Divine Intersection: The Story of My Life

                         DIVINE INTERSECTION: THE STORY OF MY LIFE

My bike was flying down the hill, heading towards a yellow traffic light. Without even thinking, I peddled hard and sailed across the traffic square just as the light turned red. A great electrical-sounding voice crackled loudly through my head: “Linda Brown! What do you intend to do now?” I sat up in bed, wondering what that dream was all about? My marriage wasn’t happy but it continued for the sake of our two children. Was this dream some sort of instruction from Above? Had I just escaped something that might have blocked my way? Nothing in my life at that moment provided much of a clue, but I could still hear that congratulatory Voice ringing in my ear, inquiring about the next step that I intended to take.

Certainly, this was God’s Voice and that dream was the first time that I had, literally, heard such a thing. God had always been in my conscious mind while growing up; I just couldn’t feel Him in the stiffness of the Episcopal Church we attended. As a little girl, I noted how smug I felt about being able to mumble the Communion Service along with the rest of the congregation. Was this spirituality? Where was the joy in this? At the same time, I cared deeply about what God might think of me and tried to live by His Laws and do what pleased him but my belief was rather amorphous. At University, I was very active in the campus church, though this was still mostly social and skin deep for me.

Marriage to a medical student led to long cross-country trips for internship and residency and my wanderlust was both born and satisfied. My spiritual happiness came from the great outdoors, camping, hiking in the wilderness, enjoying the great Western vastness. I again felt smug during my easy pregnancy and uncomplicated natural childbirth. Then, wham! My newborn son became extremely ill. He was at one hospital, my intern husband was on-call at another; and I was at home alone without a prayer to fall back upon. Those carefree years since my wedding had not seen much, at all, of prayer books and the like. My outdoor prayers were limited to “Wow!”  A neighbor brought me her Baha’i prayer book, opened to a little healing prayer, and I devoured it like manna in the desert. That night was one long sobbing supplication until at some specific point, I stopped short; knowing suddenly that my baby would be fine. I slept long and deep. In the morning, he had one less kidney and I had become a Baha’i. That led to thirty-three years of long and passionate service to the Baha’i Faith, during which I traveled the world from time to time, and constantly prayed to have a part in the spiritualization of the human race and the establishment of world peace. I began to supplicate for this so much, that one day, I noticed how my Cocker Spaniel habitually sighed heavily and flopped down upon the floor, knowing that she wasn’t going anywhere for a long time, whenever I brought out my prayer book. I’d worn out my dog with all this open-ended praying! Daily, I studied the scriptures of all religions and begged aloud for God to use me in whatever way He saw fit. I never shut up long enough to listen for a reply.

Suddenly, I began to experience strange, inner things. I heard Voices. All of my begging and pleading for insight was paying off, but I still didn’t know it. I never had been a psychic person and I quite discouraged that tendency in others, just as my religion advised me to. Trances began to occur spontaneously while my inner hearing channels continued to “pow” open on their own. Thinking I might be losing it, but loving these inner experiences at the same time, I ramped up my praying to be of service to humanity and to do God’s Work here on Earth in any way that He could use me, still interpreting that as giving more and more Baha’i service. But I shut my ears to these new inner sounds, not wanting to be thought of as crazy. Later I realized that my audacious prayers were already being answered and an unsuspected group of needy souls were being sent to me for help. The trouble was that they were disembodied. I didn’t have a clue! You see, my naïve prayers weren’t ordinary ones. All those years of pondering the human condition, the state of the world, and the relationship between Earth and Heaven, had ignited a deep passion for heroic services impossible for a little housewife to accomplish. I wanted to be Joan of Arc and my prayers were all about becoming an acceptable foot soldier in the Battle of Armageddon. “Use me in Thy Service!” I kept begging. The same prayerful intensity that had once saved my newborn was now pouring from me, day and night. Just what did I expect would be the result? I was very non-specific.

I didn’t know then, that people with opening chakras become available to many beings on invisible planes of existence. The Holy Realms are not the only dimensions beyond Earth and many confused souls become lost between the two. Suddenly, I could hear and feel all sorts of people…Over There! Yikes! Well, I had volunteered for service, hadn’t I? Here was a whole bunch of folks who really needed help. I landed in the psych ward and got the knee-jerk diagnosis of Schizophrenia. I didn’t want that and still had lots of responsibilities to my family and my Faith. I slammed my ears shut against the inner sound, necessitating the purchase of a string of CD players to drown the Voices out; but these machines kept mysteriously breaking. After awhile, my inner voices ended and I became “normal” once again. Seemingly, I had learned that it is wise to stop when the streetlight turns red. Don’t go sailing out into unknown intersections, taking unnecessary risks.

Time went by, until my elderly mother needed me to help her through her final years. Marriage over, children grown, I returned to my hometown. One day, I met a woman who lived in the house where my mother grew up. She blithely spoke of their resident ghost and then stunned me by saying that the ghost was my grandfather, a young country doctor whose car had swerved into a lake during a 1921 rainstorm. She was pleased with this friendly-ghost arrangement; but I was horrified and spent that night on my knees, looking out the window at the full moon, begging for my long-dead grandfather’s release. All other prayer sessions of mine paled in comparison with this rattling of the Gates of Heaven on his behalf. Then, just as had happened decades before with my baby, I suddenly felt that  Peace descend and knew that he was now where he should be, free of the earth, at last.

It’s hard to reconstruct those years now, to remember when I stopped talking long enough to hear anything, innerly, in return. I do remember sitting in a quiet library wondering if the florescent light bulb overhead might be defective because it always seemed to be buzzing. But then, when all buildings began to buzz softly like that, I finally decided to pay attention to the sound. It turned out to be a very-frustrated, high-pitched Voice, trying to get my attention. When it calmed to slower speeds, I heard: “I’m trying to talk to you. Why don’t you listen to Me?” That began a long and constant, ever-present conversation with The Holy Spirit, which continues to this day and is always accessible to me. We’re like an old married couple by now, in an old-shoe way. I hear words, like my own thoughts; sometimes pulsations or pressures in my head around the words; sometimes fleeting touches. The old cacophony of other disembodied voices is gone, having long ago been befriended and dismissed. I’m now a telepathic clairaudient, but don’t make a big deal out of that. I’m also no longer a Baha’i but am very grateful to that beautiful Faith for my spiritual foundation. Twice, early in the long years leading up to this easy-going spiritual situation, The Holy Spirit had gotten through to me with a clear question to ask if I would work in a certain capacity for Him. In each case, the word, “Yes!” instantly escaped from my lips. The first time this occurred was in the psych ward, causing me to think I surely must be crazy. Fifteen years later, I heard the same request again and this time, I went with it and haven’t looked back since.

To this day, I’m still safely cruising against the red light through that beautiful intersection, trying to answer with heart and soul, His eternal question: “Linda Brown, what are you going to do now?”  I still talk endlessly with Him and He endlessly responds in words that I can clearly hear. I often write them down. We have traveled the world quite a lot, by now, and have begun to create books together.

When Linda J. Brown is not backpacking and hostelling around the world, she lives in Clearwater, Florida, with the same son whose kidney put her on the path. She publishes books about her solo travels and her spiritual passions. She has two children and two grandchildren.

Since the death of my son, Randy, in April, 2011, I have been solo traveling around the world again. Currently, in Cape Town, South Africa, still squeaking through the intersections.