One day in 1986, my mentor Peg called me up in great excitement. A long-time sensitive with a strong background in metaphysics, her psychic antennae were always on alert.
“I was sitting at work, and I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder, so I got out a pen and started to write what I heard!” she exclaimed. “Listen!” She proceeded to read me simple but profound-sounding insights about her life, our friendship – all sorts of interesting observations that somehow rang true without any possibility of immediate validation.
“I was sitting at work, and I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder, so I got out a pen and started to write what I heard!” she exclaimed. “Listen!” She proceeded to read me simple but profound-sounding insights about her life, our friendship – all sorts of interesting observations that somehow rang true without any possibility of immediate validation.
I had only been studying metaphysics and psychic phenomena for a few years, and while I had pored over the many resources Peg lent me from her personal library, I was far from believing that anyone I knew, Peg included, could actually channel information from the ethers. That still struck me as a talent reserved for a very few, very special souls, whom I might read about in a book somewhere.
Ursula speaks
Peg proceeded to tell me that she was communicating with a spirit guide who had been her lady’s maid in a past life in Victorian England. The guide, named Ursula, insisted that Peg and I had been friends in that life, and she shared some personal details about those lives, including some names.
I loved Peg, but despite her great library, she really did seem to be kind of a flake, in the nicest possible way. She was like a peppy fairy, flitting about, excitable, cheerful and loving. A lot like a real fairy, in fact, now that I know more about the elemental world.
Frankly, I was withholding judgment, if not fully disbelieving. Peg had skills, no question about it, but she was fascinated with Victorian and Edwardian England and I most decidedly was not. In fact, I got a trifle sick to my stomach when confronted with the heavy, dark look of Victorian furniture and textiles. Since I felt any past lives ought to resonate with me, too, I decided to just wait and see.
The next day I got another call from Peg.
“Ursula says your guides want to communicate with you, too. They want you to try automatic writing.”
My lips to God’s ears – and vice versa, in 4 easy steps
That was unexpected. I did not for one moment think I had the ability to channel my guides. There was a my-lips-to-God’s-ears quality to the message, however, since unbeknownst to Peg, I had prayed directly for the ability to communicate with my guides a month or so earlier.
Step 1 – Relax
Following Ursula’s instructions, I lay down on our recliner with the footrest extended. It was mid-week, noon, in a quiet residential neighborhood, far from any traffic noise. Songbirds chirped in the tops of the tall maples surrounding our light-filled apartment on the third floor of a real Victorian mansion, perched high above the town.
Closing my eyes, I relaxed into a deep meditative state. I was not an experienced meditator, and I was amazed at how I felt myself being sucked into the depths almost immediately. I barely had time to surround myself with protective white light before I swirled away on a vortex of energy.
The colors and light in the vortex were shifting, rushing by, and then everything became a very dark, purply-blue. An unpleasant energy that I perceived as my perpetually uptight landlord one floor below intruded for a moment. I felt paralyzed, suspended within my body, watching the colors course over me, feeling the feelings around me. (Ursula later explained that my guides were “experimenting with the energies.”)
It is important to realize that your experience might not be the same at all. Lighter trances are often ideal for spirit communications – you want to keep your body working consciously (i.e., typing, scribbling, speaking) while remaining receptive to the higher energies. Essentially, you want to vibrate at a much higher level in your upper chakras (crown chakra, third-eye, throat, heart) while still being aware of your body.
Step 2 – Grab a pen (or your laptop)
Eventually, I was able to wrest myself awake. Feeling a trifle frightened, I sat up and grabbed hold of the pen and paper I was holding in reserve. Leaning over the coffee table, holding the pen loosely, I tried to let my arm write without any conscious thought driving the pen. Loops of no discernible pattern or meaning scrawled from the pen, over and over.
My infant son squeaked from the nursery, and I gave up. All I had was a paper full of loop-de-loops and a slightly nerve-wracking story of meditation paralysis to tell my husband when he got home from work. I tossed the loops in the garbage and went to gather up my child.
My first husband, Tom – who passed long ago, and whom I now know to have been a powerful and dark warlock in another life – demanded to see the paper after dinner that evening. Producing the crumpled sheet from the bottom of the can, I watched him spread it out and gaze at it.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “It spells a name. Owen.”
Owen? My guide’s name was Owen?
It still looked like loops to me, but I could see the name Owen hiding within, very nearly an optical illusion. Hmm.
Step 3 – Write
The next day, I bought a fresh lined notebook and expensive pen and sat down to try again. I meditated briefly and undramatically, then wrote a question. This time, I decided to listen more closely for actual words and pay less attention to how “automatic” my pen movement was. I knew that some people could hear what they were writing as they wrote, while other people used touch-typing and might later be amazed to see what words had appeared on the paper. Since I could not touch type, I concluded I would have to have some control over my pen, and therefore, some knowledge of what was being said – either that, or my guides would have to be pushing and shoving my arm around. That seemed like a lot to ask.
Sitting quietly, holding my pen lightly, I suddenly felt the urge to write some words. Scribbling quickly, I found my brain producing verbiage that would never have occurred to me, spewing words that had not been in my consciousness an instant before. I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with this sudden surge of information. Full and believable explanations for several pressing questions flowed onto the page, bringing happiness and relief and a sense of release in their wake. Somehow, I knew this data was valid, regardless of how it came to me.
Step 4 – Believe
By the next day I already doubted everything that had happened. But, as the days passed and I kept trying, I discovered that there was plenty of good information coming through, information that could be validated.
It was still necessary that I take one final step – belief. I had to have faith in the process and faith in the responses. Having faith meant acting as if I believed. It meant following the instructions and information I was given to the letter, regardless of my fears and doubts. Only by doing this could I discover the truth of the matter.
And discover it I did. That’s another whole blog post, but ultimately Owen was able to prove himself to me in quite dramatic fashion, and I settled into having faith in the process. Ideally, it would have been great to have faith to begin with, but you know how we humans are.
One quick example of a very belated validation: on April 3, 2000, first-husband-the-warlock Tom died. At his funeral I saw one of his younger sisters for the first time in many, many years. The last time I had spoken with her, she was in her late teens, doing way too many hard drugs and hanging out with a bad crowd. She reminded me I had channeled some automatic writing for her back in the mid-80s, claiming that she would someday go back to school to become a nurse. Marveling, she revealed that she had been a nurse for over a decade.
The joy of connection
There is much more to this whole story, and maybe I will get a chance to tell you all someday. But the main takeaway is this – our guides are dying to communicate with us. (Well, maybe not exactly dying.) They really do want an open channel, anything you can provide. This is one of many good ones. It is a form of divination, just like tarot cards, or runes, or scrying, or anything else.
To this day, Peg sits down daily after work with her latest notebook – she has dozens of them now, all filled to the brim – and asks Ursula some questions. She receives almost anything, from timely warnings of impending layoffs to detailed information for navigating personal and work relationships.
The last word
When I emailed Peg this morning to ask permission to use her name and story, she added this comment, which I will leave you to contemplate:
“I think about all those early adventures with your guide and my Ursula and the fact that I always felt that she really did not want to tell me anything… just gave me a push toward me finding my own answers! She still does! “
Afterword: It’s true that all forms of divination are still only hints and whispers of the full story, puzzle pieces waiting to fit into the other intel we’ve gathered. Like a game of Clue, only with our lives.
There are many ways to communicate with our guides, but no matter how good I get at being a psychic medium and divining the truth of a situation for others, I sometimes cannot do it for myself. Usually, this means I am too emotionally attached to the outcome to see the problem clearly or hear the answers I need.
You’ll run into that, too, and that is when you know you need the help of a psychic reader like myself. I can be objective about your situation, just as you can be objective about your brother-in-law or your neighbor. I, too, reach out to other psychics when I am too close to a subject, so do not feel as if you have failed in your divination efforts. Just know that you are human, and help is always there for you.
Ursula speaks
Peg proceeded to tell me that she was communicating with a spirit guide who had been her lady’s maid in a past life in Victorian England. The guide, named Ursula, insisted that Peg and I had been friends in that life, and she shared some personal details about those lives, including some names.
I loved Peg, but despite her great library, she really did seem to be kind of a flake, in the nicest possible way. She was like a peppy fairy, flitting about, excitable, cheerful and loving. A lot like a real fairy, in fact, now that I know more about the elemental world.
Frankly, I was withholding judgment, if not fully disbelieving. Peg had skills, no question about it, but she was fascinated with Victorian and Edwardian England and I most decidedly was not. In fact, I got a trifle sick to my stomach when confronted with the heavy, dark look of Victorian furniture and textiles. Since I felt any past lives ought to resonate with me, too, I decided to just wait and see.
The next day I got another call from Peg.
“Ursula says your guides want to communicate with you, too. They want you to try automatic writing.”
My lips to God’s ears – and vice versa, in 4 easy steps
That was unexpected. I did not for one moment think I had the ability to channel my guides. There was a my-lips-to-God’s-ears quality to the message, however, since unbeknownst to Peg, I had prayed directly for the ability to communicate with my guides a month or so earlier.
Step 1 – Relax
Following Ursula’s instructions, I lay down on our recliner with the footrest extended. It was mid-week, noon, in a quiet residential neighborhood, far from any traffic noise. Songbirds chirped in the tops of the tall maples surrounding our light-filled apartment on the third floor of a real Victorian mansion, perched high above the town.
Closing my eyes, I relaxed into a deep meditative state. I was not an experienced meditator, and I was amazed at how I felt myself being sucked into the depths almost immediately. I barely had time to surround myself with protective white light before I swirled away on a vortex of energy.
The colors and light in the vortex were shifting, rushing by, and then everything became a very dark, purply-blue. An unpleasant energy that I perceived as my perpetually uptight landlord one floor below intruded for a moment. I felt paralyzed, suspended within my body, watching the colors course over me, feeling the feelings around me. (Ursula later explained that my guides were “experimenting with the energies.”)
It is important to realize that your experience might not be the same at all. Lighter trances are often ideal for spirit communications – you want to keep your body working consciously (i.e., typing, scribbling, speaking) while remaining receptive to the higher energies. Essentially, you want to vibrate at a much higher level in your upper chakras (crown chakra, third-eye, throat, heart) while still being aware of your body.
Step 2 – Grab a pen (or your laptop)
Eventually, I was able to wrest myself awake. Feeling a trifle frightened, I sat up and grabbed hold of the pen and paper I was holding in reserve. Leaning over the coffee table, holding the pen loosely, I tried to let my arm write without any conscious thought driving the pen. Loops of no discernible pattern or meaning scrawled from the pen, over and over.
My infant son squeaked from the nursery, and I gave up. All I had was a paper full of loop-de-loops and a slightly nerve-wracking story of meditation paralysis to tell my husband when he got home from work. I tossed the loops in the garbage and went to gather up my child.
My first husband, Tom – who passed long ago, and whom I now know to have been a powerful and dark warlock in another life – demanded to see the paper after dinner that evening. Producing the crumpled sheet from the bottom of the can, I watched him spread it out and gaze at it.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “It spells a name. Owen.”
Owen? My guide’s name was Owen?
It still looked like loops to me, but I could see the name Owen hiding within, very nearly an optical illusion. Hmm.
Step 3 – Write
The next day, I bought a fresh lined notebook and expensive pen and sat down to try again. I meditated briefly and undramatically, then wrote a question. This time, I decided to listen more closely for actual words and pay less attention to how “automatic” my pen movement was. I knew that some people could hear what they were writing as they wrote, while other people used touch-typing and might later be amazed to see what words had appeared on the paper. Since I could not touch type, I concluded I would have to have some control over my pen, and therefore, some knowledge of what was being said – either that, or my guides would have to be pushing and shoving my arm around. That seemed like a lot to ask.
Sitting quietly, holding my pen lightly, I suddenly felt the urge to write some words. Scribbling quickly, I found my brain producing verbiage that would never have occurred to me, spewing words that had not been in my consciousness an instant before. I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with this sudden surge of information. Full and believable explanations for several pressing questions flowed onto the page, bringing happiness and relief and a sense of release in their wake. Somehow, I knew this data was valid, regardless of how it came to me.
Step 4 – Believe
By the next day I already doubted everything that had happened. But, as the days passed and I kept trying, I discovered that there was plenty of good information coming through, information that could be validated.
It was still necessary that I take one final step – belief. I had to have faith in the process and faith in the responses. Having faith meant acting as if I believed. It meant following the instructions and information I was given to the letter, regardless of my fears and doubts. Only by doing this could I discover the truth of the matter.
And discover it I did. That’s another whole blog post, but ultimately Owen was able to prove himself to me in quite dramatic fashion, and I settled into having faith in the process. Ideally, it would have been great to have faith to begin with, but you know how we humans are.
One quick example of a very belated validation: on April 3, 2000, first-husband-the-warlock Tom died. At his funeral I saw one of his younger sisters for the first time in many, many years. The last time I had spoken with her, she was in her late teens, doing way too many hard drugs and hanging out with a bad crowd. She reminded me I had channeled some automatic writing for her back in the mid-80s, claiming that she would someday go back to school to become a nurse. Marveling, she revealed that she had been a nurse for over a decade.
The joy of connection
There is much more to this whole story, and maybe I will get a chance to tell you all someday. But the main takeaway is this – our guides are dying to communicate with us. (Well, maybe not exactly dying.) They really do want an open channel, anything you can provide. This is one of many good ones. It is a form of divination, just like tarot cards, or runes, or scrying, or anything else.
To this day, Peg sits down daily after work with her latest notebook – she has dozens of them now, all filled to the brim – and asks Ursula some questions. She receives almost anything, from timely warnings of impending layoffs to detailed information for navigating personal and work relationships.
The last word
When I emailed Peg this morning to ask permission to use her name and story, she added this comment, which I will leave you to contemplate:
“I think about all those early adventures with your guide and my Ursula and the fact that I always felt that she really did not want to tell me anything… just gave me a push toward me finding my own answers! She still does! “
Afterword: It’s true that all forms of divination are still only hints and whispers of the full story, puzzle pieces waiting to fit into the other intel we’ve gathered. Like a game of Clue, only with our lives.
There are many ways to communicate with our guides, but no matter how good I get at being a psychic medium and divining the truth of a situation for others, I sometimes cannot do it for myself. Usually, this means I am too emotionally attached to the outcome to see the problem clearly or hear the answers I need.
You’ll run into that, too, and that is when you know you need the help of a psychic reader like myself. I can be objective about your situation, just as you can be objective about your brother-in-law or your neighbor. I, too, reach out to other psychics when I am too close to a subject, so do not feel as if you have failed in your divination efforts. Just know that you are human, and help is always there for you.
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