Guided By Angels: There Are No Goodbyes, My Tour of the Spirit World. Paddy McMahon

before the money was due. There was still no hope of postponing the date of payment, so what were they going to do? Somewhat less confidently I told her that the message I was getting was that there was no need to worry.

      Less than two weeks later I heard from her again. On the date that the debt was due to be paid, her husband received a completely unexpected refund of income tax, which was just enough to clear the debt. Once again, faith in the guides was justified.

      Another woman told me about the way of working with her guides that she had developed. Whenever she felt that she needed help with a problem or a decision – or, indeed, anything – she wrote a note of thanks to her guides for the expected help and put it in a box. Then she followed her feelings, always with positive results.

      This woman’s story reminded me that I have so often forgotten to say thanks throughout my life. I don’t mean just to guides, or to God/unconditional love, but for the wonder of life and all the beauty it offers daily in all sorts of ways. I thoughtlessly take so much for granted. Feeling and expressing gratitude create an expansive vibration that spreads all around us.

      Occasionally in my talks I used the story of the fifth Labour of Hercules to reinforce my belief in the power of handing over apparently intractable problems to guides.

      Hercules was tasked by King Augeas to clean out his stables, commonly known as the Augean stables, in a single day. I don’t know how many stables there were, but I imagine that there were a lot of them – enough, anyway, to make it obvious that it would be impossible for him to clean out the accumulation of manure and filth in them in the allotted time, and with the tools available to him. Then he had an inspiration, which he followed. He went up to the top of a hill overlooking the stables and he found that there was a river running nearby. He went back down to the stables and knocked holes in the walls. Then he went up the hill again and managed to divert water from the river down the hill. The water gathered force as it flowed down the hill and in through the holes of the walls of the stables, sweeping clear all in front of it.

      The story doesn’t say what happened to the holes in the walls. Presumably he filled them up again! What it does tell us is that as notoriously strong as Hercules was, he could not do the job by himself. To me, the river in the story symbolises the universal flow of help that’s available to us, which we can access ourselves or, ideally, through our guides, whenever we feel the need to do so.

      Placing trust

      These stories provide simple yet profound examples of how the spiritual and the material merge – how the material can be used as an aid to spiritual growth, and how, if we allow ourselves to trust enough, a lot of the hassle can be taken out of living and participating in the physical world. It’s easy enough to trust, say, 50 or 80 per cent, but 100 per cent is a hard nut to crack. Yet, that’s what is required. The universe doesn’t know half measures. This may seem like an intimidating prospect, but we’re assured that our guides always help us, no matter how doubting we may be. In our lack of trust, though, we deny ourselves the wonder of seeing things happen in often miraculous ways.

      In our physical world, nothing exists in material form unless we do things. It’s understandable then that we tend to see our image of ourselves by what we do – in other words going to the being from the doing. (That may be more true of men than of women.) In reality, what’s important is how we are, in our being, when we do whatever it is that we do. The doing flows from the being. How we are is the important thing.

      Working with guides has been a central feature in my life for many years, and I have found the handing-over process tremendously effective in making my life simpler and more rewarding. I don’t want to pretend that I don’t experience hassle, or get stressed about things, but that doesn’t happen much. When it does, I remind myself to follow my usual practice.

      I have been trying to explain as best I can the difference between the human and spirit ways of approaching things, and it is often difficult to get it across – particularly in the context of working with guides. Our conditioning as human beings leads us to expect that there are techniques that can be packaged and applied to every conceivable situation. In my experience I have never come across any methodology that will guarantee effective direct communication with guides in a way that can apply to everybody without exception. That’s why I haven’t tried to bring together into one chapter the whole area of communication with guides. Instead, I have let it run like a stream through the book, providing suggestions and examples from which people may find a way or ways that suit them.