Intentional Insights: Q&A From Within by S. Kelley Harrell

Phone Calls From Beyond

I have been receiving restricted phone calls that are not normal.

My cell will ring once, maybe twice and when I answer there is this strange static. The phone calls have been happening only when I am sleeping. Today, however, I received calls while at work.  I truly believe someone is trying to contact me or tell me something. I am not sure if it is my guide or my parents that have passed away in the last few years.  Is there someway for me to figure out what and who these calls are about? I am both curious and tired.  Thanks ~A

Thank you for your note, A. When I ask for the spirit of who is making these calls to come I am greeted by a matronly woman. She appears to be in her mid fifties, has curly, dark blond hair, and is wearing a navy blue printed dress that is somewhat out of date--late 70s, early 80s. She has a very maternal feel about her but she tells me that she is not your mother. What troubles me about her is that she is constantly wringing her hands and her face is lined with worry. Other aspects of her form tell me that she is deceased and that she was murdered. She was never given a proper burial. Her body was more or less dumped and buried in a shallow grave under a tree in a very boggy area a few decades ago.

When I sit with her I realize that she will not be able to speak without fear until some healing is done for her. When that healing is completed she tells me that at the time of her death she had a daughter who was 7-8. She was killed by the daughter's father. My feeling is that she was pregnant when she was killed, and that pregnancy was the reason she was murdered, even though she feels the child to have been her husband's. I learn no other specifics about her death.

I asked her how she was connected to you and her reason for contacting you. She indicated that she was attracted to you through your wonderful relationship with your daughter and because you have a very kind heart. I do not have a sense that you knew her in life; in fact, I feel that she is connected to the area where you currently live--not necessarily your exact house, but that community, that land. I also feel very clearly that the husband's crime was never found out and that the mother was concerned for her daughter unknowingly in contact with her mother's killer. The daughter is not in physical danger; in fact the father is quite elderly now, if not dead, himself.

It seems that this mother saw you as someone who could understand her pain, and someone she wanted to help her move on. The fact that you realized something besides a technical glitch was happening is an indication of your own awareness and potential ability as a deathwalker. If you have ever had any inclination to develop your own intuitive skills, it would seem there's plenty of support for you to do so. Be well, A!

~*~*~*~

Every year for Samhain I publish accounts of my more charged, and in some cases creepy, spiritual pursuits. The Dead Time is a treasured journey to Solstice, and as it is a time of untime, the shadowed season presents a great opportunity to tell the stories that many who do shamanic work won't tell--the occasions when things don't go well or the unseen presents itself unexpectedly. You may recognize some of these accounts from my previous stories, while others are more recent. Enjoy the solitude of the darkness, and know the light will soon warm!

Hotel Phillips and Murderous Insomnia

Early in the Spring of 2002 I had the fortune of spending a week at the beautiful Hotel Phillips in Kansas City, Missouri, while on a business trip. I am quite used to loads of spirit traffic when I stay in hotels; however, my stay at Hotel Phillips offered a bit more than the luxury experience the lush establishment touts. From the first night that I checked into room 1513, I sensed many presences–again, not unusual at all, as I do quite a bit of psychopomp work. Staying in hotels for me is like being tapped on the shoulder constantly, far from restful, and Hotel Phillips was no different. Upon checking into their room, other people hang up their clothes first thing. I create sacred space and release errant energies, a gesture part compassion and part hopeful of a solid night’s sleep.

One presence in particular stood out right away, a female whose only visual aspect was a white lace hem that I saw close to the floor. I saw “her” in my room and hall several times the first few days that I was there, though she would not allow me to feel her. What was odd about this spirit was when I offered to release her she did not want to go. I also got a sense with this presence more than any of the others that she had indeed died in the building, and needed friendly company. Regardless, I couldn’t sleep in the room. She was not particularly bothersome or ever present, but her air of unrest was contagious.

Thursday morning I got up, showered, and was drying my hair in the bathroom when I felt that I was not alone. The feminine presence was with me. I opened the bathroom door to find a distraught woman standing there. She was about 22-25 years old with long auburn curly hair, a Caucasian woman in a rather formal 1930s-style dress. Her white hem fell just above her ankles—the garment I had been seeing all week. As I gazed upward I saw a large bloody wound in her chest, which dripped blood and tissue onto the floor. She had been shot and was experiencing the panic of her death moment before me.

I stepped out of the bathroom and through her, as she stepped to the side of my bed. I did not learn her name, but I felt a strong sense of betrayal that she had become involved with a man and the relationship could not for whatever reason come to fruition. This man is who shot her. I often learn information around the cause of death, and it’s always fascinating. Staying true to my role as psychopomp means that details are mere curiosities. The only real objective in working with the dead is to learn how I can facilitate helping them move on to the next phase of their destiny, and doing just that. Everything else is superfluous. That said, sometimes learning what I must from them and helping them shift is no easy feat.

I asked her if she wanted to move on, and she hesitated. I told her that she would not have fully shown herself to me if she did not want help and asked her what held her here. My sense was that she was waiting for the man who killed her--her lover--to somehow redeem himself. I told her that she may have a long wait, that she had already had a long wait, and that she could wait for him to make amends in a much better place than this hotel. After a bit more discussion, she allowed me to walk her into Spirit space and all was restful.

I went on to work for the day, but from the minute I entered the room that night, I was uneasy. The oppressive feel of the room was worse than it had been since my arrival, and I realized that whoever was there was angry with me, yet the spirit refused to communicate.

Once in bed, the lights were out for about two minutes when I began to hear extremely loud scuffling noises moving around the room. I lay there and listened for a few seconds, when finally the sound reached a crescendo behind my headboard forming a complete circle around me. The entity meant to frighten, if not threaten me. Though difficult to describe, there was palpable movement in the discordant sound and it pushed against my ribs. Non-consensual physical contact from spirits is an extremely disturbing phenomenon. When an encounter reaches that point fear becomes anger.

Enraged, I observed a male in the room, about four feet from the foot of my bed. Although well dressed he was surrounded by black clouds. He, too, was Caucasian, though physically did not appear entirely human. I knew this man was the killer, and that he had killed many times. He was a nasty piece of work, and he was angry with me for interacting with the woman. He had killed her in the hotel, though not in that room, and he had never been linked to the crime. His pride was wounded that I knew what had happened, as he was used to getting away with everything. I had seen his dirty deeds and he wanted to eliminate me as a threat. He was afraid that I would hand him over to some authority for punishment. He was so stuck in a defensive consciousness that he didn’t seem to realize that he was dead.

I told him that I didn't care what he had done in his life that I wasn't there to judge him. Gradually his energy softened. The noise in the room stopped. I said that this was not the place he needed to be anymore, that whatever happened between him and the woman was between them, and if he felt ready to deal with that from a more useful place that I could help him. I also made it perfectly clear that I was ready to sleep and we would not be negotiating all night. When I said that to him, the clouds around him began to dissipate, but I still did not see him clearly. I held the space for a good 45 minutes or so, but he went relatively easily. For the first time since I checked into Hotel Phillips my room was quiet on all fronts.

The next morning I approached the concierge, asking if anyone had ever reported anything strange about room 1513. He, along with the staff at the front desk, went pale and asked me what had happened. When I told them that I saw a woman in my room, they stammered a bit, eventually going on to say that they had not had reports about that room, and had not had anything reported at all since the hotel had re-opened after renovations the previous Fall. They offered to assign me to a different room, and when I declined huddled in the corner whispering. Clearly they were aware of creepy occurrences, but I couldn’t tell if they would be relieved or disappointed to learn that their gangster spectre was no longer a guest.

~*~*~*~

Faeries in the Garden

I’m not a skeptic by any stretch, but I am an experiential junkie. I need some level of personal exchange with something before I can fully give myself over to its reality, even if that exchange happens in the ether. I’ve realized that there can be a wide berth between knowing something is entirely possible and experiencing it to be so. I’ve also learned that when experiencing something energetically overlaps witnessing it physically such an opportunity is a gift.

Several years ago I was attending a weekend class at a retreat in the mountains of North Carolina when I saw faeries. The location, itself, is somewhat of an anomaly in that it sits at the convergence of several ley lines. I personally believe it sits between diverging strata of time and dimension based on other intriguing experiences I’ve had there, but perhaps that’s more of a personal gnosis. The caretaker of the retreat has a very close relationship with the faeries of the land. I’d visited the retreat several times and heard stories from the horse’s mouth of the fae striking a deal with the caretaker, in that if she would tend their portal on her land they would commune with humans—by invitation only—between Mother’s Day and Summer Solstice each year. She told us how she’d made conversation with them learning what their job was in this realm and how they did it. They told her that their purpose was to collect dew to protect the sacred seed within blossoming floral life, which apparently they take very seriously. They let her know that they enjoy colorful, shiny trinkets. In an attempt to better understand their work and forge unity with them she complimented them on the plants and overall landscape. They replied, “That’s gnomes. We only do flowers.”

The night I met them was the evening after Summer Solstice of 2002. It was the close of the faeries’ interactive season, as well as the pinnacle of what had been months of dreadful drought. The caretaker told us that the fae had not been very active at all through the summer, as they had been struggling to maintain the flowers.

In agreement with the caretaker our class met in the faeries’ garden around 9:30 that evening. There were only a few of us, maybe ten to twelve, and we were told that upon entering the garden people often feel the sensation of a cool droplet on their forehead, or have ringing in their ears. I felt nothing of the sort. I remember crossing the threshold of the garden and instantly feeling as though I wasn’t supposed to be there, as if my presence was an interference. I had the distinct impression that the tension I felt was an indication that the presence of humans, at least at that taxing time in their season, was pulling the faeries’ energy in the wrong direction. I had the sense that we shouldn’t focus so much on them appearing to us and we should just let them tend their jobs.

I remember sitting in the talking box, the bench the caretaker usually sat on when she conversed with the fae, waiting for something to happen. Group members wandered peacefully about in the lovely open space. I had meandered to a level area toward the front of the garden that overlooked a flowering planting bed at the base of the mountain that rose just behind it. To one end of that bed stood an old chimney, the portal, which the caretaker said the fae called “the tower” that allowed them to pass from their world to ours. I had reached a point of blissful meditation on the mountain and wasn’t even thinking of faeries when one of the women who worked at the retreat grabbed my arm and exclaimed, “There she is!”  I all but jumped out of my skin, jolted from my peaceful state, but when I looked in the direction the lady was pointing sure enough there was a brilliant blue spark wafting through the dark night. It glided down the mountain and came to exactly where the lady had dragged me. Mere inches from my body, the light circled my midsection. I felt very much like it was regarding me as much as I was observing it. The blue spark drifted amongst us, weaving between all of our bodies, squeezing between tree limbs, rising above our heads and sweeping past our feet.

The whole time I had this chatter in my head, ticking off the things the flying light could be. I wasn’t intentionally trying to disprove what was right in front of me; rather, it was more like a reflex of my mind reinforcing that it was right in front of me and I had no context to suit it. The spark was bigger than a firefly and it stayed lit for long intervals. Even when the spark would dim a halo of blue stayed lit several inches out around it. Each of us stood in awe, even the retreat worker, watching the blue light greet us.

About the time that I gave over to the idea that I had no idea what I was witnessing, something even more strange happened.

A few smaller golden sparks lighted amongst us, but the slightly larger blue one flashed into a big orb. It literally exploded into a blue ball of light as big as my hand, the bright spark at its center growing stronger with luminous force. The spark in the center continued to float out amongst us, dimming and lighting while the glowing ball around it remained consistently lit.

I know what I saw visually and it fits into no other phenomena I can source. Etherically I observed a profoundly peaceful strata of Earth’s experience of itself that required nothing of me but to honor it. There aren’t many better ways to spend a weekend.

~*~*~*~

Angel Download

The year 2007 was rather strange for me, for several reasons, largely because two vastly significant segments of my life intertwined. In that timeframe health conditions that I had been managing through an intense spiritual emergency came to a head (which are covered in a subsequent story), I began to have mindful interactions with Star People. I’d read stories of experiences in which people had stellar visitors who affected their neural functioning, in essence ‘changing their hardware’ to ready them for emerging frequencies coming into the planet. I’d never felt myself as part of that strata of experience. I was a shaman, an earth-dweller, a Nature spirit in my own right. I’d had many experiences journeying out into the starry vast Unknown, but I had not experienced that facet of the Unknown venturing to me. Many of my colleagues communicate with that level Intelligent Light, reporting such physical sensations of ringing in the ears or feeling as though a cool drop of water was falling on the third eye as indicators that such a base interaction was occurring. I had no reason to think that I would engage in that facet of spirit communication, and that was fine. Truth told, I always found it somewhat hokey, talking with angels and aliens. By most measures I’ve had my hands full unraveling the myriad experiences of the wyrd throughout my life, so I didn’t need to court something more.

In the fall of 2006 I began to have migraines. I’d not experienced migraines since my first bout with them in 1999, the time I now look to as the beginning of my spiritual emergency, or what could have been one of several such etheric crises. What made this episode of discomfort different was that my face went almost completely numb on the left side, and I suddenly could not hear well and had problems reading. All sound seemed to be at a great distance, tinged with a persistent low ringing. Visually it seemed as though I had suddenly become dyslexic, only it wasn’t just that letters and words inverted on a page. I had begun seeing symbols that were unrecognizable along with upside down letters and blank spaces mid-sentence. With the rapid onset of all of these symptoms I returned to the neurologist I’d seen years before. Medical exams yielded nothing changed or harmful in my brain. The neurologist tried to convince me that I had always been dyslexic but at the age of thirty-five just “hadn’t noticed” until now. Being the sort who knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of five and who set her entire scholastic agenda to that outcome, I knew this was a new development and that I had not been latently dyslexic. My sense was that something major was going on etherically, a very profound shifting of synaptic wiring, so to speak. Medically, no diagnosis was reached.

Headaches persisted over the next few months and I began to have a very difficult time articulating my words. The visual phenomenon had abated for the most part, but my hearing was still quite affected by what was happening to me. I consulted my spirit guides ongoing, who informed me that my etheric form was shifting at a rate far more rapid than my physical form could comfortably withstand. As well, they told me that I was clearing out chakral clutter, which was resulting in various chakras elevating into vastly different vibrations than I was used to overall, and that other chakras were feeling very uncomfortable as they had not reached that point of elevation yet.

While I felt their assessment to be fact and I found peace in that confidence, I was physically miserable. The headaches became more severe and I sought out a fresh perspective on my neurological landscape. In early March of 2007 I went to a different neurologist who also held a rather holistic practice as an osteopath. She immediately confirmed that I had not suddenly become dyslexic, but that indeed a cerebral event had occurred. From her perspective it was imperative to assess just what that event was. From my perspective I wanted to see how the body’s mapping was changing to suit my new etheric territory. I consented to the testing that she wanted to do, which initially included another MRI. The results of this MRI were different from the one I’d had six months previously, revealing scarring on the brain as the cause, according to my doctor, of the physical symptoms I was having. In order to rule out deeper implications for the cause of the scarring she ordered more tests.

About a week later I was cruising down Raleigh’s outer beltline when in a flash I felt a ripple go through not just my body but the whole car and space around it, and I saw a split second visual of a group of lanky silvery grey Beings standing in a walled space surrounded by huge boxy electrical conductors. Though blended they felt predominantly feminine, and they were looking back at me through the windshield the way one looks at animals through glass in a zoo. As soon as the Beings realized that I could see them they gasped and appeared rather sheepish, imparting a very clear sense of playfulness at being caught stirring the cosmic cookie jar. In another blink, before me was only highway. I heard the murmur of a collective voice say, “She knows we just pushed this down.” I heard other voices, but they were hypnologic, fluid, not unlike a melody. I heard this soft strain the rest of the way home.

The intensity and pervasiveness of this experience was very much like my strange mind-reading experience at Walmart, only the data coming in this time was purely pleasant. As I drove along, bemused, the meaning of this exchange was perfectly clear. I’ve read many instances in archaic history and modern experience of Star Beings collectively injecting radical transformation to passively open up options to an energetically stagnant populace. I never had cause to disbelieve it but I’d never personally experienced such. This intervention had been personal in that I felt it, but it also stretched beyond me over the land, in the space between the Earth and the firmament. It was not personal and yet was custom fitted to every Being who could receive it in this plane.

For all the strange encounters that I’ve read about, this one I saw happen—an image opened in my mind that did not originate from me – and I knew it was a radical transition being gifted us instantly. The entire event lasted about six seconds and afterward I felt like I was surrounded by a silvery aura that was not my own, like an etheric cushion so I wouldn’t hurt myself with my new information, a buffer to assimilate.  I laughed the rest of the way home. I realized then that my wyrd had moved up to an entirely new level.

Medically, my doctor performed a lumbar puncture to discern the origin of the scarring on my brain. The results of this were normal, though an unrelated but peculiar outcome was the revelation that I apparently tended to have a lower than normal level spinal fluid, which can create a collection of annoyances, none of them particularly threatening. I walked away from the physical observation of the changes in my body knowing that my brain had indeed been remapped, a cause for concern to my neurologist, though to me it was a mirror of what I knew to be happening in the shifting template of my life force.

The last event in that sequence of changes came almost ten days later. In the early hours of sunlight I lucidly became aware of existing in two spaces at once. I was aware of myself lying in my bed, though I was also lying in what appeared to be an encampment in another plane.

The scenery was a small arrangement of beige tents and bedding flanked by tall waving grasses of a meadow. There was a rather bleak feel to the space, though, as if it was a temporary meeting place between realms, a multi-planar MASH unit. I found myself lying on a beige pallet on the ground, surrounding by about 20-30 others reclining nearby. They too were consciously aware of their location and of being outside the bodies. I recognized one of the people as a childhood playmate, someone I’d not seen in years. A Being stood over me, fairly masculine in energy, and quite a large presence. I felt him reaching into my head, specifically into the area of my brain that bore the scars. I felt him moving things around and I became extremely agitated. I fought him quite hard, all the while having an inner dialogue with my spirit guides. They told me that it was his job to “install” the etheric component of the changes that had been made in my physiology and that it was up to me to decide if I wanted to allow it.

“Will the headaches stop if I allow this?” I asked them.

They informed me that gradually they would abate with this new balance of energy.

“What will it change in me?” I asked.

As soon as I formed the thought, the Being plunged its “chip” into my brain. I felt a jolt of electricity shoot through my body and crackle far out into my etheric form. My ego was quite distressed about its gruff methodology, though I knew that having uttered my last question I was expressing positive intent. By the time the energy traveled several feet out into my form I felt marvelous. I felt an indescribable cellular rapport, as if I was finally able to experience all of myself in a basic formed manifestation.

Indeed my neurological symptoms did calm significantly after the culmination of this series of events. I began to see silvery white orbs on a daily basis that I know to be the consciousness of creatures guiding us into a much wider practice of experiencing ourselves in this plane.

~*~*~*~

Intentional Insights is a Q& A column inviting you to look inside yourself. If you have a question that you would like for me to address in my column regarding a brief Soul Reading or questions about spiritual healing and shamanism, please send them to me at Kelley@soulintentarts.com, or contact me to schedule a full-length Soul Reading.  Intentional Insights is a production of Soul Intent Arts. Follow me on Twitter!

~S. Kelley Harrell, C.Ht. ~ www.kelleyharrell.com ~ @SKelleyH Author of Gift of the Dreamtime: Awakening to the Divinity of Trauma Soul Intent Arts ~ An intertribal shamanic practice for Universal wellbeing ~ www.soulintentarts.com Intentional Insights ~ Q&A From Within ~ Podcast ~ www.intentionalinsights.com