Until this trip nearly all the spiritual stories I’d heard were told by women. Maybe it was sitting on a male energy vortex that changed things. Greg, a gay man and former catholic priest visiting the Christ in the Desert Monastery, laughed when I said I was a little spooked at first  experiencing Laura’s spiritual presence after she passed. ‘Oh that happens all the time,’ he said and then regaled me with stories about  his own mother-in-law Lucy reaching back to contact him and his partner: ‘Seconds after Lucy died both our cellphones rang at once. There was no-one on the line. And when we looked at the numbers it said we had called each other. We hadn’t. An hour later it happened again. We knew it was Lucy reaching out to both of us. A friend said, “It’s real simple. We are energy beings. So electricity is the easiest thing for spirits to manipulate.”‘ Later at Lucy’s funeral a large moth alighted on her son’s arm. ‘It was really beautiful. Did you know moth’s are soul messengers?’

In Sedona, I love not only the red rocks, but also the food at the ChocolaTree Cafe (delicious and energizing vegan fare). Last week over homemade chai and banana bread, co-owner David Warr told me his Near Death Experience. ‘It was on my 17th birthday. I smashed up my pick up truck so badly it split in two.’ Immediately he felt his soul lift out of his body and rise through levels of blissful energy until he was surrounded by dozens of beings. They told him he had two choices either stay in this blissed out realm or return to his body. ‘They said if I chose not to return to earth then another soul would be put into my body because its purpose wasn’t complete. There was a plan for my body and it needed to be fulfilled.’  David was reluctant to return to earth because he had an unhappy childhood and could see how mangled his body was. ‘I was paralyzed,’ he says.  To help him decide, these beings showed him ‘videos’ of his future. David saw himself as a happy parent and working to introduce people to a healthier way of eating and a better way of living. ‘I was already a chef and now I had a mission I wanted to fulfill’.  So he agreed to return on condition he wasn’t paralyzed. Doctors were amazed at how fast he healed. And in the years since he has experienced a lot of deja vu. ‘About 50 times I’ve recognized things I was shown in the after life. They are like sign posts that I am on the right path.’