Girl in a Hurry part 2

Second Attention

Girl in a Hurry...Diary of a Healer part 1Debra Robinson·June 30, 2025Read full story

In reading part 1, it becomes obvious that this is an unorthodox way of going through life…

Not often shared and rarely broken down so it can be understood and utilized. Behind the scenes, I can attest that it totally works, and yet at the same time, I realize it is a big stretch for a lot of folks. (it doesn’t have to be as radically applied…that’s my classroom. Just use what makes sense for yours.)

Here’s how I got here… and how you can reconnect and trust that same neglected aspect that you have, as well.

We all have a below-the-surface awareness. It just comes with the package…the equipment we are given for navigating this life. This awareness gets shouted down, diminished, overrun by consensus reality and twisted up. We lose touch with it.

I like to call it my Second Attention, because that is how it shows up for me. You’ll see examples of it all through this story. But a word…this is active in all of us from the outset…as babies.

Our culture likes to think that we are born as blank slates and can be managed and trained as such. Other cultures know better.

We are personalities in fresh human suits! While the body may be budding out, there is a force of nature…YOU…already moving out into life. It has opinions, it has knowings, it’s on a mission!

Your deeper self…your Second Attention.

It will tap you on the shoulder now and again, sometimes whisper inside you, pointing out danger, showing you the way, steering you toward ‘this’ and away from ‘that’.

What it knows transcends politics and creeds and all artificial systems. It is our Ally It is our Lover. It is our comfort at times.

It brings the next question, or the next step. Answers come in unexpected ways. Humor, the companion of wisdom, inserts itself…

It is a wise builder. It knows how to rise up after terrible things and begin again, turning broken rubble into building material for what’s next… It mysteriously fills our empty cups again when our energies are spent.

It is YOURS and no one else’s…an internal guidance system that knows the way.

So WHAT if no one else understands your mission?! Your interests and pursuits?

You may not understand them yourself…but living them is what gets you there…and that’s ok.

Sometimes you have to throw the weights off and declare your sovereignty over your life…

Small minds and immature or non-supportive environments find ways to suffocate, deride or shove our valuable knowing to the side.

It’s good to dwell on that aspect, putting blame back where it belongs, rather than blaming ourselves, as we so often do.

The truth of the matter is that you were directed AWAY from your knowing…so do give that some consideration.

But dwell briefly…as we’ve got some reconvening to do with that quiet, more subtle, smarter part of us. Just mark the places where you lost the trail, extract the valuable lessons and trust your Self along with your Second Attention and see where that takes you.

There is a part of us that ‘always knew’…if we dare to acknowledge it.

This relationship…or direction…or purchase was not good for us, but we didn’t heed the whispers (until they became screams) We all have some history of this.

Make a list, fill in the blanks…and you will have created the list of all the mistakes in your life… Why didn’t I listen? What did I tell myself when I chose another way? Valuable learning!

At the same time, you now hold the key to never making another mistake. Become friends with your Ally. Just start by noticing your Second Attention…

We get twisted up when we mistakenly…and innocently…make associations. We have ‘spiritual’ aspirations, but we get mixed up with teligion (that falls short). We pattern our relationships after the model of our culture instead of discovering the magic that could have been, had we not tried to apply all our notions of ‘how things should be’ and just enjoyed the person alongside us. You get the idea…

On with the story!

I needed a place to work on my young lady in the wheelchair. An acquaintance gave me the number of a woman who had a ground floor office. I made the call. I was just looking for a small office, but I wound up with a 4 room suite with a beautiful foyer…half a building right downtown in a prime location! A year’s lease to boot! It was more than I was looking for, but there was something about the way the pieces fell into place… (I was just passing through. I actually lived on a houseboat in Georgia) but something said ‘Take it.”

Next! How to furnish it on short notice and a tight budget! In the night, I had a dream. I saw a “Store Closing” sign. When I woke, I wondered where I had seen that sign! I was new to town, still exploring. Later in the day, it came to me. I got in the car, retraced my steps and I was able to find the place! It was their last day in business and everything was marked down to 90% off.

A facet of me kicked into gear…the part of me that had designed and built showrooms in Atlanta several years before. I was able to grab the manager and tell him I would take a truckful of furniture with his help. So I ran through the place, pointing at what I wanted, they marked my selections as ‘sold’ and delivered everything that afternoon!

In the heat of the moment… I hoped I could make it all make sense once it arrived.

For my part, I wondered what I was getting myself into!! My mind was moving one way and my energy was moving another way!

Suddenly I was up and running a full-fledged practice!

Things were taking shape in ways I couldn’t foresee, but in retrospect, it was all perfect.

I asked for a name… It came immediately! Clear as a bell…

’Bliss’

I was not happy with it! “You have GOT to be kidding me!!” Too suggestive! Not in this blue-collar town! But I know the Voice…

It would be 2 more years before I was shown the real meaning and intent of that name… It was perfect beyond my imagining! (I’ll share in a future post)

I moved into a spacious apartment 1 block away in the Historic District…by chance…a quick word-of-mouth exchange.

I began to learn my community…

I was surrounded by the country club set and the movers and shakers in the area. Lawyers, judges, lawmakers, etc. It made for interesting clientele…until one day when I ‘heard’ a short, sharp instruction to ‘steer clear of that crowd’. It came in the middle of the day for no apparent reason, but it was unmistakable! (I would later find that I was being eyed and that the lot of them were swingers and sexual blackmailers. Whew!) Meanwhile I had my 1st run-ins with wayward clergy! Men AND women…some big names in that world. My business name was the perfect entrapment.

Moving on from there, I was able to get the young lady out of the wheelchair. It was a great accomplishment! She was pretty plucky! And the practice was growing rapidly.

A few months later, I was ‘told’ to leave my beautiful apartment and move into the back of my office! The idea being to devote myself wholeheartedly to my people, to live simply and save money. Right after that, a friend borrowed my car and wrecked it, taking no responsibility!

So I was in the humiliating position of walking, riding a bicycle and living in the back of my studio…at 50!

To Spirit: “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!!! You have brought me high and you have brought me low, but THIS…NOW??!! This is really too much!!”

There was more to come. It would soon be time to renew my lease. Would I move on as originally planned…or would I soften and stay to help these folks?

The writing was on the wall… I kind of knew that.

My landlady and I negotiated the lease renewal, but in the rush of things, we hadn’t signed it. When I tried to set up a time, she was evasive. On the final day, she told me she was selling the building and that I would be welcome to buy it. If not, I was to keep it ready for showing and be out in 30 days.

Nothing in me wanted to buy it. That much was clear. So a search for an alternative was begun.

Oddly, that didn’t feel right either… Each time I did the sensible thing, it just felt ‘off’ in the pit of my stomach. Friends tried to help. I would just have to ask them to leave off.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but the indicators were clear and steady. I would have to wait for leading or direction….while time was rapidly running out.

Meanwhile, in my spare time, I had been learning about foreclosures…mostly because I always like to be learning something in my free time.

I started ‘feeling my way’ forward. A year before, a friend had suggested writing down what I would like for my future practice. It was far-fetched and somewhat impractical, but I wanted a country house in the city, private and quiet, yet visible, centrally located, a place with several types of treatment rooms…and I wanted to live where I worked…a common thread that runs through my life. I revisited the idea…feeling less than hopeful.

As that ripened, I called a realtor, gave him the ideas and asked for a little tour of what was available. A full day of that had yielded nothing…except that I narrowed my search to a certain area and a certain corner of town that just ‘felt right’. But there was nothing for sale in that area. Even if there had been, I realized there was nothing anywhere near my price range…which I was also ‘sensing’. So that had fallen flat.

That night, as I was sitting near my computer paying bills, I happened to glance up at the screen. I had left a foreclosure site open.

There was a house I recognized…sort of. 1 1/2 yrs before, my old friend Bob of “The 1st Church of Bob” (link below) had casually pointed the house out to me as something I should buy.

At the time, that was simply out of the question! I wasn’t staying in Indiana, the property was caught up in litigation (whatever that meant) and the selling price was outrageous. So I dismissed it without another thought.

I glanced at the screen again…Yup! Same house! Too much house for me…but isn’t that interesting…

It’s beginning to dawn on me…

Wait! It’s back on the market! It’s 2 blocks from my ideal corner! It’s a foreclosure… I know something about foreclosures! And the price just dropped to within $3000 of my ideal price!

Best of all, it was far more wonderful than anything I’d resigned myself to!!

I was beside myself with excitement! I grabbed my car keys (I was mobile again) and was going to rush out the door to go see it, when I ‘heard’ a warning!

‘Wait till the middle of the night (but it’s 11:30p!), park across the street, wait till there’s no traffic, run over quickly, take a quick peek in the windows and get right back home! Don’t let there be any signs of activity.”

That made no sense to me, but it was too clear to discount. Feeling more than a little foolish, that’s exactly what I did…at 3 am. When I ran across the deserted street like a thief in the night and looked in the windows, I was stunned!

Spacious and open, with high vaulted cedar ceilings, hand-hewn wooden barn beams…it was breathtakingly perfect…more than I would have dared to hope for!

Country in the city… Excellent location, parking, visibility and a 2nd story living space! It was zoned for business and residential use…all perfect! Best of all…it had a wheelchair ramp!

I didn’t exactly know how I would pay for it…but I had been working hard and saving up in recent months, as I’d been led to do.

I don’t think I slept that night… This was the place! I couldn’t wait to call the realtor in the morning and make an offer.

I also registered a sense of urgency. The price drop would not have gone unnoticed. When I spoke to the realtor, he agreed to meet with me in 2 days. I was on pins and needles and told him I had a sense of urgency…that I felt I needed to move on it asap. He sort of patted me on the head (through the phone) as if to say ‘Tut tut little girl…if it’s meant for you, it will be there on Wednesday.”

That didn’t match my leading… I hung up the phone, thinking "Now what?”

Then it dawned on me that I half-saw a realtor’s sign lying down in the knee-high tall grass of the neglected property. I recalled the name on the sign and called their number, telling them that I didn’t want to undercut the nice realtor I’d worked with the day before, but could they please show me the building? I wanted to make an offer ASAP. They were obliging and sensitive to the situation. They’d meet me in an hour. We agreed to park across the street and do it quickly and unobtrusively.

Ahh! I could breathe again!

Then the nice old man realtor called. “I’ve just had a cancellation and I can show it after all, but in making the arrangements, they are already booked to show it to another party. “That’s ME!” I cried.

We hit a little snag once more as he did not want to park across the street, being old and all that. With fear and remorse, we did it his way.

I ran in and out in 8 minutes, making the best of the situation. (these nice old christian guys are tough to budge.) I was sick in the pit of my stomach, however.

Not following the leading can have painful repercussions. Leadings are fleeting and subtle, but they are more serious than we realize.

We went straight to the realtor’s office where I made my offer. It was forwarded to a bank in California. (this was one of those times when the doors opened quickly and I was fairly shoved through the opening….at least that much was familiar).

I went to work for the day, shaking my head at what had just happened! When I finished for the day, there was a phone message waiting for me.

The bank in California wanted to know how I planned to come up with the cash for the house. It was time-sensitive! I checked my bank statement and my credit card allowance (having done substantial business in the past, I had a card with a high limit).

I would take my savings and put the rest on a credit card! An unorthodox approach, but one that I vowed to take many years before. Bypassing bankers…

But the realtor had already gone home for the day! I called to leave a message and she picked up the phone! She had just run into the office after hours to grab some papers she’d forgotten. How fortunate!

She needed me to bring everything to her right away, but “would I please come quietly to the back door?”

Her tone became more serious now as she explained that a man had stormed into her office 10 minutes after I’d left that morning, wanting to put an offer on that house. He literally raged at her and the staff, yelling that this was HIS property, they’d shown it to him 4 months earlier and he was going to have it by whatever means!!”

She said “Sir, you are welcome to place an offer, but we just signed an offer.”

“Tear it up!!” he screamed. “How much did she offer?!” he demanded. “I’ll offer more…all cash…right now!”

“Sir, that is not the way we do business here.”

He tendered his offer, which was higher than the asking price and they sent that over to the bank, as well. He left in a fury, threatening legal action.

Then she said, “He must have seen a light on in the office and he is banging on my front door as we speak! I don’t feel safe letting him in, so please meet me at the back door.” I gave her my paperwork discreetly and we left for the night.

Three days later, the bank accepted my unorthodox arrangement, rather than his higher cash offer and the realtor conveyed the welcome news.

“Tell her she has a house!”

Closing was set for 3 days before my final day in the old office. I was excited and yet, I knew I was crossing an important threshold.

This meant that I was staying…more or less permanently.

I was taking on a 3 story house, which was nicer than any house I’d ever lived in before, but that signalled a departure from my simple (and paid for) life on a houseboat, which had been a set-up, as well…a dream come true.

This was a serious weight on my gypsy soul…but, in time, the place would be dubbed ‘the gypsy ashram’.

Things have a way of coming full circle… What we give up returns to us in a better way…

In my brief moments of seeing the house, I had looked at it from an aesthetic viewpoint. It dawned on me that I knew nothing about the ‘guts’ of the place…furnaces, plumbing (there were a couple of broken pipes), electrical, etc.

A bit of panic set in. I begged the realtor for one more little look on that score. And then I called Bob, the friend who had suggested the house.

“Bob! You’re never going to believe this, but I just bought the house you told me about in the beginning!! Could you come look it over with me from a guy’s point of view? “

A slow smile spread across his face. “I can tell you everything there is to know about that house. I rented it for 16 yrs until it went into foreclosure.”

Meanwhile his current shop was across the street and down a few yards! He had never told me…

His modest appliance parts store was, in fact, the world-wide headquarters of the First Church of Bob with it’s famous coffee pot over which hangs a sign “Hebrewing all day,” which is about the only concession old Bob makes for the bible.

So with that, I started making a list of repairs and changes to make it into my studio and home. I was working full-time and fairly haunting the new place every spare moment.

The busy dentists next door had a full parking lot and used most of mine, as well. I hoped that would resolve itself by closing. I drove round and round, my mind spinning with ideas. But one day, as I drove by slowly, a sort of film came over my eyes. It was strange…as though someone had put vaseline on my eyes.

Then, suddenly I could see through two little bands clearly. While everything else was coated in a thick film, I could see clearly the bumper stickers on the cars owned by the dentist and his wife…several Christian bumper stickers. That’s all I could see for those few minutes.

My instinctive 1st thought was…”Oh, that’s nice…good people.” But my Second Attention showed me that this was coming as a warning!

That didn’t compute, but I couldn’t shake it.

Finally, the day of closing came!! I sat in the realtor’s office, signing papers and wondering at all that was taking place. The realtor and her staff were all smiles and encouragement.

When the ink was dry on the last signature, the realtor took me behind the scenes of what had transpired over that month before closing.

The enraged man behind the threats etc. was, in fact, my new neighbor…the dentist! She told me the whole story of his anger, cursing, threats, lies and machinations behind the scenes to prevent the sale from going through…efforts that continued up until that morning at closing time!!

They had weathered all those storms without my knowledge…

She was happy to have done the ethical thing throughout, though it cost her strain, several sleepness nights and some loss of reputation. She was glad to shepherd me…a stranger…into that house.

I asked her why he hadn’t bought it when he had the opportunity. “Well”, she said, “as you know, the price drops a bit every month that it remains unsold. So he held off until he saw ‘SIGNS OF ACTIVITY.’ The fateful words…

When we parked in front of the house, someone saw the activity. The dentist dropped his drill and ran straight to the realtor.

🌹 🌹 🌹

"You meet Saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."~Kurt Vonnegut

The battles you never see get handled for you…

I think back to how all the ‘Nos’ led to the right ‘Yes’

Now! In terms of paying off the loan I made to myself with a credit card…

When you take on a conventional loan, you will pay 3 times the asking price over 30 yrs. Compound interest over 30 yrs….

That, frankly, doesn’t appeal to me and I wonder why everyone does it…

We have been herded into that mentality and few question it. With a credit card at simple interest, and a little good planning, you are not trapped in that system.

I did what made sense to me and what I could live with on the inside.

I became my own…just…banker.

So for the 2nd time in my life, I worked like a banshee, lived close to the bone, as they say, and paid off the credit card one year and one day later.

I’ve helped others do the same…

My second attention had called me to think outside the box…

The 1st Church of BobDebra Robinson·September 11, 2024Read full story

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