10- The Illusion Of Reality

10- The Illusion Of Reality

At fifty-six, my father, husband and girlfriend of twenty years were in various stages of terminal cancer.  As I walked this intimate journey with them, the gifts and insights I received were innumerable. I attribute this to a practice Phil and I had embraced for about three years.  Using a mindset of compassion and non-judgement with regard to all experiences that arise in life,  present moment awareness is heightened. Due to this we discovered a complete shift in our experience of life itself. As the primary caretaker for my rapidly declining husband and girlfriend, I was thrust into an expansion of that shift.  While the people in the world around me went on as usual, I no longer shared their experience of it. The collapsing of  timelines, and synchronistic experiences became as much a part of life as the air I breathed.  I literally watched the differences between my experience of ‘reality’ and theirs, as if it was being played before me on a stage.…because, as Shakespeare had written, indeed it was.  

Living in the continual awareness of what is truly important and what is mere distraction was life changing.  When the people I loved were nearing the end of their physical incarnations, and as one by one they passed, a kind of awareness set in as to the true nature of this thing called life.  The normal comings and goings of everyday-ness were more evident to me as I watched the world scurrying around in distraction and routine while I was enveloped in a heightened sense of present moment awareness.  A dear friend of ours, Ed Rubinstein, once wrote a book titled Waking From The Trances Of Everyday Life.  It spoke to the mindlessness of habitual ‘doing’ in ordinary day-to-day living rather than living from a state of presence while attending to those same tasks.  I found myself acutely aware of this phenomena. I was living within a kind of slowed down state of hyper-focused awareness where time was ticking forever away, while the people interacting with me didn’t even seem to notice.  Caught as they were within their own trances of everyday life, two very different realities co-existed side by side, only appearing to share commonalities.  We all drove our cars, ate our meals, slept in beds, walked the same halls or sidewalks, even discussed many of the same subjects, but our realities of what was transpiring in those moments couldn’t have been more different.  This fascinated me and I began to not only experience, but understand the concept of ‘peace amid chaos’ and the teaching “peace that passeth all understanding” more than I ever had.

Instead of living along a timeline of fear and dread as a soon-to-be mid-fifties widow facing the loss of my beloved husband, father and friend, as well as my home and income, my experience was quite different.  Instead of life pulling at me from all directions, I was free to focus on my very ill loved ones. I stood amazed at the peaceful and meticulously guided experience my husband Phil and I were both having as we lived out his last weeks at the hospital.  Spiritually centered in a thought system based in compassionate non-judgement and presence for years, together we each experienced what we considered heightened results of those efforts as his passing grew close.  An ever-flowing stream of synchronistic experiences seem to provide whatever we needed whenever we needed it, and struggle was not even a blip on our radar.  Other than the weariness of living in a hospital week after week, we were free from tending to all of life’s necessities as one by one they were either eliminated or addressed through no doing of our own.  In fact, many things that would normally need attention during the illness and after the passing of a spouse, had been eliminated the week before we even learned Phil was ill.  This is what I refer to as the collapsing of difficulties along timelines due to our practice. This, in my experience, results from an attitude of acceptance and non-attachment in regards to life experiences.  Over and over I experience the peace that unfolds as I curiously approach life without judgment or attachment to outcome, simply witnessing what it holds rather than resisting or struggling against it.  Even as I reflect on such events to share them here, I am in awe at the ease with which the road ahead of us was prepared even  before we knew it was coming.

With Phil long past retirement age, and as spontaneous as we were, it wasn’t until the lease on our condo neared renewal that we decided it was retirement time.  Having always envisioned an RV lifestyle, we decided to move in that direction. Upon hearing our plans, my daughter unexpectedly suggested that rather than paying a heightened month-to-month condo fee, we should move into her guest room for a few weeks while we hunted for our RV, so we did just that.  Within a week we sold or donated most of our possessions, put my art studio in storage, and moved out of the condo. Since Phil wasn’t going to give notice of his retirement until we found our RV, a week later, when a routine examination revealed colon cancer, we still had the full coverage from his insurance and he was still gainfully employed.  Therefore, we had almost no bills, no property that needed tending, our finances were intact for the remainder of his life because his salary continued, and I was not left with the expenses of an RV I would not be using.  Add to this that I was able to live between the hospital and my daughters guest room, which made everything very convenient.  Even the choices Phil was able to make from the hospital with regard to structuring his retirement income were informed by his terminal diagnosis.  Those choices eliminated any remaining bills I would have been left with and provided me with a small monthly income to fund my expenses while taking care of my girlfriend for the next two years.  This would not have been the insurance or retirement structure we’d have made had his diagnosis come even one week later.  As astounding as all this was, it didn’t end there.

As Phil and my father’s passing was bridged by less than a day, even the window of time I found away from Phil’s bedside in those last days, to visit my father before his passing, was filled with a blessing.  A kind of coherency rare in my dad’s last days was granted the morning I visited.  And while my visit lasted only a few hours before I was unexpectedly called back to an emergency situation with Phil, we said all that we needed before his transition.  Even after Phil’s passing, everything was so perfectly aligned that I was able to spend the time necessary to care for my girlfriend as she battled her own terminal illness. Because all of my worldly and personal responsibilities had been synchronistically resolved, it was impossible not to marvel at these amazing results I attribute to the daily practice of compassionate non-attachment which Phil and I had embraced for so long. But before I move on from sharing the collapsing of difficult timelines, I want to share perhaps the most profound result of all Phil’s experiences during this time.

As if facing the end of one’s life isn’t typically jarring enough, exiting through the painful conditions associated with colon cancer is not an easy path.  Unless, like Phil, one had spent years playing a conscious game of ‘Don’t Make It Real.”  Borrowing a phrase from the ACIM (A Course In Miracles) community, Phil and I had spent the last three years helping one another view and respond to the world as a projection of the mind, and therefore not ‘real’ in the sense that most experience it.  Seeing everything in the physical world of form as a reflection for our own benefit of awakening from thoughts of separation, we helped one another get out of the perception based conditioning of our thoughts; those automatic responses of believing the minds projection and the results such thinking produces.  For years we reminded each other, numerous times each day, to step away from the divided mind of perception and into the whole mind of compassionate non-judgement.  This practice brought us into present moment awareness like no other.  We got to the point where just the phrase “don’t make it real” could almost instantly shine a light on any situation, lifting the heaviest burden or pulling us out of intense frustration.  We laughed at ourselves often as we found one another emotionally snagged by the things in life that we were ‘making real’.  We marveled at the way this ‘not making it real’ game really seemed to lighten or shift our experiences. Our world filled with synchronistic wonder as this practice freed us from the cycle of cause and effect and collapsed difficulties along timelines.  This proved true even along the timelines we were unknowingly moving toward.

I first received the diagnosis of Phil’s cancer in the hallway just outside an exam room where he was resting from a colonoscopy. Upon sharing this news with him I took his hand and immediately asked him if he was scared.  He smiled, saying no, and that he wasn’t going to ‘make it real’.  We agreed!  We weren’t making light of the news, we simply weren’t afraid!  On the contrary, we knew that walking through such a circumstance using the practice of compassionate non-judgement would be profoundly opportunistic on our path of awakening.  And since spiritual awakening had become the center of our lives for many years, we simply continued the practices we had found, opening ourselves to the mystery unfolding before us.

The staff tending to Phil at the clinic came in and out of the room with lowered eyes and consoling words, sharing their sadness about the diagnosis. Each time one would leave the room Phil commented and repeatedly pointed out to me how the staff’s response to the situation was so conditioned that they couldn’t even see that we weren’t in fear or disbelief.  So conditioned to the beliefs they held about the news of a terminal diagnosis, they weren't able to be present to the very people they were attempting to console. It was then that Phil and I knew we would walk through what was ahead of us together, in the same kind of peace-filled awareness bubble we had played in for years.  A bubble of awareness that most of the world couldn’t see. We weren’t in denial.  That is not the nature of the ‘don’t make it real’ perspective. We had simply conditioned our minds to see beyond the programmed illusion of separation that ensnared most.  Completely aware of the physical prognosis of the diagnosis within the illusion, we were intimately connected to the reality beyond this illusion of separation which the diagnosis had also brought, and therefore completely free of fear!  As time went on and Phil’s illness progressed it was sad to watch the suffering of loved ones who only felt the ‘reality’ of impending loss.  Personally, we knew this to simply be a time of transition; a glorious time that truly should be celebrated as one steps into an expansion of themselves free from physical limitations, having completed the mission their incarnation facilitated.

Through surgery, and conditions arising from the surgery, through living at the hospital almost day and night for eight weeks, and being given various and ever shortening time frames for survival, our peace filled bubble of expanded awareness remained around us.  While I was often physically exhausted, from living at Phil’s bedside and checking in on my girlfriend when I could, Phil and I were most always in good spirits.  Alone in his room we would often talk about how amazing it was to experience ourselves actually living the awareness we had come to realize and reaping the results in this time of heightened circumstance.  It is easy to think you are growing from your spiritual perspectives when things are going smoothly.  But when the road gets rocky you get to see the degree to which your beliefs and experiences align.  We were amazed how natural it was to continue to live from our heightened awareness as Phil literally lay dying.  Phil would visit with loved ones and friends that came by, and when asked how his attitude was so upbeat, he would share his excitement about the adventure ahead of him in terms he felt they could understand. “I’ve spent my whole life wondering about the spiritual world and now I’m going to experience it first hand!” he said to one friend.  “Why be afraid?  We don’t die!” he would exclaim.  This was quintessential Phil.

Apart from high spirits Phil was also virtually pain free throughout his entire illness.  Rarely if ever on pain medication, he remained alert and truly ‘with us’ until he slipped quietly away in his sleep the night we brought him home for hospice care.  Having since watched the stark contrast of my girlfriends long and harrowing struggle with the exact same illness, and her painful lingering as she held tightly onto her body in her last days, the differences that an awakening mind like Phil’s experienced was again magnified for me. So different was his experience through his illness and transition that it is impossible to know just how much of it to contribute to his practice of compassionate non-judgement.  However, I can honestly say I have never heard of such an ease filled and almost completely drug-free presence associated with anyone passing from colon cancer.  I personally credit much of Phil’s experience with his practice of compassionate non-judgement and the difficulties that were collapsed because of it.  As for my own experiences I am certain they were aided by this practice.

A day or so after Phil transitioned, a profound thought dropped into my awareness.   It was deeper and more substantial than normal everyday thoughts that run through my mind and it caught me completely off guard.  More like a statement of fact, it carried more weight than the words themselves and was accompanied with an expansion experience beyond-the-body.  The thought was this,  ’If Phil is dead, then I can’t really be alive.’  A profound shift instantaneously arose in me and the concept of illusion that is taught in esoteric scriptures literally expanded in my awareness.  I instantly grasped a new level of understanding with regard to the physical world as a projection of the mind.  A confirmation was extended that there truly is no such thing as life (or death) as we define it.  There is only awareness…eternal awareness.  I have come to realize that this is what we are, and this is what we expand into more of upon our passing.  As we exit the limitations of our physical experience, we expand into more of that awareness, which we never truly left, but only imagined leaving in our illusion of separation. From there, if we have evolved our consciousness enough to move beyond the planes of matter, energy, space, and time we can align directly with this awareness.  For Phil and I, this evolution was practiced through compassionate non-judgement.

Because I had been wrapped in an uncommon cocoon focused on what is referred to as ‘end-of-life’ scenarios multiplied by three, I had been experiencing huge doses of this awareness for quite some time.  The comings and goings of the world around me continued to mirror stark contrasts between my reality and the hum of a distracted, unawakened reality.  Experiencing the ease of the timeline associated with Phil’s passing and how everything was divinely guided also magnified my years of practicing compassionate non-judgement, and not making things ‘real’. Giving our personal power away to those things that we grasp onto as ‘real’ limits us from our limitless, eternal nature.  Having been able to embrace the world as a mirror of the fragmented mind, even through Phil’s illness and passing, I had fostered a new level of awakening.  In truth, Phil was no more dead than I was alive….not in this physical form of illusory projection anyway.  We are both beyond those small concepts of life and death.  Knowing this allows me to approach life differently than if I buy into any ‘form’ as who I am.  The freedom in this doesn’t divorce me from the responsibilities I align with in my incarnation or remove me from tragedy.  It does however lighten this for me and moves me from one experience to the next with grace and gratitude. The opportunity this world affords me to choose love and compassion at every turn connects me deeper to my true essence. I have come to realize this as a gift beyond measure.  While I am only practiced at it and not perfect, I have come to realize that it is this attitude that moves me closer to true Self-realization.  

11- Good Grief

11- Good Grief

Even with an absolute understanding that life is eternal and that we can stay connected to our loved ones after transition, acclimating to the physical absence of someone you have spent the better part of your life with is tough.   The grief process is just that…a process.  Even for those with heightened intuition or obvious experiences that we remain connected, there is a necessary period of grief.  As Barbara Brennan’s work shows, energetic cords literally connect us to one another.  The deeper the connection, the stronger the cords.  At the time of a loved ones passing these energetic cords are literally severed.  Appropriately experienced, grief is the way of processing this separation and initiating the return to individuation. Good grief is a necessary energetic release expressed through the emotions.  Suppressing these emotions is as unhealthy as drowning in them. Unfortunately, many do get stuck in the most difficult phases of grief and do not process the energy necessary for healing.  For that reason I want to share an uncommon practice which not only transformed my grief but illuminated my world. 

Following Phil’s transition, from time to time an overwhelming sensation of profound loss would completely encapsulate me.  Anyone who has lost someone very close to them experiences this aspect of grief.  Unfortunately what is more uncommon, is something I experienced in the midst of these episodes of despair.  As suddenly as the overwhelming emotion of grief would come upon me, it would be lifted from me.  It was as if some invisible force literally removed a heavy blanket drenched in the weight of sorrow from around me.  Often my tears would stop in midstream.  The emotion wasn’t replaced with another feeling or thought, the heaviness was just lifted from me.  As a trained counselor and trained reiki master I knew the value in letting the emotion flow whenever and wherever it wanted to, so I wasn’t repressing the intense emotion.  It was quite literally being lifted from me.

The first few times this happened I was perplexed.  Alone in the guest room I was occupying at my daughters, I would occasionally burst into sobs that would cease almost as soon as they started.  Not because I was choking them back, but because the deep grief out of which those cries arose would unexplainably evaporate, much like a dream upon awakening.  All that I was ever left to deal with unaided was a gentle sadness that was manageable and natural.   

After a while, this phase was followed by another which was not only welcomed, but deeply intimate.  A soft introspective kind of energy began to stay with me.  It was a type of tenderness that would emerge as I began speaking about Phil or tending to the business at hand following his passing. It would sometimes include tears or tender emotions, but it had a sweet energy attached to it and I simply allowed it as it arose.  In the presence of a stranger or with friends I was quite comfortable aligning with this energy.  Much like an emotional reverence for all that we had shared in our life together, it was, in many ways, my initial avenue for remaining connected to him.  If I had to describe a feeling associated with this connection it would be an intimate gentleness or tender sweetness that only I could experience.  It was born out of our unique relationship and all that we had invested in it over the decades.  It was Phil, wrapping his presence around me.  This was good grief!

It was this connection that inspired me to write letters to Phil at the end of each day.  Just as one would write and mail a letter to a loved one without expecting an immediate reply, these letters extended my connection to him because it focused my mind in our eternal connection.   Where our thoughts are, our emotions follow.  I realized that the more I stayed focused in the present moment, bringing to it all that I desired, the more I aligned with the signature or essence of who or what I desired to connect with.  This was demonstrated through the letter writing.  Of course, I also talked to Phil all the time as if he were physically beside me.  We had loved our life together.  It was a quiet, simple life and because we were both such introverts, it was mostly solitary, which we enjoyed.  We had one another and were deeply connected in our intimate aloneness.  The type of shorthand that grows between spouses is palpably absent when one transitions before the other, and nothing prepared me for the space this left behind.  Talking to Phil and writing the letters each evening greatly filled that space for me.  Eventually he would reach through time and space and connect with me in ways that touch me even in the remembering.

Early widowhood was not something I had anticipated and after a while I found myself wanting to connect with others who could relate to it and sort of walk me through it.  Hospice kept reaching out offering grief support, but my experiences weren’t reflected in those groups.  I tried reaching out to an online support group for widows and widowers in hopes of sharing my experiences but I soon found out that no one in those groups was having the kind of experience I was.  Many were in deep grief…for years….stuck in that feeling that would be lifted from me almost as soon as it would arise.  As I tried to explain my experiences, the forums reflected that no one understood.  There simply was no framework for them to relate to what I tried to share.  Even among widows, I was without a community in my widowhood.  That’s when I intuitively knew that my experiences were the result of the compassionate non-judgement awakening practice Phil and I had used for years….and one that we had made a game of practicing together in the years before his passing. 

This practice stemmed from studying a variety of esoteric, psychological as well as scientific perspectives. Over many years I had pieced together a practice stemming from Eastern thought, Western channeled material, shamanic practices, as well as psychological and scientific theories I felt led to explore.  Each of these disciplines were teaching much the same things from different perspectives, and sometimes from a religious framework I didn’t personally feel the need for.  Together they formed a foundation of awakening through compassionate non-judgement with regard to life scenarios.  This brought an uncommon ease to life that I had not experienced prior to this practice. 

Having had many mystical experiences, the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung first captivated me.  His teaching around the subjects of projection and deep introspection had a huge impact on me.   Then came the Taoist and Buddhist teachings of non-duality, and self-inquiry which fit perfectly into the Jungian framework I was exploring.  The work of pioneers like Eckhart Tolle, Bruce Lipton, Larry Dossey and the like also influenced my understanding. Next came channeled material from various sources along with the teachings from A Course In Miracles and the Hawaiian tradition of Ho’Oponono.  It has been my experience that exploring the teachings that show up in response to my ongoing sincere request to be ‘led into all truth’ is my journey to Self-realization as source-realization. I literally follow the guidance placed before me, weighing it as I go for resonance and then trust where it leads.  In this way I have not gotten bogged down in any ‘path’, tradition, religion, philosophy or dogma.  Instead I have been able to grasp what served my truth-quest while remaining open to further lessons.  I do not adopt beliefs!  Anything I believe…and I mean anything, can greatly limit the communication between my larger aspect or higher wisdom and my physical expression of self.

There are many sources and avenues to explore, and these are just some of the ones I was guided to piece together based on my experiences.  I have come to understand the value of expanding intuitive awareness for the support it lends my own higher mind guidance.  When I nurture this connection it grows.  When I allow myself to be externally guided, this connection diminishes.  Creativity is one conduit for nurturing this intuitive connection.  It has always fostered an avenue through which guidance can speak to me and teach me.  Outside material then appears in a timely fashion to serve a supporting role to the intuitive nudges I experience.  Traditional meditation has never spoken to me.  Its passive nature is not my preference for journeying nor do I experience it as an avenue for truly moving into Self-realization. 

In a nutshell, this is my practice;  I understand that everything is a projection based on individual perceptions.  Therefore, I take responsibility for mine, choosing to see everyone extending either an extension of love or a cry for love.  This helps me move away from judgment. I can then embrace whatever emotionally triggers me as though it is simply a reflection of something I have the unique perspective to heal.  From my individual perspective of duality or separation, I take full responsibility for what I am projecting into my awareness, then bring that situation into the healing energy of compassion.  This transmutes (converts) any ‘negative’ energies that were triggered in me, dissolving them and shifting me toward a state of non-dual wholeness.  This heals the fragmented aspects in myself as an individual, and energetically contributes to the healing of the collective.  My experience is that this process also shifts and collapses difficult timelines and, as it did for me, greatly reduces suffering in those times of grief or loss. From this perspective I am opened to further guidance from my higher wisdom and led into all truth, which has been my focus in this lifetime.

We have been conditioned in western society to associate the length of one’s grief to the depth of one’s love.  My hope in sharing the way my grief was seemingly supernaturally lifted because of the practice I had used for years, is that others may benefit from such a practice or from the resources I used.  I would also like to validate the awakening aspects involved in such practices.  Phil and I both felt that our journey through his unexpected illness and terminal diagnosis was greatly cushioned because of our shared practice of compassionate non-judgement. We also felt that a loving marriage fostered a thriving survivorship.  We spoke of this before his passing and I can still recall his loving countenance and peaceful assurance that following his passing I would be okay.  I believe I am doing our marriage of twenty-two years proud by carrying forward all that he gave me.…and continues to give.  His presence in my life following his transition has been unquestionable.  In life, we knew ours was the road less taken.  I know that is still true as I continue my journey.  It takes me places I find impossible to share with those who simply can’t relate to that which is beyond the physical plane.  This doesn’t make me special, it just places me in the minority as one who has consciously undone much of my programming in an effort to experience self-realization as source-realization in this lifetime.  I share my stories in an effort to share myself, my journey and my experiences with any who might also desire such realizations.  There are lots of areas of my life I haven’t mastered, but grief is not one of them. I hope sharing my experiences helps those looking to end the suffering that often accompanies the loss of a loved one.  One of the truest teachings I have ever personally experienced came from A Course In Miracles (ACIM) and it goes like this…. “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

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.

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.

15 - More Than Meets The Eye

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

My father’s experience in the last days of this life were proof that life will surprise even the toughest skeptic.  Not one for metaphysical or spiritual beliefs, my dad was intrigued by science.  While he believed their was a power greater than himself, he didn’t wrap this notion up in myths or stories.  He was a hard working, practical man.  It was in fact, his journey into agnosticism during my early teens, along with his exploration and abandonment of religious philosophy that laid the groundwork for my own fascination with exploring the nature of spirituality.  I also watched him struggle and overcome a family history fraught with alcoholism.  So with more than thirty-five years of sobriety at his passing, it was also his reaching out for help that inspired my career in counseling.  

15- More Than Meets The Eye

My studies and my own personal growth work led me deeper and deeper into questions about consciousness and the meaning of life.  As my spiritual journey filled with multi-dimensional awareness and mystical experiences, I explored energy work and became a reiki master. My sister followed a similar path and we, along with my mom often spoke of our metaphysical experiences despite my dad’s scoffing.  Even though he was highly intuitive and very grounded in nature, he thought our take on things mystical was foolish.  However, from his deathbed in the last days before his transition, he began to have experiences that would change this.

As my dad neared the end of his life he was in hospice care in his home.  From his bed he began to see pets and loved ones long crossed over. I gratefully managed to get away from my dying husband’s bedside for a few hours in time to be with him before his passing.  I was able to tell him what his life had meant to me and all he had taught me through witnessing his journey.  This meant a lot to me but what has meant even more is what I experienced at the close of my dad’s life.  As I sat close by his side, terribly weak and only able to whisper he asked, “What are all these people doing in my house?”.  Since only a few immediate family members were there, I said, “Dad, you are seeing things that we can’t see.”  He looked straight into my eyes and with wonder in his, he exclaimed, “I think I know that!”  It was a statement that not only acknowledged what he was experiencing, but that he now knew for himself that there was more to life than meets the eye. A mostly unseen world that eludes us unless we are open to it surrounds us all.  It was wonderful to watch him accept this awareness.  In his last days he knew death was not an end.  His life would continue in other dimensions and he would indeed reach out to us from there, as my mother now experiences continually.

I was so grateful for these hours with him; for witnessing such a profound transition at the closing of his incarnation.  Once again, watching another of my father’s life experiences, shaped and strengthened my own journey.  We all have an opportunity to come to such realizations at the close of our lives. Some of us, those who desire to awaken before death, will experience our multi-dimensional nature at will.  This is the way of true self-realization, stepping not onto a path, but directly and experientially into our true essence.  I have had and so many personal experiences of this expanded state that I have no fear of death what-so-ever.  I know it simply as a transition from one state of being to another. I am grateful that in his last days my Dad began to experience this awareness as well.  My brother was with him as he departed this realm and the story he shared with me about his transition was quite fantastic and other-worldly. My mom is visited by him often and she has told me of seeing him and also waking to him cradling her in his arms. My mom’s sister also had a vision of her husband following his passing and my grandmother was connected to many of her relatives after their passing.  I share this to emphasize that life does not end and death is a fallacy.  We move from physical expressions, yes but this is not death.  The more we embrace this truth the more we can remain in contact with one another following these transitions. I have heard and experienced countless stories from people who have done just that.  Hopefully we are moving into a time when this will be the norm and we can let go of our conditioned ideas about death.