Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? (8 page)
Read Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? Online
Authors: Concetta Bertoldi
Another lesson, which
I think is equally important, is to respect one another, try to keep in sight the things that are really important, don’t let small stuff make you nuts. All of this comes under the heading of making the effort to get along with one another.
As a spiritual reminder, John has a wall plaque that he is extremely attached to that has the words to the famous poem “Desiderata,” written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s. (Ehrmann was a philosopher and poet from Indiana. If you’ve never seen his poem, Google it—it’s easy to find on the Internet.) “Desiderata” means “something desired as essential” in Latin, which I understand as an ideal of absolute importance. The poem begins, “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste/and remember what peace there may be in silence.” It’s all about a philosophy of being a loving person, acting with consideration and grace, and being happy and at peace with yourself. John loves this poem and wherever we have lived, he’s insisted that it hang on the wall in our bedroom. And I have to say, in most ways, John really lives his life by this message. It’s something that we both have had to work on. One time, some years ago, we were having an argument. Well, to be honest, that’s putting it mildly. We were fighting. John walked out to go to work and I was on the phone complaining about him, when suddenly I heard a tremendous crash coming from the bedroom. I ran to see what had made the noise and there was John’s plaque on the floor. With no one anywhere near it, it had fallen right off the wall. I didn’t need anyone to explain the point to me—it was definitely the spirits reminding me of the importance of this poem’s message.
On another occasion, another argument (how many times have I said it? I’m not perfect!), John and I were bickering, and our wedding invitation, which we have framed in a glass and metal frame, fell right off the wall. Again, not a soul anywhere near it. Even though it hit hard enough to get our attention, I was grateful that the Other Side felt it could make its point without breaking the glass.
Immediately when I think about these things, the importance of getting along and treating one another kindly, my mother-in-law and her family come to mind. I joke about them now, but I want to be clear, I really did try, for years and years, to do my best to make those relationships work. Finally, I had to walk away. All the Other Side asks of us is that we do our best. Sometimes a situation really is impossible. Sometimes in order to be your best self, you do need to separate from a person or a situation that is making you unhappy or keeping you from being your best self. Nobody on the Other Side expects us to stay in an abusive situation. Even if it’s family.
The only way
I know to do this is to be able to tune in to the Other Side and see who is there. For instance, I know that my father and brother are guardians to me, but prior to their passing, I already had other guardians. Bear in mind, even if you were able to have the names of your angels, you likely wouldn’t recognize most of them. These are spirits who have been with you through many lifetimes but this time around agreed to stay over there to watch over you while you had your earthly adventure. So in terms of your present life, you would not even remember them. When family and friends who you
do
know cross over, they join forces with these angels so your team gets even stronger.
In the vast
majority of cases, yes. Most people have several or even many guardian angels. In only two cases in my entire career was I unable to make contact with anyone on the Other Side who was looking after an individual here. Why this should be the case, that these two people had no guardians, I honestly can’t say, though I’ve struggled with the answer over the years. I think it’s possible that, for some karmic reason, these two people were deliberately given no assistance this time. Like, “If you don’t know how to swim, you better figure it out, or you’re going down.” Maybe they failed to assist when it was their turn so this lifetime is to balance that, or maybe they themselves opted to go it alone to achieve some particular lesson. It is also possible, I realize, that they actually did have an angel or two, but for some reason, their angel was not allowed to speak to me. I’ve wondered and wondered about this—from all different angles—but I don’t really know what the answer is.
They certainly will.
They often will participate in and see to the baby’s send-off, wishing that soul good luck, and promising protection from their side of the veil. Often the child will have an ongoing connection with a family member on the Other Side for the first few years of his or her life, until (as usually happens) the child begins to focus more and more on the physical side of things, and loses this connection to spirit. This past spring I was in Chicago taping material to be shown to television producers, and one of the crew, a young woman named Tracy, told me the story of how her sister Donna had crossed before any of her own children had been born. Her children had never known their aunt. Yet one day, her young son, who was about three years old, woke up from his nap, saying aloud, “Happy Birthday, Donna.” It was indeed her sister’s birthday! She had known it and had been thinking about her sister, but had not mentioned the date to anyone. Clearly her son was enjoying a connection with his aunt, who he’d never met in the flesh.
No, I don’t
believe they do. Not in the same lifetime. The unborn child and that mother will come across one another again; they’ll know each other again. But I don’t believe, from my understanding of the way things work, that that child will come again, as a baby, to that mother. That soul (the baby) had a particular mission for this particular life, to teach a particular lesson. Next lifetime, it’s something different, for both the woman and the baby—and bear in mind that the “baby” may actually, in soul terms, be older than the “mother.” Regardless of why the child came here but was not born, the mother will know the answers to this when she gets to the Other Side. There is a connection, a love bond, between these souls.
Absolutely, yes.
believe these precious ones chose to come here in this highly distinctive and very powerful form. I feel like before, this was less well understood, but as we all are becoming somewhat more enlightened, we can see what a gift these individuals bring. Whereas in earlier times these individuals would often be hidden away by their families, now it is not uncommon to encounter someone with Down syndrome, and they stir a significant feeling in our soul. We might mistake the feeling for pity, but it’s not that at all. It’s deeper than that. It’s like a recognition of nobility. It’s like they have come here saying, “I will change the lives of two people” or even fifty people, or more. There is a resonance and a ripple effect. When we encounter someone who has a tougher struggle like this, it rings a bell deep in our soul. It opens up an opportunity for us to learn and practice kindness and courage.
No, there is
absolutely no rule about this. All cases are different, completely individual. God doesn’t give you this kind of sign to look for. God sends what He wants to send, when He wants to send it. No formula to it. My grandfather was very psychic and he told my father that I was, too. But nobody clued us in that Bobbi Concetta, my brother Bobby’s little girl, also would be. In our family, it skipped one generation between my grandfather and me, but it didn’t skip the next one between me and my brother’s daughter. Another thing to remember is that like other abilities, psychic ability is on a spectrum—it’s not like you either have it or don’t have it at all. We all have a bit; some have a lot. I’d be willing to bet there are a lot of people walking around with no idea how much they have, simply because they’ve never paid attention to it, or call it something else, like they have lots of “hunches.”
Well, I’m not
going to tell you to just let it all go and not to worry about it because that is just plain inconsiderate. If we care about our partners and our kids, or whoever we know will have the big job of wrapping up after us, we really owe it to them to have this in order as best we can. We don’t always get to plan when we’ll be leaving, of course, so common sense would say we should keep on top of our affairs as we go. But that would be a perfect world, right? And there’s no such thing as perfection on this side. My answer to this question is that I do think that everything is part of the plan, even the unpleasant tasks that seem to belong to other people. Our karma is all bound up in our relationships and this area is no exception. The old saying goes, “You can’t take it with you,” and that goes not only for material things, but also our troubles and our secrets. So whatever kind of life we’ve been living, it’ll all be revealed once we go.
Believe me, I’ve heard every kind of thing on this subject, from kids having to clean out barn-loads of saved stuff because their parent was either a pack rat or exceptionally frugal, to a spouse discovering hidden tax problems, to finding out about a second family—including wife and illegitimate children. Finding seventeen lawnmowers that your dad meant to fix one day may bring a smile, even though it’s a hassle to get rid of them, but finding out you may lose your home because your spouse had devastating financial problems you never knew about, or discovering kin you never knew you had, is a whole ’nother ball of wax. Yet all of them are karmic. They say something about the individual who has passed on, but they also put to the living person the question: Now, what are you going to do with this? They may feel shock, sadness, confusion, anger, or betrayal. They may want to take it off their plate, say it has nothing to do with them. But the fact is that while they are here, still among the living, they get to choose. How will they choose to behave? What will they choose to do? How will they choose to feel? Their initial response may be that they’ve been blindsided and they don’t feel in control of their feelings. But once they absorb whatever new reality they find themselves in, they really do choose how they feel about it and deal with it—and they should know that they will receive help when they need it from the Other Side, very possibly even from the one who left them the challenge in the first place. Our deceased loved ones won’t do all the work to bail us out of a situation here; they just aren’t allowed to “fix” everything for us. But when we are doing our very best to cope and overcome difficulties, they’ve got our back. Meanwhile, while you are still here, it’s up to you how you want to behave and be remembered—as someone who was trustworthy and open even when things weren’t perfect, or someone who maybe cheated or hid things or was so fearful they couldn’t be honest. That’s what karma is all about. So yes, even the messes are part of the plan—the lesson plan.
It really doesn’t.
What matters is that we respect one another and try to love one another. This sounds like the simplest of platitudes, but it is the greatest single challenge we have.
Recently a husband and wife came to see me and the wife’s grandmother came through. She kept telling me that everything was the same and showing me a cross. It took me a few tries describing what she was saying and doing before this couple “got it.” Apparently, one of them was Greek Orthodox and I can’t recall what the other one was, but something different. The grandmother had been very upset when they got married because she did not approve of them being different religions. It went against everything she had learned in her church and she had been really worried for them. They understood her message was that on the Other Side, all religion is one. Love is love and God is God and it’s all the same. They did not hold the same strong beliefs as the grandmother, obviously, but it made them very happy to hear from her that this is what she’d learned after she crossed, and that she’d wanted them to know that she’d been wrong and everything was okay now, in her book.
So much of the violence and killing and wars throughout history have been “my God versus your God.” Nothing has ever been won by this. Nothing. And nothing ever will be. Giving God a different name does not change anything except the way you are referring to Him. He is one. He’s not sitting up on a throne somewhere saying “I’m more powerful than your God.” There isn’t another one.
