Signs Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Laura Lynne Jackson LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Liveright Pub1ishing Corporation for permission to reprint an excerpt from “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)’’ from Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, copyright © 1952, 1980, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Jackson, Laura Lynne, author.

  Title: Signs: the secret language of the universe / Laura Lynne Jackson.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Spiegel & Grau, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019007306 | ISBN 9780399591594 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399591600 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Spiritualism. | Omens.

  Classification: LCC BF1261.2 .J33 2019 | DDC 133.9—dc23

  LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2019007306

  Ebook ISBN 9780399591600

  randomhousebooks.com

  spiegelandgrau.com

  Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebook

  Interior images: © iStockphoto.com/​Katrina Sisperova (Title page), © iStockphoto.com/​Nastasic (Part One), © iStockphoto.com/​nicoolay (Part Two), © iStockphoto.com/​domin_domin (Part Three), © iStockphoto.com/​Epine_art (Part Four)

  Cover design: Donna Cheng

  v5.4_r3

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Part One: Always with Us

  Chapter 1: Oranges

  Chapter 2: Cereal in the Car

  Chapter 3: Teams of Light

  Chapter 4: I Carry Your Heart

  Chapter 5: Dragonflies and Deer

  Chapter 6: Buddies on the Other Side

  Chapter 7: Hearts and Playing Cards

  Chapter 8: Hummingbirds and Light

  Chapter 9: Giraffes, Eiffel Towers, and a Song About Cats

  Chapter 10: Default Signs, Dreams, and Intuition: Tuning in to the Secret Language

  Part Two: Creating Your Own Language

  Chapter 11: Bringing It Home

  Chapter 12: 1379

  Chapter 13: Ghost Calls

  Chapter 14: Birds of a Feather

  Chapter 15: Street Signs

  Chapter 16: Dancing Candles

  Chapter 17: Turtles and Mermaids

  Chapter 18: The Connector

  Chapter 19: All Creatures Great and Small

  Chapter 20: Groundhogs

  Chapter 21: How to Co-Create Your Own Language

  Part Three: Navigating the Dark

  Chapter 22: Camouflage, a Gun, and a New Assignment

  Chapter 23: Babies and Bears

  Chapter 24: Flickering Lights and Sparks

  Chapter 25: Bows and Clovers

  Chapter 26: Rainbows

  Chapter 27: Tiny Whispers

  Chapter 28: A Gift of Love and Forgiveness

  Chapter 29: Surrender

  Part Four: Staying in the Light

  Chapter 30: How to Shine Brightly

  Chapter 31: Shine On

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Laura Lynne Jackson

  About the Author

  And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

  —ROALD DAHL

  INTRODUCTION

  Marie sat in the hospital waiting room. She found it hard to breathe. She tried not to look at the clock on the wall, but she couldn’t help it. She looked up and five minutes had passed. She looked again and another five minutes were gone. It felt like two hours, not ten minutes. Time was crawling. Nothing felt real. The waiting, the not knowing, were almost unbearable.

  Just a bit earlier, Marie’s husband of thirty-five years, Pete, had been wheeled into the OR for emergency heart surgery. The surgeons told her they were hopeful, but Marie knew there were no guarantees. She felt scared and lost, and most of all she felt alone.

  God, if you’re there, she thought, please watch over Pete. Please send a legion of angels to watch over him.

  And then she thought of the son she and Pete had lost in infancy years ago. The boy’s name was Kerry. It had been nearly three decades since Kerry had crossed, but Marie still felt a deep connection to him. She liked to talk to him in her mind.

  Kerry, Marie thought, if you are there, please send me a sign. Send me a sign that your father is going to be okay. Please, Kerry, I am so scared. It would help me so much to know that you are around, and that you are watching over your father.

  Thirty minutes later, a nurse stepped into the waiting room. She saw Marie sitting nervously in her chair and approached her. The nurse asked if she could get anything for Marie. Maybe something from the cafeteria?

  “I would love a coffee,” Marie said. “A little milk, no sugar, but I insist on paying.” She took a five-dollar bill from her wallet, handed it to the nurse, and said, “Thank you so much.”

  A few minutes later, the nurse was back with the coffee. She gave Marie the cup and the change from the five-dollar bill. Then she touched her lightly on the shoulder.

  “Hang in there,” she told Marie. “I know the wait can be so hard. God has a plan. None of us are ever alone.”

  Marie looked down at her hands, moved by the nurse’s compassion.

  There, in the top-left-hand corner of one of the dollar bills the nurse had given her, was a name, written in capital letters in black marker.

  KERRY

  Marie stared at it, blinking back tears. She felt a great wave of relief wash over her. Relief and love. She knew at that moment that Kerry was there with her, telling her his father would be okay.

  Suddenly Marie felt like she could breathe again. She thanked Kerry for sending her such a powerful message, and she tucked the dollar bill in a safe and special place in her wallet.

  Two hours later, the surgeons came into the waiting room and told Marie the operation had been a success. Marie smiled.

  She knew. She had already gotten the message.

  * * *

  —

  My name is Laura Lynne Jackson and I am a psychic medium. I help connect people to the Other Side. And the first thing I want to tell you is this:

  You don’t need a psychic medium to connect with the Other Side.

  Don’t get me wrong—I know the things I do can be enormously helpful to anyone who is open to them. The messages I’m able to convey from the Other Side can bring us the deepest happiness and invest our lives with a heightened purpose and clarity. They can set us on our highest life paths, the ones we were destined for.

  I can connect people to loved ones who’ve passed and to a common wellspring of energy—a great big tapestry of love and light—that fuels our lives in a way nothing else can.

  All of these things are beautiful ble
ssings, and when I’m able to share them with someone, it brings me incomparable joy.

  But the truth is, you don’t need me to share in these blessings. You don’t need me to tap into this incredible power. You don’t need a psychic medium to recognize and access the signs that I think of as the secret language of the universe—a form of communication that is all around us every day, available to us all.

  It’s my hope that this book will teach you to how to tune in to this language and help you see light where before there was darkness, and meaning in places where before there was confusion. This knowledge can lead you to shift paths, push you toward love, help you find joy, and maybe even save your life.

  I want you to understand that this book has found its way into your hands for a reason. That you are reading these words right now is not an accident. It is an invitation from the universe. In whatever way this book and these words have found their way to you, please know it wasn’t a random event.

  You are meant to be reading these words.

  The central principle of this book is that the universe brings the people, information, and events we most need into our paths. Powerful guiding forces exist that steer us toward happier and more authentic lives.

  Another truth that I have come to know: Each of us has a Team of Light—a group of unseen helpers who work together to guide us to our highest path. This team is made up of our loved ones who have crossed, our spirit guides (also commonly known as guardian angels), a higher angelic realm, and God energy, which is based in the strongest force there is or ever will be: love.

  If you open your mind and heart to the secret language your Team of Light uses, the very way you live your life will change. Your relationship with the world and with the universe will be different: better, brighter, more powerful.

  When we learn to recognize and trust the many ways in which the universe communicates with us, we experience what I call a Great Shift. This change in perspective leads us to heightened engagement, connectivity, vibrancy, and passion. It makes it easier for us to grasp the true meaning of our existence. And it makes the journey so much more beautiful and meaningful.

  Once you learn to see these signs and messages, you will never be able to unsee them. They will forever have the power to infuse your past, present, and future with new and profound meaning, and in this way transform your life.

  Here’s another truth: The universe has been conspiring to help us since before our souls’ arrival on this earth. Our teams have long been in place. Our job is simply to remain open to receiving these messages of love and guidance. When we do, we will know the most powerful truth of all—that the universe is constantly loving and supporting and guiding us, even on our darkest days.

  And now this book is in your hands. It is there for a reason. This book is your invitation from the universe to connect with your Team of Light and discover your truest, bravest, and brightest self.

  * * *

  —

  Before we begin, I’d like to give you a little background about myself. I am a wife and a mother of three children. For nearly twenty years, I worked as a high school English teacher on Long Island, in New York. I studied Shakespeare at Oxford and was accepted into two top law schools, but decided to follow my passion for teaching instead. At the same time, I slowly came to accept my abilities as a psychic medium—someone who gathers information about people and events through means other than their five senses, and who can also communicate with people who have passed from this earth.

  My abilities as a psychic include clairvoyance (getting visual information without the use of my eyes), clairaudience (perceiving sounds through means other than my ears), claircognizance (knowing something that is unknowable), and clairsentience (feeling things through nonhuman means).

  I am also a medium, which means that I use these gifts as tools to communicate with people who have passed from this earth. I impart this information through a reading, during which time I become a conduit between the Other Side and the person I am reading for (who is known as the sitter). I become a messenger, an instrument—a way for energy and information to flow from one side to the other.

  At first, I was troubled by my abilities—even skeptical of them—so I sought to have them verified. I applied to be tested so that I could volunteer as a medium for the Forever Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization aimed at helping those in grief, particularly parents who have lost children. The Forever Family Foundation is very protective of the people who come to them for support, who are at their most vulnerable, so their screening process is quite rigorous. I passed their tests and have been volunteering for the foundation as a medium since 2005. In 2011, I submitted to an eight-step, quintuple-blind screening administered by scientists at the Windbridge Research Center in Arizona. I became one of only a small group of Certified Research Mediums around the country. I’ve been working with scientists ever since, exploring the mystery of our interconnectedness and of how consciousness survives bodily death.

  I told the story of how I eventually came to embrace my abilities in my first book, The Light Between Us. That book featured stories of people who, with my help, discovered the many ways they are connected to the Other Side—the vast tapestry of light and love and energy that exists just beyond our five senses. But a great part of that book was about me, and about my story. While I will share some stories of personal connections I have witnessed and experienced in these pages, this book is different.

  This book is about you.

  It’s about the path that awaits you.

  It’s about connecting you to a very simple but powerful idea—that the universe is always sending you signs and messages in order to communicate with you and steer you to a higher life path. It’s about how many miraculous and beautiful truths go unseen in our lives, and how, with a subtle yet meaningful shift in our perception, we can begin to see them.

  A NOTE ON TERMS

  Before you begin to read the stories in this book, I wanted to clarify the meaning of some of the terms I use.

  A sign is a message sent to you by the universe.

  The universe is the term I use when I refer to God energy—the all-encompassing force of love that connects us all and that we are all a part of. The universe also includes the angelic realm, spirit guides, and our loved ones who have crossed to the Other Side.

  The Other Side, simply put, is where our loved ones go when they pass, and where our spirit guides reside while they watch over us. It is the heaven many people speak of. The Other Side is our true home. It is the place we will all one day return to. It is a place ruled by love and only love.

  Signs are a method of communication from the Other Side. Signs can come from different sources—our departed loved ones, our spirit guides, and God energy. These are all part of the universal Team of Light that each of us has working for us every single day.

  At first, the Other Side will use what I call default signs to communicate with us: objects, animals, or events that jolt us into seeing a meaning that might otherwise escape us. Default signs might be coins, birds, butterflies, deer, numbers, and electrical disturbances, such as empty cellphone messages, among other things. You find a dime standing on its edge in the dryer just as you are thinking of and missing someone (this very thing happened to me). A butterfly lands on your arm for an instant on your birthday. A car drives past with a license plate that has the birthdate of a loved one who has crossed, who was just on your mind. You get blank cellphone messages on the anniversary of a loved one’s crossing.

  Another default sign is what we might call a meaningful coincidence, or synchronicity. Synchronicity shows our innate and active connection to one another and to the world around us. You think of someone, and all of a sudden they are right in front of you. You hum your favorite song, and suddenly it starts playing on the car radio. You’re doing a crossword puzzle, and the very answer you’re looki
ng for appears on the TV news. All of these things can happen without us asking for them or expecting them.

  Distinct from default signs are signs that we specifically request—objects, images, words or phrases, however unusual or obscure. This is the secret language we can co-create with the Other Side.

  I have co-created this language in a variety of ways. With my spirit guides, I usually ask for oranges. With my loved ones who have crossed, I ask for armadillos, aardvarks, and anteaters, which I chose because they’re sufficiently rare and are hard to miss. With my father, who only recently crossed, one of the signs we share is Elvis Presley. This book will show you how to create your own language with the Other Side, so that when your signs come, you will not only recognize them but also feel the extraordinary power they bring!

  * * *

  —

  You might wonder, how can we trust that a sign is truly a sign and not just a happy but random coincidence?

  The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe a seemingly meaningful coincidence. Jung was fascinated with the idea that the events in our lives are not random, but rather express the reality that we are all part of a deeper order—a unifying, universal force he called the unus mundus, Latin for “one world.”

  Over the years there has been a great deal of study and debate about the meaning of coincidences. Some scientists, like Dr. Kirby Surprise, a psychologist, have studied what he calls synchronistic events (SE) and concluded that they have no meaning beyond that which we give them.