“Beyond the obvious increased opportunities it provides for encountering meaningful coincidences, travel is itself a transformational experience.”
—FRANK JOSEPH, SYNCHRONICITY & YOU
Whether you’re headed across town or across the world, travel removes you from normal routines and habitual thinking. You’re open to new experiences, uncanny encounters, and all the high strangeness the universe can muster.
Most of us set out with a checklist for routine trips across town and plan an itinerary for longer journeys. But along the way, stuff happens. The car breaks down. The connecting flight is cancelled and you end up in Atlanta instead of Albuquerque. If you’ve left large chunks of your trip unstructured you have time for exploration. That’s when it gets interesting, when you have a chance to engage synchronicity. Suddenly, running into the same people again and again isn’t just an oddity; it’s an opportunity to decipher and use the message. Why these people? Is your journey being hindered or facilitated?
An unlikely encounter helped author Richard Bach find a missing part for a rare airplane. As Bach related in Nothing by Chance, in 1966 he was barnstorming the Midwest in a rare biplane, a 1929 Detroit-Parks P-2A Speedster; only eight were ever built. In Palmyra, Wisconsin, Bach loaned the plane to a friend, who flipped it over upon landing. The damage was minor and the two men were able to fix everything except one strut. That repair looked hopeless because the part was custom-made.
Just then, the owner of the hangar approached them, asked if he could help, and offered to let them have any of the parts stored in his three hangars. When Bach described the rare part he needed, the man walked over to a nearby pile of junk and pointed to the exact part.
Bach concluded, “The odds against our breaking the biplane in a little town that happened to be home to a man with the forty-year-old part to repair it; the odds that he would be on the scene when the event happened; the odds that we’d push the plane right next to his hangar, within ten feet of the part we needed—the odds were so high that coincidence was a foolish answer.”
This kind of experience is exactly what can happen when you remove yourself from your ordinary routines. Free of the need to keep a schedule, to put in eight hours a day at work, to cook, take out the garbage, drive the kids to and from school, you throw open your arms to embrace whatever comes your way. Suddenly the law of attraction works seamlessly.
You can take certain steps before you leave home and during your trip to encourage synchronicity as you travel.
When Jennifer Gerard lived in Japan, she was open to any and all new experiences. One day she went to a street psychic who read the bumps on her head, an event that probably changed the course of her life.
He told her Nepal would be a good country for her. She didn’t know anything about Nepal, had no plans to travel there. But she wanted to go to China and take the Trans-Siberian Railway across Mongolia to Europe. A year later, she traveled to China with a friend. En route, they met a couple of guys. Without any planning, they ran into the same two young men in two other cities in China, an immense country with the largest population on the planet. “What were the chances that we would meet them three times, hundreds of miles apart?” she wondered.
They decided journeying together must be destined, so they traveled all over China with the young men. They planned to take the Trans-Siberian Railway together, but when they arrived in Beijing, they were told there had been some political trouble at the border. A trip to Europe via the railway wouldn’t be possible for months. One of Jennifer’s companions picked up a brochure about Nepal and read “kayaking” and “great food.” They decided to go overland through China to Tibet and Nepal.
Jennifer describes the journey as difficult, but fantastic. In Nepal they parted amicably, for no particular reason. “It was as if these young men chaperoned me to the place where my new life began. Certainly, I would not have traveled as far as I did without one of the young men, a Scotsman fluent in Mandarin Chinese. On that trip, without any real planning, I started a business from Nepal and I have been going back regularly ever since.” Jennifer now sells jewelry and other crafts made in Nepal, which she collects on her annual trips to that country.
During her first trip to Nepal, she found a Salagrama in a riverbed. This black rock, when split open, reveals a fossilized ammonite, a spiral with radiating lines, hiding inside. “In Nepal it is believed that when you find a Salagrama, it means that you are on your correct path in life.” From the reading of the bumps on her head to the discovery of the Salagrama, the synchronicity had come full circle.
Synchronicities are a great hook for recording your travel experiences. Start your day expecting synchronicity. After all, when you’re on a journey, unexpected things happen.
Watch for chance encounters, but don’t take chances you might regret. If you happen to engage in conversation with someone, pay attention to what the person says. A comment, phrase, even a single word could trigger an idea or a new option.
Unfortunately, difficulties and complications are often part of the typical travel scenario. Try to take advantage of the situation. Stay positive and see it as a new twist, another adventure. Frustration and tension can lead to new options and possibilities.
At the end of the day, jot down your thoughts about the day’s events. Look for synchronicities and how unexpected incidents changed your path. Notice over time how one incident can build on another and another until your trip—and your life—have been altered in unexpected ways.
Some travel synchronicities are like mirrors, reflecting your immediate surroundings and circumstances in uncanny ways, but also with personal implications. In 1988, we were in Venezuela, where Trish was born and raised. On our way back from a visit to Angel Falls, we were in the Maiquetia airport that serves Caracas, standing in line to board our plane to the U.S. Guards armed with machine guns were everywhere. Colombian drug dealers had begun using Caracas to export cocaine and the government was cracking down.
The guards were particularly interested in the man in front of us, a tall, middle-aged Venezuelan in a three-piece suit, carrying a briefcase. They told him to open it. As the man slowly unlatched the briefcase, the guards leaned forward to see inside. The air crackled with tension.
We were standing right behind him and had a good view. Surprisingly, he carried only one item in the briefcase—a paperback copy of one of Trish’s novels, Fevered. We were too stunned to let him in on the synchronicity. The odds that we would be standing behind this particular man, in the airport of the city where Trish had been born, and that his briefcase contained just one item—her book—are so outrageously high that even if we had let him in on the synchronicity, he probably wouldn’t have believed it. And because the book was written under a pseudonym, Alison Drake, Trish wouldn’t have been able to prove it anyway.
The book’s title, Fevered, was a perfect reflection of the mood in the airport that day. The guards, the machine guns, the fear and suspicion. On a personal level, it was an affirmation for Trish that her books were reaching a larger audience.
In 1996, Marcus Anthony, an Australian therapist-futurist and author, was visiting Coffs Harbour, a small Australian coastal town, when he followed intuitive nudges that led him into an astonishing experience that changed his life. Writing in The Sage of Synchroncity, Anthony described meeting a woman named Leslie who invited him to a meditation class in which she offered brief psychic reading for everyone. “She seemed to possess a type of mental ability that I had never encountered before … and I began to consider the possibility that human beings could ‘see’ beyond the five senses.”
At the end of the session, Leslie said that she had dreamed about UFOs the previous night, and that if they went outside about two A.M., they might see something unusual. Even though he considered it highly unlikely that he would see a UFO, Anthony dragged himself out of bed at quarter to two. “My eyes almost popped out of my head when … five minutes later I saw a large ball of luminous white light … a few hundred meters in the air.”
He watched it disappear over the neighboring house as it drifted toward the ocean. He ran down to the beach, and walked up and down the beach for an hour, but didn’t see the object again. He returned to the house and took one more glance skyward. Directly above him were about twenty small red lights in a double V, one V inside the other. He watched in amazement for more than a minute as they moved silently by disappearing behind trees.
On his blog, Anthony wrote, “I have had quite a few interesting experiences since that day, but probably nothing quite so extraordinary as that night. Of all the things that set me on a path of questioning dominant knowledge structures of Western society … this experience was probably the most significant. What were those things I saw that night? How on earth did Leslie know that they were going to be there at that precise time, merely from a dream? Why are these kinds of phenomena still a taboo topic in modern science and academia? I’m still asking these questions today.”
Manifestation is one of the most challenging aspects of the law of attraction. The process has been laid out in numerous books, but the essence is simple: We get what we concentrate on. All too often, we focus on lack rather than on abundance. We look at the glass as half-empty.
When you travel, it’s easier to manifest. Your needs are often immediate and pressing, and you’re able to bypass your usual habitual thinking. Your desires soar away from you at such luminal speeds your psyche doesn’t have a chance to throw up obstacles.
Here are some tips for honing your manifestation skills, on the road or at home:
It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. When you’re traveling, synchronicities are triggered by mundane needs, such as the location of a train station, shop, or restaurant. The desire to find what you need acts as a magnet for synchronicity.
During a business trip to Chicago, a synchronicity led Gabe Carlson exactly where he wanted to go. The owner of his company had recommended a restaurant called Tempo near his hotel. So Gabe and his coworkers, on their last morning in town, went looking for breakfast. But none of them could recall the name of the restaurant their boss had recommended. Gabe decided they should just walk “in a randomized direction,” meaning a coworker who wasn’t joining them would choose a direction and point. They walked off, Gabe said, bags in tow, “all smiles and openness to whatever goodness the universe and Chicago wanted to float our way.”
After several blocks, it was obvious they weren’t headed in the right direction. But they pressed on, hopeful. As they passed a McDonald’s, a ragged homeless man approached Gabe and introduced himself as Andre. Gabe gave him some loose change, and the group continued on. A block later, they saw a deli. It didn’t look promising, but they were hungry.
As they crossed the street, Andre loped after them, shouting that they shouldn’t eat in the deli. “It’s nasty,” he said, claiming he knew of a better place. Several blocks later, Andre led them to Tempo, the café they had been seeking in the first place.
Some of us might have ignored the homeless man, but Gabe and his friends were open to whatever unfolded. They followed the cues and their search was rewarded.
As Jane Teresa Anderson noted in The Shape of Things to Come, “What comes up for us during our journey and challenges us to extend ourselves beyond our previous mental limitations meets us in the outer world through the mirror of synchronicity.”
“Accidental” encounters with helpful people, such as the Chicago “bum” who led Gabe to the restaurant he sought, and the young man Jennifer Gerard met in China who spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese, are common during travel synchronicities. But other times, these encounters don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. That’s how it was with a certain Australian Rob kept running into in Europe one summer.
The encounters began in Spain, where Rob and his traveling partner, Rabbit, continually bumped into an Aussie named Maurey. It seemed wherever they went, Maurey showed up. He wasn’t particularly friendly and never seemed surprised to encounter them.
After three weeks in Spain, Rob and Rabbit headed for Morocco. They ferried to Ceuta and suddenly found themselves in a culture where they didn’t speak the language and couldn’t read the signs. They climbed into a hot, dusty bus with gaudy decor and claimed a couple of seats among the jalaba-clad Moroccans. Rob noticed two Western men three rows in front of them and elbowed Rabbit. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he said above the din of Arabic music and shouts of men arguing across the aisle. “There’s Maurey.”
They called out to him like he was a long-lost friend. Maurey and the guy next to him turned around. Rob and Rabbit were shocked to see that Maurey was sitting with Dave, a friend from Minneapolis, who was supposed to be traveling in Sweden, not Morocco. They had no idea that Dave planned to visit Morocco, yet here he was on their bus, sitting with Maurey.
What possible significance can this have? It wasn’t as if Maurey proved helpful—he didn’t speak the language and didn’t have any more knowledge about the country than Rob or Rabbit. But if travel is a “journey toward growth,” as authors Allan Combs and Mark Holland call it, perhaps these encounters with Maurey served to sharpen Rob’s awareness of synchronicity. Maybe he was supposed to learn how to use such travel experiences as a compass.
And now for something completely different. An OBE, or out-of-body experience, is an exhilarating journey during which you leave your body behind. It can happen during an altered state of consciousness, while you’re dreaming, meditating, or even under the influence of certain drugs. If you’ve ever suddenly jolted awake out of a seemingly real experience and were surprised to find yourself in bed, you could’ve been having an OBE. Exhilarating flying dreams, especially when you think you’re awake, might also be OBEs. These experiences allow you to travel to distant places and later verify what you experienced.
In Beyond the Quantum, science writer Michael Talbot described an OBE from his teen years for which he was able to provide verifiable evidence. He first saw himself sleeping on his bed and everything looked normal. Then “I floated weightlessly out of my bedroom and into the living room, still marveling at the fact that all of the features of the house seemed identical to how I knew them in my waking state.… Suddenly, as I swam like some airborne fish through the rooms, I found myself heading on a collision course with a large picture window.”
He didn’t have time to panic—he drifted right through it. He floated outside, over the lawn and into another yard where he spotted a book in the grass. He moved closer and saw it was a collection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant. Although Michael had heard of the author, he didn’t know the book or have any particular interest in it. After that, he lost his awareness and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning on his way to school, a neighbor girl joined him and said she’d lost a library book—the very one he’d seen in his dream. Stunned, he related his experience and they strolled to the spot where he’d seen the book. “And there it was, nestled in the grass exactly as it had been when I had lazily floated over it.”
Synchronicity? Yes. Clairvoyance or remote viewing? Yes. Proof of out-of-body travel? Maybe.
Robert Monroe, a Virginia businessman, recorded three decades of OBEs and wrote Journeys Out of the Body, the classic book on the subject. His experiences occurred spontaneously and he had no idea what was happening to him. He would lie down to go to sleep, and within minutes his body would shudder violently and he would feel as if he couldn’t move. It took enormous willpower to force himself to wake up and break the grip of treacherous sleep. After several such experiences, he thought something was physically wrong with him, perhaps epilepsy or a brain tumor. However, his family doctor confirmed he was in perfect health.
Monroe decided to boldly explore the sensation. One night when the vibrations started, he realized he could move his fingers and brush them against the rug. He pressed down and his fingertips seemed to penetrate the rug. He pushed harder and his hand sank into the floor. The experience shocked him. He experimented another six times with the vibrations before he dared explore further.
Then one night, he thought about floating upward—and did. That was the beginning of his journeys into the past and future, other dimensions, even afterlife locales. He wrote three books on the subject and opened the Monroe Institute, where the phenomenon is studied and visitors learn how to leave their bodies to embark on their own journeys.
For most of us, journeys out of body are rare and spontaneous, but you can learn to “program” such experiences. Maybe you want to hover above your body, explore your neighborhood, visit a friend across town, journey to another country, or possibly another world.
The fear that you might not be able to return to your body is natural. But you don’t have to worry. Getting back is the easy part. It’s as if the part of you that travels is attached by a giant rubber band—you snap right back into your body when your journey ends. Perhaps you’ve experienced momentary OBEs, feeling a surge of power and a sense of euphoria. As soon as you realized you were out of body, the fear factor kicked in and instantly you were back in your body, awake.
Getting out—and staying out until you’re ready to return—is the challenge. Because fear can hinder your efforts, it’s a good idea to invoke protection before you begin. Participants at the Monroe Institute are asked to memorize this invocation:
“I deeply desire the help and cooperation, the assistance, the understanding of those individuals whose wisdom, development, and experience are equal to or greater than my own. I ask their guidance and protection from any influence or any source that might provide me with less than my stated desires.”
Set a goal for your journey. Start with a modest objective, maybe hovering near the ceiling or moving around the house.
Now you’re ready to slip into a relaxed state. With your eyes closed, breathe deeply, relaxing all your muscles from head to toe. As you start to drift into sleep, focus your attention on a mental object, such as a flickering candle. Once you can hold that mental state indefinitely, try maintaining your focus without concentrating on anything except the blackness in front of you.
Next, let go of your hold on the borderland of sleep and drift deeper. Give yourself a suggestion that everything you experience will be beneficial to your well-being. Repeat it several times.
Imagine two lines extending upward from the sides of your head and meeting about a foot in front of your eyes. Think of them as charged wires. Once they converge, extend them three feet from your forehead, then six feet. Shift the intersected lines 90 degrees so they extend out from the top of your head. Mentally, reach out along the lines. Keep reaching until you feel a reaction, possibly a surging, hissing, pulsating wave. Let it sweep through your entire body. At this point, you might become rigid and immobile.
Once the vibrations start, release any sense of fear, and know you can always come out of it at any time. Move the vibrations smoothly up and down around your body, in the shape of a ring. Once you’ve created the movement, let it continue on its own. The more rapid the movement, the easier it is to separate from your body.
Give yourself a command, such as “float upward” or “up and out.” You might start out with a partial separation, exploring the area with your hand. If you’re ready for a complete separation, imagine yourself lifting out and floating upward, getting lighter and lighter, enjoying the experience. Think about where you want to go. Be specific, you’ll get there faster. Remember, you’ll always come back.
Near-death experiences are closely related to out-of-body experiences, except these journeys are definitely not recreational nighttime explorations. In fact, when they occur, it usually means you’re temporarily dead, or very close to it.
In the summer of 1966, Jenean Gilstrap was a twenty-three-year-old mother with a newborn daughter. One night she woke up, unable to breathe. Her husband rushed her to the hospital. By the time a battery of tests had been performed, she was breathing normally. The final diagnosis was that a large gallstone had slipped out of a duct and obstructed a breathing pathway.
Shortly afterward, she went into the hospital for surgery. She remembers talking to her surgeon before she was anesthetized, then nothing more until she felt an excruciating pain in her stomach. “I remember thinking my surgeons had lied to me about the procedure. This felt as if my stomach had literally been ripped apart and a ball of fire shoved down inside it. I felt extreme coldness on the outside of my right hand, but I wasn’t able to move or speak. Then I heard someone frantically say, ‘She’s going down! I can’t get her up!’ ”
Jenean started rising out of her body from the top of her head, and could “see” everyone in the room, including herself, her body. “As I continued to move upward toward the ceiling, I remember looking down at myself and feeling as if the ‘me of me’ were being pulled away like a soft glove being slipped off.” She continued to watch all the activity from the upper corner of the operating room.
At first, Jenean was frightened. She knew she was dying. “I was young and had just begun my life with my children. As I continued to have this mental dialogue with myself, I became more aware of my new surroundings and self. I focused less on my body, where the doctors were still scrambling and shouting orders. I felt surrounded by a white softness that became an all-encompassing, purely unadulterated whiteness of light.”
The light called to her. She could see a silver-gray cord that connected her soul to her body. But the farther she moved from it, the greater her realization “that the thing called ‘death’ was not the end of anything. It was the beginning. There was nothing to fear.”
She heard voices around her, relatives who had been dead for years, some of whom she had never met in the physical world. “But in this world, I knew who they were.”
At the moment of complete surrender to the light, a voice asked who would raise her children. That’s when she returned to her body. She was angry at the doctors for bringing her back and catapulted out again.
Jenean remembers following her body out of OR and down a hallway, where her family could see her one last time. “I could hear them plainly and was infuriated that they were making plans and arrangements for me. In that moment, I knew I was going back, that no one was going to raise my children but me.”
When Jenean regained consciousness, both surgeons came to see her and told her they’d “almost lost her.” She replied that they had lost her and related what she’d heard in the OR. They confirmed her experiences and said they’d heard of such things, but she was the first patient to ever talk about it.
For Jenean, the experience was transformational. A few months later, she woke one morning with the warmth of the sun coming through her windows and heard birds singing in a nearby tree. “I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and realized that, at the age of twenty-three, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt the warmth of the sun or heard birds singing. I knew I had to leave my unhappy marriage and take my children away from the unhappiness and into the warm sunshine and singing birds. I turned from the mirror, went to my closet, packed one suitcase and a diaper bag and walked out of that house, never looking back.”
Synchronicities often occur during times of major transitions. One of those transitions is the ultimate journey we all take: death.
You’ve heard the stories: clocks that stop at the moment of death, the odd behavior of a pet in the days or weeks before an owner passes on, the seemingly random sighting of a crow or an owl before a loved one dies. Sometimes, plants wither and shed their petals, a garden turns brown, appliances break down for no reason, and every song you hear on the car radio is about death. You get the idea. These synchronistic occurrences can multiply when death approaches someone you love. It’s as if the universe is trying to warn you and prepare you psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.
Synchronicities associated with death also manifest themselves in impulses, hunches, visions, and dreams. You might feel, for instance, the impulse to contact someone you haven’t seen for a while, only to discover later that person died about the same time you were thinking of her. If, as the mystics believe, we’re all connected, then information about the impending death of a loved one is available to all of us. But you have to be open to it to understand how this kind of information may come your way.
In the late 1850s, Mark Twain and his brother, Henry, worked on the Mississippi riverboats that traveled between St. Louis and New Orleans. One night while staying at their sister’s home in St. Louis, Twain dreamed of his brother’s corpse laid out in a metal coffin in their sister’s living room. The details were specific: the coffin rested on a pair of chairs, and a bouquet with a single blood-red flower lay on Henry’s chest.
Several weeks later, Twain and his brother were back in New Orleans again. This time they took different boats to St. Louis. Henry was on the Pennsylvania. Not far from Memphis its boilers exploded, killing numerous people. Henry was badly injured and taken to Memphis, where he died a few days later.
Most of the victims were buried in wooden coffins, but a group of Memphis women raised enough money to have Henry buried in a metal coffin, just as Twain had seen in his dream. Yet, the bouquet with that single blood-red flower was missing. While Twain stood next to his brother’s body, a woman came into the room and placed a white bouquet of flowers on Henry’s chest. In the center of it was a single crimson rose.
What’s especially powerful about Twain’s dream is that he recalled such specific details, and those details coincided precisely with the reality. His experience underscores that at a deeper level, our awareness is far greater than we realize.
The evasion of death can also be a source of potent synchronicity. On March 1, 1950, a church choir in Beatrice, Nebraska, was supposed to begin practice at 7:20 P.M. But all fifteen members of the choir were detained for perfectly legitimate and mundane reasons. The minister and his family were late because they were finishing up the laundry; another person was doing homework; yet another had car trouble. At precisely 7:25 P.M., a flaw in the heating system caused the church to explode.
This story, first reported in Life magazine, is one of the most extraordinary synchronistic instances of avoiding death. “If the presence of death can be the focus of such synchronistic phenomena, then it can be equally the case that the absence or avoidance of death, under certain amazing circumstances, may be just as significant and synchronistic,” wrote Hopcke in There Are No Accidents.
It would be intriguing to know how this experience impacted the lives and beliefs of these fifteen people. Did any of them die shortly afterward? What wisdom did they take away from the experience? Were their life paths radically changed?
The death of a loved one often hurls open doors to other realities, to deeper levels of consciousness, to personal growth. Mary S is a professor in South Africa, who had never thought of herself as psychic or intuitive. “I have been an academic for more than thirty years with a PhD in literary theory, and always thought I was objective, feet firmly based on Mother Earth.”
Four years ago, Mary met Danny, a psychologist. They apparently had a wonderful love affair, but because they lived 125 miles apart, it was difficult to see each other on a regular basis. So Danny asked Mary if they could shift the focus of the relationship to a more spiritual one. “He wanted us to be soul mates and to mainly ‘resonate’ with each other. He actually called me La gloriosa donna della mia mente.” The Italian phrase means the glorious lady of my mind and was what Dante called Beatrice Portinari, a woman he loved who inspired some of his writings but remained forever out of his reach. “Being a normal woman, I was a bit skeptical about just resonating. I wanted more,” Mary wrote.
They communicated daily through e-mails and text messages; they exchanged poems and literary quotations. At the beginning of 2009, Mary began feeling something was wrong with Danny, that his life force was ebbing away. In February, she e-mailed him and asked if she could send him positive energy every morning at seven. He agreed, and for the next few months she did, even though she’d never done anything like this before. “It was no big deal, no flashing lights, just an ‘umbilical cord’ between us, with sometimes the effect of dim light around his heart.”
On more than one occasion, Danny had said he would commit suicide someday, and Mary believed him. She was certain of it when he e-mailed her that his electric cables had been dug up for the fourth time by thieves, who sold the copper as scrap metal. “I just knew something terrible was going to happen.” In that same e-mail, he told her he was considering taking a break for a few days, to rest.
Even though they weren’t in the habit of phoning each other, Mary called him immediately. Danny was on his way home and Mary asked him where he was going. He replied that he didn’t know, he just wanted to clear his head. She pleaded with him to come stay with her for a few days, because he “needed to be spoiled.” He replied he might just do that.
That evening around seven, Mary texted him, asking if he had “survived the cold darkness.” But his cell was turned off and the message didn’t go through. She went to bed at ten, but twenty minutes later bolted upright, certain Danny needed her. She texted him again. “I am concerned about you, Love!” It didn’t go through.
The next morning, Friday, Mary felt the need to meditate and send Danny energy, which she hadn’t done for some time. At first, she couldn’t find him, but then visualized his heart in her hands and saw a magnificent light, a pale pink shell color in the center, with bits of soft green, then a big mass of golden-cream with a clear golden halo around it. “It was so peaceful and serene, it felt holy, like total freedom and bliss, pure calm and rest. I have no words to describe it. I sat there just immersing myself in the soft energy of that light. It was as if the light was giving to me—I did not have to concentrate at all to produce it.”
She sensed Danny didn’t need anything, that he was calm, happy. She thought he might have gone to the Buddhist center to meditate, which would explain the light. Then she realized a light like this couldn’t belong to any living being.
Saturday morning the same thing happened, but this time she sat in the presence of the light for more than an hour. It fed and comforted her. Intuitively, she felt Danny was totally at peace. “Again, I knew in my heart that no living being could produce such a light. Sunday it happened again and I got the same feeling. Also, during the whole weekend I could sense Danny’s presence very strongly. It was as if he was with me, relaxed and free. I had the elated feeling of going on holiday and anticipating a long time of rest and freedom.” That weekend she went into a frenzy of cooking—something Danny liked but she doesn’t—with spices and ingredients he would have used.
She knew Danny wouldn’t like her checking on him, so she didn’t call his workplace on Monday. When she phoned Tuesday the secretary said he had died on Friday. Mary was shocked, but not surprised. She felt certain he hadn’t died Friday. The police later confirmed Danny had died Thursday night between ten and eleven, the time she had sent him the last text message.
“He hanged himself in his house. It was quite clear that he had planned on doing this for a long time. Before he went, he deleted a whole life behind him. None of his friends could be contacted.”
The day Mary heard about his death, a psychologist friend came to stay with her. She wanted to help Mary cope, but without infringing on her personal space. She later confided to Mary that on that night she felt a strong presence around her, and when she left, she knew Mary was not alone.
Mary also felt this presence in the first three weeks after Danny’s death—a strong, loving presence. Even though Danny’s nature wasn’t like this when he was alive, she felt him around her for weeks. “In his quiet manner, he was helping me through this crisis.”
Mary was stunned, however, that in his will he’d left all his belongings to a friend she’d never heard of. Then she remembered he used to encourage her to be without attachment. “When I realized that nobody else had ever felt his presence after his death, I came to appreciate the wonderful farewell present he had left me: he actually came to visit me like he promised, and since then he has never really left me alone. He guided me with loving-kindness towards the realization that he had left. Nobody could phone me with the shocking account. I didn’t need to identify him at the mortuary. I wasn’t left with the albatross of his will and his belongings. What he gave me is the most exquisite gift anyone can receive … and at last I know lovers don’t finally meet somewhere—they’re in each other all along!”
Mary experienced synchronicity through a telepathic connection with Danny and the experience transformed her life. Perhaps she and others who report these kinds of experiences are at the leading edge of a paradigm shift. We’ll explore this concept in the final chapter of this book.
In dreams, our consciousness roams freely through time and space, spinning tales that have plots, characters, and motives, like a good story. Our dream stories don’t always make sense, and sorting them out when we awaken can be challenging, particularly when what we remember seems like “postcards from a journey,” as author Ann Faraday puts it. However, sometimes the message is clear and inspiring, especially when it comes through contact with someone who has died.
Mystics have always said we take regular nighttime journeys into reams of the afterlife that we don’t remember when we wake up. Yet, dreams of contact with loved ones from the afterlife are striking. You might feel a surge of energy, as if you’re more alive than usual. That’s ironic, if you think contact with the deceased is dark and creepy, like a scene out of the movie Sixth Sense.
You may experience such a dream near the time a relative or someone close to you dies. The contact might occur spontaneously without any effort on your part. Rob knew his cousin was very ill when he appeared to Rob in a dream. To Rob’s surprise, he seemed healthy and energetic, but confused. He looked around, smiling, and asked, “What’s going on?” The next morning Rob received a call from his sister who told him their cousin had died.
If no such spontaneous experience occurs, you can ask to contact someone in a dream. Let’s say you want to contact your grandfather, who died recently. You were close to him and have many fond memories of your times together.
As you settle into bed, relax and take a few deep breaths. Tell yourself you’re about to launch a journey to make contact with your grandfather. Think of him and recall a happy time you spent together. Remember as many details as you can. Sink deeper into a meditative state as you picture yourself with your grandfather. You might tell him something about your life or your thoughts about him.
In your drowsy state, you might imagine hearing a response. Try to stay focused. See if you can continue the conversation. You might fall asleep. When you wake up, ask yourself what you dreamed. Sometimes just the effort triggers your memory.
If you can’t recall any pertinent dreams, you might try this exercise as a meditation during the day. You’re sending out psychic signals, and even if you don’t make contact, you might encounter one or more synchronicities during the day that are directly related to memories of your grandfather.