soul – Leslie Sheridan

SWEET DREAMS

In 2014 I self-published my first book, Sweet Dreams, a semi-autobiographical story about the little and not so little synchronicities that began my spiritual journey. I call them synchronicities because they were events that occurred once and while I wasn’t aware of what was happening then, I recalled them later on and knew they were important to my spiritual growth.

Lying awake at night listening to album sides of Meatloaf’s ‘”Bat Out of Hell” as an adolescent in the late 1970s, I wondered what happened to us when we died. I knew about the soul within us from sermons I was forced to listen to in church growing up. What happened to all of those souls? A few short years later I would be distraught about my best friend’s soul when she passed away suddenly.

And, it was because of that event that my spiritual journey went up a level. When I left home shortly after her passing to live briefly with my grandparents in Florida (in the book it was New Mexico where Rosie relocated to be with her grandmother).

Grandma Shirley, (I used my actual grandmother’s name in the book), was the first person to talk to me about death and dying and that it was okay to grieve for my friend. But, one day she worked a conversation of reincarnation into our lunch. It went completely over my head. She talked about deja vu: grandma Shirley knew she’d been here before. I recalled a nightmare that I had prior to my best friend Spacey’s passing one day and immediately told her about it. It was a dream about how I had found her body. I asked my grandmother if my dream was what caused Spacey’s death. She assured me I did not and explained it was a prophetic dream. I felt safe talking with Grandma Shirley about this. She was never uncomfortable or dismissive when I had questions.

Dreams increased from that point: prophetic and visitations. Dreams were guiding me and healing me. Another teacher appeared when my grandmother made her transition. More teachers would appear and events and dreams increased because I was ready to move forward on my spiritual journey.

When I finally started to write Sweet Dreams, I knew that I wasn’t alone. One presence that made herself known was Spacey. She cheered me on and cracked me up when she said this story would be a great movie and gave me gentle nudges when I wanted to stop writing. I have always said that I am not a writer but I am proud of this story. It is a story of healing and love and friendship.

First Inklings

In the Beginning…

As an adolescent, whenever something was bothering me or causing me anxiety, and as a teenager what didn’t, I would turn on the radio and keep it on all night, falling asleep to the music that the late night and overnight dee-jays played. It’s a coping mechanism I use to this day, although now I have a playlist on my iPhone. One particular late night or rather early morning I had suddenly woken up, restless. I did not know the source of my restlessness that spring night. Maybe it was school. As I laid in my bed, tilting my head a little toward the window, looking up at the starry sky, a frightening thought cracked open the darkness and illuminated the reason for my restlessness. I wondered: what happens to us when we die?

I tossed and turned all night, grateful for the radio as company. WNEW-FM in New York City was then a progressive rock radio station, adopting that format in the late 1960’s (The format changed again in the late 1990’s.) They were playing album sides of their featured record of the week, Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell, which was destined to become a classic; it was an album that had spawned a few great songs already in regular rotation on the iconic radio station. I had come to love radio because of my dad. He almost always had the radio tuned to the New York City radio station. I loved rock and roll music and listening to the deejays. They were intelligent, articulate and knew so much about the music they played. Listening to the radio became the inspiration for me to want to pursue a broadcasting career and a lifelong interest in rock and roll history. But I digress…

I kept looking out of the window from my bed into darkness that seemed to go on forever. Night time does that when I cannot get back to sleep. The night becomes elongated adding to the worrisome thoughts moving around in my head. The reassuring voice of the overnight deejay and the music playing on the radio redirected my thoughts on death and dying which should have been the least of my worries at such a young age. What is curious is that it should wake me up from a brief slumber and haunt me for much of that night. How did that happen?

What if the soul of every human being was crammed up into the atmosphere. Where else would they go? The bodies went to heaven or hell depending on if they were good Christian people or not. Or so my grandmother Evangeline said. My sister Angela and I learned from a very young age that if we didn’t accept Jesus we would go to hell, although we did not understand what hell was. All of that was too abstract for small children, not to mention frightening. We both now believe that this is not what happens. It would never have occurred to me to ask anyone else what happens when someone dies. I didn’t think my mom and dad would have had better answers to my questions about death. But I never asked them.

My teenage logic told me that souls somehow left the body and went up into the sky. So there must be infinite sky to accommodate the same number of souls. All the humans who have ever lived – for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years – would have a soul up in the sky or heaven beyond the sky: cave people, Druids, Egyptians and people throughout the centuries to that night in the late 1970’s.

With the music still playing on the radio, I thought more about deep space. This first inkling about the universe generated so many questions. What else is out there besides souls floating around in the congested sky? How far up is heaven and can it be seen with the naked eye? Why do we die and not live forever? It would be about a decade before I would learn that each soul lives on after its incarnation on earth and can have more than one life here. Other life experiences as a teenager and as a young adult would take place before I would come to believe that. Eventually, my restlessness and endless thoughts surrendered to relaxation and I fell asleep, the stars lighting up the still night sky.

And so began my spiritual awakening.

A Past Life

During a past life regression therapy session I saw myself in at least a few lifetimes. There were men in each of those lifetimes: a dark haired man with a mustache who was a landlord of a rundown building; a farm hand of my family’s farm and property in the 1800’s; a man in a white tee shirt and a red plaid kilt who was my father in that lifetime.
Past life regression therapy is therapy. To get to the root of my issue in this lifetime, I had to go back through as many lifetimes as it took to find where the karma began. My higher self and spirit guides, guided me and protected me during this soul journey back in time where I saw, not the entire lifetime with the aforementioned individuals ( it’s only a 2 hour session), but scenes from those lives showing me and reminding my subconscious of a situation in that lifetime, kind of like a movie trailer. In spiritual truth, I did not forget. The memory was there all along in my cells. During and after those scenes I knew who the man was in all of those lifetimes and certain traits of those men were familiar to me in this life.
I was raped by the farm hand in the 1800’s and became pregnant. In another scene from that life I saw myself on a horse drawn wagon with my parents – unknown to me in this life – being sent away until the baby was born. The farm hand in that lifetime was my husband in this life. In this lifetime I learned that the karma with my husband was to give him children.
The man with the red kilt, who was my father in that lifetime, was also my husband in this life. I was about twelve and was enslaved, meaning I performed nearly every chore there was to be done and I did not want to do it anymore. I wanted my own life. I wrapped a red plaid shawl around me and began to walk away. He ran after me with a spear and plunged it into my chest and twisted it around. The wound was fatal. During the therapy session the practitioner asked me where my soul was leaving my body. I lifted my hand to put it on my chest a couple of inches above my sternum.
I felt myself floating toward the sky and turned myself around and saw my body lying there on the ground. It did not hurt. I was not scared. I turned back around and saw the blue tunnel and went through it to the ‘Other Side’. And it was beautiful there. My guides and angels were with me throughout this transition. When I got home that night, I washed up before bed and my eyes saw the red stained birthmark on my chest. I had seen it my whole life and never knew what it was or how it got there.
Having read quite a few books about reincarnation and past lives, this was my first experience with my own past life memory. Not only was it therapeutic, but it was absolute proof for me that our souls do go on after this life.

Spring Snapshots

Hanging out with Mother Nature for mind, body and spirit.

*all photographs by Leslie Sheridan

Taking Back My Power

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The following is one of my past life recalls; names purposely omitted.

I see a man and a woman in a wooden alcove – is it passion or violence? Violence. The person I see is a man in that life – who is a woman in my current life. The man is above me. We’re almost hidden but no one thinks anything of it. ‘She’ is speaking low telling me how to behave – to not scream. I’m fearful but listening. This person has power over me. It’s something I have to give in to. He does it to every woman.

I try to find out what country and era I’m in. The Mediterranean area comes to me, possibly during the Renaissance era. He resembles a monk with a brown robe that falls down to his mid-calf, I can see his trousers – or whatever they’re called in that time. He has a bald spot on his head and carries a stick. I think he’s a shepherd, although, I see him using the stick to push through the water as he walks away.

I ask my spirit guide who is with me why this is happening. I get “He has no power and he wants it.” Women are powerless in this time and it’s easy for him to take advantage of them. He has hiding spots and a lot of time.

For nearly five years a woman that I had worked with, who abused her power over and over, was abusive to me, as well as to many other women that I worked with. I would wake up in the morning and my first thought was of her and how I dreaded seeing her. It was toxic. I have felt fear and anger, even when I was no longer working with her, that I couldn’t place and could not let go of. I knew there was something that I had to overcome. I had thought it was realizing that I was not a victim and on a full moon I released that I was no longer a victim. It helped for a time. But the fear and anger persisted. I knew that I needed to forgive and forget. So I did that. Eventually, the fear dissipated, but the anger was still ever present. I thought about professional therapy; therapy, I thought, would take too long to rid the anger that was swirling inside of me. I wanted to release it with a magic wand. Instead, I prayed for a solution.

That solution came during this past life recall at a group meditation. That night I thoughtfully chose a question, an intention to understand my situation. I wrote it down and slipped into meditation. As I have shared in previous essays, our souls choose all of our relationships, lessons, and experiences before we reincarnate into another life here on earth. We choose who we want to learn our lessons with; we choose our family and other life lessons that we want to work on in this human journey. We also can choose to work out a karmic contract which is what I had with this woman.

That night in meditation I healed myself. There were no tears, only joy, as my metal shackles unlocked, freeing me from my contract. Finally, the karma was balanced.

No one has power over us. We only think they do. It is an illusion if we could only see it that way. But fear, which is also an illusion, is something that we’ve all learned to allow to control us, to have power over us, life after life after life. Until we learn to break that cycle. And we all have the power to do that.

The Detour

A recent hike with my camera in hand led me to a beautiful spot with a little leftover snow from a recent snowfall. The path was an off shoot or smaller trail, of the main path, with the early morning sun filtering through the trees. Click. It was a beautiful shot. What I would not find out for another three and a half miles was that the picture I just took was a clue.

It was a perfect mid-winter Sunday morning. And so I went along the path, looking at the trees, the snow covered rocks and frozen stream. Being on this trail that early morning was just what I needed: cleanse my aura, get fresh air, and really just being out in nature – my favorite place to be. The trail has hills, gorgeous trees, and a stream running under a wooden bridge. It really is picturesque all four seasons.

One of the great things about taking an early morning hike is that there really aren’t many people on the trail. It’s not anti-social; rather this time is spiritual – Sunday and the other six days of the week. I don’t really think about things while I’m hiking. I allow myself to just be in the moment, although occasionally my mind does wander, as it did this day. The funny thing is I have daydreamed before on this trail, so I don’t understand how I lost my way. I was walking along the path for a while before I realized that the texture of the ground beneath the inch or so of snow left did not feel right or familiar to me. I did not recall there being small mounds of fall leaves or rocks jutting up through the ground. This path was lumpy; not clear or smooth like the path I had started out on.

The nearly three mile hike became a four mile hike. I wondered if there was a reason I subconsciously took a detour. Perhaps it was a route I chose to take to avoid something –on a metaphysical level. Was I meant to go off the path or was the universe allowing me to have a choice (free will). Or, I wondered, was it a reminder to stay aware while I’m on my path, to discern, to not be led by anyone or anything that might take me off the path. There is a reason for everything. Maybe if I had paused and listened to my inner self when I’d taken the picture, I may have heard “Stay on your path.”

….to forgive, divine.

Forgiveness; The act of forgiving or being forgiven. 2017-01-23-13.49.27.jpg.jpg

Forgiveness is for us – to forgive someone who has hurt us . To forgive is “for giving” to ourselves. We don’t have to forget what was done to us. We are not responsible for the burden. Forgiveness is getting rid of that burden so that we can move forward. Without forgiveness we remain right where we are.

A few years ago I went to see James Van Praagh at the local civic center, getting tickets as close to the stage as possible – as soon as they went on sale. I didn’t get the meet and greet passes, just the tickets to see and hear what the famed medium had to say up close and not miss any wisdom he could share. He talked about the other side, his experiences, how he got started- his whole bio – pretty much everything I had already read about him.

Toward the middle of his appearance he was going to deliver messages from loved ones on the other side for a lucky few in the audience. Before ending his monologue he wanted to preface the readings by stressing to everyone in attendance in the auditorium the importance of being non-judgmental. He talked about why we should not judge people who have hurt us or wronged us and the reason for that is because of the Life Review.

When souls cross over to the other side they go through a life review. Every soul sees their life in review: the good, the bad and the ugly. Every soul that chooses to have a human experience has a lesson or lessons to learn on planet earth. So, the purpose of the life review is to review our souls experience in that life. Did the soul accomplish the lesson or lessons? If not, the soul can choose to learn it in it’s next incarnation. I can say I have finally learned one of my soul’s lessons after several life times. (My guides and I will be high-fiving in my booth!)

Sylvia Browne, Shirley Maclaine and others have written about the Life Review. There is a scene depicted in the 1991 movie “Defending Your Life” starring Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks. Both of their characters have crossed over and they and others enter their respective Life Review booths. Shirley Maclaine has a cameo in the movie to explain to those who have just crossed over how to operate the Life Review machine.

James explained to everyone that when each of us transforms – from the physical world to the spirit world – what the soul sees from this review is much harder to watch than having someone judge them harshly or any regret they have for what they should or should not have done during this lifetime.

Being judgmental is what humans do. I believe it is a habit that is learned in childhood and through peer pressure and before you know it, it’s become an unhealthy, negative, and hurtful habit.

And the thing about being judgy is that it doesn’t only hurt the person we’re judging, but like a boomerang it comes back to us. So, in effect we are hurting ourselves when we judge others. It’s one of those universal laws that what we put out comes back to us.

I have forgiven a lot of people in my life, including myself – it is a good feeling. Sometimes I still judge (my human-ness) but I try to be mindful of the importance of not being judgmental. I really don’t want my Life Review to hurt too much. Life as it is here on earth hurts enough.

Past Lives: Dreams and Memories

I am walking next to a little girl with blonde curly hair, underneath a black straw boater hat adorned with a few flowers. She is wearing a black coat down to her knees, white stockings and black ankle boots. She is walking on top of a rock wall as I walk alongside, her small hand in mine. I cannot see myself or what I am wearing; I feel that I am not her mother, but someone like a mother. I believe that I am her governess.

That is where the dream ends. As soon as I wake up, I know that the baby growing inside of me is going to be a girl and that I have known her in another life. Since my daughter was born, I have been a mother and a teacher to her as well. I introduced her to story time and parks; books and Opera and classical music; daytrips and Broadway shows; art museums and painting and drawing since she could hold a crayon.

We get glimpses of other lives we have lived in this life via dreams or memories during our waking life. Déjà vu moments; things that come easy to us; a feeling that we’ve known someone we just met a long time; an uncanny longing to visit a place we’ve never been before. We dream about events that may happen in the future. In dreams we may find answers to questions, problems or clues about ourselves. We can also get clues to whom or what we were in another life. A past life dream will come to us just like any other dream. It may look and feel different than a typical dream. Instead of a dream that seems weird or may jump around from one scene to another, past life dreams, in my experience give us glimpses of another life that happened millennia, centuries or decades ago. In that snapshot of a former life, the subconscious gives us – our conscious self – the details. We know the rest on a soul level.

Past lives, for anyone who may not understand what exactly a past life is or how it is even possible – you may not believe in past lives or reincarnation and that’s okay – can be explained like this. Reincarnation is when a soul chooses to live in a certain time or place; the soul chooses the people it will live a life with and other people who will help it along its journey in every life time. Many of our souls have lived several lifetimes. A soul chooses to reincarnate on earth or anywhere else. The universe is vast; we are not the only solar system out there – it may be very possible to live in another solar system. We, that is, our souls, our guardian angels and spirit guides begin the process of putting together our life plan or blue print for the soul’s (our) next journey.

Past life dreams can be in color, black and white – as most dreams are, or in sepia – which for me is indicative of a past life in ancient times. I have had a glimpse of a past life that was in sepia – an antique type of color – that may have been in ancient Egypt. In one single flash of a past life you will know when and where it was; who the person or persons are in your current life; when this past life occurred; and feelings attached to those memories.

Occasionally, we will get a flash of a past life memory while we’re awake. Sometimes it comes to us when we suddenly experience a déjà vu. It could happen while we’re at our computer at work; driving somewhere in our car; even visiting an historic site – there’s a reason you’re there. Something will trigger a past life memory and it will resonate with you.

Past Life Regression Therapy is another way to discover a past life. Regression therapy is conducted by a regression therapist who specializes in past life therapy and is generally conducted to help heal a mental, physical or spiritual issue which may have originated in a previous life or multiple lives and is coming to the surface during this incarnation to be addressed.

Through dreams, memories and past life regression I know that a few of my past lives have involved moving west in a covered wagon; being part of an aristocratic family; and religious persecution. The purpose of reincarnating is to learn lessons, such as compassion or perseverance, until our soul has reached enlightenment. It may take several lifetimes.

Nightmares & Sleep Paralysis

The only thing that nightmares and sleep paralysis have in common is that they are frightening. All comparisons end there.

Nightmares are thought to be brought on by anxiety in the dreamers waking life. In my research, I have spoken with adolescents and adults who shared with me their nightmares and more often than not they told me about their anxious feelings prior to that night’s sleep. The actual events in the dream did not depict what the anxious feeling was about every time; however they were mostly about school, work, and other life events that may cause stress, but not always.

Sometimes a message is contained within the nightmare but the events in the dream may seem freaky, grotesque, horrific and incredible. The dream may resemble a horror movie in that way.

Here is one nightmare I had that illustrates this.

A young man I work with was the junior manager on duty the night there was a huge explosion. Blood and body parts were everywhere. A rock band was playing on stage – the explosion happened after the first set. He was overwhelmed with the aftermath of the massacre. His boss – the senior manager – would not help him; instead she walked away, leaving him to clean up the mess. No sooner that he did that, that the explosion happened again, after the bands second set. At this point, I knew the perpetrator wasn’t the senior manager (in this dream she is the one who is overwhelmed). It was someone I did not recognize. My search to find the senior manager was futile. I knew she wanted no part of this. She was not supportive of the junior manager. I helped him to clean up the body parts. I noticed that blood saturated the carpet.

Occasionally I have had a dream where suddenly I’ll be unable to move or scream for help. It feels as though someone or something is sitting on top of me, keeping me from moving and not only that but I cannot breathe. I’m aware that I must be dreaming as I struggle to get out from under the thing that is holding me down and force myself to roll off the bed or kick the person next to me so that they’ll hit me and I’ll wake up. If feels as though I know I’m dying. Sometimes I’ve stopped fighting. Other times I keep fighting so that I can wake up from this nightmare. Only it’s not a nightmare. And, as I will explain, this “dream” is not brought on by anxiety. This is a phenomenon called sleep paralysis. The psychic Sylvia Browne called it astral catalepsy because this happens during the soul’s astral travels.

Every night while our human bodies are at rest our souls leave the body and travel or visit. Our soul astral travels to different planets, universes, or the other side. The soul’s home is the other side. Our human bodies are the home to our souls while it is learning here on earth. The same is true on other planets or universes. Our soul keeps learning on the other side, too, but on earth the learning is more accelerated. Likewise our soul can travel or visit anywhere on planet earth as well. If this is hard to wrap your mind around, stay with me.

What is happening during sleep paralysis is that our souls are leaving the body while it is sleeping. The soul can also leave the body during meditation, too, but the body isn’t sleeping. The mind and body are only semi-conscious. And so what happens when the body is either just leaving or just returning from its nightly travels, the semi-conscious mind – not fully asleep – panics. It knows that the soul is half in and half out of the body. Whatever we see or hear in that dream is what the soul is experiencing at the time it gets “caught” entering or leaving the human body while it’s in the unconscious or semi-conscious state.

Nightmares, recurring, pre-cognitive and visitation dreams, as well as other dreams that we experience every night that may not fall into a type have information to relate to us. Sleep paralysis does not have information or a message for us. What it does show us is that our soul does move around while the human body is sleeping. It shows us that we are more than just our physical body.