A common scenario I’ve seen for people who are going through a spiritual or psychic awakening, is that a death in the family served as a catalyst for their awakening.
Typically, this means that when a person loses a beloved family member or friend, they have an experience around the person’s passing (usually something of a paranormal nature) and it opens up their spiritual awareness or challenges their worldview and beliefs about the afterlife.
I’ve had a lot of emails in the past from new readers beginning “My loved one recently passed away, and I’m finding that my abilities are opening up…”
I’ll give you an example of how this can play out, through a story involving my little brother, Tony.
This is Tony and me in the photo below:
Tony is only 18 months younger than me and was my little partner in crime when we were small — we were really close, with an almost telepathic bond.
When I set myself up as an intuitive back in 2008, Tony honestly thought I was a bit bonkers. However, he had a paranormal experience a few years ago that was so odd, it completely changed his mind:
Back then, he had a routine going when he got home from work in the evening. Every night, when he arrived home and parked up, his beloved cat Ling would wait for him and jump on the bonnet of the car when he arrived. Tony would wind down his window and the cat would give him a kiss, and jump into the car.
Anyway, one day when he got back home from work, the cat jumped on the bonnet as usual but this time, he did not get into the car when Tony wound down the window. Instead, he ran off into the garden as if he’d been spooked by something. That had never happened before.
Tony opened the car door, and was amazed and horrified to find the cat that had just greeted him cold and dead on the floor. As he was standing there, a taxi driver drove past and said, “Is that your cat? I came past here earlier…he’s been dead for a few hours, I didn’t want to move him so that the owners could find him easily.”
Sadly Ling had been hit by a car at some point earlier that day. It is an experience Tony can’t explain. Perhaps that was the cat’s way of saying goodbye.
How losing a loved one can trigger an awakening
After a person passes, it is not uncommon to have experiences (like my brother’s experience) that we simply cannot explain. Sometimes the signs we receive from our deceased loved ones are subtle signs, like hearing their favourite song on the radio, seeing something moving in the corner of your eye or even just having the sense that the person’s energy is with you.
Or sometimes the experience we have can be more dramatic, such as what happened to my brother.
I’ve often heard of experiences for people where a deceased loved one passes in the night, perhaps a long distance away, and the person who is left behind wakes up at exactly the time that the passing took place, or they wake up hearing the deceased person calling their name at the time the passing happened. The deceased can quite easily come to us in our dreams (in this article, I explain why.)
Another common experience that can cause us to change the way we look at the world is when a medium is able to connect to our deceased loved one and pass on information that is unmistakably from the deceased.
So when you go through such experiences, it’s not surprising that your beliefs about life after death are challenged, and this can spark a spiritual awakening.
There’s also another mechanism through which our intuitive gifts can awaken when someone close to us passes…
Part of us follows the deceased person to the ‘other side’
The other phenomenon that can occur after a loved one dies, is that part of our energy/soul can follow the deceased into the afterlife for a while. This doesn’t happen to all those who go through a loss, but it does sometimes happen, especially when a death is unexpected and sudden.
This corresponds to the concept of soul loss in shamanism. Soul loss is based on the idea that that traumas can cause us to “lose” fragments of our soul’s energy temporarily. In psychology, it corresponds to splitting, dissociation and the idea of part of our psyche being stuck in the past, with another person or or with a past experience that is unresolved.
When you experience soul loss, you may feel like part of you is missing, or has been lost somehow. You may not feel like ‘yourself’. You may have low energy and low immunity. You might also have gaps in your memory when it comes to the trauma or loss that affected you.
The part of you that is temporarily missing following a bereavement can usually be found in the afterlife, with your deceased loved one. After some time, and as you come to terms with the loss, this soul fragment will usually return to you, but in the mean time, having a piece of you reside with your deceased loved one on the other side can cause a heightened sense of spiritual awareness.
This can manifest as you noticing when your deceased loved one is visiting you. You may become more perceptive when it comes to receiving spiritual communication from them. If you had any latent mediumship abilities at all, these begin to open up.
I hope this article explains why a death of a loved one can often be a potent catalyst for a spiritual or psychic awakening. You can perhaps think of it as your deceased loved one’s gift to you.
Did this happen to you? I’d love to hear about your experience. Please share in the comments section below.
In this article, I’m going to give you some tips on what you can do to draw your deceased loved ones closer to you, and I’m also going to give some examples of signs that they are already communicating with you.
This topic has been on my mind a fair bit lately, mostly because I’ve been hearing a lot from my deceased grandparents in recent weeks, including one I’ve never heard from before.
The lady in this picture is my paternal grandmother, Frances Adams.
She died one week before I was born. My dad didn’t talk much about his mum when we were growing up. All I knew about her was that she worked in a factory and she played the piano. And when she died of a stroke when he was 29, he was devastated. I remember when he talked about her death, it was still a very painful topic for him and he looks very sad in my baby photos.
And then when I went to visit my dad (who lives in New Zealand) in February of this year, my dad confessed that after 40 years of being estranged from his older sisters (after an argument), he was hoping to track them down or at least find out if they were still around and if they would be interested in reconnecting. His mum (Frances), came through to me, loud and clear and told me where to look for them and how to approach getting in touch. She also told me what to expect in terms of whether they are alive or dead, and it didn’t take long to track one of my dad’s sisters down, using the info she gave.
Around this time, I also had a dream about Frances. In the dream, I was in a hospital (I’m not sure why) and she was also there to visit someone. She was wearing an orange blouse, the same colour as the dress she was wearing in the photo above, and she looked very smart. In the dream, she spoke to me, and although I couldn’t remember what she said, I remember she was very softly spoken and seemed like quite a gentle person.
I woke up in the morning with her voice (that I had never heard before in real life) ringing in my ears. I felt so close to this person I had never met. I told my dad about the dream and he mentioned that she was very softly-spoken and a gentle personality, too. So, I do feel that it was a visitation from her.
Do you want to know how your deceased loved ones might be communicating with you, too?
Next up, I’m going to give you a comprehensive list of how you can know if your deceased loved one (in this article, I‘m going to shorten this term to d.l.o.) is already communicating with you, and then I’m going to give you a full list of tips for encouraging communication with them, if you’re not seeing any communication or much at all.
So, here are all the common ways in which our deceased loved ones tend to communicate with us:
Flickering lights & problems with electrics
Yes, d.l.o’s can interfere with electrics. When I lived in New Zealand, I noticed I was getting a lot of flickering lights in my house, and it went on for about 3 weeks. A medium I saw around this time told me that my great-grandmother, Ida Sayce, was around me, and that she said she was making my lights flicker to make her presence felt. I hadn’t even mentioned the lights to the medium, so that was pretty cool.
Feathers & Coins
If you’re finding feathers or coins on your path, especially in unusual places, then this can also be a sign that your deceased person is getting your attention. I was recently chatting online with a friend when I was in an airport waiting for a flight. She was telling me all about her partner who passed away several years ago. She told me that she sensed that she and him were going to meet again in a future life. I got the strong sense (intuitively) this would be the case, and felt tingles on my neck as I read the message (which is a sign Spirit is with me). Then in an empty (indoors) airport with no birds around, I had this feather blow past me and settle right at my feet in front of me. Feathers for me are a sign that Spirit is with me, so I felt like that was her deceased partner giving her a sign and I sent the photo of the feather to her.
You smell their fragrance
Maybe your deceased loved one wore a particular brand of perfume or they smelled like tobacco because they smoked. If you smell this odour around you and there’s no other source it could be coming from, that’s also a sign they are with you (by the way, this gift is called clairsalience.)
You have birds or butterflies around you that are behaving in unusual ways
Obviously not every time you see a bird or a butterfly is going to be your deceased loved one communicating with you. But if you are on a walk, thinking about your d.l.o. and you see a bird that follows you around on your walk, that’s a sign. Or if you see a butterfly and you’re thinking of your d.l.o., and butterflies have some significance for you spiritually, maybe that’s a sign, too. Basically, go on how YOU feel about it. If something feels significant, it likely is.
Physical sensations
A sign for me that Spirit is around is that I get tingling on my temples, near my eyes. This can happen on one side or both sides. I don’t just get this when a deceased spirit is around but also when I do readings and come into contact with other types of Spirit. This is a form of clairsentience and it is not uncommon for people to experience it when their deceased love one is hanging around. It can manifest in different ways — it won’t necessarily always manifest as tingling or on the temples, like mine does. It could be on your back or on the back of your legs, for example (both common spots.) It could also be a physical sensation like pressure or feel like someone is touching you when there is no-one there.
You just get the sense they are with you
This one is hard to describe. Maybe you just feel like they are so close that they are in the room with you, or maybe you feel like you’re not alone and being watched (but not in a creepy way).
Your/their special song comes on the radio
Maybe there is a song that reminds you of your d.l.o., or perhaps there was a song that was ‘your’ song, that you both enjoyed listening to, when you were together. If this song comes on the radio (especially if it is not a song that comes on the radio too often, and it happens at a significant moment), this could also be a sign.
Objects are moving around and you’re not moving them
Perhaps a photo of your d.l.o. keeps getting knocked off the wall, or some other item that you associate with your deceased loved one is showing up in odd places or where it shouldn’t. And no-one else put it there. Deceased spirits do have the power to move matter (although not all spirits are capable of it) so if this is happening, it could also be a sign.
You see angel lights or things moving in the corner of your eye
Sometimes I see golden/white/blue/pinks lights that are a bit like fireworks, in my peripheral vision. They go off in a flash but if I look at them directly, they’re gone. For me, this is a sign that a spirit is nearby or trying to get my attention, and I call them ‘angel lights‘ because they are sometimes associated with angels, too. I go through phases with how often I see these lights, sometimes I can go months without seeing one, but if it’s been a while and I see one while thinking about someone who is deceased, for me that’s a sign that that person is with me.
Seeing things moving in the corner of your eye can also be a sign that a deceased loved one is with you. Equally, this could be a sign of an earthbound spirit. Seeing something moving in the corner of your eye should feel comforting, not creepy. If it’s comforting, or is accompanied by some other positive feeling, it’s likely to be your d.l.o.
Conversely, if it creeps you out, and you suspected anyway that you had earthbound spirits around you or in your space, you might need some techniques to clear them (see my book The Empath’s Toolkit for a technique to clear earthbound spirits from your aura.)
OK, back to signs that your loved one is with you:
It’s the anniversary of their death, or your wedding anniversary
All of the above signs are extra significant, if they happen on or around the anniversary of the person’s death, or on another significant date, such as their birthday or your wedding anniversary (if the deceased loved one was your spouse.) In my experience, d.l.o.’s are even more likely to communicate at those times.
So now I’ve gone into some signs that your loved one with with you. What if you don’t see any of these signs but you want to encourage them to check in?
Here are some ideas to encourage communication with them:
Pay attention most of all to your dreams
Dreams are the easiest way for our d.l.o’s to communicate with us, simply because channelling the deceased is like building a bridge. You live in different worlds. You’re in the earthly world and they are on the ‘other side’. To communicate with them, you have to (energetically speaking) build a bridge to their world, and they need to build a bridge to yours. When you dream, you visit the astral planes, which are like a halfway house between the earthly realm, and the ‘other side’. And so this makes it easier for your d.l.o. to get through to you, because they can pop into a dream more easily than they can, say move matter in the physical realm. And it also makes it easier for you to pick up a message because you’re in such a receptive state when you’re asleep and dreaming.
ASK them to make their presence felt
This sounds really obvious but asking them to communicate with you can get the ball rolling. Speak their name, and say it out loud that you want to hear from them. If you’re someone who spooks easily, ask them not to knock your stuff over and startle you!
Develop your psychic abilities
Our deceased loved ones will use any available channels to communicate with us, including our clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, or claircognizance. Developing and sensitising these clairs gives them more opportunities to contact you. For example, if you develop your clairvoyance, you’re more likely to see the ‘angel lights’ I mentioned above as a sign from your d.l.o.
(If you’d like some help developing your clairs, I have a free e-course at the top of my free resources page.)
Play a song (or songs) that you used to listen to together, or that remind you of the person in question
This can draw your d.l.o closer to you. Doing this before bed may even bring them to you in a dream.
Keep their photo close by
If you haven’t got a photo of your deceased loved one on display in your house, get one up. Keeping a photo next to the bed, may also bring their spirit closer to you when you’re asleep and dreaming.
Hold something that belonged to your person and think about him/her (preferably while you meditate)
Doing that daily or a few times per week can call their spirit in to you.
Visit their grave
This might not be possible at the moment, depending on your circumstances, but they will know you have visited, and it will draw them closer to you.
Ask your friends/family to be aware
If your d.l.o. is not able to get through to you, sometimes he/she will take advantage of another person’s openness, so ask your sensitive or intuitive loved ones or friends to tell you if they have a dream involving your deceased person.
This happened to a friend of mine who lost her husband a few years ago. She was in a situation where she really wished she could talk a situation over with him, that was happening in her life at the time. She would have wanted his input. So, she asked him to come into her dreams or communicate with her, but didn’t get a message from him. I didn’t even know she asked him to communicate, but that night he came into my dreams. He didn’t say anything, I just had a dream where I felt his presence strongly. I messaged her about it in the morning and she felt it was meaningful, especially as she had particularly wanted to hear from him, at that time. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to get through to her for whatever reason and so tried another option.
So. make sure to ask any friends/family who are open to it, to let you know if they dream of your deceased person. Sometimes they won’t tell you if you don’t ask, and then you can miss a message right when you need it.
“What is the best diet for developing psychic abilities?”
Here’s what people’s Spirit Guides had have to say about diet and psychic abilities, during readings:
Eliminating meat – especially red meat – will improve psychic abilities. A predominantly plant-based diet helps you to become more open and sensitive to the spirit world.
Here’s why: meat dulls your senses and lowers your vibration. First off, it takes more vital life force to digest meat. Eating meat helps to ground the ‘mind’ energy (the energy of the upper chakras) and brings it down into the lower chakras (the root chakra, sacral chakra and solar plexus). Your body is so busy processing the meat that it reduces your psychic sensitivity – after all, when you eat meat, it brings a lot of blood down to the digestive system and away from the areas associated with the upper chakras and intuition – like the brain, and some senses like hearing and sight.
Secondly, some believe that meat contains residues of the animal’s energy that was killed for its meat. When you take in meat, you are taking in the energy of that animal too, including any fear and pain.
Eating the flesh of another animal will usually involve you having to desensitize yourself to the energy of the dead animal you’re consuming. You have to desensitize yourself in order to not feel that negative energy. But you end up desensitized, in the psychic sense too.
Why this is good for some people and bad for others
If you’re trying to develop psychic abilities but it’s not easy for you, it wouldn’t help you to consume meat because it will keep you in a desensitized state and slow down your development.
When you open up to spirit, you will often feel called to stop consuming red meat anyway.
When I did my Spirit Guides coaching course (it was a six week coaching course I did last year, which is now discontinued), I noticed that one week, there were several students who all individually decided to give up red meat. They just felt like it was the right thing to do instinctively. This makes sense, since eating more plant-based food helps to open up your psychic abilities.
But on the other hand, if you’re already a very psychic, sensitive and empathic person who needs more grounding, meat will give you that. It forces you to desensitize yourself to the energy of the dead animal (because otherwise you’ll just feel bad) and it will dull your perception somewhat. It will bring your energy down into the lower chakras and stop you from ‘spinning your wheels’ in the upper realms. This can be good if you need more grounding and less escaping into the etheric realms. Although depending on your views on this issue, eating meat might not be the most ethical way to ground yourself.
Experimenting with Diet
I currently eat a predominantly vegetarian diet, but I also eat fish several times a week, and I eat poultry and eggs.
The only thing I can’t stomach is red meat – beef and lamb. To me it would be like eating a fellow human. I occasionally have bacon but I feel bad afterwards.
(Update Jan 2018: I now eat all kinds of animal foods, except dairy products, and have noticed no adverse effects on my intuitive ability.)
I’ve tried every kind of diet (from raw vegan to the standard junk-food diet) over the last several years and I’ve observed the impact it has on my sensitivity. Here are my personal observations on the impact various diets have on my psychic abilities:
Standard diet: (when I say a standard diet I mean one that is not particularly healthy. This includes junk food, plenty of biscuits and cakes; lots of processed carbohydrates like white bread and of course, meat. This is the kind of diet I ate when I was younger.)
If you’re on this diet and you want to develop psychic abilities, you’ll often find yourself called to clean up your diet. This is because a cleaner diet makes it easier for spirit to reach you. A body that is full of processed junk food is not good for connecting with spirit. It will still be possible to connect with spirit, but it’ll use up more energy because you’re desensitized from all the junk.
When I was developing my psychic abilities about four years ago, I was eating red meat. I switched over to a vegetarian diet from time to time, because I felt instinctively like I wanted to cut out meat. However, whenever I relapsed back into eating meat, I’d get the same dream:
I’d be walking through a city in Spain, sightseeing, and I’d be with the same guy each time (who was my tour guide). Instead of taking me to see monuments and buildings, he kept showing me various rotting carcasses of animals that were dotted around the streets like grotesque sculptures.
When I asked why he was showing me such disgusting things, he’d tell me: “this is what your body is like when you eat meat.”
Eating meat desensitizes our empathy and ability to pick up things, and it desensitizes us to suffering. That’s why it’s not always helpful to eat meat if you want an ongoing relationship with spirit (Ie. your Spirit Guides and Higher self) and you’re the type of person who needs to actively create and nurture that relationship – as opposed to the sensitivity already being there.
The other extreme – Vegan and raw vegan diets:
A vegan diet will help to improve your connection to the spirit world quite quickly. For me personally, a vegan diet (which means eating only plant-based food – no dairy products or eggs) is too un-grounding because I don’t need to improve my connection to spirit any further.
A raw vegan diet (Ie. a diet where you only eat raw fruit, nuts, seeds and vegetables) will positively catapult you into the realm of psychic sensitivity. I was raw vegan for two periods – one which lasted three weeks and one which lasted for a couple of weeks. It heightened my sensitivity a great deal. The first period went well for one week but then I began to feel spacey and disoriented. With the work I do (which keeps me even more attuned to the spirit realm than I would normally need to be), a raw diet and a vegan diet are too big a step in the direction of openness to spirit.
I have enough openness already and if anything, at the time I went raw vegan, I needed to tone down my empathy and sensitivity. Raw veganism did the opposite of that. Veganism didn’t help either. For most people, raw veganism can be very unbalancing. So, although I believe that veganism is the most ethical diet, I don’t believe it is helpful for very sensitive types.
For me, the compromise is vegetarianism with some fish (what some might call pescatarianism). This is a diet that has some animal products, but is mostly plant-based.
But that’s just me.
I believe that it’s best to observe all your reactions to your food, when choosing a diet. And weigh them up. My heart says yes to a vegan diet, but my mind and my body say a big no.
In the end, the right diet for you depends on your current level of openness to spirit. If you’re not open to spirit already, then switching to a plant-based or raw diet will help you to get there. If you’re already sensitive, it can unbalance you, depending on your constitution.
(Incidentally, Ayurveda sheds a lot of light on the role of constitution when it comes to the best diet for maintaining balance, whether you’re developing your psychic abilities or not.)
If you’re interested in reading more about how to ground yourself, and the role of food, check out these two articles:
What do you find is the best diet for developing psychic abilities? Have you tried vegetarianism, veganism or even raw veganism? What impact did they have on your psychic sensitivity?
