I was very shaken. If the takings from the shop had been stolen by that motorcyclist my business would probably have gone bust. I needed the Mother’s Day income to make up for lean periods in the rest of the year. I’m convinced it was my mother’s voice that had made me lock the door, but it was two years since my mum had died so how was that possible?
Anne came to see me for a reading and I explained to her that the incident had happened so that she could learn that her mother is still taking care of her. She said she couldn’t believe that the voice was quite so clear, almost as though her mum was sitting in the passenger seat of the car. She told me that from now on she is always going to lock the car doors when she drives her takings to the bank.
Of course, not all bad things can be prevented. The reason that theft was prevented is because it wasn’t part of Anne’s life plan for her business to go bust. I still see her now and her business is ticking over—not making a fortune but bringing a lot of happiness to her and to all the people who receive her beautiful creations as gifts.
If you hear a loved one’s voice in your head, you may question whether it is real or just your imagination, and sometimes it can be hard to distinguish, but the key question to ask is whether you were thinking about that person, or something to do with them, at the time. If you weren’t, and the voice just came out of nowhere, it is likely to be a message from the spirit world.
Trekking in the Blue Mountains
We all have a time at which we are ordained to die, according to a blueprint that was set down before we came into this life. So, for example, one person might be ordained to die of cancer at the age of eighty-three while another might be supposed to go in a car accident at the age of twenty.
It’s a strange concept to get your head around that the time of your death is pre-ordained. All of us have lived many different lifetimes and with each one, we have to learn specific lessons in order for our souls to evolve. You will come back into a circumstance that enables you to learn the specific lesson you need to learn next, and your life will be as long as it needs to be for that purpose. Maybe you need to learn compassion for others, or not to place such a high value on material possessions, or how to express your creativity. There are all sorts of lessons to learn.
Guardian angels might intervene if you are straying away from your purpose, or having difficulty overcoming a problem that you need to overcome—or if your life is about to be cut short unexpectedly. Their warnings can help us to avoid dying early—if we only listen to them.
A man I knew received a warning while trekking in Australia’s Blue Mountains, just north of Sydney.
Two friends and I set off on a bush walk well armed with information from the tourist authority about the route we were taking and hazards to avoid on the way. There was even a little leaflet with pictures of dangerous creatures, such as snakes and spiders, we might encounter, but we were reassured by the advice that snakes will do their best to avoid contact with humans. If they hear footsteps approaching, they will slither off down a hole or into the nearest brush. For this reason, you are advised to make as much noise as you can when walking into an overgrown area.
The sandstone mountains have a blueish tinge when viewed from a distance and the walk we were on was quite spectacular. It was a clear, sunny day and we covered about twenty miles before we decided to stop and set up camp for the night in a flattish, sheltered area. We collected some firewood and built a fire then balanced a pot of water on top to make tea. We had brought bread and cheese, cold meat and fruit, but as the light began to fade, the air grew cooler and I was glad of the fire.
We sat drinking our tea, eating our food and chatting about our day. I was about to stand up to walk off behind a tree and relieve myself when I heard my dad’s voice in my head, clear as a bell, saying, ‘Be still!’
I froze, shocked to hear him, because my father had died of cancer the previous year. We’d been very close and, in fact, he’d been the one who introduced me to the joys of trekking in the bush.
At that moment my eye was caught by a slight movement in the grass just inches from my outstretched leg. A brown snake was slithering towards me, so well camouflaged by the dry vegetation that I hadn’t noticed it till that moment. It was too late to jump up and run away because it was within striking distance.
My heart was pounding as I tried to remember the pictures in that tourist leaflet. Was a plain brown snake poisonous? I could feel beads of sweat springing out on my face. My friends were facing in the opposite direction, watching the sunset on the hills and oblivious to my situation. I didn’t dare shout to them, didn’t dare breathe, as the snake lifted its head and started to slither over my bare leg. I suppose it thought it was a log.
My father’s words—‘Be still!’—echoed in my head and I felt amazingly calm, feeling the cool roughness of the snake’s skin against my own.
It was about a metre long, and had probably crossed my leg within thirty seconds but those seconds felt much longer than normal seconds, as though time was suspended. Once past, the snake headed off into the undergrowth without a backward glance.
As soon as I was sure it was well out of the way, I reached into my rucksack to look for the tourist authority leaflet on snakes, and straight away I saw a picture looking exactly like the creature I had just encountered. The text underneath read: ‘The Eastern Brown Snake is the second most venomous snake in the world. They are reluctant to bite but if they do, their venom is highly toxic and can be fatal within two hours. They react to movement so if you come close to one, stay completely still and it will ignore you.’
My father’s advice to be still had possibly saved my life. My mouth was so dry and my throat so tight that it was some time before I could speak to tell my friends what had just happened. But I felt a warm comfort in the knowledge that my dad was still protecting me just as he used to in the past when I was a kid. It was a very spiritual experience.
Missing the Ferry
Sometimes it takes an intervention from more than one guardian angel before the message gets across. A woman called Marjorie told me a story about a narrow escape she and her family experienced while on holiday in March 1987.
My husband and I had taken our two children, aged eight and ten, on a camping holiday in the Netherlands. We’d toured around, stopping at different campsites, and had a lovely time exploring the countryside. On the day we were booked to catch the ferry home, we started to drive towards the port, but I heard a voice in my head saying, ‘There’s plenty of time. No need to rush.’ It sounded like my dead mother’s voice but I’d never had a psychic experience before so I didn’t think anything of it.
‘We’re very early,’ I said to my husband, ‘And there will be nothing to do at the ferry terminal.’ We were passing a town that looked very pretty. ‘Why don’t we stop here, have a look around and a bite to eat and we can get going in an hour’s time?’
He agreed that it would be daft to rush all the way there and have to sit in a concrete ferry terminal for ages, so we parked the car and strolled along the pretty streets of the town, looking in shop windows and admiring the spring flowers in the gardens. We sat down in a café and ordered some food, but the café suddenly got busy and the waiters were very slow bringing our order. My husband was glancing at his watch and beginning to feel stressed by the time we’d finished eating and paid the bill.
We left the café and walked back towards our car, but as we rounded the corner we saw a crowd of people gathered around it. What on earth had happened? As we got closer, we saw that an elderly man was lying on the