Feel the Force . . .

ESP is so commonplace that we don’t blink an eye about it. We know it’s Extra Sensory Perception, the Sixth Sense, but it’s different from the other five, Taste, Hearing, Smell, Touch, Sight, where no explanation is needed. It’s been called Gut Instinct, Third Eye, Hunch, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Precognition and ad infinitum, but that still doesn’t tell us what it is.

However, when it hits, we need no explaining. One time I answered my phone and it was Margaret, from Seattle. Our acquaintance was so casual that I wondered why she’d called, but as she was getting ready to say goodbye, she asked if I knew where Florence could be reached.

“No,” I answered, “I haven’t seen or heard from her for over a year.” And she said, “Well, take down my phone number and if you happen to see her, tell her to give me a call.”

Now, hearing from Florence was so unlikely that I almost didn’t write down the number, but I carelessly scribbled it, while knowing I’d garbage it within a day or two.

However, believe it or not, before I even moved from the phone, it rang again, and yes, and you have already guessed that, of all people, it was Florence. She, too, had no real reason to call me, and it amazed us both when I told her what had just happened and she said, “Yes, I do need to talk to Margaret and had no idea how to do it, but, really, Ethel, I wasn’t thinking of her when I called you.”

In a daze I sat there and felt as if I had been used by someone or something. That I had been nothing but a Tool. Because, with no conscious thought, I had been the connecting link between two people who needed to reach each other and didn’t know how. It has remained one of those things that puzzle me to this day.

Another ESP ‘thing’ that we disregard, but if we live around animals, we know they have it.   Tales abound. My brother-in-law Jake had a Dachshund, and they read each other’s minds, and when Jake was returning from being gone for a day or week, that dang dog sensed his coming and sat by the door, and when he began jumping up and down and whimpering, Gram knew Jake was near. And he was. Again, don’t ask me how it happened, but it did.

There was a time when there were Milkmen, who using horse-drawn wagons. delivered our milk early in the a.m. and the tales told are many. It took but a week or so, for the horse to ‘know’ the route and so the man could leave the ‘stops’ up to the horse and he could nap, read, whatever, and the horse would stop at the right places.

As a young man my Granddad, as all men did, had a horse, and he said that at night, and no matter where he was in the valley, he could go to sleep and the horse would take him home.

And there’s the life-saving tale of a man on horseback, who lived in Bennion, when the valley’s west side was entirely open fields and, he got caught one night when an unexpected blizzard hit.

Blinded by snow and freezingly cold, he knew he could never find his way home, and so  put his life in the hands of God and his  horse.  He dropped the reins, gave his horse a ‘slap’  on its  rump,  huddled down to get any warmth he could get  from the back of the horse and, resigned his life to Fate. Within  half an hour they were at the barn and safe..

Without lights or other landmarlks,  the man was helpless but the horse knew where they were. Whatever ESP is, it’s hard to prove, that is, if it needs proving. It isn’t scientific, but far, far more than that, and don’t ask me to tell you ‘how’, because I can’t. I only know that it always was and still is.

The brain, as well as the heart, stomach, lungs, kidneys and on and on, can be weighed for size, heft and dissected, But the Mind? It uses the brain, but it is not the brain. And so vital that, no matter how good a body, or how much money one has, without the Mind we are just a body, nothing more.

Traveling the inward pathway to the Mind is the longest journey we’ll ever take.   But, so often without our permission or request, it uses me and it uses you and if you ever find out what ‘it’ is, tell me. But in the meantime and whatever it is, isn’t it great?????