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by Jim Holman.
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I Could Not Hypnotize Myself

How One Returned To The Church, Part 1

Editor's Note: The following story is condensed from Prodigal Daughters: Catholic Women Come Home to the Church, edited by Donna Steichen and published by Ignatius Press. The 375 page book costs $14.95. To order, call (800) 651-1531, or visit Ignatius' website at www.ignatius.com.

By Maureen Cassidy Quackenbush

When I was a child, I was always interested in magic. Not stage tricks but the kind of magic found in fantasy stories. My favorite books were about children who found magic rings or stones, or ended up in magic lands that no one else knew about.

I was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Until I was twelve, we lived in a log house my parents built, on a lake near Collegeville, the hamlet where St. John's University is located. I have two younger brothers, close to me in age. My parents had grown up in strong Catholic families. But a variety of things caused my parents to leave the Church when I was very young.

My two brothers and I were baptized, and I recall going to Mass in the big cement church at St John's Abbey with the little lights in the ceiling and the big wall made of thick chunks of glass.

I must have absorbed something [from religion] because it took me years to overcome my inhibition about using the name of God without lowering my voice and feeling presumptuous. I remember asking my mother to teach me the prayers to say on the rosary, too, and trying it out a few times before forgetting it. I don't think I noticed when we stopped going to Mass, nor whether there was any unease about it on my parents' part.

The social unrest of the 60's was of intense interest to my parents. We watched Walter Cronkite unfold the Vietnam saga every night during dinner, until casualties came to seem pretty casual. As McGovern supporters, my parents were deeply concerned that Richard Nixon was running for President. All the kids at school positively gloated at me when he won, since it proved them right (winners were right) and me -- the sole, lowly Democrat -- wrong. This only confirmed my self image as an enlightened misfit.

Sometime later, while still in junior high, I really wanted my parents to settle the question once for all: is there a God, or not? The film, Jesus of Nazareth, had moved me, and I'd read a book about life-after-death accounts that convinced me we don't simply go out of existence when we die. I begged my parents to tell me what they believed. Mother's answer was "I don't know," and my father's was, "God is love." These were not satisfying answers. Mom seemed sincerely uncertain, and "God is love" sounded empty to me, sort of like "Love makes the world go 'round." I had hoped for a Yes or No. I would have understood that their answer was based in belief, not knowledge, but because I had a very high opinion of their judgement, I would still have taken it as a strong indication of the truth of the matter. But their concern, as they explained a few times, was not to influence my private decision unduly. They seemed to think it would be unjust to form me in a belief system I had not voluntarily chosen, which would leave lasting "hang-ups," as they believed it had done to them.

When we moved to East Eugene, Oregon, the university side of town, I went to an "alternative" school with groovy teachers. It was refreshing, by comparison with the past. Judy, my parapsychology teacher, also taught kundalini yoga. We students all called her by her first name and considered her cool. From her, I learned about the untapped powers of the mind, about centering, relaxation, self-hypnosis, channeling energies of various sorts, chakras (focal energy points in the body), and the "bad vibes" one might encounter in processed white sugar and meat. Judy taught us foot and hand massage, explaining that many illnesses of the body can be cured through yoga and massage. I took her yoga class and tried my utmost to be the ultimately relaxed, flexible and centered person I thought she was. But hard as I tried to please this teacher, I could never achieve those admirable goals. I could not hypnotize myself and watch my subconscious do things; I could not enter the state of stillness and peace where you are at one with the universe and can sense a "light" of some sort.

Judy used to come back from yoga workshops fervent about new techniques she'd learned, and with notable calm teach us how to focus or strengthen our digestive, mental or sexual powers. Believing she had endorsed it, my brother and I went to hear the kundalini evangelist, Yogi Bajhan. His talk was entirely forgettable, but what I unfortunately can't forget is the droning song he taught us, "Happy am I, healthy am I, holy am I." We dutifully chanted it during his talk, and it haunts me to this day. As the Yogi left the room, he touched my brother on the forehead, which instantly cured his pounding headache. Today, I wonder what gave him that headache.

It was during this time that J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings came to the rescue. My brothers and I, with nine acquaintances who had similar interests, formed a club of Tolkien devotees, modestly titled the "White Council." Back in junior high, we had weekly club meetings and went on twice-yearly trips to the coast (with an adult chaperone, until we were older). We had 12 silver rings made and each of us chose an identifying virtue in conjunction with accepting them. We selected an eight-pointed star and a silver flame for our banner. I cherished this group of friends so much that I used to 'pray' for them, in a manner of speaking, by calling each face to mind every night and "sending them white light."

Finally, though, we did start down the dangerous avenue of the occult. It began as an 'innocent' adventure, but soon we found that the Ouija board was working so well and speedily for us that we needed someone on hand just to write the words down before we forgot them. We "spoke" to people out of faraway times and places, and all of them had something to tell us about a mysterious thing called 'zoma' or 'soma.' The meanings were fascinating for us to try to unravel, though the descriptions were often enigmatic: "Soma is the flute in the maze" or "the stone on the fjord" (variations depended on what country the "spirit" hailed from).

Soon the messages started to change, however, and the tone of our gatherings got more ominous as the board began to flatter and finally to 'instruct' us. We were described as "a great white light in the Willamette Valley."

Our enthusiasm for the world of Tolkein's trilogy had kept us childlike in some ways, and our friendships had so far saved us from being drawn in and overwhelmed by the peer pressures and gloom of high school. Still, we were not to escape the drug scene. Regarding ourselves as outside the mainstream, we disdained sports and all official high school activities, except, of course, the recycling club. Yet we were conscientious about our academic responsibilities, and though we scorned that status, were all quite successful students. Despite feeling compelled to do my homework to the best of my ability, I was convinced that my success was meaningless and the school "system" perverse. I didn't have a reasoned critique of high school beyond the convictions I still hold, that the brightest students are not those who get the highest grades, and that schools reward cleverness and obedience more than they teach love of learning, or even how to learn.

Like my family, my friends and I were intellectually rather elitist in our tastes. We didn't watch much television. Together, we disdained things like McDonalds, Republicans, new cars, current fashions in clothes and music, industrial and technological development, and progress. All my clothes came from the army surplus store or the men's section of the thrift shop. We smoked marijuana together, though I hated its oppressive, brain-disconnecting effect.

What the "drug scene" meant for us was not merely a way to escape our troubles, but a desperate hope that for those with eyes to see -- which we maintained drugs would help one acquire -- there might be more to the world than the television ads indicate, or so we desperately hoped. The joyfulness of children had been replaced by the mood-swings and general dullness of the teenager. Life was "depressing," we all agreed. I think now that it was because we were wasting twelve important years of our lives trapped in the artificial school environment.

After high school I went to a Youth Conservation Corps summer camp, whose leaders were exactly my type but just enough older to be real hippies. They were aficionados of the Grateful Dead, interested in preserving the environment and teaching us appreciation for nature, which of course included a religious reverence for Mother Earth and a distaste for humans and their abuse of the world. But it was with these people that I first tried LSD. When I did, I thought I had found the ticket to beauty and intense, mystical friendships no longer separated by anything.

But I kept looking for an encounter with a greater reality, hoping that a perfect love would be part of it. The love I sought was some mixture of romance and ideal friendship. I had not yet realized, as eventually we all must, that complete intimacy, which many people think of as true romantic love, isn't possible between human beings. Our longing for it is in fact our longing for God.

There was a gap between the end of the outdoor school term and the beginning of spring semester at college. While I waited, I worked a number of part-time jobs in Eugene. Thus I began a kind of dreary dream, the ugliest, most miserable months of my life. I turned to men, especially to being loved, or sought after, as a way to find joy. I kept thinking I'd fallen in love, long enough to lure someone into loving me, and then realize I didn't love him after all or that I hadn't really wanted love, but some kind of admiration or glory.

But when I arrived home [from attending a college in Southern Californiawithout plans for the future, I realized I had no idea even how to decide what to do next. My mother proposed that I look into a program for students who wanted to work abroad for a summer, improving their foreign language skills while earning both money and experience. So I applied to go to West Germany, and was accepted for a job working on a farm.

To prepare for it, I started working on a dairy farm outside Eugene and took junior college classes in German. The dairy farm, especially the dairy farmer who couldn't keep his hands to himself, became very unpleasant, and I began to look forward to Europe as an escape.

But in Europe, as in Eugene, I repeatedly got myself into relationships (one with a burgermeister, no less) that started as adventures but turned into embarrassing or even frightening situations. I escaped the troubles in Germany with a trip to England, where I met a man who was supposed to be a travelling partner but wanted to be much more. My subsequent escape back to America was a terrific relief.

I look back on all this and can't quite explain the things I did except to say I felt trapped by my circumstances, as though I were watching myself in chains, but I did not see that it was all caused by my own behavior. I remember looking at myself one night in the mirror -- it was when I was in Germany, but had sneaked away from my host family -- and thought to myself "she's dead"! *

Part two of this story will appear in the January 2000 issue of the Mission.

-- from the Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission, December 1999

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