Tips for a Happier Holiday Season

December has arrived!  Though many talk about the joy that comes with the holidays (and indeed, there is), I feel it is also important to acknowledge that for many, it is also one of the most stressful times of year.   The American Psychological Association Holiday stress statistics show that up to 69 percent of people are stressed about having a “lack of time,” 69 percent also are stressed by feeling a “lack of money” and 51% are stressed out about the “pressure to give and get gifts.”  

According to allonehealth.com, the stress and anxiety of the holiday season can manifest in symptoms such as headaches, sleep disturbances, fatigue, exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, short temper, upset stomach, low job satisfaction and morale, aching muscles (including lower back pain), loss of appetite, changes in behavior while at work, and a decline in productivity and work performance.  

We are also facing the “end time” of the year – a sense of finality for which we look back on the last 12 months and critique the outcome.  Since we are usually our own worst critics, guess which way that observation goes?   It can be an incredibly “heavy” and “burdensome” time of year to many.   Also, we witness nature going into hibernation, we reference the trees and plants “dying” which can also affect us psychologically.

What can we do spiritually to help us get through?  Here’s a few simple things.  

First, try to stay grounded and remember to cleanse yourself energetically.  With all the stress, along with the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers, our auras (as well as our minds) are being bombarded with frenetic and tense energy not normally displayed by most people at other times of the year.  We may observing with our eyes, but we typically ABSORB things into our energies and emotions, so it becomes imperative that we do things that will help cleanse ourselves of this abnormal energy we are diving into and swimming around in.  

If you shower in the morning, use the power of visualization to allow the water its energetic capacity to take hold of that unwanted energy and send it right down the drain.  Additionally, wash your hands a few more times throughout the day (this is not meant to become an OCD thing).  This will not only protect you from potential germs on your hands and keeping you from getting physically sick, when you wash your hands under the faucet for more than 45 seconds, that extra time can again help to draw out negative energy collecting within your field (which might later transmute into physical maladies).

Another way to combat stress – and this works anytime throughout the year – is to meditate.  Sit down for about 15 minutes minimum and just let go.  Focus on nothing but your breath and allow that focus to realign your system and clear you.  Release your need to do anything or be anything, and just be STILL.  Meditation will clear both your energy systems as well as your mind.  The monkey mind goes extra crazy this time of year, so it’s important to do what we can to calm it.  

Conversely, instead of calming yourself, go out and do something that makes you crazy with happiness!  Whatever the activity is – a few hours gathering with friends, solitude with a paintbrush, turning up the music full blast and dancing – whatever it is that can interrupt the state of holiday frenzies.   Call it a “time out” if you will … and schedule as many of them as you need in order to get through the season.  Heck, be an inspiration for others to create their own seasonal “time outs.”  Sweat-inducing exercise can also help here - as well as assisting in keeping off those extra pounds from the yummy holidays feasts!

Keep in mind, as energetic beings we not only absorb, we transmit.  If we can find that stillness or ability to wash ourselves clean of the holiday stress, we can then help others do the same.  How much more joyful would that make this time of year?

So know that in closing, I most sincerely wish you –

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Communicating with Spirits, Part 2

The Greater Picture, The Larger Act of Awareness

Two weeks ago I talked about how, when we take into account 7 billion people on the planet, and how many of those people right now are receiving information from the deceased friends and relatives in spirit, as well as spirit guides, demonstrates that spirit communication is a natural and normal part of our existence in the physical world.

So what does this all mean in the bigger picture?

By the very nature of these interactions, spirits are demonstrating that they desire to communicate with us; that we are not alone and we do not need to fall prey to the limited visions of material existence.  Their messages, unanimously, all speak to the same meaning:  we as spirits are here, we love you, and we can help you – provided that it doesn’t derail you from your own purposes being alive on the earth.  This is in sharp contrast to what we have been told traditionally from fearful ideologies.

The point to all this is simple:  Spirits are co-existing with us.  Granted, while our focus is here in the material world, theirs is focused in the spiritual.  Nevertheless, they interpenetrate this realm all the time, based on the statistics of people interacting and encountering them.  And chances are likely, we interpenetrate their realm, too, if given the proper belief system, knowledge, and conditions.  It is not “foreign” nor is it “wrong” or “against nature.”  It is actually part of nature’s design.  We co-exist with many dimensions – this is a scientific fact. 

Are we supposed to be communicating between the “veils”?  Actually … Yes.  In fact, it’s vitally important that we do.  We are here to experience the breadth of our souls, and part of that magnificence is our ability to transcend the physicality of what we are experiencing in the material world.  In order to learn our lessons, as well as help others learn theirs, we are given the capabilities to engage in this communication to bring forth the guidance and information we sometimes cannot get from the observable, material world.  Especially in a world where love is in lack – it is spirit’s greatest goal to show us that no such lack exists; that the universe is primarily a loving universe, and through love – positivity – we will prevail through our lessons and continue to heighten our souls to our greatest possibilities and potentials.  After all, we were spirit first, and then human … Not the other way around.

The spirits will not harm us; nor will they take over our lives.  On the contrary, they are wanting to help us live better, happier lives ourselves, fulfilled in the knowledge that the greater we become at being a loving, creative spiritual expression, the more it benefits others and combines to create healing and success to so many people, transforming the earthly experience to be a grand state of livelihood in comparison to what it has been in the past.

Historically, such communication was seen to have dire consequences by various superstitious ideologies – repudiation, ridicule, and ultimate death as a “witch.”  So long as the facts remain of people’s own personal experiences with receiving communications (no matter how sparse) from deceased loved ones or angels, then it cannot be denied that such forces are indeed interacting with us, and that we have the ability to receive and understand their communications, given proper conditions.  In addition, so long as traditional books refer to “prophets” or other types of religious people receiving “inspiration” or other angelic visitations (and many of these people were considered “normal” people having a divine experience), then the notion of conversing with “the devil” must be tossed aside as rickety architecture of fear.  Again, spirit isn’t trying to control us or our reality (that would take up too much time and energy and deny the purpose of their own existence), they simply want to help us – as no doubt, we would want to help our loved ones once we have traversed the bridge of death and realized communication back to earth was possible. 

It is time to wash away those belief systems and ways of thinking that deny this.  It is time to ignore and toss out belief systems that say “It isn’t natural.”  Nonsense -- utter nonsense.  It is natural; it is normal -- It was meant-to-be.

Tell yourself – remind yourself often – that you communicate easily with spirit; that it was meant to be from the beginning of humanity’s emergence into the physical realm; it is a part of our core being and heritage.  Don’t ask of yourself “Why cannot I communicate?”  Instead you should be asking “How could I not communicate?  It was meant to be!”  Again we are spirit first and then human.  It’s all about where we choose to place our focus, and hence our energy, creating an environment that makes communication conducive and expectant. 

When it comes to linking with spirit, all you have to do is ask and then BE AWARE.  Trust your senses (which is sometimes easier said than done, I know).  When the time is RIGHT, when the energy and conditions are appropriate, spirit will be there with the messages they wish to convey.  It is what they have been doing for centuries.  No doubt, we will be doing the same thing when we hit the Other Side – reaching back and sending messages to our loved ones still on earth.  It’s going on all over the place RIGHT NOW across this planet.  Accept it and embrace it.  Become a part of it.

Ghosts Are People Too

Last weekend I participated in an overnight investigation in a grand old theater that had been built in 1928. The Washington State Ghost Society had been there once before and recorded several EVPs (electronic voice phenomena). Members also reported having personal experiences, such as seeing shadows and feeling a sense of presence, and the theater owners talked of hearing voices and seeing objects move. We decided to head back and see what else we could uncover.

On the drive down, I carpooled with the Society president, Dave K. and we got talking about how interacting with spirits had become so normal and commonplace in our lives, that we had forgotten it was not a typical pastime for everyone else. It had occurred to us, rather humorously, that we take for granted our ability to dive into locations where most people fear to tread. To us, our experiences have shown that ghosts are not something to be feared, and that such encounters are really to be embraced. So we asked the question: why are people afraid?

The answer seemed quite simple, but it was worth examining. We started with the usual – Hollywood. The movie industry has done a fantastic job coloring our perception of what spirits can and can’t do. For the entertainment crowd, moviemakers would love to have us believe spirits can do ANYTHING! And that they are always out to FRIGHTEN US! This is actually further from the truth. Naturally, the other culprit in making us fear so much about ghosts is that spectre referred to as “the unknown.” Because we do not fully understand the nature of the phenomena, the missing puzzle pieces could – could (gasp!) – represent something nefarious. At least, I think that is what we sometimes tell ourselves. We as humans have this tendency to apply fear to things we do not fully understand because we assume our lack of knowledge just might lead to our downfall in connection with it. In other words, it’s hard to look out for Number One – personal self-interest – when you do not fully comprehend what you might be going up against. It’s a logical conclusion, but life rarely ever turns out to be so clean-cut.

The realizations Dave and I (and many of our investigator friends) have discovered over the years of coming face-to-face with the spirits of those who have remained behind stands in stark contrast to what we’ve been taught as a civilization over the centuries. It is in direct contradiction to what Hollywood would have you believe – and in many cases, counter to what a lot of the paranormal “investigation” television shows air. (Let’s face it, when you’re dealing with T.V., you’re dealing with RATINGS, competition, etc.). So in this blog, I would like to clear up a few things about ghosts and hauntings that I’ve learned over the years, to hopefully give people the sense that it is okay to actually NOT be afraid when you encounter a spirit.

1) Ghosts are there to frighten you. Nonsense. Only on very rare occasions are ghosts trying to deliberately scare the bejeezus out of you. 9 times out of 10, they are just trying to get your attention (and in some cases, may not even be aware of you or that their actions are affecting you). There may be any number of reasons why a ghost might want to make contact (and all of them non-threatening) – The ghost might be a relative of yours that is trying to tell you they are okay; It might be a former owner of the house you just moved into, letting you know you are welcome and watch out for the occasional leaky faucet; and believe it or not, the spirit might be trying to get your attention to warn you of danger, such as a loose floor board on the staircase. Yes, sometimes they might be wanting to make contact to see if you can help them get free of where they are at, or provide some kind of closure to their lives, or just have fun because they think you are such a cool person. Sometimes they might NOT LIKE how you’ve position a piece of furniture and are wanting to tell you that – but that doesn’t make them evil. Sometimes they just want the honorable acknowledgement. Are they really hanging out in the corner asking themselves “How can I torment this person?” No.

2) Ghosts can do anything. No, they can’t. Yes, they can move objects – but then again, so can you. But they don’t move them nearly as often and to the magnitude Hollywood shows you. The amount of energy a spirit has to gather in order to move something as light as a pencil can be quite draining. The opening of cabinet doors, the rolling of a ball, tapping you on the head, all can take place. But they can’t take place in a non-stop every-moment-of-the-day fashion. They will only happen sporadically, and at the expense of the ghost’s energy. Once they have opened that cabinet, it’s going to be a few minutes to several hours before they can do anything like that again. They certainly don’t have the energy to levitate your entire house and consume it in a ball of fire over the graveyard your home was unwittingly built over. We may not know everything about what spirits can do, but this much we can more or less agree on.

3) Because we don’t fully understand the phenomena, it could be dangerous. Yes, the phenomena could be, but that doesn’t mean it will be. I have interacted with spirits for decades, and the more I talk to them, and the more my Society investigators interact with them, the more we have come to realize they are actually more benign than they are malevolent. To me, this knee-jerk reaction of fear has got to be a result of cultural conditioning – starting from the summer campfire tales of restless spirits designed to frighten children, to the Hollywood hit designed to startle you and hopefully curl you up into a fetal position in the chair.

What most of us have forgotten is that ghosts were at one time people too. They got up in the morning, put on socks, went to a job, ate dinner, stubbed their toes, and occasionally had indigestion, then keeled over and “died”. This does not make them demonic entities bent on making your life a living hell. As ghosts, they are still those same people, albeit with a form we typically can’t see, with some occasional enhancements we in the slow-moving atomic suit don’t have. But this doesn’t make them evil, suspect, or worthy of fear. And in my experience, it isn’t the need to create fear in an unsuspecting person’s life that drives them to be ghosts. They, like us, are still searching, expressing, and living life in their own way, from the perception of their own environment. And we on occasion have moments of sharing that with them in an apparent bridge-gap between the world of spirit and the world of flesh and bone.

When it comes to interacting with spirits, we should take the same attitude and ethics as we would with our fellow neighbor: Honor and respect them. After all, that is what they are: fellow neighbors from a different time that have moved on from the physical world. If they have a message, through honor and respect, they will deliver it in a way that will not be frightening. It might startle you – only for the fact that it’s not “normal” to receive information from ghosts (The startle-effect pretty much goes away after doing it for several years though). Through honor and respect, ghosts will take an interest in answering your questions sincerely, versus an adversarial relationship oftentimes created by other ghost investigators who choose to harass – and then wonder why they walk away with little to no evidence, or a real reason to be scared. Through honor and respect, the ghosts will reciprocate your humbleness and sincerity. There have been a few occasions where I have encountered a “negative” spirit, but when I tell them I honor and respect them and are not there to “fight” or “combat” them, they will relax and a real dialogue will open up. Either that, or they simply leave me alone because they know I at least acknowledge them and won’t be frightened by them.

Honoring and respecting the spirits goes a long way, because they usually honor and respect you back. Why? Because as I said, they were once (and still are) people too.

Encountering spirits, to me and my brethren, has been an opportunity to learn more about the continuity of life. What can we expect when we leave the body? What are some the circumstances and dramas that can continue for our existence once we shed the mortal coil? These questions can’t be answered in a state of fear, they can only be addressed through genuine curiosity and honest inquiry. And to date, our answers have been astounding.

Ghost investigating isn’t about confronting demons and things that frighten people; it isn’t about going in and kicking something out and hoping to get a thrill in the process. It’s about learning more of who and what we are and gaining a better understanding of the human condition – inside and outside the body. It’s about answering questions of life, joining the hands of those that have left the body before us, and who have made their presence known to us here. And one of the questions we’ve answered in our travels is: Ghosts really aren’t scary. They’re just people. Honor and respect them as such.

P.S., And if you think you are not being respected or are otherwise harassed, give the Washington State Ghost Society a call, and we’ll try to find out why. Check us out on Facebook