The Gift of Others’ Sight

Reminder from Mano: The only way to “hear” spirit is through your heart. I want to urge you to center your awareness in your heart. As you deepen this habit, you will find yourself feeling more nourished in nature and more attuned to the plants and people around you.

One of the last tasks in the preparation of Barbara’s book is to edit a timeline, roughly chronological, showing the divine plan that led to her work with the Council of Gnomes. I am amazed at the number of spiritual teachers she has had, the groups and trainings she has been part of, the diversity of travels (both as service work and pilgrimage) she has experienced, and the sharing of resources she has offered others. I identify with the way she has taken these life experiences and stitched them into a unique creation—basic quilt pieces beautified with embroidery and mystery, made sturdy through grit and spunk.

In an article I just read on “micro self-care”, the author and therapist Ashley Davis Bush writes about daily on-the-go gems that keep her on track. She begins the day with the phrase “I am calm” on the in-breath and “I am grounded” on the out-breath—inspired by Martin Boroson’s book One-Moment Meditation. As a re-charge after lunch she does Donna Eden’s energy medicine “cross-crawl” exercise, and after all the clients are gone she does the 4-7-8 breath from Andrew Weil. At stress points during the day she uses other exercises, like Joan Halifax’s “strengthen the back for support; soften the front for compassion”.

That’s what I do too! I cobble together my meditative exercises with meaningful practices I’ve collected through the years—from many sources, like Pema Chodron, Donna Eden, yoga and qigong classes, eurythmy, hypnotherapy. Some have maintained a steady presence, some have dropped away, some have returned after that, and others are brand new.

I can also look at this amalgamating of spiritual practices as a willingness to receive gifts from high spiritual presences, from those who see something I don’t or who are willing to lend a hand in moving me to a new level of awareness. Early in her book Barbara describes several instances when others’ perceptions of her contribution to the elemental world helped her along the path of seeing for herself.

Others Detect My Elemental Connections and I Begin to See

Spirit brought me three different women who could see clearly into the nonphysical world. Each one told me of the elementals she saw around me. This was interesting and mysterious to me; it was an important foreshadowing of the time when I would initiate and cultivate my own inner relationship with the gnomes.

Once while attending a spiritual retreat at a YMCA camp in the coastal redwoods of California I was sitting on the ground in a grove of redwood trees, chatting with a friend. A very sweet feeling flowed through my heart. My friend said, “Barbara I just saw the most amazing thing. That redwood tree leaned over and gave you a blessing.” I had felt this blessing before, in meditation, and had identified it as the presence of God or the Holy Spirit. Now I began to recognize it as one of the many ways Mother Nature acknowledges and blesses me.

Another validation of connection came one night during my meditation group when a friend with spiritual sight saw a large gnome carry two small limp, colorless, lifeless gnomes into the room and place them on the floor beside me. After a while, the little ones began to gain color, to stir and wake up. The larger, caretaker gnome later returned and took away the little ones, now bright, shiny, and lively.

A similar confirmation occurred when I was attending a retreat at Asilomar Conference Center on the wild and wonderful Big Sur coast near Monterey, California. Our prayer group had been sitting outside in a circle of eight or nine people, and my friend Patricia later told me that she had seen local gnomes drag seaweed from the ocean to place around me. Then they brought water elementals in to sit in my aura and feel the energy of a “safe human being.”

During these La Canada years my friend Patricia came each week to do healing work on me. Through her inner vision she could see my large golden light covered over with a black cloud. She described her work as pulling out the splinters—and pulling parts of myself back into the whole, even from past life experiences. She suggested that I could offer my life as a schoolroom in which spirit beings taught incarnating souls by watching my process.

I see, in retrospect, that certain experiences during these awakening years were particularly significant in moving me toward my future tasks. At the time I wondered about them and held them in my heart, with the prayer that someday I would understand with inner certainty that “everything works together for the good for those who love God.” It is very gratifying to look back and see clearly how one step led to the next in guiding me to my current place of confidence, dedication, wonder, magic, and service.

Sometimes, even early on, before I had developed my “mind’s eye” sight, I could sense when nature spirits were present. One Halloween, for example, I had the house decorated with corn stalks and pumpkins. I got up early to do my meditation, and as I entered the living room I became aware that the house was full of nature spirits. They were having a party. I had an unspoken knowledge that they were traveling from one location to another, stopping to rest and celebrate in inviting places where the season was being honored. They were gone by sunrise, but they filled the house with their joyous vibrant energy of fun and play.

Another playful awareness occurred in 1965 when I was driving to Indiana with the children and had what I now call an underground initiation into the daily life of a gnome community. We stopped at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico to stretch our legs and take a one-hour tour. As we moved from cavern to cavern, the lights turned on to welcome us into the next viewing space. Half way through the tour we entered a room where lights shown on what appeared to be a series of small cave entrances giving the impression of a series of stage settings. The lights showed interesting configurations of stalagmites. My vision shifted and I saw, in each lighted area, gnomes in living situations. The first was a group sitting around a dining table; another was a wedding scene. I spoke out loud to the children to tell them what I was seeing: “Look, there’s a mother and child walking hand in hand; over there is a gnome family sitting on a couch and chairs talking together.” Soon the whole tour was seeing what I was seeing.