How a $20 gift to an old, homeless “mother” made for the best day ever.

By Jo Mooy

It was the week before Valentine’s Day. The crush of people, and their cars that usually fill the parking lot outside the grocery store, were not yet up. It was too early in the morning for them. For me, it was the best time to shop. I buy a large cup of coffee, perch it on the basket, and stroll through the entire store buying produce, bakery and deli items and exit before it fills up with “snowbirds.”

I was already dreaming of being back home and sitting on the lanai with the coffee and reading a book when I got out of the car and heard a scratchy voice singing an unknown song. I thought to myself, that song makes no sense. Even the words seemed made up. Then I remembered that my mother did a similar thing. When she did the dishes or worked on some project, she sang or hummed similar songs known only to her. Looking around, I searched for the sound. It was coming from a picnic bench on the sidewalk down a ways from the entrance to the store. Sitting on the picnic bench was a disheveled form, with matted hair, (once curly) sticking out from a ski cap, hunched over a torn paper bag. It was an old woman eating a meager breakfast out of the bag. Her foot was hooked around a shopping cart that was filled with her life possessions. Black plastic bags vied for space with a broom, a dirty pillow, and a boom box from the 1980s. It was attached to a white extension cord that was plugged into the store’s outside electrical outlet. She was singing along to whatever song was playing on the boom box. She never looked up as I walked past her towards the store entrance, but everything about her and the scene she portrayed was etched in my mind because she was the second older homeless woman I’d seen that morning. The other one was lying on the ground in front of the UPS store. The singing woman stayed on my mind all through the shopping trip. I had the means to buy everything I needed for the week. After the weekly shop, I was going to a safe home with a full refrigerator, a lanai overlooking a lake and a flowerstrewn garden. How did I warrant that while she had nothing? Was it karma? The vagaries of life? Choices made? The lack of choices?

At the line to the cash register were all sorts of Valentine’s Day goodies to purchase. Heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and bouquets of flowers filled the aisles. Glossy over-sized and too expensive sappy cards competed for the attention of shoppers. By the time I got to the register, the store was filling.

Bagging up my purchases, talking to the cashier, and paying with a credit card, I’d momentarily forgotten about the homeless woman outside. I was also in a hurry to leave the store and get home before the traffic jams began.

As I wheeled my cart down the sidewalk, she was still sitting there by herself at the picnic table bench. Other shoppers walked past her. Many left the “safety” of the sidewalk and veered into the roadway so they wouldn’t have to get too near her. She never looked up at any of them but all of them looked away from her. I hoped she didn’t notice that. Or perhaps given the condition she was in, she no longer cared. Her entire focus was on the pastry she was eating out of the paper bag and the song on the boom box.

What’s going on in our collective consciousness that we all turn away from those who are down and out? The questions on karma and life choices floated into my mind again as I headed in her direction. She carried everything she owned in a Publix shopping cart. She had a broom that looked well used. She had a pillow wherever she rested her head. She was having breakfast al fresco in one of the most desirable U.S. cities to live in: Sarasota, FL. In a way, she may have been better off than many of us.

Something made me stop as I went down the sidewalk, and I turned my back to her. I never carry cash but that same “something” made me open my wallet and look inside. There, between my driver’s license and Medicare card was a $20 bill. It wasn’t much, but I knew I had to give it to her. Before my mom died I would have easily spent that and more on the flowers, or the box of chocolates or the ridiculously expensive Hallmark cards for her. Taking out the $20, I tucked it into my palm, and pushed my cart towards hers.

As our carts came together I stopped. This time she looked up at me. I put the $20 into her rough gnarled hands and said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mother!” With crumbs falling from her mouth, her glazed eyes looked into mine like I was an apparition. Then she realized she had something in her hand. She looked down at the $20 bill and she began repeating, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God” while looking up at me and down at the $20. I nodded and repeated, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mother.”

Saying “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mother” to a homeless woman wasn’t thought out. The words spontaneously came out of my mouth. Driving home I wondered if “The Homeless Madonna” might have been a gift sent from my mother. I decided it was because helping the homeless was something she often did at her church. The Homeless Madonna gifted me that morning with the best day ever!

Conscious Living with Jo Mooy

Jo Mooy has studied with many spiritual traditions over the past 40 years. The wide diversity of this training allows her to develop spiritual seminars and retreats that explore inspirational concepts, give purpose and guidance to students, and present esoteric teachings in an understandable manner. Along with Patricia Cockerill, she has guided the Women’s Meditation Circle since January 2006 where it has been honored for five years in a row as the “Favorite Meditation” group in Sarasota, FL, by Natural Awakenings Magazine. Teaching and using Sound as a retreat healing practice, Jo was certified as a Sound Healer through Jonathan Goldman’s Sound Healing Association. She writes and publishes a monthly internationally distributed e-newsletter called Spiritual Connections and is a staff writer for Spirit of Maat magazine in Sedona. For more information go to http://www.starsoundings.com or email jomooy@gmail.com

By Mark Pitstick, MA, DC

Four prominent men believed in the concept of reincarnation. It just made sense, they said, and explained many mysteries of life. It seemed to be part of a universal plan that conserves energy and knowledge from one lifetime into another. They believed that never-ending, but periodically changing, lifetimes would assist soul growth. These men found that model to be a guiding light in their lifetimes. They are highly respected in American history, but you may not have known about their beliefs. Who are they? Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and General George Patton.

Reincarnation is the theory that we experience not just one, but many lives in the course of eternity. Although this concept may seem strange or foreign to some, it answers questions that people of all ages have wondered about.

When I was 10 years old, I sat in church and looked through the stained glass windows while the minister talked about heaven. “One day,” he said, “we will all walk on golden streets and play golden harps forever.” Even at that young age, I thought: “Wouldn’t that get old after a while?”

Think about it with an open mind for just a moment. How long could you play a harp—even a golden one—before you would be ready for a piano, guitar or even an accordion? Novelty and challenges make life more interesting and rewarding. A concept of neverending, but sometimes changing, experiences seems so much more likely than a static state of eternal existence.

Once a word has become well-established in a culture, it is difficult or impossible to change its intrinsic meaning. I use various synonyms for “God” and “soul” because those words have such firmly entrenched and limiting meanings. The same challenge exists for the word “reincarnation”; it isn’t ideal for several reasons:

1) Some people associate the word reincarnation with the occult or cults. That term can negatively trigger those with conservative religious beliefs and those who haven’t researched the topic for themselves.

2) It implies a linear series of interrupted lives, deaths and rebirths. But some evidence suggests life is a seamless series of experiences amidst eternity.

3) It suggests that we experience being different people in chronological order and separate places. However, some evidence suggests otherwise. For example, evidence for parallel or simultaneous realities indicates that your energy does not have to manifest in just one place at a time. Part of it energizes your current physical body, but another part might be experiencing other formed or formless possibilities. In addition, part of your consciousness might never have left home/ Source. From this vantage point—as the old children’s song suggests—life is but a dream. Reality may be more accurately understood as a series of virtual reality experiences as your energy visits other times and places.

As such, I will alternately use the following word combinations as synonyms for reincarnation: cyclical lifetimes, multiple lives, varying life experiences, and never-ending but periodically changing lifetimes.

Let’s discuss three common models about the nature of life, and then next month we will examine clinical and other evidence for this view of reality.

Model A: If you are like many people in Western cultures, you were taught that your life started with an earthly birth date. Your time on this planet can last from a few minutes to many years, and then you die. Then a long sleep in the ground until some judgment day, or an instant visit to the pearly gates. Finally, a judgmental God consigns you to heavenly delight or burning torment forever.

This model is full of problems. For example, how fair is it that your brief earthly experience determines your fate forever if you were: molested, raised by alcoholics or drug addicts, influenced by atheists, struggled with mental illness, or had organic brain damage? I consider this model to be a kindergarten understanding of reality.

Model B: The concept of varying life experiences throughout eternity makes more sense and is supported by contemporary evidence that will be discussed next month. A model of cyclical life experiences allows for the eventual evolution of all beings. We each have more than just this one earthly visit to learn and grow.

Reincarnation is a vast improvement over the conventional teachings of model A. To extend the analogy, model B is like a high school understanding of reality. However, this model appears to be only relatively true because it implies dualism and all that goes with that.

Richard Bach’s character in the book Running from Safety perhaps said it best:

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“No. Reincarnation is a series of lifetimes, isn’t it, one after the other, in order, on this planet? That feels a little limiting, it fits a little tight across the shoulders.”

“What fits you better?”

“An infinite number of beliefs of life experiences, please, some in bodies, some not; some on planets, some not; all of them simultaneous because there is no such thing as time, none of them real because there’s only one Life.”

Model C: This most accurate description of reality indicates that life is an uninterrupted series of experiences throughout infinity. All life is seen as sacredly interconnected with outward differences being trivial and transient. Ultimately, life is an eternal dance of energy as Creative Mind alternately manifests Itself. Each seemingly separate aspect of consciousness is like a single cell within One Mind. New scenarios and adventures are endlessly created as Life discovers its fullness.

In this model, physical death is not viewed as the beginning of a long sleep. Life is seen as an uninterrupted process as death opens new doors into the next phase of forever. Time and space are understood as being only relatively, not absolutely, real.

For those who are awakened to the big picture of life, death can be especially seamless—like walking from one room into another. Birth and death are realized to be no big deal, just commas amidst a never-ending sentence. We can best reveal our inner light and special talents when we realize our real selves are birthless and deathless. This is like a graduate school level of understanding reality.

Class dismissed.

Author’s Note: Get ready for the second lesson. Next month we will explore evidence of reincarnation from past life regression therapy and the clinical work of researchers including Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Brian Weiss.

Mark Pitstick, MA, DC is an author, master’s clinical psychologist, holistic chiropractic physician, frequent media guest, and webinar/workshop facilitator. He directs The SoulPhone Foundation and founded Greater Reality Living Groups. Dr. Pitstick can help you know and show—no matter what is happening to or around you— that your earthly experience is a totally safe, meaningful, and magnificent adventure amidst forever. Visit http://www.SoulProof.com for free articles, newsletters and radio interviews with top consciousness experts.