Angelic Pathways (10 page)

As I mentioned before, angels do not work within the confines of what makes us happy or sad, or comfortable or uncomfortable, or in terms of what we consider good or bad. These are all human constructs in which the angels cannot be contained. In obeying the law of causality, the angels are motivated by purpose and purpose alone. This is not to say they work without compassion or love—quite the opposite. It is through compassion for those of us who are brave enough to endure the trials of this human experience, and out of love for us as sisters and brothers in spirit, that the angels operate the way they do.

Because of this, should we simply live life freely and do what we please? Does living a scripted life or being bound to fate—a fate that we ourselves chose—mean that we can live our lives however we want and make decisions without fear of consequences? Or does it mean we throw up our hands in apathy and no longer continue to affect the outcome of our lives? The answer to all these questions is a firm, unequivocal
no
.

The moment we slip into apathy is the very moment we begin cheating ourselves out of learning our spiritual lessons. Though this life is scripted, our spiritual aptitude once we complete this life isn’t a guarantee. Everything will happen to us just as it’s supposed to, but if we give up and allow experiences to defeat us rather than empower us, then we’re only racking up missed lessons that we’ll have to revisit at another time. The point is that while we’re here, we are obligated to do at least one of two things: learn or help someone else to learn. Therein lies the importance of our existence. We’re not just here for ourselves, but for each other.

On that same note, we are responsible for our actions, which is why we can’t live life all willy-nilly despite knowing that it’s scripted. No matter our decisions, there are consequences. There will always be results that our actions bring about, and for them we are answerable.

Guardian Angels

According to a 2008 Baylor University survey of nearly 1,700 American adults, over half claimed they believed they were protected by guardian angels. In “Half of Americans Believe in Guardian Angels,” a
Washington Times
article that highlighted the survey that same year, Rodney Stark, the co-director of Baylor University’s Institute for Studies on Religion, expressed his surprise by saying he’d have guessed the number to be more around 15 percent than 55.

“This is the taboo subject in American religion. No one studies it, but there is a lot of it out there,” Stark was quoted as saying in the article.

No one studies it? Where was I when this survey was being taken?

Oh yeah, fighting with Archangels Raphael and Gabriel over writing my first book
about
angels.

I have to admit that if I had been asked if I believed in guardian angels twenty years ago, I’d have keeled over laughing. I wasn’t raised with a religious background that focused on angels, and I thought that people who believed in them were a little on the loopy side.

Well, guess who’s joined the loopy side in the last two decades! It’s not my fault; Azrael lured me over with the promise of all-you-can-eat chocolate, while Michael flashed his flawless eight pack and smirked, “You know you wanna hang with us.”

Still, if anyone were to ask me today if I believed in guardian angels back then, I wouldn’t laugh at them, but I would give them a firm, resounding
no
.

I understand that people still cling to the notion that an angel is watching over them. It’s apparent in all the gift and card shops that sell angel pendants or greeting cards encouraging people to have faith in their guardian angels. The general consensus is that the guardian angel is supposed to protect the person from injury or misfortune. How many times have we heard a news report about someone who narrowly escaped harm and claimed that God’s angels were protecting them?

It can be a comforting thought that the warrior angels like Michael, Uriel, and Cassiel are always near to shield us from calamity, hardship, the influence of sinners, or even from committing sins ourselves. But from what I have been shown by the angels themselves, such is not always the case. The angels are watching us, to be sure. But are they protecting and guarding us, as we’ve been led to believe for millennia?

As I mentioned in chapter 2, whatever we are to encounter during our human experience is already written in our life script. Whatever circumstances befall us are set in motion by our own free will to choose our experiences and by Heaven’s trust in us to endure them. If you barely make it to a shelter before a twister tears through your town, you were meant to survive. And in this respect, the angels assigned to you were protecting you the entire time. If, however, it’s written that you’re to get a little banged up and bruised—or a lot—on the way, then that’s what will happen. Remember, the angels are the divine custodians of fate and are obligated to bring about whatever experiences you agreed to before you were born.

I try to discourage clients, students, and readers from using the term “guardian angel,” because we tend to place a lot of misallocated faith on the operative word “guardian.” That is not to say we don’t have angels dutifully walking beside us. From what has been revealed to me, I have observed that each human has at least two angels with them at any given time. One of these angels I already mentioned—the parent angel. The second is what I call the mentoring angel.

Your parent angel is the angel you connect with in the Realm of Spirit before you are born. This angel has made a vow to you, a contract of sorts, that he will walk by your side and see you through every life challenge you have written in your script. The parent angel is with you from the moment you take your first breath in this reality until well after you have returned home. Once back in the Realm of Spirit, the angel then reviews your life with you and discusses what lessons, if any, may need revisiting in your next life.

While reading through the angels listed in appendix C, you may feel more akin to some angels than others. If you come across an angel you feel very strongly about, chances are good that that is your parent angel. We tend to mirror our parent angel’s likes and dislikes, their view of the human world, and how they may handle certain situations. In an athletic competition, for example, you may not have Metatron’s view that everyone is a winner just for trying or doing their best. Instead, you may resonate more with Michael’s view that there can only be one sun in the sky and you’re it! (For more comprehensive profiles on angelic personalities, see my two previous works,
Azrael Loves Chocolate, Michael’s A Jock
and
The Angel Code
.)

All in all, your parent angel is charged with escorting you to this reality, through it, and back home again. In a way, they’re much like our spiritual chaperones.

The other angel, your mentoring angel, works with you at much closer range. But unlike your parent angel, who is with you during the course of your entire life, mentoring angels change with the seasons and cycles of your life. Depending on the lessons you must learn during a particular leg of your spiritual journey, mentoring angels will switch in and out based on that angel’s area of expertise.

During an angel consultation, it is the mentoring angel that I often see for a client because that angel is directly connected to the current status of the client’s life lessons. My client may feel a profound closeness with Archangel Raphael, but because of her current lessons in finding spiritual balance, Archangel Chamuel may be standing in the foreground and offering his wisdom to help her achieve that balance.

I discovered a while back how the angels switch in and out of our lives based on the circumstances we’re encountering. There may be times when you feel as though they aren’t there, but they are. The angels are always nearby. And while we must face the harsh notion that they’re not always here to protect us, but rather to teach and guide us, I think we can still take solace in knowing that they do so with great love and compassion.

One blustery January morning, after having gone homeless as a result of my stroke and resulting complications, I found myself sitting at the local Department of Human Services. As I tuned out the sounds of a half dozen agitated infants waiting with their even more agitated mothers, I pondered which form of suicide might be the most noble. A fancier of swords and medieval weaponry, I owned a few collectible pieces that might make for one heck of a dramatic harakiri. But that would be messy. I envisioned lulling myself to sleep with a brew of hemlock and then lying upon a bed of white linen—in a white gown—whilst holding onto my collectible broadsword from the
Highlander
series. I would be surrounded by candlelight, with my stereo playing some ethereal choir music on repeat. Aye, that would be one beautiful way to die. The thought actually brought a smile to my face.

But I was soon pulled out of the daydream as I heard a clerk call out someone’s name. I cursed silently at the woman who yanked me from my fantasy back into this cold, smelly, dingy graveyard of the walking dead.
Wait, Archangel Cassiel is the patron of graveyards,
I thought. I knew I shouldn’t demean such sacred places by comparing them to the office I was sitting in.

A man walked past me. He reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Dressed in a blue windbreaker, a dingy orange t-shirt, a pair of khakis that were shredded at the cuffs, and a pair of muddy tennis shoes, he schlepped up to the front desk.

“I’m looking for homeless assistance,” he said, scratching at his unkempt beard.

“Are you homeless?” the clerk asked, eyeing him from over the rims of her glasses. My brow furrowed at the dim-witted question, and it took all the self-control I had not to give the clerk a glare of
Are you flippin’ kidding me?

The guy coughed harshly and choked on a gravelly “yeah.”

“Where’d you sleep last night?”

“At the bus stop.”

“Which one?”

“Around the corner.”

“Hmm.” The clerk gathered a few slips of paper and placed them on a clipboard with a pen. “Fill this out and give it back to me.” The man took the forms, then shuffled through the densely packed room and sat right across from me. His hand shook as he attempted to fill out the paperwork, and I couldn’t help but gaze at him. His stare looked hollow and hopeless, and his light blue eyes were ringed with red and underscored by deep, dark circles. Stringy strands of dishwater blonde hair slipped and slid everywhere. He looked as if he hadn’t bathed in a while.

As I watched him, I pondered my own situation. I hadn’t slept at a bus stop the night before. Actually, I hadn’t slept at all, as insomnia and depression had kept me far away from any restful slumber. But the entire time I lay awake, I had been in a warm bed in a house away from the wintry elements. I had showered that morning, despite the difficulty of trying to get in and out of a shower with legs that could barely walk, much less climb over the lip of a bathtub. My hair was done and my clothes were clean.

So why the hell was I here? Oh right, for those pesky necessities called food and medication. Ah, but only moments ago, I had wanted to die. Without food or medication, death would have come soon enough. But I didn’t really feel like dying on an empty stomach that day.

My mind was reeling. I wanted out of this office. I wanted out of this life! Everything in the past months had turned upside down and nothing made sense anymore. And to make it all worse, I was intuitively wide open. As I sat there begrudging my fate, I could feel the dull, grinding ache of the sorrow and hopelessness oppressing everyone around me. From the mothers trying to feed their children, to the homeless people looking for a warm place to sleep, to the elderly people trying to decide between food and medication, souls were crying out for mercy, for love, for someone to give a damn.

For God to give a damn.

My heart began to race as panic set in. I wasn’t sure when I had become so antisocial or when exactly being outside of my comfort zone had created so much anxiety in me, but as the sounds of wailing children, a girl on her cell phone screaming belligerently at her boyfriend, and a homeless woman’s rant foretelling the end of the world assailed me, I felt myself nearing the threshold of insanity. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the chatter as well as the atmosphere of unmitigated spiritual agony.

“Breathe,” I whispered to myself as I tried to think of something positive. It was a futile attempt. I hadn’t meditated in months, and going within proved to be difficult. I dug my nails into my knees and bit my bottom lip. The mental meltdown that I’d been fearing all this time was near. I could feel it.

“Open your eyes, Chantel.” Archangel Raphael, the angel of healing, and Sandalphon, the angel of love, had moved into my spiritual space. I could feel their warmth, their calming presence. Tense and shaking, I opened my eyes to see them there surrounded by a radiant white light. Immediately their angelic presence consumed me as the light expanded throughout the room.

Curiously, I watched as Sandalphon left Raphael’s side to visit the play area where children tinkered with a few withered old toys. Raphael, however, stood in the midst of all of us and lifted his arms heavenward. Instantly, the tension in the office dissipated. Grim and bitter faces softened, the noise and chatter lessened, and there was a noticeable calm that settled over everyone. Even the infants stopped crying.