Messages from Angels – Angels for Breakfast: Nourishment at Whole Foods

Note: One of my favorite parts of my spiritual job description is when I am asked to be a messenger for benevolent angelic forces. 

I often receive messages for people whose angels or spiritual guardians ask me to communicate when it is a matter of urgency or they are having a hard time getting through to their human counterparts. Many of these people are strangers to me and our interactions last only moments. These messages can be warnings of illness or accident.  They can also be intended to clarify or give direction. Whatever they are, I play my role as messenger faithfully

 (story is continued from previous post … click here for post 1)

Yeah,” the man with the crutch replied politely when I asked him if he was looking for breakfast, “I was going to get some but they don’t have any sausage.”  His eyes were clear.  I had half-expected his breath to smell like alcohol but it too was clean. 

I glanced at the steaming trays of breakfast food.  They had large metal spoons or plastic tongs sticking out of them and were shielded partially behind plexi-glass.  There was no sausage.  “Oh, okay,” I said awkwardly. At a loss for words, I walked away.

I returned to the pie section feeling ridiculous.  I needed clearer instructions.  I searched among the berry, strawberry-rhubarb and apple pies in hopes of finding peach. 

The voice came again, more strongly.  “Go talk to him and buy him breakfast!”

I turned back to look at the man.  I glimpsed his yellow jacket bobbing through the silver lines of the buffet.  He had moved on from the eggs and was now wandering near the trays of breakfast burritos, macaroni & cheese, turkey pot pie and other comfort food.  Once again, I heeded the voice of Angels.  I walked toward him, only to stop short on the other side of the buffet.  I felt self-conscious, and even presumptuous.  Social graces caution against pointing out someone’s suffering – as if we are somehow required to save face while remaining unassisted, unhealed and untouched.

I turned and walked back to the pie.  There was no peach to be found.  In the smaller, personal pies I had two options – a mini apple or berry pie – for $4.99 each.

“Go talk to him and buy him breakfast!”  The angelic voice came again, sounding clear and definitive.  I could see the words forming over my head and settling down on my back like a hand guiding me in the right direction.

I turned around again to look at the man.  He was still wandering near the turkey pot pie.  I hesitated.  It hurt me to look at him there, hungry and with so much restraint – after all, he did not steal, or pilfer bits of food from the trays.  I turned back to the pie I wasn’t even sure I wanted.  The next option was half a strawberry-rhubarb pie for $7.99.  I didn’t need that much pie!

The voice came again.  This time it shouted.  “Talk to him and buy him breakfast!”  The words came in golden capital letters with several exclamations points following.  They boomed out of the air above me and cascaded down around my head, reverberating loudly like cymbals.  The command blocked out all other sounds.  It cancelled out all other considerations.  I cringed and ducked slightly.  Experience has taught me that when Angels get this vociferous it is better not to argue!

I knew I had to overcome my resistance and approach that down-on-his-luck man.  “What if he says, ‘no,’” I fretted, “I am under orders to buy him breakfast!”

I walked over to the man.  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” I said.  I paused and then blurted out, “I think I need to buy you breakfast!”  I wanted to say more.  I wanted to explain....

(for more, see next post)

Messages from Angels – Angels for Breakfast: Nourishment at Whole Foods

Note: One of my favorite parts of my spiritual job description is when I am asked to be a messenger for benevolent angelic forces. I often receive messages for people whose angels or spiritual guardians ask me to communicate when it is a matter of urgency or they are having a hard time getting through to their human counterparts. Many of these people are strangers to me and our interactions last only moments. These messages can be warnings of illness or accident.  They can also be intended to clarify or give direction. Whatever they are, I play my role as messenger faithfully

At the Whole Foods grocery he leaned on a single crutch and peered into two stainless steel buffet trays -- one full of scrambled eggs and another full of bacon.  He and I seemed to be asking the same question of ourselves, “What, if anything, to eat?”

Yesterday morning, at this same Whole Foods, I had opted for eggs but by the time I had stood in line at the cash register to pay for them, they had cooled into an expensive and unappetizing yellow lump.  I would not make the same mistake this morning.  I walked past the eggs and the man on the crutch, toward the baked goods. 

Actually, I did not even want to be in the store.  I was not sure why I was there, given that I was not hungry and I was running late for the last day of a shamanic dreaming workshop in which I was enrolled.  In fact, before leaving the house that morning I had decided to skip breakfast altogether.  The workshop was exacting and although I was enjoying it, I wanted to slow down and stop rushing, even if it meant missing a meal.

Thus, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself pulling into the parking lot of Whole Foods, getting out of the car and entering the store through automatic sliding glass doors.  “Well, I’m in the store,” I reasoned, “I might as well look for something to tide me over until lunch.”

Now here I was in the baked good section, looking at apple, strawberry-rhubarb and mixed-berry pie.  I looked from the pie back toward the man.  He wore a grubby yellow windbreaker and jeans.  He carried a back pack.  Even his stocking cap was soiled.  His beard and the skin on his face and hands were smeared with dirt.  I turned back to the pie.

“Go talk to him,” the voice of an Angel said.

I turned and looked more closely at the man, thinking as I did that he must be homeless.  He leaned into the food as if calculating how much it would cost to feed himself this one hot meal.  Then the Angels showed me something.  Within my own body, I could feel his hunger -- and not just the hunger for food.  There was also a hunger that many in difficult situations experience – the hunger for laughter, peace, safety, cleanliness, community, beauty, reassurance and release from the strain of desperation.

Though I felt for him, I will admit that the command, “go talk to him,” felt rather general. I did not know what to say and I did not want to embarrass myself, so I stalled, suddenly shy.  Even though I knew it was not true, I justified my reticence by telling myself that anyone in immediate need would not even be in an upscale store like Whole Foods and that my help was not really needed. 

The voice came again.  “Go talk to him.”

Not knowing what to say, I walked back to the buffet and up to the man.  When I got there I improvised and said, “Are you looking for breakfast?”


(for more see next post)

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Book Review - Ooops! Did I Say That Out Loud? - Correspondence with Authors (Post 4 of 4)

Correspondence with Dr. Edzard Ernst, M.D., author of Trick of Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine, went from doubtful to hopeful to exciting to bad to worse, all within the space of a couple of days!  I hope that it served a purpose for the both of us, my getting angry with the good doctor, I mean.  It is said that "no shift in consciousness, however small, is ever wasted."  

At the end of the last post I had just suggested to Dr. Ernst that his arguments might be more convincing if he experimented with alternative healing.  What happened next is that......

(click here for post 1, post 2,  post 3). 


..... I fully expected never to hear from him again, he wrote back, informing me that I had failed him.  “You [Ahnday] failed to produce the good you had initially envisioned,” he states officiously in this reply,

you can tell your readers what you like!i have done and published about 30 clinical trials in this area.this correspondence shows,i think,that even the most well-meaning test on 1 or 2 individuals is scientifically not meaningfull.you approached me asking whether i would be willing to do a test with you ,i responded positively provided that this test would be meaningfull.as it turned out,it is not.now you are asking me to come up with a design that is conclusive.to the best of my knowledge,such a design does not exist given the restrictions of the experiment such as sample size and distance.the way to test the efficacy of treatments is to conduct a rigorous clinical trial which,under the constraints of the present situation,we cannot do.

i conclude that i gave it a try but you failed to produce the goods you had initially envisaged.
in my view,this was an interesting lesson to learn.
best regards

So, after reading this, I’m thinking, “This correspondence doesn’t show anything, except that the doctor wants to say ‘no.’ What ‘goods’ is he talking about? The only thing I promised him was free healing and we never even got that far!”

The good doctor had finally gotten my goat.  As far as I was concerned there was no good reason for him to blame his own unwillingness on me or on alternative healing!  On April 4, I banged out the following response,

All due respect, Mr. Ernst, what I have learned through my professional career is that when either doctors or lawyers start accusing others of not being smart or good enough - as you did in this email exchange with me when you said that "I’m beginning to suspect that you fail to understand the essentials of trial design" or "you failed to produce the goods you had initially envisaged" - it is because these doctors or lawyers really don't have a worthy argument, so personal attack becomes the only avenue of saving face.

I never promised you scientific design. The only thing I promised you was 12 free healing sessions. I agreed to a scientific design when you requested it. However, I also asked you several times to set forth parameters for your suggested design and you did not - facts which show that perhaps it is you who is not following through.

You are helping me to remember how quickly the scientific community can move to bullying of those with new ideas, as if science has somehow forgotten all the pioneers who allowed themselves to be laughed at and who moved forward anyway to make important new discoveries - Louie Pasteur and Wright Brothers among them. (For what it's worth, I believe that the scientist that finally proves the existence of chi will win a Nobel prize, and, I expect to eventually encounter a scientific mind open enough to try.)

It appears that you can dish it out but are less comfortable taking it. You spent an entire book denigrating the work of countless devoted alternative health care practitioners but are unwilling to engage in an objective dialogue about the soundness of your ideas.

Just know that you are not fooling me with your scientific blustering ... I also know that exploring ideas like the ones I have suggested, and openly communicating with the public about your personal experience, could well be professional suicide. I can see that at this juncture in your career you have every motivation to protect yourself. Accordingly, I respectfully accept that you have declined my offer and I leave you to your paradigm, as restrictive as it may be.

I wish you the best. As always, if you change your mind and actually want to get on with the business of designing an experiment then, my offer is still stands. Just know that I am more likely to respond to emails with substantive content, polite tone and proper punctuation.

Take care,
Ahnday Meweh
Spontaneous Mystic

And so it goes....I haven't heard back from Dr. Ernst.