Beyond Belief

The quickest way to stymie the expansion of consciousness/personal awareness is to adopt a belief. Beliefs are like boxes I built around myself to accept or embrace the confines within whatever experiences I find myself. Some boxes are comfortable, some painful and some simply hold me in a kind of suspension, unable to experience the fullness of my being. That doesn't mean beliefs aren't useful, because they are. Used like stepping stones rather than full blown parameters locking me into a set of rules to live by they can be very helpful indeed. 

What I have just written is one such example of a belief that continues to surface whenever it is time for me to move from any box I have built. No matter how expansive any belief box that I have adopted is, and no matter how well it has served the expansion of my conscious awareness, moving in full time and setting up permanent residence there hinders my ability to expand more. It limits me from accessing the fullness of my being and even more conscious awareness.

Expanded awareness knocks at my door all the time. Whenever I get comfortable within a perspective and think ‘Ahhh, now I get it!’, within no time at all I’m shown that what I have come to embrace is only one more teeny tiny piece of a larger puzzle that I am forever being guided to put together. Today I can move from one belief to another, more expansive belief, with relative ease. But that has not always been the case. It was once an anguishing dismantling process of tearing down one belief box before I could even recognize the new one waiting for me to move into. To say this process was earth shattering and at times heart wrenching is not an exaggeration. This is because I attached everything I thought I was to the beliefs I held about life and the world. Humans, operating from an ego state of consciousness do this. It’s called self preservation. Humans operating from an enlightened perspective of consciousness use something else to ensure their well being. It’s called intuitive guidance.

About thirty years ago I attended a lecture and heard a speaker put it like this… “The ego has one job, and that is to identify where we are and what the rules are for making it here.” This understanding became the basis for recognizing the boxes of beliefs I had carefully constructed to keep me safe. To say they weren’t working was an understatement. It became my mission to undo every one that didn’t serve me and my desire to embrace and live from the fullness of my being. Thirty years later I am still engaged in that process. The difference is that today I leap with joy anytime expanded awareness comes knocking. I have no boxes to dismantle because I’ve learned not to construct them in the first place. Beliefs are like stepping stones for me now rather than boxes I move into and take up residence. Rather than anchoring me in a fixed position, they help me keep my footing as I move through life. They give me a solid foundation to stand on while I take in the new perspectives being intuitively presented and they never limit me or lead me astray. To say I live beyond belief would be to deny it’s role in providing that surefooted experience. What I have moved beyond is belief systems!

Belief systems are everywhere. They are purposely designed to contain us within certain parameters. These systems are called by many names: religion, politics, education, science, and family. Yes, family, culture, heritage, nationality, patriotism, the list goes on. These belief systems are all designed to keep the ego safe and people managable. How well do you think they are doing? There was a time when these systems of belief worked very well for the people that initially constructed them. We are not those people. While most ego’s haven’t recognized it, we have spiritually outgrown belief systems. Trying to live out of the tiny boxes these systems provide is creating a world of chaos and confusion. I have chosen to watch the dismantling of these belief systems as a spectator who awakened to and from them many, many years ago. With a compassionate heart for those still caught in them and a heightened awareness of the damage that can come as fear ensues and these systems fail. My contribution is to share the guidance that I have experienced in a way that makes room for everyone else’s guidance. At the end of the day we are individuals. I came here to do me, not anyone else. If Innerwyze is anything it is a window into one woman’s trial and error and course correction….. and the rewards of living as much as possible beyond belief.

2- Laura and Laurie

2- Laura and Laurie

Long before I was consciously aware the multi-dimensional nature of reality or how it was operating in my life, I encountered it, as had my mother some twenty or so years before me.  Due to the fact that we are conditioned away from seeing metaphysical experiences as a normal part of everyday life, we unknowingly limit them.  But, as has been proven to me, when this aspect needs to really get our attention, it does!  I have experienced a non-physical aspect of myself that has a much better vantage point than my limited physical counterpart  If we just understood the fullness of our being, I believe we could be guided in every moment by this aspect of ourselves.  Then, instead of bowing to some seemingly separated external deity granting miracles, we could each tap into the truly miraculous nature of  who we truly are and utilize our infinite potential.  Perhaps we are moving toward experientially realizing this way of life.

When I was four years old and my sister, Laura, was two, I remember a panic that ran through my family.  Laura was missing.  Imagine my parent’s frenzy as they frantically searched for her.  It was 1960 and we lived in a small mainland town in Galveston County, Texas.  My parents had built a home on some property given to them as a wedding present from my grandparents.  Apart from one next-door neighbor and another at the end of our little road we were surrounded by vacant lots.  Our little family of four had been outside when my parents suddenly realized they didn’t see my sister.  Our property wasn’t fenced and when a frantic search didn’t produce her they feared someone may have driven by and taken her.  They called the police and worriedly  continued to search.  To this day my mom vividly recalls standing by the detached garage behind my dad as he spoke with the officers.  She reports that, without warning an “invisible something”  literally took her by the hand and pulled her across the backyard to an old quilt lying in the grass.  She said she was physically pulled down by this guiding presence to explore the quilt, which to her looked as though it had simply been tossed in the yard.  Having kicked at it earlier in her search she was amazed to discover that deep within the quilt my sister had rolled herself tightly into a ball.  Playfully hiding, she had fallen asleep.  

I recall my parents relief as my dad later sat with my sister on his lap, all of us gathered around her.  As he talked to her about never hiding from them like that again I can still hear her say, “Next time I will leave my feet sticking out.”  Everyone laughed at her seemingly reasonable two year old response, as my dad shot down that idea in a heart beat.

To this day my mom recalls that moment as clearly as the day it happened.  She told me that was the day that she truly knew there was more to this world than meets the eye.  My mom had been raised with religious teachings, but until her own revelatory experience, none of it was tangible for her.  As my friend Theresa always says, information is not revelation. Personal revelatory experiences awaken us deeply to the true nature of reality.  My mom has gone on to have many more mystical experiences.  None more profound than those after my father’s passing. But for now let me tell you how my own daughter, my sister’s namesake, was also saved by a guiding presence.

Laurie was my first child and when she was just an infant I had taken her with me to help a friend pack up her house for a move out of state.  She had a daughter a couple of months older than Laurie and motherhood had bonded us. I tucked my baby girl into the crib my friends daughter used, and went about packing.  Later, as I was working in the bathroom I got an image of my daughter in the crib with a blanket tightly wrapped around her head from the neck up.  At twenty-one I simply considered this a foolish thing to imagine and almost brushed it aside.  Fortunately however, I decided to peek in on my daughter anyway.  As I looked in from the bedroom door I couldn’t see over the bumper guards around the crib so I walked over.  There she was, just as I had envisioned her; on her back, the blanket tightly surrounding her little head.  I scooped her up, removed the blanket and she gasped for air.  Her hair was soaking wet and her face bright red.  Acting on the vision I had received had saved her life.

To this day I don't know how she managed to tangle herself up in that blanket but I have never left a blanket in a crib since!  Also, I have never discounted any vision or premonition since.  And, like my mother, I have never forgotten the intervention that aided me in rescuing my daughter.  My mother was pulled as an invisible presence literally took hold of her hand.  I was more subtly guided by a vision in my mind that I almost regarded as an over active imagination.  However guidance comes to us, following it can be life saving.

Intuitive awareness is so interwoven into our daily experience that it goes without recognition most of the time.  Unless catalyzing events, like those I have shared here happen, most people are not even aware of how much access they have to these abilities.  Identifying them in the ordinariness of everyday living taught me how to cultivate and build upon them without being enamored with them. or considering them “miracles”.  Tuning into my own higher-self aspect is all the guidance I needed to experience this for myself. My limitless nature was only obscured until I came into the realization of it.  Coming into that realization as a society begins with sharing stories like these and starting to pay attention to the multi-dimensional nature of the world around us.  It is everywhere and it is awakening in us as we exchange such stories.  It is for that reason alone that I write about my experiences.  Not so anyone will follow in my footsteps, but so we will all move deeper into our own inward path, awaken to our intuitive nature and embrace the individual and highly personal guidance that extends from beyond the realms of matter, energy, space and time.  There is indeed more to this world than meets the eye….and we are that more!

7- Creative Intervention

7- Creative Intervention

Phil provided the foundation for me to dive deeply into the larger questions of life while pursuing my creative side.  Not only did he love being surrounded by the energy of an artist, he truly enjoyed the long philosophical discussions and spiritual questioning I constantly brought to the table.  In our marriage we were truly best friends and I had never known this in my life.  We  also loved working together and were one of those rare couples who preferred to be together all the time.   Frustrated with my blocked creativity, I once told Phil I felt like I needed to waste 100 canvases to just get past the feeling.  His response was to agree, support me in creating a proper studio, and promptly fill it with canvases and whatever else I needed to break free of my limitations.  This was quintessential Phil! However, neither of us could have known the stage he was setting for the mystical experience that would birth my journey into what I have come to call Creative Introspection.

In the early days of my new marriage I continued my introspective work, dredging up those issues I felt were limiting my life.  It was hard work and it estranged me from my extended family as I delved into childhood issues that threatened those unwilling to explore the past through a functional lens.  This was taking an emotional toll on me as I came to terms with the family dynamics that had contributed to my feelings of abandonment and shame.  My spiritual mantra of ‘Lead me into all truth.’ was painted across every aspect of my life and it served me well even though it disconnected me for a time from those I loved.  

One night I awoke in the wee hours of the morning.  Pitch darkness surrounded the beautiful old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere that Phil now shared with us.  Having leased the place sometime before meeting Phil, he often teased that he married me for the farm.  We loved the place and its quiet, peaceful surroundings.  As I slipped from bed, making my way through the darkness like a blind woman who knew every nook and cranny of the room, it felt as though something beyond me was moving me along.  I knew I wasn’t wide awake but it seemed like I was being led as I experienced myself from two points of view; subject and observer.  

I entered the new art studio which was just off the bedroom, and began to set up one of the new, larger canvas’ for painting.  Still in this strange, unfamiliar state of being, I watched myself fill a pallet with oils paints and marveled at the colors being chosen.  One part of me was curiously watching what another part of me was doing, but the two aspects were only slightly connected.  I had never experienced anything quite like this before and it intrigued my curious nature so I trusted it.  I was not being ‘taken over’, I was experiencing an expanded state of awareness and being.  

Hours flew like minutes as a painting filled the large canvas I had placed on the easel.  Only the morning sun streaming through the studio window alerted me to how much time had passed.  As the sunlight and the awareness of time shifted me, I was suddenly wide awake, fully integrated and absolutely astounded at what had happened.  Unable to take my eyes off the painting, I backed toward a small sofa in the room as huge waves of deep emotion rippled through me.  I simultaneously laughed and cried from the depth of my being at the realization that I was being healed.  A flood of energy was moving through me as I stared at the painting which had also come through me.  In every way the painting was symbolic of the journey I had taken through life.  As I stared at it, it functioned as a sort of archetypal life review.  It spoke to me from an energetic level validating every emotion and every wound I had ever suffered.  It brought forgiveness to everything I ever held against myself and it freed me in ways impossible to explain.  This energetic exchange went on for about a half an hour as everyone else slept.  It left me refreshed and reborn somehow.  Renewed, I felt a freedom I had never experienced in my thirty-five years of life.  What was this that had transpired in the dark stillness of the night, I wondered.  What spiritual connection was there between creative energy and self-realization?  My head was swimming as Phil emerged from the bedroom.  

I could hardly contain myself as I shared with him what had happened to me.  We made coffee and talked for hours as we sat before the painting in my studio.  He had no more answers than I, but he could see the change.  It was obvious, and he could feel it.  My pursuit of an art career was shifted that day.  Now I was propelled to understand the connection between creativity and spirituality as it applies to self-realization.  My life’s work in psycho-spiritual healing had now merged with my lifelong creative impulses and I began to see everything I had ever created in a new light.  Songs that had simply come through me, volumes of poetry that had written themselves and gotten me through some of the most difficult times of my life were suddenly understood in light of this energetic experience.  

Using creative energy to spiritually understand ourselves and heal was now my focus.  Over time I was guided to the realization that creativity can serve as a healing conduit because we are creative energy incarnate!  Therefore, when we direct our focus to the larger questions in life, (Who am I, Where did I come from, and what am I doing here?), opening a creative avenue is like opening a portal through which our answers can flow to us…from us; our higher self!  From this day forward my art and my awakening were inextricably tied.  The answers that flow through the end of my paintbrush and pen have profoundly moved, inspired and awakened me.  While I have won awards and had opportunities to pursue a traditional career in the arts, those arenas never captured my passion.  Spiritual awakening and enlightenment was always at the forefront for me.  That it merged into my unwavering creative indulgences has been a gift beyond measure.  But that is what life gives you when you give yourself to life rather than the distractions of life; gifts beyond measure.

Some refer to creative experiences like these as channeling.  I myself once accepted that term for lack of understanding what was really happening.  Today I realize that I was simply tapping into a frequency of my own infinite being which allowed for higher exchanges of information to come through.  There is quite a difference between giving oneself over to ‘another’, as one who channels does, and aligning with one’s own higher aspect.  The first sets up and continues the idea of separation and dependence.  The later is freeing and revelatory as it connects oneself to their infinite nature.  I have experienced again and again how creative energy serves as a wonderful conduit for connecting to one’s higher-self.  When I tie this to my personal quest for ongoing enlightenment it never fails me.

9- Photo-realism

9- Photo-realism

Despite the mystical experiences connected to my spiritual journey, I had never researched or entertained any kind of paranormal explorations.  Not that I avoided them…they just weren’t on my radar.  Despite my own mystical experiences, I was a clinician who primarily believed in addressing the here and now with the here and now. But an antique photo in a tiny shop would expand that understanding, proving that the ‘here and now’ also holds the ‘there and then’.  

Each time I put the antique photograph down and walked away to explore other things in the tiny shop, I felt myself unexplainably drawn back to the woman in the portrait.  In those days there was something about old things that called me.  Along with my sister and girlfriends I often perused dusty old shops and antique malls, and this day was no different.  These places resonated with a kind of timelessness that we each found captivating.  Our homes were furnished and adorned with treasures from such places.  For me it was not so much a shopping adventure as an appreciation for the craftsmanship and beauty that I feel has all but disappeared in our modern, make-shift world of the instant and disposable.  But my attraction to this particular photograph had nothing to do with any of that.

For some time I had been collecting antique cabinet card portraits of women for a Women’s Issues class that I was scheduled to teach.  I had planned to use such images to connect the students of today to the energy of women in earlier times.  However, I never expected to connect so deeply to an image myself.  Having more photos than I needed, despite the attraction, I put the photo down and left the store with my sister and girlfriend.  Halfway down the sidewalk I was compelled to return to the shop and the photograph.  As I picked it up and looked into the depth of the eyes staring back at me, I was completely captivated and clueless as to why.  But to free myself from the pull, I marched straight to the counter, purchased the seven dollar obsession and tucked it into my purse.  That was that…or so I thought.

All day long I felt the urge to take the photo from my purse and look into her eyes.  Time and again I found myself staring into them as if they held some great mystery.  I even asked those with me if they got any vibe off the picture and they both denied any kind of draw what-so-ever.  My sister further commented that she didn’t even find the woman particularly attractive.  This threw me because I found her to be quite captivating.  It wasn’t that she was a beauty, but there was an undeniable strength and presence about her that I found compelling. 

That evening I sat with the photo and wrote whatever came to mind as I imagined the life of the mysterious woman from the turn of the century.  Alone on my sun porch, I fashioned a character study of sorts that was impossible to verify, but verification wasn’t what I was looking for.  I simply wanted to understand what was calling me to this image so I wrote whatever filled my thoughts.  The things that came spoke to a strength of character and her determination to be heard and unrestricted in an age where women had very little freedom and even less voice.  The message was one of self-knowledge with regard to her personality; a quiet type of inner-strength that was unmistakable in her presence.  Not foreboding or arrogant in any way,  I felt she held a kind of self-awareness that was purposeful and directed, without ego yet very centered.  

A few days later I had the image copied and enlarged so I could frame and display it prominently in my home.  I knew this was very unusual behavior but I just went with it.  I intuitively felt the need to ‘be with her’; to have her share my space.  Fortunately I lived with people who didn’t question my quirky ideas or spontaneous notions.

It was the early nineties and we had a nice apartment just outside of Dallas, Texas.  I say this to emphasize that there wasn’t anything in our area of the bible belt that openly addressed the paranormal.  Quite honestly, despite the mystical experiences connected to my spiritual journey, I had never researched or entertained any kind of paranormal explorations.  Not that I avoided them…they just weren’t on my radar.  Despite my own mystical experiences, I was a clinician who primarily believed in addressing the here and now with the here and now.   But the woman in the photo, unbeknownst to me, had come to show me that the here and now held more than I realized.  Being all that existed, the ‘here and now’ holds everything!

A few days after finding the portrait and writing down my thoughts, I randomly turned the TV channel following a local home-school program my son had just finished watching.  An interview type talk-show I had never heard of caught my attention.  This episode featured a detective who used the services of a psychic to assist in finding missing persons.  The detective, a credible sounding, middle-aged man, introduced the psychic and sang her praises with regard to her assistance in his cases.  Curious, I watched the interview through to the end.  When an invitation to call the number on the screen reached out to anyone with a story they would like to share about the paranormal, I found myself jotting the number down. 

Not only did I know nothing about the paranormal world at this time in my life, I had certainly never entertained the idea of calling a television show, much less a psychic!  But there I was, only minutes after the show aired, dialing the number. Hoping to get information for contacting the psychic, my mind was questioning my actions even as I watched them unfold.  I had no idea why I was calling to connect with a woman on a TV show in California simply because I was obsessed with a photograph I’d found in an antique shop in Texas, but there I was.  Imagine my surprise at being told that the psychic actually lived only three hours from my home!  For Texans, that’s a day trip! Without missing a beat, I called, she answered, and the synchronistic breadcrumbs continued to fall into perfect alignment.  As it turned out she was in my area twice a month seeing clients.  Needless to say, I scheduled an appointment.

On the phone I was careful not to give anything away.  I told her that I had seen her on the TV show, and being a counselor, I wondered if she had ever assisted in that field in some way.  She said she had and we agreed to discuss the possibilities when she was in town. Two weeks later I waited outside the office she used when she was in town.  The photo tucked inside my purse, I thought about how I was going to approach the subject.  When it was my turn to see her I found the woman to be just as she was on TV.  Warm, friendly and very approachable.  After introductions and pleasantries the two of us went into the room she used as an office.  We sat across from one another at an empty table, but for a small cassette recorder next to her.   I reached into my purse, took the photograph out and said “I was wondering…”.  Before I could finish my sentence the woman reached to take the photograph from my hand, and upon touching it she gasped slightly, drew it to her and hit the record button and said, “This was you in a past life.”  I sat speechless and suspicious until she began independently stating much of what I had written after finding the photo….and then some.  I’d probably taken it all with a grain of salt had her reading not been so close to the things that I had intuitively written.  However,  I had never even remotely considered a past life connection.  In those days I didn’t even think in such terms.  Since then however, I have had three other very gifted psychics confirm the connection and I have no doubt they were honestly telling me what they saw. 

While it is fun to imagine that I actually connected with a photograph from one of my own past (parallel) lives, that has never been what most astounded me.  Connecting with that photograph in such a profound way marked a trajectory that opened me up to a much larger picture of life.  After that experience and hearing about the possible connection, my studies turned to exploring life as an ongoing continuum rather than a single appearance.  Weather she is indeed one of my own past/parallel lives, I don’t know.  However, those who knew me during that time can certainly attest to how strongly her energy influenced my life, and the doors that opened up for me following our uncommon introduction.  I eventually began to explore past life regression.  I assisted a friend in unraveling and validating her young son’s comments about the lives they shared prior to this one.  And my world view expanded far beyond the limits of my five senses.  

I came to understand that we simultaneously project our eternal essence into many incarnations at once in various dimensions.  These fluctuate along bands of frequency and actually influence one another across what we experience as time and space.  I’ve learned that shifts in awareness which I experience in this life literally impact other lives that the larger self is projecting which I’m not even consciously aware of and vice-versa.  I have also been shown that our life is not one of continuity.  We are not limited to a chronological continuum of experience, but do indeed seamlessly pop in and out of experiences according to our perception and focus.  I have felt sudden shifts and become aware of literally shifting from one timeline to another without needing to experience the gradual steps I could have used to get there.  This awareness continues to expand in me as does my understanding of it.  It is these kind of lessons I enjoy exploring and dissecting.  The world I experience today is far from what meets the eye and this has made life quite an adventure.  One that was prompted by a photograph experienced along two timelines which crossed in the eternal now.

The enlarged framed photograph is still in my home and long ago I painted a portrait of the two of us.  Together we are more than I was alone and I feel a kinship to the energy that reached out to me in such a profound way.  Understanding that we all exist beyond the limitations of time and space is what matters most.  When we live from that awareness we open ourselves to infinite possibilities in the seemingly here and now.  The captivating woman in the photograph ushered that awareness in for me. I am both grateful I followed the intuitive nudges that led me to her and forever changed because of it.  

12- Staying Connected

12- Staying Connected

Unexpectedly widowed at fifty-six, a series of beautifully guided, synchronistic events, had me living at my daughter’s home just prior to, and following, my sweet husband’s untimely passing.  A few weeks before his transition, knowing it was close, Phil and I made an agreement to stay connected.  Our beliefs supported this idea though neither of us knew just how we would pull this off.  Therefore we decided he would be the one to let me know just how that was going to happen once he ‘settled in’ beyond the physical.  

Several weeks after Phil’s passing I was writing one of my evening letters to him in my journal.  This was a practice I had started after his transition to ease my grief and move into a new way of being with him.  It really seemed to help me find ‘us time’ to share my day with him.  But it wasn’t a two-way street and I really wanted that.  Since we had agreed before his passing to keep in touch,  it dawned on me to give him a symbol to use to let me know he was around.  Dragonflies had always been a personal totem for me and was even the logo I used for business in the form of my initials.  This seemed the perfect symbol.  As I wrote the letter telling him to send me dragonflies if he was around, I also wrote how difficult this might be since I was most always inside.  Not long after I put my letter away the phone rang.  Lo and behold, my three year old grandson was put on the phone to tell me about his new temporary “dwagon-fwy”  tattoo.  I laughed and cried and excitedly shared the news with everyone.  Phil was in touch!

Lighter and happier, the next day I shared the news with a girlfriend as I accompanied her to an appointment.  As we sat together across from the man she was seeing, he began questioning me rather than my friend.  I explained that I was just accompanying her, but still he asked me a bit about myself and my work.  As I explained my work, a look of excitement came over his face and he reached beneath the table he was sitting behind, pulled out a rather large book and said,  “Oh, you have to read this!”  A huge dragonfly illustration adorned the cover of the book he held up, and my friend and I could hardly contain our amazement.  The book, as it turned out, addressed many of the esoteric based questions I had been asking my late husband about in the letters I wrote each evening.  This was not only his way of answering the questions, but of saying hello once again.  I know this, because as I went to purchase the book that evening, the edition now available had a new cover….without the dragonfly!  Had I not gone with my girlfriend, I’d have never seen that edition let alone been directed to it for some of the answers I sought.  I have since learned how our loved ones can inspire our thoughts in order to align us with such synchronistic events.  This is exactly what Phil had done!  And he wasn’t through yet.

All of a sudden I began hearing from my family about their own unusual dragonfly experiences.  My mother, who had become widowed only a day before me, had a dragonfly visit her patio daily that she had never encountered before. This went on for a good week or more.  My sweet niece, for the first time she could recall, not only had a dragonfly appear at her home, but it perched itself on her shoulder, which she couldn’t wait to tell me about.  Dragonflies randomly appeared to my daughter and my grandson’s mother around this time as well.  But no dragonfly dance was as profound as the one I experienced a year following Phil’s passing.

Prior to his transition, Phil had never expressed one bit of concern about my life without him.  When I would say how much I was going to miss him, he would simply reply “You’ll be fine.”   For twenty-two years we had done absolutely everything together and loved the introverted cocoon we had built around our life.  Imagining life without him was impossible.  But now, as I look back, I wonder if he intuitively knew something I didn’t.

About a year after Phil’s passing, I went to dinner with a man I had met through yet another series of profound synchronistic events.  Such alignments had become almost a way of life and I needed only to follow the clues scattered like breadcrumbs before me.  Seated at a window overlooking a lake, my mind turned to Phil.  He had loved the water and whenever I am near it he always comes to mind.   I suppose it’s natural, after a long marriage, to wonder if your late spouse approves of your life moving along with someone new.  Having had no doubt, that Phil had a hand in arranging our meeting, as I sat there I wondered what he thought.  At that very moment a huge swarm of tiny dragonflies arose from the lake right in front of the window where we sat.  Hundreds of tiny dragonflies circled and danced outside the window the whole time we were there.  For me it was Phil not only acknowledging his approval, but taking credit for the matchmaking itself, saying….  “See, I told you you’d be fine.”  

Dragonflies were not the only way Phil communicated.  One day, not long after the phone call from my grandson about his timely tattoo, I was in my bedroom at my daughters house tidying up.  I was talking out-loud to Phil as I always did, telling him we needed a better system.  Dragonflies were great for saying hello but I needed something more.  As I continued to talk to Phil about ways we could connect, I reached for the remote and turned on the TV.  Again, perfect timing!   Just as I turned on the TV a woman on the screen was demonstrating how one could use a pendulum to connect with their deceased loved one.  The series, which I had watched countless times, had never even remotely shown anything metaphysical….let alone a clip about connecting with a deceased loved one.  Phil had done it again, and so I reached for a chain that held beautiful handmade glass bead Phil had once bought me.

In the years since his passing I have learned how easy it is for our transitioned loved ones to inspire us with guiding thoughts toward things they want us to know or experience.  The pendulum proved to be a great tool for ongoing communication and greatly reconnected me to Phil on an emotional level in that first year following his transition.  I rarely use it to connect with him today as we are quite literally on a different wavelength and communicate differently.  However, I do use it, and have taught others to use a pendulum, to regain a physical connection to those who have transitioned.  I can’t tell you how many times I have held it and simply asked Phil to use it to ‘hold my hand’.  For us that means the pendulum will spin in a circle with quite an energetic pull as I hold it.  This worked like magic to lift my spirits in the first year following his passing, because the physical absence was so profound.  

Since Phil’s transition I have encountered three separate mediums who have connected with Phil and given me confirmation of messages I intuitively received from him, without me sharing the tiniest bit of such information with them, including his existence!  This initially helped me to trust what I was picking up.  The two mediums I spoke with after I met my new partner even stressed that Phil was taking full credit for having put us together.  I had also intuited this because of the synchronistic alignments that happened to arrange our meeting.  This made me smile and appreciate how he was even taking care of me from the non-physical.  Mediums are great for tapping the lower planes if you can find one with a good track record.  There are lots of charlatans however using something called ‘cold reading’ to appear to have a connection, so, if you are inclined to use one, do your homework.  But, trust me, there is nothing like having your own ongoing connection. Six years into his transition I experience Phil very differently these days.  A couple of years ago my new life partner became my husband, and while he fully embraces the connection I have to Phil, it has become much more subtle. It is my sincere feeling that this subtlety is how Phil honors the life I live today.

13- The Rest Of You

13- The Rest Of You

In the last year of my late husband’s life, long before we even knew he was ill, I would catch myself at times, gazing at him in simple appreciation..  I would feel the gratitude well up in me for having him in my life.  At night before falling asleep, I would think about all he had given me and dwell in appreciation for him.  Fourteen years my senior, he had been the wise shaman who had opened me up to myself in ways I could never have imagined. Our shared perspectives and limitless curiosity made for a partnership of uncommon explorations.  Deep philosophical conversations and shared mystical experiences framed our lives together.  This kind of reflection was not typical behavior for me and it is only highlighted in my memory because it happened so often in the year before he passed away.  It was like some part of me was drinking in those last months with him before either of us even knew these were our last months together.  Intuition is indeed a curious alai. In retrospect I am so grateful for those times.  For the stillness and clarity of those moments.  For the awareness that I wasn’t taking our life for granted but truly connecting with him.  What I couldn’t have know was how the loss of Phil would connect me to an aspect of myself I had even realized was missing.

In that last year I had also decided I wanted more laughter and light-heartedness in my life and I used to tell Phil that we needed to be less serious and more playful.  As philosophical minded clinicians, we hadn’t come from particularly light-hearted stock.  I was far worse than Phil about the serious side of things, but something in me knew it was time for change.  I used to say that in my next life I want laughter and love making to be the priority, and seriousness could fall by the way-side. I’m a big believer in calling into your life those things you want to step into and as we neared Phil’s retirement I could imagine us opening up to a whole new way of life.  With plans to hit the road in an RV and go where the wind blew us, it was easy to imagine a lighter more care free way of living.  I had long ago unplugged from the world of clocks, calendars and schedules.  I truly lived a quiet life filled with creativity, introspection and spiritual pursuits of awakening.  It’s amazing how my life today reflects so much of what I envisioned for myself and yet so little of the structure I envisioned living it through.  

Not quite a year after Phil’s passing I had an experience that would shift everything.  The uncertainty of how my future would unfold as a widow in my mid-fifties was not really foremost in my thoughts.  I was getting on with life by starting up a small decorative arts business, as much for my sanity as for the income it would provide.  With Phil gone I had so much time on my hands I felt as if I might fall into an abyss of emptiness if I didn’t throw myself into something. I wasn’t lonely but I was without a foundation for my future.  I had always been independent minded and going life alone didn’t scare me in the least.  I trusted things would unfold if I just put one foot in front of the other toward a direction I enjoyed.  Then one morning everything shifted in a way I could have never foreseen.

As I was almost finished drying my hair in front of the mirror one morning, I felt a type of energetic weight drop into me.  Startled, I turned off the dryer and stood staring into the mirror as an understanding of what had happened began to fill my awareness.  I don’t know how else to describe either sensation.  A slight heaviness simply fell from the upper right hand side above me and merged with my being as, in my mind, I heard the words “the rest of you”.  In a flash of all consuming awareness my consciousness then expanded, revealing an understanding of what was happening.  Apparently an energetic aspect of myself had shifted to assist me throughout the previous year.  The loss of both my father and my husband only a day apart, while being the primary caretaker for my girlfriend as she fought the same cancer that had taken Phil in a matter of weeks, had been no small gauntlet.  However, I was completely awestruck at what I was being shown.  

Unaware that this energetic assist had even happened, I was apparently ready to reintegrate some aspect of myself that had been operating apart from me.  However, my higher wisdom was also communicating that the energy aspect that was coming in now, wasn’t the same energetic aspect that had moved aside the year before.  I was then shown that for years I had been living as if I was my late husband’s age, and now it was time to embrace my true age.  Phil had passed away only two months prior to his seventieth birthday.   I suddenly realized that I had no idea of what it was truly like to be in my mid-fifties.  Stunned by the experience, I sat dumbfounded for quite some time.  Later that day, still somewhat dazed, it began to sink in that not only was I truly clueless about what life was like in one’s mid-fifties, I was going to have to figure it out on my own.

All week I kept reliving the experience in my mind.  Having had such a solitary lifestyle with Phil, I had virtually no social life outside of my family, and with my closest friend battling much bigger issues, I really had no one to talk with about the experience or where it had left me.  I wrote letters in my journal to Phil but I knew I needed to connect with others my age in order to explore this second half of life issue.  But where to start was a dilemma.  Then one day while tidying up the living room, a commercial came on TV for a free online match-making service.  I grasped at it like it was an inspiration idea.  Not the dating part,  but I thought it would be a great way to peer into the world of fifty-somethings without having to go ‘out there’.  To say I’m an introvert, as anyone who knows me can testify, is a huge understatement!  Anonymously peering into profiles of my age group across the vast landscape of cyberspace seemed a perfect place to start.  I  went to my computer, signed on and began my voyeuristic adventure.  Was I in for a surprise!  

I had never even been in a chat room let alone on a dating site.  I was naive to say the least.  Thinking at the most, I might connect with a few women friends or someone in my position, I began to fill out the profile.  That’s when the profile questions clued me in to a world I couldn’t begin to understand.  Fortunately my daughter was much more savvy and helped me realize I wasn’t going to find any newly widowed “girlfriends”….unless I was looking for something she was quite sure I wasn’t looking for.  Like I said, naive!  We laughed about the whole thing but decided it couldn’t hurt to use the site to see what fifty-something looked like.  I answered hundreds of questions, filled out a very blunt and honest profile, included recent pictures, and reviewed the matches sent to me by the algorithm of the site.  I have to say I was amazed that an obviously overweight, mid-fifty year old woman who told the truth about her mystical and less than mainstream weirdness, would even get any responses.  But I did, and after only a week I knew cyber connecting wasn’t for me.  I decided to delete my profile when I noticed a very short, very polite e-mail from someone my age who lived about an hour away.  Before deleting I chose to look at our respective answers to the questions posed by the site.  Out of hundreds of multiple-choice questions we had answered almost every one the same way.  So, I replied to his message.  From that day on long e-mails and lively banter through texting ensued and we found ourselves writing non-stop for a week.  His sincerity, sense of humor and honesty amazed me.  The things we had in common were uncanny.  An artist like myself, and as deeply in love with music as I had always been, was just the beginning of our connection.  He found my ‘weirdness’ intriguing and I found his sense of humor just the breath of fresh air I had wanted for so long.  A week later we met and have been together ever since.  The last few years have flown by with love, laughter and understanding I couldn’t have imagined.  Apparently I didn’t have to wait until my next incarnation to experience a life where laughter and lovemaking were the priority….and there is still room for my metaphysical weirdness.  Meeting Michael was definitely arranged, but not by an online dating site!  That was just the conduit.  We are as amazed as anyone as we venture into the second half of life together, but we know it was not without planning and design from the soul level.

The story doesn’t end there.  It has other twists and turns that makes it all the sweeter.  Just as Phil and I were destined to meet and grow together, following my surrender experience at the cemetery on the farm, so were Michael and I.  Only this time it had been his surrender experience that unknowingly triggered my journey into his life.  In the three years prior to meeting me, his life had been turned upside down.  A successful thirty year career in a rapidly diminishing industry coincided with the foreclosure fiasco that swept across the country leaving him to start over in every area of his life.  He had lost his career, his home and his marriage.  A job offer in Texas had moved him into my neck of the woods, but not without taking a devastating three year toll on him.  Alone and lonely, all he had worked his entire life to build was suddenly gone with seemingly no rebound.  No matter how hard he tried, Michael faced his own dark night of the soul.  He was just emerging from it when a last ditch effort to rebuild and share his life with someone, coincided with my one week venture into an online community I was prompted by guidance and synchronicity to explore.  What were the odds?  Pretty good when you consider that what really met was Michael’s willingness to surrender and my willingness to follow the intuitive breadcrumbs strewn before me.  We just happened to be the faces on the energetic pull that our choices created.

I am quite certain the meeting between Michael and I was part of a grand design.  And I know that Phil had a huge hand in it!  This has been confirmed in my communication with him and I have been told by two intuitives who I very much trust, that he proudly takes credit for arranging our meeting.  It just happened so easily and effortlessly and in such a tiny window of opportunity!  On my end, following a year of illness and loss, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  On Michael’s end it was the result of deciding to give life all he had rather than give in to all he’d lost.  Together we are both more than we were alone and we marvel everyday at a life we never expected to know.  I am in many ways for Michael what Phil was for me; opening new ways of thinking and experiencing the world.  He is for me the laughter, love and adventure I was calling into my future, as well as a support system in every way for the reinvention of my life.  Just as Phil supported me in opening up my world, Michael supports me in taking all that I found into the world!  Each man honors the other as they live side by side in my heart, each bringing gifts that I cherish and could have never found on my own.

14- Intuitive Heads-Up

14- Intuitive Heads-Up

Intuition comes to all of us in greater or lesser degrees.  Those messages from our higher wisdom can facilitate many advantages. Warnings, guidance, and even the ability to heal through transmuting negative or stuck energy in ourselves or another are just some of the benefits.  Ignoring or dismissing intuitive awareness is literally choosing to navigate life without the innate compass we come to this life with.  I was given huge lessons in the value of listening to this higher wisdom and following its lead.

As I stood beside my girlfriends bed, just before they wheeled her away for her exam, a quiet knowing came to me.  A knowing that her diagnosis would be the same as the one my husband received the week before; colon cancer.  This ‘knowing’ was much like a premonition I had experienced prior to Phil’s diagnosis. 

Predicting my soon-to-be reality, as we drove past a hospital one day, I simply felt an unusually strong sense of compassion for those living in the hospital for weeks on end with an ill or dying relative.  The weight of that feeling stayed with me for a while and I remember commenting on it to Phil.  Weeks later, when I found myself in that very situation, I realized then that my higher wisdom had been giving me an intuitive heads-up.  As common as these intuitive messages are, for the most part we miss them or interpret them incorrectly.  If instead we were conditioned to move more deeply into these experiences when they arise, and inquire further of them, life would unfold with much less difficulty.

Because my girlfriend was a wellness expert and health-nut to say the least, there was seemingly no logical reason for my intuition that her diagnosis would also be cancer.  However, knowing her intimately and having been privy to her way of coping with life, something inside of me knew.  Intuition is all around us, especially as we are about to enter what could be a traumatic or difficult time.  As it turns out, weeks before her diagnosis, Deb was also given an intuitive heads-up, not once but twice!  I read it as a cautionary nudge and told her so, but she simply applied it to her ongoing angst about western medical practices, which also seemed logical.  It was logical!  It just wasn’t the whole story.

Deb worked in a hospital and on two separate occasions prior to her diagnosis, she reported walking down the hall and suddenly having an experience of being in an altered state of awareness.  She said the experience itself was surreal, as if she were in a scene from a sci-fi movie.  In this experience she found herself walking down the hospital hallway past large rooms containing suspended bodies of unconscious people being kept alive by chemicals infusions.  As she reported these experiences, she told me the one thing she knew for sure, was how absolutely unnatural and uncalled for this was.   This experience even made her question if she wanted to continue to work in such close association with hospitals and western medicine.  

Having worked as a wellness expert, licensed exercise physiologist and in hospital administration, Deb was always at odds with western medicine.  Her passion for alternative therapies was as strong and vocal as her rants against the abusive aspects of pharmacology.  Therefore, after her cancer diagnosis she completely surprised me by clinging to western medicine and opting for chemotherapy. 

As her closest friend, I was with her in those infusion rooms and hospital rooms as she reflected on the intuitive experiences she had shared with me. Realizing exactly what had been foreshadowed, she finally understood her visions.  Fear however, blocked her ability to do anything but ignore the message she now knew her intuition had sent; to ‘avoid the unnatural chemical infusions that would keep her suspended in a kind of odd limbo between life and death’.  Like interpreting a dream, she clearly understood the message, even as she sat in the infusion chair permitting dose after dose.  She also realized these weren’t the only intuitive messages she had received prior to her illness.  

For more than a year before her diagnosis Deb had complained of not feeling quite right in her gut.  She was one of those highly somatic individuals who had acute physical sensitivity.  Even her sensory abilities of hearing, tasting and smelling were off the chart.  But because she was so certain her wellness prevention lifestyle couldn’t possibly allow for any serious illness, she had simply written off her intuition that something “wasn’t quite right”.  I have a clear memory of her standing in my kitchen more than a year before her diagnosis, with one hand at the top of her stomach and the other at the bottom as she said “Something is going on from here to here!”  Once again I encouraged her to have it checked out.  Once again she discounted the warning.  Because we were together almost every day I knew how often she had suffered for years with ongoing nausea that she could never find the source of.  Since I tend to look at everything through a spiritual and also a metaphysical lens, I remarked on the possible link to this and her mantra with regard to “gutting life out”.  This was a phrase she had used for the more than the twenty years I had known her.  Deb was able to drive herself hard and deliberately through any circumstance.  She was a self-admitted worker bee and she had a personal will that amazed me…..and a stubbornness to match.  It would be these strengths she would call upon to engage any battle she faced.  

Deb’s response to let logic override her intuition was not uncommon.  We all do this to some degree.  In her last few months of life, her body wracked from multiple chemo and radiation treatments that did nothing to heal her cancer, she spoke again of the strange premonition that had come to her, not once but twice prior to her diagnosis. She reflected on other intuitive nudges around her illness that she had received over the years but pushed aside.  Hearing her embrace the intuitive information that her higher wisdom was trying to send, was acknowledgement to not only recognize, but to listen and heed the messages we get.  For Deb it was an a-ha moment of awareness.  She realized she could indeed trust her higher knowing, and that in truth, that is who she is, but she could never hold onto this perspective long enough to let it guide her decisions.

From the first time I met Deb she voiced a desire to connect her head to her heart.  She knew that she let her mind run the show and teasingly referred to herself as ‘the big-headed woman’.  But she did not live in a world that supported living from one’s heart-space.  Surrendering to tenderness, sensitivity and compassion for ourselves and others are not openly rewarded, and often misunderstood as weakness.  Deb would do anything not to be seen as weak.  In many ways she was the strongest person I have ever known.  Near the end of her life, while continuing to work all through her illness and refusing to let go, her doctor even said “I don’t know what kind of glue holds you together!”.  She told me this with pride and I knew then that Deb also viewed surrender as a weakness.  I believe this societal conditioning is what really took her life, it just came in the form of cancer.

I’m from the ‘let go and let God’ side of the street. I have found surrender to be a very courageous choice having nothing to do with giving up and everything to do with giving in to powers I can’t consciously access with the limited aspect of my personality.  Surrender is for me the result of an understanding that I have a higher, non-physical aspect with a better vantage point, and I trust it!  Giving in to those things that spread themselves across our lives in the form of illness and loss are powerful lessons.  I know Deb knew this because at one point she shared that she thought her illness might be something she unconsciously developed to let her self “off the hook”.  Her love/hate relationship with life was largely due to the emotional pain that she intuitively picked up on without realizing it wasn’t hers to carry.  It is typical for intuitive empaths or clair-sentients (clear-sensing individuals) like Deb to go their entire life without realizing their heightened sensitivity is an intuitive gift to develop, rather than a burden to carry.

As an academic Deb was never taught how to direct her highly intuitive empathic nature.  And because it was so vast she didn’t know how to personally trust it.   Deb intuitively picked up on the emotional pain of others to such a degree that it was often overwhelming for her.  She had a difficult time even sitting through an emotionally charged movie.  More often than not, in an effort to cope, she turned to people pleasing and trying to keep everyone she loved happy.  What we sometimes overlook or write of as co-dependency is often a response to an empathic ability as strong as Deb’s. Her overtly reclusive lifestyle was also an attempt to avoid such strong feelings.  The less intimate relationships she had in her life, the easier it was to cope with life.  Apart from work Deb had no social life to speak of, no intimate partner and even with her two closest friends of more than twenty years she played her cards very close to her chest.  In those times when life became too much to bear, she let her guard down and fell into a heap in our arms.  We responded with the same advice again and again but we could never get her to simply align with her truth, pick herself first, and trust that others would be okay in their own choices. 

Reading this you may be wondering what purpose having such high sensitivities serves.  Emotional empaths/clair-sentients have the gift of transmutation whereby they can sense emotional distress in others and, if taught how, can assist in processing it energetically. This facilitates powerful healing opportunities for those suffering emotionally.  When feelings are stuffed, emotional energy is not processed and it has no choice but to manifest as illness.  Because our modern society is so cut off from giving intuition, in all it’s forms, the credit it is due, we all lose.  Deb quite literally took on the pain of the world, held it within her, and it destroyed her body.  

More and more people are coming into their intuitive abilities.  If we do not create an arena for them to be validated, understood and expanded upon we will lose these people and the incredible gifts they bring.  As I write this it has been a week since Deb’s transition.  Her loving and kind nature touched all those who knew her.  She shared with me the heartfelt sentiments she had for those she loved, her children above all.  I rest in the awareness that she is moving toward peace and understanding.  I include this story in her honor and in honor of all those that feel deeply and carry the pain of a world that is more concerned with competition than compassion.  It is my hope that anyone reading this who relates to such immense emotional pangs in themselves or another, learn about clair-sentient/empathic intuitive abilities and the process for healing transmutation.  This world needs these individuals and their gifts….and they need not suffer on our behalf.