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Touched by Divine Love
A Personal Journey into the Unknown
By Samantha Richards Balboa Press
Copyright © 2013 Samantha J Richards
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-1064-4
CHAPTER 1
Journey into the Unknown
This journey has not always been one that I cared to make. Raised a Catholic, I was taught to believe in certain things and in particular ways. Although I was never good at being told what to do or what to believe, I followed my religion.
As I grew, I found myself questioning what I was being taught. I became a thorn in the side of all authority figures who couldn't give me reasonable answers to my queries. "Because the Bible says so," or "This is the Word of the Lord," and (my favourite) "Because it has always been that way" were never responses that I could accept.
I began to play up at school and was asked to leave by at least two schools, one of which my niece ended up attending. She told me that some of the nuns remembered me. I was asked to leave that school when I was nine. What a legacy! I was the classic case of a child needing to be understood.
* * *
As a child, I could communicate with the spirits of the dead. I saw winged creatures, which I believed to be angels, and would hear them as clearly as if I were having a conversation with a living person. I was often called odd by people who would hear me having conversations with beings they could not see. The spirits would have me stop people on the street and relay messages, which would make the recipients feel uncomfortable. Having a thirteen-year-old girl tell them things she couldn't possibly know was very disconcerting.
I realised after a while that what was normal for me was not normal for society, so I tried to conform. Over time, I learned to ignore the entities that wanted messages sent. Eventually, they stopped showing themselves to me, but I would always get verbal requests. I never complied—until my first date with a boy.
I was an athlete and had little interest in boys until I was about sixteen years old. My physical training and dysfunctional schooling took up most of my time until I was around eighteen. I met a young man in a pub who invited me out to dinner. He was blonde and cute, so I agreed.
We went to a restaurant in London and ordered our meals. Unfortunately, I felt the familiar sensation of a spirit entity beginning to make its presence known. My head seemed to be inside a clamp, and there was a buzzing in my right ear. I knew the spirit was about to speak. Silently, I told it to go away. It didn't, and I began squirming uncomfortably in my seat. My date asked me if I was all right.
As he posed the question, a little girl about four to six years old materialised beside him. She was pretty, wore a little white dress, and had beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes. She was rosy cheeked and had a huge grin plastered all over her little face. She told me she was my date's sister.
Selfishly, I didn't want to ruin my evening, but the little girl pleaded with me to pass a message on to her brother. How could I refuse her?
I looked at my date and blurted out that his sister was standing beside him. I gave him a description of her, explaining that she wanted him to know that she was happy and that it wasn't his fault that she had died. He was to stop feeling guilty.
He went as white as a sheet and asked me to repeat what I had said, so I did. He began to cry and through his tears told me that his little sister had drowned when she was four, a year younger than he was at the time. She had fallen into water, and since he couldn't swim, he was unable to help her. He had lived with the guilt ever since, believing that her death was his fault.
Suddenly, he focussed on me with quiet fury. He stood up and told me that I was a freak and that he never wanted to see me again.
I was shattered, since I didn't understand that what I had done was wrong. Of course, I now realise the enormity of what happened, including the pain he was carrying, but back then I had no idea. In my head, I agreed with him and began reiterating to myself that I was a freak.
Unfortunately, the incidents kept occurring and I got little reprieve from the onslaught even when I reached adulthood.
When I was nineteen, my girlfriend Katherine and I visited my sister Nicky in Somerset, UK. She and her husband were living in an old manor house owned by his parents. Kath and I were shown to our room. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. Kath entered first. As I stepped over the threshold, I felt an awful chill run through my body. The room went freezing and I could see my breath. "Get out!" a malevolent voice hissed at me. I grabbed Kath's hand and ran from the room. She told me that she had also felt the room go cold.
We spent the evening laughing and eating with my family. (I didn't drink alcohol back then, and even today I may have only a glass or two a week.) We decided that nothing had happened, that we were just spooked because the house was so old.
At about midnight, we wearily made our way to bed. The temperature in the room was normal as we entered. Nothing was amiss when we climbed into our beds and started chatting.
Out of nowhere, I felt a presence close to my face. It breathed cold air onto me and shouted, "I told you to get out. Go now!" I screamed, jumped out of bed, and asked Kath if I could climb into bed with her. In my naiveté, I thought the entity would leave us alone if we shared a bed. Safety in numbers. We hid under the covers, and I recited the Lord's Prayer over and over again.
I felt something slip under the covers and my body went icy cold. "It's under the covers and on me!" I hysterically told Kath. We yanked the covers off of us, and as we did, the presence moved close to my face again. Now Kath was afraid. "Get out! Get out! Get out!" the voice bellowed in my ear.
I screamed again, and Kath and I bolted from the room. We ran downstairs and hid in the kitchen until 6.30 a.m. when Nicky walked in for her morning cup of tea. We threw ourselves on her and relayed our story.
"Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. I forgot to tell you that your room used to be the old nursery and it's haunted," Nicky informed us. She said that whenever children stayed in that room, they would say, "I don't mind the man visiting, but it would be nice if he put his head back on." Great! Thanks a lot! We refused to stay in that room again. The man may have liked children, but he hated young adults.
My first out-of-body experience happened in the manor a year later when I visited with my boyfriend. We were given a room in the attic, since I refused the nursery room due to my previous experience.
Before we went to bed, my boyfriend and I had an argument. He was not the type to brood and went straight to sleep. I, on the other hand, used to fret for ages and couldn't sleep. I sat cross-legged in bed, staring at the back of his head and trying to figure out how I could hit him without hurting him—an unlikely prospect, I know!
Whilst sulking, I heard a male voice repeatedly call my name. Then it said, "Samantha, it's time to go." I immediately left my body and levitated toward the ceiling, looking down upon myself. I noticed a thin, pulsating, silvery cord connecting my astral and physical bodies via the belly buttons.
The voice asked, "Are you ready? It's time to go." Still floating above my body, I looked to my left, since I could see something in my peripheral vision. A brilliant white light appeared to be coming from a tunnel. No one was there to greet me. Suddenly, I didn't want to go. I was too young to die and had too much to do. "No!" I replied, and with that I was transported straight back into my body.
When I became one with my body again, I hunkered down under the covers, grabbed my boyfriend's arm, and pulled it over my neck, as if this would prevent me from leaving my body again. I hadn't been drinking, I had never taken drugs, and I was very much awake when all of this had taken place. My mind went numb for days as I tried to figure out what had happened to me.
From that day on, I stopped spirit entities from speaking to me through their usual route and stuck to the traditional psychic means of my family. I am of Greek Cypriot heritage, and it is not unusual for us to "read" the Greek coffee cups. I had been doing this for years, so I continued to use that medium.
I shut down my gifts for good at thirty-one after our first child, Olivia, died during delivery. We found out that she had become sick during the pregnancy. I explain this in more detail in the chapter "The Divinity of the Soul."
In my grief and my anger at God, which came about six months after her funeral, I vowed never to give another person a message from "the other side," and I excommunicated myself from the Catholic faith and from God.
I was angry that such an innocent, pure little soul had been taken away from parents, who desperately wanted her when so many children were rejected by their parents and evil people were allowed to live. I became a staunch atheist, and whenever the opportunity arose, I would denigrate the so-called omnipresent God. I hated him and wanted nothing more to do with him.
My rage continued for the next nine years, and I filled my heart with the toxic waste of hatred.
The worm turned when I reached age forty and another dramatic and stressful period in my life ensued. I had received a phone call from a company claiming that I owed them thousands of dollars. I had never heard of them. My world was thrown into turmoil. I stopped eating, something I am prone to do when dealing with stress. The weight began falling off of me, and in one week I lost three kilograms. I was sixty kilograms and extremely lean to begin with, and as the weight kept dropping off, I began to look quite ill.
In October 2009, during a particularly stressful day when I had received another hideous phone call, I kept hearing the word meditate. Meditation, in my opinion, was for yogis, not for me, so I ignored the whispers in my ear. Then the word became louder and started sounding like a chant. After much resistance, I gave in, thinking, What harm can it do? I told my husband that I was going to the garden to try meditation.
It was the worst blind date of my life—with myself! The side of me that reared its head was utterly vile! It told me I was stupid, ugly, fat, deserved all I got, was unlovable, was a freak, and as predicted by schoolteachers, had never amounted to anything. The litany was viciously cruel! I sobbed and sobbed. When I emerged from the meditative state, I quietly said, "Oh my God! I really hate myself!"
I was heartbroken at my self-loathing.
Nick was appalled when I told him what had happened, and he asked how I was going to handle it. That simple question got my mind working overtime, and the next day I decided that I would try meditating again to see if this was an isolated incident. It wasn't. The monkey tongue of malicious intent ran riot on me. I was shellshocked again. Where did all this stem from?
Not one to back down from a challenge, I decided to find out. I began meditating twice a day for an hour each time. It was an emotionally draining experience, but over the course of six weeks the attacks slowed. I was shown pictures of my childhood, and memories began flooding back. Things I had placed in my mental safe box with the key thrown away were being revealed, forcing me to face my fears. By understanding their source, I began to heal from the inside out.
I started feeling strange sensations. The back of my tongue vibrated, and my palms heated up and tingled. What I now know as my base chakra also vibrated, and when I would come out of meditation, everything around me would oscillate, including the walls of my house. I saw red and blue orbs, and as they flew, some of them would settle by the ears of my husband and children.
I was convinced that my eyesight was failing and that I was going stark raving bonkers. I visited an optician and had my eyes thoroughly examined. I was given the all clear. Off to the doctor I went. I was fine. I saw a psychoanalyst. I was sane. So what on earth was wrong with me?
I kept up my meditation, and in November 2010, I had two poignant experiences.
The first occurred while I was meditating outside under my covered front porch on a rainy night. I suddenly felt myself being made to stand, as if hands under my armpits were forcing me upward. As I stood, my arms were lifted into the crucifix position and held there. I could not move them no matter how I tried. They were then moved to cross over my chest and pinned in position by what I could tell was someone else's arms. I then had the sensation of wings being wrapped around me. My body, not under my control, rocked to and fro.
I felt a hand reaching into my head through the crown area, moving all the way to my heart. Suddenly, my heart felt like someone had given it a squeeze. I thought I was suffering a heart attack and was convinced I was going to die. I was terrified.
A deep masculine voice just beside my right ear kept saying "Shh. You're safe. Nothing bad will happen. Have trust, little one." As he spoke, I felt myself being filled with a warm, loving energy, and my panic began to fade. A short while later, I felt incredibly calm.
After a while, the hand began withdrawing from my head, and I felt my body, mind, and heart become lighter. It was as if all my pain and sorrow were lifted right out of me. I began weeping for what I had lost. I felt my identity had been taken. I didn't know any other way of living my life. It was really frightening!
The voice spoke again, saying, "Hush. This is as it should be, child. To make way for your new life, your old heart had to be cleansed. Blessed be. Peace shall now come to you."
I knew deep within my new heart that I had been touched by what is traditionally known as the Holy Spirit and that the speaker was my guardian angel. Since that day, I have never looked back.
Although I have crossed swords with the spirits on occasion, no matter how often I churlishly threaten to close down again, they know I can't. I am a part of God as he/she is of me. That is something I cannot change.
The hatred that I had directed towards God had actually been received by the God essence lying within me. By hating God, I was hating myself. The poison of hatred filled me, going nowhere but inward. No wonder I was so miserable!
I felt free of the pain that I had been carrying.
The second event that completely blew me away came during a much-needed four-day family holiday spent on Daydream Island in mid-November 2010. I meditated each day, as was my custom. Our holiday was blissfully relaxing, and we simply enjoyed each other's company.
On the day we were to return to Melbourne, we had to fly out from Hamilton Island. As we were sitting in the airport lounge, I found myself staring out of the window at our airplane on the tarmac. I saw about a dozen grey oval shapes begin to form in the window. Interesting, I thought. I wonder what they are.
The shapes gathered into a single mass that covered the window. The mass turned a beautiful shade of pink and pulsated, growing larger and larger until it looked like a cloud. This cloud-like mass made its way to the plane and grew to such a size that the left side of the aircraft was covered. A circle formed in the middle of the cloud, and at its center appeared a white angel with no discernible facial features.
I was dumbfounded.
Once I managed to get my wits about me, I spoke to my husband. "Honey, what do you see when you look out the window?" I asked.
"A plane and blue sky," he responded. "Why?"
"Can't you see the pink cloud with an angel in the middle of it covering the plane?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" he retorted somewhat anxiously. I then turned my full attention on my husband. In the middle of his forehead, a third eye appeared, and it was green! I did a double take. I looked at my son, and he too had a third eye staring at me, but it was pink. My daughter's was yellow.
"Bloody hell, you've got three eyes! All of you do, and there's a pink cloud covering the plane with an angel in the middle of the cloud. What the hell is going on? Please tell me you can see what I'm seeing!" I exclaimed.
"Hon, keep your voice down. People are staring and they're going to think you're hallucinating!" said my ever-patient hubby.
"Maybe you're right. If the cloud has gone when we step out onto the tarmac, I'll know it was a figment of my imagination and I've been hallucinating," I agreed, and off we trundled towards the plane. I closed my eyes just before we stepped out onto the tarmac. I opened them again, looked up at the plane, and lo and behold the cloud was still there!
"Babe, it's still there! I'm not hallucinating!" I said. Then the angel in the cloud raised its hand, acknowledging my presence. Feeling like a nitwit, I waved back.
Before we climbed the stairs to embark, I watched the cloud get smaller and hover next to the first two passenger windows on the left side of the plane. We climbed the stairs and walked to our seats, which were situated exactly where the pink cloud was hovering by the first two passenger windows.
Well blow me down! I had asked for extra protection for our journey home (actually, it was more like a simple request that we get home safely), and here was an angel, showing me that we were being looked after.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Touched by Divine Love by Samantha Richards. Copyright © 2013 Samantha J Richards. 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.
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