HOW DO YOU PERCEIVE?

What do you consider a sign?  How would you recognize or psychically sense an energy presence?  Do you believe that spirits interfere with technology to get our attention, especially when we are thinking about them? 

Last night in a conversation with my sister-in-law on the phone long distance, we got on the subject of ghosts.  Not a big surprise.  If you’re around me, that’s typically what the conversation will eventually turn to.  But I’m also not surprised that my family has all had their fair share of paranormal encounters as well.  Every now and then we retell our stories.

I was relating to my sister-in-law, Sonya, my recent experience of the cold mass energy that I experienced in my backyard.  She asked what I thought it was but I had no idea really.  “Maybe the way I experienced it is just the way that I experience ghosts, spirits, and energy,” I said.  She wondered, though, why I felt it actually bump into me rather than the sensation of going through me.  Our discussion led us to believe that we just each have different ways of experiencing things and that it’s different for all of us.  Sonya said she typically experiences the fragrance of flowers when there’s a presence.  

Wouldn’t it be nice to just know more, know what or who it really is, rather than just be able to report the details of the experience?  It’s fun to have paranormal experiences, but it would be great to know exactly what’s being experienced.  Sonya asked if I write down all my experiences.  I said yeah, I do.  I write down the date, time, what I was doing, what I was thinking, feeling, etc.  I just write as many details as I can think of.  Sometimes it’s all I can do to help me learn more about a phenomena and how I sense what I’m able to.

Telling Sonya of my experience of the spirit energy encounter in my backyard reminded me back to many years ago when I was visiting Sonya at her apartment.  Must be nearly 20 years ago.  She was standing in the kitchen getting a snack for my nephew when I got up to walk into the kitchen too.  Suddenly I was stopped by a loud, roaring noise passing my head and the feeling of a strong wind rushing toward me, hitting me in the face.  It was so strong and unexpected that I naturally closed my eyes.  Even felt my hair being blown back.  A moment later when I opened my eyes, I said, “Whoa, what was that?”  Sonya hadn’t experienced anything, hadn’t even heard the loud, roaring noise. 

On the phone she said, “Maybe the thing you felt in the apartment and the thing in your backyard are spirits attached to a place, the area.” 

“Or maybe it has to do with me, a spirit just trying to get my attention because I’m able to sense things,” I said. 

Back then, at the apartment, Sonya and my brother had several paranormal experiences themselves.  I lived in one of the nearby apartments in the same complex with my now-ex.  This had been before we were married.  Reminiscing about way back then reminded Sonya of one of the most intense ghostly visits she’d ever had.  A friend of ours who was in the army with my brother had a younger sister named Katie who died just 9 days after my wedding day.  She was only 19, and while in a Westernaires show fell off her horse and was killed instantly but was continued to be dragged for several minutes before anyone could get to her.  It was a horrible tragedy.  We were all so struck by it, but I can’t imagine what our friend, her older brother, was going through. 

In my conversation with Sonya on the phone, she recounted to me that a couple days after the accident she had a visit from Katie.  She described brushing her teeth and then suddenly feeling the temperature in the room suddenly dropping even though it was July.  Then suddenly thinking of our friend’s sister even though she knew it wasn’t her own thought.  “It was just like she was there,” she said.  Sonya ran out to the living room, then ran into the bedroom to wake my brother.  But she said it was like something was keeping him asleep.  Normally he awakens so easily but she just couldn’t wake him.  Then she felt our friend’s sister suddenly communicating to her, “but it was like all this information coming to me so fast, all at once.” 

I told her, “In my experience, I call that ‘getting a download’,” and Sonya laughed and said, “Oh yeah, I was getting a download all right, big time!” 

She described the feeling of her interpretation of what she was getting, being that our friend’s sister wanted everyone to know she was all right and that she was happy.  She didn’t want anyone to worry about her.  Sonya then described an overwhelming feeling of being told to just lie down and sleep now, which she did.  I asked Sonya to tell me again exactly what she experienced, what exactly she’d  received in the message.

And that’s when my cell phone suddenly went static.  I could tell that Sonya was speaking but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.  I interrupted by saying, “Sonya, I can’t hear you.  Can you hear me?”  I waited.  Then went into the house, trying to find a spot that might make it clear up.  Still static.  After a couple minutes I could hear her say clearly, “Can you hear me now?” 

I let her know that I missed her entire response.  She said, “That was weird!  I wasn’t even moving, I’m in the same spot.  I guess she’s letting us know she knows we’re talking about her!”  We both spoke our acknowledgements for her presence in our conversation, and then Sonya was able to repeat what she said.  The message to her that night had been an adamant request to please let her family know that she was happy and at peace, that it was very important that they know that.  Sonya also interpreted the message to mean that Katie had been trying to get through to her family but their grief wasn’t allowing them to feel her presence yet, which was why she was so adamantly making herself known to Sonya.  Sonya confessed she waited several years before telling our friend of the encounter. 

So, was that static interruption a sign that Katie’s spirit was acknowledging her presence as we talked about her?  I think so.  I believe in acknowledging signs wherever you can get them.  It’s the shift in consciousness that really matters, not the sign itself.  I thought about Katie’s message, how death for the departed really does bring peace.  I really do believe that.  It’s just so hard for us here to understand it, when we want so badly to hold onto what we have.  It’s hard to imagine that kind of shift of consciousness upon death, but so comforting to know it exists.

INVISIBLE FLYING MASS

I generally write from a perspective of what I believe my psychic, paranormal, and spiritual experiences mean according to what makes sense to me. I fully accept that there's often more to the picture than I'm aware of, and that's ok. For what I am aware of, I take full responsibility for my beliefs and theories and what I care to share with or teach others about my experiences and as such, if I'm wrong then I'm wrong. However, I won't know what in my belief system of personal life experiences I'm wrong about unless and until something else happens which changes those beliefs. And sometimes, an experience comes along which is so strange that I not only have nothing to compare it to, I also have no idea what to make of it. I'm not one of those people who has to derive some answer or theory for every experience. I go strictly by what I sense and feel in my awareness. And sometimes, something is just strange and paranormal with no explanation at all.

 I've learned from previous experiences the way in which our minds can sometimes create paranormal activity. If we are interested in something, that spark of energy created by the conscious mind will have the effect of bringing more of the same energy into our awareness. And, the more energy you consciously expend on a particular topic, the more that very topic will appear in your experience of life. We seem to transmit or create that which we think most deeply consciously about. Another phenomenon of the power of our consciousness reaches so deep into the core of our being we aren't even aware of its presence. It has to do with what we allow ourselves to believe is possible or not possible. They are not conscious beliefs but instead lie deep within the core of the identity of our being. If one of those beliefs is challenged, the consequences are a direct experience in one's physical life to give the experiencer the opportunity to judge for himself what he wishes to continue to believe. Our belief structure is continuously tested this way, for what other better way to learn, alter, or expand one's own consciousness if not for direct experience with which to make a conscious decision?

 Any time I really get interested in a subject, particularly if I'm poring over it, reading what others have experienced and what they tend to believe and theorize, that's when my own experiences really start happening. Many of my psychic, paranormal, and spiritual experiences have patterns and constructs which I never have to question or challenge. But my list of odd ones for which I have no explanation is growing.

My latest weird experience of the paranormal occurred a few days ago. The only trigger I can attribute to challenging my consciousness was an email which had been sent to me a few days prior. It's topic was about elementals, fairies, and other nature energies. The sender appropriately introduced the subject matter with the caveat, "Some will see this as fantasy, BS, and a challenge to their reality.” I laughed because I knew right away I was amongst that group. I skimmed the email but found nothing of interest to me. I simply don't want to waste my time and energy on things I have no use for, no interest in, no experience with, and no understanding of. If something doesn't fall into one of those categories for me, it's a waste of my time. I'm pretty picky about what I choose to focus my conscious awareness on.

But a few days later while enjoying the morning home from work, I became interested in having fun with the squirrels in my backyard. I sometimes pay more attention to them than I have been lately but this morning I really wanted to create some activity outside. I have several bird feeders set up, and of course my handmade squirrel feeder. I take great delight in supplying the squirrel feeder with various treats and then watching the squirrels scamper from all directions. They've been used to the homemade squirrel feeder for a few years now, and on the occasions when I neglect to put food out there for them, the squirrels do a run-by along the top of the fence, stopping for a second to peek in, see nothing's there, and scurry along their way. I doubt that the food I provide is saving any lives out there. Those crafty squirrels have plenty of marks to hit if mine happens to be empty. We call the fence line their freeway because of how fast they run their errands along it. When my neighbor behind me took down the fence to repair and replace it, he was nice enough to let me know he'd re-attach my squirrel feeder "or whatever it is" when he was done. I thanked him, not at all embarrassed about my homemade contraption. It isn't the most sophisticated of things but it serves its purpose nicely, made simply from a milk crate and bungee cords, with a large ceramic-pot drain plate for the food, and on bad-weather days shingles (which have blown off my roof) cover the top and sides of the crate to keep the food dry. On good-weather days I take off the shingles to give more view during those speeding drive-by's. I wouldn't want to make the squirrels go out of their way only to find there's nothing on the plate that day.

This particular morning I was setting out sliced apples and leftover hotdog buns. One squirrel was dangling from my duck-shaped bird feeder and scurried up into the tree as I approached. Another who was on the ground eating from a dish of sunflower seeds became startled and scampered up the fence post and sped off on the freeway. I know they watch me from the big evergreen tree to see what I'm doing. I once came upon a squirrel who was more interested in eating than in being frightened, and he refused to move while I filled the plate. He even allowed me to hand him a piece of bread! He took it politely from my fingers and then turned his back to me while he ate.

After I placed the bread and apples on the plate, I felt such a sense of peacefulness because of my enjoyment of it all. I'd been in particularly a good place emotionally lately, able to go with the flow and take life's ups and downs in stride. Not usual for me as I tend to worry or plan ahead more than I'm able to just enjoy the moment. But on this morning, I was definitely enjoying the moment. Perhaps that carefree state of mind is another catapult into strange phenomena. The next thing I knew, I was startled by something I heard right beside me to my left. It was something like a rustling sound and I turned to look. There wasn't anything there. The small ornamental pear tree beside me was still. It hadn't been the wind. It was a very still, peaceful-weather morning. But something had moved as if coming up next to me. I felt as if I were looking someone right in the face. Just then, it moved. I'm not even sure how I know something moved since I couldn't even see anything, but I was aware that I had widened my eyes. And a couple seconds later I was hit in the head by a flying mass of energy that seemed to run into me on purpose. It bounced off me, nicking me in the top of my head with force, the size of my fist. At the point of impact I felt the most freezing cold temperature I'd ever felt. Whatever had hit me was very cold. It hadn't been painful, and I hadn't any sense of fear or malicious intent. In fact, whatever this mass of energy seemed to be, I imagined it was playfully mischievous. My only sensation was that this had been a conscious and deliberate attempt at interacting with me. For what reason, I have no idea. I stood there a few moments more waiting, wondering if something else was going to happen. There had been no breeze. My hair, face, and the rest of my body felt nothing...no wind or change in temperature. The playful clunk in the head I got could have felt like getting tapped with a tennis ball except for the extreme drop in temperature feeling it left on my head. I touched there, felt nothing. The cold feeling quickly vanished.

So, what was this mysterious thing? I still have no beliefs or theories about it. I just chalk it up to another strange phenomenon that I have no explanation for. The one question that intrigues me the most, is how is it possible for a pocket of energy to have mass, to sustain or propel itself mid air, to exist independently of any physical construct, and to contain its own temperature so drastically different from the air around it? For all intents and purposes this thing was invisible, yet by all the laws of physics it really wasn't. It had all the characteristics of a physical object, a conscious being with intent and purpose, yet to my eyes there was nothing there.

TIME HAS BEEN FLYING

It's been five months since I've posted! Besides the usual things of life, mostly I've been busy with developing my psychic abilities. I've been so focused on that and taking notes for my next book that blogging about it slipped my mind. I'm learning that I'm not developing psychic ability per se, but it's more about learning how psychic ability works and how my Guidance communicates with me. We all have psychic ability, so it's not so much about learning how to have it, it's about learning how to use skills that you already have. And we all have our own Guidance system working with us.

Guidance is the term I use to denote whatever it is out there who's guiding me...my own greater Consciousness, my higher self, the source from which my soul originated, and I wouldn't hesitate to include in there other beings and spirits who help, guide, and protect us. Whatever you call it or whatever it truely is, it's more than what I know my own physical self to be. We've all had an experience of divine intervention of one kind or another, no matter what our spiritual beliefs are. And since writing my first book, I've heard people tell me that even though they aren't sure what they believe in out there, they know we are not alone here in this world. There's so much out there to explore and experience, I know that for sure.

The amount of psychic experiences I've had over the summer has been enormous, all of which are verified, documented, and included in my next book. I've even had to take some time off from writing it just to let things sink in. I've found that things have been progressing so fast that my notes, writing style, and knowledge are changing week by week! If I look back on some old notes from a couple months ago I think, oh I'm way past that now. And that's exciting! As I write my notes, I'm including all the questions I have and all the possible things I conceive of why, how, and what if. And as I progress, I shrink that down into a more concise view of what I've learned and why it works. My next book will in one way develop as my new experiences do, but also will have to wait until I feel complete in what I've learned.

What I'd like to include in my next book is a more comprehensive overview of how others can learn to do what I'm doing. I'm excited about that. I'm also excited to continue on my own journey and also delve more into seeing, sensing, and communicating with ghosts, learning the art of retrieval, and of course my all-time favorite OBEs. I've been told I'm a little too detail oriented. I know that I do get a little technical at times, but that's how I learn. Hopefully I will be improving my writing skills along the way! It is my hope to pass on what I've learned and teach others what I'm learning about psychic abilities. Just from what I've learned so far, there's a lot more to it than just the typical beliefs. I'm finding how the psychic senses are connected with all the other spiritual and paranormal things I've experienced.

Even when things were really taking off this summer, I never let it go to my head. I really do not feel that what I'm learning is a skill or talent. Each psychic experience I have had has been an opportunity to learn about my ability to communicate with my Guidance and with other living human beings, and of course how they communicate with me. It's a two-way street. It's all interconnected. Everything we experience is something we took part in creating. And discovering the role our own consciousness plays is another component of learning about psychic development.

CONTACT FROM A DEAD FRIEND

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.

MORE ON GUIDANCE

Last week while I was reaching into the linen closet, a question casually crossed my mind which I thought of asking my friend. Suddenly my Guidance spoke up and suggested I wait, because my friend would be emailing me the answer to that exact question soon, when he was ready. That was the feeling I got, and so I decided to listen to it. Too often my ego and its accompanying emotions barge in and push that Guidance feeling out of the way, and either I ignore it or I don’t hear it altogether. As it turned out, several hours later that evening, I received an email from my friend telling me news that was the precise answer to the question I was wondering. The timing and the preciseness of it was too uncanny to be mere coincidence, and recognizing that old familiar Guidance feeling couldn’t be mistaken. Oh boy, that got me excited. I’d been in such a slump for a while now that I was spending pretty much every waking moment mentally yelling “Where is my Guidance and why aren’t you talking to me?!”

I love how it sneaks its way in when I’m least expecting of it, like when I’m moseying around the house not mentally yelling “Where’s my Guidance?” I need to remember that.

I spent the last four years working on writing a memoir-style book on my paranormal and spiritual life experiences, and it wasn’t until writing everything out that I realized how prevalent that thing I call my Guidance was in my life. I adopted that term from my friend Bruce Moen. He's written five books on the subject of afterlife exploration. His website is http://www.afterlife-knowledge.com/. Most of what I’ve learned I attribute to his teachings and the great influence he’s had on my experience with the paranormal. The way my life has changed now, it’s a pretty common conversation for my circle of friends to be discussing what we do nonphysically. And I think that’s one of the most important things I’ve learned from Bruce, is that we are already living nonphysically. This physical world and our physical selves are not all there is. It’s taken me a few years to really grasp that concept, and I’m still learning, still asking questions. And Bruce is always patient with me, explaining things again as many times as I need it. In today’s conversation about that topic he said there is nowhere that I don’t already exist, and exploring nonphysically is just a matter of shifting my focus of attention there.

So that’s where my thoughts are focused these days, shifting my focus of attention and awareness back to that old familiar feeling of what I call my Guidance. I’m finally beginning to understand it now. It’s my connection to my higher self, all aspects of my own Consciousness. Those psychic experiences I’ve had all my life, in all their various forms, are all times when my physically-focused consciousness was connected with my higher Conscious self and able to pick up information I’d usually have no normal means of knowing. For years I used to wonder who was responsible for giving me my psychic information. It was me! All those instances of psychic clairvoyant visions, ESP, psychic dreams, OBEs, and hearing The Voice of my Guidance—all that information was coming from another perspective than what this limited physical world self could know. I look at it that my higher self perspective sees the bigger picture, whatever that may be, while the me here in the physical world perspective has to live moment by moment through time and space.

Bruce always reminds me too that exploring nonphysically requires the use of nonphysical senses to be able to interact there. As I think about it, we use nonphysical senses here in this reality all the time too, but we just don’t really think about it. An example of what I mean happened the other day. I had just cleaned out my daughter’s closet and found an old back pack filled with seashells. I mentioned this to her and then put the pack back in the closet. Later that evening, she wanted to look at the seashells and asked me to go get them. I went into her bedroom without bothering to walk all the way over to turn on the light. I knew I wouldn’t need any light to find what I was looking for. Because I had been the one who organized her closet and had located the seashells, I knew exactly where they were. As I reached into the dark closet, being completely unable to physically see a thing, I thought to myself, “I can’t see it but I know it’s there” and in my mind’s eye I saw exactly what I was doing. I didn’t need the bedroom light to be on for that. I realized I was using nonphysical senses to find what I was looking for. And it also made me realize that while I’m trying to explore nonphysically, I shouldn’t get hung up on struggling to find what I’m looking for. If I can pinpoint my intention of what it is I’m after, then I can easily find it. It’s just a matter of reaching out for it, like the intention of reaching for a bag of seashells in a dark closet. Exploring nonphysically is just a matter of knowing exactly what you want and shifting your focus of attention there. I’m going to remember that the next time I’m focusing on exploring. Just reach out and grab it. It’s there.

Making those connections to my Guidance is what I’m working on these days. Instead of waiting for it to happen to me again, I’m consciously bridging that connection as often as possible now, practicing that process, recognizing that feeling, and living and creating in that area of consciousness. It’s an exciting realization for me…to finally actually realize that those gifts of psychic, paranormal, and spiritual experiences I’ve had all my life weren’t just bestowed upon me by some kind stranger who took pity on me or felt I deserved some grace of kindness at the moment. I had had an inkling all those years that one day I’d be learning the reason behind all those weird and wonderful experiences. I’d hoped that they were there for a reason, all leading up to some grand realization.

And as whenever I learn something new, I still find myself hoping that there’s still a lot more to learn.