Saturday, September 21, 2013

Beauty and the Beast Displaced Fairy Tale

Valerie Sigler



            “ Dr. Jade Princeton!  To  ER!  Dr. Jade Princeton!  To the ER!”
“Aaagghh, it just never stops,” Jade sighed.   “So much for a bite of lunch. and a quick nap,” she whispered to the empty room.  In response,  Jade heard her mother’s gentle chastisement, “Jade, why do work in an inner city hospital with so much stress and despair?  What chaos in your head are you trying to drown out ?”
As hard as it was to admit, maybe her mother was right.  Jade had graduated with honors and was pursued by elite research hospitals across the globe.  Yet, she chose to work where a majority of her patients were severely impoverished.   At the end of the day (on days that actually had an nd), Jade felt like she had brightened a few lives and her compassion eased a few pains.
            “Dr. Jade Princeton to ER, Stat!”  Shaken out of her reverie, she threw on her lab coat and rushed down the hallways.  Directed into Room 7, Jade listened as the nurse brought her up to date:  Male, amnesia, age unknown but guessed to be mid-60s from appearance,  found unconscious at the back of a restaurant, regained consciousness on the way to the hospital, de-hydrated, and malnourished.   After listening to the litany of symptoms, Jade glanced up at the gentleman.
            And stopped in her tracks.   His eyes.  Those violet eyes.  Why did they seem so familiar?  When she looked into his eyes a history she did not know paraded through her memory.  Who was this man and what was happening to her?  She stumbled forward and stammered, “Do you know your name?  Do you know how you came to be behind the restaurant?  When was the last time you ate?”  His only response was a slightly Irish, “I don’t know.”  Ordering an IV of fluids and an MRI, Jade promised to check back in on him soon.
            No concussion.  Some scrapes and bruises, but no serious injuries.  And no  answers.  Weeks passed and Jade ordered test after test after test.  No answers.  Even when Jade had a few hours off of work, she was haunted by her amnesia patient.  He had regained his sense of humor, regularly entertaining the hospital staff with his quick wit.  The staff had taken a poll and decided Mr. John Doe would now be referred to as Mr. Adam Kane.   Mr. Kane’s attitude was upbeat, but his body continued to deteriorate.  The staff routinely brought him chocolate cake and ice cream, but his weight kept falling.  Like a time lapsed video, his age seemed to increase exponentially.
            Jade was determined to find answers for the intriguing man with the violet eyes.  She realized, too late, that her interest in his recovery had become personal.  She was inexplicably connected to Adam.  Falling back on her true gift of research, she began to look beyond Western medicine for answers.   In her twenties, Jade traded in her holistic, naturalistic medicinal upbringing for the glint and glamour of Western medicine.  Now, it was time to return to her roots, quite literally, and see if her mother had any healing herbs and roots that might help. 
            Jade took three deep breaths and dialed her mother.  “Mom, my patient needs help and Western medicine doesn’t have the answers.  I need to find a cure for him, will you help?”  That evening, Jade and her mother pored over the yellowed pages of ancient texts in search of clues.  Over the next several days, they pursued rumors, hunted for legends, and read myths about ancient quests to find the elixir of life.  It was then that Jade realized she would travel the world for this man, climb any mountain, search any ocean, or traverse any landscape if it would bring Adam back to health. 
            And so she did just that.   Native American legends told of a plant that grew at the bottom of Crater Lake in Oregon, so she went.  A solitary cactus plant in the African dessert promised fortifying restorative properties.  Jade dissected, studied, and experimented with the plants, but to no avail.  Refusing to become discouraged, she called a monastery in Nepal after reading a story in one of her grandmother’s dusty volumes.  The monk promised to speak with her about a mythical plant if she would travel to see him.  She caught the next flight out.
            Reaching Nepal exhausted, she decided to sleep before traveling to the monastery.  Vivid dreams skipped across her sleep.  She was gardening outside a small stone cottage.  The laughter of children tickled her ears as the sound of waves crashed in the background.  Peace and contentment had never been so complete!  She could smell the bread baking and stew simmering as she crossed the threshold.  Sitting before the fire, reading to the children was … WHAT!  It was the man with the violet eyes.  As the children giggled and rushed over yelling, “Mom, look at the flowers we picked for you!” Jade looked into her children’s violet eyes.   
            Jade awoke expecting to be inside the cottage with her family.  After several minutes, she realized the dream that seemed so much like reality was just a flight of fancy of her subconscious.   Attributing the dream to oxygen deprivation, she dressed to see the monk.  The peace of her dream lingered as she walked the many miles to the monastery. 
Upon arriving, she began to tell the tale of the rapidly aging man with no memory.   The monk abruptly interrupted her by asking, “Is this the man you dreamed of last night?” 
            “How did you know?” 
“To find the answers to your questions, you must to put your Western ideas aside.   In the web of life, all threads are connected.  Dreams are a part of this web.  The man in your dreams, the man in your hospital, is a part of your Soul’s web.  Your partnership is not bound by time, space, or lifetimes.  You have arrived at your answers.”
The monk proceeded to tell Jade of a plant that grows in a high mountain valley whose flower must be picked on the summer solstice after a cleansing rain shower under a radiant rainbow.  “Impossible,” she thought.  “How can I meet so many qualifications?”   It was a week until the summer solstice, 7 days to purify her soul and ask the Universe to guide her to the magical  land of the rare Moon plant. 
Jade’s week in the monastery blessed her with several more dreams of her “family.”  She realized she was visiting past lives and knew for certain she would begin another life with Adam as soon as she returned with the healing flowers of the Moon plant.  Her love and diligence was rewarded as the rainbow blessed the plucking of the petals.
            Back at home, Jade and her mother concocted a concentrated tea for Adam to ingest for 7 days beginning on the full moon.  Each day, Adam began to look younger and younger until he returned to his youthful look of 34.   The memories of his past lives with Jade were the first to resurface.  He, too, remembered the stone cottage with the violet eyed children. 
            On the seventh day, Jade went into Adam’s room and he patted the bed and invited her to sit down.  Once settled, he took her hand and said, “I remember why I was in America.  I came to find you, the woman of my dreams.”
            Adam recovered quickly after ingesting the herbal concoction.  Jade continued her research into the disease that had afflicted Adam. After uncovering and explosing a subterfuge by a Big Pharma company to create a “disease” so they could “discover” a multi-billion dollar cure, Jade’s life was in danger.   Adam whisked Jade off to safety in a familiar stone cottage which they filled with laughing, violet eyed children while she continued her research.  The entire family had gone back to their "roots"  and found the joyful place they had inhabited in previous lifetimes.


*JADE: 
Green Jade is a stone with a heart of healing. 
Flow of well-being and balance. 
Nourishing vibrations. 
Beneficial effect upon one’s dream life. 
Growth of one’s chi or life force energies.
Aids in emotional and physical well being
Broadcasts peace and loving-kindness
Believed to endow possessor with ability to interpret dreams
Detox effect on the body
Symbolizes renewal
Chinese tradition symbolization:  wisdom, justice, compassion,
                modesty, and courage.
SEVEN:
                        Ruling planet – Neptune
                        Color – Green
                        Gemstone- Moonstone
                        Intellectual, philosophical, imaginative, psychic
                        Search for meaning of life and the hereafter
                        In tune with nature
                        Peaceful nature
                        Spiritually motivated
                        Loving science, medicine, and research
                        Wise
                        Higher knowledge and the understanding of the mystery of life

VIOLET/PURPLES:
                        Color of good judgment
Color of people seeking spiritual fulfillment
Brings peace of mind.
 Purple is a good color to use in meditation.
Purple has been used to symbolize magic and mystery, as well as     royalty.
color of purpose
associated with the Crown chakra
violet is associated with imagination and inspiration.
associated with mysticism and purification.
sharpen psychic awareness, connection with higher self, and to increase imagination and inspiration


The Ouroboros or Uroboros[a] is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.

The Ouroboros often symbolize self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished. While first emerging in Ancient Egypt, the Ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus. It is also often associated with Gnosticism, and Hermeticism. Carl Jung interpreted the Ouroboros as having an archetypal significance to the human psyche.[citation needed] The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.[1]

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