Years before I started working with Spirit professionally, I took a lot of classes. I knew things "were happening" around me, but I didn't know what to do with this emerging energy. I am also not the type to let just things be; I have to explore the underneath of things and as I say almost daily, “I like to know things.”
And so I took classes in an effort to understand all of this.
Spoiler alert: It's been almost 8 years since these things started happening, and I still don't know the underneath or the “why” of how this works. What I have learned is how to work with the energy. It's sometimes like asking a question, then waiting for an answer and you get the answer but the answer doesn't come in words. It comes in feelings and sensations, colors, metaphors, symbols and vibrations and sometimes it doesn’t show up in any tangible way, you just start saying words and hoping they make sense.
One of the most memorable classes I took was an all day workshop with a long time Lily Dale medium. He was great. He told us he showed up with nothing planned, no agenda for class and had no idea what he would talk about. He fully relied on Spirit to help him know what to say, to whom and when to say it.
Ok then. This had the makings of a really interesting class.
He led us through some different exercises and told us that if we spoke up and offered a message to someone else in the class, he would in turn offer us a message. This was smart I thought since no one likes to speak up at these things, at least not in the beginning anyway.
He shared so much great stuff that day.
Here are a couple of things I wrote in big letters at the top of the pages in my notebook:
“In the peaceful mind, intuition finds voice.”
“When we doubt, we disrupt the connection. We feel unworthy. We can’t do that.”
At one point, he had us identify another member across the room and focus on them for a few minutes and then if we were comfortable, we would share whatever we felt during those few minutes of focus.
Simple enough, I thought. And if I don’t get anything I don’t have to talk.
I had my sights on a lady across the class and when I closed my eyes I didn’t see anything, I only heard the word “Petunia.”
When it came time to share there was absolutely no way that I was going to volunteer. What would I say? “Hi, my name is Christy. Petunia.”
To my horror, our teacher called on me. He said he knew I had something to say and he even knew who I had it for.
If the floor could have opened up for me in that moment, I would have gladly departed class for the rest of the day.
Alas, the floor refused to budge, and so I opened my mouth to say “Petunia.”
The interesting thing that happened next was that as soon as I looked at my person and started to talk, the images came along with the words.
I saw this woman watering her plants on a big old fashioned porch. She was quite happy and content to be doing this. It wasn’t much, but it was more than just a single word.
She smiled when I spoke and then told me that just that morning, she had been watering her petunias on her porch. She was telling them how happy she was that they were still blooming. (It was late September.)
In that moment, I felt like we bonded somehow. Like something was exchanged between us. Not only did I sense a word that described something that had recently given her some joy, but I started to see the images that went along with them.
The thing that was exchanged was energy. It was lovely and simple and profound. To this day, this continues with every person I read for. It is a true blessing and a gift that I never take for granted.
The teacher seemed pleased, and I was definitely relieved.
As promised, he offered me a message. He had a message from my grandfather who had just passed away earlier that year. He was 95 years old when he passed and sharp as a whip.
My grandfather started with “If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.” (I didn’t know what that meant.)
My grandfather said knew he was going. He fought for a bit and then thought, what am I fighting for? He said he was with me all the time and he didn’t want to be a burden to anyone else. (My grandfather lived independently until the end.) He was peaceful when he went.
The teacher added, “He is a very direct energy.” He really was.
And then he told me to prepare for the long trip I would take.
Trip? I wasn’t taking a trip. The grandfather part made all the sense, but I was definitely not going anywhere.
This was in 2018.
Within a month I would be traveling to Florida to be with my mom who had fallen ill, quite unexpectedly while on vacation.
I certainly didn’t know that on that afternoon while I was in class, learning how to connect with Spirit in a useful way.
That my mother might be stuck and disabled at a hospital within weeks was the farthest thing from my mind. She was a young 68 and very healthy and active. Well, the farthest thing from my mind was really that my mother might be dead before the end of the year.
The teacher went on to tell me that I tend to overanalyze things to death, to the point that things can’t be put back together again after I pull them apart. (I felt both really seen and violated in that moment, thank you very much.)
He said I was getting flashes in my head (yes) and then those things happen (yes.) This was going to happen more and more. My lesson is to learn to lean in to Spirit and feeling, and let things flow.
This was sage advice that would prove very useful in the battle I was about to face.
It’s funny how we end up where we need to be even when we don’t know what’s coming next. I most definitely didn’t know what was coming for me.
“If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.”
Correct, Grandpa J, I do not want to know.
That wasn’t what I came to class for. But maybe that is why I was lead to start this work in the first place.
This is a snippet from some of the writing I have been doing offline lately. I am using my ability to overanalyze a situation but trying very hard to make something new from it, and perhaps the lesson will be better than the problem itself. 🩷
PS If you haven’t caught up with “Into the Light”, the story about my mom which was a nightmare filled with blessings, you can start reading Chapter 1 here.
Into the Light
I had just come up from the beach and was walking into the yard at the cottage, and Mom was watering the plants in the front. It was the summer of 2018. She paused, stared off and then quietly turned around and said, “I don’t think I want to turn 69.” I laughed, at first thinking this was some sexual reference and then I chalked it up as age related worry. She was turning 69 that fall, in November. I remembered not wanting to turn 30 or 40 for that matter, so I understood. I can’t remember what I said back to her, but I remember suggesting she didn’t have a choice and would have to deal with it. In retrospect, I wonder what was going through her mind in that quiet moment. Perhaps a premonition or intuitive knowing that this would be her last birthday or that it might be one of the worst days of her life.
Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Petunia!!!!!!