The Reverse Santa Clause Effect
The moment I started believing in the impossible
I haven’t read a Dan Brown book since 2005 when the DaVinci Code was practically required reading. But when I heard that his newest one, The Secret of Secrets, is about consciousness, I knew I had to read it. Consciousness is a topic that it’s fair to say I’ve become obsessed with in recent years. And I don’t think I’m the only one; many people seem to be reexamining the “see it to believe it” view of reality that dominates science and culture. The unexpected smash success of The Telepathy Tapes podcast is just one example of how hungry people are to better understand the Psi experiences that are very common but still considered “unexplainable—” experiences like telepathy and precognition and the experience of receiving signs or guidance from something outside of ourselves.
I haven’t finished The Secret of Secrets yet, so I will save any larger commentary for another time, but I did underline one section that nicely summed up an idea that I have been thinking about for a while. In one of the early scenes in the book, Dr. Katherine Solomon, a fictional professor of noetics (i.e. consciousness), is lecturing in Prague when she starts to talk about a shift she believes the world is experiencing.
“Science has a long history of flawed models… The flat earth theory, the geocentric solar system, the steady-state universe*... these are all false, though they were once taken quite seriously and believed to be true. Fortunately our belief systems evolve when faced with enough inexplicable inconsistencies…
I believe a similar evolution is now occurring in the field of human consciousness. We are about to experience a sea change in the understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness and, in fact…the very nature of reality itself.”
-Dr. Katherine Solomon is The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
If you could put one of those 100 emojis on a paragraph in a book I would put it at the end of this second one. This is such a clear and compelling way to state something I have been seeing and feeling strongly for a while now. We are in the middle of a huge shift. A shift that is bigger than the onset of AI or the rise of Trump, bigger even than the fall of patriarchy or the crumbling of capitalism. We were in the early stages of a paradigm shift that will drastically alter our conception of the very nature of our reality.
I have always been a little “woo woo,” as people say, usually in a way that is either condescending or intentionally self-disparaging. But I can pinpoint a moment when I went from believing that supernatural things were possibly real to feeling like it was nearly impossible to believe that they weren’t. I think of this experience as “the Reverse Santa Claus Effect,” or the realization I had, somehow both slow and sudden, that many of the things I grew up believing could not possibly be true are quite possibly truer than I ever imagined.
It began after my dad died, when I started seeing signs of him everywhere in the form of eagles, and other symbols. I always found these signs interesting, amusing. They felt real, but I was still skeptical. Wasn’t searching for symbols just what a grieving brain does to make sense of senseless loss?
It wasn’t until ten years later when my marriage was crumbling that I an experience that changed everything. I went from thinking that it was possible that we can communicate with spirits and people who have passed, to believing to my core that we are in constant communication. Here’s the story of how that happened.
One afternoon, my last work meeting of the day got canceled so I had an unexpected extra hour before it was time to get the boys from preschool. I could have filled it with more work, or laundry, or even squeezed in a quick run. But I closed my computer and looked around the room and thought, “I need to go see a psychic.”
And then, “I need to go see a psychic right now.”
The six months of our “trial” separation were almost up, andI knew I needed to move out. Our story was not going to be what I’d hoped: a story of the near collapse of our marriage, and how we rebuilt something stronger and more beautiful in its place. Maybe I was going to build something strong and beautiful, but I was going to have to do it alone, and wasn’t going to my marriage.
I didn’t want to give up our home. I’d been the one who first saw the listing on Redfin four years earlier and emailed my husband: Is this the one?? It was a modest house, but a sweet home. I loved the box beam ceilings, the rose bushes out front, the espalier apple tree in the yard that created a wall of privacy between our yard and our neighbors. I’d thought we could stay here for a long time, at least until the boys were in high school.
But it had become clear: we couldn’t live there together anymore. One of us had to leave, and for a variety of reasons not worth explaining right now, it was going to have to be me. It felt brutally unfair. If I told the Me from two or three years ago what was about to unfold, I wouldn’t have wanted to believe it could be true that the life and family we’d worked so hard to create together would fall apart so quickly. So completely.
And yet, this is what had unfolded. It felt like I’d gone out for a swim and been swallowed by a whale, spit out on a far-away island.
Does that sound dramatic? I’ve been told I can be dramatic. But I’m telling you, that is how it felt–like the universe swallowed me whole and dropped me somewhere unrecognizable.
I would be the one to dismantle this life we’d so worked hard to create. I would be the one who had to build a whole new life from the ground up. I knew that I would find a way.
But how would I do it? Where would I go?
I’d been to a psychic or an intuitive twice before. Both times, it was for my sister’s birthday and I went along not because of any deep desire to see a psychic but because it was what she wanted to do to celebrate.
The first time we went to a past-life psychic with a group of friends, and then the next year my sister and I decided to keep the tradition going. It was just us this time, so I booked appointments at a place in my neighborhood called Psychic Sister.
The person who happened to be working that day had two long blonde braids that fell down to the middle of her back. She was a Rune reader, I learned. I’d never heard of Runes, but I quickly learned that they’re a sort of Nordic version of tarot.
“Do you come prepared with a question?” She asked as slid into a seat across from her in the small, curtained room. I hadn’t realized that I was supposed to have a question prepared, and so I asked the first question that popped into my mind.
“How do I become my best self?” I asked.
It was a pretty generic question. Even she looked a little disappointed. I don’t think I really expected an answer.
She swatted one braid behind her shoulder and then pulled some cards from the deck and laid them out in front of her. She turned the first one over and then began talking.
“There’s a storm coming in your life,” she said. “ Unexpected, like a hailstorm.” She turned over more cards. “You’ll have to turn towards your ancestors to find guidance. Draw strength by thinking of an oak tree emerging from an acorn. Go to the water when you need to find peace”
She turned over the last card. “On the other side of all of this: JOY.”
I’d never even told her my name.
“You’ll appreciate the small moments of joy, more, she said, after this storm is over. Like lying on the bed after a shower.”
Like lying on the bed after a shower? What a strange moment to choose. But it was true, before I had kids, I used to lie on my bed in my robe after a shower, my hair still wrapped up tight in a towel, grab a book off my night table and sing, “It’s the most wonderful time of the day!” This was my little Joy ritual, and only my husband knew it. How funny she had picked up on that detail.
Other than that small coincidence, the reading didn’t blow me away. It seemed kind of vague. But as I looked back on the ready a year later as I got ready to move out of my house, it suddenly seemed more fitting. The hailstorm she was talking about had come. I was in the middle of it.
I looked Psychic Sister up on my phone, and by some small miracle there was a half-hour appointment available in just 15 minutes. It ended right when I would need to leave to pick them up the boys from preschool. Perfect. I booked it.
For the rest of this story to make sense, I need to back up for a moment, to New Year’s Eve 2019, just weeks before that afternoon when I decided to go to Psychic Sister. We were just a few months into our trial separation and my mom was in town for the holidays. The boys were antsy from too much sugar and time inside; we all needed to get out of the house.
We bundled up in our winter jackets and wool hats and drove to the Pond.
“The Pond” is actually Whitaker Ponds, two tiny bodies of water located on a stretch of industrial road. It’s not a fancy place. There is a Dutch Brothers coffee on one side and a dumpster rental on the other. In the winter, the trees are barren and the water is covered in a blanket of bright green algae. But there is a flat, dirt trail around the larger pond. Walking slowly, the loop takes just twenty minutes, which makes it a perfect “toddler hike.” I used to take my kids there a lot when they were little and we were desperate for fresh air and a way to kill some time.
I don’t know much about the history of Whitaker Ponds, but the energy there feels charged. Whenever I go, I have a sense that the veil is thin. I’ve had more than a few experiences that feel otherworldly.
This was where my mother and I came a few days after my grandfather (my dad’s dad’s) funeral. There were red and white roses all over the funeral, at the front of the church and in the viewing hall, and then surrounding the casket as it was lowered it into the ground. The day after I got home, when we took the boys for a walk at The Pond, I looked over into the big field (which has since been paved to expand the parking lot) and there were red and white roses strewn all over the grass, as if someone had just tossed several bouquets up in the air and let them fall.
Then, I looked up and saw a bald eagle perched up in a tree, staring down at us. The sign for my dad. In the parking lot below the eagle, there was a blue BMW, the exact car my dad drove (and loved) with a license plate that ended in 2 JHN. Two John. My dad and my grandfather were both named John.
I wasn’t thinking of all that on that New Year’s Day a couple years later when my mom and I took the boys back to the Pond. The sky was a thick, smoky white and there was a light dusting of frost that made the whole world seem to shimmer. We’d just rounded the first bend in the trail when my mom said, “Look!” and pointed up to the sky.
Up above there was another large bald eagle sitting up on a bare branch at the top of a leafless tree. Right next to the eagle there was a crow. They seemed to be looking right at each other, and the crow was squawking, as if telling a story.
“Wow.” I said. I’d never seen anything remotely like this. Who ever heard of a bald eagle and a crow having a chat? The summer before my marriage imploded, I was chased by a crow. A few weeks later, a crow found a dead rat in our yard and attacked it, smearing it’s insides all over our patio. These experiences left me unsettled. It felt like the universe was trying to tell me something that I didn’t want to hear. When my life took a sharp turn a few weeks later, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been right, if the crows were trying to warn me. So seeing these two birds right next to each other was striking.
The dry leaves crunched under our feet as we walked. We rounded another bend and there was a man with a large camera set up on a tripod. We nodded and smiled in that way you do to acknowledge that someone is a human, but not a human that you actually know. But then my mom stopped.
“Did you see that eagle and the crow up in the tree?” She asked the man.
“Yes!” He said. “I got a good shot of it.” He unhooked his digital camera from the tripod and clicked back a few times before holding the screen out for us to see. The picture was a perfect capture of the crow and the eagle. It hardly seemed possible, but the image was even more striking than what we’d seen in the moment. The two birds were eye-to-eye, pure black against the white sky, and framed by a white circle set that made it look like they were perched in front of a fully moon. My mom and I both sucked in our breath as soon as we saw the photo.
“That’s amazing! Will you send that to me?” My mom asked.
“Sure,” the photographer says. “What’s your number?” She rattled off her phone number and then offered her name. “Nice to meet you,” he held out his hand. “I’m Raphael.”
“That photo is incredible!” I said, as we walked away. The boys had run up ahead towards the smaller pond, and we walked quickly to catch up with them.
“It was!”
“Raphael.” I repeated his name.
“Like the archangel,” she said. “You don’t hear that name too often.”
When I walked into the back room of Psychic Sister, a petite woman with long dark hair, warm eyes and a bright smile was sitting behind a table with a deck of cards and a bell in front of her. She introduced herself as Raina.
“What brings you here?” she asked, pronouncing each syllable deliberately.
“It’s just…I’m at a crossroads.” I said. “I have some big decisions to make. Really big decisions. And I need some guidance on what to do.”
She nodded her head, as if she had all the information she needed, and then closed her eyes. A moment later she opened them.
“Do you have a religion, or a religious figure, that you follow?”
I almost said that I’d been raised Christian, but I decided not to. It had been years since I’d been to a church for anything other than a wedding or funeral. Then I remembered the laughing Buddha statue I put in our yard years ago. I was drawn to his big smile, the joy that seemed to emanate from him.
“Um…I’ve always been interested in Buddhism” I said. “I have a Buddha statue in my yard.” She nodded and closed her eyes again.
“Well, you have a guide here today, and it’s an angel,” she said, squeezed her eyes shut. “An archangel.”
“Do you know which one?” She opened her eyes and looked straight at me.
“It’s Raphael.”
I almost slid out of my chairm but she kept going.
“He want you to know that he’s with you during this time, guiding you. He says he shows you his name to tell you when he’s near. He wants you to ask him for help! He really wants to help you, but you have to ask him.”
She closed her eyes again.
“Raphael loves his own name, so he’ll show it to you a lot. Other guides use symbols, but he likes to use his own name as a sign. He says that you will have a few choices, and none of them are wrong, but one choice will be better than the others. Ask him for help and he will light up the way to one choice.”
After the session, as I was getting my coat on, Raina asked me if the session had resonated.
“Yes!” I said. “Yes. Very much so. It was so weird, my meeting was canceled and I just knew I had to go see someone right now. I feel so much better. I’m so glad I did.”
She smiled and shrugged.
“Maybe this is your work too.”
After I picked up the boys, made dinner, cleaned up, got them in the bath, read books and put them to bed, I collapsed on my bed, alone. I still slept on “my side” of the bed, even though the other half was empty.
I’d left the session with Raina feeling something between giddy and jittery, as if I chugged espresso and it was just starting to kick in. I felt more hopeful than I had felt in a long time.
But a few hours later, I was coming down off the high and starting to second guess everything. Maybe the Raphael thing was a lucky guess. I started to think of all the reasons why she could have said all those things to anyone who randomly walked into Psychic Sister on Tuesday afternoon.
But then I remembered what she kept saying.
Talk to him. Ask for help. He wants you to ask for help. He will show his name when he’s there.
I had nothing to lose so I looked up at the ceiling and I started talking.
“Raphael? I need your help. My life is falling apart. My family is falling apart. I am falling apart. Something needs to change and I know that I need to be the one to change it. But I am so, so scared and I have no idea what to do next. Except I think I need to move. But I don’t know where. Help. Please help. And if you heard this, please show me your name. Please show me your name so that I know you’re really there. I heard you like to do that. Thank you.”
I stared up at the ceiling and part of me expected Raphael to appear in twinkling lights, but another part of me knew that would never happen. The house was silent. No cars or animals or sirens in the distance. Just complete silence. I waited.
On my night table there were two stacks of books, the books I was currently reading and the books I keep there to return to again and again. After a moment of silence, I reached over and randomly pulled a book from the second stack. The Four Agreements. An old favorite. I opened it to the very first page and saw something that I’d never noticed before.
Made in San Rafael, California.
I dropped the book. My hand was shaking. San Rafael. San, as in “Saint.” I’d asked Raphael to show me his name and there it was. The very first thing I saw, as if I’d been sitting at the dinner table and asked him to pass me the salt.
To be continued next week…
Writing prompt: The Reverse Santa Clause Effect
Have you ever had a moment when something you believe to be true was not true? Or a moment when you discovered that something you thought was impossible was, in fact, not only possible but happening? Take 20 minutes and write about it.
How did this moment change your life?
I have chills. This was incredible and such a gift to read on Christmas Eve. I love you!
Your writing is so beautiful, Joy.