The Invisible Choir Read online

  The

  InvIsIble ChoIr

  The

  InvIsIble ChoIr

  a true story of soul mates & angels

  Tessa Lynne

  Lifepath Press

  Spearfish, South Dakota

  The Invisible Choir: A True Story of Soul Mates & Angels / Tessa Lynne. —1st ed.

  Copyright © 2016 by Tessa Lynne

  Lifepath Press, Spearfish, South Dakota

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover image by CanStock Photos, rolfimages

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945333-10-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954120

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedicated, with love,

  to our children and grandchildren

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  Part 1 A Spiritual Journey

  1. Outside the Realm

  2. The World of Spirit

  3. Creation

  4. Lessons

  5. Catastrophe

  6. Core Beliefs

  7. This Earth of Yours

  8. Destiny

  9. Destiny Undone

  10. Odyssey of the Spirit

  Part II A Love Story

  11. Body and Soul

  12. The Invisible Choir

  13. Encounters with the Light

  14. Room for Doubt

  15. What Have I Done?

  16. The Council Decides

  17. Healing Powers

  18. Take Heaven

  19. He Doesn’t Believe Me

  20. A Winter Melancholy

  21. Love: it is an imperative

  22. Success and Forgiveness

  23. Running on Faith

  24. Hope Returns

  25. Eli Visits

  Part III A Search for Truth

  26. A Predator Stalks

  27. Alexander is No More

  28. Not One; Not the Other

  29. Man Becomes Spirit

  30. Coda: that which completes and ends

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Continue Your Journey

  Preface

  It was September 1995. I was catching my breath. A turbulent few years had turned to relative calm—it ended when my intuitive self collided with its rational counterpart. In the year that followed, one surreal event after another left me questioning my professional judgment and my personal beliefs.

  At the time, I had been a psychotherapist for ten years. My strong sense of inner truth influenced my work sessions and existed in close harmony with my analytical, logical mind—until the day I was confronted with something from outside the physical realm.

  My dilemma—could I accept the truth of my encounter? Could I trust my initial, intuitive belief? My logical mind clamored for undeniable proof. Which would prevail, logic or intuition? It was to be an extended battle.

  This is a story in three parts.

  First, the prologue will introduce you to Sally. This is not her story, but some knowledge of hers will help you to understand my inner conflict.

  Part I begins with what was revealed to me: details of the spirit world, our purpose in taking physical lives, and predictions of future events. It ends with how I learned of a long-lost destiny, Michael, and then that he was near death.

  Part II is excerpts from our letters—the power and possibilities of a spiritual connection and our heart-wrenching discoveries of a lost life. You will learn if Michael recovered and if our destinies were restored.

  Part III reveals more information about spiritual life and details of the extraordinary events that propelled me further on my journey to know truth.

  Finally, the epilogue summarizes subsequent events, from 1996 to the present.

  I was told that I was meant to share the information I was given, but I can no longer limit the telling of my story to family, friends, and interested others whose paths have crossed with mine. The events foretold twenty years ago have come to pass; we live with their repercussions. It is for this reason that I want to reach a larger audience.

  My hope, for every reader, is that you will open your heart and mind and consider the story of your own life path as you reflect on my experience and the message I was given.

  Tessa Lynne

  September 2016

  Note: To protect confidentiality, some nonessential details have been altered, a number of pseudonyms have been used, and the exact location of the setting has been kept vague.

  Prologue

  1990

  Excerpts from Case Notes

  March

  Sally has come to the mental health center at the urging of a friend. She is 40 years old, married, with a son in college and a daughter in high school. She trained in laboratory science and now manages a private lab. Physically, Sally is broad-shouldered, above average in height, and overweight, but with a muscular appearance that is healthy and fit. She wears her long, auburn hair in a loose bun and often props her glasses on top of her head. Today Sally seldom makes eye contact and is agitated, her voice weak and hesitant. Among her interests are: music, she plays guitar and sings in a church choir; art, she draws caricatures at art fairs; and softball, she is an avid player. She states she has no prior history of a mental health diagnosis or treatment.

  Presenting complaint for Sally is the experience of extreme anxiety for the last two months, with frequent nightmares and episodes she describes as “losing time.” She says the only stressful event in her life is that her daughter has started to babysit. Sally feels a sense of terror and she fears for her daughter’s safety, even though she knows and trusts the family. I ask Sally if she feels comfortable talking with me and if she wants to begin regular sessions. She replies that she would and adds, “I want to get my life back.”

  April

  Sally is more comfortable now with the process of therapy and speaks easily and openly about her adult life, often with insight. Her general competence and abilities, her high standards at work, and her devotion to her family are apparent. She speaks warmly of her close circle of supportive friends. Her sense of humor is evident, her full face breaking easily into a smile when a subject is not threatening.

  Sally reports she experienced a loss of time while writing in her journal. She returned to find an entry in childlike printing. Several more entries gave increasing hints of trauma and abuse. They refer to a man for whom Sally would frequently babysit, friends of her parents. She denies any memory of mistreatment by him, but her voice loses conviction and she shakes her head and pauses, as if listening to someone. She admits she hears a voice, which she tries to ignore, but she has been hearing it more frequently and more insistently, saying, “It did happen.”

  May

  A few memories have become clearer to Sally; she can no longer deny they are of real events. She has been aware of what she calls “warring forces” within her. Today she found it difficult to focus and shook her head as if to clear it. Then, with a deep intake of breath, she closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened, it was not the Sally I have known. Her demeanor was one of single-minded intent, her voice stronger. “I am The Protector. I am doing everything in my power to hold back the memories. That has been my role since the earliest abuse, by the grandfather, when Sally was very young. That was when I first helped her to leave her body. It was the only way to protect her. She cannot handle the return of the memories
. I will fight to keep them away; that is my function.”

  Sally often stayed with her grandfather and older male cousins while her parents took her grandmother out of state for medical appointments. She recalls little of that time and says her entire childhood is a blur, with few distinct memories. She several times found herself in the principal’s office at school, was told she had been in a fight, but had no memory of it.

  June

  The Protector appeared again today. She said she is battling an entity she calls “The Destroyer.” She claims it is “he” who insists that more memories surface. The Protector believes as strongly that the memories will destroy Sally. The Destroyer then came forward to say, “Sally cannot be whole if the memories are not returned—it is essential to her eventual well-being.”

  The Protector and The Destroyer sometimes engage in battle in their attempts to assert dominance and come forward to plead their case. It is draining for Sally, and, with the toll of anxiety and lost time, she has taken a leave of absence from work. The Destroyer remains adamant that the memories must be returned.

  July

  The Protector and The Destroyer have reached a truce; he has agreed to return the memories at a gradual pace. I assured them that I will help Sally to process and assimilate the memories. Now that they are in agreement, she feels rested and refreshed after they appear.

  As I began this session with Sally, she lost focus and concentration and then closed her eyes. A minute later, when her eyes opened, it was not the Sally I am used to. She was timid and spoke in a soft, hesitant voice. Her name is also Sally, but she is fourteen. She said that she and several others exist in an old dilapidated house where they each inhabit a small room. Their efforts to communicate are brief and disjointed, each existing in solitary isolation. She occasionally hears the voices of others at some distance from the house.

  August

  The teenage Sally is gradually sharing her memories of abuse and torture. When she told the abuser she wouldn’t accept requests to babysit, he named friends of hers he would ask instead. When she threatened to tell the police, he convinced her that his friends on the police force would protect him and that her parents would also believe him.

  The young Sally said today that there was someone else who needed my help. She retreated, and I could hear her coaxing someone to come forward, explaining how to make the transition as if there was a special passage to traverse. A minute later, I saw the innocent face of a child. She spoke in a whisper, with a lisp, and frequently reached down to pull up her (invisible) knee socks. Her name is Molly; she is four years old. In bits and pieces, she told how her grandfather had hurt her. Molly told her mother she didn’t want to go back there, but she couldn’t convincingly explain why. The adult Sally pieced together her own memories of going to her grandparents’ house with Molly’s account; they form a cohesive, but devastating, history, and she is realizing how the early abuse led to her later vulnerability.

  September

  Today only The Destroyer came forward. “The Protector has with-drawn, but she intends to remain vigilant. She trusts you, with my assistance, to help Sally.” When I said it no longer makes sense to refer to him by that name, he replied, “You may call me Reality. It was my task to return Sally to the reality of her everyday life after she escaped the abuse by leaving her body, what you call dissociating. I knew she needed to experience her life; she could not disengage from it. You have shown a high level of commitment and that you are capable of the task before you. It will not be an easy one. You have been tested. The memories will be returned gradually, but they will be returned. Sally will never be whole if they are not. That is my concern: that she becomes whole.”

  I consider Reality to be an Internal Self Helper, a common factor in the treatment of those with Dissociative Identity Disorder (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual, DSM IV-R). Of my many clients with histories of trauma and abuse, Sally is the only one who has met the key criterion: one or more alternate personalities assume executive control—they make decisions, and act in the world, independently of their host.

  Case Summary through September, 1995

  During the first year of Sally’s therapy, the eight primary alter personalities came forward, urged and supported by those who had come before them. Then came their eight counterparts, who held the most negative emotions of the alters. They had split off when the abuse ended and were relegated to a primitive existence on “the other side.”

  Nine months into therapy, Sally was able to return to work, but the first three years were intense. The teenage personalities were tempted to experience the world and often took control, creating havoc in Sally’s life. Through therapy, each gave voice to the reality of her past and learned to accept the limitations of the present. Reality took control on a few occasions to prevent serious harm coming to Sally, but he said he could not intervene every time an alter took over. When I suggested that a change in their internal environment would be therapeutic, he somehow provided building materials for them to replace the dilapidated old house. In their internal, psychic world the alters constructed and furnished a beautiful home. In the process, they began to interact with each other, establish individual roles, and become a functional family.

  Now, after five years of therapy, the eight primary alters are ready to integrate with their counterparts. The five older ones appear to each other to have aged to their early thirties. Most of our work now revolves around how the alters will be a part of Sally’s current life and on her acceptance of them as essential to her identity and her wholeness.

  Early in her therapy, Sally said, “I feel like a shattered vase. Pieces of myself are scattered all over the floor. I don’t see how they can ever be put back together.” Recently, she said, “The pieces of the vase have been gathered up and are roughly in place. I think they need only a few, small adjustments before they mesh as one.”

  ParT 1

  A Spiritual Journey

  1995

  1. Outside the Realm

  SALLY HAS JUST LEFT. I need to make a record of this encounter with Reality, but it does not belong in a case note; it is outside the realm of my therapeutic work. In fact, it is far removed from any part of the physical realm—it is a journey to the realm of spirit.

  How can I explain this encounter to others? How can I even explain it to myself? I need to first put it in context.

  Reality has always presented as both more and less than the alter personalities: less, in that he has no personal history and does not interact as one of them; more, in that he has demonstrated powers they do not have and he is wiser. In their internal world, he is perceived as a father-like figure who appears among them only when he is needed.

  Sally has been aware, since childhood, of a source that brings her peace and comfort. More recently she has been aware of Reality’s soothing presence to the alters. She has come to realize that it is the same force; he has always been close to her. “I am surrounded by a strong, calming energy field. I can’t explain it, but Reality can be present to the others, somewhere inside of my mind, and I can also experience him as a spiritual presence.”

  After the first crisis-filled year of Sally’s therapy, Reality has sometimes been unavailable. He has talked vaguely of a need to be elsewhere, has said he must replenish his energy, and has referred to a superior entity that guides him. In recent weeks, he has implied that he is more than the role he has assumed with Sally. I wish now that I had made notes of his brief, elliptical comments that hinted of knowledge beyond her conscious, or even her unconscious, mind. He has turned our brief exchanges away from Sally’s needs; his usual terse manner of speaking has changed to one that is more conversational.

  Reality is in no hurry to leave today. I start to say my usual goodbye, but he interrupts me, looks at me intently.

  “Tessa, Sally can spare a few minutes. I wish to speak with you.”

  There is a subtle change in his tone, but his appearance is much the same as usual. It is still S
ally, in a typical outfit of neat slacks and blazer, but when he inhabits her body it is with less animation and facial expression, and the voice is slightly deeper, with little inflection. Sally wears her long hair pulled back and never wears makeup, so the differences suggest a gender-neutral mien. The one change Reality always makes is to take off her glasses; he says he doesn’t need them.

  Here, in my private practice office, we remain in the same comfortable chairs Sally and I always take, sharing a corner table. The large window lets in filtered light and a glimpse of the Missouri river through half-closed blinds. A fig tree and two philodendrons bring a touch of green indoors; an area rug adds rich but muted colors. The pictures on the walls depict scenes from nature, except for one, a portrait of three Native American elder women—weathered, dignified, filled with spirit—their long black hair flowing in the wind.

  I wait for Reality to continue.

  “Have my recent comments led you to question my role in Sally’s life?”

  When I answer that they have, he does not keep me in suspense.

  “I am Sally’s spiritual guardian. It has been necessary for me to play a much larger role in her life than what is common for guardians. As you know, my efforts on her behalf are now less in demand, leaving me free to pursue other objectives related to my purpose in the spirit world.”

  I have raised an internal eyebrow in skepticism but my interest is stronger, as is a sense of the truth of what Reality is telling me. I suspend any disbelief and ask him if a guardian is the same as a guardian angel.

  “Guardian angel is not a term used in the spirit world, and it is not an accurate one. A spirit does not take the role of guardian from the angel realm.”

  My tendency to be flippant comes into play, and Reality confirms my light-hearted assumption that he does not have wings, even shows a glimmer of a smile, and then I hear a more serious tone.