Night Terrors

I've never felt quite so helpless as when my daughter Erin suffered from nightmares.

About halfway through my law school career -- sometime in 2002 -- Erin began having bad dreams. She was about four years old, and just about an hour and a half after she'd fall asleep, it would start.

They were more than bad dreams or plain nightmares. It was as if she were being attacked. Literally. Her eyes would be open, terrified at some sight invisible to my wife and me. For 15 minutes or so, Erin struggled to physically push her unseen attacker off of herself.

It looked to me as if someone was pawing at her and she was struggling for her life. And I was powerless to intervene.

I chanted silently in her ear. I synchronized my breathing with hers, opened my heart, and identified myself with her. We tried various fragrant essential oils and kept fresh flowers in the bedroom. Nothing worked though.

After months of this torture, I suggested that we ask Guru for help. Elaine agreed.

I looked through our recent snapshots and found a nice, close-up photo of Erin's face and her beautiful eyes. I then wrote a simple note to Guru, describing what was happening, expressing our feelings of helplessness, and plainly asking for his help.

The night terrors stopped immediately and never returned. (Erin has since morphed into a bit of a sleepwalker, but that's easy enough to deal with.)

Let me say straightaway, I don't believe in "miracles." As Sri Aurobindo has said, there's a process behind all phenomena. Sometimes, it's hidden or "occult," but that doesn't mean the underlying process doesn't exist.

At an energetic level -- over which I had no facility -- something frightening was happening to my daughter. Guru fixed it.

That's Erin and me above enjoying kites at the beach.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

David Moretti

Image
On October 18, 1981, I got the word that Sri Chinmoy had accepted me as one of his disciples. I was 16, a junior in high school. Young as I was, the story behind my applying to join what some in my family believed -- perhaps correctly -- to be a Hindu religious cult stretched back a few years and is a story of happenstance, serendipity and interesting personalities. Over the following nine years of my discipleship, I would meet some of the most unique individuals I've ever met and I'll do my best to draw attention to them as my story unfolds. First, though, I want to acknowledge my boyhood friend, David Moretti (pictured above). Dave was my best friend through grade school. His father worked for the Almaden winery when there were still vineyards in Silicon Valley, and his mother worked for a local bank. Unlike my parents, Dave's mom and dad hadn't divorced. I spent just about every day after elementary school hanging out at the Moretti's house. When the whole
Read more

Hear Me Roar

Image
The time for former women disciples to come together, "in numbers too big to ignore" as Helen Reddy sings in her famous song, is now. With the huge exception of Jayanti Tamm -- and her book Cartwheels in a Sari -- there have been precious few examples of what the disciple life was like from a woman's perspective. That should change. There are now scores of women who spent significant time in the Center leading extremely disciplined lives, who are now living outside the shadow of the Center, standing on their own, each of whom have distinct and unique voices. I'd really like to hear from them (you all know who you are). And I don't mean just in guest posts here (though I love them). What I'm really advocating is a site for women, by women. Something like a spiritual Double X site . I take inspiration again from Jayanti, who is perhaps laying the foundation for such a site at her blog -- read the latest lion's roar here . That's Helen Reddy in the pho
Read more

Lavanya - A Guest Post

Image
I WAS NOT AS SPECIAL AS YOU AND I THOUGHT This is the story of a few pivotal experiences of my 31 years in the Sri Chinmoy Centre. Telling it makes me feel sad, mad, ashamed, and foolish for staying and serving for so many years after I knew things were not as they should be, starting with our divine leader. Still, when I finally left the Centre, I swore to myself that I would never tell what I knew about him, and until recently I thought I never would. But when I left the Centre, I thought I knew what was true about Chinmoy, when actually I knew almost nothing. Now, as the real Chinmoy is gradually being revealed by piecing together all of our experiences with him, it seems I can’t keep my own story tamped down any longer. It needs to be told.  It’s not a good story, not a happy story, and I am not a heroine – on the contrary. But life is telling me it’s time to speak up. I probably should have spoken long ago. I definitely COULD have spoken about 40 years ago. Maybe I wou
Read more