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Grandma Bertie's Ghost



Can you guess which one of the kids above is now dedicated to serving the angels?


I often introduce myself as an “ordinary mystic.” I know this phrase looks oxymoronic… Mysticism is not something our western society considers ordinary. Not infrequently people with gifts for seeing, hearing, and feeling into less familiar kinds of knowledge are subject to dismissal, ridicule or labeling as psychotic or out of touch with reality. Not infrequently, those of us with a capacity to see into mystery stifle or hide our gifts to fit in.


Yet in my experience, mystics are actually quite common in our world. Approximately 60% of the people I've served as a chela have been mystics and the vast majority of those people were aware of their giftedness. And mystics are certainly known among indigenous peoples. The angels tell me approximately 8% of our human population have gifts that allow them to see or feel or understand things most other people would consider unknowable through the use of our senses.


Sometimes people ask me how I became an ordinary mystic. Things pour from my mouth, oftentimes intensely personal and usually joyful things about people I am serving I’ve never before met, things I literally could not know. (I cannot access information from a person’s soul or spiritual supporters without their permission.) Like people with shamanic or psychic gifts everywhere, it’s amazing when this happens. It’s definitely still amazing to me!


I live now with one foot in our conscious/waking reality and one foot in the reality we call spirit so I am accustomed to this. Yet unlike many of my mystic friends, I don’t remember having the ability to travel into and communicate in spirit when I was young. (My guardian angels assure me I was adept from birth until the age of 3.5 or so.) Instead, my first remembered experience with spirit occurred during my son’s baptism. I was 22.


My firstborn child, Ambrose, was 15 months old when his father and I chose to have him baptized in a small United Church of Christ in rural Iowa that has been home to his father's family for generations. Three of Ambrose’s great grandparents were planning to attend the service. Sadly, one of his great grandmothers died in her sleep the night beforehand. Ambrose’s grandfather stopped to pick his mother up at her home and found her still in bed, seemingly asleep but no longer alive.


When we were considering whether or not to postpone, I remember thinking and really believing that if Bertie (for Alberta) really wanted to come, she would still be in attendance. Sure enough! While Ambrose’s dad and I stood at the back of the small church near the altar watching a beautiful auburn haired minister baptize our young son with a stream of poured water, Bertie arrived. It was only later I realized I had somehow stepped outside of time to witness her coming and going.


Grandma Bertie flew in via a transom window to my left at the front of the church above the main entrance. She came in the form of a sphere-shaped comet of light, trailing a tail of sparkles. She hovered right above Ambrose’s head as the minister gave the blessing. From this ball of light, Bertie’s face, her lovely wavy hair and even her beautiful hands and her fingernails emerged. First her nose, her cheeks and hair and then the deeper parts of her face and eyes. She reached down to take the head of the small boy in her spirit hands and planted a kiss on his forehead, a kiss he reacted to! He actually bent backward to see who had touched him. Then she whisked away in a flash, trailing more light as she exited the same way she had come.


This happening had a profound effect on me. Bertie’s arrival caused such a powerful sense of physical shock that I gasped as if hit in the gut and I took in a huge breath of air. I expelled it with giant sobs of joy in front of the whole church in a wild and somewhat embarrassing display. (Fortunately news of Bertie’s death had already made the rounds of the small community prior to the service so I had cover for my weeping.) Just after (or as?) it happened, I remember looking at my son’s father and he was staring at his shoes. I remember looking out at the congregants and they all appeared to me as if they were somehow "unawake." Only I had witnessed this event.


That didn’t stop me from grabbing Ambrose’s dad and breathlessly sharing every detail once we exited the church. For a few days, he believed me. But later, after some time had passed, he waved it off as my imagination.


I never did wave it off. Instead, I carried the experience of Grandma Bertie’s ghost around with me, puzzling over it, treasuring it, wondering at the implications of such a happening. Gradually, my faith in spirit grew. It took a crisis in my life and many years of following spiritual breadcrumbs for me to find my way to the person I am today, a chela to the angels, an ordinary mystic and a “servant of uncommon devotion” to Love itself. There are many more chapters to the tale, but it all began with the gift of Grandma Bertie’s ghost.


Far more important than my individual story though is the angelic teaching that Everyone Has Spiritual and Intuitive Gifts. What miracles have you experienced that might point to a larger reality and a bigger story around who you are?


What are the spiritual or intuitive gifts you possess or you’ve witnessed in others? Are they gifts around the elements? Trees and plants? Wayfinding? Finding lost objects or people? Are you a mystic? Do you hear in color and understand deeply the way light undergirds all of reality and love? Are you an expert in giving Gifts? Can you manifest group cohesion? Do you bring peace to those around you? Are you the kind of friend that lifts everyone around you? Does your singing change hearts and move souls? Can you understand and communicate with animals? Do you understand and move with an uncanny understanding of the laws of physics? Can you draw meaning and see patterns in numbers? And the list could go on and on....


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