Contacting ~ Communicating with Spirits

I believe many spiritual experiences could be labeled peak experiences or mystical experiences. And that includes contact with spirit, whether spontaneous or by choice. Any contact or communication with spirits can be awe-inspiring, confirming, healing, unifying. Realizing that one is not alone and that there is a connection to the Divine is empowering. Accepting that we are all spiritual beings, whether in the physical body as a spiritual being, or on the other side as a spiritual being; we are all one and the same.

When we begin to acknowledge that we are connected to one another, to the Divine, we have laid the groundwork to sharpen our higher spiritual sense. We are powerful transmitters and receivers. If we learn to think of communication with spirit as an exchange of energy, a radio signal, or an open telephone line, it becomes a normal event, and there is nothing paranormal about it. I personally like Joseph Campbell's explanation of a peak experience as the moments in our lives when we experience our "relationship to the harmony of being."

Have you ever had a mystical or peak experience?
Did it result in positive changes or new understandings?
Have you had a mystical experience that changed your life or your view of life?
Have you experienced a holistic connection during the end of life of a loved one? Or during grief?
What spiritual experiences have you had, either large or small that resulted in healing?

~Linda

Coming Out of the Spiritual Closet

Photo of my Great Aunt Isa, abt. 1915-20

The pollsters' findings on people who have had contact with those on the Other Side, angels, guides, or loved ones, reflect my own independent research of the matter and my experiences with ordinary people of all walks of life. It appears many people are now very open about discussing such matters in public with little sense of embarrassment and many even seem delighted with the opportunity to do so.

So we have made gains and it may be because so much of various mystical events are now reflected in our entertainment: the books, movies, television, and that it now seems much more comfortable for discussion. People have come out of their “spiritual closet” and are ready to let the world know who they are and what they have experienced. They then discover that they are just like many others. They also discover they are far from crazy. What they have or will experience is actually a normal part of life, and is within the norm of human existence.

The more common experience related to me by others has more to do with direct contact from friends or loved ones who have passed on rather than a full blown encounter with an angelic figure. Many other experiences at first seem to involve an ordinary helping hand from a stranger at a time when it is needed most. It is only later that the recipient of the good deed begins to realize that something supernatural must have occurred.

While intuition presents itself in different ways for individual people, it is often thought to be: clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, and other types of extra-sensory perception. Yes, it is possible for Spirit to communicate in more then just one way with us! And even within a particular communication, it may be a blend of the various intuitive classifications.

Have you had commuication from a deceased loved one?--or angels?

You can leave your comments here or visit my Angel Board and share your experience.

~Linda

Belief in an Afterlife

“Death is simply a disguised deliverance, or, like the budding rose,
it climbs up on the garden wall to bloom on the other side.”
–James Martin Peebles (1822-1922)

“The wise man looks not to how long he lives,
but to how he dies. For him death has no terrors,
because it is the day of his birth to immortal life.
And he will be mindful of those he has left behind,
and will commune with them.”
–Seneca (4? B.C.–65 A.D.)

A recent poll indicates that 82% of Americans believe in an afterlife. The numbers are also increasing for those who believe that they have had communication from a loved one on the other side.

It would seem that the religious instinct is innate within humankind, as though a template for the religious experience had been programmed into our genetic structures that govern human expression. Within the innate religious or spiritual instinct are experiences that might be classified as miraculous. But, are many of the events or experiences actually miracles or no more than ordinary occurrences?

Reports of extraordinary and astonishing events attributed to supreme being or divine power will be found in virtually every world religion, every culture, and probably within every human mind from primitive times right up into the modern age. Many cultures do not regard miracles or paranormal events as anything extraordinary but merely the natural workings of a natural world. Most cultures who share that idea have well-formulated spiritual beliefs that have been carried forward from generation to generation, throughout history, and many of these cultures have evolved highly sophisticated belief systems.

When one reads the history of cultures, it is very apparent that there has always been a “knowing” within mankind that evolves into understandings that we are, indeed, spiritual beings and that life does not end with the death of the physical body. Mankind has always looked to the heavens in a search for answers. I have often wondered why that is and the answer I have come up with is that no matter our religious upbringing or belief system, we do, within us, have the knowledge that we are much more than a physical body having a life experience. We are temporarily using a physical body for an ongoing spiritual life.

When I look back at my life, I recall at a very young age knowing that there was more to life than just a few years we may have here on Earth. I have also been lucky to have experienced events that have convinced me beyond any doubt that life and love go on after the death of the body. I am hardly alone in that spiritual understanding. That idea and understanding has been presented in writings since the beginning of recorded history. We are also experiencing the coming together of science and spirituality and many in the medical profession are leading the way. Scientific studies are being conducted in various areas of life and death and maybe one day in the not to distant future there will be scientific evidence that consciousness lives on beyond the death of the physical body.

It is my hope that we are now into an age of new spiritual understanding where we can welcome and accept the gift of knowing that we are often given, no matter how subtle that gift may be. We are immortal, eternal spirits.

Those gifts not only make life more joyous, grief easier, but help to remove the fear of death that has been placed culturally as an obstacle to spiritual growth and understanding. We do know who we are. We just have to bring that knowing, our remembrance, to the forefront. And increasing numbers of people are achieving that while in the body. And for those who do not rediscover the knowing, they will know without doubt one day as they pass into another state of being.


~Linda

Spiritual Awareness

"O Reality, Divine Father Mother of all that is...I am your eyes, I am your ears, I am your voice in the land of time and space, I am your heart, I am your awareness, I am your consciousness of that which is, and I thank you that this is so. Accept me now, in my awareness, into that consciousness which gives rise to time and space. Accept me now into divine union with thee."
~Don Pendleton, Author (1927-1995)

Expanded Spiritual Awareness

Walt Whitman, among the greatest poets of our times, obviously was highly sensitive to inspiration from the spiritual realm. His epic work, Leaves of Grass, serves as the title piece of an extraordinary collection of his inspired works which emerge, finally as a self-portrait of the poet and his universal images of reality. The work presents numerous references to the immortality of the soul and, in particular, to reincarnationist thought.

In Song of Myself, written in 1855, Whitman begins the opening verse with this striking understanding:

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

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Below is an Excerpt from my book, Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness by Don and Linda Pendleton.


ENGINES OF AWARENESS

Until modern science captured the human imagination on this planet, the engine of understanding was fueled by poets and philosophers, musicians and magicians, and other forces which unbridled human creativity. From the earliest recorded histories of mankind, the finer essences of human growth have been set free by the common assumption that our world is the abode of powerful spiritual forces with which we become intimate and join with them in the divine dance.

However, since every force within the natural world also seems bent into a common need for survival, the greatest fear of all is that death lurks behind every bush, and pain behind every joy. Since also it seems that the instinctive drive for procreation places us in an ever widening pool of activities which relate us all to one another inseparably, the common dilemma for every form of animate life is that every contact with every other life is undertaken at great risk. If love is woven into the very fabric of human consciousness, then the entire life experience continually intermingles us all into common bonds of joy and peril. It is that dance which has created and sustains the human experience on Planet Earth. Perhaps this is why there is no joy without some sorrow, no exaltation without some frustration, no growth without some pain.

It is clearly remarkable, then, that the human family has made such incredible strides forward instead of being engulfed by fears and competitions. If it is true that this universe was created some twenty billion years ago, as recognized by earth time, then the human presence on Planet Earth has been brief, indeed, and our species mere babes of the universe. The wonder is not, as some have said, that we have not blown our planet asunder by now but that we have developed the ability to do so and the wisdom, so far, not to. Obviously something more important than mere survival and more enthralling than mere power is moving the creative imaginations of humanity. Could it be true, then, that love is the magical ingredient? If not for love, then why do we put up with any of it and continue to believe that something more important than our own selfish needs and desires is at the root of this constant striving?

For all of us it seems that the need to understand and the willingness to seek our own destinies are the most powerful and moving forces behind existence itself. That drive did not begin in this century or any other but is that which drives the universe and empowers all sentient life. There were shamans and priests long before scientists, seers and soothsayers eons before physicians, oracles before preachers. All of the ancients spoke of a knowledge and wisdom beyond time and gifts beyond anything a materialistic awareness may envisage.

Our Twentieth Century equivalent of an expanded awareness will be found among the psychics, healers, mediums, astrologers, psychometrics and various others who tap into the spiritual dimensions of consciousness. But these special gifts of spiritual awareness need not be theirs alone. It may be possible for each of us, in our own way, to benefit from and enjoy the divine threads of the spiritual connection that links us all, through this dimension or another. Perhaps we need only to reach for and accept what has been ours from the beginning.

© Copyright 2003, 2009 by Linda Pendleton. All Rights Reserved.

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~Linda