Have you ever felt that somebody you lost was in the room with you?
Today is All Saints, and tomorrow is All Souls, the two days the old church set aside for remembering the dead. Last night the north kept Halloween.
So this weekend the whole world, one way or another, is thinking about the people who have gone ahead.
In forty years of readings, the question I am asked more than any other is some version of this one.
Are they still with me?
My answer has always been the same.
Yes.
We are spiritual beings choosing to be here to have a human experience. When the experience ends, the being does not. The people you loved are not gone, they have gone ahead, and most of them stay close for a long time, especially to the people who loved them most.
The harder question is the next one.
How do I know?
And that is where most people get stuck, because they want the sign to be loud.
A voice. A shape at the end of the bed. A message nobody could argue with.
It is almost never loud.
It is a song on the radio at exactly the moment you were thinking of them.
A smell, their perfume, their pipe, their kitchen, in a room where it cannot be.
A bird that sits on the fence and looks at you for longer than a bird should.
A coin, a feather, a name overheard in the supermarket.
And then the monkey mind arrives and says, you are making it up, it is a coincidence, you just want it to be them.
Here is what I teach about that.
First, notice the feeling that came with the sign. Not the thought afterwards, the feeling at the moment it happened. A warmth in the chest, a tingle across the back of the neck, a calm that arrives out of nowhere. Write it down.
Over time you will learn which feeling comes with the real thing, and which one comes with your own wishing, and they are different.
Second, wait for three.
When the same message arrives from three places that have nothing to do with each other, I stop arguing with it. The song, then the name in the shop, then the bird on the fence, all in the same week. That is worth listening to.
Three sources, and you can trust it.
And third, and this is the one people find hardest.
Talk to them.
Out loud, in the car, in the garden, at the grave if you have one. Tell them what is happening. Ask them for help with something small.
They cannot answer if you never ask.
I will tell you this as plainly as I can. Grief is love with nowhere to go, and talking to the people you have lost gives it somewhere to go.
That is relationship, carried on across a thin veil.
November begins today as a 3 month, the number of words and expression, so it is a good month for saying the things you did not get to say.
So the practice for this weekend.
Light a candle for one person who has gone ahead.
Sit with it for ten minutes.
Tell them one thing you never got to say.
Then, over the next week, watch for three.
Who would you light a candle for this weekend?
There is more teaching like this in The Library, and every daily post is in Daily Posts. If you would like guidance on your own path, see Readings.
See every page and post in the Contents.
The Members area has songs, Moon pages to print, the Sunday article a day early and a first look at new Library pages.