The Science of Spirituality

 

 

The skeptic and the believer; two sides of the same coin.

I listen to Coast to Coast AM.  I was even on the show recently; as a caller on their annual Ghost to Ghost, Halloween show.  I was the last caller of the night, and I told this story about a haunted youth hostel.

To have an encounter with a ghost presupposes the idea that there is life after death.  But is there?  The arguments for and against are many and varied.

Obviously, I stand on the side of belief.  For me, it goes deeper than just a belief though; it’s tied into my being, my experiences are real.  For me.  And really, in the inner landscape of my spirituality, that’s what ultimately matters, right?  Same for you, too, no matter which side you stand upon.

Since I am a big enough fan that I pay their membership fee, I download the podcasts of Coast to Coast and listen at my leisure.  This means I frequently listen to months-old podcasts, immediately followed more current ones.

The guest  on August 7th was Matthew Alper, and he stood on the side of the skeptics.  He said more than once that he did not accept that there was any survival of consciousness past the physical death of the body.  And he quoted a whole slew of scientific experiments and studies.

Spiritual center hasn't made onto the map yet...

I did find the premise of his book interesting, that we as humans are hard-wired to have a sense of spirituality, that there is a ‘spiritual center’ to the human brain, much as there is a language, or vision center.  I am intrigued enough by his position to want to read all he has to say about it.  Because I find it perfectly intriguing that he would find overwhelming evidence for a spiritual center.  I don’t agree with his presumed mechanism, but I do agree that we have a center in our brain, a definite physical thing.  We differ in that I believe it is there to sense the spiritual realm.

Today, I’ve been listening to a show featuring Dr. Vernon Neppe and Dr. Edward Close,  from November 2.  They are the authors of Reality Begins With Consciousness.

They also have very convincing, scientific articles, studies and research that support their point of view.  Which is, briefly, that consciousness exists separate of our physical bodies, and survives physical death.  Interestingly, in both shows, the guests used temporal lobe seizures as a point in favor of their arguments.  Yeah, it was funny to me too.

Obviously, I found the good doctors’ views more palatable, since they also track with mine.  But, in all fairness I have not read either of the books, my insights come from listening to how the guests presented themselves on the air, and reading their websites.  Both books are on my reading list, now.

But it started me considering; what a funny animal the human is, that we can look at ‘scientific evidence’ from two such diametrically opposite viewpoints and each be convinced that the ‘science’ supports our own worldview.

Is it a lack of experience with spiritual, or I will say, numinous matters that convinces the skeptic?  Or is it perhaps an overabundance of otherworldly encounters that drives another to eschew all contact, denying the experience of their own senses?  In other words, ‘locking it away.’  Each can have their own inner reasons for claiming there is no life after death.

Conversely, where does the believer get his faith?  What convinces a psychic that it’s more than ‘just her imagination?’

It’s all in the individual’s perception that the distinction lies.  Each one of us perceives the world just a little bit differently than the next.  Haven’t we all seen examples of people with a narrow focus?  Or with a more widely encompassing viewpoint?  The challenge to us as humans is to expand our awareness, to try and see things from another’s perspective, to engage our empathy and see the world from outside ourselves.  It’s in making that step, that forward motion to understand another that we work towards a better world.

No matter which side of the spiritual fence you stand on, I think we can all agree to that, right?

So what do you think?  What has convinced you?

Is It A Ghost?

I’ve run into two types of paranormal activity associated with the spirits of humans who’ve died.  First, there are the earthbound spirits I’ve been detailing so far; these are beings who cling to life, and the earth, and have the intellect to interact with those of us still incarnate.  These are what we usually think of as ghosts.  However, not all apparitions are necessarily aware of us humans on the Earth plane or trying to communicate with us.  Some of them may not even see us or react to our presence, but go about their actions as if we were the ones not there.

Commonly known as residuals, these are powerful emotional leftovers of events or trauma that took place in a particular locale.  Residuals replay over and over a scene that is seemingly ignorant of current surroundings.  For example a phantom stagecoach is sometimes seen crossing the 57 freeway in Southern California.

 

I encountered a residual haunting when I walked through two men fighting.  I was visiting a county fair that had an old farmhouse on its grounds.  I didn’t have any of the typical sensations of a nearby spirit.  The day was bright and sunny and my friend and I were having fun poking around the old house.

 

We came into a large open room, a gathering space not a bedroom or kitchen.  There was no furniture, only windows, a fireplace and a chandelier.  I walked into the center of the floor to peer up and get a closer look at the dangling lamp.  Between one moment and the next several things happened at once.  I became very nauseated, dizzy and lightheaded.  I couldn’t see my friend but two men stood facing off against each other.  It was as if I was between them but they couldn’t see me.  They were arguing.  I could hear the yelling but couldn’t understand their words.  They were close to each other, pushing and then grappling.  Each man carried a gun and they fired almost simultaneously.

The cramping and nausea had me nearly doubling over and I really was feeling like I was going to faint.  I called my friend over and she had to help me out of the house.  Once outside, the nausea evaporated along with all my other symptoms, and never returned.

“That was weird.”  She looked at me, concerned and I told her what I’d seen and felt.  We both shivered not knowing exactly what had happened.  We continued to explore the fair but stayed far away from the old farmhouse.

What sort of ghosts have you encountered?  Was it a true haunt or a residual?

What’s your scariest paranormal experience?

 

Werewolves? What’s Not to Love?

At first glance, why would anyone want to be a werewolf?  Does anyone really want to be able to change their shape, to have to hunt and kill?  Common legends do not paint them as very congenial creatures, and how comfortable can it be to grow hair and have to run around on all fours?  How many hands up out there?  Ok, mine’s one of them.  Guilty!  But I’ve always found shape-shifting endlessly fascinating.

The origins of the werewolf legend trace back to the ancient world.  The Epic of Gilgamesh, out of Sumeria, relates how the hero refused to knock boots with the Goddess Ishtar, because she’d turned a former lover into a wolf.  From Greece we have Lycaon, King of Arcadia.  The basic tale has Lycaon killing his son, cooking him and offering him up for dinner to Zeus, King of the Gods.  Zeus is understandably angered by his host’s menu choice and transforms King Lycaon into a wolf in punishment. I guess the lesson from this is…don’t piss off a deity!  It’s from the King of Arcadia that we get the word lycanthropy.

The wolf has had a bad reputation for a very long time.  In early European cultures the wolf was a dangerous enemy, a threat to livestock and humans both.  Not surprising that someone who did damage to the community would be characterized as a wolf.  Werewolf legends abound throughout Europe of men changing into wolves and terrorizing the countryside.  Retrospective analyses have offered us a multitude of explanations for this creature, it’s motives and behaviors; ergotism, hypertrichosis, porphyria have all been suggested.  Superstition and suspected witchcraft have also contributed.  It’s been suggested that the werewolf legend sprang up to explain the actions of serial killers; a supernatural cause to a horrific act would have made sense to religiously bound ideals of the Middle Ages.

How did we make the transition then, from serial killer to superhero?  Today, we have Jacob Black, Richard Zeeman and Alcede Herveaux to name just a few.  Hundreds of thousands of women now lust for these guys, and yeah, I’m one of them!  The literal and virtual bookshelves are crammed with paranormal romance featuring everyone’s favorite shapechanger.  Now, they’re devastatingly attractive, powerful men (or women!) who are as irresistible to us as to the heroine (or hero!) of the story.

Obviously, numerous factors have contributed to this change, but as our understanding of wolves and their environment has grown, so has our love affair with the werewolf.  It’s only fairly recently that human perception of the wolf has turned.  With a better understanding of wolf behavior that has come from research, we now know that, instead of being slavering mindless killers, the wolf is in fact a dedicated family animal.  Wolves are loyal, and live in loving family groupings.  They act together as a team, cooperating to provide food and protection for their pack.  Pack dynamics can be harsh, involving growling, lunging and slashing teeth, but looking closely at these interactions shows that these fierce displays are usually just that, display.  Physical conflict is typically brief, and injuries rare.  More commonly, pack members are physically affectionate with each other, offering grooming, cuddling and playful behaviors to the members of their pack.   Yes, they do kill other animals, but for food, not excessively or wastefully.  They do not kill solely for the joy of killing.  Seems to me humans could do a little more modeling of their own behavior after the wolf’s.

The modern werewolf  has grown to fill a much-loved niche in our world.  Striding confidently out from the fearful fringes of superstition, the werewolf has gone from terror-inducing villain to mainstream hero.  But, the modern shapeshifter has also allowed us to reconnect with an often-forgotten part of ourselves, the part that is wild and animalistic.  In our frenetic, technology-driven world, we often lose sight of the fact that we are natural creatures.  A part of us mourns a little when we are cut off utterly from the earth that sustains us and seeks to reconnect with it.  And it’s a little bit like rediscovering the divine when you do find it.

The werewolf walks in both worlds, the human and the natural, giving us that outlet, that connection.

I cast the werewolf into the protagonist’s role in my novel, Becoming Pack, to show that humans are inextricably bound to the natural world, and our actions have consequences.  We need this bond, to remind ourselves that we are not alone, we do not exist in a vacuum.  We require the wild, open spaces and the animals that live there.  Evidence mounts on evidence that each ecosystem is linked to the other, what affects one affects the next and damage to one eventually harms all.

The wolf is an icon of how man can affect the natural world.  In North America, the wolf was the object of a sustained program of eradication, and they nearly succeeded.  It wasn’t until 1973 that the gray and red wolves received federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.  Wolf reintroduction programs began in 1995 in Idaho/Yellowstone.  Today, wolf populations are growing, and their resurgence has helped restore their native habitats.

I  have a very close bond to wolves; I used to work with them, well, two to be specific.  In Becoming Pack, I’ve tried to bring you into the world of the wolf, and what it would feel like to be able to experience the world through the senses of another.  Ultimately, that’s what the werewolf protagonist does for us, gives us a glimpse of the natural world through the eyes of one immersed in it.

Who is your favorite werewolf?  What’s your fascination with the werewolf mythos?  Leave me a comment and tell me about your love of lycanthropy!

Aren’t you scared of them?

I get asked that a lot.

Nope.  Or at least, not anymore, but that wasn’t always the case.  They sure like to try.  I’ve been told ‘get out’ and ‘go away’ along with ‘I’ll kill you.’  There are some spirits who like to paint the most gruesome scenes, typically of how they died.

On my first trip to England, my friend and I stayed in a youth hostel in Brighton.  The primary attraction for staying in it was that it dated from the seventeenth century.

I woke up in the middle of the night and went to visit the ladies’ room.  The transition from pitch black room to well-lit hall was harsh on my eyes, so as I walked down the hall I put both hands up and covered them, rubbing to block the light.  I took slow, measured steps but still bumped into someone else walking down the hall coming from the opposite direction.

Along the full length of my body I felt a tall man press against me when we collided.  I stumbled back two steps and pulled my hands away from my face.  The words “I’m sorry” actually escaped me before I realized I was completely alone in the middle of the hall.

That particular time, oh shit was I scared!  I was in my twenties, and basically just dipping my toe in the paranormal pool.  Ghostly interactions were rare and I didn’t fully accept them at that time.  However at that moment, I didn’t have any trouble feeling the spirit’s presence.

I was filled with dread, there’s no other word for it.  I could not move my feet because I was coming to grips with the fact that I’d made physical contact with a dead guy.

Oh my god, I just bumped into a ghost!  Ran through my mind on a continuous feed loop.

As I scanned the hall I saw a grayish, blackish fog in the corner.  While I watched, it boiled and I instantly knew that this was why I was feeling such fear.  This amorphous blob was churning with rage and hate.  All I wanted was to get away from this thing!  So I ducked into the bathroom and hid in a stall.  From there I felt this being move out of the corner to stand in the doorway.  Instead of the fog, now a man shape blocked the room’s only exit.

He was not a pleasant person in life or in death.

He knew I could ‘see’ him and that made him really happy.  He wanted nothing more than to make the rest of my time in that hostel a nightmare.

I rocked back and forth, really agonizing over the fact that I was now stuck in the bathroom.

“You have to come out sometime.”  You know, the menace with which he said it forever changed my fetish for the English accent.  “I’m just going to wait right here.”  He didn’t bother to come into the bathroom.  He was actually kind of contemptuous of the idea and was content to stand there and enjoy my distress, waiting for me to make my break past him.

Then I saw the bees on the floor.  Lots of them.

I’m allergic to bees and really didn’t care that most of them looked dead, a few were still moving.

I was out the door and moving down the hall, with my new ‘friend’ literally breathing down the back of my neck.  He chased me all the way and then followed me into the room.  Unlike my earliest experiences, diving into bed and pulling the covers over my head did not make the bogeyman go away.  He settled in right over me and suddenly all I could see was his face, grinning horribly.

He was not a good-looking guy either; a round face, several days’ stubble, dull, flat, dark hair and dark eyes with bad teeth loomed close to my own.  I could see most of them because his nasty grin was more like a snarl.  He pulled back and I could see his arms and chest covered in a pea-green sweater, his hands were around my neck.

He couldn’t physically hurt me but he could put me through emotional pain.   I didn’t feel anything but slowly my vision of him changed, he was pulling back and pushing me under water.  The rim of a barrel came into my peripheral vision and terror and helplessness filled me.

“I’m going to kill you just like he killed me!”  His emotions of pain, rage and hatred of his murderer made him long to visit the same on anyone else.  I realized he was showing me, over and over again, how he died.  From time to time the man over me changed and became his killer, the spirit showing me his death through his eyes when a lighter-colored head would occasionally superimpose over his dark.

I did have some experience with putting shields between angry spirits and myself but I had to get to a place of calm to bring them up.  Kind of hard to do with a vengeful ghost forcing the movie of his death into my head.  So I yelled for help and the answer I got was not at all what I was expecting.

My dog.  Or his spirit at any rate.  From thousands of miles away in California he heard my call, felt my distress and somehow astrally projected himself to that youth hostel in Brighton.  His loving and protective spirit manifested between that angry being and me, hiding under the covers.  I felt his weight settle on my stomach and legs when he interposed himself and snarled at the dead guy.  He’s still my guardian to this day.

The spirit backed off but didn’t leave and I got the space I needed to bring up my own shields.  My dog stayed until I drifted off to sleep.   When dawn came, the ghost left.

The clerk at the hostel was surprised to learn the ghost was in the upstairs hall.

“He usually stays in the basement.”  The girl’s tone indicated she really didn’t believe me when I told her I ran into him.  I didn’t really care if she doubted me because she wasn’t there.  That ghost stayed in the room all night, hovering but unable to reach me anymore through my shielding.  I could sense him when I woke, buzzing angrily like the bees from last night before fading away.  I was never happier to check out a place than that Brighton hostel.

It’s been a little while…

But don’t think I’ve run out of things to say.  Quite the contrary.  I have been busy finishing my first novel.  Yes, I write fiction also.

The ghost and spirit stories I share with you here on my blog are all true accounts of my life as a psychopomp.  I think, however, I’ve mentioned before that writing has become like breathing to me and this first novel grew from a short story.  The characters were compelling enough for me to develop them and full-length book around their initial tale.

Right now, I am in the final editing phase, making sure there are no spelling or grammar errors.  In less than a month (ideally) I’ll be putting it out there.  Then, I’ll get back to detailing my paranormal life for your here.

So, stay tuned!  More ghost stories to come.

Any literary agents or book publishers want to read a paranormal romance featuring werewolves like you’ve never seen them before?

It Can’t Be Like That, Really?

But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths – are mine the same as yours?

-Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jesus Christ Superstar

I put off writing down my experiences for most of my life.  It was like there was this block in my brain that kept me from putting words down on paper or storing them in gigabytes.  Believe me I doubted as much as any and I’ll give you here my disclaimer: these are my stories as I experienced them.  They are my truths and hold great meaning for me, but when all is said and done (here I borrow and paraphrase from my friend and teacher) they are just that, stories.  I saw these things and experienced them in all their technicolor glory, but as with all supernatural and paranormal interactions, they are highly subjective.  I certainly hold opinions on them and I am sure dear readers you will have some of your own but I share my stories for a variety of reasons; to entertain, to enlighten, and to show others who may have similar tales that they are not alone.

I recently finished Supernatural  by Graham Hancock (a plug for you here, Graham) and can say that I recommend it highly.  He examines in great detail altered states of conscious and how they have impinged on our spirituality, ancient and modern.  Throughout he consistently delineates common features from a multitude of cultures and across the span of history.  I found much of what he described fit closely to my own personal experiences.

On a very fundamental level we all have the ability to part the veil and see the worlds that lie beyond.  Why some do and some do not is a matter of very personal choice.  Some do not think to look, some have forgotten they can and some willfully close their eyes.

For me, it’s been a roller-coaster ride, scary, exciting and profound.  When I was very young I fluctuated from being extremely fearful of the paranormal, to being open and practicing Wicca for a while, and the long journey that has brought me here.

I spent a brief time in my teen years as a born-again Christian.  Really.  I had the faith, I read the Bible, I went to church and I prayed every night.  And it wasn’t for me; never once did I feel an answer in my heart to any of my seeking.  From there I became agnostic with atheistic tendencies until a coworker shared a couple of books on Wicca and I dove in.  I spent a good many years identifying with Wicca and practicing it’s rituals.  It spoke to me as Christianity never had and I finally heard within my soul the hint of answers to my questions.  But it still wasn’t quite right and I gradually moved away from considering myself Wiccan or practicing that faith.

Now, I don’t know if it’s necessary to put a label on my spirituality and views of what comes after physical death.  Recently, it’s become more common to hear the phrase ‘I’m not religious but I am spiritual’ and I frankly love it.  The truth of it speaks to me and I find fascinating conversations when I hear someone say this.  One of my purest joys is hearing how someone else views the cosmos; it’s at the very least educational and often uplifting and inspiring.

So I’ve had paranormal experiences all my life, and I’ve practiced in some form or another religion, meditation and peeking into the astral realm.  But I will freely admit that while I had the passion and desire, early on I often did not have the internal discipline to achieve really consistent results when I tried activities such as astral travel or communicating with spirits.  I was something of a dilettante in my younger days.

None of which stopped things from actually popping up in front of me and intruding into my life.  It was by times thrilling, terrifying and awe-inspiring.  Over the last ten years I have deepened and expanded my practices; I began to study Reiki and recently completed my Reiki Master-Teacher training.  I am always looking for paranormal classes, lectures and ceremonies to participate in.  The worlds beyond continue to unfold and reveal themselves in ever-fascinating complexity.  Even though I have experienced the paranormal my entire life I am continually awed and inspired by what I see.  I really feel as if I am only starting on a thrilling and adventurous journey.

Everyday Ghosts

A shade was hanging out in the corner of the elevator, looming and angry.  It was a short ride up from the parking garage and before I could get a good look, the doors opened on my floor.  A couple waited for me to exit, so I bid the hovering spirit so long.  I knew I’d see that ghost again; he was filled with pain and longing.

His name was Steve.  I saw him several times in an underground parking structure and the elevator.  He was always dripping wet, cold and shivering; sodden hair that looked black streamed down his thin, narrow face that held equally dark and suspicious eyes.  It took me a little while to get to know Steve.  He didn’t entirely comprehend that I was actually talking to him and that I could see him.  He’d been ignored or run from for some time and his thoughts were angry, frustrated and mistrustful.

When he did talk it was with a sullen, depressed air; he’d tell me he drowned in the nearby canal which didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  No one swims in it; it’s kind of a nasty place with lots of big ships passing through.  This spirit was reluctant to talk about the cause of his own demise because whenever I’d try to get longer conversations going his energy would get prickly and irritating, right before he disappeared.  Then one day I saw him standing in a dark corner across from my truck.

“Hey there.”  I said, cautiously.  He hadn’t yet told me his name.  He grabbed anxiously at his left elbow, a reflexive tic and glanced furtively side-to-side.

“Hi.”  It no longer held a sullen tone, but was still cautious.  “You really can see me.  No one else can.  It’s weird.”

I shrugged.

“It’s sort of what I do.”  I said.

“I can tell some people know I’m around, but it scares them, and they don’t ever look at me or talk to me.  Sometimes they jump.”  That brought on a tiny, spiteful smile.

“That must be pretty frustrating, all these people around and no one wants to be near you.”  He just nodded, now looking hurt.

I am pretty straightforward with the dead, because there’s just no way to soft-pedal it.

“Look, you do know you’re dead, right?”

His dark eyes locked on mine, and I could tell he wanted to deny it, but it would only be a half-hearted lie.

“Yeah, I drowned.”  Instead of trying to get out of him what he was doing in the canal, I just nodded.

“Okay, but are you getting tired of hanging out in this parking garage?”

“I can’t leave.”  He said it with definite finality.  “I’m stuck here.”

I laughed.  “No, you’re not stuck at all.  You just think you are.  Would you like to get unstuck?”  He frowned at me, disbelief once more crawling across his features.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you want to go home, get out of here and go join your loved ones?”

“You mean like, Heaven?”

“Sure, if you like.”

“I can’t, I don’t deserve that and I’m afraid if I leave this garage of where I’ll end up.  This kind of sucks, but it beats frying for eternity.”

At this point, he was still across the driveway from me.  I took a moment to consult with my spirit guides and call them in for assistance.  I felt their loving presence surround me and support me.  I then invited the spirit to come closer, to join me in the car.

“It’ll make it easier to talk and I have to get on the road before traffic hits.  You can ride along with me, and decide if you want to cross the veil or not.”

He blinked once or twice and blinked out.  I felt the familiar astral wind of a passing spirit and then a ghost was seated next to me in my car.  This close I could see the drops of water beaded on his face.

“Do you want to tell me your name yet?”

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”  He was almost indignant.  “If a ghost had talked to me, or jumped into my car I’d’ve freaked the shit out.”

I started the ignition and turned to face him.

“Because you’re not the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.  You just look lost and lonely and like you could use someone to talk to, so I’m offering to talk, but I’m driving out now.  You can come along or not, it’s your choice.”

His head cocked but his attitude changed.  He didn’t smile, but his energy lightened and he warmed up to me.  I drove out of the garage and he looked around.

“Wow!”  Yeah, he really said that.  “I forgot what the sun looked like.”  He was quiet for a few seconds, watching the play of sunlight on clouds and water passing beyond the window of the car.

“Steve.  My name is Steve.”  We were pulling around the corner and up onto the riser of the bridge crossing the canal. It’s quite tall and famous for it’s suicides.  An image formed in my head, of climbing the rail, looking down and the sickly sensation of plummeting.  A few moments later, Steve confirmed he was one of its many victims.

“Never thought I’d see this view again.”  He said it conversationally, almost lightly but I could hear the strain in his voice.

“You jumped?”  It wasn’t exactly a question.

“You know, I really thought the impact would have killed me.  It’s so high!  I was so high.  It kinda sucked, the drowning part.  I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Why’d you do it?  What was so horrible in your life that you thought ending it would solve it?”

Now he turned angry eyes on me again.

“I was a bad person, okay!  I stole from people, I did drugs, and I hurt people.  I hurt my family.”  The last was a mutter and he went quiet, jaw set.  Steve never did tell me why, but that’s his prerogative.

Talking with a ghost isn’t like a having a conversation with your BFF.  They don’t always use words.  Instead they will often project an image, a sensory feeling or an emotion.  He didn’t so much tell me what he’d done as show me.  He was right; he really wasn’t a very nice guy in life.  However, escaping the body means escaping the worries and hang ups of mortal life.  Trouble is, some people don’t let go after they die and that can keep them earthbound.

He rode silently for the rest of the drive, fading in and out, but by the time I got home he was still around, perched on the passenger seat.  Steve followed me into the house, looking around, amazed to be out of the underground garage.

“How’d you get me out of there?”

“You got yourself out.  I just reminded you that you could.”

I went into my meditation space and looked at Steve.  He was prowling around the room, looking out the windows and peering at my knickknacks.  He didn’t seem to notice my spirit guides standing near me at first.  With one exception, my animal spirit guardian, a large black dog who paced to always position himself between Steve and myself.

“I don’t think your dog likes me much.”  He was back to semi-hostile.

“He’s just doing his job and he is kind of protective.  He won’t hurt you though as long as you’re not trying to hurt me or mine.”  I projected trust and confidence with my next words.  “I’m sure you’re not thinking anything of the sort, right?”

Steve relaxed fractionally and became curious.

“What am I doing here, anyway?”

I lifted my hands in a shrug.

“Whatever you want to do.  It’s your choice.  You can wander around this neighborhood, you can go back to the garage or you can go home by crossing the veil.”

I asked my guides to bring the veil in close and to call in Steve’s loved ones, family that had already passed, spirit guides and guardian angels, to come and assist him across and home.

He didn’t want to go.  He saw it and the angels there to help him and kind of freaked.  Still fearful of wrathful deities because he’d done bad things in life, he backed away from crossing.

I asked my guides to pull the veil back and calmed Steve down.

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t my intention to frighten you.”  I told him.  ”Relax; you’re perfectly safe here.  Nothing’s going to harm you, I promise.”  I did my best to project soothing thoughts but Steve was not listening.

Frightened, he disappeared but was back the next day.

“What’s ‘crossing the veil’ and did I really see an angel?”

We had a little chat about what he had seen; that he didn’t have anything to fear and that his loved ones truly were waiting for him on the other side.  No punishment, no judgment, just welcome home.  It took him several days, but eventually he chose to go and join those waiting for him.  He passed through the veil, waving to me and wearing a smile bright as the sun.  A day or two later he came back to say thank you.