Sarah’s Blog: Week 9 –  I2th April 20I6

Easter has gone by and we are all eager to get started again. The group has now been divided into smaller circles of about a dozen people and I find myself, this term, in the LSM’s library. New and familiar faces surround me. All around the room I can see books about spiritualism. Some are quite old. Who knows what fascinating information is stored beneath their covers, ready to be discovered? I know some of the books will certainly talk about the spirit guide Silver Birch, channelled through the trance medium Maurice Barbanell in the last century. Silver Birch’s teachings about spiritual development and what happens after death have played a key role in spiritualism, and in the history of this very church.

Talking of guides, I still occasionally wonder about mine. I am looking for a certain kind of contact and I hope this happens this term. I work as a healer and while it feels like I am channelling angelic energy, I don’t get a distinct sense of one particular guide or being. That said, over the Easter break, I notice I am becoming more and more aware of my energy body. I can now expand and contract it at will. And one day, as I am standing at the entrance of the church, I get the most extraordinary waft of incense. It is intense. It is an early Saturday morning and nobody else is there. I look around. Could it be coming from somewhere? But not a soul is present, it’s just me and the birds. It is a beautiful otherworldly scent, like from some flower that doesn’t grow in this realm. It feels like spirit, a lovely greeting from the holy place I am entering.

It is through our bodies, and in particular our energy bodies, that spirit comes knocking. During the circle that first week of the new term, I was looking for my own particular calling card, as both Stephen and Gordon had described it. They said it was your own personal sign that spirit was coming close. I slipped into the silence easily now, it was a comfortable place. This week I was aware of time, of the room around me, and while I didn’t ‘go deep’, I knew I had to be patient. Each time was different and you were to have no expectations. And then, just as I thought nothing much would happen and I was just enjoying the sensation of my energy body, there it was, unmistakable, that sense of presence, and significantly, the hairs on my head felt like they were standing on end; my scalp was even tingling. The air in the room seemed to change, to become pregnant with something and then it was gone and Doreen was drawing us back from the silence with her lovely gentle words.

It was a tantalising moment, like that delicate perfume at the church door, but profound enough to linger in my memory for the whole week.