KICK-ASS ANGELS. I used to have a blue, plastic, parking angel affixed to my dashboard until it melted one summer. That was about the greatest extent of my relationship to such an ethereal entity. Like many East Coast, urban, Taurus realists, I'm about as spiritual as I can get, given my obvious handicaps.
But that doesn't stop me from being fascinated with beings I can't see--and even more fascinated with those humans who are passionate about subtle-realm phenomena.
Timothy Wyllie looks like an angel. The photo on the back of his book--Adventures Among Spiritual Intelligences: Angels, Aliens, Dolphins and Shamans (Wisdom Editions, $16.95)--captures him peering over his reading glasses, his longish gray hair flowing over his shoulders. The way he looks back at you is other-worldly, in a sense. His hold is inexplicable. I was enthralled just talking with him for an hour on the phone from his New Mexico high desert home.
Maybe that's what it's like to communicate telepathically with angels.
"They can see us, but we can't see them," Wyllie explains when I ask what they look like. "But they sound so familiar. You know them and yet you don't."
His latest book is a newly named version of his1992 spiritual memoir and follows his classic 1984 work, Dolphins, ETs and Angels. Along with Alma Daniel and Andrew Ramer, he penned what's considered the most effective manual for coalescing that cosmic "family" reunion, Ask Your Angels.
"People like me are seen as woo-woo," admits Wyllie. "Those blinkers of materialism and the bombardment of science are hard to overcome."
The first thing Wyllie asked me when we spoke was whether I was cynical about all this stuff. When I said no, he asked if I was at least skeptical.
"It's good and healthy to be skeptical," he responded after I owned up to it. Then he queried if I believed in reincarnation.
"I can't not." I hoped he could make his way through the double negative.
After his infectious laughter trailed off, we set to talking about how to include those extra-species relationships into your life.
Wyllie hails from England and was born at the height of World War II, endured English boarding schools and trained as an architect. He lived for many years in New York City, and in the '70s, founded a spiritual community, traveling to Europe and the United States on its behalf. By 1980, he devoted himself full-time to researching spiritual intelligences and interspecies communication.
"I don't regard myself as a changer," says Wyllie of his work. "People push things they don't want to deal with to the side. Oddly enough, they'll come up to me after a reading and out it will spill."
He adds, "What amazes me is how little skepticism there is out there towards this work. I would think I'd get more of it. But maybe it's that I'm not fanatical about it. I merely say, 'This is what I see, take it or leave it.'"
It took a long time, apparently, for Wyllie to tune in the angels.
"I lived at 181st Street, at the very top of Manhattan. The river is close by there--an important element for spiritual and psychic work. Then I moved down to 89th Street, a very noisy part of town, I could hardly hear myself think. It took about two to three years to really tune myself in."
After an experience in Montreal where angels broke through to a medium channeling them, Wyllie says, he found he could just do it himself.
"Angels are just another species, like dolphins or aliens," Wyllie explains. "I have an angel who works with me on my books. He's not doing dictation or channeling or even ghostwriting. He's more like a counselor or a seer."
OK, I want one of those.
Actually, Wyllie says we can have a bunch.
"We all have companion angels, there's plenty to go around. They're there to help. The angel universe is enormous."
But with six billion inhabitants on this planet, isn't that getting kind of crowded?
"We don't have to deal with each and every one of those six billion people," Wyllie offers, not to mention other beings on distant planets. "Most of us find it's enough to deal with our families and friends. But if you can't fit in angels, well that's just your loss."
Here's what it takes, plain and simple, to have an extra-human relationship: quiet. Wyllie says you have to ground, align and then release yourself. Follow the breath and the chakras, especially the fifth one that is the open door to angelic form.
"Listen with your ears and your throat. You'll know them when you hear them."
So why is the world so screwed up if all these angels are flitting about looking out for us?
"Believing is a heart-beat away. And these are kick-ass angels. They won't let you escape. They do not tolerate lies."
Does that mean I shouldn't be too worried that George W. Bush is running for re-election?
"If it amuses you to worry about that, go ahead," Wyllie assured me. "Karma comes back. There will be much egg on many faces."
Timothy Wyllie comes to Tucson on Wednesday, June 4, at 7 p.m., at Reader's Oasis, located at 3400 E. Speedway Blvd. Call 319-7887 for all the details. For more about angels, visit www.timothywyllie.com.
--Joan Schuman
