Diane's Detox...Let's Heal

July 4^th   .........Independence Day and Cassadaga

I arranged my return journey to spend the 4th of July holiday with my oldest son, Joshua, in Orlando. There were people vacationing at my home on the Suwannee and there was no need to hurry back to the Tri County area. I was certain there would be more to do if I remained in Orlando, close to the Mouse, as the employees of Disney lovingly call their employer.

Joshua wanted to view the fireworks from the hill he had watched them from last year-able to see 3 different displays at once. I told him whatever we did was fine with me. I didn’t tell him I would rather go to the park to listen to the music and be part of the excitement. I was learning to keep some things to myself. Besides, I knew if The Universe thought I should be at the park, I would be.

My son’s room mate stopped by on his way to the park, “You two want to go with me? It’s gonna be awesome.”

I looked at Josh and said I would love to go and he said, “Why not?” We all grabbed wallets and jackets and headed out the door.

We drove up to the security guard who was stopping travelers from entering and flashed our badges showing we were employed by the mouse, drove in and got the last good parking spot. We were walking towards the lake just as the first “BOOMS” were going off in the air. It was a display done in typical Disney-style choreographed to patriotic songs and bigger than life.

My attitude of gratitude was beaming and a few tears rolled down my cheeks. It was the first 4^th of July without Red and tomorrow would be the first 5^th of July without him. I was getting used to not having Red around but when that “Miss Him” feeling overwhelms my body it was still so strong. I was beginning to believe it might always be. There will never be another Red and their will never be another Red and Diane team. I was blessed to have the passion and the excitement many people never experience. I will always love Red and I tell him so frequently, in sign language, the way we used to tell each other of our love when he was on stage; little pinky up for the “I,” heart to the chest in a fist for the “Love,” and pointing our fingers at each other for the “you.” Now I point my finger at the sky and smile knowing he sees me.

The screams at the festivities of the fireworks brought me back to the moment and I was thankful for where I was. I looked over at Joshua and realized it was a happy 4^th of July.

I had been in touch with some women who had a spiritualist church in Orlando and planned on attending their Sunday morning service. I copied the directions to their location off the Internet, gave my son a good bye hug and headed out the door, a little early, in case I had trouble finding them. I usually had no problem finding places I was supposed to be.

As I drove down the road that should have taken me right to their church the road ended abruptly. The directions clearly said it was on North-something Road and apparently South-something road was not connected to it. I called the number I had copied from the Internet, left a message and drove around for a few minutes in my new “not worrying” attitude. If I was supposed to be there I knew I would find it.

As I drove around realizing I was not going to find this Hidden Church of Spiritualists something in my head told me to call Karen King in the Keys. It had been a long time since we had spoken and cell-phone-Sunday was a great time to catch up. Besides, it looked like I wasn’t going to Sunday morning service any time soon.

She was home and we chatted for a while and I told her I was looking for a missing Spiritualist Church. As soon as I said those words I realized why I had called her. She was supposed to tell me, “Diane, isn’t there a community of Psychic-Spiritualist people somewhere near Orlando.”

“Yes, thank you, Karen. Of course, that is where I should be going. A couple of my friends have told me all about the place. In fact one was commissioned to write a song about it. I can’t remember the name of it but I do remember the meaning of its Indian name, Rocks under the water. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

We talked for a few more minutes, both of us trying to remember the name of the place, and I told her I would call her back later to let her know what happened. She loves to hear about my synchronistic coincidences, or as I was beginning to call them, my daily miracles.

I called my friend, Lee Pinkerton who had written the song and left a message for her. I called another friend to whom I had also spoken about this psychic settlement and left another message. Apparently I wasn’t going to get through to anyone on the phone for help.

I looked at my gas gauge and realized fuel was of the utmost importance. I decided the attendant at the next gas station would be able to tell me the name of the place and how to get there.

Now, my guess would be, if you polled 100 people in Orlando, 3 of them might know of the place I was talking about and one of them MIGHT be able to give me directions. I was continuing with my positive attitude, but realized, I was really reaching this time.

Hey, if they didn’t know the place I was talking about I could always head for the west coast. I had set up a tentative date with a friend who was playing music in Crystal River tonight. I could show up early and we could catch up. But something inside told me I would be on the way to a Spiritualist Community soon.

I pumped my gas and went inside to talk to the woman behind the counter. When she was done with the gentleman ahead of me I looked at her and said, “I am not sure whether you can help me but I know there is a Psychic-Spiritualist Community somewhere near Orlando and I can’t remember its name…”

“That would be Cassadaga. My husband is a Pagan Priest and does services there often. Just go up Route 4 and take a right. I don’t think there are any signs for it, but I think you will know when to turn,” she smiled.

“Yes, I think you are right,” I thanked her and headed out the door to head north on Route 4. As I was going out the door she added, “We’ll be celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary at Cassadaga Lake in New York this fall. If you are in the area, I would love for you to come to our party.” I thanked her and told her I love would to be there but I would be in Florida this fall.

As I hopped excitedly into my truck I picked up my phone to call Karen in the Keys to tell her what had just happened and looked at the caller ID to see she was calling me at the same instant.

“You are never going to believe this,” I began.

“Oh yes I will,” she laughed. I told her I picked the only gas station attendant in Orlando who knew not only knew the place was called Cassadaga but was able to give me directions.”

We laughed some more and I put on my head phones so I could talk to her and drive hands free while I got onto Route 4. She had a few things she wanted to tell me. I love talking, listening to, and learning things from, my dear friend Karen.

I drove by an exit and Something told me I had just missed my turn.

As I looked in my rearview mirror I could see a small sign off the highway, at the end of the exit ramp that read, “Cassadaga 7 miles.”

I said goodbye to Karen, got off on the next exit and sped back to the one I should have taken, glad Something had told me I was going past where I wanted to be.

I drove into town looking at all the old houses feeling like I was in New England. Many of the settlers here had come from upstate New York and the homes told me they had built them. Nearly every house had a sign out front with some type of healing service on it and the center of the town was on a big bend in the road. I went around the bend and realized there was no more around the corner. I turned around and parked in the last parking place in front of the café which was also the last parking place in sight.

The entire area was bustling with people for a couple of blocks in each direction and I had several buildings to choose from; I walked up on the porch of the Andrew Jackson Davis Building. A gentleman was sitting on a bench and asked me if I needed any help finding something.

“I think I am just going to let Spirit guide me,” I thanked him. He laughed and said, “This is a good place to do that!”

I walked into the store and saw some “Birth Cards” on the counter for which I had been looking and picked out the card for May 25^th. I chuckled as I read the information on the 7 of clubs birthday card;

And on the back of the card it continued to describe me to a T;

How do they know these things?

The woman asked me if there was anything else I needed and I told her, “There’s something in the back of the store calling to me. I’ll be right back.” I wanted to find a book on how to read Auras but I didn’t want anyone’s help in this earth plane. I wanted Something to lead me to it.

I walked to the back and looked around and saw a wall of brochures for all the different programs offered here at Cassadaga. I wondered what would be going on this afternoon and then heard a speaker’s voice from around the corner. I walked towards the voice in time to hear the woman at the door tell the young couple standing there to, “Wait for this speaker to finish and when everyone applauds just go in and find a seat.”

I looked at the sign on the door and realized I had arrived just in time for their Sunday afternoon medium-ship meeting. This was exactly where I was supposed to be.

As the crowd of approximately 200 people applauded the welcoming speaker I walked in behind the young couple and found a seat as the first medium stood and asked if anyone wanted a reading.

Hands went up everywhere and he pointed to a young man on the other side of the room and told him many things about his life and how the children who were with him were going to teach him many lessons in patience.

Everyone laughed and then the medium turned to my side of the room and asked again if there was anyone who would like a reading. My hand shot up along with 30 or more others and he pointed at me and asked me my first name.

“Diane,” I said, wondering what he would have to say to me.

“Is your last name Johnson?” he asked. I told him, “You’re close.” When he looked at me inquisitively I told him my last name was Jackman.

“I see a man standing behind you. He is the kind of guy you meet and like in the first few minutes of talking to him and he has one of those smiles that goes from one ear to the other.” He paused and listened for a moment and then continued, “He wants me to tell you he is really proud of what you have accomplished, not only since he has been gone but for the things you have been working on over the last few years. He is very, very proud of you.”

I remembered my lessons on how I should talk to the medium to keep the energy going but I knew I shouldn’t feed him any information. I thanked him and told him I knew of whom he was speaking and I understood the message.

“He also wants me to tell you there is something you are missing. Something in a television show you watch, there is a message you are missing,” he waited for my answer.

“Well, I don’t watch TV so I am not sure of what you could be speaking,” I told him.

He changed the subject and began speaking of a book he had been given at the beginning of the program as a gift on how to read auras, and my mouth dropped open. Good job, Spirit World. I would have to walk up and get the name of the book from him after everyone was finished.

I tried to listen to the other readings being done but my attention kept drifting to how amazingly clearly these people could see and hear things most of us could not. I was also thinking how wonderful it was of Red to be there cheering me on. I guess it was time for him to be my biggest fan. I had been his for so many years.

I went up and thanked the man for the reading and asked him for the name of the book he had mentioned and how I had come into the building hoping to find a book to teach me how to read auras.

He gave me the information and then added, “The message is about your health. It is something about how you are not eating right.”

When he said that I realized he was right. I told him, “Here it is, 3pm in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten yet today. I am always telling people they need to feed their brain if they are going to think properly. Thank you, I am going to go get something to eat right now.”

I walked out to the cashier and picked up my card, asked her if she had the book, “Living Rainbows.”

“I think we just sold the last copy,” she said as she walked to the shelf. “Nope, here’s the last copy. It must have been meant for you.”

The way Spirit World was working these days I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if this one had materialized on the shelf as we were walking over to it.

As I checked out I thanked them for their help and the girl who was sitting at the edge of the counter picked up a booklet and handed it to me while she asked me if I had picked up their publication about Cassadaga. When I told her I hadn’t, she put it in my bag.

I headed out the door across the street to the Café and walked up to the bar. The waitress came out of the kitchen and I ordered a Caesar Salad and told her I was very hungry. She brought it out within a couple of minutes and I thankfully consumed my lunch. When I was finished I got my glasses out to look into the booklet I had been given to find out if there was a psychic here I wanted to see.

I picked a page and opened the booklet up. There, in the center of the page was a butterfly on an ad for a Hazel Burley West. I decided to drive to her street and if she was easy to find and available I would have her do a reading. Apparently someone in Spirit World thought I should see her.

I found her house easily and I knocked on her door. When she answered my knock in her bathrobe I felt a little badly about not calling her. She asked me if I had an appointment and I said I hadn’t but if it wasn’t a good time to get a reading I could leave. I didn’t want to intrude.

“No, please, come in. I was expecting you but I looked in my appointment book and there was nothing written there so I thought maybe I had just forgotten to write it down.”

She led me to her reading room and gave me a couple of books written about Cassadaga with pages marked for me to read about her history in the community. Apparently I had picked one of the original psychics who had settled in the area. Well, Spirit World had lead me to someone respectable; Hazel with the butterfly in her advertisement.

When she returned she asked me to write my name and proceeded to tell me how her husband and she had been part of the Sunday medium-ship meetings. She recalled the most embarrassing one of all, “He was talking to a black woman and told her there was a man in her aura. It was her father and he was explaining to my husband how he had died from a rat bite. I started kicking the podium to make him stop his story. I was frightened this black woman might take great offense with this tale of her father being killed by a rat bite and feared my husband was going to be in BIG trouble.”

“It turned out, the woman’s father had been a scientist and he had been bitten by a laboratory rat and died within days of that bite. That was the most memorable moment of my deceased husband’s readings,” she finished as she took the paper I had written on and set it in her lap.

“From your writing I see you are an independent woman. Even when you are with a man you like to make up your own mind about things,” she told me about myself. She was right.

“I see a woman, on your mother’s side, your mother’s mother, you were named for her. Her name starts with E-L,” she said. “Yes, that would be my mother’s mother, Elizabeth. My middle name is Elizabeth.” I looked over to the paper to see if I had written my middle name on it. No, it wasn’t there.

She continued, “I see another woman on your mother’s side her name starts with M-A-R…”

“That could be either my Aunt Peggy whose real name was Margaret or my great grandmother Margaret,” I confirmed. “I never met her.”

Hazel told me I had many ancestors with me I had never met. There were lots of loved ones now helping me on my journey. She also told me that Spirit World is still learning from us as well. We are in the physical plane and they watch and learn lessons from us they did not learn while they were here. That was the first time I had heard that but thought the concept made sense.

“I see a man falling. He was very, very close to you and when he died he fell,” she was having a hard time continuing and imitated the man she could see dying. She described the position Red had been in when he had his heart attack, on straight arms and how he fell to the side when I threw him off of me to try to shock him back to life.

She continued, “I don’t want it to be your husband, did your grandfather fall when he died?”

“No, it was my husband,” I went on to explain how Red had died. She felt so very sorry for me and continued.

He is making me dizzy. I need to sip on my water, excuse me please. “He wants me to tell you he is proud of you and that the education you are getting from the studies you are pursuing is more work and will give you more knowledge than any university courses,” she told me. I was happy to hear this because I had considered going back to school but really couldn’t decide what I would take for courses.

“He also wants me to tell you his music is timeless. It needs to be in the movies. You will make money by getting his music into movies and by eventually selling some land,” she told me.

I was glad to have been led to this woman. She was telling me things I needed to hear, needed to know, so I could make my decisions as to what projects I needed to accomplish first. Get the CD out and then the book. Got it.

She spoke a little longer but I had heard what I needed to hear. I paid her more than she requested and she gave me a book and told me to read it. It was the handbook of life.

I laughed as I walked out of her reading room because my friend Karen King is always telling me we are placed here without a handbook and here I was, holding it in my hand. Whether I ever saw Hazel again was unimportant, she had given me great information and I was once again feeling very, very blessed.

I headed towards the west coast and tried unsuccessfully to reach my friend playing music so I headed straight to Chiefland glad I would not have to sit in a bar tonight.

As I was driving I had some strange feelings of dizziness and told the air, “Red, if this is you it must stop. I can’t drive and be dizzy and I don’t like feeling this way.”

I felt an easing of the dizziness and then heard his voice in my mind telling me this wasn’t about him it was about me. What I had to do was important. What I had to say was important.

I told him that was ridiculous and I had the feeling of dizziness again.

“OK, OK, I believe you,” I reluctantly gave in and the dizziness went away. I asked the air if this was our first post mortem argument and distinctly heard him laugh and say, “Yes.” Good grief, we are going to argue even after his death!

I called Dr. Susan to tell her I would be camping out on the floor of The Center tonight and she said that was not a problem at all. When I arrived there and let myself in I heard a loud grinding noise coming from the back treatment room. The fountain had run dry and heaven only knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been led here to spend the night. But then, heaven knew I would be there to fill it with water and prevent a possible fire, didn’t it? It was good to be where I belonged and I was beginning to realize I’m always where I belong. There are no mistakes!

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