Throughout history, angels have been known as guiding spirits. They have been called "Messengers of God." Angels have been seen as encouraging souls whose purpose is to lead us through transformative events in our lives.

Often, these guiding spirits are embraced so that a sense of comfort can be felt in the midst of despair. A dying patient and family members who believe in the presence of angels report feeling blessed by God.

Angels are extensions of God's consciousness to most traditional religions. They come to us in various ways, shapes, sizes, and expressions. What a person believes to be true is true for that person.

When a person is dying, we can work with their angels in the following ways:

1. Believe the Patient.
Spiritual creativity is often the only level of independence that a dying person has at the end of life.

2. Encourage Inner Exploration.
If given enough time and a nonjudgmental attitude, dying patients feel more and more comfortable with those who care for them and begin to share the inner dynamics of their life with those around them.
A nonjudgmental sharing of lives creates a pathway into inner exploration. As such, a sense of safety is felt and the journey into the depths of one's soul is encouraged.

3. Allow the Patients to follow their Soul.
When we trust in the Wisdom that created our dying patient's life, we are trusting in the Wisdom that created all living things.

When a dying patient begins to trust you as his or her caregiver, you become a midwife, a fellow soul, an angel on a person's path of dying into life. As a patient is dying, he or she generally becomes more soul than body.

As a person let's go of his or her identification with physical matter, what really begins to matter are the things in life that isn't matter. The relationship created between you and a patient in this kind of transformative experience of dying connects us to the eternal realm. Here, we are invited to dance with the angels.

Samuel Oliver, author of, "What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living" and "A Fish Named Ed"