"She might have been laughing with the angels. She might have been laughing with God."

Larissa Kaye Batten (LLbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.

Last week I watched a young, retarded woman in a wheelchair giggling at the ceiling of a supermarket. As I stood there watching, I realized how uncomfortable I sometimes feel in the presence of one who is different from me.

Forever, it seems, I have felt inadequate in being around handicapped people. They are so unfortunate to not have what I have, I have thought to myself. They seem so limited by their handicaps.  I feel so unable to help.

I ask myself: Should I look directly at this person? Should I avoid her eye? Should I smile knowingly? Should I show the person how kind and thoughtful I am by dropping a nickel of change in the can marked "Charity"?

But something happened the day I watched the retarded woman giggling at the supermarket ceiling. I had an epiphany: The woman was giggling at something that amused her, something I couldn’t even see. She might have been laughing with the angels. She might have been laughing with God.

I have become so self-centered in my approach to the "less fortunate" that I have failed to see many of the lessons. Perhaps I have been the one with less fortune.

Is it possible that we live in a society that is so focused on its own limited conception of good fortune that its members have become blinded to the higher notion of good fortune?

Who decided that the handicapped are less fortunate? Who decided that the retarded have so little compared with the rest of us? Who decided to pity the retarded woman giggling along with her spirit world?

I did. We did -- we all did. We have become a society so determined to do the right thing that we ourselves have lost touch with our own reality. Or maybe it is just that. Maybe we have created our own reality for lack of the willingness and courage to look at the truth.

I have a cousin who was born with so many birth defects that our relatives were in anguish at her birth. From that day forward, I, a small child, grew up to feel sorry for my poor, little cousin. She couldn’t see or hear or live like the rest of us. She was different. Therefore, she was less fortunate. Thus, I should pity her. Ultimately, I could not be there for her. I was so caught up in my own self-centeredness that I could not see how she really was just like the rest of us. She wanted to be loved, and held. She wanted to play with her cousins. She wanted to play dress-up and giggle. She wanted to be a little girl. I treated her like a stranger, and to this day am ashamed.

I wonder now if my cousin, in her near blindness, near deafness, and infinite physical and emotional challenges, was and is in touch with a spirit world that the rest of us have too much sight to see.

See, people with good vision and good hearing and such "good fortune" become consumed with our own perceptions of the world. My cousin probably did not have enough good vision and good hearing to spend her time developing such judgments and illusions of the world around her.

My cousin used to turn her baby fingers into people. She would have long, involved conversations with her fingers. Her fingers would have relationships with her other fingers, and I – well, I wondered about that. What kind of child creates a world out of her fingers?

Maybe a child who sees the spirit world that the self-centered are too busy to see.

Perhaps some people are not familiar with the spirit world. I, myself, had never heard about the spirit world until I began to learn about the history of Ireland. For me, Ireland is perhaps the most mystical, untouched, natural and soulful place in the world. Writer John O’Donohue, in his Irish bestselling book Anam Cara, introduced me to the words, "spirit world."

Ireland is known for its strong ties to the "spirit world," or land of spirits and souls that ache and echo and whisper and love and maintain ties with the present, tangible, "real" world.

Perhaps there are many definitions of spirit world. I like to think of the spirit world as a place of infinite love, of spirit, of joy and truth. In simple terms, I think of angels and spirits, of light and wisdom, of different souls I have known. At a deeper level, I think of one, of all love, of all souls, of all truth, as one light, one truth, one knowing.

For those who are called enlightened, the spirit world is at times as plain as day.

My own introduction to the spirit world came when I was so thoroughly traumatized by the aftereffects of years of childhood sexual abuse that I did not feel I could go on.

A new world opened up to me: the spirit world. I became in touch with angels, with my own understanding of God, with "voices" from the other world, with spirits, with people I loved long gone, and so on.

I, of course, assumed I had at last gone over the edge. After all, I grew up in a society that does not believe in any other world than this one. Only crazy people believed in spirits and souls.

I had one spiritual experience that changed my life forever. I was in such emotional pain that I was sobbing in a public restroom begging God for help. I left the bathroom, returned to my chair on the beach, and found a crumpled up piece of paper at my feet. I opened the paper. It was a prayer. At the end of the prayer, the instructions were to say this prayer every day. I have said the prayer every day since.

The first time I said the prayer, I had an experience that was literally out of this world. I was transported into a different time and place. My body, my mind, and my spirit were taken over by a love and truth beyond anything I had ever consciously known. I was exhilarated and devastated all at once. I was simply blown away. I was given a message. And then I called my friend to say I had finally gone around the bend. I told her I must have been hallucinating, what else could explain this event?

Some "less fortunate," crazy, mentally ill, retarded, handicapped, and who-knows-what-else people have been given the gift of being able to access the spirit world. People who have had near-death experiences know what I am talking about. People who talk to their angels understand. Those who listen to spirits guide them can identify with me. People who listen to voices realize this.

I have a dear friend who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, manic depression, alcoholism, and the aftereffects of childhood sexual abuse, among many other things.

She is one of the dearest souls I know, and has struggled more than almost anyone I have ever met.

I would like to know how much of her suffering results from her plethora of diagnoses, and how much from society’s interpretations of them.

Recently, my friend described to me yet again her hallucinations. She told me she was hallucinating while on the telephone with me. She also described some of her past hallucinations.

Not only did I feel privileged to be invited to witness her communication with what I now believe to be the spirit world, but also I was virtually awestruck by it.

Two main thoughts struck me about these hallucinations.

Like myself, my friend appeared to be haunted by the sexual abuse in her past. She seemed to be re-experiencing thoughts, sounds, voices, and feelings from the past. This seemed quite evident in her description of the hallucinations.

Furthermore, my friend seemed to be receiving in some of her so-called hallucinations a gift that is out of this world.

My friend described to me a sense of peace and acceptance and love that seemed unfathomable to her as a possibility in her daily existence. She did, however, express a deep sense of horror at her inability to "return" from this spirit world when she felt she needed to.

I believe I might be the first person in my friend’s life to guide her toward a sense of hope in experiencing these hallucinations.

My friend has been so trained by doctors, medicines, books, friends, relatives, society, and who and what knows else, to see hallucinations as a horrific experience of the insane that she has for the most part failed to see any positive possibilities at all.

Is it possible, as I have learned in my experiences talking to angels and spirits and God, that she has been given the ability to hallucinate as a gift?

Or is she the underprivileged, the less fortunate, the insane woman our society will continue to make her out to be?

I have done a fair amount of work with the elderly in nursing homes. I have heard many of these people talk to voices I myself do not hear. These people are crazy, right?

Or, are they in touch with the spirit world? Are they preparing for their journey home?

As a society, are we willing to look at the other side of hallucinations?

If more of us would act as my friend did, and help us to see the gifts and blessings in the world of the "insane", the elderly, the handicapped, etc., would we perhaps begin to help rather than to hurt?

The next time I watch a young woman giggling at the supermarket ceiling, I will try to not look down upon this woman. I will look back at her because she has a gift I would like to have: a great, beautiful doorway into an understanding of love, of spirit, of soul that perhaps few of us have yet to experience.

And maybe I will smile brightly at her because even if I could not understand the gifts of my cousin, today I can begin to listen to those who have been blessed with them.

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