waiting

So since I have been back in school, I have lost track of where I was going with this blog. Though I am a little unorganized at the moment, the thoughts and feelings stay with me all day everyday. I have been hearing so many wonderful and inspiring stories from those of you who have been following me. I love hearing them, but it only reminds me that I am still waiting to tell my own wonderful story. Sometimes I wonder if maybe certain people who have past just do not communicate with certain people. I just get frustrated like HELLO?! Can't my own dad see what I am going through?! Maybe my vavoa doesn't understand me because of a language barrier?
Today I was really thinking about that on my way in to class. It's bad to say I was spacing out a bit while I was driving, but hey it happens. I drive down the same road twice a week to get to class and I never really pay attention to the shops and restraunts. Literally out of the blue I looked left and saw a sign through tree branches. When my eyes focused I began to see "AL". I focused a little more and when I got closer the name of the place was called "AL's" and on top of the name was a budwiser ensignia. My dad finally dropped a little hello. :)

My creepy afternoon

So, I usually like to post things in chronological order and I have to rememebr details from a few weeks back, but I have to write about the day I had yesterday! It was just awful. Let's rewind to Monday night. I spent HOURS working on three assignments that were due on Tuesday for my grad classes. I finished up at about midnight and just didn't feel like getting up and walking three feet to my printer. So, instead I watched TV for a few more minutes and went to bed as usual. Then the morning struck. The computer that I have owned for the past two years just refused to work. It never even had an inkling of a problem and I take such good care of that damn thing making sure I don't download ratty stuff. A half and hour into the battle, I tried texting some people to help me and WHAT?! My phone made a sound I NEVER heard before and refused to send the messages. Then...and this is absolutely no joke, the tv picture started freezing up. I did not even know what to think. I turned off the tv, stepped away from the computer and looked at my usually trust phone like it was from outerspace. Now, I know from my reading that electronic devices are usually easy portals for ghosts to communicate through, but what the hell was this?! My cousin, Rick had actually brought this up while he came home to visit about a month ago so I know this is a common thing. How does all this stuff happen with no answer?! To make matters even more interesting, when I got into my car to go to class, my car was making the loudest screeching noise and it was not the brakes. ughghghghghgh very,VERY creepy afternoon.

Dreams

So, I have always been a really heavy sleeper as well as a vivid dreamer. For the past few months my dreams have seemed so real that I literally didn't know if those things had happened or I had dreamed them. I would ask people, "Did you tell me that...."? I really couldn't distinguish between my dreams and reality. Not only do I have vivid dreams, but I have reoccurring dreams. When I was very young I used to have a reoccurring dream that after my parents tucked me in at night they would leave the house and get on a boat where soon after they would get eaten by a shark. Weird right? I had that damn dream ALL the time!!! I have always dreamed about random people that I usuaually don't recognize but I did notice that after people have died I dream about them often. The first time this jumped out at me was when I was eleven. The last day of sixth grade, my good friend was hit by a truck while he was riding his bike. The driver was having a seizure at the time of the accident. One of the strange things I can't help thinking about is that he had given me a ride home on that bike that very afternoon. We all walked home from school and often hitched a ride on the pegs. That day we were all supposed to meet up. It was very sad...he was only 12. I had many, many dreams about him and thought about death so much that summer. I never thought about signs, but I felt like I was getting them. Seeing figures in clouds, white birds flying by. I remember thinking of "the other side" for the first time too. Will he age with us still? Can he see me right now while I am in the shower? The dreams were the worst. One in particular was set at the school we had just left. My friends and I were all running and laughing. I looked behind me and saw him standing there in all white close. He was saying "come with me". He began walking in the opposite direction and I slowly followed. He just kept saying "come with me". We eventually reached the top of a small hill. When we reached the top and said "stay with me". That dream obviously stuck with me and I think about him all the time. I dream about my grandmother every once in a while. My mom said she even walked by my room one night years ago and heard me speaking in Portuguese in my sleep. I have been having them about my father ALL the time. Not quite the same dreams but all the same theme... that he is still "living" even though he has died and everyone knows it. Often times he tells me to not tell everyone. It's like he is in hiding. Peaceful. Sometime I am crying when I wake up because I know that it my only chance to see him becuase I haven't receieved any messages from him. Part of me thinks that it's not his style to communicate with me from the other side but at least I have the dreams. One time during a nap... we were holding hands and it was so beautiful. Maybe it was poor circulation but that hand had tingles all over it while I was waking up. It was so beautiful.

Playing with Energy

In Van Praagh's book, energy is a central theme. We are engegy and so are ghosts. Ghosts are attracted to places where there are many people gathered because they thrive off of this energy. Van Praagh talks about becoming aware of the energy that we produce because our auras can attract haunting and even evil spirits. Beyond protecting ourselves, it is important to understand energy so that we can feel when a spirit is present. Most people notice a tempurature drop and this is very common (i.e. feeling a cold draft on the back of your neck). Tingling in limbs is also a sign that someone is with you. In order to get a sense of what energy feels like, I followed a simple excercise that was written in the book. I sat in a comfortable position with my arms laying loosly by my side. I lifted them over my head so that I could lower them slowly to just below shoulder height. With my eyes shut and a few deep breaths inhaled and exhaled, I slowly brought my hands together (palms facing inward). Van Praagh says that when your hands are about a foot apart you can feel something between your palms. It can be a tingling sensation or a magnetic force and I happened to feel the latter every time I tried. I could feel by palms bouncing away from each other just like magnets would of the same charge. It was a pretty cool first experience with energy and I learned that energy is how some ghosts communicate with us. In some cases ghosts can muster up enough energy to move objects, which often happens when something is really pressing. Ghosts do not want to harm the living but sometimes people think the opposite because of the raukis they can cause (slamming doors, creaking floors).
While I understand energy, it is a harder concept to materialize. How can I tell if a spirit is with me if I always have a tendency to be cold? What if that tingle is just poor circulation? Those are some of the newer things I need to be more open about.
Interestingly enough, Van Praagh says that we can send out our energies to the living as well which I believe has happened to most of us. This can be most evident when you are thinking of someone and they call you. I always think it is awesome when that happens! I seriously think this happened to me a few weeks ago with James Van Praagh himself. While I continued to read his book and read his stories I wished more and more that I could meet him myself. I wished I could fly out to California but that would not be possible with work, school, and oh yea... no money. I just wanted a sign from him which I wouldn't think to be possible since he is living. So here is the weird part. I took a little nap and when I woke up, the tv show The Ghost Whisperer was on. Now, I have never seen this show. I don't know what time it comes on or what channel airs it. I don't really watch many tv shows and no offense but I could care less about Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy. The odd part isn't about the plot of the show but who produces it. James Van Praagh himself is the creator of the show and based the program on a (medium)friend of his who I had just read about in the book. She speaks to earth bound* ghosts and so does the main charater in the show. I didn't know what to think about that whole experience but I felt like I was being heard.

Next blog: dreams
Blogs to come: Aunt Patty's beautiful sign and what cousin Rick knows.

**Earth bounds are ghosts that you would typically imagine thanks to movies (Translucent body, ability to appear and disappear,speaking). Earth bounds are "bound to the Earth" mainly because of unfinished buisness that needs to get tended to before they can pass on. This medium in particular can speak to Earth bounds and works with athorities to solve crimes! Van Praagh sees images of spirits who have passed over.

"Ghosts Among Us"

It has been about a month or so since I have recieved the book "Ghosts Among Us" by James Van Praagh from Lorraine. In this book, Van Praagh uses previous readings and his own experiences to illustrate the realness of ghosts and after life. I began reading the book at work (which is very difficult to do by the way), and could not put it down for the life of me. It was literally like an unquenchable thirst for information. I managed to read almost half of the book during the work day and I was glued to it at home as well. I hadn't been that excited about something I was reading since the twilight series, so this was a huge deal! In the beginning of the book it tells you that you will see the world with different eyes by the end of it and I found that to be true just after one chapter. I won't write all the things that interested me, or blew my mind because I would basically be summarizing every word and Mr.Van Praagh would have a problem with me if he ever happenes to read this. I will share this though; there is no end. We go on...love goes on. That message alone was enough to change how I see "life". We live for today because it is what we have, but who we are travels with us when we leave our shell of a body. The thought alone of what happens to us raises more questions than you can imagine. I had a list on my bookmark of things I wanted to find out from my readings such as what we look like or if we age. The important thing to keep in mind is that what we do here in our living life carries on to our after life. Just knowing that there is an after changed my way of thinking. Being a prisoner of my own anxieties had taken a tole on me over the past year. I was scared for every body I could think of. My mind would race at night because I knew that when I was sleeping I couldn't protect myself or the ones I care about. Reading this book has made me breathe a little easier. The sky looks a little bluer and living so much more valuable. I am learning that life is about energy and what we do with it. I can remember what I used to fear about death. I would miss the connections with the people, places, and things I loved. I found this to be particularly stronger when I fell in love with my boyfriend, Peter. Before him I wasn't really scared about much, but as our relationship progressed I couldn't even imagine not being able to feel that love... even in death. Death equalled darkness. Nothingness. I have always loved science so I adopted a lot of concrete logic (since I was craving for something to make sense) and all I could think of was a legitimate black out where everything in you just loses power like an old refrigerator. What I needed was a spiritual awakening; something that didn't have to do with theory, and I got one all because of this book. "Ghosts Among Us" is actually responsible for this blog. I needed to vent somewhere!

I am excited to share more about the book, and what I have been experiencing. I am trying my best to keep this chronological :)

Thanks for sticking with me!!

next blog--dreams and energy

*Visit James Van Praagh's website