Jump Girl

by Salicrow

  “Can’t we just turn the volume down a bit? Maybe push the voices to the back of my mind?”

  This is your soul’s path, Peter said. You cannot leave it on the back burner. It is your life’s work, the work you have come in to do, and you will adjust. It is not an experience; it is a transformation into who you are meant to be.

  As we drove to the airport, spirits were still talking to me constantly. I was still seeing other lifetimes when I closed my eyes, and my body was occasionally overcome with kundalini. I held myself together as we entered the airport, hyperaware of all the spirits filling in the spaces in between. Some stood close by their loved ones, trying to get their attention, while others wandered about, much like the travelers who were preparing to board planes. I had learned already to phase them out—to see them but not look at them. Looking meant purposely engaging with them. To look meant I acknowledged them, and this always resulted in them wanting to talk to me. Adam kept them away for the most part, and I was able to see them as no different from the other people milling about the airport.

  While boarding the plane, I focused on the fact that I was opening to a gift that was so much more extraordinary than I had ever imagined. I tried to remind myself that it was my birthright. I was being handed the knowledge of who I was, the cumulative knowledge of lifetimes. All of me, the complete essence of my being, was unfolding for me in this lifetime.

  As the doors to the plane were sealed, I closed my eyes and imagined a white light starting in the middle of my chest, my heart chakra. As I breathed deep and steady, the light moved outward until it surrounded the whole plane. In that light, I programmed the energy of love, peace, kindness, and protection. I opened my eyes, knowing that my flight was safe. Now I repeat this exercise every time I get on a plane. It flows out of me like water. It’s something natural that leaves me with a feeling of safety and contentment.

  Halfway through my flight, I began to pray. This time I sidestepped the spirits I had been talking to and went straight to the source. I reached out to the Creator, the collective unconscious, the gods and goddesses. I believe that all gods and goddesses and their names are separate, yet one. To me God is fluid, ever changing, and complete. I am a part of God, and so is everything around me, all of existence. With this belief, I reached out to the powers that be and begged for a reprieve: I need a break. I need to be normal. I need the volume turned down so I can think. I spent more than half of the flight in prayer. When I got off the plane, my mind was quiet.

  It remained quiet for most of my vacation. I would occasionally hear from Peter, and Adam was always there, but they did not seek me out in conversation. I felt normal, but I also felt spacious, as if my mind was vast. It felt like the aftereffects of taking mild hallucinogens. Colors were vivid, sound was clear, and my sense of smell was alert.

  For about a month, I had little contact with spirit. I could still perceive them and occasionally spoke to them, but it was nothing like the mind-altering experiences that had constituted my winter. My abilities were still heightened in comparison to what they had been before November, but they were much less than what they could be or what they had so recently been.

  I now found myself pleading for my acuity to return. I believed I could now handle it.

  At the end of a long month, Peter spoke to me. He said, You needed to want it. It was not enough to have it; you needed to want your gifts, or you would never use them for others. You are a stubborn person, one who will refuse to play unless it is by your own desires. By turning down the volume and withholding our conversations, we were simply asking you to choose.

  I did choose. I chose the life I am now living. I chose to be a communicator, channeling messages from the dead to the living. I chose to walk between worlds.

  I needed that quiet time when the voices of the dead were soft. I needed to make the decision for myself. Peter was right. I am strong-willed and a bit rebellious; I carry the genetic line of pirates, warriors, and gypsies. My family is filled with those who believe rules are only guidelines and that the real treasures lie in the wild places.

  Part 7

  The Voice of Spirit

  52

  The Long Road to Closure

  I never really had to try to establish myself as a medium. I started out by doing séances—spirit communication in a small-group setting. Soon one séance led to another as people told their friends and families of their experience with me. I didn’t record sessions for people, but I allowed them to record me if they wanted to. Smartphones and handheld recorders shared my work with many. I have always felt this was helpful to the healing process because it allowed those who were unsure about their beliefs in the afterlife and spirit communication to listen in privacy.

  I had never listened to a recording of myself doing spirit communication because I felt that these recordings were the property of the people whose séances I had facilitated. But a few weeks ago my father—who passed four years ago—told me he had some things to tell me and he thought I should record them so I could share them with my sisters.

  I let Dad speak directly through me, saying his words as I heard them in my head. This type of communication varies from the style I use with the public. When I speak to people as a medium, I first listen to the sentence completely in my head and then repeat it as accurately as I can. This allows me to better gauge what the spirit means, judging both from their words and from the images they project when they can’t find language. When speaking with my own dead, however, I know what they mean because they’re not strangers to me.

  My dad spoke a lot about things he had learned, things he regretted. Most of it was stuff he had spoken of before his death, as he had been diligently working on soul work during the last few years of his life; but there were some surprises, things he had discovered that he’d never mentioned while he was alive.

  One of the most noteworthy revelations had to do with pride. He had grown up dirt poor. He and his brothers had been raised by their grandmother, who made her living selling worms and speaking to the dead. Pride was important to him; it was what kept his head high when he walked through life. When we were kids, he constantly told us, “You’re a Brown. That means you’re better than everybody else.” It was a simple statement, but he repeated it over and over again like a mantra.

  Listening to my father speak through me, I was surprised when he said it was his pride that had cost him his eye. He said that if he had just waited to be drafted into the army, he would never have lost his eye. It was his pride that told him he was better than the army and should enlist in the Marine Corps.

  Joining the marines meant placing himself on the front line. He took pride in being a marine and a bad-ass. Even in his later, high-mileage years, he was proud of his service and how dangerous it was. It was only in death that he was able to see how his pride had caused him such hardship.

  He went on to speak of all he had learned and how he had come to accept the consequences of his actions in life. He spoke of the healing he had received and how death had given him a new perspective.

  When we die and enter the world of spirit, the volume of our emotions is turned down, much like turning down the volume on a stereo, allowing us to process the events of our life with a more analytical eye. We review our life and its events with a deeper clarity because we’re not constantly being bombarded by the emotional perspective of our old traumas. We’re more capable of seeing the reasoning behind decisions, both our decisions and those of others.

  When a spirit comes into contact with a medium, the spirit’s emotions are turned back up again. Things feel more vivid as the spirit is more strongly connected to the world of the living. If the spirit is that of someone whose emotions overwhelmed them in life or of someone who experienced great tragedy or fear in death, they will most likely experience an increase in emotions that makes the contact unpleasant at best.

  Another thing that death gives us is the ability to check in on others. This gives us a more accurate vie
w of circumstances and of the way people feel about us. In life, everything is seen through the lens of past experiences. If we were made fun of at the school dance, there is a good chance that our emotions will pop up the next time a dance comes around. We go to the dance expecting it to be traumatic.

  In death we do not hold onto emotional traumas with such a tight grip. We are able to witness circumstances of our life as if they were happening to someone other than us—which, in truth, they are. When the emotions are calmer, the perspective is broader.

  My visitation with my father reminded me that for many people the wounds of life are too great for them to understand and reason out while alive, and their real healing must wait until they have crossed into spirit. Understanding this has brought me to a better understanding of the decisions people make in life. I now know that some people’s emotional burdens are simply too heavy, and they must wait for death to become unburdened. Look at some of the events happening today in the world at large—beheadings, drownings, shootings, terror, exile—and you have a glimmer of how the spiritual transition from life to death helps us elucidate our experiences. These things are far too intense to be understood or cleared while they are happening. Many of us go through life with the blinders of our past wounding, showing us a narrow view of the greater reality.

  Over the years I have borne witness as families cried while listening to the spirits of their beloved dead talk of the lessons they had learned in life and death. I have seen people forgive each other for wounds that were carried to the grave, spirits and living alike. The lessons of death are true and profound.

  I always tell people I have a different view of death from most people. Being in constant communication with the dead teaches me that death is not the ending; it’s just a continuation in another form. We continue to work on the lessons of life, particularly with living family to whom we remain emotionally connected.

  It is never too late for closure, although for some that road is long and passes through many veils. The dead ultimately will go out of their way to let the ones they have disappointed, hurt, or neglected know that they are sorry, for they are now aware of the consequences of their actions.

  In life we can expand our view through meditation, prayer, and healing work, but even for some serious practitioners the blinders are on too tight and vision is still too limited. We can take heart in knowing that death provides an expanded view. We are able to see clearly through the eyes of spirit where we went wrong and what we could have done differently. The road of the soul is long and winding, and often our lessons travel with us from lifetime to lifetime. Some lessons must be learned when we are between lives, when our soul is not being bombarded by the visceral experience of life.

  I passed the recording of my father onto my sisters, who both listened in turn. We all agreed that the pride that led him to the Marine Corps caused him to be blinded to other things in life.

  53

  The Language of Spirit

  One of the things I’ve learned in my years of spirit work is that the dead do not all communicate in the same way. Some communicate so clearly that it’s like having a conversation with a living person. I hear their words in my mind and pick up on the nuances of their personality from the way they put their sentences together. Others hardly say a thing, simply showing me images and occasionally throwing out a word or two. Still others communicate in a layered fashion, spreading scent, sound, imagery, and knowing.

  It’s always a crapshoot; I don’t know how someone will communicate until they do. What I do know is that how they communicate as a dead person tells me a lot about what kind of person they were in life. I know who was gregarious and who was meek. I know who said little but delivered much when they did; who talked with their hands while smoking cigarette after cigarette. The ways in which the dead choose to communicate are as complex as those of the living.

  I should say that not all mediums experience spirit the same way. Messages can be projected through all of our senses. I experience them that way: I see, hear, feel, and smell spirits, in addition to receiving visual images from them through my third eye, like watching video clips in my mind. Most mediums are skilled in one or two methods of communication. The number of ways one can receive messages does not determine how good they will be at it. Someone gifted solely with the ability to hear may be fantastic at it and might receive detailed conversations.

  As I did more séances, I began to notice that introverted spirits were more likely to communicate through imagery, not so much in externally visible images shown to me outside my mind but rather in scenes playing out on the video screen of my third eye. An introvert needs time to respond in words, not because they’re slow or ignoring us but because they need time to find the words for the images and emotions that fill their mind. Introverts tended to show me detailed images of their homes, what they looked like at thirty-five, their favorite car, buildings, places, jewelry, and other artifacts and amulets.

  The images they showed me came from my mind and thus could not be exact duplicates of the memories they held. It was as if I had a document folder in my mind that they could search through rapidly for pictures that were similar to the memories they held. Then my description of the images allowed the living to know who and what I was talking about.

  The similarities between my descriptions and the spirit’s reality are often remarkable but not exact. This is because of the way I communicate. I struggle with seeing things I’ve never seen before, and I find it easier to look at something at least similar.

  Introverts are also more likely to leaven their interaction with emotion. Their reserved nature is detail oriented and emotionally vivid, and these qualities carry through in their communication. When communicating with spirits who were introverted in life, I know exactly how they felt about something. I know how deeply they loved and where their sadness resided.

  Extroverts are more likely to talk or to use a combination of talking, imagery, and strong body language. I often recognize the facial expressions, body posture, and hand gestures of extroverts. They love to tell stories, and I often have to slow them down because they talk so fast that they get ahead of themselves.

  I have incorporated these teachings of spirit into my divination work as well. When someone comes for to me for a reading about their life and I see that an introverted person is involved in their dilemma, I began advising them to say what is bothering them and then to give the introverted person time to think about it before discussing it together. People were able to understand that when their partner said, “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” and “It’s up to you” when asked for a spontaneous answer to a deep question, it was often because they had not yet processed the thought from emotion to words.

  People who were open to metaphysical thought and belief when alive are often better at communicating when dead than people who lacked such beliefs. Interestingly, the nature of one’s religious belief is less important than the strength of the belief. People with strong religious beliefs are often quite good at communicating, even when their religion may not have approved of such things. There is an understanding that comes with crossing over. They’re able to see that spirit communication is not unholy, but a means of healing. We’re not conjuring up evil spirits to plague our enemies; we’re helping people find closure when they have been separated by the veil of death. They understand why they are not in heaven (or hell) but instead in a purgatory of resolution.

  I have had many, many Catholic grandmothers—the sort who had holy-water dispensers and statues of Mary in the bedroom—come through in spirit to speak to those they have left behind.

  Spirits often use symbolism to communicate. The whole process is woven like a tapestry, with each dialogue creating its own unique pattern. Some spirits go heavy on the symbolism; some stand in front of me or pull up a seat, acting as if they were among the living. Some play music in the background, and others waft their favorite perfume under my nose to make sure I recognize
their scent. Their scents are recognizable to those who love them. They can smell like doughnuts, cigarettes, the lilac bush in their yard, perfume, hair spray, or the inside of a barn. The sense of smell is often the easiest way for them to communicate with the ones they love. Often people will report smelling cigarettes in their house even though no one in the house smokes, or the smell of baking when the kitchen hasn’t been used all day.

  When I first got back in contact with my father after our years of separation, he told me he was starting to smell like Grammy Brown. He said, “I don’t know what it is, but sometimes I get into my truck, and I swear I smell just like Gram.”

  I laughed and said, “You don’t smell like Gram, Dad. You are smelling Gram.”

  It is not overly difficult for a spirit to project their image into our world, but it’s not easy for most of us to see that image, for reasons I’ve already stated. It’s important to remember that spirits live in another dimension. When we stare directly at them, we look through them. A medium is simply a conduit, allowing the spirit world to gain access to energy needed for contact. We are all mediums to a certain degree—some people more than others.

  54

  Psychic Amnesia

  Gallery spirit communication is a session of spirit communication done for large groups, usually thirty or more people. Guests come to a spirit gallery knowing that because of the size of the gathering, there is no guarantee that they will receive a personal message. Spirit galleries are more difficult to perform than one-on-one communication or small-group séances. There are many spirits in the room, and I not only have to communicate with them; I also have to pick who will be allowed to speak. It’s impossible for me to get messages through to everyone.