“Man’s concept of his world built on the experience of the five senses is no longer adequate and in many cases no longer valid.”
-Shafica Karagulla, M.D.,
a Turkish-born psychiatrist
I am a white witch. DId I fail to mention this? True. I did away with secret temple rituals and went straight into sorcery….
I don’t share this with people. Because when I tell people that I see and manipulate white light, and it magically puts screaming babies to sleep, their eyes narrow, they nod politely, and take a few unsteady steps back.
I made a major exception to my undercover sorceress policy just over two weeks ago, when a lovely mother began to open up to me on the playground of the elementary school. She told me she was feeling desperate about her son, who would not go to sleep at night. He was an anxious and sensitive seven-year old and he was getting up multiple times at night, fearful and tearful. She was at a loss, and feeling trapped.
So I told her my white witch story. And she laugh with nervous disbelief, but I could tell she would try it out… something told me that she needed this story.
Her son went to sleep that first night…and every night since then without trouble. She laughs gleefully when we bump into each other every afternoon as we pick up our kiddos. She high fives my sorcery as a powerful white witch.
But it’s not voodoo.
It’s science. It’s quantum physics. Energy.
When Lydia was about 9 months old, she began screaming all night long, every single night. She had been an easy sleeper, a point we clung desperately to, since the day time Lydia was perching herself precariously on every tall piece of furniture, eating vaseline and toothpaste and generally finding ways to defy death at every turn. At first I thought the night crying was just a growth spurt, but she wouldn’t take more milk. And I tried everything to get this kid back to sleep. I bought every sleep book I could get my hands on, I implemented every method with exactness, desperate for rest and bewildered by the sudden change in her sleep. Or lack of.
And the screaming. Endless screaming.
I changed her diapers. I bought a new brand of diapers. I bought heavier pjs. I cut the feet off her pjs and put on socks. I bought her flannel sheets. I put a fan in her room for white noise. I played low, classical music. I rearranged the furniture in her bedroom. I hung a mirror in her room. I tried different night lights. I left the lights on. I taped black paper to her window, and bought black out curtains to block the moonlight.
I read a story about a lovely mom who examined her screaming baby only to find a long hair wrapped tightly around a purple, throbbing toe. This story tortured me. I stripped her down, looking for a rash, a bite mark, a bruise, a purple toe.
I took her to the doctor, and they stubbornly refused to give me baby tranquilizers or sleeping pills and insisted that Lydia was healthy and thriving. No cause for medical alarm.
Except that I was going apeshit crazy. I have never experienced that level of sleep deprivation. Even with two babies, just 15 months apart. I thought about sleep every single minute of the day. Like a dying man crawling in the desert for the mirage of a deep, blue pool, I crawled into my bed every night, and it began again.
The only thing that would make her stop was to sit upright in a chair and hold her while she slept. In fact, she would pass out into a deep slumber, punctuated only by her shuddering hiccoughs, within 60 seconds of being in my arms. Even submerged into dreamland, if I tried to put her down she would wake and scream, clawing at my chest. After four months of this endless struggle, half dozing in a chair as she slept and my arms throbbed painfully, I realized with sudden clarity, what it was. The answer seemed to actually hang, fully formed, in the dark of her small bedroom.
Fear.
She was terrified.
The fear, once I recognized it and gave it a name, seemed as tangible as a snarling tiger in her crib with her. As menacing as a fire, creeping up the curtains.
WHY? Understanding it was fear did not help me solve our problem. It became more distressing to realize that my baby was traumatized each night by agonizing terror. And what could she possibly be afraid of?
Her life was filled with Cheerios, Barney, twirly skirts and my constant loving presence.
Why is it that so many of my life’s lessons come only after I have a complete mental breakdown?
So.
I had one.
A breakdown. Hysteria.
My brother was visiting. Rick and I had gotten through bath and bed time with ease and Rick had left for the library to study. Gard and I had just settled into our tiny living room for a relaxing chat when Lydia’s screams began. Several hours earlier than usual.
I freaked.
The frustration and severe sleep deprivation and paralyzing failure took me down to my knees. My brother let me rant and my building hysteria matched Lydia’s upstairs. And then he handed me a box of tissues and told me to sit down. He told me take a few deep, calming breaths with him. Then he held his hands out, almost touching each other…. and taught me to feel energy. This may seem far-fetched, it certainly seemed crazy at the time.
He told me to sit with my hands close together, and feel the heat there… energy. He told me to imagine that energy as a white light, gathering in my hands. I used my hands to “press” this warmth, this “white light,” this energy in my hands. And slowly we moved our hands further apart, concentrating on building the energy in our hands into a big, warm, ball of light. He told me to gather all of my love for Lydia, all of my fierce feelings of love and protection, and put it into this huge ball of light. My hands began to prickle and tingle, the heat in my hands was tangibly growing, even as I moved them further apart. We sat side by side on my brown sofa at the foot of the stairs, eyes closed in meditation, our hands open to “hold” our energy spheres.
Upstairs, Lydia was choking on her sobs, she sounded like she would vomit soon.
Then he told me to visualize Lydia, screaming in her crib. I was to visualize myself walking over to the crib with a my ball of white light, and place it over her head, letting that light wash over her. He would do the same with his energy.
I felt crazy.
But I felt shredded by her cries.
I did it.
She stopped crying within ten seconds of “giving” her our light.
Tears of relief and disbelief dripped off my chin. I hugged my brother in gratitude for the moment of peace for both Lydia and I.
He left with the instruction to do that every time she woke.
I got pretty damn good at feeling energy with my hands, and gathering a large amount of it for Lydia quickly. Every night it worked, I felt shocked that it worked again. And within two weeks of energy meditation, Lydia was back to sleeping through the night, and the crying stopped.
Lydia, now eight, still asks me for light when she is upset or scared or is having trouble sleeping. It has never failed to help calm and soothe her. I am teaching her that she can gather this light herself, but there is nothing like a mother’s love.
It seems like life is handing me some pretty concrete experiences before I read about it in this E squared book…the timing is pretty amazing.
Because after counting 3 orange cars the first day, and 4 purple hats the second day, in my VW Jetta experiment, I read experiment #3. Pam Grout’s words are in red.
Lab Report Sheet
The Principle: The Alby Einstein Principle
The Theory: You are a field of energy in an even larger field of energy.
The Question: Could it be true that I could be made up of energy?
The Hypothesis: If I am energy, I can direct my energy.
The rest of the experiment is laid out to help you see how you can direct energy using a simple device made of a coat hanger. But I absolutely know that this is true, and was provided a great way to see this work for someone else, even before I read the chapter in this book.
If you still think I am a witch, you are missing out on a pretty handy, powerful tool in your tool box. If you want to give it a go, but need some direction, go get this book and follow her experiment, The Alby Einstein Experiment.
After all, I’m gonna need some sorcery, and a more than a little white magic to get these sweet girls to adulthood…
Don’t we all?
Onward.
