Dr. N: Had you and Melinda scripted the dance scene together during the spiritual prep-class?
S: Yes, we knew about it then and when I saw her at the dance, alarms went off. I did something very uncharacteristic of me ... I cut in on the man she was dancing with. When I first held her my legs were like rubber.
Dr. N: And what else did you and Melinda feel at that moment?
S: As if we were in another world ... there was this familiarity ... it was so weird during that dance ... a knowing without doubt that something important was unfolding ... the guidance ... the intent of our meeting ... our hearts were racing ... it was enchantment.
Dr. N: Then why was Clair in your life earlier as a complication?
S: To tempt me to stay on the farm ... one of the false trails I needed to get past ... another kind of life. After I left, Clair found the right person.
Dr. N: If you and Clair had taken the lesser trail together and missed your sister's flag, would that life have been a total disaster?
S: No, but it would not have been as good. There is one main course of life we choose in advance, but alternatives always exist and we learn from them, too.
Dr. N: In your lives do you ever make mistakes and take false trails and miss the flags in the road for a job change, moving to another town, or meeting someone important because the details you saw at the place of life selection or in the recognition class were not implanted firmly enough?
S: (long pause) The signs are there. But, sometimes I overrule my ... inclinations. There are times in my lives when I change directions because of too much thinking and analysis. Or, I do nothing for the same reasons.
Dr. N: Ah, so you might do something other than what was planned in the spirit world?
S: Yeah, and it may not work out as well ... but we have the right to miss the red flags.
Dr. N: Well, I have enjoyed our talk about the place of recognition and I wondered if there is anything else this spiritual class does for you later in physical life.
S: (in a far away voice) Yes, sometimes when I am confused about my life and don't know where to turn next, I just ... imagine where I might be going compared to where I've been and ... it comes to me what to do.
Helping clients recognize people who were destined to have an impact on their lives is a fascinating aspect of my practice. I believe those who come to see me about relationships are not in my office at a certain point in their lives by chance. Am I spoiling the purpose of their spiritual recognition class by assisting these subjects in recalling clues? I don't think so, for two basic reasons. What they are not supposed to know yet probably won't be revealed in hypnosis, while on the other hand, quite a few of my clients only want confirmation of what they already suspect is true.
I can speak about recognition signs from personal experience, since I was blessed by three specific clues to help me find my wife. Thumbing through Look magazine as a teenager, I once saw a Christmas advertisement for Hamilton watches modeled by a beautiful dark-haired woman dressed in white. The caption in the ad said, "To Peggy," because she was holding a wristwatch as a gift from an imaginary husband. An odd sensation came over me, and I never forgot the name or face. On my twenty-first birthday I received a watch of the same make from a favorite aunt.
A few years later, while attending a graduate school in Phoenix, I was washing a load of white laundry one Saturday. Suddenly, the first trigger was activated in my mind with the message, "It's time to meet the woman in white." I tried to shake it off, but the face in the ad pushed all other thoughts away. I stopped, looked at my Hamilton watch and heard the command, "Go now." I thought about who wears white. Acting as if I was obsessed, I went to the largest hospital in the city and asked at the desk for a nurse matching the name and description.
I was told there was such a person who was coming off her shift. When I saw her, I was stunned by the resemblance to the picture in my mind. Our meeting was awkward and embarrassing, but later we sat in the lobby and talked non-stop for four hours as old friends who hadn't seen each other for a while-which, of course, was true. I waited until after we were married to tell my wife about the reason I came to her hospital and the clues given to me to find her. I didn't want her to think I was crazy. It was then I learned that on the day of our first meeting she had told her astonished friends, "I just met the man I'm going to marry."
My advice to people about meaningful encounters is not to intellectualize coming events too much. Some of our best decisions come from what we call instinct. Go with your gut feelings at the time. When a special moment is meant to happen in life, it usually does.
One of the last requirements before embarkation for many souls is to go before the Council of Elders for the second time. While some of my subjects see the Council only once between lives, most see them right after death and just before rebirth. The spirit world is an environment personified by order and the Elders want to reinforce the significance of a soul's goals for the next life. Sometimes my clients tell me they return to their spirit group after this meeting to say goodbye while others say they leave immediately for reincarnation. The latter procedure was used by a subject who described this exit meeting in the following manner.
"My guide, Magra, escorts me to a soft, white space which is like being in a cloud-filled enclosure. I see my committee of three waiting for me as usual. The middle Elder seems to have the most commanding energy. They all have oval faces, high cheekbones, no hair and smallish features. They seem to me to be sexless-or rather they appear to blend from male to female and back. I feel calm. The atmosphere is formal but not unfriendly. Each in turn asks me questions in a gentle way. The Elders are all-knowing about my entire span of lives but they are not as directive as one might think. They want my input to assess my motivations and the strength of my resolve towards working in new body. I am sure they have had a hand in the body choices I was given for the life to come because I feel they are skilled strategists in life selection. The committee wants me to honor my contract. They stress the benefits of persistence and holding to my values under adversity. I often give in too easily to anger and they remind me of this while reviewing my past actions and reactions towards events and people. The Elders and Magra give me inspiration, hope and encouragement to trust myself more in bad situations and not let things get out of hand. And then, as a final act to bolster my confidence when I am about to leave, they raise their arms and send a power bolt of positive energy into my mind to take with me."
One aspect of the two council meetings which I initially found rather odd is that members of the same soul group do not necessarily go before the same panel. For a while I assumed there would always be a correlation here because all members of a single soul group have the same guide. I was wrong. In the minds of my subjects, even senior guides are thought to be a couple of steps below the developmental level of the omnipotent beings who make up their councils. They are similar to the Old Ones that Thece told us about in Chapter 11, but with more specific responsibilities toward life evaluation of souls. While a guide might, in some respects, be considered a personal confidant to a soul this same familiarity does not extend to an Elder. In time, I came to appreciate that an Elder's authority, unlike that of guides, involves a cross-section of souls from many groups.
Apparently, everyone in a soul group respects the intensely private nature of these proceedings. They all see their individual Council of Elders as godly. The Elders are bathed in bright light and the whole setting has an aura of divinity. A subject put it this way, "when we are taken into the presence of these superior beings who exist in such a high spiritual realm, it validates our feelings about the source of creation."