Following a Spiritual Path: Recovering From Religion Volume 1

By Elsabe Smit

Are you disillusioned with religion? Or are you just curious about spirituality? Then this book is for you. What do you leave behind when you walk away from religion? What do you walk towards when you embrace spirituality? There are so many beliefs and practices that are labelled as spirituality. The purpose of this series of books is to separate the wheat from the chaff and explain a variety of spiritual practices. Do you know the Golden Rule that governs all major religions as well as spirituality? Do you know how to use spiritual practices to protect yourself from bad vibes? How does meditation differ from sleep or relaxation, and why do we benefit from meditation? Do you understand the sacred language of the symbols in your dreams, and why day dreams and night dreams are good for your health? These are a few of the many questions that are answered in book one of the series. Elsabe Smit has been a practicing psychic and spiritual healer for decades, with clients in many countries in her virtual practice. She has published a range of books that are available as e-books and audio books. She will help you find your own way through the quagmire of practices, so that you can make your own decisions about your spiritual life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsabe Smit
• Release date: Dec 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005368920

Elsabe Smit

Elsabe Smit is a well-known international coach, facilitator, author, and public speaker that uses her clairvoyant and intuitive skills in her daily life to assist all of those that she comes into contact with, in her professional life.She has an MBA (Master Business Administration), a MA in Industrial Psychology, and extensive experience as a Business Analyst. Using all her knowledge, skills and competencies, Elsabe helps people to understand the mysteries of life and Love, so that they can regain control of their lives.Elsabe Smit was born and raised in South Africa and has lived in Ireland, South Africa and the UK since 2000.After years of facing numerous personal challenges, involving her relationship with her drug- and alcohol-addicted mother, living with and getting divorced from an abusive husband, being a single mother, being a mistress for a period of time, and then facing unemployment, she one day realized that she had been given the amazing gift of intuition and clairvoyance.Using her newly discovered gifts, she then rediscovered herself. She learned that all her past experiences, "good" and "bad", were only steppingstones on her life's blueprint towards loving and accepting herself.Having always having had a keen interest in human behavior, this discovery took her on a different path, adding the study of life, death and spirituality to her interests. During that journey she explored NLP and embraced Quantum Physics. Elsabe studied some of the world's best acknowledged researchers and gurus in the fields of relationships, health and business.During her professional life Elsabe's career included lecturing at a South African University, being a Human Resources Manager various companies and being a freelance business analyst.In between the various permanent positions and contracts, she developed her reputation as a sought-after author, speaker, facilitator, coach and mentor.As an author, some of her books are today still in use as prescribed textbooks for university and college students in South Africa. Other books have been published and are available on your favorite e-book site, and some books have been published as e-books which she shares as free gifts.As a speaker, facilitator and trainer she has presented numerous programmes to groups ranging from a dozen to hundreds of people. The subject matter has been as varied and interesting as her life.As a mentor, she coached and mentored small business owners, blue-chip executives and employees covering a myriad of professions, employment levels and industries.Don't forget her contribution to the world of psychics. She's been on various radio and TV shows with international audiences. In addition, Elsabe has done thousands of personal psychic readings for people from all walks of life located in various countries - including one for a death row inmate in a US prison.Throughout her life Elsabe has been passionately focused on identifying the nuances that make a difference in people lives, the why's of birth, life and death - and now it's your turn to tap into the vast wealth of knowledge and experiences that she has gained during her lifetime, so that like Elsabe ...YOU can also Discover yourself and Love YOUR Life.

Book preview

Following a Spiritual Path: Recovering from Religion

Volume 1

Elsabe Smit

Published By Elsabe Smit

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2020 Elsabe Smit

Visit my website at http://www.ElsabeSmit.com

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. I am not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

Cover: Terri Radcliffe at www.brandrepublica.com

Contents

Introduction

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

In Conclusion

1 Your Spiritual Path

What to expect

What is a spiritual path?

Why do I feel like the odd one out?

Am I dealing with the devil?

What if I want to turn back?

How do I deal with a non-believing partner?

Summary

2 Religion or Spirituality - Which is Right?

What to Expect

Is spirituality a religion?

Is spirituality a cult?

Is spirituality a philosophy?

Spirituality and Spiritualists

What is Spirituality?

Universal Law and Religion

Eternal Life and Death

Meditation or prayer?

Happy Holidays

Enlightenment and Spirituality

Who is Christ?

Summary

3 Who Am I?

What to Expect

You are not your brain

You are not your job, possessions, or country

Near-death experiences

Who am I?

I am

What does if it resonates with you mean?

Intelligent water

Water in vegetation and animals

Sun spots

Grounding

Vibrations and music

Where can I find more answers?

Summary

4 Spirit Guides, Guardian Angels and Ancestors

What to expect

Time and Space

A definition of time

Physical distance is irrelevant

Is there scientific proof for precognition?

What does a medium do and why?

What does a psychic do and why?

Cards or no cards?

What is an Empath?

Ancestors, Guardian Angels and Spirit Guides

Guardian Angels

Spirit guides

What do spirit guides do?

Summary

5 Practical Applications of Spiritual Stuff

What to expect

Using the parking space angel

How do you create?

How can I make my future better?

How do I protect myself against crime?

Manage your own energy

Summary

6 Introduction to meditation

What to expect

What is meditation not?

A short history lesson

How to meditate

When to meditate

Reasons for not meditating

What are the benefits of meditation?

Summary

7 Dreams and dreaming

What to expect

What is a dream?

Why do we dream?

How to recall your dreams

Types of Dreams

Interpreting dreams

Levels of dream interpretation

Common dreams

Summary

About the Author

More From the Author

Introduction

We live in a world where people are either disillusioned with religion, or they become fanatics who insist on getting the world to follow their one and only religion. The middle path of accepting religion and living according to their religious beliefs seems to be the domain of an older generation. The younger generation seems to want excitement and entertainment rather than a moral compass.

This lack of focus and balance has left much of the world in a space where they cannot see their way back to the constraints of religion, and they find themselves in a moral void from which they don’t see their way forward.

But is there an alternative to either a restrictive, dictatorial religion (whichever one you are disillusioned with) or a moral void of fear, guilt, disappointment, and cynicism?

Yes, there is. I call it following a spiritual path.

But what is a spiritual path? Does it mean you have to play with crystals and have your fortune told? Does it mean becoming a vegan while your body screams for the taste of bacon, or rejecting all Western medicine when you need to have a broken bone set? Does it mean proving your moral superiority in some way by telling the world that you are now spiritual and no longer religious?

Question: How would you define following a spiritual path? What has brought you here?

No, you do not need to go to any extreme. You need to find your own path. And that sounds like a very daunting task. If you have already turned your back on the scriptures of whatever religion you have been exposed to, then where do you find your compass? What do you need to look out for? What do you need to associate with, and what do you need to stay away from?

I have found myself in this dilemma at the beginning of my personal journey.

When I was a young adult, I associated with the version of the Christian church that I grew up in. I could recite parts of the Bible from memory. Because I have a particularly good memory for facts, I regularly won Bible quizzes. I prayed daily and had a role in the church, first as Sunday school teacher, and then as deacon. I was a good Christian in a desperately unhappy marriage.

I approached the church minister for help and guidance when I was in a situation that was a daily risk spiritually, emotionally, mentally, financially, and physically. The response of the minster (on several occasions) was that he was terribly busy and would get back to me. Can you imagine the vast loneliness of being in such a marriage, in a culture where divorce was a greater sin than blasphemy?

The situation escalated to an evening where I faced the wrong end of a firearm. Only a Divine intervention could save me. At that moment, my father walked into my house, realised what was happening, and disarmed the drunken person who claimed to be the man in the house.

A few incidents happened before and after that night, and these incidents shaped my life.

A week before the incident, I had a very vivid dream of standing in the kitchen, with beautiful orange and white flowery curtains behind me (and I recognised the curtains as the real ones that were in my kitchen at the time). Suddenly the curtains caught fire, and I could not do anything to quench the flames. I felt powerless, but at the same time I had this strong and deep sense of knowing that I would survive.

Two nights later I had the same vivid dream. I did not understand.

Then the incident happened, in the kitchen, while I had my back to the orange and white flowery curtains.

This was not the first time that I had such vivid dreams that then related to incidents in waking time. Many years before that, when I was at university, I dreamt that I walked into a bedroom where a noose was hanging from the ceiling. It scared the living hell out of me, and I had no idea what it meant. A few weeks later I met a senior student, and he invited me to the house which he was sharing with a few other students. He was an art student, and at the time I was curious to meet people that were out of my usual range of god-fearing Christians. So, I went to his house.

As I walked into the house, I saw a glimpse of a noose hanging from a ceiling in one of the rooms. For a second my heart stopped beating. Then the art student showed me into that same room, which was the bedroom he shared with another student.

At the time I already knew that there was some meaning behind dreams, and in my naiveté, I saw this as a sign that I had to help this poor man. I did not have the emotional maturity or self-insight to realise that I wanted to help him (a young alcoholic) because I was unable to help my mother (a middle-aged alcoholic) who had rejected me from the day when she discovered that she was pregnant with me.

I married this man, knowing in my heart of hearts that it was a mistake, but feeling unable to stop the cultural wheels from turning.

I only learnt later that these particularly vivid type of dreams were warnings, and I heeded them.

This was how my journey with prophetic dreams and the language of dreams began.

Question: What incidents in your life have made you wonder about life in general and spirituality in particular?

Now move on to the period after the firearm incident in the kitchen. At the time I realised that for my self-preservation and the safety of my son, I had to move out of the house and get out of that marriage as soon as possible. Three days later I had accommodation, and we moved out.

Suddenly the man found Jesus and wanted me back, so that we could patch up a marriage that should never have happened. I did not budge. He took an overdose of harmless sleeping pills. I did not budge. He called in his mother so that she could explain my duty as a Christian wife to me. I did not budge.

He called in the big canon – the church minister.

I went for a counselling session with this holy man who had no time to help me over the previous months. I sat there while this man of the cloth told me that it was my Christian duty to mend my ways and make my husband happy. He told me that the very last thing I should consider was a divorce, because such an act would in retrospect turn my holy marriage as well as my marriage vows into legalized prostitution, and in effect make me a prostitute. The husband was sitting there, nodding like one of those dogs that people used to put on the dashboards of their cars, and grinning whenever the minister scored another point.

I got up and walked out, away from the husband, the minister, the church council, the Sunday school, the congregation, the Bible and God.

This happened in a relatively small town. In the ensuing weeks, members of the congregation would see me walking in the street and cross the street so that they would not need to have contact with me. Not a single nod – friendly or otherwise. Not a single phone call. Nothing. Not from the minister, not from the other members of the church council. I was as good as dead in the eyes of these people.

A few months after the counselling session the minister went fishing and broke his leg…

I had no self-confidence, but I had a good job and could at least financially take care of myself and my son.

I tolerated this ostracism for about another year, and then found another job and moved away to a different part of the country.

This is how my journey of finding my spiritual path began. I realised very quickly that I could not walk away from God, because God was inside me. I realised what I had discovered in that church building and in the congregation had nothing to do with a loving God.

God was back in my life. But no Bible (why had I not noticed the violence and the improbable stories before? Who cared about how many details I could recall and quote?), no prayer (it suddenly felt pretentious and artificial) and no circle of like-minded friends with the same values.

I was alone in a desert.

I decided to attend another church – in a different language – and I joined the choir, which I enjoyed, because I like singing. However, the void and the disillusionment were still there.

There was (yet another) crisis with my mother where I found myself in the middle of very nasty events. I did not cause the events, I did not contribute to them, and I could not stop them, but I was the focal point because my mother was incredibly manipulative and convinced even professionals that I was the source of all her mental and emotional issues.

Again, I approached a man of the cloth (this time in a different language) for spiritual guidance out of this quagmire. He listened with one ear, prayed for me, and reminded me that my tithe was due.

After that I turned my back on all religion and decided that I would live with the loneliness rather than the hypocrisy and doubts.

Since I was so far off my Christian path, I decided during a few additional critical turns in my life to do the unthinkable and most sinful thing I could imagine. I consulted various psychics.

These psychics understood where I was coming from. They did not judge me. They did ask questions, but even so, they knew a lot more about me, my life and the people close to me than they could research at the drop of a hat (this was long before the time of social media). And they were upfront about their fees, with no guilt trips, and no conditions. Fascinating stuff.

Question: What experiences have you had with spirituality and the occult?

I was fortunate enough to earn some royalties from academic textbooks I had published and decided to spend the money on seeing the world. I went to the USA for three weeks. There I could freely walk into bookstores and indulge in books about magick, clairvoyance, the occult, and other spiritual topics that were so new to me. I felt like a kid in a candy store and bought some of the books.

Of course, I noticed the signs for two psychics, one in Sedona, Arizona, and one in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, both in the USA.

The one in Sedona was a sweetie who repeated what the one in Johannesburg, South Africa, had told me before my trip. How did they both know the same things about me without me telling them (and they were on different continents)? And there was a lot of good news about my future, which added up and resonated with me on every level.

The one in Philadelphia was a different kettle of fish. She had a LOT of questions and tried to convince me that there was some sort of curse on me. Of course, the only way to remove the curse was for me to spend even more money buying very special, very expensive candles that she had blessed in the moonlight.

I declined at the time, pleading that I did not have the money to buy the candles. She was not put off and wanted my contact details so that she could send me information about the best candles for me, and other paraphernalia that would turn my life around. I gave her my phone/fax number in South Africa.

When I returned home, I was petrified of going through Customs at the airport and having those illicit books discovered in my luggage. What would people think of me wanting to read a book by Sylvia Browne, the famous and later notorious psychic? Even worse – would I be arrested for witchcraft and locked up for ever? What if I got arrested? I have to say I was living in post-apartheid South Africa where freedom of thought was still a new concept.

I did not get arrested, and nobody was interested in my fears. It was all in my mind.

By the time I got home about a week after my meeting with the Philadelphia psychic, there were about ten faxes waiting for me. As the faxes progressed with no response from me (because I did not give her details about my travel plans) the curse on me grew, and so did the list of progressively expensive items that I HAD to buy if I wanted to see another year on this planet – never mind a happy year.

I tore the faxes up and stopped reading the new ones. The avalanche eventually subsided, and nothing happened to me – apart from me getting more and more curious about the occult and esoteric, where I slowly discovered answers.

My relationship with my mother was fraught from the day she discovered that she was pregnant. She blamed me for ruining her life (because she had a teenage pregnancy) and later on blamed me for her addiction to drugs and prescription medicine (even after I had left home, got married, got divorced and finally broke off all contact with her). I can honestly say that when she passed on, I felt that her death was a relief for her, because her demons went with her and became disempowered.

Imagine my astonishment (and fear – I was petrified) a few years after her death, when I was home alone, and I clearly felt her presence in the room. I did not see her, but I KNEW it was her in the room with me, and I was terrified of her finally getting her revenge on me. Instead she was a benevolent presence that in later years guided me on occasion. That was my first experience of communicating with someone who had passed over.

My career path took me to Cape Town, where I crossed paths with a lovely man. He offered development classes. Of course, at the time (in the late 1990s) personal development was a buzz word, and I was interested.

I discovered to my horror/fascination/delight that his development classes focused on spiritual development, and the development of psychic skills. This was like a tap opening for me. With every week passing, the stream of psychic information flowed stronger. Very soon I was doing accurate readings for people in the room.

Of course, my questions far exceeded the answers I received. From there I spent two decades studying, reading, learning, and talking to a wide range of people. I continued with the psychic readings, mostly by email, for clients in different countries.

I cannot claim to ever have had a guru or spiritual teacher, apart from my brief sojourn with the lovely man in Cape Town, from where I moved to Europe.

These are just significant highlights, and I will not bore you with all my spiritual experiences over the years.

For me, this has been a lonely path, but I now realise that was by choice. It does not need to be a lonely path for you.

I decided to provide a framework of the knowledge and wisdom I encountered over the years. The information is from books, personal encounters, and psychic readings that I did over the years. If I do not quote sources, it is because over the years the information was presented to me in various forms, and I did not think of writing down the sources at the time. I would be happy to attribute knowledge to anyone who can prove to be the originator of the knowledge.

The advantage for you is that you do not need to believe anything I tell you. God/the goddess/Allah/the Source/whatever you want to call your Creator gave you a mind, and you can do your own research rather than believe everything I tell you based on my experience.

This is a framework of my own journey. I do not believe for a moment that your journey will be the same. Do not hesitate to follow your heart, and do not hesitate to embrace what resonates with you, or walk away from what you don’t want in your life.

You will notice that the information I provide is not just