Posted by Roberta Grimes • May 02, 2020 • 65 Comments
Book News, Jesus, Understanding Reality
I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses…
– C. Austin Miles (1868–1946), from “In the Garden” (1913)
The more we learn about reality, the more we realize it is one seamless whole. There is no separation between the physical reality that we think we see around us now, and the spiritual reality that is all around us and within us, through us, and so deeply central to every moment of our lives that it may very well be all that is real. This physical reality is an illusion, and shown to be that by the fact that it is composed of atoms which are nothing but energy. If the White House were the nucleus of an atom, placed where it is and the size that it is, then its closest orbiting electron could be as far away as Denver. And there would be nothing between them! We look closer, and we realize that even that atomic nucleus and its orbiting electron are nothing but vortices of energy. Physicists still call them particles for nostalgia’s sake, but they are not solid particles. The only reason why you cannot put your hand right through your desk is that the vortices of energy in your hand conflict with the vortices of energy in your desk.
The more deeply you come to understand the truth about reality, the more often you find yourself experiencing unexpected bursts of joy. I still recall the thrill of reviewing all the accumulated evidence one morning and being dumbstruck by the realization that it was impossible for the afterlife not to be real. And then I recall all the separate thrills as I was discovering additional facts, each of them something like an odd-shaped piece of one amazingly complex puzzle, until eventually now we have the whole picture. Just a few small gaps remain to be filled. Even after all these decades, the wonder of just how beautiful the greater reality is and how devotedly each of us is loved still makes me grin to think of it.
I have told you a lot about what I have learned in my half-century of doing 
this work. But what I realize now is that I never have adequately managed to convey to you some sense of the chest-swelling joy that will be your mindset for the rest of your earthly life once you manage to get your mind around the truth of what actually is going on!
I receive many emails from people that I never will meet in life. Ever since The Fun of Dying came out in 2010, I have been answering afterlife questions from people who are desperate to believe that a love-filled afterlife is possible. And some of those who email me are angry! They are so steeped in religious fears or in rank scientific negativity that the bit of light I have brought into the unrelenting grimness of their beliefs feels to them at first to be an act of torment. “If what you are saying is true, prove it!” Of late, however, more of my emails are filled with the joyous wonder of people who are only now realizing that their whole lives have been suffused by the love of Spirit. They have learned enough about how reality works that at last they can see the spiritual overlay of every minute of their whole earth-lives. The daily workings of Spirit have always been so reverently done, so unobtrusive and respectful, that until they began to grasp the greater reality and their place in it, they hardly even noticed events that you would have thought would have rocked their lives!
Until recently, I had never much noticed the workings of Spirit, either. The love and care of Spirit has for most of my life been for me what it probably is for you: it’s just the water in which we swim. We carefully plan these brief forays on earth with the help of eternal friends who then undertake to guide us so we can use these lives to better grow spiritually. Most of the big decisions that we think we are actively making now actually are part of the life-plan that we and our guides established before we were born. I had never much considered all of this, but as I look back now, of course I can see the constant work of Spirit in my own life, too.
Everyone’s life is full of spiritual miracles! My life is an open book to you so I am going to use it as an illustration, but please be aware that what has happened to me is not at all unusual. Most of the daily action of Spirit happens seamlessly beneath our radar, but sometimes we resist the advice of our guides that comes mostly in meetings while our bodies sleep. So then they have to act in our lives more overtly! (Thomas wants me to point out here that I am especially stubborn, so if you have had fewer of these moments, just be glad that you are working with your own guides more smoothly than I work with him.) I will give you here just four examples of times when Spirit in the person of my treasured friend Thomas has had to jump visibly into my life:
knew right away that I was in the wrong place. Within two months I had moved to Boston, and two days after I arrived there my new roommates invited me to a mixer. So I walked into a room full of people where the primary light source was an uneasy-looking man sitting across the room who was glowing. He was giving off so much light that he had a halo around his entire body. How was it possible that no one else saw it? I crossed the room and introduced myself. We have been married now for almost forty-eight years.
Again I’ve got to emphasize the fact that everyone’s life is as carefully planned and as tenderly guided as mine has been! Each of us looks at a material world that seems to be solid but in fact is not, and we are here for a brief part of our eternal lives with a specific set of spiritual goals, marks to be hit, and people we have planned to be important in our lives. If we had more space, I could give you off the top of my head at least a dozen additional ways in which my primary guide has tugged and prodded me throughout my life! And if you will examine your own life from a position of knowing that Spirit has been guiding it, you will see your own set of such moments lifelong, going all the way back to childhood. And you will be suffused with joy.
The hymn that begins and ends this post is reportedly based on JN 20:14, where Mary Magdalene confronts an empty tomb and two angels. She asks them where Jesus is, and “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus.” I am sharing this hymn with you now as a source of a little added wonder. If there ever was a reason for us to feel overwhelmed with joy in the love of Spirit, that reason is this greatest of all events!
“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ 
Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, ‘Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means, Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.”’ Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her. So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord” (JN 20:15-20).
This passage has always tantalized me. Such odd but very important details! Even the Lord’s closest friends didn’t recognize Him when they first saw Him in His risen body? And when Mary rushed to hug Him, He considered His risen body to be perhaps too fragile to be hugged? Jesus did die on that cross. He did reanimate His dead body, and He used it for just long enough to demonstrate to His disciples that His crucified body had returned to life. But even God on earth could not make a reanimated dead body stable again for long, which is another telling point in the NDE debate. He couldn’t make His damaged and formerly-dead body easily recognizable as Himself, either. Just two small but important details that were passed down orally for two generations before they even were written down. And they give us
another little piece to add to the gigantic puzzle that is our glorious and entirely Spirit-based reality! I think about these two gritty details, what they tell us about the Lord’s great gift to us and the further measure of certainty they give us in the constant care of Spirit, and again unexpectedly my heart fills with joy. It is impossible for any of us to entirely grasp the tender perfection with which each one of us is infinitely loved.
And He walks with me and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am his own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
– C. Austin Miles (1868–1946), from “In the Garden” (1913)
Dear Roberta,
The stories of your early encounters with your main guide are fascinating. I hope other commentators will be willing to share too. My own personal experience is also lifelong, but the “coming out” I remember most vividly wasn’t even a personal interaction. In my college days, I had an apartment downtown and took a shuttle bus to campus uptown for classes. I distinctly remember one day, as the bus was pulling in, suddenly it was as if I was taken in hand, out if nowhere, and I understood that the whole universe was alive, conscious of little ol’ me—and deeply loving and eternal. It was such a vivid experience and I never forgot that the introduction started there.
I have had other experiences since but, as is said, you never forget your first time.
Mike: Were you studying theology at school when you had this experience. I’m asking because you said you were on your way to classes when you had this happen.
Also, we tend to remember the good experiences that we feel are orchestrated by spirit guides, but what about the ones we consider to be bad? Couldn’t they also be deliberately “arranged” by guides for any one of hundreds of reasons? We tend to think that bad experiences happen because we “went off course”, but maybe that is too convenient an explanation, and the not so good experiences may be just a part of some life plan we have.
Lola, I was an English major!
As for the “bad” experiences, none of my contact from my guide or her “team” has been “bad,” although many have provided either a glimpse of a “way out” of a negative experience or a reason to understand why it’s not a bad experience. Her very clear message just prior to the passing of my father (and, soon, my mother) is a case in point.
I guess by bad experiences I meant ones that aren’t what we would ordinarily hope for or want, but you and Roberta are very lucky to have such a bond with your guides. Do you have any tips on how to create a bond with guides? Most people don’t even realize they have guides, much less seek out a connection with them.
Lola, the hope is that others commenting in this space can and will elaborate. My bad experiences are chalked up by myself to the appearance of a challenge I have either directly agreed to for the value of solving or working around it, or to a part of the overall mission I was recruited for (that’s another story) that has a wider scope. But everyone is here for a unique purpose, so it’s hard to say how something that’s significant for one would be for another. That’s why it would be great to hear from many people, and I have a feeling we will.
Dear Lola, it’s important always to remember that our spirit guides are very much people too! We can’t lead the relationship. This isn’t like having a pet. It isn’t precisely like having a spouse, but it is much more like being married than anything else. He and I are working together to get my plan for this life well completed, and no matter how sure I am that I am right, he has his own opinions and if I want us to accomplish anything I had better always keep his preferences in mind!
For example, after Thomas broke into my life in Feb of 2015, I loved talking with him through a medium. I wanted to do it all the time! And he cooperated at first, but I had a lot of questions about Thomas Jefferson’s life and rookie questions about spiritual matters, and after a couple of years during which he put up with my quizzing him every month or three, he simply refused to do it anymore. He began to make it clear to me that for more than sixty years we had worked together quite well without a medium, and now we were going back to that more internal way of working.
I realize now that while I felt bruised at the time – this was close to three years ago – in fact, he managed it all quite gently. He taught me how to recognize his presence, how to perceive how he felt and what he wanted in each moment (and why), and how if I wanted a more detailed conversation while I was awake I needed only to listen internally and I would know in detail what he was saying to me. It was a better way of working than either the nighttime-only way that we had worked together for my whole life or the nights-plus-medium communicating that we had done for a couple of years. Soon I felt quite comfortable about it; but still, I am always aware now that we are working together in the way that works best for him. And I have even come to like knowing that. I am so grateful to him. I want him to be happy!
Postscript: After writing this, I went to bed and then woke up after meeting with him knowing that he wants me to make a couple of things clear to you. He says that this way of working does work best for us, but it might not work best for you and your guide. He agrees that the guidance relationship is a lot like a marriage, two people supporting one another in doing the best that we can together, and he says that you and your guide might make a different sort of marriage that works best for you. He also says that the primary problem with our using a medium was that it made it harder for me to get over the Thomas Jefferson connection. When I was talking with him using a medium I was always a 21st-century, starstruck groupie talking with a historical figure, when what we needed now was to have me focusing on our present work together. He had thought I would get over it, but when I settled into the fun of being able to ask Thomas Jefferson questions and have him answer them, he decided I wasn’t going to get over it and it was time to stop using the medium. It still surprises me to see just how much he is so over having been such an important historical figure! But when I wrote My Thomas, I read every surviving thing TJ wrote in his first 40 years of life so I got to know him pretty well; and the man that he was then he still is now. Even today, he is all about the work.
No, dear Mike, you never do forget your first real encounter with Spirit! And it can be an internal moment of wonder, as yours was, but you had to be old enough to be able to fully register the experience and its significance.
As I first read your comment, Thomas prompted me to tell you that he had wanted to do something similar for me, perhaps at the age of ten; but we had to make me extremely religious by about that age so I would do all the necessary early learning, and I didn’t trust myself to react strongly enough to anything so subtle. So, Thomas says, I insisted that he bludgeon me over the head with that experience of light. He adds, “Typical.”
One thing that you and I have talked about but I don’t think we have adequately shared with others here is that when you really come to know your guide, it isn’t so much a religious/spiritual experience as it is coming to know and deeply enjoy the very best friend you ever have had in your life. Each of us is being guided for life by someone who knows us infinitely and loves us completely and wants only for us to live our best possible life, even though these beings who are devoting our whole lifetimes to us are far smarter and better developed spiritually than we are! Sharing a close relationship with your primary spirit guide is like sprinkling your whole life forevermore with the fairy dust of endless wonder and joy. The thrill of it really is beyond description.
Yes, Roberta, it is true. I hope we have more opportunity to discuss this here. Perhaps others who stop in to comment will share their experiences too.
Roberta: It would be pretty hard to get past the fact that this is Thomas Jefferson – a very important person in terms of history. It isn’t easy to just forget all that and treat him like he was just the guy that lived down the street. However, his life as TJ probably doesn’t carry the weight for him that it did when he was here. He seems to be more interested in what he is attempting to do now than anything he did as Thomas Jefferson.
Dear Lola, I think I never would have gotten over the Jefferson connection while we still were talking about Jefferson, so his ditching the medium was wise. Now it almost never even enters my head! I don’t picture him that way, or hear him that way, and in fact the person that he is now seems to me to be a more substantial individual than was the Thomas Jefferson I know from my research, even in his old age. My Thomas is a deeper and more spiritually and emotionally balanced individual. We really do continue to grow forevermore!
Yes, that’s because he’s evolving and no longer needs the Jefferson persona.
hi Roberta, love what you wrote here in your email.
thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
ramonia
Dear Ramonia, thank you so much for being so kind! I love hearing that you find these posts helpful. Now you have inspired me to try to do even better for next week!
I just want to say hello and thank you for the joy and love you share.
I am always filled with joy and hope after reading your articles.
Marilynn
Oh my dear Marilyn, thank you so much for saying this! What I want to do more than anything else is to fill everyone who comes here with the love and joy of Spirit, so you have delighted me more than you know!
Hello Roberta. I am writing from Uruguay.
Thank you so much for your posts! I have a question: does my mom who passed 25 years ago, listens to my thoughts when I think about her? Sometimes I do a walk at night where I live, in the farm and I look at the stars and think or talk to her
Do her listen to my words? Or my thoughts?
I have read like for three times, the book about the boy who passed away in the car accident in Colorado. Maybe the answer to my question is there but I couldn’t receive the message,I don’t know…
Sorry for my english! I hope you understood my question
Best regards
Mariana
Dear Mariana, welcome! Your English is lovely, and the question you are asking is one that just about everyone asks when someone we love very much goes on ahead of us. We want so much to know that we are still in contact with them. We haven’t lost them altogether!
People who have dropped their bodies are still the same people, but they are different to the extent that they now know the truth about a lot of things and their independence as people combined with their vastly increased knowledge makes it hard to make general statements about what they are up to once they are out of our sight. But this is generally what we have learned is true:
1) In the couple or three years after their deaths, people who were close to us in this most recent lifetime are generally very anxious to make sure that we have gotten over their deaths, we know they are fine, and we are going on with our lives. This is when we might get signs from them that many of us will treasure for life.
2) The world we return to in the astral plane is a great deal bigger, busier, happier, and full of fun things to do than you and I can even imagine! And people who have just returned home want to get back into it once they believe we are okay, so they spend a lot of time away from the phone, so to speak, although if we have an urgent need of them we can get their attention by calling to them. But they are not hovering. We on earth tend to think they must be sitting around on clouds all day, but quite literally the opposite is true!
3) There is no distance. Mikey Morgan is well back into his inconceivably exalted learning and growth in the sixth level of the afterlife, but whenever Carol calls to him to communicate, he is with her in an instant. Their connection has been tight since he died in 2008. On the other hand, if a connection has not already been established it can take awhile to build it, which is why people who have never been in direct daytime contact with their guides have to put some effort into making that connection happen from this end as their guides work from their end.
4) When our loved ones return home they are going back to their real lives and reunited with some extremely old friends, and gradually they are re-acclimating themselves. During the earth-years right after death, while they wait for everyone they knew in their most recent lifetime to come home, they remain in their most recent personality and many of them do focus on individuals on earth, most particularly their children. My mother and I were close when she was here, and she is fairly advanced spiritually. I am actually more aware of her in the last year or two, as she has become more comfortable with being at home again and more interested in the work that I am doing now. Eight years after her death, my sense is that she may be becoming part of my guidance team.
5) But our transitioned loved ones are always very respectful of our privacy! They don’t hover in our minds unless we invite them in, and they don’t eavesdrop on our private thoughts. They remember very well how it felt to be here, and they want to give us the space and privacy they would have wanted. Our guides have been a part of our minds for our whole lives, so they are much more aware of our thoughts from moment to moment.
So in short, dear Mariana, if you have been talking with your mother this way for a long while, then being there with you during those walks is part of her routine so she is there and listening. If it has been 25 years since she went on ahead and you haven’t talked to her much in between, it is likely that she has been watching over you some while she has been doing lots of other things too; and if you are only more recently calling to her in your mind, she still is almost certainly responding now and working from her end to help to build whatever connection you are telling her in your mind you would like. Whenever you think of her, she will draw closer. It is likely that you sometimes meet with her in the astral while your body sleeps, but if you want a more open waking relationship with her now than you have had before, you will need to establish it as you would establish it with your primary guide, by asking for it politely night after night and then picking up and being eagerly grateful for every small sign that it is happening. It can take awhile.
Please know, however, that your mother will be waiting for you joyously when you eventually go home!
Dear Roberta, thank you so much for your response. After sending my question to you, I felt a little bite foolish because I thought I have done a child-like question.
So it made me very happy when you told me that is a common question that people, grown up people,do, hahaha
Thank you again for your answer. I will start from now on to communicate with my mother because it was something I didn’t do for these past 25 years. I will be very patient, and wait for any signal.
Also I will try to make contact with my guide!
Again Roberta, thank you for dedicate your time to answer all the questions we all have!
Sending you lot of love!!!
Mariana
And lots of love right back atcha, dear Mariana!
thanks
Dear Millie, thank you for being here and commenting! Knowing that something I have said has helped you makes me smile ;-).
Dearest Roberta,
The older I get, the more powerful is the realization that my whole life has been held and guided by Spirit. And it’s not just during the beautiful, inspiring times but through the painful and calamitous ones as well; even more so perhaps.
Since the method of this close holding by Spirit involves both my Guardian Angel and my Spirit Guide, I too wish to share something of my experience.
I know that my Guardian, as I call my angel of life protection, looks after my safety and life continuance until my death should occur. He allows me the time to fulfill my life plan; my reason for choosing a life on Earth in the first place. I cannot but be deeply grateful each day I draw breath.
However, my Spirit Guide is a very different matter. She helps me with realizing my plan while I’m having this life experience. She nudges and bumps me to certain understandings and actions, should I choose to take her suggestions, that is.
I always have free choice. Always.
I now see my guide’s enduring love, dedication, adaptability and close focus to my spiritual growth over my entire existence here on earth. Allow me please, to give a few examples:
In my final year of high school (college) I was sitting alone at table one evening, when a voice spoke through me. She told me her name. Just like that. I knew it was another awareness, a strong and gentle, beneficent personality who spoke; this experience was simply no thought or imagining of mine. Of course at that age, inexperienced and under-confident, I was startled. I stood up, moved away and subsequently suppressed this unique event, wondering if there was something wrong with me.
Within a year of this ‘introduction’ I was sitting in my local synagogue, listening to the Rabbi’s sabbath homily and I kind of ‘clicked’ into a different awareness of the scene before me. Quite suddenly I was laughing (on the inside) and felt as if I was watching a ‘live movie’. I felt that the whole thing was a kind of illusion; unreal, a farce, a merry comedy. Suddenly I got the joke, as if I was inside a movie watching it from there. My understanding was that the scene before me was fake and I was filled with the joy of being greatly entertained. The whole world and what happens here felt fake too. I’ve never forgotten this experience, and there have been other such times…
In November 2017 I was sitting at home one Saturday morning and I had a truly astounding experience. In a moment, while I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, I had an awareness of the Presence of God. It involved Jesus in the midst of it. Jesus said something to me. His ‘touch’ was both extremely powerful and very gentle and His thought-voice was clearer than any bell. In fact, the strength and gentleness of it fell on me from above, and the only descriptive image I can relay here that even comes halfway close, is one where a spotlight illuminates you suddenly, while sitting in the dark: Strong and gentle.
Sorry, but I’ll keep what He said private, as it is personal and this blog is public, but it was extremely uplifting. Roberta, I was beyond Cloud 9 for days. I wandered about, interacted and worked etc… but it was as if I was in another place. In short, as I perceived the Divine that morning, I felt God’s Presence as a kind of giant egg above my head. He was Spirit. In the middle of that egg was Jesus. Like the ‘yolk’ at the centre of the egg Jesus was enveloped by the ‘albumen’ of Spirit.
Roberta shortly after that, my guide nudged me (shoved me) to open your YouTube video on ‘The Fun of Dying.’ Soon I found your blog where you suggested the benefits of consciously contacting our spirit guides. Now, with help from one wise blog contributor (who is much more experienced at spirit guide relationship than I) the connection to my own guide has become ever clearer. I realize that she has been nearby all my life. I know that key suggestions at pivotal points in my life have been from her. The picture grows ever clearer.
Dream visits happen for me too. For instance, just several nights ago, my guide was walking with me through the terrain where I had suffered my most serious life trauma. (Actually, the landscape was both like and unlike the actual place in the Midlands of England where I lived at the time.) There in a dream, she and I discussed each detail at length as we both remembered it. To be open, I will admit that I felt the old hurt keenly after this dream and the emotional pain persisted much of last week. However there is a resulting change for the better inside. I’m lighter somehow.
Maybe our guide can walk with us while we sleep at night, helping us heal our deep pain. Roberta, I now just let this all unfold. And it is an unexpected wonder each time. We are as you say, so deeply loved.
Efrem, thank you for your brave and thoughtful post. This is exactly the kind of confirmation I have been looking for, and I am certain many other people have been looking for this, as well. I am happy I read to the very last comment because you hit it out of the park with that one! The examples of your experiences helped confirm my own thoughts and suspicions and provided some much needed hope that we are (spiritually) guided and loved, even if we don’t consciously realize it. I appreciate, more than you know, that you shared your experiences with us. There are many fine contributors here in this blog and I appreciate you all. I have written several responses and questions over the last several months, only to delete them, feeling that what I had to say was just not important or worthy enough of anyone’s attention. I am sending this one, though, because what you wrote was important to me and is likely to stay with me for a good long time. I hope that each person reading here, as well as your loved ones and friends, is/are doing well during these trying times. Thanks Roberta and all, for your great contributions and for the effort you put into helping us to wake up a bit. Or, a lot.
Dear Jeffrey, you have hit it out of the park as well. What a beautiful, graceful, generous comment! With our friends here, I want to let you know that all of us will welcome your further thoughts on future posts!
Efrem: I wish I could have a dream experience like you did. That’s astonishing! However, I had a similar thing happen to me as you describe when you heard the voice. Back in 2002, I had a couple of things I was very concerned about, and suddenly while lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I heard a female voice say “hello, Lola.” I nearly fainted as she sounded like she was sitting next to me, but the voice, although female, was not mine – the pitch was completely different. I have for the past year or so had the feeling you describe while sitting at the synagogue i.e. that much of what we experience here is overrated, and not “real.” I don’t know how else to describe it. I am not including the virus as that is not overrated, but I mean more or less life in general. I would be very interested in what the rabbi was talking about at the time this happened to you, as I feel that whatever it was, someone was trying to tell you not to take it too seriously.
Lola, what an amazingly frank introduction some member of your guide team—perhaps your primary guide—delivered to you in 02. Our lives are in fact guided by a team. Mine is led by a wonderful and wise feminine spirit who, I am led to believe, was in this earthly plane about 1,000 years ago as a shaman or shaman’s wife (I am not certain and I am led to realize but doesn’t matter whether I know details), but her “team” seems to include an old friend of mine who passed away about 20 years ago but seems still to be entangled with my mission here. I hope you continue to have these intimate encounters with your guides. They are, as Roberta has mentioned above, strong advocates and—maybe lucky for us—as investment in our purpose as we are, so we get a lot of help whether we realize it or not.
PS-sorry there are a lot of typos in the above but I hope you can follow. I am technologically challenged these days, working on my phone!🙁
I didn’t notice any typos, Mike, but I do believe we have a “team” of several at least. I also believe that the more we acknowledge guides, the more they are able to help us. It’s hard to help anyone if that person denies you exist. She did not sound angelic or “holy” at all – just like a regular person who I might have been meeting for lunch, but the voice was unlike that of any female friend I had at the time in question.
Hey Lola,
I so appreciate your response here. So your main guide spoke to you too, as if beside you. That’s wonderful. And this, in conjunction with your awareness of the overrated nature of this non real life experience, shows that we have these greater reality milestones in common. Isn’t that great!?
Are we all really just one self in the process of coming together? Nowadays I’m enjoying being here on Earth much more.
🙂🙃🙂❣️
My dear beloved Efrem, when I first read your first post in this series (dated 5/4 at 1:08), I didn’t have time to answer it properly; and anyway, I have learned that when something this wonderful is posted, it often will spark a whole discussion. And so it has! Thank you so much for being the light this week for so many people!!
🙏🏼❣️🕊
Hey Jeffrey,
I’m completely delighted that you found my post helpful and encouraging. Thank you so much for letting me know.
For many years of my life I doubted that I was good enough to be loved and saved. Hence I feel that the experiences I have had were given to me out of mercy (in the classic sense). It was out of compassion that Our Lord gave me a His simple, freeing message.
As is true with my Guide, I am given what I most need. It’s all out of love. And each of us is absolutely loved.
I came to having a conscious relationship with my guide quite recently. And I realize that it has worked because I came to it out of a sense of abundance and not out of lack. (Yes, I’m sure that this understanding was my guide’s suggestion in the first place!) I believed that open guidance was quite possible, that I could be worthy of it too and then I knew…
I guess love is abundant. It is there for each of us aplenty. And my heart tells me that your blog comments are more than worthy to be placed here and to be enjoyed by all of us. 🙏🏼🌅🕊
Thank you, Efrem, for your thoughtful response. I can relate to much, actually all, of what you wrote. The parts about mercy and compassion are really touching. How wonderful! How healing! How amazing! I am still working on it, but the feelings I experience concerning the presence of my guides, or angels, or maybe even the Lord, Himself, are often ones which make me feel they are very close. Like, right there, ready to pop in at any moment. It is almost palpable, but remains very elusive and can be frustrating. I hope to learn and develop more through further prayer, meditation and quiet reflection so that I may hopefully begin to experience even a small portion of what you, Roberta and Mike J-R do. It may never happen, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.
Roberta, the blog was great this week, but your additional comments, as well as those of the regular greats, Mike, Lola, Efrem and others, made it even better. Thank you all for your wonderful contributions. I wish you all the best and send sincere wishes that you and yours stay well in these crazy days of Covid-19.
Thanks, Jeffrey. I started out commenting on these blogs because I was interested in the subject matter, but I now feel like I’m in some sort of “soul group” for lack of a better description. I certainly agree with Efrem in that anything you write here is worthy of attention and, most likely, helpful. Please don’t think otherwise.
Hey Lola, I love your description of us (readers and commenters attending this blog) as a sort of ‘soul group’. It really does feel like that! I am comfortable being open about personal things here, probably because it does actually feel this way.
Sorry, I didn’t answer your prior query concerning the subject of the Rabbi’s sabbath homily at the time I had my Spirit based experience.
Basically I don’t remember the topic since I was too astonished at what was happening at the time. The subject of his sermon was most probably based on the Bible passage read aloud that day. It would have been about the deeper significance of it.
Seeing the whole scene as a ‘live movie’ was a pivotal life moment that I’ve never forgotten.🙂🌅❣️
Hi Lola,
I, like Efrem, also like the notion of this blog as a “soul group”. I personally do not have as deep of connection with my guides and angels as some do here, but I do feel presence quite often and I try to hone in on that. I an also starting to believe perhaps some of us interact differently with our guides, or I should say they interact differently with us. While I relish the idea of a guide giving me specific instructions, I also believe that type of contact will come if such contact is what I need. We always think we know what is best for us, when more often than not we do not. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that I’ve failed in some way, spirit may be communicating just fine if I listen close enough.
I believe this is true, Tim (referring to your last sentence). The key here, I feel, is acknowledgment of a guide’s presence. Once we get over that hurdle, the rest becomes easier.
Dear Jeffrey, thank you for all your wonderful, great-hearted thoughts here. I, too, feel that those who share their comments with us are a big part of the value that people can get from these weekly posts, which is a major part of why I consider all the time that I devote to them to be worthwhile!
I survived my pre-teen and teen years because of my guide or guides, of that, I have little doubt. An example of help I got was when I was riding down a hilly street in my home-made go-kart and for no particular reason, I decided to make a U-turn near the bottom of the street without looking. I didn’t notice a truck coming the other way and missed being squashed by about ten feet. Other similar episodes involved the climbing over the boxcar left for a local farmer, climbing as high as possible on trees, and taking turns with my friend Paul’s rifle.
My experiences were spiritual only in the sense that saving another person’s neck is a spiritual act, and it just occurred to me I never thanked my guide(s) for keeping me intact. So, my guide(s), thank you.
Despite being agnostic, my father sent me to St. Paul’s School, Concord NH. For those not familiar with that school, it is part of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire and was run by a no-nonsense Episcopal Priest, Mathew Warren, DD. He also mandated that we all had to take two years of a course called Sacred Studies, which I believe was a pre-seminary course in the same sense of pre-med courses. Did I graduate wanting to be a priest? Absolutely not. (Actually, some did, such as Frank Griswald who became the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. He graduated a couple of years before me, so we never really met.)
As we graduated some of us asked if we were now more spiritual, having had that course. I think it was unanimous that we weren’t. Yet as I started college I couldn’t help but think that Christianity was nice save the fact that there was no God, and that science could explain everything. That thought was the first to be challenged. Move up a few years and I was working as an engineer and commuting about 30 minutes each way. My favourite radio station was WCRB, which was Boston’s premier classical music station. It also had a program that almost exactly coincided with my drive home called Reading aloud with Bill Cavness. (Another “coincidence”. I couldn’t remember Bill’s name, but it just popped in as I was writing.)
I remember one and only one book he read very well, C.S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength” about scientists working for the NICE (National Institue for Coordinated Experiments). They were anything but nice, and my thoughts about science were forever changed.
It was about this time my thoughts about Christianity were undergoing a slow change. There is no God morphed into “too bad there is no God” to “I’m kind of bummed there is no God” to ultimately “I will act as if there is a God”. As soon as I formulated that little sentence something went “ping” in my brain. It was not worded, but it was an absolutely clear message that there was a God. I don’t know if it was God or guide -that doesn’t matter- but my life turned on a dime because of that. If it hadn’t happened you wouldn’t be reading this. Since a guide may have had something to do with that, I say again, Thank you, my guide.
Yours,
Cookie
Hey Cookie,
I loved the description of your own life’s inner and outer happenings that showed that God, your guardian angel(s) and guide(s) were everywhere.
I agree that the Divine and His helpers are present throughout life, as your close call on the billy cart with that U-turn and a near truck collision attests!
Your ‘ping’ moment of knowing there was a God was really interesting, I felt. Your changing perspective from ‘there is no God’ to ‘I will act as if there is a God’ seemed to get you ready for that ‘ping’ moment of inner revelation. See, this process is most interesting to me. It’s the deep stuff within consciousness, it’s the change that happens inside, that’s where God draws so close.. That’s the truly magnificent thing (for want of a better word describing how wonderful and cherished this is).
Are our guides who are part of our Divine plan, working with us to bring us to that point of God revelation?
Thanks for sharing this! I can see how your guide(s) are helping you to draw closer to the Source. 🌅🙏🏼🕊
Oh dear Cookie, thank you for sharing your story here! Yes, it is virtually always our guides who speak to us that way; they are working with us always beneath our radar, and even long before we are actively interacting with them they will powerfully intercede if we have a “right” thought that they want to encourage.
For me, it was one day when I was annoyed with my then-boyfriend. I thought he should be “in love” with me, whatever that meant, although I wasn’t in love with him. Then I thought, “Well, I’ll bet when I get to heaven someone will love me.” And at once I was flooded with such an overwhelming sense of joy, a sense of being supremely loved. That must have been nearly sixty years ago, but I vividly recall it to this day! I know now that it was Thomas, and I am so grateful still for that moment when he showed me once and for all that I am never alone.
Jeffery, what you said about the feelings that you experience, concerning the presence of your guides, angels and the Lord Himself really struck a chord with me. I too feel that they are very, very close. That’s exactly what it feels like to me.
I’ve learned to trust my deep feelings about Spirit, and now I know that they are so often true spiritual understandings. I reckon that the Lord and our helpers are bringing us into Oneness out of love. We just seem to need to have this human experience where our senses principally perceive this earthly world. For the time of our stay here.
May Spirit ‘pop in any moment’ for you soon! My own Guide established a conscious connection with me only recently, and my mindset was neither one of expectation, nor did I ‘block’ such things. I felt hope and a keen desire to make contact, knowing that I would certainly give it time. (I hope this helps a bit.)
My own method was to just ‘sit with’ my guide every morning upon waking, for several minutes. I still give my spirit guide and guardian angel a ‘hug’ each day and say thank you. This allowed things to accelerate. Though it looks like the relationship and the time it takes to clarify are different for each person. (Of course I meditate and pray to the Lord Himself with regularity, that feels like entering a sanctuary from this world.)
Also, each person and their guide have an individual relationship. For instance, I’ve heard of a more scholarly guy than me, see his own guide send him on finding missions through suggested books to glean a deep spiritual answers and truths placed within the pages. Amazing eh? Jeffrey, I’m more of a schlepper (disheveled itinerant) by nature than a scholar. So my guide drops key ideas and images into my head directly and then she follows up (rather poetically) with things I notice around me, or key words I then hear, that confirm the EXACT point she has made. It is uncanny and it’s such a pleasure to experience this synchronicity.
May you and yours be safe from Covid-19 and all it’s nasty flow on effects. (I wish the same to Roberta and our blog family.) And Jeffrey, I wish you a swift and very rewarding relationship with you own lifelong companion and guide, my friend. 🙏🏼🌅🕊
Efrem,
Thanks so much, my friend! I agree wholeheartedly and I appreciate what you have written in your response. I can only hope to experience a bit of the synchronicity which you have with your guide. I do also maintain hope and a keen desire to make contact with my guides. I won’t be giving up on that one anytime soon. I will endeavour to remember your wise words and keep your method in mind as a guide in my own efforts to connect. Prayer, appreciation, thanks and simply more careful watching and listening signs and clues are definitely going to be a big part of my regimen. Thanks again, Efrem. Best wishes to you and all.
Efrem: I find it hard to believe that you are more of a “schlepper” than a scholar judging by how and what you write, but even if that is true, the fact that you notice things around you and pay attention to “key words” etc. means that you sense a relationship with these beings. Who knows how many times this happens, and most people are totally oblivious to it. Like I said previously, acknowledging guides is a major step, as I believe this is crucial to a good working relationship with them/;
I still feel that there may be help available from other sources besides guides (such as deceased relatives etc), and it is difficult, if not impossible, to detect where this help is actually coming from – it may be a collective effort. We really don’t know.
Hey Lola 👋
I used to be more text and research oriented than these days, however I do enjoy listening and watching for the best way forward, and discerning quietly where my heart bids me go. My perspective has changed greatly in the last few years, my dear. I am more ready to let this world go at some point in the future. I’m not so impressed by the clamor, high drama and drastic nature of human society. In short Lola, I’m not tied up in the game.
And I strongly agree with you, when you say that acknowledging your guide(s) is a major step on the way to an active relationship with them. Maybe it’s like saying hello. 🙂😉🙏🏼❣️
Efrem: I used to be “tied up in the game” but I have lost interest in it and I’m sick of the constant drama that makes its way into our lives. I don’t expect things to be perfect, but I am not motivated for any big challenges any more. I’ve developed a “been there, done that” attitude. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older and wiser, or just plain lazy LOL.
Dear Lola, what seems generally to be the case is that our primary guide orchestrates our relationships with those not in spirit when it comes to guidance throughout our lives. Others will come and go to help us with specific matters under our primary guide’s direction, and sometimes a deceased relative will join our guidance team, but our primary guide is always the boss. I have been writing fiction for going on fifty years, off and on – it’s a six-novel series at this point, with one more to go – and when once I asked my primary fiction guide through a medium how we could keep my writing fiction from interfering with what Thomas wants me to do, she flat said, “His work comes first. We work only as he allows it.” So I would assume that whether it is directly or indirectly from our primary guide, all our guidance is under his or her general direction!
Hello all, This has been especially great for me to read this blog today. I have been trying to contact my guides. I feel them around me and I want to hear them and meet them. Maybe I’m making it seem too hard. I did have an experience recently when my cell phone indicated that someone was texting me. At the time I thought I knew who it was (I was in another room when I heard the phone). I made the conscious decision not to even pick up and look at the phone. As I was walking through the kitchen back to the bedroom, for some reason I turned around and noticed the clock – 11:11. A loud voice said “check your phone”. I believe that was my guide. When I checked my phone, the message was from one of my spiritually like minded friends.
Since then, I have meditated and tried to be still and contact my spiritual guides. I am having trouble with time and negativity. I work in an environment where negativity and lack are very prevalent. Therefore I need a lot of time to quiet down and pull myself out of the negative energy.
I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions on my situation.
Hi Wendy,
When I read that you have seen the number sequence 11:11, that synchronized with hearing a’voice’ and perceiving a phone message from a spiritual friend, I sparked up!
11:11 is by many accounts a number of Spirit; an invitation considered to be from guides (and angels?) to grow into Spirit. As well as being an invitation it is thought to be a message of love, saying that you are already on the right path to conscious spirituality.
I’m no authority, but my own experience involved seeing 11:11 often, in conjunction with hints from my guide – like the things that happened for you with the voice and the phone.
Wendy, it seems you are already in communication with your guide(s).
I’ve learned in life, that the touches of anger, spite, hatred etc.. are heavy and hurtful. However the touch of love is light, gentle, often subtle and quite heartening. And love is enduring; it is with us all our lives. You have a guide who loves you and neither abandons nor forgets you.
I reckon that you will increasingly recognize your guide’s way of reaching out to you. It becomes more distinct over time. It becomes familiar. One thing that helps me though, is that I relax, trust a little and try to be open to my guide’s communication. I know now that being tense and forcing something to happen, doesn’t help. It’s kind of a ‘relaxed receptivity’ that works for me.
You and your guide will find a way. Actually, it looks like you are already finding one! 🙂😉🙏🏼❣️
PS: One thing that helped me a lot earlier on was keeping a ‘guide diary’.
Every time I asked a deep question or I noticed something special happen, I recorded it there. I often wrote to my guide in that diary too. Just a thought..
What a great idea, Efrem. It’s so easy to forget things like that after a while, but keeping a diary of sorts is a great way to look back and remember things like synchronicities, answers to prayers, etc. that so often get erased in our memories by the drama we have to endure just by living here.
This reminded me of a time years ago when I foolishly used a back road as a shortcut and got stuck in a ditch due to “black ice” on the road that was invisible. It was dark out and there are no houses on this part of the road, nor were there cellphones then, so I basically gave up and just started to cry (a typical girlie response). In a couple of minutes, headlights appeared, and an elderly man in a blue truck stopped and saw what happened. He casually went to the back of his truck and pulled out a tow chain and with little or no effort, pulled me to safety. I was so appreciative that I dug in my wallet to pay him for his trouble, but by the time I did that and got out of the car to give it to him, he had gone. What are the odds that someone would be on a road that is almost never traveled, was an age where he wouldn’t scare me to death (he was elderly), and just happened to have a tow chain handy? I never could find out who it was and I had to let it go, but the odds against this being “lucky” are quite high, as hardly anyone actually used that road, especially at night.
Woah! Lola, your anecdote of the old man in the blue truck does sound as if it was an example of a very special kind of help.
What an amazing thing; it makes one stop to pause for thought. Thanks for sharing! 👌🏼🌅❣️
Dear Wendy, I love your story about being prompted to turn in time to spot 11:11 on a clock, and hearing a voice telling you to check your phone. That is absolutely classic guidance behavior! Thomas does the numbers thing for me two or three times a day on days when he thinks I need encouragement, usually 2:22 or 4:44. Occasionally threes or fives. I don’t think the numbers mean anything specifically – it just happens to be a time when he can prompt me to look at a clock.
Clearly your guide is reaching out to you! So you should just say “Thank you! I see that. Please do something else,” and then keep watching. The more you do your part in furthering this interaction, the stronger the daytime connection will become.
As a postscript, after I wrote this response this morning in which I basically claimed that Thomas doesn’t give me ones, he then gave me 11:11 and 1:11 on my computer clock. I never looked at it otherwise. He loves to make me feel silly!
It’s interesting to read everyone’s experiences in spirit, both overt and nuanced. I am no expert, but I am given to understand that contact with our individual guides and their “teams” can be as unique in style as we are—and also, to one commenter’s point, may vary in intensity over a lifetime. It depends on circumstances.
One personal note is that although I have had some clear communication via dream work over the years, my most intense period to date started a couple of days before my father passed away. She helped me nearly every day for a year in a very interactive and overt manner that, nonetheless, involved zero face to face or vocal interaction. I just, as they say, knew what she wanted me to know. So, one way or another, we get the support.
It’s important to note that they are , with rare exceptions, doing the work whether we are aware consciously or not. In short, we are not in our own.
Thank you so much for your insight Mike. I really am making it hard for myself. I just need to let go, relax and call to them or just simply feel that they are there. 🙂 I feel a bit more free now…..
Yes, Wendy! They are eager to have us invite them in, but it’s a personal relationship, so how you do the inviting is up to you. By the way when it really really matters, as many have noted in various comments, they will make themselves clear.
Thank you Roberta. This has been a very inspiring blog post, and I have loved hearing about the experiences of fellow members of our little family here. Speaking of family, I get the impression from my studies that we all have soul groups or families that we tend to incarnate with over and over. Not only that, but ones not in body may act as primary or secondary guides to ones who are incarnate, maybe trading off more than once – us guiding them, them guiding us. That is a heart warming thought. I recall you stating that you and Thomas have known each other in several previous lives. Did you ever hear if you might have served as a guide for him in a previous incarnation as well?
Dear Scott, I think I have always been Robin to his Batman. Always male through 17 lifetimes, and always his supporting player. He has just finished incarnating, and I am apparently his first guidance subject, chosen by him to finish some of the things he wanted to get done in his next-to-last lifetime; but I am pretty sure I have never primarily guided anyone. We are told that people can be effective primary guides only once they reach a fairly advanced level, toward the top of Level Five. Below that, we can be part of someone’s guidance team if that seems appropriate, but just as a supporting player.
dear roberta why is it there is not much said about feathers my wife has been dead over 18 months now and i miss her more now than i did when she died but when i get feathers it makes me feel she is with me i got four bif feathers in one day my son gets them in his wallet i get them in the car ihave even had them in the mailbox when i collect the mail can you enlighen me many thanks Terry
Hi Terry, I am not an expert but have had similar experiences and know others who have had them too. The feathers are significant, certainly. You and your son are in the best position to know what they signify. Their meaning is tied to a bond you had and is deeply personal in order to capture your attention. In short, there is a strong connection being made and you should respond in the manner that makes the most sense to you. It is a wonderful moment each time.
Dear Terry, I almost never find feathers, but after reading your comment I went out to get the paper and there were two big blue jay feathers in front of my front step!
Feathers and coins seem to be the two most common kinds of signs from dead loved ones, I think perhaps because feathers, especially, have been in use for many thousands of years and they are easy to deliver and easy to spot. I think that before we even used coins, people would leave distinctive looking pebbles – white pebbles, maybe – as signs of their survival; then along came coins as a “modern” innovation. There are many more possible kinds of signs today, but still feathers are the old standby. And it is wonderful that your wife continues to give them to you and to your son – be sure always to thank her aloud!
It’s important to note that many advanced beings volunteered for this experience we perceive as incarnation, for the sake this earthly phenomenon. Some roles may seem small, some larger, but all are important. In some cases, the main charge is “listen.” Out guides are the ones who recruited us in these cases. In one mystic tradition they are known as the “Friends of God,” and they are doing the heavy lifting. For us, the hard part is just to listen. We are each a node in a great web of light that covers the earth 🌍. The role of “listening” may sound passive, but it’s actually an important part of the network. So all together now; there’s a lot of listening to be done.
PS-that message was sponsored and brought to you by a wise and wonderful very advanced (and patient) being. This PS is pure me: her message is the optimism of 2020. Thank you for listening!
thank you mike for responding to my message terry
thanks roberta you allways make my day nice helpfull people in your team thank you again terry