I conduct retreats and workshops and practice psychotherapy and energy healing with individual clients. My constant intention is to serve the highest good for all and to work for the expansion of human and planetary consciousness. The work of consciousness must always begin with the self. In this light, I would like to share a recent spiritual healing experience of my own.

In January of 2004, I was conducting a retreat for women’s consciousness in the mountains of upstate New York. Our work was to focus on an issue of importance in our life and allow the guidance of the retreat to shed light upon it. For myself, I wished to explore a conflict with one of my adult children that had been causing me to feel angry and resentful about his behavior. I was so angry that I felt estranged from him and was grieving this loss.

On several occasions earlier in the month, I experienced pain over my left kidney and frequency of urination. I had suffered from kidney stones many years prior and clearly remembered this pain! I had seen my Nurse Practitioner, who ordered an ultrasound. The report indicated possible calcification in the kidney. I was referred to an urologist but my appointment wasn’t scheduled until the week following this retreat. So, off I went to the five-day retreat praying all would be well and I would have no further episodes of pain. No such luck!

On the second night of the retreat, I was awakened by a triple knock on my door. When I opened the door, no one was there! Leaving on the light, I went back to sleep. The following morning, I asked if any one else had heard knocking. No one had though when she heard my story, one of the participants said, “It sounds like you had a visit from a knocking ghost!” (While I believe in the existence of spirit companions and guides, I had never had one arrive in my space quite so noisily!) She went on to explain that she and others had similar, verifiable experiences. After a lengthy discussion, I decided to smudge my room that night and pray for the ease of the spirit’s journey. I asked that the spirit move on but that if it had a specific message for me, would it please try to communicate it to me in my dreams. I then went to sleep.

In the early morning hours, I had a dream in which my Aunt Kay appeared. Because I could actually smell her, I wasn’t totally sure that I was dreaming. My Aunt Kay had passed on many years before, but during her life I was extremely close to her. She was one of the most non-judgmental people I knew. Others in our family actually used to get angry with her “naivete” in relationships, as she always saw the good in others. I loved her dearly and so when she appeared to me that night on retreat for the very first time since her passing, I wept with the pure joy of feeling her presence.

I heard myself saying out loud, “Aunt Kay – is that you?” as I became fully aware that the spirit knocking had been her. She greeted me in this altered state saying, “Oh Barbara, he is such a good boy!” I then awoke and began sobbing heavily. I knew she was talking about my son and I felt an enormous release of my anger towards him. The feeling was profound and I felt much better able to move towards understanding and forgiveness.

Sobbing on and off the entire day, I simultaneously felt the releasing of pain in my kidney. Although I did not seem to pass any stone, I felt the pain on all levels of my being cleared that day. Subsequent evaluation by the urologist found no stones, calcifications or cysts in the kidney; his exact words as he looked at the CT scan results were, “These kidneys are beautiful!”

According to the teachings of Polarity Therapy, the kidneys exist on what is called the air current. Energetically, they congest when there are unresolved emotional issues of anger and frustration. In Heal Your Body, author Louise Hay describes kidney stones as “lumps of undissolved anger.”

I am deeply grateful for the visitation from my aunt, for my own willingness to grow in consciousness, and for my deep communion with my body physical. It is my fervent hope that as we all work to grow in consciousness our healing efforts will manifest on personal levels as well on the planetary level, and that we will live in harmony with all that is.