I was going through some old dream journal entries recently and came across one of the first times I made real progress with what I would now call beyond lucid dreaming. At this point, I had only just begun experimenting with the Monroe tapes and had been using them for a short time. For those who may not know, the Monroe Institute developed a method using binaural beats to help people learn how to leave their body—and, notably, the process is repeatable for most people. I believe this is referenced in the relevant On-topic media post “Did the CIA Discover the Spirit World?” Put as simply as possible, the training teaches your mind to remain awake while your body falls asleep. You are fully aware and cognizant of everything happening. Unlike lucid dreaming, this does not occur while you’re asleep. In the beginning—over the course of maybe five to ten sessions—I wasn’t having full out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, or anything particularly deep. Instead, I experienced visions: very simple at first. Mostly intense colors and amorphous, shifting blobs. After a few sessions, however, the visions became more detailed, eventually forming characters and landscapes. This all culminated in the following vision: ""At first, I saw only the sky—but it was different. It looked as though I was peering through a window into another world, where the sky shifted through different color hues. I could see the tops of what looked like pine trees, similar to the ones across the street from the house I was living in at the time. Then I noticed the edge of a large circular frame, almost like a window, made of something resembling concrete, with countless tiny grooves along its edge. I realized I was looking out through this opening, which was oriented straight up into the sky. Slowly, the “window” began to move away from me. As it did, I realized it wasn’t a window at all—it was a gigantic eye. Not just any eye, but the Eye of Providence itself. I was looking through its iris into another world—one that seemed familiar, yet distinctly different from our own.

In 2012 I went for Angel Healing as a skeptic. I didn’t believe in Angels, or anything like that. I just wanted some positivity put into me and the negativity taken away. I told myself it was no different from meditation or relaxation. I booked three sessions and tried to stay open-minded, but not believing. The first two sessions were calming, comforting even, but nothing I couldn’t explain away. Then came the third. I was wrapped in a soft pink blanket, eyes closed, breathing slowly. The healer stood at my head with her hands gently hovering over my eyes. I could feel the heat from her palms, steady and warm. Then, suddenly, I felt a separate hand touch my stomach. It was unmistakable. Firm. Real. My eyes flew open instantly. No one was there. The healer was still at my head, exactly where she had been. My heart was racing. I knew what I had felt. There was no doubt in my mind. At the end of the session, I told her. She looked at me calmly and said, “That was an Angel.” I panicked. I left quickly. I read everything I could about Angels afterward. I had no choice but to believe. I know what I felt that day. I was touched by an Angel. I got Angel wings tattooed on my arm to remind me of the fact, - I am never alone. 😇

Yesterday, I was thinking of my late parents and missing them terribly. They both loved Christmas, especially Daddy, and the holidays are just not the same without them. Then a text from my sis popped up on my phone. She had purchased an evergreen wreath to go at their gravesite, and had gone over to the cemetery yesterday to check on it. As she arrived, the late evening sun hit the wreath just so and made it look like a lantern or lit candle was glowing in the center. Physics…or something more? It’s comforting to think of this as a message from Mama and Daddy telling us they are near. Moments like this are not about proof but more about presence. My sister noticed, and then sent the photo to me…and that is what matters most.

This photograph was taken in the summer of 2020, on a day when the world felt both eerily quiet and intensely alive. I was alone, walking through the woods as I often did then, letting the trees steady me and the rhythm of my footsteps calm my thoughts. There was a stillness to that walk, the kind that isn’t empty but listening. The woods opened out at the back into fields, tall grasses catching the light, wild and ungoverned, and it was there that something shifted. I remember the moment clearly. The air felt different, charged somehow, as if I had crossed an unseen threshold. I sensed, with absolute certainty, that I wasn’t alone. Not in the way we usually mean it—not another person, not an animal breaking through the grass—but a presence that didn’t belong to the physical rules we’re taught to trust. It wasn’t fear that rose in me. It was recognition. Then I saw it: a flash of movement, subtle and fleeting, invisible to the naked human eye and yet unmistakably real. For a split second, it revealed itself—not in form, but in motion, like light bending where nothing should be. A shimmer. A disturbance. A reminder. I don’t pretend to fully understand what I saw, only that I saw it, and that moment saw me too. Instinct took over. I lifted my phone and took this photograph. I didn’t compose it carefully or think about technique. I simply responded. The image that emerged feels like a meeting point—between light and shadow, matter and something beyond it. The delicate white flowers stand almost defiant against the darkened edges, as though illuminated from within. The field looks ordinary at first glance, but it isn’t. It holds something. It remembers. I’ve called this photograph 'Spirit of the Woods' because that is what it felt like: the land briefly revealing its awareness, its life beyond our limited senses. I’ve always known, deep down, that I am never truly alone. I don’t walk through places; I walk with them. I sense things others might dismiss—shifts in energy, presences without bodies, movements without sound. Non-physical phenomena aren’t abstract concepts to me; they’re part of my lived experience.