Group Think Re-Thunk

Earlier this evening as I pondered what to wear to my weekly flute choir practice, I questioned the decision to reach for my khaki slacks.  I hadn't worn them in at least a year, but for some reason, the choice felt right.  When perusing my selection of tops, I decided on a solid black long-sleeved polo shirt with khaki trim around the collar and cuffs.  It had been at least two years since I'd worn that particular top.  After twenty years of wearing a khaki uniform with collared shirt, in recent years I've leaned towards collarless tops and more stylish slacks.  I checked the outfit in the mirror and liked the look, but I was subtly aware that the choice was not what I normally wore to the rehearsals.

Half an hour later when I walked into our practice room, the women already seated started laughing.  It didn't take long to notice why.  Four others in addition to me--nearly half of our small choir-- were wearing light or khaki colored slacks and a solid black or navy top with contrasting trim.  Not for the first time, my fellow bass flute player and I were dressed like twins.

Halfway through the rehearsal, out of the blue our director stated, "I remember going to an orchestra rehearsal once where half of the players showed up in pink.  It was bizarre."

One of our members asked why she mentioned this at that particular moment, having already commented on our look-alike outfits at the beginning of rehearsal.  Our director replied, "I don't know.  It just came off the top of my head."

Sitting there hearing her words, I received an unexpected "hit" from Sanaya.  Their message came in a burst of awareness as their concepts often do.  As I let the download "unfold" mentally, word by word, I knew that the thought our director had just blurted out was actually part of their message: 

"Thoughts are not owned by the individual thinker.  All thoughts belong to the universal Mind.  The thought just spoken by your director was put there by us as evidence of this teaching.  Groups such as this one take on a group consciousness.   Each individual has what they consider their own thoughts, but as the  so-called individual consciousness prepares to gather with a particular group, the thoughts begin to coalesce.  As the individual members of this choir prepared for the rehearsal, their thoughts came into alignment in such a way that those sensitive to vibrations began to think coherently--as one with the others.  The result is that as each member made a clothing choice, the others picked up on this and thus made a similar choice, with each one thinking the thought was their own. 

We prepared this lesson for you to show how group consciousness works.  Can you see how entire organizations and even nations take on a belief system and these beliefs are quite often followed blindly by members of the group?  Only when you pay attention to your thoughts and keep in mind that you always have a choice as to whether or not you act on them can you rise above a group consciousness that may be detrimental to the growth of the whole.  Certainly there is no damage to be done by a choice in clothing, but we ask you to be aware of going along with the crowd when choices are made which are not of the highest order--when they are not based on love, kindness, and compassion.  If you question your thoughts and actions, perhaps there is reason to question.

That is all."

Wow.  And I thought I was just getting dressed for a rehearsal. 

Love at the Center

In my work as an evidential medium, I talk to many fathers who have passed to the other side.  Many times my clients are happy and relieved to hear from their dad, but that’s not always the case.  More often than one would hope, a man comes through with an apology to his child.  What can at first be an awkward or painful reunion ends up being an opportunity for healing to take place on both sides of the veil.

My dad has visited me several times since his passing in 2008 at age 92, and I have welcomed each visit with joy.  I love my dad dearly, and that love has always been reciprocated.  Each time that I have sensed his  spirit's presence, I’ve asked him to tell me something that is going on with my mother that I don’t know about.  With this validation, she and the rest of my family know for sure that he really visited me.  He has always provided excellent verifiable evidence, like the time he told me to talk to my mother about her electric curlers, telling me that something was wrong with them.  I called Mom immediately, and she told me that she had cleaned her closet the day before and found her old electric curlers, but they didn’t work anymore.  Way to go, Dad!

If you’ve read my memoir, Messages of Hope, you’ll recall the reading I had in which my Dad came through quite clearly.  I knew for sure he was there when he said to the medium, “Just call me Bill.”  It was the first thing my father would say whenever anyone learned that his real name was Oliver.  Dad was named after his father, Oliver L. Smeltzer, but everyone in his family had always called him “Bill.”  Dad thought this was better than being called “Junior.”

The origin of Dad’s name is actually quite interesting:  O.L. Smeltzer Senior’s father lived close to the family of a Mr. Oliver Love.  Supposedly, somebody in Oliver Love’s family saved somebody in our great grandfather’s family from drowning, and Great Granddaddy named his sixth son after Oliver Love.   

When I sat to meditate this morning, my gaze fell on the desk across the room.  On it sits a foot-long wooden carving of the word “Love.”  It is always the last thing I see before I close my eyes to enter the silence, and for some reason, today I thought of Dad.  I recalled that his father died of tuberculosis when he was 8.  When the depression hit, at age 14 he was sent to live and work at the Milton Hershey School for Boys (yes, THE Milton Hershey of Hershey’s Chocolate fame, for whom Dad later served as personal assistant). 

It could not have been an easy childhood, yet Dad never let on about it. I have no memories of my dad ever uttering a critical word to me.  They say women often marry men like their fathers, and I can be rightly accused of that.  Like my husband, Ty, my dad was never anything less than fully supportive of anything I wanted to do, and he never hid his love for me. 

This morning, when looking at that wooden carving of the word “Love,” for the first time ever I realized “his middle name was Love.”  I had always known this in a literal sense, but I never thought of it in the metaphorical sense.  It wasn’t something we talked about.  For some reason, Dad was ashamed of that middle name.  We know this because he always insisted that the “L” was just an initial.  It was only after my brother started doing genealogy as an adult that he discovered my father had a middle name.   

Perhaps it was his difficult childhood that left my dad uncomfortable with overt displays of affection around anyone other than his immediate family.  Perhaps that is why he disliked his middle name.  I may never know the real reason for his discomfort.  What I do know is that he and my mother—who also had a challenging childhood—found a deep and enduring love with each other, and they passed that love on to their children.  It is a gift for which I am eternally grateful.

As I’ve learned from reuniting so many adult children with their fathers, the gift of love is transformational.  Receiving that love from across the veil, whether it comes from the wispy gesture of a hug, a kiss, or a head bowed in apology, can reignite the love within.  That love lives in each of us, but for some reason—perhaps from grief, from guilt, or from some other human emotion—it burns less brightly in some than in others. 

My father’s middle name was Love.  It is my hope that these words ignite in your soul the remembrance that Love is your middle name, too.  No matter what kind of childhood you had, no matter if those around you failed to realize that their middle name was also Love, may you leave a legacy of love for all those whose lives you touch.