As it is getting close to Valentines Day, I thought I would tell you all about a very special Valentines gift that I received last year.

I was busy writing a poem for Valentines Day last year, for my husband Geoff, it was just after lunch when I had finished the poem. Geoff came home and we chatted for a while about the things he`d been up to that day, when suddenly he insisted that I looked a bit pale and asked me to go upstairs for a rest, he`s quite a fuss pot at times! I told him that I was ok and not at all tired! but he insisted! so I gave in and lay down on our bed.

I was just laid there day dreaming and listening to the birds in the garden, my eyes were closed but I wasn`t asleep. Suddenly I could smell my son Andrew`s favourite aftershave, it was the last thing I`d given to him before he died. I opened my eyes and felt the weight of someone sitting on the bed, thinking it was Geoff, I turned over, but sat there with me, was my son! He was as real as you and I! and no I am not going crazy!! I thought am I dreaming here or what? then he spoke to me saying ” No mum, you`re not dreaming, I am really here with you, but I can`t stay long ” he took me in his arms and gave me a big strong cuddle, just like he always did. I was so shocked that I couldn`t speak, I just burst into tears and hung on to him with every ounce of my being. He kept saying over and over ” Mum, I`m here, you`re ok, I love you, shush, calm down ” all the time he was kissing my face and hands.

He sat with me for a couple of minutes. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn`t get any words out, and I was getting so frustrated because I wanted so much to talk to him. I hung on to him, stroking his face, his back, his chest and his hands, and just soaked up into myself his whole beautiful energy. It was so strong that it lit up the room.

All I could say was ” Oh Andrew “, over and over!! I wanted so much to talk to him, but I was completely helpless in tears and shock. I eventually calmed down, he was always good at calming me down when I was upset, and eventually I managed to talk to him.

He kept telling me ” Happy Valentines day mum, I couldn`t send you a card so I brought you the real thing! what do you think eh? original or what?? ” We both laughed and clung on to each other. I kept saying ” please, don`t go Roo ” ( Roo is his nick name ) but he said ” I`m sorry mum but I can`t stay, I`m only able to be here for a little while, just long enough to wish you Happy Valentines day and to get my special cuddle off you again.

It was me that told dad to make you go to bed! so that I could get you all to myself for a few minutes. I just put the thought in his mind. Mum, promise me that you`ll always remember that I`m so proud of you and your writing, eeh! woo hoo! my mum`s a published author!! and it`s about bloody time that you took some credit for it, so stop putting yourself down when someone admires your writing! There now! that`s your telling off done, so be good for me ok!

Mum I was with you all, when dad read out the poem STILL for us at the anniversary get together. I was also with you, sat next to you, when you wrote it mum. I gave you the words to the first part of the poem! The first four lines and the last line, are my words. I`m so proud of your first attempt at writing a poem that doesn`t rhyme.

Always remember that I am still with you and I`ll let you know like I always do. You`re getting good at spotting the signs now, at last!! I love you Momma Bear ( that`s Andrews nick name for me, because I always give the people that I love big bear hugs ) so give dad a hug for me and tell him I love him, and that I like the new car ” He squeezed me extra tight and I just managed to say ” I love you too baby ” then he faded away smiling at me and blowing kisses, and with one last ” I love you “, he was gone.

After I pulled myself together and calmed down, I ran down the stairs and told Geoff what had just happened, he just said ” You`ve been dreaming love! I said you looked tired didn`t I? I heard you talking to yourself though, you silly mare!! ” He wouldn`t accept any of it, and refuses to have anything to do with `that sort of thing`as he calls it!! In exasperation I held my hands out to him and told him to smell them, when he did, he said ” Is that Andrews aftershave? ” ” Yes!! so how does your logical, very sceptical and stubborn mind explain that away then eh?? We haven`t got any of that fragrance have we?!! ” He still wouldn`t accept it! No matter how much proof I get from Andrew, Geoff refuses to believe in life after death. So I`ve just given up telling him!

STILL

He is no longer mine

He has left me a great mountain of memories

His feather soft kiss still plays on my cheeks.

My heart still bursts and sparks with the flame of the love we shared

With the dreams we dreamt

The wind still sighs.

I still melt with the memory of the warmth of his skin in my quiet moments.

I still see his smile on moonbeams high

Hear his laughter in the fire of the sparkling stars.

Stilled are the echo`s of the fire in his soul

His shine.

The sweet memory of his soft perfect skin

He still dances in the rhythm of blossoms in sway.

Still his aura caresses sweetly the leaves on the swaying branch.

He is no longer mine

His soul holds me gently

His song dries my aching tears

Still I feel him close.

Always

Always part of me

For we are bound as one.

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com

AN ICEBERG IN THE SKY

In July 1975 a large block of ice fell through the roof of the Melkis family home in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England. At the time of the incident the family was engrossed in the original TV movie about the Titanic. As the ice crashed through their ceiling, they were tensely waiting for the ship to strike the fateful iceberg in the film. Thankfully nobody was hurt!

RETURN OF THE GIRL FROM PETROVKA

Early in the 1970`s the British actor, the fascinating Mr Anthony Hopkins, ( who is my alltime favourite actor ) signed a contract to play one of the leading roles, in a film version of George Feifer`s The Girl From Petrovka. He searched the many bookshops in London`s Charing Cross Road for a copy of the original novel. His search was fruitless, so in frustration he went into the Leicester Square subway station to catch a train home. There lying on a seat in the station, he found a copy of the book, apparently forgotten by someone at the station.

Two years later Mr Hopkins was in Viena, working on the film production, and was visited by George Feifer. Mr Feifer told him that he no longer had a copy of his own book! – he had given his last one to a friend who had sadly lost the book somewhere in London. “Is this the one you mean?” Mr hopkins asked, handing him the book, “with the hand written notes scribbled in the margins?” It was indeed Feifer`s own copy. The Girl From Pretovka had come home at last!!

REUNION IN PARIS

When the novelist Anne Parrish first visited Paris in the 1920`s, she and her husband spent some leisurely time browsing the secondhand bookstalls that line the banks of the River Seine. On one stall she found an old copy of a book called Jack Frost And Other Stories, a book that she loved to read as a small child in Colorado Springs, she had not seen it since her nursery days. She became very excited to find such a well loved treasure again after so many years, and she showed the book to her husband. He opened it and on the flyleaf found an inscription: “Anne Parrish 209 N. Weber Street, Colorado Springs!! Needless to say, she snapped it up!

DO YOU BELIEVE IN LUCKY NUMBERS

I once read an interesting story in my early teens, and it has stuck in my memory ever since. It has always fascinated me how people think and feel about numbers!

LUCKY SEVEN

A gentleman by the name of Anthony Clancy was born in Ireland, on a Sunday, which is the seventh day of the week, on July 7th, the seventh month of the year, in 1907! He was the seventh child! and his father was also a seventh child, he also had seven brothers; that gives you seven sevens!! On his 27th birthday, he fancied a day at the races! So he went to put a bet on at his local horse racing track. He looked at his race-card, hoping to pick a winner in the seventh race! The horse he picked was called Seventh Heaven! His racing number was number seven, and the horse had a handicap of seven stone. The odds were seven to one! so he put seven shillings on the horse, and yes you`ve guessed it! it finished seventh!!!

DOUBLE THE FUN!

Identical twin boys who were born in Ohio USA, were adopted by different families, shortly after they were born. In the early seventies, after thirty nine years apart, they were reunited. They discovered that they had both been named James and they had both become law enforcement officers. They both studied mechanical drawing and carpentry. Each James married a woman called Linda and each had a son – one named James Alan and the other named James Allan. They had both been through a divorce and had married their second wives after three years, on the same date, one year apart, both their new wives were called Elizabeth!! They both holiday every year in St Petersburg, Florida and they both had, during their childhood, pet Huskies called Toy!!

I will continue to tell you more stories in future articles on the true and unusual realms of life.

Fascinating stuff!!

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com

Here is a short science lesson for you all today.

From our small rock, we have a grandstand seat to explore our local galactic neighbourhood. Our nearest star, the Sun, is 93 million miles away, but each night when this star disappears from view, thousands more fill the night sky. In the most privileged places on Earth, up to 10.000 stars can be seen with the naked eye, and all of them are part of the galaxy we call home.

A galaxy is a massive collection of stars, gas and dust, bound together by gravity. It is a place where stars live and die, where the life cycles of our universe are played out on a gargantuan scale. Scientists think there are around 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, each containing many millions of stars. The smallest galaxies, known as dwarf galaxies, have as few as ten million stars!! The biggest, the giants, have been estimated to contain in the region of 100 trillion. It is now widely accepted that galaxies also contain much more than just the matter we can see using our telescopes. They are thought to have giant halos of dark matter, a new form of matter unlike anything we have discovered on Earth and interacts only weakly with normal matter. Despite this, its gravitational effect dominates the behaviour of galaxies today and most likely dominated the formation of the galaxies in the early Universe. This is because scientists now think that around 95% of the mass of galaxies such as our own Milky Way is made up of dark matter. In some sense this makes the luminous stars, planets, gas and dust an after-thought, although because it is highly unlikely that the dark matter can form into complex and beautiful structures, like stars, planets and people, one might ultimately claim that it`s rather less interesting. The search for the nature of dark matter is one of the great challenges for twenty-first century physics.

The word `galaxy` comes from the Greek word Galaxias, meaning milky circle. It was first used to describe the galaxy that dominates our night skies, even though the Greeks could have had no concept of its true scale. Watching the core of our galaxy rise in the night sky is one of natures greatest spectacles, although regrettably the light of our cities has robbed us of this majestic nightly display. For many people it looks like the rising of storm clouds on the horizon, but as the Earth turns nightly towards the centre of our galaxy, the hazy band of light reveals itself as clouds of stars-billions of them! stretching thousands of light years inwards towards the galactic centre. In Greek mythology this ethereal light was described as the spilt milk from the breast of Zeus`s wife, Hera, creating a faint band across the night sky. This story is the origin of the modern name for our galaxy – The Milky Way. The name entered the English language not from a scientist, but from the pen of the medieval poet, Geoffrey Chaucer: `See yonder, lo, the Galaxy, which men clepeth The Milky Wey, For hit is whyt.`

The Milky Way contains somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars, depending on the number of faint dwarf stars that are difficult for us to detect. The majority of stars lie in a disc around a hundred thousand light years in diameter and, on average, around a thousand light years thick. These vast distances are very difficult to visualise. A distance of 100.000 light years means that light itself, traveling at 186.000 miles per second, would take 100.000 years to make a journey across our galaxy. Or, to put it another way , the distance between the Sun and the outermost planet of our solar system, Neptune, is around four light hours-that`s one sixth of a light day. You would have to lay around 220 million solar systems end to end to cross our galaxy!

At the centre of our galaxy, and possibly every galaxy in the Universe, there is believed to be a super-massive black hole. Astronomars believe this because of precise measurements of the orbit of a star known as S2. This star orbits around the intense source of radio waves known as Sagittarius A* that sits at the galactic centre. S2`s orbital period is just over 15 years, which makes it the fastest known orbiting object, reaching speeds of up to 2 per cent of the speed of light. If the precise orbital path of an object is known, the mass of the thing it is orbiting around can be calculated, and the mass of Sagittarius A* is enormous, at 4.1 million times the mass of our Sun. Since the star S2 has the closest approach to the object of only seventeen light hours, it is known that Sagittarius A* must be smaller than this, otherwise S2 would literally bump into it. The only known way of cramming 4.1 million times the mass of the Sun into a space less than 17 light hours across is as a black hole! which is why astronomers are so confident that a giant black hole sits at the centre of The Milky Way. These observations have recently been confirmed and refined by studying a further 27 stars, known as the S-stars, all with orbits taking them very close to Sagittarius A*.

Beyond the S stars is a melting pot of celestial activity, filled with all sorts of different systems that interact and influence each other. The Arches Cluster is the densest known star cluster in the galaxy. Formed from about 150 young, intensely hot stars that dwarf our Sun in size, these stars burn brightly and are consequently very short lived, exhausting their supply of hydrogen in just a couple of million years. The Quintuplet Cluster contains one of the most luminous stars in our galaxy, the Pistol Star, which is thought to be near the end of its life and on the verge of becoming a supernova. It is in central clusters like the Arches and the Quintuplet that the greatest density of stars in our galaxy can be found. As we move out from the crowded galactic centre, the number of stars drops with distance, until we reach the sparse cloud of gas in the outer reaches of the Milky Way known as the Galactic Halo.

In 2007, scientists using the VLT telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile were able to observe a star in the Galactic Halo that is thought to be the oldest object in the Milky Way. HE 1523-0901 is a star in the last stages of its life; known as a red giant, it is a vast structure far bigger than our Sun, but much cooler at its surface. HE 1523-0901 is interesting because astronomers have been able to measure the precise quantities of five radioactive elements – uranium, thorium, europium, osmium and iridium – in the star. Using a technique very similar to carbon dating (a method archaeologists use to measure the age of organic material on Earth), astronomers have been able to get a precise age for this ancient star. Radioactive dating is an extremely precise and reliable technique when there are multiple `radiactive clocks` all ticking away at once. This is why the detection of the five radioactive elements in the light from the HE 1523-0901 was so important. This dying star turns out to be 13.2 billion years old – that`s almost as old as the Universe itself, which began just over 13.7 billion years ago. The radioactive elements in this star would have been created in the death throes of the first generation of stars, which ended their lives in supernova explosions in the first half a billion years of the life of the Universe.

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com

Most people have said to me that they believe that I have a gift that they don`t possess! When I tell them that I believe that everyone is psychic, they often look at me in wonder. Really!? they say!. You think everyone is psychic? Even me?

The answer is yes. Everyone is psychic. The key difference is our own belief in our psychic abilities. I have been in touch with my psychic side for many years now. But I would never have practiced those abilities if I didn`t believe that my gift is real in the first place. Your psychic abilities are just like any other ability that you possess, the more you practice at learning to get the hang of them, the better you become, just like learning to read and write!

So this is about helping you to believe with confidence in your psychic abilities. Because until you truly believe in yourself, your way to the spirit world will be blocked.

WHY DON`T WE BELIEVE IN OURSELVES?

I find that the main reason that we don`t believe in our psychic abilities is because intuition and life`s `softer` skills aren`t encouraged in this day and age. Most children who have psychic experiences don`t tell people about them, for fear of being laughed at or being called a lier.

Psychic experiences are usually dismissed as coincidences, or our imagination. We`re not taught to practice our psychic skills – far from it in fact. In life we`re told to focus on `practical` and `sensible` things like maths and English. Sadly there are no lessons in school about tapping into our intuition!!

I`m willing to bet that you`ve had more than one psychic experience in your life! Perhaps you didn`t call it this, but you understood that it meant that there was something more to the world than you could see with your own eyes.

When I was a youngster, I used to often see my grandad at the end of my bed, nothing strange about that! except that he died before I was born! Of course, at the time I didn`t know I was having a psychic experience. I thought I was seeing the end of a dream or having a hallucination!

Now I understand that he was really there and came to visit me regularly in order to help me learn about my abilities. He is the one who comes through first when I get in touch with the spirit realm.

I`ve heard many accounts from people about their experiences with their departed loved ones. These experiences are commonly straight after a passing, when our psychic senses are heightened and our logical mind takes a break.

I remember one lady telling me that she saw her husband on an empty hospital bed, a few hours after he`d passed away. She`d come to collect his belongings, and wasn`t startled or surprised to see him sitting there, instead she felt totally calm and very comforted. Her husband looked healthier than she had seen him in for many years, and he smiled at her and blew her a kiss, then he disappeared. Afterwards the lady decided that she had had a hallucination due to the shock of her loss. During our chat I asked her to really focus on this memory. When she recalled it in detail, she understood that she had in fact connected with her husbands spirit that day. She`d never hallucinated before in her life and she realised that the feelings of calm and great peace were from her connection with the spirit realm that day.

Because we don`t learn about intuition at school, and because we`re not taught to focus on the `invisible` side of life, we don`t tend to recognise it when it actually happens to us personally. If we `d been taught to notice our own psychic abilities from a young age, I believe we would all be very proficient at the skill by the time we reach adulthood.

Consider the psychic experiences that you`ve already had! By focusing on coincidences, visions, psychic dreams and when you just `knew`things, this will really help you believe in, and encourage the development of your psychic abilities, the abilities that we are all capable of developing, just like any other skill that the human brain is capable of learning.

So let`s take a trip down memory lane. I`d particularly like you to focus on the time after you lost a loved one, because this is often when our psychic energies are most in tune with the spirit realm.

When your loved one passed away, were there any strange coincidences surrounding their death? Perhaps something happened with their possessions that you weren`t expecting! or perhaps you ended up hearing their favourite song while you were thinking of them, quite by accident. Maybe you saw or felt their presence, or had a very vivid dream about them that told you something very important. Whatever your experiences, I`d like you to really focus on them. Find a quiet spot and really relive the memory in detail. What were you wearing? What was the temperature? What exactly did you see, hear and feel?

The more you focus on that experience, the more you`ll begin to value it as a genuine psychic encounter. This will help you appreciate that you do have psychic abilities and that you can connect with the spirit realm. You just need to believe and start practicing.

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com

SPECTRAL INCURSIONS

Those that scorn the idea that spooks or ghosts prowl and shimmer throughout the world, do so because so far nobody has caught a ghost `in a bottle`. Because they are skeptical by habbit, or because they resist the notion that death may not be the final experience for us humans.

For many the word `ghost` conjures up an anonymous white-robed figure, a spirit that has come back from the grave to haunt the living. But in the literature of Ghostdom,` spectral beings come in a variety of forms and shapes, and some never put in an appearance at all! although they make their presence felt. Ghosts also differ in behaviour- they may be purposeful, playful, angelic or even demonic. Miracles are an example of intervention by angelic or enlightened powers, while most poltergeist episodes are held to be demonic, or a manifestation of untaimed telekinetic abilities.

In the psychological view of the phenomenom, ghosts reveal a spectrum of powerful, but not yet understood capacities of the human mind. In these terms some ghosts are the product of telepathic powers, as when a relative appears to another at the time of death. Poltergeist phenomena suggest unwitting and uncontrolled psychokinetic abilities. And some– the appearence of phantom doubles– suggests that out-of-body experiences can sometimes be manifest to others.

THE ANNE WALKER STORY.

Late one night in the early 20th century a miller, James Graeme, of County Durham in the North East of England where I live, suddenly found himself in the company of a young woman. He naturally asked if she was alright and then in shock, he noticed that she was covered in blood all over her hair, and had five gaping wounds in her head. She told Graeme that her name was Anne Walker and that she had been murdered, with a pickaxe, by someone called Mark Sharp who was acting on the instructions of another man who was also named Walker, by whom she was pregnant. She made it very clear to Graeme that unless he gave this information to the police, she would continue to return to him.

Refusing to believe what he had experienced, Graeme did nothing. But again the apparition appeared and twice more pleaded with him to help her seek justice for her murdered baby and herself. He finally worked up the courage and went to his local police station and spoke to a friend about what had been happening, praying that he would be taken seriously. A pit that the ghost identified as where her body was, was examined and her body was found half burried. Sharp and Walker were later arrested, tried and sentenced to hang. She appeared one more time to Graeme, but this time she was whole and beautiful again, she just smiled and was gone. He never had another experience like that again!

GHOST!

In he wanders in the deep dark night

Scaring the neighbours, oh what a fright!

He likes to make a noise

But he doesn`t want to be seen

But they can tell when he`s there!

Because he always causes a scene.

He has a cat like step

That cannot be heard.

A lightness of touch

Like the smallest of bird.

He opens doors with his ghostly touch

And he turns off the lights! then laughs so much.

He likes to scare folk, because it`s so funny to see

But he`ll never be seen by you or me.

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com

CHANGED LIVES.

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.                       -William Isaac Thomas.

It is difficult for most of us to imagine what it`s like to have a near death- experience! To begin with, a person who has had one, has nearly died! Nobody expects to nearly die! As Sigmund Freud put it so succinctly, ” When we attempt to imagine death, we perceive ourselves as spectators.”

When a near-death experience takes place, it is generally completely different from anything that people could have imagined ever happening to them. When NDEr`s describe their experience as being “unworldly”, they generally understate it. Words like unworldly don`t begin to explain an experience that takes you out of your physical body and into the realms that have been described so vividly in the dozens of NDE accounts that I have read so far, and I have studied this subject for many years now, through many medical surveys and scientific studies that have been published.

BARRIERS TO SHARING

It is a long journey from the time that a near-death experience takes place, until the changes following the experience are fully manifested. These life changes often include transformations in the near-death experiencer`s values, beliefs, and relations with others. Collectively these changes are called aftereffects.

Near-death experiencer`s often tell that the aftereffects were the most important part of their experiences. Aftereffects can dramatically affect the NDEr for the rest of his or her life. To understand NDE aftereffects it is helpful to “walk a mile” with the NDErs, following what happened from the time of the NDE until the aftereffects become fully clear later in life.

For NDErs the first challenge is obviously to recover from what nearly killed them and many seek therapy, for what is diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome that many people suffer from when going through this trauma, for example war veterans ect.` NDErs have to deal with the shock of the life-threatening event and the memory of the NDE experience.

Many people believe that NDErs would jump at the opertunity to share such a dramatic experience immediately after it happens. In reality, this is not usually the case. After recovering from nearly dying, if they try to share their story, they often encounter another challenge: they may be met with indifference and even negative reactions, to the point of some people mocking and being cruel to the experiencer. It`s easy to understand how crushed a near-death experiencer would be, trying to share just how remarkable and personal the experience was, only to be told by the people taken into the experiencer`s confidence that the NDE was due to the drugs, hallucinations, or a dream, or was imaginary and never really happened. People have even been accused of being simpathy seekers or attention seekers. When NDErs encounter such inappropriate reactions from others, they may suppress their experience and the memory of it. If they do, the possibility that they will develop life-enhancing aftereffects are greatly reduced, and some suffer from deep depression because they suppress this personal experience.

Compounding the difficulty NDErs face in sharing, is that near-death experiences are often so unworldly that they may be difficult to express in words. Near-death experiences are often called “ineffable”, not only are they difficult to explain to none experiencers in words, but also because it may be difficult to mentally process these astounding experiences. People may struggle for a long time to understand what has happened to them, and they expect that others would firmly deny, or would not understand the experience that they have gone through.

Still, some people, thank heavens!! are brave, and they still share their experiences with medical personnel shortly after it occurs. Sometimes they are lucky enough to find nurses and doctors who understand NDEs and may even have had the experience themselves, or have studied the information that medical and scientific surveys have revealed to scientists who have spent many years studying this phenomanon. Unfortunately this isn`t always the case when the experiencer encounters a member of the medical team who are uninformed about NDEs or just don`t care enough to find out about them. The result is a negative responce and a look that says ” you must be crazy “. Imagine for a minute! just how traumatic it is for the experiencer to encounter reactions like this one, when they share this information.

This is a small example of what I have read in a study. A man in Peru, nearly died from meningitis, a very serious brain infection that is life-threatening. Here is what happened when he tried to share his experience:

” I told some people about my experience, and they said I was crazy, even my own wife wouldn`t believe that it really did happen. My own doctor insisted that I get psychiactric help because I told him that I felt that I had spoken to an angelic type of energy ”

Near-death experiencers are generally very uncomfortable sharing their experience with their medical caregivers, for fear of being mocked or recieving negative reprisals.

It`s no wonder that some medical personnel have a difficult time knowing how to respond to this information as even the experiencer, doesn`t know how to respond to the event either. The unexpected nature of the NDE always presents a significant barrier to sharing this information. Most patients who go through this experience don`t even know what it was in the first place, and therefore find it difficult to relate this experience to the faculty who study this phenomenon. An NDE study survey asks, ” did you have any knowledge of NDEs prier to your experience? ” A resounding 66.4 percent of respondents of NDEs said no! Only 12.7 percent questioned in the study felt that their experience, when it happened, included features consistant with their beliefs. Understandably it would be difficult to talk about this experience, especially if you didn`t believe that anything of its kind could happen.

These barriers to sharing this information about NDEs clearly state why many people do not speak of their experience for years or even decades, but the experience and information stays in their memory very clearly. However, surveys and scientific studies, have found that nearly 90 percent of experiencers share this information in these important studies. Research has shown that it takes on average, a minimum of seven years for people to come to terms with their experience, whether adult or child! One of the most common responses found, is a deeper understanding of spirituality, and this has given the experiencer profound comfort in their knowledge of the afterlife, and also reduced their interest in material gain or status, and it has had the affect of giving them a greater understanding and appreciation of life. Later research found a myriad of other aftereffects, including a belief in the sacredness of life, a sense of God`s presence, and an awareness of the meaning and purpose in life.

Near-death experiencers often become increasingly aware of the needs of others and are willing to reach out to them. They may seek to live life more fully and with real joy. Personally speaking, I think the world needs a lot more people with values like these.

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com

I have today picked out at random three Tarot cards whilst thinking of Tony, myself and Cherie, Tony`s partner. I feel quite positive with the information they have imparted today and I hope they mean something to all of us.

THE SUIT OF CUPS (HEARTS)

Cups are connected to emotions, relationships, friendships, and romance. They are also associated with the element of water, and water signs of the Zodiac: Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.

People represented by this suit usually have blond or light brown hair, and blue or green eyes. The suit can also refer to people with an artistic temperament.

QUEEN OF CUPS

The Queen drinks deeply from the cup of life. Her emotions and sexuality are intense; she relies on intuition before intellect.

When you draw the Queen of cups, you are full of emotional empathy and compassion and others will be attracted to you for that reason. Alternatively, someone who represents the qualities of tender-heartedness will come into your life. Your emotional involvement with someone (or being wrapped up in your own feelings), means you can`t see the truth of what`s going on. You will soon be more compassionate with others.

XXI THE WORLD

The world symbolizes the complete person, integrated, whole and self-aware as well as the fulfilment of one`s choices or goals.

SYMBOLS AND MEANING

In any layout the world is a positive card; there`s always a sense of accomplishment and prosperity. Everything is working for us, dynamic, moving, vibrant and alive as the world itself. The fool is now living out his true potential and sees that life is meaningful and he has a purpose in it. He has realised that all the different little bits of him, whether negative or positive, make up the wholeness of himself. Likewise, when you draw this card you have a sense of individual value and `wholeness`.

The world can also mean you`ve got the perfect partner or vocation and there`s no turning back. You know that whatever happens, you have the chance to move on, follow your heart`s desire and there are no regrets. You can look forward to success in relationships and all creative enterprises. Sometimes this card is interpreted as `the world is yours`. You`re about to embark on a trip of a lifetime or into a new venture. You feel carefree and yet part of the whole. In a sense you are at one with the Universe. If this card comes out in the blockage position, it could mean that you could be too sure of yourself, or simply indulging in too much wishful thinking. You may need to ask yourself some straight questions and give straight answers. `Who am I? What do I need to learn? What is my true potential?`

A robed figure commands the elements and forces of the universe. This card represents the completion of life`s circle and mystical unity with the cosmos. The power of transcendence is within reach. You can attain worldly success and liberation through spiritual rebirth. Success could be delayed. You are not quite there yet. Time to filter out imperfections and refine your vision.

VI SWARDS

Someone is going to cut you some slack-soon. Relief will come after a struggle. You may be taking a sea voyage.

kEYWORDS, recovery, travel, new departure, leaving the past behind, getting over difficulties, being more positive about life, healing experience.

The six of swards indicates you are moving out of troubled waters. You`re unsure of what`s going to happen next, but you can see the way ahead. This card usually indicates that you are going through some kind of psychological healing process. You`ll soon be rowing away from those choppy waters for an easier route. You may feel a bit bogged down in problems and need to accept that you have to make an effort to make changes.

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com

As a race, the English are said to value their animals more than material wealth! we do love our cats and dogs!! The French regard indifference to culinary pleasure, as a sign of an idiot, while the Italians revere racing and the opera to a similar degree.

Such national stereotypes!

Japanese- ingenuity

German- efficiency

There are many, and many of them even contain a grain of truth. We can safely say that humans seek pleasure and avoid pain, but what else can we claim without hedging our bets?

We could say that humans, in general, enjoy humour– but only in its place!; that they admire courage– but not the unthinking kind!; that they dislike meanness– providing that it`s distinguished from financial prudence! We could also say that motherhood meets with general approval–providing that the worlds population doesn`t threaten to explode!! But what can we say that humans approve of in an unqualified way?

They approve of COINCIDENCE! For several reasons human beings enjoy universally and without qualification, a good coincidence!!

First, because coincidence is democratic; it has no regard for wealth or station in society!

Second, coincidence suggests that the world- meaning that vastness of time and space! in which human beings can easily feel less important than a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert– is not indifferent to us! Coincidence suggests that the world, whatever it may be, is not only uncannily attentive to us, but sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths to prove it.

Thirdly, as a consequence, coincidence creates an impression of mysterious potentials, mostly unrealised, but still a possible source of relief from the dreariness of the mundane comings and goings of our everyday lives. Coincidence does enjoy a kind of unequivocal, universal popularity! it`s not surprising that we have all kinds of opinions and theories about them. Are all events, in the supposed absence of provable causal connections, in fact coincidences?! Are coincidences spurred into being by our latent psychic abilities? Do they exploit, or reveal, unities ultimately traceable to the mind of God, or to the Collective Unconcious, or to the infinite kinship systems of innumerable rebirths? Does their value lie solely in what we learn from them, of the mind`s tendancy to create the patterns it sees, and to then invest them with meaning? Will coincidence eventially yield to the picklock of correct statistical procedure? and so on!!

With nets such as these being cast, perhaps the elusive coincidence creature will someday be captured and identified. But if it is, will we ever be quite sure that the evidence that becomes available, has not merely fallen into place by virtue of the mystery we call coincidence?

COINCIDENCES CONCERNING PEOPLE!

LINCOLN AND KENNEDY

Two of the most remembered and dramatic tragedies in American history, the assassinations of presidents Abraham Lincoln and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, involve the following amazing paralles:

1) Lincoln was elected president in 1860. Exactly one hundred years later, in 1960, Kennedy was elected president.

2) Both men were deeply involved in civil rights for ethnic communities.

3) Both men were assassinated on a Friday, in the company of their wives.

4) Each wife had lost a son whilst living at the White House.

5) Both men were killed by a bullet that entered the head from behind.

6) Lincoln was killed in Ford`s Theater. Kennedy met his death while riding in a Lincoln convertible made by the Ford Motor Company.

7) Both men were succeeded by vice-presidents named Johnson who were southern democrats and former senators.

8) Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908, one hundred years later.

9) The first name of Lincoln`s private secretary was John, the last name of Kennedy`s private secretary was Lincoln.

10) John Wilkes Booth the assassin of Lincoln was born in 1839 (according to some records). Lee Harvey Oswald the assassin of Kennedy was born in 1939, one hundred years later.

11) Both assassins were Southerners who held extremist views.

12) Both assassins were murdered before they could be brought to trial.

13) Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and ran to a barn. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran to a theater.

14) Lincoln and Kennedy each has seven letters.

15) Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson each has thirteen letters.

16) John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald each has fifteen letters.

And lastly, Lincoln proposed a John Kennedy for vice president- John P kennedy!

A dollar bill was issued in Dallas only two weeks before JFK was killed there, it`s now known as the Kennedy assassination bill. Since Dallas is the location of the 11th of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank districts, the bill bears the letter K, the 11th letter of the alphabet, and the number 11 appears in each corner. The serial number begins with K and ends with an A, standing for Kennedy Assassination. 11 also stands for November, the 11th month of the year; two eleven`s equal twenty two, the date of the tragedy. And the series number is 1963, the year the assassination occurred.

G xx

nanny.gina.r@gmail.com