Encountering Electronic Voice Phenomena in Person, Part II

“Chopin Anew” by Jan Nyka. This image is amusingly appropriate in the context of EVP, don’t you think?
http://www.jannyka.com/index.php?/commercial/people/

At the beginning of the ASCS conference, Suzanne Giesemann gave a charming, inspiring, but no-nonsense talk about her development as a medium, which included stories about striking synchronicities— and another slew of them for me. Here she outlines her journey from hard-nosed Navy commander to professional mystic: https://www.suzannegiesemann.com/about-suzanne-2/

I want to tell you about an enlightening anecdote from Suzanne. One day, during her meditations, she received a visit from an entity who called himself Odin. Ohhhkkaaayyyy, she thought. She didn’t remember much about Norse mythology, so she went off and read up about him. What she found was a whole package of synchronistic threads that connected with people close to her, having to do with lightning and runes in particular. The next time she encountered Odin, she blurted out, “Are you real?”

“I am as real as you are,” he replied.

“But you’re a myth!” Suzanne insisted.

“You’re a myth!” was the answer to that.

 The idea was that all personalities, human and otherwise, bubble up from the substrate of the universal mind, and all are pretty much the same in essence, and all equally real or unreal, depending on how you look at it. That’s about as close as I can get to explaining my experiences with such eminences as Kuan Yin or Medicine Buddha.

And as close as I can get to explaining the following.

As I described last time, I was putting a lot of effort into listening during October, and something began to happen that interfered mightily with that. At first mildly, then catastrophically, I developed a case of constant high-pitched tinnitus. By the last week of the month, it had taken over my life and I could hardly think of anything else.

I suspected that the new problem might have something to do with my trip to the conference, either the work with the spirits, the flight, the drastic changes of altitude and humidity, or all of the above. I’d also had a slight virus sort of thing right after the trip. I started looking for help to sort it out. That’s when things got even weirder.

I began with a remote polarity treatment from the person who had helped me with issues like this before. My therapist encountered a crowd of beings around me who seemed to all be trying to talk to me at once, and she thought that was creating the ringing in my ears. She came up with a strategy for communicating with them one at a time in a controlled way that would limit any trouble. Sigh… I’ve had all too many issues over the years with entities knocking hard on my doors… but I guess it’s an occupational hazard.  And it has led in fruitful directions at times.

For a while after that session, the sound in my ears died down a bit. The theory about these critters being the main cause of the tinnitus doesn’t seem to have panned out in the time since then, but they were most definitely present and they needed to be dealt with. I cautiously set about making their acquaintance, just a few of them. They were very accessible, and seemed enthusiastic and positive about communicating with me. One gave me a warm hug. Another— I’m grateful for this— reached into my head and tweaked my eyes so that colors became dramatically brighter and for quite a while the usual dryness was gone. Perhaps more ominously, another asked why I was bothered by the ringing, since they were “tuning me” and I ought to be happy about it.

I didn’t detect anything untoward, but I wasn’t comfortable with having anyone trying to control me or use me for their own agenda, especially without my conscious understanding and consent. I made an appointment with my psychic mentor, Mendy Lou Blackburn, who is always the person I turn to when matters like this get beyond my abilities. When I went to bed, I asked Fryderyk what he thought was going on, and he had something to say about it, but in the morning I couldn’t remember what it had been.

Mendy Lou and I looked extensively at the whole situation and tried to figure out how these entities fit in. They didn’t seem connected with the Big Circle, the group Vicki and friends work with. Mendy could see them clearly, as a sort of vortex containing multiple small lights. They appeared to her to be a mix of beings of different levels of development. When she used the term elementals, I remembered that Fryderyk had said the same thing the night before.

At one point I looked around for my link to the Big Circle, for comparison, and instantly Braden popped into the room in a burst of light, so Mendy Lou got to meet him and get a sense of his fun-loving personality. It was comforting to have him show up. Fryderyk also made himself known, but he stayed in the background.

So there I was with an unwanted “fan club” and still an intolerable level of constant noise. I went to the office and put my questions aside for the time being. By the next day, with the ringing still driving me nuts, I felt I couldn’t stretch my stressed and irritated self far enough to deal with the mysterious entities anymore. Apologizing, in case they were sincerely there for my good, I wrapped them up in a sort of package and pushed them out of my field. I just didn’t know what else to do at that point. Since then I haven’t heard anything further from them.

I told Vicki about all this, and she confirmed that Braden and company were not involved and didn’t know who these beings were either. The Big Circle folk told her to let me know that I was “climbing Jacob’s ladder” and all was well. All the sources seemed to agree that I was somehow being changed to be able to perceive more, and that I should be patient with the process. I felt a little bit better.

The process of clearing attachments and emotional junk continued with a remote treatment from James Rolwing, and Thought Field Therapy (the original version of tapping on acupressure points) with Diana Ristenpart. After that, the tinnitus changed, in quality though not volume, and became a less obnoxious type of sound so that it was more tolerable. A range of pure sine wave frequencies disappeared and I was left with an array of tiny chimes combined with cicadas. Strange how that is less bothersome!

After a lot of phone calls, I was able to get in with an audiologist and a nurse practitioner at an ENT office, and they found inflammation in my Eustachian tubes— a potential physical cause for the sound. Mercifully, my hearing tested as mostly intact, except for a small deficit at very high frequencies. I’d been terrified of having a significant hearing loss, which is often associated with tinnitus. Since I’ve always hated noise and have carefully protected my ears, this whole thing has seemed awfully unfair!

With the onset of the ringing, everything in my environment became oddly loud, subjectively, and my impression was that the effect was different from the hyperacusis that can occur with hearing loss. Sound is much more three-dimensional and multilayered, richer and more colorful, and I pay attention to it differently. Once Fryderyk told me that music is an environment in which one can move about, and I think I know vividly what he meant now.

So is a process of “tuning” still going on? Am I going to be able to hear more of what nonphysical sources want to tell me? Or am I taking a long time to get over a viral infection and a great deal of stress? All of these? I don’t know if I’ve had enough brain-space lately to be able to tell. No dramatic new openings appear to have occurred in my psychic development to match my increased awareness of physical sound. Meanwhile, treating for inflammation and taking Chinese herbs for the pattern I’m showing has helped, as far as I can tell.

I did have an unusually extensive conversation with my composer friend, though, and I’d like to think that I was showing a little more ability to hear what he wanted me to know. This happened on 11/17:
Fryderyk showed up when I was about to go to sleep, as he so often does. I reported that my tinnitus had lessened, and told him that I hoped to be able to hear him better through whatever process was going on with the changes in my ears.

I asked about his efforts to speak through direct voice, wondering why it seemed worthwhile to take so much trouble to make physical sounds rather than just talk to someone inside their head or through channeling. He replied that it is important for him to speak in actual words, not just thoughts, because words have a physical effect on the material world.

“In the beginning was the word?” I asked. His answer was something to the effect that in the beginning was a thought, then a word that shaped reality.

“How does music compare to words?” Up to that point he had been more or less directly dropping concepts into my head, despite the subject being the primacy of words, but this came out as a clear verbal message: “Music is a scaffolding on which we can build reality.” That was a striking idea that I wanted to be sure not to forget, so although I wanted to get to sleep, I dutifully grabbed my notebook and pen. Which, as it has done many times, broke the connection.

After settling back down, I was able to get back in touch with him, and we continued along the same lines. A direct-voice medium is like a radio, he told me; you tune the medium, tune yourself in, your own station. There were images of communicating with me, in contrast, being something like wandering through a cave with twists and obstructions.

I asked if things might be easier if I were a trance medium. He doesn’t like to work with them, he replied, because they can’t really give consent. Even though they’ve consented to the overall procedure, they can’t filter or respond to any of the communication. He prefers the relationship, the dialogue involved in working with someone who is aware of what’s going on.

(Regarding “Music is a scaffolding on which we can build reality,” a musician friend expressed something strikingly similar to this just a couple of days ago, even saying, “In the beginning was the word.”  She said she is trying to affect the world from the inside through music and meditation lately, rather than continuing to work with political organizing and that kind of thing, as she used to.  I expect that other musicians have expressed similar thoughts.)

Vicki mentioned that Braden had warned her against thinking she is communicating with any Famous Dead People, because they are likely to be impostors– although he himself had brought Fryderyk to meet his mother.  For example, he said, if someone shows up who purports to be Elvis, you should run. I mentioned this to Mendy Lou, who recounted the time she not only met Elvis, but had a lengthy conversation with him, many years ago when she was working in Las Vegas. I also mentioned it to a patient who has a strong interest in these matters, and she replied that I shouldn’t be surprised if I did run into Elvis sometime, because he’s her cousin, albeit a distant one. Six degrees of separation and all that.

So when I showed up at Vicki’s presentation, and she saw a momentary flash of her friend “Fred,” she pushed the thought aside.  Why in the world would someone associated with him walk into her workshop?  Her boggle threshold had to be raised a bit, along with mine.  The pattern that began with meeting my Famous Dead Person so many years ago seems to be building up more coherence over time, but I’m still not always certain what is being asked of me.  Now I’ve been brought into the Big Circle project in some way, and telling you about it must be part of that.  Otherwise, I’m awaiting further developments.

 

Mendy Lou Blackburn:  http://mendylou.com/
James Rolwing:  https://www.facebook.com/pg/PatternReleaseEnergetics/about/?ref=page_internal
Lunasol Polarity Therapy:  https://daynaurora.wixsite.com/lunasol-polarity?fbclid=IwAR06LGeVHFtlqrv8ALvx0qJevC3_DcmpCGHqOxl9wVyndUDZ64cFtBcf2bU

Advertisement

I Only Work in Inner Space, Part II

I jotted down the following one evening in Grants, NM, when I was staying over in order to go out to see a patient in a remote location the next day. I didn’t add the date, so I don’t know even what year it was, but it has been quite a while since I worked at that office. I’d estimate that I wrote it around 2010, while thinking about that matter of trying to explore inner space without becoming a “space case.” It came out more or less as advice to people who are starting out as intuitive healers in a world that may not even believe their work exists. I think it’s still worth sharing, so here it is, with some minor editing:

Be open to being wrong. Be open to being right.

Some new intuitives, realizing how often they turn out to be correct, might take off on a power trip of some kind. Especially when frightening or distressing material comes through, it should not be stated as an absolute fact that cannot be avoided. Don’t pretend to have all the answers to anything. And don’t impose your point of view or your system of beliefs on anyone as if it were the ultimate. Don’t judge or act self-righteous.

More often, though, the problem is that we constantly second-guess ourselves and fail to trust valid information when it comes to us. I try to maintain a healthy skepticism about ideas that come into my own head, the same as I would with ideas from any other source, constantly checking any way I can. However, the temptation to edit every thought can stop the flow and make it impossible to accomplish anything.

When I do intuitive healing with patients, I prefer to work in collaboration with the person on my table. So often, I see something that seems totally off the wall and vanishingly unlikely to me, but I screw up my courage and tell the patient about it, and it turns out to be dead on. This gives the patient an opportunity to add her own insights, and we find a path through the jungle together, tossing out ideas and testing them until we find the issues that are most fundamental and clear them. Sometimes the patient is sleeping or otherwise not amenable to joining in on this process, and in that case I can still get a lot done, but it’s all the more powerful when we work together.

My point is that I’m not in the business of proving I can divine all the answers; my job is to aid patients in their journey toward healing, not to impress them with my skills. Not that I never feel a need to prove that I can do what I do, especially with the pseudoskeptic types, but it’s crucial to let go of all such concerns if we want to get clear information.

I feel fortunate that I don’t have to identify myself as a professional psychic. If that were the case, I’d always be expected to come up with revelations of some kind, preferably earth-shattering ones. Sometimes neither I nor the patient can find profound meanings in their illnesses and injuries, and many times there’s no need to. We can just do some needles, bodywork, or herbs, and everything’s fine.

One of the things I admire about my mentor Mendy Lou Blackburn, who does identify herself as a professional psychic, is that she doesn’t tell her clients what they want to hear, unless that’s what they need to hear. It’s pretty easy to figure out what a person is hoping you’ll tell them, even without any great psychic ability. A person could probably make a lot of money just feeding comforting, flattering words to clients, but anyone who’s honest knows that would lead to no good. There is a middle way of using firmness to express hard truths without dictating to, insulting, or unnecessarily frightening the client.

I’ve been writing as if you are doing readings for other people, or planning to do so, but perhaps you intend only to gather intuitive impressions for your own development. We need to be all the more careful in reading or channeling for ourselves because we may be quite blind to our own beliefs and preconceived notions— they are so close we can’t see them clearly.

Be open to greatness.

Betsy Morgan Coffman told our beginning channeling class that we might find ourselves in contact with some very high-level being, Jesus for example, and that often people get upset and refuse to trust that this is happening. “But think about it,” she said. “Why wouldn’t Jesus want to talk to you?”

But what of the Wayne Bents of the world [Bent was an abusive cult leader who was jailed and was much in the news when I originally wrote this], the people who are sure that not only is God talking to them, He is telling them to gather followers who will treat them as His representatives on earth? Bent reported being told that he was the Messiah in so many words, if I remember correctly. I use him as an example because there is general agreement that he’s delusional. That is, he’s been less successful than some, and done more obvious harm, or at least been caught at it. But what’s the essential difference between Bent and, say, Joan of Arc? Perhaps “by their fruits” is still the best way that you will know them.

Some years ago I was part of a Noetic Sciences group that held meetings with inspirational speakers and uplifting activities. Once a young guy showed up and introduced himself, quite matter-of-factly, as the latest incarnation of some great line of spiritual teachers or world leaders, I don’t remember what exactly. This pronouncement was delivered in the same tone as if he’d told us he lived in Bernalillo or had just started college. Totally normal for him. When I looked toward him, I saw a black space in the room where he should have been. He scared the hell out of me, and I hoped he’d never come back. Nobody else had a bad feeling about him— I asked them later. I never saw him again, and I don’t know what fruits, if any, he or his message produced. Every so often I run into someone with claims along the same lines, and am not sure what to think. My own tales of my experiences with famous deceased humans and higher beings may strike someone in a similar way, so I can’t judge. I just know that that particular young man left me feeling extremely uneasy.

You probably will never receive a message that says you’re the Messiah or the incarnation of some other august figure. But never doubt that you are as deserving of enlightenment as anyone.

If, instead, a message you get tears you down, it’s probably coming from you and not Them. Source/Spirit/Higher Powers/the Divine might be applying tough love at times, not letting you get away with laziness or self-deception, but won’t belittle you or discourage your sincere efforts. They typically seem to think better of us than we do of ourselves; They see the reality of the infinite beings we truly are.

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/

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.

 

**************************************************************

 

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/

“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.