3: As Providence Would Have It

3

As Providence Would Have It

Letters to Ascended Master

St. Padre Pio,

Tuesday, July 25, 2011

6: 40 A. M.

Dear Padre,

          I’m writing you a letter, so I must have granted myself permission by doing a household responsibility, which I did yesterday; I finally took my long extension ladder out and removed the dead branches from one of our maple trees that a severe storm last year had broken off, and I also cut four or five other dead branches from the tree. I want to remove the whole tree, which I may do in the fall with my neighbor Tony’s help, because he has a power saw, which will leave one large healthy maple and two small maples in that clump of trees in the center of our front yard. In any event, I see this as a symbolic sign—getting rid of the dead wood in my life!

           Okay, now I can get to the reason I was dying to write to you about—the new book that I came across last week by “chance”!

          As I said in my first letter, once I begin a new book it begins to attract to itself all the relevant material it needs to realize itself, and last week I drove into Barrie to visit my friend at her bookstore and as Providence would have it, I noticed a book on the coffee table where I was sitting that caught my attention— In the Spirit of Happiness: Spiritual Wisdom for Living, by the Monks of New Skete. (I will comment on this book in future letters, because it addresses much of what you had to say to me.)

          My friend was busy placing an order of jewelry with a salesman (she sells more than used books in her New Age bookstore), so I went down the street to Tim Hortons and picked up a coffee for her, the salesman, and myself and sat down in one of her comfortable reading chairs to wait for her to finish her business; and while I waited I browsed the books that she had on the coffee table. One was In the Spirit of Happiness.

          New Skete is an Orthodox Catholic monastery in Cambridge, New York, and as I read the inside cover jacket I was immediately pulled into the book because it excited my curiosity about the monastic life. I had not read any books on the monastic life until I began reading about your life, and for some reason Providence deemed it necessary for me to become acquainted with the spiritual life of a Catholic monastic order; hence my “discovery” of In the Spirit of Happiness, by the Monks of New Skete.

          I had read a book called Hermits, by Peter Francis—with chapters on “The Desert Fathers,” “By Walden Pond: Henry David Thoreau,” “Hermit of the Sahara: Charles Foucauld,” “The Waters of Contradiction: Thomas Merton” (I read his book The Seven Storey Mountain), and other chapters that gave me wonderful insights into the life of a hermit—but In the Spirit of Happiness was an inside look at the spiritual life of a contemporary Catholic monastic order that spoke to the spiritual needs of our time; and as I waited for my friend to do her business, I read the Preface, Authors’ Note, and Chapter One: The Seeker, and I was hooked; so I bought it.

          I’ve only got two more chapters to go, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to get a look into the spiritually disciplined life of a modern monastic Catholic order because it gave me an insight into Catholicism that I needed to round off my understanding of my old Roman Catholic faith, which for reasons much too deep to explain here, was terribly skewed by my New Age spirituality—but which my spiritual healing sessions with you set straight, and for which I am ever so grateful!

          If I may Padre, let me wax philosophical a moment about my relationship with my old Roman Catholic faith and my relationship with you, which came as a COMPLETE SURPRISE to me. But strangely enough, you did tell me in my last spiritual healing session that you and I had planned on the Other Side before we came into the world to work together to help raise the spiritual consciousness of the world, but I had a long journey to make before I was ready to meet you through my spiritual sensitive last year! My God, what a journey it was just to get to the point where we could work together on my book Healing with Padre Pio!

          The point I want to make is that my relationship with my Roman Catholic faith grew out of a misunderstanding of the spirituality of this great religion founded upon the teachings of Jesus Christ, and I had to go through hell to find my way out of the labyrinthine nonsense of the false premises of my Roman Catholic faith (like eternal damnation in hell, to name the most psychically damaging false premise)—and I came out bitter and angry at Christianity. So bitter and angry that I needed the healing grace of a Roman Catholic Saint who had suffered the holy wounds of Jesus for fifty years to heal my wounded Christian soul! And I thank you for that, Padre.

          As I said in my novel Healing with Padre Pio, we began with the premise of healing my wounded Christian soul, but we ended up healing the wounded soul of Christianity, and finally the wounded soul of the world with the healing grace of your consciousness of “all-knowing and all seeing.” I simple proved to be the medium for your healing grace, and I feel privileged to have been, and continue to be of service to your mission of serving life from the Other Side.

          Padre, you did say in one of the books that I read on your life that you would do more for humanity from the Other Side (actually, you used the word heaven) than you could do while you were in your suffering body, and given the testimonials that I read of all the miracles that people from all over the world have attributed to you, it seems that you were right—not to mention what you are doing with me! But just what are you doing with me? Let’s look at this for a moment…

          I believe you are allowing me to offer the world the very UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE of a Roman Catholic Saint who has transcended the inflexible doctrine of Roman Catholicism and realized spiritual ascendancy into the Soul Consciousness of all knowing and all seeing, thereby allowing the world to see that all spiritual paths come from what you have symbolically revealed to me as the River of God that flows into different streams and which we impede by placing our “rocks” of misunderstanding into our individual stream, and it’s your duty in your service to God to help us become aware of our spiritual impasses so we can continue on our journey home to God; but, of course, you know very well how Roman Catholics are going to respond to this.

This is going to be controversial, but as you said in one of my sessions when I brought this up, “controversy is good because it causes dialogue”—and the world is in desperate need of a new dialogue on Christianity, which Bishop John Shelby Spong is trying to initiate with books like Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and Jesus for the Non-Religious. I know my book Healing with Padre Pio is a novel, but I had to couch my spiritual healing sessions with you into a story of fiction, because that’s the only way I could have the freedom to explore our process together.

Controversial or not then, I’m writing you these letters for personal reasons, and what happens thereafter will be up to Providence. I’ve since come to see that my life is choreographed from above, and all I can do is play my little part and hope for the best; so whether people like this privileged glimpse into your life as an Ascended Spiritual Master or not, it’s not really for me to say. All I can do is work out the thoughts and ideas that I am given to express creatively through my writing, and I know that this epistolary project is going to prove very, very satisfying.

Before I close this letter, I’m going to make a personal request. I know from my reading that we have to be specific in our requests from Holy Spirit, and I’m going to be specific in my invocation to you (being an Ascended Master, I know that you are one with Spirit): please let my published books begin to bear financial fruit soon, because it’s causing Penny and myself a great deal of anxiety waiting for all the good karma that we have put into getting my books written and published to reap some financial benefits—my latest book being Keeper of the Flame, which came out last month, and My Unborn Child which came out last summer. 

I know that you told me in one of my spiritual healing sessions that it would take three years for the ripple effect of my writing to show remunerative return, but it would be so nice to see some definite signs soon because all of this waiting is hard on our nerves.

Last night we picked up a coffee at Tim Hortons and went for a long drive to talk things out (we do this often just to air our head), and we discussed the possibility of having to move back up north into our triplex (we have two units rented, which go towards the mortgage on the house; we used to live on the top unit) and sell our house down here in Georgian Bay to finance our retirement; but as realistic as I am and would concede to the idea, I don’t want to, and neither does Penny. So Padre, if you would, please intercede for us, because I honestly don’t know what else we can do to make it happen.

I pour my heart and soul into my writing, and Penny pours her heart and soul into editing, formatting, and getting my books out to our publisher, and then doing book trailers and promoting and marketing them wherever she can on the Internet—after her work day and on weekends!

Penny’s invaluable to my writing, and I don’t know what I would do without her; but we are getting on in years, and we are getting concerned. I only wish I did not have to have a bypass operation three years ago. It put a serious damper on our finances, and we’re hoping that one of my books connects before our savings run out; so, again, please see what you can do to remove those obstacles that are keeping my books from connecting with the readers that I know are out there waiting to read them.

I have a lot of trust in you Padre. Given what I experienced with my spiritual healing sessions, I believe in you; but Penny hasn’t quite rapped her head around my relationship with you yet, and I have to be patient. She is my heart and soul, and my love for her only grows deeper with each new day, and the last thing I want is to burden her with the anxiety of financial struggle in our old age. Let it happen Padre, before it’s too late.

I remain,

Your faithful companion,

Orest

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WATCH FOR NEXT WEEK'S LETTER: No. 4:  The Whole World's Asleep