Dowsing with Death – Part 2 of my journey into alternative communication

So here it is – the long-awaited sequel to My Left Knee .  Probably best if you follow that link to Part 1 if you haven’t already seen it.

To recap briefly, I was the most down-to-earth and non-flaky individual you could wish to meet, almost, when I discovered that a dear friend who had passed away was apparently contacting me from the other side.

I’ll leave you to imagine the mix of emotions swirling around in my head at that point.  A ghost with a quirky sense of humour could get my attention any time she wanted by applying a vice-like grip on my left knee.  A pun: she’d ‘left’ some years before and her name was Nina – Ni for short.

Ok.

Well I’m a pragmatic soul, really, so I decided that a) she must have a pretty important reason for going to these lengths to get through to me and b) knowing Nina as I did, it probably had something to do with her beloved family.  I therefore decided I’d better find a way of communicating with her – preferably one that didn’t involve any more excruciating pressure on my knee.

Well it ‘just so happened’ (Like I believe that – no such thing as coincidence!) that I’d recently been reading an article on dowsing in a magazine – one of those glossy ones aimed at women with an interest in angels, horoscopes and the like.  I was, remember, at the very start of my spiritual journey!

I’d mastered getting the pendulum to nod affirmatively backwards and forwards in reply to questions such as ‘Is today Wednesday?’ or ‘Is my name Jan?’ and to shake its little bobbing head from side to side if I asked ‘Am I Mickey Mouse?’

 

Well it was a start.  I figured that if it was that sensitive to ‘lie detector’ vibrations, she ought to be able to use it to communicate with me.

“Are you Nina?”

Nod, nod, nod went the pendulum, very emphatically.

Whoa.

“Is there something you need to tell me?”

Again, nod, nod, nod.

Ah.  I’d hit my first snag.  The pendulum could only do nod, shake and a manic spinning that seemed to mean I’d confused it utterly.  There was no way it could respond to “What is it?”

So now I had to be a spiritual medium and a mind reader?  The pendulum could only deal with yes/no questions.

“Is it to do with your family?”

Nod, nod, yes.

Hmm.  Her family were going through an interesting transformation at that time.  Her husband had fairly recently remarried, her eldest child had recently started secondary school, the new wife had insisted the dog was rehomed.  I had to find a way of narrowing down my questions.

Back to the magazine article.  After explaining the lie-detector bit, it had a full page diagram – a circle divided into slices with pictures representing aspects of life the readership might be interested in: travel, romance, home, money and so forth.  The idea was to hold the pendulum over the centre of the circle, go all calm and relaxed, ask it what you should focus on in your life and see which section it swung to.

I could adapt this!  I grabbed a box of coloured pencils (do ghosts see in colour?) and drew a set of little pictures to stick over the magazine’s symbols: her husband, his new wife, the two children, the now-absent dog, her sister, Nina and myself.  This should at least narrow it down a bit.

After some thought, I made a second circle with what would now be called emoticons – little symbols for happy, sad, worried, help, danger, excited etc. so she could tell me how she was feeling about these people.

Ni was a quick learner.  So was I.  Within the space of half an hour, she was communicating with me and my pendulum.

No, she was fine about the dog going.  She was delighted for her husband and saw how happy he was in his new relationship.  That was a relief – not a lot I could have done about either of those.

Next, though, the pendulum veered towards ‘danger’.

Danger to…?  It swung to her eldest child.

Is the danger from someone on the chart?  Nod, nod, nod.

My mouth went dry.  I held the pendulum again over the figures.  It swung to the new wife.

Impossible!  She was a sweet, lovely lady.  She seemed genuinely fond of the children.  Just the week before, that boy – the eldest child – had told me how much cleaner the house was, how good her cooking was.

But Nina was adamant.  She showed me new wife, dog.  Then new wife, son.  Then danger.  Then repeated.

“Are you telling me she wants to get rid of your son, like she did the dog?” I asked, finally.

The nodding of the pendulum was so strong it was almost wrenched out of my hand.

Next she moved to my little image of myself, then the ‘help’ icon, then the boy.

Did she want me to speak to her husband or sister about this?

A vehement no.

This, it seemed, was down to me to sort out.

And you know what?  It was true.

It took me a long time to figure out what was going on there, but the clash between the new step-mum and the eldest child had started.  He was in great need of support.  So was she.  I did my best and staved things off for a good long time.  It wasn’t until he was several years older and my back was turned for a while that she finally managed to get that boy removed from the family home.

Without Nina’s warning, I wouldn’t have seen it coming, and this was just the start of a long and magical communication with her, and later with others…

…but those stories can wait for another post.

 

Be the love you want to see

The way I see it, we’re all love.  Basically, that’s it.  Our true/real/higher/soul selves are a part of Life itself and that – give or take a vowel – is Love.

Of course because that greater self has chosen to spend a few decades playing at being a human, we can often get so involved in The Game that we forget we’re really life/love itself, but it’s good to stop and remember from time to time.

I’m going to tell you a secret.  I’m going to tell you the resolution I made about a year ago.  The reason I’ve not told anyone before is that I wasn’t at all certain I’d be able to manage it.  It was a huge ask.  I’m certainly not saying I’ve fully succeeded yet, but I’m sufficiently well on the way to feel confident to share my intention with you, and maybe invite you to join in.

I decided to give up judgement.

To expand that slightly: I’d never liked the part of me that was so willing to criticise or condemn others for not behaving or thinking the way I did.  It was a behaviour that seemed to diminish me, so I chose to get shot of it.

So can you imagine what not-judging feels like?  It means not moaning about a political party’s politics; not criticising neighbours, relatives or figures in the media for what they’ve done or said; not even condemning those who have perpetrated act of terror or criminality.

If you’re now bristling with righteous indignation, just be aware of that feeling and sit with it.  Check how it feels within you.  Ask yourself if that’s how you want to be.  If it is, that’s fine.  I’m not judging you, either!  I found it didn’t sit well with me, so I chose a different path.

Of course I don’t agree with everything others do.  I accept that from their viewpoint they are doing what they see as the right thing.

It goes without saying that I feel sad for the victims of crime and repression – and still more sad for the perpetrators, as they act from a place of such fear.

Naturally I hate to see suffering in any form, but having acknowledged that it’s there, I can choose whether to extend my energy in anger against those I could judge responsible or in love towards everyone and everything involved.  Not-judging is not at all the same as not-caring.   I believe love is the stronger energy and will make more of a difference.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein

To look at it the way one of my heroes would, if the problems in our world have been created through judgements, fear, anger, spite and condemnation, are we going to solve them by more of the same?

I don’t believe any of the problems were caused by love.  That’s why I am willing to try it as the solution.

I can only say it as I see it.  Releasing judgement is hard work – and life throws up all manner of tests of my resolve on a daily basis.  It takes a huge effort sometimes to walk a mile in the shoes of someone who has detonated a bomb or committed murder and to try to find where they were coming from.  When I do, though, and I feel the sad, lonely, fearful place they were acting from and send them love, I feel expanded, freer and lighter than I would if I had judged and condemned them.  They don’t need my hate.  They have enough of that.  But they’re in such need of love…

…we all are.

On Sunday I condemned my mother to death

Chalice Well (Photo credit: greenchartreuse)

Yesterday was challenging – no doubt about it.

Woke up on a (finally) sunny and not too cold spring Sunday and was planning a leisurely stroll to the beautiful Chalice Well Gardens here in Glastonbury.

At 9am my mother’s nursing home phoned: would I get down there immediately, please?  Things were bad.

My mum is 91 and has advanced dementia.  She barely eats, she barely wakes up for more than a few minutes at a time and if she gives a smile of recognition once a month I count myself lucky.  She is lifted around in a hoist from bed to shower to chair and is reliant on the wonderful staff at her home for every bodily need.  She has had numerous ‘near misses’.  I’ve lost count of the number of times doctors have told me to brace myself and prepare for the end, but here we were again.

I arrived in her room to find it bursting with paramedics and equipment.  Mum was fully conscious, with wild, staring eyes.  An oxygen mask was clamped to her face.  She was waving her hand about – apparently trying to shake off the probe or whatever it was attached to a finger.

“She has a chest infection,” one of the ambulance staff explained.  “Her oxygen intake is very low and falling.  She needs to be in hospital and on oxygen if we are to save her, but it’s up to you.  If you’d rather we left her here and let nature take its course we’ll respect your decision.”

Great.  9.15 on a Sunday morning and I was being asked to play God with my mother’s life.  The medics were, understandably, in a hurry.  They needed an instant response.

I fought my way through the forest of pipes and tanks and plastic stuff littering the way and stood with my mum.  Her eyes were still darting about.  She looked petrified.  I remembered the other times I’d been to see her in hospital over the past few years – turned into a human pincushion with drips and masks and whatever, surrounded by strangers.  I imagined the 45 minute journey by ambulance with sirens wailing to the nearest hospital.

Words from Conversations With God rang in my ears: “What would Love do now?”

“No,” I said.  “I’d like her to stay here.”

They nodded.  The mask, the oxygen tank and other equipment were whisked away.  The medics’ final comment was that she probably had less than two hours to live, so I decided to spend those two hours well.

I held her hand, stood where she could see my face and I talked.  I started with our life together – all 62 years of it.  I described the holidays we’d had, the houses we’d lived in, the gardens she’d created.  She was still conscious, still listening after all that, so I went on to talk about her own childhood, her friends, her marriage and anything else that came to mind.

Finally a locum GP arrived.  He said she’d stabilised but quite possibly wouldn’t recover.  He didn’t give a timescale.  He put into place a raft of palliative care that covered every eventuality and would ensure that she suffered minimum distress.

I left her sleeping peacefully several hours later.

Well what would you have done?

At times like this – times when we’re dealing with the very toughest choices and challenges – it can be easy to forget that life is a game designed to expand the universe.  I’m very lucky to have wonderful reminders all around me.

This is one: a post from the excellent Ask The Council blog that magically appeared in my inbox this morning.
Here is another: a post I wrote at the end of last year, dealing with the same question.  It contains the guidance I was ‘given’ when someone else asked me why life is so horribly tough.

The Game gets serious when children die – but it is still a game

Not what I was intending to do today, but that Facebook picture of the Philpotts and a noose appeared yet again on my Facebook page and I can’t resist putting the case into the context of my own truth and beliefs about life.

For readers outside the UK who may not be aware of the story,  this couple and an accomplice have been found guilty of the manslaughter of their six children after burning down the family home in an attempt, as I understand it,  to frame Mr P’s former mistress and to make enough money to get a larger home.  They were unable to rescue the children from the fire they’d started.

The picture shown above sums up the reaction of, apparently, many people in the UK.

Obviously I feel saddened by the story and very sorry for the suffering of those children, along with all who knew and loved them.  However I want to move away from blame and anger, and to view Mr and Mrs Philpott as souls and – this is controversial, I know – as mirrors for us all.

 

Soul Contracts
It’s part of my truth that everyone is a soul; one which has chosen to spend some time being human in order to make new choices and expand Consciousness/the Universe.
If these ideas seem very strange to you, I suggest either taking a look at my book Life: A Player’s Guide or at the writings of Neale Donald Walsch or Jane Roberts.

Before squashing ourselves into human form we decide, as souls, what aspect of experience we wish to have in this lifetime.  We discuss this with other souls and form what could be termed ‘contracts’ or agreements with them.  For example if I chose to experience victimhood, I would agree with another soul that he/she would abuse me in some way.  The easiest way to imagine this is to think of actors sharing out the parts in a play.  Remember, the soul is in search of experience – ideas like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ don’t enter into it any more than they would in a cast of actors.  We are, in a very real sense, simply playing parts.

That being the case, I’m quite happy to believe that the Philpotts and their children made such contracts.  At soul level, the children agreed to sacrifice their lives in order for their parents and others to experience the repercussions of the choices that were made.  Having returned to Spirit, their souls can decide what they would like to experience next.

Mr and Mrs Philpott now face prison sentences of life and 17 years respectively.  Their earthly experience continues and few would expect it to be happy on the whole.

 

Mirroring
Whilst agreeing that the vast majority of people would never dream of making the choices these two made, I believe that every now and then individuals incarnate to show the rest of us just how spectacularly wrong life can go, if we head down particular paths and make certain choices.

Tor des Schmerzes, memorial for victims of Nazi eugenics in Karlsruhe main cemetery

Just as Hitler provided the world with evidence of the way eugenics and racism could lead, so, in his smaller way, Mr Philpott has shown where greed, vindictiveness and the thoughtless pursuit of financial gain could take us.

Interestingly, I’ve also received several of those quirky reminders Facebook specialises in, over the last few days, pointing out that money should never be seen as a goal in itself or as a replacement for happiness.

Perhaps part of the Philpotts’ soul purpose was to make that message abundantly clear to us?