Читать книгу Guided By Angels: Part 2 of 3: There Are No Goodbyes, My Tour of the Spirit World - Paddy McMahon - Страница 5

Once a complete mystery, the workings of the spirit guides have begun to become clear to me over the years. My communication with Margaret Anna in particular has been resoundingly enlightening, as well as enormously reassuring, and it is through her words that I can best describe how the spirit guides effect the changes in our lives that they do, and how they communicate both with us and among themselves.

I was communicating with Margaret Anna one evening when I realised that I had interrupted the flow several times. I stopped to apologise, and she asked me not to do so any more.

‘I’m not controlled by time like you,’ she said. And so it was that I began to view our communications in a different way. They were also shaped by Margaret Anna’s view of memory. She doesn’t have memory lapses, she said, so she has no need for memory.

She said, ‘There’s nothing I need to forget so I can forgo the protective screen of memory.’

This is an interesting concept. In the human state we think of memory as the capacity to remember things, whereas it’s interesting to see it as an aid to forgetting things that we have no need to remember. In particular, it can be an aid to forget things that are often a source of guilt and depression. Speaking for myself at least, I think that one of the benefits of growing old is that a selective process takes place about what I need to remember instead of putting energy into dwelling on things that are usually of very temporary significance.

What’s in a name?

Margaret Anna commented to me about how many recorded spirit communications are from souls with exotic-sounding names, such as the names of Native American chieftains and so forth. She felt that people might relate more easily to communications from someone with a non-exotic name like hers: Margaret Anna Cusack. She said, ‘It’s ordinary, like everyman or everywoman.’

I’m not so sure about that myself. The concept of spirit guides (or guardian angels) can seem far-fetched for some people, and I think we are all guilty of being slow to accept that extraordinary information can come from apparently ordinary sources. Maybe it’s because we don’t think enough of ourselves to accept that people with ordinary names can be capable of extraordinary things. Exotic names somehow make it more convincing!

No spiritual hierarchy

When people get together to work on any project – political, social, religious or whatever – the first thing they do, almost inevitably, is to set up an organisation with rules and regulations and pyramids of hierarchical positions. In many religions we are told of a hierarchy of angels. In Christianity, for example, angels fall into orders, or ‘angelic choirs’. Is this actually the way that angels operate?

Margaret Anna has been very clear about this point, and she has stressed that nobody – including other souls in spirits – tells her what to do. She feels that it is important to establish this, because it is an all-too-common belief that there is a type of ruling hierarchy in spirit, who assign missions to their minions. So the structures that dictate our life on earth no longer exist. How do they operate?

According to Margaret Anna, guides have what she calls a ‘cooperative system’. It would be unthinkable for them to sit idly by while people struggle. There are hordes and hordes of souls in spirit engaged in all sorts of schemes designed to help their brothers and sisters on earth. They have conferences and they set up committees. They choose the ways in which they’d like to help, bearing in mind the areas that most suit them. They may decide to appoint a coordinator who will keep an overview of their different programmes and, of course, they meet frequently to discuss how they’re progressing.

Margaret Anna says, ‘While we’re very aware of human traumas and the suffering that many of our human “charges” are experiencing, and we certainly don’t take them lightly, nevertheless, because we can see the bigger picture, we retain our feelings of joy and are in what I might describe as states of concerned detachment. We wouldn’t be much help to anybody if we got caught up emotionally in every passing crisis.’

Here, for a reason that will become obvious later, I’d like to mention a friend of mine, Frank. I had come to know him when a mutual friend introduced him to me, after which we had established a great rapport. He was a member of the Catholic religious Order of Marist Brothers. He had qualified as a teacher and worked in Africa for many years, doing rehabilitative work as well as teaching. In his youth he had been an active and talented footballer. When he read them he was very taken with my books and used them in his work of helping recovering male addicts. He had died a few years ago, but on a number of occasions he has communicated freely not just with me but also with another mutual friend. He has been invariably accurate in all his communications. He is now participating in the type of cooperative system referred to by Margaret Anna, by easing the passing of souls into their new situation.

What crisis?

It’s comforting to know that when we are in our darkest hour there is someone looking out for us. But in spirit they look at things rather differently. Margaret Anna has said that what humans see as crises aren’t really crises at all. She had her own share of crises when she was on earth, and concedes that this may not be a particularly helpful statement for anyone going through what they perceive to be traumatic times. However, it’s fair to say that when we look back we often wonder why we got so worked up over situations that, in hindsight, seem trivial. From the guides’ perspective on the mountaintop, as it were, they can see the purpose behind the happenings, they rejoice in the understanding that sometimes comes later on, and are so grateful when they can help people to reach that understanding.

Margaret Anna says, ‘We have great fun here. Don’t let anybody think for a minute that we’re clones of each other. We’re able to express our different and unique personalities in ways that we didn’t feel free to on earth. And I think you can gather from the tone of my communications, even though you’re putting them into rather careful language, that I’m anything but a pietistic, antiseptic type of individual.

‘However, it would be misleading of me to present a picture of life in spirit as full of uninterrupted joy. It is for many, according to their states of awareness. But, unfortunately, there are still many souls in spirit who are experiencing what I can only call the tortures of hell, except that, mercifully, we know that it’s only a temporary hell. The duration of it is determined by how willing they are to open themselves to a new awareness of themselves.’

I wondered what she could mean. What could lead to souls in spirit experiencing the tortures of hell? She agreed to give me some examples.

Unhappy souls

In the religious teaching of my youth, suicide was regarded as a mortal sin that meant punishment by hellfire for all eternity. Any person who committed suicide wasn’t entitled to be buried in consecrated ground. I shudder to think that so many people – and, I’m ashamed to say, I was once one of them – subscribed to such a belief system. For all I know, many may still do.

Margaret Anna described the case of a man whom she called Johann, who was born into a well-to-do family in Austria in the early part of the twentieth century. He qualified as a doctor and went to work and live in Germany. His move to Germany coincided with the rise to power of the Nazis. He was an idealistic young man who saw his medical career as a vocation rather than a job. He couldn’t but be aware of the changing political scenario, but he was so absorbed in his work that, to some extent, it passed him by; until, that is, he was drawn into it.

He was given a commission in the German army, which initially was quite pleasing to him. He saw this as an opportunity to give whatever healing he could to wounded soldiers. However, he wasn’t allowed to stay in that role for long. His new assignment was to examine imprisoned Jews in order to select those who, in his opinion, were fit for manual work.

His instructions were clear – selection or rejection. In the early stages he was unaware of what happened as a result of his decisions. Inevitably, of course, he found out, and his horror was indescribable. Johann went to his superior officer and requested that he be transferred to another post where he could fulfil his medical vocation. He got an unambiguously direct answer: ‘Go back to your post or you’ll be shot as a traitor.’ After much agonising he went back and tried to convince himself that he was doing his patriotic duty – that maybe the authorities had access to information he didn’t, which indicated that Jews were in some sinister ways seeking to undermine the stability of the State. He became as efficient a robot as he could.

The years went by, the war eventually ended, and the extent of the Nazi atrocities began to be revealed to the world. Johann could no longer anaesthetise himself. He sought oblivion and committed suicide in 1947. But, of course, there was no oblivion. He couldn’t get away from himself. The realisation that he couldn’t destroy himself, that he had no choice but to live with himself indefinitely, was the source of the most agonising mental torture for him – a despair that knew no relief.

Margaret Anna took on the task of helping Johann to a point where he could begin to accept, if not to love, himself. The first and most important part of her task was to help him to unburden himself. Johann was racked with guilt, and in his own eyes he was utterly worthless. He felt that he had completely reneged on his vocation and betrayed his profession through his cowardice; he had saved his own life at the cost of many, many others.

In the early stages of their contact, Johann wouldn’t even acknowledge Margaret Anna. But she continued to turn up – sitting silently near him, projecting love at him, just being with him. After some time he began to look at her somewhat furtively. Eventually he asked her what she wanted.

‘Nothing,’ she said. And that was the end of their conversation. They continued to sit silently together.

Margaret Anna didn’t stay with him continuously; she kept coming and going, so that he had long periods by himself. She noticed that, in spite of his resistance, he couldn’t disguise his pleasure when she turned up. He was slowly beginning to enjoy contact with someone else, who was obviously not looking at him with abhorrence, which was how he was feeling about himself.

When she felt that the time was right, she told him that she was with him as a representative of divine love and that she wanted to help him to forgive himself and enjoy being alive and well.

‘How can I forgive myself?’ he asked in torment. ‘You don’t know all the terrible crimes I have committed, all the suffering I have caused.’

‘Yes, I do. I know everything,’ she replied.

After a long pause he asked, ‘And yet you don’t reject me?’

Margaret Anna assured him that he was now in a dimension where he would meet no rejection. Haltingly, he began to talk, to let all his self-recrimination pour out, and she listened. She let him talk away. She could see him observing her, wondering if she was horrified by what he was telling her. As he saw that there was no change in the way that she was relating to him, he became more expansive and there were even occasional glints of humour.

Gradually things evolved to the stage where he agreed to let her take him to meet other souls, who accepted him unquestioningly. He began to allow himself to enjoy their company spontaneously. She no longer has to come and get him. He automatically connects with the group, or with one or more of them, as he wishes.

I wondered about the victims of his selections; would he have to face them? She said that sooner or later it would happen – as it does on earth. What did that mean, I wondered?

Margaret Anna answered, ‘People don’t realise – mercifully – that they’re in frequent, often daily, contact with some who have abused them in some form or another in a previous life or previous lives. The reverse is also true – they may be in contact with people they have abused. It’s never all one-way traffic. Johann may eventually choose to reincarnate into an environment where he will have opportunities to make restitution in some form to one or more of his victims and, through them, to humanity as a whole. That will be his choice. Opportunities other than reincarnation will also be available to him. The main thing is that he’s on his way.’

Souls communicating

I have to confess to interrupting Margaret Anna’s story about Johann. She spoke at length about the conversations they had, and I was curious to know what she meant by ‘talking’ in spirit. She informed me that languages, as we know them, are unnecessary in spirit.

She said, ‘We function through thought transmission.’

Margaret Anna reminded me that in our communication she wasn’t using any words; instead, she was transmitting thoughts to me and I was interpreting them into my words. I now understand that souls can operate at whatever level they wish – using books, words or any other form of communication without limitation. In a way, the idea of books shows how our own communication on earth is limited, and how spirit can transcend that. Margaret Anna says:

‘There will always be writers and books and readers. Suppose you go into a bookshop where there are books in many different languages. If you open a book that is, say, written in Swedish, it will be incomprehensible to you because you have no knowledge of Swedish. Imagine, though, that you have reached a stage at which when you open the Swedish book you automatically understand the Swedish words, although you have never studied the language. It’s hard to grasp from where you’re sitting. We can operate at whatever level we wish. Those who like to use words will continue to do so. It’s not an either/or situation. Limitation of possibilities only applies to your present human thinking. There’s no need to try looking around corners that don’t exist. There’s nothing to stop you having the best of all worlds.’

Visits from unhappy souls

In my individual sessions with people, souls who had committed suicide occasionally came through. Sometimes they were confused because, of course, they had sought oblivion and hadn’t found it. They were just wandering around frequenting old haunts, like public houses or bookmakers’ offices, and trying to talk to people who couldn’t see or hear them, which left them feeling very lonely and frustrated. I would suggest to them that they look for a light that would lead them to a guardian angel who would look after them. I’m glad to say that this usually worked.

Others weren’t confused at all. They had responded to the help that was always available to them from their guides and/or groups, such as Frank’s. Their purpose in coming through was to reassure their loved ones in the physical world that they were fine, and to express their regret for the pain that they had caused them by leaving so abruptly. Those who were left behind, particularly parents, often blamed themselves – and believed that they were somehow responsible for not noticing that there was any problem. Even though it was still difficult for them to get over the pain of separation and, particularly, the awful abruptness of it, they now had the consolation that their son or daughter or friend was alive and well.

I remember one unusual case. A young man who believed without reservation in continuing life was impatient to find out what it was like. He jumped off a wall with fatal consequences for his body. He came through to reassure his mother that he was in good form, except that he regretted that he couldn’t get back the same way that he had left. He would have to go through the whole process of reincarnation again (if, of course, he wished to do so). This was one soul who had not learned the art of patience.

Rightly or wrongly, I have come to the conclusion that the increasing incidence of suicide has been compounded by the fact that many souls find the density and restrictiveness of living in physical bodies on earth too much for them, after having experienced the freedom of spirit. Of course, this brings up the question of why any soul bothers to be born into such challenging situations. But, clearly, it’s all to do with raising levels of consciousness or awareness. An effective way to do this is to be forced up against a wall, so to speak, so that we have no choice but to try to liberate ourselves and find freedom in the way we think. Trying circumstances often bring out the best in people, and always teach a lesson.

Forebodings of death

Many of us fear death, even when we are reassured that there is something profoundly wonderful that follows. There are multiple stories of people who have had premonitions or forebodings of imminent death – and not usually their own death, either. In Ireland there used to be (maybe there still is) a tradition surrounding what is known as a ‘banshee’. My dictionary describes this creature as a ‘female spirit whose wailing warns of a death in a house’. Literally, the word ‘banshee’ means a ‘woman of the fairies’. As far as I know, it’s a mythical tradition that applies only to certain families.

There was a road leading to the house where I was brought up. At one of its turns, the banshee was believed to sit combing her hair. I remember hearing a story about a foolish man who snatched her comb and ran as fast as he could into his house. Hot on his heels, the banshee pursued him, and arrived wailing at the door. Realising the mistake he had made, he was about to hand her the comb, but the woman of the house stopped him. She placed the comb on some tongs and handed it to the banshee. As the banshee took the comb, the tongs broke in half. I expect the man was very grateful he hadn’t handed them over directly, and that he suffered no ill effects after the risk he took.