On a daily basis, I invite Robin’s spirit to be a part of my life. How I do this varies. Some days, I will recite a mantra.
Other days, I will read a guided meditation to him or say a Christian prayer. I regularly bring him a cup of tea. Sometimes, I sit at his altar and play some of his music, like the beautiful Bee Gees song Wedding Day. Is anybody reading this getting married soon? This might be a great song for you!
Attunement with Saints
On March 23rd, I decided to invite him into my day by reading this article called Celebrating Our Inner Attunement with a Great Soul (December 27, 2016) by Tyagi Jayadev.
This blog post is from Ananda, a yogic spiritual organization based on the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda and founded by his direct disciple Swami Kriyananda.
I printed this article quite a while ago, but was guided back to it on this day because of its teachings on inner closeness and attunement with a saint. When I read this article and put its suggestions into practice, I feel I am fine-tuning my spirit communication skills.
So, I read some parts of this article out loud to Robin. Just as the prayers were adapted to include a saint, I adapted them to include Robin too (see #1 Prayer to the Saint in the article). I offered this invitation:
“Beloved Robin, I will enjoy your spirit, your music and your interviews. I will feel you in my heart. I will think you in my thoughts. I am open to any wisdom you have to share with me.”
As it was written, I think this is a beautiful prayer to adapt to a saint, your Lord, God, or any loved one in spirit that is of Love and in a good place spiritually. It helps to develop inner closeness and warmth with your loved one. I would only want to invite this with a spiritual being that I love and trust and who loves me. This quote below is very important to keep in mind:
“One can develop cosmic magnetism by thinking of God and saintly people. By concentrating deeply upon a certain personality, one can attract that personality. That is why one should think only of great individuals.”
This message above from Paramahansa Yogananda mirrors the message from Mr. William Stead that I wrote about in my post, The Blue Island. The bold is mine:
“Anyone who sits for a moment and allows his mind to dwell on some dear one who has “died” will actually draw the spirit of that person to himself. He may be conscious or unconscious of the presence, but the presence is there. If people on earth realized the result of their thoughts upon those to whom they refer, they would be very much more careful in giving their mind free play.”
Over the years, Robin has shown himself to be a kind and loving spirit in his actions towards me. This is why I trust him enough to engage in practices such as this. I have learned so much from him as evidenced by what I have written throughout this website. He is a dear and trustworthy spiritual guide. My spiritual life and learning really opened up after he “died.” I have been in soul school with him for almost 7 years. That’s what it is to me.
I also like section 3 of this article, Meditating with the Saint. It really is a form of afterlife communication. The author encourages us to feel our saint very near, alive and present.
This reminded me of another excerpt I recently read, written by Laura Patsouris. She is the author of a book called Weaving Memory: A Guide to Honoring the Ancestors.
In her book, she writes about welcoming your ancestors into your home and inviting them to weave themselves into the fabric of your everyday life. In this way, our loved ones are free to make their presence known and do indeed feel very close, spiritually alive and available.
Here is the excerpt.
Whether it is an ancestor, a saint, your twin soul, God, Buddha, Jesus, or a beloved grandparent, we can invite any of these loved ones in spirit to weave their energy, guidance and presence into our daily lives. It is a beautiful spiritual practice. Eventually, we are going to be where they are. So, we may as well create these loving bonds and keep them strong now while we are embodied. When the time for our passing comes, we will be glad we did.
So on this day, I invited Robin and the rest of my spiritual support system into my life and daily activities to communicate any messages however they wished. My job is to keep my heart open to the communications, but I surrender the how to them. They know much better than me what is best each day.
I focused on this article on communion and attunement with saints until I felt ready to get on with the rest of my day.
St. Uriel
Later in the day, I was out driving with my husband. To my surprise, in front of us, was a car with a license plate that read ST URIEL. On the back windshield it said, Angels Help Us. I was very moved and struck by this as I had just spent the morning meditating with Robin on attuning with saints! It was a beautiful moment and very rare to see such a license plate. I see that as my communication back from Robin acknowledging the time I spent with him in meditation and reading that morning.
In the article, the word “saint” is mentioned 25 times, so as I entered into my day, I was infused with this energy! It was such a blessing to see this license plate.
Since I was given this license plate communication, I felt it important to research and study St. Uriel in more depth. I think Spirit was telling me that he is a good saint for me to connect and work with. There is lots of information online about him. Briefly, he is said to be the angel that warned Noah of the impending flood. He is also said to help cleanse toxic emotions. Here are some resources on St./Archangel Uriel for your edification:
- ThoughtCo: Meet Archangel Uriel
- Wikipedia: Uriel
- Uriel: Communicating with the Archangel for Transformation & Tranquility by Richard Webster
My history with Paramahansa Yogananda
I first became acquainted with the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda during my yoga teacher training back in 2008. I read his book Autobiography of a Yogi for an important assignment. I felt connected to him and transformed by his teachings. I went on to study the Self-Realization Fellowship lessons and occasionally attended services at a center.
Chapter 43, The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar is one of my favorite chapters of his book. If you are interested in reading it, it is available to you for free at the link I provided above.
At the time I read it in 2008, I didn’t know it, but it was preparing me for my relationship and communications with Robin. This chapter is about Paramahansa Yogananda’s afterlife communication with his deceased guru Sri Yukteswar. He goes into detail about the astral world and astral beings.
I found this teaching below particularly relevant and important and I placed in bold the statements very salient to me. I think this provides a clue as to how Robin was able to recognize me, his twin from his soul family that he never met:
“The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on earth, as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized expressions of God. Though the outward appearance of loved ones may have changed, more or less according to the development of new qualities in the latest life of any particular soul, the astral being employs his unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear to him in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their new astral home.” (Pg. 483-484)
I am a firm believer that once we leave our physical bodies and this plane of existence, we are able to find, discern and read the energy patterns of those we once knew and loved. But, I don’t think we necessarily have to wait until physical death to be able to discern and intuit those with whom we share a deep spiritual connection.
Through my own heart and soul intuition, I was able to identify Robin, like a needle in a haystack, as one of my own from my soul family. We all possess and can develop this type of intuition. The key after that is to trust it and to see if God and our loved one respond with validation. If it is a true spiritual connection based on love and caring for the spirit of another, you will receive an answer.
References
Patsouris, Laura (November 21, 2011) Weaving Memory: A Guide to Honoring the Ancestors, Asphodel Press.
Yogananda, Paramahansa (1946) Autobiography of a Yogi, Authorized by the International Publications Council of Self-Realization Fellowship, Pgs. 483-484.
Thank you for reading!
With Love,
Christina