My understanding of angels has changed over the years, here’s my story.
When I was a little girl, perhaps four or five, I believed in the angels of fairy stories. Angels all wore golden sandals, played golden harps and wore long, flowing white gowns.
In my first or second year at school, I was chosen to play the angel Gabriel in the school nativity play at Christmas. I had a solo of the Christmas song ‘Away in a Manger’ to sing, a white dress made from one of my mum’s old bed sheets and a sparkly halo made from a wire coat-hanger and silver tinsel. Standing on the stage, dressed as Gabriel and singing to the audience was one of my proudest and happiest childhood memories. To me, angels were God’s shining messengers, exactly as they appeared in the Christmas story. I was in absolute awe of them and fascinated by their ethereal beauty.
I was already beginning to channel and travel in the astral planes at this time. I would sit on the bottom stair of our home and make myself go ‘upwards and backwards’ into the stars. There, I could communicate with beings made of glowing iridescent colours that played before my eyes like glowing, vibrating streams. I considered these ‘beings’ to be more like ‘dream friends’ than anything else. I didn't call them angels. I simply thought everyone did the ‘upwards and backwards’ trick. I thought it was something everyone enjoyed, just like me.
I began to draw these visions and I remember often showing my parents these images. If they thought I was strange, they never said!
I was a questioning child and naturally cynical. By the age of around six, I had concluded that Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy were no more than a figment of my parents' imagination. I had so many questions to ask about everything around me and so much I needed to learn.
At around seven or eight, I started to question my Christian upbringing and teachings. I picked over the Christmas story, pointing out things that ‘just couldn’t happen’. I questioned the existence of God and many Christian beliefs. How? Why? What? I was on a mission to discover the truth and began to discount anything that couldn’t be explained by science. I convinced myself that God, the bible and everything in it were made up stories.
I was still channelling and travelling in the astral planes but I categorised this as different. For me, spirits and the astral planes were real enough. I had spirit encounters every day; they were natural to me - but God and the bible were definitely make-believe. And as for angels? They were just fairy tales.
My parents relationship broke down and my mum eventually left the family home when I was ten, leaving me alone with my dad. I retreated more and more into my own world, channelling for hours and I became more and more interested in the spirit world.
Then when I was eleven, my dad was killed in a boating accident at Ullswater in the Lake District. I was involved in the accident. Only four months later, my mum had a very serious car accident and was very badly hurt. Again, I was involved in the accident. In both accidents, I was relatively unharmed and, looking back, I experienced serious ‘survivor guilt’. I took these tragedies as further proof that there was no God and no angels watching over us all.
I retreated further into my own world. I was still talking to spirits in my astral travels and I communicated with my dad in the afterlife several times. I also started reading books by the famous medium, Doris Stokes, who continues to inspire me to this day.
My interest in spiritual topics continued throughout my teenage years and into my twenties but I didn’t believe in God and I didn’t believe in angels. In my opinion, there were spirits of the dead and other spirits around and that was what I could communicate with. There was nothing else. Everthing was very black and white to me. I was very inward focussed and closed to new ideas.
My twenties were chaotic and unhappy. I fell down every hole. At the time, when I’d hit rock bottom, I’d have what I’d call ‘the bounce’ where I would sense hands pulling me upwards from the edge - but I still fell down the very next hole in the road! Eventually, I stopped channelling and astral travelling altogether, I put down my paintbrushes and used every means possible to block out the unhappy mess my life had become.
At the age of thirty, I had my little girl. And my life began to slowly change for the better. At this time, I trained and qualified as a clinical hypnotherapist. Gradually, I began to find my inner calm again. I began to feel like the empty hole inside me was filling up. I started to dream that I was filled with light.
Eventually, I started to draw and paint again. I’d forgotten about the channelling I enjoyed in my early childhood, but what I started to see in the landscapes I painted intrigued me. In many of the skies, spirit and angel figures seemed to appear. I wouldn’t see them whilst I was painting, I would only notice them when I finished the painting and stood back! I realised that whilst I was relaxing and enjoying my painting, I was naturally channelling again and automatically painting the images I was receiving.
This time around, I was excited and amazed by the ability. Like a curtain being drawn back slowly, I began to remember much more about my childhood spiritual experiences and more of it began to make sense. I began to research, to read about other people's experiences and to experiment. I began to look for signs, to seek out confirmations. When I was a child, I'd blindly accepted this ability, made up my own mind as to what it was and then, equally as blindly, refused to entertain any other explanations. Now I knew there was more.
My dreams began to be extremely vivid, often involving teachings from other beings. I’d wake up exhausted from all the ‘lessons’ I’d been shown. Again and again I was shown the network of energy connecting us all. Again and again I began to leave my physical body and travel in the astral planes. Researching this ability, I found that it's shared by many, many people around the world. I trained myself to control my travels.
I began to realise that the common web that holds all energy together is real and incredibly powerful. I was told by my guides that many of the spirits I had always encountered were angels. These angels are made of the same energy material as our own higher spiritual selves, the same material as the divine creator and all natural spirits. Every living being is connected and every living entity has its own frequency.
I began to channel and paint for others and was incredibly moved by the effect my images had on people. Energy is everything. I paint my angels as I see them, as they appear to me. But other people could now see and feel them too and every message seemed to be received in a unique way.
I know now that I'm on the right path. The energy that I put into my spiritual channelling and painting work is rewarded by the Universe. I still have my 'bad' or chaotic times, but I now realise that this is part of experiencing life as a human being. It's part of my journey, as it is part of yours.
I look for signs and I receive them time and time again from my angels. There is so much more to life than we understand and can even imagine. If the only difference I can make in this Earthly life is to show people something beyond their current beliefs with my paintings, then I'm happy. At the same time, I understand that everyone has their own beliefs and no one is right or wrong. Just because you can't explain something with science or 'prove it' doesn't mean that it can't be right or isn't real.
You are so much more than the body in which you are travelling. You are a spiritual being made of energy and vibrating at your own unique frequency. Every living thing is connected by an energy web. We are all part of a glorious tapestry.
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