Today was special, though. I saw NM on a make shift stage with a microphone, welcoming students to Mission College and doing some little activities to kick start the beginning of the spring semester. She was wearing the cheesiest smile and a tiger suit that looks like a onsey pajamas set. I haven’t seen NM since high school. Mostly haven’t seen her since I decided to leave her clique freshman year after being fed up with that group’s juvenile tendencies. But there she was, tiger suit and all… it made me kinda embarrassed but very proud of her.

I’m also pleased to see returning students in the cafeteria. It seems to be the place where everyone finds me. We make eye contact from across the big hall, they walk over to where I’m eating, and we have a friendly conversation about the previous semester.

It was also the first day of actual tutor work, and there were many tutors on shift but no tutees to be seen. I tutored a total of two whopping students. The remainder of my time, I was finally able to study my macro- and microminerals from Nutrition. When I completed that, I eased into brainstorming outlines for my essay prompts on the nursing application. Why do they make us write 4 essays? I don’t know. But I’m hoping I do a stellar job on each and every one of them, and they will be the reason I get an acceptance letter!

This semester, I come back as a tutor feeling more accepted and supported by the rest of the staff. Not in an outcast kind of way, but more greatly appreciated I suppose. I like to think it’s because I make an effort to stay positive there.

At some point, the chairman of the science department came. The crowd of tutors separated to leave me by myself. Suddenly, I found myself in an interview of how competent I am for the job. I always feel so accomplished after succeeding in a professional conversation. The chairman came in doubtful and hesitant, but left shaking my hand with that intention of doing business together. However, I’m a little intimidated because she makes her anatomy students learn origins and insertions for every muscle organ, and she has physio students calculating formulae on their exams. O_O;;

Even though the semester has started, I feel like I’m still in break mode. I have to make sure I can deliver all this convoluted material well throughout the semester.

Writing in a journal has always been key to stress relief and general therapy since I was a child. So, as instructed through meditation, I began to write creatively. I was curious about my angel sight, and my piece was about conversing with one of my guardian angels. I depicted Guardian Angel Rebecca as a slender, pretty lady with a fair complexion. She wore long, wavy red hair, with feathery wings that were never larger than Archangel Raphael’s. In this piece, we discussed my spiritual training and how I should perceive everything.

After my 21-day reiki self-treatment was completed, DL came to sleep over at my apartment. I wow’d her with a reiki treatment, and I walked her through the same meditative exercise I used to be introduced to my guardian angels. I was greatly disappointed in the fact that the one being guided for the first time into meditation should see her angels so animated with clothing and movement and color. I hated that everything should click so easily with her, but for me, I get stuck with stupid colors. Again, my excuse seemed to be that I was too logical for my own good.

But suddenly, DL blinks with decision as we hung out in my bedroom. This was an initiation of her third eye chakra. I don’t know if she ever finds this moment to be paramount to her third eye experience, but it is very important to me at least. She began to see the spiritual guides around us and could pinpoint their exact locations in the room. “I see someone behind you,” she said, never removing her gaze from a certain spot in the room.

“?!?!?” I was freaked out.

“It’s a woman,” she blinks again, “she’s really pretty. She’s very bright, with long curly hair.”

And then my heart skipped a beat, like a miracle had just happened. “That’s Rebecca!” I called out shocked and happily.

“She’s wearing very beautiful robes, very angelic,” she said soothingly, “and very calm.”

It took another friend for me to realize that I had clairaudience along with my clairvoyance! And for a time, I wrote stories. I wrote stories like a child with an imaginary friend on adventures. Mostly, I write about my conversations I’d have with my guardian angels in my favorite locations in the world. I coupled this was the overall improvement I made in my meditations. I also recorded down little messages or signs I’d pick up, or spiritual interactions in the physical realm. Now, I can see archangels and my guardian angels anywhere around me in the physical realm.

It is such a lovely feeling. To know that you are not alone. To feel a guidance as you progress through the day. To know that even if you have no parent, there are individuals in the spiritual realm that can guide and protect you if you willingly listen.

But today, I have immense trouble finding anyone who can relate to me. My sister, who is a Born Again Christian, thinks that I’m going to hell unless I go to her church… I’ve found a deeper, far more spiritual connection to my Catholicism, but no one in church would understand. My understanding of spirituality and religion are far more complex and better understood than most religious people. I’ve found that there are some friends who I’ve lost because they can no longer relate to me. My then-boyfriend thought I was weird – yeah, dumped that one and now I have a better boyfriend is way accepting and respectful even if he can’t understand me completely.

It’s probably best I filter out the people who can’t respect something as special as this new skill. It is largely a secret to my scientific friends, and my friends in medical school. I write about my spiritual interactions in a separate blog as I find that I seek individuals with whom I can relate but I also fear of judgment and ridicule.

When I find someone who “gets it” and can see with their third eye chakra, I feel that a part of me has been discovered all over again. But if my life is lined up to this path, I will eventually find a way to contribute to science so that others can better understand the many mysteries of Eastern medicine and spirituality. Many of these things can be measured, but our science is not fully equipped to test the hypothesis. But I will always be that child in this physical realm, seeking the answer to this question: “WHY.”

We sat in a circle to receive our training. There was something about circles that I found to be significant and mystical without fully understanding. During a certain meditation exercise, members of the circle broke out in happy tears as the reiki master explained that Archangel Azrael had made an appearance to impart a message. “You’re life will change drastically from this day on, you will lose friends and gain entirely different ones,” AR delivered, “call on Archangel Azrael when you need comforting.” Some individuals made the angel out as a golden mist or cloud, one full of love and warmth. I simply squished my lips to one side, somewhat frustrated at my confusion. For much of my time there, I didn’t understand anything during the session.

We went through a meditative exercise to meet our guardian angels (of which there are two or more per person). I closed my eyes in fear and excitement. I expected to see angels dressed in robes with wings as the depictions suggest world wide. But instead, I was restricted to the color of my eyelids… AR instructed, “Now, some of you may have very popular archangels as your guardians! But it’s completely fine if you don’t have them; it makes no difference, so don’t feel alarmed!”

AR explained, “They should appear to you almost instantly.”

That made me fearful! I hesitated as she said this, but then I took the plunge and addressed them, “Can my guardian angels please appear in front of me now?” No angels were to be seen. I was disappointed in myself, thinking back to FB who said during my first reiki session, “Usually people who are so logical like you are less receptive to this kind of stuff.”

But then I started to focus hard on what I could see. No longer did I have this bland brownish pink color to my eyelids. As I asked for my guardian angels to appear, that fleshy color transformed into a gush of neon green and hot pink colors. It felt like when I was a child and I pushed my eyeballs into my sockets to see all the colors as fireworks in my vision. Except that my eyes were lightly closed and relaxed. Was this similar to the gold cloud that others saw with the other angel? I cringed, shrugging my shoulders at such strong lighting.

I told them, “Can just one of you appear in front me of?” The pink color faded, and my vision was completely blanketed in a bright green. “I guess you’re one of them,” I thought to myself.

I asked somewhat foolishly, “What’s you’re name?”

“….,” said the angel.

I sighed as the meditative music continued playing in the background, “I feel like an idiot. How do I know you’re here, or that you’re even saying anything?”

The only thing I could “feel” was this sensation of wanting to think of the letter “R”.

“R….R…..R,” and as I said the letter to myself, my eyes filled with tears and I was unknowingly happy.

I said goodbye to angel “R” and he left. “He” was a gender I just felt comfortable with if we were going to treat angels like human individuals. He felt masculine somehow. When he left, his green color disappeared, and my vision went back to the  fleshy shade of my eyelids. The dazzling, hot pink color appeared instantly once I invited the second angel back. She was glowing in a throbbing sort of way.

“What’s your name?” I asked with a little more determination. I learned so far that colors and odd feelings that suggested words or statements were all I had to play with.

“I’m not telling you,” such a nice guardian angel, “you named me, and I’m not telling you.”

“WHAT?!” I answered back.

“Guess,” a voice commanded in my head.

But as this statement happens in my head, I think back quite simply to a distinct memory. I was 5 years old in a shopping mall with my mom. As we walked through the mall, Nanay told me, “Everyone has a guardian angel, and you can even name your angel.”

Little Joyce exclaimed, “I CAN NAME HER!?”

“Yes!”

And there in the mall, I named her Rebecca because I thought that it was the prettiest name in my class.

I brought my consciousness back to the music in the room and that majestic pink color. “Rebecca?”

She was making figure eights with balls of color, fireworks, speckles everywhere that eventually exploded into a sea of pink. So, I thanked her and said goodbye. All of this at that moment was highly questionable to me. Some people were more “clairvoyant” than me, and could see all kinds of things. Wings, feathers, hair, facial expressions. I could only see color. In retrospect, I also had the ability to hear which many of the students lacked.

By this time, we had spent all of our morning learning new things, and it was time for lunch. I bought a nice salad at Safeway and decided to eat it on the steps of the university building where flower beds, a water fountain and trees could be found. Everyone seemed so happy to have finally met their guardian angels; I wished I was competent enough to meet mine, too.

I sat on the steps, absorbing the warm sunlight and the light breeze, and looked to the sky, “I’m still not sure I believe in any of this,” I said to myself.

And picturing a movie scene, my eyes narrowed as I thought to myself, “Give me a sign.”

When I finished this thought, a beautiful black and yellow butterfly hovers closely over me then bolts away. O_O My heart fluttered at this tiny miracle, but still I was uncertain at playing this game. “If this is real, come back!”

The butterfly re-appears from behind a tree, and does a circle over me before disappearing.

That day, I come home having graduated as a Level IReiki practitioner. As I exit off the free way, a car’s license plate reads “777″ which I learned in angel numerology means that the angels are giving me praise.

Ten minutes into googling information about archangels, I see a page for Archangel Raphael. It felt like there was that mental click like when I guessed Guardian Angel Rebecca’s name, how she’d explode into exciting designs jetting here and there in my vision. With no meditation though, this mental click was a feeling in my heart. A gut feeling. I continued to read on that Archangel Raphael is a powerful healer who often assists those going into the medical field and that he is associated with the color green.

Later at night, I call FB excitedly telling her that I met my guardian angels. She wasn’t surprised at all when I told her who they were. And I, with very little science, seemed to have believed in everything.

Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing; it is a process of collecting pure, positive energy from the atmosphere and delivering it to a client’s body who has invariably manifested his/her own stagnant, negative energy. The universal energy helps to neutralize any negative energy in the body, and replaces its source with what has been administered. Surprisingly, I learned reiki is one of the popular forms of alternative therapy when patients want to avoid Western medicine and/or alleviate the effects of Western medicine. This form of energy healing is flexible and could be tailored to accommodate other forms of healing such as the more contemporary two: massage and nursing. More unconventional forms to aid in health include, but are not limited to, crystal healing, aura cleansing, chakra cleansing and angel therapy – all of which I curiously studied thereafter.

I also dug deep into the history, finding all kinds of professional articles and reports that told of different origins. They all traced the origin of reiki back to a Buddhist monk who went by the name of Mikao Usui in the 1930′s who had merely re-founded the ancient healing form during a 30-day meditation exercise in the mountains. Usui wanted to emphasize that it wasn’t his sole discovery, but that it has been used by our ancestors for so long; afterall, the reiki energy is the same energy employed in traditional Chinese medicine. Perhaps it is more familiar if I were to describe the energy as “chi,” which is simply the Chinese translation of “ki” in Japanese.

I also found very little clinical research about reiki, and the little that I could find concluded with a placebo effect. Analyzing the physics behind it all, I found myself disgusted at the style in which people would conduct research. I would have thought someone would try to analyze the eletromagnetic field and compare the altered wavelengths in the basic level before testing on people – because that’s how research is supposed to go… So, I’ve concluded for the 100th time that science, in all its glory that everyone in America likes to adopt in their mentality, is unfortunately ill-prepared and unsophisticated for studying “mysterious” things in Eastern medicine. In my senior year on undergraduate college, I learned that my field of interest was sloppy in its nature.

Anyway, I was upset to discover the poor quality of research, and resorted to receiving a treatment from FB who gladly accepted the offer. FB treated me in a traditional Tibetan style of reiki in the comfort of my own dorm room. I was laying on my bed, with very limited artificial lighting and some nice meditative music. FB never touched my body except for the end, and the best way I can describe this sensation is feeling bigger than my own body. Wherever her hands hovered, I felt a tremendous wave of warmth, pressure and tingling giving an impression that her hand was pushing my body down further into the bed. In many ways, it was very relaxing. Nowadays, you can find qualitative evidence of this sensation through a Kirlian camera or through a video that can record electromagnetic waves of the body. OR, you can get your own reiki treatment to see for yourself, but remember to have an unbiased and open mindsetting.

After the session, came a personal reading based on the problem areas of the body that she treated. With it being so personal, I choose not to describe in detail. FB brought to my attention many personal issues that have gone un-resolved. They were issues that I feared the most, and could not bring myself to tell anyone. Her angels told her what to say, and instructed her on certain approaches I might want to assume as I deal with my problems. I choked back tears, a little too proud to show my vulnerability, but realized that she had seen it all anyway. It was the more internal and mental problems that reiki treated, and not so much the physical illness. What I had learned is that healing works from the inside, then out. Mental first, physical last.

Not only did I get an A for that term paper, but I also ventured to seek a Reiki master to become a practitioner myself. I wanted to study reiki more intimately to see how I might be able to study it scientifically and further educate society.

____________________________________

“They don’t have anything that interests me for this year’s colloquial electives,” I said to my roommate as she was preparing herself for a day out. I held the course catalog in my hands open to a certain page; GA took the catalog in her hands and looked.

Colloquium courses were part of our electives, but students always seem so reluctant to start taking them. For one reason, they are three consecutive semesters long to complete for one letter grade. They are a string of highly subjective courses that three professors instruct from different disciplines. One that I had always found so interesting was a course called “Natural Disasters” in which a science professor lectured on the biological standpoint, a theologist lectured on the movement of spirituality in the population, and an economist lectured on what would the monetary implications be in a state of panic. But every semester, the colloquial courses change subjects and professors. Another reason why students didn’t like them so much was the inability to transfer credits to any other school.

But GA seemed to have expressed her own personal interest in one subject, “Holistic Health! If I wasn’t in honors, I would have really wanted to enroll in this class,” she pointed to the course number. It was decided. At least someone had an opinion; the next day, I enrolled for Holistic Health. The first semester was taught by a nursing professor who lectured on Western vs. Eastern medicine; a women & gender studies professor discussed the role of women in medicine in the past (prior to “Western” medicine); and a philosophy professor introduced the culture and mindsetting of Native American healing in the second semester.

Being a science major, I found myself listening hard to every word each of my professors would say to us in the beginning. I learned I had to remove myself from my science background if I wanted to understand anything. But I’d say 100% of the students struggled as much as I did to get the idea behind the class. I learned tremendously through lecture, but what I remembered the most was the meditation session at the end of each class meeting.

Students would make fun of each other for trying, and the professors were peeved at how naive we were as they tried to meditate themselves. It was just so foreign, and perhaps there wasn’t a good understanding to the subject in the beginning. I honestly tried to meditate, but in the beginning I just didn’t get the point like most of the students. One time, I opened my eyes from the meditative exercise. I could feel my pupils working to constrict as I looked about the room, looking out the window, and finally looking to the professors who were somewhat lost in a trance. I studied their calm, blank faces… the way their eyes closed so effortlessly and casually. “I’m not getting it,” I said to myself. That’s when I started to try to understand.

I felt at that point that I was no longer scoffing at the subject like everyone else; I was upholding the philosophy of science: to simply  make observations in order to understand. Western society had lost its way in science, and forgot the rudiments to science. I found it…very disrespectful to the people who were on the frontier of the golden age.

After that hurdle, I found it easier to clear my mind and meditate as my professors suggested. The classes became more enjoyable. But the most the most moving part of this topic was the term paper at the end of the course. To be continued~

Sick Sinus Syndrome

Then comes the poor estimation of time it takes me to swim my quota. Why does it take 25 minutes to swim 40 laps? I don’t know. I wonder how many laps I have to swim to get to my goal of 1 hour. Today, I particularly focused on the torso with my strokes; maybe this is why I gained so much distance. Lately, my breathing has been off, but I think this is something that will be fixed over time.

After the pool, I did a 4-hour shift at the hospital. There wasn’t a lot to do in Med Tele today since I had done everything last week… so I spent a lot of my time in the nurse station socializing. Most of today was standing around until someone had a unique request such as getting a tray of food, delivering a bladder scanner, etc. #M was pulling examples of EKGs from the monitors to teach me clinical topics when a box started to suddenly blink on the screen. #M paused, and began to analyze the other leads.

“And this is your prime example of sick sinus syndrome,” he says with a slightly higher pitch in his voice, “I have to tell the nurse right away.”

It was so freaking awesome to see this happen live on an EKG. We began to talk about the mechanism behind it all. Shortly, conversation died to a quiet ember and #M began to ask about my personal story coming to Med Tele. A doctor was standing by the sidelines, recording notes in a patient chart while observing an EKG nearby. I told #M the same lame story: that I was an ex-med student looking for that one school that will accept me into their Master’s program for nursing. This, of course, was met with comforting words sharing his confidence in my success.Yes, everyone sees so much potential, but still I continue to work so that I can see that behind my misty, biased glasses.

Apple friggin' pie.

I suppose the highlight of today was when I left the inventory room from stocking the new patient bags. I joined that same doctor that overheard the conversation in the great hallway. He looked at me with a nod, and we walked down the hall together. He said, “It’s a wonderful decision to become a nurse practitioner!” He went on to explain the perks of the profession from his doctor standpoint, “It’s what this country needs right now, and you are perfect for that role. I see that in you!” It’s so nice to volunteer here. I feel very fortunate that I’ve found this niche in the hospital where I learn so much of the stuff for which I thirst.

Afterward, I went all over my side of town hunting for apple pie ingredients. Safeway was obnoxiously expensive and surprisingly lacking. Target was outrageously cheap and fully stocked. And I found a sturdy pie pan at the mall for half the price that I saw in the former stores! The pie was quick to make thanks to Ate, who helped form the lattice on the pie. I wanted to put less sugar because I just hate dessert, but Ate insisted we follow the recipe. I’m kind of annoyed that it’s sweet, though. I aspire to bake the apple pie I had in New York, to make a pie that will bring back the same sensation of sitting beside LD at my leisure.

I made my way through the new walls of the Med Tele wing for the first time in what seemed like several months. When I arrived at this hall in the hospital, DK approached me with a patient who was being discharged.

“Joyce!” He called out my name as though I was a familiar pal in the distance. I greeted him with a big wave and smile; I offered to discharge the patient myself, and gripped the rubber handles of the wheelchair to take on the task. This started my 5-hour shift in the hospital, where I checked the glove compartments, sharps containers and nursing supplies in each patient room throughout the wing. When I was finally done with my responsibilities, I lingered in the the nursing station staring at the EKG monitors hungry for definition.

“What does multiform PVC mean?” I’d ask in the open silence, pointing to an EKG on the screen that blinked.

“That’s nothing, often times these triggers are false because we analyze the other leads and they show up normal on those,” the monitor tech would explain.

I scrunched my eyebrows, “But what does PVC stand for?”

“Pre-ventricular contraction,” he’d respond, “do you know your conduction pathway?”

I’d answer his questions, and he’d draw out the logic behind an EKG gone bad. Shortly, their shift would end and the new staff would move in. But I’d still stand there studying the EKGs, and still someone would explain clinical applications to me. This was how the remainder of my hours was spent in the hospital until I thanked everyone and said goodbye.

I told them that I had just been rejected to my top school but that I am still awaiting responses from other places. I particularly enjoyed #D’s facial expression:  scrunched eyebrows accompanied with a crooked line for a mouth and an incredulous shrug. He told me that I should have a more fierce attitude about my rejection, and that it’s that school’s problem that they didn’t take me. I smiled for the first time regarding the subject.

As I came home, I webcammed with LD and told him about my day. I also contacted DL who wanted to hang out today for a reiki session. I told her, “My reiki for your reading!”

DL is a very intuitive individual, but I’ve felt on various occasions that her readings are often mixed with her personal interpretation – something which will improve over time. She shuffled her angel cards as I vented about my anxiety. I was half confiding in her looking for the friendship necessary to comfort me, but I was also communicating with the angels demanding their response. Sadly, they could only give me the same information they’ve given to me when I directly asked them. The way the cards would stumble out of the deck on their own as DL shuffled them was undeniably their doing.

In the end, DL fanned out the angel cards in her hands. The edges of these beautiful cards were coated with a glistening, gold that I appreciated in the limited lighting in the room. I pulled out a card. It showed an illustration of Archangel Raphael, my guardian angel. In no way am I greatly surprised at the angel readings. Concluding my reading, a tear wells up in the corner of my eye silently and I am flooded with a feeling of comfort.

The trip to New York was amazing, and I certainly made a million memories having fun there, but now I come home and must face reality. I still have yet to be accepted into any kind of academic program; while APU has granted me an interview, I can’t put all my eggs in that basket until I receive a definitive answer. In response to this uncertainty, I’ve resorted to also applying to University of Illinois as their program prerequisites are similar to UCSF. There are some alternative motives in that choice, however.

There’s also this sudden shift in thinking in my relationship with LD. I don’t doubt that my stay at New York has strengthened our connection. It seemed so easy in the beginning of our relationship. Sure, any long distance relationship is a struggle for most couples, but it just seems to be getting more difficult the more successful and developed the relationship becomes. And our connection strengthens further with a jolt each time we’re able to see each other in person. Now it feels like most of my application to UoI is simply to secure a chance to live together with LD, and to finally be with each other more casually. That seems to be the attitude coming from both of us. If I go to Chicago for school, LD will follow me with his clinical rotations, then comes his residency in Chicago. If we can both get a job in Chicago, it just seems to complete the plan. A plan to move forward with our lives. It all seems so dream-like, but maybe I should perceive this with more resilience rather than groping for the possibility. It just feels like I’ve fallen so much more in love, and I am in a phase I’ve never once tread before in my feelings. It feels almost like… grown-up love. o_O

Hmm… maybe I should steer this entry to another direction.

I’ve made my to-do list for tomorrow which involves putting in some hours at the hospital, devising a plan for my recommendation letters, working on applications and – FINALLY – go swimming. No more fantasizing, sulking and feeling sorry for myself (and definitely no more relaxing). I must accomplish as much as possible before I have to go to work. I have struggled so much being able to put all of my feelings into words, but I pulled through thanks to the comforting words of SS and this Blonde Bock bottle of Gordon Biersch.

The one thing that seems to terrify me the most in flying is the suspicion that my checked-in luggage has been lost. No, I don’t care about the plane crashing or terrorists overtaking the cockpit or missing my flight. AirFrance lost my month’s worth of luggage when I traveled through Europe several years ago; granted, they gave me lots of euros for my personal expenses which meant that I had a shopping spree in Europe! but still… the agonizing minutes it takes to locate my luggage on a conveyor belt in the end is the most terrifying moment in my flying experience. ANYWAY. I was very pleased to learn that my two pieces of luggage were one of the first to pop out of the rubber curtains!

So, I’m back home now. The little souvenirs I bought have been passed out, and I have returned to a more relaxed but depressing state back in my comfy home. The familiar street names, curves of the roads, California chains, my big laptop and the sunny weather ought to feel relieving to me, but I can’t help but give a blasé sigh at my surroundings. Meh. And LD isn’t taking it very well, either. Although we have nothing to say, we webcam with each other as we go about our days independently just for the mere comfort of looking in a little window to find company in digital format.

Speaking of, I have photos to share finally! I will simply provide a link to rest of my photos. With this being my personal blog, I will share the shots I enjoy the most in this post.

Hope you guys enjoyed these as much as I did!