Spiritual Healing of the Family, by Fr. Robert DeGrandis, the highly popular, charismatic priest takes a look at how we can heal our families of spiritual disorders, how we must learn to pray for this, how to approach inner healing, and how first we have to heal ourselves. He also discusses how to purge negative spirits that may be haunting marriages. click here

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For our discernment:

FORMER TYCOON WHO SUFFERED 'FATAL' HEART FAILURE SAYS HE SAW A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN WHO MAY HAVE BEEN THE VIRGIN

The other day we were speaking with a fellow named G. Gordon Allen (now Reverend Allen) who once was an international investment banker with his own firm and offices in Seattle, the UK, and Zurich, handling some of the world's richest folks. He was also in the import-export business -- a mover and shaker who was in a field as worldly and "ruthless" (to use one description of his field, from a documentary about him) as it comes.

Explains his website:

"Gordon had become used to working hard and building his own companies. He was in investments and used to deal with highly successful people. He was a high officer at the Masons and as such was distinguished with a lot of social esteem. But also as successful businessman he received a lot of praise. Of course he enjoyed all the advantages of a highly successful businessman, meaning he lived in beautiful homes. Besides that he was a member to all the exclusive clubs.

"However, even with this success he had his share of hardships, when involuntarily he became a single parent losing his wife to mental illness. He then had to do the upbringing of his three children alone while running his businesses. Due to all the problems that the situation brought with it, Gordon had to start from scratch in business several times, yet every time he started anew, he became more successful. He was a hardworking man, good for his employees, but a truly hard-nosed businessman. Hard-nosed for his competitors as well as for himself. He worked so hard that he often times ignored his physical health.  Gordon's work schedule became intense.  Eventually he would basically end up working eighty hours a week. Then in 1993, when he had just started a new business, Gordon's health could not take anymore.  He came to the point where his physical symptoms overwhelmed him, he took himself to the hospital and had his life-changing experience."

The experience was congestive heart failure during a severe bout with pneumonia during which he momentarily lapsed into clinical death.

"It was a lot of fun making money," he once told BBC, which did a documentary on him.

"I enjoyed making money."

But then pneumonia sent him to the emergency room. That's when his experience outside of his body began. It's when his life totally changed.

"The first thing that came over me was this absolutely profound sensation of love," he had recounted of it to BBC, the British television network. "I mean, it was so unconditional, the love of a mother for a child and a child for its mother, that kind of love, the two of those interacting. As I proceeded into this, it was followed by a sense of purposefulness. I ended up in a 'space space.' A high spiritual being had graded me and there are two other spiritual beings, one on my right, and I'm being communicated with. The thought was communicated to me that all the skills and all the talents that I had been given were for a purpose greater than what I had used them for, that there had been another purpose and they should now be applied to that purpose. That's the moment my life changed. When I came back my heart felt on fire with love. Even though I have a very modest life, the richness of the life I have today is like the Sistine Chapel compared to a plain lower drab road somewhere."

We always seek to cautiously discern such claims. There is rarely little doubt that the person believes he or she saw what he or she says. The question is whether, among other things, it came from the right source.

Allen has no doubt it did. And, we must admit, there have been some very good fruits (another means of initial discernment).

The beings he allegedly met were what the former "tycoon" claims "were spiritual brothers, beings who knew me for who I really was.

"Not my ego, not my personality, but my indwelling spirit whom they greeted as their long lost friend. Their own flesh and blood. And all that without speaking to me. There were no words. It was a feeling of sheer compassion. Of bliss, of harmony and utter acceptance. Communication in the spiritual realm is not done with words alone, it is a deep internal communication. Thoughts immediately are felt and known by the other person. It is like that on earth when you see a flock of birds. When they are all flying together no sounds are made, but suddenly they all turn left or right, as if a command had been give to them, it all is communicated on a spiritual level. So at that level I was being communicated with. It was a communication from heart to heart."

His website adds: "The first thing I was feeling was being totally overwhelmed. This was something so totally new, just wonderful. It was like a homecoming after having erred for years, searching and searching and never finding, and now unexpectedly having reached that space. This was the place that they were waiting for me, this was the ultimate place that I belonged. was feeling overwhelmed and I did not ever want to return to earth again. This was simply right. It is sheer, utter, complete, total fulfillment and bliss. I did not want to return to life. When you finally realize that all the efforts you have gone through in your life, all the hard working that you have done, all that business, just to make money, just isn’t of any value in that place where you belong. That shakes you up totally. All these years of hard work. Now suddenly they amounted up to just one final recognition: my skills and talents were gifts of God, they most certainly were, and I felt blessed by God having bestowed them on me, but these talents were not to be used for making money alone. That was not at all the issue. Suddenly it all became crystal clear to me, and of course that was not an insight that I got on my own. This was one of the many insights that the spiritual brothers revealed to me when I was out of my body and home for a while. I was like the novice and they were like the wise mentors. And I felt the integrity, the sincerity and the utter importance of what was being revealed to me.

"After coming back into my body, I was totally overwhelmed with what had happened to me. There aren’t enough pens in the world to describe the tremendous joy and wonder I felt. My heart felt as if it was on fire. It was as if the fire of love of God had been poured into it and I continuously felt it."

It's for our discernment. Upon his return, Gordon lost all his money. He divested himself of his financial ventures, paid huge amounts to cancel business leases, settled all his taxes and loans, and ended up with $324 -- plus happiness. "I had sold the house, the expensive car, I now lived in a tiny apartment, nothing luxurious, just adequate and I was feeling very serene," he recounts. "I did not own any companies anymore, had no employees and I had but one wish on my mind: serving the less fortunate. So I studied to become a counselor and started helping the poor." He called a number of clients with a startling request: he asked them to forgive him (a request met in most cases by stunned phone silence). Gordon now counsels people in the state of Washington and while a general Christian, says it wouldn't take much for him to become a Catholic -- that sometimes he feels right on the brink of that. One of those he admires as "saintly," in his pantheon of heroes, is (soon-to-be-saint) John Paul II.

Many days Allen finds special joy in simply complimenting a store clerk or some other stranger. (So can we.) This breaks the ice -- and causes a smile to erupt, which can have a chain reaction.

God logs these things.

Why, we asked, do a number of those who assert similar experiences end up preaching things like reincarnation and other New Age ideas? He believes they are putting their own spin on it, perhaps influenced by the academic types who have entered the field. He says when he was being interviewed by one major research organization, they paused the interview when he began to speak of Jesus (explaining that they weren't interested in that).

Actually, Gordon had a number of close brushes with death. In 1993, a major tumor was removed from his brain. It was during one such episode that an event occurred of particular interest to us. During it, Reverend Allen says he encountered an incredible woman of great kindness and indescribably beauty who was excited to greet him. She was clad in blue.

He believes it was the Blessed Virgin Mary.

When he "came to," nurses were coming in and out of his room, and not just to tend to his medical state.

They were also coming because for hours after the experience, a subtle and beautiful blue light was on the wall next to him.

An inexplicable light.

Like many who have this experience, he came back knowing he had a special mission -- a purpose -- and that was to serve God and others. He now lives in a small apartment on a modest pension and serves as a minister and counselor.

[resources: afterlife books]

[Gordon's website]