This article was first published in Network News issue 21, Winter 2000.

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William Bloom is one of the focalisers of the Angels2000 Easter event. He has been part of the Foundation’s educational faculty for over twenty years. Here he tells of his own journey towards an experience of angels that is sensed with the whole body, and how to be aware of their presence.

When I returned home from Findhorn after my first visit years ago, I was astonished by the drabness of my study. I had previously taken great pride in my large antique wooden desk, all the books, the Persian rugs, and religious icons. Suddenly, after Findhorn, I could see and feel that it lacked colour. Where was a rainbow? Where was the vibrancy of joy?

One of the great lessons of our emerging spiritual culture is to understand, feel, and perceive the sparkling magic of life that exists in every cell and particle. Before my first Findhorn visit, there were many things I knew but did not experience. I knew there was a spirit for every blade of grass. I knew there was light and life in every atom and molecule. But something opened up for me at Findhorn. Like many people, I was triggered into a new way of living and sensing and feeling.

The wonder of the angel realm, of nature spirits and all devas, is their complete interpenetration with all life. The challenge is not to be able to bring them close—the challenge is to notice that they are already there.

Educated originally in the Western mystery tradition of magic, I had been taught to jump through various hoops before I could contact the angels and nature spirits. First, I had to purify myself. Then I had to create a circle of cleansing and protection. And then I had to call them in using special words, vibrations, scents, and symbols. If I had been pure enough, if I were graced by God, then I would be lucky enough to receive the grace of their presence.

As some of you may already know, I took this approach to the extreme of doing a two-year retreat and a very specific six-month ceremony in order to meet my guardian angel. Having given up a good career in London media and dedicated myself so earnestly, it would have been a real drag, wouldn’t it, if after all that effort and sacrifice, I had not met the angel. But I did, and it was deeply beautiful. And since that time in 1977, I have been continuously aware of and working with the angel realm.

But twenty years ago, I needed to come out of my old attitude and embrace something more realistic, open, and charming. This is what I learned at Findhorn on that first visit. The new attitude is to surrender to the fact that the angels and nature spirits are interwoven and present in every single aspect of nature and the universe. But that understanding has to be “felt.” It needs to tingle through you and then to sit comfortably and continuously in the fabric of the body. It is what is called a kinaesthetic experience. It is not sensed by thoughts or vision, but is felt by the whole body. It is felt by the whole body because it is your energy field which senses when angels and spirits are in it. Your energy field is interwoven with your physical body. So, an event in your energy body sets up a ripple that is felt by your nervous system and registered by the brain.

Let me give you an immediate example. If you are in the forest and suddenly become aware of the magic and nature spirits all around you, what has actually happened is this: Your energy field, your aura, is sensing things that are always there, but you are now relaxed enough to notice it.

There’s a sparkle or tinkle or a magical feeling. At that precise moment, you need to pause. You need to allow the sensation of their presence to come more fully into your energy field. If you’ve never done this before, its newness may make you nervous. But sit quietly and in a centred way, and begin to enjoy the full body sensation of everything invisible that is around you. Surrender to feeling the flows and the energy beings of great beauty that dance through everything, including you.

That indeed is the challenge: to stay quiet and open to what is always there. You have to be quiet inwardly or else you simply will not sense them.

At the Angels 2000 Gathering in Findhorn next Easter, the whole organising team and the presenters are dedicated to helping people enter more fully into the actual experience of the angelic realms. The event will not be theoretical. Nor will it be flaky. It cannot be flaky because if you are flaky—which means not in your body and connected to earth—you simply will not fully feel and integrate the experience of your connection with the nature spirits and angels.

For me, being part of this coming conference is a wonderful circle and an honour and a happiness. I am incredibly amused by the idea of how the angels are just going to slide into and through everything we do. I believe that many very sophisticated angels are going to come and watch us trying to learn how to connect with them. Some of these angels will be huge, up to the clouds, and will be over the ocean and on the hills. And we little people will buzz around with our ideas and our excitement and our self-seriousness. And the great angels will watch us benignly. It’s going to be a great week!

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William’s books include Angels, Fairies & Nature Spirits, published by Piatkus.

Photo credits: all images of William Bloom by Adriana Sjian Bijman