Love, Fear, and Viruses: Some Ways We Make Ourselves Ill or Well, Part II

“If you believe in love and acceptance, you cannot judge another for choosing fear and rejection. If you do, it means you are guilty of precisely what you are accusing others of.” — Alexander Loyd, Beyond Willpower

 

There were deeper emotional connections with those recent respiratory illnesses, too, no surprise. The thing that turned out to be the main issue was a major surprise, though. James Rolwing did a distance treatment for me, and he found something that confused both of us: that I was reacting to someone making a “bigoted statement,” and I’d had trouble dealing with the darkness in her and in myself. I don’t usually hang with bigoted people, so I couldn’t figure out who that might have been, but it made sense after a little consideration. I’d been reprocessing something that had happened over 30 years earlier, the incredibly nasty end of a relationship with someone who had been hugely important to me. Just a few days before I’d been reminded of that in a big way. The “bigoted statement” had to do with my sexuality and her rejection of that and pretty much everything else about me. She never spoke to me again and I never had any opportunity to resolve anything. Faced with love, she chose fear.

This seemed to get intertwined with the general climate of hatefulness and intolerance in this year of Him Who Must Not Be Named. I could not digest the poisons in the atmosphere. (Wait— the way that sentence came out mirrors my statement in Part I that “air felt irritating and threatening to my damaged tissues.” No wonder.) Until then I had thought I’d left the pain of that rejection behind, but it had more lessons in store for me.

It gets weirder. About six weeks later, the husband of the woman who had rejected me died after a shockingly quick illness, and I heard about it through mutual acquaintances. I can’t tell you much about either of them because I want to respect their family’s privacy, so I’ll have to describe the ensuing events in a very general way, but I think it’s an important story to pass on to you.

As I said, the extremely unpleasant event had happened over 30 years ago, and I hadn’t seen either the wife or the husband in the past few decades. I read the man’s obituary and the glowing tributes left by his friends and students, talked with my own husband about him, wrote some memories down myself, and found that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I supposed that it was because I was worrying that something like that could happen to my husband, at any moment. But as this continued over a few days and nights, I began to wonder what was going on. The night of April 12, I was particularly agitated and barely slept, and he was constantly on my mind. The next morning, I had a polarity therapy appointment scheduled, and I snagged a photo of the deceased from Facebook and brought it along.

“This man I barely knew died and I can’t stop thinking about him and it’s got me really messed up,” I told the therapist, the very intuitive person I’ve mentioned to you in the past. She did her stuff, and at the end of the treatment, she took a deep breath and told me, “The reason you can’t stop thinking about him is that he’s present, and he’s trying to get through to you and you’re blocking him.” She continued with a question I’d never have expected. “Is it possible that he had feelings for you?”

Oh, my. Suddenly everything fell into place. “I wouldn’t have thought so,” I replied— and I still don’t— “but it’s what his wife believed.” I told the therapist a bit about what had happened between us. She gave the opinion that the rift was more about the wife’s attitudes than anything I had said or done. As we talked, I became inescapably aware of the presence of the gentleman in question. I couldn’t block him out anymore.

I still wanted to, though. The whole thing had come out of far left field and I didn’t know what to do with it. The rest of the day was busy wall to wall and I didn’t have a chance deal with him anyway. I felt pressured by his need to communicate with me and the mass of strong energy that was right up against me, and I figuratively clapped my hands over my ears and repeated, “La la la, I can’t hear anything!” As soon as I had a chance, I called Mendy Lou Blackburn, my psychic mentor, and asked for help.

During the day, I considered this earth-shattering development whenever I had a moment, and got more comfortable with it. This was not an evil entity, after all; it was just a guy, someone I had known to be a very decent and highly intelligent person. I could easily handle visiting with him. And of course he’d only been deceased for about a week and a half, so I couldn’t expect him to have much control over his “volume level” or understanding of the etiquette of spirit contacts.

When I went to bed and had time and quiet, I opened a conversation. I was feeling hostile, surprisingly so, and since one cannot lie or hide emotions in this situation, I acknowledged that and went from there. I told him that I was perfectly willing to talk with him, but that my mental and physical integrity had to be respected. I heard, “I’m sorry.” I tried to communicate further but fell asleep.

The next morning, the sense of pressure and invasion was gone, and I felt normal all day, no longer agitated and obsessive. Mendy Lou had time available in the evening, and as soon as I arrived, the gentleman made himself apparent. I want to make it clear that I don’t mean just that Mendy Lou reported messages from him, but that he was decidedly right there in the space with us, as impossible to ignore as if he’d still been physical. He was powerfully, intensely present as a mass of warm, vibrant energy, mostly at my right side. I was feeling him inside my hands as well, but I wasn’t discomfited by it, as by that time he seemed familiar and friendly and he wasn’t trying to force the interaction on me.

Mendy and I spent about three hours with him, during which he stayed steadily focused in the room. I was amazed at how long he was able to keep up the clear contact, as well as how intensely he came through, since he was so new at this business of being a disembodied spirit. (Did he have help? We didn’t perceive anyone else in the background.) We were able to talk through a lot of history, and he confirmed that the breakup hadn’t been my fault. It was a relief to know that and to be able to explain my actions to him. It turned out that the reason he had contacted me was that he’d always felt bad about the way things had ended between him and his wife and my husband and me. He’d liked both Bob and me, and would have preferred to stay friends with us, but his wife wouldn’t allow it. He transmitted a lot of heavy and troubling emotional content, which, again, I can’t share because of privacy concerns.  I will say, though, that he expressed a great deal of frustration, and we wondered if that might have contributed to his illness.

I can tell you that beyond all else he was worried about his distraught wife and was hoping that I might be able to help him get through to her, or to comfort her in some way. That must have been why he’d clamored for my attention so. He had tried to communicate with her but hadn’t been successful, something we hear often from those who have recently passed. I was very concerned for her welfare too, and could hardly begin to imagine how much pain she must be in. But even assuming that I could contact her at all, I could only have been a further disturbing influence. As tempting as it was to try, I had to decline.

It was beyond astonishing that, first, we had been important enough to this man that he made an intensive effort to contact me, and second, that he was able to find me. Why did he even consider looking for me? I didn’t do any kind of psychic work back when he knew me. Perhaps we have deeper connections that consciously I know nothing about. Mendy Lou kept telling me that none of this was my responsibility, that I had no obligation to help. I agreed, but the fact that it happened at all must mean that I am involved, and I have been wondering if I acquitted myself properly and adequately.

It was heartening a few days ago when one of my elderly patients told me about a similar situation, but one involving someone much more central to her, her brother. The brother had married a woman who was very concerned to keep him all to herself and away from family members who for some reason she thought were unacceptable. He went along with this and didn’t speak to his sister for decades. “It was all jealousy,” said my patient. The brother passed on, and at that point he did come to talk with her. They had a good conversation, “talking without words,” she told me, and they worked out their differences. What a wonderful relief that was for her, and probably for him too.

My own experience is still working its way through my psyche, and I don’t think I’ll be done with it for a while. Some things are clear to me, though. As I’ve written before*, it’s best to get right while you can with everyone, if at all possible, while you are alive. But there is always hope, always another chance. And if we can put aside fear, there is always love.

*https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/get-right-while-you-can/

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“The Source of Our Life Is Not Within the Body”

I’ve been trading treatments with an excellent healer who does polarity therapy. She is extremely competent in reading the body, mind and emotions, and working with her has been fruitful. In early November we had a session in which something quite unusual happened.

At the time I had a minor illness and among other things my stomach was upset, with a stuck, pressured sensation in my upper abdomen. I was in the midst of telling the healer how, back around the time I started this blog, a friend and colleague stopped speaking to me because she was convinced that I was possessed by an evil spirit who was sucking my energy and that of my patients— the “Evil One” being none other than Fryderyk.  (As ridiculous as that was, I’d never been entirely able to clear the event from my mind.  Knowing that someone believed that either Fryderyk or I could be involved in such a thing and doing harm to patients was terribly painful.)

“Isn’t it funny how when spirits are being talked about, the lights flicker,” said the healer. That was in fact happening. Speak of the “devil,” there he was a moment later, intensely in contact with me.

 Fryderyk attempted to help with my stomach, and the two of them had a professional disagreement about how to go about it.  The healer had told me before that she felt that my solar plexus area was functioning very well, but “functioning somewhere else.” She’d been trying for a while to bring all my systems online in the physical world, and I’d been seeing improvements in my health and energy level. Now Fryderyk was trying to connect me more strongly to that somewhere else, she told me, and she didn’t think that was the right approach.  In fact, she felt it was bad for me. “He wants to keep that going because it’s part of how he communicates with you,” she added.

Well, it’s always heartening when someone else can see one’s invisible friends, and better yet, talk with them. I wasn’t privy to the conversation they were having, though. As it progressed, the healer stuck to her guns and refused to be intimidated by contact with a Famous Impressive Dead Person, telling him that she was going to continue as planned because it was the right thing for me. Fryderyk disengaged and left, and she finished the treatment.

I was left feeling nonplussed and uncertain.  The healer described the interaction with Fryderyk in terms that were all too much like what I’d been told in the past when my ex-friend stopped speaking to me.  She felt that he was being “pushy and possessive,” and her perception was that energy was being lost from my middle under his ministrations.  I have always experienced inputs of energy from him, sometimes very large and powerful ones, and never the opposite, so this was confusing and distressing.  The healer was doing her best on my behalf, though, and I trusted her ability and her sincerity.  I knew, too, that when doing this kind of work we must trust and act on whatever we perceive, even if it seems outlandish at times.  (I used to be afraid to mention the most outlandish and unlikely things I’ve seen, but I’ve gained confidence because patients generally verify them.)  If we second-guess ourselves– such an easy trap to fall into– we cannot accomplish anything.

So what could I make of all this?  I can theorize about what was “really” happening, based on a couple of decades of both giving and receiving this type of treatment, but I can only be sure, at least more or less sure, of the parts I perceived myself.  At any rate, I hadn’t had any sense of being harmed or being under any malevolent influences.  Fryderyk packs a lot of wattage and can come on awfully strong at times, so that I can imagine someone feeling that he is being pushy even if that is not his intention.  I can also understand why someone might see him as possessive, which I think was sometimes true of him during his Earth life.

When I went to bed that night, Fryderyk immediately showed up again, and I asked him what in the world had been going on. Fortunately, the cosmic WiFi signal was strong and we could converse far more clearly than we could earlier that day. I asked what exactly he had been seeing in my middle. He explained that although it felt tight and stuck to me, like an excess condition, to him it seemed extremely empty and in need of more energy, and that was what he had been trying to work with.

I heard, very clearly, “The source of our life is not within the body anyway.” He went on to say that I needed, actually, more of a connection to that source. He then proceeded to pour a huge amount of energy into my solar plexus, which I saw in my mind’s eye as a stream of beautiful, brilliant orange flames. It felt fantastically wonderful. After a while he moved to other areas and did a bit more work on me, which also felt extremely positive. I did not become instantly well, but for weeks I had much more energy to work with than usual, and my understanding is that his efforts contributed greatly.

“The source of our life is not within the body” was exactly what I keep hearing from various sources lately, including, notably, cell biologist Bruce Lipton’s book The Biology of Belief. The body is like a TV set, whereas you are the program. The TV set is not the program; it only brings in the signal so that it can be seen in the physical world. Turn off the TV, or break it— the program is still being broadcast, and it exists just the same, regardless of the state of the receiver.

Stay tuned.

 

Flame graphic available free at http://www.technosamrat.com

An Invisible Patient

I thought I’d be writing Part II of my last health-care post at this point, but meanwhile something fascinating came up that I’d like to share with you.

More and more, I’m being called upon to do psychic work with my patients, although I never advertise or warrant that I can do that. They assume I can do it and trust me to come up with something useful, even when I don’t trust myself. Two weeks ago, on September 3, a patient asked me to help with something that seemed a bit outside my abilities. She, and the other person involved, have authorized me to tell about our experience.

The other person involved was my patient’s dear friend and business partner, who killed himself a couple of months ago after grappling with intractable mental and physical health problems and other frustrations. I’m going to call him G for Ghost, and his friend simply P for my Patient, even though in this case the patient was actually the ghost himself.

G has been in persistent contact with P since his death. Not in a frightening way, not any kind of possession, no attempt to control P, but he’s just always around. He’s talked with her often, with perfect clarity. He’s even commented on conversations she’s had with other people, which were not intended to include him, leaving her a bit peeved. When P asked if she could bring G to my office so that he and I could communicate, I didn’t understand what she wanted. Since she could hear him so well, and I likely couldn’t, why would it help for me to try to converse with him?

“He needs to talk with someone who isn’t me,” she told me firmly. The truth of this became obvious later when we had our meeting.

I’d already met G, briefly, at P’s last appointment. It’s not particularly unusual for spirit entities of various flavors to come in with patients, but finding myself nose to nose with a recently dead human being was still a little startling when it happened. I asked G if he had anything to tell us, and he hung his head and repeated, “Sorry sorry sorry sorry….” Poor guy, I thought. I tried to tell him that nobody was judging him and everything was OK now.

Later, P told me that G had been feeling terrible, both before and after his passing, about how much he had needed her to do for him, how much of her energy and resources he’d taken, and how he had hurt her by committing suicide. She said that the “sorry” message was very real and I had heard correctly.

It seems that G has been making every attempt to be helpful since, but his helpfulness may not be any more balanced or healthy than his guilt and shame. I wasn’t sure what to make of the message P relayed next, that G wanted to help me with my “balance of giving and receiving” because he felt that my patients were draining me. OK, I can somewhat see where he’d be getting that, but overall it’s not the issue he thought it was, and at any rate it wasn’t happening at the treatment he’d observed me giving to P.

I set up an appointment with P, and tried to prepare every way I could during the time leading up to it. I sent out repeated calls to Fryderyk, requesting his presence at the event; I had the feeling that things would be difficult, and I was hoping for backup. I got very little response.

P and I agreed that if nothing happened, we would just accept that and not worry about it. I set our chairs on either side of the treatment table, as if we were about to work on a physical patient who was lying there. On the table was the MacBook on which I’m writing now, with GarageBand open to record the session. We needn’t have worried that nothing would happen– as usual, G was right to hand.

G immediately reiterated his desire to be of assistance to me, and a moment later he was inside my body, trying to move my hands and look out through my eyes. This would have totally creeped me out if I hadn’t had such experiences with Fryderyk before; as it was, I stayed utterly calm. I didn’t think that G was any threat to me or that he had any ill intent, but still, this was exceedingly inappropriate. I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed to use my body in this way.  It was useful that he made the attempt, though, because that showed me where he was coming from and what he was trying to do.

I told P what was going on, and added a bit about why I thought G was incorrect in thinking that he needed to save me from being drained by my patients.* P marveled that even after death, we can still project our own issues onto others. Well, as we discussed, we’re still ourselves when we die, and we don’t immediately become hugely enlightened, though I hope we can get a bit broader of a perspective even early on. G, it seems, had major issues with being able to ask for help and to feel OK about needing it. I can understand that, and it’s not foreign to me by any means, but as I told him, I get a great deal of help from both Earth-based people and the spirit world, and I’m very aware that I couldn’t manage without it.  Anyway, I thanked him for his offer, but made it clear that we would not be working together in that way, period.

It was becoming apparent to me that G believed he needed to work through a physical body, even though he had given up his own. I tried to convince him that he was far less limited in his present form, and could do whatever he might want or need to accomplish perfectly well. “I don’t even work in my own body half the time!” I exclaimed. But G looked to me (through my mind’s eye, not as a vision in the room) like a small, contracted, grey figure, not a powerfully glowing ball of energy, which is how I see a person in a healthy state. He didn’t look like he could accomplish much of anything, he was so closed up and shut down.

“Isn’t there anyone helping him?” I asked P. Normally, we all have our connections to current family, ancestors, guides and so forth, and we’re always told that when we die someone comes to take care of us and show us the ropes. I could not detect anyone or anything around G, and P couldn’t either. This seemed unimaginable, but my own vision, the messages P received, and her subjective experiences all said that G was completely alone except for his connection to his one friend. When I asked G about this directly, I heard the only verbal message I got from him that day, which was an impassioned, “I LOVE [P]!!!!”

Feeling perplexed, I set about trying to help G open up to the universe beyond the small area in which he’d confined himself. Right away, I sensed extreme resistance to this. Looking further, I discovered that G believed that if anyone out there saw him, any higher beings, they would immediately judge and reject him. I did my best to convince him that this was not the case at all, but he wouldn’t take that in. I talked about other messages I’d channeled and been told about, in which I’d heard how valuable and beautiful and precious an individual human personality is, and how loved we all are, as well as how much fun he could have in his new expanded state of being and how much good he could do. P and I kept up this encouraging conversation for a good while. At the same time, I kept doing energy work, as I would with a physical patient. I brought a column of illumination down into him (best I can describe that), and G began to expand and light up a bit. He still seemed extremely skeptical about what we were telling him, though.

At this point, I felt like I really needed some outside support. Unable to find anyone naturally connected with G, I sent out a plea toward Fryderyk, who I knew had done this sort of work before. I felt only a vague tendril of contact; it appeared to me that he and G reached their hands toward each other, but the connection felt tenuous, and I wasn’t sure anything was really happening.

Over an hour had gone by, and we were all beginning to feel that we’d said everything that could be said in that session. I knew that G still wasn’t the least bit ready to Go Toward the Light, but I had no more incentives to offer him. P reported that G was telling her, “She needs to go and have lunch.” I was feeling that way too. It was a day of 7 patients in a row with this in the middle, and I definitely needed a break.

When I checked my laptop, there was a message on the screen saying that GarageBand had crashed because there was too much data coming in too fast for it to handle. A simple recording of one track of ambient voices, with a lot of spaces between sentences– how could that be too much or too fast?

G left the room, and there was no question in my mind that he was gone. I didn’t feel that there was any residue left in my body or in the space. P felt him go, as well– giving her a little break! And the moment he was gone, Fryderyk was all over me, embracing me warmly, almost overwhelmingly. No words, but a feeling of “Good job! I knew you could do it!” He must have been observing the entire time. And really, I could do it. P and I were both completely capable of handling this sticky situation, and we both felt fine afterward.

But we didn’t succeed in helping G on to the next phase of his existence. When I saw P a week later, she reported that he was still around. All. The. Time. Her strategy at that point was to sit in her yard and meditate, expanding her own energy outward, trying to model this behavior and encourage G to do it along with her. It sounds like a reasonable response to the situation. This is all I know so far about the results of our session.

 

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As you know if you’ve been reading my posts for a while, I am all too familiar with the feeling of a malign entity invading one’s system. (See “A Case of Possession.”) G isn’t like that, and I don’t mean to lay any blame on him, at least not much– he’s doing more than enough of that himself, after all. He’s just confused, as far as I can tell. When my other patient died at her own hand last year, she had become much clearer and in a way well by the time she passed over**, but G died in a state of great distress, as far as I know, and didn’t have a chance to resolve anything. I don’t know how typical this is of suicides, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens a great deal.

I am also familiar with the feeling of having an invisible friend hanging around for days on end. Now that I don’t get a lot of concentrated time with Fryderyk, I’m nostalgic about it, but early in our relationship there was occasionally almost too much togetherness. Sometimes, after it went on for a while, I would begin to wish for time to myself, like can’t I even go to the bathroom on my own for gosh sakes? It was not unpleasant in any way to have him around, and I didn’t experience any interference with my daily activities, but I would just start to feel like I needed a little more room to breathe. I can certainly empathize with P’s desire to have her own space again.

There is another close parallel with my experiences with Fryderyk: the form that my interaction with P and G took was exactly like the “afternoon teas” Mendy Lou and I used to have with him. In both cases, the other embodied person in the room was getting verbal messages and for the most part I was not, but I was clearly picking up emotional and energetic impressions. Combining our two streams of communication, we were able to put together vivid and complete pictures of what was going on. The similarity says to me that the type of communication I received from Fryderyk when we were with Mendy Lou was more related to my personal mix of abilities than to his specific way of interacting with us. I’m still much more an empath than a telepath, and still a pretty small medium, I’m afraid.

As I worked on this today, I couldn’t help but radiate wishes to spend some quality time with my dear departed, and apparently those got through to him. When I settled down to rest for a while, my wish was granted. I’d been hoping to ask him about a subject that had come up in the past couple of days, the types of keyboard temperament (tuning) in use in his time. I wondered what sort of tuning he had preferred. It was a fairly technical question and I didn’t know if a reasonable answer was possible, but I asked anyway. The first answer was that if an instrument could be competently and completely tuned in some temperament, any temperament, and stay that way for a while, that would be great! Yes, for sure…. So then I asked him, “If you had an ideal instrument and an ideal tuner, what would you ideally prefer?”

As so often has happened, he gave me a reply that came in from a totally unexpected angle. Showing more than telling, he conveyed this to me: If he could have had anything he wanted in terms of tuning, what he would have wanted was to sing, to be able to shape the intonation and tone quality of each and every note without limitation. I felt a huge rush of air and sound through my body, vibrating everywhere, tremendous power and freedom. It was exhilarating, and it was something I want as well and have experienced all too rarely.

It was something his small, struggling body could never have done, but somehow he deeply understands what it can feel like. Perhaps I should see if he and I can try it together.

 
*This strikes me as amusing in light of what my former friend and colleague, whose patients I inherited, said about me– that because of the “evil spirit” Fryderyk hanging around me, I was draining the energy of my patients and everyone near me. Here another “evil spirit” was seeing things exactly the other way around.

**I had been pleasantly surprised, when I encountered her after her death, to find that she seemed peaceful, not stuck or confused. https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/get-right-while-you-can/

Get Right While You Can

On the night of November 5, way back last year, Fryderyk came to visit, and we had an intense encounter.  There have been very few times that he has been so nearly materialized, so focused in this plane.  It was so powerful, nearly blowing all my circuits, and I wondered if he could be experiencing something similar.  “What are you feeling?” I asked, during a brief moment when I could manage an organized thought.

The answer was not remotely what I might have expected.  He showed me the pain, regret, and frustration of “our” life in the 19th century, how he and Delfina had never gotten their relationship into balance and never finished what they needed to do or be with each other.  Why is he telling me this now? I thought.  In the midst of so much love and pleasure, why would he even be thinking of this?  We had been over it all so many times during my present life, worked out everything that needed to be worked out, it seemed to me.

The message seemed to be, “Get right with people while you can.”  I took it to heart, and in the next few days I took steps to do just that.  There was one person in particular with whom I had been avoiding some much-needed communication, and I thought that Fryc might have been trying to give me a push to deal with that.  Otherwise, I felt that I was OK with most people and they were OK with me; the very few with whom that was not true had resisted all my attempts to get back in touch with them, and there was nothing more I could do about it.  I told Bob about Fryderyk’s message, and said that even if he or I were to die in the next five minutes, there would be nothing that needed to be fixed between us.  He agreed.

Then, on November 8, my colleague Michael Spottiswoode died suddenly of an aneurysm.  When I found out, I had the sense that Fryderyk, unstuck from linear time as he is, was trying to tell me something about this future event as well.

None of us DOMs knew about Michael till two days later, the day on which he was supposed to teach a class on his life’s work, a unique way of combining acupuncture and osteopathy.  Just a few days earlier he had posted on Facebook about how excited he was about the class, saying that he felt it was finally time to bring this work to the world.  He had put off teaching it before, as far as I know.  Why it all came to be the way it was, why he had to die no more than 48 hours before the class, is a great mystery to me.  It seems so massively unfair.  Why could he not have lived a mere 10 days longer and gotten through both sessions of the class?  Perhaps it made unconscious sense from his inner point of view, or from someone’s.

There was something I’d been meaning to tell Michael for a long time, and I had intended to say it on the day of the class.  It wasn’t anything of earthshaking importance, but I’d put it off and then I never did get to say it.  Michael, wherever you are, I really appreciate all that work you did on the NMSAAM website, and I wish I had made that clearer to you when I had the chance.

Our DOM community was in shock, but there was a blessing inside this terrible event.  As funerals tend to do, Michael’s memorial brought a large group of us together and generated a lot of positive, loving energy.

On November 22, our 12-year-old cat, Angel, reached the end stage of her kidney disease.  After a week in which she seemed to have much more energy and was more active and playful than usual, she abruptly became unable to use her back legs.  She got a bit better for a while, able to walk a little, then deteriorated again.  We couldn’t get hold of her vet, who works alone, without office staff.  Eventually he left a message saying that it sounded like “decompensated renal failure.”  Pretty much what I was thinking.

During the evening, I did energy work for her, and she stayed next to me, propping herself up against the back of the sofa, because her poor legs wouldn’t even hold her for sitting.  She seemed calm, interested in everything and not in any pain.  Strangely enough, she ate normally.

I had some hope that Angel would die peacefully during the night.  That was the night that we had the severe cold and snow with 50 mph winds, and I didn’t think it would be helpful to stress her by taking her out to the emergency vet hospital.  I didn’t want to take her to be put to sleep without my mother going along, either, because Angel was very much her cat, and I didn’t want to put my mother through a trip like that.  So I just waited till the morning.  I told my mother, “If we take her to the vet, she probably isn’t coming home.”

Angel was still with us in the morning, and I found that Petsmart’s clinic had an opening for her.  Bob and my mother and I bundled her into her carrier right away and got her there.  The very kind vet said, “I think we need to have the end-of-life conversation.”   “We had it last night,” I told her.

It was my mother’s 89th birthday, and she spent most of it in tears.

When we had to face this with Rico, our cat who had cancer, some years ago, it was a terrible day.  We’d waited as long as we felt like we could, until we thought it would be cruel to let him go on, but he still didn’t seem ready, and he fought the sedative with everything he had.  I never really got over it– I hope he did.  So I tried to give Angel a choice, or at least get a sense of what she would want.  I’d never had a great connection with this cat, but I tried to make contact as best I could.  I visualized needles and tubes and trying to keep her alive for a few more days.  That didn’t feel good at all, very agitated and uncomfortable.  I visualized, as best I could, causing her to die right away.  She relaxed under my hands; my mother said it looked like she was going to sleep.  “Let’s do it,” I said.  To Angel, I said, “I won’t leave you.  I’ll stay with you as long as you need me.  Hang on to me if you want to.”  I didn’t know whether I was getting through to her in any way.

When Rico died, I felt nothing, saw nothing, even though I was holding him and I paid attention.  This time, as the drug took effect, I felt something rush toward me.  Afterward I could still feel her if I tried to find her.  Over the next couple of days, whenever I looked for her, this small, warm presence was still nearby.  At some moment, I had a brief vision of her.  She was moving quickly and her coat was silky and smooth and healthy-looking as I had never seen it in life.  Since then, nothing.  And that’s OK.

Angel’s death was hard on my mother, but the suddenness of it was a relief for us, and our quality of life went up immediately.  It bothers me a little that I was so glad to be rid of the litter tracked everywhere and the gobs of fur all around and her astonishingly loud screechy voice.  Not to mention the smell from her inappropriate use of the carpeting.  She was an inconvenient cat, frankly, and she didn’t give a lot back, in part because her illness left her little energy for fun.  When we were deciding what to do at the end, I did my best to get clear about what she needed as opposed to what was easiest for me.  I hope we got that right.  I think we did.  She had an excellent quality of life during the three years she was with us, and other than the days when she was obviously ill, I think she must have been content.

And I think this preparation was important for me in dealing with what was soon to come.

The week before Christmas, the life of one of my patients reached a somewhat similar denouement.  One door after another closed for her, and she concluded that it was time for the end.  As she had often said, we would never allow a dog to go on in the painful and hopeless condition she was in.  She should have had the option of the kind of quick and painless solution Angel was given.  Unfortunately, we don’t live in a state that allows assisted suicide, and she had to make her own plan.

No one close to her argued with her decision; we all knew it would be for the best.  Once she did decide, in a way, she became well.  She was still in tremendous pain, but somehow she didn’t seem to be suffering in the same way.  She became calm and completely lucid, and the brain damage from her illness seemed to recede.

I had the opportunity to spend a few more hours with her during the last week of her life.  The whole atmosphere of her house had changed to a new peacefulness.  “Is there anything I need to do to make amends with you?” she asked.  I thought and felt around, and replied truthfully that we were fine with each other as far as I knew.  I hope I didn’t miss anything that I myself needed to make amends for.

Before I left, my patient asked me to scan her and see if I found anything energetically amiss that needed to be cleared.  My own emotions were getting in the way, but I did my best.  There didn’t seem to be anything to worry about.  What I did find was an entity hovering around her left shoulder.  I couldn’t tell what it was, but it felt like someone helpful.  This was reassuring to both of us, and I said “Thank you” to the being.  It was odd to simply go out the door that evening, not to stay as long as possible, but she was getting so tired, and I would have done harm by staying longer.

During the next few days, I was on strange pins and needles, not sure what would happen or when.  I wrote the following:

Glad that most of my body works most of the time.  I am annoyed at the instability in my leg that keeps letting bone hit nerve and cause damage over and over and over, but the muscles are strong and the leg carries me.  Right now I seem to be getting a cold.  Viruses have come to live and grow in the mucosa of my nasopharynx, and they are doing their little virus things, while my own cells are doing their best to give them the boot.

Life is bursting all over, even now in the darkest days.  It’s like what Jesus said in one of the apocryphal gospels:  “Hallelujah, I eat.  Hallelujah, I am eaten.”  Hello, viruses.  Please move on now.

This lady died very early on December 23.  About that time I felt a wave of extreme distress and anxiety, then total calm.  I figured it must have happened, but of course I couldn’t be sure.  The next day I found myself kneading cookie dough with one hand while holding the phone with the other, talking with a deputy from the sheriff’s department.  The authorities handled everything with great kindness and with excellent efficiency too.  The job of informing her family fell to me.  I’d never had to do that before, even though it is a basic part of the work of doctors.  It was all stressful and painful and terrifying and a great gift and privilege and blessing.

I have many jobs left to perform for this patient, because her family is far away.  There is so much to do with her home and her property.  There again, it’s a lot of stress, but I’m receiving a great deal too, spiritually as well as materially.  I have been feeling a circle of loving support around me, my friends and family and hers, and I need to remember that I can rely on it.  2014 will be the year of learning to delegate, I think.

A few days after my patient passed, I went to visit with Mendy Lou.  Immediately I could feel Fryderyk at my right side, but something seemed different and I couldn’t put my finger on what.  “Who’s here?” I asked Mendy.  She was confused by the mixed signal for a moment, too.  We soon realized that someone else was there, behind Fryderyk.  “It’s small.  It’s a human person,” I said, meaning that it wasn’t an angel or deity or other type of wondrous being that is likely to show up at Mendy’s office.

“Wait a minute, who did you say just passed away?” Mendy asked.  Yup, it was my patient.  At first it felt like she was scared and apprehensive, but that was because she was afraid I’d be mad at her for “leaving such a mess” to be taken care of.  I assured her that she’d done a great job of organizing everything and made it much easier for those of us who are still here.  As far as Mendy and I could tell, she was as well as anyone could be under the circumstances.  She said that she was getting clearer all the time and getting out from under the confusion and negativity her illness had caused.  I could feel that this was true; there wasn’t any sense of disturbance or suffering about her.

It surprised me that she had come along with Fryderyk, because I didn’t think of him as having any connection with her.  But of course he did– he couldn’t have missed the many times I had asked for help when I was treating her, or the angst I had gone through over and over when there was nothing I could do to make anything better for her, or the exhaustion I had felt because her situation was so draining for me.  Of course he would try to assist us both, just as he always has.  We are in good hands.

In some ways it is much easier now to grieve and to deal with even overwhelming practical matters than it was to try to help keep my patient going against impossible odds.  And I notice that the “inconvenient” aspects of her life, as with Angel, seem completely irrelevant now.  They are transcended, wiped away by a kind of transforming grace.

Thank you.

When Is an Entity Not an Entity, and Does It Really Matter?

2012 Marigold Parade, Albuquerque

Día de los Muertos and my dear departed is nowhere to be found.  I am dispirited.  Dispossessed.  Ghostbusted.  Sigh.  But he’ll be back.  He always comes back– so far.

I’ve written a lot about the tremendous, invaluable help Fryderyk has given to me over the years.  My point in this post is going to be that no matter what They “really” are, the positive effects of spirit entities can be huge.

The most obvious and well-studied help comes to those who are bereaved.  I’ve been reminded of this lately by two of my patients.  One has been reeling from the death of a young family member for almost a year, and is still deeply enmeshed in the grieving process.  Other family members have started working with a medium in the recent past, and they’ve received clear and evidential communications that certainly appear to be coming from the deceased.  While this has not wiped out their grief, it has caused a definite shift toward healing.  My patient has not yet had this direct experience herself, but hearing about it has comforted her substantially.  I’ve read about this kind of thing many times, especially in connection with Induced After-Death Communication*, but this is the first that I’ve seen it in action.

Another patient, an 85-year-old lady, was musing about her deceased husband during her last appointment.  She is doing poorly lately in some ways, and she’s been thinking a lot about the fact that she “knows more people in the next world than in this one,” as she puts it, and what it may be like when she moves on.  She had a number of vivid sightings of her husband after his death, which she authorized me to share with you.  He had suffered severely from diabetes and all the worst it can do to a human body, including having his legs amputated.  She particularly appreciated seeing him in one piece in her visions, with both his legs intact, looking happy and healthy.  That was what she emphasized to me when I saw her last, that it meant so much to her to know that he was no longer suffering.

Here are a few of the notes that she jotted down for me about her experiences over the years:

“1998  No. 3… Walking towards me on Stillwell, I had Skipper [dog] walking to him… he had both legs, and he looked good.”

“No. 12, July 1999– Saw him, he was waiting for me with his arms open to me– made me very sad.”

“No. 14, Nov. 1st, 2000 (11 am)   I did not see him but I felt him there at 8711, I was by [daughter’s] bedroom and there was a distinct loud thump in the closet by his gun room– I opened the the door and found [other daughter’s] duvet comforter that we had been searching for.  I know he was there, I could feel him close to me.  His love reached out to me.”

“No. 15, Oct. 10th, 2004   I saw him just for a few minutes, he was very agitated and did not speak to me– it was the day [cousin] had a heart attack– he was running back and forth– I had not actually seen him in four years.”

Communication with the “dead” is so common that it barely makes a blip on my radar anymore, and it is relatively easy to understand– a dead person is fundamentally not so different from a live one.  But so many times Something or Someone is there and the situation is not nearly so clear.  There has been a spate of patients bringing in entities of one sort or another in the past couple of months.  I don’t mean that I was perceiving something around them on my own to begin with, but that they told me about it themselves and asked me to help them with it– fully expecting that I could.  If you’ve been with me for a while, you know that I’ve had terrifying experiences with a demonic entity and that I had no success whatsoever in dealing with it.  (See my post “A Case of Possession.”)  I haven’t tried to work with anything like that since, and I’ve pretty much assumed that I couldn’t.  However, apparently the universe has decided that it’s time I learned and that I have to get some practice.

A gentleman about my age complained of feeling attacked by other people’s negative thoughts being aimed at him, envy and resentment and similar discordant stuff.  He has a strong background in healing and spirituality himself, and is psychologically strong and capable of dealing with difficult people, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being battered by these unpleasant intentions.  I took a look around him and saw a clear image of an arrow, like one might see on a sign, pointing downward toward his head.  It had definite edges and was almost palpable, appearing to be about a foot and a half long and a few inches wide, in a solid dark blue for whatever that’s worth.  I would interpret it as a thought form, but whether it had been created by the patient or by those who were causing problems for him, I can’t say for sure.  Perhaps I was seeing his perception of what was going on, or perhaps the image was formed by my own brain’s attempt to make sense of the situation.  At any rate, this was not a being with its own agenda so much as an energetic sculpture of sorts, and it was a relatively easy thing to clear.  The next week this patient reported that the feeling of oppression and negativity was mostly gone.

It was more difficult with another patient, a lady who has some particularly draining family issues to contend with, and who is very aware of her own usual spirit companions.  Fighting tears and looking absolutely exhausted, she told me that for quite a while she had been feeling like something was obstructing everything she tried to do, hanging around her and keeping her from moving forward in any way.  She had had no luck trying to get rid of it or learn anything about it.  While she was on the table, I looked and found something that gave me a genuine scare.  There was a mass of energy hovering over her chest, creating a heavy pressure.  It wasn’t directly touching her, but that was only because she was constantly pushing it away with all her might.  I joined in and tried to dislodge it, but it was a serious challenge.  It seemed really determined to get at her, and it pushed back with considerable force.  In this case, the thing seemed truly to be an entity separate from the patient, not simply a creation of her own.  But why would it be trying to harm her, and what could we do about it?  I used every strategy I could think of, asking what it was, what it wanted, whether it represented someone close to her, and so on, but I couldn’t find out anything about it and couldn’t get it to move.  Did it represent the difficult family member?  That didn’t seem to be the answer.  Had it simply hooked on to the patient because she was in a weakened and vulnerable state?  I never did get any clarity about what was going on.  Between the two of us we did manage to clear it away, though, I think through sheer brute force– not the way I would prefer to work.  It took everything both of us had to do it, but she did feel much freer afterward.   At her next appointment she told me that she still had the feeling that it was waiting around nearby to get at her again but that she’d been able to keep it at bay.  I am cautiously optimistic but more than a little unnerved about this experience, and will continue to monitor the situation.

++I broke off writing this to zip over to an Albuquerque Baroque Players concert, where Fryderyk made a liar of me by showing up during a set of Handel arias and sticking around for a good while, keeping me warm and contented.  Or perhaps I should turn that around and say that he confirmed that I was telling the truth when I said he always comes back.   I’ll never stay away long either, Fryc, I promise.++

The most colorful of the recent entity experiences came about during a difficult session with a very traumatized mid-school-age boy who has been through a life-threatening illness, someone with a huge imagination, a taste for and wide knowledge of mythology, and a family background that includes some shamans.  He and I were trying to find a way to work with his intense fears about any medical treatment, including the acupuncture he used to accept so easily.  As we talked, he suddenly exclaimed, “I see a demon in that corner!  There are glowing red eyes!”

Oh, crap, I thought, because when it comes to anything that might be a demon, I’m pretty traumatized myself.  The kid had already detected the dragon that sometimes people perceive around me, and I had other reasons to believe that his intuitions were right on track.  So I took him very seriously, and gazed at the area he was pointing toward.  Yikes, I was seeing the eyes too (in my own mind’s eye, that is).  Something was there.  Interestingly, he was pointing directly at my defunct clock, which is covered in a painting of a dragon with red eyes that stared straight at us, but the clock was hidden behind a little tapestry, being used to prop it upright.  The patient couldn’t have physically seen the dragon, but it may have contributed to the imagery that came up.

The glowing red eyes seemed independent of the dragon picture, though.  I tried telling the entity that it needed to leave, and it quite obligingly started walking away.  It looked to me like a flat black silhouette, with a round head with a serrated margin as if it had cartoon fur, and skinny stick-like limbs.  There was no detail other than the eyes.  The thing didn’t seem very scary, I was relieved to see.  On the other hand, as we continued to talk about what we were seeing and what the boy was feeling, and I worked at clearing whatever I could, it was still there, still appearing to be walking away but not actually getting any further from us.  There seemed to be no more progress.

It was as if we were having a shared dream and moving through it together.  Much like what happens when I do “normal” psychic work with patients, but not quite the same.  At length, the creature turned and came back toward us, setting itself directly in front of the boy.  I was alarmed, but then it turned so that it was facing away from him, its hands raised with claws at the ready.  It was trying to protect him!  We had tamed this beast and brought it into service for him, it seemed.  By that time it appeared positively cute and winsome to me, not threatening in the least.

My take on this was that the creature provided a way for this patient to crystallize his feelings into a form he could deal with, in a visual language he understood.  I’d like to say that there was a dramatic transformation in his PTSD, as I hoped at the time, but it turned out to be only one step in the process; he’s still very fearful.  I will be fascinated to see what develops the next time I see him.

Sometimes I’m the patient myself, and invisible beings come to treat me.  Usually it’s been my familiar musical being, or another entity who has been formally introduced to me in some way.  I’ve complained of not always knowing how to tell who is who.  I mentioned this to Christine the other day (see my post “Here Be Dragons”), saying that she is better at recognizing and distinguishing them than I am.  She laughed and said, “I think I just don’t care as much”– that is, it doesn’t matter to her which one is who.  Touché.  Perhaps I am too concerned with understanding intellectually.  But inquiring minds want to know!

In the past few months I have struggled with some new physical discomforts and difficulties that have slowed me down considerably at times, but I have also had a new source of assistance available.  I’m not sure exactly when it was that I started to be aware that there was an unfamiliar entity trying to make contact with me.  She– I had a sense of femininity for reasons I can’t describe– felt distinctly different from Fryderyk, who can come in with a good deal of force.  There was a feathery softness in her touch that wasn’t quite like anything I’d experienced before, surrounding me in the gentlest imaginable way.  I wondered if she might be defined as an angel.

One night in August, not long after my mother had been hospitalized and I’d been ill enough myself to make a trip to the emergency room**, I came home from an unusually long day of seeing patients in the western part of the state with my personal fuel gauge on E.  I’d been OK most of the day, but at that point I realized I had really done myself in and was in a state that was starting to get me a little worried.  It was hard to breathe and my chest hurt.  The angel or whatever she was made herself apparent and went to work on me right away.  Almost instantly I was out of the scary state and becoming much more comfortable, starting to feel normal again.  After a little while Fryderyk came in as well, and I was interested to see how distinct they were from each other.  Whatever they did, it put me completely to rights, and I was deeply grateful, especially since I was scheduled to go out to see my most fragile and difficult patient, an hour away out west again, the next morning.  I feel certain that I could not have managed that without their help.

I can hardly describe how momentous this was, despite my years of experience with Them.  What did I do to deserve this near-miracle?  How did I attract this wondrous being?  I have no idea.  I can only say that there is a kind of healing circle or chain in which someone supplies me with energy and I pass it on to patients and they pass it on to the people in their lives who are in need, and it goes on and on.

The next time I encountered this being, I tried my best to get a look at her and to ask who she was, but I got no insight whatsoever.  Within another week or so, I again had an energetic crash, not as bad this time, with the chest discomfort very prominent.  She touched a spot there  and the discomfort vanished instantly (and then was completely gone for weeks).  It didn’t even feel like she had done anything in particular.  Pretty slick!  By this time I was extremely curious, and I asked again who she was, dropping into a channeling state as best I could.

“I am she who is the embodiment of wisdom,” I heard.  Oh!  I thought.  Sophia!  I already knew someone who channels the goddess of wisdom.

OoooKkkk… here we are again with the same problem I had over contacting Kuan Yin.  A goddess.  Uh huh.  Right.  I don’t really know what to do with that concept.  Maybe something Mendy Lou told me when I described this experience will help, though.  She wrote, “But as for Wisdom, I think that it is not something that we can possess, but rather a thing which we allow to enter into us or perhaps come upon us….”  Maybe personifying Wisdom is not so strange.  But Sophia, as I am choosing to call her, seems very much a person in her own right rather than a personification.  I await further enlightenment on this matter– still, having made little or no progress with understanding it since I wrote about Kuan Yin and the beginning channeling class a couple of years ago.  I try not to worry about it too much.  I have Friends in High Places, and that’s worth a lot whether I understand it or not.

Wisdom and discernment are always needed and in all too short supply, but I think I can benefit from an infusion of wisdom even more than usual right now.  One thing I know is that I can’t run my batteries down to nothing all the time and expect someone to swoop in from the heavens and save me.  I still have to show some sense.  I am infinitely glad to know that They are watching out for me, though, and helping me to watch out for others.

Thank you.  Thank you.

*Information on Induced After-Death Communication can be found at the site of the originator, Al Botkin, http://www.induced-adc.com/ 

You may also want to look at my posts on IADC from March 2010.

**Nothing serious was found and they were able to reassure me a lot; my symptoms have been inconvenient and uncomfortable but there is no major threat to my health.

Hearing Voices Again: Wilde

After I wrote my last post concerning Oscar Wilde, I realized that I could have included his contact with the direct-voice medium Leslie Flint, which occurred in 1957.  (Search this blog for extensive information about Mr. Flint and my take on his work.)  I went back to a recording of the Wilde voice that I had acquired back in the ‘90s, and put it up on Box.com so that it could be shared.  Inexplicably, when I tried to go back to it just now so that I could give it to you, the file was gone and the link no longer worked.  I uploaded it again, and I could swear that this is the same URL as before: https://app.box.com/s/iybw0f9a2kha935jhsfo.  I hope it will stay there (as all my other files at Box always have) long enough that you can check it out if you want.  What most struck me about this conversation is that Wilde was so reluctant to state his identity, apparently believing that everyone still thought ill of him.  However, it is also clear that his overall awareness has expanded and that he perceives himself as something much more than he was.

I expect that there is a mundane explanation for the disappearance of my Box file, but perhaps Someone Up There didn’t like me sharing that recording?  The Leslie Flint Educational Trust insists that all their recordings and other materials are copyrighted, and that copies from other sources, such as the one where I purchased the Wilde recording, are illegal.  I think I’ve discussed some issues about copyrighting channeled messages with you before.  But at any rate, the Wilde session is not currently available at www.leslieflint.com, so I think I’m in the clear.  I have also cleaned up the sound as much as I could, and although it’s still full of static, it’s easier to hear than what I started with.

I hadn’t visited the Flint website in a couple of years or so; I had been trying to make transcriptions of the Chopin recordings, but found it impossible because I couldn’t download the audio, nor would the Flint people sell me any of it, and without being able to go back and listen to the same section over and over I just couldn’t manage to write the stuff down.  The tapes were old and fuzzy, and Chopin’s English can be a bit strange.  I even tried recording with an air mic on another device and going from there, but the quality was even worse and harder to understand.  I’m sure there must be some technological solution, but now I don’t need one, because ta da! transcriptions have been made by an infinitely patient person belonging to the Flint organization!  Thank you, thank you, thank you to Mr. Simon Lovelock for taking the many hours it must have required to transcribe all these messages from the Chopin voice and others.  The Chopin sessions can be found here:
http://www.leslieflint.com/transcripts_chopin.html

And thank you to Guilherme Tavares for pointing me toward the updated Flint site.  It turns out that some of the recordings that wouldn’t play before now run just fine.  I discovered that I can right-click on my MacBook to rewind or fast-forward, although the recordings are still not as user-friendly as those on many other sites.  There is now a YouTube channel as well:
http://www.youtube.com/user/LeslieFlintTrust?feature=mhee

Recordings of the Chopin voice are at http://www.leslieflint.com/recordingschopin.html.  When I clicked on a session I hadn’t been able to hear in the past, one from December 1955, I was greeted with “People don’t seem to realize, you know, how very much mixed up you are.”  Oh, my, did that sound familiar.  When I ask Fryderyk about anything pianistic, if I get any verbal answer at all, it is likely to start out with, “You are thinking about this all wrong” or “You are looking at this backwards.”  Next time that happens, I am going to reply with, “Are you as tired of saying that as I am of hearing it?”

Not that I would disagree that people are very much mixed up.  Far from it.  Guilty as charged.

“When you play it you are touching my soul”

For some background and a summary of my concerns and conclusions about the Chopin Voice in the Leslie Flint material, you can have a look here: https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/hearing-voices-part-iii%E2%80%93-chopin/

The opening measures of Op. 10 No. 3, manuscript

I’ve been trying to organize my collection of musical insights gained over the years from communications with Fryderyk Chopin.  In the process, I came across a presentation given by the Chopin Voice to Leslie Flint’s sitters on February 25, 1955.  It contains some comments that so many of us who play Chopin’s works would find greatly comforting, especially those whose physical ability often lags behind their understanding of the music and the depth of their connection to it.  Some of you may feel that this is all too sweet, too good to be true, or too religious-sounding for your taste.  I understand, but it’s worth putting in front of you nonetheless, and what the Voice says does fit my experience of him.

Today is a good day for me to hear this message again.  I’ve been exploring the emotional landscape of Chopin’s E major étude, Op. 10 No. 3, which he composed at the age of 22, too inexperienced to fully understand what he himself was writing, one might think.  It’s one of those pieces that seems like the angels of music must have been whispering in his ear with special clarity.  I’m at a point where I have a solid understanding and deep feeling of the meaning of the piece and the story it tells– or at least, one possible story– but I am not yet quite where I can stay immersed in the emotional and psychological experience and bring all that to the listener because I just don’t have complete physical control of the entire piece.  I will soon.  Really!  It’s exciting to be so close to something so wondrous, but of course you know how frustrating it can be too.

Rose Creet, you may remember, was a great fan of Chopin and a dear friend to this version of him.  At one point in another year, the Voice half-joked to her that sometimes he listened to her playing and said to himself, “Hmm.  She is get a little better.”  I can only hope that at times he says that about me!  I do think that he is often quite aware of what I am doing technically, what the actual sound is, and how close I am getting to a clear physical expression of the music.  But it makes perfect sense that it would be easier for him to perceive a player’s emotional state and thought patterns than to hear the molecular vibrations of the Earth-plane air.

I transcribed this session from an online recording at http://www.leslieflint.com.  Between the Voice’s rather bumpy English and my inability to hear clearly at many moments, there are likely a fair number of errors.  I’ve added question marks in instances when I just couldn’t be sure.  I’ve also bolded passages that I think are of particular interest to players.  Here goes:

Sitters: Rose Creet, Leslie Mannington[?]

Voice:  Hello.

Rose:  Hello?

Voice:  Madame et monsieur, good evening.

Rose and others:  Good evening.

Voice:  Well, you have not said it, but it is me all right.

Rose:  Yes, I know.  Frederic.

Voice:  It is.

Rose:  Yes, Frederic.  And we’re so happy you have come to us again.

Voice:  I was trying to think what I should speak to you about this evening, and I thought the most appropriate thing would be what is common to our hearts, music.

Rose:  Yes, please.

Voice:  I have tried very much to find a way of expressing certain things to you regarding music in the spheres of love, but I don’t know how I am going to find the words which can possibly give you the right understanding.  I think the best comparison, the best way to do it, is to tell you that that which is music to you on Earth, beautiful though it is, important though it is, and essential as it is to those who feel and know and understand these things, yet in comparison to the things of spirit, where music is supreme, it is infinitesimal.  When I think of the compositions, the music that I have written in my Earth life, although I am in a sense pleased with it, I realize it is so small in comparison to that which I have been able to do here.  Here there are no limitations.  On Earth, I used to struggle… ah! the limitations seemed many.  Things that I had in my heart, in my brain, things that were running through me— I just found that sometimes the compass of the instrument was insufficient.  There were notes that in my heart I had felt so strongly, that could not be expressed, for the instrument was insufficient.

Here, there is such a wide range.  You see, here we are not limited as you are.  You can only hear to a certain pitch, or to a certain point.  Beyond that your ears do not hear.  With us it is different.  There is a much greater range of which we can hear.  And in consequence the instruments which we have are composed or [?] made in a much larger scale.  Therefore, we can strike notes and chords and create harmonies which are beyond your imagination.  Take something which you think today on Earth is a grand study, or something that is a great flowing piece of work, with great harmonies, great though it is, it is so small in comparison.  As the spirit is larger in its experience and in its wisdom and in its knowledge and in its expression when it is freed from the physical body and the earthly condition, so is music also.  It is only the limitation of the Earth that limit the human heart, that limit the human ability to create.     

Any artist who is an artist, whether it is in music or in any other field of activity, as you know, often will express the same thing.  He will say, “Ah!  I just cannot get it.  I do not feel, and it just will not come.”  He has the moment of mood, when he knows that he can do a work, and he will go at it day and night until it is accomplished, and then no doubt he will sit back and think, “Well, it is finished, but it is not as I would quite have liked.”  In other words, his materials limit him, and yet what he has created is accepted by the world as a great work, which it is, within the limitations of the Earth.  But here, where there are no limitations, where the power of the spirit is such that a man can become as great as he desires in a spiritual sense, and his work can become also as great, there are no limitations to those who strive, to those who seek, to those who try to express that part of God which is in themselves.  For in music is God, as indeed are in all things that are good.  There is the prize[?] and the heart and the emotion of the Most High.  For we see with the eyes that are not of the Earth, and we hear with the ears that are not of the Earth, and we express in volume and intensity, with things which cannot be confined as you understand it in a material sense.  All the limitations of the artist are broken over here, and he or she can accomplish great things.  And all those things are an expression not only of man himself, but of God working through man.  For God is perfection, and all we who are artists are striving for perfection in our art.  In other words, we are all becoming more like God, part of God, and in consequence our work and art grows also.

And therefore, in the different spheres you find that as those who have gone through one sphere to the other of progress, they leave behind in their particular sphere (the same as when a person leave your world to come to this), they leave behind some expression of God, some expression of the emotion of the spirit and the beauty of the spirit in all its purity and grace.  In my life, I try to leave behind some expression of God in my work, and the artists and the poets, and all those who strive to express themselves, the soul, which is a part of God, have left behind a heritage for those who follow after.  And so in the spheres as we progress from one to the other, as we learn and assimilate and utilize all the opportunities in each particular individual sphere in which we live, we create and leave behind for those who come from your world into that particular sphere some of ourselves, to leave behind in love to help those who follow after, the same as those musicians in your world today take the works of the great masters and find in them great beauty and reverence and harmony and sound of… great, joyous music.  They feel and know there is some part of God in the soul of a musician who has made progress beyond material things.

So it is that we all help each other.  We are all brothers and sisters.  You were surprised, long time ago, when I first come to you.  For a long time you could not really believe it.  You thought, “Ah, it is not possible.  Why should he come to me?” because you are humble in spirit, because you realize the greatness in music, you realize the greatness in art, and you realize too that there was some part of the soul, and you felt perhaps you could not touch it.  But my child, that is exactly what we are striving to do, to touch you, that you might in some measure link with us in harmony of the spheres.  It is our gift to humanity to help those who follow after, that they might be inspired also to express and to give to the world in the darkness in which it finds itself the harmony and the love of the spheres which is expressed in the music that we have been able to give through our sojourn on Earth.  We are all tied together in bond of love and affection.

Music is the harmony of love which flows through all human beings and links us together.  In my music when you play it you are touching my soul, and I am conscious of it.  When you love it and when you try to express it with all that you have to give to it, I am conscious of it, and when I find there is such love, then I am drawn.  And how often we have striven from this side, to make links with people on Earth, who do not understand.  There are here and there a few artists, a few people in music who, though they do not know the meaning of what you call spiritualism, yet in their deeper selves there is a consciousness of being attached through the music with the soul who created it, and they try to express it.  And if they are good artists, if they are talented, if they have a natural ability, then we can use them, as we often do, trying to help those that are struggling in your world as we would have liked to have been helped, and often were, when on Earth.  So we strive to help them.  There are some in your world who I often help, some that you know.  And so, because we love with all the fullness that love means, we do not necessarily only go to those who can become accomplished musicians in the Earth life, but to those who feel so intensely, which sometimes, in fact, I would go so far as to say is even more important than the execution of the music, for where there is an intensity of love, or a great understanding within the heart, to express, in my case, my music, then I am one with that person, and if I can help them, and help their trembling fingers over the keys, that is my joy and privilege, for I come in love to serve.  For my music is to serve humanity, to help them rise above mundane things, into the harmonies of the spirit which I now enjoy.

And so it is that music links us together, much more perhaps than any other form of art, but it is in music that we find such a peace, and it is in music which we find solace in our soul who are in trouble, as I know I did so often in Earth life.  For I have many times gone to the piano with a heart that was broken, and yet found peace and great harmony and great solace in it.  And some of my greatest composition was done in my most terrible hour, for it is always when God calls strongest to the heart that out of it falls the harmony of the spirit, which nothing can take away from the world.  For it is left behind, as indeed it is for service.  For even in death, as you call it, we serve still in various ways.  I am not dead; I am more alive than ever I was when on Earth, more conscious, more able to serve and to help, and greater harmonies I can now create than ever I was able to do in the confines of the material earthly body, which was always a sorrow to me, and ofttimes a nuisance.  But this I know, that your love, your desire for expression of that within you, makes possible that link I have with you, and if you do not execute my work as you know you would like to do it, it is the heart within you that makes possible that link between us, the desire.  It is always the desire, the sincere desire in the heart and the soul that calls to us, more than even the other things which often people around and about you admire most.  I know that there is disappointment and disillusion to the artist, to the soul who strives and feels so intensely and yet whose physical… physical body has not the power to do what the heart tells them.  But nevertheless, you are creating, in some sense, a great harmony, because you feel.  How often do we know of people who execute technically brilliantly the work of a great composer, but there is something lacking which makes it dull and uninteresting, because it is without feeling, it is without soul.  They have not touched the soul of the composer.  And unless the soul of the composer is put into the technique, if it is not behind that which is being done, there is in spite of its brilliance of execution, nothing but deadness, and there is nothing but disappointment.  But those who feel so intensely, those who appreciate music, and yet cannot play it, are the greater musicians, for they have something which the man with all the technique in the world has not got.  He has not got God in his heart.  He has not touched the heart of a musician.  He has not felt that wonderful union that comes between those who so love that which is and which has been created in love.  For in love do we who create music serve humanity.

Every great work of note in your world has been created, through the instrumentality of the musician, in some way, by the hand of God, for it is the hand of God that helps all those who strive to send into the Earth beauty and glorious harmony.  It is the fingers of God that move behind the fingers, often the stumbling fingers, of the humble musician.  For God is knowing all things, and God is expressing himself in all ways, through the artist who paints, through the musician who creates and plays, through the singer who sings the harmonies that others have composed, and all the beauties of the Earth.  Always you find God, and behind the musician, God is.  And when those who feel God in music, though their fingers cannot play the notes, there is a musician, there is harmony.  There is glorious music, for it is music of the soul that swells out and in the spheres is heard, and we are conscious of it, and we are drawn to those who, though they want to do so much, can do so little because of the limitations of their earthly life.  But their hearts are full of love, and their hearts are conscious of all the harmonies of the spheres, and their thoughts are with the great musicians and the great composers who have gone before but who have left a heritage for the children of Earth to follow.  I know how you feel, and because I know how you feel, it is a joy for me to come, and to serve and to help and to bless.  I do not ever feel that I am giving a second away if it is spent with those who love as you do the music that is God’s.  I must go, but do not feel sad, and feel joyous, for there is great beauty in all of us.  For we are all God, in harmony with each other.

Rose (in a reverent tone):  Thank you, Frederic.

Male voice:  Thank you, Monsieur Chopin.

Where Does Music Really Come From? More on Rosemary Brown

Rosemary Brown at work on the mazurka in D flat

The music of Rosemary Brown is the subject that has brought people to my blog more than any other.  My writing about her has put me in touch with some fascinating people in faraway places, and just recently that has led to my being given another album of Brown pieces as .mp3s, plus a collection of Brown sheet music I hadn’t seen before.

Through a series of e-mails begun with, if I remember correctly, a reprint of my original article on Mrs. Brown in The Ground of Faith, I’ve had the good fortune to become acquainted with a Brazilian musician and composer, Guilherme Tavares, who has supplied me with a lot of these materials, and also did me a tremendous favor by editing my own recording of “Grübelei.”  A circular sort of Web process brought some of the recordings to Guilherme, involving other people with strong interests in the Brown phenomenon:  Ademir Xavier left a comment on my blog about Érico Bomfim, who is trying to record all of Mrs. Brown’s work, then Guilherme contacted Érico, who sent recordings to him, which he passed on to me, and I am now making available to you.

Guilherme also found a BBC radio program about musical mediumship, from three years ago, and recorded the section about Mrs. Brown.  He asked me to transcribe it, and I am posting it here.  It includes the moment when “Grübelei” came into the world– a fascinating moment in which the most hardened skeptic would be hard pressed to believe Mrs. Brown was faking.  I’m going to save further comments on the new material and on Mrs. Brown in general for the next post, but for now, I’ll say that I’m especially intrigued by what she said about all composers perhaps getting music from a central source beyond themselves, possibly transmitted to them by intermediaries, just as the composers themselves were transmitting music to her.  This has been my meta-question about Mrs. Brown’s work all along– where does music really come from?  If Liszt or Beethoven or whoever give music to Mrs. Brown, where are they getting it?

I remember one of my piano teachers, Jane Viemeister, who’s a competent composer herself, saying that music is like an endless waterfall; all you have to do is take your bucket and scoop some up, and there’s always more where that came from.  Arlo Guthrie once said that music was like a stream going by, and it was his job to dip out the good stuff before Bob Dylan could get it!  Many composers have reported feeling that they were simply writing down music that was being dictated to them by some higher Source, perhaps even God.  Yet, every composer has a recognizable, individual style.  I still find this all mysterious– especially when a poem pops unbidden and fully formed into my head.  I can’t write music, but my best work does tend to happen in much the way those composers describe.

The conclusions, or rather non-conclusions, reached during this radio program are pretty close to my view of the subject.  Except that, having lived with a spirit close by much of the time, getting mixed up in my daily life, I don’t have any problem believing that Liszt could advise Mrs. Brown on the price of bananas in the supermarket.

“Music from Beyond the Veil,” hosted by Professor Paul Robertson on BBC Radio 4, first aired July 14, 2009.

[A rather rough recording of “Grübelei” plays in the background.]

Mrs. Brown:  It really began when I was a child.  I had a vision of Liszt, but at that time I was not aware that this was Liszt, because I was too young to have seen pictures or photographs of him.  And he told me that when he was on the earth, he was a famous composer and pianist, and that when I grew up he would give me music.  After Liszt had established a link with me, he first brought Chopin, but then he began to bring others, and there is now quite a group communicating fairly regularly.

Robertson:  A group which included many of the greats, Brahms, Debussy, Schumann, Schubert, even Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.  This piece of music, recorded in 1969, is attributed to Franz Liszt, yet it was recorded nearly 80 years after his death.  He chose as his musical intermediary, if we are to believe her account, a quietly-spoken, unassuming housewife from Balham.  Her name was Rosemary Brown, and she created a stir in the late ‘60s, when her musical mediumship added dozens, and eventually hundreds, of new compositions to the musical canon of Liszt and his group of famous friends from beyond this earthly veil.  As a musician myself, a violinist who spent most of his career leading a string quartet, you could say that I too am a medium, but when I aim to express some long-dead composer’s intentions and emotions, I believe I’m working from a musical score.  Yet, I’m fascinated by the mysterious connection between music and our spiritual lives, not least the question of where seemingly transcendent musical inspiration comes from.

In 1969, BBC Radio 3 broadcast “Music From the Dead Composers,” an hour-long program which took a close look at Rosemary Brown’s claims.  During the program, Rosemary described how she received new compositions from beyond the grave.

Mrs. Brown:  Liszt, who was the first one to give music to me, has a way of controlling my hands.  I think quite a few people will have heard of something called automatic writing, where a spirit controls the hand of a person here, and writes through them.  Well, in this case, Liszt somehow contrives to control both my hands, so that he can make them play the music, and he plays the same phrases over several times, while I watch and try to memorize the notes, and then I’ll write it out afterwards to the best of my ability.

Robertson:  In May 1969, during the making of “Music From the Dead Composers,” presenter Geoffrey Skelton and his producer Daniel Snowman visited Rosemary’s home, a small end-of-terrace house in Lakewood Road, Balham, to record with her as she received her music.  Forty years later, Daniel Snowman can still remember how Rosemary sat at the piano waiting for inspiration to strike.

Snowman:  It was a very emotionally low-beat occasion; there was no sense of a séance or of magic or tables moving or all those things.  We simply turned the machine on and sat there, with her obvious agreement– she gave us a cup of tea and all that– and we sat.  And she would, every now and then, mumble various things– not sure whether they were to us or for us, or to somebody [chuckles] from the dead.

Mrs. Brown:  I’m becoming aware of their… they’re present.  At least they’re here, see.  They’re going to transmit.  I can see Liszt quite clearly.

Snowman:  And then she said, “Oh, yes, Liszt, Liszt is here now.”  And Liszt apparently dictated to her a difficult piece called “Grübelei.”  And she was mumbling back and forth with him, in English, “What? Five-four in the right… and a different… and the key signature, how many sharps?  And three-two in the left?”  You know, kind of, “If you say so, Maestro.”

Mrs. Brown:  [slowly picking out notes, scratching on paper]  I don’t know what I’ve left out.  What have I left out… left out… left out?  Oh, yes, you said repeat that, that goes there, yeah.  No….

Snowman:  And then gradually the thing seemed to come together.  She tried to play it, couldn’t, Geoffrey had a go, and it came together as an interesting piece.

The most extraordinary thing to me about that piece she produced in our presence, “Grübelei” by Liszt (supposedly), was that somebody of the ability and authority of Humphrey Searle, a great Liszt expert at the time, you know, looked at this piece and said, “Yeah, it’s very much like the kind of piece he was experimenting with towards the end of his life.”  It’s an extraordinary piece for somebody to simply do a pastiche of Liszt, to come up with something like that.

Willin:  Well, I had quite a lot of correspondence with Rosemary when she was alive, um, and I’ve looked at a lot of her music and I’ve done a lot of tests on it, and I’ve discussed it with possibly thousands and certainly hundreds of people.

Robertson:  Dr. Melvyn Willin describes himself as being a paramusicologist.  As well as being a music teacher and performer, he researches cases where music apparently meets the paranormal.

Willin:  And what do I have to say?  Um, I think that she was genuine, I think she was tapping into something.

Robertson:  So when you say genuine….

Willin:  She wasn’t fraudulent.

Robertson:  She was sincere.

Willin:  Sincere, yes.

Robertson:  OK.  But do you think she was, in your terms, a genuine medium for something she couldn’t otherwise have achieved?

Willin:  I think she believed that she was genuinely in touch with the composers that she said she was in touch with.  Um, and hey, perhaps she was.  I would be happier to think that she was in touch perhaps with something that was within her, that she was perhaps getting some help from externally.  But I don’t believe that Beethoven or Liszt was telling her the price of bananas in the supermarket, etc.

As to her music, it’s always come across to me, and to others, as a rather good pastiche of the actual composers.  But having said that, I wouldn’t say always, and that’s the frustrating thing, because I can’t say that no, I think all her pieces were pastiche.  I have to say that I think an awful lot were, but there was the odd one or two, that I just think, I don’t know how she did that.

Robertson:  So where does that leave us with the intriguing case of Rosemary Brown?  Not even her most ardent critics accused her of being fraudulent, or of somehow deceiving the public, and she was clearly sincere in her belief about where her talents came from.  It’s interesting, though, to hear her in an interview of 1967, describing her composer friends from the other side as themselves intermediaries for something greater.

Mrs. Brown:  Well, it seems to me to come from a central source of inspiration, as if there were spheres of music, and I think it is channeled down to me, as perhaps it is channeled down to other composers, by various intermediary beings, spirits, whatever you like to call them.  And in this instance, I think there are people who have been composers upon the earth, trying to channel the music to me.

[Background music: a tenor singing “O Sole Mio.”]

Robertson:  I’ll leave the last word to Leo May, who is as certain in his conviction as Rosemary Brown was in hers that he’s channeling the spirits of dead musicians, in his case, those of Enrico Caruso and Mario Lanza.

[An interview begins]  So in a way, it’s not a million miles different to having a talent and then having a duty to serve that talent.

May:  I’m a servant, yes.

Robertson:  And is that quite important, to feel that?

May:  It is indeed important, yes.  Indeed it is, to serve it.  I want to serve the spirit world, which I know, if anybody says to me, “do you believe in the spirit world?” I say, “No.  I know it.”  And there’s the difference between knowing it and surmising that it might be there.  I know it.  Without a doubt.

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http://www.arends-musikverlag.de/rosemary-brown/
Where you can buy Rosemary Brown sheet music and recordings.

https://app.box.com/s/isl0e5ybqgm84ljdusvi
My own recording of Liszt’s “Grubelei,” with some engineering help from Guilherme Tavares.

http://www.youtube.com/user/xavnet2
Ademir Xavier’s YouTube Channel, where you will find Érico Bomfim playing some Brown works, as well as a couple of interviews with Mrs. Brown.  Xavier has a blog, Era do Espírito, at http://eradoespirito.blogspot.com.

https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/the-music-of-rosemary-brown-from-a-pianists-perspective/

My earlier post, “The Music of Rosemary Brown from a Pianist’s Perspective.”

“All Manifestations of the Source of All Things”

The superior spirits “have a language always worthy, noble, elevated, with not the least tincture of triviality.  They say everything with simplicity and modesty, never boast, never make a parade of their knowledge or their position among others.  That of the inferior or ordinary spirit has always some reflex human passion; every expression that savors of vulgarity, self-sufficiency, arrogance, boasting, acrimony, is a characteristic indication of inferiority, or of treachery if the spirit presents himself under a respected and venerated name.”    –Allan Kardec

“Just because someone’s dead, that doesn’t mean they’re nice.”    –Diane Polasky, DOM


 

 

I’d like to make a request of you:  Before you start in reading below, please check out this post from November 2011 on Michael Tymn’s blog:   http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/month/2011/11/   Scroll down to find ‘Do Famous “Dead” People Communicate?,’ posted on November 14.  If you’re interested in spirit communication at all, you’ll find it very well worth your time.

Mike began:  “I believe in spirits and spirit communication through mediums.  What I struggle with, however, is communication purportedly coming from famous people or more current celebrities of one kind or another.  I am highly skeptical when the spirit communicator claims to be Jesus, St. Michael, Socrates, Plato, St. Augustine, or some other historical figure held in high regard by many.

Then again, I wonder if I am being too hasty in dismissing such communicators.”

As you know, I am well acquainted with a Famous “Dead” Person, and so for me this question  is of crucial interest.  My very first post on this blog, “Developing Discernment,” had to do with a friend who stopped speaking with me because she believed I was involved with an evil spirit.  She believed this because– get this– a healer she knew, someone who had never met me or my deceased friend, and knew absolutely nothing about my work or his, told her so.  She said that Fryderyk was sucking energy from me and that this was making me sick and causing me to make my patients sick as well.  I feel sick right now while writing this; it was a terrible attack, and it did me a great deal of harm.  My ex-friend was very ill herself with a disorder that affected her cognitively, and everyone around me said, “It’s got to be her illness.”  I was repeatedly assured, by people who were in a position to know, that there was no way any of it could be true.  Nevertheless, for many months I couldn’t shake off the awful creepiness of having someone believe such things about me.  That in itself, that intention to undermine and harm someone “for their own good,” might be termed an evil entity, I’d say.

So let’s say I’m a little sensitive about this issue.

In another post I described the horrifying episode in which I encountered an apparent demonic entity that had wrecked the life and health of one of my patients and seemed determined to keep the harm going with everyone it could reach.  (See “A Case of Possession.”   https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/39/ )  I think I could see something like that coming, these days, though I can’t be certain.  I have definitely had some other encounters in which I felt that an entity was better left alone and not listened to.  I can only hope to be able to stay out of trouble.

But then there have been encounters that seemed almost too good to be true.  An example, which occurred a few months ago:

As I’ve mentioned before, I have been much taken with the teachings of an entity who presents himself as St. Stephen the Martyr, as published by Michael Cocks, who was involved with a group that communicated with that entity in the 1970s.  I had shared some parts of that work with Mendy Lou Blackburn, who was equally enthusiastic.  When I visited her late last December, we talked about one of St. Stephen’s messages, not trying to evoke his presence in any way.  Suddenly, there he was– or there was someone who wanted us to believe that.

The being that told Mendy Lou he was St. Stephen was very palpably standing a few feet in front of me.  I wanted to be able to recognize him in the future, so I concentrated on him, trying to catch the “flavor” of his presence.  I saw/felt a hand reach toward me; I reached out my left hand and he took it in his.  This was very clear to me, though of course I didn’t see it with my physical eyes.  Both Mendy and I felt like we were meeting some major rock star or something.  I told Stephen that I would like to follow him (meaning that I would like to be able to learn more from him).  He told me that he didn’t want me to follow him, but that I could walk with him if I liked.  He then sort of took me on a little virtual walk; that is, I had a sense of forward movement at his side.  I listened as hard as I could and words started to come out of my mouth, but I was so excited about the whole thing that I couldn’t keep the channeling going.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!  I haven’t had any more contact with this entity since, much as I would like that.  At least he passed the test of being unassuming and non-egotistical.

Mendy, as much as I, found this almost too good to be true and a bit hard to believe, even though all sorts of wonderful beings show up in her office all the time.  As she said later, though, she has a great deal of experience with this stuff and she feels confident of being able to sniff out a fraud.  Stephen did not appear to be a fraud, not to either of us.  I had a feeling of the sublime, no sense of anything that might raise an alarm.

So many times I have wondered what might become of me if I were to find out that my very own Famous “Dead” Person was actually an impostor (or that I had been misunderstanding everything), as my ex-friend insisted.  It seems especially unlikely in this case, since I became interested in Chopin after having my first anomalous experience involving him in my teens, rather than starting out as a fan and then concocting some sort of connection with him.  I have tried to think about this as unemotionally as possible.  It would be one of the worst things I could imagine, but then, it wouldn’t really change the history of our relationship over the years.  The fascinating ideas he’s transmitted, the emotional and physical healings for myself and others, and the sense of deep love and support would be the same.  And one way or the other, I’ve gotten some great piano lessons.

Fryderyk has, at times, definitely exhibited “some reflex human passion,” although he has been as modest and non-egotistical as Chopin was in life.  He’s a human being, no more or less than the rest of us.  It would be as inappropriate to expect deceased human beings to act like angels at all times as it would be to expect the same of those in the flesh.

(In a previous post, I wrote this about him: “I have many reasons to believe that the person who visits me is the current version of the one who lived on Earth from 1810 to 1849 and wrote all that superb music, but I understand that it is never going to be possible to prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt.  That small shadow can sometimes seem bigger than the light it obscures, I’m afraid.”  https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/hearing-voices-part-iii%E2%80%93-chopin/ )

As I’ve mentioned before (see “An Appointment with Jesus,”  https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/an-appointment-with-jesus/ ), the most confusing and problematic encounters I’ve experienced have been with an entity who purports to be Jesus.  It seems disrespectful to describe him that way, but I have exactly that “highly skeptical” feeling that Mike Tymn was talking about.  I’ve never gotten used to the idea of talking directly with Jesus, especially given my severe allergy to organized religion, and I still feel embarrassed and uncomfortable bringing it up here.  Yet, I must say that these contacts have been absolutely wonderful, and in the midst of them, I felt completely willing to throw myself into the experience.  I can’t say precisely that I was willing to believe, but I was willing to be open and to listen and learn.

The last time I met with Hania Stromberg at my office, this august entity visited with us.  Yes, that’s what I’m saying– Jesus, in my office, speaking quite casually with us, as if it were the most ordinary occurrence.  I knew that he had come in, but I didn’t recognize him.  From my point of view, there was a distinctly male being sitting at my right elbow, but he seemed like a typical human person, not particularly “large” or powerful.  A kind and loving presence, but small in scale, similar to any of us.  Hania had some questions for this man, and he and I chatted comfortably as I tried to bring in the answers.  I found myself adding my own two cents, explaining what I was hearing and perhaps strengthening it a little, because I felt that the ideas were helpful.  Had I realized who he was (or purported to be), I would very possibly have clammed up and found it impossible to have this easy communication, let alone to dare to add any thoughts of my own.

Hania kept asking me whether I had figured out the being’s identity.  No, I hadn’t.  She seemed highly amused by my cluelessness.  Finally, unable to contain herself any longer, she told me who he was.  I was completely surprised, despite knowing all about her channeling relationship.  I had been confused by his ordinariness, I explained, having previously encountered him as a much more impressive presence.  She said that he sometimes appears in this very human guise, and other times shows his larger self.  Well, that’s true of those of us who are embodied, too, and so it seems quite plausible to me.  Here are her words:  “Jesus Christ, out of His love for me, makes Himself as large or small as is needed to allow me to be with Him best at the time.  Our relationship has an aspect of being friends, and He will make Himself to whatever scale is most reassuring for me at the time, so I can maintain this feeling, so as not to intimidate me and throw me off ’the friends’ track.’  Sometimes He is immeasurable, other times as you experienced Him then.”

Hania also told me that the message given in this conversation was one he had communicated to her a number of times, and that I was conveying exactly what she’d heard before, but had been unwilling to take in.  Perhaps Jesus felt that if he also spoke through another person, reinforcing the message, he would get these ideas through to her more effectively.  And that did seem to be the case.  The message was inspiring, soothing, and empowering, and it had a positive effect on both Hania and me.

You may remember that Betsy Morgan Coffman, in one of her classes, mentioned that often people get uncomfortable when someone appears to receive a message from a source they think is too big or important, particularly when the source is Jesus.  Then, more than ever, we think we must be making it up.  Surely Jesus isn’t speaking to us— he must be awfully busy, after all, and we are so insignificant.  “But think about it,” said Betsy, who operates from a non-dogmatic but decidedly Christian frame of reference.  “Shouldn’t Jesus be our best friend?  Of course he loves us and wants to talk to us!”

It’s definitely easier for me to think of Jesus as simply a human person who lived a long time ago.

On the matter of appearing in different “sizes” at different times, Michael Cocks added this intriguing comment in his blog post of 4/5/12:  “Stephen said that sometimes he feels that he has exploded into the universe, and that is his field of consciousness; other times he feels that he has imploded into being Stephen so that he can talk with us.”  This fits with some of the points made by Chopin and others in the Leslie Flint opus.

On another day, an unfamiliar personage came along with Hania.  She asked me if I could tell who was standing at the foot of the table.  I was about to reply that I almost never pick up names, but then, while staring at what appeared to be a vaguely human shape approaching seven feet in height, I realized that I was in fact getting one.  I took the leap and said, “He says he’s Saint Francis.”  (I didn’t know which St. Francis.)  Hania told me that he’d appeared to her many times.  OK.  I try not to be surprised anymore.  “He’s very tall,” I added.  “Yes, he’s a big man,” she agreed.

Was St. Francis nearly seven feet tall?  Probably not.  Why did this version of him appear that way?  I have absolutely no idea.  But I’m always heartened when more than one person sees the same thing.

One might imagine that a person would derive a considerable ego boost from claiming to channel these high-level beings, but then, some people want very much to keep their connection with the Famous “Dead” on the down low.  I described such a person in my post “A Reluctant Channeler”:

“I think it’s important to point out that Helen wasn’t doing this for any kind of self-aggrandizement.  Far from trying to exploit her relationship with a famous person from the past, to sell books or whatever, she kept the experiences under wraps.  I don’t know if she ever mentioned them to anyone besides her husband and me, and she told me precious little.  That is, she had no motivation to fake this, at least not in terms of public attention or potential wealth.  A pseudoskeptic might insist that she got an internal boost to her self-esteem simply by fantasizing a connection with someone significant, but I think that in that case she would have talked a great deal about it and made sure everyone was aware of her new importance.”
https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/a-reluctant-channeler/

Recently another friend took Betsy’s introductory channeling class, and immediately found herself doing automatic writing at her computer, with another famous historical figure, one she had studied for many years, claiming to be the source.  This went on for just a few weeks or so, at which point the entity told her that he was finished saying what he had come to say and would not be visiting her anymore.  If my friend had been intent upon making a big deal of herself, or if the communicator had been one of those who like to get attention by masquerading as a big-name personage, I doubt that the interaction would have ended so soon or with so little drama.  One or both of them would have wanted to keep it going for as long as possible.

Not only do people hear from the Famous “Dead,” sometimes they get communications from the Famous Fictional, which opens another large can of worms and has made me a bit nervous when I’ve observed it happening to people I knew.  I have at least three theories to explain this odd occurrence.  One is what the materialists might say, though a bit augmented– that the fictional personage is simply a projection of the mind of a person who felt particularly engaged or affected by that character.  Two, that a legitimate, helpful spirit being decided to show up in the guise of the beloved character, in order to more easily and effectively communicate with the person.  And three, that certain fictional characters (Sherlock Holmes and Spock come to mind) have such wide appeal, and have had so much human energy invested in them, that they have developed a kind of reality of their own.

I suspect that both the first and second of these scenarios happen quite often, not only in the case of fiction-based communicators, but in many cases of the Famous “Dead” and of angels and deities.  The third I don’t necessarily believe in, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if it turned out to be true.  As I think I’ve told you before, I’m open to the idea that contacts with divine beings of all sorts, such as mine with Kuan Yin, may reflect that sort of human-generated reality.

Some years ago, when Mendy Lou looked into the Michael material, the Messages from Michael stuff, I mean, not anything to do with the archangel, her feeling was that Michael was this sort of entity.  Not that he was unreal, but that he was a kind of secondary creation, not an original creation of God or nature.  That the collective human mind caused him to exist and to speak to us.  I find much of the Michael teachings to be bizarre and at odds with what nearly every other source has to say, so I prefer to think that he is not a true authority and is somehow a lower degree of “real.”  But what do I know.  He does have a lot of followers, and many aspects of his messages seem useful and practical.

(If you’re about to argue that we humans generate all of our reality ourselves, please hang on to that thought for another time, because it’s s little off to the side of what I’m talking about here.)

If the entity in question is “simply” a projection or reflection of the channeler’s own mind, that is not necessarily a bad thing at all, though I think it would be far preferable for the person to realize what is going on and not to become too dependent on what appears to be a separate mentality.  Receiving wisdom from our own higher or greater selves is perfectly valid, and indeed that must be what happens when great art is created and when great scientific or other discoveries make themselves known.

Michael Cocks added this comment to Mike Tymn’s post:  “Our personal experiences do lead us to try and describe reality in differing ways. On the one hand, there is strong evidence that our individual consciences and points of view survive death of the body.  On the other hand, there is strong evidence that we are all connected to each other in the network of the whole in an infinity of ways….  And that makes a slippery place when trying to define things.  There is always “on the one hand.. and then the other.”  On the one hand, from a mass of interlocking linguistic, historical, and personal evidence, the people talking to Stephen the Martyr were sure we were talking to this “Famous ‘Dead’ Person.”  We were impressed with his humility, wisdom… and love.  But on the other hand Stephen was insisting that he and we are all each other, and all others, all manifestations of the Source of all things, that he was reminding us of the knowledge we had before we entered our present incarnations.  More narrowly though, he said he was talking with us as fellow members of a like minded spiritual group.  And yes, on the one hand individual spirits are at all stages of development, and there are destructive spirits; yet on the other hand developed and undeveloped are together in a synchronistic whole.”

I have many times heard mystics and channelers say simply that “Spirit” told them thus and such; they don’t necessarily know what the specific source was, but they know it felt right and that they got a worthwhile message.  This “Spirit” could easily include their own higher self or some other aspect of them, as well as the collective mind of humanity.  Like “all manifestations of the Source of all things.”  It must also be remembered that at any given time, a group or team of discarnate entities may be involved with the communication, further confusing the issue of identity.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this has been true more often than not in mediumistic work, especially in the case of physical manifestations like direct voice, which seem to require a great deal more energy than purely mental transmissions.

Yet, sometimes there is overwhelmingly strong evidence that the spirit communicator is exactly who he or she claims to be, even in the Famous “Dead” cases.  While in the midst of working on this post, I encountered an article by Michael Cocks in the Journal of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, in which he explained the reasons he is convinced by St. Stephen’s use of 2000-year-old Macedonian Greek, which identified the speaker’s time, place, ethnic group, and connection with the Essenes.  And lo and behold, just as I was sitting down to write today, I found that a shorter form of the article had been posted in Rev. Cocks’ blog, ready to transmit to you.  Is this a great universe, or what?
http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaelcocks/entry/stephen_the_martyr_spoke_to_us_in_his_native_greek

In the end, it’s the quality of the message that counts.  I find myself perennially returning to the hoary old principle “by their fruits ye shall know them.”  You and I both know that a lot of channeled material is pretentious gobbledegook.  We’ve also seen brilliantly shining examples of wisdom that are unassailably excellent no matter what the source (St. Stephen’s teachings being among these).  But I would venture to say that a majority of messages are somewhere in between.  That’s where it gets more difficult.  A carefully-calibrated crap detector is a great asset.  But there’s no sense being so skeptical that we miss inspiration and enlightenment when it does its best to speak to us.

Betsy’s Channeling Classes: Conclusion

Mandala by C.J. Rogers

For your further edification and amusement, I offer the rest of my experiences with formal channeling classes, from the notes I took at the time.

On 2/24/08, Betsy-Morgan Coffman held a “booster” class  for those who had already been through C2.  There were some amazingly profound, high-level messages, which I think are worth passing on to you, as well as more clarification about the mechanics of channeling.

Betsy started out with some general advice from herself and Orion, which I will pass on to you:

“The higher frequency wins” if there is interference from bothersome entities.  There are always lots of entities around when we do this work, clamoring to come through, but we don’t have to allow them our attention.

“Intuition is ordering in; channeling is ordering out.”  Intuition is getting information from your own higher self.

“No matter what you say the ego’s going to challenge it.”

“Try your best not to take responsibility” for the other person’s life and actions.  “Give them their power back.”

Cleanse daily, asking your highest guides for help.  Cleanse at the end of a session.

“Truth is empowering, freeing, loving, and doesn’t harm anyone.”  There is impersonal truth, like what we might get at a public session, and there is personal truth, specific to the individual.

“The third eye is for psychic hits, the crown for channeled information.”  You can use both and alternate between them.

You can ask for a guide either by his or her name or by nature, that is, you can ask for an angel, or a healing guide, or a guide that can help with a specific issue.
********************************************************************

The format was similar to the previous classes.  For the first exercise, we were told to ask for three guides, as before.  I found a greenish energy on my left; I heard the name “Taltec.”  He said, “You are kind.”  Above my head was a white light, I thought associated with the word “Mycene.”  I did not receive a message from her.  This process again seemed far too rushed for me, and I was barely getting in touch with the third entity when we finished.  I did feel my hands activated and glowing, though, and great energy at my crown chakra.  I would have liked to have more opportunity to feel out these energies or entities and to see if I should have more contact with them.  They did not return later, as far as I could tell.

“Marcus,” a guide associated with a excellent healer I know, Susan Herrington, was fun and lighthearted, and kept telling us to lighten up.  I could feel him clearly, sitting at my left with Susan, and found him particularly enjoyable.  A most pleasant energy.  He spoke, jokingly, of “leace”—love and peace at the same time.

When we next went around the circle, we were supposed to have an entity speak.  The day before, I had told Fryderyk that the class was coming up, and that I hoped he would attend with me, and he did return.  I felt some of the previous energies/beings around me, but Fryderyk had also been there the entire time, coming in strongly in his most usual spot at my right side.  I was a little torn, not knowing which one to listen to.  I wanted very much to hear from him, but then, I might be missing a chance to make the acquaintance of someone who could become important to me.  It became more difficult because I was second to the last in line, and I had to hold my connection to him for quite a while as the others took their turns.  At first, I felt a great deal of activity around my vocal mechanism, buzzing and vibrating, and energy and near-words rising in my throat.  I could hardly keep from bursting out with whatever he wanted to say—ideas were coming already— and I needed to squelch him until it was time.  But by the time it was our turn, the energy had dropped considerably, and I felt that we might have missed his chance to come through.  I had also become increasingly nervous; my heart was pounding fast and I couldn’t calm it down.  I realized that I wasn’t comfortable bringing out this intimate association in such a public place, despite the fact that there were people I knew fairly well and trusted in the room.  I was afraid of letting him speak and also afraid of blocking him.  I was pretty much tied in knots.  Then it was my turn and I had to find a way through all that.

Betsy acknowledged that I was already strongly connected and did not need help from her to get in touch.  I told her that Fryderyk was present.  I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.  Nothing.  Then more nothing.  Finally my voice started up, and while I didn’t feel that the message was solely his at first, the voice sounded solid and confident.  “Performance anxiety is not unusual,” we said, and I was told that others could feel my anxiety.  That veteran of many years of mediumship of all sorts was able to work around my nerves, though, and more words came out of my mouth.  “It is interesting to come to you in this context; it is not the way I am used to working….  She is nervous, she is blocking, but it doesn’t matter, I can still get through to you.  She does not want you to know me as she does.  She is possessive….  I am interested in what you are doing with this work.  I am proud of you.  You are doing well.”  He said something else reminding us that we are greater than we think we are, but I couldn’t remember the exact words long enough to write them down.

No one else knew the significance of his calling me possessive; they could not have known how I had sometimes taken him to task for that very fault, and how I had insisted that it was not a fault of mine.  This could have been heard as an inside joke, but I didn’t detect the slightest edge of humor.  Nor did he seem upset or frustrated.  I was simply being told a truth.  I was so surprised to find that I really didn’t want to share him with the group.  “I asked for that,” I thought, and I took the lesson to heart.

After saying his piece, Fryderyk left the room.  I remembered that during the C1 class he had hung around, but had not seemed to want to speak.  I remembered, too, that when he did speak to me in the evening after the class was over, his message was too personal for a group session.  I almost regretted asking him to come in today, since it seemed I had done little more than to cause both of us an inconvenience.  I was glad I had been able to hear a few words from him, excited and elated, but I felt that perhaps I had been inappropriate somehow.  I wasn’t quite sure what to think.  I wondered if he had done this simply as a favor to me, or if it had served his own purposes in any way.  I thanked him profusely, anyway.

We began to receive some formidable material.  Manuel reported, with a quizzical and perhaps confused look on his face, that he was channeling “the light that surrounds Metatron.”  This sounded quite odd to me, especially since at that time I had never heard of the Archangel Metatron, and the name seemed like something out of a Japanese superhero cartoon.  But the entity added, “We use names for your convenience, not ours.  You can call me Bob if you like.”

Liz admitted that she was extremely uneasy with the whole experience of being in the class, and apologized for bringing up a lot of questions about the basic mechanisms of channeling.  We encouraged her to ask and not to feel bad about her misgivings.  She asked, among other things, how it could be that we are all one energy, but it manifests as different beings.  She wanted to know if we were really just channeling God at all times.  “Bob” explained, “Thought takes energy and forms it.”  He said it is like air being everywhere in the world; it is situated over different countries, but it cannot be separated.  He referred to string theory and how a string vibrating one way is one thing, and vibrating another way, it is something different.  “You are the essence of God having a human experience,” he added.  “You are born with this toolbox and you spend your whole life just trying to open the box.”

I asked him about a friend’s channeling of a set of fictional characters, and whether it matters that they are fictional.  His immediate answer was simply, “No.”  A concept came to me, and I said, “I just got that fiction is a convenient framework for us to create what we need to manifest.”  “Bob” added, “But remember that you are the author, the editor, and the director.”

Orion broke in with, “We personify energy, so that the part of us that is a personality can relate to it.”

Marie (not “my” Marie) said, “There are so many different guides because we are all so different.”

Liz asked about how we create our reality through our thoughts.  Karen replied, “Intense emotion with your thought creates your reality.”  Betsy concurred, and her ideas included, “Taking emotion away from the thought disempowers it.”

Betsy said that she had told Orion years ago, “All I want is more God.”  He had replied, “If you connected right to God, you’d burn up!  I’m as high as you can go without burning up.”  (I’m not so sure about that; humans do often seem to make direct connections to the Divine– don’t they?)

We told Liz that we appreciated her questions, which brought the whole discussion up to a higher level.  She seemed to feel a bit better, but she declined to try any channeling herself, saying that she had realized it was something she just didn’t want to do.

I asked another Susan (there were three, and I had met this one in previous classes) why we all have that fundamental belief that we are not good enough and not deserving, because she had expressed something earlier about our need to get beyond that.  She was unable to give a purpose for it, but talked about how it happens, how when we come to Earth we remember who we really are, but we get brainwashed within a few years and forget.  It came to me that we believe we are inferior because deep down we remember that we used to be something greater.

When it was my turn to answer questions, I was not nervous the way I had been earlier with Fryderyk.  I knew that if I was unable to connect with a guide, I would still most likely be able to bring in answers on my own.  I felt myself connecting very strongly upward, lifting, and there was an entity in the position where I expect to find Michael, but I couldn’t be quite sure it was him, and he did not connect with me in such a way as to speak through me.  I felt more that I was connected directly to Source and speaking as my higher self, and that was what I reported when asked.

The information I gave met with approval; Betsy said in a couple of cases that she saw the same thing, and one of the students I read for said, “Well, you’re the third person to tell me that.”  I felt confident and strong.  My style of speech and my consciousness remained my own, however, and that seemed all right, as I was speaking meaningfully and effectively.

Susan H. was last, after me.  I asked Marcus why sometimes we can’t channel, thinking particularly of another friend who’d been having this problem lately.  He said, “From our point of view, it’s like you go away.  Since you are being human, sometimes you need to go and do human things.  You can’t always be in channeling energy.  But we are always glad when you come back.”

Marcus was then asked why we come here to be human.  Part of his answer was to say that it’s like going to an amusement park— we want to ride the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, all the different rides, and have all the different experiences.  Karen asked if Source learns through us with those experiences.  Marcus, and it seemed Susan along with him, replied that Source already knows.  So why do we need to have those experiences at all?  “If I wanted to climb a mountain, I’d know it would be cold, but I’d still want to go.  If I was going to watch a sad movie, I’d know it would make me cry, but I’d still want to watch it.”

There was so much more, far more than I was able to write down.  We rocked!

 

On March 18, 2009, I participated in another of Betsy’s booster classes.  This one was conducted as a conference call; it was an experiment to find out if holding a class over the phone would be workable.  For me, it worked quite well.  It seemed to me that I could perceive more without the distraction of seeing and hearing the other students in the same room with me.  Some very experienced channelers, Hania Stromberg and Jennifer Vaitkus, were on the call.

While setting up and calling upon help and protection, Betsy mentioned an entity I hadn’t heard of before, “Lady Maitreya.”  “Who the heck is that?” I thought.*  Then Betsy did her usual thing of asking us to contact three guides, to our left, to our right, and above us in the center.  Very little time was allotted to each one, and as in the past, I felt rushed, but it seemed like I made three definite contacts.

The one on the left looked like a cartoon of an angelic figure in white, with yellow hair, a white halo, and a suggestion of wings, either small wings or perhaps some sort of ornamental shoulder pads or flanges sticking up from her dress.  I wasn’t sure.  I was a little annoyed with myself for coming up with such a hackneyed picture of an angel, but I felt like there was some actual communication coming from this being.  When I asked for a name, I heard “Maitreya.”  That again!  What did it mean?  This didn’t look anything like the Future Buddha, certainly.

The guide on the right flew into my field of vision and hovered in front of me.  At first I thought it was a great russet-red bird, but it quickly crystallized into an image of a pterosaur with a long, skinny neck and a pouch below its beak rather like a pelican’s.  Once the image formed, it just sat there.  There was no communication of any kind, or rather I had no time to ask for any, because Betsy had already gone on to the last guide.  I still have no clue what a red pterosaur was doing in my head.

As at previous classes, the third guide was the hardest to get a fix on, and I was barely getting started when I ran out of time.  We had been told that the third guide was likely to be the highest, and this seemed to be the case.  I thought he felt much like my previous experiences of Jesus.  Lots of white light and a vague sense of a human male shape, nothing more just then.

We were all asked to give greetings and brief messages from our guides.  As we went around the circle, I did my best to focus in on them and get a sense of what they might want to say.  It was the first guide, the angel woman, who wanted to speak, so I concentrated on her.  “Maitreya” didn’t sound quite right.  I thought that she was related to Maitreya or an aspect of him/her, in a way I couldn’t pin down.  I finally settled on “a representative of Maitreya.”  I still didn’t think that was exactly right.

At any rate, when my turn came, I felt ready.  I introduced the being as a representative of Maitreya and an image of purified womanhood, whatever all that meant, and proceeded to speak.  My experience was that ideas were put into my head, but words were not put in my mouth; I had to come up with the verbalization myself.  The lady said that she had come to speak of purity.  We all often feel unworthy, she said, but she wanted us to know that we are everything that we need to be, that we are pure light and so forth, and should not let anyone tell us otherwise.  The speech was clearly a response to my having recently been accused of being taken over by a harmful spiritual source and was sucking energy from everyone around me [as I mentioned in previous posts].  Whether this message was coming from a source entirely outside me or simply from my own mind, I found it heartening.

As the various students and their guides spoke, at times I strongly perceived the colors or energetic “flavors” of different entities.  One who was particularly vivid was introduced as Edgar, and later identified as Edgar Cayce.  I saw black, in a wide and far-reaching vista that stretched ahead of me, a line of deep black running across the horizon.  I don’t mean black in any negative sense; this was simply the tone that presented itself to my brain.  Edgar seemed most congenial.  Another strong entity was called Mary; when asked, she could not say that she was any one specific Mary, but told us simply that she was “Mary who loves.”  I saw her as tones of royal blue and indigo.  Yet another entity claimed to be Kuan Yin.  I didn’t perceive much of anything with that one.

Jesus spoke through Hania, as usual.  There was no message of great import, but his presence was palpable, and felt as wonderful and soothing as ever.

In some cases, either I was simply unable to perceive anything, or nothing much was happening for that student.  Sometimes I fancy that I can tell whether or not “real” channeling is going on, but that may be hubris on my part.  One way or another, some of the students appeared to struggle mightily, and the messages were unimpressive.  It’s not easy, even with practice and help from the teacher, to do these things on command and with so little time to prepare.  With some others, I could strongly feel and/or quasi-see the entities.  The skeptics and pseudoskeptics among you might like to say that I was seeing thought-forms generated by the students themselves.  That’s a possibility.

Finally, we took time for a few questions.  One student asked about some depigmented, flaky patches on her arms, which someone had told her related to a past life.  The student who was asked the question came up blank, but I was bursting with answers, and I asked if it would be all right to say something.  Betsy told us that she had been about to open the question to the group anyway, and to go ahead and speak.  It looked to me like the woman had been burned in that past life and that the flaking represented trying to get rid of the damage, trying to get rid of something she didn’t need or want anymore.

Another student had been said to have the “Flower of Life” in her aura or something like that.  I didn’t understand this reference, but it appeared to be a familiar concept to Betsy and her circle.  This woman asked plaintively why she couldn’t manifest this and why she didn’t feel connected with it.  No answers were forthcoming, and so I jumped in again, telling her that I could feel her fear—which I really could, so very strongly— and asking her to let go of that and be all that she really is.

My memory isn’t totally clear on any of this, which so often happens with working in an altered state.  At the time, I spoke with conviction, but then I spent the rest of the evening and the next day second-guessing myself and wondering if I had gotten any of what I told the other students right.  “Right.”  Does that mean anything at this point?

 

*Since writing this, I’ve looked through Betsy’s first book, I’m Beside Myself, again, and found Maitreya described as an “angel, archangel, and star being” who has been an important guide for her over many years.  I’ll ask Betsy for clarification.