareness, “The back-and-forth communication Barbara described was a practice and a process, not a propensity that one either does or does not have.” Barbara never questioned if she wrote to me in the computer that I would put thoughts in her mind and I would respond to her letter, word by word.

REMARKS from Barbara:

My conversations with Mano are done on the computer. I totally trust his presence. And communication. Mano responded to my personal wondering, “Am I making this up?” by teaching me to use the pendulum asking “is this true?” Then he would respond with a + for yes and a – for no.

REMEMBERING Mary Jane:

Mary Jane’s wisdom and clarity continues to teach and guide me every time I reread one of her blogs.

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To Connect Is Simply a Practice and a Process

Blog #122

I start this Blog by referring back to one of Mary Jane’s entries years ago:

In 2005, I started doing small retreats at Barbara’s guest cottage, spending hours in the Amphitheater alone, in the rain, early in the morning, at night, sitting in tree hollows, gazing, longing, doing my best to honor the energy I felt there. I have always wanted to see angels and elementals, and I knew this must be one of their portals. I had also formed a belief through the years that such clairvoyance or “second sight” was not my gift or my task in this lifetime. Nevertheless, this belief did not keep me from feeling a sense of loss that I had no palpable access to the extrasensory realms I have solidly supported for so long.

On my retreats I would always visit Barbara, and she began telling me about her long-cultivated relationships with the nature spirits on her land. Once she showed me the draft of the Council of Gnomes book she was working on. It intrigued me and also puzzled me: What, in reality, was this new world she was striving to describe? I rather weakly observed that the manuscript would need some editing and that I might be able to help. I was skeptical, since I couldn’t see, then, how it could come out of its dreamy fairytale mist into the palpable, practical daylight.

What began to grow in me, however, was the consideration that, like other forms of spiritual discipline, the back-and-forth communication Barbara described was a practice and a process, not a propensity that one either does or does not have.  

A couple of weeks ago, July 17, 2023, THE GAIAN FAERIE CONGRESS invited me to present a Zoom workshop based on my DVD story, Healing Burned Woman.  Much of my joy came from Mano’s interaction as I prepared the information he wanted me to share. I actually learned things I didn’t know before.  

One of my heartful dedication and prayers from the beginning has been, “In a body or out of a body, I serve God.” I felt this call to serve God become very specific when one morning, while sitting outside watching the stars leave and light return, I heard the inner voice say, “Barbara, I do not need you in San Luis Obispo any longer. I need you on the mountain.” 

We moved to the mountain when I was 60. On my first trip to the Amphitheater I became aware of a large spirit walking beside me. It was a gnome. It was Mano. He said his size indicates that he is not a garden gnome, instead he is a master gnome and he will be my teacher.  

His first teaching was to send love to the plants, nature spirits, and angels as I walked the path to the Amphitheater each day. After years of following this guidance I became aware of spirit beings living in my cottage with me. Small elemental beings that like being called the Workers and larger beings that looked more human, that I call the Companions.

Mano told me that walking to the Amphitheater thousands of times, sending love and saying hello, gave the elemental spirits the opportunity to become familiar with a human and when invited by Mano, some decided they would like to be trained to work in the house with a human.

Every so often Mano would give me flash areas of awareness of this training process. Once while I was washing dishes, I became aware of a excited energy all around me. I looked with my inner eye and saw about 5 little gnomes, each wearing an apron and drying dishes. Another time after washing my hair and using the blow dryer I again felt that excited energy and looked to see the little gnomes each with a hair dryer blowing it over their own head, then blowing it at each other.