I started seeing angels again. No, hold off on the straight jacket, don’t reserve a room at an asylum. I’m not totally crazy. Yet.   

But, I have opened myself to the possibility of Angels, or spirits to help and maybe guide me in Life. Like the ones we believed in before reaching the so-called “Age of Reason,” somewhere around Age 7. I felt comfort in the “buffer” such a spirit provided me in a world that seemed to become tougher and crueller as I dealt with the orders from my older brothers, and the ridicule bullies tried to impose on anyone the least bit different — or smaller — than themselves. It was nice to have that invisible shield, the wing of the angel to ward off such pain that growing up inevitably brought with it.   

Never felt so pure. Never so innocent. So child-like. Hell. I was a child, there was no “like” about it! And I believed, truly believed there was goodness in all the world. That a Higher Being, one I was learning to call by the name of God, had plans for my “well-being” if I simply followed Him (Her!). By simply getting to know, to love and to serve this Creator.   

How long ago was that? It’s seems an eternity, for Christ sake. I’ve been covered with layer upon layer of adulthood, one responsibility after another, a family to raise, a career to pursue. Who had time for such remembrances? Such journeying back to their youth, their childhood. And yet, I am still that same person, that same child. I am not my “thoughts,” not my “emotions,” not this “body” that has begun to deteriorate once I hit the middle age of 35. I’m still him, that boy, “Little Mikie Contos” before he asked to be called Mike, Michael and now michael j.   

I have done a full circle. And I got my angel back. Maybe even two of ’em.   

But they’re different this time. Not the soft cuddly cloud-resting types with a harp in one hand and three wishes in another. There ain’t nothing “mambe-pambe” about ’em. No halo around their heads. Nothing meek or timid about ’em. At least one of them is one bad, mother-humper. He’s had to be, to have hung out in all the places I’ve been to the past years, protecting me through such a hell to get to where I now am.   

I laugh when I feel his presence. Laugh out loud, disturbingly loud. And I don’t care who sees me or hears me bellow with laughter. The louder I laugh, the more in tune I feel with the mysticism in my Life.   

Angels always fight for what's right

I noticed it upon walking a Labyrinth during the Full Moon in July, 2010, as I left the ghosts of the Vietnam War behind me and hugged my new “brethren,” a group of Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) that journeyed together “Shamanistically.” I laughed so hard, tears came out as I slowly made my way out of the maze of my life and into their arms. Good, hearty laughs that were the opposite of the cries I had shed for soldiers whose part of me (and them) died in war.   

The next uncontrollable “outburst” was when I looked for a sign along US Route 202 near Skippack Pike, some 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. I actually “asked‘ for a sign. And got one. Literally. It came in the form of Reeds’ Wicker Store, near the Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, PA.   

I wanted “direction” and found it in the painted words on the side of the Reed building. I saw “Reed . . .  And . . . New,” three words that my peripheral vision picked up while stopped for a red light. What does it mean, I asked  no one in particular. Did I get nudged by something or someone? Hit upside the head? Guided into a reading the words the way they actually sounded, such as:   

R e a d  

A

New! 

That’s it! Read the books anew. Read the latest Kabbalah book anew. Read and ask for another sign, if you dare, I laughed, banging the steering wheel with glee! Ask for as many as you like, but when are you going to stop questioning, and apply what you have learned?   

I was breakfasting at IKEA, reading “Kabbalah Science and the Meaning of Life,” by Rav Michael Laitman, Ph. D. (2006).  I had plenty of doubts yesterday. Still do, particularly, with religious fundamentalists who want to “keep women in their place” and treat gays as “abominations,” thereby “hijacking” and twisting what I believe is the basic and “pure” teachings of the Kabbalah.   

But there it was. The sign appeared for my behalf. I started my Journey some nine months ago, basing it on the bedrock belief from the Catholic Baltimore Catechism, which says the purpose of Life is: “To Know, Love and Serve God.” Simple, but so complex if we make it so . . .    

But there was the same message. Typed out on Page 32 of the book on the science of Kabbalah.   

There is a Creator who wants to “give.” This is the Root , the Zero Phase, according to the book. I call it the “knowing” of God. “In order to give, He must have someone to give to . . . He creates a Kli [vessel] that receives the ‘gift’ . . ..” Dr. Laitman wrote about the Kabbalah Science. God created man and woman, and our main purpose is to first receive His Giving, is how I interpret it. Kabbalists refer to this as State One. I like to think of it as “loving” God, to “love” the gift of  unconditional love He bestows on us.   

States Two, Three and Four are the transformation we undergo unaware that our desire to be like God, to be like the Creator, is urging us to “bestow” just like Him, to “serve” Him, just as the Catechism suggested to the pure of heart so many years ago. The Kabbalah says we “descend” in order to “ascend” and use “free will” in choosing this path to what my Sufi friends call “My Beloved.”   

And that’s when I got the third sign from an angel. Asking how it all tied together, I reached for small pieces of paper I had carried as book markers. Let there be a sign, I said. (Was it a prayer?) And there it was. The word “Service” appeared. It said the “Center”  has been an “active part of the community with . . . valuable services . . .”   (To know, love and serve God!) 

I laughed so hard, I almost went in my pants. Laughed so much, I had to cover my mouth in hopes other diners in the Conshohocken, PA, restaurant would stop staring at me.   

Who says spirituality should not be a laughing matter? Talk to my angel. He’ll straighten you out.

(Inspired by Joshua, rockstar’s Angel Class)