“There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.”
~ Albert Einstein, 20th-century Theoretical Physicist

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This article is a repost from our old blog –
originally dated February 2007.
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10. Already having your umbrella handy for that unforecast summer shower.

What? You got a problem with that? Where I live this ability has come in quite handy. No…spirits don’t come from the grave just to warn me about the weather. I just know. Sometimes it comes to me when I wake up in the morning and sometimes when I watch the “real” weather man on the news…he says his bit and my intuition says its bit. My intuition is usually spot on.

9. Asking Julia Child for new recipes when you’re in a pinch.

Okay well I don’t know if its really her or a spirit who knows a lot of recipes and talks kinda funny. All I know is that is some fantastic Chicken Alfredo that she whipped up. And I am asking her now for some good artisan bread recipes the next time that she pops in. Or the elusive recipe for that Death By White Chocolate cake that I had the last time that I visited Orkney.

8. Alway having someone to talk to, even if half of the time the voices are only in your head.

One of my guides has this habit of popping in when I am in a situation that is so particularly modern and in some way completely ludicrous. She is always blurting out sarcastic remarks in my head and I have to fight especially hard sometimes to keep from laughing out loud or repeating her comments for all to hear. I think she’s a riot but one of these days she is going to get me in trouble. (Next time I go and chat with her I’ll make sure to comment on her situation in such a way that she has to fight from being inappropriate on my behalf. ;))

7. Being able to throw out the Ouija board (now that you are one.)

I had an ancient pagan priest come to me and tell me that I was “a f-ing Ouija board” and so therefore my desire to use one was just a further removal from the source and I should get rid of it. I am, as usual, a little bit insecure about my gifts and wish always to have them reinforced or “proven” by some other type of divination. (Hey, it’s a known issue and I’m working on it.) Nevertheless, no more ouija board, gone, finito, adios, bye-bye.

6. Being able to hear Elvis sing “Live” even though he’s no longer alive.

Get this…I don’t even really like Elvis. I ‘d prefer to hear Hendrix, Lennon or even Nat King Cole. But Elvis was a strong-willed kinda guy and when we die we are still exactly who we were, end of story. If someone plays an Elvis CD near me I just know that I’m gonna accidentally tune into his energy and the next thing I know its like he’s crooning in my ear. And it’s never the song that’s playing on the CD, it’s always some other song. My head gets confused by this sometimes and so I avoid the ole Elvis music as much as possible.

5. Having dead folks try to tell you what do to with your life.

Though it does seem a bit ironic, this is not meant to be a joke, honestly. They are full of wisdom and are generally altruistic, trying to help the living live the best life possible, without regret. I had a deceased relative come to me after her funeral recently and offer me some advice. She noticed that everyone around her grave could say she was generous but that no one thought of her as kind. You see, she had bent over backwards to help people but was always a bit opinionated. She always gave good advice but in a rather harsh and judgmental way. This made folks afraid to disappoint her and in the end made people back away from her as she became more cantankerous. Her advice to me was to learn the meaning of the two words: kindness and generosity, and try to cultivate BOTH in my life. Good advice since I am asked to give my opinion all the time and usually on topics that people are quite sensitive about.

4. Standing back and watching the building of Stonehenge through one of the builders eyes.

I went to visit Stonehenge on one of my trips to England. In general the place is way too commercial…too much camera clicking, too much highway and not enough chanting for my taste. But, once I sat down and got into an Alpha state the place changed completely. I was there at three different stages. One stage at which there were wooden markers and workmen’s platforms all around, with people hustling and bustling about. One stage with people coming in, down a long promenade to bless the finished circle and one stage at which a ritual was going on. I was standing far outside the circle with multitudes of other worshipers and then I was able to fly up over the whole place and come down in the center circle where an initiation ritual was being performed. Believe me when I say that this is where our phrase “Being part of the inner circle” comes from.

3. Seeing things come to fruition exactly as you had known they would.

This can sometimes be big stuff but is usually just a small-scale, warm fuzzy way of getting a reaffirmation from the Universe of my gift. A while back I woke up in the morning with a song in my head that reminded me of an old friend. As I lay in bed listening to this song I just knew that he was thinking of me and would be calling me later that day. But after I got up and started moving about my day I got a feeling that I understood to be a wake-up to listen. I listened to my intuition and it told me what he would be calling about. He had been diagnosed with a chemical imbalance that was causing him to be clinically depressed and he was wondering if I in my herbal healing, “know-it-all” way I could suggest some things that might help him. That put me on alert and I sat down that afternoon to do a little research. When he called (and he did) later that evening I already had some info put together for him and a brief list of where he could get the stuff. He wasn’t surprised that I already had his info for him but, to be honest, I kinda was.

2. Helping others on their personal spiritual journeys.

People always need some kind of help along the way to achieve their best possible self. That’s why we are all here together, to challenge and assist each other. My most common question from folks is “What is my purpose in life?” Well I really love this one, it shows real thoughtfulness on the part of the individual. They have thought about life, about joy, about health and about family and have determined that each would be benefited most by their following their true purpose. That is the best decision that can be made for anyone. So, they come to me and I tap into their energy waves, their guides and the universal map for their life and that allows me to give them a definitive answer: “You are meant to use sound to heal others. You have a spiritual connection to harmonic sound. Go and learn how to use a synthesizer and make your creations available as a podcast or as CDs. You will find joy in this and will be offering true benefit to this world.” As a spiritual seeker myself I get great joy out of helping others with their paths.

1. Knowing that you are working toward your ascension every day.

Whether you believe that the planet is changing in a fundamental way and that the whole kit and kaboodle is about to enter a higher dimensional existence or you just believe in personal ascension into a higher level of consciousness, the truth is that we are all changing. we are all constantly learning and evolving, releasing behaviors and beliefs that no longer work for us and embracing new thought patterns that better represent what we are now in our lives. In this way we transcend our old selves and become something different, wiser and more evolved. To transcend the past and lovingly embrace who we have come to be is the path to personal ascension. I know that I am working toward my greatest self and toward ascension not just because the spirit guides always tell me so, but because I can feel it within me. With every question that I answer, with every person that I help, I vibrate at a higher level and I emit more light of Universal Love. You are each helping me with my ascension as I live out my calling and help you toward yours. It’s a symbiosis.

“I don’t believe that ghosts are “spirits of the dead” because I don’t believe in death. In the multiverse, once you’re possible, you exist. And once you exist, you exist forever one way or another. Besides, death is the absence of life, and the ghosts I’ve met are very much alive. What we call ghosts are lifeforms just as you and I are.”
~ Paul F. Eno, Author and Paranormal Researcher

As an addition to my Medium Adventures series, a reader recently asked me this question….Should you be afraid of being a medium?

It is an interesting question. And one that several people who have “accidentally” or “purposely” developed this skill over time have probably been faced with.

To be honest because I am a trained witch, meaning a “wise woman,” who has been exposed to the paranormal on a regular basis since I was fifteen, I never really had this concern at all.

But religion and dogma are just a doorway to true spirituality. Many of us are now becoming “spiritual” and slowly dropping the restrictive “religious” approach to self development.

With this in mind, the gifted mediums who are now beginning to blossom and step onto the stage, myself included, come from all different backgrounds and carry with them a wide array of beliefs and understandings.

You may have come to this path through Buddhism, or Catholicism or through Judaism. Where you came from denotes how you will react to the realization that you are starting to develop certain abilities.

This is what annoys me about some of the blogs out there written by other psychic mediums: They speak in a pointed manner about all sorts of “negative” experiences that they’ve had.

Call it transparency or call it shock value, but it does absolutely zero to foster healing or awareness in people. It simply serves to make people keep paranormal phenomena at arms length, to essentially cut themselves off from the spiritual world and their own gifts.

What these psychics fail to realize is that their negative experiences are caused mainly by their own selves, by their approach. (Or lack thereof.)

A witch learns to Believe not just Think that they are in control of the elements and the spiritual realm. Yes, these forces can do things that we cannot do (such as materialize and dematerialize at will) but they cannot take manifest form. This fact gives us a power over them, however much that power may be rooted in the ego.

We are physical beings, but with just as strong of a spiritual energy as any paranormal phenomena. The first thing is to set up boundaries. Spirits have different levels of ability themselves. Some can hear, some can see, some just sense. Others can muster up enough force to speak and even, at times, to move things.

I just felt that shiver run through all of you. *wink, wink* Oh, come on.

So if I approach the communication with spirits, elementals entities and other extra-sensory beings with the knowledge that I am the one in control, it enables me to change my energy frequency in such a way that they understand the boundaries.

I speak to them, both internally and also out loud when I feel the need. I simply tell them that I am open, but that they will only enter when I agree, that they will not show me horrific images, that they will leave my sleep in peace and that they will not fully possess my consciousness. (Most of them do not wish to do this anyway, for how could you give them aid or tell their story if you weren’t present for the bulk of the communication?)

So that is, basically, it for setting up boundaries. Yes, it really is that simple. The key isn’t using biblical symbols or calling archangels or speaking in fancy tongues. The key is true Belief that you have the upper hand.

Think of it this way: If they were more powerful than you are in your little ole physical form, why would they need to come through you to accomplish their work? Why wouldn’t it be you needing to go through them? (Leaving aside the fact that at some points on your learning path it will be you needing to go through them to accomplish your work. That’s what they call a symbiotic relationship folks.)

Many spirits and elementals are simple in nature and not some big galactic or evil force wanting to control all that you do for the next forever and ever, amen.

No. It is the mind and belief structure of the medium that gives these beings their form much of the time. You believe that there is 50% evil in the world and 50% good and you are just waiting for the day when that “evil” attaches itself to you and rides you like a sweaty night hag? Well then, baby, you will have that day, sure as a rainstorm.

But if you believe that we are all essentially of one Great Source, just walking at different learning points on a similar path and you believe that you can help others by becoming one with their energy for a brief space of time…that’s what you’ll end up experiencing. Like the creator of rainbows.

If you are at the beginning of this adventure and you are experiencing new abilities then just let it ride for a while. See where it takes you. This truly is a gift.

Of course, right now, it may not seem like a gift. But at least know that it can be a gift to others. You can help others, just by being open to spirit. You won’t need to go and spend the eight years in college to become a psychiatrist or parapsychologist. You’ll be able to help them instantly, giving guidance and effecting some much needed resolution.

If you feel fear or pain at the thought of becoming a medium, first embrace the feelings as valid expressions of your own inner self awareness. Then allow yourself the freedom to realize your place within all creation and your oneness with all things.

You ARE those spirits, YOU need to get YOUR message through, YOU need to know resolution, YOU need to heal the wounds that YOU had in life so that YOU can progress onward and upward, unburdened to meet YOUR next challenge.

See how it changes and becomes less threatening when you identify with the fact that we are all one and the same energy force striving for the ultimate awareness so that we can reconnect with our Source? You realize the importance of the work that you are being called to do.

If all else fails and you KNOW that you WANT to follow this path of the medium but you have hit a stumbling block, reach out and make contact with another medium. Tell them about your hopes, your fears and your difficulties.

Some may be short with you. Some may be over-wordy. But all will be familiar with at least some of what you are feeling. And just writing out your experiences will help you, I guarantee it.

Blessings on your own path to self-discovery.

-Vera Nadine

“I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me. ”
~ Noël Coward, English Playwright and Composer

Well there are several different types of Psychic and several different types of energy. I do not claim to know them all. But I get lots of questions about my experiences with energy and paranormal phenomena so I thought I would take a moment to explain one type of psychic ability that I often use. I am not aware of other psychics who have this same type of ability so please drop me a line if you have experience with it.

This gift has to do with time and in particular distant past, however all time is a continuum and the present and future are all occurring together along with the past. So our ancestors who lived in, say, a mud roundhouse are still living there in that mud roundhouse right now. Your unborn grandchildren who will one day run in the field beside their school are already running there right now.

The past is the future and the future is the past. Right now is yesterday and tomorrow is right now.

It may seem hard to grasp, like some big conspiracy of the philosophical people to sound deep and intellectual. But once you suspend confusion and disbelief for a moment it becomes quite easy to grasp.

Have you ever experienced Deja Vu? Have you ever sunken into a conversation with someone or been out shopping with your children or reached for a sweater to fold it and had that warm fuzzy awareness of exactly how the next twenty seconds would occur? It can be eerie but it can also be quite comforting, the knowledge of what the next bit of the conversation will be about.

Is it really so hard to believe that just as we are living in our third dimensional reality, there may be other humans living and striving in their other dimensional reality? Because that is the only difference.

I say that I am a psychic elephant because elephants are rumored to have amazingly long memories.

Some psychics say that they could hear voices as children or see ghosts or often knew the future. Well you could say that I would be one of those whose gift came in the form of knowing the future, but only insomuch as the future IS the past. Since a very small girl I have known the past.

I began by telling little playmates about what used to be where we were playing in our neighborhood. I am quite sure that I freaked out our third grade teacher one day while we were visiting a living history museum that depicted life 150 years ago, by telling her that I “remembered living back then.” She insisted that what I meant was that I remembered having visited the museum before.

Later on in college I studied history, drawn to the spiritual high that I got out of it more than any grand career I imagined it might bring me. During this time I was also working with a priestess of the Goddess and becoming more aware of my connection to the natural and spiritual realms.

My academic focus was on architectural history and its no wonder that I soon began developing a much more acute gift for psychic visions of the past. Buildings are boxes that filter light and light records things in energy form. Buildings are like books waiting dusty on the shelf for someone who knows their language to come along and read them.

People ask me how old their house is. I read its psychic energy, its aura. I give them a date, say, maybe 1778. Then they hire me or someone else to do all of the title and deed research. Inevitably they come back to me and say, “Hey you know my house was built in 1779. How did you guess so close?” I just smile and say, “Oh, I studied this stuff.”

My two best friends know what I can do. My roommate likes to listen to what I see when we go driving around or hiking. Amongst other things, I have seen sacred elders perform an initiation ritual inside Stonehenge, a 17th century ship sink off the New England coastline, an angry Mounty pacing back and forth in front of Niagara Falls and ancient Native Americans hunting just off of a forest hiking trail.

When I worked in museums it was a spiritual rush to go to work every day. To hear the spirits that once owned these artifacts, to feel their energy and often see the scene of when it was made, or gifted or how it was used…these were special moments indeed.

Maybe this is why spirits, living and dead, from other time periods are a lot of what I deal with in my psychic work. They know that I do not believe them to be “long gone” or to be “delusions.” I am one foot in the past at every moment so having a woman who lives in a cave and hunts saber-toothed cats come to me because her young child is dying and ask me to see him safely to her ancestors is not weird at all. I do what I can with my gifts to help the young soul cross over, give the mother some comforting words and then come back to popping microwave popcorn or whatever I was doing.

I must say though that the people around me must sometimes think that I am bored by what they are saying or that I am just a serious daydreamer. When I studied for my Masters in England my professor commented that I had a low tolerance for listening to anyone who wasn’t as clever with words as I am. But he was mistaken.

Our classes were nearly all held on site so to speak. We took long bus and train rides to medieval abbeys, defunct castles, 14th century cottages, pagan monuments, places older than I had ever visited in my life. Then he would walk us around and try to talk about science and conservation. “Ahhhh…sorry, I’m currently watching the 300-year-old monks plant their garden, dude. I’ll, like, be back with reality later…M’kay?” I mean what was I supposed to say?

A guide who came from the Pleiades once told me that I was a recorder. That my gift was to remember all of the details and to have access to all of the lives that I had ever lived. He said that through those recorded moments and people and places I could access any and all other points in time.

People who know me well will tell you that my memory is more than uncanny, its downright spooky and even somewhat annoying. Ask me what shirt I wore on Christmas day when I was 12. No problem, a pink one with a bright orange stripe that said L.A. Gear in it. Ask me what exact words you said to me last Friday as we were coming out of the movie theater…”Man, when did hot dogs start tasting exactly the same as nail polish remover smells?”

Why I know the words to every movie and every character and every song and every comedy skit I have ever heard (much less how these are going to be helpful in some future life) is completely beyond me. I memorize words and pictures, it’s just what I do. I even memorize to a millisecond the pauses between the words and the inflection of peoples voices as they say them. (I do great impressions.) I don’t try to memorize this stuff, it just happens by default.

Like, I will always know if you have been in my closet because I can remember that the blue coat hanger had three white coat hangers hooked on top of it with a pink one on the left and exactly two and a half inches between that pink one and the scarf that lays over the rail at that end. It could be four days since I last opened that closet but if the white hangers aren’t tangled in the blue one anymore or the space has increased to four inches, I’ll know it.

So while I cannot imagine a reason for that spectacularly odd gift of memory, I figure that there must be a good spiritual reason why my newest guide, who is an ascended being and healer, is also a conduit for every female ancestor (both blood related and spiritual family) who has ever come before me.

I am an historical medium, that is the only way that I can describe it. I can often tell you what has happened in a place before, whether it is inside a building or in an open field. Maybe this explains my love of historic research and archaeology…we all feel the need to have our gifts validated from time to time.

The oldest thing that I have been exposed to was probably 35-40,000 years ago. I have had several visions and conversations with people who lived 6-8,000 years ago. And my most frequent communication is with peoples who lived about 1,000-1,500 years ago. Since I live in a relatively young country and see its history all the time (usually in very short but highly-detailed flashes) I consider 100-400 years ago to be basically like yesterday.

I know, you are asking yourself, “If the past, the future and the now are all happening at once and she claims to be able to see the past and speak with people from the past then why can’t she do that for the future too? The answer is that I can. But I do not have the same affinity for it. Human perception allows for only a linear understanding of time, at least on the conscious default kind of level. The past is something that just happens to me, the future is something I have to try to do and I feel lucky but doubtful when I do actually succeed at it.

Some people, rather than being sent forward as a recorder, I am sure have been sent backward as an eraser, to reset things that went too horribly wrong for the world. Perhaps they have a stronger affinity for the future than I do. But the few times that I have been able to look at a piece of land, or held a concept in my mind, that then triggered a view of future realities, they have all been very clear, but very isolated.

For instance, I can see my future home and its surrounding land but not anything that abuts it. I have no idea where the place is but I will definitely know it when I see it. As a matter of fact I call it home now, walk its halls and smell the flowers in its garden. This is because I have already been there. But I have been to my past homes as well, have looked at my past selves.

The past is something that I am just part of, that I just stumble into regularly. It is like an old trusted friend, tried, true and comfortable.

Anyone who has read some of my oldest posts has heard my primary guide Maggie. She is a tenth century healer and wise woman and she lived in Southern England. I have been to her home, MY home actually as Maggie is my own past self, my past life and my higher self as well. I have seen this house in visions and I have been there in the physical.

She told me what the town was now called, I took the train there from where I was going to school, I got off the train and I told her to take the feet (in other words, guide me to where we are going.) We walked about three miles out of the town center and through a modern housing complex. At the end of it sat a hilly field with nothing in it but high-tension electrical wires and a few ruts where people had driven their off-road vehicles.

She marched me across that field, with my eyes completely closed and I saw all of her neighbors huts, the children playing in the cart paths and the pigs in their paddocks. Suddenly she stopped and I was staring at the wooden door behind which was my (and her) former home. When I lifted that latch folks, it was solid and real, I felt it in my hand.

Now I know what HOME feels like and I know that this place truly was her home because I buried a simple mundane object there. When I let her take the feet again four years later, she walked me to the same exact spot in this vast, empty field and a few clawfuls of dirt soon proved it when I came up with my same old Powerpuff Girls key chain.

Beat that for tomorrow nights lottery numbers.

“Inner seeing has nothing to do with physical vision; it’s the perception of life directly.”
~Frederick Philip Lenz, III, Ph.D., Spiritual Teacher of American Buddhism

Someone wrote and asked, “When did you first know that you had the sight?” Good question. I, of course, do not have a very simple answer.

Firstly the sight is ofttimes a complete misnomer as many psychics do not actually SEE anything. I think that this is what can give rise to dismay amongst people who are attempting to develop their own sixth sense, they sit there hearing things and feeling things and never trust that they actually have a gift because they have not actually seen Uncle Bob come walking out of the mists and bow down before them in his burial attire.

Back to my gift…I suppose that I was a very precocious child, I was hungry for knowledge from a young age and had an inherent rightness about my way of speaking. Many may choose to coin this “Know-it-all Syndrome.” (Think Hermione without the wand.)

I truly do not remember ever thinking that I had a different gift then anyone else, and if I did it certainly revolved around reading and writing more than trancing and speaking in tongues. But I would tell stories to my friends. Everyone loved to listen to my stories, all of my little friends getting their free bit of after school entertainment out of me.

I would tell stories about the ladies in their funny hats and long dresses getting off of the train at a depot that used to be right where we are standing, about how cars used to be huge and shiny and have funny fins on the back of them, how a little girl used to play in the closet with her doll house just like we were playing now. Everyone loved how vivid my stories were and I felt like I had a gift. But the truth is that they weren’t my stories, I know that now.

My Mother always said that I was an Old Soul, something she could see deep in my eyes. She had a knowing of her own, seeing something in me before I was even born and naming me Vera Nadine, perhaps in the hope that I would become exactly what I am becoming today. I use to entertain her friends, and I think scare the pants off some of them, by singing songs from the 1940’s that I could not possibly have known on my own. Maybe it wasn’t me singing.

One summer, at camp, I walked along the forest path toward the lake with several other little girls and touched each tree for a time, the others pausing to listen as I told them the story of that tree, what it had lived through and seen, how it was feeling and when it would die. It only occurred to me many years later that I wasn’t lying to them but reading, at a very early age, the energy imprint of that living being…a signature that all things carry.

A part of me always knew that I wasn’t lying, that what I was saying wasn’t entirely made up out of my own imagination but tied, in some very real way, to an indescribable thing that I couldn’t see or touch but that was truly there somewhere lending its voice to my words. Call it child’s play or call it magic but I believe that my gift is inherent, something we all have that seeks expression.

Years later, after having attended a Protestant church for almost ten years with my extended family (neither of my parents condescending to attend with me mind you) I made confirmation alongside a boy named Damien (yes, really) and told my Father that I would not be going back there anymore. I didn’t find any truth or spirituality in the standing and sitting and mournful singing. Since we had agreed I could do as I wished after making confirmation, he didn’t fight me. (The whole fiasco I deem to have been arranged by him to appease his family’s desires to have me in church rather than by his own desire.)

Now I believe that spirituality and religion can coexist, but that they are not mutually exclusive and that the one can sometimes put a pretty firm end to the other and vice versa. After leaving Protestantism I embraced a solitary Pagan path and began researching more about earth-based religions. This is something that I worked at and learned more about all through high school. I do believe in magic, that is the ability to transform energies to your benefit, and know that I did some small bits of it as a teenager.

During this time I continued to be the learned-know-it-all and for some reason people always came to me when they had a problem that they could not solve or needed a shoulder to cry on. I also began attempting what I thought was Proper Divination, adopting a set of Tarot cards from a high school sweetheart (I still have them Lucas.) and toting them to a multitude of keg parties and Denny’s restaurants. I helped some people with what I told them, but always seemed to be more accurate when I forgot about the little booklet that had the card meanings and just “lied” to each person about what they meant based on what I thought that person needed to hear.

Why do I keep saying that I lied? Well because that is what I thought for so long, that I had lied to these people, that I was just being creative and making up stories to entertain. It is only just recently that I realized why I felt this way. It is because children are not raised to believe in the unknown as a thing of value, unless of course we are talking about certain select few deities, and therefore they believe that anything unseen is a figment of their imagination. But this is not always so.

Was I lying to these people about talking trees, what the tarot said for them or whether or not a little girl had once played with her dolls in the nearest closet? I do not think that I was. I think that I was simply exercising a gift which for me at the time had no definition, no recognizable value or purpose. Now that my connection to the divine is solid to me, has structure and definition, I see where these occurrences fit in to its development.

Freshman year of college my own spiritual path was illuminated for me in many ways, I met an older lady who was a priestess of the Goddess and had been taught many years earlier by another elderly lady whom she had met in her travels. She agreed to teach me her way of belief. I was so excited and by coincidence I also took a class that semester in the Myth and Reality of Witches…yes it did fulfill a General Education requirement.

I will not attempt to dispel all of the myths or explain all of the realities here, suffice it to say that the one strong reality I left the class with was that this was what I was meant to be, what I already believed and that I wanted to know other people who believed the same stuff….that there was a balance to all life, masculine and feminine, black and white, wet and dry, up and down and that we as spiritual beings having a physical experience could live in harmony with the rest of creation and in honoring it could harness its energy for the greater good.

My years of study with this woman included mostly work on the self, such as integrity of the word, cleansing negative habits, living in self-discipline and learning to slow the body and release the mind through meditation and path workings. She also instructed me in ways to connect to and commune with the different aspects of nature so as to better know their energies and be able to use them in a beneficial way.

As spiritual seekers, no matter what our mixture of beliefs or our chosen religions, we are all striving towards a true inner balance, a connection to the divine and toward personal impeccability. The truth is that this perfect impeccability cannot be fully achieved in manifest, physical form but it is the striving and the acknowledgment of our own imperfection that makes us impeccable.

When I was ready to go out on my own, armed with a strong spiritual foundation, my first guide finally came to me, not in a meditation but in a waking moment of self-despair. I had lost someone that I loved very much and could not reconnect to them in a constructive way and as I sat doodling crop circle-like forms on a blank paper (something I have done since puberty) a voice sounded in my head and my hand started writing words. That was Gretchen. Many other guides have come and gone since but she remains the constant.

Gretchen has helped me accept my chosen purpose in this life and has aided me in developing my gifts further so that I may help other spiritual seekers in this lifetime. I am sure that more gifts will develop in time just as I am sure that you are reading this because you suspect your own gifts and are wondering if it can be possible. I am here to tell you that it is so.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. ~Mark Twain, American author and Humorist

Here is an interesting thing that occurred recently. It only lasted about eight minutes, but it seemed like several days…

I was lying in bed, just getting to what I call the twilight place. It is that place between sleep and awake where you begin to have very surreal thoughts and scenes pass through your mind, but you are also aware of your “self” and thus technically still awake. (This is the place that astral travelers and people who practice lucid dreaming are able to maintain.)

Anyways, I became aware of an open field, or clearing, in which I was standing with a muddy garden and a small run-down hut off to my right. It was just about sunset in this clearing. There was a woman crying off to the edge of the clearing and she was looking down at the ground. I approached her and gazed down to try and see what was upsetting her so much.

When I did, I was looking into a deep hole and gazing straight into the blank, open eyes of a man who was stone cold dead. I got freaked (as one does) and just about lost my connection to the scene and this woman.

But I reminded myself of something that Erin Pavlina said to me when we had talked on the phone, “Allow yourself to be startled by what you are shown, but do not allow yourself to become frightened by it.”

I slowly calmed myself and pulled myself back into the scene. I mean, I was being shown this for a reason and I had to stay present long enough to figure out what that reason was.

I came back to the place and looked down into the grave hole again.

The man was clothed in a ripped and worn woolen tunic and leather breeches. There was also a very cheap and tarnished bit of chain mail in the hole beside him.

His eyes were wide open, staring blankly up into the cascading tree canopy that leaned over the edge of the clearing.

In those eyes I could see shock and pain, but not the normal confusion of the recently deceased.

The woman, whom I took to be this man’s wife, said to me, “He is lost. He is bound and cannot be free. I fear for his soul.”

She followed this up with, “He has suffered enough. Can not you help him?”

At this point, I became aware of this man’s spirit watching us from just inside the forest a few yards away. I stepped a bit closer to him and asked him, “Why aren’t you able to move on?” Suddenly, it was just myself and this spirit, and the clearing seemed to have gone dark, like the sun had set.

The spirit raised his arm slowly and pointed to a place just the other side of his grave and pronounced wistfully, “HE won’t let me .”

As I turned, there appeared another spirit, that of a very burly, muscular man in leather and metal armor. He was standing with his feet spread wide and his arms crossed, as if guarding a doorway. He looked to be stubborn and was clearly quite angry.

I looked back and forth at the two of them several times. It was obvious that there was a strong relationship here, but that it was not due to family relation or friendship at all.

Finally, I walked closer to the burly spirit and the other spirit followed me, allowing me to be the one standing between the two of them. “Why are you preventing him from passing the veil?” I asked the second spirit. He answered quite snidely, “Because he did this to me.”

“He killed you?” I asked. “Yes. He shall never know peace.” He replied.

The first spirit explained to me, “It was in battle.”

Instantly, I received a vision of what had happened between the two men on the battlefield:

The burly man was part of an invading party (I think that they were Viking or something similar) and the other man was one of a smaller group of defending locals. I believe he would be considered Saxon.

When the invaders ran at the the line of the local men, assembled on one side of the battlefield, the line broke chaotically. Some men ran forward into the fray with their weapons drawn. Some ran forward blindly with their eyes shut. Some men turned and ran back away from the battle and others simply stumbled backwards, falling all over each other.

It was a bit like Braveheart with Vikings, but with much less choreography and less obvious valor.

The burly Viking was not in a position of weakness, but the Saxon man was. He was encircled and surrounded by five or six foes. Like the bottle in a game of Spin the Bottle… he just kept spinning in circles, pointing his weapon outward and striking anything that he could.

The Viking was several yards away, further in the fray, dominating his enemies quickly and continuing to move on to the next. Suddenly, he pushed into the circle surrounding the Saxon.

In a flash, this smaller Saxon man ran the Viking straight through with his sword. The Saxon was equally as surprised as the Viking that he had run him through. It all happened so quickly and without any other focus or intent on the part of that Saxon than protection and survival.

The Saxon was immediately aware of what had happened and, while saddened at not having had the chance to face the man eye-to-eye when he killed him, this Saxon man was relieved when he realized what happened. For, looking at the size and the fierceness of this Viking, he knew that if he hadn’t gotten lucky then he would be the one dead.

After seeing this vision, I instantly returned to the scene in the now dark field with me standing between the spirits of these two warriors.

The Saxon man explained, rather demurely, “I was in the right.”

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“There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.”

~Hubert H. Humphrey, 38th Vice President of the United States

So, my friend Damian made a suggestion recently that I think is a good one.

Damian wrote:

“I’d like to see a ‘Series’ exploring your meetings with Spirit – Positive, Negative or simply when they called in to say “hello” – which includes descriptions of the entities you met along the way.

That’d make great reading.

Well, thanks for the suggestion, Damian. I have been thinking on how to bring this about for sometime now and this request made me decide to just stop thinking about it and DO it!

So I have added this new tag, “medium adventures“, and will now start telling some more detailed, real experiences that I have had.

~

A brief encounter happened the other day….

I was in the shower, relaxing with my thoughts. Yes, really.

Just as I was getting ready to turn the water off and step out of the shower, I had a spirit energy come to me.

It entered straight into me and made a beeline for my brain ——->

“I am all alone.”

It was a woman speaking.

I could hear her clear as day in my head.

Then I could see her looking at me.

I often get this phenomena when a spirit is highly charged with emotion, whether good or bad.

My eyes are closed because I am trying to listen to their words and see any pictures that they want to show me.

What I get when they stare is a feeling like they are nose to nose with me, eyes as wide as pie plates, looking right into mine.

It is always just a touch creepy… not frightening, mind you… just creepy. Spirits do not have the same concept of personal space as we living folk do.

I figured out from her look that she was a Geisha girl. Full tilt, real thing, born and bred Japanese Geisha girl.

I also knew instantly that she was not too happy about being said “entertainment.”

Once I got my bearings (keep in mind I am standing under a hot stream of water in the shower with a deceased Geisha sharing my tub…), I replied to her statement. “You are not alone. You have people who love you.”

She whispered, sadly, “My family are all dead.”

My response was, “But they are not gone. They are all around you. With you.”

She just stood silent, looking down at her feet. I got the sense that she had trained herself to look away rather than express emotion.

I figured that I had to try and convince her of this truth and to give her some kind of comfort. I had to try and leave her with some hope.

(Let me briefly explain here that I am an historic medium or something like that. I will write a post on this at some other time… it’s complicated. But the girl I was speaking to is now deceased, only thing is the girl I was talking to was not yet deceased. She is still alive in her time and her place, our past, her present. This was a life she was still going to have to live, and to her she wasn’t popping in on ME, I was popping in on HER.)

I said to her, “Quiet your mind whenever you are alone. Picture things that are beautiful to you… a hug your mother once gave you, a flower growing in the gardens outside, the home that you shared with your family.”

“Once you are calm, you will hear them.” I explained.

“Remember,” I continued, “you are never alone, your loved ones are always there with you. They are always loving you and waiting for you to listen to them.”

“You are a beautiful soul. You are light.” I finished.

She asked, “I am free now?”

I said, “You are always free.”

She said, “You set me free?”

I replied, of course, “You set yourself free.”

She said, “You are blessed.”

It ended with my stating, “So are you.”

I felt her peace come over her and she faded.

I took my prune-like self out of the shower and lit some incense.

The whole encounter lasted about 4 minutes.

~

Many of my spirit encounters are short one-off visits like this. Or they end up being recurring 120-minute marathon runs with ascended beings speaking deep philosophical truths into a mini-recorder. I honestly don’t know which ones I prefer better.

I’ll post some more little tidbits later.

Have you had an encounter with spirits lately? Share your story in the comments!