Heavenly Hugs: Comfort, Support, and Hope From the Afterlife
272
Heavenly Hugs: Comfort, Support, and Hope From the Afterlife
272eBook
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Overview
The nearly 2,000 cases of departing visions and visitations from deceased relatives and friends collected by the author prove that there is life after death. At the moment of physical death, departed loved ones return to the dying to ease travel from this life to the next. Friends, family, and healthcare workers also report seeing these loving spiritual travel guides.
Such encounters—reported by individuals from a wide variety of cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds—clearly illustrate that the personality, soul, or consciousness does not disappear or “die.”
To live our lives to the fullest, we must relieve ourselves of the false notion that death is the end. Departing visions help us do this.
Heavenly Hugs will introduce you to both historical and modern-day departing visions, proving:
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601635846 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 11/22/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Sales rank: | 739,525 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Finding Answers
Death ends a life, not a relationship.
— Jack Lemmon
The Fourth of July evening festivities had started out with a bang — a big one. My family and I were spending the holiday at our small cabin in the wooded Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Friends had joined us for thick shrimp gumbo, fudge brownies, and fireworks. The air was cool and the smell of magnolias competed with the scent of evergreens. That night, even the typical stormy summer weather was cooperating.
The clouds had parted, allowing the twinkle of starlight to peek through. Down the mountain, the village community had finished blowing up an arsenal of multicolored fireworks. As the smell of gun powder dissipated, my oldest son yelled, "Now it's time for the home show!"
As fiddle music down in the village floated to the top of the mountain, out of the trunk of our car appeared the kid-sparklers and brightly packaged firecrackers. With each strike of a match a loud explosion would ricochet off one mountain to the next. The repetitious, "Boom! Boom! Boom!" sounded like cannons firing, and with this the ghosts of the past must surely have stirred. It was as if the Civil War had erupted in the South again.
Though my husband and the boys jumped for joy, with each loud bang my nerves began to feel frazzled. After an explosion, I'd say a prayer to the loving spirit of my mother: "Please protect each little toe and finger."
Eventually, all the small bombs had been blown to bits. My youngest boy then tugged on my shirt and asked, "Are there any more?" I drew in a sigh of relief and said, "Talk to your father." I then headed indoors for a soothing cup of tea. This rattled mother was in need of a break.
As I opened the door to the cabin, I noticed one of my friends had the television on. The TV was small and the picture was very grainy. "That's weird," I thought. "She's sitting in here all by herself." She was watching a well-known Hollywood psychic take requests from a studio audience. Questions like, "My father just died; can you contact him for me?" and, "Do you see my grandmother? Does she have a message for me?" were bringing tears to her eyes. I knew who this particular psychic was and didn't have much regard for what I was hearing.
I've had the pleasure of knowing some very trustworthy mediums and psychics who were committed to helping others. Sadly, this guy wasn't one of them. Looking at my friend, I wondered why she was watching such nonsense while the rest of us were outside celebrating.
As I began preparing myself a cup of tea, I heard the television psychic make a pitch to the audience for his set of books, CDs, and services. The studio cameras then panned across the paranormal guru's devotees. Grief-stricken mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, daughters, and sons, several with tears running down their cheeks, willingly pulled out their checkbooks to purchase hundreds, even thousands of dollars worth of products.
As my friend continued to watch this sales pitch, her tears dried up and the hypnotic pull of the program suddenly dissolved. Shaking her head, she finally noticed I was standing in the room and said, "That's just terrible." Joining her on the couch I asked, "What's wrong?" With the click of the remote the television screen went blank. She laid back, sighed, and said, "What that psychic was doing is wrong. First, he's taking financial advantage of a group of folks in serious grief." With a look of exasperation she continued, "Secondly, what he's saying to several people in the audience doesn't make any sense to them. When told his messages from the 'departed' are way off base, he argues and tells the grieving they are wrong. Wouldn't relatives and friends know more about their deceased loved ones than this guy?"
After tossing a pillow across the room she added, "Telling these poor people they don't know what they were talking about adds to their grief. It's just not right." After this sudden, surprising explosion of emotion she looked out the open door. Following her gaze, I saw she was watching the kids running down the mountain waving sparklers. Concerned, I turned back to my friend, and saw the tears were welling up in her eyes again.
After I handed her a tissue, she continued. "That psychic's behavior is really reprehensible, but his show did remind me of something. It's an experience I haven't really told anyone about." Outside, my husband and the boys had found a few more bottle rockets and the firecracker war was on, but my friend didn't even notice. Instead, she surprised me by saying, "I had some strange experiences with my mom, before and just after she died." In spite of the renewed rounds of cherry bomb blasts, the teary-eyed woman sitting on my couch had my full attention.
"Mom was the nurturer and the anchor in the family," she said. "She supported me through not only a rough divorce, but also my battle with cancer. We talked to each other several times a day and even vacationed together. Mom and I had more fun!" Remembering the closeness she felt with her mother brought a smile to her face, but as she continued to talk it became obvious her distress wasn't only about her grief.
"Several days before my mother died, she started talking about going home. When I told her she was already at home, she looked past me and said, 'No, I want to go home! I want to go over there!' I don't think Mom was talking about the home she lived in on Peach Street. I think she was talking about heaven!" Having heard numerous accounts just like this from the dying, I nodded in agreement.
"I was at my house when she finally passed. At the time of her death I felt her squeeze my shoulder, just like she use to do when I was a kid. When I turned around, no one was there. Several minutes later the phone rang and it was my sister telling me Mom had died."
My friend's mother had experienced a departing vision. She had caught a glimpse of the afterlife just before she left her physical body. Then, at the moment of passing, the daughter had been touched by her mother's spirit. After I handed my friend one more tissue, she dried her eyes and continued. "After Mom died, I knew she was no longer suffering and was now in heaven with my grandparents, but I still felt so sad. The depression was debilitating. I couldn't work, stopped taking care of myself, and felt as though life had lost its meaning. All I did was cry and I didn't know who to talk to."
"Then I had a wild dream," she said. "Mom came to me in a dream. This dream was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. It was so real, so unlike my normal dreams." After taking a sip of her tea she put down her cup and shared with me an after-death communication. "At the end, Mom just wasn't herself. She had lost a ton of weight and was so terribly thin. Illness had ravaged her body and I prayed for her misery to end quickly. Well, in the dream Mom was her old self again and she had come to tell me she was just fine. Just like old times, Mom was dolled up from head to toe. Her hair was perfect, her nails were beautifully manicured, and she was wearing her usual shocking-red lipstick." Laughing, she added, "In the dream she gave me a great big hug and I could even smell her awful fruity perfume!" For a moment my friend was silent, back in the past. She was reliving her dream, remembering this sweet reunion. After a couple of minutes, she shook herself back to the present and then returned to her tale.
"I tried talking to my minister about my mom's visions before she died, and he told me I'd misinterpreted her words. That she was just confused. Then I told him about the dream I had after she died, how real it was, and he said this was just my grief! The guy wouldn't even listen to me when I tried to explain to him I'd never had a dream like that before in my life! I left his office feeling more upset than ever.
"After asking a few of my friends what they thought, most of them just looked at me like I was nuts. One very religious woman from work even accused me of 'consorting with unclean spirits'! That left me feeling very freaked out. I quickly stopped talking about it with any of them. Guess I should have known better. The biggest mistake I made was asking my therapist about all of this. I told him what my mom had said about 'going home' before she died. He told me Mom didn't see heaven. Instead, he blamed the vision on her brain dying. Then he gave me a big speech on how the brain fires off all of these neurons when a person is about to die. He said she was either confused or hallucinating.
"When I asked him what he thought about me feeling her squeeze my shoulder before I knew she had died, he said I was 'distraught.' As for the dream, after hearing about that, he then referred me to a psychiatrist for medication! After the session, I just sat in my car and cried for 30 minutes."
More tears slid down her face as I gently reached over and hugged her. I then reassured her that I believed everything she had just told me. Feeling comforted, she added, "I really believe my mother is just fine, but why is everyone brushing me off as some grief-stricken woman who isn't thinking straight? I can't find anyone who believes me. I went to friends, the minister, and my therapist, and they all rationalized my experiences and left me feeling crazy. I'm not off my rocker and I don't need medication. What I've needed is for someone to really listen to me and take what I say seriously. You are the first person to tell me my experiences are real!"
Wiping her eyes one more time, she then clicked on the remote and there again was the Hollywood psychic promoting more books, newsletters, and individual healing sessions by telephone. With the slickness of a salesman he continued hawking his wares to the newly bereaved. For a few seconds I was confused as to why my friend had turned the television back on. Then it hit me. She was looking for answers and wondering if anyone else had ever had such experiences. My believing her was a start, but it wasn't going to be enough.
With this "light bulb" realization, I hugged her again. My happiness for her heavenly hugs had been mixed with sadness. The departing visions and after-death communication comforted her, but in searching for answers she continued to feel misunderstood and overwhelmed. After being dismissed by the people she trusted the most, she was fearful of ever sharing again. My friend had been brave to confide in me. Though I was glad she had taken the risk to share her remarkable afterlife experiences with me, I also knew she still needed more information. The TV psychic wasn't going to be her solution.
Finding Answers Can Be Hard
We live in a death-phobic society. Like so many of us, my dear friend had been totally unprepared emotionally and spiritually for her mother's passing. Major societal institutions, such as education, family, and religion, had never taught her how to sort out experiences like this.
Not only did she want me to be there for her, to hear about her extraordinary contact with her mother, but she also needed supportive reassurance that she wasn't alone. Along with this, she desperately required help in understanding what it was she had witnessed and felt. It was going to be essential for her to learn how to integrate these powerful, life-altering events into her everyday living experience.
After my friend dried her eyes, I smiled, and took both of her hands in mine. Glancing at the television psychic, I said, "That's definitely not spiritual, but your experiences with your mom are. I'm going to share with you a similar story about my own mother, mother-in-law, and father-in-law. Believe me, I've been in your shoes. My story will help you understand you aren't alone and that your encounters are more common than you think."
Taking the remote from her hand, I said "bye-bye" to the celebrity psychic, and once again the television was silenced.
CHAPTER 2Pulling the Departing Vision out of the Closet
The dead are merely the countrymen of my future.
— Dean Koontz
Very few of the spiritual gems I've been sharing with you come from psychics or mediums. They make their way to me through people just like my friend who was watching the TV psychic on July 4th: Messages of reported contact with the afterlife fly through cyberspace and land in my e-mail inbox on a regular basis. I regularly receive phone calls or end up in live Internet chats with experiencers. Such was the case not long ago while I was appearing on an international radio program, and Dr. Ron, a physician-turned-minister, called the show to share his thoughts on the departing vision. He then followed up with this note:
As someone who has been in the practice of healing, I wanted to say what I could on the topic of dying, death, and departing visions. It's a shame the death and dying process has been reduced to such an industrial process. Death has become a sterile sort of commercial enterprise. ...
Dr. Ron is so right! With industrialized medicine the human touch is on the verge of extinction. Rarely do we die in the comfort of our own beds, surrounded by dear friends and family with our favorite pet beside us. The experience of death has become very antiseptic. When my mother passed, she did so by herself in a sterile hospital room, hooked up to a multitude of tubes. Because of hospital policy, I was too young to visit her, so family and friends had to sneak me in to say goodbye.
My grandfather died alone in a nursing home, in a shared room without any familiar comforts. Just before he passed a college friend of mine went to his bedside with a cell phone so that I could speak to him. The emptiness I felt as I said "I love you" was heartbreaking. My sadness was not so much about his passing as it was about the conditions in which he was leaving this life.
Concern over how we as a society deal with death is something I hear about all of the time. Death and dying has become an industry. Outside of the hospice movement, little has been done to change this. The process of dying should be a spiritual experience not only for the individual who is about to pass, but also for those who love and care for them.
In response to the way our culture deals with death and dying, my friend Dr. Ron also shared with me some of his experiences in the emergency room of a hospital.
The now-governor of the state was then the senior emergency room physician, and one night a 75-year-old man went flatline on the table, was coded, and came back and told us about his DBV (deathbed vision), and then laid down and died again. Well, we coded him again, and he came back to life, sat up, and told us to let him go. After that, he laid down and died once again. I was saddened that his wife was kept out in the waiting area. She missed what we saw and heard from her husband. I was even more saddened that another physician brushed off my inquiry as to what that experience meant to him. ...
I certainly have questioned why more clinicians seem to steadfastly ignore this topic. Working as a hospitalist is like working in a factory; again, our medical profession fits the industrial process, and as an employee of the factory, we are not at liberty to discuss the "failure rate" or the "flaws" in the production lines.
Dr. Ron's experiences as an ER physician validate why so many of us are unable to talk openly about our departing visions. The dying man in the previous account had an afterlife experience, was ready to die, and even asked the hospital staff to let him go, but they didn't listen to him.
Science's Skeptics
The world of science continues to be at odds with that of spirituality. Skeptical thinkers scoff at tales of departing visions, calling them superstitions, hallucinations, or the wishful thinking of those individuals who fear death. Such scientific skeptics aren't the only barrier to the open discussion of afterlife encounters; mental health professionals also shy away from such discussion during therapy sessions.
Many of my peers and colleagues have been judgmental of my investigations. I've been publicly ridiculed by skeptics and nonbelievers on numerous occasions, and at times, even members of the media have portrayed me as some sort of "flake." Watching this from the sidelines my close friends often ask me, "Why do you continue to dedicate years of your life to exploring these spiritual reunions?" My reasons for doing so are very simple. Professionally, I strongly believe that those who experience departing visions are no longer plagued by a fear of death. Because of this they are able to resolve issues of grief and loss in a healing manner. I want to support these experiencers. Currently, there are limited resources for those who seek out validation after such encounters.
Personally, my own otherworldly encounters with deceased friends and relatives have helped me grow spiritually. I started having departing visions and after-death communications when I was just 15. These treasured experiences continue to this day. When blessed with such contact I'm reassured that love never ends. With no fear of death, I now understand dying is just part of the journey to the next adventure.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Heavenly Hugs"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Carla Wills-Brandon, PhD.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface: We Never Die Alone,
Introduction,
Chapter 1: Finding Answers,
Chapter 2: Pulling the Departing Vision out of the Closet,
Chapter 3: Using History to Heal,
Chapter 4: Scientific Research: The Early Days,
Chapter 5: Modern-Day Research Rebels,
Chapter 6: Dreamtime Premonitions,
Chapter 7: Visitations at the Moment of Death,
Chapter 8: Love Knows No Boundaries,
Chapter 9: Receiving Comfort from the Dead,
Chapter 10: The Light After Life: Is This the Soul?,
Chapter 11: Going Public Despite the Skeptics,
Conclusion: Where Do We Go from Here? Learning to See the Unseen,
Notes,
Index,
About the Author,