Authors/Channelers

Although our names may appear as the authors of this book, we are just messengers for these spirits who so very much want to help humanity. But they can't do it by themselves. Heaven is asking for your help.


Click the names of the authors for bios. Rob's bio, Jane's bio and Paul's bio.

Putting this book together really has been an amazing experience for us, one that has provided all of us with great enjoyment along the way. It has also been a journey filled with tremendous emotion, with countless smiles to ourselves and each other throughout the process, as well as numerous instances in which we have just sat quietly with tears streaming down our faces.

If you get even the tiniest fraction of joy from reading this book that we have gotten from writing it, then our efforts will have been worthwhile. Who knows—perhaps, just as Ruth Montgomery and the Spirit Guides have helped us find our mission in Life, the information they've sent from Heaven will allow you to figure out what your own purpose is here on Earth.

Some Details about Rob "Cuac" Totaro Macomber

You must be wondering where I got the nickname "Cuac"—or how even to pronounce it. You see, when I was in first grade, kids started calling me "Cucumber" because of my last name. By third grade, they had shortened it to "Cuke." When I went to write my nickname down for the first time, however, I spelled it "Cuac." Not long afterward, as I was riding with my "Grammy Al" to Bangor, I saw a roadside vegetable stand that had the correct spelling of "Cuke." Nonetheless, I concluded that I liked my version better and would forever keep "Cuac" as the preferred, though phonetically mangled and decidedly unique, spelling of my nickname. Hence, you'll often see me referred to as "Cuac" in much of this book, though "Rob" and "Robbie" are also used to show how various family members and friends refer to me in our everyday lives together.

"Totaro" became a part of my name when I married my wife, Phyl, whose maiden name was Totaro. Since she had elected to add "Macomber" to her name, I decided to add "Totaro" to mine. In fact, when I announced this during a toast at our rehearsal dinner, the reaction that it brought to the faces of Phyl's parents, Bertha and Leonard Totaro, remains one of my life's most treasured memories.

School

My siblings and I were extremely fortunate in terms of the educational opportunities we had. For me, it meant being given scholarships to attend a private high school located in Milton, Massachusetts, called Milton Academy and Bowdoin College, a small liberal arts school situated in Brunswick, Maine. Being able to go to these two institutions was a true privilege and left me profoundly grateful to have been the recipient of the beneficence of other members of our society.

I will never stop being thankful for books. They have changed my life. I know that they can do the same for the many people around the world who've never had the chance to taste the magical powers of education, the ultimate elixir.

If there's a bigger believer on the planet in the importance of education, then I'd like to meet that individual—for I'm sure that that is a person from whom I could learn a lot.

Food
No profile of me would be complete without mention of how much I like to eat—no, make that, how much I love to eat.

I mean you're talking about a guy with an eating resume that includes the following:

  • After my Aunt Mary had filleted the catch from my first deep-sea fishing trip, polishing off an entire eight-pound haddock as a ten-year old.
  • When I was in grammar school—maybe sixth grade, I would guess—wearing a white sweatshirt on which I had written on the back in big, bold green letters: "EAT, CUAC, EAT."
  • On a bet, when I was sixteen, wolfing down four Big Macs in six minutes at a McDonald's in Brewer, Maine.
  • Losing a radio-broadcasted pie-eating contest the following year because I slowed down midway through when I realized that I was tied for the lead only because I was swallowing the strawberries whole.
  • Thinking that I needed to bulk up my slender 190-pound frame for basketball when I arrived at Bowdoin as a freshman and supplementing my double-helpings, three-meals-a-day diet with a daily intake of an entire loaf of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.
  • In the midst of a weekend in Boston while in college, eating three-and-a-half large cheese steak subs late one night at one of Jay Leno's favorite old haunts, Buzzy's Fabulous Roast Beef.
  • During another college road trip, devouring a dozen lobsters in forty-five minutes at "Custy's Restaurant" in North Kingstown, Rhode Island…and then having the establishment's closing time thwart my attempt to break their then-record of thirty-something lobsters in one sitting.
  • After completing my final college exam, celebrating not with a traditional glass of champagne or bottle of beer, but by treating myself to an excursion to one of my favorite local haunts—the local Deerings ice cream shop. It seemed like a fitting way to toast the moment, as I figured that my college roommate, Rob DeSimone, and I had eaten more hot fudge sundaes in Brunswick, Maine, than any other two students in the history of Bowdoin College. After finishing my sundae (made with chocolate chip ice cream and extra whipped cream), I thought to myself: That was good, but it wasn't nearly as much fun as having one with Rob. I think I'll have another one in his honor. And so I did.

Oh, by the way, my all-time favorite ice cream flavor is Friendly's "Buttercrunch," and my top pick for a sundae is undoubtedly their classic "Jim Dandy." Here's how it's described on their menu: "There's divine decadence by the spoonful in this sinful split with five scoops of ice cream, strawberry, marshmallow and chocolate topping, a split fresh banana, sprinkles, walnuts and whipped topping."1

Although there are also plenty of food-related vignettes from my adult years, I think you get the point: Eating has been a big part of my life. So much so that I have often joked that, until Phyl and I got together, my idea of being healthy was not ordering extra cheese on my cheese steak subs. I'm sure that my fixation with food probably not only stems from the fact that it's just plain fun, but also has something to do with our family finances having made food a precious commodity when my siblings and I were growing up.

As one of my sisters once said to her college boyfriend, "Going grocery shopping was a really big deal in my family." I thought of this when I recently read an article in which Wheel of Fortune's Pat Sajak explained that he's very grateful now to be able to buy anything he wants when he goes to the grocery store. It was nice to see such a privilege truly appreciated.

While I myself have certainly had to watch what things cost when grocery shopping as an adult, I definitely have not been underfed. To the contrary, since my mid-twenties, my belt size has started with a "4" the majority of the time—once reaching 46" when my weight peaked at 267 in the mid-90s.

Although those numbers dropped to 183 and 36" respectively when Phyl and I got married in 1998, I then put on a quick twenty pounds during our two-week honeymoon and began my ascent back up the scales. As I write this manuscript, I'm tipping them at 236, with a 40" waistline. I share all of these weight-related details with you because for all of the funny "food" stories and memorable eating moments, I still have a hard time accepting the fact that I've spent most of my adult life overweight.

My sense of semi-disbelief about my weight underscores the degree to which, despite the many humorous eating anecdotes, food has become a very serious matter in my life. Perhaps the best way to illustrate how I feel about this subject is to share a memory with you from my childhood.

When I was eleven, I was reading My Turn at Bat, the wonderful autobiography of legendary baseball star Ted Williams. In it, Williams wrote:

From the time I was twelve years old I was a malted milk hound. Malted milk with eggs. When I started playing professionally, and could afford it, I'd have four or five a day. I'd like to know how many calories I put away in those years. I look at myself now, when a dish of ice cream means another notch in the belt, and I have to think that that skinny skeleton body belonged to someone else.2

When I saw that, I thought: That will never happen to me. I'm not going to be one of those guys who was an athlete early on in life and then puts on the pounds later when he gets older. I'll always exercise and keep in good shape.

And then Life happened.

The bottom line is that I now find myself struggling on almost a daily basis to control my weight. Every evening I am reminded of just how troubling this issue is to me. Just before going to sleep, I try to do a brief review of the day and identify three things that I did "right," three things that I did "wrong," and the reasons behind those "wins" and "losses" for the day. Almost always, at least one of my daily entries in the negative column involves overeating. Often this produces feelings of self-loathing, disappointment with my own lack of willpower, and the now familiar admonition to myself: How can a guy who considers life such a great privilege and professes to love his wife and family endlessly have a cholesterol count of 251 and yet still be out of control with his eating habits so often?


Fairy Tales

Okay, how about we lighten things up a bit now (no pun intended)? How about we talk "Fairy Tales" for a bit? As someone who has a life-sized replica of a knight in shining armor in his dining room, this is a topic close to my heart. You see, this is a subject that has a lot to do with who I am as a person, the perspective my siblings and I have on life, and, perhaps most pertinent for you as the reader, how we have approached attempting to understand all of the information we have received from Heaven as we have gone about writing this book.

The importance of fairy tales providing a philosophical framework for my family and me is best captured in an excerpt from what we included in this book's dedication about our mother, Marge Macomber:

Whenever a Walt Disney movie would be showing at the theater when [Robbie] was a child, his mother would always manage to find a way to get her children to see it. She felt that it was very important for them to have the opportunity to see these films of fantasy, magic, and fairy tales.

While Robbie has irreplaceable memories of going with her to see Pinocchio, Snow White, Bambi, and a host of other enchanting classics, the thing that made the most lasting impression on him is that his mother was every bit as excited to see these movies as he and his sisters and brothers were. Her sense of enthusiasm for these timeless flights of fancy, the irrepressible youth of her soul, and her unshakable belief in happy endings are all part of Mum Marge's legacy to her son Robbie. To this day, his two favorite movies of all-time in the entire world remain The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan.

The extent to which these childhood classics have impacted my life can be seen just by looking at the license plates on the cars my wife Phyl and I drive. One of them reads "WIZOFOZ" and the other "PETRPAN." And then there's the corner of our living room that's like a mini-shrine to The Wizard of Oz. Oh yeah, when we got married in 1998, our wedding dance was to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"…with Phyl wearing replicas of Dorothy's ruby-red slippers that my sister Sarah had made as a wedding gift for her.


Our "Grampa Paul" and "The Tin Man"

Although The Wizard of Oz has played an influential role over the course of my entire life, it wasn't until after I started writing this book and heard my mother tell a "Wiz"-related story from family lore that I fully realized where she had gotten some of her "unshakable belief in happy endings."

Ever since I was a young boy, I had heard Mum describe how, when I was just a year old, her father, Paul Allen, my "Grampa Paul," had held me on his lap so that I could watch The Wizard of Oz with him. I have no recollection of that experience because he died the following summer, leaving his wife Verna (our "Grammy Al") to bury him on her fiftieth birthday. What I do recollect, however, is that Mum had mentioned over the years that her dad had briefly known Jack Haley, the actor who had played "The Tin Man" in The Wizard of Oz. When I began work on this book and was seeking to understand my family background a little better, I came across a small nugget that shed some light on where, at least in part, the "don't-ever-be-afraid-to-try-anything" advice she has always given to us kids came from.

While tape-recording some conversations with Mum about a wide range of family history, I captured a brief vignette involving our Grampa Paul and "The Tin Man":

Cuac: You said at one point that Grampa Paul knew the fellow who had played "The Tin Man"?
Mum: Oh, right. He worked at the Boston Navy Yard, and his helper was "The Tin Man" before he went to Hollywood. What was his name?
Cuac: Jack Haley. Wasn't he Grampa Paul's electrician's assistant?
Mum: Yes. He used to tell my father that he wanted to be an actor, go to Hollywood, and try to get into film. My father encouraged him and said, "Well, do it if that is what you want to do. You will never know until you try it."

This little family story is not at all meant to imply that the reason Jack Haley became an actor is because of our Grampa Paul's encouragement. No, the point is rather that this short narrative illustrates the tremendous influence that previous generations have upon future ones. Our grandfather possessed an "anything-is-possible" attitude about life and instilled in his daughter, Margaret, that same sense of belief. And had she not passed that same sort of outlook on to us, it is doubtful, very doubtful, that this book would exist.


A Few More Miscellaneous Tidbits

So, what other things will give you a quick snapshot of me? Though by no means a complete summary or in any particular order of importance, here are a few more details about Margaret Allen Macomber's oldest child, Rob:

Favorite TV shows (old and new): Lost, Alias, Medium, 24, Heroes, Magnum, P.I., West Wing, Commander-in-Chief, Ghost Whisperer, Joan of Arcadia, Touched by an Angel, Witchblade, Remington Steele, X-Files, The 4400, Hogan's Heroes, Gilligan's Island, and Mike Hammer…to name just some of them.

Favorite fiction authors: Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Kenneth Roberts, H. G. Wells, Robert Ludlum, Jeffrey Archer, Nelson DeMille, Jack Higgins, Stan Lee, and other countless comic book writers whose names I do not know. But regardless of what author I am reading, I've always been most interested in reading about the emotions being felt by the story's characters. Even when presented with Dickens's masterful passages describing settings and scenes, I found my eyes going into "skim mode" as I raced ahead to learn what was going on inside the characters' hearts.

Favorite memory in life: The weekend that Phyl and I got married. With five best men, nineteen ushers, one maid-of-honor, ten bridesmaids, two readers, two ring bearers, one flower girl, and numerous other family members and friends present, the recollection of Phyl and me together sharing the experience of our wedding with so many people whom we care about is a memory that time will never diminish.

I enjoyed our wedding so much that, after the ceremony was over, I suggested to Phyl that we get dressed up in our wedding clothes every year on our anniversary. And so that's just what we do. It's an absolute gas and has become an extremely special tradition for the two of us.

Phyl's got the tough part of that gig, though, as she has to fit in the same wedding dress every year. All I have to do, on the other hand, is head over to College Formals and rent a tux in whatever size I happen to be.

Old harmless habits I can't seem to break:

Since age fifteen, I've been addicted to Chapstick. I keep tubes of it in all sorts of different places and get uncomfortable if I don't have one within immediate reach.

I often get lost in thought while driving, causing me to miss exits and make wrong turns on a regular basis. Phyl calls this my "Float Mode."

I guess that's about it for openers about me, with one big exception: What I have done as an adult for work and how a series of severe business setbacks profoundly affected my take on the spiritual side of life. Although this part of the story and the way in which it led me to being involved in writing this book will be explained later in more detail, here's the short version.


An Open Mind toward the Mysteries of Existence

I must say that earlier in life, I never would have envisioned being on my present path of spiritual inquiry. Coming from a traditional academic background and having pursued an entrepreneurial career in business, I was, up until the early 1990s, leading a life oriented toward the mainstream that had as its primary focus the achievement of conventional success.

Rob DeSimone, my high school classmate and Bowdoin roommate, and I began our first business together at age nineteen. It was a small summer moped rental business called Mopeds of Maine in Bar Harbor, Maine, subsequently leading us to locate there year-round after college and become commercial real estate brokers and small-scale real estate developers.

On November 11, 1991, a major curveball came my way in business that served as a catalyst for my beginning to seek answers to the age-old questions of existence. Since then, I have increasingly endeavored to make some small inquiry about the spiritual aspects of our experience here on Earth. Although later on in this book I will explain more about the specifics of this business calamity and the effect that it had on my life, suffice it to say that the past decade and a half has witnessed a major transformation of my belief system.

Faced with what quickly evolved into a seemingly never-ending morass of litigation (from which I am still diligently trying to pick up the pieces), I sought to glean at least some slight bit of understanding about how a career that I had been working on so hard since age nineteen could have taken such a sharp detour. Seeking to gain at least a modicum of insight into why this might have happened, I slowly began to delve into the spiritual side of life.

After reading dozens of spiritually oriented books—most of my favorite nonfiction authors, some of whom we have quoted in this book, are now of this genre—I have come to the not-so-surprising conclusion that the first place to look when searching for reasons when something goes wrong in one's life is in the mirror. This is a pretty simple and basic lesson that probably should have been obvious much earlier on.

Although I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, you should know I am not what many would call an extremely "religious" individual in the conventional sense of the word. Although baptized a Catholic, I rarely attend church and do not feel I have found any one faith that seems to "have all the answers."

To the contrary, what I believe is continually evolving and subject to constant change. I guess you could say that whatever belief system I have is very "fluid" and that, more than anything, I have tried to keep an open mind about the mysteries of existence. Not surprisingly, this ongoing thought process usually leads to many more additional questions for me than it does answers.

In my pursuit of gaining some sort of spiritual perspective, I came across a number of books written by Ruth Montgomery. Or perhaps I should say, they made their way to me. As you shall soon see, Mrs. Montgomery's work ended up altering the course of my entire life and helped put it on the path that has led to my involvement with the writing of the book that you are now reading.


"When your views on the world and your intellect are being challenged…"

As influential as Ruth Montgomery's writings have been on my direction in life, it is in the words of another person whom I never met that I found the best description of how I have come to approach the "big-picture" questions we all ask ourselves in private moments.

More than a decade ago—and not too long after my business woes commenced in the early 1990s—I came across a quotation in a catalog for Bar Harbor's noted human ecology school, the College of the Atlantic (COA). The quotation was part of a dedication to a COA teacher who had recently passed away, Professor William H. Drury, Jr. Even though I had never met the gentleman or even heard of him before, it was obvious from the dedication in the catalog that he had been a great teacher, was revered by his students, and had touched the lives of many young people.

When I first read Professor Drury's words, they struck me as being very powerful. They made enough of an impression upon me that I immediately photocopied them so that I would always have them. I guess because I have always enjoyed learning and "being a student," William H. Drury, Jr.'s words really spoke to me and hit a chord deep inside. Here is what Professor Drury had to say:

When your views on the world and your intellect are being challenged, and you begin to feel uncomfortable because of a contradiction you've detected that is threatening your current model or some aspect of it, pay attention. You are about to learn something.


Back to Top

Jane Macomber: Who I Am

Let me begin by saying that you are going to find that I write with a lot of emotion. I'm sure that my frequent use of exclamation points, italicized words, and colloquialisms might raise the eyebrows of my former English teachers, but I'm just trying to write in a style that is as close as possible to what you'd hear from me if we were sitting down and chatting together over a meal.

I am a single mother of two teenage boys, Justin and Caleb. I work full-time as the assistant manager of the housekeeping department at a small inn in Massachusetts.

I am, and always have been, a very "hands-on" type of mom. I just plain like children in general. My sister Laura has often called me "The Kool-Aid Mom," the one who has the neighborhood kids over all the time.

When the kids were younger, it was not uncommon for me to be outside playing kickball with my two boys and their friends. Now that they are teenagers, my car has turned into the local taxi as I shuttle them to the mall, take them around to do errands, or make midnight snack runs. It is also not unusual to find five or six young boys asleep in our living room on any given Saturday or Sunday morning, as I have always tried to make their friends feel welcome in our home.

My Hobbies

I do have a couple of hobbies. The first is photography.

Our father is a self-taught photographer who has passed that interest on to me. He bought me my first camera (completely manual) and told me that, to be a good photographer, I must take pictures. And so for the past decade and a half, I have taken thousands and thousands of pictures. I have a special fondness for florals and, of course, for my children.

Another hobby of mine is collecting children's books. I have hundreds of such books and have derived immense joy from them.

My Lifetime Interest in the Unknown

On to a topic that has obviously become much more than a hobby for me: the unknown.

Ever since I can remember, I have been afraid of ghosts—but, at the same time, have been fascinated by them. I've always loved ghost stories, even some that were meant to be funny and not scary.

I guess you could say the unknown has always fascinated me, whether it was ghosts or just a good mystery book. I devoured every Hardy Boys book Rob ever owned. Later in elementary school, I started reading Ed McBain mysteries. I couldn't wait to finish one and race to the library to get the next one.

I also loved Stephen King books in elementary school. I was one of the first kids in my school to read Stephen King's Carrie, and then Salem's Lot. I have not read all of his work by any means, but he is a fantastic storyteller. I love the fact that he dares to explore the unknown. And he lives just an hour away from where I grew up. Maybe there's something in that cold Maine air.…

And, as I mentioned, while loving this sort of thing, I was also scared to death of some of it, especially of ghosts and vampires. Salem's Lot was my favorite book, but I was terrified that a real vampire might show up at my window every night. To this day, if I have seen a scary movie or read a frightening book, I don't hesitate to sleep with the light on.

This all may sound crazy—I communicate with "dead" people, but I'm scared of them! What I'm afraid of is seeing them. Especially ones that are not so nice. It's one of life's age-old contradictions that we all deal with at times.

Although I believe this fear holds me back from frequently seeing "ghosts" or things on different planes, I have on occasion seen and heard some things. Not nearly as much as some people I know, but enough to make me scared, and at the same time, yearning to see more. There's that contradiction thing again!!!

I will not get into all of the specifics of my first encounters for personal reasons, but when I was around eleven years old, I saw the shadowy figure of someone on two different occasions in my home (it was the same "person" each time). I also heard someone during this same time period and believe it was this same "person" (ghost if you will).

Later in life, I became aware of aliens. I am still scared to death of them, yet fascinated at the same time. I would love to see a UFO, but would hate to be abducted. I don't see how we can be the only intelligent life in the universe. (And with the way things are going, I sometimes think we are the most unintelligent beings in the universe!)

Anyway, I have always been "into" the unknown. Anything to do with the supernatural has always intrigued me. I loved the stuff as a kid and still do.

My Education

Although I've just touched on a handful of my childhood experiences in school, I now want to walk you through my overall education. In hopes that they will allow you to get to know me a little bit, I'm going to include many unvarnished details about the path I traveled through my academic experiences.

The Adams School—Grades 1–8: Great Teachers, Great Food, Great Times

When I entered first grade, the Adams School was a four-room schoolhouse that had two bathrooms and an attic. Each room housed two grades: first and second together, third and fourth together, and so on.

Right from the beginning, I loved school. I enjoyed learning and seeing all of the other children. Looking back, I can see we were a privileged bunch of kids, with fewer than one hundred of us in the entire school.

I especially enjoyed the home-cooked lunches that were hand prepared by the wonderful Mrs. Helen Gray. I'm talking home cooking, with the absolute best macaroni and cheese in the world. And home-baked yeast rolls that any Castine student can still smell simply by thinking of them! (Just how much my siblings and I loved her cooking is illustrated by the fact that after Mrs. Gray passed away, our family was given her recipe book.)

We had wonderful teachers. Mrs. Danforth, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Babcock, and Mr. O'Brien provided excellent instruction on all of the academic basics. Moreover, Marge Babcock was—and, to this day, still is—one of my favorite people in the whole world. It was easy to see she genuinely loved her job and working with children. She will forever remain one of the better parts of my childhood.

When I was in either seventh or eighth grade, my teacher, Mr. O'Brien, knew that some of my friends and I were interested in ESP. So, for science class he let us do some "scientific research" on ESP.

Mr. O'Brien got us some of those cards with the stars, wavy lines, and circles. While one student held up a card with the drawing facing him or her, another student would concentrate and try to guess what the card had on it. We also tried to control what numbers would show up on dice, using concentration and will power. I always got the highest score in these ESP experiments and loved my teacher, Wallace O'Brien, for letting us do something so cool!

My High School Years: Troubled Times…with a Happy Ending

When it came time for high school, my mother wanted me to go to private school. She felt that it would "broaden my horizons," so to speak. I, on the other hand, had no intention of leaving home.

I remember the interviews I had at four different boarding schools. I was not very enthusiastic about any of them. I remember in particular my answer when the interviewer at Milton Academy, where Rob had gone, asked if I was there because my mother wanted me to be. A big "Yup" came shooting out of my mouth. I was thrilled when all four schools sent rejection letters.

Because of low enrollment, the Castine High School had shut down years before. (My father remembers a commencement ceremony where his friend was the only one graduating!) After that, most kids were bussed to the high school in Bucksport, about half an hour away. But following in the footsteps of my sisters, Laura and Sarah (their high school experiences also ended up including boarding schools), I chose to go to George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill. Because it was a smaller school than Bucksport, my sisters and I thought it to be a better choice for us. Since there was no bus to Blue Hill, it meant our parents had to drive us. Eventually, we arranged to hook up with a bus from the neighboring town of Penobscot, thus reducing our parents' driving significantly.

Even though all of my friends from Castine were going to Bucksport, I did know some kids from Penobscot who attended George Stevens, and I was thrilled to be going there. I loved it right from the start. I was enrolled in the upper level classes, Level Five, and really enjoyed them. The teachers were excellent. I also loved the social life and soon started hanging out with several kids from Penobscot, as well as classmates from other nearby towns, on a regular basis.

I got good grades in school, but was well into partying by then. In fact, my popularity at Blue Hill was due not only to my outgoing personality, but also to the fact that I supplied some of the best homegrown pot in the area (not grown by me, but by a good friend). It was not uncommon for me to stay after school to hang out with friends and get high. That, of course, meant I had to hitchhike home. I decided, however, that most of the time it was worth it, although it didn't sit well with my parents. I was usually home by late afternoon and had plenty of time to do my studies.

By the time my second year of high school in Blue Hill rolled around, I was beginning to go downhill academically. The first half of my sophomore year I did fairly well, earning mostly Bs. But the second half of the year saw a dramatic change as I slid into a deep depression and was drinking more and more. I drank so much that one friend nicknamed me "Sponge." My grades were slipping, and my attitude toward the whole learning process went out the window.

By the time the end of the school year came around, I had missed finals because I was sick. I had to take my exams on a day after everyone else was done with school. I didn't do very well on them.

For some reason, my parents couldn't pick me up that day. I think I must have lied and told them I could get a ride because they didn't like me hitchhiking. But that is exactly what I did.

I remember thinking as I was walking down the road that I was not going back to school the next fall. I had made my mind up on that matter already.

This was a big disappointment to my parents, as they had gotten me (and my brothers Joe and Paul) a full scholarship to a small private school, Kents Hill, outside of Augusta, Maine. Looking back, I guess that it must have been early on in my sophomore year, when my mental state was still somewhat intact, that I had initially agreed to go there. But, by the end of the year, I had no intention of going to any school. I was too involved with my misery and depression.

Having tried without success to get me to go to Kents Hill and Blue Hill, my mother decided to see if I would try Bucksport High School, where most of the other Castine kids went. Typical of adolescents sometimes taking school rivalries too seriously, I considered Bucksport to be "the enemy." But I relented and went there…for five days.

On the sixth day I purposely missed the bus. My parents got me in the car to drive me. I started whining about my stomach aching. My father hit the roof. But my mother, too tired to fight me anymore, consented at that point to my becoming a high school dropout.

At a loss as to what to do about the situation, my parents asked a local school counselor to come talk with me. After about five minutes, I stormed out on her too. But the counselor then had some very good advice for my parents: Let Jane work it out on her own.

I learned years later that my father, not knowing what to do, had even considered "locking me up" in some sort of institution. Had that happened, I can assure you I would be another suicide statistic. (Thank you, Mrs. Noonan, for your good advice to my parents about letting me work it out on my own.)

I moved out of my parents' house shortly after these incidents to help my cousin with her children for a few months. Despite my mental state, I did love kids and found great joy in helping out. Thinking back, I realize it was probably really good for me to have something so positive in my life.

My depression was still there, but by the time the next school year rolled around, I had come to my senses enough to know that I needed to go back to school. By this time, I was living with my parents again.

I chose to return to my first school, George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill. About two months into the fall, I quit drinking and doing drugs and aced the year. (I describe the spiritual experience that led to this decision a few chapters further on in the book.) I also decided that my last year of high school wouldn't be so bad at a boarding school. I even attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, for the summer session after my junior year at Blue Hill. It was a great experience and a good primer for my senior year at Gould Academy, a private boarding school in Bethel, Maine.

When I arrived at Gould, I was one year sober and on top of the world. I fast became friends with many different types of kids, but tended to stick to the partying crowd. After all, just because I didn't drink anymore didn't mean I couldn't have fun. On the contrary, I had a lot more fun once I quit drinking and all that other stuff.

Gould was great! I had such a good time there. They totally accepted me, the new kid, the born-again Christian who was religious and all, but still liked to have a good time. (I still consider myself a Christian, but now believe that all religions have something to offer if one is interested in learning about spiritual matters.)

Every five years a bunch of my friends from Gould and I get together for the class reunions there. Some of the best people I know, I met at Gould.

College and Beyond

My brother Rob, always the academic, thought I should do a post-graduate year, just to have another year under my belt before I went off to college. I went along with it and had lots of interviews at various schools around New England. But, because no one that year could offer me enough financial aid, I went home after graduating from Gould and worked in the local grocery store.

I applied to several colleges for the following academic year and was thrilled when I was accepted at my first choice: Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Hampshire is a great school, and I feel honored that I was accepted there. But, for reasons I wish to keep private, it did not work out for me.

I did not return to Hampshire the next fall. I worked for a few years and finally realized I needed to go back to school. Wanting to try a new area, I applied to several schools in California. But before hearing back from them, I ran into an old friend. We ended up having two children together, so I never finished my formal education.

Some say I should go back to school now that the kids are older; but I believe all that life has offered me has been an education beyond compare.

The Ideas Being Presented in This Book Are Suggestions

As I have come to understand it, the wide cross-section of varied experiences that I have had in life is one of the things that contributed to my being allowed the honor of helping to carry on Ruth Montgomery's work. From what she and the Spirit Guides have said, another factor is my longtime interest in "the unknown." Regardless of the exact reasons I have been permitted to be involved in this project, I consider it a great privilege to be bringing to you the recommendations for our world that Ruth and the Spirit Guides are sending to all of us from The Other Side.

The ideas presented in this book are suggestions—suggestions to put our planet on the track we say we want it to be on.

I am not going to use fear and say that if these ideas are not followed, then all hell and damnation are going to break loose. I believe the only Hell that exists is the hell we create ourselves. I will also say that I believe it is just as easy to create Heaven.

In a book I once read called God's Underground, the author declares, as best I can remember it, that "if passion exists, even if that passion is hatred, the possibility of love exists." I wholeheartedly agree.

So, that's a quick snapshot of my background and me. I assure you that I am not a nutcase looking for notoriety or anything else. I simply wish to follow through on the assignment that I have been given by Ruth and the Guides.

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Greetings from Paul Macomber

Like the rest of my siblings, I was born and raised in Castine, Maine. For much of my youth, I grew up in a two-hundred-year-old colonial house that was, shall we say, showing its age. I lived there with my parents, three sisters, two brothers, our three-legged dog, Honey, and numerous cats. It's true that we didn't have much money, but did have a lot of love among all of us. And what I've found interesting as an adult is that it's the memories of the latter that are by far the strongest.

My Early Thoughts on Spiritual Matters

I remember when I was probably about seven or eight years old that I started contemplating the thought of death and what happens afterward. I recall thinking that there had to be more to it than just living your life, and then when it came to an end, they'd put you in a box, bury you in the ground, and that was it.

How could you just stop being? It just didn't make sense to me that one day when I died I would cease to exist. I wanted to believe there had to be more going on after the death part. The thought that I would just be gone, and that was it, always led me to be looking and thinking about alternative possibilities to something after death.

Stories of ghosts both scared and intrigued me. I think that this was because if they did exist, it meant that there was some type of life after death…although it didn't seem as though ghosts had a very pleasant existence, at least not the ones you hear about when you're eight or nine. But it sure was a better alternative to being left in the ground with no future at all.

Like most everyone else, I heard talk of Heaven and God during the early years of my youth. Yet I never heard any stories about people who had any real experience of having been to the afterlife. At the time, it seemed to be more of a fairy-tale type of place where you supposedly went after death if you lived a good life and were a nice person.

When I was about ten or eleven, I remember hearing some people talk about reincarnation. It sounded nice that when you were done with this life, you would get to start all over again with another. On the other hand, I couldn't understand how people could transform from one person to another person. It seemed to me that you were who you were—and how was that ever going to change?

By the age of fifteen I still had no clear belief system about what happened after death. I did know that I felt there was something more to it than dying and being gone forever, but what that was I still didn't know.

Around the age of seventeen or eighteen, I read a few books on reincarnation, and they resonated as being true to me. It seemed to make sense and helped to fit the pieces of the puzzle together in terms of connecting the life and death part. I guess you could say that was the time when I started to embark on my spiritual exploration of life.

As you can probably surmise, I'm now fully on board with a strong belief in the reality of Heaven, ghosts, reincarnation, and life after death. In fact, those concepts that seemed so far out there when I was young are now the foundation of my belief system.

My Academic Background

After finishing elementary school at Castine's Adams School and attending Bucksport High School for a year, I received the remainder of my high school education at Kents Hill School, a private boarding school with just over two hundred students, located in central Maine, not far from the state capital of Augusta. My time spent there was a very enriching period in my life.

At Kents Hill, I was exposed to students from different parts of the country, as well as from various locations around the world. My schoolmates had diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds that you didn't find in the everyday, year-round life of Castine.

I met some of my closest lifelong friends while at Kents Hill, many of whom I'm still in regular contact with today. Those were very formative years that prepared me well, not only for my time at college, but also for the path that lay ahead of me in life.

After graduating from Kents Hill, I attended Phillips Exeter Academy summer school and then took eighteen months off to work and save money for college. I attended Babson College, which is located in Wellesley, Massachusetts, twelve miles west of Boston. Babson is a small business and liberal arts college, with an emphasis on business education.

I wasn't in the top of my class academically at Babson like I had been in high school. In retrospect, I'm certain that it had a lot to do with my strong desire for social interaction, intertwined with my fair share of beer consumption. Nevertheless, I received a great education and had a good time doing so.

"…I ran into an old friend from Nantucket who invited me out to stay with him on the island for a weekend."

After college I lived in Boston for a couple of years doing odd jobs, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. One day while walking down the street, I ran into an old friend from Nantucket who invited me out to stay with him on the island for a weekend.

While in college I had spent a summer working on Nantucket, and two of my best friends from Kents Hill came from there, so it had been a special place for me. As it was mid-July and about a hundred degrees in Boston, I took my friend up on his invitation…and the weekend turned into a five-year stay.

During those five years, I worked building houses and performing other odd jobs. I also became involved with drugs—cocaine, to be specific. Living on a beautiful, secluded island like Nantucket and using drugs allowed me to avoid facing the question of what I wanted to do with my life. It was a perfect escape, or so I thought at the time. Looking back now, I can see that it was just an easy way for me to postpone having to face my fears about what seemed to be the daunting challenges of trying to figure out a career and direction in life.

I have numerous fond memories of good times on Nantucket and made many great friends while living there. Because of my irresponsible attitude and involvement with drugs, however, I ended up in prison for a year.

I found out that I was in trouble with the law a few weeks after leaving Nantucket, just one day before I was scheduled to move to California and start a new life going into business with an old friend and roommate from college, Andrew Zenoff. I had to postpone my trip to turn myself in and retain a lawyer to defend me.

After returning to Nantucket to face my charges, I was released on bail and had one year before I went back to court to learn that I would be sentenced to a year in prison. I spent that year in California working with my friend in a new start-up venture. He had invented a new baby product called My Brest Friend that lends support to breast-feeding moms and had only recently launched the business. During that year, I did little else but work, read books, and exercise. At the end of the year in California, I returned to Massachusetts to face my charges and received my year-long sentence.

Although it wouldn't have been my first choice as a place to reflect and search my soul, prison ended up being a positive experience in many ways. I read dozens of books, most of which dealt with spiritual topics. I also wrote more letters than I have ever written in my life. But, most importantly, I was able to look deep inside myself to determine what was really important to me and what it was I wanted to do in life.

I came to the realization that my relationship with my family and friends was what was most important. I further concluded that, in addition to making a living, I also wanted to do something that would help people, preferably on as large a scale as possible. At the time, I envisioned developing a business that would not just make a profit, but also positively impact the lives of others as well. After being released from prison, I returned to California, where I have lived ever since.

My college friend and I now market the My Brest Friend nursing pillow, which he invented, to people all over the world. It has assisted hundreds of thousands of new moms to breast-feed successfully and, in doing so, has helped their little ones be healthier. We also subsequently started another new venture that is a retail concept. It provides most everything a new parent would need, all under one roof. We are currently in the process of expanding it and are growing both companies.

For all of the twists and turns in my travels along life's path, I hadn't even the faintest inkling that I would ever be involved in something like this book…until it started happening.

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