“…the first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” –C.S. Lewis
I’ve always seen them. I thought everyone did. …Don’t they?
When I was five years old, I didn’t know what an aura was. I just knew that when the sunlight hit the room just right, all the colors of the air would dance around in front of me. Red, pink, blue, green… I loved seeing them. They made me giggle. I saw them inside, and I saw them outside in the yard. I even saw them at night when I would lie down and start to sleep. I knew it was energy. I hadn’t learned that yet in sixth grade science, but I could tell. I thought it was very cool that you could actually see what air was made of. I don’t remember how often I saw them. I just remember it was normal.
(image from Bing, licensed free to share and use)
Children have a beautiful ability to suspend disbelief. We accept that there’s at least a small possibility that there are monsters in the closet and that unicorns exist somewhere and that angels fly around in our bedrooms at night to protect us. Sometimes I knew my imagination wasn’t real. There was a song I used to sing as a child called, “Germs, My Invisible Dog”, so I pretended I had an imaginary puppy too. I knew that I didn’t. But some things I saw seemed to have a little more authenticity.
(image from Bing, licensed free to share and use,
picture that hung on my grandmother's wall)
Sometimes the spiritual experiences were positive. When I was in third grade, I stayed a week with my grandmother. My mom says she’s who I took after. Maybe she was an intuitive too. I don’t know. It was a good week, one of my great childhood memories. I remember baking cookies together and playing with dolls. One night, in the middle of the night, I woke up with a bright light shining in the room. There was a woman floating in the air, looking down on me. She was smiling. The light surrounding her stretched out behind her, beyond the walls, into infinity. I looked over at my grandmother, my father’s mother, who was sleeping in the bed next to mine. She wasn’t disturbed by the white light. And for some reason, I wasn’t either. It was unusual, but I felt protected. Later I looked through my parents’ photo albums to see if maybe she had been my mother’s mother. My mom and I decided that must be who she was. It was the only time we ever met, until very recently. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I had no fear that night. With this beautiful woman I’d never seen before watching me, I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone. …or maybe she’s never left. I’m not sure.
Sometimes other people could see the things I could see. They just seemed to less often. Maybe I just happened to be at the right places at the right times. Some of the experiences were just fascinating. I was probably about fourteen the night we had to call dorm security because the girls in the room next door were making so much noise. We were at church camp on top of Lookout Mountain in Tennessee where we used to go for a week every summer. There were about five of us in my room that night, including a chaperone. It was past time for the lights to be out. It didn’t really bother me, but in the room next door, it sounded like the girls were running around the room over all the furniture. I imagined they were having a pillow fight. They were laughing really loudly and banging on our wall. The chaperone in our room got fed up. She picked up the phone and dialed the front desk. She told them the room number. They said, “That’s impossible. We don’t rent out that room.” After they hung up, the banging continued. It almost seemed like the girls knew security wasn’t coming so they got louder. I think the chaperone had to call downstairs three times before anyone was willing to come up. But finally they did. They knocked on the door and yelled, “Who’s in there? No one’s supposed to be in this room.” The girls just giggled. The security demanded they open the door. Nothing but laughter. Finally, the security opened it themselves, and suddenly, the room went silent. There was no one there. Security barged in and looked all around. They even looked out the window, even though we were on about the fourth floor. Nothing. No one in the shower, no one under the bed… the guards gave each other a strange look and closed the door behind them. And the girls giggled.
It’s always nice when the universe makes you laugh, even when you don’t understand the joke. It was moments like these that I came to believe that even the supernatural realm has a sense of humor.
The experiences weren’t always positive. Sometimes I saw shadowy figures or had experiences that frightened me. I now know that that’s part of the gift – to be able to decipher unclean spirits, and in recent years, I’ve learned to channel the knowing and understanding into active spiritual warfare.
(image from Bing, licensed free to share and use, of Kirlian photography, used to capture photographic imprints of energy particles in matter)
I see auras in present day. But they’re not the same as they were when I was a child. I don’t see colors dancing in the air. What I see now are sparkles. But only in certain moments. It’s whenever I’m really connected to my spiritual guidance. When I have a revelation or an insight. It’s like an affirmation to me. God’s way of telling me, “Yes, you’re on the right track.” I can’t will them into my awareness. They’re just there sometimes like little hugs. I had years of depression and wrong choices where I couldn’t see them. But they were always in front me. Now my awareness is open. I let them in.
One of my best friends is an artist. She’s the one who showed me that the colors of the auras of the chakras are true. I had studied chakras and Kirlian photography from Russia that claims to be able to capture photographs of auras. But my friend didn’t know anything about that yet. I was a Reiki therapist, and it was the first time she lay down on my massage table and I gave her a Reiki treatment. I worked through her body, balancing each of her chakras, as I always did when I worked on someone. And after it was finished, she opened her eyes. I asked, “How do you feel?” She said. “Wow. I just saw the most amazing light show.” I said, “Really?” She nodded. She said (touching her face), “When you were here I saw purple, and here (touching her throat), I saw blue, and here on my heart, I saw green…” I stared in amazement. She said, “and then here, I saw… I saw…” I said, “Yellow?” She said, “Yes! Yellow. And then orange, and then…” I said, “Red.” She asked, “How did you know?” I said, “Those are the colors of the chakras.”
(image from Bing, licensed free to share and use, of chakra system)
The auras aren’t always so positive. But I understand them better now, and now I know how to utilize the messages to take right actions. Now that I’m an adult, negative energy isn’t frightening anymore. It’s letting me know there’s imbalance. Whether it’s through action, or simply through prayer, I view it as a message for me to be a part of helping bring it into balance.
One night I was working on another friend and I saw something I’d never seen before. When I got to his heart, the aura over his chest area was black and looked like the jagged lines of a picket fence. I thought it was strange, but I didn’t trust myself yet to try to interpret it. I didn’t say anything. The next week, he had a heart attack, which thankfully he survived. I used that lesson to help me learn to speak up with other clients when I felt imbalances. Once I was able to notify a client to see a doctor, and even though she had no symptoms yet, the doctor visit revealed that her appendix was about to rupture. So my understanding of how to use the gifts we’re given is ever-evolving.
(image from Bing, licensed free to share and use, of Kirlian photography)
Around 2006, I lost several family members. A cousin was killed in a motorcycle accident. Around the same time, an uncle was diagnosed with a brain tumor. And my only living grandmother entered hospice with leukemia and kidney failure. Through all of this I learned that sometimes death can also be healing. One day I went to visit my uncle in the hospital. He had all but lost consciousness at this point. His eyes could follow someone in the room, but he was unable to sit up or speak. Without saying very much, I went and sat beside him and placed my hands on his head. I closed my eyes and imagined healing going into him. After a few minutes, my uncle sat up and turned and looked at me. The first time he had spoken in weeks, he said clearly, “I believe you can heal me.” That was the last time I saw him living. I’ve always regretted that I didn’t live in the same town and was unable to continue visiting him in the last days. I’ve always wondered if continued Reiki treatments really might have made a difference. But I’ve also come to accept that we are mortal. That we do have a finite amount of moments on this earth. And that there is a continuation of our story after we’re gone.
(image from Bing, licensed free to share and use)
Dying is a process. And for some who are fortunate enough to travel the terrain naturally, the crossing of the bridge can be a beautiful experience. The last time I saw my grandmother living, she was bedridden and staying with some of my relatives. When I arrived there from out of town, she was delirious from pain medications and was also crying in pain. A hospice worker was trying his best to soothe her with heat packs and creams on her lower back where she was suffering from failing kidneys. I entered the room and asked if I could try instead. He moved over and made room for me, and I placed my hands on her lower back. Instantly, my grandmother said, “Yes. That’s it.” Her pain began to resolve. My grandmother was legally blind and had been for the past twenty years, so she had no idea what I was doing. She only knew I was there because I talked to her. She told the hospice nurse she wanted me to apply the heat packs from then on instead of him. Several family members were in the room visiting, including my parents. Others were coming in and out. Just a few moments after I began sending Reiki into her kidneys, a remarkable thing happened. My cousin entered the room. She was in her late twenties and had long flowing hair. But my grandmother hadn’t physically “seen” her, due to blindness, since my cousin was a child. Suddenly, my grandmother looked up at the doorway and called my cousin by name. She said, “Oh, you look so beautiful.” We all looked at each other, perplexed. We said, “Grandma? You can see her?” She could. She looked around at us, and completely coherent, she greeted each one of us. She began laughing. She was elated. She could see. She became so excited she asked us to call everyone into the room. And then she asked us to sing. We all began singing her favorite hymns. She called out each one, asking us to join her. My grandmother was dying. And she was filled with joy. While we were singing her requested hymns, she looked up and around the room with bright, amazed eyes. She said, “Oh, it’s so beautiful.” She began to describe heaven to us. And angels. She was ready to join them.
I’ve seen many things in the energy fields that maybe not everyone sees, both the beautiful and the dark. I’ve faced spiritual battles, and I’ve seen miracles. But the only thing that truly had the grip of fear on me was the idea of losing my family – the wondering how I’ll make when the people who I love the most are gone. A few weeks ago, I received a message about that from heaven.
My aunt recently passed away. She lived a long life, and it was time. Still, it pained my heart tremendously to be so aware that my parents’ generation was getting smaller. There won’t be many more losses before it’s my nuclear family. The night before the funeral I was sitting at my dining room table and suddenly I began to see the auras. Those little sparks of energy that maybe come from angels. I looked up and took notice of them, and they started becoming brighter. And then for the first time in my experience, heaven opened up to me. I saw my aunt, and she was smiling. She was so happy to be reunited with her husband who she lost forty years ago. My mother’s parents were there. My uncle who died of the brain tumor. One by one, members of my family began greeting me and telling me that I didn’t need to worry. It wasn’t an audible voice; more something like vision and a premonition combined. But the message they sent to me was that I’ll never lose my family. Although I began weeping uncontrollably, I was also filled with indescribable peace. They were letting me know that no matter who crosses over, they’ll always still be there. They’ll be happy. They’ll be free of pain. And they’ll be with me. Indefinitely. For the first time, I held a sense that this lifetime is just a blink. And that the next one is what’s real. I’m grateful to them for visiting me that night and giving me this message.
(image from Bing, licensed free to share and use)
C.S. Lewis was right. Heaven is inside us. If we attune our hearts and our eyes, we know it and see it. Just some moments more than others.