Paul felt its approaching. IT crouched as a slight throbbing and nagging pulse below his left clavicle. Slowly the feeling gained strength, expanded its radius and now shifted its center to solar plexus, from where it sent heat waves to the heart and head. Paul didn’t feel excessive pain or physical torment. Rather, it was a feeling of inevitable and close death that, in a quiet agreement with the Universe, was demanding its pray. Paul felt himself alone as if suspended in the cold emptiness of an insignificant region of the Universe. He felt a strong urge to assume a horizontal position, as if some unknown force attempted to flatten him, preparing his bones for a position, it would remain for the next several thousand years.

Words sounded strangely dull, as if his wife and children were on the other side of reality, parted from him by an invisible wall. ‘Everything will be exactly the same.’ He thought, ‘They will go to work and school as they usually do. Except I won’t be here anymore.’ Paul remembered that these nagging feelings and thoughts eventually were going to go away and made a weak attempt to convince himself that the same will happen now. Yet deep down inside he knew that his puny internal voice overpowered by the stronger voice, the voice of a logical inevitability pronouncing his sentence with the dull assurance of a hyena in the night. Paul became convinced that this time, his life will indeed end. He wanted to cry, from pity to himself and the realization that it was too soon as his mind ran over a multitude of things that needed to be done and required his attention. Finally, he relaxed, and breathing heavily and shaking his head not to lose a tearful alertness, with his consciousness slowly being enveloped by the veil of incoming darkness, waited until IT will come.

His wife noticed him lying on the floor and screamed. “Again?” He nodded. 

She sat on the floor next to him and grabbed his hand. “It’ll pass, honey. It’ll pass.” She started crying. 

Paul’s mind registered her sitting and crying, but looked at her with indifference. She was still far away from him on the other side of the glass wall. 

“Should I call for an ambulance?” she sniffed. Paul only rolled his head in negation. ‘Just live me the hell alone’ went through his mind. She wasn’t helping, just flapping her wings like a chicken that just laid an egg. At this moment he felt IT started to retreat. He waited until IT was gone completely, slowly got up from the floor and went to take a shower. Then he sat by his computer and with an obtuse diligence was checking their bank account and credit cards statements.

“Why don’t you update your resume, hon?” Nikki said over his shoulder.

“What’s the point?” Paul’s voice was weak and irritated. “What if all this happens when I am in the office?”

“Then at least do something about it!” she screamed.

“Do what? Go to that psychic? What a stupid idea!”

“You are the one who looks stupid right now! We only have the money for a couple of months! What are we gonna go next! You…” she measured him with hateful look, “you selfish prick!”

Paul inhaled deeply. “Ok,” he rolled his eyes at uselessness of the proposed measure. “Ok, I’ll go see her.”

It was 10:45 A.M. Madame B. just finished her previous healing session and reclined in a chair. She inhaled deeply and held the air in for some time, trying to overcome a little irritation. Her client wasn’t able to relax her mind and didn’t seem to try it despite Madame B. multiple requests. This made her work much harder that it could have been. ‘Why is this such a big deal? …People… They don't want to help themselves. They just want a magic wand… and then even if there been helped they’d be ashamed to admit it. Can’t resist the social stigma…” She exhaled loudly. ‘Well, at least, they talk.’ - The new client, the one that was supposed to come in at 11 o’clock, found her by “the word of mouth.” - ‘I wonder whose mouth this was?’ she snickered. 

Madame B. didn’t know much about this new client. Only that Paul (that was his name) suffered from anxieties and panic attacks. He came 2 minutes passed 11. Madame B. looked at him with an interest of an artist evaluating the best pose to place the model for her new painting. 

“Please sit down. How can I help you?”

“I’d like to balance my energies… because I feel they are not distributed correctly. Sometimes, I get these hot flashes and feel jittery and then I crash because I have no energy at all.” He appeared tongue-tied, glancing occasionally at Madame as if second-guessing the validity of what he was about to say. Sandiness and worry nested in his eyes. "So I thought if you balance it… I was said you do that stuff. If you do this on me then… maybe it will help?”

“Did you see anybody before me?”

“Yes, the doctor gave me those antidepressant pills. They make me feel groggy and I gained weight. Then I went to see a psychologist.”

“… and?”

“He asked me about my childhood and if my parents were strict or controlling?”

“Were they?”

“No… Not really."

He looked up at the ceiling. "They, pretty much, let me do whatever I wanted. Not that I wanted anything special. You know just like any kid. In fact, I really hate all kinds of control, when someone imposes anything on me, forces me to do something that I … don’t want. I never forbad anything to my kids as well. I hate being forced, just detest it.”

“Why do you think that is?” Paul looked down collecting his thought and rubbing his chin. 

“I don’t know if this will answer this, but…I never felt like the owner of anything. On the contrary, I felt I owe people something like I am a pretender or an imposter like I was guilty of something, I only didn’t know of what. I am not sure why I am telling you all this. I never told this to anyone and… would never admit this. Still, people somehow feel it, and knew it and I knew that they knew it. This strange...” he pondered looking for a word, “..acknowledgment that bounced between me and other people like, like an accordion,” Paul imitated an accordion playing movement , ”caused problems in my relationship, making my expectation of friendship and kindness to collapse into a little frozen cone.” Paul moved his palms together as if collecting water. “I probably didn’t explain well. It’s confusing.”

Madame B. smiled approvingly. “No. This is very good. Tell me… did you always feel this way or was there an event, after which things has changed?”

“I don’t remember since when … I think… I always felt this way, since I remember myself. In my life everything was ok, I mean regular. Sure, I had some stressful situations, but…who doesn’t?”

“So you don’t know what could have caused this?”

“No.” Madame B. sat quietly for a while, thinking. 

“Ok, I think I have an idea of how I could help you. Let me tell you, now, how I work.” Madame B. started telling Paul the particulars of her approach and the theory behind it.

Madame B. had a hard time during this first session. The trouble wasn’t in accessing Paul’s astral body. It’s what she discovered inside his aura presented a challenge. Colors there didn’t spin. On top of that, they were diluted and barely seen, like a tinge of artificial dye sprinkled inside clear plastic. Madame B. didn’t know the exact cause of this difficulty. In her practice, such colorless vacuity inside aura could have been the result of excessive medications, intellectual strain undertaken by a client concurrently with a session or by a system of believes that rejected the very possibility of spiritual healing or astral travel. After the end of the session, she requested Paul to make an effort to relax his mind during the session. “This is VERY, VERY important!”

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