In today’s episode of Healing from Within, your host Sheryl Glick author of The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite love, a non-fiction book which shares her understanding of the Universal laws of energy and how we can incorporate them into our daily lives for helping to create health prosperity and better relationships welcomes Jody Casella author of Thin Space which has won the award for this year’s Best Book for children and teens. Thin Space a fictional novel tells the story of a boy who lost his twin brother in a car accident and is in search of a Thin Space: a mythical point where the barrier between this world and the next is thin enough for a person to step through to the other side.
The main characters in Thin Space are Marsh Windsor whose twin was killed in a car accident and he is consumed with guilt and crippled by the secrets of that fateful night. He feels he only has one chance to make amends and set things right and twin brother was Austin, Maddie Rogers and her brother Sam move into the house near Marsh. where Mrs. Hansel, an elderly lady recently passed. Other characters include Brad Silverman, Logan (Marsh’s girlfriend before the accident), and Kate, Austin’s girlfriend before he died and Mrs. Golden School Principal, Marsh’s parents and others.
The common themes in Thin Space are societal and peer pressures of young adults, the loss of a parent or sibling, dealing with grief and loss, issues of twins and their unique closeness, the need to be known independently, the need to be accepted and loved, male-female differences, better ways for communicating between adults, counselors and teachers, and understanding the changes in young adults and indeed in life circumstances.
Sheryl tells Jody of her first book, “Life Is No Coincidence: The Life and Afterlife Connection,” which focused on her awakening to the coincidences and synchronicities that began to happen after she experienced a spiritual visitation one night by herr grandfather who appeared in shadow form and telepathically told her to write something for her father. The next day Sheryl received a phone call from her mother telling her that her father had passed. Sheryl couldn’t forget the feeling of the interaction in that dream and it didn’t feel like a dream. Years later, while reading a book by a psychic medium John Edward where he described the difference between a dream and a spiritual visitation, Sheryl realized that is what she had experienced that night. Sheryl began a search to understand Spirit and spiritual communication that lead me to develop into a Reiki energy healer and medium.
Judy describes a spiritual visitation in the book in regard to Maddie. Maddie begins to tell her mother of certain nightmares she is having and people that she sees in these dreams who she doesn’t know. Maddie asks Marsh if the people are real or are ghosts or dead people coming through the thin space?
Jody discusses some of the wonderful connections twins have and also some of their challenges. One example is, Marsh hears the therapist ask him “Did you feel connected to your brother? Did you feel like you were two halves of the same person? and did you have a bond that goes beyond normal sibling….?” The major problem Marsh and Austin experienced was that it was hard for them to watch people pausing and frowning and not knowing which one they were talking to. People running their names together so it was one name and they wouldn’t have to guess..it seemed they were losing a part of themselves and sometimes in one moment you might wish that you could have people know you for you and even hope that there was only one of you…
Sheryl says she has identical twin granddaughters and thought when they were born she wouldn’t be able to tell them apart and if she put one in the wrong crib they might lose their true identity and we would never be able to rectify the situation. But, Sheryl saw after a short time, there were many unique differences and now that they are five and are so different in their interests – one is quick moving and one is less quick to make a choice Sheryl attributes this to the fact that physically they share the same DNA, but spiritually, they are each a unique soul with their own life plan and destiny and reasons for having chosen this physical life.
Maddie, the young girl who just moved into the neighborhood, hopes the idea of a thin space is real because she wants to see her father who died when she was very young and begins to help Marsh in his relentless search to make a connect with the other side. Marsh tells her of course her father would know her but in his mind he thinks maybe not, because it has become clear to him that people don’t really know each other as well as they think they do.
Sheryl says as a medium she walks with one foot in this world and one in the other and in her readings she has discovered there are family members or friends who come through for the person she is reading and her client may say… “Well they weren’t alive and I never met them..” Sheryl responds that they know you and are connected to you still and learning from your experiences and discoveries as you live through your own life issues. As for knowing another person It is difficult as we each have our own perceptions and these are formed from our earliest interactions with many people and our patterns or means to evaluate the world and daily events are uniquely specific to these moments and our interpretation of each event Therefore it is hard to know yourself and doubly hard to know another..the best we can do is listen observe not make judgments and allow others to find what suits them best in their own discovery of SELF.
As a medium Sheryl describes the different dimensions of energy or life and that conscious survives physical death and sensitive’s or mediums are able to alter their vibration reach up and spirit meets us in the middle.
Mrs. Hansel told Marsh that thin spaces were doorways, places where the wall between this world and the next is thinner. Where the dead can come back and where living people can enter the world of the dead…Mrs. Hansel said it all came down to your soul leaving your body at the time of death in the same place it came through. She told the boys she would create a place like that… she also had them gather stones and scatter them all over the place..on tops of doorframes and in random piles in the corners of rooms. This was part of her process for making her thin space.
Marsh and Maddie finally find the thin space and decide to go in together. “The moment slows, freezes, as we stand shakily, at the edge of Maddie’s bed. I stare at my bare foot as I nudge it forward. I feel Maddie tensing beside me. Her head bobs as she moves forward too, her fingers digging into my hand, and then my heart seems to jump into my throat. The room slides away. It happens just like Mrs. Hansel described. The bedroom walls, the bed piled with blankets, the ceiling the wooden floor—everything narrows, blurs, and in a whoosh we’re rushing past all of it. I can’t get my bearings. There’s no top or bottom. I can’t even tell if I’m falling or rising. It’s like being plunged into a deep pool but I’m not wet. I can’t see the surface or the bottom. I flail around, enveloped in cold….The air’s black, thick, and I’m still tossing around in it. Where’s the mist? This isn’t how Mrs. Hansel explained it.”
Mrs. Hansel appears and I am no longer falling and flailing..the dark leaks away and I’m standing on something solid. I say her name and Mrs Hansel appears and looks exactly like the last time I saw her…her white hair, her nightgown
Sheryl says she often tells her clients who miss someone they love that all they have to do is think of them or say their name and they will be around us.
Jody describes how the spirits looked when Maddie and Marsh saw them in the thin space. Marsh’s brother appears in the black T-shirt and jeans limping dragging his right leg through the gray towards me. Its hard for me to look at him..he may as well just have staggered out of the wrecked car..one side of his face is blackened with blood..I can’t find his right eye under the mass of bruising. The rest of his body’s no better off.
Sheryl says when she does a reading for a client she sometimes senses how a person has passed and as she is very clairsentient, how painful it may have been and if it was heart disease, cancer or an accident, but usually the soul or person Sheryl senses is healthy and youthful and free of that ending. They only show that to clarify information so the person receiving the reading can know it is their loved one. Dr. Eben Alexander author of” Proof of Heaven” described the place you seem to be describing which he first became aware of when he had his near death experience and was later led by his sister to a higher place of light and life where he gathered much awareness of the Afterlife in its higher state before recovering and returning to his physical life.
Marsh’s dead brother asks him to do something for him so he can be free. Sheryl wonders if Jody believes all souls need this to happen at the time of death and Jody writes” To let go and let them move on to their next stage of Afterlife and say to them we will see each other again…it is not goodbye. Ask them to be safe and in peace.” Sheryl as a medium who has felt the love and peace of those in spirit concurs with this observation..it is on the money. We must forgive ourselves, accept the loss of people as they move into the next dimension of life, realize we make mistakes and are not perfect and love happens when people can trust you even if you are expressing ideas that are very different from what might be their reality.
In observing Jody Casella’s book Thin Space, some of the challenges faced by young adults in understanding who they are, how to become responsible in loving action with friends, family and parents, how to assume responsibility for any mistakes they may make, and how they might develop the courage and vision to follow through on their believes and values regardless of the peer pressure that effects most teenagers is clearly presented. Thin Space shares the idea that consciousness survives physical death and that our loved ones are still connected to us and if we find a way to go beyond our conscious mind or our ego and issues of our physical life, we will be able to know that they survive and continue to be around us when we think of them. In knowing this truth, whether you garnish this truth from a reading received from a medium who has offered you information to validate that your relative or friend in Spirit is still connected to you, you will further understand the true circle of life and energy becoming less fearful of change and more accepting of the natural order of events.
Jody and Sheryl would have you always look to the future with hope and trust that all events whether perceived as good or bad are part of a greater Universal Plan: not random and ultimately lead to a greater awareness of ourselves and love. |
