Last night, a young friend of mine brought up the idea of faith. She said she wished she had it, she wished she knew there was something more once we die (having just been through the unexpected deaths of both her father and her husband within the past couple of years).
I don’t like to push my beliefs on others, but I do enjoy walking through the door when they open it for me. I try to tread lightly and not be offensive or overstep my bounds because my faith is my personal experience. I can share my evidence, but that won’t give HER faith. At the same time, my experiences could give her places to look for her own idea of faith and understanding.
She asked me how I believed so wholeheartedly in my spiritual core. Quite plainly, I told her it was because of signs and synchronicity. I explained that, once I honed my powers of observation, and actually paid attention to the things going on around me, reinforcement of my beliefs was found just about everywhere. She asked for examples which were easy to share because they were so profound in my life.
I was doing an instructional meditation on meeting my spirit guides and angels. It was the first time I’d been through a “hypnotic meditation”. I met my “master guide”, a beautiful Native-American-looking woman with incredibly long, gorgeous black hair. I asked her name. She said it was Shauna. Since I was still conscious during the meditation, I thought to myself, “The name Shauna doesn’t make sense for someone who looks like you.”
As the meditation wound up, I asked for a “sign” confirming that what I had experienced in my mind was also valid in my waking, physical life. I then fell asleep. Waking six hours later, I checked my work email which was usually flooded with twenty plus emails every night. That morning, there was only a single message in my inbox. Surprisingly, it was a spam email that had made it’s way through our robust spam filter on our email server. The email was from Shauna at yahoo dot com. Needless to say, I was awestruck.
That was one of the first times I felt as if there was “something” or somebody out there lending me a helping hand. During my initial spiritual indoctrination (where I was learning and absorbing everything I could on religion, theology and philosophy), I came to the idea that feathers – especially soft white ones – were kind of a “sign” for me that I wasn’t alone. I had read a book about signs, and it seemed that one, a white feather, would randomly show up at the appropriate times in my life. It’s funny because I have a friend who tells me that seeing feathers could just mean there’s a dead bird nearby. Sometimes that’s true, too!
Here is another example:
My aunt was dying in hospice. My cousins called me at work and said they needed me there with them because they didn’t think their mother was going to make it through the day. I raced the twenty-five miles up the freeway to get to them as soon as I could. It was one of the few times I “heard” (it was more like felt) my guides and angels. They kept saying (or my feeling), “She needs to go to the light. She needs to let go. You need to tell her it’s ok to go. Tell her everybody will be ok. You MUST tell her to go.”
When I arrived at the hospice facility, my aunt lay unconscious in bed, thankfully medicated so we hope she felt little pain from the cancer that had taken over her body. The first thing I asked my cousins was, “Have you told her it’s ok to go?” They shook their heads and said they couldn’t. They asked me to do it.
I went to my aunt, leaned over, stroking her hair (which was falling out from the chemotherapy), and I whispered in her ear, “It’s ok to go. Your children and family will all be ok. You need to let go now. Others are waiting for you, and we’ll be ok here. Follow the light.” Within ten minutes, she was in the throes of active dying. My grandmother, her mother, had entered the room and was beside herself. It was heartbreaking. She yelled, “No! Don’t go!” I held my grandmother and said, “She has to go. You have to let her go. You have to tell her it’s ok.” My grandmother just cried as my aunt died within minutes. I could feel the moment her spark (or soul) took flight. There was a peacefulness between the sobs.
I stayed with my cousins while they called the funeral home. We waited together, with my grandmother, as everybody bid farewell to my aunt. After several hours, I hugged them goodbye and walked to my car. As I approached, I saw a large (5 to 6-inch), perfect white feather on the ground at my door. I looked around and didn’t see any others in the vicinity. Then I looked up and said, “thank you”.
When we pay attention to the signs, when we look for them, when we can quiet the outside noise enough to really listen and look for them, they are there. So while I can tell you about my faith, your experience is your own. You just have to take off the blinders, have your eyes wide open, and recognize the signs when they are placed right in front of you. It can be difficult when we’re practically trained not to listen to our “gut”. It does take practice, but it’s such a natural part of our being that it truly isn’t that difficult to comprehend once the decision is made to do so.
After telling my friend about this, and many more experiences, she experienced her own moments of synchronicity later that night. She text me the day, “Wow. You just have to recognize it when it shows up right in front of you.”