One More Beautiful Ghost Story

Over the last two weeks on this Blog/Video Log, I've shared with you how I've been blessed by spirit reaching out to help and protect me during some of the more challenging moments in my life.  This week, I'd like to share with you one more story where a gentleman who had recently passed away was protecting his wife by reaching across the veil between life and death. 

This particular event took place when my husband, Frank and I were traveling in New Zealand in 2005.  We had always longed to go there knowing how truly beautiful it is in so many ways.  For our accommodations we preferred farm stays and home stays as this gave us the opportunity to make friends and have more personal interactions.  New Zealand's people are bright, intelligent, creative and kind.  The landscape is spectacular.  And for me, as a working psychic, I was amazed and delighted to discover that my clairvoyant function was extremely heightened every day that we were there.  I was able to avert danger, interact with nature and sense the presence of spirit at a much more profound level.  

The story, that I'd like to share with you now, took place after we had crossed from one "island" to the next.  At the ferry station we decided to take a taxi van with several other travelers to our separate destinations in the area.  I helped the driver load our luggage into his enclosed trailer.  Then off we went.  After dropping off most of the other tourists, but with still a few to go, we arrived at our destination, the home of a woman whom we had contacted a day or two before.  

Frank jumped out to go to her door and be sure that we had arrived at the correct address and I got into the trailer with the cabby to sort out our bags and began placing them on the curb.  Frank came and got a load of our cases and took them in.  Then an older gentleman, presumably the husband of our hostess arrived on the curb full of appreciative and welcoming softly murmured comments.  After a quick little exchange of smiles, I resumed my activity in the trailer and emerged a few moments later with the last of our bags.  From the curb, I saw the elder gentleman enter the front door of the home and I then followed after him. 

Once inside, I met our hostess, who was just showing Frank to our room, right near the entrance.  I went on into the room to freshen up while she invited Frank to come upstairs and see the kitchen.  After showing Frank around, she then went up to the third level to resume watching a very exciting tennis match on the telly, and invited us to join her, if we'd like, once we had settled in.  

After looking around, Frank returned downstairs and I asked how he liked meeting her husband.  Frank was nonplussed by this and said that her husband and her two teen-aged children had all died the previous year in an automobile accident.  Our hostess had shown him a photo of them.  She also said that she was looking for a little more income and that we were her first home stay guests.  It was right after that that she had excused herself to go upstairs to finish watching the game. 

Hearing this I followed Frank up to the kitchen area to see the picture and there, in a photo, with two beautiful youngsters and our hostess beside him, was the older gentleman who had greeted me with smiles of welcome out in front of their home.  Apparently the husband, unbeknownst to our hostess, had reached across the veil to greet us at the curb to see if wee would be suitable guests in their home.  Evidently we passed his approval and received his welcome.

I am touched to know that our loved ones can help us not only in life, but also in death.  They watch over us, whether we are aware of it or not, just making sure that all is well.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

"I Don't Know About You, but I Live in a Reincarnational Reality"

"I Don't Know About You, but I Live in a Reincarnational Reality" This was a quote from Ram Dass that I've adopted as my own.  Our lifetimes are like going to sleep at night.  We dream and then we wake up again to a whole new day.  It's just that with reincarnation it's on a slightly bigger scale. 

There was some wonderful research done at the University of Virginia in the late 1960's by a man named Ian Stevenson, MD who was a professor of pyschiatry.  He gathered 2,500 case studies of children who at around the age of two or three would speak openly about their previous families.  They also spoke about their former lives and the way they died.  Many of these children had nightmares about their past life experiences because when the volume is turned up loud (as is often the case in someone who has died relatively young by some violent or unexpected means) the memories can come through more easily.  

My dad was one of these kids.  He wasn't in Ian Stevenson's research group because he was born about 40 years earlier, however my dad did exhibit one of the characteristics that Ian covered in his research, which is known as xenoglossy.  Xenoglossy is the ability to speak in a language that you've had no former exposure to, at least not in this lifetime.  My dad grew up in relative isolation in the Arizona desert, and as a little tiny boy he spoke a few words of Hindi.  He named his cat the Hindu word for cat.  He also told my British grandmother and grandfather about his death experience in his most recent past life, where at the age of 11 he and his whole family died suddenly at the dinner table; crushed under the timbers of their home as it collapsed during an large earthquake.  

This kind of experience is common for these reincarnational children: a young and sudden death, recalled at a very young age.  Some of them have birthmarks or defects that match the wounds that their deceased former self had experienced.  Until recently,  these accounts have mostly lain somewhat dormant in family recollections or in the desks of researchers like Ian.  They were usually passed off as unexplainable anomalies, wondered at briefly and then forgotten about.  But now that nearly 3 billion of us are connected via the internet, we have access to lots of information that has formerly been unavailable, like Stevenson's research, along with other new discoveries in the the topic of the ongoing nature of consciousness.  

Though reincarnation is not readily accepted in the West, it does have a history of recognition in the Gnostic Christian texts, as well as in the ancient Kabbalistic Jewish teachings.  Throughout most of the world reincarnation has widely and wholeheartedly been embraced.  Hinduism and Buddhism both acknowledge its reality.  And the oral traditions, the numerous nature-based religions of the world,  have always accepted the cycles of life and death and rebirth.  

Lots of current research like the explorations into near death experiences show us that consciousness continues after the body and brain have died. This helps us to change our understanding about life and death.  It frees us to realize that our spiritual growth is a process and that we don't have to accomplish everything in one go.  We are reborn together again and again as we progressively embrace our interconnectedness and move closer and closer to love.  Voltaire said, "It is not more surprising to be born twice than once."  Know that love is never lost and that we all dance together again and again.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  

© Josephine Laing, 2014