you will work with during the visualisation exercises (see page 32). Because Spirit will only appear to you in a way that is comfortable for you, to begin with you may feel a presence, rather than see an image physically or internally. The more comfortable and practised you become, the more sensitive your vision.
1 Place a candle securely on a table. (I use a light-coloured candle, because it gives clarity of vision.) Sit comfortably so that you can see the candle, and light it.
2 Focus on the flame. Don’t try to draw the candlelight in to you, and don’t take yourself into the flame. Just be with the beauty of the light.
3 Now pay attention to what you may see at the edge of your vision, without altering your focus on the flame. Let any colour, sensation or image register. Don’t think about what it could be. Just receive it.
4 Now close your eyes. This will help you to expand what you have seen with your peripheral vision. Don’t expect anything. The more you can push away your thoughts, the more clearly you may see.
4 Centring
You can practise this simple visualisation as a preliminary to any of the guided visualisations throughout this book. It is particularly helpful if you are feeling stressed, or generally out of kilter. Through practice, it can help you become more sensitive to your internal vision.
1 Visualise a candle flame, and look at the golden centre.
2 When you can do this, hold both your hands as if cupping the light of the flame.
3 Feel, if you can, the warmth of the flame.
4 Move your hands apart, stretching the golden light. Keep going until you are no longer aware of your hands and you feel the light is both in and around you.
You are now centred. You can learn to do this quite quickly, at any time when you need to take a few minutes to sit still and be quiet.
5 Opening your chakras
This is a good general exercise for daily practice in developing sensitivity, particularly when you need to feel calm and still your mind.
The chakras are the seven principal energy points on the body. They are sited at the groin (the base, or root, chakra), the spleen (or navel, chakra), the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the brow (or third eye, between the eyebrows) and the crown of the head. There is also an eighth chakra, located above the crown, which usually corresponds to your fingertips when you extend your arm above your head (see the chakra journey exercise, page 105). In this exercise, we use the seven on the physical body. The chakras are energy centres of spiritual knowledge, through which we can access our higher selves. By opening the chakras, we open to increased sensitivity.
1 Sit comfortably, with both feet on the ground. Close your eyes, and take a deep, round breath, in and out through your nose.
2 Visualise a cocoon of white light enveloping you from head to toe for protection (see page 68). Seal it as if you were holding the air inside a balloon.
3 For the base chakra, visualise a violet flower: feel its texture, trace the outline of its petals. See the petals open, then open the centre of the flower. Really look at the colour and detail of the petals.
4 For the spleen chakra, visualise a white daisy. Open and touch the petals, feeling its vitality. Open the centre of the daisy and look around – what can you see? Just allow yourself to experience whatever comes to you.
5 For the solar plexus chakra, visualise a sunflower. Touch it with your fingertips as its petals and centre open up to you. Its centre reveals a volcano, and deep within is liquid gold. It isn’t hot; it is totally safe. You are sitting on the volcano’s edge. Dive in and immerse yourself in this gold. Feel its light and energy penetrate your being.
6 For the heart chakra, visualise a delicate pink rose. Again, feel its texture. See its petals and centre open for you.
7 For the throat chakra, visualise a forget-me-not. Trace the outline of its blue petals, and watch them peel back to reveal its centre.
8 For the third-eye chakra, visualise a buttercup: open its petals and centre.
9 For the crown chakra, visualise a golden crown opening, and shining a ray of light upwards.
You are now open to Spirit in a way that you will be able to sense beings.
Now close your chakras. To do this, imagine that each chakra has two little flaps, one folding over the other. See them close, one at a time, for each of the seven chakras, and feel at total peace.
Chapter 2 Meeting Spirit Guides
My spirit guides live in my earliest memories. Their love and guidance graced my formative years, and I cannot remember a time when I did not sense their presence. To me, my guides – or ‘Spirit’ – were friends that not everyone else could see. My mother and Lottie, both sensitives, believed in my otherworldly confidants, but as a little girl I had not yet grasped that invisible friends were generally tolerated by other adults as a childhood game to be put away with the toys.
At that time, my spirit guides came to me day and night. I didn’t think it unusual that my version of a bedtime story involved talking to five or six deceased people: together, we shared the liveliest conversations and, later, the most amazing spiritual teaching. I became used to seeing the ordinary faces of my spirit friends gathered at the foot of my bed, and me chatting about the day I’d had. I would have been three or four years old at the time, because I remember that they all followed me to school when I was four and a half. Yet my friends never frightened me, even in the dark; I instinctively knew that they were there to protect me and keep me company, especially when school days felt lonely.
The guide who was with me the most at that time was the man who I had named ‘God’. I can see now that he resembled a monk, but as a little girl he was simply a man in the rough, brown suit. I talked to him as naturally as I talked to my mother and father – out loud. Clearly, ‘God’ was an unfortunate choice of name since I attended a Catholic girls’ school in Birmingham. Within weeks of my arrival I was reprimanded by the nuns for taking the Lord’s name in vain.
I recall one nun asking me who I was talking to.
‘It’s God,’ I replied.
‘Don’t blaspheme!’ she shouted. ‘Who do you think you are?’ I knew that she was really angry with me, but I was indignant. God had never told me his name, but I had just made the assumption: he was
my friend God.
‘It is God – it is!’
And so it went on. I wouldn’t back down, so I kept being smacked by the nuns.
One day, God said to me: ‘Don’t worry. It only hurts for a little while. One day, you’ll be able to teach them.’ At this time I only understood this as the possibility of happy vengeance: I would be the nuns’ teacher so I could smack them back, just like a child. Yet God was teaching me already, in his own subtle way. Every Sunday in church I remember him whispering in my ear, translating the Latin sermon and explaining its meaning in a language that a five-year-old could understand.
Just as God was my spiritual mentor, he was also my superhero. He held my hand as we crossed the road, and once he jerked me back to the safety of the pavement when I ran ahead towards oncoming traffic. There were so many little instances when I physically felt his hands around