Horizons Magazine
Andrea de Michaelis, Publisher
Photo taken 2005
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DECEMBER 2005 Cleanup from Hurricane Wilma, Talking to my hiking boots. I often project my own thoughts and beliefs and fears onto those around me. A friend concerned that a disembodied spirit had attached itself to her deceased husband's soul. Not everyone sees things from my point of view. Not everyone responds the way I would respond. Having real or imaginary conversations can heal a situation. Having an imaginary conversation can be a source of real insights.
Hello and welcome to the December 2005 edition of Horizons Magazine. I've been spending time playing in my yard and removing the deadfall from the trails and pathways after Hurricane Wilma took her little journey through the 'hood. I notice the acorns from the oaks have fallen a month late this year. I suppose that has to do with the storm season, and some kind of balance Mother Nature is helping out with. I've been restacking the bricks and stones at the firepit and re-acquainting myself with the local squirrels, raccoons, possum and armadillos. Many sunsets we spend together, having some excellent conversations. I like it when I can spend time in nature with the critters, and I can feel very in tune with them.
This reminds me of something that happened a few months ago. I've got 3 cats and they all take turns taking up posts in different rooms in the house. Lately YinYang, my tubby black and white harlequin masked kitty, has been sleeping next to me all day long on my office credenza, and spending the nights in the chair next to the bed. Izzy, the big giant Maine coon, has been alternating between guarding the firepit and the Squirrel Park during the daylight hours, and crashing on the fainting couch in the living room in the evenings. My tortoiseshell Shakti has just now, years after I got her, started venturing into my bedroom to visit with me, something it has taken her like 5 years to do.
A few months ago, as I was preparing to go on a trip, I'd gotten out of the shower and, from my vanity area, I spied Shakti sitting on the floor next to the bed, watching me. I was glad to see her, since she'd only recently began visiting my room, and I started talking to her. I was welcoming her to my area and telling her she could come anytime. She is a very quiet kitty usually and today was no different. So I talked to her, and I imagined what she was saying back to me. I thought it was great we were finally getting to really bond after all these years.
I kind of wondered why she was visiting today and hadn't done so very much in the past, and I was reflecting on the fact that we all need to take our own time to get used to something new and that's probably all she was doing. I was just glad she was finally coming around and being more friendly. Her responses to me were insightful also. She knows humans can't always be trusted and it is a good idea to watch their habits for years before actually getting more personally involved with them. That made sense. And that just because I am friendly to her today, I might be less friendly if she jumped on my pillow with a half mouse in her teeth once night. She had a good point there.
So we were just going along, having this great communication for the first time, and I was really digging her and she was really digging me. And then I put my contact lenses in and noticed that wasn't Shakti on the floor there. That was my hiking boots. Without my contacts in, they looked the same size and color as a crouching-down Shakti cat. Darn, and we were having such a good conversation, too.
As I thought on it later, I realized the same thing happens to so many of us in our daily life, too. We have our own ideas and opinions, and we project those onto the people around us. If they are not saying anything to the contrary, we can just imagine they think like us and will act like us and respond like us. We spend a lot of time doing this, don't we?
We don't get the call from the new man, so we automatically invent an entire story around why that might be. Or the boyfriend goes incommunicado for 2 days and we create a big drama around why we know we're being dumped.
Or the hot new co-worker gets a choice assignment that you secretly wanted, yet you don't ask the boss about it, choosing instead to stew for two weeks, making yourself sick, when all you had to do was talk to someone and clear things up, rather than avoid them and let your imagination run away with you.
It's not always comfortable having your own thoughts projected back at you, especially if they are fearful or worrisome thoughts.
Many of the readings I do are with clients who are in that place of not knowing what is coming next, yet fearing the worst. The projections of their own mind are overwhelming them as they consider the worst case scenario what-ifs. Sometimes it happens that even after someone has passed, we can drive ourselves crazy as we stroll down memory lane reliving everything we thought we might have done wrong.
Recently a friend from out of state wrote me about her husband who had recently passed. He had spent years researching shamanistic practices of various cultures wherein consciousness was altered during the rituals. She was concerned that a disembodied spirit had attached itself to his soul and was troubling him, even after his death. I got her permission to share part of our conversation here.
Q: How do I come to some sort of peace about my husband? He is coming to me in my dreams and reliving old destructive behaviors. I feel like I have been through a 13-year test of initiation in relationship with a man who chose darkness after "talking the talk" of being of the light. I feel like a sheep that was led astray (my spirit was ripped off when he left, because that's how it was when he was alive). I compromised, acquiesced, and was always the one that had to give in to make the relationship work.
A: While the personality of YOU may have felt ripped off, your spirit was only enriched by the whole experience. You "always had to be the one that had to give in to make it work" as you wanted it to work, you mean. To me, compromise is two people both settling for less than they really want, so I don't automatically agree with compromise.
If I'm in a rowboat with my partner, and we're going upstream and I'm the only one rowing, that's my clue that I don't need him in the boat with me. IF, for other reasons, I feel it's worth it to do all the rowing upstream myself, say because I know when we get home he'll make a fantastic dinner and clean up afterwards and shower me with attention and give me the best sex ever, well, then I may not mind doing all the rowing. It might be worth it.
Or I might consent to do all the rowing because I am just glad he's here with me in the boat, even though it was all my idea. Maybe I consent to do all the rowing because I am projecting all my own thoughts and ideas onto him about how a relationship (or a boating trip) should be, and since he's saying nothing to let me know he thinks otherwise, it is my fantasy that he thinks the same way I do.
Q: He was controlling and manipulative, and everything was for his selfish benefit. I did see that while he was alive, but I was so blinded and trapped, that I couldn't get out of it. I am working on and have worked on forgiving this man, who when he comes to me in dreams still thinks he didn't do any wrong. When will he be able to look at himself and see he did wrong, and ask me to forgive him?
A: It's important to remember that this thought is just your own projection, based on how he was when he was alive. His understanding now is far different. From his higher standpoint and perspective right now, he knows that you either forgive him or you don't, and either way, it only impacts you and your peace of mind, not his.
He knows that the greater part of yourself, your Higher Self if you want to call it that, understands and forgives already. It is only the personality self of you that is stuck on requiring that he ask you to forgive him in order to let you move past that.
It would be easy for me to just say, "Oh yes, he asks you to forgive him" but as you come to that understanding by yourself - without the ok from him - that forgiveness has already happened or is not necessary, that will be an important lesson and insight for you. And I can't deny you coming to that profound insight on your own. It's one of those things like if we help the butterfly emerge by cutting the cocoon to help him, then he is denied the chance to develop the strength in his wings that will let him fly, which is a skill he requires in order to live.
Q: He has not once come forward to ask me to forgive him because he still thinks he was right.
A: Remember, this is your thought projection thinking that he still thinks he was right, this thought is coming from you, not from him. I promise you this. Maybe you could meditate upon the question of "in what way does this thought serve me?"
Q: He did come forth one time in a very sheepish, cowardish, tail-between-the-legs way, because he knew he did me wrong and treated me badly. Then he didn't want to stay long, because he thought we would get after him, although I never did on the physical plane.
A: I would like to hear of this encounter because that is not what I feel from him at all. This sounds like an astral message from an unclear channel, filled with projected thought. It's not easy to discern what are our thoughts and what are messages from the other dimension. Even many psychics can read only the astral plane, which - remember - is attached to the emotional state of the reader and the client at the time of the reading.
Some psychics will tell you the astral plane is the only place you can get a reading from, and that the Akashic Records are there so it's the highest place, blah, blah, blah, but that is only because that is the only level they are able to read from, so they don't think there is anywhere else to get info from. And many of them mean well, and just don't know otherwise.
Then there are those that love to get you emotional during a reading, so they can plant seeds that keep you going back to them so they can charge you for more readings. It's not easy to recognize when that is happening, and that's what they count on. You being so emotional that you exert no willpower in your interaction with them. You feel compelled to return to them for your fix.
Q: I expected him to come forth, to have seen and learned that he was wrong (even at least partially wrong!), and say I love you, but he hasn't.
A: He can't come through to you in the way he is now, with you feeling the way you feel about the situation right now. You are both at vibrationally different levels. You aren't at a place right now where you can hear anything unless he says what you want him to say. Give it a little more time. Your thoughts about it are changing now anyway.
Q: He did come forth in an Aleister Crowley sort of way, a powerful dark spirit.
A: This sounds very astral and as if someone was masquerading as him to get you emotionally riled up. This happens with the ouija board also, the "spirits" like to get you riled up and emotional, because that is the environment they "exist" at. It's like they get a buzz off your emotional state, so if they can hang around you and get a buzz off your continued sadness, anger and resentment, they will seek you out. I advise only using a ouija board with stable, responsible people, when you all feel mentally clear and sufficiently prayed-up *smile*
Q: While he was in the physical body, there were times he could be real sweet and loving, he had total charisma, and drew people to him like a guru. He had the ability to influence 100's of people. I see all these people, "sheep", who think he was the enlightened one and were looking to him as a guru, and it disgusts me. Toward the end it disgusted him also and he wondered what he had unleashed.
A: Perhaps many of his "followers" were after a quick fix for a peak experience and not into it for the spiritual aspect of delving deeper into themselves for personality integration. Everyone has their own agenda....
Q: Also, if when we go to heaven, we see all those who have passed on before us, how do you explain past lives and reincarnation, if all the loved ones are still up there in heaven all the time?
A: This is a good example of being told how things are when we die, like we either go to heaven or hell or purgatory, and then when you ask a deeper question like this, you realize that what you've been taught "is real" just doesn't make sense.
When we "see" those who have passed, we don't see their physical form with our physical eyes, we see what I can only describe as an energetic impression of them. We see them as we remember them, not because they haven't changed from that form, but because that is how we would recognize them.
If you saw your husband now, you wouldn't see the body that was injured in the fire, you would see him whole as you remember him. If we were to do a contact session with him, he would appear to me as you remember him, so that when I described him to you, you would know it was him. Like he'd wear the checked shirt and khaki pants and be cleaning his glasses with the front of his shirt. A favorite song might be playing that only you two might know. He would be wearing something you recall and doing some activity you would recognize and I could otherwise know nothing about.
And it would not be the "essence" or soul of him coming through, as most of that part goes on to evolve and reincarnate. It would be that energetic impression of him, or the database of him, that knows everything he knows. That is why the loved one who has passed on knows where the keys are lost or where the bank accounts are. But "he" may just be an energetic database.
That is something not many mediums will tell you, because they want you to keep coming back to access your beloved (the database) through them. But it's very useful to tie up loose ends in many situations, and help loved ones move on. But no, you're right, it is not the essence or core of him that is coming through to you or anyone. You call forth the vision or thought of him by your focused intent and desire to have questions answered and matters settled. But that is for your own benefit and not for his.
End of email Q & A
As you can see, even after someone has passed, we can drive ourselves crazy as we ponder everything that might have gone wrong, or that we think is still going wrong. If you feel you have unfinished business with someone, living or passed, the end of the year is a good time to do some role playing as a self healing technique. Have a conversation with them in your mind, or do some writing at a burning bowl. I do this every New Year's Eve and I spend December writing down the things that I want to feel are resolved at year end. I've found it to be a powerful practice
So, this month I've learned or been reminded of:
1. Communication is a two way street.
2. I often project my own thoughts and beliefs and fears onto those around me.
3. When I do that, I don't always know I am doing it.
4. I can think I know exactly what is going on (i.e., talking to my hiking boots) when in fact I don't have a clue and am making it all up in my own head.
5. Not everyone sees things from my point of view.
6. Not everyone responds the way I would respond.
7. Having real or imaginary conversations can heal a situation.
6. Having an imaginary conversation can be a source of real insight and healing.