ANGELS
Now, I’m the most sceptical person on the planet: I think meditation is just laziness. People who have therapy should stop being so self-indulgent and help others. In the course of my job as a journalist, I have had more ridiculously expensive alternative treatments than you could shake a water divining stick at - hot oil dribbled on my forehead in Jamaica, a man walking on my back in Puglia, a week spent munching ayurvedic food in India, kinesiology and even acupressure.
But none of these have even scratched the surface of my demeanour of unhappiness, alleviated the pain in my back and shoulders or even given me the energy to face the day.
But then my 17-year-old cat, Snoopy, became ill a few months ago. He was diagnosed with kidney and liver failure, and prescribed numerous drugs by the vet. He wasn’t improving, and so I enlisted a second opinion from a holistic vet, who prescribed herbal medicine, as well. But Snoopy became so ill (when drinking water, he would let his head fall into his bowl), my vet told me nothing more could be done. I was in despair.
Soon after, I was having a chat with a friend near my home in Somerset. She started telling me that, driving across the moor late at night, she often felt a presence in the back of her car. It was a man, and he was whistling. ‘Not a constant whistle that could have been a partially open window; an actual tune.’ But who is it? I asked her. ‘Oh, it’s my guardian angel,’ she replied.
She went on to tell me about a psychic healer, a man called Terry Shubrook, who has helped her and her many animals using angel therapy.
Despite my misgivings, I give him a call. I ask him how he got into this sort of therapy in the first place. ‘I was having treatment for an alcohol problem, and found out the rehab was in the grounds of a convent,’ he says.
‘I felt an angelic presence and, sure enough, a change came over me. It was like a switch in my head. Since then, I have been guided by what many people call intuition: that is an angel telling you something. When a thought comes into your head from nowhere, that is what you need to listen to.’
Terry says he helps people and animals. He laughs, telling me he has been at the conception of many children. ‘I had been working with a woman who was trying to conceive. During a session, an energy came down to her and I knew it was the soul of a child. Two weeks later, she rang to tell me she was pregnant.’
My inner sceptic is finding all this a bit hard to swallow.
But, when you’ve got a cat that is poorly, you will clutch at straws. I ask Terry if he can help Snoopy and he says he can.
He explains that he often works remotely, using the body of his wife to represent the body of his patient, be it cat or person: he can be many miles away, but somehow treat the patient through using his wife’s body.
He tells me Snoopy is not ready to leave me yet, and does some healing work on him, using Snoopy’s angels to tell him what is wrong (cats have guardians, too, apparently). There’s no logical explanation as to how Terry heals Snoopy. I only spoke to him over the phone and I didn’t even tell him what was wrong with the cat. He tells me he can feel its energy.
The following week, I take Snoopy to the vet to have his blood and urine tested. They are both ‘normal’.
Despite all my doubt, I am impressed, but I need more evidence. And so I contact the queen of angel therapy, a woman called, rather aptly, Doreen Virtue.
She is based in the U.S., a fourth generation metaphysician (or spiritual leader), the author of numerous books on the subject and has treated many ‘ ultra-famous movie stars’. ‘Angels have soft, feathery wings. They always talk about, and act from, love. Everyone has guardian angels who guide and protect us,’ she says.
‘The angels can’t force their help on us, however, since we have free will. We must ask for their help. Evil people don’t listen to their angels: their angels stand by with “wings tied” unable to intervene because God created us with free will.’
This all sounds a bit American, wacky and religious (none of the other therapists I speak to mention God at all). Can these beings really help us?
I speak to Jenny Smedley, who is based in Somerset and is world renowned for her ability to use angels to help people. She discovered angels when she was 45 and suffering from depression. She was on a train, had started to meditate and says she found herself in the presence of an angel.
‘The angel showed me my life path,’ she says. ‘Most of us don’t know why we are here. I was lucky to be told I was to be a spiritual seed planter. If you follow your path, that is where true happiness comes from; it can’t be taken away by outside influences.’
I start to wonder whether therapists using angels are just tapping into our anxiety about our jobs and our future, but then she tells me something, completely out of the blue.
She tells me my guardian angel is telling her that my nephew will be OK and will grow up to be some kind of ambassador. She cannot have known he has been suffering from leukaemia and, not long ago, was given a bone marrow transplant.
‘There is plenty of love to come for you. There is turquoise around your angel, which indicates that the love will come from abroad. This will be a foreign-speaking man, from a hot country,’ she says.
She says we all have angels, often more than one, and that mine is ‘very pretty’.
She says there are two types: past-life angels that give you ‘horrible nudges’ so that you will do better in the next life, and guardian angels, which direct you in your everyday life. I ask her how I can start listening to them.
She tells me to draw an image of how I want my life to be, and to write eight words around the image: these could be ‘happy’ or ‘free’. This is my own personal mantra, which I am to repeat before I get up.
As I say these words, endorphins will multiply in my brain. If anything bad happens during the day, I am to bring this mantra to the front of my mind to drive it away.
I try to do this the next morning and feel a bit daft, but in a way I do think it puts me in a good frame of mind - at the very least it makes me try to be happy.
I speak to a man who claims he has been guided by angels all his life. Horst Rechelbacher is a man worthy of respect, he is the founder of beauty empire Aveda, the first of the organic, plant-based super beauty brands. He recently sold the business to Estee Lauder for $300million.
Horst was born in Austria, a country where angels are part of the culture. ‘They are everywhere,’ he tells me from his organic farm in the U.S., ‘as statues in churches, in our town squares.’ But how does he know angels exist, and how do they help him?
He tells me that, because of his work (his mother, too, was a herbalist), he has travelled all over the world in search of healing plants and was ‘amazed how many different cultures believe in angels’.
He says he uses angels in every aspect of his business: ‘The angels help my work, my mental state. They influence my decisions. Plus, I know I’m loved. Even if we just believe we are looked after - the placebo effect - our brains will produce the right chemicals and they will help us.’
Finally, I visit Sohini Patel at the Tranquil clinic on Harley Street. She is 32, and a qualified osteopath who uses angels to help treat her patients’ physical and emotional ailments.
She says angels help her patients achieve their potential and cope with stress. She once told a woman that she should leave her partner, as he was going to be violent towards her. She later got a call from that woman, saying this had, indeed, come to pass.
Surprisingly, she tells me that half of her patients are men, mostly businessmen, stockbrokers and bankers, who not only have to learn to deal with stress, but want to know how to follow their instincts, to make good decisions.
Then she asks me to lie on her couch and begins running her hands over me, drawing the bad energy away from my body. My buttocks feel warm.
‘That is your angel, supporting you,’ she says. ‘You have to think of your angels as your team. You are never alone.’
She tells me my heart is wounded and that I need to come out of my self-imposed hibernation (I moved to the countryside after my divorce a year ago, and rarely see a living soul) and start socialising more.
So far, so predictable. Then, she says something that makes me freeze. ‘I can sense a bottle,’ she says. ‘Wine.’ I don’t tell her that I have been so depressed recently I have started to look forward to a glass of wine at six o’clock, even when I’m on my own.
My family has a history of alcoholism and I know that, if I’m not careful, I could easily become dependent, too. This is something no one could possibly know.
Sohini moves down my body, and her hands hover over my left knee. She tells me a bad spirit attached itself to that part of my body six days ago. ‘Is your sister having problems with her knee?’
Now, this is weird. Six days before, I had had a stand-up screaming match with my sister, and the resentment was still brewing. The row happened the night before my sister had surgery - on her left knee.
‘Listen to your gut instincts,’ she says, as I stand up shakily to leave. ‘Repeat the words: “Trust and relax. Trust and relax.”
‘At night, at least once a week, soak in a sea salt bath for 15 minutes. This will cleanse your body, release the energy.
‘When you go to bed, ask your angels a question. In the morning, when you wake up, you will have the answer.
‘When you hear a voice telling you the answer, say what they are telling you out
loud: it makes it more real, and you’re more likely to remember it.’
I feel as though a weight has lifted from my shoulders. My mobile goes. It is a text from a man I have been wanting to hear from, asking me out for dinner. He has just come to England from abroad (the turquoise bit Jenny Smedley mentioned). I then get some good news about a work problem.
Have I been helped by my guardian angels or do I merely think I have? Is this the placebo effect Horst was talking about? Either way, I intend to go home, soak in that sea salt bath and banish the dark thoughts that send me spiralling downwards (’Whatever you brood over will hatch,’ Jenny Smedley had warned me wisely).
I don’t know whether it was because I was vulnerable, but I do feel there is something out there protecting me, wanting me to listen. In the past, I ignored that voice all too often.
Even if the angels don’t exist, these past few weeks have taught me to remember I am a spiritual being, that I have intuition. That I have to practice being happy. For the first time in a year, I dare to feel a tiny bit optimistic.
If you are interested in learning how to contact your angels, then there are many books out there and Doreen Virtue is a specialist in this subject, however if you would like to train to become and angel therapist then Luna Online Homestudies specialise in holistic therapy courses www.onlinehomestudies.com
SOURCE: Liz Jones - Daily Mail Online