If you were raised in a family that practiced a particular religion, you may be wondering about the similarities and differences between religion and spirituality.
Religion is the practice of an organized faith. People who consider themselves to be religious look toward the religious leaders in their faith to help them find solutions to issues and to help them through traumatic situations. If you consider yourself to be religious, it means that you are practicing some or all of the doctrine as established in an organized religion, and the teachings of that religion comprise your faith and belief system.
Spirituality is the practice of observing and pursuing beliefs—on an individual level—without restrictions or regulations of religious dogma or doctrine. Individuals who are spiritual ask for direct guidance from God, their angels, or their own souls when seeking solutions to difficult problems. If you consider yourself to be more spiritual than religious, you do not practice or observe an organized religion. Your beliefs, philosophies, and sensibilities rely heavily upon your inner voice, emotional feelings, and, very likely, angelic guidance about what is right for you.
Although the intent of this book is to spiritually widen your horizons about the true nature of the universe, let me also state that in no way am I suggesting you discount or dismiss any religious philosophy that you now embrace, especially if those beliefs are supporting you in building and maintaining a fulfilling quality of life.
Religious beliefs and traditions may be a very uplifting, comforting resource during difficult or traumatic periods, and I want to recognize the legions of pious clergy members who work tirelessly to provide solace to their fellow man.
At the same time, I find it confounding when I hear people who are religiously devout admit to having a great fear of death because they remain anxious and uncertain about what fate will await them when their physical body expires. I have come to believe that many religions are responsible for creating and perpetuating the fear and insecurity of death and the afterlife because they provide mixed messages that serve to confuse rather than to enlighten.
How is that confusion possible, when almost all religions fully embrace the philosophy of a heavenly afterlife, as well as the existence of God and angelic beings who guide and protect those on the earthly plane? Why are people so insecure and afraid about what they’ll encounter in the afterlife when almost all organized religions confirm the existence of heaven?
I believe a large part of the confusion stems from religions that threaten the consequences of a dire judgment after death, resulting in banishment to a spiritual no-man’s-land like limbo. Even worse is the idea of going to hell because heaven is a closed club that doesn’t want one of us as a new member.
Of course, there are those people who don’t trust in the existence of God or angels. They don’t subscribe to the afterlife theory at all, believing that once the physical body expires, there is a black void of empty nothingness. If a person truly believes that this life on earth is all there is, or that it might actually be better than what he is going to experience in the afterlife, he certainly doesn’t have much to look forward to, does he?
Reincarnation may be colorfully described as spiritual genealogy. Your existing gifts, talents, and abilities echo not only what you have accomplished and experienced thus far in your current lifetime, but they also reflect the sum total of what you have achieved in all of your previous lives.
Becoming acquainted with your past-life history will promote your willingness to raise the bar when it comes to goal setting, allowing you to expand the quality of life you are able to create. You’ll open doors to a heightened self-awareness and a more realistic assessment of the previously earned inborn talents and abilities that you didn’t know existed.
Aren’t you curious about your own past lifetimes? If you decide to explore your unique past-life history, you’ll be able to discover exactly what you achieved prior to your current lifetime. Past-life experiences contribute to your existing levels of enlightenment because they create the framework for your current talents, abilities, passions, tastes, fears, and foibles.
Your ability to channel also validates the reality of heaven and the existence of its spiritual inhabitants. Channeling is the process of communication that takes place between spiritual beings existing in heaven and human beings existing on the earthly plane.
All the residents of heaven, including God, the network of guardian angels, and your departed loved ones, are spiritual beings. They regularly provide human beings with a wealth of intuitive insight designed to help pave the way for success and fulfillment.
As you become more receptive to spiritual communication, you’ll discover that there are numerous angels working with you to provide assistance and direction. During waking hours, your angels speak to you telepathically, providing intuitive information that sounds like a little voice inside your head. You are very likely to interpret that little voice as your own thoughts. While you’re asleep, angels communicate with you in the form of dreams, which are meant to provide insight into your career, relationships, issues, health, safety, abundance, and even past-life experiences.
Think for a moment about the dreams you’ve had that have been particularly memorable or repetitive. Along with recalling past-life experiences, your dreams bring clarity to what is happening currently in your life and even furnish an awareness of what is to come in the future. It may also prove very comforting for departed friends and family members to maintain a relationship with you by making an appearance in your dreams, often to share some very necessary information that they feel will be spiritually or emotionally constructive.
Guardian angels initiate an open dialogue with us when we arrive on the earthly plane and continue to provide unwavering support throughout our lives, even if we remain unaware of their existence and our inborn ability to communicate with them. You’ll build a more cohesive and tangible relationship with them every time you practice your communication skills. Developing the ability to channel with your angels will dramatically improve your quality of life.
The process of channeling is incredibly simple. While it may sound grandiose to communicate with heavenly beings, it is your birthright as a full-fledged member of the same community. Don’t forget that you, too, are a spiritual being who lives in heaven between each of your earthly lifetimes. You are only here on the earthly plane for a short spiritual pilgrimage to accomplish a number of very specific goals. You are a spiritual being yourself and have guardian angels already assigned to work with you to assist in the accomplishment of your spiritual agenda. Your guardian angels have been providing intuitive information to you since you were an infant. Because this communication has already been occurring, there is no question about your ability to be able to do it.
You have already been channeling from the time of your birth, whether you realize it or not. The ability to continue doing so will remain intact no matter how much you ignore or deny that the process is taking place. With just a little practice, you can develop communication skills that will allow you to have a two-way conversation with your guardian angels or departed loved ones, whenever and wherever you wish. Imagine how life-changing it would be to have immediate access to the wealth of information available from them—as well as from your soul’s memory bank—and how you might use those insights to build far greater success in your life.
“I think immortality is the passing of a soul through many lives … such as are truly lived, used, and learned, help on to the next, each growing richer, happier, and higher, carrying with it only the real memories that have gone before.”
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888; author)
Chapter 2
Spiritual Destiny
ARE YOU AWARE that the