I’m no psychic.
I’m not a medium either, nothing at all like that.
Some people apparently have that talent—I don’t.
Yet, I’ve had some of the experiences from time to time. Anecdotally, it seems to be fairly common. Many people do.
I’ll tell you a true story that happened to me. It might help you understand yours if you occasionally have psychic experiences.
Non-corporeal entities
Guardian angels and spirit guides work in the background—most people aren’t aware they’re there.
Not everything that’s a non-corporeal spirit is good or positive. Far from it. They have free will. If you take the time to consider the ramifications of that statement, that’s scary.
As a human, it can be hard to tell the good from the bad and the neutral. They’re non-corporeal, after all. There’s no uniform you can see. Something that’s so good can appear to be so harsh, like a parent or instructor who’s giving you a wake-up call. You don’t always want the message and, so, you cuss them. Even hate them.
Non-corporeal, these entities are far more spirit-based than humans. They’re more attuned to intangibles. For example, they don’t seek out either compliments or attention like humans, unless there’s a good reason. A human will spend a lot of effort procuring material goods, securing their status in a group, and doing things like that. Guardian angels and spirit guides don’t have concerns like that.
Humans are physically based. We don’t see or sense everything that goes on in the non-corporeal realm.
Those entities weigh criteria differently when making decisions.
Just how different can be hard to understand.
It’s so different it might even seem strange.
It’s like that with spiritual matters.
Consider the Litany of Humility, part of which reads:
From the fear of being wronged,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase, and I may decrease,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen, and I set aside,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
Thoughts like these are counterintuitive to most people.
Why would you want others to be liked and admired more than you?
While that is a good topic to reflect upon, in contrast with the movie Not Okay currently streaming on Hulu, it isn’t the purpose of this article.
The point is that even though an angel or a spirit guide is more advanced than you spiritually, it doesn’t mean angels aren’t individuals.
Mine is extroverted, for example.
In fact, if more guardian angels/spirit guides were as extroverted as mine, there’d probably be much more talk about them.
Why I wrote this
Hearing about my journey might be able to help you in your journey, at least tell you where I’m coming from. I’ll start with that. Later, in the second part of this article next week, I’ll share with you what I think the main points are.
Having a relationship with your guardian angel or spirit guide goes right along with having a relationship with God. Angels work for God. You’re never going to meet a more dedicated cheerleader on your behalf. They’re there to pass the glory onto God, to help you work for His team.
They might not be working for His team if they don’t seem to be doing that. The entity in question would be better thought of as a discarnate entity.
I was 10 when I had my first communication.
And I didn’t even know it at the time.
I was a wannabe cartoonist when I was a kid. I suppose it was a natural career goal because I loved drawings, loved to draw, and stories too.
When a particularly good comic came out in the newspaper, I’d cut it out and tape it in a spiral notebook that I dedicated for the purpose of saving comics.
Then there was the stack of comics I accumulated. I’d plow whatever dollars came my way into buying the ones sold at my neighborhood 7-11.
I didn’t really try to copy the way other cartoonists drew so much. I had my own ideas, and I’d borrow books from the library on how to make those ideas come to life. I practiced daily.
My favorite idea was a series of comics about a family that lived in a dump and would do all kinds of crazy and kooky things with the garbage and discarded stuff you’d find there. I figured that I’d call it the Garbage Folks.
“That’s a terrible idea,” my mom said. People would assume I was making fun of poor, homeless people, she insisted.
“Well, I’m not,” I returned. Creativity was admirable no matter the creator’s social status; at least, I thought so. One person whose creativity really impressed me was a homeless guy who slept in an open area by my house and make art out of the junk he scrounged up. I fondly remember his creations: Jeffo Jungle, The Wee Rabbits Wedding House, and unnamed others he made out of discarded plastic, toys, and other debris. I wish I had taken pictures of them. I’ve never found any. You’ll just have to take my word for it that they were cool in a quirky way.
A few years later, I’d find out that our income was below the poverty line. The Garbage Folks, if executed according to my full vision, would have been about all the cool stuff you could do with the things people throw away, basically living for free, captioned with silly adventures and frequent punchlines.
In my wanderings in our neighborhood south of the University of Arizona, there were numerous vacant lots that have since been developed. People used to dump all kinds of things in those lots and in Arroyo Chico, the dry wash that runs through central Tucson: kitchen tables, sofas, beds, magazines, books, whatever. Any family that lived there could find all kinds of cool things and do lots of crazy things with them, kind of like in that movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
When I envisioned the dump, the world, that the Garbage Folks would inhabit, I filled it with way more cool garbage than you’d find in the lots near my home. Later on, I’d learn the difference between the wildcat dumping that was going on near my house and regular trash hauling that sanitation companies and cities engage in.
The Garbage Folks needed to live somewhere. It couldn’t be Tucson. That would be no fun. I lived in Tucson. Part of the fun of escaping with your imagination when you’re a kid is thinking of other places you can be.
So where should I make the Garbage Folks be from, I wondered.
Topeka, Kansas, came the answer.
Okay, so Topeka, Kansas it was. They lived in the dump that was supplied by the Topeka Sanitation Department. I had never been to Topeka, so my idea for the dump where they lived was pretty generic.
I had an idea that a dump was a place where the Earth had been carved out to stack the trash. At some point, the city would cover it up with dirt.
Years later, when I was putting all of these incidents together, I realized the character of the suggestion was the way people from the University of Texas razz Texas A&M and vice versa. It’s a full-blown rivalry. The idea that I should make the Garbage Folks hail from Topeka, Kansas, was a comment in that kind of vein. Sometimes humor can go over your head. It’s especially easy to miss when it comes across as a thought in your head.
Thing is, there was no reason for me to make them from Topeka. None. At that point in my life, I had never been I to Kansas, and barely saw any pictures beyond some drawings in those kids’ books that teach you about all 50 states. For me, Topeka, Kansas was a weird, quirky place to make the Garbage Folks from.
American Pop
The next time it happened, I was watching Ralph Bakshi’s animated tour de force American Pop in the theater. Later, they’d come out with the PG-13 rating. American Pop would have been a PG-13 if it came out in the 90s. I imagine movies like American Pop were the reason why the PG-13 rating was created.
But for me, in 1981, I was too young to see it, according to the people who assigned movie ratings. Age limits were strictly enforced at the box office if you looked a few years too young. If you looked close to the age, then you could get away with it more easily.
As a comic lover, I had to see it. It was animated, and it seemed to be groundbreaking the way Watership Down had been. I hadn’t been able to see that movie because there wasn’t any money for things like that. I didn’t have a paper route until 1979. That movie had been out the year before. Once a movie was out of the theater, there wasn’t any way to see it. It could be years until an edited version played on TV.
When you were underage, and you wanted to see a movie that was forbidden to you, what you had to do was buy a ticket for a PG movie and then ditch it for the one you really wanted to see. You looked both ways at the door to the theater and made sure nobody was watching you. Then you slipped into the theater where the ‘R’ rated movie was playing. That’s it. No big deal, though it seemed like a big deal at 13.
The movie told the story of four generations of a Russian-Jewish family and how their lives paralleled pop music. At the time, there was no PG-13 rating. It had some depicted drug use, violence, and it was animated. That troubled the Motion Picture Association (MPAA), and that made it inappropriate for kids.
In one scene toward the middle of the movie, a grandson of the family, Tony, meets up with a blonde-haired waitress he ends up spending the night with. Though I had never been to Kansas, those scenes were full of memory for me, so much so that I couldn’t separate what was in the movie from what was playing in my head.
These weren’t my memories. It was a jumble. Going out in the cornfields, getting drunk with friends, messing around with girls. Front-porch swings and intense conversations, knowing looks. Topless blonde girls. Bales of hay with blankets stretched out on them. I loved her.
At this point in my life, I’d never even kissed a girl, let alone done anything more. These memories were not my memories, not even close. I wasn’t a farm kid from Kansas. More than that, the old farm trucks from the 40s and 50s or whatever were not a regular part of my world.
I heard of past lives and reincarnation. Clearly, as far as I knew, that’s what had happened to me.
Rest area somewhere around Groom, Texas
I was at a rest stop on a cross-country journey, making my way through north Texas. It was a few years later, in early June 1984. My mind was set on finding a bathroom.
They sure grow them beautiful in the Kansas sunshine! Why, it’s a Kansas sunflower!
I looked around. There was a brown-haired, long-legged beauty around my age getting out of the backseat of her parent’s station wagon. She was brown-haired, gorgeous, and around my age. But Kansas? Why was I thinking Kansas?
Then, having finished using the bathroom, as their station wagon pulled away as we were getting ready to leave, I saw that the car had Kansas plates.
I wasn’t looking around at any cars or any people coming to the rest stop. One hundred percent: I was focused on finding the toilet and taking a leak.
I didn’t think too much more about it. I had to use the restroom.
Falling out of the sky in a Huey
I had a friend in the Marine Corps Reserve when I was in college. When some girl found out that Bob was a Marine, you could practically see their interest. Naturally, I wanted some of that attention.
What was even more impressive than all of the attention from girls was that my friend was getting a lot of help in paying for his classes. I was getting financial aid like Pell Grants, and federal student loans, but my aid was always slow in funding even though I met all of the deadlines. This was a huge problem because I’d register for my classes, the funding would be slow, and then they’d drop me from my classes. It happened every semester. The financial aid office was a mess.
That never happened to my friend in the Marine Corps Reserve. It never happened to any of the other guys in his unit, either. Military student financial aid was run on a different system not affiliated with the university.
I considered joining the Marines, but the service that really interested me was the Army. My uncle had been in the Army. Also, the Army had these cool t-shirts they were giving out. I also liked the idea of the Army National Guard. I didn’t want to go away anywhere for a long time and the “Nasty Guard” has a defined mission and a local focus. All of the services had the Montgomery G.I. Bill and other programs.
I spoke with a recruiter. He took me around the National Guard armory. I was excited to sign. I was going to do it too, but that’s when these intense dreams started.
I’d be in a helicopter. It would get hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. We’d fall out of the sky, and I’d break my back. The helicopter would explode, and start burning. I’d be unable to move and feel myself burning alive. Rounds for the .60 cal would go off and explode around me.
The dreams would repeat themselves with slight differences. Sometimes the Huey would spin as it went down. Sometimes it would fall to one side as it fell, making me look at the ground as it came up on me. Sometimes we exploded in midair.
I woke up in my bed sweating, feeling like I had just fallen 60 feet.
After six times or so, I had enough. I stopped returning the National Guard recruiter’s phone calls.
I didn’t think about it again until I was out of college and looking at a career change. Joining the Army Reserve then seemed like a way to get experience in health care. And it was. And I liked being in the Army Reserve, staying for 23 years.
The Vietnam Veteran’s Wall Online
All this came to a head around 1998 when I read the Arizona Daily Star online. I don’t remember the exact date, but I do remember it was 1998 because my daughter was born then, and her crib was in the same room where I kept the computer.
The story that caught my attention was how there was going to be a “virtual wall” for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial online.
I was filled with the urge to go to my computer, turn it on, and take a look at this website.
I went to Virtualwall.org and paused. Ok. Now what?
I looked at a map of the United States.
I was operating with a series of urges. It seems weird to say, but usually, I make my own decisions. I was still making my own decisions but was being guided to make them. I could have clicked on any state at a whim and looked at the list of names of soldiers from that state who had died in the Vietnam War. The Virtual Wall told you basic things about the soldier in question: name, hometown, rank, maybe if someone wrote something about them, somebody who knew them.
Then, I guess, the viewer took away whatever they took away from looking at a list of names. I looked at the map of the U.S.A., and the Garbage Folks and the girl I had seen at the rest stop in Groom, Texas popped into my head, strangely enough. Then there was the scene from American Pop with the waitress. I realized was having a lifelong conversation, and the memories were coming back to me prompted in some way.
I clicked on Kansas.
Now, what? There were a lot of names from Kansas.
Then another conversation popped into my head. There was this one girl I had known in high school who went to another high school. I was infatuated with her for a time. She had told me about the first time she had sex with this guy named Chris and then told me his last name. That last name was the name that popped into my head, oddly enough.
I looked for someone with that last name on the list of people who had died from Kansas, and there it was.
That was the name of my spirit guide, guardian angel, or whatever.
I knew it because I felt a chill/shock go down my spine all the way to my legs.
For further reading:
What nobody will tell you about your guardian angel (Part 2)
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