Jesse was the first person to suggest to me that some of the benevolent strangers we encounter are not even human, but incarnated guardians. Corporeal angels.
This is a continuation of Stranger Angels: Part 1. If you haven’t heard the story about my weird European stalker who looked like a mannequin, then hit pause and go listen to Episode 08.
It will make this sequel a lot more satisfying...
I met Jesse in 2002, exactly ten years after that trip to Europe. I was thirty-two years old. I had lived through a really shitty Saturn Return that nuked all the structure in my world and left me in a ditch that I would spend most of my thirties crawling out of. At the time, I was recovering from a serious illness and working on rebuilding the basics of third-dimensional existence — you know: job, place to live — I had no way of knowing that I was about a year away from a major Trip Down the Rabbit Hole that would deliver me to some different level of identity and I suppose a reorientation to my spiritual path — events that climaxed with an intervention by my guides, an ultimatum regarding my sense of purpose, and ultimately the creation of Shift Your Spirits and the work for which you know me.
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MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE
Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols
Conscious Evolution by Barbara Marx Hubbard
The Ones Who Glow by Slade Roberson
Angels 101 by Doreen Virtue
A Book of Angels by Sophy Burnham
An Angel for Every Day by Angela McGerr
Sylvia Browne's Book of Angels
Angel of the Revelation by William Blake
phylum/ phyla — the different types or levels of angels: Thrones and Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Carrions, Powers, Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, Angels
asher — your personal guardian angel (body guard)
silver cord technician — the angel who manages your silver cord connection to spirit
Mother Mary Speaks to Us by Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger
Quantum Spirituality — this is not the book I remember... I may have the title wrong... I think the book below may actually be the one.
Quantum Theology by Diarmuid O'Murchu
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS
Jesse : Stranger Angels - Part 3
Jesse : Stranger Angels - Part 4
HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON
Get an intuitive reading with Slade
TRANSCRIPT
Okay, so this episode is a part 2 - it’s a continuation of last week's episode called - you guessed it - Stranger Angels part one. If you haven’t heard the story about my weird European stalker who looked like a mannequin, then go ahead and hit pause right now
I promise it will make this sequel a lot more satisfying if you go listen to that episode first.
Part one is Episode 8.
Jesse was the first person to suggest to me that some of these benevolent strangers we encounter are not even human, but incarnated guardians.
Although I had experiences as a kid that involved angel sightings, spirit guides, spirit animals, ghosts, elementals ... I would never have included that man John, who had followed me around on my trip to Europe, in a similar kind of paranormal category. Over the years, I even found myself relating the story of the almost-mugging — and, for some reason, excluding the part about John entirely.
Until my conversations with Jesse, I would have lumped these strangers into quirky, environmental synchronicities.
Let me explain what I mean by environmental synchronicity — I’m talking about these patterns I observe that seem to emerge from random chaos, and feel somehow “less personal” — just glitches or glimpses of cosmic machinery at work that don’t feel “targeted” toward me in a significant, meaningful way.
I’ll give you a couple of recent examples:
A few months ago, just before Christmas, I was standing in the checkout line at the supermarket behind some random stranger. Nothing noteworthy about that, except that, the very next day, in a completely different part of the city, I was waiting to place an order at the cafe, and the same person got in line behind me. Never saw him before; never saw him again after…
Another example of this kind of environmental synchronicity...
Last month, I was out running errands. I stopped to get gas and a car pulled up at the pump next to mine. I noticed it because it was the exact same make, model, year, and color as my own car. (You always notice when you see “your” car on the road, right?) So, I went all over town that day — the bank, the post office, the bookstore, the cafe, and eventually, a few hours later, criss-crossed my way to an enormous shopping mall in an area of the burbs I generally avoid and only visit about once a year if I absolutely have to — I needed to exchange a gift. I found a group of empty parking spaces and pulled into one. As I was getting my bag out of the trunk, a car pulled into the space next to mine — same make, model, year, and color - AND - it was that same exact car and driver from earlier in the day.
In that asphalt sea of parking options, not to mention in a medium-size city — we’re talking about a quarter of a million people -- what are the chances?
So, these are not Big Deal experiences, right? — just things that make you go “Hmm… What was that all about it?” Never saw them before; never saw them after. I suppose it’s some fairly irrelevant mathematical remainder in the clockwork of divine timing.
Anyway, that’s the kind of compartment in my mind where I might have placed the story about John the European mannequin stalker, just tagged with a greater-than-average significance and a Big Mystery stamp…
At least, that’s how I thought of it before I met Jesse.
…My name is Slade Roberson
For over ten years, I’ve been a professional intuitive and the author of the blog Shift Your Spirits, where I try to write about spirituality with fewer hearts and flowers than most New Age blather.
I also mentor emerging intuitives, psychics, and healers in a program called Automatic Intuition.
Before we go any further, just a quick FYI — I’ve added a new feature to the show.
For years now, before I send out a blog post, I try to tune in and listen for something that will speak directly to you, that will serve as a message. Like an oracle.
And I get email replies, every week, with tons of you saying that the post was a direct answer to a question you had.
It’s really cool, and I want to bring that phenomenon to the podcast…
At the very end of this episode, after my final links and credits, I have a channeled message for you.
Be thinking about a question or concern you have. It might be answered by the show itself. But hold it in your mind and I’ll come back on at the end and leave you with something extra…
Back to the story...
I met Jesse in 2002, exactly ten years after that trip to Europe. I was thirty-two years old. I had lived through a really shitty (shittier-than-most) Saturn Return that nuked all the structure in my world and left me in a ditch that I would spend most of my thirties crawling out of. At the time, I was recovering from a serious illness and working on rebuilding the basics of third-dimensional existence — you know: job, place to live — I had no way of knowing that I was about a year away from a major Trip Down the Rabbit Hole that would deliver me to some different level of identity and I suppose a reorientation to my spiritual path — events that climaxed with an intervention by my guides, an ultimatum regarding my sense of purpose, and ultimately the creation of Shift Your Spirits and the work for which you know me.
Back in 2002, I was not operating from even so much as the intention of a “higher vibration” — I was just surviving. (Barely.)
I was working in Chattanooga (where I grew up) at a temporary, low-paying job while searching for a full-time position with benefits, preferably in a counseling environment, where I could also work toward my Master’s degree. I decided I wanted to move back out of state, to Atlanta, a larger city where I had lived before and where there were more opportunities. Fortunately, my temporary job gave me Mondays off, so I could arrange to do interviews on at least that one weekday, and travel down on the Sundays before.
All the back-and-forth was expensive; gas eating up most of my funds. The weeks of job hunting were turning into months. Many of my friends and contacts in Atlanta had moved away; even more of them were estranged. I had one friend from college who was generous with her hospitality, who I felt I could impose on to some degree, but I was going to rely on her heavily for a place to stay at a longer duration of time once I’d actually secured a position and could then start that second stage of relocating to a place of my own.
I’d already worn out my welcome with more than one person. I told everyone, including my parents, that I was spending those Sunday nights in motels; more often than not, armed with pre-ironed interview clothes, a lint-roller, resumes, and my cell phone, I slept in my car so I’d have enough gas money to return home. (I could sometimes simply get up before dawn in Chattanooga and drive down but the morning rush hours and unpredictable gridlock of getting into Atlanta on Monday mornings was way more stressful and difficult to effectively schedule.)
I passed most of those earlier Sunday evening hours killing time hanging out in cafes. I tend to haunt cafes — I’ve discovered more than one magical vortex in a favorite cafe. If I decided to plot them on a map I wouldn’t be surprised to discover evidence of ley lines or some personal power nexus.
I met Jesse at the Starbucks in Ansley. He politely asked if I minded if he sat in a leather armchair next to mine that shared the small table between them. He was dressed in scrubs; maybe a surgeon, probably a nurse. He was handsome in a bland, super clean-cut way — he obviously had some seriously Nordic DNA that results in superior height, blond hair, blue eyes, and an airbrushed complexion. I remember thinking he looked less like a nurse than a model for a medical uniforms catalogue, or maybe an extra in a hospital scene on a TV show.
I don’t remember how we initially began chatting, but the conversation started over the books we were reading. I was reading Jung and Tarot; he was reading Conscious Evolution by Barbara Marx Hubbard.
(Which I just realized saying that, I told Amy Oscar, who I interviewed in episode 4 of this podcast, that listening to her reminded me of listening to Barbara Marx Hubbard.
Anyway
Jesse talked at great length about the concepts of Hubbard’s work — he was a bit dull and emotionless in his delivery, professorial, but the information itself was interesting and he seemed intent on instructing me about it.
He eventually asked me what “my story” was, and I told him about my process of finding work and relocating.
Pointing to my book he said : “You’re inhabiting the Wanderer archetype.”
I was like “Ah, yes, or you could just call me a Fool, as the Tarot would.”
He shrugged and kindly said “It's the beginning of all Journeys."
When the baristas began to make the obvious motions of closing the cafe, Jesse asked me where I was staying. I told him truthfully that I wasn’t sure yet, but I lied and said I was going to go find a cheap motel — and I mentioned a notoriously shady possibility nearby.
He looked troubled by this and was like. “No, no no. I live alone, really close to here, just blocks from the University where you’re going for your interview. I have a guest room, I’m not working tomorrow, and I insist you come stay with me.”
I was not looking forward to finding a safe place to sleep in my car, and after going through the motions of being assured that the invitation was sincere, not just a friendly but empty offer, I accepted with grateful relief.
JESSE’S HOUSE
So, I was supposed to follow his car to his place, but he also gave me back-up directions in case we were separated, not an address but like simplified landmark-syle — The house was on Woodland Hills, the first driveway on the left after the last speed bump as you approach the traffic light at the end of the street.
Jesse drove some vaguely forgettable car — something white, fairly late model, like a Ford Taurus — it looked like a rental.
I’d probably driven past his house thousands of times over the years.
When he stooped to go in through the back door into his kitchen, I realized for the first time just freaking how tall he was.
The strangest thing about Jesse’s house was that it was almost entirely empty — there were no appliances except a coffee maker, nothing but water and milk and a bag of coffee in the refrigerator, paper plates and plastic cups in the cabinets; there was nothing but a lonely chandelier in the dining room; two leather armchairs, a large television and a lamp, both sitting on the floor in the living room; there was no art work on the walls; blinds were the only window treatments; in one bedroom there was a mattress and an alarm clock on the floor, an open closet with a row of scrubs and a few pairs of jeans and t-shirts; the bathroom had a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor, and shaving cream in the medicine cabinet, a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo in the shower…
It looked like a house that had been immaculately upgraded and remodeled — for sale, but was like badly in need of some staging.
I asked him “Did you just move in?”
And all he said was “Uh…yeah.”
(The same cryptic and succinct answer he’d given me when I asked if he was a nurse.)
The whole house smelled like saffron incense.
When he showed me to the second bedroom, apologizing that it was his “meditation room slash library,” I discovered where Jesse kept all his possessions (or at least a good ninety-five percent of them).
Books. Books — everywhere. (It was a bit… eccentric; possibly insane.)
The books weren’t shelved, but in stacks on the floor; a few feet high, and two or three stacks deep around the entire perimeter of the room. The twin mattress on the floor, well-made with crunchy new pillows, made the whole room look like some kind of gigantic crib with book-stacks instead of bars. Had the stacks been any closer to the bed or any taller I would’ve feared that they might topple over on me and bury me alive while I slept between them.
I had once worked in a small metaphysical book store, so I immediately recognized the spiritual subject matter of his collection; he seemed to have at least every title we’d carried in stock, and then some. The books were also in several languages — English, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Afrikaans… Yes, I recognize Afrikaans because I have an ex who grew up in South Africa and I was fascinated by his Afrikaans (Afrikaner?) versions of The Chronicles of Narnia.
In addition to the most popular best-sellers on a range of subjects, as I explored the spines more carefully I realized that the one over-arching theme, the one topic that was represented more than any other was: Angels. And, I mean, this guy was clearly obsessed with angels.
ANGELS?
Really?!
Our earlier conversation had established Jesse (in my mind, at least) as intellectual, sober, and serious. He just didn’t seem to fit the profile of the customers I remembered coming into the new age book store and purchasing material about angels. I must admit, at most periods in my life, I negatively judged people with an interest in angelology as being vapid. With the exception of those who approached the subject of angels from an academic, scholarly, or comparative religion angle, I assumed the audience for contemporary angelology to be simplistically fundamentalist or spiritually immature.
Weren’t angels a bit — I don’t know — fluffy, naive, benign yet decidedly un-powerful?
Although I would have had a hard time describing sightings of beings like the one I wrote about in "The Ones Who Glow" as anything but some type of guardian angel, at the time I met Jesse I still held onto some arrogance that my experience (or at least my perspective) was uniquely profound.
The truth is, at this present moment, I accept that the word “angel” describes a type of entity I do believe in — a vocabulary that transcends the boundaries of human culture and faith — yet some part of me wishes there was a footnote every time I use the word that says
“The angels I see do not look a damned thing like Barbie dolls in nightgowns with wings. Their energy is comforting not because they are ‘huggable’ but because they are powerful.”
In response to Jesse’s semi-apology about my having to sleep in a makeshift library, I told him I always need to read before falling asleep anyway. It was already incredibly late in the evening and I had to get up early; so he left me to the books and retired to his own room.
A person’s books provide an irresistible insight into his private self, so I stayed up for awhile exploring them. I was intrigued to discover how many of the books had been autographed — all the Doreen Virtue titles were inscribed to Jesse by name; Sophy Burnham, Angela McGerr, Sylvia Browne… they were all signed. In addition to the modern, popular titles you would find in any well-stocked New Age section, there were also very old books I’d never seen before and still have not run across again — volumes filled with Kaballah; encyclopedias of angel names; invocations, prayers, and spells for calling in the Archangels and banishing demons…
Of all the uniformly blank white walls in Jesse’s house, there was one exception — opposite the bed I was going to sleep in — above and between the stacks of books -- was a print of William Blake’s Angel of Revelation -- which I used as the illustration to the original written version of this story on my blog. I’ll link to that post so you can come take a look at the painting.
When I opened the closet to hang up the suit bag containing my interview clothes I found the floor covered with more poster prints, rolled up like scrolls with rubber bands around them. From peeking at them, I found they were more reproductions of angel paintings and facsimiles of illuminated manuscripts.
I fell asleep that night staring at the Angel of Revelation, with that little coif of golden curls that clashes absurdly with the intensity of his expression and purpose, frozen in his bold-postured pronouncement...
Jesse served me coffee the next morning when I came out of the bathroom, dressed and ready to leave for my interview. He very formally inquired how I had slept.
“Angels, angels, everywhere,” I said, hoping it came across as only a slightly teasing prompt.
“Indeed they are,” he said.
I’ve always had a tendency to want to adopt another person’s language in an attempt to connect with them. So I tried to talk about it, to at least communicate to him that I was more open to the topic than I probably really felt.
I told him:
“I’ve liked William Blake since I was a little kid. When I was in elementary school, a librarian found me looking at a book of Blake’s paintings and poems and she told me that Blake saw angels in trees when he was a boy. I remember resisting the urge to confess Me too!.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what she was inviting you to do,” Jesse said. “I’ll give you another opportunity to now. I’d like to hear about that.”
I’d actually never told anyone that before I told him. I’m not sure I even fully remembered it until that moment.
So I told Jesse about The Ones Who Glow, the same story I wrote about my first encounter with a guardian angel when I was about five or six years old.
“That was your asher,” he told me. It was the first time I’d ever heard that term. He explained to me that the asher is the proper word for the “classic guardian angel,” and is merely one of many different types (or phyla) of the spirit entities we call angels.
“Will you come back next week?” he asked me. "I want to tell you more, and I have a feeling you have some other stories too. You’re welcome to stay here again, when you go on your second interview.”
“Provided I get called back for another interview,” I said. “Are you making a prediction?”
“Oh yes, I absolutely believe you will,” Jesse said. “You’ve just called your asher to you, after a very long time.”
“I have?”
“By talking about her, right now. You will notice the effects of having done so.”
As I gathered my things to leave, and thanked him for his hospitality, he wrote a pager number down on a piece of paper and gave it to me. It said “pager - colon.” Which was a little odd. I didn’t know anyone still used those.
“Let me know when you’re back in town,” he said. "I insist. Promise me you'll come back and we’ll continue this conversation.”
I said that I would, although I’m not sure how much I meant it.
My first interview was a success, and I did get called back for another one the following week… and the truth was, this time it was scheduled late in the afternoon on Monday — I really had no good reason to drive down on Sunday and stay the night. It was totally unnecessary, other than to visit Jesse again.
And I decided to do that.
I found myself wondering if I should actually page him. I was worried that I might be imposing on a stranger who was only being polite. But then, he had given me an oddly specific way to contact him…A pager. Which felt like something that in 2002 had to be used for urgent situations. Then, it occurred to me that the number might even be a fake.
I decided that I would page him, and if he called back I would thank him again for letting me stay and let him know that his prediction about the second interview came true. And that would give him the opportunity to invite me to meet again if he really wanted to. The page went through okay, but quite a bit of time passed and my cell phone never rang.
I drove down anyway. And I eventually went back to the same cafe where I had met him. Hours passed, closing time came. Still no call. I was pretty disappointed, and feeling foolish that I would now have to spend money on a hotel or find a safe place to sleep in my car and kill another entire day until it was time for my interview.
But as I was getting in my car to leave, Jesse pulled up next to me in the parking lot and rolled down his window. He was clearly in a rush — flushed in the face, and almost out of breath.
He said “Oh, good, I caught you! Follow me back to my house.”
I spent a total of four Sunday evenings and Mondays in a row at Jesse’s house unearthing memories of possible angel sightings, paranormal experiences, and encounters with supernatural beings.
I wasn’t called in beyond a second interview — I didn’t even get that job, although a good friend helped me find another position at that same University not long after… The truth is, I kept going back to stay at Jesse’s with an entirely different motivation.
The second time I encountered Jesse, he came to the cafe where we had originally met, just as I was leaving. The third time, I paged him, while at Lenox Mall, miles away in another part of town, and fifteen minutes later he walked right up to me in a Pottery Barn. The fourth and final time, I dropped by his house without paging him at all. His car wasn’t there, but I peeked through the window in his back kitchen door; and then, just as I was putting my car in reverse, he pulled up behind me in the driveway.
I didn’t even consciously realize how much I had locked away and forgotten about until I started sharing these stories with him — the more of them I recalled, the more they began to surface. There were so many experiences I had never talked about or even remotely considered telling anyone.
You gotta understand -- at the point I met Jesse, in 2002, I was still deeply guarded (and relatively ignorant) about the existence of spirit guides or angels. For the first thirty-five years of my life I carried on under a profound anxiety that I might be mentally ill, or, more importantly, that other people would diagnose me as mentally ill — and that if I talked about this, I could be institutionalized, locked away, lose my freedom, or maybe even my life over it.
I could never recall or transcribe my conversations with Jesse word-for-word, and, if this were a movie, I would simply show you a montage of those hours spent in the armchairs that were the only substantial furniture in the house talking over take-out food and cups of coffee. Much of these talks felt like some kind of intensive therapy sessions — like, as if, in the symbolic logic of dreams, Jesse’s uniform blue medical scrubs represented healing.
He never talked about himself, his work, his family, his life. At first I would ask questions, according to social protocol, but they were always vaguely deflected. He interviewed me, with very precisely chosen questions that I was sometimes surprised to realize how much I could answer, at great length. He wanted to dig into the details of strange memories that I hadn't thought about for years.
I’ve never felt “listened to” so completely.
After pulling the stories from me, he would take a turn theoretically “diagnosing” or identifying the themes from a spiritualist perspective, as if he were writing a thesis paper on my childhood. Sometimes, the dialogue felt like a psychic reading, as he seemed to know more about me than I did.
And — always — he related the context and the parameters of what we discussed to the existence of angels.
I eventually moved from feeling “embarrassed” by the direct way he lectured about this topic to warming to the possibilities. The more I shared, and the more he explained to me, the more I felt something click into place that made more sense than I might have initially wanted to admit.
I began to feel lighter, intrigued, even relieved that there were things that had never made sense to me before that suddenly had this magical, retroactive filter through which I could reconsider them.
Viewed through the prism of Jesse’s beliefs, the very things that I had uncomfortably ignored and repressed because they were disturbing or confusing began to have a purpose, a cohesion that would at least make sense in the realm of Stories.
Skeletons in my closet, of which I was mostly ashamed, were recast as powerful, meaningful, benevolent characters. The ingredients of my -- air-quotes — “mental illness” became the components of a mystical narrative where I was a hero, not a victim.
(It’s very much the current model for my client readings — to reinterpret a person’s Story such that the seemingly random threads emerge as a pattern in a tapestry; the painful pieces become gifts of the spirit; the tragedies become tests of the will; the failures become the acquisition of wisdom… Any life story can be willfully romanced through an intentional shift in perspective.)
Much of what Jesse shared about angelic entities was biblically arcane to the point of being obtuse: stuff like The Book of Enoch who was essentially abducted by ancient aliens (angels) and later returned to record the names we historically know them by; and archaic categorizations of the angelic hierarchies — the Four Choirs, and the subset phyla (species) of angelics like Supernals, Celestials, Illuminations, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers… and those of the Orders of the Fourth Choir who are the most likely to closely interact with humanity — Principalities, Archangels, (plain old) Angels.
Among the “lowest” order were the personal guardian angels who work with each of us, usually in pairs: our Ashers and Silver Cord Technicians.
(Technicians is my word. I don’t remember what he called it. I obviously had to go back and research all those terms, after the fact…I don’t have that kind of recall.)
Recently, one of the students I’m mentoring through the Automatic Intuition Program told me that she believed one of her spirit guides had shown up, unannounced, on her doorstep one day. An unusually small woman who claimed to have a “message” and was invited in. After a conversation in which she made predictions for this student concerning her future life purpose, she left and was never seen or heard from again.
I didn’t say so at the time, but I wondered that this might not technically be an entity of a much higher vibration than a guide. I doubt the ability of a spirit guide (which I classify as a formerly human soul) to manifest a corporeal body — to assume living form. But of course it depends on whether or not anyone else witnessed this little woman — was my student the only person to see, hear, and interact with her? If so, then I suppose it may well have been a spirit guide in full-body apparition, not unlike a ghost; or else she was able to be perceived by interior psychic senses.
Jesse suggested that many of the beings we might perceive as brief, full-body apparitions with very limited interaction — and assume to be ghosts or shadows or angels — might actually be astral travelers: real, living, flesh-and-blood human beings, asleep in some other part of the world whose souls leave their bodies and wander around. This might explain why so many of the women we see depicted in artwork about this often seem to be wearing nightgowns, are unaware of their surroundings, and are unresponsive, like sleepwalkers.
While many spirit entities of all types are most commonly perceived by intuitively sensitive people, who experience them regularly or intermittently through the subtler psychic senses, Jesse told me that there are beings who literally manifest physical bodies that all of us — absolutely anyone — can see and interact with.
It takes enormous power and ability to assume a corporeal form, even temporarily, and it’s unlikely that ghosts, earthbound spirits, or dis-incarnate human souls acting in the roles of guides, could pull this off.
Beyond just being around us everywhere in some “ethereal” way or in some “other dimension,” corporeal angels walk around among us. Even though we see them and speak to them, we mostly dismiss them as random strangers; it may never occur to us that they're not human.
Roles of Corporeal Angels
Jesse said that angels who take the physical form of human strangers commonly appear to be doctors, nurses, EMT’s, police officers, firefighters. You may have brief and meaningful interactions with people in these roles who you never see again, and others of their kind can’t account for them and will likely not know who you’re talking about if you ask about them.
Many corporeal angels will assume the guise of homeless people. Jesse pointed out that many panhandlers are quite aware of this lore, regardless of their personal beliefs, and may strategically exploit the perception for their own ends. He advised that the best means of discernment is simply your gut — that you know or at least suspect on an intuitive level; their vibration is usually quite high, the feeling that you get in their presence should never be threatening, though it could be uncomfortable or intense.
Here are Some of the Qualities that Might “Give Away” the Incarnated Angel:
they seem “rooted” to a particular spot — able to interact with you, although they may remain standing or seated in one place
or they move around normally, but they're limited to a specific physical location or time
their clothing may be “anachronistic” — the style of the clothing is oddly out of fashion, or appears “too new,” without normal wear and tear
their clothing may appear unusually put together or hastily chosen
there’s an anonymous quality to their overall appearance — they blend easily into crowds
they may be unusually tall or the opposite, extremely diminutive in size
they may appear to be of an indeterminate age — whether they are young or old, it seems almost impossible to guess
they are “plainly beautiful” in an unremarkable way that has more to do with “newness” than the handsomeness of their features — “beautiful” in the way that all infant creatures are beautiful; even though their features are not interesting or necessarily sexually attractive, their skin is often colorless or without variation or blemish
their smell may be unusually strong or noticeable; pleasant but pervasive
they speak without recognizable accent or dialect
they are emotionally even-keel or undemonstrative in their expression — perhaps even “robot like” even though other people may be able to see them as well as you can, they have no known connection or relationship to anyone else
you feel their presence before you notice them; they are always aware of you first; by the time you make eye contact you realize that they have already been staring at you
And there can be some Significance to Their Names
They are not quick to introduce themselves or to volunteer their names; if you ask, they will provide you with a single first name.
The names they claim will often be of recognizable significance to you — a name that you particularly like; that you have known many people to share; that appears often in your family; one that corresponds with a figure of importance to you.
Even when their names don’t seem to be coincidental or meaningful, they nevertheless correspond to some pattern. (Have you noticed the commonality among the names of the characters I have shared in these memoirs, not to mention the names of some of my guides that I’ve talked about before? They all have J-name. Names that start with the letter J: Joanna, Julie, James … John…..Jesse.
Although it is a very simple pattern, it’s an unyielding constant.
More important than the “type” of entity or the details of their physical appearance are the roles they play or the circumstances in which they may interact with the living in a corporeal form.
Circumstances Where Angels Tend to Intervene
Miracles
Transition periods like birth and death
Physical Danger
Direction Regarding Life Path and Purpose
assistance while Traveling
I specifically recall that “while traveling” was the last thing that Jesse mentioned; combined with the list of odd physical attributes, it was The Trigger that finally made me say “Okay — wait a minute…”
This is how and why this series of memories I’ve been sharing with you connects. Before that day, I had never related to another person the mystery of the stranger who had followed me from London to Paris to Amsterdam. I believe it had confounded me and defied logical explanation for so long — and to such a degree that I feared speaking about it would only make me sound paranoid.
I had uncomfortably and successfully semi-forgotten it. Tucked it away with no expectation of ever understanding how it could be…
“Why now?” I asked Jesse, after he pronounced his judgment that my experience in Europe was a perfect example of what he alluded to as evidence of Their existence. “Why am I just becoming aware of this, here and now, at this point?”
He said “At whatever point in time, your awareness can change in all directions — backwards into the past, forward into the future. You’ve definitely — admittedly — been wandering around in the woods in the dark, purposefully hiding. Maybe now you’ve stumbled upon a path that leads Somewhere you should go.”
(Jesse’s speeches tended to be spiked with these Yoda-like kind of answers.)
“So, what do I do with that?” I asked.
He said “Reconsider… Everything…”
And then he said something to me that I would hear repeated, from a variety of sources, in remarkably similar wording and form, over the next few years — I refer to it as The Ultimatum from My Guides:
He asked me “Why would you keep what you believe to yourself?”
I wish I could say that meeting Jesse set me on a clearly defined, purposeful, peaceful path out of those proverbial woods I was wandering in.
“Reconsidering Everything” was not a pretty process — it was not all “hugs and angel wings” — the Universe had already stripped me of so many basic structures in my life, and then it sent a Wrecking Ball through my world, and deconstructed my belief system and my understanding of reality.
Although my personal paranormal experiences certainly increased a hundred-fold, the next few years was more like a tornado tearing through those woods, and if I’d ever feared that I might lose my mind… Well, I finally did. I lost it. Remember my Origin Story, episode one?
It took me about three or four years to crawl up and out to a place of lucidity and control that has allowed me to produce the writing on my site and to begin counseling others and providing readings.
That last day with Jesse, after he challenged me regarding my reasons to continue in secrecy, he did something that was completely out of character with the relaxed, timeless nature of the routine we’d established, or the synchronicity of my comings and goings — he suddenly announced that he had to go.
(Which I translated as a polite way of saying it was time for me to go.)
He was urgent, fixed, and final in showing me out the door; it felt like he had heard a silent alarm go off and knew my car was about to turn back into a pumpkin.
From the small back porch near his driveway, Jesse watched me throw my bag into the trunk. Before I sat down in the driver’s seat, I took my last chance to speak to him over the hood of the car:
I said “You know, don’t think that I’m not unaware that, if everything you claim is true, you are highly suspect. You meet more of the criteria than Stalker John did. If anyone I’ve ever met is One of Them, you must be.”
He gave me a grin and a little shrug — not a confirmation, but certainly not a denial.
I never saw him again.
About a month later, when I had finally landed a job and relocated, I wanted to at least talk to him and let him know how everything had worked out. But when I called his pager, I received a wrong number message.
Although I never ran into him again, there were three occasions when I discovered books mysteriously left for me — one for each of the places where I lived between 2003 and 2006: Messages from Mother Mary a book called Quantum Spirituality which I cannot seem to find on Amazon and Conscious Evolution (the book by Barbara Marx Hubbard that Jesse had been reading when I first met him).
Not only did Jesse disappear on me — even his home vanished.
The few times that I drove by the small white house right after moving to Atlanta, I saw a realtor’s For Sale sign by the mailbox and it looked emptier than ever. Whenever I found myself on that street, I would slow down as I passed the house, looking for signs of occupancy. On one occasion, about a year later, during a particularly rough patch of difficult psychological transition, I actually went there with every intention and hope of stopping and visiting him again.
I carefully tracked the landmark speed bumps — just past the last bump before you get to the traffic light — and I pulled into the driveway.
Before me was a green house, and, more disorienting, the driveway and the sidewalk were on the wrong side of the house. I got out and looked to the neighbors on either side — it had to be one of those; I only could’ve missed it by one, in either direction…
The house simply was not there.
As if it existed according to a magical law of physics like Platform 9 and 3/4 where you catch the Hogwarts Express, or the safe house in The Order of the Phoenix that can slide into and out of a crack in space-time…
Over the next couple of years, I scoured that street, expecting to locate it at last and realize my previous error, even if Jesse wouldn’t be found there.
When I eventually moved back to Tennessee in 2006, the last thing I did on my way out of town, my car packed to the roof with my belongings, was take one final slow (fruitless) creep down Woodland Hills at that last speed bump.
And telling you this story is the closest I’ve come to finding it again — or making it “real."
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BEFORE I LET YOU GO
I promised to leave you a message in answer to a concern or question you may have.
So take a moment to think about that—hold it in your mind or speak it out loud—I’ll pause for just a few seconds….right…NOW
1…2…3
MESSAGE
It looks like someone may be trying to hide their real intentions from you. Maybe even lying to you.
But consider also you could be lying to yourself. In some kind of denial.
Notice the presence of Owls. Those are signs from your guardians that deception is taking place, but that you are protected from it when you ask to see the truth.
The owl is a totem of wisdom and the ability to see through bullshit.
I'LL TALK TO YOU LATER