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 When Michael Abrams was a young man, he watched his father die in front of him on a mountaintop in Vermont, where he suffered from a massive heart attack. Although Michael gave him artificial respiration for 45 minutes, until help arrived, he was unable to save his father's life.
At that time, his feelings about death were very confused, and he felt a lot of the things most people feel about death, including anger, bitterness, and sorrow. But when he completed medical school and began to attend to dying people in his role as physician, he developed a deeper understanding of the meaning of death, and came to realize that death was not to be feared, since it is a natural process.
At some point, Dr. Abrams began having silent conversations with newly-freed souls and the angels that accompany them. His book The Evolution Angel contains many of these conversations, which helped him discover a great deal about the way things work in the world of Spirit and in the everyday world of form.
He says that the process by which he connects to Spirit is easy. He simply thinks of a question, and the answers effortlessly flood into his mind. He doesn't feel that he has any particular psychic ability or power that has enabled him to communicate with Spirit, and believes that God and his Divine agents are freely accessible to all human beings without exception. All it takes to connect to Spirit, he says, is a belief in a world beyond and a rudimentary ability to quiet the mind and listen.
Angels are the fingers of God
In his conversations with Spirit, Dr. Abrams is told that angels are Spirit's way of revealing itself, of channeling itself in a way that can be safely tolerated by human beings. They are the precision instruments that God uses to offer personal care. Like fingers on our hand, they operate in a perfectly coordinated fashion to execute the fine details of the great design.
Angels are either waiting to take birth or have already been on earth and have passed on. They remain invisible, except in very special circumstances, so that people can freely develop their own souls. Angels can appear in any form, and they can even appear with wings, though they consider it a bit silly to do so. ''Rarely, in carefully selected situations, we find it effective and permissible to appear in a way that matches a person's expectation,'' his angel told him. ''Most people expect us to appear with wings and so forth, so we give them what they want.''
Opening ourselves to receiving Divine messages
The primary way that we can begin to receive Divine messages, says Dr. Abrams, is by learning to trust our imagination. He explains that imagination is a part of the mind that forms images:
It is arguably the highest faculty that people possess. One can pose a question to God, for example, but then have to imagine the answer. What people have to understand is that the answer they then hear is not imaginary, but it is actually real. But this is very difficult for people, they have trouble trusting what they're hearing. They may hear the voice of God all the time, but simply not recognize it. They may think it is a figment of their own mind. The fact is that it is a figment of their own mind, since their deepest self is in fact one with God.
What makes it possible for each individual to begin opening up to receiving messages from Spirit will vary from case to case. For Dr. Abrams, it was the pain he experienced from attending certain deaths. After some of his patients died, he would go back into the physicians' call room and begin writing on his laptop in an attempt to comfort himself. He began having conversations with Spirit, and at first he thought that a death had to occur before he could talk to Spirit. But then he was told that he could converse with Spirit anytime and in any place.
''It is our destiny as human beings,'' explains Dr. Abrams, ''to reach a point of evolution where we will speak directly to God.''
Self-creating our lives for spiritual advancement
Dr. Abrams describes the times that he has wrestled with his own confusion and personal sadness at the suffering that his patients must endure. He asks Spirit why people must suffer from diseases like AIDS and cancer, and from car accidents, bullet wounds, and suicide.
He is told that these diseases and accidents are like a course that people design so that they can gain particular kinds of knowledge. ''Typically,'' the angel said, ''a person who decides to set up his life so that he has cancer has a very good reason for doing so — this is not something that is done lightly. Generally speaking, such a person feels that the lessons that will be mastered are extremely important — so important that he is willing, even eager, to commit to the pain involved.''
The angel explains that many people pray to God for relief from their suffering, because they have forgotten that they have set up this situation in advance. Although the Beings of Light tell them that the pain will be terrible and the terror intense and prolonged, people wait in line to be born so that they can live out this experience in order to learn. ''He insists, insists mind you, that he be locked into this situation. He leaves explicit instructions that we are not to alter the situation in the slightest, no matter how much he pleads and begs.''
In some cases, the situation may resolve itself because of prayer, since there are useful lessons that can be learned both from having prayers answered and from having them unanswered. The reason that so much suffering exists is that most people who ask to be born on earth are very intense souls. ''Most of you want to progress very, very quickly. I'm telling you, you set these things up and you lock yourselves in.''
Dr. Abrams believes that the concept of a self-created life is very old. ''It was part of the original Christian religions, and teachers like Jesus were well aware of this. The texts and translations that indicated this were removed during the Middle Ages because they were self-empowering and reduced the control of the church.
''As far as Eastern religions are concerned, I believe that Buddhism is attuned to the belief that we create our own reality. They call it karma. Our actions and thoughts lead us to corresponding states of reality. Buddhism is very clear on this point.''
Religions are in the business of dis-empowering people
In The Evolution Angel, Dr. Abrams asks the angel why it is that people lost the perspective that they self-create their life and the belief that they can commune directly with the Spirit world. Spirit tells him, ''A class of people arose who began to make their living mediating between God and normal people. They quickly found this was big business — very, very big business.'' The church told people that only they knew what God was saying and what reality was. Telling people that they could speak to God themselves and create their own reality would've put this enormous structure out of business.
Many religions continue to teach that hell is a reality, and that it is possible to descend into a state of eternal agony after death. Dr. Abrams comments that any belief system that produces fear and a victim consciousness is destructive. ''The element of society that contributes most to a fear of death is the formal religious component. I believe this is highly detrimental and is really not a reflection of the true beliefs of these religions, but is a by-product of Medieval control policies.''
The uncorrupted message of Christianity was self-empowerment
In his second book, The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle, Dr. Abrams describes Christianity itself as one of the most self-empowering religions. The reason that we can't see this is because the translations of the texts are slanted. He says:
I went back to the original Greek texts and looked up specific words and passages, then retranslated them. I found that the beliefs that were outlined in the original texts were very self-empowering, and were not at all like later translations. There are a lot of different ways you can translate these Greek passages; there's a lot of ambiguity. I believe that the people who translated them were not particularly adept, and they also had their own agenda. The church wanted to make sure that the translation presented to the public was the least self-empowering, because that was good for their business.
Dr. Abrams took one important passage from the New Testament and translated it in depth in The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle. The three paragraphs that he analyzed turned into an entire book that describes miracles as a natural phenomenon that has been blocked by human fears. Ancient Greek words, like Logos, had such a great depth of meaning that they took 12 pages to describe. ''Because I wanted to make my translation as accurate and acceptable as possible, I used very standard reference texts — the same references that are used by Catholics. I used an interlinear Bible, which lays out the Greek in an unaltered form, and a concordance, which contains a Greek-to-English dictionary.''
The two books that he has written are mainly linked through the concept of self-created reality. ''In The Evolution Angel, the conversations that I had with the dying and the angels that accompanied them focus very strongly on this concept. The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle is an extension of this and shows the specific ways we can create a more positive and abundant reality.''
Do we become angels when we die?
In The Evolution Angel, Dr. Abrams asks Spirit to explain what happens to people after they die. The angel tells him that we don't cease to exist, since the Intelligence that brought us into the universe is a ''consummate recycler and conservator of energy and resources.''
''An engineer on Earth might be in training to become an angel that helps design and construct some aspect of the physical plane after passing on. A musician might be preparing to harmonize certain kinds of energy fields in the next realm. A farmer could be learning skills that will enable him to oversee certain processes in the plant kingdom after crossing over.'' The angel suggests that we think of ourselves as angels-in-training, and that we are all training to do different things.
The importance of acting with compassion
Dr. Abrams says that Spirit has helped him realize, at a visceral level, the absolute necessity of being kind and compassionate to patients. He has come to understand that it is not enough for physicians to master medical technology, but that they also have to understand the importance of spiritual knowledge.
He learned that our actions and thoughts truly generate the experience we have in this world, and that it is only by acting from a place of generosity that we can experience generosity. ''I believe you can only give to yourself. Giving is in one's own best interest, and this knowledge comes from working with the principle of self-created reality. The world is evolving toward a state of higher understanding, and I feel confident that this will result, ultimately, in a more caring and compassionate society.''
The importance of faith and imagination above scientific proof
Even after all of his conversations with Spirit, Dr. Abrams still has moments of doubt about the things that he has been told about life after death. He says that scientific proof is not possible. ''We really can't know whether God is real or not. I simply write down my experiences and allow people to read them and think what they may. I think it's critical for people to learn concepts like 'faith' and 'trust' and 'hope.' These are very highly evolved states of consciousness. The way the world has been set up, the way the other side has been 'veiled,' is very useful in helping us attain these states. I believe we chose this point of existence, where such things are veiled, primarily because we want to strengthen these states of consciousness.''
In The Evolution Angel, the Spirit tells Dr. Abrams, ''When you still your own thought, the thoughts of God, who is within, will become evident. In this state, you will be able to converse with God and any of his manifestations — any of his agents or 'angels.' But you have to try. You have to speak to us and you have to listen. And you have to trust what you are hearing. Use your imagination. Get into the right state of mind, ask what you want, then imagine what the reply is. Don't be afraid and don't lock up. Be creative. Remember that your imagination, the part of your mind that can form images, is a Divine faculty. Trust it.''
Awareness about communicating with Spirit is growing within the medical community
Dr. Abrams lectures to thousands of people each year and is often approached by highly trained professionals who tell him that they are working along the same lines as he is. ''ICU nurses and hospice workers tell me that they are very relieved to read my book, because it helps them feel less alone and motivates them to continue the spiritual work they are doing. Those working with the dying tell me that they actively try to speak to patients in comas and those that have passed on. Reading about others who are doing this gives them a sense of comfort and hope.''
Although Dr. Abrams believes that more and more people are beginning to penetrate the veil, the medical community in general is still not open to the concepts that he writes about in his books, and this is one of the reasons that he uses a pen name. ''The physicians that I've spoken with have approached me at talks that I've given and on the Internet, but I haven't spoken specifically to groups of medical doctors. I don't think that they're ready for it. But in 20 years I believe they will be — by 2020 this will be commonplace.''
The Evolution Angel Two
At the present time, Dr. Abrams is preparing to write a second book. ''A lot of information has come to me, but I haven't sat down to put it on paper. Once I do, it will probably happen very quickly; this was the case with The Evolution Angel.''
Let's hope that it will not take the mainstream medical community 20 years before they become open enough to read The Evolution Angel Two.
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All quotes in the above article are from The Evolution Angel, by Michael Abrams, and from an interview recorded on July 23, 2001
Excerpts from The Evolution Angel and The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle can be viewed online at . These books can be ordered online or by writing to: Abundance Media, P.O. Box 17981, Boulder Colorado 80308.
The illustration for this article is one of several of Dr. Abrams's paintings that may be viewed at . Prints are available for purchase.
Dr. Abrams has a limited number of openings available for personal coaching and can be contacted for information by calling Colleen Cary at
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A Doctor