I have been in a state of love so complete that anything that came within range fell subject to this powerful love. I have been in a state of despair so complete that body and soul were paralysed on every level and breathing was the only way to suspend negative animation. It is not the person that triggers the love; the love precedes the love-object. Not many people know this.

I do not know how other people feel, how deep they go, how high. Working with people as a psychological and spiritual astrologer I have learned how to help and how to show the way. But no one really knows. Except, of course the person’s inner guidance. Dialogue with your inner guidance trumps everything. If we let them get a word in edgewise it is a wonderful thing.

In a state of complete momentary (all feelings are time-stamped) emptiness, when the robin comes to eat his breakfast in the little guardian-feeder especially designed for safe robins, then the emptiness is instantly replaced with temporary joy. (Toss that emotional scale thing away.) I love any condition that will help me with any negative feeling – it is the way upwards and onwards.

To live the unconditional life is an intermittent thing at best because it relies on being in perfect alignment with God source energy all the time – which sounds a little like ‘heaven’, like the non-physical, discarnate state of being. Arthur said, when I asked what it was, that it was difficult to accomplish unconditional love. Arthur did not want to push us. Life, it seems to me, is supposed to be like the roller coaster. I think Abraham wants to set the bar high as ‘they’, the Abrahams, speak universally rather than to just the one. Maybe that’s why they are a troop.

The colours and the contrast, the ups and the downs, the nothingness, the love, the rage – all of these conditions are why we are here.

‘Please can I go home now?’, I ask with all my heart. ‘Not just yet, they say. You just wait, you’ll see…’ (By they, I mean not a troop but just my three non-physical friends.)

So then you are old and you think, well what is the point of this? You are marginalised, your health dips, no one gives you a second look, there can be no great ambition as time is running out; what was it you were just thinking? Jean the Magnificent just kept going, uncomplainingly for all her 85 years because she was a Saturn-type: sun conjunct Saturn in Libra. Saturn types do very well at the end of life, as the road peters out. There was a quiet faith she held that ‘all things pass’. Saturn types manage life very well.

What is more, when JM was the age I am now and I was about 35 I thought she was the most beautiful person I had ever met. I did not care much about the outer shell, it was the essence of this person that shone through. Yet, walking off into the sunset with Jean brought about a full-scale identity crisis which took me completely by surprise: no job, no sexual orientation, no role to play, no place to call my own. First bliss, then white-out then black-out. Astrologically the line-up was spectacular.

It was at this time I found my way to my first horoscope reading simply because all the obvious channels in the real, conventional world had nothing to offer, no help to give. I tried them all because when I last checked I was a schoolteacher, wife, mother, daughter, home-owner. Most of these vanished overnight and the others were seriously compromised. The dear astrologer, Gloria could see it all, even before we met which seemed like magic to me. I listened in amazement as she told me all about myself. This was an overwhelming relief. (I am not prone to overwhelment.)

Thirty years later I am still trying to make a life that fits. I have let go of most friends – except the ones who need people like they need food – as the conversation is always one-sided. It is asking too much that a socially adjusted person would understand my priorities and experience.

Which makes conversation with non-physical paramount.

If you speak astrology, you might see the gravity of a chart which has 2 feed-back loops (mutual reception) by sign involving the chart ruler: the sun which is in Scorpio; with Pluto in Leo. And Venus (ruler of the 4^th which is occupied by sun, Saturn, Neptune) in Sag., with Jupiter in Taurus. Venus and Pluto being in trine formation. Sun and Pluto in square.

But here’s the thing: young starlings can squeeze into the robin’s guardian-feeder but they have a long hard job getting out again.