I started writing this when we'd been chasing down a set of car keys that had vanished into thin air. It had been dogging me for a day.
Years ago, when a wedding ring vanished during a family celebration, my Catholic friend taught me how she asked St. Anthony to find lost objects. Her technique (if I remember right): Quiet yourself. Get a mental image of what you want to find. Ask St. Anthony to help you find it. Wander through the house or area with a sense of loose concentration, mind and body easy. See if there’s a place you keep being drawn to, even though you may KNOW FOR SURE it couldn’t be there, because you can take that to mean you are being guided. Where you keep feeling that pull is likely where it is or is a hint to where it is. She had great successes with this. That particular day she kept getting drawn to the discarded wrapping paper. She must have gone back to it 4 times. And sure enough there was the wedding ring, found before it went out with the trash.
My technique is almost the same. I start logically. First I retrace steps. I ask another set of eyes to look. I go through things systematically.
When that all fails I go the intuitive route. This is when it gets fun. It's a great way to pull into the less logical and feel the energies of attraction and repulsion. It's also a great way to get the universe involved, recognizing that there are forces greater than us.
I quiet myself. I get a mental image of what I want to find. I may even imagine the lost thing wants to find me, too. I ask the Universe/God/Life/Angels to help me find it. Or I ask St. Anthony - he's a friendly Saint. I wander through the house or area with a sense of loose concentration, mind and body easy. Sometimes I use a technique like the radar thingy. Like my friend, I don't discount places I feel drawn to even when logic tells me it couldn't be there. I don't rush; time pressure adds a level of cloudiness. I try to relax about the outcome; lost things sometimes need to stay lost. If I get stressed out while on the wander, I stop and relax again. The relaxed mind and body gives me access to something larger than logic, something rich and fluid.
The car keys? Well, we looked for them everywhere we thought they might have been, and places we thought they might not. We tossed cushions, took apart the recliner chair, checked all the wrong pockets. Called the dentist office. The garage got tidier. We cleaned out a few pockets. After two days, no keys.
But.
The third day, a letter from the government reminded me to renew license and health cards. That led me to the glove box of the Jeep which I rarely open. Without the letter, it could have been weeks or even months before I needed to use the glove box. And there they were. It ended up being an "Oh I remember now" moment. He'd dropped them in my glove box for convenience after a visit to the dentist (poor guy had teeth pulled) while I was getting him some prescriptions from the drug store.
By giving up the need for the keys to be found, when they did show up, it was a delightful surprise. It felt like a blessing.
