Since before graduate school, I had the feeling that something wasn't quite right with the life I had planned for myself, but I didn't know what to do to change it or make it better. I continued on the scientific path.  In the middle of my PhD program I earned my Master's and began teaching at the University of Portland.  I was struggling with whether I should finish the PhD.  It wasn't until I was sitting in front of the computer working on a journal paper that the thought came to me, "If I have to do this for the rest of my life, I might as well shoot myself in the head."  Luckily, that was a huge wake up call and I didn't own a gun.

Just days later my first husband brought home Julia Cameron's new book, The Artist's Way, as a birthday present.  I had been wishing to be more creative, and supposedly this book was a process that lead to greater creativity.  For me, it was a door into a conscious spiritual path, one to which I was not at all open.  In fact, at the time I was a confirmed skeptial atheist, so this idea of a Higher Power, and help from the unseen seemed like a lot of bunk.  But, I was so miserable, I was willing to give the book a chance.

The process worked for me.  I became happier, at ease with myself, and more aware of the belief system I had put in place around my life, and what I could do to change it.  Slowly my relationships, my work, and my world began to improve.  I still taught physics labs, but I was engaging more and more of my creativity and allowing myself to be happy doing so.  In the years that followed I allowed myself to go back to the piano, to earn an advanced belt in karate, to learn to rock climb, and I wrote a novel and several short stories---I thought that I had found a new career path by becoming a creative writer.

Then, my life once again fell apart.  I suddenly became so ill I couldn't do any of the things that had helped me become the happy person I now was.  I left teaching because I felt so physically ill.  What was more frustrating was that western doctors could offer me no relief.  Once again I was driven by desperation; a friend suggested I try acupuncture, and I did, even though I was skeptical.

Soon after I began having the strange experience of being aware of my energy system.  I actually saw energy, noticed it in others, and found this all very disturbing.  The year before I had read Julia Cameron's book, The Vein of Gold, another book on deepening the creativity I had tapped into after completing the Artist's Way.  In it she had talked about how as a person embraces more of their creative gifts, their intuitive gifts also open up for them.  At the time I thought it was an interesting concept, but not necessarily something that could happen to me.  Now it was happening to me.

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