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The Aura

When I visited Fullerton Market last week, I mentioned that there were a few specific experiences worth noting. One was a booth for the "Healing Society" - Which is an eastern-holistic-cosmic sort of approach to healing. Normally, I'd pass right by that sort of thing, but they had this machine set up that looked like something from a carnival, featuring electrodes arranged in a palmprint shape, hooked up to a laptop computer and printer. It was a machine to measure and show the human aura. I had to see how they purported to be able to do this. I want ahead and sat down, listened to far too much detail about such topics as energy meridans and brain respiration, and figured this contraption was measuring some simple electrical property such as resistance or capacitance. I didn't need any more confirmation about how much foolishness exists in the world.


I was going to leave then, but they set me up on the machine, and took the image. The master practicioner, flanked by a couple of attentive but vacant-eyed followers who were wearing what looked like a cross between martial arts attire and lab coats, looked carefully at the laptop screen. She then began asking me about a series of physical problems that I don't have, related to what she saw in my "energy imbalances." I wasn't going to pay the five dollars to get a print of the image, but they ended up giving it to me with a discount coupon for their center. My aura was mostly swirls of green and yellow, as opposed to the sample, mosty green, auras they had of people who'd been through their program. Fine, fine, I was ready to go.


This group reminded me a little of that "Mind Head" organization in the film "Bowfinger", and seeing how they use terms like "Earth Humans", I don't think the comparison is unfounded. I had seen more than enough, and spent too much time there already.


Before I left, though, I noticed one of the flyers they had on their table. It was a flyer I recognized as one that had been placed under the wiper of my car a few weeks earlier. I can't stand ad flyers under my wipers! Any parking lot that's been a target of that sort of advertising is soon littered with the flyers. And these people, out to achieve cosmic balance and heal the earth and its creatures, including the Earth Humans, had been guilty of that litter. So, before I left, figured I'd deliver a small dose of instant karma. I happened to have an empty candy bar wrapper in my hand, courtesy of the goodie bowl at the Fullerton Parks and Recreation table that I'd previously visited. I surreptitiously deposited my wrapper in the midst of their display and departed.