Soul asylum

They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. I do often find myself caught up in a mysterious life. I had a friend who once said the great thing about short-term memory loss is that every day is a new adventure—it’s kind of like that. Everything is mysterious because I don’t understand much.

After missing the first service I was scheduled to attend Sunday, I went to the Internet, plugged in “services, reno, sunday, noon.” It took me to a news story about the Church of Inner Light, which practices in the sanctum of the Reno Psychic Institute.

When I entered the Institute, all was quiet. In an inner room, there were three people sitting in a rectangular arrangement of 10 chairs of varying design. Everyone was meditating, so I sat down quietly.

The room wasn’t large, maybe 22 by 12 with cinderblock walls. There was a muted light coming through the windows, two ceiling fans, a snack station in the corner, potted plants and stacked chairs and boxes along one wall. There was a platter on a wall with a painting of seven lilies on a blue background. A refrigerator provided a drone of white noise. A white board near a bookcase listed upcoming classes. The donation box (a $5 offering is requested) was on the bookcase.

Rev. Ed Norman, who drives a construction truck during the week, led the service. He wore green shorts and shirt and no shoes. He has a ruddy complexion, blue eyes and a gray beard.

When the meditation broke up, I followed Norman into the gift shop and explained the reason I’d come. He told me a little about what was going to happen, that we were going to begin the meditation in the center of our head—the location of the pineal and pituitary glands—and we’d ground our bodies with the Earth and the cosmos. Part of the idea is for participants to learn to recognize their own spiritual vibrations. I asked if the service could be considered a guided meditation, and he said he preferred not to describe it that way.

“We don’t really like to say ‘guided’ because that indicates a form of control. It’s more of an introduction.”

The Church of Inner Light’s clairvoyant, meditation-based service began a little late, with a couple members coming in 10 minutes after the stated beginning of the service, but I didn’t get the impression that anyone was that hung up on starting at the crack of noon. By the time Norman began speaking, there were six of us in the room. There was no music in the service.

We began by focusing our minds on the area above and behind our eyes and between our ears. And that’s where things start to get a little hazy, moving into meditation land. We next visualized a grounding light going from our first chakra (a vortex of energy, some belief systems count seven chakras on the individual; the first is located on the lower hip and spine part of the body) to the center of the Earth. We then visualized connection between our seventh chakra (at the top of the head) and the cosmos.

Throughout the meditation, Norman introduced us to concepts like taking the “not-information” things that were invading our auras, infusing a rose with them, moving them outside our space and destroying them. From my head, I visualized a lavender, ropy light rhythmically pulsing with golds grounding me into the cosmos and an undulating blue with golds moving up and down grounding me into the earth. I don’t know where the colors came from or what they symbolize.

After the meditation, there was a short discussion of where our meditations took us, and then psychic healings were performed. Norman did one on me, which he explained as combing impurities from the aura.

Want to take Brian to church? Call 324-4440 ext. 3525.