Week 1 Natalie Lortz

I was in my best friend's house. She was in the kitchen, talking and throwing her voice to me in the living room. In the living room, it was just me and her dog, Paco. I laid on the couch and Paco laid on the floor directly across the room from me. We were both facing the fireplace. Above the fireplace was an urn with the ashes of my best friend's grandfather. And above that was a wreath with synthetic white flowers on it. I laid down on the couch because I had suddenly felt very tired. I was trying to relax my breathing when i felt my entire body stiffen up. At the time, I had experienced many episodes like this (body stiffening up randomly) due to a torn abdominal muscle and figured it was another muscle spasm. However, the feeling I felt rise in myself could not be attributed to a normal muscle spasm. It's hard for me to write about this simply because I don't know how to describe it accurately enough. I felt spiritual turmoil. I was paralyzed, laying on the couch and staring at the white flower wreath. My heartbeat & breathing was slow, yet my entire body felt tense, reacting to something. But nothing was happening in the physical realm that I could've reacted to or been provoked by. Eventually, my best friend walked into the living room and said "Woah, what's wrong with you?" I responded, "I have no idea but something is going on" and eventually she left because the energy in that room was too intense for her. I didn't say anything when she admitted this but I wasn't surprised because even though it was her house, I knew she wasn't supposed to be there.

All of a sudden I felt comforted. There was a voice outside of myself but also in my head that was telling me everything was going to be okay. I saw a form in the shape of a dog sitting next to the fireplace in front of Paco. I looked over at him but he didn't seem to think anything was odd. He merely shuffled and exhaled through his nose. The voice/spirit told me that she was Zoe, my best friend's first dog from when we were younger. About 5 years ago, she died of cancer. Zoe began telling me that because of the deep love her previous owners still felt for her, her spirit stayed in the house to protect and watch over them. She thanked me for loving them just as fiercely as she did and said just as she watched and cared for them, she did the same for me because she felt my love too. It was in this moment that I realized there was no true finiteness to life or the connections we share with other living beings. Separation is an illusion.

This sounded like a very nice story until Zoe started speaking to Paco. She told him that he needed to honor the promise he made to watch their family and love them unconditionally and to stop being so negative and bratty. He had been grumbling around earlier that day because his owners hid the ball from him. His only job was to love & protect them and in return be loved and cared for back. I could hear her words and feel her attention be directed towards him, but to my surprise Paco reacted in annoyance. His mannerisms were as if he was being nagged by something that only I and he could see. He didn't seemed too pleased to be hearing this, understandably so since he was basically being scolded by a spirit life form.

This entire time, I still felt odd bodily sensations. I felt as if an electric current was running up and down my arms and at random intervals, certain body parts would tense up. This didn't make sense to me because I was laying down and my breathing was relaxed. Maybe this could've been explained by some kind of scientific fact, but while her attention was directed away from me, I began to realize something was still very odd and almost very wrong with me. Right after thinking this, her attention turned back to me. She understood and felt the spiritual breakthrough I was having at that very moment and comforted me by saying she would be there with me through it all. I have been going to my best friend's house since we were 12 and the perfect bloom on the wreath's flowers had never changed. But that night, my eyes were glued to them because I could see the synthetic flowers spinning in circles as real as I could see Paco. Each one was either blooming even more, or spinning around or both. Through this entire process, I could feel Zoe's presence & could feel my subconscious embark on a journey by going deeper and deeper into these flowers. Consciously, all I knew was that I was entranced for almost an hour and took comfort in Zoe's love because I knew that was what materialized her onto this plane. I can't directly describe what my spirit went through or what it learned. But I do know it was a lesson of oneness, unconditional love, and peace.