A dead friend came to visit in an unusual way, making himself known in my awareness by popping into my mind a memory from some twenty years ago. It was the type of memory that you would have no reason to think about unless something triggered it. But I could think of no logical trigger for this particular memory.
The memory spontaneously played in my mind's eye as if I were watching a recorded silent video version of it, all from the same visual perspective of the eyes of my 17-year-old self. As I watched the replay I remembered the moment as clearly as if it had just actually taken place. It made me laugh at myself, remembering my impulsive youthfulness that sometimes got mistaken for arrogance I suppose. I was having fun, being as spontaneous as this odd flashback of a memory.
At the time of the flashback, I didn't consider it a visit, just a memory. I didn't realize it was a direct answer to the intent I’d set in requesting Guidance to help me learn to make contact with the deceased. After all, I had no reason to think this friend from my past was dead.
The next day I happened to be browsing a website for my upcoming 20th high school reunion and the announcement section caught my eye. His name was there, listed as deceased…the friend from the spontaneous memory the day before. I couldn’t believe it. Could the spontaneous memory flashback have anything to do with him consciously deciding to contact me from the other side?
I sat there thinking hard about what I was doing in the moments just before the odd memory flashback had popped into my head. And I remembered that I was sitting at my desk, browsing Bruce’s website,
http://www.afterlife-knowledge.com/, and had read his response to a question about the use of a Quija Board for contacting your spirit guide. That conversation got me thinking about my wanting to contact my own spirit guides. (I already obviously believed in such contact because of my many previous experiences).
So I closed my eyes, took some deep relaxing breaths, and I set the intent that I'd like to have my Guidance help facilitate my practice at learning after-death communication. I asked Guidance to give me an experience where I'm in contact with a deceased person and to help me learn to recognize such an experience when it happens.
Now that I realized the odd memory flashback had occurred right after I set that intent, I was excited that I had gotten a direct experience that was exactly what I'd asked for. But I was disappointed in myself that I had failed to recognize it for what it was.
My friend Bruce tells me all the time, "Vicky, you need to pay attention to the very next thing that comes into your awareness, no matter what it is, even if it doesn't seem to fit or make sense. It will almost always be in direct response to what you were just thinking, asking, or intending."
Because I failed to recognize this after-death contact at the moment it happened, I wanted to find a way to verify that it was indeed genuine contact. Then I got an idea. I'd ask a test question, whose answer must prove that this sequence of events had indeed been a tailored experience and was indeed conscious contact from a dead friend. So I relaxed, set intent, and spoke to my Guidance again. This time I said, "Can you please show me something that proves to me the contact from this deceased person was real?" I waited but seemingly nothing happened. Well, as I've been learning, something
did happen, I just failed to notice it…again.
In the most splendidly orchestrated way, the next thing that actually popped into my awareness was—not so ironically—another spontaneous memory of another friend from long ago. This memory, however, went back much farther than some twenty years. This memory went back all the way to the first grade. That would have made me around 7. That would place this memory back in time about thirty years. I knew instantly that there was no other logical trigger for this memory. The sequence of events played perfectly in my mind's eye, forcing me to relive a moment of my life from way back when.
Again, I failed to see this second spontaneous memory as an answer to the question I had just posed to my Guidance. I also made the mistake of not seeing this memory as a connection to the previous experience. Although they were very similar odd experiences, I wasn't aware of what was in store for me.
The realization of the connection, however, came a few hours later that day when I received an email from a woman who was the girl in my memory from first grade. Her email gave her phone number, and when I called she said she'd been thinking of me for a while, wanting to find a way to contact me. Finally she found my email address because of the high school reunion website. It had indeed been many years since we'd been in contact.
Well, if that isn’t a direct answer then I don’t know what is. The odds were way beyond mere coincidence. A memory of her popping into my mind just hours before she contacted me was not something I'd brush off as mere coincidence. It was a definite sign from my Guidance, letting me know in a very clear way that my experience of having the thought or memory of someone popping into my awareness was an indication of that person’s intention of contacting me.
Obviously with these two identical experiences, it didn't matter whether the person was dead or alive. Because I had no real way of confirming the first contact with the person now known to be deceased, I couldn't verify that he was actually intending contact with me. But because the second, living person
could verify her desire to contact me, it gave me enough verification to trust this type of experience as an indicator of conscious contact.
Bruce is right. When there is something that comes into your awareness immediately after placing an intent, you can almost always count on it being in direct answer to what you were just thinking, feeling, asking, or intending. Our Guidance does this for us. And the way we perceive and receive information coming into our awareness is a filtration process that comes to our conscious minds in a way which we can recognize. Paying attention to this process is key.
I’ve noticed this throughout my life. And I'm sure many people have too, but we always tend to call it coincidence. You think of someone you haven't seen or talked to in a long time. Then suddenly the phone rings, and it’s them.
What a coincidence, we say.
Dead or alive, we're all connected that way. Our thoughts and intentions really are powerful things.
