Journey to Now: A True Magical Story of Love and Utilizing Energetic Connection with the Past, Present, and Future.

by Suzanne Taylor-Torres

Overview

Journey to Now is an autobiographical recollection of one womans spiritual quest and personal transformation spanning twenty years.

Suzanne Taylor-Torres shares how she discovers the power of her own Divine Feminine inner self and the application of the Law of Attraction.

Woven into this journey are:

-a soul-match love story,

-past life memories,

-psychic phenomenon,

-a pop-music personality,

-and even magic!

Follow this fantastic account, and choose which life-change steps can work for you to manifest your desires!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504343978
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	12/09/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	212
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Suzanne Taylor-Torres has an MA in education and Usui and Lightarian ™ Reiki Mastership.

She uses aids such as hypnosis, PLR, angels, ascended masters, and therapeutic grade essential oils to help others create healthy, abundant lives.

As a native Long Islander and mother of two, Suzanne lives in Sedona with husband, Kevin, three cats, and Chihuahua.

www.serenityquestaz.com

Read an Excerpt

Journey to Now

A True Magical Story of Love and Utilizing Energetic Connection with the Past, Present, and Future.

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By Suzanne Taylor-Torres

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2015 Suzanne Taylor-Torres
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-4396-1

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CHAPTER 1

STRANGE BEGINNINGS (1911)

We all have had those moments of déjà vu when some place or something seems familiar. You know what I mean. We feel we have seen it or been there before.

This used to happen to me every time I would go on a class trip in elementary school to some historical site, like a museum or a colonial village. I lived on Long Island at the time, and there was one such site in a small town called Bethpage. It was an engineered collection of historical buildings from the area as well as some moved from other places. Our teachers took us there often, as Long Island has a long colonial history dating back to the 1600s.

I would walk into those tiny buildings feeling fear or trepidation ... It was as if entering would disturb the ghosts or energies from the past. Those small, narrow hallways and staircases seemed familiar to me, as was the depicted way of life. Watching the museum staff dressed in period clothes, cooking in big iron pots in stone fireplaces, dipping wax for candles, making soap ... it was all a known reality to me or dare I say "memory." An eerie feeling would stay with me the rest of the day. I never spoke about it. I was not sure anyone would understand.

I'd experience the same eeriness when I visited my Aunt Rosie's old house or ventured into my own basement. I felt I was not alone. It seemed as if there were eyes watching me. It was almost like I was trespassing in someone else's space. I figured if I spoke of it to any adult, they would laugh at me and say I was being silly. So I didn't. (I probably was already connecting psychically with whatever energies were within these spaces. But I did not understand this phenomenon until my later years.)

However, none of these instances compared to what I would experience as an adult, many years later. I had gone on vacation to Florida with a friend and my then five-year-old daughter, Justine, to visit a tourist attraction called Medieval Times. Advertised as a dinner/ entertainment experience, it offered a jousting show with a "non-utensil" meal of turkey legs. Sounded like innocent fun.

We were greeted by a well-garbed medieval British gentleman, who began with an introduction on the upcoming activities. For some reason, his eyes settled on mine as he spoke. Still in my late twenties, I was young and pretty, and he may have been flirting a bit.

But I was too consumed by his eyes, his accent, his costume, and the era to notice. I could feel some part of me, maybe my consciousness, suddenly floating to another place. He was still speaking, but I didn't hear the words.

It was as if my body was in the present but the rest of me had stepped into a past dimension. Scenes of similarly dressed men flashed through my head, along with castles and horses.

As quickly as it had begun, it stopped, as the lord's introduction came to an end. The line we were on for the show began to move into the arena. I felt dizzy and a bit disoriented. He stood at the door saying nothing, until I entered, at which he very quietly whispered, "My Lady" with a bow and a strange look in his eyes ... It was almost as if he knew what had just happened to me. He nodded ever so slightly as I passed.

With a shiver and a smile of acknowledgement, I entered the arena and sat in bleacher-like seating with a long table in front of my group. Neither my friend nor Justine seemed to have noticed what had transpired. "What just happened? What just happened?" I asked myself.

I tried to enjoy the dinner show, after all the knights were quite handsome, with their long hair flowing as they rode by on their horses. (I have always been attracted to men with long hair ... a product of being a teenager in the Seventies, or so I thought.) But that question kept flooding my mind the rest of the night and for most of the trip. "What just happened?"

Yet by the time I returned home from our vacation, unpleasant events within my marriage brought me back to the present day reality.

It was my second marriage and unfortunately, my husband's drug usage, which had been dormant for a good while, had begun to blossom. I came home to broken window locks, muddy carpets, a front lawn strewn with boxes and an earful of meows from five hungry kittens.

It seemed that his business, a nighttime bread route, had become too stressful for him, so he began making side trips to drug dealers whenever he went to pick up bread from the bakery in Queens. He had become frustrated that he had arrived home late and lost his house key, and so he'd tried to break into the house via the front windows. Boxes of rolls, bagels and donuts were lying all over the front lawn. It had been raining, thus the muddy carpets. As for the kittens ... I wasn't sure when they had been last fed, so I poured cat food into their bowls that whole day because they were so hungry.

Things had gone from bad to worse while I had been away. I even found burn holes in my new sofa — most likely from the drugs that he had been smoking. Who knew who had been there with him? I felt like my home had been violated. And after finding that some of the savings had been cleaned from our bank account ... all my trust was gone. Mike truly was a good man, but his disease had taken over.

A month later, he disappeared for three days and came back without his car. Through an intervention, he agreed to stay at a thirty day rehab center. (This was his third time.) In the meantime, I taught every day as usual at a local school, took care of the bread orders at night, had a friend drive the route, and on weekends I collected our money and did the books. I used a cover story with our clients that he had suffered a heart attack. I was embarrassed, disappointed, tired, and frustrated. Once again, as various times before, I was the responsible one who had to keep things together.

When the month was over, we sold the business. Mike took another sincere stab at sobriety, went to work for a friend's landscaping company, and we stayed together. I just could not go through another divorce.

So life went back to the usual routine: wake up, go to work, come home, take care of the family, cook dinner, watch TV, go to bed ... What monotony! I lived a semiconscious existence, just doing what needed to be done. I was very disappointed with my life and was probably suffering from some degree of depression.

And so things went until December 2nd, 1992, when, after two miscarriages, my son was born. A boy! I had been sure I was going to have another girl, my daughter being nine; I had even saved all her baby clothes. The doctor had informed me that, from the blurred images of the sonogram, it looked like a boy, but doctors had been fooled before. Nevertheless, I had put that thought from my mind ... no boys for me. I'd never had a brother and had gone to an all-girl junior high and high school. I didn't know about boy things, I knew about girl things. No, I was having a girl so I could buy all those pretty pink dresses and put bows in her hair.

I had even had her name picked out: Deanna Lee (partly after my grandmother). I had thought about baby names ever since I was ten, and I had picked my first child's name, Justine Renelle — so lacy and fancy. No one else would have her name. It was unique and beautiful just like her. Names were important to me. I believe they are a representation of that person's new life path.

But, to my husband's glee, it was a boy. Just what he wanted and said it was going to be. He'd gotten his way. Considering what he had been putting me through I didn't understand why I hadn't gotten mine. For the first few days, I really had to grapple with the reality of having a son. What was I going to do with him? How were we going to bond? I hated sports. I hated cars. I really hated snakes. And the clothes shopping ... boring!

To my surprise I bonded easily and immediately with this little blonde-haired blue-eyed cherub. He was such a good baby; he rarely cried. He slept through the night, and as he grew, our mother-and-son bond also grew. I adored him, and he adored his mommy. He was always happy and made the people around him smile. (I recall, once, at about age five, he told me he would never leave me, that when he got married, he'd live in the basement to stay close. Reality check: he did for a bit, but he now is in his early twenties, and he and his girlfriend live in their own home.)

Though it all turned out OK, at the time, I felt I had no power. No power creating the child I was to have, and apparently, no power in naming him. His father insisted he be named after our son's grandfather, as is the custom of so many families. As I felt strongly about names and individuality I tried to explain that I wanted my son to have his own identity and not follow in the footsteps of his grandfather (the specifics of which I will leave out). I tried to point out that since I had carried the child, I had vomited every day for four months, and I had gone through the labor, I should have a say. But I was bullied into settling to give him his middle name, Andrew, which I shortened to Drew. I proceeded to call him this. So too did my friends and my side of the family. I even enrolled him in school as such. Thus, through my passive-aggressiveness, no one except Mike and his family called him by his real first name.

This is the way I seemed to proceed through life in my adult years: through a passive-aggressive mode. I hated conflict, I hated arguing. When I stood up for myself, I did so in odd ways, with little communication, sometimes with crying and sometimes backhandedly. I always felt like a victim of circumstance, powerless. Other people easily convinced me that I was wrong or being silly. I was always in reaction mode to what I thought life had thrown at me. And then I reacted through emotions. (How very Sicilian of me!) Life up to this point — with the exception of my children — had not been fun or very happy. It had actually been quite exhausting, and I was drained.

In addition, the climate of Long Island continued to add to my exhaustion — so many rainy, dark, damp days. I'd constantly be frozen to the bone. Muscles always held tight as if to keep the cold out. I suffered continual head colds, strep throat, or flu. I actually only lived for July and August. Two months of warmth. Two months of the beach and pool. Two months of not working but relaxing in tees, shorts, and flip-flops. That was all I enjoyed.

How bleak! But, thanks to my recent ray of light, Drew kept me occupied. And I could always retreat into those strange memories/ fantasies from the Florida trip to keep me going.

Oh yes, how easily I could daydream about castles, handsome knights, and romantic interludes: chivalry at its best. I could readily envision mini plays of how my life would have been. I could see the intricate dress I'd wear, the old English town or countryside where I lived, even my husband's face. I could feel how happy and full of love I'd be.

They were wonderful daydreams. At least, I presumed they were daydreams. And they kept me going. Hey, I didn't drink. I didn't do drugs. It was the only thing to which I could retreat when I needed to escape somewhere. I should have tried writing back then. I could have fabricated many a romance novel.

CHAPTER 2

THE PICTURE [1992]

It was late that December — another Christmas to shop for, another trek to the shopping mall. This year, I was with my newborn son, who was lying cooperatively in his stroller as I made my way through the crowds of lackadaisical shoppers. I had a purpose: to buy and get out of there. I did not have much time before Justine, (then nine), would be home from school.

Christmas, the one holiday I looked forward to ... family, friends, food, presents, fun. Joyous times, there had not been many of those in my life. I could probably count them all on my ten fingers, two of which were the births of my children. Maybe, I thought, that was all there really was in life — definitive events between all the other daily mechanisms.

Looking at all those shoppers, laden with over-stuffed shopping bags, half of which would probably be returned ... Why did we do this to ourselves? And here I was amongst them, caught in the same process.

As I semi-consciously strolled through the maze of storefronts and aisles, I found myself in front of a frame and print shop. I stopped to gaze at the collection of art, ranging from provincial to modern, when my eyes caught a glimpse of it! I stood there, frozen.

In the back of the store, all the way to the right, there hung a picture of a medieval queen holding a sword. She was dubbing a soldier who was kneeling in front of her. Her long golden hair slightly rippled. Her cream-colored dress was adorned with gold, the long lacy sleeves flowing as she held the sword to his shoulder.

He, kneeling on a brown pillow, with a black falcon crested on a red garment worn over his chainmail. To the side, stood a small group of onlookers.

I could not take my eyes off it. There was something so familiar, as if I could feel the cold of the stone castle floors, as if I had worn that dress, as if I recognized that knight, as if I had seen this before, somewhere, sometime.

In an instant, I was carried to a distant place, just as I had been at the medieval show. Again, the sounds around me grew distant as the scene became so three-dimensionally clear. I could feel the excitement in the room, the silence of the men watching. I sensed the familiarity between the woman and the soldier before her. It was almost electric. I was lost in the vastness of those castle walls.

I was not conscious of any time passing, or any movement or sounds around me, until I was interrupted by a high-pitched wail from my son! He had awakened from his nap, as his stroller sat as motionless as I did. So, as if on autopilot, I did the only thing I could. I moved on, tending to my present tasks, and continued into the holiday madness.

Between that time and the next few months, I did a bit of research online about the print. It seemed the artist, Edmund Blair Leighton, had done a series of period pieces depicting the same characters. Thereafter, anytime I shopped at that mall, I would stop to view what I then considered "my picture", (Accolade, 1901). I even bought a postcard- sized replica to keep in my nightstand. I often took it out to gaze at it, trying to remember why it was so significant to me. Yes, it was of the same content as my daydreaming, but there was more to it. What was it about this era that so compelled me? What were those stirrings in my heart? Why did I yearn to be back there?

I still was not sure what this connection was about, but again my attention was soon drawn elsewhere. About the time Drew turned one, I was struck with a strange ailment. I don't want to say it was an illness because it wasn't. I suddenly had a pain in my right side around my waist and hip. I felt like I had to visit the lavatory all the time. I wondered if it was kidney stones, having suffered from them ten years previously.

After visiting a few doctors, it was discovered I had a crimped ureter and my right kidney had blown up like a balloon. I underwent corrective surgery and after a stint was removed, I should have felt better. But I didn't. I still had that chronic urge only now parts of my abdominal skin had no feeling at all.

And so began my trek from doctor to doctor, emergency rooms, and finally a pain management center, which prescribed drugs. Though the drugs didn't work, the neurologist there finally determined that besides the ureter issue, my pregnancy had stretched the inside of my abdominal wall so much that it had caused nerve damage. Many of these nerves were over my bladder, thus the continued urge to go. A try at a physical therapy office with massage helped ease the condition a bit, but I lived with extreme chronic discomfort for the next few years. My family was tired of hearing about the same old issue. Through it all, I was expected to move on with life as usual. So I did.

Within the next two years, 1995, we had moved to a new home. I got to redecorate. My bedroom featured an old-fashioned four-poster bed made of cherry wood, so high that I needed a footstool to climb onto it. The dressers and nightstands were also period pieces. Over the bed, in a beautiful golden frame, hung "my picture."

By that time, it was me — she was me, I was her. I so identified, so remembered this knighting. And I was beginning to remember a man. A man with long, dark hair.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Journey to Now by Suzanne Taylor-Torres. Copyright © 2015 Suzanne Taylor-Torres. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
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.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Excerpt from, "The Truth about Past Lives" by Silvia Browne, xiii,
Chapter 1 Strange Beginnings (1988), 3,
Chapter 2 The Picture (1992), 9,
Chapter 3 Segue to New Realities (1995-1997), 15,
Chapter 4 Connections, 21,
Chapter 5 New Psychic Experiences (1998), 29,
Chapter 6 The Journey Link, 36,
Chapter 7 Entertaining New Ideas, 45,
Chapter 8 Into the Akashic (1999), 50,
Chapter 9 Catalysts (2000-2001), 56,
Chapter 10 "Believin" (2002-2004), 62,
Chapter 11 Two Steps Back (2004-2007), 68,
Chapter 12 My Intro to the Law of Attraction (2008-2009), 75,
Chapter 13 "Knock, knock. Who's there? Universe." (2010), 81,
Chapter 14 Staying Focused, 86,
Chapter 15 Trust (2012), 92,
Chapter 16 The Momentous Jeep Ride, 97,
Chapter 17 Sedona Together, 105,
Chapter 18 Planning (2013), 110,
Chapter 19 Our Wedding, 116,
Chapter 20 Synchronicities (2014), 122,
Chapter 21 The Past and the Present Together, 128,
Chapter 22 The Importance of Recognizing Signs, 135,
Chapter 23 The Mystical Magical Thing, 142,
Chapter 24 Redistributing Abundance, 158,
Chapter 25 The Letter and More Manifesting, 166,
Chapter 26 Life Lessons and Thoughts, 173,
Chapter 27 Completion at Winter's End (2015), 180,
Chapter 28 My Soul Match's Perspective, 186,
Afterword, 193,
Bibliography, 195,