A friend of mine is “into” angels. “Suspend your disbelief,” he told me, explaining how belief in angels re-materialized into his life recently. I knew at that moment that resistance he had spoken of was puffing out its chest and stepping between me and the computer screen where his words appeared.

(Written by Melanie Kriebel)

“Suspend your disbelief.”

That’s all he wrote, adding that I should try it for 30 days, that is, suspend my disbelief in angels for 30 days and see what happens.

When I looked him in the eyes the next time I saw him, I had only one thought rattling in my mind: “You’re Capital C Crazy!” I couldn’t give up my resistance to such a requirement. How could I “suspend” a “disbelief” that I have had since I stopped being a child and saw the world as an adult? I resisted his advice. It made no sense. But, on reflection, I came to see that resistance is something you can dismantle to see a portal to an alternate reality.

The portal is always there, I assure you.

And it did not take long for me to see a doorway opening to this new way of viewing something as unearthly as, well, as the subject we’re discussing: “Angels.”

I now believe that angels can take the form of a human to intervene in someone’s life. Many times, I met someone who might have been angelic, but I was quick to discard the experience as nothing more than, say, the kind act by a stranger. The so-called “angelic” feeling may have stayed with me for some time. Looking back now, I see It stayed as long as I let it, really.

Take love for instance,  When we have relationships, we let another sentient being enter us; we let an “otherness” enter us. Another consciousness interacts with our own. I believe it is the universe, or maybe a divine source, looking itself in the eye; the universe is having a conversation with itself. And if you’re wise, you’re realize it is something to pay attention to.

In other words, we let another’s dreams, faith, an image of the world become a part of our own. Perhaps we match their perspective, or we are curious about it and temporarily dismantle our own, or we wish to challenge it and change it, while mutually creating a new one. Maybe, a synthesis of the two.

Or, perhaps we want to destroy it.

Could this be nothing more than angels at work in love? Or angels in love at work? Look at them this way: they are an intervening force from the Divine. I learned that they exist once you dismantle your disbelief.

* * * *

What has helped me see this reality? Well, I met someone, briefly, a few months ago. I was shuttling my grandmother from her nursing home to a friend’s house for Christmas. This was done in a private ambulance as she’s bound to her wheelchair.

The driver’s name was Dan. The conversation lasted only the seven-mile distance from the nursing facility. We talked about what was going on in our lives. He was in his twenties and had dropped out of Penn (the University of Pennsylvania), now working for this ambulance company. I believe he was studying economics. He was dissatisfied, anxious about the future and unsure of how to apply his degree. He left and was planning a trip to the Ukraine to marry his fiancé.

I was struggling with the same things about school. I did not at that moment abandon my relationship with higher education, but he allowed me to let it go for some time, to separate my education and career from my identity and just be.

How liberating, to just be, and to discover what that means!

* * * *

I have been on a spiritual journey for some time now, and I am grateful everyday for this new reality. I am grateful to Dan for placing his kind hands on my eyes so that I could see for the first time the translucent outline of an unfamiliar door . . . A portal with delicate carvings and engravings and scriptures in many tongues and symbols . . .

There is a pasture beyond that door, and, in the distance, you can see the faint form of a lotus flower blooming under the forgiving rays of an ever-present, fiery sun. After suspending my disbelief, I now realize an angel named Dan had opened my eyes to this brave new world.