Listen to this short clip (3:46) to hear Diane's mom and stepfather come through on my radio show A Practical Psychic (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/apracticalpsychic).
Monday, August 23, 2010
On The Verge of Something
I'm just not sure what it is.
Friday I was sitting across from my client in my office, chatting before our session. As she was speaking, I had the strangest sensation that I was about to go out, and by that I mean go out of my body permanently. I felt like I was going to die.
I didn't feel any pain, or the onset of any fatal trigger in my organic body, I just had this amazing awareness that if I chose to, I could at that very moment step out of my physical existence and totally into spirit. It seemed like a part of my mind was also witnessing this instant of choice too, like I could see my chin fall to my chest and my eyes close, and could see my client's reaction. I stayed, obviously; maybe the choice wasn't really mine to make, but more illustrative of the power my higher mind could exercise. It was a funny feeling, not alarming exactly, but kind of awe-ful, and I felt a distinct curiosity along with quite a desire to follow through with it.
Since then I haven't really felt quite right. It's Monday morning now, and for the last three nights I have hardly slept at all. It seems I wake up every hour or even more frequently than that. Last night during one of these waking moments I felt like I could go out again, right then. Physically I feel very odd, kind of like my mind is splintered from my body. I feel in myself and like I'm observing myself at the same time. The part that is observing me has a distinct lack of emotion about these sensations and the idea of going out and while that freaks me out a little it's also rather comforting. If a wiser part of me thinks it's no big deal, who am I to argue?
My heart feels funny, as do my throat and my head, and I'm not talking about a physical funny feeling but the impression of a funny feeling. The pup I'm raising hasn't slept either. Last night he was moving around what seemed like every 30 seconds, and he's doing the same thing this morning. Something is really agitating him, but my animal communication skills have never been much good (no practice) so I can't say what's going on with him. With me though, I just feel somehow out of sync, or out of phase with the frequency of normal life now. I've got an itchy feeling to get moving already! though I have no idea what that means.
I remember a year or so after the September 11 attacks there was a blackout in the city (of New York) where I was working at the time for Hunter College. Since 2001 the College had an evacuation plan that meant if you worked in a certain area of the building you should meet at a certain corner a block or two away in the event of anything truly disruptive; it was simply a way to account for all the employees. So when the blackout came in the late afternoon and we all began to grasp the magnitude of it, the employees began to make their way from the buildings. As I walked to my designated meet-up place (the northeast corner of 69th and Park Avenue) I had my eyes on the sky like every other city resident who had seen our towers fall.
What stands out most about my state of mind on that afternoon was a kind of stunned sense of waiting. I was moving but wasn't really aware of walking; I had the sense of walking and watching myself walk at the same time, all the while waiting for what we were all sure was coming. Just a detached, unemotional brand of waiting, which is what I was feeling with my client on Friday and last night on the edge of sleep.
In my meditation this morning I felt the urge to write, so this is what came out when I picked up a pen:
"Either way I go, there will you go too.
The pope, the pope whose ear has turned to the World
closes shut like a clam shell, the pearl still inside.
In Span a ring is given and a proposal made
and a famous Scout has a cancer.
Cannons shout a plane from the sky and Taps is played
for a well-know black man."
What? My thoughts exactly. Who am I channeling now, Nostradamus? But wait, there's more. This week I've written to expect:
- Fire on an oil rig in the Gulf
- A solar flare or super nova event
- The passing of a Latin American leader
Maybe I'm channeling predictions now, like the great Jeanne Dixon. God forbid I get anything about an American leader -- I'll likely be accused of meddling in a terrorist plot; I'd be accused of provoking that bland waiting which would be just too ironic.
Friday I was sitting across from my client in my office, chatting before our session. As she was speaking, I had the strangest sensation that I was about to go out, and by that I mean go out of my body permanently. I felt like I was going to die.
I didn't feel any pain, or the onset of any fatal trigger in my organic body, I just had this amazing awareness that if I chose to, I could at that very moment step out of my physical existence and totally into spirit. It seemed like a part of my mind was also witnessing this instant of choice too, like I could see my chin fall to my chest and my eyes close, and could see my client's reaction. I stayed, obviously; maybe the choice wasn't really mine to make, but more illustrative of the power my higher mind could exercise. It was a funny feeling, not alarming exactly, but kind of awe-ful, and I felt a distinct curiosity along with quite a desire to follow through with it.
Since then I haven't really felt quite right. It's Monday morning now, and for the last three nights I have hardly slept at all. It seems I wake up every hour or even more frequently than that. Last night during one of these waking moments I felt like I could go out again, right then. Physically I feel very odd, kind of like my mind is splintered from my body. I feel in myself and like I'm observing myself at the same time. The part that is observing me has a distinct lack of emotion about these sensations and the idea of going out and while that freaks me out a little it's also rather comforting. If a wiser part of me thinks it's no big deal, who am I to argue?
My heart feels funny, as do my throat and my head, and I'm not talking about a physical funny feeling but the impression of a funny feeling. The pup I'm raising hasn't slept either. Last night he was moving around what seemed like every 30 seconds, and he's doing the same thing this morning. Something is really agitating him, but my animal communication skills have never been much good (no practice) so I can't say what's going on with him. With me though, I just feel somehow out of sync, or out of phase with the frequency of normal life now. I've got an itchy feeling to get moving already! though I have no idea what that means.
I remember a year or so after the September 11 attacks there was a blackout in the city (of New York) where I was working at the time for Hunter College. Since 2001 the College had an evacuation plan that meant if you worked in a certain area of the building you should meet at a certain corner a block or two away in the event of anything truly disruptive; it was simply a way to account for all the employees. So when the blackout came in the late afternoon and we all began to grasp the magnitude of it, the employees began to make their way from the buildings. As I walked to my designated meet-up place (the northeast corner of 69th and Park Avenue) I had my eyes on the sky like every other city resident who had seen our towers fall.
What stands out most about my state of mind on that afternoon was a kind of stunned sense of waiting. I was moving but wasn't really aware of walking; I had the sense of walking and watching myself walk at the same time, all the while waiting for what we were all sure was coming. Just a detached, unemotional brand of waiting, which is what I was feeling with my client on Friday and last night on the edge of sleep.
In my meditation this morning I felt the urge to write, so this is what came out when I picked up a pen:
"Either way I go, there will you go too.
The pope, the pope whose ear has turned to the World
closes shut like a clam shell, the pearl still inside.
In Span a ring is given and a proposal made
and a famous Scout has a cancer.
Cannons shout a plane from the sky and Taps is played
for a well-know black man."
What? My thoughts exactly. Who am I channeling now, Nostradamus? But wait, there's more. This week I've written to expect:
- Fire on an oil rig in the Gulf
- A solar flare or super nova event
- The passing of a Latin American leader
Maybe I'm channeling predictions now, like the great Jeanne Dixon. God forbid I get anything about an American leader -- I'll likely be accused of meddling in a terrorist plot; I'd be accused of provoking that bland waiting which would be just too ironic.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Spirit Communication Highlight
Because Blogger won't let me upload an MP3, I took my audio file and dropped it behind one of the backgrounds available in iMovie so I could create a video.
This is 5:55 of a spirit message that came through for a caller on my radio show, which is usually psychic impressions only. I thought I'd now edit the most interesting or unique mediumship events into a "highlight reel" to play on my site, my Facebook page, and here on my blog.
Look for more of these in the future.
This is 5:55 of a spirit message that came through for a caller on my radio show, which is usually psychic impressions only. I thought I'd now edit the most interesting or unique mediumship events into a "highlight reel" to play on my site, my Facebook page, and here on my blog.
Look for more of these in the future.
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Gentleman
I'm still continuing with my kundalini yoga practice, though I'm doing it at home because there aren't classes nearby. It's not quite as amazing as the first one, which could be because I'm alone, I'm using a DVD and I'm doing the same thing pretty frequently. Some interesting things have happened in the meditations that follow however.
People often ask me at my Message Circles what the spirit people DO out there, so I decided as part of my Circles and during my meditations that I'd ask. Usually in Message Circles the spirit person comes through and identifies him or herself through characteristics, illnesses, gifts, or sometimes a name. They also will offer evidence of their presence in the physical guest's life by commenting on a recent doctor visit, a new paint color for the baby's room, or what everyone had for dinner last night. I ask them for these kind of details not only as evidence of their identity, but as evidence that they are still part of the family even though they are in spirit.
Last Thursday after yoga I sat for a few minutes of meditation. The Gentleman (who shows himself as a skeleton to me, and first introduced himself during a past life regression several months ago) came in after a few minutes. I asked him to show me what happens after a spirit leaves a body, and he showed me that the spirit goes into a deep sleep. When I asked him, "for how long?" he just shrugged -- it depends on the time they need to adjust. While the spirit person is in this deep sleep, he showed me something like a scan going over them. It looked like what I've seen on TV of submarine computer consoles: kind of a sweeping line that detects bumps and blips in little flares of light.
This is what the scan was showing over the sleeping spirit, and the scan went back and forth until all blips and flares of light were gone, revealing just a line moving uninterrupted back and forth over the spirit person. Is it cleaning? Resetting energy? I don't know, he wouldn't answer me. He kind of clacked his teeth together when I asked, and of course it always looks like he's smiling so I got nowhere with that.
"Then what?" I asked.
He showed me that the sleeping spirit VERY SLOWLY begins to emerge from this deep kind of sleep, and the pace at which the spirit person awakens has everything to do with their capacity to adjust to their new place and the information about the change in themselves.
He shut me down after that, and my meditation was suddenly over. You know that feeling when you're meditating (or doing anything -- jeez, even having a relationship) and suddenly you just say to yourself, "Okay, I'm done." That was that.
But that night I had my regular Thursday evening Message Circle, and about 4PM I was sitting on my couch reading when I began to yawn uncontrollably. This has been -- though not for a while -- a strong signal from a spirit person or guide that I'm wanted for some important communication. I kept yawning. Well, I WAS tired, I thought to myself. I do have this 6 month old puppy. But it persisted (classic sign of something to pay attention to), so I put down my book, got into a comfortable meditation posture and said, "Okay, what?"
Nothing happened.
I thought I saw the Gentleman for a moment but then there was nothing. Okay, so I was tired after all.
In time I went started my Circle, and in response to my intention and general unspoken question to the spirit people, I got an answer to "what do you do?" Well, sort of.
One physical guest's mother came through first, we identified her, and she continued to hang around, interjecting between every other spirit person. Finally at the end of our Circle she came through with her message, which she conveyed through the tale of St. Christopher.
For those of you who don't know, the story of St. Christopher begins when a traveler approaches a fast-moving river. He notices a small child on the bank who asks to be carried across. The traveler (Christopher) agrees and puts the child on his shoulders. As he fords the river, the baby gets heavier and heavier until Christopher is leaning heavily on his staff and staggering through the dangerous water, risking his own life. When he finally reaches the other side, he puts the child down and says, essentially, "What the f***!?"
The child says he is Jesus and he is so heavy because he carries the weight of all the sin in the world. And Christopher is canonized (Patron Saint of Travelers) and then de-canonized some decades later.
So Angelina the spirit mother tells this story, and remarks that she herself carried a terrible sin, or so she thought. She hid this sin and judged herself very harshly all through her life. When she finally went out, she learned that what she had carried had no weight where she was now, and that it was her OWN judgment, not God's, that made that burden so heavy. All that wasted energy! She told us to drop our hard self-judgments, to forgive ourselves.
She has taken on some sort of teaching or even preaching kind of work where she is, she told us, to get the word out to physical people to believe that God will never judge them as harshly as they judge themselves.
Later that night I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned all night, and when I did drift into short periods of sleep I was entangled in very disturbing dreams and energies that I can't remember. At one point the Gentleman showed up, and I asked him to help me sleep. He stood behind me and put his hands on either side of my face. Then he moved to my feet, and finally put a hand on a rib on my right side, and -- finally -- sleep.
In the morning I felt like I'd gotten not only a jolt of his healing energy, but a way to lay my hands on my clients. In my meditations since then I haven't gotten more clarity, but my people are always telling me I must practice more patience.
People often ask me at my Message Circles what the spirit people DO out there, so I decided as part of my Circles and during my meditations that I'd ask. Usually in Message Circles the spirit person comes through and identifies him or herself through characteristics, illnesses, gifts, or sometimes a name. They also will offer evidence of their presence in the physical guest's life by commenting on a recent doctor visit, a new paint color for the baby's room, or what everyone had for dinner last night. I ask them for these kind of details not only as evidence of their identity, but as evidence that they are still part of the family even though they are in spirit.
Last Thursday after yoga I sat for a few minutes of meditation. The Gentleman (who shows himself as a skeleton to me, and first introduced himself during a past life regression several months ago) came in after a few minutes. I asked him to show me what happens after a spirit leaves a body, and he showed me that the spirit goes into a deep sleep. When I asked him, "for how long?" he just shrugged -- it depends on the time they need to adjust. While the spirit person is in this deep sleep, he showed me something like a scan going over them. It looked like what I've seen on TV of submarine computer consoles: kind of a sweeping line that detects bumps and blips in little flares of light.
This is what the scan was showing over the sleeping spirit, and the scan went back and forth until all blips and flares of light were gone, revealing just a line moving uninterrupted back and forth over the spirit person. Is it cleaning? Resetting energy? I don't know, he wouldn't answer me. He kind of clacked his teeth together when I asked, and of course it always looks like he's smiling so I got nowhere with that.
"Then what?" I asked.
He showed me that the sleeping spirit VERY SLOWLY begins to emerge from this deep kind of sleep, and the pace at which the spirit person awakens has everything to do with their capacity to adjust to their new place and the information about the change in themselves.
He shut me down after that, and my meditation was suddenly over. You know that feeling when you're meditating (or doing anything -- jeez, even having a relationship) and suddenly you just say to yourself, "Okay, I'm done." That was that.
But that night I had my regular Thursday evening Message Circle, and about 4PM I was sitting on my couch reading when I began to yawn uncontrollably. This has been -- though not for a while -- a strong signal from a spirit person or guide that I'm wanted for some important communication. I kept yawning. Well, I WAS tired, I thought to myself. I do have this 6 month old puppy. But it persisted (classic sign of something to pay attention to), so I put down my book, got into a comfortable meditation posture and said, "Okay, what?"
Nothing happened.
I thought I saw the Gentleman for a moment but then there was nothing. Okay, so I was tired after all.
In time I went started my Circle, and in response to my intention and general unspoken question to the spirit people, I got an answer to "what do you do?" Well, sort of.
One physical guest's mother came through first, we identified her, and she continued to hang around, interjecting between every other spirit person. Finally at the end of our Circle she came through with her message, which she conveyed through the tale of St. Christopher.
For those of you who don't know, the story of St. Christopher begins when a traveler approaches a fast-moving river. He notices a small child on the bank who asks to be carried across. The traveler (Christopher) agrees and puts the child on his shoulders. As he fords the river, the baby gets heavier and heavier until Christopher is leaning heavily on his staff and staggering through the dangerous water, risking his own life. When he finally reaches the other side, he puts the child down and says, essentially, "What the f***!?"
The child says he is Jesus and he is so heavy because he carries the weight of all the sin in the world. And Christopher is canonized (Patron Saint of Travelers) and then de-canonized some decades later.
So Angelina the spirit mother tells this story, and remarks that she herself carried a terrible sin, or so she thought. She hid this sin and judged herself very harshly all through her life. When she finally went out, she learned that what she had carried had no weight where she was now, and that it was her OWN judgment, not God's, that made that burden so heavy. All that wasted energy! She told us to drop our hard self-judgments, to forgive ourselves.
She has taken on some sort of teaching or even preaching kind of work where she is, she told us, to get the word out to physical people to believe that God will never judge them as harshly as they judge themselves.
Later that night I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned all night, and when I did drift into short periods of sleep I was entangled in very disturbing dreams and energies that I can't remember. At one point the Gentleman showed up, and I asked him to help me sleep. He stood behind me and put his hands on either side of my face. Then he moved to my feet, and finally put a hand on a rib on my right side, and -- finally -- sleep.
In the morning I felt like I'd gotten not only a jolt of his healing energy, but a way to lay my hands on my clients. In my meditations since then I haven't gotten more clarity, but my people are always telling me I must practice more patience.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Looking For A Spirit Person
Generally when I conduct Message Circles I say a short prayer, close my eyes, put out my "Open For Business" sign to the spirit people, and then wait. In a moment or two the spirit people will begin to take shape in a way that is specific enough for me start identifying their details and assigning them to whoever is sitting around me.
If I'm doing this at my home, I can tell when we're nearing the end because the feeling of energy from my porch (where I ask the spirit people to wait) begins to diminish. If I'm doing the Circle at another facility or someone's home, I just go through each spirit person until I find, when my eyes are closed and I'm listening, that no new information or details are coming to me.
At my July Message Circle at Opal Moon in Croton, NY, I had gone through this process, related all the spirit people who were there for me, and was getting ready to close the Circle. A family of three women asked if I would bring someone through for them who hadn't come in, and whom they really wanted to hear from. I don't often follow through with such a request because they usually come at the end of the Circle, and that sort of request lends itself more to a private reading. After all, no one else in the Circle got to ask for a specific message.
I hadn't really been satisfied with the spirit people I had brought through for this family though. There hadn't been any real hits, or zingers, that had the family members laughing or crying or absolutely identifying their spirit person. My feeling is if I don't give the client this level of detail, then I'm just like any other run-of-the-mill medium who could (for all I know) be making the whole thing up. Yes, I'm one of the most skeptical people out there!
So I asked for the spirit's first name, and went looking. What that means is I close my eyes (I'm pretty visual, and this helps me concentrate) and instead of waiting for something to appear on the inside of my eyelids, I kind of push out into the darkness that is there. I stretch my vision as if I'm peering towards a very far off horizon to see if I can detect any movement there or any change. I may do that looking left, center and right. I try to be patient, all while my conscious mind is taunting me: "You suck. These poor people can see right through you. They can see you don't know what you're doing. They can see you're a fraud."
Yeah, that stuff goes through my mind. I don't usually believe it, but when I have to look, summon, or fight for an impression I begin to doubt myself. Because the clock is ticking, everyone's waiting, I'm already ready to close up shop and go home.
I also tune in to my feelings. I concentrate super hard on locating or identifying any twinge or emotion that begins to even faintly crop up. My feeling is if a spirit person didn't show up at a Circle, either they have a very good reason for staying away or I am not picking up on their frequency. So in this exercise I just heighten my awareness as much as I can. It's difficult to describe, and kind of difficult to do: I can't sustain it for more than a few seconds. It's like diving into a pool to retrieve something from the bottom of the deep end; I can only dive down for a few seconds before coming back up for air. And every time I have to come back up I'm aware that people are waiting for me to deliver. It's pretty stressful, which is the perfect way NOT to feel when trying to find a spirit person.
Finally, after about three whole minutes of this kind of work (try it, it's MUCH longer than you think!) I thought I felt something. I leapt on it like a terrier and began to drag it back from the far horizon closer to my experience.
The feeling I got was a very slight feeling of being "off" or out of balance. I brought it up to the family, with my usual connection of recreational or pharmaceutical drug use. They could confirm some of the medicinal drug use. I felt I saw either a hand weight or a baby rattle, neither of which they could identify. And it went this way back and forth, a "sort-of" identifying detail, then one we couldn't place. We got a little closer to identifying him clearly when I saw him stick out his tongue at me, and it was evident he was making fun of me. The family would concur that he would do such a thing. Still, it wasn't enough for me or for them. He showed that he smoked, they agreed -- but so what, lots of people smoked. Still not enough for me.
He showed me a heartbreak connected with him, which the family validated. But then the next detail wasn't a hit. I wasn't getting enough detail, a few physical things, but finally an overall feeling from the spirit that he was losing patience with me. First he was making fun of me because I wasn't interpreting his symbols clearly enough (which the family validated, as he had a taunting kind of streak when alive), and threw up increasingly ridiculous symbols for me to try to interpret. Then he stopped, kind of with a feeling of "Enough! I'm very busy! Wrap it up!"
His mother asked, "what does he say?" and immediately the response came to me, "they don't have their hooks in me any more." Which caused quite a lot of laughter from the family, and had a two-fold meaning: he had been an alcoholic, and died from complications of that addiction after time in the hospital hooked up to things. He talked about a richness or texture in his perception now that he wasn't able to enjoy before, which seemed to describe emerging from the fog of alcoholism.
So these were pretty good hits, but I still wanted to give this family more. So I begged this impatient spirit for one more detail, one really specific message that would comfort his people. He talked about Edgar Allen Poe, and his poem about the Raven, specifically the line about knocking at the chamber door. He said this knocking, this door, would be how they would know him when he came to visit. One family member gave a happy shout: another medium had delivered the same message that inexplicable knocking would actually be this spirit announcing his presence. His mother said just days ago she'd thought she'd seen him at her door. He wanted them to know they weren't making it up, it was really him when they either heard knocking or had the visual impression of him it would be by or in a door.
Finally! The spirit person seemed to pack up his energy really quickly as though he had to rush off. I wanted to ask him where he was going and what he was doing that he had to get back to. I wanted to know why he hadn't voluntarily shown up during the Circle. But even before I got those thoughts formulated he told me, "Not now," and left.
In my practice now I plan to ask some of these questions:
"What occupies you in the spirit world?"
"Are you traveling around this globe, other worlds, dimensions?"
"What does it look like there?"
"Are you aware of past lives, or of a plan to return?"
I hadn't ever bothered with these issues before, because I wanted to get their identity out to their people more than anything. I think I felt there was always time to get to this "unimportant" stuff. And frankly, I'd read some books by other mediums who described the afterlife in ways that just didn't seem plausible, or seemed too New Age-y. Castles in the sky, great libraries filled with scrolls (who needs to read when you're a spirit?), heavenly meadows and angelic beings. It just seemed like crap. That's human stuff, isn't it?
If I'm doing this at my home, I can tell when we're nearing the end because the feeling of energy from my porch (where I ask the spirit people to wait) begins to diminish. If I'm doing the Circle at another facility or someone's home, I just go through each spirit person until I find, when my eyes are closed and I'm listening, that no new information or details are coming to me.
At my July Message Circle at Opal Moon in Croton, NY, I had gone through this process, related all the spirit people who were there for me, and was getting ready to close the Circle. A family of three women asked if I would bring someone through for them who hadn't come in, and whom they really wanted to hear from. I don't often follow through with such a request because they usually come at the end of the Circle, and that sort of request lends itself more to a private reading. After all, no one else in the Circle got to ask for a specific message.
I hadn't really been satisfied with the spirit people I had brought through for this family though. There hadn't been any real hits, or zingers, that had the family members laughing or crying or absolutely identifying their spirit person. My feeling is if I don't give the client this level of detail, then I'm just like any other run-of-the-mill medium who could (for all I know) be making the whole thing up. Yes, I'm one of the most skeptical people out there!
So I asked for the spirit's first name, and went looking. What that means is I close my eyes (I'm pretty visual, and this helps me concentrate) and instead of waiting for something to appear on the inside of my eyelids, I kind of push out into the darkness that is there. I stretch my vision as if I'm peering towards a very far off horizon to see if I can detect any movement there or any change. I may do that looking left, center and right. I try to be patient, all while my conscious mind is taunting me: "You suck. These poor people can see right through you. They can see you don't know what you're doing. They can see you're a fraud."
Yeah, that stuff goes through my mind. I don't usually believe it, but when I have to look, summon, or fight for an impression I begin to doubt myself. Because the clock is ticking, everyone's waiting, I'm already ready to close up shop and go home.
I also tune in to my feelings. I concentrate super hard on locating or identifying any twinge or emotion that begins to even faintly crop up. My feeling is if a spirit person didn't show up at a Circle, either they have a very good reason for staying away or I am not picking up on their frequency. So in this exercise I just heighten my awareness as much as I can. It's difficult to describe, and kind of difficult to do: I can't sustain it for more than a few seconds. It's like diving into a pool to retrieve something from the bottom of the deep end; I can only dive down for a few seconds before coming back up for air. And every time I have to come back up I'm aware that people are waiting for me to deliver. It's pretty stressful, which is the perfect way NOT to feel when trying to find a spirit person.
Finally, after about three whole minutes of this kind of work (try it, it's MUCH longer than you think!) I thought I felt something. I leapt on it like a terrier and began to drag it back from the far horizon closer to my experience.
The feeling I got was a very slight feeling of being "off" or out of balance. I brought it up to the family, with my usual connection of recreational or pharmaceutical drug use. They could confirm some of the medicinal drug use. I felt I saw either a hand weight or a baby rattle, neither of which they could identify. And it went this way back and forth, a "sort-of" identifying detail, then one we couldn't place. We got a little closer to identifying him clearly when I saw him stick out his tongue at me, and it was evident he was making fun of me. The family would concur that he would do such a thing. Still, it wasn't enough for me or for them. He showed that he smoked, they agreed -- but so what, lots of people smoked. Still not enough for me.
He showed me a heartbreak connected with him, which the family validated. But then the next detail wasn't a hit. I wasn't getting enough detail, a few physical things, but finally an overall feeling from the spirit that he was losing patience with me. First he was making fun of me because I wasn't interpreting his symbols clearly enough (which the family validated, as he had a taunting kind of streak when alive), and threw up increasingly ridiculous symbols for me to try to interpret. Then he stopped, kind of with a feeling of "Enough! I'm very busy! Wrap it up!"
His mother asked, "what does he say?" and immediately the response came to me, "they don't have their hooks in me any more." Which caused quite a lot of laughter from the family, and had a two-fold meaning: he had been an alcoholic, and died from complications of that addiction after time in the hospital hooked up to things. He talked about a richness or texture in his perception now that he wasn't able to enjoy before, which seemed to describe emerging from the fog of alcoholism.
So these were pretty good hits, but I still wanted to give this family more. So I begged this impatient spirit for one more detail, one really specific message that would comfort his people. He talked about Edgar Allen Poe, and his poem about the Raven, specifically the line about knocking at the chamber door. He said this knocking, this door, would be how they would know him when he came to visit. One family member gave a happy shout: another medium had delivered the same message that inexplicable knocking would actually be this spirit announcing his presence. His mother said just days ago she'd thought she'd seen him at her door. He wanted them to know they weren't making it up, it was really him when they either heard knocking or had the visual impression of him it would be by or in a door.
Finally! The spirit person seemed to pack up his energy really quickly as though he had to rush off. I wanted to ask him where he was going and what he was doing that he had to get back to. I wanted to know why he hadn't voluntarily shown up during the Circle. But even before I got those thoughts formulated he told me, "Not now," and left.
In my practice now I plan to ask some of these questions:
"What occupies you in the spirit world?"
"Are you traveling around this globe, other worlds, dimensions?"
"What does it look like there?"
"Are you aware of past lives, or of a plan to return?"
I hadn't ever bothered with these issues before, because I wanted to get their identity out to their people more than anything. I think I felt there was always time to get to this "unimportant" stuff. And frankly, I'd read some books by other mediums who described the afterlife in ways that just didn't seem plausible, or seemed too New Age-y. Castles in the sky, great libraries filled with scrolls (who needs to read when you're a spirit?), heavenly meadows and angelic beings. It just seemed like crap. That's human stuff, isn't it?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
