THE BORDERLANDS

Questions keep cropping up in my mind regarding the limits (or not) of my psychic abilities, as I keep discovering things that I can do that I didn’t know that I could.  Because of some lesser things happening, a bigger question has arisen: can I communicate with spirits that have ascended?  I have been quite certain for a very long time that I absolutely cannot.  But now….now I’m not so sure.

This is an Earth-shattering, life-altering, mind-bending question for me, but several friends have responded to my struggle with the same casual, this-is-so-obvious comment: Oh, of course you can.  You just need to find a borderland, where the veil between worlds is thin.

WHAT?  I NEED TO WHAT?

I had to go on the interwebs to find out what they were talking about, what a borderland was, and what on Earth these so-called “thin veils” were.  Turns out, they’re a thing.  And, to my great surprise and delight, I might have one in my back yard.

First, the official definition of a borderland is: an area of overlap between two things; an unclear state or condition that is between two things and is like each of them in some ways; a vague intermediate state or region.  And, according to a variety of “experts,” the veil that separates the here from the hereafter is thinnest at sunrise and sunset, at the points that day overlaps night, and in borderland places where there is a meeting of worlds: land and sea (shoreline), sky and mountain (mountaintop), forest and prairie (edge of the woods), wetlands and drylands (my back yard), sky and water (waterfall).  In other words, areas where the veil is thin exist at the border between this and that.

My house sits on a half-acre of land, the front half of which is high and dry, and the back of which is low and swampy.  The street side of things has the house, flower beds, and lawn, and the “back 40” has an unmanaged, wild forest.  Dividing the two zones is a bramble of wild roses and pussy willows.  This thorny hedge meets the criteria for a borderland and is the spot that I thought had the potential to be a place where the veil is thin.

There isn’t a way to stand in the middle of the thorny hedge, so when I went out there to investigate, I slipped through a very narrow passage off to one side of the thorns, and stood just barely under the canopy of trees.  I was not sure where to begin, not sure how to summon a spirit, not sure how to tell for sure if the veil really was thin there, not sure if I needed an incantation or solstice ritual or cauldron of bat’s wings and eye of newt to turn this spot into an “official” borderland.  So I tried the easiest thing first: I closed my eyes and called a name about 10 times.  The name I called was that of my husband’s brother, Roy Shapley.  He died suddenly, tragically, seven years ago, and I miss him.  He was a wonderful human being, loved by everyone who ever met him, and a few months after his death, I helped his spirit ascend.

I cracked open just one eye first, and then reluctantly the other, pretty sure that I was doing this all wrong, and pretty sure that all I had summoned was a flock of mosquitoes.  But — OH MY GOD — calling his name worked.  It bloody worked.  Roy’s spirit stood before me.  Totally him, totally there.  And I burst into tears.  I was so, so happy to see him, so overwhelmed that he came, so astonished that this worked, so shocked that I could actually see an ascended spirit.

I hardly knew what to say besides thank you.  I was crying pretty hard, and he just stood there smiling very lovingly at me.  We spoke, but only briefly.  There isn’t the urgency with an ascended spirit that there is with an Earth-bound one, so our encounter centered on love and gratitude: I told him that he was loved, and I thanked him about a hundred million times for being a wonderful human being and for showing me that this was possible.  His spirit glowed with an inner light, and the next thing I knew, he was gone.

I am still trying to process what happened.

I don’t know all the ramifications of this, but I can hear your curiosity already: will I be offering readings for ascended spirits now?  No, I won’t.  And I may not ever do that.  First off, Roy’s spirit came to me because of my relationship and connection to him.  I will need to do quite a bit more research and practicing to know if my abilities extend beyond this.  And secondly, I feel quite strongly that what I am called to do with my psychic gifts is to help troubled souls.  And ascended souls are, by definition, at peace.