When I tell people that I understand that there's a higher power in the world, the first reaction I get is disbelief. The second is them thinking that I'm absolutely crazy. And a rare reaction is them understanding that energy exists and that some people are more sensitive to the energy emitted from the earth than others.

Everything that comes from the earth holds energy: the ground, the rocks, the plants, the animals, the humans, the water, the fish, the deceased. Everything is made of atoms. Those atoms hold energy. A basic scientific law (the conservation of energy, to be exact) says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. What was once will always be. When something dies, the energy is just left here to be transferred from one being to another. If you can believe these basic scientific explanations, you can also believe that there are some people who are more sensitive to these energies than others.

I've always questioned religious institutions, but this isn't to say that I don't believe in a God. I believe that there is something higher than us, a being that once created all of this world that we stand on. How else would it get here, right? I realized that science and religion aren't too far off from one another, and I realized that all religions have a common factor: a mass of energy that created all that we know.

I grew up knowing that there was something different about me. Sometimes I just felt like I knew things that other people weren't aware of. I would have dreams that would come true, nightmares that came to life, visions and deja vu moments that actually happened. I would have a bad feeling, shake it off, and be doomed to that reality. I grew up being scared, very scared, that I was just crazy and that no one else would ever understand. There were signs in my life that I would pick up on, good or bad, and I would know that I had something spiritually higher than me watching over me.

The older I grew, the more sensitive I became to my surroundings, but I also was better able to understand the world around me. I seemed to okay with what other people would call their greatest fears. I knew that death wasn't something to be afraid of because we are all made of the world's energy, which never leaves the world. I knew that everything can be healed, even if a Western medicine prescription for the ailment doesn't exist. I found faith in knowing that we, humans, aren't the only things that emit vibrations.

I learned about the seven chakras of the body, which are centers of energy in the human body. We have the crown chakra, which is where your spirituality comes from. The third eye chakra is where your awareness is found. The throat chakra is the home of communication. The heart chakra holds love and affection. The solar plexus holds wisdom. The sacral is where your sexuality and creativity lives. Finally, your root chakra holds you together through basic trust. When a person is feeling physically, mentally or emotionally ill, you know that their chakras aren't balanced. The energy inside them isn't doing its job and they need something to help that. This is where we use energy from Earth's others beings to help create balance. Healing stones are the balance. Sensitive people can see the energy emitting from the chakras. Sensitive people can feel the vibrations of a stone from the Earth and channel it to transfer its energy to the chakra.

I started to understand religious institutions more by understanding my own personal experiences. A close family member of mine passed away a few years ago, and I knew that before this happened, she was meant to be my guardian angel. I dreamt about it, had a feeling about, and I just knew. A few years ago, she got very ill and moved on to another life, or moved on to Heaven, whichever you want to believe. For a while, when I was still coping with her death, I saw signs that led me to believe that she was okay and that she was still here with me. A psychologist would say that this was just a coping mechanism created inside my own mind to deal with the death of a loved one. A believer would understand that her energy was just taking a while to transfer because it wasn't ready to leave her just yet. Years later, I still feel her protection.

Someone from a religious institution would cope with the death of a loved one by saying that they are at peace and have gone to Heaven. Whether you believe this is the case or not, the energy of them is still left behind. A "religious" person would say that the soul and body are two different things, and that the soul goes to heaven while the body is left in the ground. This is why "religious" people believe in ghosts. This is also why they believe that all a sensitive person can do is see and talk to ghosts.

When a sensitive person has a loved one die, it's a lot different from an insensitive person "losing" someone. We don't "lose" people -- we simply communicate with them in different ways. We find signs that point us to them. They come to us in dreams. We don't see them as "ghosts" haunting us -- we see them as energy surrounding us. They aren't lost souls who haven't yet found peace and have gone to heaven. They are simply energy on a mission and sometimes they come to us for help.

No matter what you choose to believe in this life, just remember that everything is connected. We are all masses of energy and we are all on this Earth. What you believe beyond that is up to you.