“I’m afraid of you,” Jennifer told her.
Kathy nodded. “Of course you are. I would be afraid, too, if I were you. But it is only through fear and adversity that the soul is enriched. When we are totally happy, wrapped up in our own affairs, we float through life and nothing is impressed upon our souls. We do not gain in wisdom.”
Fear swept through Jennifer’s body. “You are going to hurt me,” she said. “I know you are. I can feel it.” Yet she continued to sit there, unmoving. She had the sudden revelation that no one could hurt her, that she had conquered this woman before, in her past.
“We have been connected, Jenny, I keep telling you this,” Kathy Dart said patiently, but there was an edge now in her voice. “And the only way we are going to understand the connection, see what the problem is, is to go back in time and look at who you were and how we are all linked. What is the cosmic connection?” She smiled softly. “In a way, we have already begun. Habasha has cast out the negative spirits in your body. The pain and consuming fire you felt last night when Habasha touched you through my fingers was his way of expelling the evil spirits from your body.”
“You admit that you’re going to hurt me,” Jennifer insisted again, staring at Kathy.
“The truth hurts, yes,” Kathy agreed, nodding. “But it’s also the only way that you can overcome this rage that is within you.”
“Are you talking about acupuncture?” Jennifer asked. “Maybe that’s how you’re going to hurt me.”
“It does hurt a little,” Kathy said, nodding, “I won’t lie to you. But the pain dissolves quickly once the needles are absorbed by the body. It’s like a pin prick, nothing more.”
“Then what happens?”
“I use what is called periosteal acupuncture, placing the needle deeper into the body. It is hardly more painful than the simple tip contact, and it goes only an inch into the skin. I use a collection of needles, either silver or gold, but I do not use as many needles as, say, a normal acupuncturist. I am seeking other answers.”
“The body remembers, Jenny. You’ve been told this, I know. But it’s true. Your spirit carries forward, from one generation to the next, the history of your lives on earth.”
“You just put these needles into me and I start sputtering out past lives?”
Kathy Dart shook her head. “No, it’s done much more subtly. I twist the needles as my spirit guides instruct me, and this in turn stimulates your recall. You’ll ‘see’ what lives you have lived, as if you were watching a movie.”
“Will you be watching the movie, too?”
“Well, I won’t see your lives, but we can discuss the images, if you like. We are set up to record what is said in the sessions—you’ll want to listen to yourself again afterward.”
“It doesn’t seem possible,” Jennifer said.
“Yes, I know.” Kathy Dart sank back in the chair and looked across the frozen landscape of Minnesota. Her customary confidence and poise had slipped away, and Jennifer thought she saw a flash of fear in those brilliant blue eyes. “The truth is,” Kathy admitted, “that I don’t understand my own ability, but I fear it. I never wanted it.”
At that moment Kathy Dart looked lost, a slender, delicate young woman overwhelmed by her life. She was very beautiful, Jennifer noticed again, in a way that had nothing to do with style or fashion. She was blessed with pure white skin and fine small features, and ironically, her clarity of expression hid her very heart and soul. Jennifer knew she could never fathom what Kathy was really thinking.
“Once Habasha walked into my life,” Kathy went on, “nothing stayed the same. I left my husband. I left my friends and my teaching career. When I moved back here with my daughter, who was just seven, I had no money, no plans of any kind, but Habasha told me to go home to Minnesota. I was to build a new life, here on the banks of the St. Croix River.”
Kathy glanced over at Jennifer. “This is where I was born, you know,” she explained. “My grandparents and parents farmed this land. Then my brother, Eric, took over and mortgaged all the five hundred acres and lost the place. I was able to buy just this old barn and the outbuildings at a public auction four years ago. I used all the money I had from my divorce settlement to buy back my home. I had to do it. Habasha told me I would only find real happiness by being close to my roots. In the spring I love to go outside when the fields are being plowed and smell the fresh earth as it turns. It’s all so wonderful and right.”
Kathy Dart stopped talking and Jennifer reached over and took hold of her hand.
“None of this is very easy, Jenny, I know. But we have to go where our hearts tell us. We have to listen to our own spirits and respond to their directions. We are not alone. That’s what you, what I, what we all have to remember. We have each other. You must know that. You came here to the farm in search of the truth.”
“The truth can be very frightening. Sometimes, I guess, I’d rather turn my back on it, walk away.”
“But you don’t feel that way now, do you?” Kathy asked, searching Jennifer’s face with her eyes.
Jennifer nodded. “I don’t think I fully realized I couldn’t hide from the truth until last night, until Habasha touched me. When I felt the burning—”
“His energy hurt you. He was casting off the evil guides that had surrounded your aura. Jennifer.” Kathy squeezed Jennifer’s hand, “He has set you free, Jenny!”
Jennifer stared back into Kathy’s eyes and said firmly, resolve in her decision, “I’m ready, Kathy. I want to know who is trying to reach me. I want to end my misery. I want to know the truth, whatever it means for my life.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
IN A SMALL, ENCLOSED room off the living room, Jennifer slipped behind a screen and took off her clothes, then draped herself in a warm flannel sheet.
“This used to be the birthing room on the farm,” Kathy said. “When a mare or cow went into labor, she was brought into this section of the barn. It was always the warmest, because it was in the center.”
She was carrying a small tray on which a dozen silver and gold needles floated in alcohol, next to a package of gauze. She set it down near the wide, padded massage table in the middle of the room.
“Would you prefer it if someone else were here?” she asked, as Jennifer emerged. “Eileen, for example?”
“Oh, no. I’d be too frightened.”
Kathy laughed. “Well, some people are frightened to be alone when they go through the treatment.”
“What’s it going to be like?” Jennifer asked as she approached the table. There was very little furniture in the clinic: a few white steel cabinets, a wash basin, and open shelves filled with flannel and cotton sheets and stacks of white towels
“It’s a different experience for everyone. For me, it went very slowly. Each vision, each lifetime took several hours to view; it took me a month of past-life treatment to complete my history. For others—Eileen, for example—we went through centuries in a matter of minutes. She could only get a glimpse of herself, she said. Often, it was just a suggestion that she had been there somewhere—among the Romans, or the Irish.” Kathy shrugged. “It depends. A man named Howard, who is doing research on the right side of the brain, has a thesis that the more creative you are, the more vivid your recollections will be.”
“Also, you might not recall anything during this first session. Your defenses may try to protect you, keep you from knowing. It might take several sessions before we break through the median points and reach what I call the Core Existence, the center of a past-life experience. Think of it this way, Jenny. Your past lives are like blisters. Once I prick a blister with my golden needle, you’ll be able to ‘see’ the lifetime that you have already lived.”