May the Angels Be with You
Access Your Spirit Guides and Create the Life You Want
GARY QUINN
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2001 by Gary Quinn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
(First published in 2001 by Harmony Books, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, Random House Inc., USA)
Smashwords Edition 2012
Moulton Agency Books
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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To our higher angels and guides who are always there to give love and information for each individual, so that they may create heaven on earth
Introduction
Expect Help
1
Hang on for the Ride
2
Clearing the Way: How to Tap into “Angel Power” (Even If You Don’t Believe in Angels!)
3
The Angel of Vision
4
The Angel of Wisdom
5
The Angel of Purity
6
The Angel of Strength
7
The Angel of Love
8
The Angel of Peace
9
The Angel of Victory
10
Heaven on Earth: A Meditation
11
Angels: A Quick Guide
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
Expect Help
The journey you are about to embark on in this book will take you many places you’ve never been before. You will feel a wide range of emotions, come upon worlds of possibility you never realized were open to you, and investigate places in your soul that call out for investigation. You will slowly develop the certainty—not just the faith or hope—that guidance is yours for the asking.
Seem like an impossible promise? It certainly sounds as if such a trip—like the Grand Tour rich people used to take a century or more ago—will require all kinds of preparation: packing clothes for every occasion and climate, getting all necessary shots to ward off disease, learning many different languages, obtaining visas and passports, preparing to leave home for a long duration. It sounds exciting, perhaps, but maybe more than you feel you’re up to. However well intentioned they are, many “spiritual” books, and in particular books about angels, often make it seem that the meditative adventure they describe and advocate is as complicated as that aforementioned Grand Tour. You are sometimes deluged with arcane details about cosmology—about how the Universe “really” works— about the hierarchy of heavenly (and not so heavenly) spiritual or “divine” beings. The very specificity of these approaches may at first appear to lend credibility to their claims: how could so much be known if it weren’t on some level “true”? Without in any way desiring to debunk these claims, I’d like to offer a note of reassurance, here at the start, that you don’t have to acquire complicated visas and passports or learn unfamiliar languages to enter the realm to which this book invites you. As Dorothy discovered, Oz (despite all its wonders, beauties, mysteries, and miracles) had nothing on Kansas. She’d always had everything she needed right at home. She just hadn’t known it before.
If you question that payoff, you’re not alone. Oz has all that magic, color, suspense, and fun—flying monkeys, a wizard, a talking scarecrow, a tin man, a cowardly lion, gleaming emerald towers, apple trees that throw apples, a good witch in a floating bubble, and a green-colored cackling bad one on a broom—and what Dorothy gets is more brown farm dirt? What kind of trade-off is that? Seems more like a cruel trick. Actually, Kansas wasn’t Dorothy’s prize any more than Oz was. The prize was her ability to envision the most marvelous dream she could imagine and then find ways to explore it, live in it, overcome her fear of it, love it —and learn from it that there were many Ozzes and Kansases, as many as she felt like creating. We tend to regard the circumstances we were born with or into (parents, genetic inheritance, wealth or lack thereof, siblings, where we were born, education, size of nose, color of hair, and so on) as a prison sentence: we feel as trapped as Dorothy once did in Kansas and even (before she realized she could exit the dream anytime she wanted to) in Oz.
But we’re not trapped. Limitations, like fears, are illusions. Miracles are not illusions: they are part of the basic fabric of our lives. It is one of the primary missions of this book to help you understand just how free you really are and how normal miracles are. Not by lecturing you, but by beckoning to you to open up and discover all this for yourself.
The world is spread out before you like a feast. How do you see that feast, partake of what’s in it? Expect to. Expect that the feast is there and that it’s there for you. That’s the simple “trick.” I’ll enlarge the invitation. Expect help. You will learn that this does not mean “expect help sometime in the future when some source of it is ready to bestow it.” Expect help now. Help is being offered to you now. Help has always been offered to you. All it takes to realize the simplicity of this great universal truth is to calm down and let the possibility in. As you’ll see in the following pages, you need only to “act as if.” (We’ll give that a good deal of play later on; let me just plant the seed of it now.) Thoughts have tremendous power. We are continually in the process of creating ourselves every moment we breathe, every moment we act from our assumptions and perceptions of the world.
The cliché “you know a man from the company he keeps” is profoundly true—but doesn’t begin to tell the half of it. You know a human being from every manifestation of his or her life. This fact suggests an often unnerving—and after you’ve recovered from the shock of seeing your complicity in it —sometimes rueful irony.
The questions most clients come to me wanting to ask are usually very basic: “How can I make more money, find the right relationship, be the success I want to be? How can I get what I want?” In a way, a perfectly plausible answer (here comes that irony) is: “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Because whether you know it or not, you’ve been creating the world that some unconscious part of you thinks you deserve all along. It wouldn’t be your world otherwise.”
How do you stop this unwitting self-sabotage? The answer is first to become aware of the thought-to-reality mechanism that is already at work in your life, but over which you haven’t yet learned to exert control. In other words, to be who you want to be, to have the life you want to have, you first have to examine your motives. You have to be sure you’re sending out to the world the clearest, most examined, and most honest intentions you’re capable of conveying. All of us are already manifesting our desires, and if we’re not happy with their outcome, we’ll benefit by becoming more conscious of the motives we’re really working from. Then we can focus on changing them so that we do get what we want. This usually means acknowledging assumptions that have been holding us back because we haven’t completely registered that we have them—for example, that you don’t deserve what you desire, that risk-taking is too terrifying to attempt safely, and/or that you have to do it all yourself.
Let’s quickly debunk the last of these misguided and self-impeding assumptions (we’ll deal with the other two later on): the idea that “you have to do it all yourself.” In two words, you don’t. In fact, in two other words, you can’t! If you knew how much you already have been helped, and are being helped right now, any fantasy that you’re a lone wolf crying in the wilderness would evaporate like the mist it is.
This book is about angels. But it’s also about the infinite interconnectedness of the spiritual and the material realms we all inhabit, the infinite joyful abundance of the Universe, and the infinite help that is available to you to become exactly who you want to be. Keep it simple. All you have to do is ask, with a clear heart and an open spirit, for what you want.
You know what the first result will be? A resounding cheer from the whole angelic realm: “Hooray! You’ve figured out the secret!” Imagine all these angels eagerly poised for flight, awaiting only the barest invitation from you to soar into your life.
1
HANG ON FOR THE RIDE
Angel came down from heaven yesterday.
Stayed with me just long enough to rescue me . . .
These words from a half-remembered Carlos Santana song darted from somewhere into my groggy head and nudged me out of my nap on the plane from L.A., beckoned me to open my eyes, pulled at me to feast on the visual splendor of Sun Valley, Idaho, now dawning below. Like sentries on the road to a royal banquet, great jagged outcrops of boulder and rock framed the city’s spread.
I began to sense the miracle from the moment the plane touched ground: the very air was magic. I knew this was someplace I was supposed to be. More words rang in my head: “A table has been prepared!”
I was clear about what I had been invited to provide at that “table”: two presentations covering one topic, “How to Contact Your Angels.” I had prepared for these talks in my usual way—amassing notes, stories, anecdotes, and meditations, the joyful spillover from my lifelong absorption in the power and guidance of angels. I also looked forward to giving as many one-on-one “angel readings” as time and energy would permit. The venue was the Third Annual Sun Valley Wellness Festival at the Elkhorn Resort Lodge, whose organizer, Liz Caldwell, had known my work in L.A. as a psychic counselor and “angel channeler” and had invited me to share my experience with the large and varied group who had come to expand their spiritual lives.
Arriving at the resort, I felt embraced by both place and people; already my spirit was being fed. During the guided meditation with which I opened my first talk, I quickly sensed in the packed room the ebullient energy of many souls at various stages of receptivity “going with me,” all of them eager to explore whatever opportunities this encounter might provide them. It was as if a joyful convocation of souls—a “soul party”—had spontaneously formed around me.
As I led my Sun Valley group in this meditation introducing them to the Seven Angels that we would investigate throughout our time together, beckoning them to let go of their fear and resistance, I sensed a softening, a collective opening of hearts in the room. I felt the imminent prospect of widespread healing and the certainty that it would be fostered here. An overpowering sense of the Universe’s abundance flooded through me. I knew that all we ever needed to do was let that abundance in—and shed as many of our assumptions and expectations as we could. I knew—and I prayed to help every soul in the room also to realize—that the rewards of letting go will always, always turn out to be incalculably greater than any of us dream. All of my carefully compiled notes, all of the prep work I’d done for the seminar, probably had some subliminal benefit to me when I got up to speak for the several-hour sessions I conducted each day.
But I can’t remember looking at my notebook. Something magical and transcendent took over—I spoke and listened without any hesitation or self-consciousness. The angels I channel privately in my practice now came fully, freely, abundantly to my aid. So many memories of faces at Sun Valley stay with me: the woman whose son had recently died—his name (Michael) and nickname (Bo) came to me the moment I saw her—and her stunned and grateful expression as I passed on his message of love and peace and hope to her is something I shall never forget. Other men and women began to sense the presence of their guardian angels, sometimes visually, more often registering them internally—in a remembered dream, song, poem. So many connections were made within, between, and among everyone, all strengthening my understanding that I was not the source of any of them. I had simply enabled these people to connect with each other and with their own higher selves and at least some sense of angelic guidance.
All I have been and can ever be is a conduit, a channel, through which information and guidance can flow. This gives my life its purpose—at every moment I’m grateful for the gift of being able to provide this angelic “phone line.” But it is a gift whose ultimate aim is to become unnecessary. My goal is to let everyone know that angelic love and guidance are available to all of us, right now. All you have to do is let it in. You don’t need a channeler for this. (But I’ll be here until you realize you don’t.) My Sun Valley experience helped me to connect profoundly to this mission once again.
This goal is the book’s mission, too: to help you let angelic wisdom into your life and heart. If you had even the slightest inkling how completely and powerfully you are loved by the angels around you, you would cry for joy—and then quickly become reassured that you had all the resources, so many more than you ever dreamed you had, to turn your life into the magnificent adventure you want it to be.
THE SOUL PARTY
I resort to using the word abundant so often in describing angels because it suggests their great teeming variety and energy—but what word can really capture how wild, light, infinite, joyful, and expansive their presence is? Language is too linear for this task; words tell you only how A connects to B connects to C. The realm of angels is timeless, rich, multidimensional, with levels of meaning you have to feel to understand. The only way I know to begin to understand the nature of this realm is simply to allow ourselves to feel its impact and influence and love. All any of us has to do is give up our resistance to receiving this influence. Angels have so much to tell us. And we can benefit so profoundly from what they want to teach us. The very world would heal if, collectively, “it”—we—learned to heed their call. But remember it’s a “soul party”! At one point I tried to describe to my group what it’s like to receive angelic help: “Think of it as a ride in Disneyland!” Angels are messengers of joy. They are not the washed-out, faintly smiling, dull little icons you see in cliché religious art. They are as delightful, ingenious, and exciting as they are infinitely loving. They are one with their happy, urgent messages. They are pure focused bursts of joy. In fact, you’re not fully “hearing” an angel if something inside you doesn’t feel like it’s positively glowing.
How do I know this? What’s my proof?
I have never been bothered by the question of “proof” with regard to spiritual phenomena. To me, if something is true, it will eventually reveal itself as true. You don’t have to go scrambling after it. If you have the human optical ability to see color, and you are taught the names of different colors, no one will have to prove to you that (on clear June days) the sky is blue. Truth is self-evident. So it is with angels: if you allow them into your heart, mind, and life, angels will help you to transform your life. Ask them for help with this transformation, and see what happens.
If you truly have cleared the way for their entry, you’ll have more proof of their power, love, and truth than any argument anyone could pose. The proof is in the experience—and the experience awaits you whenever you want it. Not that we don’t sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to blind ourselves to truth. Human history largely documents this kind of willful blindness and denial —blindness and denial fueled by fear, which is perhaps truth’s worst enemy. Eventually, with your angels’ help, you’ll see that all fear is illusion. In fact, you might want to start to chant these four words to yourself —“Fear is a lie”—even if you can’t quite yet bring yourself to believe it. Eventually the truth of it will prove itself.
Spiritual or religious defensiveness has always struck me as sad and self-defeating—not only when people are determinedly closed off from experiencing anything other than the material world, but also when a proponent of a particular spiritual “truth” attempts to cram it down someone else’s throat. There hasn’t been a religious pundit yet who through sheer force of “logic” was able to sway any nonbeliever one iota toward an alien belief. Truth will out, if only we’ll learn to get out of its way. I don’t have to lecture you on the blueness of the sky. All you need to do is look up at it.
So right off, please understand that this book neither defends nor attacks any particular view (religious or otherwise) of angels. I have no angelic “ax” to grind. I do only what I know how to do: pass on “the news” that these miraculous beings in various ways pass on to me. Their truth—or the truth of this or that speculation I make based on what they tell me—will speak to you or it won’t. If it does, all the “proof” I’m interested in is that it’s helping you. If it doesn’t, well — there’s always its entertainment value! (But don’t give up on it quite yet.)
Letting go of our defenses is frightening at first —but ultimately it is such a relief! I urge you to try to release your fear and anger every chance you get, especially any moment you feel yourself clench and about to say, “But . . .” Allow whatever feeling, thought, or opinion occurs to you simply to be. Just “hear” it. Don’t argue or attempt to explain it away. Don’t do anything about it! Simply make room for whatever thoughts come after it. Entertain each of your thoughts, like guests. Be courteous, withhold judgment, just keep the flow going. Eventually it will become clear to you which “guests” feel welcome (or “true”). You will be clearing your psychic airwaves—not only to allow truth to reveal and prove itself, but also to open up the path for your angels.
Experiencing the presence of angels is enlivening, abundant, rich, a little like listening in on the spiritual radio waves of the world: cliffhanger stories, ringing laughter, miraculous solutions, deeply loving support. Perhaps this all sounds a bit frantic, but it isn’t at all. Angelic peace proceeds from a perfect unconditional love—a stillness somewhere mysteriously within the angel —that answers to something just as deep in ourselves. There may well be joyous and productive activity at the “surface” of this peace, but there’s always a stillness at its heart.
WHAT ANGELS ARE—AND AREN’T
Many people envision angels as little pink winged humanoids whose wan smiles too rarely engage much interest or curiosity. As a result, even if we profess to believe in them, we often envision our “guardian angels” (and we do all have guardian angels) as comfortingly dependable icons, like caricatures of perfect aunts, grandparents, uncles. We may also feel —or crave to believe—that any angels who may be helping us are the souls of recently departed loved ones. The pain of loss often induces the hope that they are by our side spiritually now, as angels. Departed souls can have a great, loving, and beneficial impact on our lives: you may well feel the presence of loved ones who’ve passed on. But their gifts emanate from human souls in transition from one state of being to another. Their guidance is very personal, invested with a lifetime of particular lessons and caring, a focused attention we can receive from no one else. Angels are not human— and therefore have no human past to distract or prejudice them. They invite deep trust and intimacy, but their primary function is to convey whatever particular joyful messages we need to thrive. They are infinitely adaptable and full of quicksilver ingenuity and transformations, and yet there is something changeless in their being, in the constancy of their unconditional love for us. They are what and where they are meant to be: accessible to human consciousness, and connected to spiritual realms we cannot reach without their help. Their place in both divine and human realms is securely set.
I bring up the distinction between angels and departed human souls for one very practical reason. I had a number of (initially bewildering) encounters with various spiritual presences, not all of them (I learned) worth embracing or listening to. In other words, I learned that not every voice in my head is an angel.