“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

~Henry Adams

An important group of people you will meet in spirit stand apart from the others not so much by who they are as by what they do.  These might be considered your teachers or higher spiritual guides.  You may have known them in this life (or another), but they can also be souls with whom you have had little or no previous relationship whatsoever.  They are attracted to you through the light that you express into the spirit world, the light that reflects the purposes you hold and the activities you are pursuing.  For instance, if you want to compose music, your light (or your aura) will reflect that by its energy and colors, acting as a sign to other souls and as an invitation for those who are interested in joining you in your work.  (Carlos Santana told Rolling Stone Magazine that the inspiration for his comeback hit album was received in a message from his spirit guide.  Carlos also received a message from critics and listeners through his multi-platinum CD sales and eleven Grammy nominations.)

Though a relationship with your own soul may be the most important one to develop in the eternal world, knowing your spirit guides can bring you great assistance in understanding your personal and eternal directives.

When you are in step with your spirit and when you have help from your guides, you might just end up changing the face of history.

One of the people whose co-creation with spirit changed history did it through a  book.  In its first year it sold over 300,000 copies in the United States alone — 3,000 of them on its first day.  (That’s a mountain of books, a century and a half before Oprah!)  It was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe — a white woman who had never seen a plantation slave and had never even been to the south.  Nonetheless, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the most widely read and influential books not only of its time, but in all of this country’s history.  Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin are extraordinary in two ways:

• Her book was one of catalysts for the war between the states. (When she met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he took her hand and asked, “Is this the little woman who made this great war?”)
• Though Harriet Beecher Stowe was the author of record, she says she didn’t write it!

“I did not write that book,” she said.  “I only put down what I saw…  It all came before me in visions, one after another…”  When asked whether she at least arranged the plot,  she said that the events, the characters, and even the fates of those who would live or  die “arose before her” without her control and, in some cases, such as the death of Eva, against her wishes.  It was someone else who had designed the story and set the scene.  Because Harriet Beecher Stowe had the courage and the confidence to trust her “otherworldly” guidance, she helped to change the course of slavery to freedom.

Harriet Beecher Stowe did not know who was working with her from the spirit world, but she allowed herself to embrace the directive that lay before her.  You, too, can be assured that those who work with you in spirit (even if you have never known them before) are very much in keeping with your directives, because they are responding to your light as a reflection of their own.  It is not unlike finding a teacher or collaborator to work with you in the physical world. Your spirit teachers wills stay with you as long as both of you are growing and benefiting from this very intimate sharing.  They may leave once your interests no longer coincide, or if other purposes or teachers come to take you further.  Or you might create a relationship with them that takes you to new interests together.

The point is that these teachers don’t necessarily have to have a history with you as long as they have a purpose with you.  It could be creative, spiritual, personal, or emotional.  Regardless of the types of interests you share with these beings, embrace the opportunity to let them help you to a higher realization of your goals and dreams.

THE DIVINE

“There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was there before the Elements and owes no homage unto the sun.”

~Thomas Browne

The next level of spirit life, if indeed the world of spirit can be pigeonholed into levels, is that of the divine.  It includes that identity that you know as God, whether that God is Christ, Allah, Emanuel, or Ra.  It also embraces the identity that is you at the point of absolute communion with the divine and, indeed, in union with all that is in any world — physical and nonphysical.  Our souls or spirit selves already exist and have existed at this plane of life eternally.  Without this spark of divinity in each of us, we would cease to be.  No matter what our lives are in the physical world, for each of us there is a spirit whose home, whose light, whose very life is sourced within the divine.

God — whoever you feel God to be — is the one Spirit who can take you to your greatest truth and to your most unutterable realization of joy.  If you seek no other spirit relationship, seek at least this one.  It is here, in this relationship, that you discover wisdom, absolute confidence and fearlessness, and a catch-your-breath beauty that you will never find in any physical world experience.

I love the story about the old preacher, Henry Ven, who relished every step of his life in his relationship to God.  As he lay, an old man, sick and dying, he asked his doctor feebly when he would be going to “his Father.”  When the doctor indicated that it would be very soon, there was an immediate change in his demeanor.  He became so jubilant at the prospect of meeting his Divine Father that he actually got better for two more weeks!  For Henry, and for all of us, knowing the spirit of God in our lives makes divinity a presence that can be truly felt in our experience NOW.  (And now is forever.)

(Excerpted from Life With Spirit by Sharon Anne Klinger, All rights reserved.)