Upcoming Book
Becoming An Angel:
Earning Your Wings While Still In Your Earth Suit
It will be a while before this comes out, as I’ve just finished it in July 2011. Unlike some authors, I write my books before I look for homes for them (that way I don’t rush them out the door). Please sign up on my book announcement list to learn more as we get closer.
This book will make you laugh and make you think. It articulates a spiritual path (of the loose sort) in a light-hearted, loving, and sincere way. As you will see, it is less about angels than about growing into your own angel nature.
Here is the table of contents and the Introduction as I initially wrote them.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
I. MEET THE CELESTIAL REALM
Right Relationship with Angels
Slow Dancing
Why Angels Have Wings
The Holy Orders of Angels: An Everyday
Classification
How to Get to Heaven
Heaven on Earth
II. SO YOU WANT TO BE
AN ANGEL?
Why Be an Angel?
How Do You Become An Angel?
What Will Be Asked of Me?
It's Like Baking a Cake!
Become Like A Child
We Are All Chosen People
Stripping Down to the You That Is You
Becoming An Angel: A Two-Way Gift
III. FIRST LESSONS
Finding Your Way
Entering the Temple
Feeling Safe
Letting Go of Unworthiness
Don’t Stay Small
The Radiance Within
Lighter & Brighter
Loving Your Dark Places
How To Pray
Opening Up in Sweet Surrender
Receiving Grace
The Attitude of Gratitude
Love Transfusions
All Puddled Out
IV. CULTIVATING
DIVINE QUALITIES
Joy
Humility
Generosity
Compassion
Kindness
Gentleness
A Patient Heart
Sincerity
Sweet!
Oh, So Delicate!
Mountain of Being
Integrity
Faith
Clarity
Pure of Heart
Staying True
Obedience: Sacrifice or gift?
Deep Peace
The Power of Love
V. LESSONS FOR
LIVING
Right Speech
Being Cheerful
Living With Courage
It's A Gift To Be Simple
Living Lightly
Resting in the Present Moment
Divine Timing
How to Hold Suffering
Don't Worry, Be Happy
Sex
Good Manners for Earth Angels
VI. TRUE NATURE
For God Alone: A Practical Explanation
Beyond Right and Wrong
E.T. Want Home
Morning Energy
Being Complete
Immaculate Heart
Living With An Open Heart
Meeting My
Angel Self
Spiritual Guidance from the Angels
VII. JUST
FOR FUN (4)
Our B.A. (Baby Angel) Program
Angel Intensives
Testing Your Spiritual Maturity
Magic Show
Introduction
We have a fascination with angels, a sort of love affair. From stained glass to greeting cards, figurines to movies and best-selling books, our concern with angels is easy to see.
This book is about becoming an angel. Seriously. It is about growing an angel's heart and opening up to our angel nature right here while walking around as a human being. I know this is not theologically correct and does not conform to church doctrines in which angels are created by God and are eternal, but you have to let go of that if you've going to get into this book. You have to consider that maybe that's not true, maybe there's more to know about angels, and even if we've not talking about literally becoming an angel, it's a useful metaphor. I believe we each have an angel nature as part of our spiritual makeup, and the world would be a much better place if more of us could develop and live from that place.
This is a process that involves unlearning as much as learning. It's about peeling off the lacquered-on layers of conditioning and defense that tell us it's too dangerous to live with an open heart, peeling off the learned sophistication that covers our innocence and keeps us from feeling vulnerable. And of course we have to deal with that sarcastic inner voice that sounds rather like Ebenezer Scrooge grumbling, "Angels! Humbug!”
There is also a learning process, but it's a little different than most of our learning. It's not head learning and not something you can generally get from a book (except this one!). It's an experiential learning that grows out of stillness and being in touch with the subtle unfolding of your innermost self.
Most of us are too antsy for this, but that's just something we'll have to get over. We've got to stop, and go in. In, in, in. Past the troubles that are plaguing us, past the rowdy emotions, past the to-do list, into the sacred chamber of the heart.
There are a thousand reasons we stay away from that. Mostly these are related to the thousand pains we don't want to feel, but also we just don't know much about this dimension. Yet if we learn to get quiet and enter that sacred chamber, we will find aspects of ourselves that will turn our lives around. You see, becoming an angel is less like a Boy Scout project of earning the requisite badges and more about freeing the angel within you. It's like turning on a part of you that you haven't even known exists.
This book is the result of my closeness to the angelic realm. It comes from my communication with angels and a gradual recognition of my own angel nature. It has a different character than some of the angel books, where the contact seems very concrete and literal. This is not how my perceptual apparatus works. It's not like I could file a police report on what my angels look like or what kind of accent they speak with.
This is subtler knowledge, which comes as experience and is given language using the data banks that I have available. Maybe you've noticed that when a voice speaks to you inside, it uses words you already know. I always appreciate that. I don't like to have to get out my dictionary to know what someone is saying to me. Well, one reason the voice speaks in words you know is that the words are your own translation. There aren't German angels and French angels. There are just angels, beings of light.
Perhaps my most profound understanding is that angels are a mirror of what we can be. I think nothing would delight them more than for us to recognize that our deepest nature is not different than theirs. It's not like they want all the attention for themselves. I think the angels would be happier if we focus less on them and more on our own angel nature. Of course they can be models and are happy to have us acknowledge and treasure them, but their real concern is what we can be.
Meet the Author
Who am I to write this? With what authority do I speak? That is certainly what critics and publishers want to know, and it's fair for a reader to also ask this. My first response is that I am nobody. Nobody special. Nobody more special than anyone else. But I have spent several decades diligently attending to my spiritual development and I seem to have an "in" with a pack of angels.
I am not coming from any particular spiritual tradition. I'm sort of a renegade, yet I'm a sincere and honest student, which makes me a good instrument for this book. I've learned enough about writing to know that it is often a matter of staying true to something subtle that is unfolding in one's experience. It's a matter of listening. My practice as a writer has helped me on my spiritual path, which is also a matter of receptivity and feeling into what is happening in the subtle realms. In fact, if I were the Unmanifest looking for someone to assign this book to, I think I'd pick a writer like me.
I have an interesting personal story, which I will tell in a nutshell. I was connected to the angels before I was born. I was comforted by angels during intense childhood trauma. I forgot all of this, but was unconsciously drawn to angel images. In the course of healing my trauma I began to consciously remember the angels and reconnect with them. My love and gratitude toward the angels is in large part what has powered the writing of this book.
What is in this book? How can it help me?
This book is divided into seven sections. Part I, Meet the Celestial Realm, begins with a few facts about angels that you might like to know--like why they have wings and how they're organized into bands. As you might guess, I'm playing with this material quite a bit. I'm sharing my deepest intuitions, but I'm holding the forms lightly, and I am sometimes pulling your leg. Don't take me wrong: I've no intention of misrepresenting the angels, but as you'll see, they don't take their forms seriously either.
We move rather quickly from this more humorous beginning into the motivation and the process of coming into our own angel nature in Part II, So You Want To Be An Angel. Although we may start out with doubts and resistances, we'll learn that becoming an angel is a little different than other spiritual trainings. It's less about ego on the chopping block and more like receiving a transfusion of love. We are transformed as we come to recognize our underlying spiritual nature and learn to live from there.
In the next three sections, I put you to work. These lessons are designed to cultivate the various attitudes and qualities that will help bring out the angel in you. No free passes here, so don't think you can skip the homework and graduate. You can still enjoy this book, but you'll move closer to getting your wings if you practice these things.
Part VI, True Nature, comes back to the question of who we fundamentally are and to the process of discovering your angel self. We end on a light note with Part VII, Just For Fun, as I write about the Angel Institute and how to test your spiritual maturity.
Becoming an angel is something you need to take seriously in your heart, but you otherwise want to be careful about. If you have too high of expectations, they'll trip you up, and if your ego gets too identified, you go back to square one. In the spiritual realm, if you want to be Somebody, it gets in your way. You're too puffed up to get through that eye of the needle. Trying to be Somebody is accentuating the wrong part: it's making the ego identity bigger, rather than softening it so that our spiritual identity has a chance to be known.
You've probably heard the saying Angels fly because they take themselves lightly, and that has some meaning for us, too. We're not competing for honors here; in fact, recognition is unlikely. If people think angels have wings and are not human and you don't have wings but you are human, people won't think of you as an angel while you're walking around in this earth suit. So you may as well relax and have some fun.
So that's it. You've been given your orientation, and it's time to sign up. Angelhood 101. Here we go!
