How to Cure An Addiction to Shopping With Soul Retrieval

I’m in Hong Kong for some business meetings. I was born a honker here. Shopping is blood sport and as everyone knows, Hong Kong is a shoppers’ paradise. When combined, these two ingredients are highly combustible. Otis had warned me beforehand, he said “be careful, take it easy!” Next thing I know, I walk by a jerky shop, and think to myself: “oh, the sweet smell of burning meat!” It only took me fifteen minutes to buy several hundred dollars worth of beef jerky, more than a years’ worth for sure. Next, I went to a dress shop. And let me tell you, these sales ladies were first-class pros. They told me: “oh, I’ve never seen our clothes fit better on anyone! My, my, there’s something really special about you!” I hear my voice; it’s soaked in paradise fluid (aka shopper’s delirium) and is several octaves higher than normal. I say: “Oh, these dresses fit me perfectly!” I walked out of the store three hours later, after spending way, way more than I should have. I kicked myself. I’d once again succumbed to gluttony. It made me squirm. Otis had suggested that I wait 24 hours before buying anything. This was a really good idea but somehow, I was not myself. I can’t seem to bring myself to pause before buying. I’m defenseless against buying; I buy so much I feel sick!

I ducked into a Starbucks. Thank god for Starbucks. Starbucks is a great way to get out of Hong Kong for a moment without actually leaving. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Immediately, I saw a retarded girl aged about 5, her face was blackened by dirt and grime. She was barefoot and wearing tattered rags. She was lost and confused; her body hurt from beatings and people constantly taking advantage of her. I could feel her physical and emotional state as clearly as I can feel my own. I looked around: I was suddenly in the Ching dynasty (China about three or four hundred ago). The girl is me! She is the reason I can’t control myself with food and clothes and all these things that give me comfort.

I approached her in my imagination and took her into my warm embrace. The manifestation of myself in Starbucks and the manifestation of myself in the Ching dynasty were both crying. I communicated to her in balls of thoughts. “I’m you in a parallel universe and I’ve come to rescue you. I’ll protect you and never allow anyone to beat you, you’ll never be cold and hungry.” I told her this and she became happy and eager to follow me. In my imagination, I took her to a Ching dynasty bathhouse and we had fun looking around. With the help of several servants, I scrubbed her with soft, silk towels. We trimmed her nails, combed her long hair and put it up in a beautiful bun, complete with diamond and jade hairpins. She loved it. The servants and I helped her into a silk, brocade gown and soft, brocade shoes. We sat down to a scrumptious meal and she began to eat as fast as she could. This is the source of my ravenous gluttony! All those feelings of: “if I don’t hurry, all the good stuff will be taken away.” I gently told the girl to slow down and that there was no hurry because this food and this comforting feeling were actually me and I would never let her down again. I’d come for her and she was going to stay with me forever and ever. What happened next really surprised me….

She looked at me and said, “I know you well. I’ve been living with you all this time.” Oh, my god! Otis has said to me, “I can’t figure you out sometimes, you’re a smart woman who does things in a retarded way!” And of course, this little girl was the one who caused me to buy and to hoard. Why did she do this? She showed me an image of her friends – hundreds and hundreds of destitute children – she gave them the extra stuff. “Is this bad?” She asked. “No, no. Well, yes.” It’s trippy and hard to explain, isn’t it? She is me in my imagination and I, in my current life, am seeing her as responsible for my inability to control myself. Somehow, she got it. She wasn’t as retarded as I thought! She asked me, what do you want, Jenny? I replied that I wanted to get away from my habit of buying. I told her that I wanted to enjoy shopping, but gracefully and within reason. I wanted to be able to buy only a few good things slowly and take my time. What happened next me left me speechless….

She showed me an image of her death: she was beaten and frozen to death by the side of the road on a snowy night. She said, “I want to send those bad people who beat me to jail!” Together, we locked them up! Then she said, “I want a burial worthy of a rich and famous person.” Luckily, I’d seen traditional, old time Chinese funerals in movies from my childhood in Hong Kong. Immediately, I called up the images from my memory – just like a filmmaker – of a procession of mourners in white funeral garbs, complete with lantern bearers to light the way to heaven. There were trumpets and gongs and horns blaring funeral songs and a huge bonfire of paper sculptures. The Chinese believe that if you burn the likenesses of objects, then the deceased can use them in the afterlife. She and I, laughing together, burned tons and tons of paper gold bars, mansions, servants, boats, cars, shoes, clothes, electric fans, toothpastes, jewelry and even boxes of KFC.

A hole opened up in the clouds and a shaft of light beamed down. I suddenly panicked; a part of me was going to die. “You’re much better without me and I’m much better in the light,” she says before disappearing into the light.

Bashar, my alien teacher and friend, said that “a cube with all blue sides that has changed one side to red is not a blue-cube-with-one-red-side, it’s a fundamentally different cube.” From now on, I will be a new person who has never had any problems with gluttony. I’m not a shopaholic. I’m not driven by habitual urges to buy. I’m a person who shops with intelligence, grace and joy! It doesn’t hurt that I have help from my physical lover Otis and my higher self in the spiritual realm. I am good to go!