Life After Death

I know what miracles are. I know because I see them happen every day—and because some of them happen to me. I guess you could say that I’m proof, or my life is proof, or, for that matter, my very existence, is proof. There have been so many miracles in my life that choosing just one to write about and calling it the “biggest” would be like loving one of my children more than the other.

I loved my husband, Randy Michael Connolly, until death did us part. So much so that it felt as if I’d died with him. By the time December 2013 rolled around, I’d been praying for my own death for a little over a year, although I still hadn’t conjured the nerve to take my own life, and realized I might never find that nerve, no matter how devastated I was. The only thing that could possibly keep me going, I determined, was a miracle.

I wanted, I needed, some kind of concrete, measurable evidence that he was still with me, just as he’d promised he’d be as he was dying.

Night after night of crying myself to sleep had mitigated neither my desperation nor my depression. Nor had knowing that there were people around me who were hearing Randy, in spirit form, clearly and irrefutably. Sure, I appreciated their loving messages, as indirect as they were. But what about me? I was his wife, dammit. Didn’t I deserve to hear those messages straight from the source?

Then, one night, a night like all the rest where I’d passed out after hours of tossing and turning and abject anguish (I don’t profess to be one of the stoic ones), I was awakened at 3 am by a loud—booming—voice that said, “Get out your pen and get writing. We’re going to write a book.”

I can’t tell you why and I can’t tell you how, but I knew in every cell of my being that this disembodied vocalization belonged to my husband (and not only because I was alone in the house). What I did not realize was that the result of this mandate, and the ensuing half hour of notebook scribblings, would be the basis for our first “ghostwritten” book together, Crossing the Rubicon: Love Poems Past the Point of No Return.

You might think I’m going to say the miracle was that Randy, in spirit form, woke me up and downloaded a book of poems, along with an almost instant comprehension and precisely worded description about how to form a new relationship with your loved one after death, and how to write about it so others would understand and benefit.

You might think it was that since that night I’ve been able to communicate with Randy, and the dead brother of manicurist, and the dead wife of my father’s best friend, and many other spirit beings who so much want to communicate with their own loved ones.

Either way, you’d be right.

But, honestly? The most profound and shocking miracle is that without the gift of Randy’s dying, I would never have discovered, or perhaps I should say uncovered, the brilliant conscious creation practice that has become my way of life.

A celestial life.

Is it possible to recognize a miracle—a blessing, even—while you feel you’re being ripped to shreds? When your soul can’t see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel even if it were wrapped in the glow of every star in the sky? When your heart is gasping for breath in order to survive one more minute, one more hour, one more day?

My answer?

• BRD–Before Randy’s Death: Absolutely not.
• ARD–After Randy’s Death: Absolutely. Even if you’re in the throes of agony. Because once your anguish has been imbued with conscious awareness, the frequency of unconditional love, the vibration of truth, and the resonance of wisdom, nothing is ever the same again.

For me, on that night, even as I wrote in the dark, sobbing over the pages of an old lined notebook, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, fear, grief, and the sense that I had been abandoned to fend for myself in a world I could no longer make sense of, I was concomitantly aware that I was feeling something I’d never felt before.

Even in that state of complete overwhelm, I knew I was experiencing something so enormous, so rock-me-to-the-core powerful, that while I couldn’t name it at the time, I could feel it blooming inside me, as evidential as the scar on the inside of my thigh, the one I’d gotten in a motorcycle mishap in high school. It seemed as if I’d always had this thing that was burgeoning—always known it, always felt it—but would never again fail to recognize it and cherish it.

The wave of unconditional love that flowed through me arrived in the form of complete phrases and rhymes and prose: an unabridged conversation. It arose in the vibration of truth, through the voice of my dead husband. It emerged in the resonance of wisdom, as a new kind of knowledge I was being invited to believe in, accept, and share. It emanated with the awareness that, even as I wept and the lead in my pencil dwindled to a stub, I would never be the same again.

Turns out, it’s true.

Because nothing has been the same since that night.

I no longer have any need to pretend that I have it all under control, or that life makes sense. I don’t and it doesn’t. Which is precisely what makes miracles so…miraculous.

I now understand that all our attempts to control, fix, cajole, maneuver, manipulate, push, and pray are nothing more than miracle-blockers. When viewed through the lens of retrospection, miracles are the fruit of faith, not force.

When I met Randy after my first 40 years on the planet, I knew that was a miracle. The circumstances were too bizarre, too completely without precedent. We agreed that we were two of the truly fortunate ones. We’d prayed for a miracle. We’d gotten it. End of story.

Then he died.

Which compelled to ask, What does that say about our supposed miracle? Was I wrong? Were we wrong? Was this some kind of a joke, a faux miracle? Had I been deceived? If God wanted me to be happy, why take away the one person who made me happy?

Could something that once looked like a miracle of light and love turn into something so sinister and dark, something so obviously not miraculous?

I did not know the answer then. But these questions are what goaded me on, deep into realms that I’d never previously tapped. I explored karma, life after “death,” past lives, meditation, and conscious creation. I acquiesced into what has been so aptly called the dark night of the soul. I allowed myself to be held by those who’d had similar experiences and encouraged me to believe that I would come out the other side…whole again.

I eventually learned that my sensitivity was simply code for being an HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person, and medium for the spirit world, and that tapping into that ability would prepare me for becoming a facilitator for other HSPs.

Finally, ultimately, I learned that miracles are in the eye of the beholder, like these:

1. I contracted with Randy and agreed to be his partner in this lifetime to help him learn that someone (me) could and would love him unconditionally—a lesson that allowed him to cross over knowing he’d achieved his spiritual goal.
2. Randy is now helping me learn, from across the veil, that having trust and faith in what you can’t see is the means by which we can influence the energetic force that determines our ongoing lives.
3. Questioning every core belief you once held deepens your understanding that the spirit world is always communicating with us, and that it’s simply up to us to learn how to listen. For me, this has meant having the ability to share such insights with others.

The biggest miracle of all, you ask?

That’s easy.

There is life after death. On both sides of the veil.

* * * *

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The post Death and Grief and the Highly Sensitive Person first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

It took me quite a while to get up my nerve. Truthfully? I was almost afraid to ask what it meant, why he’d stuck it there. I mean, who tapes a piece of paper that says “RA YA KOO MA YEE” on it to his back car window?

Randy, that’s who.

The Language of the Emotions

The only thing he’d tell me—my husband who passed in 2012—and only after many months of asking, was that it was the only written bit of “his language,” the one he was born with and had never shared with anyone, the one he’d never heard anywhere else from anyone else. He called it the “Language of the Emotions.” As our relationship grew, Randy used to speak words of this language to me, mostly during intimate moments, but also when verbalizing during times of extreme emotion, as if there were no other way to articulate what he was feeling without its use. Looking back, it doesn’t really surprise me that English was actually his second language, given his dyslexia and problems with spelling and grammar.

The other thing Randy always did that left me wondering who exactly this brilliant guy was that I’d fallen in love with who held a steady job, but was also one of the weirdest people I’d ever met, was to sign his name with little superscripts at the end, like this: Randy Connolly*” Again, I had to be content with the non-answer I usually got until, one day, he admitted that the asterisk and quotation mark were his way of nodding his thanks to the Great Mother and the Great Father of the Great Oneness.

Several amazing events have taken place over time that have revealed just how these things are connected, and just how deep their meaning goes. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a chakra meditation my good friend and author Sherri Cortland has on her website in which she takes you through a chakra clearing and balancing that incorporates chanting syllables that relate to each chakra’s energy. I responded strongly to the meditation, but the real kick came when I asked myself What if….? What if the single-syllabic tonal chakra chants were similar to Randy’s language? What if the syllables of “Ra,” “Ya,” “Koo,” “Ma,” and “Yee” each had a meaning beyond an emotional communication?  And why the heck hadn’t I ever thought of asking that before?

Flashback to about 12 years ago, as Randy made his transition and spoke his language for the last time. Only a few words, but words that would matter more than I can say. I felt the circumstances even more painfully because, as he lay dying, he also kept pushing me away. Literally pushing away the love of his life. His wife. His partner. I was pretty hysterical at that point. Let’s face it, who wants to be rejected at a time like that by the one you love? And so I sat and cried a couple of feet away, not knowing what to do, afraid to watch as he took his last breaths.

Not only didn’t I realize what I was doing with my hands, which, it turns out, were, of their own volition, fiddling with a tape recorder on the table, but, because I couldn’t see through my tears, I wasn’t aware that I’d pressed the PLAY button. In fact, it wasn’t until months later when I turned the recorder back on that I heard the few precious syllables of Randy as he spoke his final words…in “his language.” And it wasn’t until a couple of years after that, at one of the recording sessions for my audiobook of Crossing the Rubicon, the producer said, “Gee, it’s too bad we don’t have any audio of Randy. It would be a perfect way to incorporate his energy into the book since he wrote it with you after he died, right?”

Right.

Which is when I shared the recording with a medium I knew who was able to translate the words for me: “Goodbye, my love…I’m coming home.”

This message was exactly what I needed. The one that would, at long last, shift the energy of shame I had been carrying since Randy’s death.

Randy always said he (we) came from another planet. That his real name was Two Lakes of the Star Clan. When he napped, I found myself imploring him to remember to come back to me because he always seemed to go so far away when he slept. Now I had my answer. He was not pushing me away because he didn’t want my love. He was pushing me away so he could “come home.” Apparently, the more I held onto him, the less his spirit and his body could do what they had to do—leave the physical realm.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. As I said, I’d meditated to Sherri’s guided chakra meditation and suddenly got it in my head to research each of the syllables of “Ra,” “Ya,” “Koo,” “Ma,” and “Yee.” What I found, if revelations are ever really “found,” was both obvious and mind blowing.

Bear in mind that Randy misspelled everything, so I had to be generous with my own spelling as I researched.

• RA: Egyptian sun god, the creator of the universe and the giver of life.
• YA(H): One name for God; YA(A): goddess of fertility and love.
• KOO (KU; also known as Akua): God of war, fishing, farming, with supernatural powers. (And now I appreciate why Randy called himself a “frequency farmer.”)
• MA: Moon goddess; Mother goddess; warrior goddess.
• YEE: As in John 10:34, “As ye are gods.”

To me, and I know to Randy who felt strongly on the matter, one finds the kingdom of God within. So if “ye” is the plural of “you,” we are all Gods…God is within each one of us. We are all God and everything is included in that oneness.

Is the trajectory of these events and discoveries beginning to come together for you as it did for me? Because between the gods and the goddesses and the oneness, we’ve pretty much covered the territory of Randy’s daily reminders: the way to consistently express his powerful belief that he was a spiritual being having a human experience—and was grateful for that opportunity.

It was his way to give a nod of thanks to the Universe.

Every time he signed his name. Every time he climbed into his car. His way to give a nod of thanks to the Universe.

I keep Randy’s original printed 4” x 11” “RA YA KOO MA YEE” sign on my desk. Over the years it’s been on a shelf, in a filing cabinet, packed away, and misplaced. Since chanting the tonalities of the chakras and feeling the frequency of the sounds, however, it has taken on a whole new meaning and will continue to sit front and center in my life.

We are the sun. We are the moon. We are warriors. We are lovers. We are frequency farmers. We are all God. We are all one…speaking the same language.

And, most importantly, as HSPs, the Language of the Emotions is our language,

and paramount to the state of the world.

The post HSPs have their own language–The Language of the Emotions first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.