The unseen world, and a giant icicle

I met a Reiki Master at the bus stop today.

(As an aside, it was well before the bus strike that I last took the city bus, and this was definitely my first time within the local routes.  It was an enjoyable experience!  And much like Dan, I totally forgot to be rude to the formerly-striking drivers just because… honestly?  They got me where I was going with a minimum of fuss, and a maximum of punctuality, despite not being a big fancy Downtown Express bus.)

Ahem, so I was saying: I met a lady who, after a little chatting, informed me she is a Reiki Master.  She told me how she got into it, after being terrified by her “visions” from when she was 15 onwards, and how both her mother, and her grandchildren also “see” things.  (The way she described it reminded me of Min’s character in the Wheel of Time series.)  She seemed happy that she’s able to explain this gift to her grandkids, so they won’t be terrified of them as she was, but mostly what caught me was how happy she seemed to be that she knew what her personal gift was, and from that, what her job in life was to be.

She said that she had a feeling I also had visions, but I really don’t, and I told her so.  I sometimes have dreams with scenes or images that pause super-sharp in them, so that I do remember them when I wake up, but as to visual hints from the Beyond, that’s about it.  I did tell her that I get hunches (just like everyone), but that they tend to be vague, not as specific as some of the cases she was describing.

As she continued to reassure me that I was an intuitive person, that I should listen to my feelings, it occurred to me that the way she’d described all her “messages” was within a Christian framework.  Her granddaughter saw angels pointing, she’d seen figures of light gesturing to her, and glimpses of Heaven, all of her communication in the name of Jesus.

So, maybe the reason that I feel my own intuitive indications are vague is just because I have no mental framework for them to fit into.  I mean, yes, I know what an angel traditionally looks like, ditto demons, skeletons, etc.  But none of that stuff actually stems from my core, my a priori heart.  For me, that particular space is filled with the periodic table, and molecular structures, the feel of the wind on my face, and the cold of metal, pictures of space with its swirling galaxies and vast empty reaches… and of a sort of vague, cloudy notion of a benevolent Something that’s driving the mystery we call Life.

So if my own impressions of divinity (for lack of a better word) are formless and non-verbal, is it not reasonable to expect any communication from such a divinity to be equally cloudy and sourceless?

I realize I’m making the obvious assumption that my own perception of things is “right”; but then again, I pretty much hold that whatever I’d be reading off another person or a situation is all information that my conscious brain doesn’t know what to do with.  My subconscious, then, has the task of sticking it into a framework that I’ll recognize and read correctly — so what if the truth is not that I’m not sensitive enough to see the world around me, but rather that I’ve just never given myself a framework expressive enough to read the world?

I still don’t know how I feel about the whole thing; it’s entirely possible she’s just crazy, or someone who’s discovered a successful way of profiting off peoples’ need to believe in something.  I’m pretty sceptical about Reiki in general.  Still, it was something interesting to think about this afternoon.

In other news, I took this picture last week sometime, before the Vicious Mid-March Thaw (also known as The Great Pre-Spring Hopes-Getter-Upper) of the weekend.

Is it not enormous?  I am both awed by its hugeness, and horrified at the fact that such a thing could have formed on our garage.  Hopefully it’s not a bad sign, structurally.