Open Writing

The day before the aeroplanes flew into the World Trade Center was my son's eighth birthday and I was busy concentrating on preparations for his upcoming party. It should have been a happy time but for some unfathomable reason I was carrying around a heavy sense of imminent dread. This sensation was troubling me so much that when a friend remarked, "Lovely day, isn't it?" I remember replying, "Yes, it's almost too perfect" and then wondering, straight away, what had possessed me to answer in such an uncharacteristically pessimistic fashion.

The next day I sat on the sofa watching, with shock and disbelief, as the events unfolded on television. Despite being fully engrossed in what I was seeing, I unexpectedly received a buzzing and urgent communication.

"Sandra, John is there - in New York."

Now, John was a young man whom I had known in my single days and last I'd briefly heard of him he was living and working in Japan. I had absolutely no reason to mentally place him anywhere in America, let alone close to the scene of the terrorist attacks. Furthermore, I was happily married and not in the habit of thinking of the whereabouts of other women's husbands. Still, this information had been delivered so strongly that it haunted me for weeks. Eventually I could bear it no more and I sheepishly asked our kindly neighbour, who was a computer enthusiast, if he could please upload the list of those killed on September 11 for me and see if John's name was on there. To my relief, John's name did not appear on the list. Satisfied with this reassurance, I moved on and put the incident behind me.

Back in 2001, we did not have a properly functioning computer ourselves. We owned one, but it was a dial up system and the modem didn't work properly so it was, to all intents and purposes, useless. In those days too, the Internet was in its infancy, social websites such as Facebook and Twitter did not yet exist and not many people were in the habit of surfing, or appearing on, the Internet. But by 2007, when I suddenly recalled the "John in New York" story, I had full and easy access to the Internet and I hastily typed John's name into the Google box. Hey presto! There he was, like me, a little older but essentially the same as I remembered him and underneath his photo was a list of his work history - New York 2001 - he had been working in midtown Manhattan.

This brings me to a question, several questions really, none of which I am sufficiently spiritually advanced to answer myself. Why is it that certain disasters trigger a spiritual communication in me and not others? It obviously has nothing to do with the scale of the disaster. The Morecambe Bay helicopter crash involved only seven people whilst the Twin Towers involved thousands. When the Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster struck in 2004, killing over 200,000 people, I remained blissfully unaware of it, spending most of the day playing marbles and backyard cricket with my son. The location of the disaster also seems to have no role in all of this. When the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized, I was geographically fairly close by, in England, but at the time of the Morecambe Bay helicopter crash I was living over 17,000kms away in Australia.

Why is it that certain people, who have passed over, come through with messages for me and not others? To a large extent, it has to do with love but it does not necessarily seem to be a proportional fit. For example, my Aunt Hazel, who is undoubtedly my dominant communicating spirit, was very kind to me and cared for me when she was alive but, because she lived in England and I lived in South Africa, we seldom saw each other. In reality, I was far closer to several others who have passed over and yet they have never come through in a reading, nor do I ever have a sense of their presence near me. I feel sure that they are safely in the afterlife but they don't seem to have the strength or ability to "break through". I have read that it takes time for a spirit to settle into the afterlife and some mediums recommend waiting for at least a year after someone's death before trying to communicate with them. I have also read that there are several levels of spiritual knowledge and competence and perhaps it is only those who have reached the higher levels who have the skill to lower their vibrations sufficiently to communicate with us humans?

Spirituality also seems to play a part. Certainly Aunt Hazel was a regular church attendee and helper. Pops, when he was alive, had many a conversation with me on spirituality and warned me off ever dabbling with the Ouija board, as he'd had an alarming experience with one. But then again, I have had several people come through who can only be described as larrikin atheists. That, at least, was the persona they presented whilst they were alive. Perhaps, underneath, they were quietly in touch with their spirituality.

Something I can vouch for is that a spirit's personality does not change. If someone was fairly intense in this life then they tend to come through in a fairly serious manner. Equally, if they had a sense of humour when you knew them then they are likely to come through and make you laugh and smile.

My friend Cynthia (departed this earth 1999) managed to come up with a masterful example of this phenomenon ---