Articles Worth Reading: Messages in Lorraine Moran's Dreams

Visitations in dreams appear to be one of the most common ways people receive messages from their deceased loved ones. Guideposts has an article about Lorraine Moran, who lost her grandfather to suicide when she was 10 years old.  Several decades later, she lost her 34 year-old nephew Joey, after years of abusing alcohol and other drugs.  She describes in poignant detail about visiting Joey in the hospital during his final days, when he was hooked up to all kinds of medical equipment and could barely communicate.

But what is most remarkable about Lorraine's experiences are the dreams she had in the aftermath of their deaths.  After his suicide, Lorraine describes how her grandfather visited her in three separate dreams, merely saying the word "yes" to her in each one, and being comforted by him. And then there's the account of a dream she had after Joey's passing:

"One night just a few days after Joey passed, I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt I was hanging up my clothes on my clothing line. My grief continued to weigh down on me as I worked. Then I felt a presence with me. I turned to see Joey. He looked so different. His face was filled out and had its color back. He smiled and his blues eyes were bright and full of life. As he looked at me, he started to laugh his familiar, hearty laugh.  

I was suddenly hit with anger. How could he be laughing right now? Didn’t he see how much pain I was in? But Joey just smiled at me and put a hand on my shoulder. 'Aunt Lorraine, you don’t get it,' he said. A calm slowly settled over my body." 

And what is this "it" that those of us still here on Earth don't get?  I have to wonder....

Animals and Spiritual Development

As a follow-up to the last post: I was reading an excerpt from Craig Hamilton-Parker’s book What to Do When You Are Dead. Hamilton-Parker works as a spiritual medium. There was a passage in his book that I found particularly fascinating and eye-opening, where he talks about animals and their spiritual evolution:

“My spirit guide has told us that animals do not all survive as individual identities after death. Some merge to what he calls a ‘group consciousness’. Their spirits return to a collective awareness for that particular species, and from this pool of awareness different animal souls are born. It is only when an animal becomes self-aware that its soul continues after death and starts the long process of climbing the evolutionary ladder toward human and angelic consciousness.

For many animals, this journey begins if it receives love from a human. In particular, pets and domestic animals gain a sense of identity because of prolonged exposure to humans. Our consciousness ‘rubs off’ on them, so to speak, causing them to forsake much of their instinctive nature and start to develop free will. Some people lavish love on their pets and treat them like their own children. Although in many ways this is a form of psychological transference, they are in fact helping the animal progress spiritually. The love they lavish on them enables the pet to quickly attain a sense of identity. The owner is thereby helping to create a new soul. I suppose you could say that pets are children in a real sense, for their souls are brand new!”

This is definitely a revelation to me. I’ve heard before that animals are here on Earth to help us human develop spiritually, but it could also well be that we’re here to help them spiritually develop as well!

Do Animals Grieve? Part II

In a previous post, I talked a little about whether animals feel grief towards each other when one of their own dies.  This raises another possibility -- we all know that we humans grieve the loss of our animal companions, but do our animal companions grieve us when we pass on from this world first?  I present a few stories culled from the web that seemingly demonstrate that animals feel sadness from the loss of their human companions.

First, a 2016 story about a cat in Central Java, Indonesia, who apparently misses her dead owner so much that she had spent over a year at the grave of the woman she loved the most.  Even though a kind passer-by tried to give the feline a new home, she kept returning to the graveside:

The second story relates to a 34 year-old cowboy from Paraguay, Wagner Lima.  Lima was killed in a motorcycle crash in Brazil on New Year's Day, 2017.  During the funeral procession, Lima's horse, Sereno, was heard whimpering, and even at one point put his head on Lima's casket:   

Finally, there's a YouTube video of dogs that appear to be grieving the loss of their owners:

Some people have provided alternate explanations for some of these stories, that the animals in question are not really grieving but are exhibiting other behaviors.  Still, it's interesting to ponder the possibility that animals may miss their human companions in a similar way that we miss them when they take leave of this world.

Words of Comfort: From a Dear Friend

At the end of July I was recalling an extremely vivid dream I had had the previous night with my friend Kari.  It was springtime and I was at my dad's place.  He told me that my mom had been "missing" since the winter and was presumed dead.  I then walked into an adjacent room -- I believe it was the study -- and saw my mom's lifeless body lying in bed.  (Funny that my dad didn't bother to check the next room!)  I approached my mom's body, and then, all of sudden, she became reanimated -- she opened her eyes and started talking.  I remember hugging her and remembering how her face felt and smelled.  Then I woke up, and spent a good portion of that day in tears-- something I hadn't done in a while.  After I recalled this to Kari, she wrote the following words to me:

"Maybe it would help you to realize that your mom is still with you, but in a different form.  If we are energy, if we are spirit and soul, then she's just as much with you now as she was two years ago. It's just that we want what we know and it's hard to see and feel something new.  I know it's not as satisfying.  Not right now anyway.  I think that's because we don't understand the purpose of earth.  I think if we did, we wouldn't see that a person died.  I think we'd see that they were still on their journey, just like us.  And that your souls aren't disconnected.  It's just a new level of enlightenment."

Kari's words have been a source of comfort to me in recent days, and I hope they are a comfort to you as well, dear reader, during your time of grief.