My life was expanding to accommodate Shylo’s frequent visits, which soon became a regular part of life. It was during an everyday moment with Shylo’s mother, Jeanie, that I noticed the energy environment of the room unexpectedly shift. Shylo suddenly entered the space. She was standing in spirit just to my right.
Her mother had come to visit me and had just been tearfully expressing how much she missed Shylo. She spoke of how very close they had been. Shylo appeared, carrying a basketball. With her was an older man, wearing a trucker’s hat. I described him to Jeanie as having been involved with car repairs. Jeanie immediately said this man was Jeanie’s stepfather, someone Shylo was fond of. He had died only a few months before Shylo herself had passed.
In a moving interaction, Shylo told her mother it was now time to stand in her personal power and that, like the game of basketball, she must play her moves with determination and precision. At that point Jeanie sat forward on the sofa, explaining that basketball was one of Shylo’s favourite sports as a teenager. From Shylo’s forthright uncompromising manner, Jeanie now felt she was encouraging her mother, just as she used to do when living at home. Experiencing Shylo’s feistiness brought Jeanie such warmth and healing, along with many tears.
Towards the end of our visit, I walked downstairs to collect something from my bedroom for Jeanie. I was surprised to see a basketball sitting in the middle of the downstairs landing. Jessica didn’t play basketball. She didn’t even own a basketball. Where had it come from? At that moment, Jessica opened her bedroom door. When I asked her where the basketball had come from, she said she’d found it in the grass and felt moved to pick it up and bring it home.
I picked up the well-loved orange basketball, which looked just like the one Shylo was holding in spirit, and joyfully presented it to Shylo’s mother, telling her how it came to be in our home. ‘Here. This is for you!’ I said, my face radiant. ‘Shylo clearly intended this as a message to you. It’s the first time a basketball has ever been in my house!’
Within a week, Shylo returned to visit. I had been sitting writing for some hours, when an unexpected change occurred in the energy surrounding me. I looked up to see Shylo walk in and seat herself on the chair next to my desk. ‘I appreciate you!’ Shylo said, as she sat down.
‘Thank you, Shylo. I appreciate you too,’ I replied, my heart radiant with love for her.
‘My mother sent you those things because I asked her to,’ she continued, referring to the audio tapes on my desk.
Shylo’s mother had a strong feeling she needed to send the tapes to me. They were copies of the recordings of my conversations with Shylo’s mother, when Shylo had shown up with the basketball and had given her mother some meaningful advice. Clearly, Shylo was assisting her mother and me with this project between worlds.
‘I want you to tell her thanks. She’s dedicated. I like that about her,’ Shylo continued, now clearly gutsier than I had previously known her to be. ‘You’ve seriously just gotta forget about all this other stuff and focus on what you’ve gotta do,’ she said, referring to my recent preoccupation with clients and my usual day-to-day duties as a mum. She was also referring to my moments of doubt, wondering where all this unexpected journey was taking me—doubts which had led to me to avoid my writing.
‘I want to tell you something,’ she said, softening a little. ‘You have made it better for me to be here, okay? So you’ve just got to keep trusting this is moving towards something bigger. When you doubt, it’s a trap! It’s all a trap! There are so many bigger things to get to and to be concerned about. I know. I’ve seen what’s out there. I know we’ve got a lot to do!’
‘Okay, Shylo. I will just have to stop doubting what I am doing and surrender.’
‘Being here gives me access to other things, other places,’ Shylo continued. ‘It’s like I’m in service. It’s a way of serving. It’s easier now that you feel better about me being here. I like it better when you’re not hurting so much,’ she said, her caring bringing tears to my eyes.
‘I like it better when I’m not hurting so much too,’ I replied smiling.
‘Focus and be determined! Just write and focus!’
She went to walk off, then suddenly stopped and looked back towards me saying: ‘Go to bed. I will talk to you later. You go to bed!’ Then she was gone. I relented and retired to bed.
Several days later, the same sudden shift in the energy around me occurred again. I was enjoying some easy listening music. A photo of our special friend, Professor John Mack, with his arms around Jessica and me sat proudly on our mantelpiece. It had been taken during his recent visit and I had framed it that afternoon. I missed John so much now we were on the west coast. My mind also held thoughts of Shylo.
I was about to begin writing about Shylo’s interactions and insights from the place she referred to as ‘creation,’ when suddenly a powerful loving light pervaded the room. I sat back, taking in its splendour. The entire space was bathed in a beautiful sacred light presence, exquisite and completely loving. Somewhere in my heart I knew this place, this light, spoke to me of my true soul home.
At that moment I saw Shylo’s face, so I moved over to my desk, sat down in front of my computer, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Within moments, Shylo began to talk: ‘Along the way, everything gets easier. You begin to accept being here in spirit. People are kind,’ she explained. ‘It’s not like where you are. Generally, people stay here in spirit until they have come to a new understanding of themselves and their pathway. This is a place of learning. We are not here just to be somewhere. It has purpose. We celebrate life here. It’s easy. Life is easy here. If you want something, or you want to experience something, you have it. You can have an experience to bring you closer to a better understanding of what you are supposed to learn.
‘So here you occupy your time with growth. We learn. It’s a big school. Everybody learns. We like to learn. It’s simple. Once we acknowledge what we need to do, then we can attend to it. You don’t feel like it’s a chore or that you don’t want to do it. You know it will help you to overcome something, or feel better about something. Learning here is like sitting down and having a cup of coffee with someone. Just sitting and listening and being friends. It’s a place of caring. It helps you know your goals and what you love to do. Everything we do, we get help with. No-one’s alone here. Everyone has other people to help them. There are never people who have no-one to help them.
‘There is a strong sense of community. It’s because of the connection; we are all connected. No-one has anything to hide here. There’s no point. Just like I used to say to my mum: just go do it! Don’t be afraid. It doesn’t matter what people think of you. Who cares what people will think? Their opinion doesn’t matter. Don’t restrict yourself because you’re thinking: What will other people think if I take that action? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you do what you feel is right inside your heart.’
At that moment I was drawn back to the feeling of loving light around me. I remarked how radiant and beautiful the space had become. Then I noticed a tingling sensation around the periphery of my body. Closing my eyes again, I saw Shylo and smiled at her effortlessly. I felt such love for her I struggled to hold back my tears.
Moments later, my emotions began to settle and Shylo continued: ‘Nothing is worth dying for. Not showing anyone anything, not proving anything to anyone, not attempting to escape out of a feeling that you just can’t seem to run from. It creates a lot of pain for the people you love. You can’t believe what they go through. Nothing can prepare you for that. I try to talk with my mum. Sometimes she feels I’m there. I know she listens to me. I always know that. She tries really hard.’
Again I was fighting back my tears. ‘I love you Shylo, with all my heart!’ I said, as tears flowed down my cheeks. ‘I know me crying like this isn’t really helpful to the process,’ I added. Then, finding my emotional balance, I insisted we keep going with our work.
Slowly, Shylo’s communication resumed. ‘Attempts to make contact from here are really hard. You don’t want the people you love to feel the pain. You want to try to fix their suffering. You want to say something funny to make them laugh. But they can’t hear you anymore. You remember a time when you did make them laugh, and it settles you a little to recall that memory. Then you come to a different place. You see you can’t fix things, so you just sit with them to give them comfort. It’s a peaceful feeling you can transfer to them. We learn that here, because we know most people can’t hear us.
‘We have friends here and that helps. We do things together. We make plans to accomplish things we would like to have happen. On a group level, we can be more powerful and affect things more. We get together in groups with other people who have a similar goal, or something they want to experience or do,’ Shylo explained. ‘In that way, we can share the learning and make a bigger impact. Like in an earthquake, where there are lots of people in distress. We work together to help calm them. Well, we try. We move in and around people in pain or distress. It helps us to learn about what people go through.
‘These experiences bring people new insights about themselves or others, or life in general. It’s all to do with growing—it’s always about growing. We don’t just do this to feel the pain. We do this to grow through feeling the pain. So when we hold a person in that painful place, we can join with them and create a barrier of strength to help them survive their experience. Then when they recover, they can offer learning to others by relating their experience.
‘We can choose to offer to support a person in this way, or sometimes we’re asked to participate in group learning, to bring us all to a new level of awareness. At other times, we participate in events so others can grow. We assist other people to learn. So we might be called in to help with people who are experiencing something in your dimension, or in other dimensions, other places, other times. It’s more complicated than you think.’
At this point in the communication, Shylo paused. I sensed she was about to share more personal information, closer to her heart. So I remained at my desk. Then suddenly, I felt a wave of cool chills over my shoulders and across my neck, as I saw an image of Shylo’s mother. ‘Mum never did anything to hurt me,’ Shylo reflected. ‘All she ever did was to help support me.’
This was all very emotional, and important information too. I began to feel concerned I wasn’t hearing Shylo correctly. My emotions were affecting my ability to hear her, so I asked Shylo to help me. Suddenly, my hands lifted off the keyboard and turned towards me. I felt a flutter of energy through my body. I knew Shylo was assisting me, and immediately the clarity was restored.
‘There is so much to do over here. Always choices about what direction you want to go in, what group you want to be involved with. It’s kind of like summer camp. Sometimes we are prepared for events that will bring a number of people across, events you would call a disaster. It’s really an opportunity for those people to leave their physical life. Then others around them grow, as a result of their departure.
‘Every experience is about growth. As someone you love leaves their life there, it is always a message not to waste the life you have. Don’t let any event pass without stopping and asking yourself: How is my life different from this experience? How can I learn from it, or become something other than what I have been? It’s really important to experience these events as learning moments. That’s where the real point of life hits home. You can really see the value of what’s real.
‘One of the things we often hear from people, when they start the first part of their learning on arriving here, is that they wish they could have engaged in their life more—done more of what they really wanted to do. But changing the way you live your life is not easy for many people. I see that more clearly now I’m here. When I was where you are, I used to get frustrated with people doing things that didn’t make any sense. I really wanted people to take notice of what I thought, and what they were doing that sometimes annoyed me. I would get so frustrated when it wasn’t clear to other people, the way it was clear to me.
‘It’s like some people live their life in a daydream. They don’t think about their actions, how many people will be affected by what they do and don’t do. Some people don’t want to get involved. They want to leave it to others to make the changes.
‘Well, the world needs everybody to take action, to step up and do what needs to be done. Everybody can make the changes. Everybody. Even kids. People seem to have forgotten the value of simple things, more than things that cost a lot. They don’t matter. It’s sharing time together that matters—laughing, having fun, enjoying those special moments with the people you care about. Those moments are what we think about most when we get here. We never even think about the things we had. There’s no value in things. It’s the people you care about, the times they made you laugh and made you feel really strong, proud and happy. The times you gave it your best, then came through and gained a sense of confidence ... this is what really matters most.
‘I don’t blame anyone for me being here. I never felt that way. I had to accept that’s what I did. I just didn’t want to think anymore. But if I had just walked out of there instead of reaching for Mum’s gun, then that moment would have passed, and we could have just ... I could have had the life I had come to live. It wasn’t like I wanted to leave. I just wanted to stop the thoughts about how different I was from before the car wreck. I felt different. Changed. It was hard to understand that I couldn’t just get better.
‘It was something I never accepted and it caused me to feel like sometimes I didn’t want to try. I think that if I had just been able to let go of wanting to be the same as I used to be, I could have accepted that who I’d become after the accident was alright too. I know a lot of people loved me and wanted me to know that who I was then was enough. I know that. Lots of people felt like that. But I just had expectations for myself and ... it was like a hurdle that I just couldn’t seem to get over.
‘When someone dies the way I did, they lose a turn. You can’t just decide to come back. I’ve seen so many times when people die and they want to go back, they can’t. You have to wait until you know what caused you to leave the life you had. You have to wait until things have changed for you, to have an opportunity to come back. Sometimes that’s tough on people, once they come to understand how things really have to be.
‘Most people who leave the way I did don’t mean to be here. They come here and just want to take it all back. They look at all the people they left behind, who have to go through so much pain and feel so sad. The pain caused by dying the way I did doesn’t stop when you’re gone. It just keeps going, like a long rope. It just doesn’t stop hurting for the people you left behind.
‘It’s not an intelligent choice. It’s not even powerful. It’s just that people don’t see that you can make other decisions. You can find a way to feel free from the pain. I didn’t make that decision. The decision I made led to my leaving a life that I really appreciated. I love my mum. I never wanted to blame her. But what I did left her feeling like she had done something wrong. I never felt she did anything wrong. She was the best mum. She worked hard and she never did much for herself. She loved us kids and she wanted us to have a great life. If I could have stopped anything, I would have stopped the pain she went through after I shot myself. I didn’t think that I would die. I didn’t know what it meant. I just knew I had to do something that would end the pain and the thoughts about not being enough, not being the same as before.
‘When I looked back in at my mum in so much pain, I knew I had done something I couldn’t take back. I couldn’t decide in that moment that I had made the wrong decision and just step back into my life. It was finished and I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t ride anymore, be with my friends or laugh and have fun, or do anything that I loved there. It was my decision. I knew that, but it wasn’t a choice that I could change. There wasn’t a second chance. I left, and I couldn’t go back.
‘I am here and now I have to wait until I learn what I need to learn; then the moment of understanding will come. Returning to earth will then be the most important way of contributing and understanding my life more. I wasn’t given that chance. It stopped once I pulled the trigger. If I could, I wouldn’t have done it. It makes everything harder. It’s not easy to watch the people you care about go through such big changes inside and in their own life. It’s so hard to see what your decision did to everyone.
‘There are so many other ways to be heard, to make things less painful. It’s so easy to see that once you are here—once they show you all the moments where things could have been different. Even in a thought. Just one thought makes so much difference. I wish I’d have made the choice to make my life continue on. That would’ve been so great. I would’ve done lots more things, and had lots more time with my family and my friends; made more friends and done more things. But I can’t, ’cause I’m here. Now I have to wait till the time is open for me to return.
‘Elizabeth, I love what you do. I love the difference you make to people’s lives. It’s the best thing. I’ve noticed how you show people who come to you how to think, how to choose ways to make them grow and feel better about who they are. It’s really important, because you make them see their lives are valuable. That’s really special.’ Then Shylo added: ‘I’m leaving again now. I’m ready to go back.’
Shylo stood up from the chair I was sitting on, then turned around and stood behind me. It was as if she and I had been merged, to enable the clear flow of information from her to me. She was dressed in a black summer top with small shoulder straps. Her hair was in a ponytail. She wore casual blue jeans.
Shylo waited for me to complete writing. Then I saw her look to her right. There was someone waiting for her. It was the man I had seen her with when she came to visit her mother that time with the basketball. The man with the trucker’s hat, who’d passed over before her. Her grandfather. Shylo’s mother had told me they were close, so his presence and support of Shylo made sense.
With gratitude and lightness of being, I looked across to where they were both standing and smiled at her grandfather. They were about to leave. ‘Hi, Mum!’ remarked Shylo, with a wave that was clearly to be relayed to her mum. Then they both turned and began to walk away.
‘Love you, sweetheart!’ I replied, now in tears. Shylo’s messages were so meaningful, so profound.