BY ELLEN FENNER — We all have a moment we can look back on and see divine intervention that we didn’t necessarily recognize at the time. For me it was the day an angel (see photo) sat me down at her kitchen table and fed my starving soul.

In the spring of 1984, I returned home from my second year at college completely dejected. I had lost control of everything I’d ever imagined myself to have any control over. When I decided not to go back the next year, I gave up a full-tuition scholarship and set myself adrift.For five months I languished at my parents home in rural New Hampshire, unable to move forward. They did their best to help me get going again but the terror was overwhelming. Instead of enjoying the prime of my youth, I was paralyzed.

My parents had begun renting the other side of their farmhouse to a new tenant. She was a woman from Chicago who had moved to New Hampshire to help start a publishing company in our small town.

I (in the picture to the left) would see her come and go, and once in a while my dad would send me over to her side of the house to call upstairs and see if she wanted some lunch with us. She was a writer and I felt a little bad about interrupting her in the middle of her work but I’d force myself to do it.

We’d all sit down around the table and talk. This fascinating woman had the most interesting view of the world, and told us stories about the people she was meeting and all that she was learning about them.

She was a city girl in her late thirties and had totally uprooted herself by moving to NH. She had no sense of what it was like to live on a farm, so my dad helped her get used to it by letting the sheep out to chase her! One day she even ended up on the roof of her car while Dad chuckled at her as he watched from inside the house.

At his urging, I’m sure, she invited me over to her kitchen one afternoon. I was completely unprepared for the directness of her question:

“Ellen, are you gay?”

I was caught off guard. “Uh . . . yes . . .” I stammered back.

She just said, “I thought so . . .”

Much of my distress at college had begun with this revelation about myself. I braced myself for the lecture that I thought was coming.

She began to tell me her understanding of why gay people exist in the world. To my surprise, she didn’t tell me that I was wrong or bad. Instead, she helped me to understand my place in the world and the progression of life in general, since it was clear to me that mine was not going to follow a “normal” trajectory. She told me stories about how gay people throughout history had existed to change the consciousness of society.

We discussed the population crisis and how homosexuals were a way for the universe to put the brakes on a bit. I began to understand that it was up to me to create my own concept of life. She urged me to “just take one step. It doesn’t matter what direction — JUST MOVE!”

We talked for hours, and though my memories of the specific conversation are spotty now, I still feel the opening of my heart as she peeled back the white knuckles of my mind, one by one, to reveal a light in me that I had forgotten was there.

Years later, after I’d fallen out of touch with her, I overheard someone in Florida talking about this amazing woman she’d just learned of named Caroline Myss. My ears perked up, and I flashed back to that farmhouse kitchen encounter in 1984. “You know Caroline?” I asked the woman. She replied, “Doesn’t everybody? If they don’t, they should!”

I had no idea that Caroline, this wonderful thinker and writer who wore fancy fur coats in rural New Hampshire and had been afraid of a bunch of sheep, had since gone on to deliver to the rest of the world the same message of clarity and redemption that she had given me in the infancy of her work as a mystical Medical Intuitive, spiritual teacher and author. As the woman in Florida said, “If you don’t know Caroline, you should.”

Thank you, Caroline Myss, for devoting your life to sharing your message.

Ellen is a writer and artist living in central Florida, immersed in the suburban dream of her youth, but with the perspective of a lifetime of unconventional experiences and spiritual searching. Check out Ellen’s humor-fueled blog, Downright E-fenzive.

GUEST COLUMN: REBECCA JONES *— When I met my husband, then-roommate, he was living in the basement of our shared student apartment. We became friends simulating Star Wars battles with toy light sabers and fell for each other watching a Ghostbusters marathon. Sheltered from the world, we seemed to have more similarities than differences.

To be quite honest, it still sits strangely when I hear people say I married a “Muslim man.” I feel like I fell in love with a boy who happened to be Muslim. That was almost 10 years ago.

But just because I fell in love, didn’t mean I fell in love with his faith.

* Rebecca Jones is a pen name requested by the author to protect her family from any potential backlash.

We had many debates about the relative strengths of Islam and Christianity. While I conceded that Islam was certainly a recognized and perfectly acceptable path to the divine, I swore I would never convert.

I have always been a closet spiritual seeker, rather than overtly religious. Raised as a Baptist, I was taken to church weekly by my parents and was often moved by the self-less nature of Jesus and the teachings of the New Testament. I studied many religions in university, eager to see into other ways of being and believing. I was curious but not particularly drawn to any new path.

However, over time I did become Muslim — and I have practiced Islam for almost six years.

At first it was horribly awkward and terrifying. There were prayers to memorize in Arabic, and rituals to emulate. And this wasn’t a popular time for the move I made, coming just months after the 9/11 attacks (we live in the northeast).

Plus, Islam seemed to have a rule for everything! I gave up pork and alcohol. I taught myself how to pray by watching a video I ordered from the internet. The rites and language seemed very foreign, and I felt that I didn’t have the same connection to God I had once had.

But as time passed and I came to know and love many of my “brothers” and “sisters” in Islam, and as I memorized prayers and practiced rituals, I came to love Islam. I had accepted Islam intellectually and rationally long before — but the day I made my Shahada (declaration of faith) supported by my sisters in Islam, it truly entered my heart.

Islam means “submit,” and I have come to see that abandoning ego and submitting to certain directives and rituals in pursuit of something higher can create a sense of peace and certainty.

For sure, I’ve witnessed prejudice, misunderstand and blowback — especially given the tensions surrounding the war on terror, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that are the response of our governments to 9/11.

This everyday example is relatively harmless, but happens often: My mom owns a hair salon where she caters to an older set of grey haired ladies. One day an elderly woman commented to my mom that during Ramadan the Skydome in Toronto had been converted into a makeshift mosque to hold the thousands of Muslims who lived in the area. “Can you imagine?” she said, bewildered by the fact. “Where do you think all of those Muslims came from?”

My mom stopped cutting and pointed to a picture of my husband and I that she keeps on her hairdressing stand. “You see those people that you look at every week when you get your hair done?” my mother asked. The woman looked closer. “Well those people are Muslims!” my mom declared with pride. “That’s my daughter and my son-in-law. Muslims are everywhere! You might even know some!”

Many people have questions when they meet a Muslim convert for the first time. “Really? You converted? Do you mind if I ask you why?” Or, “What did your parents say?”

Well, my parents are accepting people who actually know a lot about Islam, and often educate others about it. They know that we worship God, and that the Arabic word for God is Allah. They know that we don’t worship the sun or moon. They know that we honor many of the same stories and prophets as Christians, including Abraham, Moses, Noah and Jesus.

We don’t think Jesus was God but we do think he was sent from God to teach us how God wants us to live. We respect other religions and don’t believe there is any compulsion in religion. We love peace and family and are hardworking members of the community. And I guess those are all of the reasons I converted — that, plus I love a boy who just happens to be Muslim.

ANONYMOUS — Sometimes I feel fondly — even grateful — for hitting what I consider rock bottom . . . so long as I never have to visit there again.

If there’s a contest between life’s ups and downs, ups are in. Some people pop pills to stay up.

Up is nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but I also believe that down is a place where you can do some foundation work for a personal renovation.

My downward journey started . . .

with an early-childhood pattern of dysfunction. I remember playing Monopoly with my brothers while my parents fought loudly downstairs, or writing silly songs in my bedroom while my parents fought loudly downstairs.

You get the idea. As often as possible I would find a bubble of escape — sometimes to friends’ homes for sleepovers, where I would get a dose of “up.”

The goofy banter at their breakfast tables was a sweet symphony compared with the cacophony of crying and pleading in our house. My parents split up when I was a teenager, yet my diaries reflect nothing dark from those days. They’re all about “Mom’s yummy fudge!”, or “the cute guy who smiled at me in the elevator.”

Writing my life “up,” however, didn’t make it so.

Marrying ‘normal’

I thought I was smarter than everyone when I married a very nice guy with “normal” parents. I’d show my family. Marriage and stability were easy. I could make mine last because I had found love.

But I had a little magnet inside me that kept pulling me to darkness, or darkness to me.

In a picture of us camping, he is kissing our dog’s head and has his arm around me. His devotion is clear to me now. He respected me, but back then I didn’t believe anyone could.

I was in a constant state of fear, bracing myself for when it would all end, when he would leave me for a sweet co-worker or hot neighbor.

“Up,” in other words, didn’t feel natural. After seven years, the marriage was over.

From divorce to down time with a lost soul

After I left him, boy did I visit some darkness. I found a lost soul, a heavy equipment operator in whose presence I felt used, dirty, small and afraid. Something inside me would never allow me to move in with him.

I felt strangely at home in his madness, but would always return home, into the light.

Saturday: Shooting hoops at the local rec centre, just the two of us. I’m losing. First he tries to show me how to shoot, but I keep missing. He’s getting annoyed. I let out a nervous laugh. Quite suddenly, his face tenses up and turns red and he screams, enraged:

“YEAH SO I’M A BETTER ATHLETE THAN YOU. FUCKING GET OVER IT!”

Huh? I back away slowly. The front desk guy comes in and checks if everything’s okay. My boyfriend says, “yeah” and smirks. When the coast is clear, he grabs my left breast.

Sunday: Back in my apartment, the sun streams through the lace curtains. I bake muffins and savor them with a pot of strawberry tea. After breakfast, I walk half an hour through town to the local beach. A group of friends are waiting with guitars. I’ve brought mine, too. I play and sing for hours in the sand with positive, friendly people, enjoying the sun on my face. Even more wonderful is the absence of tension. This is how life should be, isn’t it? But I really should be getting back.

Darkness, light. I juggled those for a year until I was almost hopelessly sucked into the darkness.

I tried to leave the scary guy several times but had a disturbing, recurring thought:

“I don’t want to be happy. I want to be with him.”

When I bounced this line off my younger brother, he laughed and said that that would be a wonderful T-shirt for women who shack up with abusers.

I was smart enough to see the ridiculousness of my ways, always kept a foot on the upside — and one day left the darkness for good.

The light had always surrounded me, but I finally chose to live there.

Life has small, manageable ups and downs. The world is full of darkness, but none as dark as what can happen inside one’s own head.

Today, I’m surrounded by so much sunshine from every angle that I can’t believe I ever let myself slide into that deep, dark pit. The memory of my little “visit” still makes me sick to my stomach. But I had to touch bottom before springing back up.

The author chose not to share that she was stalked at the time she wrote this, in addition to the situation that she described above. Soul’s Code adds it to the record as a testament to our contributor’s capacity to transcend the circumstances of story and narrative.

BY CASSANDRA KELLY — Sometimes, to amuse myself, I think about the parallels between my life and the lives of those that our society has deemed “famous” or “stars.” For instance, I grew up in poverty — so did Gloria Estefan.  I’m a pilates lover and so is Jen Anniston.

And so this is how Arnold surfaced into my consciousness.  His recent declaration of infidelity, which produced a child with his ex-housekeeper, blew peoples’ minds — except for those who believe everything they read in the National Enquirer and an explosive expose in the L.A Times detailing a history of sexual harassment that Schwarzenegger’s proxies attacked in the final days of his election to become California’s governor.

It seems that Arnold and I both shared parallel secrets. In public: monogamous. Behind the scenes, not so much

To date, similar to Arnold, I’ve been living a life of non-responsible, non-monogamy (the old “don’t ask, don’t tell” routine which so many people embrace).  However, if I had the guts, I would probably be living a life of responsible non-monogamy.

Yet it would be a huge gamble to give up the safety-net of a committed relationship and throw myself into a sea of unknown forces. Like many, I’m not brave enough to do that.

Is this a problem? Well, it wouldn’t be if I had maintained singleton status throughout my life.  But I haven’t.

I’ve had three major long-term relationships, and have cheated (such an ugly, yet accurate, word) on all of my significant others . . . starting with my first boyfriend at age 15.

The history of my discontent

With Boyfriend 1 (BF1) the infidelity was with his cousin— in a horse stable, of all places.  Come to think of it, this is probably the genesis of where my leather fetish started

These activities were just minor “fooling around” really . . . not the full Monty of intercourse.  I waited until I arrived at college before I unleashed a full non-monogamous onslaught, but only after BF1 had tried to break up with me a few times, so I guess I felt justified in my actions.

Sort of a ‘you hurt me, I’ll hurt you scenario’.

With my next major relationship, I was monogamous with Boyfriend 2 for a few years, until he told me that HE had been unfaithful. This was incredibly upsetting, and perhaps was what later gave me a sense of carte blanche to start an affair with one of our married friends.

On to Major Relationship # 3, my current and longest-term relationship. Nope, still not monogamous . . . and although we went through some tough periods where I thought he might have had an affair, I got over that and moved on. Well, I moved on . . . into the arms of another person for two year long, messy affair that ended badly.  Did I learn my lesson?  Time will tell!

So what’s the deal here? Am I some kind of freak of nature? Am I trying to have my cake and eat it too, like our friend Arnold?

Or is the fact that I have tried to fit my personality and taste for variety into a monogamous way of life not realistic for me, and in fact, for many other people?

Let’s talk about. . . responsible non-monogamy

Recently I’ve uncovered an idea and a lifestyle called responsible non-monogamy which has opened my eyes to a few home truths.

What I’m currently contemplating is if we, as a society, should use the word “relationship” when trying to define the interactions between husband and wife, girlfriend and boyfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend and boyfriend and boyfriend. As Eckhart Tolle’s companion explains in a piece featured on Souls Code, just using the loaded words “in a relationship” sets up a whole dynamic of unhealthy expectations.

Have you tried a responsible or a non-responsible, non-monogamous lifestyle?  Have you tried to interact with partners outside of the definition of “relationships?” Feel free to share your positive and negative experiences via the comments section.

Hint: It isn’t meth. Simply holding a few colored gemstones healed my mind, body and spirit. Crystals rock!

BY SUSANNA BELLINI — I once met a woman, a former geologist who after years of handling stones eventually discovered they held energetic and spiritual properties. She left geology to become a healer.

Years later, at a very low point in my life where I struggled in an unhappy relationship and was about to lose a big freelance IT contract, that woman—and my own experience with her healing stones—kept coming to mind.

I remembered the first time I held the crystals and experienced vivid visions, powerful emotions and a feeling of familiarity, like coming home.

When my relationship finally ended, badly and painfully,  I was distraught. So I booked a crystal healing session and leapt on the first train from London to Brighton, arriving on my crystal healer’s doorstep in tears.

We went straight into a deep healing session and I floated out and away from my body, right out into the vastness of space.  Far below me, I felt her placing the blue quartz on my heart.

Physically it felt as though my heart was breaking open, then like cracks or lines of energy spreading out from the centre, and finally, like space and opening out and warmth.

Tears ran down my face, but they were tears of release and gratitude. There was no pain, no replay of any emotions or circumstances.  It was kind of like being operated on under local anesthetic; while part of me could feel real physical sensations part of me was floating amongst the stars.

Then at some point I lost all awareness of physical sensations and was entirely out of body. I was somewhere beautiful, being shown things, surrounded by loving beings, wandering in the beauty of the stars and the magnificence of the universe, the dark vastness of space.

Coming around at the end of the session, my heart, or more accurately my heart chakra, the centre of my chest, felt as if bruised. It remained this way for a few days.

Mentally and emotionally I felt light, clear, clean, positive, as fresh and new as if I’d just been reborn.

I didn’t have the slightest residual painful thought of that relationship or that person, then, or ever again.

How I became a crystal healer

I’d already loved and responded to the crystals.  Now, knowing they were capable of such heart healing, I determined to become a crystal healer and share such beauty with others.

My first crystal healer taught me how to dowse the chakras, taught me the meanings and ways of working with stones and introduced me to Katrina Raphaell’s lovely books.

Since my friend wasn’t a teacher and I wanted to become a qualified practitioner, I completed an accredited two year Crystal Healing Diploma.  While this took away some of the magic for me, I felt it was necessary to take care of the statutory and legal requirements of training.

I felt a duty to my clients to learn first aid, anatomy and physiology, counselling skills, etc. as well as extensive academic and practical study of crystal and gem therapy, in order to be the best and safest therapist I could be.

I became a crystal healer and eventually a teacher of crystal healing practitioners in my turn. Eventually all the magic came back.  With the experience and wisdom I have now, I seek to teach with a balanced mix of magic and comprehensive practical training.

What to look for in a healer

If you are looking for a crystal healer, or crystal healing training, I recommend that you find someone offering a mix of magic and grounded training and experience.

Go to someone who loves the stones, whose stones sparkle with life and who is also caring, practical, and down-to-earth.  Find someone you feel intuitively safe with, someone with some training, some practical experience and a lot of loving wisdom.

If you just want to start discovering a bit about crystals and how their energy works — go and choose some that attract you.  Hold them, meditate with them, place them somewhere lovely in your home and notice what happens.

If you can do some kind of experiential live or online workshop to learn about different ways of working with your stones, a good grounding in the basics will save you time and is invaluable. Then explore, discover and learn from the crystals themselves.  Only then read the crystal reference books and guides, to confirm your own real experience.

This way, your discovery of crystals will be a strong, wonderful, enlightening journey.

Susanna Bellini teaches crystal healing online and at her centre in York, UK.  Visit her at Bronze Dragon.  Her recent article for Soul’s Code was Enlighten yourself while you sleep.