…And as the Earth tilts away from the sun at this time of year in the northern hemisphere, like the rest of nature we adapt easily or less easily to the colder, darker conditions: November – February – this is the ‘contrast’ to provide the enjoyment of spring and summer – and autumn too perhaps.

Jean, who was an uncomplaining even-tempered sort of person, liked the winter in England. She came to live here from California in 1990. She was 66.

I uploaded more Arthur pages yesterday. In 2003, Jean agreed to try to ‘channel’. I wanted her to so much as I could see in her birth chart that she would be able to find the right conditions within herself. She had a NDE (near death experience) when she was a child and remembered floating above her body and feeling the love and the pull of the non-physical dimension, but decided to go back to her body as her parents who were there were so upset. And there were other occasions when as a child she felt it would be too easy to become dissociated, so much so that she would not be able to return to her body.

She was a professional classical musician. And taught Braille music at the California School for the Blind. I was remembering her with a great deal of love this morning after hearing Esther Hicks or Abraham on a sort of rampage promoting her/their style of meditation to a woman who had said she was already using TM (Transcendental Meditation). It seemed to me as if something was triggered in Esther by this person who was not meditating in accord with the A-H method and discovering the outcome that pleased Esther. I found it incongruous with the way Jean approached ‘channelling’. She simply lit a candle in the evening before bedtime and quickly entered a trance-like state. As for the morning meditation, that would never have been attractive to her as she was the wake-up-late type, the owl not the lark. She was out of bed at 8.00am but didn’t fully come to life till 10.00. Yet, she was the most blessed person I have ever known in life or on the screen. We spent 20 years together and I never saw her irritated or out of balance in any way.

Just as Esther entered the world with the necessary conditions in her personality to prepare her to speak for Abraham, Jean entered the world as a placid loving soul who early on found a way of living easily in the world. Music meant a great deal to her, as well as the musician friends she made along her way.

So, astrology confirms that it is much easier or more likely that some will be able to mediate in the way that A-H recommends and describes and that some will find it near impossible. Nevertheless, and fortunately each person will, if motivated enough, find their own way to quiet their mind enough to tune into their own Source energy or Guide. It is a very personal and different experience for everyone.

I was struck by Esther’s conversation with the woman on the Alaskan cruise this year. It was a long conversation – 27 minutes. Here is an edited extract, with Esther coming to a climax at about 6 minutes. My point is that there are many ways to the centre, and evangelical rampages about The Way to do anything are, in my humble opinion, unhelpful, if entertaining from the stage.

I take the A-H material very seriously as it is all that I use for conversational spiritual connection now that dear Jean has departed. I am not good at meditation these days although like the lady in this extract I used TM for about 5 years and found it most useful. Now I am finding my way slowly back to a morning ritual. Discipline is hard for me, while it was easy for Jean. Her birth chart shows Saturn conjunct the sun in Libra. Anyone with a sun-Saturn conjunction, or Saturn in Capricorn is good at discipline, patience, forbearance; steadily getting the job done without fuss. But it was Jean’s moon in Pisces in a wide conjunction with Uranus which, added to the rest of her chart, made her a good channel by the time she was willing at 80 years old. A very different story to Esther’s.

On an earlier cruise in 2007 I listened to A-H having a seminar which contained the best conversations I have ever heard from them. I will try to find an extract for next time.