Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [77]
No one is immune to the dark forces in spirit. In fact, a dark energy would love to invade a good person and siphon off all that good energy. Wherever you go, always surround yourself with the white light of spirit, and remember that it takes only a minute or two to protect yourself from human and ghostly psychic vampires.
ELEVEN
An Enlightened Life
Imagine if you told a family living in abject poverty that there was a treasure of gold under the dirt floor of their shanty. They would only need to remove the layers of dirt hiding it and they would be rich forever. In the same way, we are not aware of the treasure of our spiritual nature, hidden by our own ignorance and delusion.
—First Teaching of Buddha
Over the years I have been interviewed by many reporters from around the globe, and some of the more forward-thinking ones have asked a certain question that always gets me: “After all these years and hundreds of thousands of spiritual messages and findings, do you still find what you do amazing and miraculous?” I have only one answer: “Yes. Because another mind has been opened.”
So far you have learned something about—and maybe come to appreciate—the unseen spirits that surround you, as well as something about the worlds they inhabit. Now that you have read firsthand accounts of spirit phenomena in this book, perhaps your queries about the afterlife have been answered, and new ones may have taken their place. Perhaps your mind has been opened to a brand-new perspective on life, death, and what lies in between. I certainly hope so.
When I first began communicating with dead people, I was like a child in a candy store. It was a true adventure each time I worked because, being very new to the scene, I never knew whether spirits would show up, or if they did, whether I would be able to see them and understand what they had to say to me. I often wondered how people would find out about me and whether I could earn a living from this work. Twenty years ago, mediums were not as popular as they are today. Actually, in those days it was rare to find a decent medium. All I knew was that I needed to be true to myself and follow the guidance I received from the other side. If I was indeed where I belonged, then there would be nothing to worry about. After all, my work was a plan derived from the spirit world, and I was merely the voice box. Being naturally inquisitive, I found that hearing tales from dead people was a perfect arrangement. So I threw caution to the wind and threw myself into my work. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it ever since. It is not too far-fetched to say that I have probably experienced, heard, seen, felt, and witnessed every death scenario imaginable and been involved in every possible type of family dynamic.
Initially, I loved my work as much as I did because it was so profound. To sit with a person and direct messages from their deceased loved ones, to watch a depressed, lonely, grief-stricken individual become entirely transformed and made whole right before my eyes, was deeply moving. When I asked clients to describe their experiences, they often couldn’t find the appropriate words. One woman, however, once looked straight into my eyes and said, “It was like seeing the light of God.”
These connections gave people a new lease on life and a better understanding of themselves and the world in general. Of course, I already had a strong belief system before starting this work. All my life, I have known that we survive death. So when ghosts conveyed evidential details to prove their existence to loved ones, not only were the messages very much needed for my clients, but they also enabled me to learn to attune myself to the spiritual dimensions, to decipher the feelings behind the messages, and to sense the nuances in between the words. My work opened my mind and taught me a whole new attitude toward living.
When you have been touched by the eternal truths of the spiritual dimensions, you cannot possibly go back to the