Strange Angels and Other Helpful Spirits

Some people think that angels always look like either cherubs, or thanks to Doreen Virtue's angel cards, a bunch of hotties with wings. This is not a shot at Doreen. I met her and interviewed her, back when I was a magazine editor and she was a blonde. She is a very sweet and good hearted person. She was about lightworkers and angels back then, but this was before she became the Empress of Angel Cards. I like her.

I'm just saying that that's not what my first otherworldly encounter looked like. He looked like a Chicago cop. A burly, uniformed cop.

 

You see, many years ago, I used to drink a lot. Those of you who know me now see that I only drink a little. When I go out with other people I will volunteer to be the designated driver.

 

So what led to my encounter was this. A buddy and I went fishing down by the lakefront, back when I lived in Chicago. We didn't catch any fish that night and drank a few beers. That night we only split a six pack but we had both been working long hours, so we were kind of tired already. So early in the morning, he got in his car and I got in mine, headed home. 

On the way my eyes closed and I found myself crashed into a huge old oak tree. I was not wearing my seat belt, and my head knocked out the windshield, but I had nothing more than a few tiny cuts on my forehead which required no stitches and left no scars. Miraculously, I had no injuries. The cops came and I didn't have my wallet with me, so they locked me up and I called my wife to bring my ID down to the station so they would release me. Back in those days, they didn't give breathalyzers or anything and a DUI ticket was just a ticket. That was not just a Chicago thing years ago. 

One time when I was in Los Angeles, I went out bar hopping, first to a concert at the Troubadour to hear Jimmy Buffett and Hoyt Axton do a show and then stop at a few more places to flirt, fool around and drink scotch. On the way home, a cop stops me for the proverbial missing tail light. He asks "Are you doing drugs?" I say "No sir, just drinking. Just heading home now." He says, "That's good. Have a safe trip." And he lets me go without a ticket. I kid you not.

When I lived in Atlanta, I remember reading a story about a guy who had 22 DUI tickets and still had his license. This was before laws changed. 

 

But back to the Chicago story. So while I am waiting for my wife to bring my ID, this uniformed cop walks up to the cell and says, "Hey Dan, how are you doing? I just had a few beers with your dad the other night." I said "That's not possible. My father died a few years ago. You couldn't have had a drink with him the other night." He said, "Your father's name is Mike and he works in construction, right?" "Yes, that was his name and he did work in construction, but he has been dead a few years now." The cop just smiled and said "Don't worry, you will be out of here soon," and he walked away. I didn't catch his name and I did not recognize him.

 

You probably don't know this, but my last name is not all that common, not even in Chicago back then. I know because I used to look in the phone book back then just to see how common the name was. So the odds of there being another Mike Liss who worked in construction with a son named Dan are virtually non-existent. Back then, there were only a couple dozen people with my last name in the Chicago phone book. Over the years, I have met a few other people with the same last name and we always are interested in meeting each other for that very reason. In recent years, I have been doing a little family research and found some fascinating things, and that still verifies that there are not that many of us. I have written to a couple of famous people with the same last name, and amazingly, they answered. As you probably know, sometimes when you write to famous people, they do not answer.

So was this a hallucination? Did I imagine this cop? Was he just there to deliver a message? Was he an angel who protected me from death or  serious injury? Was he trying to tell me to quit drinking or cut back? Well that did not happen for many more years. Was this my father looking out for me from the other side? Or was his message simply that it was not time for me to die yet?

Messages are not always clear.

Here is another story I do not tell often. Back in the 90s, I met a Brazilian healer named Mauricio Panisset, who was living in Georgia. He died a few years after I met him. When he worked, he would chant the word "energia" over and over, and each time he did what looked like lightning bolts or strobe lights would flash from his mouth. I was laying on a massage table and he touched his finger to my third eye and lightning flashed inside my head. He said that he had been gifted with this special ability in childhood, and I took that bolt to my third eye as an initiation into a shamanic, if you want to use that word, sort of healing. And that was not my first or only initiation.

There is a long tradition of amazing spiritual healers in Brazil, and it was not until many years later that I heard of John of God, who is also Brazilian. And shortly after I heard about him from a Brazilian woman who organized trips to go visit his healing center, I was invited to join them and experience this for ourselves. I still have a healing crystal that I bought at his center which I wear at special times. It is cut in the triangle shape which is a sign he uses.

One of the rituals we did down there was to visit a small healing waterfall, which was for purposes of spiritual cleansing. We took off all our clothes and took turns standing under this waterfall. Interestingly, one of the guys who took a turn before me was very scared of water. He said that he was afraid he was going to drown, even though the waterfall was only about 8 feet tall and we were standing in ankle deep water, because the rest just all ran downhill. When it was my turn, they said that my aura turned all kinds of colors and the water running off me was not just one color, but a full spectrum. It felt great. It was cold water even though the temperature down there was quite warm. I did not have any of those visuals of myself, but that is what they all told me.

Today, there are a couple nurses who, in spirit form, help me do my healing work. People who do healing often have things like this happen. There are lots of ways to make these kinds of connections. Back when I used to do a lot more drumming, I met and drummed with people whose spiritual path practiced drumming to invite the spirits of their tradition to join them at their rituals. The drummers of the Santeria tradition were some of the best I have ever drummed with. The drummers of the African traditions also create powerful vibrations as do some of the Japanese drummers of the Kodo traditions. These are all big heavy drums, but I also studied with Layne Redmond who specializes in the much softer sounds of the tambourine type drums that date all the way back to ancient Egypt. And these drums are the kind I still use. Tambourines are regarded as one of the greatest spirit calling instruments of all time, partly because of their long history of being used in sacred ritual, and that is why they are so common when you see clip art of people doing spiritual rituals playing them.

So back to the nurses. As I mentioned in previous newsletters, the building where I lived for several years until this past fall was originally housing for the nurses who worked at Longmont Hospital. I had a good feeling about that place from the moment I walked in. I sensed a very nurturing energy which is why I was very stressed out when I had to move because the building was sold and going to be remodeled. During the period of transition, when I was looking for a new place to live, my blood sugar numbers were ridiculous. They were so high I did not know they counted that high. I was getting 400-500 on my home readings and my A1C hit 14. For those of you who are not familiar with diabetes numbers, my home readings should be about 100 and the A1C under 6.

So there are two spirits who used to be nurses when they lived here, and I asked them if they would move with me. I can see them as well as feel them. They did, and two more things happened. One is that they helped me find a good new place to live. The other is that I started working with a doctor of Chinese Medicine, and I feel certain that this helped me lose weight and lower my numbers. I also have been getting lots more calls for reiki and energy work in recent months. Today my blood sugar readings at home are near what they should be. And clients are reporting that they really feel the currents of healing energy moving through them very powerfully.

There are more stories about this that I do not feel that it is time to tell yet. But I will say that the nurses are helping me to heal both myself and others better than ever. Another sign that the nurses help me? When I was looking for a new place, there were many and I was not feeling good about them. When I found this place, I liked the energy right away. This property is also owned by the hospital. So without knowing this either time, I went from one hospital property to another, but both times I felt that the energy of the place was good. I take that as a sign that I am part of a community of healers in a greater dimension.

You see, our angels and spirit helpers do not always look like we think that they are going to look. But we know when they are there. And I fully acknowledge my spirit helpers in doing my work.

All initiations that we undergo are part of our movements to another level of consciousness, and in doing so, we experience life in new ways and see things differently. In accepting this challenge, we will be called on to shift our lives and the benefits are felt in many ways. One of the vows I found myself taking is that I would use my abilities to help anyone who calls on me. And I also let my spirit guides know that I both need and want their help in order to do this well and be of service to everyone. 

Isn't is fascinating that our spirit guides do not always look like we expected them to look or thought that they would look? 

Yet, they all have the same job. They are here to protect us and help us. We all have them, but our consciousness about all this has everything to do with our experience. It is a whole new world. And it involves how we see our selves and our place in this life. We always have the opportunity through our free will to make changes. And when we do choose to make changes, we are opening ourselves to surprises and unexpected developments. I have found that welcoming these changes has profoundly changed my life and I am happy to be here and be of service. 

You see, I think that we live more than one life in this lifetime. If you had asked me years ago what I would be doing in the future, I had no idea that it would look like this. Yet here I am. And here you are.