I Search for Some Items

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “I Search for Some Items.” Listen to this episode.

Sometimes the perfect piece comes into your life at just the right time, naturally and exactly as it was meant to be. Welcome to episode 28 of My True Ghost Stories. I was raised around many faiths in the neighborhood and in my family, and everyone participating in these different spiritual practices was devout, totally believed, and wonderfully put no pressure on me as a young person to believe what they believed. Nobody was saying, this is how you have to be. All these people talked about what worked for them.

They made efforts to expose me to their practice and left me alone to make my own choices. I'm very lucky that way. For example, my neighbors down the block took me to their Lutheran church. My grandparents took me to Catholic church. My dad taught me how to meditate with Buddhist chants.

My grandma took me to Quaker meeting. Other neighbors introduced me to their orishes. There was a Christian science reading room on my corner. And my mom openly discussed spiritual connections with plants and the earth. And she threw in some pagan rituals too.

And I loved it all. The messages, the rituals, the altars, the routine, the structure I took it all am. And I have been unable to pick one. I have tried so many times over the years to choose a religion and go fully into it. But I, growing up exposed to so much good spiritual stuff, I cannot choose one over the other.

And it is my own path unique to me. My path is that my spiritual practice involves a piece of all these influences from my childhood. Once during a conversation with a Catholic priest about trying to choose a path, I explained to him all of my childhood influences and how I loved them all. And he said, well, if you, for instance, wanted to be fully Catholic, you would have to give up these other practices and choose Catholicism. Or he said, smiling, you could just keep doing what you're doing.

And I took that as his approval of that to keep doing what I'm doing. And that's what I did. I honored them all. And I continued all the practices that I'd picked up as a kid. And when I started to do this work, intentionally going into haunted spaces and talking to sad and sometimes angry ghosts, I knew when I started this, that I was gonna need to step up my spiritual game for protection, to have a solid foundation.

So I realized I needed to add something to my practice. And that was altars, plural. I had one altar already dedicated to St. Michael, which I talked about in episode 26. And when I thought back to what I loved about those religions of my childhood, a big part of it was the statues, the shrines, the idols and the icons.

And I got so excited about bringing these things into my house. The process of adding the multiple altars to my home took a while. It took a while because for me, when it comes to obtaining spiritual things, I either wait for physical objects that I need to cross my path, or I go look for them in person. In this situation, I couldn't just go online and order supplies for four different altars and then set them up three days later. No.

Each altar had to form from the universe, which needs to happen in person. So I consulted in person, clergy, pre-stesses, and practitioners for information and guidance. I went to churches, botanicas and yard sales for statues and pedestals. I researched offerings and altars, songs and ceremonies. And little by little, over the course of probably a year, I had three altars in place, with a morning routine of prayer and meditation that set me up to be guided all day and protected all day.

But one idol was still missing. And it was Bodhisattva Kanon. When I was a kid, my dad was a practicing Buddhist, which he still is sort of, although he has added some other practices, the Buddhism remains. So growing up in the house, there was a statue of Bodhisattva Kanon, who was the Buddhist deity that represents compassion. And Kanon was the main religious symbol in my house and she watched over us all from a high shelf in the living room.

We also had a plaque on the wall in the kitchen, with the opening lines of the Kanon invocation, written in Japanese and English. And this is the chant that my dad taught me as a kid. And that was the first spiritual ritual of my life, chanting that chant every morning. Kanon lived on a high shelf in my living room, but we did take the statue down sometimes, for instance, to perform a wedding ceremony. Kanon was the officiant at the joining in Holy Matrimony of my Barbie and my G.I.

Joe. Barbie wore a white wedding dress made by my mother, and G.I. Joe wore his military uniform. They stood in front of Kanon. Well, I held up G.I.

Joe and my little brother held up Barbie, and the ceremony was beautiful. And as far as I know, they had a long, happy marriage in that box in my mother's attic. So on my adult quest that I've been talking about, to honor all the faiths of my past and set up alters all around for guidance and protection, I, a few years ago, put out an intention into the universe to bring me a statue of Bodhisattva Kanon. And I trusted it would happen. And while I waited for Kanon to appear, I began to research this deity of compassion so that when the statue did arrive, which I knew it eventually would, I would know what to set up and what prayers to say.

I took out a book from the library. As I said, I don't use the internet for this type of stuff. It has to be imparson or imprint. And the book was called The Gods of Northern Buddhism. Their history, iconography and progressive evolution through the northern Buddhist countries.

And the book was by Alice Getty. It was published originally in 1914, but this was a copy from 1962. And it was big and musty and full of information. The first chapter was about Buddhism in general, which I read every word of. And then the next section was about all the Buddhist deities.

I took that book with me on a weekend trip to the Jersey Shore, which I do fairly regularly. And there, that Saturday morning, I set up my coffee, my travel altar, set my prayers in meditation, and then opened the big musty library book. Since I had already read the first chapter all about Buddhism in general, that Saturday morning I went directly to the chapter about Kanon. And reading about this deity, I became very grateful that I had been raised with this influence of compassion, presiding over my family from that high shelf in the living room. And I was grateful that I had chanted that chant every day as a kid, even though I did not know what the words that I was chanting meant.

I believe I invoked this compassion by the magic of this kind of thing. And it really helped me to be compassionate. For instance, when I was little, I used to carry dry cat food around in my co-pockets in case I ever met a hungry cat. And I'm sure my younger brothers and sisters will probably disagree with this next statement about their mean older sister. But I was a fairly compassionate kid.

And I think I have Kanon plus my upbringing to thank for that. After reading that chapter, that Saturday morning at the shore, I went to the beach to meditate and ask for further instructions from the universe. I was ready to assemble an altar. I was just waiting for the materials. As I said earlier, altar pieces have to come to me by human hands.

There needs to be a conversation, contact with another human being, an exchange of energy, or at least the knowledge of the origin of the object. It's very old school, but it's how I have to do it. So I had one last altar to put together, my altar to Kanon. I let go and trusted that the universe would present the materials in its own time. That weekend down the shore, my boyfriend and I took a little trip to the main avenue.

Every Jersey Beach vacation town has one. Has lots of souvenir stores, antique stores, little restaurants, a pizzeria or two, a drugstore, and a hardware store for the locals. We were walking past a large thrift store that looks like it used to be a Woolworth or something. And some of you might know what Woolworth is. And inside this large store, they have little booths for different vendors.

The vendors aren't there, just the friendly cashiers and the workers who may be volunteers. The whole place has a very hometown local feel to it. As we walked past the first of the two entrances, my boyfriend said, I think there's something in here for you, and he's quite intuitive as well. So we went in. We walked around inspecting the different booths for a while, and nothing was presenting itself as being for me.

There were some things that were definitely not for me, like the hot pink sequined blazer, or the set of 10 Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer placemats. So we kept walking around looking for what might be for me. Not with an urge to buy something, anything. We're not really shoppers, but with the idea that if it was there, it would be obvious. It would speak to us.

We went in and out of booths, finding nothing. So we decided to split up and look, the place is really big. I went into a booth, lots and lots of CDs. I was already beginning to experience shopping fatigue, also known as decision fatigue, which is a real thing. And I tend to just stop shopping when I experience this.

So that day, in order to keep looking and not give up, I decided not to start sifting through the CDs, and truly overwhelm myself with remembering different songs, and maybe that's what's for me. This song, the universe wants me to listen to Peter Paul and Mary, Led Zeppelin, and that was not it. The thing for me was not a song. So I just left that booth and headed for the next. And the entrance to the neighboring booth, the booths are all sort of sectioned off by shelves and pegboards.

I saw some Christian religious pictures propped up on one of the eye-level shelves. Okay, this might be the booth. I thought to myself, although I could tell those pictures were not something for me. We were looking for. There's nothing wrong with them.

I just knew I would know it when I saw it. I looked around the booth. Crystal bowls, more Christian pictures, some nice pod holders. No, no, no. And then I paused in the middle of the back wall of the booth.

Looking down to the bottom shelf at a metal picture frame, and a small porcelain lamp-based shaped like a flamingo. And I got a message. Look up. So I scanned my gaze slowly through the shelves, more religious pictures, napkin holders, children's books, and there. In the center of the top shelf, looking out over us all, just like in my childhood living room, was a statue of Bodhisattva Kanon.

I called to my boyfriend, who was a few booths away. Come over here, come here, I found it. He rushed over and entered the booth I was standing in. I looked at him and pointed up to the statue. There it is.

I announced. There it is. He agreed. We had found the thing for me that was in this store. I wanted to be 100% that this was indeed Kanon.

In case for some reason, I did not remember correctly. And while my boyfriend offered to look up the image on his phone, I reminded him that these spiritual quests of mine have to involve human contact. So I called my dad. After he answered, I quickly got to the point. I'm going to send you a picture, I said, excitedly.

Well, okay, he said, go ahead. And we sent him a picture of the statue. It took him in for him to get it. And then he said, okay, I got it. Let me look here.

Well, that's Bodhisattva Kanon. The one that married G.I. Joe and Barbie. Why are you sending me this? My boyfriend and I were too busy high-fiving and hugging to answer any questions he might have had.

But eventually I got back to the phone and said, I'm making an alter. I prayed for a statue of Kanon to be put in my life. I can't believe we found this. I was like yelling into the phone. Okay, my dad said.

And he had no idea about any of that, but he was happy. I was so happy. And he hinted that it's not that unusual to find a statue of Kanon at a thrift store. But I'm here to tell you that I go to thrift stores. And I haven't seen one since.

And this was a few years ago. So I know that this statue was meant for me. My boyfriend and I headed up to the friendly cashiers. They took the colored tag off that tells them which vendor the item came from. And while they rang it up, I blurted out.

I've been praying to find a statue of this deity. I've been studying from a book I got at the library. They were mildly interested and extremely polite. We will tell the vendor for you. He will be happy to know his statue went into good hands, they said.

So more human interaction, more exchange of energy. When I returned to the city, I asked my dad to write out for me the Kanon chant that he had taught me as a kid. I couldn't remember it past the first line. He said I could just print it off the internet, but I said, Dad, please, it has to be in your handwriting. So he agreed.

My mother soon after that by chance or not gave me the plaque with the opening lines of the Kanon chant, the one that was on our kitchen wall when I was a kid. She had found it in the attic and thought I might like to have it. I framed the chant written out by my dad. I placed the plaque from my mom, from my childhood kitchen to the right of it. And these are right beneath the statue of Kanon, who was on the highest shelf in my living room, looking out over us all.

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