By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

HAVE you ever felt uneasy without a reason, and suddenly thought of a specific person? That kind of feeling occurred to me three times within the first quarter of 2023, and every time, that person is in a kind of fix or in a hospital, or in a stage of critical transition.

Such thoughts were more frequent when I was in elementary and high school, where I was also certain of having visited places I have never been before. These episodes gradually tapered down in college, as I tried consciously to veer away from them with extra-curricular activities like playing basketball, joining a theater club, trying out a new religion, and writing.

I am trying to look into my past to explain partially this unsettling feeling of connection with energies beyond myself. The closest I can remember is my association with my maternal grandfather.

My grandfather on my maternal side is an herbalist and a healer.  Every school break, we would come down to the lowlands from the mountains of Benguet, where I spent my growing years. I would always wonder why there were so many wild horses in the stables, extending under the terrace, where we often fall down while standing on the ledge, near the chico tree where dried horse manure piled up. I was told later that they were gifts from those he healed, a sign of their gratitude or left with him for unruly behavior. There were also sacks of “ballatinaw” (purple rice), chicken and other animals near the granary where we jumped up and down on the haystacks. These too, were gifts, because according to those who lived with him, he did not accept payments for healing. He also had the habit of taking in people who had nowhere to live, which annoyed some of his children.

He did not go to medical school, but was able to send one of his sons to take up medicine in Manila, who probably didn’t like the profession chosen for him, and came back within the year to pursue other lines of work. In fact, I believe he did not go to formal school at all because the stories he told me were the kind that I later on read in the stories and myths of old civilizations in Mexico. These stories were not from books, as I don’t remember him in the company of books, but probably passed on orally, by his ancestors.

I remember my mother telling me not to peep in the empty room where he meditates, but I did. I saw him, praying over an offering and mumbling prayers in a language I did not understand. At another time, he literally made two eggs dance in space. When I told my mother what I saw, she made the sign of the cross and prayed to the image of the Virgin Mary, holding my hands. She told me not to get too close to my grandfather, and be firm in the religion where I was baptized as a Christian. But my grandfather begins his prayers with, “Maestra Jesas, Maestro Jesus … fill the seas with fish, and the fields with grain ….”

He could predict when the rains would come, the exact time of the day, but he could not anticipate the wild horses crossing over MacArthur Highway and getting run over by Philippine Rabbit buses. He had an uncanny way of knowing, saying, “Natayen ni Baket Insiang” before she even breathed her last. Call it premonition or intuition. Call it anything.

Right now, it is convenient for me to call it the “wave of interconnectivity” with those whose energies we come across with more frequently, where we have established closer relationships, whose vibrations encroach on our own. After all, in its tiniest form, we are all cells, seeking to unite with other cells, creating our wholeness and holiness, finding the unity of our existence.

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