Category Archives: crazy talk

With this ghost ring…

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The most common greeting I’m receiving these days is, “How’s married life!”  I usually respond with “Fabulous!” or “Wonderful!”  but occasionally the cheeky, “Fantastic – we’ve finally consummated our relationship after 11 years!”  I have difficult to shock friends, so this response always gets a laugh!

I am still anxiously awaiting our wedding photos, and I know they’ll be brilliant!  Our photographer is one of the best, and I’m so glad we booked her.  I’ve had a couple of people come up to me since our wedding, expressing regret that they didn’t invest a bit more into their photos.  If you’re one of those people, remember, it’s never too late – and you can always renew your vows if your photos or memories of your first wedding was less than ideal.  My own parents renewed their vows and I remember the ceremony, as I and my sister attended, with my best friend’s father officiating.  To me, *that* was my parent’s wedding, even though I know that technically, they were married before I was born.

So remember, if you wish you’d had more flowers or eloped and wish you had invited a few friends and family – you still can!  It’s never too late, until you’re dead.  Even then, sometimes it’s not too late!

We have all these funny little social rules, don’t we?  They’re good things when they keep our society rubbing along with a minimum of conflict.  I’m a firm believer in manners, courtesy, and consideration, for example.  But I’m the first to throw convention in the garbage if it’s damaging or simply useless!

I had an interesting dream visitation last week.  That alone is unusual; as a medium, spirit folks don’t have to wait until I’m asleep to get my attention.  They’ll just pop in as soon as I think of them, or when I am talking about something connected to them that they care about.

Here’s the backstory:

Sweetie and have both inherited our mother’s wedding rings.  I, after my mother passed away, and Sweetie, after her father passed away and her own mother wanted Sweetie to have them.  We are *so grateful* and humbled to have been able to each take our mother’s wedding rings, which lived on their hands for decades during their own lifelong marriages.

We call them our “fancy” rings, meaning, we don’t wear them to work.  Both rings have diamonds, and I am simply not allowed to wear rings with stones to my work at the hospital, and Sweetie doesn’t want to wear her fancy ring to her job flipping B&Bs, which is physical and very dirty.

Instead, we wear placeholder rings made from silicone.  Sweetie likes hers quite a bit, but I’m not in love with mine.  I want my everyday wedding ring to be a permanent fixture, and my mother’s diamond to be something I can add to my hand on my non-hospital days – but I want my wedding band to stay on my hand all the time.

When did I become a traditionalist?  Well, I guess since our ceremony held so much meaning for me, I don’t want a cheaper-feeling ring to symbolize it.

I think that’s the part that bothers me – I know this ring will eventually wear out.  If the company is still around, they’ll replace it, but the point is I don’t want to be wearing a wedding band that will need replacement.

As I write this, a realized that silicone does not hold any sort of energy, either.  With many objects, wood, metal, even some plastic, I pick it up and immediately flash back to the last time I handled it, what I was thinking about, how I was feeling, who I was with.

I *want* my wedding band to hold on to the energy of my day-to-day.  You know, MY MARRIAGE.

So I decided that I don’t really like this silicone band, and I’m going to buy a gold wedding band to compliment my mother’s ring.

Then I had a brainwave.

My mother’s ring is pink gold, custom-made from a goldsmith in North Bay, Ontario, from a huge Russian rose-gold ring, before rose gold was popular or easily attainable.  The diamond in my ring is the same one I remember from her yellow gold ring in my childhood, I think my mother went through a couple of versions of her wedding ring, upgrading over the years on major anniversaries.  My father had communicated with the local jeweler my mother’s desire for a pink gold wedding ring, and the jeweler had kept his eyes open for months before he’d procured this large ring with enough metal to work with.

Remembering the story my father had told me about the making of the ring that would become my own wedding ring, I realized that I too had an unused pink gold ring sitting in my jewelry box.  It’s engraved with the initials of my great-grandmother, my mother’s mother’s mother.

Her ring was passed down to me, a teenager at the time of her death, through my mother and grandmother.  (The ladies in our family tend to live a *very* long time.)

As a teenager and in my early 20s, I LOVED this ring.  It is hand-engraved with details, it’s unique pink gold, (even more unusual when it was made, possibly in the early or mid 1900s) and it made me feel connected with the woman my great-grandmother was, when she was in her teens and twenties.  I met her a handful of times before her death in the 80s, but I honestly don’t remember much about those meetings.  I would have been 5 years old or younger, when I did meet her.

I wore the ring consistently for fifteen years, and have not worn it much in my 30s at all, mainly because in my maturity, the ring will need to be resized.  It’s too small for my ring finger, but too large for my pinky.

So I had this thought – why not remake this ring into my wedding band?  It seemed like a great solution!

Well, that night, I had a vivid dream.  I was visiting a place which was familiar to me, but also felt like I hadn’t visited in decades.  It was a two-storey stone cottage with a stone wall surrounding the comfortable yard.  The enclosed gardens were lush and well-established, and a pink climbing rose had overtaken most of the cottage roof.  The cottage itself was clean, whitewashed inside, and was quite warm and comfortable.  There was no glass in the windows, just open air.  Intuitively, I know it never gets cold there, and the rains are gentle, never blowing inside the house.  The air is fresh and cool, not damp or chilly, and there was a small, low fire in the kitchen, and a wood stove in the livingroom.  Polished wood plank floors throughout.  No electricity, but neither was it needed.  The land surrounding the house was rolling green beauty, with a forest visible a few miles away, and waving grass, wheat and flax in the fields close by.

A woman similar to my own age welcomed me inside.  We had tea (the best tea!) out of well-used and well-cared-for china cups, with soft ginger cookies.  We chatted for what seemed like an afternoon, in the kitchen.  I visited her dog, either a large spaniel or a small retriever, and her large and black pet rabbit, in her walled garden.  It was a lovely visit, like meeting a friend of a friend for the first time.

When I woke up, I realized who it was – my brain connected the dots.  It took the rest of the day for the realization to really sink it – I no longer felt good about remaking my great-grandmother’s ring into a wedding band!  This lovely lady was my maternal great-grandmother, kindly, politely impressing upon me that she did not want me to do anything to the ring that would cause the engravings to be altered.  It’s not that she objected to it being resized or remade, but if the engravings were lost, the history of the piece would be lost too.  Looking at it, no one would know the ring was unusual, there would be nothing to hint at its history, and the knowledge of that history very well might die with me.

I became obsessed with my great-grandmother for nearly two days – and then I was invited to view a family tree on Ancestry – I tree I was connected with after having my DNA processed and connecting with a third cousin who has an incredibly detailed online family tree.  There, I found this:

Untitled design (10)

A photo of my great-grandmother, looking very much like she did in my dream!  I don’t believe I had ever seen a photo of her when she was this young!  Although you can’t see her hands, I think she may even be wearing the ring in this photo.  I wonder if I’ll ever find out?

It’s very unusual for a relative to care what happens to their belongings after they die.  In sessions, this is not an uncommon question: Is it alright if I sell grandmother’s house?  Is it okay with her if I remake her ring into a necklace?  Or even, Does grandmother mind if I trade in her car?  She loved that car.

I had frankly assumed it would be okay with my great-grandmother that it would be just fine with her to remake her ring.  I had even assumed that her practical Scottish heritage would be pleased at my practicality!  She wasn’t upset, but she certainly wanted it known that she does, very much still care what happens to her ring!

So I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with my great grandmother’s ring.  I could have it resized to wear it again, but I could not wear it as a wedding band as long as it has engravings (as it’s not infection prevention kosher at the hospital.)  Part of me wonders if I should pass it along to one of her great-great-great granddaughters, when one of them becomes a teenager.  I certainly should specify this in my own will, as it’s clear that my ancestor in spirit actually IS still invested in the physical object she left behind!

Human Oversoul… Alien Oversouls???

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2015-06 oversoul

Picking up where we left off yesterday, we were talking to the human oversoul, aka The Mother.

 

Bruce:

Do aliens have oversouls …… each variety with its own? Does the human oversoul naturally engage well or poorly with different ones?

 

Mother:

Yes! There are many beautiful planets with living, incarnated children. You are asking about the three known species (shows me tall whites, short pinks, short greys.) They are all loving, beauful beings, although each species has it’s own challenges. The nature of their incarnations are different, particularly the (short pinks) who inhabit their bodies like you communicate with animals. They are less bound by incarnation, and more studying sensuous existence.

Yes, the planets and the oversouls of off-earth species communicate with the oversouls of earthly species. There are species-sharing, species that are inter-related across planets. Earth is not an isolated anomaly! If humans are my children, other intellectual species with similar capacities for logical thought and communication would be your cousins.

There are many species that are similar across planetary ecosystems. Start with macro-life. Amoeba have oversouls. This is the very source of intelligent design! Evolution is not random, for heaven’s sake! Not at all! How would anything be accomplished if left to chaos and chance? Chaos will always fall to order, to system and ultimately, to evolution, even in the “vacuum” of space.

Kate: I swear you guys, she just made a joke about mothers needing vacuums. “Every Mother needs a vacuum! Ha ha!” I had to do a double-take. Did that just happen, or was that me? The thing is, *I* wouldn’t make a joke like that. Did the Mother just make a joke and my knee-jerk reaction was “Hey! That’s sexist!” My reaction is part of why it’s funny!

I wish there was a way to write about what just happened without butchering the joke by explaining it! There were so many layers to that one, and the Mother is asking me to have a sense of humour about myself, too! I appreciate the reminder.

 

Bruce:

Are oversouls planet-linked? Does the range of a given oversoul ever extend to other planetary systems?

Mother:

Yes, it is useful to think of the relation as ancestral. If I am the mother of humanity as it exists today, and I relate to you in near-human form, the next “level” is my OWN parents. Imagine again, the light and the crystal refraction. If the colours red, blue and purple are formed by a crystal, the crystal is their mother. But who is the parent of the light before it refracted?

At some point, you return to the source of the light, which is useful to think of as “Source” or “God” or “Universe” or even nothingness, mere potential, the silence before the BANG!

There are ancestors all along the line of evolution. Every branch has a Mother, an oversoul. This is why a diverse species like dogs require many oversouls! A great-grand parent for all dog-like creatures, whose children created wolves, jacklys, foxes and dogs. The dog branch bloomed out BEAUTIFULLY! So many different flowers! How do you fit so many flowers on to one plant? It continues to branch out. The oversoul forms based on the need of the species, or the sub-species, and the oversoul you perceive / connect with depends on how you address your questions and to whom.

The answers you receive depend upon who you ask, and the context of your questions.

Some species share oversouls across planets. Plants are highly specialized, and their oversouls (so-named Devas in my brain because I’ve read the Findhorn books) are specialized. There are oversouls of small ecosystems, oversouls of particular plants and oversouls of the very earth and compost.

Compost! The wonderful collection of micro-organizms which transform life, which yield new life and support ALL life on earth! You have not even THOUGHT to ask about the most vital oversoul of all – the Mother of SMALL LIFE!

The Mother of microscopic life is essentially the earth herself. These microorganisms control the world, control the fate of the planet, begin and end all life.

 

Bruce:

There seems to be some kind of hierarchy …. or structure, at least, in spirit. How do oversouls fit into that structure? What lies “above,” “below,” or “beside” the oversoul classification? (I realize that there may well not be a “higher or lower,” but there are “proximities” and inter-relationships of some sort.)

 

Mother:

I believe we have addressed your question with the refracting light and the branching flowers – life is the expansion, the growth. Hierarchies can be seen to exist – such as the food chain. Microscopic life is consumed by ever-larger species until you reach the apex predator. Yet the predator is dependent upon every block in the pyramid, or it would cease to exist in that form. The lion is decended from, and dependant upon the infinetly small microscopic processes that support his existence on earth.

Kate: So, wait. Could the bacteria in the gut of the lion be perceived as the lion’s spiritual grandparents?

 

Mother: It doesn’t appear that’s a useful image for you, and for others. Let’s look at it like a forest. The lion is not the most important creature in the forest, though he might be the loudest. The lion’s very existence depends upon the existence of the forest, and so the oversouls and devas of all the species in the ecosystem are connected to each other.

Sometimes, these oversouls have been perceived as fighting each other. This is why humanity creates stories about gods who fight, the sun is chasing the moon! You can see the “battles” as the mere pruning of the branches, creating room for new growth, new evolution, new lessons, further generations of children!

 

**** There’s more to come! Keep your eye out next week!

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Your Questions answered! The Human Oversoul

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2015-06 oversoul

A while back on the Joyful Telepathy podcast,  I did an episode about “oversouls”.   (Here it is.)  In a nutshell, An oversoul is the level of consciousness that is higher up the chain, closer to source, than the incarnated individuals.

I used the example of the sea urchins – a single urchin, when broken off of the bunch, will have a single voice – but unless you cut it off, the whole colony of urchin will speak with a single voice, just like the Borg from Star Trek. This is a hive mind, not an oversoul. This hive mind consciousness happens whenever there’s a group of individuals that don’t differentiate themselves from their fellows. Herd animals, flock animals, inscects – all these creatures can experience hive / collective consciousness. They don’t HAVE TO, it’s more a phenomena that seems to happen. I’ve spoken with chickens that see themselves as unique and separate from the others, and I’ve spoken with chickens who experience life as a group – who are so close to their feathered companions they’re practically tethered together, telepathically. It’s a useful state of mind, especially for prey animals. Why limit yourself to two sets of eyes when you could see out of sixteen?

Collective consciousness or hive minds are for incarnated beings, it’s blurring the lines that separate us as incarnated individuals. Oversouls is something else again, it’s higher.

Consciousness manifests itself as you address it. This is why, when our loved ones cross over, they appear to us as their most recent incarnation – that’s how we know them, and how we’ll relate to them.

When you think of an oversoul, don’t think of this as a separate angel / queen / god of the species, but as a way the consciousness has of manifesting itself to us so that we can understand and relate to that level of knowledge.

For me, whenever I’ve accidentally or intentionally addressed oversouls, I get a vision of a majestic ruler of that species, or even of that type of animal. The husky / sled dogs of the north have an accessible oversoul, for example. So do Chihuahuas, so do herding dogs. I think this centralization of consciousness helps the incarnated species, somehow. I have all sorts of theories about this, but I this is going to be a long post and I want to stay on track.

As I was saying, a while back on the podcast I put out a request for questions for the Human Oversoul. For months, I didn’t get any questions. I let it drop, thinking the audience wasn’t really interested in that topic… and because I couldn’t really think of anything to ask. Where do you start? It’s such a huge idea.

Fortunately, my friend Bruce came up with LOTS of questions to get us going! I was so happy! Then I promptly lost this list of questions and stopped everything while my life reorganized itself.

Kindly, Bruce has re-sent these questions. Fabulous! But then, I found myself blocked, FOR WEEKS. I was actually having trouble accessing the a Human Oversoul.

What was I doing wrong? Was I going too far up the consciousness chain? Was I really trying to address “God” in a roundabout way, or the planet Earth’s consciousness? Something about the way I was approaching the contact wasn’t gelling, wasn’t working for me.

And then it clicked, in one beautiful moment. I would address “The Mother”. Not the “Human Oversoul” exactly, but the creative source of humanity, the love, the emotion, rather than the intellect. It’s not intellect or intelligence that binds us humans together on a spiritual / energetic level – it’s EMOTION that is at the crux of the human experience.

The way I’m tuned, particularly after my mother’s death, I thought I’d address the idea of the “Human Oversoul” as “The Mother” figure of humanity. What if I addressed this level of consciousness as the loving mother of all of us? What if I tapped into the unconditional love of a spiritual mother figure?

Jackpot. And the answers began to flow.

We’ll break this into three parts. Here it is: Part 1.

 

The Mother appears surprisingly short, as though she manifested first for our ancesters, our common humanity before we spread across the globe.

Kate:

What was the very beginning of the human species we know today?

Mother:

There have been three blooms of my children. The first blossom was a failure (shows me just a few hundred people, all wiped out.) The second bloom over ten thousand years ago, the creation of a branch of brothers and sisters who did not survive into modern times (shows me a short stature and nearly unbreakable bone-density, large teeth, quiet peaceful natures.) The third bloom happened eight thousand years ago, and cascades over the earth today. You choose which species of humanity (choose the place where you’d like to mark as the beginning.)

Bruce:

There appear to be stages in the development of human beings. Was there a time when hominid precursors of homo sapiens (as we now call ourselves) were just too primitive to fit into the human oversoul? Conversely, will a time come when the race develops beyond the need for an oversoul?

Mother:

Do you ever outgrow the need for a mother?

An oversoul can be viewed as the overseeing mother of the collective experience of a manifest consciousness. (Shows me the soul bubbles.)  How you define the birth of humanity will affect how you define me, and my form will shift to assist your understanding in the context of your questions. There is always an oversoul, life is not possible without a mother.

“Primative” is a selection, a division among children / family. A mother may have a “primitive” child, as defined by that child’s abilities in the context of her environment. A mother may have a child who thrives in that environment and is “gifted”. She loves them both. She worries about them both. She works to guide, protect and preserve them both. Mothers, ultimately, release their children to their own lives, to the world, to their own decisions, to their fate. There was a time when it was *expected* that mothers would see some or all of their children die. I mourn my “primitive” children in the past, I am the immortal soul consciousness of all of humanity.

Where this consciousness, this knowledge, begins and ends, is defined by your question. I am *delighted* your first question poses such a paradoxical answer!

(She explains that a paradox is an answer that seems impossible to nail down, that may be correct and wrong at the same time. She doesn’t explain this for Bruce’s benefit, but for all the people in the future who don’t know what “paradoxical” means and who won’t look it up, because it’s the mother’s responsibility to anticipate the educational needs of her children!)

 

Bruce: Some say that humans were always humans and the various stages of early man were unique unto themselves and really separate species. If so, did these early hominid have their own distinct oversoul(s).

Kate: I need to reword this for my own brain to process it: Okay. Imagine the image of the ape evolving into a man.

2015-06 human-evolution

 

At what point on that scale do you say, “THAT is no longer an ape, that is a human – or that is Early Human Version 1.” Does Early Human V1 have it’s own mother oversoul? When did it separate from the oversoul of the “Ape”? Is the oversoul of Early Human V1 different from the Ape oversoul, and different from the Mother I’m talking to right now?

Mother: (feeling of delight) Yes! As you define and perceive the differences between animal, early human and human, the oversoul becomes tangible. Let me show you.

(Shows me a triangle crystal, refracting a beam of light into a rainbow of colour.) Your perception of this image – you see a white light travelling through the crystal and separating into six colours. Six species of light. Each colour has a unique experience.

If you address Purple as a species, you can talk to her oversoul. You can relate to all things Purple, the purpose of Purple, how Purple experiences life on earth. As Purple expands, she needs her own mother. She *perceives* her mother to be different from the mother of Red or Blue.

In this way, ALL CHILDREN on earth have unique mothers. Their *experience* of their mother was unique to their own lifetime, different from their siblings. A mother may answer questions differently to individual children, depending upon that child’s needs, depending on how the question is framed and timed.

And so again, in order to answer your question definitively, I would need to ask you, beautiful one, to choose the parameters.

The Purple exists because you perceive it to be different and separate from the other colours. The Purple’s mother could be at the beginning of the refraction, or the crystal itself could be addressed as the Mother of all colour on earth.

How you choose to address and define the oversoul is how the higher levels of creation manifest their answers. The answers are always defined by and adapted to the child’s current level of development and understanding. Beautiful child, the answers to your questions will change over time! Please keep asking!

 

Bruce: How do the various oversouls interrelate with one another? Are they indeed entirely discrete? Do some oversouls naturally have a smoother “interface” than others? Are there some that repel each other?

Kate: Sorry, Bruce, in medium mode I often have to re-word questions so that I can incorporate and fully understand your question, before I can ask it and understand the answer. In my own words, are oversouls able to speak to each other? Are there big oversoul conferences? Can they perceive each other? Do some miss each other entirely because of differences in their levels, vibrations – whatever?

Mother:

Understand, your question stems from your human existence. You impose your human form on your ideas of oversouls, and those ideas frame your questions.

As you imagine the oversoul to be the mother of a particular species or group experience, you can easily imagine there are parent-teacher conferences! And so there are!

Parents and teachers gather to discuss the needs of the kids, what is happening (good or bad, healthy or not) and how the progression can be corrected, directed, assisted.

As the Mother of humankind, my concern is for the human children. As needed, I conference with the parents of other children (other species on earth who are impacted by humanity.)

 

Kate:

Wow, Humanity must look like an out-of-control school yard bully on earth right now, to the other oversouls of the planetary species.

 

Mother:

Yes, but there is no outrage, anger or jealousy that you would see in a human parent – teacher conference. The other parents are concerned for the welfare of their children, but there is no vilifying of humankind. The human family as a species is a product of their in-born needs. The behavior, disrupting as it is on other species, is driven by human need, their inborn desires.

These desires shift and evolve over time, and grow to accommodate the perceived environment.

In your own words, the difference between the woman who blocks the cutting of an ancient tree is one of the humans who can hear and feel the pain of the tree as it is felled. The human holding the chainsaw has no idea of the tree’s pain – he has his own children, and the death of this tree will feed his children.

Maybe, one day, all of humanity will perceive the consciousness and experience of the tree. Right now, many can more easily relate to the needs of the logger’s children. So logging continues. This is the story behind the oppression of many species by humanity.

We, the oversouls of the collective consciousness of incarnated species, have parental love and empathy for the logger, the tree and the human blockade. These conferences are regular – you would perceive them as constant! Rest assured that all of the children on the planet are being represented by oversouls.

Now, how do we define those oversouls? They are not like humans, or how you would perceive angels. They are closer to a Pantheon of Gods, a “God” for each element, species, every interest on the planet. The planet too, as you know, has an accessible consciousness as well, easily accessed as a “Mother”.

Why do you think humans created the phrase, “God made humans in his image?” (laughs) Because HUMAN MEN accessed their image of God in THEIR OWN image! Isn’t that delightful!

(Acknowledges my thoughts)

 

Kate: I was just thinking how much the energy of the Mother feels familiar, and I was trying to decide if this was the same energy I felt while talking to Mother Earth,  to Mary Magdeline, or is it some other being, an angelic energy? I was just thinking “Why is this energy so familiar”. The Mother answered me in that acknowledgment that HER energy was present in all of those interactions!

Mother:

Many, many millions of humans access me through the portal of the icon of “Mother Mary” or the “Virgin”. Mary Magdeline freely and openly accesses and channels me! So when you channel her, you channel Mary Magdeline channeling me, in her own way! (laughs). She enjoys drawing the oversoul energy through her, and takes every opportunity to connect humanity with their Mother.

 

And yes, oversouls are learning (expanding) too!

 

Bruce:

Do aliens have oversouls …… each variety with its own? Does the human oversoul naturally engage well or poorly with different ones?

 

*** OHHHH! We’ll answer this one tomorrow!

Signs in Spiders

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spider

Alrighty. Thank you everyone for hanging in during this blog-blackout. How do I explain what happened? Well, between the move, and all of the overwhelming family stuff, I became pretty blocked. I’ve always used writing as a way of getting through difficult times; not being able to write has made things more difficult to process. Once you stop writing, it’s more challenging to get going again – you stopped for a reason, in my case I was feeling pretty shit-kicked, emotionally.

I’m not sure what I was waiting for. I’ve written several posts in my head without actually typing them out, so I’ll start with that one.

In sessions, a lot of people ask about signs from their loved one – how do they know when she or he is around? What do they do to get our attention?

My grandmother, (my mother’s mother) sends most of the family lady bugs, although I believe she helped send me those orcas in September 2013. As lady bugs are rare in Tofino, I’ve noticed really huge, unusual houseflies tend to come around when my grandmother wants to say “Hello! Just checking in, can you see me?” I always say “Hello, grandma!” out loud, so she knows that I noticed.

This is one of the suggestions I have for people: when you *think* you see a sign, just say hello. “Hello, sweetheart! If that’s from you, I see it!” Saying it out loud is THEIR confirmation that they’re reaching you, so it encourages them to keep trying. The more you acknowledge these little signs, the more they tend to happen.

Before my mother died, she told me she’d send me schnauzers. When I was a teenager, our family dog was a schnauzer named Heidi, and Heidi was my first real teacher in animal communication.

I said to my Mom, “Great – but there aren’t many schnauzers around here at all! It’ll be hard to send me schnauzers if there aren’t any to divert. What about sending me birds, too?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Schnauzers and birds.”

 

The morning I got the news that my mother had died during the night, there was a damn big spider in my bathroom sink.

This is unusual because I have a deal with the spiders. The large ones stay outside, the small ones are allowed inside only until they’re as large as the nail on my pinky. Preferably, they stay out of sight. Ever since I cut this deal with the spiders, they’ve generally stayed hidden. They’ve stopped doing things like showing up on my PILLOW or on MY FACE!

My mother was the first person to point out that those creatures we’re most afraid of are often used as spiritual messengers. Why? Because we NOTICE them. A beetle or a fly I might ignore, but a spider? They cause me to freeze instantly. Other than predators who could eat me, there really aren’t any other creatures I’ve encountered that literally paralyze me just by showing themselves. Yeah, I freaking notice the spiders.

So when I saw this spider in my bathroom sink, I thought it might be from my mother. But why would that be? I was just seeing hummingbirds outside the bedroom window. Those birds don’t come into my yard because the neighbours have feeders. There’s no reason for them to detour into my yard. Besides, my mother had said she’d send schnauzers and birds. Spiders were not a part of the pre-arranged deal.

A week and a half later as I was packed and ready to go to Ontario for my mother’s service, it happened again. Another spider, slightly larger this time, perched on top of my luggage.

Okay, this *might* be something, I thought.

Why wouldn’t I just ask Mom directly, being a medium and all? Because I’m grieving. Sometimes, it can really hurt to be in contact with a loved one just after they pass, before you’ve had a chance to heal a bit. I think this is one of the reasons some mediums make up rules about loved ones being “unreachable” for a certain period of time after their death, or insisting on a certain period of time passing between a death and a client’s session to speak with that person or animal.

When Mocha (my big dog) and Leo (my tabby cat) died, they immediately came to hang out in spirit. I had to actually send Mocha away that first week, because it was so painful to have her presence around without her body.

For some people, they experience this spiritual closeness with a visiting spirit by suddenly thinking about them, and feeling overwrought with grief, when a moment ago, they felt fine. Our bodies react with certainty when we experience these things. We *know* what we experienced was real, even if it doesn’t translate as profoundly when you try to share the story with someone else.

So there was me, and there were the two spiders – one in the sink, and one on my luggage. While on the six-seater plane to Vancouver, I whispered to Mom, “If those spiders are from you, I need some more confirmation.”

Two days later, I was sitting at my mother’s service. It was perfect, I think it was exactly as she wanted it.

Can I let you guys in on a secret? I *hate* funerals. I hate eulogies. It’s just not for me. This is not how I grieve, and it’s not how I want to grieve. My mother’s service was the very first formal funeral I’ve been to.

You know what I prefer? The wake, or the before / after gathering where family and / or friends gather to eat, drink and tell stories full of love, laughter and recalling the full character of the person we all just lost. I love informal gatherings. I despise formal services. I can’t justify exactly *why* they turn me off so strongly, and I’m not saying they’re wrong or that people shouldn’t do them.

I just *do not want* one for myself.

That said, my mother’s service was perfect.

My very favourite part was when her Buddhist priest stood up to talk about my mother’s relationship with Japanese Buddhism. He didn’t use any of his own words – he read a speech my mother had written and presented to the Buddhist circle of practitioners. It was a talk on how mindfulness practice impacted her life.

When the priest got to the part in the speech about the spiders, that made my heart twist like a sponge, wringing out all the conflicting emotions at once.

She’s talked about how she used to hate spiders, she’d kill them on sight. How mindfulness practice helped her get above her visceral reaction and merely *notice* the spiders. How interesting they are, how beautiful, even. She could appreciate them, even love them – as long as they weren’t too big!

That was it for me. That was my confirmation, and I cried because I got that message, and it felt like it was just for me.

Of course, if I’d said anything at the time, it would’ve looked pretty crazy. That’s pretty much par for the course, eh?

After the service, there *was* a gathering of family with stories and laughter. My little squeezed-out heart sponge started to untwist, soften, become pliable again.

That night, as if there was any doubt left, there was a medium-sized spider in the bathroom sink.

 

 

 

The Second Glorious ReinCARnation! How I manifested a new car.

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Here it is, the story of the second reinCARnation – and it’s incredible.  To refresh your memory, here is the car Sweetie & I owned in 2011 / 2012:

karma ca

And when this one died, we went car-free for almost a year.  Here is the car we purchased in 2013:

car 2

It was a nearly IDENTICAL red toyota tercel.  That second car died after only 6 months of use.  After that, I vowed I would not buy another beater, but wait until I could afford a reliable car.  Driving a beater is for people with better tolerance for living on the ragged edge.  Will we get over that hill?  Let’s see!  Will we make it to town?  Who knows!

I would rather have no car than a sort-of car that costs money to insure, gas up and repair, in exchange for tenuous functionality.

So we have an under-the-table secret:  we desperately need to move.  We are not getting any sleep here, and our landlady does not follow the Residential Tenancy Act… and there is a housing crisis so we have been unable to find another place to live.  We’ve been looking for over a year.

Okay, well, it COULD be worse… but it’s pretty darn bad right now.

I’ll need to do another post on how to deal with energy vampires like this in your life. She’s a perfectly nice lady by day, but a door-knocking, micromanaging, laundry counting / critiquing, crazy-making, texting while Sweetie was at her father’s funeral (and wouldn’t stop) emailing multiple times a week kind of gal.

I have set boundaries over and over and over. She spent the last year saying “I know you’re angry with me,” and her new rhetoric is “I wish we could be friends again.” I have never said a mean thing to this lady, all I’ve asked for, over and over again, is space. Space and privacy.

Apart from that, she really is a nice lady. There is no way we could see this coming when we rented from her.

I’m just so grateful they don’t play music. It could be much worse, but yes, it’s pretty darn awful for me at times.

So, we need to move. We’ve been looking for a new place for months and months. There is a housing crisis in Tofino, and it seems to be worse this year because many landlords are choosing to kick out their long-term tenants in order to turn their rentals into B & B suites.

There has literally been nowhere for us to go.

Except, maybe, Ucluelet. We lived in Ucluelet from 2009 – 2012, and I love that little town. It has more of a redneck personality which actually suits me better than the nosy neighbour hippy-dippy culture in Tofino, where everyone has opinions about your recycling and composting habits.

In Ucluelet, the groceries cost a bit less, the tourists are not quite so thick, the 12 km long Wild Pacific Trail snakes along the Oceanside opening spectacular views and the sea lions of the harbour bark up a storm all winter long, reminding you that you actually live on the wild west coast.

I love Ucluelet. But I work in Tofino, and while housing costs less in Ucluelet, I would have to own and drive a vehicle almost daily to make it work.

Honestly, I was resigned to another year of crazy landlady, no sleep in summertime, incessant texts and psychotic mis-counting of every load of laundry we do. (We’re sure she doesn’t harass her kids when THEY do laundry.)

Then I thought, “Well, let’s just see what’s possible.” I researched car dealerships and contacted one with a good reputation. The following series of emails assured me that yes, in fact I *could* afford to have a car and drive it 30,000 km a year. IF the car payments were X.

The sales guy, we’ll call him Fred, assured me that yes, we can certainly get payments under the amount of Y.

I have to have payments no more than X, I repeated. Sure, sure! Absolutely do-able!

So I bought a one-way bus ticket from Tofino to Nanaimo, rattled the 5-hour journey away by listening to my ipod and chatting with a flirty man in his sixties.

I guess when the dealership picks you up from the bus depot, they think they have a leg up on you.

I test-drove the 2013 Chevrolet Sonic that we’d been discussing. Then Fred dropped this line:

“Wow, you’re doing really well, driving standard.”

 

Blink.

 

In my head: Did that just happen? Does he mean, for someone with a VAGINA!? Good thing I packed my PENIS so I’d know how to drive a manual!!!

Then I thought, so that’s how it is, eh?

We get back to the dealership. Of course, as expected, pre-negotiated number X was off the table. So was Y. They came to me with number Z.

Of course I said no. You always say no to the first number.

The second number was insulting too. When I asked what had happened to number X, they said “The bank shortened the term of the loan.”

Yeah, bullshit. Not buying that for a second. Fred goes back into the “manager’s office” and says “You’ll hear the boss screaming and yelling at me!”

Yeah, right.

Finally they came back with a monthly payment that was X plus $15. I figured yeah, I could live with that.

Then they kept me waiting for 45 minutes, during which time a guy named Bob came up to me to chat, as did a guy named Rick. They were being all friendly, trying to make me laugh. To smile is to show weakness during negotiations, and I knew they weren’t sincere. Their boss wouldn’t be paying them to socialize with clients, they’re being paid to size me up.

Then they funneled me into the insurance office – they wanted me to sign up for insurance before I’d even seen the paperwork on the car! Uh, NO! I asked to see the financing paperwork first, into the finance guy’s office. Turns out it’s Bob. Bob smiles a big smile, because we’re friends, you see. He told me a joke.

When I sat down to look at that paperwork… It was ridiculous. The cost of borrowing was astronomical. Now, I realize I’m in a credit re-building phase, but I also know that there are banks and dealerships that exploit desperate people with marginalized credit scores.   I am not desperate, and I am not going to screw myself financially just to have a car. Not when I can live with crazy landlady for another year and try for better financing next year.

I saw an $800 charge on the paperwork. I pointed to it. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s your tire insurance.”

 

Blink. In my head, What the fuuuuuuuu??? I can buy four new tires for $800.

 

Interpreting my silence as misunderstanding, Bob explains: “Yeah, if you hit a pothole and your tire pops and your rim is damaged, this insurance will replace it.”

In my head, They think they can pull it all over on me. They think I’m really, really ignorant. 

That’s when I started to get angry. What I said: “I will decline that insurance. What else here is extra? What’s this $500?”

“That’s insurance for damage.” Bob went on making it sound like it was insurance that was a really great idea to have.

“Bob, can I see the paperwork for that insurance, please?”

What Bob hands me is not an insurance policy, but a flier for “Theft Protection”. That is, if I paid $500 now, IF my car is stolen and IF it’s damaged because it’s stolen, they’d kick up to $2,000 towards repairs.

Absolutely ridiculous. I doubt it was a real insurance policy. I suspect it was a dealership cash-grab, and they’d want repair work done *at* the dealership.

I asked about the “staff discount” they were giving me, as a hospital employee. “Oh that’s been applied to the sticker price of the vehicle.” Of course, most of that was cancelled out by a $500 documentation fee.

Then Bob whips this comment out: “Well, the car’s a standard, so you’ll be saving lots of money on the brakes!”

The words hit the table between us with a splat.

In my head: He thinks I don’t know what break pads cost. 

Later, when I recounted this story to Sweetie, she cranked off this remark: “Yeah, ‘cause I go through break pads like tampons!” I nearly peed myself, I laughed so hard! Next time I buy a car, Sweetie needs to come with me so she can make snide, sarcastic, glib and undermining comments like this during the negotiations.

At some point, I got up and left the room. I went to the bathroom and started to tear up, because I was so freaking disappointed. I was not going to say yes to a financing agreement and a bunch of people who showed me no respect. I wondered if they’d change the deal when I told them I was going to walk.

They did.

But it wasn’t good enough. Every time I asked a pointed question, Bob had a runaround answer for it. He was a slippery sucker who was difficult to pin down. He even tried to convince me by saying “You AGREED to these terms in email!”

Oh, bullshit. I was so angry I started to cry. In that moment, I remembered an excerpt from Tina Fey’s autobiography, “Never, ever cry. Unless you have to. Sometimes a well-timed emotional scene is a good negotiating tactic.”

Then I remembered Lady Gaga, and how upset she was with the first set of photos for her first album cover. She said, “I had to cry for a week to get them to change it.”

And finally, a voice popped into my head that said, You’re not going to get anywhere with these guys if you’re NICE. 

I stood up. I pointed at the paperwork and I yelled / assertively projected my voice at Bob, “If the numbers had looked like this in email, I WOULD NOT HAVE COME. I am CRYING because I’m PISSED OFF! I am going to stay in a HOTEL ROOM TONIGHT and take the BUS HOME tomorrow because YOU GUYS did not come through!!!”

“Please sit down,” Bob whisper / screams and pats my hand. “Please, sit down!”

Immediately, the manager comes in – turns out it’s Rick. He ALSO pats my hand and asks me to please sit down.

Now, if I were a man yelling, do you think they’d be patting my hand? Of course not. I stayed standing.

Both men try to use their louder voices to interrupt me.   I kept talking. I grabbed my purse to walk out.

They knocked more off the price, brought my payments down to X and brought my cost of borrowing down to a reasonable amount, if I choose to keep this car (rather than trade it in a year from now to get better financing.)

Finally, I was ready to sign up for insurance. By this time it was after business hours, and they had to call in an insurance lady to do my paperwork. That took a half-hour, at the end of which it turned out the insurance premiums were going to be nearly double what I thought they’d be.

In my head, Well, that tears it. I can’t own a car at those insurance rates. I guess it’s over. 

I went back into Bob’s office and explained politely that while I appreciated they were giving me a deal on the car, I can’t take it as the insurance rates were much higher than expected.

Again, I was ready to walk. Bob insisted I wait, and hustled back into Rick’s office. A few minutes later, he came out and offered to pay for half my insurance premiums for the first year.

I took a long, long time to decide. By this time it had been four hours, and if I hadn’t memorized the key figures before I went into the dealership, I would have just walked away from the deal because I was so far from capable of making a decision that would affect me for years to come… but I did know those numbers, and my mushy brain could at least match them up.

It was an hour after closing time, Bob started practically begging me to take it. “You got what you want! We gave it to you!” He did everything but say, “Please take the car and leave so I can go home!!!”

I don’t know why on earth they were willing to take such a hit on the profit. I think that at the end of the day, they didn’t want a customer with a big mouth walking out the door unhappy.

I signed the paperwork, got into a car so new that it didn’t feel like mine, and drove it to Tim Horton’s where I promptly burst into tears.

I had no idea car buying could be so brutal. On Sunday, I spent the evening dry-heaving the exhaustion, anxiety and sheer “ick” out of my body. It took 48 hours for the fear to wear off and the tentative happiness to seep in.

I look at that paperwork, and honestly, I know it’s immodest but I am damn impressed with myself. I found an assertiveness gear in my guts that I didn’t know I had. I don’t think the dealership made any money off of me at all. (The bank will, if I keep this car and pay it off at this rate.)

The idea is that I’ll trade this car in for a different one at a better financing rate in a year, and I understood that I *had to* get a deal I could afford on this first vehicle, because this deal would affect the next one. What if they didn’t give me a good enough trade in offer?

I stopped at a Wal-Mart at the halfway point on the journey home. I like to stop at Wally’s to use the bathroom, maybe pick up some French fries or a toaster. That night, I just wandered the isles, stretching my legs and leaving my eyes unfocused… until I got to the women’s clothing section, and it snapped into focus: A faux-vintage t-shirt with “The Beatles” logo.

 

Thank you, guys.

 

I was too tired to really talk to them, but I think I heard “nice ride!” as I started the car up again to go home.

These are the small signs that a lot of people experience, and it’s easy to write it off as coincidence. Did John and George really care that I got a good deal on a car?

I think so. I think I needed all the help I could get, because now, Now, NOW Ucluelet is a housing option again! After our series of harrowing drives in beater cars, I was unwilling to buy another beater and be dependent upon it to get to the hospital.

I think they were helping me. The deal I got on this car was a small miracle. I don’t know why they didn’t let me walk, why they stayed an hour after closing. There was just the *right* amount of customers in the dealership that night – enough to witness my yelling and possibly change their minds about buying there, but no one who was serious about buying *today*.

I know I stayed in that dealership because a) I didn’t WANT to have to find a hotel and figure out how to catch the bus home and b) I really, really wanted to make Ucluelet a possibility.

It’s all about getting out from under Crazy Controlling Landlady, and it’s about actually accessing the amazingness of the wild west coast! Without a reliable vehicle, I haven’t been enjoying living out here as much as I did the first few years. I *love* the trails, the National Park Reserve, the isolated secret beaches and the scenic two-hour drive to Port Alberni.

The car also opens up income opportunity for Sweetie. She can work full time at the gallery, seek work at the library (which has locations in Ucluelet and Tofino) and scope out galleries to sell her work all over the island.

So I stayed, even though I was exhausted, and for some reason, Fred, Bob and Rick were willing to do what it took to get me to take the car.

In the end, I can barely believe I got the thing. It’s almost new, it’s certainly the nicest vehicle I’ve ever owned. It’s possibly the newest vehicle anyone in my family has ever owned. It feels like a rental I forgot to return! I need to adjust to it!

Here it is:

photo

It’s basically Chevrolet’s version of a red tercel: the Sonic.

I did not post photos of my new car for the general public, for a few reasons. Mainly, I know how I’ve felt these past ten years when someone I know gets a new car and posts about it online, all happy and show-offy. I thought, “Must be nice to have money.”

And maybe you’re thinking this too.

The reason why I wrote all about this is I think this car is the first thing I full-on “manifested”.

It’s like it’s finally clicking with me, what it takes to really create something out what you have on hand. I really just wanted a reliable, safe, affordable version of the 1989 Toyota Tercel we used to drive. It looks like that’s exactly what I got!

Last night, I realized something else:

If I had been my usual worrying self about the scenario of owning a car, I would not have even tried to get one. I would have over-researched every possibility, and when I learned of the insurance premiums on a new vehicle, I would have concluded that car ownership was not possible for me right now. I would have GIVEN UP without even trying!

Instead, this is the first time I went into a life-changing possibility completely open to it, without gaming out scenarios. I literally laid out and clearly defined the terms I needed, which mainly focused on numbers, car safety and reliability. I didn’t visualize a specific car because I didn’t really *care* what sort of car I got, just as long as it met the numbers within my safety limits.

It’s hilarious that the car I got is almost a perfect clone of the last two vehicles we’ve owned, except it’s shiny, reliable and safe! I guess the little red car default setting is still a part of my energy pattern.

I feel profoundly changed by this experience. I think for the very first time, I really *get* how worrying creates problems that don’t have to exist. It blocks solutions that others could step in and provide, if you just give them space.

Here’s another topic I’m going to explore in more detail: Parallel realities, and bringing the good stuff from a parallel reality into your own timeline.

I’ve mentioned in the Joyful Telepathy podcast episode on Parallel Realities that I do believe we run multiple scenarios on a life plan in parallel timelines. We’re not just taking the red pill or the blue pill, we’re taking both. For years, I’ve noticed I have dreams and awareness of a parallel reality that is really similar to this one, but in which all the little hardships have just been softened and tweaked. I specifically remember having a new-ish vehicle in that parallel reality, and my decision was to focus on bringing that car from the concurrent reality into *all of them*.

The assumption I had been making about my parallel reality is that I had a nice car because I was making more money than I do in THIS scenario. The first trick was to get over that assumption, because it’s not necessarily true – and even if it were, that doesn’t mean a new-ish car is impossible for THIS scenario. I literally had to open the door to the POSSIBILITY that maybe, somehow, in some way I can’t imagine right now – it COULD be possible.

Finally, I’m sending tons of love, support and compassion to the version of me who wasn’t ready to take the leap and believe in the possibility of affordable, reliable car ownership. I *could have* kyboshed this thing before it began, and as I believe in parallel realities, I think there’s a scenario where I *did*.

So that’s my ReinCARnation Manifestation story!

What do you guys think about this parallel reality idea?  Do you have a different idea you’d like to share?

 

 

 

 

On Wednesdays we wear Pink!

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Wow, did I ever have a tough day yesterday! I’ll tell you folks all about it in a later post… It involves me yelling at four middle-aged, big men. Not insulting-yelling, but using an ASSERTIVE loud voice, standing while three men are asked me to please sit down.

It was a big day.

Today, I had a couple of lovely readings, and now I’m wrapped all up in yellow.

This is something we intuitively do, and we don’t always realize the energetic impact of colour on our life. If you become aware of how colours affect you, you can use it to your advantage!

While I’m doing readings, I frequently wear all pink. (On Wednesdays we wear pink!) There’s an energetic reason pink is associated with love, and I find pink clothing to be supportive of connecting people with the pets and spirits they love.

White is another great reading colour, and I also find white to be protective. I have a white kerchief I wear on days I feel vulnerable. It works as well as quartz crystals, some days!

Today, it’s yellow. Why do I feel the need to surround myself with yellow?

I experience it as recharging. Yellow like the sun, nourishing and supportive like sunlight. It helps me to psychologically recover from a tough day, or a low-energy period. It boosts my mood and my confidence. It helps to alleviate worry, too.

Have you ever noticed yourself going through colour phases? Sweetie went through a three-year period where she wore orange every day!

I think we all do it. Ask yourself, how does this colour make me feel? What changes about how you feel when you wear or just look at this colour?

This extends outwards to the colours you surround yourself with – what colours surround you? Does it affect you?

Here’s a good place to start:

Are you in a colour phase right now?

Did you / do you have a favourite colour?

The Ecosystem of Pain (Inner Demons Pt. 2)

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Okay, I’m finally ready to write the follow up to the Inner Demon’s post.

 

One of the reasons I enjoy working in a hospital so much: it’s incredibly grounding.  Grounding, maybe not always in a pleasant, zen way, but in a jarring, gritty, this-shit-is-real-life kind of way.

 

The positivity movement is a much-needed balance to the hyper-negative news culture we have in North America, and even though I’m as sunny a Mary Sunshine as you’ll ever meet, I’ve always railed against the idea that you can eliminate all pain and discomfort from life through positive attitude, by disallowing negativity to impact your life.

 

Let me start this piece by stating I firmly believe in the balance of light and dark in life.  I believe that joy, love and happiness are as much a part of life as their counter-parts: sorrow, grief and stress.

 

Yes, we can greatly affect our *experience* of negativity through our faith and attitudes, but we can’t surgically excise negativity from life.  I think negativity is something to be embraced, managed, challenges to rise to or difficulties to survive.

 

I feel it would be a personal moral failing for me to forget there is suffering in the world.

 

So I work at a hospital.  I donate to charity.  Every time I do a reading, I say a prayer hoping to make a positive difference to those who ask for my help.

 

The thing about working at a hospital (animal or human): you have your finger on the pulse of the best and worst in humanity.  Although I am not directly involved in patient care, I am *around*, and when there is acute suffering, of course I feel it too.

 

I feel the emotions the most, especially if I’ve experienced a similar distress in my own life.  This would be true for anyone empathetic, anyone who is strong enough still *feel* things in a setting like healthcare, rescue work (human or animal), social work, law enforcement or any other job where shit gets real.

 

A common practice is to disconnect from what’s happening.  During the health care crisis in Ontario in the late 90s, when I did my nursing training after 7 years of volunteer work as a candy-striper, I watched nurses whom I respected and admired burn out and quit.  The surviving health care workers were empathetically checked out.  They had to be.

 

This is why I am in awe of the mighty few who remain in nursing, who hold the hand of a patient in distress and cry tears of empathy – and show up for work the next day. 

 

After just one year of training, I was burnt out too.  Despite my excellent grades and the counseling from the teachers and nursing supervisors, I felt I couldn’t continue.   I did a search of the blog and it looks like I haven’t yet told you guys about the day I quit nursing.  Someone please remind me to tell that story down the line.

 

So why suffering?  And what the fuck are Demons anyway?

 

I received a really sweet email from a reader who suggested that rather than using the word “demon” that I use “entity” instead.  Let me explain the differences I perceive, based on my personal experience.

 

So far, my understanding of the Garden of Shadows has become a loose classification of the individual types of beings I’ve encountered.  Critters, Entities and Demons.

 

If you’d asked me last month, I would only have talked about Critters and Entities, the low-vibration life forms that recycle the energy imprint of negativity into neutrality.

 

Okay, wait, let me back up a bit more.

 

Picture a house.  Now, picture a married couple in that house.  The husband and wife fight, a lot.  Then one of their kids is killed in an accident.  The marriage collapses under the pressure, the couple moves out and the house goes on the real-estate market, but sits empty.

 

Nothing has been done to clear this house, energetically, so the thing sits on the market.  People walk into this house, but it just doesn’t feel right.  There’s something about it.  They don’t like it.

 

What the potential buyers perceive is the energetic imprint left by the emotion of the former occupants.

 

That energetic imprint has altered the energy eco-system in the house.

 

Our eco-system goes far beyond the physical environment we experience with our bodies.  The energy we put out into our environment is like adding an essential oil to a big bath tub, and it changes what energetic organisms thrive in this environment.

 

In a place where the atmosphere has been altered through pain, the critters who thrive off of that will be pulled in.  This is perfect.  Under normal circumstances they just transmute the energy to neutral through feeding on it, and they move on.  When I perceive critters, I usually see them as insect-like, doing their composting duties.

 

But if there is a location rich enough in pain that they want to stick around, you can end up with an infestation.

 

Let’s say this house is purchased by another happy couple.  The day they move in, they have a fight.  The stress inexplicably continues as they wait for things to even out.  One bad thing after another seems to happen, and finally one of them is injured.  The injured partner generates more stress and sadness for the critters to feed upon.  The critters multiply, and their increasing numbers enhances the subtle negative energy of the whole house.  It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.  The critters become parasite-ish.  Insects in small numbers are normal and healthy, but an imbalance of insects is a plague.  Think locusts, cockroaches, tapeworms.  Very unhealthy indeed.

 

The humans start to get depressed, which is expressed in irritation towards each other.  Within two years, this happy marriage is on the rocks.

 

When I was growing up, I lived across the street from a place we called “the divorce house.”  Every two years, this place would go on the market.  A happy family would move in, break apart and sell the house.

 

You’d think the real estate agents would be the biggest clients of psychics and priests offering house-clearing services… but then, if the house stayed off the market, the realtor would have less opportunity for commission.  (I have not extinguished my inner cynic!)

 

Once a place is swarming with critters, it starts to invite entities.  Entities can also hitch-hike in on resident humans.  Just like lice, scabies or the flu, humans can transmit sad parasites back and forth to each other.  Entities have more of a discerning consciousness than critters.  I perceive them as monkey-like, making conscious choices about what to do and where to be and who they latch on to.

 

Entities are more proactive about their environment, and they actively incite the sort of energy they feed off of.  They like to garden.

 

Entities love to hang out with depressed and ill people, especially if there’s a chronic illness that’s associated with a lot of shame or emotional trauma.

 

An entity hitch-hiked into our house, once.  We discovered it after our guest left, and it decided to hang out in the “sad room” of our Ucluelet house.  This room, we later found out, was where the property owner’s son accidentally / intentionally ended his own life.  I was kind of pissed the property manager hadn’t alerted us to this event, which had traumatized not just the family, but the whole town, and all of that sorrow had rained upon our living space for over a decade.

 

This little creature was hanging out in the top corner of the house, and I noticed him only as a movement in the corner of my eye.  I slipped into medium mode and THEN I was able to “see” him.
I do not deal with these sorts of things myself.  We called in the angels to take care of it, and they did.  Immediately.  We were then advised by the “cleaning crew” to cut open an apple and leave it on a plate, cut side up, overnight to absorb the remaining energy and then dispose of it the next day.

 

I don’t like to waste food, but this is a really neat trick.  It worked well.  In general, I burn candles, use salt, rocks, holy water, bells, cleaning, smudging, prayer – but never before a cut apple.  The ways to energetically clean your house are endless.

 

I have since believed that this creature, this monkey-like entity must be what they’re talking about when people say “demon”.

 

Now, I’m going to tell you *how* this new information came to me:

 

I had just finished my third and final reading of the day.  I was positively *high* on energy.  The usual two-inch thick stream of warm energy I usually feel down my spine during readings had expanded into this four-foot column of warm happy light that enveloped my entire body.  My very being was pulsating with energy and love.

 

This doesn’t happen every time I do readings, and this was the most powerful experience of the universal god force that I’ve had to date.  I was just so high on love.  I felt like I’d never come down, no matter what sadness I witnessed, no matter what happened, it was all love, baby, love envelopes us all.

 

And then, my mind flashed on a particularly difficult person in our life.  I’ve been perplexed by this challenge of a human for quite a while.  And then it hit me – and it all made sense.  And it was all still part of the perfect love story of existence.

 

This person was an incarnated demon.

 

My knowledge and certainty of this was instantaneous and complete – like Neo getting the kung-fu download in the Matrix.  It was also completely harmless, non-alarming knowledge.  I was filled with understanding, compassion and – get this – renewed RESPECT for this person.

 

Because – this is so wild – sometimes demons incarnate to shift their pattern – they are going from dark to light!

 

Isn’t that amazing?  They’re transmuting themselves.  This is one of the purposes of demon incarnation.

 

THAT’S NOT EVEN THE CRAZY PART YET! 

 

Some of them are FANTASTICALLY GOOD PEOPLE!

 

SERIOUSLY!!!  I was too zen / full of universal love to have my mind blown by this at the time, but it was blown about six hours later when I came back down to earth.

 

I was awash with images of religious leaders, teachers and doctors, social workers and nurses, police officers, fire fighters – people devoting their lives to and sacrificing themselves for other people in need of help.

 

The thing is, no transition is easy.  This “dark” nature expresses itself in a variety of ways, and sometimes these demon people are easily corrupted in positions of power.  Not just the big, obvious positions of power, but the subtle, day-to-day positions of power.

 

You know how many incarnated demons end up as priests and ministers?  A LOT.  They’re working *really hard* and they’re taking their cue from a long and powerful tradition.

 

An example from my ancient history – when I was working as a temp in Toronto, I had a boss who bullied me.  She would find a way to call me fat and stupid every single day of the week… but she had the power to fire me at a moment’s notice, so I couldn’t defend myself until after I was hired on permanently.  It took a year and a half of daily office torture before she was finally fired.

 

This concept suddenly shed light on why some people just can’t resist being assholes, power-mongers or just plain crazy-makers.

 

They may not even know it themselves, but they feed off of negative energy.  They almost can’t help tweaking a situation negatively to get that energetic feedback.  For someone working really, really hard at being a good person, a moment of relapse in making a hurtful comment may come as a great relief to them, like letting off steam.

 

The flip side is the utterly shocking impact this can have on those around the incarnated demon.  How could this amazing, wonderful person say / do such a  thing?  It’s very confusing.  It’s almost irreconcilable.  Often, it seems easier to just forget what happened or what was said, because it seems impossible to incorporate this information into who you thought this person to be.

 

Here’s another thing:  There are demon SOUL FAMILIES!

 

Sometimes, they incarnate in groups, over and over into the same family line.  And woe to the angelic kid who chooses to be born into a demon family – this happens.  This explanation flashed with three separate headlines I’ve read in the past ten years with tragic stories of kids who died at the hands of neglectful and abusive guardians.

 

Child abuse is such a common tragedy that it doesn’t make the papers unless it’s truly horrific.  These are the sorts of things I feel a personal responsibility to witness, to never forget or deny that the innocent suffer in this world.

 

For the first time, I really started to understand *why*.  I could never before reconcile my ideas of a soul incarnation in human form, choosing terrible behavior.

 

In this blissful, expansive consciousness state, I understood (more completely than I do now, trying to explain it in words) that demons incarnated in human bodies are expressing their nature.  They are a part of the ecosystem.

 

It is not an eternal war between good and evil, harmony and dissonance.  It is a dance.

I understood, too, that we really do make a choice.  There is the potential for harmony and dissonance within all of us, because we are all related when you come right down to it.  Even angels and demons are cousins, incarnated or ethereal.

 

So what do we do with this knowledge?

 

I think we use this idea to change our approach.  Ever see that episode of Friends with the incompetent naturopath treating Ross’ weird mole or “kundus”?

 

“You must LOVE the Kundus!  Let me hear you say it!”  “Uh, I love the Kundus…”

 

We change our approach to incarnated demons expressing themselves in a harmful manner.

 

Our whole corrections system is based upon revenge.  When someone hurts us, as human beings we want to strike back.

 

Now, I don’t know what a “loving” judicial system would look like exactly, but I’m sure it would involve less minimum sentences and much more reparative community service.

 

This humble post isn’t intended to be an answer to the entire world’s problems, it’s just a useful idea.  It came to me in a blinding moment of love and happiness, and I will hold it in my heart as truth for the rest of my life.

 

I’ll let you know how it settles.

 

Your questions are welcome!  I may expand this into a podcast episode.

Past lives, Inner demons and more Crazy Talk!

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Karmic Resonance

 

It’s that time again: when I let loose and write about something s *crazy* that even *I* considered holding this one back.

 

This all started two years ago when I began to self-regress in nightly meditation under the guidance of my kind and compassionate spirit friends.

 

Some of the things that came up during that time, I wrote about.  Some of them, I kept to myself.

 

See, our past lives are not always pretty.  We know how messy life on earth can get, and I’ve seen how easy it is to tie your identity and self-worth to a concept like “lightworker”.  Some people only want to look at the light in themselves.

 

My friends, we are not all pure and happy balls of light.  I do believe each one of us has light and shadow aspects of our spirit consciousness and our history.  I also believe that both aspects are a perfect expression of the euphoric, universal, we-are-all-one “god”.

 

I also believe that many of us, including me, have expressed terribly dark facets in past lives, even if, and maybe that’s precisely why, we’re “good people” now.

 

I do truly believe that all action, thought and experience creates an energetic impact, ripples that affect us in future lives and affect our past lives retroactively… because time is bendy like that.

 

These ripples, sometimes caused by us, sometimes initiated by others, create an energetic resonance (karma).

 

In meditation, you might reach a place of expansive consciousness, where this idea is downloaded and makes complete sense, until you go back into your human body and your brain starts to tell you it’s contradictory.  It *is* contradictory from the perspective of an incarnated being with a limited and linear life span.

 

I’ll give you an example from one of my meditations and my personal history.  If you’re having a down day, you might want to come back to this story later.

 

**

 

When I was seven years old, my adult teeth were coming in… except I was getting too many.  I had extra teeth, and this posed a problem.  Not only that, but my adult teeth were far too large for my jaw.  The only solution was to pull the extra teeth.

 

Getting teeth “extracted” is an incredibly unpleasant experience for an adult.  For a kid, it’s awful.  On top of that, our dentist was old-school.  He used *reusable* needles and glass syringes, which make the injection of the local anesthetic really painful.

 

The sickening maraschino cherry on top of this crap sundae is:  the local anesthetic didn’t really work.  So there I was, a seven year old kid, getting two or three teeth pulled at a time, screaming my head off, saying “it hurts!” and no one believed me.

 

I was an obedient child so it took three visits before I stood up for myself and refused to go back to the dentist.  I threatened to fight and to run away.  Finally, my parents took me seriously.

 

They found me a new dentist who used disposable needles, a different, effective anesthetic, and he even used a chocolate flavored topical anesthetic so I wouldn’t feel the needle as much.  He had five birds at his house, and would bring me colourful feathers as a present whenever I came to “visit”.  Eventually, I became this family’s babysitter of their five children, and I survived the subsequent necessary extractions without further trauma.

 

But I carried resentment with me for years.  How could my mother hear her kid screaming in pain and not come to help?  How could she bring her kid back there, and not investigate better options until I was so terrified I refused to cooperate?

 

Of course the rational brain kicks in.  Intellectually, I forgave my mother, but the trauma was still there.

 

One night, in meditation, sliding through the lifetimes looking for old wounds that needed healing, I came upon a life experience with such vivid, visceral certainty in the truth of these memories, that it shocked me to my very core.

 

I dropped into the body of a massive man, hunched at the shoulders from a lifetime of ducking under doorways and stooping to labor with tools too small for my body.  I was wearing filthy, oily leather armor, conscious of the chafing because I was not wearing the proper undergarments.  I was wearing only filthy protective clothing and a rusting metal helmet to hide my face, but no soft fabric because it would get ruined from the mess.  All the blood, and other body fluids.

 

I walked down a stone staircase and watched myself pull the teeth of other living humans, while another man in black robes asked them questions.

 

There I was, doing the bidding of a weak, cruel man, and I was bigger and stronger than anyone in the building.  I could have picked up this prisoner and walked them out of the compound, no one would have stopped me.  Instead I stayed and pulled his teeth, and the teeth of many others.

 

Then I understood why I had to experience a small part of the pain I’d inflicted as a result of the choices I’d made in a past life.  This was karma, settling itself.  The energetic resonance needed a harmonizing note, and my understanding of it released the last bits of resentment and anger I harbored towards my mother.

 

The last extraction I experienced was when I was nineteen, and I had all four wisdom teeth removed under general anesthetic.   My cheeks blew up into chipmunk size pouches for two weeks afterwards, and my face became discolored with bruises as though I’d sustained a terrible beating.

 

And I have not had one ounce of trouble from my teeth ever since.  Not one cavity, knock on wood.

 

I haven’t gotten to the really crazy part yet.  I think I’ll save that for tomorrow.  (Or the next blog entry, whichever comes first!)

 

No Wrong Way to Die

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Soul Bubble

 

If it happened to me, I’d make different choices.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother and her treatment options since her diagnosis of a stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme.  You know, the big, bad, nasty brain tumour.

I can’t help but put myself into her shoes.

This last visit could not have been timed more perfectly.  I think I caught my mother right in a sweet spot, right after the last nausea-inducing monthly round of chemo and the “Oh yeah, that thing’s definitely growing, let’s get it out” surgery.  I think I caught her on her best week since her radiation began, and I’m so grateful for that.

I’m also grateful that I got to go to one of my mother’s appointments and see for myself how she and my father are relating to the care team.  She’s not just along for the ride, she wants all they can do for her, she wants to put off that day for as long as possible – the one where the tumour comes back and there’s nothing they can do.

I also deeply honour her decision to live, the determination she tapped into shortly after her diagnosis when she knew in her body she could make the tumour disappear.  “Just watch me do it!” her soul whispered.

I honour my mother’s choices and her experience, I am not doubting her choices and I’m proud of her for asserting herself in the face of this terrible disease.

I just can’t help but think about what I’d do differently.  My choices would not be better – in fact they could be arguably worse – but I think about them all the time, and I’m compelled to talk about them.  Thank goodness Sweetie doesn’t seem to mind.

*** People, please know that Sweetie’s Dad is in the hospital too, and could use all the healing and prayers you care to give him.  This last trip was overshadowed for both of us, wondering how many “last times” we were experiencing with our parents.

I talk about what I would do differently as a way of warding it off, like bringing an umbrella prevents rain.

I would not opt for life-prolonging treatment, not at the expense of however many “bad days”.  I would not cash in a good week on a gamble that I might have more good weeks down the line.  I’m a bird in the hand kind of gal.

I would rather have one good week than a few crappy months.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I would make such a profoundly different choice.  Erik & I have previously talked about The Miracle of Life; the paradox and danger of understanding that our consciousness goes on after the body dies.  If you value the consciousness more than the body, then you start to devalue your own life and the lives of others. 

I’ve been thinking about why I’d go for a short good life than gamble it for a longer, maybe just as great lifespan.

The root of my thinking is not based in my work as a medium, but in my experience as an animal communicator working as a veterinary assistant for five years. 

My death education began with my animals as a kid, and my first exposure to the worst parts of suffering and humanity were in that veterinary clinic.  I remember the first dog I held as he was put to sleep.  He looked a lot my childhood German Shepherd.  He was young and healthy, and it seemed like such a crime to put him down. 

I remember the ancient black Labrador, emaciated from neglect and disease, but who always gave us a loving wag of his tail whenever we approached him.  This fellow was an SPCA seizure, and had spent most of his life in a backyard.  He was not suffering, and so the vet brought him to the clinic and spread orders for everyone in the office to give him as much love and attention as they could for the next week.  One of the vet techs even slept over in this dog’s kennel to keep him company.  I was the one who held him as he slipped from his body after the best week of his life.

I assisted with dozens of euthanasias during my five years at that clinic.  The vast majority of deaths at the clinic were gentle, and only when no more could be done.  I soon recognized the change, the look in an animal’s eye, or in the tension of their body that said, “I am done.” 

Most people don’t have the choice of medically assisted death, so their bodies go through a slower transition and that can look like terrible suffering, which leaves the surviving loved ones in a lot of pain, remembering those last hours or days.

We like to think of our consciousness as one static thing, but our consciousness changes when we’re incarnated, and is changed again each time we leave a body. 

Our body has it’s own consciousness too.  Our bodies *want* to live.  They want to experience pleasure, eat, sleep, have sex, be excited, be outraged, be passionate – feel alive!  We were born with an autonomic nervous system and our bodies want to use it!  It’s like the “passing gear” on a really sweet car.  What’s the point of a porche if you don’t floor it once in a while?

The body does all sorts of disturbing-looking things while it’s shutting down, and observing this process can pile anger and guilt on top of grief, especially if there is a sense the death is “wrong”. 

We the living really want to “should” death.

Death, you should be painless.  You should be perfectly-timed.  You should come softly as a friend, as a sigh of relief, of forgiveness, or love.

This idea has formed in my mind as I’ve translated the death experience of hundreds of people and animals for their loved ones in session.

Only the body fights death.  The soul does not. 

Soul Bubble 2

While we are incarnated, our “You” consciousness is fused with the consciousness of our body animal.  Start by thinking of the purple circle as your soul, and the green circle as your body.  When you’re incarnated in a body, the two levels of consciousness overlap.

When your body is hungry, aroused, in pain – that experience is processed by your body, and it impacts the “higher” part of your consciousness. 

There is so much overlap between the body and the soul, that the overlap is really a new facet of consciousness that didn’t exist before you incarnated.  Your unique “You” plus your body has created something that did not exist before your incarnation in this life.  Your soul and your body had a baby, and it’s the new YOU.

Cool, eh?

When I’m communicating with someone who died, it’s the purple circle that’s exchanging energy with MY purple / green overlap.  Sometimes my physical body interprets the communication in physical sensation, sometimes my consciousness “gets it” and my body’s brain has to translate the concept into English.

After someone dies, that green circle falls away, but the green / purple overlap remains, and becomes a part of that purple circle.  Here’s the brain bending part: that purple circle is overlapping however many other past lives.  They’re layered on top of each other.  You can address a past consciousness by flipping the pages of that purple circle.

Soul Bubble 4

When I communicate with a spirit, I’m always looking for that top most purple circle, because that’s where the personality is, that’s how the client knows this being.

Soul Bubble 1

The YOU, the purple circle is just one facet of our individuality and the sum of our experiences.  I use the term “Individuality” rather than “Higher Self” because I want to show that our Individuality is the passive sum of all of our individual incarnations and experiences.

Higher Self has more of an “intention” behind it.  The “Higher Self” is the force behind the shaping of the pink Individuality.  The pink circle is where your soul is, right now.  If you were to visualize the pink circle of any loved one on the other side, it would be a ball of light, and would look and feel the same as any other spirit being.  The higher self is that thin ring around the pink circle, applying intention and pressure to shape what is created within itself.

Soul Bubble

Finally, we can never forget where we come from.  We are all one, we are all love, we are all God.  That’s the yellow sun, our connection to all that is, was and shall be.  Connection with this yellow sun is a joyous, transcendental experience.  People can spend lifetimes meditating to get a glimpse of this while incarnated, while others experience it completely in the throes of a wild physical orgasm, at a rock concert, or during a potentially fatal accident or event.

That, in a nutshell, is how I relate to life and death.

So given that this life is an overlap of my purple self-awareness and my green physical body, when my body starts crapping out I have every intention of dropping that circle like a piece of over-ripe fruit.  Let it go to ground and start again, so long and thanks for all the fish.

I say that now, knowing that my green circle wants to perpetuate itself.  Maybe I’ll feel differently when that day comes.  Maybe I’ll want to hang on.

My point, and my motivation for writing this post, is to talk about the process of the green circle separating from our individuality.

We are born knowing how to die.

The more the body shuts down, the thinner that overlap becomes, the less the experience of the body affects the purple consciousness.  Think of that green circle as just fading away.

So often while talking with animals or people who appeared to suffer in death, they talk about how they didn’t suffer, even as their bodies fought to breath.  Some of the things they have said:

I was sitting in the chair next to my bed, watching.

I was standing at the foot of the bed, telling the doctor to let me go.

I jumped out of my body and ran around the room! Did you see me?

I was holding you, trying to let you feel that I’m already out of that body. 

I have pictures from the day my dog Mocha passed away.  It was a very peaceful death, thank God.  We were five hours away from the nearest vet (being a holiday) and it was clear Mocha was not in pain, so I just sat with her for the eight-hour death process.

I look back on that day with profound gratitude.  Had I still lived in Toronto, I would have taken her to the vet to have her death process hastened.  I never would have experienced how calm and peaceful it was to sit with an animal I loved as they gently peeled away from their body.  I did a lot of praying and I know the process would have been easier on me if it had been faster.

Mocha’s soul hung around in the room with us for minutes after her body stopped breathing, and we were gently, lovingly, BEGGING her to jump into the light.  When she finally did, her body truly ceased to live.  Mocha was gone, and this body left behind had become a completely inanimate, decaying object.

Something else which has surprised me every time I see a death: how immediate the affect of death is, how the body looks intangibly different.

From the other side, death is not often described as a painful traumatic event.  You know who suffers?  The ones left behind.

Sometimes people or animals fight for life not to put off their own death, but to put off the pain and grief of those who love them.

They are the brave, the generous and the strong.

 

 

 

 

 

Rafters–Angels on Earth

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soul bubble kate sitka

Last year I did a reading for the very first True Rafter I had ever met.  She wanted to look at her life plan, what her higher self had planned for her and the themes around her incarnation.

Basically she was asking, “What the heck am I doing here?”

I looked and was astounded by what I saw, clear as a bell in my mind, as though I was physically looking at her plan right in front of my eyes: a single piece of paper, with a single sentence written on it.

Help where help is needed.

Then I saw travel all over the world.  This help included everything from picking up a kid’s shoe that had fallen off his foot, to spending potentially years abroad working on grassroots projects in developing nations.  The possibilities were truly limitless, but the purpose was the same.

And then I saw unfolding angel wings, and I understood.

It was truly mind-boggling to me, because most of what I’ve read through the teachers I’ve encountered never made mention of high-resonance “angelic” beings incarnating in physical form.

I’ve talked about Angel Training, sure.  But I’d never before run into someone whose life plan was so profound and uncomplicated, and whose higher self showed me wings.

There are many potential ways to interpret this message, but I went with the certainty, the full-body *knowing* that came the moment I saw those wings. 

So I told her exactly what I saw, and what I thought.  Then I didn’t hear from her for months.  I couldn’t stop thinking about her, that reading completely rocked my world.  I felt like I’d caught a glimpse of El Dorado.  Then, one day I opened my email to see a message from her, which was a testimonial so beautiful it actually made me cry. 

This work is full of little miracles.

That reading opened my awareness to a whole new type of incarnation, one where you *don’t* have a plan.  You didn’t really need one, and you’re okay with that.

Rafters have a comfort zone that is bigger than the widest-ranging risks a most of us would ever take.  Big changes come easily to Rafters, they ride uncertainty and the unknown like a surfer on a wave. 

Want to move across the country with this person you just met? Take a job you’ve been offered and think you can do but really know nothing about?  Travel around the world for a few years with little money and no plan?  

Sounds just right to a Rafter. 

Rafters *know* it’ll always work out because it always DOES for them.  They’re not here strictly for their own development, they’re the “right place, right time” masters, and they’re the ones who hear the other angels the best.

Rafters might not even know that their impulses are really nudges from all the angels trying to help us all along.  Rafters are the angelic boots on the ground, they’re like the sleeper agents for the universe. 

Here’s the really awesome thing:  many of us have a sub-theme in life as a Rafter.  Remember this whole thing is a continuum, with Planners on one extreme, Wingers in the middle and Rafters on the other end.  There are a TON of people who have Rafter “phases” in life.  We might devote a decade or more to a Rafter time, before “growing up” and discovering true ambitions of our own. 

“True Rafters” (and by true, I mean those who incarnate with one sentence life plans) radiate an energy that so many people are attracted to.  They seem pure, innocent, optimistic, friendly and loving towards everyone.  Rafters simply can’t see a difference between one sort of person and another.  They might be perplexed when someone tries to tell them about “those people” but they can’t hold on to a judgement against “those people” or the person talking to them!

I’m reminded of my high school friend Ben who invited a homeless man in Toronto to stay with him, without even consulting his roommate who was standing right there!  It did not even occur to Ben that his friends might have a problem bringing this stranger home.  A True Rafter can only see the light in another person, and is only capable of seeing the best, highest-good action as an option in any given situation.

Remember this entry on Exit Points?  For Rafters, every day is a potential exit point.  THAT is how open their life plan is!  It’s a scary thought for a lot of people. 

Here’s a tough part for a lot of people: Rafters are sometimes victims of terrible crimes.  It was not necessarily planned when they came in to die in such a tragic way.  Rafters seem to be tapped, or seem to be asked to put themselves in the path of a human predator to divert this predator from another potential victim who does have a complex life plan. 

This is why it seems like the best, the brightest, the most radiant of people seem to end up as victims in this way. 

Likewise, Rafters are the ones struck down in their prime by sudden illnesses or accidents.  A rare disease will crop up out of nowhere and ruthlessly snuff out their light.  A car accident will end it all, or a fluke series of coincidences.  This golden child who always seemed to be on the right side of lady luck will suddenly seem to be crushed by a cruel and merciless world. 

Why do bad things happen to good people?  Well, because this world is a challenging place that’s full of random chance, a sort of organized chaos that is being actively managed by our own thoughts, our choices and the crazy-constant work of our guides, angels and spirit friends. 

For Rafters, they didn’t plan a specific exit point.  They can decide to be done at anytime.  They can be nudged towards an exit point that will teach doctors about a rare disease, or help bring awareness to a trend of violent crime.  Rafters do not hesitate to risk their lives helping others, and sometimes they do leave their bodies through one heroic act or another. 

For those left behind, sometimes you can obviously see the how this person’s death had a profound impact on the world, but more often the death seems random and senseless. 

What I’ve seen and heard through many readings, learned from many teachers, is that no death is random or senseless.  It may not have been planned ahead of time, but every death has retroactive purpose. 

Even the grieving process of those left behind is a lesson from a Rafter.  The death and the grief will motivate action and change, because people just can’t *stand* this particular senseless death.  Even in death, a Rafter’s influence has the uncanny knack of getting everyone involved in a good cause.