Do Dead People Watch You Shower? (17 page)

I do hear
that we are on the threshold of some very major advances in a number of areas pertaining to our health. They keep telling me that cures for certain diseases are right around the corner. I never cease to be amazed by the changes I’ve seen in technology just in my lifetime. I remember when I was a kid walkie-talkies seemed magical. Now we have cell phones that can reach someone on the other side of the world with perfect clarity—and they’ll play music, and take photos and movies, and you can plug them in to your computer and send your pictures to all your friends. It’s just crazy. In medicine we’ve got everything from organ transplants to test tube babies to clones. Again, this is a world of positives and negatives and while we have advanced technical medicine we have also advanced technical weapons, both cures and destructions, and it’s up to us to decide how we use each. Where will we place our energy? It’s the double-edged sword of free will.

Because I’m not a scientist or a doctor, I do find it a little hard to relate in any kind of sensible detail to what They have told me about coming advances, but They are always so beautiful about trying to tell me. There are particular diseases They have named that They’ve told me will see major advances, whether treatments or cures, and They keep telling me that the next generation will not suffer with them anymore. The ones they mention most often are diabetes, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. Certainly there are also others. I know that what They tell me is true, that breakthroughs on these diseases are right around the corner. When my brother Harold was suffering with AIDS, They told me that something monumental was coming that had to do with hormones, but They also told me that it would not be in time for Harold. Of course, this made me sad. But I’m grateful that the new “cocktails” that now exist are keeping others from going through what my brother went through. I hope that knowing that treatments and cures for some of our worst diseases are coming soon will bring comfort to families currently struggling with them, or for whom it might be a worry in regard to having children.

They absolutely do.
You probably know that more and more, using energy of different kinds (sound, light, vibration, and so forth) is ever more prevalent in medicine. The dead are pure energy. So this is an area where They can be really “hands on,” so to speak. Just off the top of my head I remember a reading where a man’s mother came through and she knew he’d injured his shoulder. He’d been in physical therapy for it, but of course I didn’t know that. When I told him that his mother said that she’d been putting energy on his shoulder to help heal it he said, “Wow. It
has
been feeling better. I’d even stopped thinking about it.”

In my own life, a few years ago I had a serious operation, for which I’d received three blood transfusions. I was in very bad shape and desperately needed sleep in order to regain some strength. Every time the doctor came into my room it was to say, “You really
must
sleep.” Unfortunately, my body rejects all narcotics so I
couldn’t
sleep. I was getting worse and worse and really suffering. I was so bad that I was at the point of thinking about my life, taking account, deciding whether I would be satisfied with my life if I were to cross right then, and I had decided that I had done as well as I knew how with what I’d understood to be my job, and that I really was okay to go. I just lay there in the bed and closed my eyes.

Suddenly I was on a roller coaster, sitting in the second seat from the front. In the front seat were two men. One of them turned around to face me, and I saw it was my father. “We needed to take you out of there,” he said. “We needed to get you out of your body so you could sleep.” The roller coaster car seemed to be traveling straight up. We were very high up and I have a fear of heights. My father said, “Don’t worry, I’m driving. If you’re afraid, close your eyes.” I don’t know how long we went up, but I remember my father saying to me, “Please make the choice to stay,” and then he said, “I’m going to bring you back down.”

The next thing I knew, I was back in my body, but I felt completely different from when I’d left. The pain was nearly gone, I felt strong and restored. From that moment I began to make a full recovery. I can still remember being wheeled out of the hospital to leave. As I was pushed toward the door, the sunlight was streaming in so brilliantly I felt like I was being reborn.

Yes, there is.
Different mediums will have different kinds of “shorthand” with the spirits they are in communication with. They, over there, will modify the way They communicate so that it can be most easily understood by the medium in question. I know, for instance, that there are some who will see a white flower when it’s somebody’s birthday, while I, on the other hand, am more likely to hear Them say a month, which I know from experience to correspond to either a significant birthday or the anniversary of a crossing. Some mediums will see a cross or some other symbol over someone’s head when there will be a baby born to that person or to someone in their family soon. What
I
see is an image that I understand to be Saint Philomena, who, according to what is known about her, died a virgin when she was about twelve or thirteen. She is a patron of children, among other things, and when I see her I can be very certain that a child is coming.

Babies are sent
to this side from God, but they also have a lot of friends on the Other Side. As I understand it, during a pregnancy, the soul of the baby does not stay with the mother until the very last part of the third trimester. Until then, it goes back and forth, by means of the tunnel, the same one we travel through when we die, just kind of checking things out and getting used to its new situation. But then toward the end, it actually does spend more time with its new body and that’s when the mother will experience a lot more activity. Finally, at birth, it completely adheres to the body.

A baby might
be a very old soul. But as babies come through the tunnel, they lose all memories of what it was like on the Other Side, who they were, and what they’ve come here for this time. It arrives in this little loaf-of-bread size and has to learn all over again how to use the physical form. But each of us comes here for soul growth, and the souls on the Other Side support the baby’s mission here. As time goes by, they’ll be putting other people and circumstances in place to help wake the baby up to what he or she is here to do.

When I say
that they forget about the Other Side, it doesn’t happen right away. All mothers will tell you that they’ve seen their baby “relating” to something—really someone—they can’t see. Like the baby will be looking at a particular spot in front of her, or maybe across the room, and smiling and laughing, maybe waving her arms, like she is communicating with someone, but there’s nobody there. That is a soul that the baby knew on the Other Side who is there watching over the baby. Especially now that there are baby monitors it’s very common to see this kind of thing.

I hear stories of this all the time. Clients always tell me about their kids saying that they’ve heard something or seen someone. One story that comes to mind is my client who told me she was driving and her young daughter was in the backseat of the car. Her daughter seemed to be carrying on a conversation with someone. She said, “Honey, who are you talking with?” and her daughter replied, “Grandma. She says she lives here.” Well, they just at that moment happened to be driving by the cemetery where her mother was buried—the child didn’t know any difference between living there and being buried there; that’s simply where she was able to see her grandmother.

I remember another client told me about her five-year-old who was at his grandmother’s house, watching his mother making sandwiches. She said to him, “Mommy’s making lunch for you and Grandma.” And the boy points to what looks to her like an empty chair and he says, “Are you going to make lunch for Grandpa, too?”

One of my clients got a real scare from her little girl. Her daughter, only a few years old, was saying her prayers and she said, “Is it okay to say prayers for my
other
mommy and daddy?” My client was so panicked, she thought her daughter was telling her that she was going to die. But that wasn’t it at all. Her daughter had been here only a short time so she was seeing her parents from the last time she was here.

Little children have
been on this side for only a short time; they haven’t been “tarnished” yet by our expectations of what is acceptable or unacceptable here. In a sense, they are still more connected to spirit than someone older who has been in the flesh a long time. They’re still able to communicate with the Other Side, telepathically, and it’s not at all unusual for a child to see a grandparent, for instance, whom they knew on the Other Side before coming here, or one who has died soon after the child’s birth here. They still see spirits quite easily.

But older people don’t spend time talking about the dead relatives and pretty soon children lose that ability because, in essence, they turn their backs to it. This is learned behavior in order to be accepted on this side.

I think generally
this ability does fade. But like I just said, when a young child begins to turn his back on the spirits around him, it’s nearly always to fit in with what he sees as normal on this side. A parent who doesn’t remember his or her own experiences with spirit may humor the child, saying, “Oh, are you talking with your imaginary friend?” So the child gets the message eventually that this is not real. Or a parent may be freaked out if her child is talking about seeing someone who has died. So the child keeps his mouth shut because he doesn’t want to make Mommy uncomfortable. To keep this ability alive, when a child talks about seeing or hearing “Grandma” or “Grandpa,” it’s important to show her an approving face rather than a disapproving face. Kids take direction from their parents. If a parent looks scared, then the child will think that it’s a bad or scary thing to see Grandpa. It’s like when a kid gets near the top of the stairs, she looks back at her mother to see her reaction: Is this an okay thing? Or a not okay thing? Her face says it all. I think just keeping an open dialogue about the subject when a child brings it up can keep this ability alive to some extent. With a young child who has not even begun talking yet, you can try showing him a photograph of a loved one who has crossed and check his reaction to it. There’s a good chance that he will recognize the person from over there.

I believe from
what I’ve been told that we all choose our parents, but that we do get some direction from the Other Side; it’s a collective decision based on how the soul can best help over here and grow spiritually. We are born to the right people and in the right circumstances to let this life’s purpose unfold through our free will and our different choices and actions. In every situation, we choose. We come here knowing to whom we’ll be born, that there will be a lesson (or probably more than one!) that we will be confronted by, and/or make a contribution to. We will also be expected to help others who are also coming here. It is our choice to reincarnate: where, when, and to whom. It’s all a combination of decisions made with the spirit Masters on the Other Side.

I believe that
it is predetermined, yes. Both from my own personal experience, and from that of others I’m aware of. I believe we decide before coming here whether we will have children at all, and if so, how many. And while I would normally say that we can alter this with our free will, in the case of children, I will go out on a limb and say that this is one thing that is so much an integral part of the divine plan that there is no way we can change it once we are here. Having or not having children is a huge part of the framework of any life. I can’t really think of anything bigger, even including a life-threatening illness or accident. Since each child will bring different lessons to the parent(s), I think the question of “how many” is resolved before we come back here.