Another Door Opens: A Psychic Explains How Those in the World of Spirit Continue to Impact Our Lives - Softcover

Wands, Jeffrey A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743279654 ISBN 13: 9780743279659

Publisher: Atria Books, 2007

Synopsis

When a loved one dies, most of us assume the door to communication with that person has closed. Yet, in this profoundly inspiring book, Another Door Opens , Jeffrey A. Wands offers a different perception - one that suggests that a unique form of contact has opened.

In his trademark conversational style, Wands takes readers on a dramatic tour of the beyond - presenting an entirely new definition of death and, most interestingly, the opportunities it presents. By recounting real-life stories of those who've used his psychic ability to reach their loved ones, Another Door Opens provides intense and unforgettable examples of how the wisdom of the dead has helped change and enrich the lives of the living. The result is an awe-inspiring book that shows readers how to keep the door open to those who've passed - and how to use that connection to open doors to a new understanding of their own experiences.

About this title

About the Author:

Jeffrey Wands is an internationally acclaimed psychic medium, radio host, and author.  He has hosted his own radio show in New York for many years.  Currently, his show, "Psychic Sundays," can be heard on WALK 97.5 FM.  He is a welcomed, regular guest on radio programs across the country and has also made many television appearances, including Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Maury, Today and A&E's Mediums: We See Dead People to name just a few.  Jeffrey's psychic practice in Port Washington, New York, has thousands of clients worldwide who willingly wait for up to a year for an appointment.  Please visit JeffreyWands.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1

Why Me?

The Gift That Goes on Giving

Usually when someone asks, "Why me?" it means one of two things. It's either, "Woe is me. Why did this happen to me?" or, "Wow, how did I get so lucky?" In my case it's been a little of both.

YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE

I know now that I've been given a gift, but for a long time I was unable to see it as a gift. In fact, it sometimes seemed to me like a little bit of a curse. I like to think of myself as an ordinary guy, and I wanted other people to see me as normal, so for a long time I tried to hide -- and hide from -- my gift. I tried to fight against or just ignore my psychic abilities. But, as I've discovered, we can't always control the gifts we've been given. I couldn't just wrap up my gift and take it back somewhere to exchange it for one I thought I'd like better. And I couldn't control the messages that kept coming at me, whether I wanted them or not.

In my book The Psychic in You, I talked about messages I started getting and contacts I made with souls on the other side when I was a little kid. And, as I said, very often what came at me got me in trouble. I didn't know where these "insights" or apparitions were coming from, and very often I just blurted out whatever popped into my head. I remember very well the day I made my sixth-grade teacher cry when I told her that her mother was standing in the room behind her wanting to know why she was so angry with her, and then I named the song her mother had sung to her when she was a child. I certainly hadn't wanted to make my teacher sad, but her response was just one of the many unforeseen reactions to things I told people that eventually led me to want to hide my light under a bushel, so to speak.

For a long time I was afraid -- and not without reason -- that people would think I was weird and I'd be rejected. Then, when I grew up, got married, and had children, I was afraid of the teasing and ridicule I thought my kids would be subjected to because of the work I do. As it's turned out, my kids haven't had a problem with it (in fact they have fun with it), and neither have their friends, but I didn't know that then.

ACCEPTING MY GIFT

It may have taken me a while to figure it out -- in fact, it took me well into my thirties -- but I now know that I don't have to be afraid of affecting other people's lives because it is precisely the fact that I can impact the lives of others for the better that makes my gift so valuable. When I finally accepted how much and how many people I could help, I was able to give up my need to be normal. "Normal" for me became helping people, and when I thought of it in those terms, I actually liked what I was able to do. I always try to act from a place of doing the right thing, and I do believe that most of the time I'm making a difference. The way I've finally come to see it is this: If I were a gifted concert pianist and I never played the piano, I'd be throwing away and dishonoring my gift. I never want to dishonor my gift. Instead, I now look upon it as a call to duty from the higher power.

In truth, it seems to me that the whole concept of "psychicness" has become far more acceptable, even mainstream, in recent years. When I began my work I couldn't have imagined that programs like Medium and Psychic Detectives would ever be drawing huge television audiences or that books and personal appearances by psychics would be selling in record numbers and drawing huge crowds. All of this has come as a pleasant surprise, and I like to think that my own work has contributed in some small way to that acceptance. When I think about why it's happened, I believe there are two reasons. One is that science has been able to accomplish so much that no one imagined possible fifty years ago, and that people are more willing to accept the "possibility" of many things they formerly considered impossible. And the second reason is that, in recent years, there have been so many large-scale catastrophes, both natural and man-made, that people are eager to find some meaning in life that goes beyond their short time on earth. When life as we know it seems so fragile, it seems natural to seek some larger significance for our being here at all.

Getting back to "Why me?" however, beyond not wanting to seem weird, I was also extremely uncomfortable with the power people seemed to want to give me. Until I started getting their feedback, I didn't really understand how much of an effect I was having on people. But when I began to get calls and mail saying, "You changed my life," instead of being pleased or proud, I was very upset. I didn't want that kind of power. In fact, I hated it.

For a long time, all those fears and that discomfort held me back from accepting what I was really supposed to be doing. Instead, I tried several different businesses. At one point I even opened a restaurant. But every time I tried to get away from my gift, whatever venture I tried turned out to be a disaster -- and I also wasn't happy or fulfilled.

If you keep running away from your gift,

you're really just cheating yourself.

Still, I worried about "going public," and it wasn't really until I appeared on The Maury Show for the first time in December 2001 that I knew I'd made peace with the path I was meant to follow. There I was, giving readings not only in front of a full studio audience but in front of millions of television viewers as well. I figured that was about as public as it gets. It was sort of like my coming-out party. But the experience also made me realize that through my work I was able to help more people than I could ever have done in any other profession I might have chosen, including the law, which had been one of my early career choices. Maybe in other circumstances I would have been a therapist, and in a way I am, because what I do is almost always therapeutic for my clients. It helps them to get a different, more positive perspective on what's happening in their lives.

I've discovered that the more I appear on television, the more comfortable I become with the process, and every time I'm presented with a new challenge, I'm able to rise to the occasion. On the humorous side, however, it seems that each time I'm filming a program outside the studio, something goes wrong with the equipment. The batteries on the camera go dead, or the lights don't work. Not too long ago, I was on an AM radio call-in program when, in the middle of the show, the entire phone system went down. I believe these "failures" are a result of the intensity of the energy emanating from so many souls wanting to come through as well as the intensity of my own energy.

I should also add here that I believe things are thrown in our paths for a reason, so that we are given the opportunity to reach higher and become better. An extreme tragic yet heroic example of this is the way Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers reacted on Flight 93 during the horrific events of 9/11. It was not accidental that those people were on that particular flight and, in their final moments, saved the lives of thousands by making sure the plane did not reach its intended target.

Learn to appreciate the value of the gifts you've been given.

Another thing that has made me more comfortable is my understanding that however much other people may want to think I control what happens in their lives, I really don't. I don't even control what comes into my own life by way of the messages I receive. And whatever I am able to tell my clients, they still are the ones who have to decide what they will do with the information. I don't know what the message is going to mean to the person receiving it, and sometimes I don't even understand the meaning myself. I'm just the conduit, the messenger.

People often ask me how I get my information from souls on the other side, and the best way I can explain it is that most often I see psychic photographs in my mind. The souls show me pictures or symbols or a name or a date that they know will have a distinct meaning to the person they're contacting. So, for example, when I was doing a reading on the radio for someone whose mother's name was Lucille and who had red hair, guess whose picture came into my mind? Of course it was Lucille Ball, and, naturally, the woman I was reading for recognized the meaning of that picture immediately.

But even though I now know I'm not responsible for the messages I receive, I've also learned -- since that day I made my teacher cry -- that I can't just blurt out whatever comes into my head. I am responsible for what I say, and I need to be very careful how I say it, because what I tell people can, and often does, have a profound effect on their lives. Even though messages from souls on the other side are always delivered out of love, they're not always the messages people on this side want to hear. I try to make all my clients understand that what I'm telling them is intended to help and direct them, but sometimes, unfortunately, they just shut down. They may not want to hear it or they may not know what to do with it, and very often they still want me to tell them what to do.

CHANGING YOUR PATH IS UP TO YOU

Even after all this time it continues to amaze me when I give someone a message and he or she asks me, "Well, what should I do? Should I do this or that?" All I can say to these people is, "This is what your loved one on the other side is telling me, and you have to make up your own mind how to act on it." I consider myself the facilitator who helps other people to realize that they do have a path and that, if they want to, they can change it. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the psychiatrist and well-known writer on death and the afterlife, put it most clearly when she said, "I beli...

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0743279654
• ISBN 13: 9780743279659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224