My Spiritual Journey: An Essay from my book

Strangely enough, I have never written about my spiritual journey anywhere before, and had only shared certain parts with very few people over the years.

When I first wrote my book, Outlaw Torn, I had included some basic information interwoven in the overall story I was telling, but once I began the final serious edit before I self-published, I wound up cutting out all mention of it from the book, intending instead to write about this important aspect of my life in a second book. As the years have passed since late 2018, my ideas regarding a second book also changed and I instead started my essay series. I think my path can be very well summed up in an essay and doesn’t require an entire book.

One of the very first experiences that I can remember in my life, as a very young child (I don’t know how young but probably older than a toddler), was how I would stare up into the dark ceiling in my room at night, and see a certain pattern that I could never identify. It seemed to have a word or some writing in the center of it and I always imagined that if I could only read what it said, I would understand everything. In my pitch-black room, I would ask myself questions like, who am I? Why am I here? What is this life about? I recall only deafening silence responding back to me, and that pattern, repeating over and over, endlessly.

Only once did I ask my mom and dad these kinds of questions aloud, and they just looked at me in kind of a confused way, and I realized then and there, that my parents did not know the answers either. I felt terribly disappointed and felt like there was no one in my life who could tell me what I felt like I needed to know. It took me some time to actually get over this feeling, but eventually, I did forget about it for the most part and just got on with being a developing child.

When I was about six or seven years old, my parents made me go to these Bible study classes at a local church. My parents were Catholic, but we never really went to church except once or twice a year that I can recall, and it was not a big part of our lives, so I really did not understand why I needed to do this. I went along with it for a while, but after a couple of months, I had somehow understood that I was being taught these stories because I was going to be involved in some sort of ritual at the church, something called “First Communion.” I did not like most of the stories that they were telling me from this Bible book, and once this plot of my parents had become clear to me, I had firmly decided that I was not going to do this.

One evening soon after this inner conversation, I told my parents that I would not be doing this ceremony and I wanted to stop going to the church classes if this was why they were making me go. Their jaws practically dropped to the floor and they were stunned at my pronouncement, but then adamant that I would indeed be taking part in this important Catholic ritual and they wanted to hear nothing else about it.

For the first time in my young life, I stood up to them, and told them that they could not make me do this and I was refusing to have anything to do with it. I called the stories that they were teaching me lies and that they were wrong about everything. They could not make me do something that I felt was not good for me and that I was not going to another class, no matter what they said.

I did not know the word “hypocritical” at that time, but if I had, that is exactly what I would have told them about the Catholic church and these false teachings they were forcing on me. I did not know why I felt that they were untrue lies, but all I can say now is that I did and I also did not like how they were framing the world and how it works; their stories about God were just not right, even to me as a little girl. I applaud that brave little one (me) for standing up to her parents about something she felt so profoundly, and apparently, the universe did too.

Within weeks of my refusal to go to Catechism class, my father got a new job that would take my family from Southern California to Westerly, Rhode Island, all the way across the country. In 1970, this was a monumental undertaking that required a great deal of planning; it was much more challenging to do than it is now. So many things had to be taken care of and arranged and this whole brouhaha about First Communion went straight out the window, as they literally had no extra time to think about it, much less force me to do it. The universe had thrown all its weight on my side of this issue and it was basically forgotten by my parents.

I will note that at this time however, I had all but forgotten about my early years and the huge life questions I had asked myself in the darkness of my room at night. For now, and what I can actually remember, that was the end of my spiritual life until my teenage years.

Due to several factors I wrote about in greater detail in my book, including my parents getting divorced, which was certainly a long time coming, I began experimenting with drugs at around thirteen years old. Mostly harmless marijuana smoking but by fourteen I was smoking and snorting PCP in its various forms and even though I had hated it, I was drinking a lot of alcohol by fifteen.

I do recall that at this point in my life, I was essentially an atheist, at best agnostic, but there was still something there because when I would get very angry or frustrated with some aspect of my life, or even the entire world as it was, I would scream and yell to whatever god existed and tell him to “fuck off” and to “strike me with lightning and kill me if you are even real.” These were very defiant feelings that would pour out of me at times that definitely reveal to me today how upset and disappointed I was with my own feelings about life and indeed, the entire world as I knew it in general.

Why yell at God at all if he isn’t real on some level to you?

I was sixteen when I first took psychedelics, namely LSD. Nothing else I had taken or tried up to this point would I classify as any sort of spiritual experience, but taking a trip on acid was completely mind-blowing for me. I absolutely loved it and it was like experiencing a reality underneath this one that I had always known was there. This reality was ONE and there was no such concept like separation or duality. I could see energy and vibrations in the air, the walls, as all the objects around me and indeed, myself as well. I could also totally understand our essential unity. It was beyond beautiful. The only problem with this was that the drug wore off in 8-9 hours and then I was left with the normal reality again and I would almost feel depressed that I could not summon what I had experienced back on my own. What was important though, was that I knew what I experienced was true and maybe even more real than what we are calling this reality we are living in right now, without the hallucinogenic influence. I had glimpsed something that would alter my view and experience of the world forever. From what I know now and understand about spirituality, almost everything happens and unfolds because and due to such a glimpse.

Nothing else of a truly spiritual nature happened to me for years besides when I would consume LSD, mushrooms or any other hallucinogens. But all these experiences with these drugs were significant for me and only once did I have a “bad” trip; most experiences were always of this life-altering and life-affirming variety and I loved them and never forgot how I felt.

When I self-surrendered to the federal prison camp in late 1995, I was forced to deal with very uncomfortable feelings and situations immediately and the first couple of months for me were incredibly stressful and quite challenging. Once I settled in and calmed down, so did my emotional state and before too long, being in prison became normal. A yogi is simply someone who can adapt to any situation and I was no yogi when I first arrived in prison, but we humans in general are highly adaptable, even if an extreme situation took a little longer than most for me to get used to. There are no yardsticks for these kinds of experiences however, and in the end, we are all doing the best we can, regardless of where we find ourselves from moment to moment.

At some point in the first year of my incarceration, probably three months in, there was a day I was particularly upset about things, and feeling a stark and utter disbelief that my life had wound up where it had, and all of a sudden it was like there was a divine Presence all around me and it was so loving, so comforting and completely filled with a feeling of unconditional support and endless compassion - for me. I could get all of that easily from whatever was happening to me. There was a huge opening feeling and warmth in my heart when this happened. I could also feel that this Presence was decidedly Feminine in quality. This was the first of many such experiences that I would have while I was incarcerated, and they helped me in ways that are impossible to put into words.

I had been attending these meetings with Jehovah’s Witnesses (there’s a sentence I would have never thought I would write), who would come into the prison on the weekends and would teach and share fellowship with us. My roommate at the prison camp had invited me to attend when I first arrived, and for lack of anything else even slightly spiritual I had agreed, and for some time, I actually enjoyed the meetings and the knowledge I was picking up about the Bible and this Christian God, whom they called Jehovah. There was no Feminine representation of God however, in their view, nor in the Bible, and I remember feeling quite conflicted on a deep inner level because of this inconsistency. I had also sadly realized there was no one I could talk to about my visits from the Goddess while I was in prison. I had started calling her, “She Who Has No Name” and She was such an important Presence for me; She gave me strength and determination to make it through my prison sentence, to work hard at what I had to do, and to get out unscathed.

When I was released from the federal camp, and was (barely) enduring the horrible halfway house I had been assigned to in Newark, New Jersey, She was an invisible Presence helping me deal with some almost overwhelming feelings, and on many days where I really did not think I could handle what was on my plate for another minute, it was like She would reach out to me and I could almost feel Her embrace and it was calming and soothing, and I would go on.

After I was in my own place, I almost immediately started trying to figure out what kind of spiritual path was calling to me and who She was. I started reading about Wicca and took a small course, a local workshop, and learned enough to try and do my own rituals, seeing what would happen and how I would feel. I found I liked the rituals and working with the Goddess and God energies, but I still felt like this wasn’t quite it for me; some aspect(s) of this practice was just not what I was looking for.

Not too long after this, I read something during my research about ancient Egypt and that you could study and work with these deities as a spiritual path, something called the Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Traditions and the Goddess who had been with me now for a several years nudged me and all of a sudden, it was revealed to me that her name was Isis. It was amazing to finally know for certain who She was and hone in on the right rituals and practices to honor Her correctly. I bought several books about Isis and how to best work with Her energy and embarked on what became a truly wonderful journey.

I joined an organization called the Fellowship of Isis (FOI) which was actually based in England and was non-denominational, catering to all different kinds of spiritual paths and offering a multitude of different courses. I signed up to study to become an actual modern-day Priestess of Isis, something She had let me know She wanted me to do. The communication between us now that I had found out who She was and the right ways to work with her, had opened up so much, and it was really such a beautiful relationship I had with Her for quite some time.

One of the books I bought about Isis was written by an author who also offered an interesting looking course working with Her and I eagerly signed on for that too; this is when I can say that I really began working with Isis in earnest. I absolutely loved it and felt fulfilled in my spiritual life in a way that I had never imagined was possible. I was doing rituals two then three times a day with Isis and working with energies that She would tell me about. I graduated from the author’s course and was still studying with the FOI, having received my first Magi degree and working on my second one that would officially make me a bona fide Priestess.

One day in early December of 2000, she had me log onto the computer and directed me to a website that was about something called Reiki. I had never heard of it before. I said, “Isis, what is this? What do you want me to do?” She told me that I needed to buy the course and that it was part of my path to become a healer in this lifetime. She said that I had been a healer before and She wanted me to do this. Part of me was like, what are you talking about? But mostly I knew to listen to Her and that She had not steered me wrong in the past. So, I clicked on the “buy now” button and paid a couple of hundred dollars or so to become a Reiki Master. Of course, I had no idea that most people progress through at least two or three levels of Reiki and then train to be a Reiki Master, but the course She told me to take would give me the full initiation. It was probably best that I had no idea what I was doing or taking on and how much this huge attunement would change my life, as I might have wanted to wait or never do it at all. But I also have to say that when Isis was adamant about something, She could make Herself felt pretty forcefully and I loved Her dearly, so I also trusted Her completely. If this was what She wanted me to do, then this is exactly what I would do.

The people I was receiving the attunement from were in Australia and would be performing this attunement over the upcoming weekend; apparently, they would be “working” on it and me over the entire two-day period. I really do not have a strong recollection about that weekend, but I do remember a couple of times during this attunement process that I felt spaced out or even disconnected from my body and needing to lie down and waking up from these episodes and feeling pretty strange.

I received a little manual in the mail from there shortly thereafter and started working with the Reiki energy immediately. There were several symbols to learn about and experiment with, as they held their own different frequencies; one to amplify energy, another to make it possible to send the healing over distance, and one that was helpful for the emotional levels of the people being sent healing, and it was all very fascinating to me and very interesting to work with. This manual however, simplified everything to such a degree that I really did not learn to work with chakras and life force energy correctly. I did not have any inkling of that then however, and always sallied forth as if I had everything I needed, an attitude which has always served me well in most situations.

After two months or so of working with the Reiki energy only on myself, I started doing healing on other people, both in person and by distance with pretty amazing results from the feedback I was receiving from them after these sessions. Things also started to escalate for me in my personal life that I also felt were happening due to these energies being activated and the radical shift in my own frequency from receiving such a strong attunement.

I was feeling suffocated at my job and not wanting to be in New Jersey any longer. I definitely attribute most of these feelings to that attunement event, because I was not in a bad place before it happened and all of a sudden, my feelings were really shifting powerfully in a way that I did not feel I could ignore. I needed to leave the guy I was living with and start over again in a new place, by myself. There was a lot of blowback from these decisions but I felt like there was nothing else to be done but to move forward and not stagnate. At some point in time around then, I also got ordained as a Reverend online, thinking I could also offer different ceremonies to people as another way to connect and to make money. I also figured maybe it would help if I ever actually created a Temple somewhere, something that I thought about a lot during this time period.

I wound up in Tucson, Arizona by that summer of 2001, and most of what happened there and afterwards in Florida is covered in my “Relationship” essay, and honestly, it was not an easy, smooth, nor particularly good time for me in my life. Regardless of everything else experienced, in September of that same year, I was ordained as a Priestess of Isis, Ma’at and Ra in a remote ceremony by my dear friend Siti. That was an immense accomplishment on many levels and I was really proud of myself for all the time, effort and dedication. I was still studying with my FOI mentor for my next degree, since the new goal was to be a High Priestess, but for now, I was content and Isis was pleased.

By the time I wound up back in California at my sister’s house at the end of 2001, I was starting to venture online to offer healing and was taking many other courses, and being attuned to new energetic healing systems, like the Lightarian Reiki program and other Lightarian energetic offerings; working with Archangels and Ascended Masters, things I had never even dreamed of doing or being involved in. I was also still very involved in the FOI, and after becoming a Priestess, I had created an online Temple and started offering my own Priestess training course, which was something Isis had told me to do. I started getting students and was working with people in ways I had never imagined and was really deeply in love with everything I was doing.

What brought me back to live in New Jersey again is covered in my “Relationships” essay, but once there and settled back in to working my day job as well as my energy healing and priestess training work I was doing in my free time, I was busy, but not busy enough to low-key get addicted to receiving more and more attunements and initiations to as many energy healing systems and methods as I could find. This was in 2004-2006 that I felt this kind of frenzy to take on more and more energy and to be able to offer it to others, even as I was not taking enough time in between these attunements, or working with the energy for at least a couple of months, making it more special and something I really could say I knew about and was experienced at. That’s why I need to use the word frenzy, as it was irrational and compulsive, and not at all how all of this had started. There was an imbalance, but I was too immersed to see what was going on with myself, because that was not part of my practice. Hindsight is so revealing.

It was also around this time or a bit before, that I really got into aromatherapy. I did a small course about it and then started buying very good quality oils and creating my own essential oil blends, all based on spiritual ideals and all starting with the word, “Inner.” So, there were blends like, Inner Peace, Inner Wisdom, Inner Balance, Inner Love, Inner Strength. At one point I had created like twenty-two different blends and I would sell them separately on my website, as well as send them to people with different attunements I offered. I had many people tell me how much they loved my oil blends and how powerful they were. It was a really important part of my work for many years.

This was an exciting time in many ways for me, but also quite frantic and obsessed on some level, and I will never really understand what possessed me at this point, and how I found myself eventually attuned to and teaching about thirty-six different healing systems, including Reiki. Looking back with more clarity twenty-dd years later, perhaps it was that almost every other aspect of my life seemed empty and definitely not fulfilling; I was in a bizarre, lonely marriage and had no real friends at all where I was living. My online life and students, other healers I would trade systems with and connect remotely, were almost my entire life beside my regular day job, my still ongoing daily rituals with Isis, and of course, my precious cats.

When I again left New Jersey in 2006 to return to my sister’s home in California, I was in a bit of a funk over the failed attempt at marriage and the disappointment from that entire experience weighing heavily on me, even though I was feeling very good about my spiritual life and path. It was a somewhat fragmented life I was living though, and it was not that balanced.

More and more, my work with Isis felt like is was coming to some sort of conclusion, and finally at some point in early 2007, I felt as though our energies had merged in some way and that we were no longer separate but that she was now a part of me. My work with her ended even as I was still working on my third Magi degree to become a High Priestess in the FOI and I still had a handful of students that I was also training to become priestesses. It also felt less urgent that I was doing these things and I took some steps to wrap up my student’s studies and either end working with them or accelerate their becoming a Priestess of Isis through ordination with me by assisting them to finish what was still needed for that final step.

I think it is important for me to interject here, that since late 2000 when I was officially done with federal probation, I had been smoking marijuana again, off and on. When I moved from New Jersey to Tucson in June, 2001, I had stopped for several months not having anyone to get it from, but when I made friends with Becky there, she had contacts and I started smoking again and only had a small break in Florida, and started again when I moved in with my sister. When I moved back to New Jersey in late 2003, I did not smoke for several months, until I contacted my ex-boyfriend and then later, when I made a new friend who also smoked. So, while I smoked pot for a majority of this time, I also had longish stretches when I did not smoke any weed at all. Isis had never brought this up to me as an issue and because it was something I could always stop whenever I needed to, it was not a problematic thing for me either. I have always had an on-and-off love affair with cannabis since I was 15-16 years old and even though I essentially went to prison because of it, that never made me feel anything bad about it either; it was mostly the people I was involved with who had screwed up, not pot itself being wrong or bad as far as I was ever concerned.

I had been communicating with a guy in Australia named Anthony that I had met online several years earlier, and he was doing all these very powerful meditations and practices, and at some point, around 2004, he started telling me about this awesome teacher, who actually lived near me in Los Angeles, named Wistancia and about this course he thought I should take that would make me a New Earth teacher. He said Wistancia had this available on her website and he was taking it and was really loving it.

This was during the time that I was doing so many new systems and energy healing methods, and this actually sounded a bit different, so it felt interesting because of that. I did sign up for and start this training in 2004 or 2005. At the time I took it, it was coming out gradually from Wistancia, one level at a time, and most of the levels were already available by the time Anthony recommended it to me. It was based on this idea that our Earth was evolving and transforming, and was actually going to take on a new “body”, and that was this New Earth. It would actually be a much bigger planet and the laws and the way things would work on this planet would be more of an extraterrestrial kind and not anything like how we live now. We would be receiving new bodies that could look however we wanted, and we would be able to train in whatever work was our heart’s desire, and on and on.

The course itself was training us to be New Earth Ambassadors, and we would be the people that would help everyone else on the New Earth adapt and adjust to this new way of life, so it was also really cool to think about that and to want to be of service to humanity in this kind of way, which I very much did. This was all very fantastical of course, but I was really into this vision of what was going to happen, supposedly right before the year 2012.

Once I did all the levels, I started offering this New Earth Teacher training on my own website and trained people remotely or in person. I also created a New Earth essential oil blend that I offered to my students who took the levels with me. The course was also working with certain crystals for this course and other things that I was already doing and working with energetically. There were rituals to do with the Earth and for the most part, it was a lovely course and inspired this love of Mother Earth and her own ongoing transformation, not just ours.

It was also my introduction to working with Wistancia as a teacher and of her own teacher and mentor, Channie West, or Channie Cha as she calls herself. Channie was the actual creator of the New Earth Teacher training course as well as an energy healing system she worked with and taught called Universal White Time Healing (UWTH). In early 2007, I suddenly got very interested in UWTH and decided to take the first two levels with a teacher in Tucson, AZ, not Wistancia. The classes would be one-on-one with this teacher and at a perfect time for me, and I would not be waiting for Wistancia to put together a class. This Arizona teacher, whose name is Kalama, also invited me to stay at her house for this training and made it almost effortless for me to attend. All I had to do was pay her for the courses and drive there and back. It was also one of the only times in years that I had actually taken a class with anyone in person and not online or remotely, so I was excited and happily nervous about it.

The training took place in early February of 2007 and went very well. The initiation for the first UWTH level was quite strange, but UWTH assumes that you understand that it is an extraterrestrial healing system, and there was a lot about this that you just had to trust, because there was no way you could actually prove the veracity of many, many things they were alleging about it, as were the many experiences that Channie had claimed to have with extraterrestrials and in spaceships in multiple galaxies and worlds since she was five years old, living in Sweden.

Kalama was a wonderful hostess and competent teacher, and she made me feel comfortable and also appreciated as a student who wanted to learn from her and not Wistancia. I got the feeling that everyone wanted to be taught by Wistancia, who already had this spiritual teacher aura about her, and she was an important figure in UWTH, as she was chosen to head this area of the world as a high teacher of UWTH. There were not that many teachers of UWTH either and even this congested area of Los Angeles only had a few. It made it feel very exclusive and they fostered this feeling in themselves and in the students quite well. We were special. So now looking back, several red flags were present right off the bat, but I wasn’t looking for red flags, and was more fixated on the green ones, of which there were also several waving.

It was also nice to be back in Tucson again. On one of the nights I was there, Kalama took me out into the desert so we could really see the stars in the night sky and she was talking about my new connection with the extraterrestrials now that I was attuned to UWTH and this special Well that is part of it all, and really making sure I knew some of the stories about this woman Channie who was the founder of UWTH and where everything we were learning had come from. Incredible stories about all manner of spaceships and having hundreds of extraordinary experiences with all manner of extraterrestrials in all kinds of worlds. She had also written a book, like a diary of these experiences and once I read that, I was convinced that Channie was legit because of the richness of her stories, as well as her artwork about these beings and worlds that she illustrated her book with. Even with all these fantastical experiences, Channie was very down to earth at the same time, very unassuming-looking, heavyset older woman. I wanted to take a class with her very much right off the bat, as she also taught certain things, and I would get into those soon enough. UWTH pretty much took over any other priorities for me after that first set of classes in early February 2007; I was hooked.

You are also taught “The Golden Movement,” which has four movement parts; you learn one new part per course you take in UWTH, of which level four is the highest – on planet Earth at least. The first part is actually the most important and you learn that part in level one. I also did level two back-to-back with level one with Kalama, so I learned the second part before I left her place to go back home. There is an entire storyline around the Golden Movement, that has to do with these beings called Golden Knights. Channie was supposedly exposing all these secret things regarding how things really worked out in the universe and how she was all connected with everything and in the know in ways no one else was. I was utterly fascinated with the Golden Knights and the Golden Movement.

When I got back home after that first training block, including two strong initiations into UWTH that were life-changing as far as my teacher was concerned, it was interesting because some things simply felt different, and I responded accordingly. When my sister wanted to smoke some weed with me after I got home, I realized that I did not want any, and so for however long, I wasn’t going to be smoking or imbibing anything recreationally. I was feeling a definite higher frequency in myself, and it was like there was no need to change anything about my experience in the slightest way by interfering with it, by introducing any mind-altering substances to my present vibe. I can get that now, fifteen years later. It was also not that weird for me to take a break for whatever reason as I have already mentioned, but this break was definitely due to the UWTH training and initiations. I had no doubt about it, because it was so entirely organic and it was very welcome. These were very important and fulfilling months of working with the energies and symbols and really immersing myself completely in UWTH.

I took the UWTH level three class only a month or so after the first two levels, and again, went back to Kalama’s house in Tucson for the training. It was a couple of days longer but there was a lot of new techniques and knowledge to be taken in and there was quite a lot more material than levels one and two for sure. I know I was utterly taken in and fascinated; I considered myself all in with UWTH, already wanting to become a teacher myself. I felt like I had found my perfect niche in the healing realm and I was thrilled.

Kalama could not teach me to become a teacher and I would have to finally contact Wistancia herself and wait for a level one teacher class, and the teacher training was three times as much moola as the healer training. It was definitely not cheap to become a teacher in UWTH and it was increasingly more expensive as you trained for the higher levels after the first one. My feeling however, was that I had found the healing system I wanted to commit to, so it was just a matter of saving the money, or getting a loan to pay for the class, and taking whatever classes I could as soon as I could when you have limited resources, but are committed to finding a way.

It's funny now that I cannot remember when I did that first teacher training with Wistancia; it was either late 2007 or sometime in early 2008. There were several other people also in the class and it was the first time I had met Wistancia in person. I had been communicating with her about several things for a while before that, but was finally getting to experience her energy and her teaching style at her home, which I had also heard a lot about, because Channie stayed there when she was in the USA to teach something or other.

The training was one long day if I remember correctly and there was a lot to absorb that is not really said in the level one healing papers, so there were some new concepts and others that were being brought out more for us to understand the hidden meanings, the esoteric level. I had read Channie’s book by then as well, so I at least knew what she was talking about for the most part with all these very specific background type stories about Channie and universal concepts that go along with UWTH, especially on these higher teacher levels. So I was really interested as I wanted to know the esoteric meanings of things, knowing it would help me to teach level one with new eyes and a new, deeper understanding.

What I will never forget was the initiation for that teacher training, an initiation which enabled me as a teacher to be able to initiate someone else into UWTH as a new healer. To the level one student, this was a huge deal and there was a lot to learn about that initiation process alone, as it was intricate with many parts and things you needed to do and say, including the use of an ultra-special large piece of red fabric, that had been taken out into the universe by Channie and blessed somewhere incredible, then brought back for me to use in my initiation ceremonies with my students. Yes, really.

My own initiation that day with Wistancia was by far, one of the strongest such experiences I have ever had, after receiving dozens of attunements, empowerments and initiations into multiple energy systems and methods up until that point, including the three UWTH initiations I had received from Kalama. I have no idea how long we were up in Wistancia’s room for the entire initiation process, but I remember entering the room and laying down on a massage table so she could work on me, and what seemed to be a very complex initiation process with many parts going on around me. The energy that was going on was really beautiful, expansive and intoxicating and I recall drifting in and out of conscious awareness of what exactly was going on, going into a bit of a trance or sleep-like state, and it was impossible to contain the experience within “time” as it were.

At some point, it was done and I was being helped off the table and out of the room after a bit of a hug with Wistancia. Her loving and supportive energy felt awesome and very divine at that moment for me and I was extremely grateful for this experience and the opportunity to represent UWTH as a teacher and a healer. Wistancia was being held up very much in this UWTH structural system and it seemed like she was ethereal and walking the walk, and I felt trust in her and in UWTH being very valid, very real.

I went downstairs to let the next person know it was their turn. I was alternating between laughing madly, being in that huge upward shift of feeling bliss profoundly, and then weeping uncontrollably, but in this pure feeling of joy that was so divine and almost splitting my heart wide open. I think that was actually my first experience of Shaktipat, or spiritual Awakening, and I felt an intense wave upon wave of pure Expansion and Energy, and again to me now, my first experience of Shakti, as I would call it now. It was real, however, and there was something incredible transmitted to me in whatever she did to me during that initiation. That I can and will attest to, which definitely made me feel even more connected to and part of UWTH, as well as to Wistancia. This experience was only positive and inspiring for me.

I actually took a second teacher training from Wistancia before I did Level Four of UWTH, also done with Wistancia. All these trainings were always at her home in Los Angeles and always had multiple people taking the course with you, usually at least three others. By the summertime of 2009, I was a Level Four Healer, the highest level you can attain on Earth, and a Level Two Teacher. I was also deeply in debt, and had been doing anything and everything to get money for these classes.

After the initiations into Level Four UWTH, there is an evening where you are supposedly taken up to these other planets in the universe; astrally or however this was to be accomplished, and you were doing all these activities and things which you were supposed to be able to remember, to verify some validity of what Wistancia would also tell you had happened. This was my first red flag. There had been others, sure, but for me, this lying about this pretty important event was really disturbing to me.

Of course, Wistancia couldn’t say much to me about it, and I flat out told her that nothing happened whatsoever. I went to bed in my motel room and waited to be awakened to be taken somewhere out-of-this-world, and went to sleep without any interruption until I awoke in the morning. She claimed that I went with them on this journey and had gotten off some spaceship wherever it was she said we all went, some far-away planet that we had heard about before, no doubt and I was running around everywhere doing the Golden Movement. I just looked sideways at her, like what are you talking about? It was the first real crack in the UWTH edifice for me and I looked at her very differently that day and from then on; it was never the same between us. She did not really like me very much after that either.

In summer of 2009 I was sort of working at this spa in Corona, California and was available to people for UWTH healing sessions or other modalities and offering opportunities to learn UWTH and attend a training with me for the all-important level one class. People predominantly came to this place for a detox foot bath, but there were a couple of other offerings there so it wasn’t super busy but people would come in and check it out and there were some regulars who you could count on coming by at some point during the week. Sometimes I would also go in and open the place, and I could set you up with a foot bath, or get you laid out on one of our crystal healing beds. After they opened, and I spending time there, I hand-painted the storefront window, which was quite fun for me, and I received some nice attention and at least one other gig from doing it out in public. I was definitely there to help out any way I could. I recall answering an ad the owner placed for an energy healer and went down there to meet and discuss the opportunity. We hit it off right away, so things just happened effortlessly from there. It was a laid-back gig that also expected me to show up.

I had been talking in earnest to my good friend Anthony, his awesome girlfriend Kate, a sweet woman named Anna and a few other people they all knew, about flying to Australia and teaching UWTH Level Three, which none of them had taken and none of them had any access to. I had talked to the spa owner about this and did not know how I could come up with the very hefty fee for the Level Three training; it was well over three thousand dollars as I recall. For some reason, the spa owner wanted to pay for the training for me, and I was able to get Wistancia to arrange a class, which we wound up doing alone. I do not think there were any other people either qualified to do the class that had not already done it, or that wanted to do the training at that time.

I found that certain things about the training session were great, like that old Wistancia feeling before Level Four, but there were moments too when things just feel weird or off, and I would be uncomfortable there and have to kind of wait for it to pass. I don’t know what else to say about it. I think teaching me alone threw her off a bit too, simply because she is used to teaching a group of people, which just takes longer than teaching one person. We finished a day earlier than she would have normally done and I was thrilled to be getting the training, couldn’t believe it was even happening and also eager for it to end so I could leave.

Wistancia knew that I would be traveling to Australia to teach Anthony, who had been corresponding with her for years, within a short time after my training at her home and she mentioned nothing to me that I should or shouldn’t do when going somewhere to teach UWTH, nor gave me any sort of warning about taking all the manuals and initiation items with me when traveling to another country. We had talked about my going and it would have been an absolutely ideal moment for her to give me any advice, about practical matters and anything else but she did not offer me anything, besides a couple of tepid words of support.

I was also going to try and teach a level one and level two class while I was in Australia for three weeks so when I packed to leave, I had to bring pretty much all the UWTH papers I had. I needed to be able to not only teach the class levels, but do each initiation ceremony as well. Everything like that went into my regular checked luggage, not any carry-on bags. I did not see that it would be a problem nor feel any reason to think it would.

I was taking some insanely long flight to Adelaide Australia, from LAX in Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand and then on to Adelaide. I still smoked cigarettes at this time in my life, and so did Anthony and Kate, but that was only one hard part of such a long flight. It was challenging, but getting off the plane in Auckland was awesome, as there was a tennis match being shown and one of the players was none other than my favorite, Roger Federer, so it was like, Welcome, Linda! I hustled off with other dying smokers to some area where we could puff, but it was outside and it was winter over on that hemisphere in August and it was cold and windy and not inviting to be outside whatsoever.

The layover took a while and then back on board to fly to Australia, another 5-8 hours or whatever it was. The whole thing was like 22 hours; no wonder my ticket only cost me $911. Once you are getting close to your final destination airport, and you are from another country, they give you this little questionnaire thing to fill out, and there were some questions there that I wasn’t 100% sure how I had answered to get the tourist visa I was traveling on, but answered them as best I could, but I felt nervous for the first time about all of this.

Once finally deplaning in Adelaide, I was feeling so excited to see my friend Anthony after so long talking to hm online, so I was hoping to get in and out of customs quickly so I could get started on my amazing trip; I mean I was finally in Australia!

Instead, I got scrutiny about my luggage and was moved over to one side where they would question people about items in their bags or something in their paperwork, etc. I was still not feeling like there was any issue, but I felt more worried about my responses on that little form I had filled out more than anything else. I always worry about being a convicted felon in times like those, and that it may actually matter for some reason that I can be hassled over.

At one point, they were going through everything in my checked bag and one of them became fixated on all the UWTH papers and manuals I had. I explained I would be teaching to a few good friends, in private residences, nothing big and that that was part of the reason my friends had helped me to come, besides just visiting for three weeks. I was starting to get nervous as they were really getting quite weird about the extraterrestrial materials and techniques in my manuals and before I knew it, I was being whisked into a tiny room off to the side for interrogation.

I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. It also apparently had nothing to do with my prior felony conviction; it was all about UWTH, if not the material itself, then the fact that I had made mention in writing about money and several classes we would have in a calendar I also had in my purse and now this customs guy was convinced I was here to teach, i.e. work, and not to visit, so he is telling me I have the wrong visa and I am explaining to him that they have the wrong idea, and any incidences of classes was tiny compared to my time in their country. I was not at all working, I was visiting and having these small private gatherings with online friends, and that was not work in anyone’s book.

By the end of five hours of this back and forth, he finally tells me that he is cancelling my visa and I will be deported back to the United States. I am just beside myself, right? It’s been like this incredibly horrible experience since I set foot in Australia and now my worst fear is being realized and they are actually kicking me out of the country. I am freaking out that my friend Anthony has been waiting for me all of this time and now needs to be told that I will not be going with him, instead they will be taking me to some sort of accommodation until they can get me back to Los Angeles on a return flight.

I’m wigging out again as much from sheer mental and physical exhaustion at this point than just mere shock and disbelief at this clusterfuck, and I am finally taken out of that suffocating little room where my freedom had been taken away in a most undemocratic and unpleasant manner. I gathered up all my belongings and then I am brought out to a van, and then driven to some place not that far from the airport. When I get out, I can see that it’s some little house, but there are guards there and it’s more like a relaxed jail, in my opinion. One good point was that there was no one else there but me and the guards. I took my stuff to a room with a bunk bed and it was like my prison rooms back in the day. Yikes. What the fuck has happened here? I was still absolutely reeling at this bizarre turn of events and what a huge misunderstanding this all was, but I understood that whatever was happening now was totally out of my hands.

These Australian customs people were nice but strange; they made me fill out some ridiculously long intake type of form, and asked several times if I felt that I was suicidal. Why? Do you want me to be? I mean, what the hell is this weird place you have me in? At that point, I simply wanted to leave so why am I stuck here? Get me out of your shitty, inhospitable country already and fuck off. I was so upset, but more angry than depressed and not quite ready to slash my wrists.

At some point it became night, and I became tired, with my body not knowing what time it was at this point, as I am also feeling some intense jet lag along with this fun dose of international stress. The next day, I am waiting to be told to get ready to leave and instead, the guard on duty is like, there are no flights out today so you can just chill. I do not want to chill here, can’t you just let me go to my friends? This is crazy what you guys are doing.

On the plus side, I am allowed to contact Anthony and he was freaking out possibly worse than I was. It was great to talk to him, but this situation was something I never could have envisioned or prepared for. Anthony and my other friends were trying to get in contact with some authorities to reverse this decision or at least get me an appeal, whatever could be done to keep me in the country. They were actively fighting this injustice and I felt all proud of them and then so guilty that I was letting them all down by being kicked out of the country.

Another day passed and apparently, I was still stuck without a flight, so they kindly invited my three closest friends to come to the house of detention where I was being held, and we could all hang out for several hours. I was glad that we could all at least meet before I was deported, but I was also feeling so terrible; I was their teacher and they had to come see me in jail, and no one would get their training or anything that they had been promised and looking forward to. I felt so awful about this and my heart felt broken in some way that was brand new to me. Seeing them in person was so great and hugging these people in person that I had known online for years was very special. I am so grateful that happened and I did not have to leave without ever sharing a hug with each of them. But before they could actually enter the house, they were searched and had to fill out some forms, and I felt like some criminal that they could see once before the firing squad had its way with me.

Unexpectedly, Anthony’s behavior right off the bat was almost rude, as he almost immediately wanted to whisk me away alone so he could get a healing from me, something I did not know he would want, much less insist on, given the circumstances, and these two other people who would be kept waiting, when they also came to visit me, and not to be sitting waiting in this weird jailhouse. But he was bordering on demanding, so Kate and Anna both just told me to go ahead and they would be fine, so I smiled uncomfortably and led Anthony into my bedroom and closed the door. I had him lay down and performed the best healing I could at that moment for him, not feeling like it was a good healing at all. I felt forced, rushed and uncomfortable but I did my techniques with the energy and hopefully he got an awesome healing regardless of how I felt. He never did say.

After that, we all had a really nice visit, and by the time they had to leave, they were explaining that they were still working to get the decision reversed. I was then told that Wistancia and Channie had been informed about what had happened here to me, and they were doing some energy work apparently, to assist the situation for which I was both appreciative and embarrassed. Maybe with their help, I would be staying. I still silently figured I would not get to remain however, and so I gave Kate several gifts I had brought from home to give to her and Anthony, one of which was a pair of one-of-a-kind white pants I had drawn and painted on. They were so surprised and wowed by the gift and their smiles and hugs made me again so very thankful that this visit had been allowed to take place before they sent me away.

After they drove away, I felt so blessed to have had that time to actually meet them, hangout, smoke cigarettes in the cold together, laugh madly and hug them all fiercely, but I was just so heartbroken and devastated at what had happened here in Adelaide, and that nothing we had all planned for so long would be allowed to take place.

The next morning, I was told I would definitely be leaving that afternoon, so I packed up and was ready to move whenever someone showed up. I talked to Anthony one last time that morning, telling him I would be going to the airport soon from what I had gathered, and him sadly telling me that they had not been able to accomplish anything – to either keep me from being deported altogether, or to delay it happening so fast. It was a sad call for both of us and it would be the last time we really communicated, as our long-time friendship fell apart very soon after I got home and tried to make reparations to people there. At some point later I realized that I had not even heard from anyone there in several months and it was over, just like that.

During the first weird, jet-lagged week back in California, I had phoned Wistancia and told her about what had been happening to me and find out what she thought about the whole fiasco. She started saying some stuff about her and Channie doing things to try and help the situation so I could stay but it just didn’t stick or something along those lines. Then she said, “You should have never brought all your UWTH manuals and supplies, nor written anything down about classes or anything where they could find it. You should have mailed everything ahead of time to Anthony and avoided this whole mess.” My jaw had already dropped when she started saying this so matter of factly, like I should have known, or worse that I had known and went ahead and did it wrong on purpose. Wistancia can be very weird and standoffish, but this reproachful attitude was more than I could take after everything that had and had not happened, in part because of something she acted like I should have known and that she could have easily told me about herself if indeed it was something I should have taken precautions about. I had to know, so I (kind of) calmly asked her why she had not mentioned this to me in our class if it was so obvious and so important that everything gets sent on ahead of time, then you will sail through customs with nothing weird going on for them to detain you with. I noted that I could see that all now, but I had gone there purely innocent to any idea of wrong-doing or that there was anything amiss with having these things, but I let her know it sure would have been nice if she could have at least mentioned that to me, knowing I had never taught anywhere out of the country and had no idea what was a good or a bad idea in these situations.

I was pretty angry with her and her meanness about it really rubbed me the wrong way. I felt she may have deliberately set me up to fail. I told her I was now banned from Australia for three years because of this. The plans that had made to teach there had completely blown up and would never happen now. Her whole energy felt just like she was yawning about this and could have cared less. I felt like she had never wanted me to succeed, and had never wanted me to teach Anthony and the rest of the Australian people, would rather make them travel overseas and have to go to one of her classes. Maybe however, she cared even less than that, and simply couldn’t be bothered, and simply thought I had made a mess of that all by myself.

This experience was the next bigger crack in my relationship with Wistancia and UWTH in general. All I wanted from them was support and really, other than what I had heard they were doing spiritually, they offered nothing to me in that way so I felt really diminished in what I was trying to accomplish and alone even though I am supposedly a part of this “advanced” spiritual community of healers and all the other things we were studying and doing. I felt abandoned by them in my time of need. I have never forgotten this and as much as I was still very much a “whitetimer” I was also having deep internal rumblings due to many underlying issues that were bubbling up to the surface.

Quite soon after this current friction with Wistancia, the spa place I had been working at was going out of business and remarkably, no one ever asked me to reimburse them for the UWTH teacher class that they had paid for or anything else. They even gave me some furniture when they had to move out of another location as well, so I was beyond relieved that we were parting on good terms and nothing was owed to anyone.

I wasn’t making a ton of money teaching UWTH in those days, but it wasn’t bad either. I would usually have someone to teach every month or so and I did a lot of paid remote healing work for clients as well. Since teaching UWTH had to be done in person, the logistics could be a lot harder to figure out and I wound up starting to offer to travel to people that were out of state, they just had to pay for part of those expenses and have a place for me to stay during the two or three-day training sessions, depending on what was being taught of course. I booked many more students after that, traveling to Colorado and Missouri for multiple classes, and teaching in my own apartment for any locals.

Foolishly, I had stopped teaching any other modality or system once I got going with UWTH, feeling like everything else was inferior to it and wanting to only elevate my clients with what was being touted to me as the most powerful healing method you could teach or use for healing work on Earth. So, on one hand, it was understandable to want to work with the strongest and best techniques and methodologies, yet on the other, it was my “all or nothing” mentality, and my feeling that I was all in with UWTH because ultimately, it had the most to offer. It had absolutely seemed that way to me.

In addition to the New Earth Teacher course I took before I even started UWTH, there was another series of other classes that Channie herself taught, about what she called “The Beyond.” These were essentially her take on the universal meaning of life and how everything started and it was very strange actually, and patently absurd. While I was again gung-ho for all things Channie, this was the one teaching that I wasn’t as p