Originally, it was the overpowering scent of rose hips. Now, Heather makes herself known in a brush of energy across JoyBeth’s left shoulder.

Heather is her guardian angel.

It’s true that some people think JoyBeth is a little loopy when she talks about angels, faeries, elves and other spirits she meets in the journey she calls soul work.

“I had to face that stuff long ago, I had to face being misunderstood,” the Orland woman acknowledged.

JoyBeth describes her journey as “soul attunement,” and the company she and her husband run from their lakeside home is called “Soul Integrators.”

“There are so many kinds of pathways and exercises, many people are confused,” she said. “My whole focus is to bring together many understandings.”

People are searching for explanations for what happens in their lives, and JoyBeth’s message strikes a chord.

She delivers her thoughts, followed by a specially chosen piece of music, in a brief program, “Metaphysical Realities,” at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday on WERU, a community radio station based in Orland.

“When I talk about faeries or elves, or people who have passed on, I get so many calls and letters. People say, ‘now I know what this was I experienced’,” she explained.

She has decided to share her message about soul work in two books published on Valentine’s Day: her autobiography, “Beyond Belief Into Knowing;” and a workbook for the journey, “Soul’s Delight.”

Now in her 40s, JoyBeth – she goes by the one name – had a difficult childhood marked by frequent moves around the country, a variety of emotional and physical abuse, and bouts of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

But along the way, it also seemed she had stronger intuitions and experiences that not everyone had. These ranged from a childhood visit she is convinced was from Jesus to regular occasions of being able to “read” the energy of a person or place.

She could pick up personal objects, she wrote in her autobiography, “holding them in my hands and then hearing stories about who they were. I couldn’t perceive visually anything, but I could form

words. I would get the opportunity sometimes to see who the owner was and began to see a pattern of being able to know their feelings-emotions and generally what their life was like through touching an object of theirs. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was starting to practice psychometry.”

In one instance, JoyBeth’s car tires were slashed. While she was touching one tire to check the damage, the name and face of the person who had done it came to her. Needless to say, she didn’t try to use that information to convince the police.

She looked for life’s answers everywhere she could, studying different spiritualities and religious faiths both in and outside her course work for bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

A year as a VISTA volunteer in Colorado and stints teaching junior college and working in social programs kept JoyBeth looking for the keys to personal growth – always with an eye on the mind-body connection. She took in everything – feminism, vegetarianism, yoga, sky diving, whatever might bring her closer to herself.

Searching for the right college to get her advanced degree, she would visit this city or that, only to get a “message” even before setting foot on campus that it wasn’t the place.

The same thing happened when Joybeth approached a hotel that had been recommended in Kalamazoo, Mich., where she ended up doing graduate studies in social work. She started walking, paying attention to the inner voice that told her how to proceed. After a couple of miles, the voice directed her to enter a particular motel, where it turned out the clerk was in the same college program.

That was a positive message, but it was frightening when she started having feelings about the health of her beloved younger brother, Hank.

The illness began with stomachaches. When Hank asked his sister what she thought, “For the first time ever, I hesitated because my body had started tingling all over and it didn’t feel good,” she wrote. Hank died at 19 of leukemia.

JoyBeth had expected to move to Houston after getting her master’s degree, to live near her family. But weeks before she finished school, she started dreaming about living and working in Bangor, an area about which she knew only two things – lobsters and Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” song.

She sent her resume all over the place, but of course, it was Bangor that answered with the offer of a counseling job.

“The moment I drove into Maine, I had a deep sense that I had finally found ‘my home.’ I couldn’t explain it, but I knew that my guidance had been right,” she wrote.

She hasn’t changed her mind, explaining, “Living in Maine makes me grounded.”

JoyBeth continued learning – joined a dowsing group; studied flower essences, crystals, minerals, auras; read books by psychic Edgar Cayce; and helped start Maine’s Healing Arts Festival, where she taught hatha yoga, hypnosis and meditation.

Her willingness to enter into trances brought not only contact with more spirit guides, but awareness of past lives, including one lifetime as an Aztec.

JoyBeth resisted messages that she would soon meet her life’s partner.

She describes in her book yelling at the heavens, “Leave me alone! I’m not ready! And I don’t want to deal with any more old hippies!”

The person turned out to be a handsome schoolteacher named Johnny B, the man she has now been married to for nearly 17 years.

Eventually the couple purchased a set of old woods camps by Alamoosook Lake, yet JoyBeth resisted the growing knowledge that the location would become a type of retreat and learning center for metaphysical pursuits. But a visit with a psychotherapist – one who accepted her journey and her contact with spirits – convinced her that she was on the right track.

“From that day to this, I have been open to the world of spirit, God and Soul, never again slamming down the receiver,” she wrote. “Slowly my attitude of dread changed to one of joyous anticipation of my daily communications with inner worlds. Within a week, I was receiving daily knowledge and information about many aspects of the healing process, about human purpose and evolution, about the spirit worlds. Step by step, I was taken by the hand and encouraged, supported and taught what I needed to know in order to find out who I was as a soul.”

She and her husband fixed up the main camp as their home, and used the two smaller ones first as tourist cabins, then as space for retreat visitors. Outside, beneath old white pines more than 100 feet high, JoyBeth has created meditation gardens with perennials, sculptures honoring various faith traditions, and cairns of smooth, round stones constructed by her husband.

JoyBeth has done one-on-one counseling, given workshops ranging from one hour to two weeks – a recent workshop was held aboard a cruise between Houston and Honduras, and had her own programs on WERU radio.

Currently, her main activities focus on promoting her books and, several times a year, taking a week’s worth of classes as part of doctoral studies at the University of Creation Spirituality, the California facility founded by theologian Matthew Fox.

“The people in my classes there are more than 50 percent ministers, in some form,” she said.

The point, for her, is “deeper integration of spiritual beliefs into daily life,” something she believes does not have to be tied to any particular religion, or lack of it.

Tuned in as she is to living things – plant as well as animal, JoyBeth is committed to healing of the earth as well as of whatever lives here.

“We’re in trouble here as human beings,” she said.

JoyBeth’s workbook, “Soul’s Delight,” covers seven levels of spiritual growth, each corresponding to one of the chakras, or centers of energy, in the body – from root to crown. The book is subtitled “Your Step-by-Step Higher Self Integration Journey,” a process she decided to offer because “people are hungry for the how-to,” she said.

Activities include reading – the book contains references to many sources for more information on particular topics, writing, exercises, meditating and lots of breathing, among other things. Each level of the process, she explained, incorporates more awareness and development of “soul abilities.”

People in Level 3, for example, have done some exploring of spirituality, and may be wondering what comes next and how much of a commitment to make.

Level 7 is the most highly developed, and JoyBeth considers herself to be between Levels 5 and 6.

“If we want to develop our higher abilities, we’ve got to stop doing it piecemeal,” she asserted.

Before embarking on such a process, seekers may want to consider dealing with issues that could interfere with growth, such as childhood abuse or addictions.

“If you don’t know how to have healthy relationships with humans, it will be difficult to do so with spirits,” she pointed out.

When JoyBeth talks about moving into “altered states of consciousness,” it can make people a little nervous. But everyone is familiar with some of those states, she said, including sleep and the state that comes just before it.

Another example, she said, is “driving along the highway, and suddenly you’re there,” unaware of the time that has passed. “It’s using that eight-tenths of the mind complex that you don’t normally use,” she said.

“Most people start out learning relaxation techniques,” she added. “Soul abilities, ESPs – all of us have those, but they need training.

“When someone says, ‘I knew that was going to happen,’ or ‘I knew you were going to say that,’ that’s precognition. Mothers and fathers know when their kids are in trouble. It’s your natural soul’s abilities,” she said, abilities which can be developed to a higher level.

“My orientation is a whole system,” JoyBeth said. “Everything I know comes from understanding soul and spirit. Our right as souls is to have everything we need for our journey here,” materially, mentally and spiritually.

People may be familiar with that notion as “prosperity consciousness,” a theory that is gaining respect in many quarters.

“Business is interested in that, recognizing that productivity rises,” she said.

One of the things JoyBeth teaches people in workshops is that they are capable of multitasking – doing several things at once, something she learned from her mother.

She demonstrates the point by having students rub their bellies and pat their heads, then add singing, hopping, looking and thinking – and then switch hands.

As they tune in to their soul abilities, she acknowledged, they want to know how to tell whether a “message” from a spirit is real, and where it comes from.

“There’s no easy, quick way to know what’s real,” she said. “It takes much practice, skill. Who is talking now? Was that a preprogrammed voice, or a sub-personality part of me I developed to protect myself?”

As an example, she said, some messages come from the “Miss Critical” part of her personality she developed as a defense mechanism.

JoyBeth’s first contacts with her guardian angel, Heather, were infrequent, sporadic. To those who want to be in touch with their guardian angels, she offers gentle suggestions.

“Start with a breath. Learn to relax. Do some mental work with angels, reading about angels. Make sure your intent is clear.

“If the intent is self-destructive or a test,” she pointed out, “guardian angels will not listen to your desire. The energy will interfere.

“You’re going to have to come from an intent of love, an intent that is clear and for the best of all concerned. It may take some people 20 years, it may take some people two hours.

“Everything depends on where you’re at in your development, and whether you’re doing this to feel more love, to feel more protected.

“Put yourself in nature’s surroundings, or a sacred space inside your home. Go with no expectations. Pray, attracting a high level of spirit. Follow it, work with it.”

JoyBeth’s books may be ordered through bookstores or from Trafford Publishing at 1-888-232-4444 or www.trafford.com. Information on Soul Integrators is available at http://members.aol.com/Souldelite; or e-mail Souldelite@aol.com; or write Soul Integrators, P.O. Box 19, East Orland, ME 04431.