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The first one was an amiable counselor that Samuel met during his student exchange program. This man and his wife became Samuel’s “foster parents” when he had to escape the chaos caused by civil war in Sudan. They gave him a place to live, bought him a car and steered him in the right direction in life. This was probably the happiest time in his life. The second synchronicity happen when Sam was in community college. Sam always wanted to become a farmer. He wasn’t political. Emotionally and spiritually, he was a down to earth, quiet person. But the community college didn’t offer classes in farming and, having no idea what to study, Sam took classes at random. One of those classes was psychology. He had no interest in it and was sitting by the door so he could exist faster at the end of the class. Yet the teacher took a close order of him. She was a flamboyant blond lady – very lefty, coming to a college from the midst of sixties movement. For whatever reason, she became Samuel’s mentor. Voluntarily, as he never asked for it. She was the one who insisted on Sam going to a university. On his own, Sam actually applied to an agricultural school and got accepted. It was a state college, which tuition wasn’t expensive and Sam thought he could easily work his way through it. Instead, she took him under her wing, brought him to one of the top private colleges in the US, arranged an interview and talked to the dean. To make a long story short Sam got a full scholarship: tuition paid, living expenses paid – everything. He was ecstatic. To him, this was very strange how the dots got connected.

 

 

Yet being in this college added much pressure. Other kids that went to this school, came there from prep schools and were on the college level when they arrived. Sam, coming from a very different world, was not prepared to deal with this level of competition. Eventually, he found his way and graduated from this college with the dual major of economics and political science. While in college, he started to get interested in politics because of the communist student movement. In fact, there were a couple of professors from Sudan, who were both Marxists.

 

Sam attended their classes and started being involved more in a student movement. This added to his intellectual tension. On one hand, he mentally identified with the oppressed, and, at the same time, needed to secure a job from the same bourgeois institutions he was so against in theory. Underneath this all, on the gut level, he just wanted to survive. The third synchronicity happen when Samuel was close to the graduation. Having no idea where he was going to work, a friend arranged him an interview in a bank that was hiring at a time. Sam was absolutely unprepared to a banking career neither educationally, nor in terms of ideology - as the student movement completely brainwashed him, nor emotionally and spiritually as he was rather with animals and plants. When Sam went into this den of capitalism he had the whole day of interviews by a cohort of bank dignitaries. He was still just a kid whose mind was filled with the ideals of equality, the brotherhood of men and surplus value. However, for whatever reason people liked him and he always found a stretched hand in the middle of the fog. Among all those dressed in starch and wingtip shoed men, there was one tiny although very tough lady, who everybody was afraid of. She was the one who liked him and gave her unequivocal recommendation. Perhaps it was because he was so different from all the sons of “big cheeses.” At that time, not many black Americans were employed by any banks, let alone premium ones.

 

Thus, Samuel was accepted to the 18-month training program with an exam in the end. This was an added pressure. The bank management purposely made it tough since they wanted to see how much stress a prospect could take. Most of the guys who were on the program were privileged kids because their daddies were CEO of this and that. They were doing their banking gig so they could go on to become a president somewhere. For Sam it was different. He hanged in, led only by his survival instinct. Failure was not an option for no one had his back. Lucky for him, it was the time when the government was beginning to “bring the black population into the mainstream.” On top of that, he came from a good school. So on paper, it was a good match. Surely, he wasn’t invited in the fraternity. He was the fish in the wrong water. Sam started working in the bank while doing his MBA at night. Adding to this pressure another notch Sam was involved with the girl, who at this point in time decided to stop taking birth control and got pregnant. As a result, Sam went completely crazy. He was by far not ready to settle down. He wasn’t even ready to figure out what was he going to do with his life?

 

 

Sam felt extremely guilty because it made him think about his own orphancy. How could he abandon a child? How could he allow regeneration of his own misery? That was one thing that he swears to himself would never happen. And now he was faced with this dilemma…. After his son was born Sam decided to marry the girl. There was no formal wedding but he simply took the responsibility for the child. Sam started driving back and forth from the bank to her apartment to live with the mother of his child and his son. Since he was still doing the graduate work the stress level became too high and depression symptoms appeared. He started losing sleep, appetite and even having an out of body experience. That happened in the library while doing a research paper. Samuel suddenly saw himself leaving his body. He felt himself dropping into a bottomless pit. Suddenly, he was floating in a psychedelically blue sky then lowering to tops of buildings. One of them had a huge padlock across its top. This padlock has been there for a long time and there was no key.

 

 

Returning back to his body and not understanding the meaning of all this, Sam freaked out. If at this moment the right person would have held his hand, it would have prevented him going down the line of anxiety and depression. But the way this was - Sam ended up in a hospital. The doctors put Samuel to sleep for about a week. Sleeping recouped him to a degree. That’s was the time when whatever he was holding inside was about to break through. He even had the repeated annoying dream when he was in front of a big dam and it was breaking. Fortunately, he was able to go back to work. He alternated one week at the hospital and one week at work for a while and he was running ten miles every day. Yet he felt his “psychosomatic problem” as doctor referred to it, was getting out of hands; the ghost that was haunting him was gaining influence over him. He started thinking that he becoming mad and that fear became an additional load on his consciousness. By and by, he graduated from the training program and by anybody’s standards he’s done a tremendous job – graduated the top premier school, passed the toughest exam, had two master’s degrees. Lots of people get blown away. Sam actually landed a career. He became a vice president. He was right in the front line of financing businesses. Yet no matter how much he has achieved, he felt like a failure. There came yet another stressor. When one is financing businesses and those businesses are started by successive aggressive bullies, they didn’t use to that some black kid was telling them “no” even though the risk was too high. Yet if he wouldn’t say “no”, he had the bank to face. That’s really when Sam started losing his hair. Thus the idea of losing his job became pathological, he felt trapped. He became more acutely aware of society, America, tensions, the divisions, the politics…. By this time he already went through a divorce with his first wife. He walked out, leaving everything. Rented a room. Should he have this opportunity, he would run away, somewhere to the North Pole, but he had no such opportunity.

 

 

Another synchronicity took place that helped him to cope with the situation. His direct boss was the second in command in the bank. It turned out that despite occupying this powerful position he suffered from clinical depression. He intimidated the hell out of everybody, but he was sympathetic to Sam. He never said it, but most likely he understood what Sam was going through. Thus the part of the reason why Sam stayed at this job for such a long time was because of him. Once at a party, Sam met a girl who became his second wife. It seemed, in retrospect that they were meant for each other being born in the same city in Sudan, were going to the same college in the US, worked in the same bank. They only were missing each other until they finally met. She was a bright young lady, beautiful, and a truly good human being. They got married and were doing extremely well; both successful professionals had a beautiful house and two kids. At some point, things started changing. It was imperceptible at first, imperceptible to Sam. Eventually, Samuel found out, that good human being could act viciously under certain circumstances, which he never imagine could have happened. She went after Sam with the vengeance. To Sam it seemed like he did the same thing as I did with the first divorce - walked out and I left everything. The difference was that this time he made thousands of dollars and was left with zilch. He was again living in an apartment. Two opposing forces: wanting to hold on to the job and leaving this field, were tearing him apart. At time Sam felt like his body literally had been pooled apart. The divorce has become the last drop. It really broke him. He felt like some ligament in his soul was torn.

 

“You see.” He was telling to Madame B. “I don’t see the point.”

“The point of what?”

   </p>
<p>&ldquo;The point of living, the point to my life. Here I am coming from another country and meeting all these synchronicities, all these lucky breaks… It seems that they were given me not by accident … that they were meant for something that my life meant something. And then this end, the divorce and I am broke again, almost as broke as when I came to this country. Why did I learn all these social theories and then the finances while deep down inside all I loved was warm soil, plants, and animals?     
<p>Why?&rdquo;

Madame B. inhaled deeply and smiled. Her smile had a share of light sadness in it.

“That’s how it was written in stars, Samuel. We cannot change what’s written in stars.”

“But why was this written in stars for me? People… all they know is fear and greed, greed and fear. That’s how it was all throughout the human history. What was the point for me to be born on this continent of slavery, from my father the way he was? You see, it doesn’t make any sense. Life doesn’t make any sense.”

Madame B. Closed her eyes for a second and inhaled deeply again.

“You see, unlike animals, we are given a gift of self-awareness. But that gift is a double-sided sword. You are aware of yourself and your place in the world, but then this awareness prompts you to ask other questions, which don’t always have answers. I don’t know how to answer your question. We don’t know why our destinies are written in stars. But I tell you this much. Life is beautiful, despite all of this and our lives matter, your life matters, whatever you’ve done in your life matters. I can’t prove it, but I can feel it. Don’t concern yourself with those questions where we have no control over. What we are trying to do with you is to make you see that the glass is half full not half empty. And why was water poured in the glass? This is not up to us."

"Let us meditate. You are really helping your cause when you meditate.” She smiled at him again and closed her eyes. Madame B. was preparing to ask for help to her “spiritual guides”. She always asked for help in tough cases, when the astral media was so tight that paint peeled and come off right after applying. Sam’s case was screaming for help. As usual, Madame B. accessed Samuel’s aura with ease and made a mental snapshot of its entire complex color arrangement. She was going to present this case to the panel of spiritual guides, her constant helpers. Madame B. didn’t know who her helpers were: spirits, angels or souls of the ancestors. That didn’t matter. The important part of this exercise was the results – they helped. Carrying the snapshot of Samuel’s aura in her mind, she presented it to the “panel of spirits” as she mentally referred to them. As the snapshot was brought over, Madame B. pointed to the knee and sacral chakras, where the orange, yellow and red colors were supposed to reside.

 

This time, as always it did help. Madame B. started to paint with orange, red and yellow and with every stroke the overall health of the aura became better. This by far wasn’t a one punch deal. Madame B. was grinding the disease a sand grain after a sand grain. Gradually Samuel started seeing the results of the treatment, experiencing little pleasures of life again, and feeling like he was a kid that he have never had in his orphan childhood. He started to enjoy food, walks, ocean, riding his bike. Madame B. encouraged him to engage in all these activities as this was the part of the healing process. Swimming in the ocean helps cleanse oneself metaphysically.

This one morning Samuel felt like swimming. He drove to the ocean and his thought had some unusual clarity. ‘Nothing is either good or bad; only thinking makes it so. Life is simply neutral… Indifferent. What makes the difference are the feelings. They paint the world in happy and joyous, or ominous and dreadful colors. Depression is an annoying companion that drills a constant negative message into your mind: a message of a threat and a potential doom. It tells you that the world is hostile and you must fend for yourself and plan for a disaster. When you allow yourself to listen to it and act accordingly, it ridicules you, incessantly tells you that you are a failure, weak and unable to spread your wings. It insists that you are worthless, timid and a dismal. This then drives you to take self-destructive actions, which are followed by the regrettable consequences. That is when depression steps on the accelerator: I told you so, you are incapable; your only destiny in life is a failure! All I have to do is to be strong enough not to listen to that companion and that little annoying dwarf will leave me alone.

 

Samuel arrived at the ocean, took off his clothes and entered its gentle wavy matter as he would enter a woman in the final stage of lovemaking. Lifted by a clear blue water Samuel felt it healthy pressure in his muscles and the first time for a long time felt happy. He was in a process of regaining the balance that enabling the creatures made of complex carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules to exist in optimum regime on this planet.