In this post, we explore how recurring archetypes of empire — visible across ancient civilizations — continue to influence modern political systems. This is not partisan commentary. It’s a structural analysis. We examine Centralization of authority, Technocratic governance, Psychological framing, Media consolidation, and possible pathways toward a more conscious civic model.
Context: Years of Legal Hell
To understand what happened on June 25, 2009, you need to understand what we’d been living through. Since 2001, our life in paradise had turned into a legal nightmare. We lived on a dirt road in the Hawaiian jungle, where an ancient stream from the mountain crossed our path. When it rained up high—not where we lived, but up in the mountains—water would rage across the road, turning it into a torrent.
That’s what killed our friends.
Jack was driving Celeste and Athena to a party at our place when the stream flooded. He tried to cross anyway. The car was swept away. Jack, Celeste, and Athena drowned. Only Harold and one other passenger escaped, nearly drowning themselves.
For years afterward, we were caught in a web of lawsuits. Celeste and Athena’s grieving parents sued everyone they could find—including Donald Sanger, the wealthy land developer who’d been buying up the 265 acres around us. When the parents sued him, he sued us, along with Chaz, who was hosting the party, and anyone else connected to that terrible night. The whole thing cascaded into a legal nightmare that pulled everyone in.
We were poor. They were rich. Same old story, different century, different island.
By June 2009, we’d been living under this legal siege for nearly eight years. The depositions were grueling. Expensive. Soul-crushing.
June 25, 2009: The Deposition
The deposition was scheduled for that morning. Unlike a trial, where witnesses wait outside, in a deposition, all parties are present—both sides hear everything said. It becomes public record. That’s why we were both in that conference room together, along with the attorneys, the court reporter, and Donald Sanger—the wealthy land developer who’d been dragged into the lawsuits by the grieving parents and had turned his legal fury on us, systematically trying to take our home.
My husband, Sasha—a clinical hypnotherapist with a Ph.D., brilliant and gentle—was questioned first. I sat there watching them literally torture him with hostile questioning. Watching my dearest beloved being torn apart, drained, wrung out.
When they finally finished with Sasha, I knew I was next. My heart was already starting to race just thinking about facing them.
NEWS STOPPED THE DEPOSITION
Lunchtime. A brief reprieve before I’d have to take my seat and face the questions I’d been dreading for weeks.
Then one of the attorneys from the room next door burst in as if he’d been waiting for us to pause. None of us expected the news that stopped everyone cold.
“Michael Jackson just died.”
The room went silent. Then chaos. Everyone started talking at once, remembering Michael, sharing stories, caught up in the shock of losing the King of Pop. For those few precious minutes, the lawsuit was forgotten as we all processed the impossible news that Michael Jackson—the Michael Jackson—was gone at only fifty years old.
When lunch ended, reality crashed back. Time to resume. Time to face the questioning.
I took my seat. The court reporter prepared her machine. I raised my right hand and swore to tell the truth.
And that’s when it happened.
THE INTERVENTION
My heart launched into tachycardia—a violent, irregular pounding that felt like my chest might explode. At the exact same moment, I felt a presence zoom up to my right ear. I swear I felt breath on my face, though no one was there.
A voice—his voice—spoke directly into my consciousness: “Tell them you’re sick.”
But there was no delay between hearing and speaking. The words came out of my mouth at the precise instant I heard them in my head: “I feel sick.”
How is that even possible? I was speaking and being spoken to simultaneously, as if we were one voice, one intention.
The attorneys didn’t hesitate. Papers flew into briefcases. “We’ll have to reschedule,” someone said, already halfway to the door. Within seconds—and I mean seconds—they were gone. Packed up, out the door, into the hallway.
I sat there, blinking, my heart still racing.
By the time I stood up and walked to the hallway, the entire building was empty. Every office. Every room. Even the front door stood wide open, as if everyone had simply vanished into thin air.
I walked outside in a daze and got into my car.
I started driving, still wired, heart still racing from the tachycardia. I had to focus—navigate through town, watch for traffic, get home safely.
I never drive with the radio on. My whole life is input—other people’s thoughts, ideas, demands. There’s hardly room to be me. So driving, especially on quiet country roads, is my meditation time. My only space to just breathe and be.
As I left town and reached the rural stretch where I could finally relax and cruise, that’s when it started.
I heard it—clear as day, though no radio was on. Michael’s voice, singing the old Jackson 5 classic: “I’ll Be There.”
“Just call my name, and I’ll be there…”
The song looped in my mind—or was it in my ears? I couldn’t tell. But I knew. I knew.
And here’s what struck me later, when I had time to think about it: Michael was incredibly polite. He waited until I was safely out of traffic. He let me get through the demanding part of the drive so I could focus. He knew I was wired, knew that even the thought of facing that deposition had been hard on my soul.
The music played at full volume as I drove, but when my phone rang, the volume automatically lowered so I could talk. When I hung up, it gradually crept back up to full volume again.
Same thing with sleep that night. He let me fall asleep. But every time I got up to use the bathroom, there it was again—loud and clear.
Michael Jackson had just saved me from that deposition.
The one who’d been attacked by powerful people his whole life. The one they’d destroyed with false accusations, media persecution, and finally—many believe—deliberate harm. He understood what it was like to be vulnerable, targeted, and fighting for survival against people with unlimited resources.
And in my moment of greatest need, when I was alone and terrified, he came.
But he came respectfully. Considerately. Waiting until I was safe. Managing the volume so I could function.
He was there—but he was there for me, not just at me.
Maybe I did help raise such a good boy after all.
Going Home
When I got home Thursday afternoon, the music was still playing. All through the evening. All through the night.
Every time I got up to use the bathroom, there it was again: “I’ll be there…”
All day Friday, the music played. Michael sang his greatest hits in an endless loop in my consciousness, with “I’ll Be There” repeating between each song. It was like being stuck in an elevator with the Jackson 5, except this elevator was my mind.
I tried to function normally. Go about my day. But the music never stopped.
By Friday evening, after dinner, I was doing dishes when I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like I was going to go crazy. Sasha joined me and started wiping the stove and the counters. “Honey,” I said, “I think Michael Jackson is haunting me.”
He looked at me carefully, reading my energy. He’d seen this before—I’d been visited by the dead many times over the years. “Tell me what happened.”
I told him everything—the deposition, the heart palpitations, the voice, the simultaneous speaking, the instant evacuation of the building, the music that had been playing for two solid days.
“We should do a session,” Sasha said. “See if we can actually contact him. See what he needs.”
I agreed immediately. We scheduled it for Saturday morning.
And that’s when something shifted.
The music didn’t stop—Michael was still there—but the volume dropped dramatically. It became bearable. Background instead of overwhelming. As if Michael knew he was finally getting help and could ease up on the intensity. He didn’t want to burn me out. Didn’t want to take me with him. Even in his desperate need, he was being considerate.
I had no idea what I was agreeing to.
(To be continued; check out the next post in this series.
*Janet Kira Lessin is a researcher, author, and experiencer who has worked with souls in transition for over five decades. She lives on Maui with her husband, hypnotherapist Sasha Lessin, Ph.D. This is the first in a series documenting her extraordinary encounters with Michael Jackson’s spirit in the weeks and months following his death on June 25, 2009.
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