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Humans universally call on God, saints, ancestors, angels, and spirits. Using basic imaginal capacities we “hook-up” with guides both on the planet and those alive to us in other dimensions. Sometimes, it seems, these energies hook up with us.

I believe I was conscious and sane each time I heard  a “voice.”  Mary, the mother of Jesus visited me before my daughter was born. Another time an unknown teacher gave me three directives. Both times I was driving in a car. The messages were unexpected.

Consequently, I trust my access to teachers and guidance on the “ether” net. I 2012 I researched this capacity. For a month I began each day in prayer with a pencil and notebook. I offered a question and waited for a teacher to come. I listened and wrote anything that I heard, sensed, felt without judgment, welcoming each guide and writing whatever he or she had to say. Here is an example.

Me: Good morning. Name?

Zora Neale Huston

Me: What would you like me to hear?

ZNH: “Delight in the offices of love. They are yours to be realized. Can you be seen in the disguise of your humanity? There is every possibility that peace will be yours if you concentrate on love.”

Me: Is there a technology for the season?

ZNH to wish is to dream: open the 3^rd eye.

Me: What is wishing?

ZNH: Your Higher Self calling you home.

I dis not own any books by Zora Neale Huston, although I once listened to a book on tape. Wikipedia calls her “an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston’s four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.”  Her father was a preacher who stopped supporting her after her mother died. She died in obscurity before Alice Walker revived her work. I am humbled that she would come to me.

For that month it was shocking to contact people, some I never knew existed who offered to teach, guide or share experience with me. After each 15 minute writing session, I googled their name where I was shocked to find them in the amazing database created over the last few decades. Some of these inspirational people are alive today.

How was I able to connect with them? How does this kind of higher connection work?

Even the weakest forms of connection are crucial on the seen and unseen level. On wikipedia I found this.

In 1962, while a freshman history major at Harvard, Mark Granovetter became enamored of the concepts underlying the classic chemistry lecture in which “weak” hydrogen bonds hold huge numbers of water molecules together, which themselves are held together by “strong” covalent bonds. This model was the stimulus behind his famous 1973 paper The Strength of Weak Ties, which is now considered a classic paper in sociology.

Weak social bonds are believed to be responsible for the majority of the embeddedness and structure of social networks in society as well as the transmission of information through these networks. Specifically, more novel information flows to individuals through weak than through strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information.^[21]

Our spiritual connectedness needn’t be strong, constant or lovingly consistent. Being weakly connected may be exactly what is needed.

I offer to say Hello to all connectional possibilities as a form of paying my respect and gaining access when needed.

John White in Future Science lists ninety-seven cultures each with a unique way of naming healing or life energies. Barbara Brennan, the healer and scientist researched the human energy field, HEF, and universal energy field, UEF first as a research scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center and then a graduate from the first class of the Institute of Core Energetics in New York before she created her own school. In the book “Light Emerging” she postulates that our ability to communicate with helpers is related to Higher Sense Perception. In the chapter, The Three Types of Auric Field Interactions in Relationships she states,

There are three major types of field interactions in the fourth level of our fields.

• The first type is through harmonic induction of the frequencies of one field into the field of another person.
• The second, and most apparent, type is the streams of colored fluidlike energy, or bioplamsa, that flow between fields.
• And the third type is the cords of light through which we connect with each other’s chakras…

Each type of auric interaction can be either positive or negative. The positive interactions serve to charge and nourish our fields. The more we have them, the fuller, more fulfilled, and happier our lives become. On the other hand, the negative interactions can cause damage to the auric field and leader to disease. P. 179

We Connect through Breath and Pulse

Intimacy, says Brennan, requires “field coupling.” Today we know the science of mirror neurons and physiological attachment. Artists, athletes and healers use this capacity to create team and ensemble. As we engage in a higher purpose it strengthens this ability.

My spiritual director reminds me that breath and pulse are the primary ways to attune. Breath and pulse reminds me of beat and song, rattle and incantation, drum and the chant. Dance and singing are technologies that awaken and attune our higher sensory perception that connects us beyond ourselves. As we become adept other connectional capacities often spontaneously and unexpectedly engage. Some of us choose to focus and develop these additional capacities. Most people do not.

Brennan names Bioplasmic Streamers as the form of energy exchange between people. Those with HSP notice these streamers as color and shape. IF we are kinesthetically sensitive we will speak of this as the quality of “energy” between people.

Connecting with Relational Cords

Addressing “The Cords That Bind Us” Brennan discusses genetic and relational cords both healthy and traumatized, and the need to repair entangled and dangling cords that connect chakra to chakra. Brennan’s description of interconnected cording is as good as any I have found to describe why attending our family connections is essential to our greater sense of belonging.

Once the initial genetic cord connections through the mother’s heart chakra are made, genetic cord connections are made through all the other chakras. Thus, you are connected through all your chakras to your parents. They, in turn are connected through all their chakras to all their children. In this way, you are connected to your siblings. This connection goes on through grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. IT continues through all your bloodline connections, through the great genetic tree of life dating back through time immemorial. It creates a great network of light cords connecting all of human life back to the first humans on earth.” 185.

Soul Team Connections

It is interesting to think of the ways that we connect on a higher level. Prayer is often mentioned. Connecting through our big bodyspirit we relate to the divine as a person using cords and larger energies.

We are corded with the Divine in such a basic way that we may not even know it. But what about our Soul team, our spirit guides?

Books are an amazing technology for accessing guidance. The Bible, for instance, is a holy book, not just because it conveys sacred teachings but also as it provides readers a physical conduit to the Divine.

What books connect you to an important teacher? Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman is one of my holy books. I don’t go to it regularly but that book is alive for me. If I open it I know I can contact one of my guides as a brother and spiritual companion. My life has been profoundly directed and changed through literary exchanges. Volumes written by Doug Adams, Ruth St. Denis, Malidome Some, Marilee Zednek, Flora Wuellner and others hold my consciousness. I hope my own writing may do the same for someone.

Using physical tools to connect, it is likely that our energy consciousness is IN the object, especially if it is meaningful. Whether it is our iphone, computer, a book, a talisman, an instrument, or something that we have made sacred, our physical objects become imbued with our energy or the energy of others. This is why we are warned about idolatry, confusing the energy of a thing with the greater field of divine connection.

Machines today channel radio, laser, and electromagnetic connections, sound waves, and light waves. There are probably more forms of connecting than humans can imagine. Though we can’t observe most of them some of us learn that they exist through dreams, HSP, and encounters we won’t mention.

But, energy connections happen daily, too. I pick up the phone to call you as I “think” of you and send out a streamer of consciousness. A name for this kind of energy consciousness is “psycho-noetic,” combining feeling and thought. I like to joke that I am smarter than an Iphone; I just don’t use all of my aps.

Why wouldn’t reaching out to you, a spirit guide or reaching out to God work in a similar fashion?

Energetic Connections

Sensitive’s feel “cords” of connection that are commonly referenced in

• Bless be the tie that binds.
• We’re bonded.
• I connect to you.
• We’re enmeshed.
• Joined together
• No strings attached.
• I feel cut off
• You dropped me.

We “cord” through specific body parts

• Cording at a chakra achieves a corresponding form of connection. Heart to heart. Gut to gut. Sexual center to the Sexual Center. Mind to Mind.
• Cording through the top of the head can control the ego. Sometimes called guru energy, a teacher or elder can cord our mind to secure their authority and rule our thoughts.
• Through the back of the neck many disembodied energies can enter and exit the body. By protecting our back do we get tight shoulders or migraines?

Cords with mothers are unique. Living inside her body, we cord in mutual survival. The energy goes both ways to create a cord that is both enduring and challenging. As part of her we “know” her and she “knows” us. A colleague felt two strange feelings in her heart, one sharp like a dart. The other was literally a tug. She began to identify it when her mom called on the phone which helped her be less confused about what was happening in her heart.

With family and lovers and even coworkers we consciously and unconsciously negotiate how strong or light these cords are. My brother and I are corded but do not exchange energy communications by his choice. I respect his reasons though I miss him. I can still claim our connection through birth and in God and continue to send him love. He hasn’t blocked that.

In the Spiritual Instruction Memo on Heart and Soul I wrote about the obsessive, draining cord I had with my high school sweetheart and how I removed my cord from his heart and then his cord from mine. I connected both he and I to our higher power. If I can change an obsessive enmeshed cord you can too.

Therapeutic work around parents, lovers, family and friends helps us to renegotiate our intimate cords. Movement and ritual may allow this to happen quite quickly. Hopefully, we’ll know what we want and how to deal with the repercussions of changing the intensity and nature of corded connections. I am glad to have a higher power that constantly intervenes on my behalf in this regard.

How do we stay connected and let go?

Physical cords and agreements with teachers, colleagues, and institutions also function on a body level.

After 100 people laid their hands on my head walking out of my ordination agreement twenty years later was as big as leaving a marriage. Group and individual bonds were created in a particular energy. Changing those cords required the same time and process that I used to enter into connection. This included a ritual where I invited the representatives of the church to wash their hands of the ordination agreement.

Today, I still sense the old connections. Is it because the church representatives did not inform the wider church and some did not consent to release me? Is it because I choose to remember those connections as a lesson? Is it because I continue to claim the church as part of my cultural family? Probably all of the above. No one or nothing has been murdered, only rearranged.

Group connections feel like ghosts. On a vacation I wrote this poem.

When moving house

I shucked my theology books.

Unburdened volumes

of bible commentaries, church

history, concordances, and lexicons.

I was done

Til the vacation where

I bedded down in the room

of a child long gone.

A madrone ladder led to a reading loft.

Where I touched the spines

of 100 books I’d tossed.

Dead childhood rhymes,

frayed bindings or religious studies

rose from the dead like

grim ghosts with knickers on

casting a grey weight over

the quaint swinging bench

and northern tides running dark

over the star-fished rocks.

I lay sleepless under my covers.

What are libraries?

My own shelves sing to me of myth,

dying well, poetry, and true stories

composted in dream soil, where

the authors breathe in a wild lineage

elevated, honored, adorned, and green.

Alongside them standing the slender leaves

That bear my name.

Connections with our Spiritual Team

Relationship with a higher power is foundational for most people and recognized both as an internal sense and transcendent or “higher” form of experience. I know of no religions that are purely monotheistic in expression. Even Christianity offers many ways for the Divine to show up. So higher power can take many forms.

Common language speaks of vibes, flow, chill, and presence. Once an individual encounters a disembodied “otherness” they may take no ordinary experience more seriously. Or they may engage spirituality with complete faith and no physical sense at all. This is truly miraculous to me. Atheists and Buddhists who offer blessing through deep detachment astound me.

The most effective way to work with any connection is to know the kind of connection that our body wants and then act from that intention. I want my divine connections to allow me to be myself as simply as possible. Over and over I have found, as unbelievable as it is, that this works best. Perhaps people come to trust me because I am consistent in my agreement to be in my own body as a good place and connect to God and God’s world.

How do you sense Divine Presence? What are its unique qualities?

I notice a gentle, palpable sensation connecting in and beyond me. It feels alive in my torso, limbs, and mind offering a tender fullness. This “Presence” feels strangely non-evaluative and can gently guide me back to love. I sense it subtly underlying and beyond my usual discriminating feelings and thoughts. Oh, blessed thing. I call this God.

Nurturing Divine or Soul presence through awareness, gratitude, and regular check ins, I’ve developed a sense of other forms of energy as well.

I sense connections to people on the earth.

I sense “beings” that I call angels, guides, and helpers.

I sense challenging, draining, or confused energies.

I sense time like waves of choppy and smooth water, both speeding up and slowing down.

I sense deceased souls, liberated and non-liberated.

I sense ancestors.

I sense energy signatures of groups and spaces, present and past.

Some friends see the dead. Some are so sensitive that specific practices and rules for engagement are needed.

Disembodied Connections: Invited? Uninvited?

As we learn to distinguish helpful and unhelpful energies through the faculties of reason and imagination. (See SoulSpeak: The Art of the Imagination.) we attune to subtle differences.

What feels like me? What does not feel like me?

Am I depressed or am I carrying someone’s depression? Am I draggy? Or am I dragged down? Am I stupid or is some energy stupefying me?

I was taught to be open. This is not enough. It is better to learn when to be open and when to be closed, as others will happily occupy a sensitive soul and a willing body.

Have you ever been with someone who stepped inside your space to talk? As they came close, your head suddenly felt full or buzzy. Perhaps it became difficult to form your own thoughts. You couldn’t think straight or lost your train of though. Their energy may “occupy” you.

When this happens I psychically move back or ask the person to step back so I can hear them. I take note of this tendency. Many times, individuals don’t know that they are doing this. It is not my job to educate them, but to ground myself and silently communicate that my head is off limits.

It is important to know that if a person or energy enters my being and it feels uncomfortable I have the authority to remove them. I do this by seeing them connected by their own cord to God just as I would show a small child where their parent is and put them in touch using intention and my spiritbody.

Going inside or attaching to another person Is generally not something you want to do unless you are covenanting for a higher purpose. You don’t know what you might inadvertently pick up or trigger.

One way to learn about this is with people who have storing, healthy souls that you trust or who have gifts in this area. Psychic doctors and healers especially need opportunities to practice this.

At one point I was overwhelmed to think of needing to protect myself both on earth and other dimensions. Then, I realized that the same rules apply for everything. Our bodies don’t need different rules or practices for different dimensions. An ethic of love and regard works in all dimensions!

Basic Agreements for all Relations

There are agreements I use with spiritual teammates based on what I have learned about living in a body. Only I know what it is like to be embodied. Those who are not embodied may not remember. I am grateful for their consideration and respect of my current knowledge.

If they are of the spirit they will agree that Godness uses no-force. Force removes choice. Anything taking up residence inside of us without permission goes against the Universe’s most efficient and powerful “prime directive.” Free will. Godness allows the use of inefficient use of power, because power is neutral. It is part of the fabric of everything. Remove energy or free will and we leave this dimension.

Belief systems and their corresponding imagery will unconsciously lead us to host imaginal entities: angels, saints, gods, goddesses, relatives, and on and on. Using the words, “I hold you in my heart?” “Christ is in me.” All of the angels are here.” “I invite God and all the saints.” We invite great amounts of energy inside our being.

How much energy do you need and want?

Do you need an entire community inside of your body?

Do you need your partner inside of you?

Blessed are the pure in spirit for they shall see God. It turns out that humble connection is the most direct way to encounter the divine and even then, Divine fullness, that burning bush, is not meant to inhabit you unless you are called to that. Respect for each body’s free will allows the Universe to beautifully function in energy of high synchronicity.

Toward this end these are my primary agreements.

Agreement one: Our body is ours, no one else’s. We get to take care of our self.

Agreement two: The best place for helpers is at the edge of our space unless invited in for healing, initiation, or instruction.

Agreement 3: We have authority and responsibility to remove any uninvited intruder even those that claim spiritual authority over us.

Our spiritual team members then,

• Depend on us to know what we want
• Attend but do not burden us
• Be weak or strong connectors
• Change
• Point to the Universal Field
• Support connection to the Highest Source of Love.
• Are Humble and Pure In Spirit By Example.
• Enjoy Opportunities to Connect through Breath and Pulse, Song and Dance.
• Live by Synchronicity and Spontaneity
• Are many.

We need our team more than ever. Without names, skill development, teachers and practices we don’t develop the capacities and understandings we need for evolution and perhaps even survival. We need teachers who can learn and teach about listening to body and soul if we are to generate health, peace, and prosperity.

Meister Eckhart  (1260 -1328) was a catholic mystic who got in trouble with Rome. He asked, “WHY SO MANY SOULS?” and advised,

When were you last really happy?

Let that experience ferment,

bring it to mind once

in a while.

Surely in the genesis of that past moment, when you danced,

you would not have wanted a constable

to have knocked

on your

door,

or have said, “You just entered

a restricted ground.”

Why are there so many stars and souls

with no end in sight for

them?

Because nothing can interrupt God

when He is having

fun,

creating