Penguin messenger.

The first “official” words I received from a spirit communicator were heard as a question posed to his partner...loud and clear...in the gentleman’s own voice...in my head.

It was startling...but not really so, for when I was a kid it was my thing to play solo in our backyard, and my sprite-like friends spoke to me all the time. 

I was one of six kids, but the best talks I had were outdoors, spacing out into the cloaked bark of a tree, or gazing into the trickling waters of a ditch. My friends and I had long chats. Once I put those days aside, listening to the voices within me was poured into poetry or transformed into characters on stage...for four, long decades.

Today, as I view myself as an eternally unfolding medium, I wonder how these voices enter our heads in the first place?

Are the words really in our heads? From what I’ve read about spiritual connections and NDEs, your brain has got nothing to do with it. But why does it appear to be sensed in your head? Is it due to energy permeating the openings of your crown and third eye chakras? Is it experienced this way to simply not freak out your material-bound earthly form?

It feels like spiritual energy blending so closely to your own that it appears to be within you. It seems like there can be more than one energy, and they can be at differing intensities. They can speak, project images upon your consciousness, make you suddenly feel a physical sensation...pleasant or painful...introduce a smell, musical tones...guide your hand upon the page.

My hope is to continue to be open to these subtle energies and to relate them as true to the source as possible. Because that didn’t happen the first “official” time.

The spirit gentleman’s question wasn’t deep or scary or probing. It was a simple inquiry that meant a great deal to the recipient: What are you going to be for Halloween?

She choked up. “He and I would dress alike for Halloween.” When she later asked, “Well, what should I be?” I was shown a cartoon penguin. Actually, it was Opus from “Bloom County” and I thought Wah? Really? Nahhh….

I didn’t tell her. I thought that was ridiculous, nobody goes as a penguin! Because I didn’t tell her, I kept seeing that image until the beginning of November; that’s when I ran into the recipient and asked her what she finally chose to wear.

“I went as a penguin,” she explained. “It’s an in-joke in my family.”

I never saw that penguin image again...until today. I was reminded of this story, perhaps because Valentine’s Day is close at hand. When I felt compelled to draw Opus with the spirals of energy centers swirling around him, I knew I had to send it to a certain lady who donned a penguin costume for the first Halloween she didn’t have her partner physically close by, dressed alike. He was sending her his funny ideas just the same.