TERRY MOSHER
Here it is Christmas Eve and I’m listening to American Routes’ latest history lesson of some of the world’s greatest musicians. This week the concentration is on the great Billie Holiday, or Lady Day as the great jazz tenor saxophonist Lester Young called his best friend (Young’s nickname was President, or Prez for short).
Somehow, and don’t ask me how, but listening to the commentary on Holiday has pushed me to talk about my Christian belief on this the day before Christmas, which is celebrated by Christians as the birth of Jesus Christ.
We live in a chaotic age where just about everything that occurs in the world is instantly broadcasted by some electronic means to just about everybody in just about every part of the planet. That fact stirs us up to heights never before thought possible and if you are tuned in you can’t help be nervous and have a fair amount of fear (which allows Donald Trump, for example, to rise to popularity by playing to those fears).
My own life started out between the fear of the Great Depression and World War II, although to be honest none of that had much affect on me as a young lad growing up in the Southern Tier of New York State in the small village of Portville that sits along the meandering Allegheny River and in one of the many valleys of the Allegheny foothills (our house had the river as our backyard neighbor).
For me it was a peaceful time, and a wonderful and beautiful place to live. It still is. The only fear for me ‑ and maybe it was not fear but a sense of the unknown ‑ were the sleepless nights I had when I was about five when I would find myself experiencing a sense of traveling through space and into nothingness. It’s hard to describe that with words, but it was like out-of-body experiences and everything would expand until I was alone and moving through space into a vast nothingness.
I have thought about those experiences many times over the ensuring years, trying to make sense of it. Along with those experiences, which stopped after about a year, was having dreams of flying machines that were propelled by anti-magnetic means that defied gravity and could travel at unbelievable speeds, and real life dreams that people could travel to any place in the world by just believing they were there. Don’t ask me how that works, all I know is that somehow in some future I understood that was going to be possible.
At any rate, that is pretty heavy stuff for somebody so young. Heck, it’s pretty heavy stuff for anybody of any age. The only person I have ever mentioned this to is my wife, simply because I don’t know if it is real or just the imagination of a young boy that had gone wild.
I have had other experiences since them. First, though, I believe we all are here on Earth for a reason. I believe we know before we come here who are parents are and what our destiny is in terms of spirituality. We come here to better our souls, which is our essential selves. The intent is to become one with God in a state of perfection and we do that by coming to this Earth and experiencing all the pleasures and pain of living as a human.
In short, we all have our own individual spiritual plan that if we follow (and we lose sense of that plan when we are born here, although subconsciously we have a sense of it through knowing what is right and wrong) we will better our souls and get closer to that perfection we desire as spiritual souls.
Because we also have free will, we can come here and take steps backward in soul development or just tread water and remain the same as what we were when we first came here.
I believe I was off my spiritual path for about 30 years, wandering, if you will, in the wilderness. But, first, let me explain some other experiences I have had that have led me to this point in spiritual development.
When I was nine years old and in the fifth grade in Mrs. Waterman’s class at the old school in Portville (a new school was built and completed in the early 1950s), I had an experience that for years made no sense to me.
I was sitting in the second row of desks from the door to the hallway, third seat right behind Martha Jean (who later would get her doctorate and become a dean of nursing students at a college) when these words were placed in my mind by telepathy means: “You will marry Mary.”
Wow!
For those of us men who can remember what we were like as young boys nine years old, the one thing we all can likely agree on is that we didn’t’ think at that age about being married, must less having much to do with girls other than tease them on the playground during recess.
If you have had this type of experience I can guarantee you don’t forget it. Ever. And over the years as I learned more about myself and the world I live in and read about world religions, I have come to understand somebody on the “other side” was guiding me along my spiritual path, keeping me on track, if you will.
The unanswered question I have is why? Why would anybody (my guardian angel) see the need to tell me at nine years old this?
Of course, just less than two decades later when a girl walked into the Wintergarden, a road house half-way between Bellingham and Ferndale (it is no longer there), I instantly knew who it was – Mary. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just knew. We married less than a year later.
Two of the remaining three telepathy experiences I have had remain a mystery to me. Twice I was given the winner of a horse race, once at the old Longacres race track (I won $36 dollars betting the horse, although a year ago I wondered why I only bet $2; I should have bet more) and again when Summer Bird won the 2009 Belmont Stakes. I was sitting in my living room when I was told that and I started yelling at the TV to the talking heads that it was Summer Bird and not the horses that they were predicting the winner.
I like watching the Triple Crown races – Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes and the Preakness – and enjoy trying to predict along with the talking heads who will win, it’s the competitive nature in me. But being told the winner before the race ruined the actual race for me. There was no thrill to knowing in advance who was going to win.
The key question for me, though, is why somebody on the “other side” would want me to know the winners of two races. What does that have to do with my spiritual development? That makes no sense to me. And I won’t know the answer to that until I get back to the other side.
The other telepathy experience makes all the sense to me, and confirms to me the big question that will end this exercise. This happened on May 26, 1989, the day our granddaughter + Sarah Mary Ann – was killed in an accident in Idaho. I called her Junior because she has my wife’s full name as her middle name.
Junior was three and half years old and when we got the news we rushed to Sea-Tac to meet our distraught daughter (Wendy Ann) who was flying in from Spokane.
As I, Mary and one of our sons (Todd) approached the airport’s underground train at the South Terminal I started to hear the instrumental “Amazing Grace.” There is no sound system there, but I heard Amazing Grace loud and very clear.
Then these words were planted in my mind through telepathy means. And I instantly knew who was speaking to me – Junior. She said, “Don’t worry about me, I walk with the Grace of God.”
Double wow!!
At that instant, the South train arrived and the first person out was Wendy. She stumbled, crying uncontrollably, into Mary’s arms.
Junior’s death, as sad and tragic as it was (she would be 30 today), it achieved what I believe it was meant to achieve, and put not only me back on my spiritual path, but the rest of the family as well. As I said before, I was off of it for about 30 years and her death shocked me back on.
The result is that I believe that Junior was sent here as an angel to set us straight as a family. That also raises another question that won’t be answered here on this Earth: Why?
For the year following Junior’s death I searched long and difficult hours looking for answers. Through that process I had a “Spiritual Awakening” in 1990 that included six days of crying and feeling all these crazy and intricate defense mechanizes pour out of me that I had built up over some terrible years that I call my “dark years” during which I lost my mother at 12 years old, saw my father remarry, and moved from Portville to Ferndale all just over a year.
I literally saw those defense mechanizes leave me through the top of my head and as they left I understood the reason for them. It was like going through a review of my life, like what is said about what happens to us when we die.
On the seventh day of that awakening I was driving to the ferry terminal to go to another Seattle Mariners’ game at the Kingdome when I began to experience what “True Love” was like. I was overcome with peace and love and all the colors became very bright and beautiful. It was the most wonderful experience I have ever had, and I wanted it to continue on forever. It was like what some people have had in near-death experiences – they go toward a light and are overcome with love and don’t want to come back to life on this Earth. Unfortunately for them, it is not their time and they come back to Earth where the experience is full of emotions, including pain and pleasure, and often times not much love.
I remember leaving the ferry in Seattle and wanting those people walking on the sidewalks to experience what I was experiencing, so I rolled down the windows and turned up the music that was playing on KPLU radio. I prayed as I drove to the Kingdome along Alaskan Way that I would be able to experience this True Love for the remaining time in the day.
It didn’t happen. By the time I parked the car, it was all gone and I was back to worldly reality.
I do know, however, that lying in wait for me (and for others) on the other side is True Love in all its beautiful colors without a hint of emotion and all the agendas that come with Earthly feelings, including fear that seems to have gotten a stronghold here in America and other parts of our world.
Billie Holiday right now is singing “I’m free as the breeze and I’m traveling light, no one but me, and my memories, some lucky night, he may come back again, so until then, I’m traveling light.”
Billie first sang that in 1942 and 17 years later on July 17, 1959 she died at the age of 44, ending a tragic life full of all the stuff no one should have had to go through. She would have been 100 this year (April 7) and I hope she is experiencing on the other side ll the things I did as I drove off that ferry.
We Christians are just hours away from celebrating the birth of the one who died for all our sins and I pray no matter what you believe (or don’t believe) that Dec. 25 brings you happiness and that all the days that follow bring you even more happiness. We live in such a chaotic time that I wish only the best for you and that none of ugliness that seems to come closer and closer to us every day ever visits you.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.