UNDERSTANDING SPIRIT COMMUNICATIONS

The material presented in this book is based on two underlying assumptions. The first is that our souls are immortal and continue to exist after we leave the physical world. Our existence continues in the astral world; that is, in the spirit realm where non-physical conscious entities dwell.

The second basic assumption is that there are open lines of communication available between the conscious entities of those in the physical world and the conscious entities of those in the astral world.

The information in this chapter is presented as a recounting of my personal thoughts, beliefs, observations and experiences regarding communication from those in the spirit world.

I want to make it clear at the outset that I understand that others may have had different experiences from mine or have beliefs or truths that are in opposition to mine. Please be assured that I am not trying to convince anybody of anything. All I want to do is to share my personal experiences with you. You can believe or not believe what I say.

You may or may not choose to incorporate anything I present into your own personal belief system. Nevertheless I avow that everything I am saying here is my own personal truth. I do not proclaim myself to be an expert in anything. All I can do is to talk about what I do.

When we die our personal individualities continue to exist in the spirit world. Only the physical part of us dies. The rest continues to exist. Spirits are conscious energy beings that are not encased in physical bodies. Some of the spirits who inhabit the astral world were previously part of our physical world. Others never incarnated in the physical world.

Very few of the spirits who dwell in the astral realm have reached the state of perfection, or completion as my guide corrects me, and are able to move on to another dimension beyond the astral realm.

We must understand that these non-physical entities in the astral realm are not God (or whatever term you may want to use for the highest of all powers) and therefore they are not infallible. Just as in our physical world with some humans more knowledgeable, adept or skilled than others in what they do, so it is with the spirits.

If, for example, you are experiencing severe abdominal pains and you have tried everything you know to relieve the pain, the next logical step is to go to a more knowledgeable person; that is, a medical doctor. Some doctors are more knowledgeable than others but, for the most part, doctors can usually find the source of the pain, sometimes after conferring with other doctors or even researching available information. But doctors are not God. Sometimes the diagnosis is wrong. It is the same in the world of spirits.

Some spirits that channel information to mediums are from a lower energy level in the astral world, others from a higher energy astral level or any level between. The higher the level of the source of information, the greater the probability of the accuracy of the information that is transmitted.

If, for example, your Aunt Millie was someone whose advice you would not take seriously while she was in the physical, treat her advice the same way after she has crossed over to the astral world. In this world, if you had a question about the laws of physics, you could ask your cousin who took a physics course in high school. He just might be able to answer your question correctly. The likelihood of getting the correct answer might increase if, instead of asking your cousin, you asked your neighbor who majored in physics in college. The likelihood of the correct answer might even be greater yet if you asked a university professor of physics. Just as there are different levels of intelligence or abilities in our world, so it is in the spirit world. You might get some kind of answer to your question from Aunt Millie or you might even get an answer from the level of Albert Einstein.

Just because information is channeled from the astral world, this does not mean that you can take it as gospel truth. In fact the Bible says "Try the spirits.", meaning "Test the spirits." (I John 4:1 "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.") Spirits can be good or evil. They can be right or they can be wrong. Some try to deceive. Some try to help. The important thing is to be very cautious when dealing with the spirits and the information they provide.

Some spirits like to send messages to their loved ones and friends; information mostly about their experiences, relationships and feelings while on this plateau. Other spirits provide guidance in their communications. Their intent is to be helpful and guide the individual. We all have at least one guide who stays with us throughout our lives. Even though we may not "hear" them, they do have an effect on our intuition so that we will be more likely to make the right choices in the exercise of our free will.

The exercise of our free will takes precedence over spirit influence. Ideas that come from spirits often appear as thoughts that come from "out of the blue", or "inspired" thoughts or even what you might call "epiphanies". Sometimes a guide will appear for a specific occasion, such as to give help to a doctor during an operation, or even to give advice to a gambler.

In my book Scattered Glimpses: A Mosaic I wrote about an interesting case that occurred when one of my physician friends, Dr. Richard Neubauer, spoke to me about the quadruple bypass heart surgery that he needed. He was in considerable pain and was fearful that he might not pull through. He knew me well enough that he had faith in my predictions. My telling him that everything would be okay calmed his nerves. He had the operation and it was very successful. My guide had told me this.

Two or three days after the operation, a doctor whom I did not know came to me in spirit, telling me about what had taken place on the operating table. He told me that when he was alive in the physical world, he had done a great deal of work with heart surgery. From the other side he was guiding the doctor who was performing the surgery, helping him with what he called some kind of loop that he had invented when he was on this plateau. I never spoke to the doctor who performed the physical operation but was curious about how the doctor in spirit had exerted influence on him. Did he actually come to him in spirit as he came to me or did he influence the doctor=s thinking (or intuition, as my guide calls it) without the doctor even knowing so?

When I related this episode to my recuperating friend, I told him the name of the assisting doctor from the spirit world, Christian Bernard. Dr. Neubauer told me that Dr. Christian Bernard was probably one of the most famous heart surgeons ever. It was he who performed the first heart transplant many years ago.

I get the impression it takes spirits a lot of energy to make their presence known to those in the physical world, whether visually or auditorially. On several occasions, after communicating with them for a while, they began to fade or their voice became weaker. They have told me they don't have the strength (I suppose that means energy.) to remain with me any longer. I feel the spirits can sense when they are in the presence of someone like myself who can see or hear them.

In addition to the transmission of information from the spirit entities, the receiver (that is, the medium) must also be considered. Very often information from the spirits is not given in words but rather in symbols, or pictures, or moving scenes, or in languages other than English, or by other means less familiar to those in our dimension, such as telepathy. The mind of the medium must handle this information and translate it accurately into understandable verbal language.

The translation of information into verbal language involves the exercise of the medium's psychic ability. A great psychic must be able to shut his mind down, have no conscious thoughts and be devoid of all emotions when in the psychic mode. The same is not true of mediums. Mediums can be simultaneously fully aware of what is occurring in the astral world and the physical world at the same time. Not all mediums are psychics. Not all psychics are mediums. Here also is an area open to wide diversity. Some mediums are more adept in translating the messages with greater accuracy than other mediums because of their varying psychic abilities. A great medium may not be a great psychic. Likewise, of course, a great psychic may not be a great medium. Thus herein lies another possible reason that a medium might provide information that was different from that which was transmitted by the spirit; in other words, information that was wrong, distorted or incomplete. For truly reliable information, the channeler must be adept as both a medium and as a psychic. Of course, this is all predicated on the energy level of the spirit that is channeling the information.

With all due modesty, I feel that I can say that there are three major reasons for the exceptional level of accuracy of my relating communications from the world of spirits: 1. The high level of the guide that is the source of the information 2. My ability as a medium to clearly receive information from the spirits 3. My psychic ability to interpret the information from the spirits accurately.

CHANNELING

For me, channeling information from unseen sources is a very natural process. It has always been part of my life on this earth. I receive both psychic and channeled information. By this I mean that thoughts, ideas, pictures, symbols, feelings, hunches etc. just come into my mind, often when I am thinking about a particular topic but also often when my conscious thoughts are unrelated to the information received. Perhaps this information does come from an outside source (that is, channeled) but I sense a difference between psychic and channeled information. I feel that psychic information comes from my higher self at the soul level or from a source that is not related to specific entities that channel information to me. This I feel but I do not know, nor can I explain the difference.

I do, however, sense four different ways of receiving information from outside sources that I channel. The first is that ideas just flow into my mind. These are not words, but rather concepts that I can easily convert into conscious speech. As I relax, the words flow very easily from my mouth. I sense a difference that I am unable to explain between receiving information through this modality and receiving information psychically.

The second way I receive information is that I actually hear someone speaking inside my head; words that I could repeat aloud if I so choose. I often have to pay careful attention because my mind must keep up with the pace of the voice of the speaker. If I am distracted or do not pay careful attention, the words are not repeated by the sender but are lost to me. This can, on occasion, be quite disconcerting. There could be gaps in what I hear or the information is so abundant that my memory cannot recall all that was said.

The third means of receiving information is when I am in an altered state and allow the channeler to speak through me. Although it appears that my consciousness is not in this dimension, it seems that both my awareness of this world and the voice of the speaker are inside my head. Although the channeler is speaking through me, I have the ability to censor, block or alter what comes out of my mouth. When I return to this reality, I am able to remember only certain parts of what I spoke aloud.

The fourth means of channeling, which I call deep-trance channeling, is when my consciousness appears to be fully dormant. I am speaking aloud but I am totally unaware of what I am saying and have no ability to control what I say. After channeling, I come slowly back to my everyday third dimension level of consciousness and have no memory or only foggy memories of what was said through me.

MY SPIRIT GUIDE

I'd like to tell you a little about my spirit guide and my relationship with him. First, however, I will begin by mentioning a few things I have learned from him regarding spirit guides in general. You will find some of what I will say here, in abbreviated form, in the question and answer section which follows.

We all have a spirit guide who, before our incarnation, agreed to guide us throughout our lifetime. Some of us have two or three, perhaps even more. At times, other spirits guide us for specific situations or periods of time. Like humans in the physical, spirits have emotions and personalities. They vary in their ability to provide guidance; that is, some guides are better than others. Some are very good and helpful in the information they transmit to us and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, some guides can be not so helpful, often even providing information that is incorrect, not understandable, or incomplete.

All of our guides communicate with us. It is we who do not hear them. Unlike most people, but like many other people, I am able to hear the voice of my guide within my head just as if a person were speaking to me. It seems that the majority of humans receive guidance that appears to them as intuition or "thoughts out of the blue". Even then, many people do not recognize their intuition, but instead either misinterpret it or just ignore it. Usually intuition appears as your very first thought when you are focusing on a situation. This first thought is very fleeting and often escapes before it is captured. The secret is to recognize your first thought, hold onto it, and then act on it.

Spirits have varying degrees of energy. This is what is meant by "levels" in world of spirits. The higher the level, the greater degree of accuracy in their communications. I will try to tell you everything I know about my guide but I will not reveal his name. This is not by my choice, but by his. If many others were to call on him, he says that this would drain his energy.

My guide is a very old soul; that is, he has had many, many incarnations in the physical both on the earth and in other star systems. He states that the earth is not his home base. We may therefore assume that he is of extraterrestrial origin. He views life in the physical as very difficult and says that he has no desire to reincarnate. He does at times, at his discretion, manifest himself to me visually also but not always. He has told me that he can manifest himself to me in whichever of his incarnation experiences he chooses. He has said he does not come to me in the visual form of his last lifetime but rather when he was on Earth in Biblical times.

He appears as a prominent personage in the Old Testament of the Bible. It is his preference to show himself as an old man with a white beard, dressed in a robe, wearing sandals and holding a crook in one of his hands; often walking on sand such as a beach or on cobblestones. A few times he has shown himself to me as a younger, strong, muscular healthy man. I do not know if that was his younger self in his Biblical lifetime or if it was he in another incarnation. I know nothing else of his other lives in the physical. He told me his name as a Biblical personality. Actually, since I am not well versed in Biblical characters, his identity was of little significance to me. Practically all I know about his life as portrayed in the Bible was told to me by my husband, who had a strong religious upbringing. He did indeed play a significant role in the Bible.

Since spirits have distinct personality characteristics just as do humans, I will attempt to tell you what I know about his personality. He is a gentle soul, kind and caring. He has quite a sense of humor, which can often be misinterpreted as what we might call a big ego. Yet he is modest and unassuming. He takes pleasure in helping those on our plateau. I say "others" because he has told me that he is the guide for other people in addition to me. He is quite down to earth and at times can be even rather earthy, even having a sharp tongue.

When I am communicating with him I often question what he tells me and I dispute what I am told. When I am in the third form of channeling, as described in the previous section, I sometimes hold back and do not say aloud what he tells me, or I tone down what he says to make it sound more dignified or tactful. I sometimes cover up his earthiness. It seems that tact takes a backseat to truth in the information my guide provides. There's something almost like a childlike honesty in his communication.