by Chris Meyers Almey
Northern News Services

NNSL (Apr 04/97) - Spirits. Angels. Who has experienced them? Who believes in them? Lone Sorensen does, for she has seen angels.

There are those, of course, who would take the view that spirits are nothing more than figments of the imagination, as in the movie Ghostbusters.

Sorensen doesn't share that view, not after taking part in a recent spiritual development workshop in the city.

Spiritual development can assume many faces, from religion through philosophy to one's own character to everyday dealings with fellow human beings.

It can be an intimate, personal experience or it can be shared with another, with a few people or everyone. It can inspire or it can possess.

Spiritual development can raise humanity to new heights or it can be shunned. It's not always about religion, but religion is often at the heart of the matter.

Take God for example. People have turned away from churches in droves in the South, whereas the North seems to have a close affinity with God -- or the Creator, as the people who first inhabited this land sometimes prefer.

Just look at all the churches in Yellowknife -- a dozen is quite a few for such a small city and especially a city not six decades old.

It's safe to say that sometimes only the intrepid dare to talk about reading the Bible to associates, for fear of a rolling of the eyes.

Yet ghosts and angels are part of beliefs that have been the foundation of the Christian and western society for thousands of years.

And as the next millennium approaches, people are seeing more angels and major news magazines have written about them more and more over the last year.

Sorensen's angels appeared to her few months ago during a women's circle in Yellowknife, facilitated by Blanche Tanner.

Tanner lives in British Columbia and she is coming again to Yellowknife next week with her husband Harreson to run a series of workshops sponsored by community supporter Ardith Dean. There is also a special weekend workshop, location to be announced.

The weekday workshops will be held on April 8, 9 and 10 at Northern United Place from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The Tanners have been running workshops on personal growth and spiritual development for more than 10 years.

One of their women's circle changed Sorensen's life. "I saw angels. I started opening up with pent-up emotion," she says.

She says she had been too busy and had stopped paying attention to what she was truly feeling.

During a workshop on meditation Sorensen had another remarkable experience.

"I felt my third eye was opening up," Sorensen says. "It was a real sense of peace."

Then she saw a brilliant light. She says it's hard to explain to people who haven't seen it, but many would have read about it in articles on people who have had a near-death experience.

Sorensen says it was so peaceful, so wonderful, an awakening of sorts.

Perhaps more comprehensible is another workshop she took called Heart to Heart. As result of it, she was reunited with her father, whom she had been angry at for seven years.

"Once you get rid of your negative energy there is more room for joy and happiness," she says.

Now she dances with her kids and has come alive again.