WHILE airport delays are usually infuriating, waiting on tardy flights proved lucky for Wexford couple Catherine Campbell and Philip Sutcliffe. Philip had been over in Dublin from the UK on business, when he got chatting to the woman having a coffee at the same table.

"I found Philip to be so interesting, intelligent and articulate," recalls Catherine, who is a spiritual healer. "We started talking about spiritual matters, and I realised that he had an inquiring mind and didn't dismiss things. The attraction was instant, and we got on so well that he came back the following weekend, and I didn't want him to go home."

In some ways, the attraction was instant because the pair had very similar backgrounds and interests. Both had unusual spiritual experiences from an early age, owned many of the same books, and had grown-up children from previous marriages. Catherine's children, Karen and Colin, live here, while Philip's sons, David and Andrew, live in England.

Catherine grew up in Finchley, north London, and moved to Ireland with her family when she was 12. It was at boarding school in Callan that she realised she had different abilities to the other girls, when she picked up on menstrual and other pains that the girls around her were experiencing.

"I would send them healing and the pain would go," she says, adding that both of her grandmothers had the same abilities. "The penny dropped when I discovered that everyone else didn't see auras the way I did. I went to work in hairdressing and interior design, and also studied healing, colour, psychic ability, psychology and philosophy. I never intended working as a spiritual healer, but it just happened because people started coming to me for help with mental, physical and emotional diseases. I lived in Clontarf for 25 years, and had a healing centre there."

Meanwhile, Philip grew up in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and studied agriculture at college. He spent two years in Zambia as a teacher with Voluntary Services Overseas, took courses in estate management, psychology and philosophy, lived in South Africa for several years, and spent 16 years working as md of Hohner in England, which specialises in musical instruments. Having designed his own range of guitar cases, he left Hohner to set up his own company, but his interest in paranormal and spiritual matters remained strong.

"I had all sorts of experiences from an early age, but was unable to put them into any kind of meaningful sense," he says. "I was in touch with beings that weren't from here, including seeing some UFO vehicles when I was in Africa, and experiencing what would be explained in our terms as an alien abduction. I continued to study all the major religions, and every aspect of modern spirituality trying to make sense of it all, but I hadn't come to any conclusions."

Meeting Catherine in 2002 proved to be a watershed for Philip, as she taught him to meditate, which he feels was the key to unlocking the powers that lay within him.

"What really attracted me to Catherine was her permanent sense of loving and enjoying life," he says, "and the fact that she is bright and intelligent and has a very attractive independent spirit. She's very extrovert and outgoing, and the spiritual side to her was an amazing bonus, because it helped me to come a little closer to who I am."

The pair went to live in Moraira, Spain, for several years, and were married there in 2003. As well as a formal ceremony, they had a spiritual one, and asked Paddy McMahon, author of The Grand Design series of spiritual books (written under the name Patrick Francis), to come over and marry them.

When Catherine signed up both of them to an intensive mediumship course at the Arthur Findlay College for the Advancement of Spiritualism and Psychic Sciences, the initially hesitant Philip was astounded when he had his first full mediumship experience that day.

He now works as a medium, and Catherine as a healer, although she has also been communicating with spirits all of her life. They opened Whole Spectrum Healing in Gorey together, which offers spiritual healing, chakra balancing, chelation -- healing through the body's meridian lines -- colour and crystal therapy, cranial sacral therapy, mediumship, tarot and life readings, emot- ional freedom techniques, psychism, clairvoyance, auras, angels, guides and guidance, metaphysics, and spiritual awareness and development.

Catherine and Philip both say that they have never come across a negative spirit, only ones that are confused with situations, or are trying desperately to communicate with someone to right a wrong. And even when spirits have moved on, they can still come back to leave a message.

"It's people that worry me, because you don't know what they're going to do," says Catherine. "Spirits are very predictable, and are always full of love."

"There is such immense beauty in spirits," adds Philip. "I'm just like a footbridge from the spirit to the person in front of me, and I get the joy of seeing it all unfold, without being personally involved in the drama on either side.

"As far as I can see, when people pass from this dimension, they move to a far more loving environment, and have an opportunity to learn and prepare for another experience that will take them to their spiritual height. Religion doesn't come into it -- there are many different vibrations, and we're on the lowest one here on earth. How mediumship works is that spirits come down to our vibration, and we go up to theirs."

Catherine and Philip also run regular courses, and have new ones starting shortly in miracles, mediumship, meditation, and spiritual journeys. They are clearly devoted to one another, and powerfully interconnected on a romantic and spiritual level.

"If someone had asked me if I would go out with someone in this field, I would have said not in a million years because they're all fruitcakes," laughs Catherine. "Philip is kind, compassionate and the most loving person I've ever met, who never judges or criticises anyone. Little did he know when he met me what was ahead for him!"

For more information, phone (053) 948-0519 or visit www. wholespectrumhealing.com

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