In the 1989 movie Always, Richard Dreyfus plays a fire-fighting pilot who dies when his plane goes down. In the next scene, he is sitting on a tree stump while an angel, played by Audrey Hepburn, is explaining to him that he’s now going to be a guide for a younger fire pilot. He asks her how the man will hear him since he’s dead, and she tells him to just think to him and he will get the thoughts. She goes on to say, “That’s how we communicate with them now, through thoughts. They think it’s their own thoughts, but it doesn’t matter. At least they get the message.” Those may not be the exact words because it’s been years since I saw the movie, but it’s pretty close and you get my drift. That’s how our spirit guides, our deceased loved ones, and God communicate to us — and that’s how we will communicate to our living loved ones when we pass away.
Learning to Communicate through Thoughts
Communicating through thoughts is called mental telepathy, and it’s part of the psychic gift called clairaudience. We frequently communicate this way in our everyday life, but a lot of us don’t pay much attention to it. For example, can you remember a time when someone’s name came into your head and a few seconds later they called or texted or you ran into them? When this happens, we tend to dismiss it as just a coincidence, but in reality we are communicating with the person telepathically. Unfortunately, when we suddenly have a thought of someone we know, instead of stopping to listen to what other thoughts about that person are coming in, usually we simply move on to the next thought — one of the thousand other thoughts we have in a day — and don’t think much of it.
When we think about another person suddenly, either the thought comes in from that person or we initiate the thought, and it’s easy to differentiate between the two. Here’s what I mean. If a song comes on the radio that reminds you of someone, or you see a person who looks like someone you know, or there is some other external trigger, and you start thinking of them, chances are, no matter where they are in the world, they will get a thought of you; in that case, you have initiated the thought. On the other hand, if a thought of someone comes into your mind seemingly out of nowhere, without a trigger, then they initiated it; they had the original thought of you and you picked up on it.
I tell my students in my psychic development classes to follow up on the thoughts that come in from people throughout the day to see if those people were thinking of them. If you think of a friend or loved one on your lunch break, call them that evening and ask if they were thinking of you. It’s fun when you realize how strong your thoughts can be.
This brings up a very important point about after-death communication. When you die, your loved ones here will be very sad, and you will probably visit them a lot in the beginning to try to reassure them that you are okay and that you really did live on. The problem is that they will be waiting to hear your voice again, but they won’t hear it, because you’ll be communicating with them telepathically. If they’re not accustomed to this kind of communication, most likely they won’t consciously notice your attempts at communication and will think you’ve forgotten them. As silly as this might sound, if you start practicing sending thoughts now, while you’re alive, you’ll be able to communicate more effectively when you’re deceased. Practice with people who you will probably want to communicate with after death. You don’t have to tell them the exact reason why you want to learn how to be a good sender and receiver, unless they’ve got an understanding of all this.
At their live events, the psychic mediums John Edward and James Van Praagh choose volunteers out of the crowd and give them readings. When asked how they choose who they read, they always say that the loudest soul coming through gets their attention. What that means is that that soul has learned to make its thoughts very strong and loud in order to be heard by the mediums here on earth. How do we make our thoughts loud and strong? By practicing.
When my dad lived in San Francisco and I lived here in Minneapolis, every Thursday we would practice mental telepathy. We had set times throughout the day — 10, 2, 6, and 10 — when we would send thoughts to each other and focus on what thoughts were coming in. We would write down whatever came into our minds, and then we would compare notes the next day. It was really fun and helped both of us become stronger at sending and receiving.
Contacting Deceased Loved Ones
If you want to communicate with a deceased loved one, you should say their name out loud to get their attention. They do not sit in heaven listening to our every thought and waiting around for us to think of them. There will be times when they don’t answer because they have lives going on over there, contrary to many of our conceptions.
When we covered this subject recently in my advanced psychic class, I gave the students my dad’s name to use for practice communicating with the deceased. Many of them said that Dad was irritated because so many of them were calling him to talk to them. Dad was an outgoing guy, so it didn’t occur to me that this exercise would irritate him, but it makes sense that he’s got things going on over there and wouldn’t enjoy being pulled on by twenty students wanting to communicate with him!
I recently discovered something very cool that had never occurred to me. Being in the line of work that I’m in, I’ve seen many living people pull on their deceased loved ones by asking them to come and visit, to make decisions for them, or to come and comfort them. I know how hard that is on the deceased, so I was delighted when my angel Lilli told me that we can leave messages for our loved ones. As soon as she said so, I saw an image of someone on the other side taking messages for people from their living loved ones. I also saw the deceased picking up their messages throughout the day. To leave a message for someone, all you need to do is say your name, the other person’s name, and the message you want to leave, like this: “This is Echo Bodine. Please leave a message for my mom, Mae, and tell her I love her.” You won’t necessarily hear back from them, but they will know you were thinking of them, and that will put a smile on their face. If they do choose to respond, you’ll hear a simple thought in your head, such as “I love you too,” or “Thank you.”
If you try to contact your loved one and feel like you’re not getting any response, I want you to understand that it’s not that easy for the deceased to communicate to us. It’s easier for them to communicate with psychics trained in mediumship because the psychics have learned how to raise their energy to almost the same level as that of the deceased.
Also, in the first few months after their passing, you need to be mindful that the deceased are getting used to the “new neighborhood.” It might not be feasible for them to come back to the old neighborhood just because you want them to. If you are not able to connect with them yourself (which, as I said, is not that easy, so don’t get discouraged) you can go to the Referrals section of my website, www.echobodine.com/referrals, to find a reputable, trustworthy medium.
This reminds me of a comment late-night comedian Craig Ferguson made when his father passed away. He said during his monologue that many psychics had contacted him saying that they could communicate to his father for him, and Craig said, “That would be amazing because I was never able to communicate with him when he was living.”
Is a Deceased Loved One
Trying to Contact You?
Without a medium, the easiest way for the deceased to talk to us is through what seem like dreams but are in fact actual soul visitations. Bits and pieces of these dream encounters come through to the conscious mind. If you wake up in the morning feeling like a dream was real and the dream stays with you for hours, this is a sign that you have been visited.
Another easy way for souls to get our attention is through smell. They can actually think a smell, and we pick it up as a smell thought. Have you ever had an experience when, say, a smell of your grandma’s perfume seemed to permeate the room for just a second or two and it instantly made you think of her? She did that. Or maybe a loved one was a heavy smoker and you smelled the smoke. A Brazilian healer friend of mine named Alberto Aguas died in 1992. He wore this amazing cologne from France that I’ve never smelled here in the U.S., but when he comes to visit he projects that smell and there’s no mistaking that it’s him visiting. I love it when that happens!
Also, if your deceased loved one is able to manipulate energy (there are good teachers on the other side who teach souls how to do this), they may move material things to get your attention.
If you think a loved one is trying to contact you, make sure to ask for good, solid proof that it’s really them. There are ill-intentioned earthbound souls out there who love to mess with grieving people, so ask for specific memories the two of you shared that prove they are who they say they are (and be prepared to send this kind of proof after you die when you contact your loved ones from the other side).
People Are in Death as They Were in Life
Many people think that when a person dies, they become angelic and lose their character defects. Unfortunately, that’s not true, as you’ll quickly discover when you communicate with your deceased loves ones. Yes, some of our perspectives do change when we’re out of these earthly bodies, but, as is the case when we are on earth, if we don’t want to change our perspectives, we don’t have to.
I had an interesting learning experience during a medium reading I did for a woman and her mother-in-law, who came to communicate with the husband/son who had been deceased for a couple of years. Usually when there is a reunion in a reading, everyone is pretty happy to see one another and it’s a pleasant experience for all who are present at the party. In this particular case, this young man taught me they aren’t always pleasant. I called his name, and into my office came this guy who wanted to know “what the hell these two want.” He went on to say, “They bugged me when I was living, and now they’re bugging me when I’m dead.” I was a bit flabbergasted, to say the least.
I wasn’t sure what to say to the women. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so I sat there waiting for him to say something nice. Finally the wife stepped in and asked me if he was being “crabby.” I sheepishly answered, “Kinda.” She asked if he was bugged that they were there asking about him, and he sent a resounding yes into my head. I told her he didn’t seem very happy, and both the mother and the wife were thrilled with this information. They confirmed that, yes, this was her husband, her son, and that he had always been cranky in life and it made sense to them that he would be this way in death. They told me that if I had said he was really sweet and so glad to see both of them, they would have thought I was a fraud, but the fact that I described his unhappy personality to them was all the proof they needed that his soul was alive and doing fine on the other side. The wife said she was hoping he had mellowed a bit since his death, but they were content just hearing from him. The mother was relieved that he wasn’t in hell.
Another common misconception is that once we’re dead we “see the light” (so to speak) and feel bad about the unkind things we did or said to people. Many women have asked me if their deceased husbands will see how mean they were to them when the husbands were alive. I wish I could say that everything will become crystal clear for everyone when they get over to the other side, but it just doesn’t work that way. It can take quite a while on the other side before some souls want to take a good hard look at their behavior toward others. We all have to eventually, but it doesn’t necessarily happen right away. Denial is just as rampant in heaven as it is on earth.
I remember the week that O. J. Simpson’s wife was murdered and everyone was speculating about who did it. I was teaching a psychic development class, and my students asked me if I would tune in to Nicole Brown Simpson’s soul and ask her who killed her. I was quite surprised to see her on the other side telling a large group of people that Kato Kaelin, the pool guy, was the one who killed her, and she was in shock over it. I asked the guide who worked with me at the time what he thought about what she said, and he said that souls can choose to see whatever they want, no matter what side of the veil they are on. He said that death does not automatically make people privy to the secrets of the universe or of their own life, that she would eventually get to a place in her growth where she would be willing to see the truth, and that maybe she was already there.
The spirits have never said that O.J. did or did not “do it.” My point is that dying does not guarantee that we will be ready to see the truth afterward. But regardless of whether we can recognize or acknowledge truths when we get to the other side, everything that happens is a karmic experience for all involved and everyone gets their just (as in, justice) karma eventually.
Another misconception we have about the deceased is that once they are on the other side, they no longer care about what goes on down here and they’re just happy, happy, happy. That’s not true. It’s like graduating from high school or college, when we feel a bittersweet happiness that our long journey of education has ended. This is very similar to how the soul feels about the life here that is over.
In medium readings, I’ve also noticed that living people often try to get their deceased loved ones to advise them because they think souls on the other side are all-knowing, but they’re not. They have psychic abilities only if they cultivated those abilities while they were alive. Plus, the deceased intuitively know that they’re not supposed to interfere with people’s lives, so they are generally not forthcoming when loved ones ask them about the future.
I have two more stories of after-death communication to share, both of which illustrate that people are still themselves on the other side and that they still feel very human emotions.
QUESTIONS AND APOLOGIES FROM A DECEASED TWIN
Five years ago, my friend Marta lost her twin brother, Mark, at age forty. They were both TV producers, and Mark had finished a big project that day. He and his business partner celebrated with a beer, and then Mark said he needed to lie down for a while because he was feeling a bit woozy. About an hour later his partner checked on him and found him dead from what the coroner later said were natural causes. Marta called me at 2:30 AM to give me the news, and I immediately checked in on Mark’s soul. For some reason, maybe because he was young, I expected to find him wide awake and ready to communicate, but instead his soul was sound asleep. I asked my spirit helpers if they could shed any light on what had happened, and this is what I learned:
An Elder from the other side came down even before Mark lay down, and waited for him to go to sleep. Today was the day he was to graduate, and as soon as he fell asleep, the Elder lifted his soul out of his body and took him to the other side, where he continued to sleep. His body died shortly afterward. His parents, who were both on the other side, were nearby, waiting to see him, and his mother was impatient. She was pacing back and forth and kept saying that she just wanted to check on him and make sure he was okay. The Elders kept reassuring her that he was fine and needed to wake up on his own, and she wasn’t very happy with that answer.
Then they told me that when Mark and Marta and the Elders were in the planning stages of their current lives, Mark felt that he would have accomplished everything he wanted by age forty, and then he would help Marta with her work from the other side.
They also said that early the following Tuesday morning, Mark’s soul would wake up and there would be a meeting between him, his parents, four Elders, and some of his deceased friends and relatives to help him remember his life plan and what was going on. The meeting would be over by noon, and sometime in the afternoon Marta would start to feel his energy.
In addition, they said that Mark would do many things in the coming weeks and months to let his twin know he was around her and that once he got into the groove of his new life on the other side he was going to do very well. They suggested that Marta make a scrapbook of Mark’s life.
The following Tuesday, after the meeting was to have taken place, I checked in with his soul to see if he was awake, and he was. He related a lot of information to me, most of which he wanted me to convey to Marta.
He told me that he needed Marta to explain to him the life plan and especially the part about his leaving at an early age because he couldn’t remember it and he trusted her. He was having a hard time because he felt like he had abandoned Marta and kept apologizing over and over.
He kept saying that he didn’t get it — it didn’t make sense to him that he was physically dead. Then I heard him repeating the name David over and over in his head, and he seemed very concerned about this David.
He told me he had spent time with his parents. He said he felt very close to his dad and saw a wisdom in him that was even stronger than it was when he was living. He said that his mom had changed and was not as selfish and freaked out as she had been in life, that she’d become more loving, gentler. He said his dad was being really patient with her.
Again he mentioned David and said he needed reassurance from Marta that everyone wouldn’t forget him. He showed me a box of cereal and said he wished he had eaten more cereal. He said he found himself thinking about stupid things like that rather than what would be considered the all-important things.
He wished he had played with Marta’s two young daughters more than he had. He also said he was glad that Marta had her husband, Nelson, and that Nelson was a good man.
He said that it had been hard to give Marta signs. He saw her looking at his body when she went to identify him, and said he was glad she did. (She hadn’t wanted to look, but her best friend talked her into it.) Quickly he said, “Grandma says hi,” and explained that she had been really nice to him since he got to heaven. He ended it by saying, “You haven’t heard the last of me. Thank you for helping me through this — this has been hard.” With that he faded out. For someone who had been deceased for only a few days, Mark mustered quite a bit of energy to say all that.
I asked Marta if she knew who David was, and she said that was the name Mark had wanted and that his father had wanted to call him David as well. Instead, because they were twins, Mark’s mother had thought the pair should have similar names. This could have been Mark’s way of letting Marta know this was really him we were communicating with.
I share this story with you for a number of reasons. This was a great example of the deceased needing our help when it comes to accepting their death. Deceased people don’t automatically remember their life plan when they die. It takes time for them to remember, especially in a case like Mark’s, where he lay down for a nap and woke up in heaven four days later. That would be shocking for anyone.
It’s also notable that he kept apologizing for abandoning Marta. I’ve heard this from many people on the other side. They feel full of remorse for leaving their loved ones behind, and if they’ve left a lot of unfinished business for the living to tend to, they feel even worse.
REGRETS ON BOTH SIDES
Jim, an ex-boyfriend of mine, called with terrible news. Donna, his beloved wife of five years, was dead. I tell you this story to emphasize our need to take care of business while we are alive.
Jim told me that he left for work in the morning, “kissing her good-bye and telling her I loved her.” Donna said, “I love you too,” and drifted back to sleep.
But at about 10:30 that morning, Donna’s boss called Jim to say that Donna had not yet come in. Because she’d recently had lots of health problems — including a stroke on their wedding day — he was concerned. Still, despite her health challenges, she was young and had always rallied.
Jim clocked out of work and ran home to see if Donna had overslept, but when he walked into the bedroom, he knew right away that his fifty-one-year-old wife was dead.
The whole time Jim was telling me this story, I could see Donna standing between here and the other side, just listening to him. She was listening to the way he spoke about her, listening to him talk about her children and the poor health she had suffered for so many years. Tears were streaming down her face as she watched him trying to cope with the experience all alone. She wanted so badly to reach out to him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, but she had to stand back and let him have this experience. She loved hearing him talk about some of their memories. At one point in the conversation, she needed to leave for a while because it all became too emotional for her. She didn’t want to be dead. She wanted to be alive and healthy. She wanted to be with her husband and her children!
When Jim asked me, “Why now? Why did she have to die now, when she was getting better?” I heard her say that when she had almost died the previous August from complications from a stroke, she had asked the powers that be if she could have one more Christmas with him, since that was their favorite holiday. So she was given the extra time.
The next morning when I woke up, she was standing next to my bed with a very concerned look on her face. I was a bit startled. We had never met in person, but I knew from the previous day who she was. She told me she was concerned about her son because her husband didn’t like him, and she was worried that Jim would treat him unfairly at the funeral. She asked me if there was anything I could do. I wasn’t sure, but I gave Jim a call to see how he was doing. He immediately started talking about her son and said that he didn’t want him at the funeral, and the only thing I could think to say was, “What would your wife want?” I kept bringing the conversation back to that every time he brought up the son. Donna did attend her funeral and was glad to see her son there, and everything turned out fine with the family.
About a week later I got another call from Jim. He was upset because Donna’s estate was such a mess. She had never had a will drawn up and had a different password for all her important accounts — none of which he could find. He was beside himself with grief and frustration. When I got off the phone, I asked Donna why, with all the health problems she’d had, she hadn’t gotten her affairs in order. She told me that she had felt intuitive nudges to get things in order but was afraid that if she did so she would die. I hear this from many people, and it’s understandable. But you need to know that the end result with Jim and Donna was one grieving partner on this side dealing with a lot of frustration, and Donna on the other side feeling regret.
On this side or the other, life does go on for all of us. We need to take care of our nuts-and-bolts, nitty-gritty business for others, just as we hope they will take care of their business for us. The Golden Rule applies on both sides of the veil!