Colleen Carelli has been searching for a greater meaning to her life since she was 18 years old. One day, a brush with difficult times led her to a realization: She should spread the word about spirituality and topics like life after death.
Wednesday, over a hundred people gathered at the Secaucus Library to listen to her presentation, “Journey of the Soul.”
Carelli spent years studying with teachers of all kinds on a wide range of spiritual subjects. Metaphysics, meditation, parapsychology, near-death experiences, the chakra system, Buddhism, and the bibles are just some of the studies that have guided her journey.
“I have so much information that I’m only able to scratch the tip of the surface,” she said last week. “It’s so exciting and it makes me very happy and healthy. It’s all about thoughts are things. If you start to change the way you look at things, the things you look at will start to change.”
Robin Franconeri, a mother from Secaucus, attended Wednesday’s talk out of curiosity.
“I’m very interested in spiritual guides and angels, and I’m interested to know more,” said Franconeri. According to Carelli, spiritual guides and invisible helpers surround us each day, looking to offer help if we just let them.
“You sit with guides and chart your life out before you’re even born,” she said.
Positive thinking
Carelli found an interest in the spiritual world when she was 18 and feeling hopeless about her life.
“Kids panic at that age,” she said. “They go on drugs or do negative activities. So I went on a deep search for why we are here. What is our purpose on Earth? What is the mission? It’s got to be more than getting up in the morning and going to work and going to bed.”
Carelli found her way out of her funk when she discovered Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking.
“It’s intense on purpose,” Carelli said. “You focus and use mantras and creative thoughts. It taught me not to be a victim.”
A deep believer in a higher power, Carelli is not a fan of organized religions, claiming that they serve to separate rather than unite.
“People are like snowflakes. We’re all completely different, but through condensation, we go back to the same source,” she said.
Carini said that there are thousands of near-death experiences around the world.
“There are documented cases where the soul was hanging over the ambulance, or where they see loved ones grieving,” she said. “There is no death. You just step out of your body. Your soul leaves your body like an old overcoat and you go back to a source of life that is more alive than this one. More real and more perfect.”
Carelli gained her insight from her studies and her own experiences. She has seen countless channelers, such as John Edwards, George Anderson and Edgar Cayce, the father of channeling.
John Edwards was one of the authors whose books were on display during the lecture.
“We like to promote books on the subject,” said Library Director Katherine Steffens. The library belongs to a network of 73 libraries, so people can order books as they are interested.
Edwards wrote Crossing Over and After Life. Also displayed was Reaching to Heaven by James Van Praagh, and Life on the Other Side by Sylvia Browne.
Carelli’s husband, Don, taped the lecture from the back of the room.
“I’m a real skeptic,” he said. “But when I heard her tapes from mediums, it’s just freaky because you hear things the person talking can never know. What she did is teach me that there is something beyond death.”
Don and Colleen have a 16-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. She works as a barber on Madison Avenue in New York City.
The crowd, mostly women, ranged in age from children to senior citizens.
Carelli hopes to offer more presentations as she can, teaching the universal lessons she has learned.
“You have to be honest and loyal, and people shouldn’t compromise,” she said. “Compromise breaks your heart.”