Sometimes my life feels like a bad movie -- so trite that you almost can't script it.

Scene 1: Clearing the Clutter

Yesterday, I had a great day, working on cleaning out more clutter from the house and the garage, culminating in a trip with a very full car to Goodwill in mid afternoon. I was supposed to be working on my audio equipment, getting it to work reliably, but that seemed really hard, and I was having fun (!) moving things into the car, and reorganizing the garage, so I kept putting it off. Finally I had a carful, went to Goodwill and dropped it off.

Scene 2: Phone Call

On my return, guilt led me to my desk, where I happened to notice the message light blinking on my phone.

There was a message from a friend, several hours old, saying that a mutual good friend, whom I'll call Charlotte, was in the hospital on her death bed.

Flashback:

Charlotte was the soul of compassion, and the essence of grace, a beautiful spirit in a beautiful body. Though she had not lived a particularly easy life, a single mother who worked really hard at a variety of businesses (from running an in-home day care so she could be there for her toddler, to a jewelry store, to a small therapy practice) and jobs (HR and office support) to support and raise her wonderful (now grown) daughter, she left everything she touched more beautiful and more peaceful. She always knew exactly what to say to ease suffering, always had a smile, a gentle laugh and a positive, philosophical attitude for the more difficult parts of life -- the broken hearts, the illnesses, the financial hardships, including her own. At points when I was low, I always knew I could call her, and I'm sure her other friends knew that, too.

I knew Charlotte was sick, had, in fact, been increasingly sick over the last 10 years. But I'd seen her a few weeks ago, and she'd been in good spirits, saying she was getting better after a real scare.

Scene 2, continued

Though I returned the call immediately, it was too late. Charlotte had already left her body. Had I heard the phone ring, I would have barely had time enough to get to the hospital (an hour away) to say a brief goodbye.

Apparently she had left her body peacefully, attended by a Tibetan Buddhist lama and several good friends. And I know, given the state of her physical body, that it was a good choice to leave now, and gift of compassion to herself. Charlotte, who was always so giving to others, had finally given herself the gift of freedom.

I could only have a short conversation with Ann, the woman who'd called me, because she was too teary. Ann is a very strong woman, and I could hear her trying to stay strong and practical -- but she couldn't. The pain was too fresh. We settled on me calling the next day to get Charlotte's daughter's phone number to see how I can help.

Scene 3: The kitchen

So I came upstairs into the kitchen, where my husband was seated at the kitchen table, reading email on his laptop. As I entered, he said cheerily, "Hey, I've got something to show you," to which I replied, "Charlotte died." I caught him up on the news, and then he said, "What I was just about to show you is kind of the opposite of that." There were photos of his cousin's brand new baby girl!

So that's when it hit me... life on earth is kind of like this big saloon. You enter through the swinging doors (take a body), have a drink, some food, hook up, break up, maybe play a game of poker, or pour a beer for someone else, watch the dramas unfolding around you, and leave again through those same swinging doors. You can’t see what’s on the other side of those swinging doors, on account of the light being so different, but you know it’s there.

Life is not about the tables and the chairs in the bar (clearing the clutter), it's about the angels who come and go.

Last weekend, I had the privilege of hosting Mark Macy (www.spiritfaces.com) and his Luminator (more on that machine later), for a couple of parties, where he described his research into instrumental transcommunication (www.worlditc.org), i.e. using electronic equipment to talk with the 'dead'. The reason I say 'dead' in quotations is that once you've seen his research, you can never again believe that the spirit that leaves a dead body actually dies. His evidence includes computer passages, typed from a computer which was turned on without anyone physically in the room, and which included information only known to the 'dead' woman and her still living husband, and a message left on Mark's own telephone answering machine from a colleague who was 'dead'.

While Mark's presentation is clear and convincing, the best examples of transcommunication he shows are the ones provided by the audience itself. With the Luminator running, he takes Polaroid photos of audience volunteers, and many of the photos have faces completely different from the physical ones of the photo subjects. (On my blog of this article (http://10minutesaday.blogspot.com, I've included 3 of my photos -- one of me (as me, not the best photo, oh, well), one of me that is clearly not me (as there maybe two faces, and at least the nose and mouth aren't mine), and one of my paternal grandmother, who might be the face in the second photo (or maybe not). The only alteration to the Polaroid camera is that black tape is place over the light sensor so that the flash doesn't go off, because the spirit faces need a low light situation to be seen on film.

Even more fun for me was getting to hang out with the Luminator. This machine seems to change the electromagnetic field in an area at least a hundred or so feet in diameter. Another clairvoyant who was there described it as changing the energy of the space in my home to that of the borderline between the worlds ('here' and 'hereafter'). At first, I was really taken aback by its power -- it felt like my body was on some kind of speed, or having an adrenaline rush, though my mind was completely normal. As I got used to it, though, something amazing happened. I was 'shown' what happens when you 'die'. I did not have the experience of the tunnel that most near-death experiencers describe (not that I was near death in any way), but doors opened from my heart and I came out on a beautiful landscape, which I was told was different for each person. After a few moments of enjoying that, I was showered with a beautiful green light that permeated me, and then a beautiful yellow or golden light that did the same. After a while, that faded away, and I was back in the beautiful landscape, but this time, there were thousands of 'people' there. (I think this is the welcoming party that everyone talks about.) I was at a distance, hovering in the sky, looking at the assembled group, but I noticed that if I asked for someone, they'd sort of come to the front of the group, or perhaps I zoomed in to them. I was given to understand that in a way, this 'party' is somewhat holographic, as if each soul sent a hologram of a part of itself that I would recognize, not necessarily that the whole soul was there.

A while later, a reproducible way to talk to 'dead' people occurred to me. All I need to do is go back into my heart, open the doors out onto the landscape, be cleansed by light, come out at the party -- and then ask for a particular 'person'. So I tried it with my husband's father, who 'died' when he was 15. I learned some things about him that my husband could verify, which believe me, I didn't know, and others that made sense to him, though he could not actually verify them.

The next day, I happened to be teaching my day-long 'Psychic Skills Workshop', and offered a guided meditation of the process to the participants as a bonus session after class. Everyone stayed, and everyone got to their landscape, and everyone found a person -- not always the person they had thought to contact, but someone they knew! Because it was the first time I had ever done the meditation, I didn't leave enough time for people to have satisfying conversations with those they contacted. Oh, well... that's how you learn. Next time I’ll leave more time for people to talk to their loved ones.