I Have Questions

Our spiritual traditions have many sources of powerful spiritual origination: Shiva, Buddha, Jesus, Saint Francis to note just a few.  The Roman thinker Seneca noted that our most feared day is our last on earth, but this is also the beginning of our eternity.  As a practicing Buddhist, a secular meditation teacher, and a faculty member in higher education I am a highly spiritual person – but not a highly religious person.  This reality has caused some serious detours on my own Buddhist spiritual path.  I find the deep faith and speculation about past-lives, reincarnation, inter-being, and karmic causes and conditions all very fascinating.  That being said, I also tend to be highly practical in my personal approach to such matters.  In my final analysis, I tend to side with those who believe once you die, it all ends.  My only ongoing conflict in mind, however, is what happens to my electromagnetic energy (required to keep me alive) after I die?  New Physics notes that energy cannot be destroyed, so what happens to it?  Since human perceptual systems are capable of registering only about 5% (some say perhaps as much as 10%) of the various energies waves in the universe – a whole lot is possible well beyond our rational understanding. This scientific question leave the doorway a bit open for other speculations related to the possibility of “the other side.” My recent read of Mark Anthony’s 2011 book, Never Letting Go: Healing Grief with Help from the Other Side.  Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications presented me with several unexplained realities from grieving my wife, Eleanor’s death over the past four years ago.  In the final ending, we are to experience full acceptance, deep inner peace, less sorrow, while holding onto the wonderful LOVE.  I will review his section about how spirits may present themselves to us in our environments.  I will share some of my own experiences in these very same situations.

1) Seeing the lost person: Sometimes mourning survivors of loss see their lost loved one “as if” real.  This clairvoyance did happen to me.  The day after I traded in my wife’s car I was driving my own car to the dealer’s when across the road (Route 7 south in Shelburne), I saw Ellie driving her car in the opposite direction.  She even looked over at me.  I was shocked, and began to pull over to turn around. Then I realized that even if I caught up to the car, Ellie would not be driving it.  Grieving hallucination or something from beyond?  I will never really know. Pretty real and powerful, however.

2) Hearing the lost person: This clairaudience also happened to me on several occasions. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes in meditations, and sometimes in entirely random situations.  I often speak to her “as if” she is here with me; she seldom responds.

3) Smelling the lost person: Yes, clairscent has happened to me also.  This is more rare for me.  I have experienced scents associated with Ellie several times while in our home in Monkton, Vermont.  This is especially true when I sit in her favorite study looking out over the hill and woods she loved so much. Now the top of that view is home to her sacred ashes.

4) Feeling the touch of the lost person: Oh , yes.  Once while taking our favorite walk but this time without her. I experienced a very strong hand-in-hand experience.  It was a real touch with pressure!  We often held hands on this walk.  So, yes clairsentience has happened to me.

 5) Seeing unexplained visual events:  Yes, I have witnessed this phenomenon in association with Ellie.  I have experienced this – but not as strongly as the other experiences already mentioned.  They usually appear as fleeting, subtle energies moving around from place to place.

6) Visits in dreams: I have experienced this many, many times – almost always highly positive in nature.  Sometimes it is a confused state.

7) Objects out of place: This has happened to me; it is a rare experience for me.

8) Electrical tingling in the body:  Yes, I have experienced this encounter in the past both with Ellie and my loving mother, Lucy.  After Lucy’s death I was packing up all my mother’s clothing up in the attic of her home, as I left the room and reached the bottom step I was “stunned” into a freeze position by strong, cold swirling energy all around my body.  It was a warm Spring day! Freaked me out!  Perhaps she was not yet ready to part with those cherished belongings.  Upon recollecting on how I found Ellie near death in our bedroom after arriving home from work, I experienced a hell-chilling, freezing sensation from the pit of my stomach and lower back to the top of my head.  Very, very painful emotionally.

So, there you have it.  An un-believer has experienced most of the ways lost love objects are suspected to communicate with us in our own physical environment.    Very interesting!

For more information refer to Anthony, M (2011). Never Letting Go: Healing Grief with Help from the Other Side. Woodbury, MN:Llewellyn Publications, pp. 61-83 and 221-261.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

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