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During July in 2003 my idea of a retreat took a turn for the worse. Several residents stayed at the retreat, with other applications in process. The first one skipped the booking, the second refused to pay the $50 a week required for full board and had to be removed by the police. The third told me that she had accidentally killed someone just before arriving and that she suffered from bipolar disorder. Hence, after much discussion, and following the advice of the police, my friends and my mother, I decided to let go of the idea, cancelling all future bookings. It just wasn't safe and, as my mother warned me, "You don't know people, Coral. They're not like you."
After the last resident left, Denise and I reluctantly agreed that the idea of a spiritual health retreat for artists and writers wasn't going to work and that we should go our separate ways. This left me with a beautiful five room place and a stack of merchandise. So I decided to go into wholesaling and selling vegan health products in the Northern Territory, at least until I figured out what else to do. After the negative experiences with the first residents, I was reluctant to advertise for a flatmate. I wanted to work and live in a friendly and peaceful environment.
During July in 2003 I was invited to attend a writers' festival in Victoria. I didn't want to leave Binda and Kindi on their own for a few days, even when paying Denise to feed and look after them. When I got back, Denise told me that she had been 'forced' to move her family into the premises for a few days. She told me that each time she had locked the dogs in the front yard beneath the house and had switched on the monitored alarm system, it had 'gone off' the minute she got down the stairs. The alarm did this five times, before she and her friend Barbara chose to leave it off and lock the dogs in the house.
Since the alarm system is monitored, Chubb Security had come out while Denise was there and told her that the 'detected movement' was coming from the study. But they were unable to see what could have caused it to keep going off like that. Denise felt sure that it was supernatural. To her way of thinking, it seemed that whoever "it" was did not want her to leave the house. I was to have this same feeling in the future, that is, that whoever or whatever was in that place liked me being there as well. Not long after the alarm incident and my return from the writers' festival down south, it was my turn to fall down the house stairs. I then contracted a flu-like illness that lasted for several days, but from which I never fully recovered. From that point on, everything seemed to go from bad to worse.
As a result of the fall I required a number of X-rays of my spine and I was not able to walk properly for weeks. During this time I heard what appeared to be several inner thought dialogues. One morning, while laying down on the queen-sized bed in the main bedroom I heard, Stay with me, followed by, I always have. Listening to this 'communicating consciousness' was like going to a movie where one could hear the script and sense the emotions that were connected to one's experience, but being able to exist outside and separate from them at the same time.
Sensing that all was not going as I had planned, my mother came from Sydney to visit me and stayed in Darwin from 25th August until 8th September 2003. By the time she arrived in Darwin the indoor and outdoor work and bills were piling up. I had been going to a chiropractor every third day since the fall. The pain was excruciating and came in intense waves that wracked my body causing migraine, nausea and giddness. Even standing for short periods of time became an effort. My mother noticed that I had become clumsy, always falling over and dropping things. "I'm ill," I said. "I think I'm very ill." My mother had arrived at a beautiful place and there I was in the middle of it, barely able to move, Binda and Kindi by my side.
My mother stayed in the main bedroom, while I continued to sleep in the study. Not long after her arrival, I had woken up in the middle of the night. I looked into the room where she was sleeping in the queen-sized bed and noticed that the left hand touch lamp was on. I thought, that's odd. She doesn't normally like to sleep with the lights on. Then I forgot about it and went back to sleep. At around 7.30am, after I had been up for two hours working in the study, my mother came in to tell me that something strange had happened. She looked pale. |
