My brother sent me an e-mail with the obituary of an old friend. Lillian had been the woman who dyed and curled and styled my mother's hair in her kitchen down the street before she opened a shop in a then newly-invented concept called a mall. I played with her kids and baby sat for her youngest, and spent hours waiting for mom on her perm-streaking-cover the grey-cut adventures, and can still almost still smell the neutralizer...

Anyhow, She was a devout Catholic, though this does not adequately cover her devotion. She remained unswervable even when her own son was molested, and refused to believe Father Paul would do such a thing, accusing her own Eddie of lying and sinning in doing so....

I expected to find Lillian in the Focus 23 areas, and went looking for her there. She was no where to be found. I called the smell of the neutralizer mixed with her ever present cigarette, and found myself standing across the room from Lillian, who was sitting at the table smoking and drinking coffee. I was a bit distracted at my discovery that I could smell, or seemed to, and that I could feel the heat from the stove which was covered with simmering pots, which I could also smell. Spaghetti sauce. Lilian looked up.

"Thomas! Thomas! Hey, Carl, come here. You'll never guess who's here!."

I was still a bit lost in the smells, and when she hugged me to her shest I could smell the coffee and cigarettes again. I seemed to have substance and so did she. I was wondering if this was a lucid dream as it began to fade, and I remembered (for once) to say, "Clarity, please!" It was as if I had switched to high def from an old black and white television. I turned when I heard a noise behind me. Carl, Lillian's husband who had died of lung cancer in 1965 stood there in apparent health, an indeterminate middle age prime version. He hugged me, too.

"How'd you get here? I thought you were Presbyterians," he said. "Ooo, Father Paul is gonna be upset at this one."

We sat, and I found I could also taste as we ate the Italian food Lillian had apparently cooked for me. We talked. They told me Lillian had just arrived, but were unable to guage how long it had been. Carl could only say that one day he was aware that Lillian was there with him. They though they were in some version of Purgatory, working off some kind of debt before they could "go on." They were aware of some there, of which there were many hundreds they said, who had disappeared in a flash of light, never to return or be seen again. They were told that these people had complated their penance and were forgiven in the instant of rapture, and disappeared. They seemed very serious and convinced, and even gentle efforts to enlarge or shake this a bit seemed very upsetting. I could only repeat, "Well, there is much, much more than this." And there is.

Carl spoke at length about being in a healing center for some time after he came to this place. He assumed it was ahopsital, but commented that they had used devices and things he had never seen. Lillian had just come there, no healing needed, like he had gotten up one mornig and she was "just there."

Lillian looked radiant, though in life she had always had dark circles under her puffy eyes. She was blond, as she had dyed her hair in life, and was blond to her roots, which in life had always been black. Lillian sat and took my hand and sighed, "Tell Eddie when you see him that I know he told the truth. Ask him to forgive his ma."

After a while I noticed I was alone in the kitchen. I conjured a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote them a note of love and thanks, and that I would be back.

And I will. No guide ever showed up, but then I never asked for one. My sense is that this was 24-25ish and it seemed very vivid. I could hear noises, smell, taste, walk and stand, feel heat, and substance though most often I feel formless or orb-ish, which is how I generally "see" others out there not in the BSTs.

Anyhow- I will add to this if I can budge them. It is my intention to clear the place out.

Thomas

Very interesting, sheds some light on the BSTs. For example it's funny how they can align the vanishing of people off from their system with their belief of the purgatory. And this unclear perception of time points, when someone arrived, very interesting as well. And then, even when there's insight in a major mistake made under influence of this very belief, it is still not noticed that this belief is the problem.

And, as with all of your "trips", you have such a vivid perception!

Spooky