Dear Julia:

One night when I was 14, I was sitting in my room eating sunflower seeds from the shells when I heard a voice in my head tell me "two sets of three and I will come." The next day when I got home from school, the sunflower seed shells were arranged on my dresser in two perfect triangles consisting of three shells each, with all the points facing my mirror. I was extremely frightened by this and sat up in bed that night, unable to sleep. At 10:40, I reached for my alarm clock and felt a pull on my body to lay down flat on my back. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I felt I was floating in a warm whitish-yellow light, and I felt the strong arms of a man hug me from behind. That same voice whispered to me, "Don't be afraid, I am here and I love you." Then it was over. When I woke up, I felt as if I'd been sleeping for hours and had the most wonderful dream of my life wherein I felt awash with unconditional love. However, my alarm clock said it was only 10:44, so it couldn't have been a dream. From that night forward, I have often experienced sleep paralysis and it's usually a peaceful experience. Once in a while the voice speaks. I have also found I can make the sleep paralysis happen if I want to. The first time I tried, the voice said "I am helping you." Could you give me any insight into what is happening to me or the source of this voice?
- Leslie

Dear Leslie:

It sounds like you have a dear friend and lover in another dimension. This may seem really far out, but if you can accept that beings exist in other dimensions, and you know that we have friends and lovers here, it follows that we can have friends and lovers from other dimensions.

The sort of positive, loving vibration you describe is almost always born in another life in which both parties were in the same dimension. Since this is a deep topic, I'll offer a hypothetical storyline to try to explain how this happens.

Let's say that in your last lifetime, you met and fell in love with a man named Jeff. In that lifetime you felt an immediate sense of connection to him because you had been together in many other lifetimes. You lived a couple of happy decades together as man and wife, and then sadly, Jeff was killed in an accident on the family farm.

This naturally devastated you, but then Jeff began to visit you from Spirit. You would often feel his presence around you and hear his voice in your head. Sometimes at night, when you were lying in bed missing him, you felt the warmth of his spirit envelop you.

As you became more comfortable with these visits and he became better at connecting with your energy here in the physical, this progressed to the point where it was like you were making love on an energetic level. (Sex is energetic in nature anyway, for orgasm is the build-up and release of energy.)

You continued to enjoy visits from him throughout that life, and when you eventually crossed over into Spirit, he was there to greet you. Then you both celebrated the fact that you had been able to remain "together" even after his accident physically separated you.

When you began to plan your next lifetime, you both thought it would be exciting and interesting if Jeff stayed on the other side while you incarnated. From the perspective of the living, this may seem frustrating and undesirable, but from the perspective of Spirit, everything is much lighter and freer. Also, in terms of time, one lifetime probably feels more like one week does to us here.

So you incarnated, and Jeff remained in the background when you were a child so as not to scare or upset you. You may have been aware of him when you first arrived, of course, but as you grew, you were taught that your imaginary friend wasn't real, or you became entrenched in perceiving the world with your physical senses and forgot how to perceive him. Odds are good he was hovering nearby all the while, quietly whispering to you to guide you, love you, support you, etc. When you became old enough to handle it and to be with him in a more sensual way, he broke back into your awareness with a grand sign that you couldn't miss or deny, for he had to find a way to make you believe in him again.

I'm not saying this is just what happened, I'm simply offering an example of how these sorts of relationships can develop. Many people have close friends and lovers on the other side, and many people consciously interact with them on a regular basis. These may be people who were living and are now in Spirit, or they may be loved ones from other lives who chose not to incarnate with us this lifetime.

We can also have astral relationships with other living people. For example, if one person is very adept at astral projection and another is psychically sensitive, the psychic may be aware of regular visits from an astral projecting friend. This may be a pair who shares a strong spiritual bond already, but these relationships can also be born when an astral projector is out exploring and comes upon someone who is able to sense their presence, and then gets interested in trying to interact with that person. (Astral projectors are a curious lot: they are forever exploring, which is how most of them end up out of the body to begin with.)

It's also possible that some of the so-called spirits who visit us are simply beings from another dimension who have found a way to connect with us. Imagine a guy who learns to astral project and finds someone in another dimension to whom he feels a strong attraction. (Again, this may or may not be someone he already knows and loves from another time/place.) He may choose to visit that person whenever he gets out of the body, and we can assume that the same thing would work in reverse - that beings in other dimensions can figure out how to travel inter-dimensionally and visit us here.

Many people are saddened by the idea that a soul mate may have chosen not to incarnate with them, and they wonder if this means they should remain alone this lifetime. That is not at all the case. As a soul mate is simply someone we have loved well in another lifetime, we all have many soul mates. Indeed, the more people we learn to love, the more soul mates we'll have forevermore.

Further, beyond the physical there is no such thing as marriage, monogamy or jealousy; love is totally free and unlegislated. Your lovers in other dimensions will want you to find love and be as happy as you can be in your physical life, so there is no need to feel guilty about any relationships you may have with beings in other dimensions - you're not cheating on anyone.

With this in mind, if you are ever bothered by a spirit who seems jealous or possessive, you can be sure you're not dealing with an interdimensional soul mate relationship. Instead, this is probably an earthbound spirit who has latched onto you. This is most likely not someone you have known and loved before (unless your departed spouse or lover was intensely possessive and is refusing to let go.) Either way, you'd want to end this relationship just as you would if this person were still living because it's not healthy for anyone involved.

Interdimensional relationships with loved ones can be wondrous, beautiful and beneficial in many ways. So long as these experience remain warm and positive, I would give thanks for them and explore them to the extent you feel drawn to do so. At the same time, however, it's important to remember that you are blessed with a physical body right now, and are wise make the most of this opportunity we call life.

- Julia