Angels Among Us

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We all know people who we would describe as earth angels — those who help others in times of need; people who always seem to be there for you when you need them most. Sometimes we refer to them as a godsend and other times a friend. We might find an earth angel in a neighbor who sends over a home-cooked meal when there has been a death in the family or in the kind soul who clears the driveway of snow when you are housebound, recovering from an illness. A stranger might cross our paths with words of wisdom during times of distress. Others perform countless random acts of kindness without expectation of favors in return. I have always thought of angels in a similar way — as selfless doers of good, sent from God to help us in our times of need. I have thought of them as compassionate, kindhearted beings with huge white wings who create miracles by preventing tragic accidents and greet people who are crossing over at the time of death.

In the latter part of the twentieth century — the late 1980s and early 1990s — the presence of angels in our world was just beginning to become apparent. Angels had until then been relegated to the murals and statues in churches or the homes of the very religious. Doreen Virtue, bestselling author of more than fifty books including the Angels 101 Series, Healing with the Angels, Messages from Your Angels, and multiple angel oracle card decks, had not been published yet. In 1994, the TV show Touched by an Angel had just begun. Like many, I read accounts of angels intervening in times of crisis to save people but had never had a direct experience with them or paid much attention to the concept of them until 2003, when purely out of curiosity, I took a class on how to do angel readings.

The class was based on the book Angelspeake: How to Talk With Your Angels, by Barbara Mark and Trudy Griswold. The book provides a simple method of connecting to your angels and spirit guides through automatic writing. The class invoked an immediate recognition in me, like a flood of truth and light suddenly ignited a spark in my soul that resonated throughout my entire body. Since this profound opening, I have been doing readings for others and myself. Through these experiences, I have come to know many angels and spirit guides from beyond the veil — the illusory separation between the world we see before us each day and the invisible world known as heaven or the other side. I have felt a great love and kinship with these wonderful beings of light — as if I belonged with them, like they were family or closer than the dearest of friends. The light that comes flooding in through their messages is like being in a private room with the most loving, nurturing, and divine presence you could ever imagine. My heart expands and my chest opens wide, spirituality floods my entire being in a warm embrace, and I feel as if I am lit from within by the pure white, sparkling flame of my own personal fairy godmother's magic wand. I've gotten that same feeling from people I have met and in an instant felt like I had known them all my life, akin to the feeling of coming home. I was so exalted, filled with tremendous joy from my newfound source of inspiration and wisdom that I could not help but share with others.

I was soon surprised to find that many people were wary of my connection with the angels. Friends I had known since I was a child were skeptical but more accepting. Others warned me that doing readings was against religious teachings. I was taken aback. I wondered what religious traditions these teachings belonged to because my perspective was so starkly different.

These warnings did not just come from friends. One particular client of my husband's, whom I had never met, told him that communicating with angels was going to bring the devil into my house. She handed him a book on the Ten Commandments and told him to make sure I read it. She started shouting at him and put so much fear into him that he came home and told me never to do another reading again. I had to point out that the Ten Commandments do not reference any danger in communicating with angels. In fact, the Ten Commandments, as the story is told, were engraved on stone tablets by Moses as he received the direct word of God. Today this practice of receiving the direct word of God would be referred to as channeling or divine inspiration.

This associate of my husband's had no idea who I was or how I did my readings, but the fear she expressed sent a loud wave of fear and anger into my family and my home. Some might say it was the devil in her, or the fear of evil itself, that brought the dysfunction into the home. Others might say it was my own doubt surfacing in order to be healed.

Whatever the case, this incident and others like it, made me more curious than ever to understand the familiar bond I had with the angels and what it meant. I wanted to understand why I could feel such a natural and positive connection to God through the angels, while other people were buried in fear. I found myself suddenly on a guided tour of another way to see history and the stories that influence our beliefs.

Humans have been intrigued by the presence of angels since ancient times. We can find evidence of angels in almost every culture known to mankind. Angels appear in the teachings of indigenous tribes across the globe as well as in the sacred texts of all the major world religions. Angels are universally and most frequently referred to as the messengers of God. They are the natural bridge across all faiths — the one element of religion and spirituality that we all have in common. No matter how different we all think we are, the angels are the common thread that binds us together; a universal, sacred connection between God and humankind.

Human encounters with angels are well documented. In some of these encounters, angels are portrayed as the servants of God — loving, kind, and supportive beings of light that help us find our way in the world. In others, angels are portrayed as fallen ones — rebellious, violent usurpers of God's power, wreaking havoc on the poor human victims. Depending on your own spiritual or religious background, your feelings toward angels may be filled with a welcoming love and acceptance or a suspicious, fearful dread. So how can there be such a vast difference in perception?

People's perceptions are based on where they are in their lives, what circumstances surround them, the beliefs they grew up with, and the struggles they face. Our beliefs are based on what we know at any given point in time. For history as we know it is just a story, his-story, reflective of the prevalent belief systems from the time in which it was written. Viewpoints change when new information is received. New information can come from our direct experiences or the discovery of factual evidence that alters our perception of what is real.

Biblical and ancient spiritual texts are filled with stories about angels who communicated with man. Messages from angels are in fact commonplace in both the Old and New Testaments. Many of the prophecies documented in these texts were delivered in the form of messages from the angels.

Much of the fear around angels and spiritual gifts, like prophecy and channeling, seems to stem from the account of the fallen angels that appears in the Old and New Testaments in Genesis 6. These are the angels who, as the story is told, disobeyed God and came to earth to mate with women, resulting in the offspring of "evil" giants known as Nephilim. This is where fear of angels, especially angels in human form, comes in. This story has been used not only to breed fear of angels — but to breed fear of our own innate wisdom and power as well, through the interpretation that spiritual gifts like astrology, channeling, and magic arose from the teachings of the fallen angels. But wait a minute, didn't the holy wise men follow the stars to find the newborn baby Jesus? They were searching for fulfillment of an ancient prophecy regarding the coming of the Messiah, and they obviously had knowledge of astrology and astronomy. The fact is the account in Genesis 6 is only one aspect of the story.

If we look further back in time, to the book of Enoch on which Genesis 6 is based, and other texts that predate the Old Testament, we find evidence of other angels on earth, angels in human form before the concept of the fallen ones is introduced. These texts show that the fallen angels were not the only angels to incarnate in human form and reveal evidence of a direct, inherited, ancestral relationship between humans and angels.

In the book Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil, author and religious scholar Elizabeth Clare Prophet examines both the Book of Enoch and the Book of Origen, to reveal two separate races of angels who incarnated in human form — the "fallen angels" and the "children of the light" — and to show evidence that both forms of angels are still on earth today. Throughout these texts, the "generation of light" or the "children of light" are a referred to as "righteous ones". These are angels in human form who are filled with light and goodness and a direct connection to God (godliness). In the following excerpt from Enoch 105:3-4, we clearly find reference to the biblical Noah as an angel in human form:

He is not human; but, resembling the offspring of the angels of heaven, is of a different nature from ours, being altogether unlike to us. His eyes are bright as the rays of the sun; his countenance glorious, and he looks not as if he belonged to me, but to the angels.

This concept of an ancestral relationship between humans and angels is corroborated by other ancient texts. In his book, The God Code, Gregg Braden states:

The Haggadah (ancient Hebrew scripture predating the Old Testament) ... in addition to stating that humankind was created specifically as a bridge between the worlds of Heaven and Earth, describes precisely which qualities of the angels of Heaven and the creatures of Earth, have merged to create the species of 'man'. Specifically, we have inherited four qualities from the angels that contribute to our uniqueness. They are:

• our "power of speech,"

• our "discriminating intellect,"

• our "upright walk," and

• the "glance" of our eyes.

... Balancing the traits that we share with the angels, we also have four not so angelic characteristics that we've inherited from 'the beast of the field':

1. We "eat and drink."

2. We "secrete the waste matter in our bodies."

3. We "propagate" our kind.

4. We "die."

"Inherited traits" — the word inherited obviously implies a direct, shared genealogical lineage between angels and humans. Humans are portrayed in this passage as the biological descendants of angels. The first time I read this passage, the words resonated throughout my entire body and soul, invoking a complete state of déjà vu, like I was remembering something I already knew. It means that we are all angels on earth. Humans, as an entire species, are a type of hybrid angel — angels in earthly form. We have all (quite literally) inherited the heavenly (divine) traits of the angels along with the earthly traits of the "beasts of the field."

As I continued to research and reflect upon the theme of angels in human form, I began to realize a message that was unmistakably clear. Humans and angels share a common heritage. The benevolent angels represent the highest aspects of ourselves — who are at our core, when we are in our most natural state, the aspect of ourselves that is closest to the heart of God. The angels are in essence pure light and love, reminders of our own sacred nature and the light and love of God from which our own souls are made. Humans, like angels, are meant to be messengers to each other — direct extensions of God in this world. We are, all of us, in our most supremely natural state, earth angels, angels in earthly form. Those who are pure of heart, who have a conscience, who hear the call to a better way of life, who are driven by a mission to somehow make the world a better place, these are the descendants of the angels known as the generation of light. We have simply forgotten who we really are.

If the concept of humans descending from angels seems foreign to you, it is because we have been conditioned to believe we are less than holy and magnificent. Humanity is currently in a broken state — living in an unnatural world, separated from God, each other, and our spiritual gifts. The world that surrounds us today is one of forgetfulness. It is a world built on false knowledge and fear, put to sleep so to speak, by the symbols and stories that surround us. In the name of industrial progress and the shade of time, our senses have been dulled. We've lost our natural instincts — the instincts of the beast of the field, along with the evidence of our heavenly angelic heritage — the intellect and wisdom of our own souls.

It is not the stories or symbols themselves that shape our opinions, however, but the interpretations pressed upon us. The interpretations of the current day create the lens through which we see. By recovering the original meaning behind the symbols and stories that surround us, we can change our perception of who we are and our natural connection to the world in which we live.

As Elizabeth Clare-Prophet summarizes the passages of Genesis 6 and the book of Enoch, she says, "The angels descended and took wives from among the daughters of men. They taught the women sorcery, incantations, and divination — twisted versions of the secrets of heaven." 3 In other words, the story is not telling us that the gifts of heaven (spiritual gifts) are bad, but that they were misused and corrupted. White magic based on the natural order of the universe and used for healing and joyful creation was corrupted into sorcery or black magic and used to serve the ego self. Spiritual gifts like prophecy, and telepathy (communicating through thought without the spoken word), that were previously used to communicate with divine messengers for heavenly guidance, started to be viewed with apprehension, as gifts that couldn't be trusted for fear of unwittingly getting messages from the wrong sources. This pervasive fear grew as time went on, diminishing the strength of our spiritual gifts and eventually eliminating our direct connection to God, the angels, and each other.

So much has been misinterpreted, corrupted, and turned around over the years that we now find ourselves in an upside down world. Many beliefs we hold are in opposition to the natural order of the universe, and we don't even know it. False knowledge has not only separated us from our spiritual gifts but it has been imbedded in our world through the misuse and misinterpretation of sacred symbols and stories that surround us.

Symbols once held sacred by ancient cultures have at times been purposely perverted and misused by those who wished to keep humanity separated from our natural power. Symbols that once held the keys to light, love, and balance were distorted and disgraced — symbols of white magic were painted black, to perpetuate our current state of separation. The most potent example of this is the symbol of the swastika — an equilateral cross with four arms bent at right angles, most recently associated with Hitler and the Nazi regime. A quick search on Wikipedia reveals the use of this symbol dating back to 2500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient India as well as in classical antiquity in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. It is found on artifacts from ancient civilizations including the Celts, the Hopi, and countless others.

In its original context, "the word 'swastika' literally means 'to be good'." It can also be translated as meaning "being with higher self." The symbol is still used today by the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism primarily as a tantric symbol to evoke Shakti. The word Shakti means "sacred force or empowerment" and is associated with "primordial cosmic energy." It "is the concept or personification of divine feminine creative power, sometimes referred to as 'The Great Divine Mother' in Hinduism."

This sacred symbol of goodness, spiritual ascension, and the divine feminine was tilted and turned counterclockwise (against the natural flow), by the Nazi regime. Today, this perverted symbol is instantaneously identified with the smell of death camps, burning human flesh, gas chambers. What was once recognized as a universal symbol of reverence for all living things was changed into a symbol of total disregard for human life. The corruption of this symbol by a demented few is symbolic of the world also turned on its axis, in opposition to its once holy and natural state. Once common knowledge, held with similar meaning across a myriad of ancient cultures, the true meaning of this sacred and holy symbol is now relegated only to those schooled in the ancient traditions and the eastern religions that have kept its original meaning intact.