Dancing in the Light (16 page)

More tears spilled from his eyes. “Yes, my beloved,” he said, “and
you
were my brother.”

I can only say that what he said
felt
exquisite. I
knew
it was true. That was the reason I had been so moved.

Ramtha and I went on to spend quite a bit of time together. He taught me about light frequencies in relation to the human body. He humorously predicted personal events in my life—that
always
evolved to be true. He was lovingly stern with me when I allowed my intellectual skepticism to block my growing “knowingness.” He related story after story of
our life together, pointing out other people we knew then who are part of my present incarnation. He examined what was karmically necessary for me to work out with those people. He spoke calmly and evenly of why I had chosen to have conflicts with certain people in order to understand myself and them more fully. He specified the areas of my growth that needed more work. He warned me about my blindness in relation to some of my friends and revealed some of the past-life incarnations we had had together.

He spoke of the vitamins I needed, the kind of exercise I should have, the foods I should stay away from, and even gave me his evaluation of the scripts I was reading.

I asked questions relating to everything from the personal life of Jesus Christ to whether I would ever meet my soul mate in this incarnation. What I learned from Ramtha would fill another book. But no matter how much I learned from him, he continually reminded me that I already knew all the answers. I mustn’t depend on him or any other spiritual guide for knowledge. I must be my own guide. I should learn to trust and depend on my own capability for awareness. Guru-hopping could be fun, but it only postponed one’s own self-truth.

Ramtha was amusing, fun, and loved to have a good time when he was in the body of J.Z. Often he would ask for wine, as he had enjoyed it when
he
was in the body. Several times he got drunk and J.Z. was left with the residue of a hangover.

His was an activating energy. He was not at all laid back and generalized. He could zero in on your personal life until you felt he was invading your privacy. And there was nothing he didn’t know about me. He brought up events in my childhood that I had forgotten long ago. He questioned me about my most private inner confusions, which no one could have known. He did this not to prove his credibility, but to help ease my conflicts through discussion. It
wasn’t possible to conceal anything from him. He knew it all anyway. From the spiritual dimensions there were no secrets, ho games, no need for clandestine manipulation. The point of his spiritual education was to impart the truth that
we
were God. We were as capable of knowledge as
he.
There was no pecking order. No one was more advanced or evolved than anyone else. They might be only more
aware.

That became clear later. I had begun to take exception to some of the techniques Ramtha used when he taught. I still do. I feel that he is often too strong and harsh with his predictions of times to come, unaware of how detrimental fear can be. It is my feeling that warning is not as essential as balance and harmony. I told him so and he agreed that we all learn from each other. That he had as much to learn from us as we had to learn from him.

So Ramtha became a spiritual friend, and he endeavored at every meeting to help me realize that my own higher self was my best spiritual friend. In the meantime he would be there to help me whenever I needed it as long as I didn’t become dependent. (The warning about dependency was common with all the spiritual entities I talked with.)

Now in New York a few years later, Ramtha came to help me when I was really in trouble. He often worked with other entities on the spiritual planes whom I had learned to trust. In this case, he worked with Tom McPherson.

I was about three weeks into the run at the Gershwin Theatre. The summer weather hadn’t hit full blast until the third week in May. As always in New York when summer is hot outside, air conditioning is like winter inside. The theater was no exception.

During the middle of a performance, the air-conditioning system came on full blast and the change in temperature not only caused my muscles to seize up, but I felt my throat go dry, cold, and finally very raw and sore. The last thing I needed was a summer
cold while I was performing. I got a shawl from the wings and finished the performance, but I felt the die had been cast unless I took some preventive measures immediately. I called a doctor I knew, waking him up, and he prescribed an antibiotic which I rushed to have filled at an all-night drugstore. I hadn’t taken any medicine for years. Why I made the mistake of doing it then, I don’t know.

By the next afternoon I was so weak from the antibiotics that I could hardly stand. My throat felt better, but my legs were gone. How could I perform?

Dominick picked me up at my apartment, but I couldn’t walk. He lifted me into the car.

“How’re you going to work like this?” he asked.

I sighed, very depressed. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be better when I get there. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Okay.”

I dragged myself to my dressing room. Maybe if I could get through a warm-up, I’d be all right. It worked in reverse. The more I stretched and jumped to prepare myself, the weaker I became. The rapid blood flow only spread the antibiotics more fully through my system.

The orchestra was tuning up. I put on my opening costume and went to the stage. I did one plié and collapsed behind the curtain off to the side of the stage where no one could see me. I was conscious as I lay there, but I couldn’t move my body. It was terrifying. I couldn’t even speak.

I heard Michael Flowers calling for me. I couldn’t answer. I heard people yell from my dressing room that I wasn’t there.

Then, as I lay there, I knew I wouldn’t be able to go on unless I had help. What kind of help? I put everything out of my mind and I called on Tom McPherson and Ramtha.

“Come in and help me,” I pleaded desperately. “You have my permission to infuse your energies with mine. Please come above me and pick me up.”

I waited … I tried not to doubt. They would be there if I
allowed
it. Slowly, I felt my arms energize. A permeating glow ran through them. I found I could lift them. Then I felt a current in both of my legs, a kind of mellow, activating current. I moved my right leg. It didn’t feel leaden anymore. I lifted it slowly over my head. It stretched easily. Then the left leg. The same ease was there.

I carefully pulled myself to my feet. I felt a dizziness. I looked above me, attempting to
see
what I felt. I visualized the light aura of Ramtha and McPherson mingling with mine. The dizziness left me. I shook myself all over. I felt my energy come into an alignment. I walked to the backstage wings where everyone milled about, trying to locate me. Michael saw me first, walking toward him.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You look different. Where were you?”

“I collapsed from those damn antibiotics,” I explained dreamily. He put his arm around me.

“Well, will you be able to go on?”

“Are you kidding?” I said, almost as though it weren’t me talking. “I’ve never missed a performance in my life and I’m not about to start now.”

“Well, good,” said Mike. He looked at me closely.

“I may not be doing it alone, though.”

“What do you mean?” he asked me expectantly.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve asked Ramtha and Tom McPherson to come in and help me. They are above me right now. I can feel them. As soon as they hovered close to me, I could move again, otherwise I’d still be in a heap behind that curtain over there.”

Michael knew all about Ramtha and McPherson.

“Well, okay,” said Mike, like a football coach before a game. “So we’ll have a little spiritual energizing here, eh? Can Ramtha dance?” he asked with delight.

“I don’t know, but I know McPherson can be funny. I think Ramtha will be holding me up and McPherson gets to perform.”

Michael kissed me on the cheek as the overture began. I warmed up with plies and stretching. My energy was fine. With the overture over, I took my place behind the revolving piano and waited for it to turn. My cue came, the piano revealed me, and the spotlight bathed me in number III surprise pink. I stopped a moment. The lights felt different. The sound was off. I couldn’t measure the distance from where I was to the front of the stage. I felt like a foreigner in strange territory. I looked above myself as though to reconfirm that my friends were there. I could feel them say, “It’s all right. Relax. Let us do this.
Know
that we are here.”

I had no other choice.

I began to sing. To me my voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else. The stage under me felt farther away than usual. My familiar reality on the stage I knew so well was being infused with the reality of two other soul energies I knew just as well. It was a remarkably new but “homey” experience.

Apparently we did a good show. I don’t remember any of it. In fact, according to others, the show was better than usual, I am unhappy to say. I had always liked to do things myself, regardless of the effort it took. I was learning that to sometimes call on help from my spiritual friends was no reflection on my capabilities. In fact, the sooner I gave up my “I am strong in the face of adversity” streak, the better.

Michael said I took my last bow and then as soon as the curtain came down I collapsed again. The energy of Ramtha and McPherson left me. Michael ran to me and picked me up in his six-feet-four-inch matching arms.

“I see they had another job to go to right away,” he said, laughing, knowing that I was all right.

“Were we good together?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but I’m glad they won’t let you become dependent.”

*      *      *

Dominick had watched what happened from the wings. He was a religious man (Catholic) and had been reading my book. Every now and then he would ask me a question about reincarnation or spiritual guidance. He said the Church wasn’t answering enough of his questions. So we’d talk after the show. Michael lifted me back into the car so Dominick could drive me home. I was stretched out on the back seat.

“How did you perform like that?” he asked hesitantly, almost as though he didn’t want to hear the answer. “I don’t understand.”

“I had some help,” I answered.

“Help? From who?” He swallowed hard.

I sat up and leaned over the back of the front seat. I told him all about Ramtha and McPherson. He didn’t flinch. He seemed to almost understand.

“So you’re telling me that these Ramtha and McPherson fellas are around all the time if you need them?” There was no sarcasm in his voice.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”

“And they used to have bodies and be alive on the earth.” He made a statement instead of asking.

“Yes.”

“And they might sometime decide to reincarnate again and have bodies like us.”

“Yes.”

He hesitated as we pulled up in front of my building. Then he said, “You know why I believe what you’re saying?”

“Why.”

“Because about one month after my brother died, he came one night to visit me. I
know
he was standing next to my bed explaining that he was all right and I should tell my father not to worry. I asked him why he didn’t tell Dad himself. He said, ‘Because Dad wouldn’t understand. You do.’ ”

Dominick shook his head with the memory. “And the funny thing is, just that day I was looking at the
flowers on our patio and the thought occurred to me, if flowers can come back every time they die, why can’t people? Nature does it all the time. So when my brother came to me that night, I guess I was ready to understand it. Maybe he could help me sometimes, like your friends helped you tonight. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

Dominick’s simple eloquence was so much more to the point than all the metaphysical books I had read.

“Where can I read more about this, Shirley?” he asked.

“You don’t need to, Dominick. It’s all inside of you. Just listen to your feelings and trust them.
You
are unlimited. You just don’t
realize
it.”

He shook his head again and said, “Wow. You know, I don’t think my driving you was an accident. I think I needed to just be around and see how you put this stuff into action.”

Dominick helped me upstairs, suggesting that I use vitamin C rather than antibiotics to get rid of my cold. “And don’t try to do so much yourself,” he chided me. “Let some other people help you, like you did tonight.”

I was learning that lesson in more ways than I could keep up with.

I would like to relate two more incidents that occurred with McPherson and Ramtha. First, McPherson.

Before doing
Terms of Endearment
, I hadn’t acted in nearly three years. There might have been good scripts around, but I wasn’t getting any.

Then Steven Spielberg wrote a screenplay called
Poltergeist
and asked me to play the mother. My dream had been to work with Spielberg because of his metaphysical proclivities. But to me
Poltergeist
was too violent. It exploited the negative side of the Force and I didn’t want to contribute to negative violence in the marketplace. So, after many meetings and discussions, I told Steven I couldn’t do it, regardless
of what a stupid career move it seemed to be. He understood and said he had a film planned that focused on the positive side of the Force about the love of a small boy and an extraterrestrial. But there was no good part in it for me. When he outlined the story to me, I said I thought
E.T.
would be more successful because it gave people hope and was charming besides. He thanked me and promised we’d work together someday when we could emphasize the positive aspects of spiritual understanding.

Many of my associates and friends thought I was nuts to turn down
Poltergeist
, particularly in view of how my career was going at that time. It was hard for me to explain that it went against the grain of my spiritual beliefs, because
Out on a Limb
hadn’t been published yet.