Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 20, 2015 • 8 Comments
Book News, Thomas Jefferson
All of us have spirit guides who help us live the life-plans that we made 
before we were born. It must have been my primary guide who spoke to me from out of the light when I was eight, but in all the sixty years since that night I never had wanted a daytime meeting with him. We travel out of body during sleep and meet with our guides on many nights, and I always have felt well-guided.
Then on February 21st of this year I had a telephone reading with Susanne Wilson, who is a wonderfully gifted spiritual medium. My intention was just to visit my family, but toward the end of the hour my spirit guides asked to speak with me. I learned on that Saturday afternoon that I have eleven guides. Four of them help with my personal life; three work with me on writing fiction; and three assist with my afterlife-related projects. And then my primary guide stepped forward and announced that his name is Thomas. In his penultimate earth-lifetime, he was – imagine a drum-roll – Thomas Jefferson.
I was less dumbfounded when I first heard this than you might expect. I have had for my entire life an intense affinity for Thomas Jefferson, even to the point of keeping a life-sized bust of him in my office. I also wrote a well-received novel about his ten-year marriage that was published by Doubleday in 1993 and reissued by Wheatmark last year. It was entitled – this seems ironic now – My Thomas. Thomas told me that he actually had “co-written” that novel, which explained a 
lot! I always had known that it was better than anything I could have written.
Being a primary guide is a full-time job, and of course I felt unworthy of that kind of attention from someone I idolized, but Thomas insisted during that first reading that I not think of him as Thomas Jefferson. That hadn’t even been his most recent lifetime. So I thought that was that. I had a great story to tell friends over lunch, and a sense that finally I knew who it was that was guiding my writing and my life. I began to think about trying to get him to collaborate with me on a book that would address the lies that Jefferson’s political enemies had told about him and that history had recorded as true, the Sally Hemings lie first among them.
But then in mid-May Thomas asked Susanne Wilson if she would conduct another reading with me. I spent an hour with him, listening and arguing through Susanne. That hour altogether transformed my life.
I have indeed just completed a book with Thomas, but it has nothing to do with Thomas Jefferson. It will be published in the Fall. And it is so far beyond anything that I ever could have imagined writing that it is going to deserve its own blog post when the time is right.
One of the things that Thomas had said during our brief February conversation was that I should start doing online education . (Yes, the people 
we used to think were dead are up on modern electronics!) To get my feet wet, I then signed up to be part of a free Sacred Stories Telesummit this month. My Sacred Stories appearance will be on Wednesday evening, July 22nd. Since what has happened in my life this spring is the most sacred story that I can imagine, I may get up my nerve to talk about it then. We’ll see. If I do talk about it, I would love to know that you are in the audience.
Now, on another topic:
One of life’s ironies is that by the time we finally learn enough to be of some use to people, we have accumulated so much mileage that our upholstery is threadbare and our tires are bald. About a month ago we established a YouTube channel and uploaded a series of introductory videos that were done in March. All I can see when I look at them is that this particular vehicle is decidedly past-peak! But of course the message is not, so today I am swallowing hard and sharing those videos with you. It will be immediately apparent to you why my primary mode of expression is podcasts and blog posts!
And finally, I don’t say this often enough: THANK YOU. I hear from so many people who comment here and post or message me on Facebook and send me emails. I have made hundreds of new friends! Please know that I will never take your friendship for granted. If I can help you along our shared life’s journey, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
P.S. – I have just asked Susanne to ask Thomas if he would mind my telling you who he was in his penultimate earth-lifetime. Here is his response, word for word: “It is time. Tell them I lived several more remarkable lives, in my opinion and most assuredly in the opinion of the esteemed discerning council in the realms. Nevertheless, this so-called Jefferson life shall be best known to your world.” Consider my mind to be officially boggled.
Wow! What a fascinating story Roberta. I await further developments (if there are to be some) with great interest. Not being American I really don’t know much about Thomas Jefferson, but I feel the urge to check him out now.
The main reason for my contact with you today, though, is to mention that I, too, had a telephone reading with Susanne Wilson (in early May) and really rate her highly. She immediately brought through the one person who I most wished to make contact with, my beloved wife, and boy did she do that! Yes, there were a couple of references that I can’t yet identify, but the bulk of her communication brought forward things that no-one but Liz and I would have known, as well as much that theoretically COULD have been gleaned from Google or Facebook (so must be excluded from any pseudo-scientific analysis)
Thanks again for all your work in this regard, Roberta.
Heh – Actually, the identity of my spirit guide is kind of fun for me, but it isn’t one-tenth of this story… which is still unfolding. I’ll be blogging about it again, and I believe that our book will be out this fall. It is presently with Thomas’s chosen publisher for review.
Susanne really is brilliant. I’m so glad you had a good experience with her! She tells me that it’s variable – she can go for a week and not get one name – but then, as with you and me, she can hit home runs for awhile. I had become so convinced after a lot of experimenting that all spiritual mediums were more or less charlatans that the reading I had in February was my first in more than a decade. I had thought it was my mother who kept putting into my head the thought of consulting Susanne (of whom I had lately become aware). I think now it was Thomas. But nevertheless, I had wonderful validations from both my parents, and the ones that most convince you are sometimes not big and showy. Susanne said at one point, “Why does she keep pointing to her eyebrow?” Now, my mother had rather skimpy eyebrows, but she was very good with an eyebrow pencil. As I was saying that, Susanne said, “Oh. She says now she doesn’t have to draw them on anymore.” This was enormously evidential to me, since it was trivial to the world but it had been a running joke among my mother, my sister, and me. It was HUGE.
And as for things you’re not sure about, my grandmother was there and didn’t say anything – she was a small and quiet person – but she was showing Susanne an oyster. An oyster? What the heck was that about? A month later, Susanne did a reading for my daughter, and Grandma did the same thing. But my daughter guessed it immediately: it was a name clue. Mediums typically don’t hear names, but their guides pick symbols from their minds (Susanne got “Dorothy” for my mother and “Oliver” for my father by being shown significant movies). My grandparents’ last name was “Ostergaard.” It was simple!
Susanne Wilson has become so popular now that the last time I talked to her she was booking appointments in November. If this upcoming book of ours becomes known, it may become hard to get an appointment with her at all.
Thank you for commenting, dear Brian! And since you’re curious now about Thomas Jefferson, I’m going to send you a PDF of My Thomas. It will be more amusing to read, now that you know that the man himself reports having been its co-author. Since Jefferson’s marriage spanned the American Revolutionary War, It is also a view of what it was like to live through that period. Enjoy!
if it’s any consolation, you don’t sound “old” at all and I can’t see you so the image of yu in my mind is different from what’s on those videos.
I don’t know who my primary guide is but it may be my grandfather who was a preacher in life. as soon as he could find a way he began communicating with me. I never knew him in life. he died before I was born. he was attracted to spiritualism but afraid to go there so he became a preacher instead not realizing how far apart those 2 things are.
I had one of those experiences of light when I was 11 although I didn’t think of it that way till much later when I ws reading about other people’s experiences.
Thank you, dear Lorie! I shouldn’t care how I look, but I just don’t want it to be an obstacle to anyone’s understanding of what is true.
What a great story that is about your grandfather! Yes, he might very well be your primary guide, since he transitioned before you were born – our primary guide nearly always commits to us at birth and stays with us throughout our lives. Other guides come and go – as Susanne Wilson says, “for a season or a reason” – but we remain under our primary guide’s constant care throughout our lives. It’s really a quite beautiful system, that we are so deeply loved and cared for.
I would love to hear more about your experience of light, dear Lorie! They seem to be very rare. Perhaps you might send me a contact email?
This blog is also quite interesting, Roberta, and maybe a little controversial.
First off, my Guides seem to bring some amazing synchronicities in times of crisis, normally at the “eleventh hour,” but I don’t seem to have the day-to day communication with them and the main Guide, that you do. Any suggestions to remedy this, for me and others that are in a similar situation?
Meanwhile, I respect your honesty and intelligence, so I’ll take it at face value that the Spirit that lived as “Thomas Jefferson” is your main Spirit Guide. So, a few questions:
As far as I have heard and read, Jefferson believed that Jesus was the greatest ethical and moral teacher of all time, but rejected his miracles and the supernatural and spiritual world of this teachings. He has obviously found out he was wrong about the later parts. Has he expressed to you his thoughts on his metaphysical/spiritual views now?
The Sally Hemings situation is a controversial one. I re-checked it out and DNA tests on one of his descendants matched part of the DNA of a descendant of one of the children of Sally Hemings. There is no doubt that Jefferson family DNA is in the children of Sally Hemings. But, defenders of Thomas Jefferson say that it could have been his brother, Randolph Jefferson or Randolph’s children, who fathered the children, since they were known to have fraternized with slaves. What does your Spirit Guide, Thomas, say about all this? – And does he admit he was wrong in holding slaves?
Thanks, Roberta, and I’m looking forward to hearing your interview on Sacred Stories this evening!
Hello dear Michael! Actually, until February I didn’t know or care to know my guides. It is rare for them to break into our lives as Thomas did to me, but I think he had been trying during our nightly consults to persuade me to write that book and I wasn’t doing it. So he ran out of patience. I could tell during our May visit that he had not wanted me to know about his TJ lifetime at all because he knew I would seize on it and want to talk about it and he emphatically did not want to talk about it. When I started in gushing as soon as Susanne said the name, I could almost hear him saying, “Oh lord, here we go.” The dead really, really don’t care about their prior lifetimes or value the famous ones, and he seems to be not as happy with that lifetime as you or I would think that he should be.
I hadn’t realize it until now, but knowing your guides is FUN! It’s like you become a walking crowd. It’s hysterical. I recommend that anyone interested in coming to know their guides find a spiritual medium who is able easily to connect with guides – Susanne Wilson is great at it – and have a visit. She also teaches a series on better working with our spirit guides that i will begin to take in August.
Where TJ’s views on Jesus are concerned, he is focused on something else about Jesus now which is to him much more important. I’d rather not say until Liberating Jesus comes out what he and those around Jesus – and Jesus Himself – are trying to do. But it is big.
TJ didn’t father the children of Sally Hemings. The strong circumstantial evidence is that it was his younger brother, Randolph. My guide, Thomas, is a strong and determined man – as Susanne says, “he does not suffer fools” – but I got up my nerve to ask him through Susanne to confirm my suspicion that Randolph had fathered Sally’s children. Susanne said that his answer was, “The children of Sally Hemings were my family responsibility.” Then he seems to have said something sharp to her because she said, “Ah, I wouldn’t ask him any more questions about this.” He always was honorable to a fault. He isn’t going to “out” his brother. He wouldn’t blame Randolph while he was alive, either, which was why he said nothing then. Somewhere in these blog pages there is a post or two about this, but Thomas was emphatically NOT the father.
And as for slavery, he knew it was wrong, of course. (I have blogged about this as well.) He inherited something like 250 slaves, between his wife and himself, and he was stuck with them: it was illegal to free them in Virginia, and even freed slaves in other states lived miserable lives. His solution was to care for them. In My Thomas (the novel that apparently he “co-wrote”) you’ll read what was true – his slaves basically worked five days a week except in very busy seasons, and they raised vegetables and chickens and eggs and sold them to the main house and were paid for them.
The only slaves TJ seems to have bought were Ursula – to wet-nurse his first child, who otherwise would have died – and Great George, so he could be reunited with Ursula, his wife with whom he had not been allowed to live for many years. TJ didn’t countenance beating or mistreatment. He despised overseers, so soon Great George ended up becoming his foreman. At Monticello, slavery was more of a symbiotic relationship – he took care of his slaves because he felt responsible for them and he hoped that if he kept them safe for a bit, soon a solution to slavery was going to be found and let him off the hook. As a result of TJ’s work, Virginia was the first place on the face of the earth to ban the importation of slaves. And if Martha had lived, Thomas’s plan was to retire right after the Revolutionary War and figure out with her how to end slavery. All of this is in his contemporary writings! But she died as the war was ending. He was quite literally never the same man after her death. He went back into politics. The rest, as they say, is history.
Wonderful reply, Roberta, thanks again. Looking forward to “Liberating Jesus” to become available.
I thoroughly enjoyed your interview on “Sacred Stories!
Thank you, dear friend! Sacred Stories was fun, and I adore Rev Patricia. We are working out the Liberating Jesus publishing contract this week, and I’m changing all the Gospel quotations from NIV to NASB because NIV’s permissions are too restrictive (I feel foolish for not having realized that would be a problem). Then we’re good to go! I expect it to be available late in the fall. Then I’ll tell the remaining details surrounding its creation. This is an amazing story – I wish I had savored it more when I was in the midst of it!