Читать книгу Soul Rescuers: A 21st century guide to the spirit world - Natalia O’Sullivan - Страница 10

Grandmother Cooke, who now lived with us, was the daughter of a Romany Gypsy. Although she was a Christian, she was never afraid of being psychic and showing off her gift. She could read tea-leaves, divine meanings from a pack of playing cards and even tell the future from reading the shapes in the froth which formed in a beer glass during or after the drink. She treated it as an everyday occurrence and friends and neighbours used to pop in constantly to ask her advice.

This gave me the confidence not to underestimate my own psychic skills. I have never felt threatened or truly afraid of any encounter that I have had, even when working as a soul rescuer in places of darkness and malevolence. My early experiences of the spirit world taught me patience, how to communicate with the ordinary earthbound spirit and the difference between a ghost and a haunting.

In the fishing town where I was brought up, the conflicts in the streets and clubs were caused by drunken trawler crews hardened by long stints on the high seas. My intuition, or gut feelings, which are the basic instincts of all psychics, served me well during these times. Being psychic enabled me to hear unspoken voices from people and from the souls of earthbound spirits who would come and haunt the drunken sailors and others, taunting the living into violent behaviour or uncontrollable actions. I was usually able to detect trouble by feeling a build up in the atmosphere, though in some cases violence seemed to ooze up from the very grounds of the dance halls and nightclubs in which we gathered. I could hear the spirits’ intentions and ill will; I could hear the land and the buildings echo past events, sacred memories to the violation of the human spirit.

For many years I could not place why I had these abilities and as I became more aware of how far apart they set me from others I became oversensitive and insecure. By my early twenties I found myself in a Spiritualist church. It was dark, badly lit and with a rather daunting atmosphere. I met my first medium, a very old lady whose way of communicating with the spirits of the dead inspired me. She was the first to tell me that I had a natural talent. She instructed me to develop my psychic gifts and through her guidance I realized the difference between a psychic and a channel for spirit communication.

It became obvious to me that I needed a larger environment in which to develop, so I moved to London. Almost immediately I was thrown in the deep end as within a month of contacting the local Spiritualist church I was encouraged to become a probationary healer. I joined a development group and within a short time they realized that my gifts were unusual so moved me on to helping their rescue circle.

Rescue circles help lost souls to be relocated to family and friends. This was my first stage in becoming an apprentice soul rescuer. For two years as this work gathered pace I found myself working six nights a week in soul rescue and spirit communication while holding down a professional job in a large international company. This kept me grounded in the physical world, whilst my spare time was spent in the other world.

There were three crafts I was learning at this time which all demanded different techniques. My healing gift was in its infancy, but as I began developing a channel of light, I felt as though I was in contact with the higher powers. Being a conduit for a power source through the laying on of hands felt as though taps were being turned on and a flood of tingling, pulsating life-force would come out, often leaving a feeling of elevation, as if I was physically standing above the ground.

Then came the rescue of disembodied spirits. This practice is vital to many people who had died, sometimes tragically or in great fear of death, or with no belief in an afterlife. This is where I began to understand earthbound spirits and the conditions in which they remained after death – their world, their emotions and their psychological problems.

The Spiritualist rescue groups which I attended attracted well-meaning psychics who believed in a greater order of souls, angels and gods. Denomination was unimportant, but being psychic was necessary, as was possessing good counselling skills and the ability to use them on an unseen human being!

But after two years of learning psychic, healing and communication skills I began to find the work with the church limiting, particularly as I was in my early twenties while many who ran the organization at that time were in their sixties.