During the 1980\u2019s and 90\u2019s, I took\u00a0nine trips to the Philippines to study with some of the most powerful healers\u00a0in the world. While I was there, I made friends with a group of like-mindedpeople and each time I returned, I spent most of my time with them. We were like\u00a0family and I kept in touch with some of them.<\/p>\n
I was online a few days ago, when a\u00a0message showed up from a woman named Anna Pensacola. She was the sister of\u00a0Riza, my closest Philippine friend and Anna was messaging me to tell me that
Riza had passed away. She had died at the age of 77 from lymphoma and she\u00a0wanted her ashes to be used to plant endangered trees on her farm. That was\u00a0typical of Riza\u2019s kindness and awareness. Anna reminded me that I had\u00a0introduced Riza to the healing power of crystals and she had embraced it as her\u00a0life\u2019s work. Sometimes we don\u2019t know the impact we have on the people that we
love until they\u2019re gone. I realized that I had been Riza\u2019s inspiration. I had\u00a0made her laugh when I dubbed the primitive bath room in the building where she\u00a0worked as \u201cThe Discomfort Room.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I told Anna that I would\u00a0contact a mutual friend to talk about Riza, she said, \u201cHe has also left us and\u00a0so has his wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deaths of three friends was\u00a0shocking. I went on Google to find my other Philippine friends and I got a\u00a0pileup of grief.<\/p>\n
Boy M. Gone<\/p>\n
Jimmy. Gone.<\/p>\n
Boy F. Gone.<\/p>\n
Alex. Gone.<\/p>\n
Chuchi. Gone.<\/p>\n
Aleli. Gone.<\/p>\n
In one day, I found out that I had lost\u00a0half a dozen people whom I loved and admired. I had a stab of guilt that I\u00a0hadn\u2019t stayed in touch with some of them, but I was comforted by the knowledge\u00a0that we had the kinds of relationships that rose above distance and time.<\/p>\n
I thought about my beloved friends\u00a0who had impacted me so much:<\/p>\n
Their bodies made up the skeleton\u00a0of another place and time.<\/p>\n
Their souls invited me into their\u00a0hearts and their minds.<\/p>\n
They took me with them to physical places\u00a0where Western people didn\u2019t go.<\/p>\n
They recognized me as a fellow\u00a0traveler with no boundaries\u00a0<\/p>\n
They chanted mystical songs to make\u00a0me feel safe when I took my claustrophobia with me as I squeezed into tight\u00a0entrances of hallowed caves.<\/p>\n
I have never been anywhere, before\u00a0or after, that was as magical as the places I went with them, where the\u00a0extraordinary was ordinary. Where the paranormal met the normal and both of\u00a0them were forever interchanged and transformed. A place where there was little
difference between the sleeping and waking world.<\/p>\n
I walked around in a kind of trance\u00a0that day and I had a vision of my friends\u2019 bodies rising up and dissolving. My\u00a0heart was broken and I have to learn to live with it. Remembering the gifts\u00a0they gave me helps me feel close to them:<\/p>\n
We climbed sacred mountains in the\u00a0dark of night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We saw what they called mother\u00a0ships.<\/p>\n
We listened to invisible spirits\u00a0singing.<\/p>\n
We bathed in waters that allowed us\u00a0to communicate with people who had passed away.<\/p>\n
We uttered prayers at Mt. Banahaw to\u00a0get permission from the spirits to enter sacred sites.<\/p>\n
We witnessed extraordinary healings\u00a0and paranormal events that should never have happened.<\/p>\n
And yet, they did.<\/p>\n
It felt tragic that there was no\u00a0one left to keep the otherworldly realm alive, but I was leaving out someone. Me.\u00a0I\u2019m still here. I count. I\u2019m someone who still has access to that world and to\u00a0everything that happened. I carry it proudly and talk about it when someone is
interested. I even wrote a book about it, \u201cAwakening the Healer Within.\u201d My\u00a0friends are dancing through the pages. They live inside of me and I\u2019ll be\u00a0carrying their wisdom for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n
Missing each one of them has forced\u00a0to face my own death. A friend told me that when her parents died, she realized\u00a0she was next in line. I had the same experience when my parents died and here
it was again. I had to accept the fact that one day, I would be gone, too. I\u00a0had to face the mystery of my death. Would I see my friends again? Was this an\u00a0ending or a beginning?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
When people talk about me when I\u2019m
gone, (I hope they will), I\u2019d like them to say, \u201cShe didn\u2019t have any answers
but she had some really good questions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the 1980\u2019s and 90\u2019s, I took\u00a0nine trips to the Philippines to study with some of the most powerful healers\u00a0in the world. While I was there, I made friends with a group of like-mindedpeople and each time I returned, I spent most of my time with them. We were like\u00a0family and I kept in touch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2723,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions\/2723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}