from: Astille
20 June 2026
Dear Zanne, is that not how you begin your correspondence in your world? … Dear friend, dear relative, dear pen pal?
Well, we are unusual pen pals, are we not, for we have but one set of hands, ten fingers, one keyboard, and yet we share a mind. Of course, thoughts are already shared universally, but that is another story; what we are doing is making an agreement to focus our thoughts, our minds, in such a way that we can correspond with each other. Two beings of light corresponding across a divide, be that divide a country, a continent, or, as in our case, the realm of life and the realm of spirit. To use one of your favourite phrases, “what could possibly go wrong?”
Well, nothing really, not from my perspective; it is not the end result that is important, it is the process of dialogue itself that is beneficial. If you think about it, every word, sentence, and paragraph is open to interpretation and misinterpretation all the time, even when people are in the same room and speak the same language. Add different languages and cultures into the mix, and it is a wonder that anyone communicates successfully at all.
That begs the question about what makes communication successful, then does it not? I know that in your culture, body language and tone are considered even more important than the words themselves. Two aspects of our communication that are lacking. Well, lacking in the expected sense, for I know when we have successfully communicated, your heart races and you feel a surge of pleasure and satisfaction. You have been known to shout, ‘thank you,’ at the ceiling as if I am somehow suspended there.
What is not missing is inflection, the importance I place on one word over another, the pauses for effect, which, although difficult to capture in black and white on paper, is still possible. I know you do your best, as do I, but people will add their own inflections just as they interpret the words spoken in life through the lens of their personality and, hopefully, their soul.
This leads me to the one aspect of communication that is rarely discussed in your world, that of soul-to-soul communication. That is the language of light, colour, and pattern, an aspect of communication I am quite familiar with. You are too, although in a very different way; why else would you have been drawn to mediation and meditation in your later years? Both are forms of healing that are as old as time because they amplify the vibration of the soul. They reach beyond time in their search for meaning and healing, knowing that the soul always seeks harmony through understanding. It brings love, unconditional love, because that is its substance, and it essentially knows that it is communicating with another aspect of its greater self, just as you know that this correspondence is essentially with another aspect of your greater self.
As such, we are, in truth, communicating across a divide created merely by the passage of time, the existence of a personality, the impact of life experience, and the learning that has been accrued. That makes it sound simple, but in your world at this time, it is not. It would be too trite to say, “People have forgotten where they come from,” but there is truth in that. There is a lack of curiosity about the purpose of life, over and above the accumulation of wealth and the pursuit of individual power.
So to correspond, as we are intending to do, is no mean feat; it means overcoming cynicism, disbelief, and loneliness. A loneliness almost entirely self-inflicted because everyone has access to their soul and to the guidance and love of Spirit, but so few access it, and those who tend to restrict it to proscribed religions, or disciplines, or the pursuit of atheism. I can say this because you recognise in yourself the journey towards trusting me has been a long one, and even now, we barely have touched the surface of our shared purpose. But that is why we are corresponding now; that is why you feel an imperative to do this, and everyone has to start somewhere. I am looking forward to it.
from: Zanne
20 June 2026
Dear Astille, thank you so much, for I am both excited by exploring this but also curious about what I am trying to achieve. I know that for many years I have felt disappointed by my inability to engage with others about spiritual matters. That has felt lonely, but also made me question why I have this need in the first place.
I have not, in today’s parlance, “found my tribe”. I either seem to encounter people who appear to know it all already, or who are completely disinterested, sometimes hostile, or those who master aspirational slogans while floating nine inches above the ground and opening your cheque book.
That’s unfair, I know that, but perhaps this is the nub of my loneliness. I want to be of value to other people, but does that imply superiority? Perhaps it does, but that will only be because those who hear the framework of the teachings I am doing my best to follow will not have encountered the challenges within them. You know better than I that the granting of complete freedom and unconditional love presents challenges. To accept total responsibility for one’s life, choices, and progress is a challenge. To truly accept that you were not the victim of circumstance, that it was your soul that created the circumstances so you can fulfil the purpose of your life, takes some digesting, especially if those circumstances have been hard and led you to contemplate suicide.
Even as I write that paragraph, I see my error in thinking. I talk about loneliness, and yet that too has been by my own design. You have walked beside me my whole life long. As a child, I felt you there; as an adult, I have learnt to listen to you, speak with you, and at times speak for you. So, this is what I mean: it sounds glorious to be told you have a spiritual guide, or companion, or even muse, but it comes with a responsibility, a need to believe, trust, respect, and give time to developing that communication. In my case, time to understand your unique voice, which can only be expressed through my vocabulary, making it confusing at best, open to accusations of delusion at worst.
Oh! I have to pause and re-read your gentle words, for I am being too hard on myself, and that could, if I let it, if you let it, lay a burden on you of calming me down or soothing my struggle. But I know it is by putting one foot in front of the other that has got us to this pass and moved my contact with you from aspirational to palpable. As I fell back from my head into my heart, I felt a softening, a reminder that this dialogue is soul to soul; therefore, I need to look beneath my disappointment and my self-criticism to why this matters to me. Why, when I write those words, do tears come to my eyes? Why does knowing the balm of spirit matter to me, knowing that what affects one cell within humanity affects all cells?
I know there is a negative side to that as well, but for now, I choose to concentrate on the healing, the soothing, and explore how that feeling of self-responsibility seems to accompany a sense of self-forgiveness … let me pause here for a moment … when I feel the balm of spirit, as I do now, I feel the forgiveness comes from beyond the self, from a source that understands my frailties and my failings and loves me anyway. That gives me pause for thought.
This is opening up so much for me, and we have hardly begun, but that is because it is the silt along the foundation of my progress so far. It is the crushed shells that have cut my feet and the rocky terrain with its hidden fissures, and yet it is the warm water over my ankles also, the sight of the horizon all around me, and a reminder that I choose this life as I choose this dialogue wherever it takes me. I am looking forward to it too.
from: Astille
21 June 2026
Beloved one, I greet you on this Solstice day, a time when the movement of time is more apparent, even more so with the unusual heat you are encountering at this time. We talk so much of spirals and yet mankind is slow to grasp the guidance within the cycles of nature all around them and within them. I say this because this is what is happening with you, this imperative, as you call it, to explore the outworking of the teachings you have absorbed has been promoted by cycles of your own: retirement and health concerns for yourself and loved ones. Cycles which have a way of concentrating the mind and counting the years ahead.
One of the out-workings which gives a particular form and ease to our correspondence is that I am aware of the ancient teachings you have absorbed and so we share a vocabulary and that gives us a good foundation to build upon. That said, I do not share your impatience with yourself. I understand that to you forty years of spiritual study seems like a long time, indeed it is more than half your lifetime, but this is where we differ. To have dedicated more than half your lifetime to something which has been so challenging on so many levels is a credit to you in our eyes, but a disappointment in yours. How, you ask yourself, could I have taken so long to grasp the nettle of self-responsibility and freewill walking lock step throughout life? How could I have felt so lonely when I was never alone?
All these things lead to you berating yourself and yet what we see is you rising above the victim identification and coming to accept that you are subject to the will of the Creator. Then in your later years turning your attention to trying to unpick the lessons within that journey. Lessons like cooperating with the spirals of life, listening to your inspiration and giving weight to it. Lessons that reflect on life while in life when the impact of that simple act can still be felt. In that context seven hundred years is a drop in the ocean beloved one …
… and that brings me on to my subject for today, which is karma. Another apparently simple concept — cause and effect — but so much more complex in its workings because it unites the eternal with the everyday. You have already mentioned your realisation that perhaps it was no accident that your family background created challenges for you as a child, which would need to be addressed later as part of your spiritual awakening. You surmised that your soul chose your family for that very reason, and you would be correct, but — and there is always a but — your soul creates the context for the fulfilment of purpose; the detailed actions, reactions, or inactions are up to you.
Not only do you have to take account of the impact of free will but also the accretion of karma from past lives upon your current life. There is one unassailable truth, which is that the actions of life have to be accounted for within life, not in the afterlife. In short, if you cause harm to another in life, then aspects of those two souls will come together, maybe thousands of years later, so that they have a chance to assuage the karma that was created, and that cycle will repeat until that karma is assuaged.
Now I know you already know and have accepted this aspect of truth, but I also know it makes your head spin. You find it inconceivable that spirals of unresolved karma can continue to create difficulties in a completely different set of circumstances. How could anyone possibly predict that an intractable difficulty within a relationship, or even between countries, or religions, is caused and maintained by something so impenetrable? But that is just it, beloved one, no one needs to revisit, uncover, or understand the root causes; they just need to allow love to flow through the very bones of the dispute and make whole what was broken so long ago. It will never be the words, the treaties, or monuments that create the healing; it will always and forever be the acceptance of love, shared humanity, and purpose. The shift, when it comes, is instantaneous, silent, everlasting, intimate, and yet felt by the whole world. There is an intake of breath and a long exhale as ocean currents and weather patterns settle within the hearts and minds of all.
You know have experienced these moments of release yourself, but you also live uncomfortably with your knowledge of the accretion of karma within this life. You are resigned to it remaining so as people pass to Spirit, but it leaves an undercurrent of sadness which is helpful and unhelpful in equal measure. It fuels your curiosity, which is helpful, but angles its beam towards the negative, which is unhelpful. Fortunate then you have a lighting technician at your disposal to redirect that beam towards the fulfilment of purpose as a whole, which includes light and dark alike.
from: Zanne
22 June 2026
Dear Astille, I could not reply yesterday because I was caught up in the spiral of life. A beautiful spiral as the young man whose birth I witnessed and assisted with came to visit with his own baby and lovely new wife. He has been living abroad as an adult, so I have not had much contact with him and have never met her, so this was a delight. There was such ease between us all, even though there is an age gap of some fifty years. It was like being with family as I recognised the unbreakable bond between us. It was a simple meeting, four generations sharing a meal — our eldest son joined us — and a reminder that karma does not always imply struggle; sometimes it can imply joy too.
We then boiled in the heat on the way home, so I was exhausted. London in a heatwave is like being baked alive.
from: Astille
22 June 2026
Beloved one, I am not standing at the edge of the racetrack of your life, stopwatch in hand counting the minutes. I am with you, enjoying the moment, the contact, the ease, and the joy. These are the times when I join in with your reflections about what the passing of the years has meant, the changing of the guard, so to speak, as the young people you were with yesterday hold a different future in their hands, as well as a very different history — as became apparent when the landmarks of your youth were met with blank stares.
But that did not matter because love was the currency that flowed between you, and each recognised that they were touching base with family. Your gathering brought together three continents, captured memories that all will return to and reflect upon. In a way, you blessed the son of the son you blessed at birth, and he blessed you in return with love.
That is all that matters, beloved one, each recognising that humanity is one organism, dependent on each other, however fleetingly, to provide milestones along the path of life. For as you pointed out, the landmarks of your past, you were back there, younger and quicker perhaps, but still wondering what the future holds, just as you do now. Your references to your popular culture may have been met with blank stares, but it was you walking down memory lane, not them. They were creating their own memories whilst you were remembering the colours of the past and the vibrancy of hope that flooded your country as it recovered from war. Let us pray that it does not take another war to awaken that vibrancy of hope once again.
23 June 2026
from: Zanne
Dear Astille, I started writing to you just three and a half hours ago about the torturous heat we are experiencing at the moment. I anticipated an exchange about how humanity has created its own misery, when suddenly, thanks to the gentle intervention of a much-loved and respected inspirer, things became a lot more personal and I have to admit tears flowed.
In a nutshell, what he was pointing to was my abiding tendency to step back in situations where I feel people to be more gifted than me, more educated, more worthy of recognition, even chosen in some way. He was not being unkind, quite the opposite, but he was pointing to a pattern which I recognise. One which my survival instinct forced me to overcome in the workplace, although I always felt like an imposter, but I have not managed to overcome in my spiritual development. Somewhere I still cling to the belief that others are chosen and I am not, at times and with external encouragement, not just unchosen but positively a danger to the spiritual fulfilment of others that I loved and this was painful.
In part it is why I have held you at arm’s length for a long time. I suspect it is partly why I have embarked on my journey through the spiritual teachings because if I cannot be one of the chosen ones perhaps the best I can manage is to understand the teachings that must be instinctive in them and try to consciously apply them to my life … gosh, no wonder I cried … in order to make myself acceptable to God. I cannot believe that I just wrote that, with all I know, all I have learnt, all the love I have accepted — there is still this residue of being eternally limited in some fundamental way and I am terrified of overstepping my place.
Of course, it makes sense if that has been—still is—a major part of my spiritual journey, then the family I grew up in and the spiritual group I joined were perfect environments for me to learn, perfect. The first was my soul’s choice, the second was my personality’s, and I have not come out from under that cloud. Well, no one is going to rescue me except myself, and I can’t do that alone.
I’m sorry for holding you at arm’s length for so long. I was frightened then, and I’m frightened now because, as I have repeated frequently over the last few months, ‘fine words butter no parsnips’. All the fine writing in the world could still leave my heart occluded by this residue of self-denial, and it is so painful to realise that. But not as painful, I imagine, as realising it only in the afterlife. I have time to face this, so I am grateful for this pain.
23 June 2026
from: Astille
Beloved one, dry your tears, for every heart within this world is occluded by something, be it fear, disbelief, anger, and yet they know it not. So to know it is a gift, to bear the pain of this realisation with sadness and with gratitude is a portal through which the light of learning can flow.
We talk a great deal about love and learning as if they are two separate stands of healing, but they are intimate companions. Love creates the fertile soil for learning, but realisation and acceptance are like a soft rain shower that awakens the seedlings underground and encourages them into the light. That is what has happened with you this morning, and your tears were the soft rain shower for they released this seedling from the soil and encouraged it to grow. But I would say this, that no seedling grows until it is ready, and readiness depends not just on the seedling but on the cycles of nature and the needs of the soul.
So breathe, take a pause, make a cup of tea, and feel my presence. Let it steady you. Let it lift you. Let me walk in silence with you, as we together feel the orbits of the planets, the pull of gravity, the weight of the air currents barely moving, the heat rising.
…
In your world, you are encouraged to step back. Step back from sadness, from anger, from conflict, and that is good advice. But what do you step back into? If it is a void, then negativity and fear tend to follow, for nature abhors a vacuum, isn’t that what they say? What I am encouraging you to do is step back into love, for the past cannot be changed, and your cry this morning was about the time you may have wasted. Beloved one, only your soul knows your timespan on this planet, and that timespan is closely related to your life’s purpose, so who is to say you’ve wasted time? A lesson that is hard won can be the most successful lesson of all, and no lesson, not one, will not re-present itself again and again, in different forms and formats.
There is not one spiritual Master, Guru, or religious figure that has not nursed doubts, accrued failings, made mistakes, or passed to Spirit feeling they could have done more, trusted more, believed more deeply. Not one. That is the path within Creation; there is always more to learn, and life is never what you think it is. You take your cues from all around you, and you interpret those cues again and again in different ways, attribute different meanings, and seek to steady yourself on the ship of a culture that you did not build. You seek to please an invisible Captain or seek to dominate them, but that is all because you have a telescope clamped to one eye. Put down the telescope and look at what is around you, what you have built, in unison with Spirit; see the hand of the Almighty upon the tiller and concentrate on the horizon and allow its mystery to unfold.
24 June 2026
From: Zanne
Good morning Astille, forgive the brief message but I just wanted to check in and say I am thinking about you. I really appreciated your words yesterday. Do you have a story to tell? Surely this cannot be just about me? What’s it like being a spiritual guardian — one who can be ignored and held at arm’s length for years? Anyway, thank you for yesterday, it meant a lot. Once again you have dug me out of a hole of my own making. I love you. Thank you.
24 June 2026
From: Astille
Beloved one, you made me smile, for I am aware of your thoughts all the time; no device is needed, although I appreciate you wish to keep a record. I appreciate your invitation, so to speak, to share my story, but it is not independent of you, or indeed all of humanity. Even though I have never lived on your earthly realm, we share the same purpose and serve the same master, which is Love.
In essence, my work is no different from your work you do as a healer. We both work in our own way to focus channels of Light so it can illuminate what the God inside of those we work with need, with as little interference from us as possible. Through our personalities, we seek to calm and bring reassurance so that people can receive and accept the healing that they need. We offer a safe and non-judgemental haven to reflect upon a noisy and distracted world that has increasingly lost its way. We are all here to serve Creation; collectively, we are the outworking of Love. The greatest gift anyone can bring to humanity is that of unconditional Love, for when humanity feels separated from Love, they feel fear but rarely recognise its origin.
It is easy to recognise fear when staring down a wild beast, but more difficult when your demons are mere shadows across your soul, open to interpretation and exaggeration — as you discovered yesterday. These mercurial, wily energies are merely seeking the balm of love they instinctively know to be their birthright, but are blindfolded by life with its neon idols and false promises.
You know yourself how this toxic spiral encourages people to believe that they are unloveable. It twists in upon itself to form a sphere of impenetrable pain that keeps rolling across the harshest territory, collecting more pain as it goes. Difficult to believe then that a caress can feel like an admonishment at times. So patience is all we can offer until one thread detaches itself and creates a small opening for the light of Love to silently enter into the dark centre.
You have been there, beloved one; we both know this is a road you have travelled, and when you travel it once, you are very likely, in fact, it is inevitable, you will do so again because it creates a bedrock of expectation against which you measure all future challenges. Not because you are bad or a failure, but because the lessons of life spiral throughout life until you recognise the patterns and release yourself from them.
That release comes from accepting the Love that entered in and grew within the darkness. Once you accept you are loved and forgive yourself, then the knots untangle and the understanding is released. That sphere of suffering transforms into an incubator for understanding and compassion, but that understanding and compassion – for self and others – only comes when the light of Love is recognised for what it is.
This is the path of the spiritual guardian. I will follow you through imperatives such as this, forests and brambles alike, and accompany you every step of the way. Not to rescue you, but to hold aloft the lantern of purpose and meaning and offer a wider perspective, should you pause to enquire. When you are lost in the darkness, it is my lantern that beckons you onwards. When all seems lost and helpless and your determination falters, it is my gentle hand on your back that reminds you you are loved.
I know that yesterday you put a very negative spin on this work that you have undertaken to do with me, a typically harsh spin, if I may say. Whilst you might berate yourself for keeping me at arm’s length, in your words, the reverse is also true; you have never given up and asked me to carry you across the bramble patches either. That’s not to say that there were not times when I might have had the better compass, but I kept it in my pocket for when you were ready, and here we are.
25 June 2026
from: Zanne
Well, at least one of us had a compass! I think I was blindfolded! But seriously, I question how helpful anyone can be to anyone else on a spiritual path because we are all so unique. It must be different for you.
My experience is that any discussion of spiritual matters tends to go a number of ways. Either: I am preached at by those who know it all already, I bore those who don’t wish to engage with any ‘woo woo’, or I am threatening in some way and people shut down, or I feel we are on totally different paths and see no point in continuing. In short, face-to-face discussions have rarely gone well — maybe because they are too personal or precious — and that is why I am where I am some forty years on.
As I write these words, the penny drops … I’ve been looking in the wrong mirror, and not for the first time. This imperative, this journey, is an inward one, an essentially lonely one until, or unless, I deepen my relationship with you, which, although a pleasure and a delight, is something I have been strangely reluctant to accept. It’s one thing to believe that once I return to Spirit I can make peace with my failures in the warm embrace of love, but to accept that that love is available to me now and I am capable of wilfully ignoring it is a wake-up call.
Was I subconsciously punishing myself? Is this the path of self-forgiveness, the path of peace? Am I brave enough to accept the love that has been freely offered before? I am under no illusion that this love is a magic carpet, but I do know it now and I trust it. It brings with it a peace and a sense of being part of eternity, which opens up my mind to a wider perspective. Makes it easier to accept who I am, failings and all, and believe and trust that I am not alone and never have been. This is what you bring, Astille, a mirror in which I can see my soul looking back with compassion and love. Thank you.
25 June 2026
from: Astille
It may seem strange to you that being accepted, in the way you are now accepting me, is a balm for my soul. It feels as if potential is being realised, circles are being closed, and the groundwork of a new chapter is being laid. A chapter, I hasten to say, that is as unwritten for me as it is for you.
As a spiritual companion, you always hope to be of service and to have that service make a difference, not just to one person but to leave a legacy of light within humanity that might provide a spark of inspiration to another one day. Rather like your meditation just now, where you concentrated healing on your partner but felt the circle of light grow and the focus of healing expand across humanity and to this planet as a whole. No opportunity is ever lost to send the love of Spirit to humanity.
Should it be accepted, be it in one individual or a community, it is that synergy that makes it powerful and effective in life. But do not mistake power for force; healing will forever be gentle and accepted, or rejected, voluntarily. But it is recognised by the soul; all souls, it is just that their personality has to be aligned and their free will engaged for that love to be effective.
I hear your question. If healing can begin by being focussed on one individual and then expand to embrace all of humanity in an instant, is that true of evil or hatred? I also feel your reluctance to keep typing, for fear that my answer will be yes, or that your interpretation of my answer will be misleading. But let me be very clear, spiritual guidance is always loving; it cannot be anything else. It is always gentle and accepts that free will is sacrosanct. Just as fear rose in your heart as you contemplated this question, so fear rises within humanity and has a contagious energy within it which is easily manipulated. Not by Spirit, but by mankind, and what makes that so difficult for Spirit is that it lowers the vibration rate of humanity, making the influence of Spirit less accessible. But that lower vibration rate is seductive too, for it engages people who already feel unworthy or unloveable, and promises them power through expressing their inner self and finding it acceptable in the eyes of others. It is seductive for its power is overt.
Here we are discussing the stark fact that there are two sides to every coin. There can be an over-reliance on a spiritual guide, as much as there can be a resistance. There can be a misunderstanding that a spiritual guide is the voice of your soul, whereas it is / I am, a close companion and advocate, but your soul is greater than me. There is an increasing misunderstanding within humanity that the planet is there for their benefit alone, and they are free to plunder what they need. They are not; indeed, I would venture that mankind has almost reached the outer limits of what the Creator will allow. Collectively, people have come to believe they are more powerful than the Creator; they are not.
However, as you know, the Creator has taken steps to try to stem the ignorance and greed that is being cultivated on such a scale, and the Bearers of Light — those who do not struggle to listen to the voice of their soul or to follow the purpose of their lives — are finding their feet and taking up their places in the world where they will have influence and eventually power. They, you might say, are the collective light side of the coin of darkness that has been uppermost for far too long. Whether they will be successful depends on the collective free will of humanity to heed their message and accept their light of knowledge and wisdom. If they do not, then the Creator will prove Its supremacy one way or another, for the Earth is precious and humanity is precious too, for nowhere else is there the opportunity to learn and grow through experience.
But that experience, just as you realised yesterday, does not mean getting everyone or everything else to change, but changing yourself. Becoming the greater spiritual being that you truly are and bringing your light to life.
26 June 2026 a.m.
from: Zanne
Good morning, a morning on which the impact of two earthquakes is being felt in Venezuela, and indeed I am writing once again with sweat dripping from my forehead. Your words of yesterday were very prescient, and as I watched the aftermath of the earthquake, I thought of another inspirer’s statement years ago that ‘Mother Nature has a few tricks up her sleeve’. It’s an obvious statement, but mankind really only does change when they are forced to.
I have also been musing — while gently sweating — on your words yesterday about there being two sides to every coin. Becoming over-reliant on a spiritual guide feels risky and lazy. Risky because I can never be sure it is not my superego in disguise, and secondly, I know from experience that any form of stress or need is likely to corrupt any communication channel that is open.
I’m not sure I really know, even after forty years, what the voice of my soul sounds like. Indeed, I suspect it sounds like nothing at all. I tend to explain it to myself as intuition, and the instinctive grasping of opportunities or making choices that have turned out for the best. But even then, I may credit my soul too much with guiding me towards the positive aspects of my life, while ignoring its influence on the life experiences I would consider negative.
Having said that, I would credit my soul with my ability to endure the single most difficult and traumatic experience I have gone through in this life. That is not to say that for many years I questioned whether I had misread my soul’s direction and placed myself in harm’s way, so to speak, without good reason. But as I emerge from the other side, I credit myself with following my soul blindly, trusting it faithfully, and acknowledging its wisdom. Whether it was necessary, I do not know. Whether it was ‘ordained,’ I do not know. I am resigned, happy even, to wait until the extended period of reckoning when I pass so that I can view my experience within the round, so to speak.
I think that last statement represents the shift I made, unknowingly, from blindfolded self-determination to trusting something greater. Something beyond time where the twelve years of suffering paled into insignificance against the long-term benefit to my soul and past and future lives. Make no mistake, this was a subtle and gentle shift in my foundations eclipsed at the time by my raging at the injustice of it all and berating myself for my ignorance and failings. Perhaps because I was so abusive to myself, and no doubt to others, the amount of healing and self-forgiveness I stacked up was considerable, which did give a lot of material to be used in the rebuilding of my foundations.
As I write this, I wonder if that is one definition of faith? Some part of me understood that by staying the course, accepting the suffering that had been largely self-imposed, I opened the door to the light, like the thread unpicking itself from the sphere of impenetrable pain that rolled constantly over harsh terrain. Is that what happened to me? The light gently elbowed its way into my consciousness, was accepted, appreciated, and eventually relied upon. Is this what is culminating now in this communication with Astille? Is this the light side of the dark coin that I picked up and carried for so many years? I suspect it is, and that lifts my heart and my spirits.
Even if it is transitory, it feels important and everlasting because, I suspect, once you know this Light, you never, ever forget it. Once you feel the presence of love, in whatever form, it feels like a lifetime companion that is a bridge between Spirit and life and therefore eternal. And, more than anything, you know that this Love embraces both sides of the coin that is you. It knows the worst of you, the best of you, and your struggle to be true to the soul within, which is a reflection of the Creative principle.
26 June 2026
from: Astille
I am not asking anything of you that you have not longed for along your spiritual path, a spiritual path may I say that has been as long as it has been circuitous, but circuitous is productive because it gives ideas, reactions, and instinctive objections time to mature and crystallise into new levels of understanding. No one or nothing has overtaken you, or swept you away, or made demands; it is more like a waltz where two professional dancers naturally adapt to move in harmony.
In truth, that is always how successful spiritual partnerships are formed; both parties learn to move to the music, the music of the spheres, and allow themselves to flow together within the rhythmic flow of the music. Each one more attuned to one instrument over another, but both harmonising first with the orchestra and then each other. In our case, we both committed to the essence of the Creator, universal or natural law, held within our souls and then chose each other as our dance partner. You choose these communications, as do I, and our appreciation of them is mutual.
But, you may well ask, what purpose do they serve? For myself, it is for you to uncover the beauty and the potential within your own soul, whilst in life. You said earlier that I hold up a mirror to your soul, and I would agree with that. I know this is an inner debate you have had with other spiritual guidance you have received, where you were expressing gratitude for their insights, and they replied that they were merely pointing you to your own inner beauty and readiness. You had two responses to that: firstly, you felt they had dismissed your gratitude, and secondly, gently challenged to consider that you had so much more within you that you were presently accessing. That, perhaps surprisingly, was uncomfortable because it challenged your dependency on an outside source and plunged you back, a little, into loneliness.
There is a conundrum that has to be faced within spiritual partnerships, which is that of loneliness, or to be more accurate, the absolute individuality of the soul. It is easy to talk about everyone on Earth being an individual, that frees people up to act in different ways, explore different attitudes and paths through life. But that core cell of individuality is, you might say, an essential component to the soul — it alone can fulfil, or deny, its purpose whilst accepting it is integral to the whole of Creation — and therefore that fulfilment, or denial, affects the whole.
So there is an essential element of aloneness, individuality if you will, which requires the personality taking full responsibility. A spiritual guide stands alongside those choices; it does not make them, the personality does, and in the final analysis, the soul does. That is what is truly meant by, ‘freewill is sacrosanct’, self-responsibility is also sacrosanct and —this is where the beauty lies —it becomes powerful, tenacious and gentle when it is aligned to the Will of the Creator. It does not work in opposition but in harmony and stands for, not against, and that can be a lonely place to stand in this world at this time.
This, my beloved one, is why inspirers step forward. We understand that conundrum as we walk along its margins all the time, stepping forward, stepping back, while at all times loving our charges and knowing that that love, if accepted, can ease the burden of self-flagellation. For it can be hard for us at times to watch the pain and disappointment people inflict upon themselves, the harsh self-judgements they absorb as they move through life, whilst seemingly being blind to the beauty within their soul. So we shine our lights in the forests of despair and maintain our patient vigils, for we too are observant to the needs of that soul while in life, for that is where the learning through experience dwells and that is the purpose of life.
28 June 2026
from: Astille
Beloved one, I would like to point to a different struggle, one which the last two days has been amply demonstrated in your own life during the apparent gap in our correspondence. I say apparent because in truth there is no gap, just a shift in focus. And that struggle is how mankind copes with peace, or to be more specific, how you fill your time when the outer struggles have abated and the inner turmoil has ceased?
Well, the answer to that over the last two days is that you created a different type of struggle for yourself. As if a heatwave was not enough to contend with, you decided to engage with online technology and create a platform that would offer these words up for others to read, should they choose to. This element of choice was important to you, so you were willing to engage in mundane and frustrating tasks that would probably have taken people a third of your age an hour or so.
What remained during this time, when everything else spiralled out of your comfort zone, was your commitment to exploring, recording, and sharing, and that is admirable. But it is also true that whenever peace descends, the desire for distraction, the need to feel potent in the world, emerges from the shadows. This is not a criticism; it is an observation. Mankind is restless, and you in particular are restless, but I don’t know if you know what you are restless for.
You have assumed for a long time that it was the search for love and acceptance. But you have it now. Is it a search for purpose and meaning? Are you concerned you will leave life without fulfilling your purpose? Partly I would say that is true, if you dismiss your knowledge that the soul decides when the time has come to depart this world, and that decision means that their purpose here has been fulfilled.
But there is a more profound answer, in my view, and that is that this restless nature is because instinctively you know there is more, but you don’t know what it is. While in life there are three limitations that weigh upon the spiritual personality: the passage of time and the amorphous nature of the soul’s purpose, to use your words. The third limitation is the one I would like to discuss, your lack of potency. Now this is a complex area because humanity is free to explore aspects of life that might be harmful to life itself, but the potency of which I speak is about the inability of mankind to adjust the great spirals of Creation to meet their need.
Now I warned this was a complex area because you have enough examples in your own life of people waiting for the “time to be right”, and never achieving anything. You have enough examples in your own life of running before you could walk, and both of these point to the main point I am making — which is that every member of humanity is subject to the Laws of Creation and those Laws move at their own pace. The real potency you have is to be alert to their movements and to match your feet and your free will to their rhythm and their beat.
Now there is no certain way of knowing this. Are these discussions running before walking? Only time will tell, but I will tell you this: every step creates learning and the distance covered deepens that learning. Stagnation and procrastination create learning too, but that is often after passing from this life and so that approach has a tendency to lead to regret. Of course, regret is a common currency either way, but if you ask me I am happier to run beside you than to sit quietly watching one portal after another pass by unopened.
28 June 2026
from: Zanne
Dear Astille, your words made me smile because you are so correct. A period without something to strive for or struggle with is not something I welcome. While I bemoan the long-term struggles I have created and rage against the petty annoyances of life — all of which are increasing as I grapple with new technology and the lack of human interaction — I find periods of uninterrupted time challenging. I quite like being needed, I guess.
Yesterday, after hours in the sweltering heat dealing with AI and robots, a real person, with the wonderful title of Happiness Engineer, sorted me out, and it was the interaction that delighted me, as much as the outcome. It was all done remotely, just like this, but it made me smile as I could tell the quality of the person behind the job title. I’ve never really thought about how much of my day-to-day communication takes place just like this and how at times it is immensely rewarding because the humanity of the person shines through, just like your humanity shines through, which seems a strange thing to say. Your understanding of humanity is so profound, even though you have never lived in a human body, and your patience is formidable. That was the key to the success of the engineer yesterday; they were very patient, even though I bet they are measured by some algorithm that instructs them to limit personal contact time.
I was wondering why I was explaining that interaction to you, but then realised that to align myself with the spirals of Creation, I would have to be patient. I cannot engineer happiness, but I can cooperate with it and feel myself to be potent by doing so. That would be joyful, to feel part of the spiral of Creation and to fulfil my part, just as I do just now.
I’m reminded of a phrase I often used at work, “better to seek forgiveness than wait for permission”. So I did run before I could walk; for me, it was an act of survival. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt others in the process, but I also think that we all must be free to test things out before embodying them, and we should be patient with one another. We all test drive our new personas one way or another — after all, we don’t buy a new car without driving it first. It’s easier to recognise that in young people, but for my money, curiosity and playfulness are desirable in adults.
Is that the same as restlessness? Maybe in part, but it seems to me that finding your path to your amorphous soul is always going to involve some trial and error, discovering what persona seems comfortable and what does not. Thinking back, I think that might have been the value of my childhood, unencumbered by strong parental views, norms, and expectations. I was left pretty much to my own devices. One of my friends was incarcerated for being “beyond care and control”, which I narrowly escaped because I had already left home.
Just as I was finishing writing to you, I received another message from a Happiness Engineer, which I did not expect at all as it is a weekend, and they have sorted me out yet again and brought tears of happiness to my eyes with their patient manner and kind words. Maybe their job title really does say it all!
29 June 2026
from: Astille
Beloved one, there is a sense of release and relief in you today, which is good to see. Relief because you are no longer baking in the heat and release because you have, with the help of your Happiness Engineer, got your blog up and running, so this does not feel like such a selfish pursuit. I know this was not how you were thinking of it; after all, although it is intensely and intimately there is still that imperative driving you to share. Not as a teacher or expert but as a curious and reflective participant in life, love, and spirit.
It is inevitable that those who embrace love also wish to share that embrace with others because they understand the life-changing quality of love and its ability to heal the internal rifts which lead to suffering, even in extreme cases to death. In your case, this is matched by an understanding that you, although cannot change people, that everyone is on their own individual path through life, the terrain ahead is either similar or complementary. But that does not take away the pain of watching people recreate their suffering, their isolation, their despair over and again. All the easier to recognise when it is a landscape you know well and have occupied yourself.
I want to return to your comment about quite liking being needed and although I know it is not quite the same, the truth is that a great deal of healing is achieved through being still and opening to your soul. It is a silent, invisible transmission of light which fills first the vessel and then the world and even if words are not spoken, it is akin to a prayer. Strangely, without the direction of words, that prayer is uninterrupted on its journey into life. Life as a whole, not just a part or a person.
You have often dreamt of the whole world pausing in unison at the stroke of midnight on the last day of each year. Of perhaps two minutes of quiet reflection and the silent acceptance of peace pervading everyone. You imagine them opening their eyes and seeing themselves reflected back in whomsoever they are with, no strangers, no visitors, no interlopers, just another aspect of the collective that is humanity. Shared purpose, interdependent, and now, filled with peace, love, and hope. Prayer has changed the course of history before, why not again?
I am not suggesting that when you feel the need to feel needed, you sit in silent prayer for the remainder of the day, but beloved one, you too can pause for a few minutes and allow what is around you to fill you and to fill this world. You too can send your love to those in need, for that transmission of light does travel and will be received. I know you do this already, but I would remind you of an old koan: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? You don’t need acceptance or acknowledgement to know that you are needed; you can respond to your own eyes, heart, and head, and if that response is unencumbered by any expectations, then it too will be potent and create no negative reaction in the recipient.”
29 June 2026
from: Zanne
That was lovely, thank you so much. I would like to believe that this communication, this transmission of light, is like a prayer, a way of channeling peace into the world and awakening beauty. That’s what I have taken from your words this morning, and I am letting it sink in.
I know there is something that passes between us that feels beautiful and precious; what I don’t know is if it is captured in the words. I hope so. This morning, in particular, I felt as if you handed me a bunch of the most beautiful and delicate flowers; their perfume filled the room, and I arranged them as best I could to preserve their integrity and show off their beauty. Then I stood back to admire their arrangement, hopeful that not only I and those close to me would inhale their perfume and feel its effect.
I cannot know, like the koan you mentioned, I cannot know the impact of these words and neither should I really, for that would set up expectations and interrupt the flow. I always thought that should I ever write, for it was not a given, that if it were published at all it would be after my death. But I take from your words this morning that these morning transmissions are like praying and so have an effect while I am in life by praying for this world and for peace upon it. For conflict to end and dialogue to begin. For all people to be free and to know the freedom of listening to their souls and knowing they are loved.
That is what is precious, not that it is rare or limited, but because it is exactly the opposite, an abundance of love freely given. I am trying to capture the captivating perfume of what a gift life is. What a gift the freedom to be able to live, love, and learn is, and yet so few of us breathe it in and feel its joyful, healing balm.
Beloved one, take a deep breath and sit with me a while. You have succeeded, have you not, in creating a letter box for us which others can access if they so wish. You had to carve it out with unfamiliar tools and you sweated in the heat, but kept going. Kept walking away and kept returning with another idea for a way forward. Is this not an analogy of your life? One foot in front of another, despair and then an instinct, intuition, and once again the right foot moves ahead of the left, and another milestone is that much nearer.
But what of the milestones in life? What are they and what do they really mean? I guess it would come as no surprise to hear that in spirit we measure life by the level of acceptance and peace within a person, not the size of their bank account or job title. In spirit, we measure the level of self-forgiveness in a person by their compassion for others. Those who are cruel to others are often cruel to others. Those who are afraid of their inner demons often place those demons on the backs of others and travel with their crossbow. So many people in life run from their inner selves, not really because they are afraid of their darkness, although that might be their suspicion, but because they are afraid that their inner beauty is too fragile to survive in this world. It will get cut to shreds by scything criticism, vitriol, or worse. They will be mocked and shamed, and they will have to abandon their own beauty in order to redeem themselves and — although they could not articulate this — and then they would be totally alone with their self-blame and shame. They would create the abandonment they so fear, so better to ignore their inner beauty and armour plate their fragility.
Shame, like victimhood, are toxic bedfellows; they really do throw a shadow over your path and occlude the light from the stars above. It is as if the stars mock you until the spark of light within you reignites your faith in starlight and opens your eyes to the beauty both around you and within you.
I am grateful you kept going, truly I am. Now rest and let our words find their place in this world.
30 June 2026
from: Zanne
Thank you for your kind words. I guess tenacity has its good side too, and I hope I have got us where we need to be even without my Happiness Engineer. That title still tickles me.
Shame is a bedfellow I know well, although perhaps not as a bedfellow because in my experience there is not much sleeping involved when you are feeling the heat of your burning cheeks. For me, the quiet of the night became my solace in many ways and has remained so. I’m not sure about this, so I’m thinking out loud: why is shame so toxic? Partly I think because you have to be vulnerable in order to learn, and if you allow yourself to be vulnerable, then shame becomes a much feared enemy.
It never did overwhelm me, but it came close. I had to keep it at bay to keep working, earning money, and caring for my family. Most people are in that kind of situation, needing to keep going whatever the cost, but it does mean accepting the lesson and moving on is placed on hold until you feel strong enough to hold up a mirror to your own face and accept your errors. Maybe that’s a given that we heal only when we are ready to, and that is something not entirely within our control.
It’s beginning to feel like a battle between the personality and the soul, but maybe that’s for another day? If my last couple of days are anything to go by, it’s my soul that’s kept me on task, and my personality that’s walked away. But my soul won the battle … thankfully. Until tomorrow.
1 July 2026
from: Astille
A new month and new harvest of learning and exploration. What will she say today? I hear your thoughts. Is she even a she? Ah! Then the barrier comes down. Such a sensitive subject within parts of your world at the moment, are we really going to explore this? Do I realise how much offence could be taken?
But why would that be, beloved one? You may find it difficult to categorise me into a gender, and yet you do not judge me. You love me, and that love is not based on my gender, or even my lack of it in the terminology of your world. Of course, it helps not to have a body because that signals a category that may not suit the personality inhabiting it, or challenge the soul within to inhabit the gender that they chose for their incarnation, which their personality may be rebelling against. But the reasons for any rebellion are myriad, and the identification of gender one way or another might be a convenient battleground but possibly not the actual reason why the personality feels at war within itself and the world around them.
No one really chooses to make themselves uncomfortable in their own body. When it is not out of a reaction against their family but an inborn imperative, you might say, then it is their soul speaking, and their soul will understand full well the challenges that might present within the culture that person was born into. I say, ‘born into’ here because, of course, people move to different countries and continents from those chosen by their soul prior to their birth.
So often in your world, what gets ascribed to gender is not primarily about the physiology of the body but the cultural norms that are automatically applied. Often these have more to do with the conservation of resources, power, and control rather than any neutral assessment of the relative strengths of a person or their abilities. Masculinity and femininity are equal and intertwined; or the human race would cease to exist. They are intertwined in every individual, and the different shades within each personality mark out its soul’s purpose and the history of past lives. Within the oversoul of every human being, there is a mixture of gender roles, racial history, and over the ages—by this I mean periods of 2,000 years—and an accretion of learning about what it means to inhabit those identifications and how it hinders, or accelerates, the learning within that oversoul.
This kind of information and understanding really could help mankind to first accept themselves and then to accept and respect others, knowing that they can never really know the soul path of another. Making it easier to recognise that although their struggles may be different to their own, everyone is seeking peace in their own way. Misguided, perhaps, clumsily, probably, blindfolded, almost certainly.
Is this offensive to anyone? I would venture not, for we in spirit understand the struggle without judging, love the person, and do our very best to point to the learning that they are accruing as they stumble through life, should they enquire of us. What we hope of humanity is that they too respect their fellow travellers and assist them when they stumble and fall. Everyone is seeking an identity of sorts, and for some, that changes with the wind; for others, it is a long, hard road that sadly causes some to fall by the wayside and return home early.
2 July 2026
from: Zanne
I have spent a long time musing on your words of yesterday, words which at first I feared would create offence, should they ever be read, and wanted to resist hearing them, let alone recording. But that was a breakdown of trust within me. Why would spirit be anything else but cognisant, more cognisant than me, of the challenges people are facing in this world? The fact is I am the one that is ignorant to many of the challenges people live through and live with. I may have some general awareness but no deep understanding of what it takes to stand in their shoes. Spirit does, and they know what these challenges represent, not just to the individual but within humanity as a whole.
For so much of my life, women’s equality has been an issue for me personally, and I have both been discriminated against and benefitted from the equality movement within my life. I have lived through waves of progression and am witnessing waves of oppression. I have seen and participated in action and watch as the reaction comes into play, but only in one country. I have briefly experienced different attitudes and behaviours in other countries but long enough to feel gratitude for the country and the time into which I was born.
I am grateful you kept talking yesterday and that I did not censor you. It was a lesson in trust for me, not only in the detail of what you said but in the extent of the change you opened my eyes to. Things are changing, and logically, gender roles and other personal identifications will be part of that change if people are truly to experience freedom as a reality, not a slogan. Indeed, if equality is going to become a reality, at least for the majority of the world, then gender roles may be the least of it; politics, financial institutions and markets, religions, food production and distribution, climate change, education, work, and conflict all come to mind as needing an overhaul for inequality, manipulation, and greed threads through them all and enslaves people in so many different ways.
Total freedom and equality for all is a concept that is hard for me to imagine, even as an aspiration. There seem to be too many people on the planet to be sustained by its natural resources, and my brain cannot compute the reality of this country, the one I know best, becoming self-reliant in its food production anytime soon, let alone manufacturing or health care. So life will have to be simpler, quieter, more attuned to the seasons, and less attuned to so many anxiously making money for so few. If humanity is to thrive, then our interdependence on one another must become more of a lived reality rather than the hybrid form of connection we have now, which is mediated by the big tech companies who, in subtle ways, enslave our attention and create memes of discomfort which would not exist if we were in more direct contact with the human being behind the story.
2 July 2026
from: Astille
Beloved one, I believe congratulations are in order as you begin another year on this planet, one which has started rather well in my view. Each milestone is a marker along the path towards the light of understanding, and as this is your seventy-seventh year, that is a five in numerology. A time of positive life changes, freedom, and spiritual growth. If you add in the number seven, you welcome in deep spiritual awakening, introspection, and the pursuit of inner wisdom. I would say the last twelve thousand words would suggest that you did not need a manual or a road map; your soul just beckoned you forth, and you followed.
It’s important for me to say that this focus is not just about the end of life coming closer, or the recent encounters with ill health that you have both had; it is about furthering the commitment that you made to your soul and to your teachers, some forty years ago. A commitment to share their work in your words as best you can. A commitment to demonstrate a different approach to life, which, like our conversation yesterday and earlier today, is about developing a broader perspective, a spiritual vocabulary about the purpose and meaning of life itself.
People are many things: beautiful, creative, loving. They are capable of great love and profound fear. They can manifest hope and joy and embrace freedom, at the same time as denying those things in themselves and others. Overall, they are capable of great learning, and this planet, this beautiful planet, offers this learning through experience so that everyone on this planet and in spirit grows. You have had seventy-six years of loving, learning, and thriving; that is something to celebrate, is it not? It is a privilege to share this moment with you and your great friend and granddaughter on the morrow.
3 July 2026
from: Zanne
Feeling a little empty this morning, peaceful and content between two events, my birthday yesterday and celebrating our granddaughter’s tomorrow. She’s five today and I feel more emotional about her birthday than my own. She is just beginning her life and she has such character and presence; her younger brother does too, and when birthdays come around theirs seem so exciting, so important. I loved your words to me yesterday as my day concluded, gently and without drama, but filled with love and kindness from my family and friends.
The world just keeps turning, the reflections of life seem to fill my horizon and I see the action of love everywhere. I don’t know quite how to say this because it seems too fanciful even for me, but as I watch some horror unfold — admittedly at a distance — I feel a pang of sadness for the denial of love, not its destruction because I know love cannot be destroyed, but as if each event has a holographic image overlaid upon it that I am sensing, not seeing. The best description I can conjure up is that the love being denied or expressed creates an auric palette of shifting colour and pattern, so even in situations which would appear to be diametrically opposed to love, I am sensing its auric presence and relating to that. If I were to create a cartoon depiction of what I am imagining, the horror would be bright, bold and dramatic and full of expletives; the medics and officers would be more pastel shades and hovering over to one side would be a spiral of gold.
6 July 2026
from: Zanne
Dear Astille, I don’t suppose it will surprise you one little bit to know that since I last wrote, things have been turned upside down, well perhaps not upside down, but knocked sideways. We have been away with family, and while I am there, it is not that spirit drops into the background but that the unrestrained joy of being with the grandkids fills my soul. Their joy, their innocence, their abundant beauty just lifts my heart over and again. Their trust in the adults around them is profound, and they make everyone happy, even when they themselves are unhappy for one reason or another.
So it was more of a knock than perhaps it might have been at another time to receive correspondence that created anxiety within me that I have done something wrong, again. An old pattern I know, but one I cannot shift. There was no detail, just a vague warning, but given my past one, which I take personally, perhaps too much so. Clipped wings came to mind.
Fortunately, very fortunately, another much respected inspirer has sought to correct my fearful reaction, which included ceasing this contact. So yes, here I am, reaching out once more to feel your love and to remember why I am doing this. For myself, yes, for others — maybe one day.
6 July 2026
from: Astille
Let me speak, feel my presence, feel my love and breathe, beloved one, breathe. You cannot let the pathways of others, even when they crisscross yours, deflect you from your own purpose. You do not need reminding that within the aviary of souls no wings are ever clipped. Souls are free to fly wherever they need in pursuit of purpose, and yet the most important step is that first letting go of the perch and trusting that the air currents will lift you skywards. This you have done, over and again, this you have done, and here we are, beloved one. Here we are together, and there is work to do.
‘Work?’ I hear you question, ‘this isn’t work!’ But oh! Yes, it is, it is working on the fear that can paralyse you, working on the disbelief that can imprison you, and working on your failure to trust in the light that fills and guides you. You know the Source, and there is nothing, nothing at all wrong in pursuing the song of your soul through light and dark in equal measure. You can no more give up on this than I can give up on you. Love does not give up; it keeps moving towards its goal, and so do you, so will you.
But time is shorter now than it was some sixteen years ago when words were spoken that devastated you. Remembering them and recreating their effect after the lesson has been learnt helps no one, least of all you. Let the light shine in you and through you; you have created the most beautiful stained glass window for it to shine through. See the past for what it was and welcome in the future, for that is where hope lies, and not just for you but for all of humanity.
This is an important step in trust, beloved one. When the god within you brings you that which you need, take it to your heart; it is an answer to your prayers. May peace be with you.
7 July 2026
from: Zanne
Thank you for your words yesterday; they lifted my heart and chased away the shadow that lingered over me. One of the questions that the inspirer posed to me yesterday was whether I questioned the peace that our work together brings to my heart, and I do not. I treasure it and it always transforms my day. But still, recalling the past and fearing that, at a deep level, nothing has changed in how others see me … I almost wrote, “Fear me …” still plunges me into a pit of despair. The pit is much shallower now; I can climb out more quickly, and the mud is dry, so I can shake it off like a dog shakes itself after swimming. But I cannot close this pit myself, or can I?
7 July 2026
from: Astille
Indeed, you cannot, beloved one, but not in the way you were meaning. Does it take the mutual recognition of error by all those involved to, ‘fill in the pit,’ to use your words, to heal the wounds of error, to use mine? No, beloved one, it does not require the recognition of error, or the expression of regret, from those involved to heal the wounds of error; that would mean giving your power away to others and that would be to repeat the same mistakes.
But you are right, you cannot do this alone; you need your soul’s light on your fingertips as you massage and soften the scars. As, may I say, do the others involved, for they too bear scars which may have hardened over time, while yours have softened and become malleable. How? By this, by walking towards the light and out of the darkness. By finding the voice of your soul echoing in the chamber of your heart and resting in the peace that you found there.
You have found your way to your own capacity for love, and to do that, you had to encounter many shades and qualities of fear, not least that of being unworthy. Not a journey for the faint-hearted. When you were cut loose, you were stripped of the rules and edicts that became the battleground for those who remained. You mourned their loss, like the dog above being plunged into icy water when it was not expecting it. You froze, you screamed, and you floundered towards the bank seeking the comfort of the known, but comfort was denied you over and again.
So, eventually, you dipped your toe in the water and started to see how the light flickered on its surface, watched the rainbows appear and disappear, felt its warm embrace, and now you are fully immersed in its beauty. You feel its potential all around you like fish darting just out of sight. You are at peace, but still in sight of the bank, still hoping to see a garden bloom there from all the seeds that were planted, and smell the perfume pervading the air attracting visitors.
But should you climb out and visit that garden, would you find forgiveness there? No, beloved one, that is only within your heart. Would you find friendship? Maybe in years to come when the gardeners have found their own way to love and are able to reflect on the pool at the centre of their domain and see the rainbows and the fish for themselves. All reflective pools begin with a pit, beloved one.
8 July 2026
from: Zanne
Thank you for your words of yesterday. I am beginning to realise that letting go of the past is not just about my letting go of the negativity but also accepting that things could never have worked out the way I envisioned them. So I have spent years grieving something that either never was or failed to materialise. I see now I have been mourning a vision which was never mine in the first place. I always felt that the collective, of which I was a part, let something precious drop through our fingertips like dry sand.
Until now, I have nurtured the desire to restore what we could using the wisdom and self-awareness we have accrued along the way. What I have failed to accept is that those fingertips were the Creators, not ours — indeed, so was the sand — and so what was left was subject to a far, far greater vision than mine. I feel relieved and foolish. Relieved that I was not the only cause of the seepage, and foolish to think my vision could ever have encapsulated the whole. There’s arrogance for you.
8 July 2026
from: Astille
That is where the learning lies, beloved one, between the Will of the Creator and the will of mankind. You learn the most as these two energy forces interact and intersect each other. There you feel the tension, you feel the limitations of the self and feel the fluidity and certainty of the greater. Every boat on the ocean is subject to the tides and the weather patterns, and every sailor may plan their destination and chart their route, but plans and charts broker no authority in a storm. To the Creator, it is the destination of mankind that holds their attention and the future of this planet. It is up to the sailor when the storm has receded to reconsider their plans and redraw their charts. You never redrew your charts, beloved one, but you are now. What may appear to you as flotsam and jetsam in the aftermath of a storm may well be destined for other uses as time passes. Uses that better serve their purpose than being bolted onto a larger craft.
Although I am in danger of mixing my metaphors here, think back two days to your bemoaning the potential of having your wings clipped. Well, beloved one, if you kept your vision bolted onto a larger craft that was becalmed, then you clipped your own wings. You alone have the power to replace that vision back into the hands of the Creator where it always belonged and free yourself from the storm clouds that you fear are amassing on the horizon.
9 July 2026
from: Zanne
Probably just a quick note today as life and mistrust are intervening once again. Not vague this time, detailed and precise but interestingly not unsettling this time because it has enabled me to examine my own heart and actions in relation to the communication and not found it wanting. Indeed I was thinking of a phrase often used in spiritual conversations, ‘finding your way to love, and that is what this challenge has prompted; an honest review of my actions, intentions and attitude and I have found my love and loyalty intact, indeed almost exemplary. This has been a quiet, inner process, you understand, but a rewarding one.
This must be the outworking of that phrase, one I have attributed mainly to the Love of spirit, but today I uncovered my own storehouse of love and loyalty which I have not deviated from even in reaction or anger. I’m proud that these are the values that have guided me without the need for dictates or instructions. These are the sinews of love that have held me firm when the storms have hit.
9 July 2026
from: Astille
Beloved one, I could not have put it better myself. Increasingly, you are phrasing your reflections in ways which reflect the light and the love of spirit, and this delights me. A few days ago, you tried to describe a holographic aura of colour that you sensed spiralling around disasters, almost as if the love being denied hovered above the scene, as if waiting to be allowed to ameliorate the suffering.
Well, this is happening as you write and work through reactions which are painful in life. First, you feel the pain, the sadness, and then the love that was being denied, be it yours or another’s, is accepted into your heart, and the images soften and the knots of pain dissolve. There is a natural rhythm to this, a rebalancing, as another inspirer so beautifully said earlier this week, ‘you are a self-righting vessel,’ and this is why and this is how. If you do not allow yourself to feel the pain and the sadness in the first place, then love and peace have no foothold on which to rest and level your position in the ocean of life.
May the rest of your day bring you peace. Until tomorrow.
10 July 2026
from: Zanne
Good morning Astille, I find myself at peace this morning and don’t want to generate any irritation in order to create a purpose for our contact. I realise it’s like being the parent of a young child; you long for peace and for them to pay quietly by themselves sometimes, but when the house falls silent, you rush to find out if they’re OK? So that begs the question about what fuels these conversations, surely not my need alone? If the dramas and tensions of life were to cease, would we still communicate?
There is, of course, an underlying question for me, which is would I feel alive if the dramas and tensions ceased? Yes, would be my answer these days, yes, because peace is glorious, multifaceted, and colourful. I’m not thrown back on my own failings and misdemeanours like before; peace feels expansion these days, full of promise. That’s a change.
10 July 2026
from: Astille
Beloved one, I am aware that time is tight this morning, but although your words were few, they contained a great deal. A progress report, which I feel reflects well on our work together, and a question about the purpose and style of these communications. The purpose can be defined in even fewer words: it is to bring the light of love to life. Firstly through the distillation of light, colour, and vibration into syntax, and secondly to explore spiritual principles through the lens of worldly problems and concerns. Should those cease, then what is left is the universe of peace that surrounds everyone on this planet, and when you are still enough to feel its embrace, you start to sense the presence of stars and planets as yet undiscovered.
Should words cease completely, the light, colour, and vibration will remain and will be uninterrupted by the death of the body. But while the capacity to distill those vibrations into words remains, this will be our focus as these words create thought forms in life. Words limit as much as they inform; this you know, so my idea of balance is a combination of time spent resting in the cloak of peace matched with periods of time of applying light to life, not as an aspiration but as an agent of change. In indigenous cultures, healers used crystals to signify the shifting of energy away from suffering and towards healing. It did not physically change anything except the focus and the belief of the person being healed, which awoke their own self-healing ability, which, when successful, opened up a channel of trust first with the healer and then with the spirit sources they relied upon.
So dialogues such as this are shape-shifters in a way; they expand the energetic field in which you grapple with life. They widen it and, in so doing, shift your focus from the small to the greater, and may I say, the greater appreciates their inclusion in life, for it is all life, not just yours.
11 July 2026
from: Zanne
Good morning, well I am in need of a little shape-shifting this morning once again. There is nothing new to report really, just that the continuing downward spiral of reaction towards sadness, even depression. Not an all-encompassing depression, although the state of the world would give anyone cause to be depressed, but quite a specific theme; that of the lack of love and how difficult I find it to recover from being exposed to that, especially from people seemingly committed to their own spiritual path.
On one level it’s not about them, they are free to be whatever they choose to be, but how alone I feel. I think that is where my sadness lies. When I witness their approach it makes me feel hopeless and although you would be right to say that it is my expectations of them that are at fault, equally if years of spiritual development and discipline do not change a person’s personality one iota, then am I not entitled to nurture a little bit of sadness for a while, especially when I see its impact on others and feel their pain?
11 July 2026
from: Astille
You are entitled to feel whatever you wish and to acknowledge it and to wallow in it, if you so desire. I will put my wellies on and wallow with you in the mud of despair, but it won’t move anything forward. In fact, it will simply evoke similar feelings from the past and widen the bog you will have to traverse eventually. Understanding that people are free to be whatever they wish to be, partly because you recognise there is learning whichever way you turn in life, is a lesson you have learnt the hard way, but it is one that many in life still need to learn. Not because they are deliberately avoiding it but because they are not in touch with their soul in the same way as they are their free will and independence.
Your soul, you might say, is the litmus paper you carry within your consciousness which recognises true spiritual authority and takes it to your heart. This, to put it another way, is your route back to love, just as you recognised earlier this week. Once you are in touch with your soul, then spiritual authority is like a perfume that informs your senses and becomes as natural as breathing, for indeed it is the breath of the Creator in life. True spiritual authority can bypass the personality of the wearer at times, but more commonly adapts to their unique persona and dictates not how it is received, but delights when it is received at whatever intensity.
Much as you have grappled with style this week, you have not grappled with substance. Why, because you recognise the universal spiritual authority within it, and it resonates with your soul and all your past and future actions. What is a cause for sadness, and this I grant you, is that your spiritual depth is not recognised, valued, or appreciated, but beloved one, those who feel spiritually impoverished are rarely those who are the most generous to others. They have no reason to be impoverished, of course; it’s just they have yet to catch sight of their inspirer in wellies walking beside them.
12 July 2026
from: Zanne
I have a rather brief but pointed question for you this morning, which is: what is the point? The point of this, our dialogue, my attempts over so many years to apply spiritual teachings and principles to my life and then to share it in the hope it may help others. Knowing full well that recording this is just one part of the continuum of coming to understand myself more deeply. A voluntary process, sometimes almost magical in its effect, always transformative — a life-affirming, health-giving alternative to any quick-fix methods created by mankind to ease the pain of living. Cheaper too and more reliable than a lottery ticket.
Immediately I feel the tears prick at my eyes, how could I ask you such a thing? Have you not answered this one hundred times already? Isn’t its benefit plain to see from the ache in my heart as I think of the alternative, of the absence of these dialogues and the energy shift they herald every day? Is this just plain dissatisfaction? Am I still that selfish and self-centred? Has it become too commonplace?
12 July 2026
from: Astille
Beloved one, if you are expecting me to take offence, you have come to the wrong place. You are so adept at berating yourself that you never give space to the bigger picture. Maybe, maybe, what you are voicing is the subconscious voice of humanity as a whole. What is the point?
Beloved one, if people started to ask that about their own lives and started to wonder at the blessings of this planet, their interdependence on each other, and the freedom they have to explore their free will, they too might condense that wonder into, ‘What is the point of this life? Why am I here? What contribution can I make? What love can I share and receive in return? What lessons can I explore? Why are some things so familiar, why do I feel drawn towards some people and turned against others? What is this force within me that seems to know and yet tells me not, without me asking? Why do I feel part of something greater sometimes and at other times petty and mean and afraid? How can I grow into this life and fill my time with meaning?
What is the point of recording? There is the act and there is the result. The act itself, as you have rightly said, walks you, indeed walks us, along the continuum towards love, and changes the cells in your body as well as the thoughts in your head. It opens doors to the greater whole, and to Purpose with a capital P.
Then there is the distillation of light, love, colour, and vibration into words, which leaves a holographic thread to the love of the Creator. Like a spider’s web captures dew drops that glint in the sunlight and draws the attention of anyone who pauses to wonder at the perfect symmetry of natural law and how it captures light into life. Nothing is wasted; there is delicacy, beauty, symmetry, and strength within its fragility, perfect for the task, and costs the planet nothing.
In some ways, beloved one, you are recording the footprints of mankind on this beautiful blue planet. You are mapping the peaks and the troughs, the lakes and the storms, and the absolute stillness that can fill a human heart in an instance if they trusted in the love that sent them forth and watches over them every step of the way. May peace be with you this day.
14 July 2026
from: Zanne
Oh, Astille! I am sorry I did not write yesterday, but I was caught up in something that has disturbed something deep within me that I barely recognise myself. It started yesterday morning with a dream of being smothered, literally someone holding something over my mouth, and me saying, ‘You don’t need to kill me,’ probably the result of watching too many true crime documentaries. But then I discovered that a very challenging email had arrived around midnight, challenging but in style and presentation rather than content. Indeed, it was content that I had prior notice of.
What I want to try and explore with you is why it had the effect upon me that it did. I was careful to respond in positive and gentle terms, and indeed that made me realise why the presentation mattered; it was hostile. Not specifically to me, but to everyone being caught up in its net, and by hostile, I mean cut off from the love that binds those it was addressed to. It affected me physically as after I finished drafting my reply, my heart raced with fear, and I felt light-headed. This is not the only time I have had these symptoms, so I don’t know if my drafting of a response was the cause, but I remained fragile, slept badly, and woke this morning unable to breathe. I still feel tearful.
As I write, I am beginning to see a link between the fear I experienced at the start of my spiritual journey and this bout of fear. Is this a spiral seeking completion?
14 July 2026
from: Astille
Indeed, it is part of it, but not all of it. First, let us look at what your fear signified in the beginning and then what it might be signifying here. Your first experience of spirituality, as you know, was through your mother, and it was many things, but the one I will concentrate on here is the manipulation within it and the fear that induced in you as a child. You were alert and able to protect yourself from the manipulation; indeed, it fuelled your fierce independence, but the shiver of fear remained dormant.
Then when you were introduced to a great spiritual challenge; you were fearful again, this time of losing the independence you so closely guarded. You were right to be fearful because in many ways, that was going to be your greatest challenge as you progressed along your spiritual path. A challenge you confronted, albeit reluctantly, and overcame. Now what is affecting you is not the hostility, for at a subconscious level, you recognise it as fear in disguise. That is why the lingering effect is sadness because you recognise the challenge faced by the other person and know that love, yours and that of others, is the balm that could soften the fear and allow the person to relinquish their disguise, as you have relinquished yours in the past.
Hostility is the weapon of a person who imprisons themselves in fear, and yet it signifies a tender and fragile heart that can open to love like a rose bud opens to a springtime shower. One of the hardest lessons in life is to know the power of love and have it deflected or rejected.
15 July 2026
from: Zanne
This morning, if I were to describe the weather, I would be describing my mood also. Overcast, with the promise of more humidity and heat later on, calm but brooding. Neither one thing nor another.
That got me thinking about how many days we spend this way in our lifetimes? Nothingness days where time just passes beneath your feet and your feelings and thoughts slow to a snail’s pace. More than productive days, I warrant. More than creative days. Thankfully, in my case, far more than sick days.
What draws my focus on these days? The temperature, the trees outside my window, the breeze, the silence, the energy force of life, that steady background silent hum of the life force weighing us all down, the edges of my body, and the regularity of my breath.
Oh! There it is, comes the slicing sound of a saw somewhere in the distance, floating in on the breeze from the open window, creating tension in my body where there was none.
15 July 2026
from: Astille
So a great deal of nothing then, all your senses creating a tapestry of sensation that you weave into the landscape, just as you become it. At one with life, a sentient being in a world created for humanity by the Creator. Which, until the irritation floated in, was a world completely in harmony with humanity and vice versa. You describe that as nothing, I would describe that as contemplative living, for you were alert to your body and your senses in a way that busyness or creativeness obscures. You could almost have counted your heartbeats, but did not need to. The silence you were listening to was full of the sounds of humanity all merged into a single note that drew your consciousness towards curiosity and back into yourself. If you had engaged with it, it would have felt like a thread, a thread of life and learning and meaning. An accretion of the outworking of the life force of mankind enabled by the Will of God. You could almost sense God, could you not? God as in Love, attention, and potential. An emptiness that is not empty at all, but anticipation.
Anticipation of what? Humanity to come home, beloved one, humanity to come home.
Can you see, beloved one, that it is these days — when you are subject to Creation — that prepare you for your homecoming. So, for myself, I celebrate their predominance in your life as they balance out the busyness and the wilful.
17 July 2026
from: Zanne
Well, Astille, it seems you have your wish. It is later than normal because my morning has been taken up with doing things, but being still at the same time. I had palpitations in the night, which left me exhausted this morning and needing to set up some doctor’s appointments. So, although I had lots to juggle as we updated our equipment to record our meditations, I was constantly drawn back into myself. Monitoring my heartbeat and my ability to manage pressure. Incidental pressure, but pressure nonetheless.
Now life has allowed me some space. I think of you. I thought of you in the night time too and saw a steady light on the horizon. Not my time to go home yet, it said to me, here take this pendulum and breathe with its rhythm, take this light and let it centre you, take this love and rest within it. Much as this is imagery to try to describe an experience, it also has some truth about the different aspects of our communication. The steadying, the hopefulness, the peace as if this is enough, capturing love in action in words is enough. Words that will forever be inadequate that are my stepping stones towards your realm.
17 July 2026
from: Astille
You cannot escape my gaze, beloved one, except by your own actions. Close your eyes now, and the light on the horizon is in your chest now. Isn’t it? The pendulum is your heartbeat, steady and strong, and the peace is your heart song, and the threads of love are the notes that echo first in your thoughts and then on this page. You ask, is this enough? It is more than enough; you are more than enough, and your heart is strong enough to bear this passage that we travel together. Together, beloved one, together.
Every pendulum has two beats and one axis. Our axis is one of Light, and each beat unties our realms with love.
18 July 2026
from: Zanne
Good morning. Strangely today I feel the opposite of strong; I feel fragile, tearful, and afraid. I know afraid is the right word, but I don’t know what I am afraid of … so maybe therein lies a question. The fragility is emotional, not physical today, and the tearfulness is about loss, the loss of a relationship with a group of feelings travellers. So although the fragility and the sadness are uncomfortable, I recognise them and know there is no solution other than accepting Christos and trusting that I will go where I need to go when the time is right.
But what am I afraid of? Well, I could trot out my usual list of unworthiness, misguided thinking, arrogance, and an inability to trust or surrender, and granted they all have a part in this, but something deeper is seeking to emerge too, and it’s as if I am looking through a telescope and ignoring the binoculars at my right hand.
Interesting, as I explore that image more, it is not what I expected. I have put the binoculars down with my right hand, my dominant hand, because I was guided to pick up the telescope and did so almost intuitively, ‘to give it a try’.
18 July 2026
from: Astille
Well, beloved one, the image answered your question, did it not? Your fragility, if that is how you see it, comes from viewing life and Spirit through one lens, not two, and when you do that, a lot of your normal list falls away. Arrogance gives way to awe, unworthiness surrenders to Love, and misguided thinking gives way to wonder and perspective. There is no judgement, just acceptance, because as you meet the gaze of the Creator, you are seen in a way you can never be seen in life. The unblinking eye holds your gaze for eternity, and the telescope is in your hand, no one else’s.
Be at peace, beloved one; fragility is a gift, not a curse; it is the merging of life and love, and in this world at this time, that will indeed mean that life feels fragile, for it has not yet accepted Love as its master, and you know this and fear that time is running out. But, beloved one, this is where it helps to use two lenses, one which has a lifespan and one which is eternal. The fear arises in you when time becomes finite, and it subsides when purpose dictates time and not the other way around. So breathe; your heart is steady and strong, and you are fulfilling your purpose every day. Peace be with you.
20 July 2026
from: Zanne
Good morning. Not a lot to say today. The heat is lessening, but my fragility is still present, more a transparency to life, I think. I don’t suppose anyone in this world can exist without sensing the cries of pain and suffering somewhere in their consciousness. If we are one organism, then it stands to reason that we are all transparent to the pain of others, and yet even as I write that, I realise the reverse must be true also — that we are subject to the joy and hope of others, but that seems in much shorter supply at this time.
I anticipate your response, the cleansing of the new Age, and I accept that. But I am tired. First, I lived through the preparation for the new Age; now, I am living through the cleansing, but I will never live to see its culmination — the rising of the Christos in everyone’s hearts and the predominance of love over greed. It doesn’t exactly feel like a pipe dream. I do believe the shift will come; I just can’t see how at the moment. Wars are too entrenched, greed and need too widespread, mine included.
Just decided to check the meaning of pipe dream, and it refers to the hallucinatory dreams from smoking opium, which is interesting. Some would say not that much different to our communications — an escape from reality.
20 July 2026
from: Astille
Good morning, beloved one. I am imagining myself as an etheric being emerging from a wisp of smoke and speaking to you, perhaps as an etheric manifestation from the past, booming predications and warnings at you. Basically, frightening you into submission, or seducing you into compliance while your senses are intoxicated. No wonder Spirit had such a bad name and was feared by so many, for indeed that was an escape from life because it was an escape from self-responsibility.
Now I know there are times when you would probably counter with self-responsibility being a boring, never-ending cycle of self-indulgence and self-recrimination and argue that perhaps a once-and-for-all possession by a Spirit being would be more conclusive. Indeed, it would, but it would also subvert the supremacy of free will and the need to learn from experience while in life.
This cleansing of the new Age, this glorious Golden Age which has just begun, is not a spiritual form of punishment but an amalgam of the unrequited karma that the granting of free will has enabled mankind to accumulate over the eons. A karma, might I say, that applies to the misuse of the Earth itself as well as to the action or inaction of humanity.
This is not the burden you feel it to be, it is an opportunity for mankind to learn in ways they have never learnt before. I accept it is unavoidable and therefore there are consequences to ignoring the imperative to change, but equally the intelligence factor in humanity is great, their ingenuity is profound and the Bearers and Children of Light are powerful forces for change. Powerful because the change they seek is the change that rests dormant in the hearts and souls of humanity. A change that names and releases their deepest need, which is for love and for peace, and charts a new pathway towards it. A pathway that everyone can envisage and ascribe to because it assures a safer future for their children and grandchildren. A pathway that is aligned with the stars and the constellations.
Is this an escape from the reality of life? I think not, it is a grappling with the details of life and its relationship to Love in a way that is worthy of the attention of everyone on this planet and in Spirit.
Sinews of Heaven 