Annie’s Notebook 8
WAKING UP TO OURSELVES
A regular review: For those who feel there’s something more.
This month’s topic:
THE GIRL WITH ANGELS IN HER FEET
A long time ago Emma, who was six, told me that before she came to earth she used to ‘clean people’s hearts.’
In Rosalind Winters’ delightful book: A Journey to the Sacred Shore, she tells the story of a four year old who asked her: ‘who pushes the flowers out of the ground and makes the grass grow?’ Roz told her it was the work of the angels of nature. The child ran off to play barefoot in the grass, but soon she returned to say she could feel the angels in her feet!
When I myself was five I remember wondering if God was dreaming us, where would I be when God wakes up. I still think it’s a valid question!
Guidelines
“The way to understand the evolution of mankind is to recognise that we evolve downwards. By this we mean that when we are born we are fully spiritualised beings, but by the time we reach the age of two we have lost the connection to ‘all that is’, more or less completely. What we have then is memory of being in touch with the greater whole and this is likely to come back to us in dreams and child-like reflections.
By the time we are seven even that link through the dream world – unless we are very fortunate – has faded. We are in the world of men and women, conducting our lives from the beginning again in the space and time of this particular incarnation.
And then once again we begin to grow back, to the recognition that we are a soul, connected to spirit. It is our earthly task to recapitulate, to learn, and move on.
The child is indeed the father of man. If we are lucky the parent encourages our dreams as children, but so often the parent thinks the child is fantasising or at best is bringing into daylight their dreams from the night before.
Yet, when children insist they see fairies or angels, this really can indicate the level of consciousness that the child has brought into this life to be explored in the future. If this early experience could be taken seriously, it would allow them more easily to re-connect to their heritage later in life.
When we say level of consciousness we do not mean it in a hierarchical sense, simply the order within which they will operate as they become aware of the multi dimensional world we live in. There are so many layers of consciousness, and with encouragement a child will naturally gravitate towards an understanding of where they are placed in the universal scheme of things. How much better to be led, gently towards their own recognition of the world they live in, than to lurch as most people do into consciousness through pain and suffering.
However, there is one proviso to encouraging children to follow their dreams. Very often a child who is close to his historic past, and who experiences a ‘bleed through’ from that life, can be very afraid. It is not easy for a fragile consciousness to accept the terrors of a remembered fragment of a former life.
In these instances the parent can allow the child to tell his story, express his fears or anxiety, and then gently dissuade him from holding it in his heart, because a child will easily believe himself to be a victim, and that, sadly, is the prevalent energy of humanity today.
The best thing in this current age, when so many people feel themselves to be a victim to others in society, is for more people to encourage the notion that angels and fairies abound in a bounteous world. To trust that these beings are real, and that they look after our interests and keep us safe in the world. All children know deep down that they have many unseen friends who care about them. The more we can encourage that belief, the greater sense of safety and wellbeing the child will bring into adult life.
What triggered the bigger picture for you and set you on your spiritual journey?
Jo’s story: When I was a child what mattered most was climbing trees. I was fascinated by nature, and it has always been important to me. I rather shut down in later childhood and coasted; I was not a happy teenager. I didn’t ‘wake up’ until my father died in my late twenties. I was already a qualified physiotherapist but I realised something new: how healing it was to stroke my father’s back to help soothe his laboured breathing. At his funeral I met a wonderful Franciscan priest who taught me the basics of prayer, beautifully typed on the back of a postcard: ‘just breathe in and breathe out the breath of God’. It was a revelation to me.
I think, in essence, death has been my awakener throughout my life. My mother’s death fifteen years later coincided within days with me opening a complementary health centre. Her spirit was so present, and she carried me through so many new avenues of awareness. I attended many personal and professional development courses and became an over-enthusiastic evangelist for what I knew was Right! How much I had to learn about the importance of humility and courage in terms of leadership.
But most important was the death of my dear husband, a clear and evolved soul, whose beauty I could not truly see when he was alive because I was so full of my own journey. When his physical body gave in to cancer a year ago, I had a strong and overwhelming sensation that he had expanded into golden droplets of pure love that were present everywhere. I learned somehow that there is no longer need for a road, or a journey, because we are it; it is here, it is now, and it is love. We are so blessed.
Next Notebook June 16th: