Hello!
I was looking for something an I've suddenly came accross that thing, jeez... you have to take a look http://market.austinirving.com/e7hcm/1
Thanks for your consideration, Rodney Whitehouse
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Jeez!
Friday, November 4, 2016
A Cowboy, and Indian, and a Gift
Today I did a house clearing for a friend of mine. I’d been at over her house a few days ago to help her fix her shower. Afterwards, she fixed me a little lunch and we sat and talked. for a while. After a while, something she said made we wonder if she was being influenced by something. Maybe something in the house? So I checked, and, sure enough, I detected something in the house. It didn’t seem particularly harmful in any way, it was just there. At first I thought it was male, but later I got confused and just couldn’t tell much of anything about it. I mentioned this to my friend and we talked about it, but I couldn’t get anything more, so where wasn’t much to say about it.
I contacted my friend, later, and got her permission to have a remote look-see. I wanted to find out more and see if there was anything to be done. I contacted another friend of mine who had demonstrated some talent in this area, and we set up a time today to look into it.
Why don’t I look into it myself? Ah, I just don’t trust myself in this kind of thing. In my personal view of things, it seems to always work best if we have two people doing the work, one to be the sensitive and one to be the guide. I feel that this allows the sensitive to “be sensitive” and be with whatever they’re getting, without having to strategize about how to best help the entity we are in contact to. As an added bonus, having two people allows the session to be recorded. I didn’t record it this time, though I wish it had because it was interesting.
This subject goes under quite easily, so I just sent her to her a “Happy place”, a real or imaginary place where she feels most comfortable and at peace. I usually ask several questions to get them completely orientated and absorbed into the sights, sounds and details of the places, as much as possible. This all went pretty much by the book, until I had the inspiration to ask: “What else is there?” For some reason, I just thought that she wasn’t alone. (I didn’t say “Who else is there,” because I didn’t want to plant any suggestions. If there was someone else there, I wanted her to come up with that on her own.)
Right off, she described an native American woman, a Mexican woman, then she corrected that to say that she seemed to be from Guatemala. She was dressed in traditional clothes and sitting on a blanket. We called her Maria. There also seemed to be a “garden gnome” sitting some ways away. It was never clear why the gnome was there. Later it faded into a charred tree stump, whatever that means. Maybe it was just there to observe?
It seemed that Maria was there to help with the house, but she wanted to do something first, materialize something that looked like a medicine rattle. As my friend described it, Maria held up her hand, as though there was something in it, and there appeared an outline or impression of the rattle, but it never fully formed. She apparently gave up on that after a while and we moved on to the house. Again, I told my friend as little as possible about the house, I wanted her to have no preconceived notions about what she might find there. I just gave her the first name of the owner of the house and roughly where it is located.
My friend picked up little about the house itself, just the general placement of the kitchen and dining room in relation to the front door. The spirit seemed to be located just off the dining room, right about where I was sitting when I first noticed him. The spirit was of a man, in his forties, wearing a cowboy hat. A pleasant fellow, but he was confused. He was stuck and couldn’t find the place he was looking for, everything looked different.
Apparently, he had lived in shack in that location in 1916 [estimated 100 years ago], had left, died, and had spent considerable time in a kind of limbo state. Not too long ago, no more than a few years, he got out of the limbo and wanted to return to the place where he felt the happiest, but he had trouble finding it since nothing looked the same. He had been stuck and confused ever since.
My friend had the idea to show him the progression of time, from when he left this area until now, I assume to get him to understand just how much time had passed. She watched as the shack slowly deteriorated, and fell apart. At one point, people came by and wrapped up pieces for their own uses. Eventually, nothing was left and the area returned to nature for a long time, until the developers showed up, started building houses, and turned the area into a subdivision.
Maria tried to get him to leave, with no success. I asked after people he missed, in the hope that they would lead him on to the light, and some people appeared: A native Indian woman, two children and two men. They were smiling and happy, especially the woman. He was now ready to leave the house, but first, my friend had to create a door because he refused to walk through the wall.
Once outside, we ran into another problem. He had exited in a different direction than his friends, so he couldn’t find them. When he did join up with the others, it turned out that they weren’t “real” after all. My friend noticed that the “friends” didn’t seem to have any energy associated with them, they were just animated cutouts, so to speak. He had made them up. We where stuck again, but at least he was out of the house. Maria took some energy from my friend to lend herself more power and authority. I have no idea if that helped or not.
My next idea was to ask him to look up for The Light. He didn’t see anything above him, but he did see something through the trees. He walked with Maria toward a glimmer in the forest, and soon came to a clearing where the light shown down brightly and his friends, the “real” ones this time, were waiting. It didn’t take much now for him to go with his friends and fade away. My friend waited for the portal to close and the light to fade. We thanked Maria for her help and ended the session.
Afterwards, my friend told me, “I think 'Maria' is what I would call a 'rescue guide', one who spends her time coaxing people out of stuck places. No doubt she appears in different guises according to what's needed.” She also said that Maria was businesslike and professional but also compassionate. We speculated about why she appeared as someone from Guatemala: Maybe all the local, native American spirits were busy? (That’s a joke, by the way.) That’s just one of the many things about this work, we always seem to have more questions than answers.
Before Maria left, she gave my friend a parting gift, she described it like this, “I feel very cheerful, light-hearted, peaceful and sure of myself.” Not a bad outcome for a job well done, I think.
I contacted my friend, later, and got her permission to have a remote look-see. I wanted to find out more and see if there was anything to be done. I contacted another friend of mine who had demonstrated some talent in this area, and we set up a time today to look into it.
Why don’t I look into it myself? Ah, I just don’t trust myself in this kind of thing. In my personal view of things, it seems to always work best if we have two people doing the work, one to be the sensitive and one to be the guide. I feel that this allows the sensitive to “be sensitive” and be with whatever they’re getting, without having to strategize about how to best help the entity we are in contact to. As an added bonus, having two people allows the session to be recorded. I didn’t record it this time, though I wish it had because it was interesting.
This subject goes under quite easily, so I just sent her to her a “Happy place”, a real or imaginary place where she feels most comfortable and at peace. I usually ask several questions to get them completely orientated and absorbed into the sights, sounds and details of the places, as much as possible. This all went pretty much by the book, until I had the inspiration to ask: “What else is there?” For some reason, I just thought that she wasn’t alone. (I didn’t say “Who else is there,” because I didn’t want to plant any suggestions. If there was someone else there, I wanted her to come up with that on her own.)
Right off, she described an native American woman, a Mexican woman, then she corrected that to say that she seemed to be from Guatemala. She was dressed in traditional clothes and sitting on a blanket. We called her Maria. There also seemed to be a “garden gnome” sitting some ways away. It was never clear why the gnome was there. Later it faded into a charred tree stump, whatever that means. Maybe it was just there to observe?
It seemed that Maria was there to help with the house, but she wanted to do something first, materialize something that looked like a medicine rattle. As my friend described it, Maria held up her hand, as though there was something in it, and there appeared an outline or impression of the rattle, but it never fully formed. She apparently gave up on that after a while and we moved on to the house. Again, I told my friend as little as possible about the house, I wanted her to have no preconceived notions about what she might find there. I just gave her the first name of the owner of the house and roughly where it is located.
My friend picked up little about the house itself, just the general placement of the kitchen and dining room in relation to the front door. The spirit seemed to be located just off the dining room, right about where I was sitting when I first noticed him. The spirit was of a man, in his forties, wearing a cowboy hat. A pleasant fellow, but he was confused. He was stuck and couldn’t find the place he was looking for, everything looked different.
Apparently, he had lived in shack in that location in 1916 [estimated 100 years ago], had left, died, and had spent considerable time in a kind of limbo state. Not too long ago, no more than a few years, he got out of the limbo and wanted to return to the place where he felt the happiest, but he had trouble finding it since nothing looked the same. He had been stuck and confused ever since.
My friend had the idea to show him the progression of time, from when he left this area until now, I assume to get him to understand just how much time had passed. She watched as the shack slowly deteriorated, and fell apart. At one point, people came by and wrapped up pieces for their own uses. Eventually, nothing was left and the area returned to nature for a long time, until the developers showed up, started building houses, and turned the area into a subdivision.
Maria tried to get him to leave, with no success. I asked after people he missed, in the hope that they would lead him on to the light, and some people appeared: A native Indian woman, two children and two men. They were smiling and happy, especially the woman. He was now ready to leave the house, but first, my friend had to create a door because he refused to walk through the wall.
Once outside, we ran into another problem. He had exited in a different direction than his friends, so he couldn’t find them. When he did join up with the others, it turned out that they weren’t “real” after all. My friend noticed that the “friends” didn’t seem to have any energy associated with them, they were just animated cutouts, so to speak. He had made them up. We where stuck again, but at least he was out of the house. Maria took some energy from my friend to lend herself more power and authority. I have no idea if that helped or not.
My next idea was to ask him to look up for The Light. He didn’t see anything above him, but he did see something through the trees. He walked with Maria toward a glimmer in the forest, and soon came to a clearing where the light shown down brightly and his friends, the “real” ones this time, were waiting. It didn’t take much now for him to go with his friends and fade away. My friend waited for the portal to close and the light to fade. We thanked Maria for her help and ended the session.
Afterwards, my friend told me, “I think 'Maria' is what I would call a 'rescue guide', one who spends her time coaxing people out of stuck places. No doubt she appears in different guises according to what's needed.” She also said that Maria was businesslike and professional but also compassionate. We speculated about why she appeared as someone from Guatemala: Maybe all the local, native American spirits were busy? (That’s a joke, by the way.) That’s just one of the many things about this work, we always seem to have more questions than answers.
Before Maria left, she gave my friend a parting gift, she described it like this, “I feel very cheerful, light-hearted, peaceful and sure of myself.” Not a bad outcome for a job well done, I think.
Saturday, October 29, 2016
spectaculous
Hello!
Have you seen that place already? It's just spectaculous, you've got to look at it here http://bovaserdi.wordpress-florida.com/lnwsy/214
Hope this helps, Susannah Carlson
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Spirit Under Glass
Those who know me know that I go to a lot of MeetUps. Sometimes up to six a week. Hey, it gets me out of the house, it's generally fun, and I've now met enough people that I usually know someone wherever I go. A few months ago I made a new friend with an unusual problem and this post is about that problem. This is a cautionary tale, it ended well, but it pays to be aware that there might be "extra features" included when you buy stuff at flea markets and thrift stores.
There is one MeetUp that I'd been meaning to go to since I first came here, and then I finally found the time to go. When I showed up, only one other person was there, aside from the host, and it seemed like the host had suffered a mild stroke or something and didn't seem functionally present, so we pretty much talked between ourselves the whole time.
The MeetUp was a discussion group around the book Fringe-ology, and the other person was a older woman who had considerably less exposure to the paranormal than I had, but was curious. She had published a novel that included past lives and she thought she might have a spirit in her house. Long story short, I visited her house to pick up a copy of the book and immediately felt the presence of a spirit there. That was very unusual for me, I have never before have I felt such a strong presence. And it was centered around the stairs that lead to the second floor. At some point, I'm not sure when, I realized that the presence was actually focused at a glass display case at the head of the stairs.
We talked for a while and I did an exploratory session with her that established that she was a very good subject, going under quickly and with good visualization skills. We set up an appointment for a few days later to work on this entity. She was worried that it might be the spirit of her dead partner, who had died in the house, and wanted it gone. My plan was to use her as a surrogate to communicate with the entity, and find out what I needed to persuade it to move on to the light. Best laid plans and all that.
When the day arrived she slipped easily into trance, and readily contacted the entity. The session was short, so I've included the full transcript below, along with a post-session conversation where she told the story of the "figures," set of Kachina dolls, that she had bought at a flea market in Denver, and added further information about the entity that didn't come out in the session. I like having the full transcript because it provides the flavor of the session and how the information was uncovered.
I've cut out most of my instructions where they didn't add to the story. My words are in italics.
Start of trance session.
"I think he was…he performed, or he participated, in these ceremonies. He may have been one of the figures.
He’s not a great talker.
He’s not showing me very much. He’s saying that the most important thing is just to be.
What is his purpose in being here?
He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Why is that?
He’s been cutoff, somehow…from his life.
So, what happened?
He had to leave. Something awful happened. He wasn’t thrown out, but there’s something he can’t forgive.
Where was he?
Somewhere down where there’s sand, a desert. He says it’s a place where I’ve been. He’s telling me, “You know the place.”
Can he show you that place from your own memory?
He says I drove onto it. Oh, it’s somewhere near Santa Fe. No, no, he says, “You drove onto the reservation.” I’m seeing the reservation houses. They’re all sandstone buildings, and there’s no landscaping around them. They don’t landscape at all. I remember driving on to that reservation. Acoma, Acoma Pueblo.
What was it like when he was there?
Things don’t change.
What were the people like?
He says they were already breaking apart.
In what way?
They were leaving, they were going their separate ways. They weren’t coherent. Not as it had been when he was growing up.
How old was he at this point?
I not seeing…he’s not showing me that. No ideas are coming into my mind.
Ok. What was he purpose at that time?
He went out to catch an eagle. He was very much into the culture, and the traditions.
Oh, it changed. It changed a great deal when Los Alamos was started. He says that’s when it started. The Los Alamos project put a lot of people…strangers…and things are not the same. I see Santa Fe, as it was, [can’t understand]. He’s showing me Santa Fe, I can see it. There’s still horse carts on the road. And there’s the hotel. And everything’s adobe, it looks very different.
What was being lost?
[can’t understand], the sense of who they were. They sold out. He’s saying that they sold out. And he spoke up, in meetings. He said that they were selling out. But they wanted the money, they wanted the development. He said, “Is that who we are, sitting outside the governor’s place selling jewelry? Is that who we are?” He said, “What are you going to do next? Are you going to sell tickets to the festivals?” And so he left.
Where did he go?
He took a construction job. He went to Denver.
Then what happened?
I think he was killed. I think he was killed in a accident. And no one know who he was. And they took the things he had brought with him…and they were sold.
What are those things?
He had ritual things. He had sacred feathers, and pottery, and sand painting. And he had the kachinas. But there were more. And he says he doesn’t want to go back.
The post-session discussion starts here.
Start of recording
"Do you want me to tell the story of where I got those dolls from?
Yeah.
It was in an antique mall in Denver. It was a big one, the biggest one in Denver. So you can just imagine the size of it. And, I walked in and, the only way you can systematically do something that big is to just walk the aisles. And, as you go by these places, where the people have their stuff out, you just, sort of get a quick idea of what is there. You don’t have to stop at all. And I got down to this one particular place and, just something about it, it was very jumbled, and something about it sort of said, “You should come in and look.”
And so I sauntered in and looked around, and for the most part, there was no rhyme or reason to it. Just all sorts of things thrown together. Then all of a sudden I caught a glimpse of one of these Kachinas, down in the corner. In this cabinet and to the back. And there were actually four of them, and I only took three. And, something called me very much to them. And so I had to go get the guy, the manager to come and unlock the case, so I could pull them out and look at them.
Initially I only took two. Then when I got them home, there was sort of a sense of incompletion. So I felt very called. I had to drive clear across Denver to go back. The other two were still there, and I took the third one of them. I didn’t care as much, I didn’t feel drawn to the forth one so, it still may be up there. That’s how I got them.
I brought them home and I cleaned them up and replaced the feathers on MudHead, and they came down from Denver and have been part of me ever since. That’s how they came into my life. But I only started realizing that there was something going on with them when I brought them here. (She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington) Particularly when [her partner] died, that was back in December, that was when I realized that there was something going on with them. They’re very much a powerful influence.
Yeah, the strongest I’ve felt, personally.
And he (the spirit we call the Teacher) is not angry, he’s not upset, he’s just passionate. He’s passionate about what he believes. He’s passionate about the importance of it. And he wants to do something…what did he tell me…something…
Wonderful…?
Something important. And I don’t think it really involves me, it’s more I’m hosting him, providing him a place to collect himself.
Or a platform to…if it’s…telling his stories and getting his information out there is part of the process. Perhaps when certain people see it, perhaps they might be drawn to it.
Well I think I will still see if I can send his Kachinas back. Because he is, despite his feelings, he is part of that. That pueblo. He may have left them and he may deny that he is, but he is. And if I can send them back then, perhaps, that will bring him some peace. But I think that even if I send them back, that he is going to leave. He’s found a comfortable and congenial place because I value the same things he does. And as long as he finds it meaningful, I’m not going to object too much to it.
But I can tell him that I would like that if he is the one that showed me that cavern, with the carved figures…when I did my own…
[instructions]
Generally I’ve tried to meditation, but I have so much static, so many people coming at me, that I don’t always really get through to that place of calm.
What do you mean, so many people coming at you?
I’m aware of presences, as I start to go down. I’m aware my husband’s talking to me, I’ve got my mother, I’ve got all sorts of wild things going through my mind. It’s very difficult to get beyond them. And this time that I did, I was shown the picture of a large eye. You know, the third eye?
Yeah, Ok.
And that when I went through that eye, into what was beyond, I think I told you there was someone with me, who was showing me? I found myself going through the light, going into a huge cavern, where there was…it was infinite. You couldn’t see the beginning or the end or anything. And I was taken into a side room, and it was almost as if somebody had a flashlight, or something was illuminating the walls. Because I thought that if this was the Akashic records…I was expecting them to be books, and in English. And it wasn’t.
All of the walls were intricately carved, almost like alabaster or marble, intricately carved with…it looked like Indian art. You know those three-dimensional friezes where they have all these figures? You know, east Indian, real India. You got these three-dimensional friezes of figures, often quite sensual?
Ok
And the whole wall, and the ceiling…you couldn’t see the ceiling, everything was covered with these intricate carvings, and I was told, this is your soul group. This is where you belong.
And that has always been an issue for me. Where do I belong? And so, essentially they’re telling me, “Stop worrying about where you belong, in the earth plain, this is where you belong. This is your group, so to speak. And that was very comforting. And the fellow that was with me, very reticent, very quite. I asked his name, and I got the message, “You’re not ready for this.” If that was him, then he could help me, if he wants to teach, then take me back. Show me, show me what is there. Because apparently he can also go backwards or forwards as he wishes.
End of recording
I think it's fascinating how the spirit taught her though pictures, even though she didn't know he was there. In the end the spirit left on it's own. He left her the understanding that she wasn't the person he needed to fulfill whatever purpose he had in mind.
This instance ended well, with the spirit comfortably gone and the dolls are now just regular dolls. It doesn't always happen that way: objects with energy or attachments of various kinds are out there and can cause significant trouble. Sometimes they can be cleared, but other times it's just better to get rid of them. One options is to send them to one of the Paranormal Museums that know how to handle and store these kind of objects in a safe manor. If you think you may have a haunted or cursed object, contact me and I'll see what I can do for you: AQuestioningSpiritTherapy@gmail.com.
There is one MeetUp that I'd been meaning to go to since I first came here, and then I finally found the time to go. When I showed up, only one other person was there, aside from the host, and it seemed like the host had suffered a mild stroke or something and didn't seem functionally present, so we pretty much talked between ourselves the whole time.
The MeetUp was a discussion group around the book Fringe-ology, and the other person was a older woman who had considerably less exposure to the paranormal than I had, but was curious. She had published a novel that included past lives and she thought she might have a spirit in her house. Long story short, I visited her house to pick up a copy of the book and immediately felt the presence of a spirit there. That was very unusual for me, I have never before have I felt such a strong presence. And it was centered around the stairs that lead to the second floor. At some point, I'm not sure when, I realized that the presence was actually focused at a glass display case at the head of the stairs.
We talked for a while and I did an exploratory session with her that established that she was a very good subject, going under quickly and with good visualization skills. We set up an appointment for a few days later to work on this entity. She was worried that it might be the spirit of her dead partner, who had died in the house, and wanted it gone. My plan was to use her as a surrogate to communicate with the entity, and find out what I needed to persuade it to move on to the light. Best laid plans and all that.
When the day arrived she slipped easily into trance, and readily contacted the entity. The session was short, so I've included the full transcript below, along with a post-session conversation where she told the story of the "figures," set of Kachina dolls, that she had bought at a flea market in Denver, and added further information about the entity that didn't come out in the session. I like having the full transcript because it provides the flavor of the session and how the information was uncovered.
I've cut out most of my instructions where they didn't add to the story. My words are in italics.
Start of trance session.
"I think he was…he performed, or he participated, in these ceremonies. He may have been one of the figures.
He’s not a great talker.
He’s not showing me very much. He’s saying that the most important thing is just to be.
What is his purpose in being here?
He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Why is that?
He’s been cutoff, somehow…from his life.
So, what happened?
He had to leave. Something awful happened. He wasn’t thrown out, but there’s something he can’t forgive.
Where was he?
Somewhere down where there’s sand, a desert. He says it’s a place where I’ve been. He’s telling me, “You know the place.”
Can he show you that place from your own memory?
He says I drove onto it. Oh, it’s somewhere near Santa Fe. No, no, he says, “You drove onto the reservation.” I’m seeing the reservation houses. They’re all sandstone buildings, and there’s no landscaping around them. They don’t landscape at all. I remember driving on to that reservation. Acoma, Acoma Pueblo.
What was it like when he was there?
Things don’t change.
What were the people like?
He says they were already breaking apart.
In what way?
They were leaving, they were going their separate ways. They weren’t coherent. Not as it had been when he was growing up.
How old was he at this point?
I not seeing…he’s not showing me that. No ideas are coming into my mind.
Ok. What was he purpose at that time?
He went out to catch an eagle. He was very much into the culture, and the traditions.
Oh, it changed. It changed a great deal when Los Alamos was started. He says that’s when it started. The Los Alamos project put a lot of people…strangers…and things are not the same. I see Santa Fe, as it was, [can’t understand]. He’s showing me Santa Fe, I can see it. There’s still horse carts on the road. And there’s the hotel. And everything’s adobe, it looks very different.
What was being lost?
[can’t understand], the sense of who they were. They sold out. He’s saying that they sold out. And he spoke up, in meetings. He said that they were selling out. But they wanted the money, they wanted the development. He said, “Is that who we are, sitting outside the governor’s place selling jewelry? Is that who we are?” He said, “What are you going to do next? Are you going to sell tickets to the festivals?” And so he left.
Where did he go?
He took a construction job. He went to Denver.
Then what happened?
I think he was killed. I think he was killed in a accident. And no one know who he was. And they took the things he had brought with him…and they were sold.
What are those things?
He had ritual things. He had sacred feathers, and pottery, and sand painting. And he had the kachinas. But there were more. And he says he doesn’t want to go back.
Go back where?
To where he started. He doesn’t wish to return.
His home? Where he was born?
Yeah, he doesn’t want to go back to the desert where he was born.
Perhaps it’s time to return to the Source?
He opening up his arms, to the sun.
Is there someone he knows and trusts, that has past on before him?
He said himself, he’s made a promise to himself. He says I cannot help him.
Help who?
Him. Whoever this person is. That’s why he…he says he is the wanderer.
What is his purpose?
I don’t think he knows.
What is the promise he made to himself?
Meaning. He’s looking for meaning. He thought he knew. He says, what he liked about me, is that I’m looking for the same thing.
Is he attached to all his old possessions?
He says, some of them are long lost. Some have been destroyed. These were the only possessions that came into the hands of someone who understood them.
What do you want to do now?
He wishes to do one, he says, one glorious thing. Something, that when he talks to the elders who have gone before him, something he can present to them that gives some purpose to his life.
What kind of thing might that be?
He wants to teach. He wants someone to understand the old ways. Because he said they are sacred, beautiful, ways. He says I cannot help him, but I can be useful to him.
How would he do his teaching?
He says he has already started.
Good. Who is he teaching?
He has attracted…He’s attracted to the ceremonies. That is all he’ll tell me. He says these are the sacred mysteries. He is in this house because it is a safe, supportive place for him, while he pursues the things that give him joy and make it possible for him. He means no harm.
..., how comfortable are you having him here?
I feel rather blessed.
Is there anything he could do to make it a little more comfortable?
Tell me tales. When I sleep, tell me tales. Tell me the stories that you would have told the children. He told the stories to the children, when they sat in the kivas. I can see now, the ladder coming down. And the smoke, you climb down through the purifying smoke. And the children, sitting cross-legged around him in a circle.
Coyote. He’s telling stories of Coyote…Coyote and the jackrabbit…"
End of trance session
To where he started. He doesn’t wish to return.
His home? Where he was born?
Yeah, he doesn’t want to go back to the desert where he was born.
Perhaps it’s time to return to the Source?
He opening up his arms, to the sun.
Is there someone he knows and trusts, that has past on before him?
He said himself, he’s made a promise to himself. He says I cannot help him.
Help who?
Him. Whoever this person is. That’s why he…he says he is the wanderer.
What is his purpose?
I don’t think he knows.
What is the promise he made to himself?
Meaning. He’s looking for meaning. He thought he knew. He says, what he liked about me, is that I’m looking for the same thing.
Is he attached to all his old possessions?
He says, some of them are long lost. Some have been destroyed. These were the only possessions that came into the hands of someone who understood them.
What do you want to do now?
He wishes to do one, he says, one glorious thing. Something, that when he talks to the elders who have gone before him, something he can present to them that gives some purpose to his life.
What kind of thing might that be?
He wants to teach. He wants someone to understand the old ways. Because he said they are sacred, beautiful, ways. He says I cannot help him, but I can be useful to him.
How would he do his teaching?
He says he has already started.
Good. Who is he teaching?
He has attracted…He’s attracted to the ceremonies. That is all he’ll tell me. He says these are the sacred mysteries. He is in this house because it is a safe, supportive place for him, while he pursues the things that give him joy and make it possible for him. He means no harm.
..., how comfortable are you having him here?
I feel rather blessed.
Is there anything he could do to make it a little more comfortable?
Tell me tales. When I sleep, tell me tales. Tell me the stories that you would have told the children. He told the stories to the children, when they sat in the kivas. I can see now, the ladder coming down. And the smoke, you climb down through the purifying smoke. And the children, sitting cross-legged around him in a circle.
Coyote. He’s telling stories of Coyote…Coyote and the jackrabbit…"
End of trance session
The post-session discussion starts here.
Start of recording
"Do you want me to tell the story of where I got those dolls from?
Yeah.
It was in an antique mall in Denver. It was a big one, the biggest one in Denver. So you can just imagine the size of it. And, I walked in and, the only way you can systematically do something that big is to just walk the aisles. And, as you go by these places, where the people have their stuff out, you just, sort of get a quick idea of what is there. You don’t have to stop at all. And I got down to this one particular place and, just something about it, it was very jumbled, and something about it sort of said, “You should come in and look.”
And so I sauntered in and looked around, and for the most part, there was no rhyme or reason to it. Just all sorts of things thrown together. Then all of a sudden I caught a glimpse of one of these Kachinas, down in the corner. In this cabinet and to the back. And there were actually four of them, and I only took three. And, something called me very much to them. And so I had to go get the guy, the manager to come and unlock the case, so I could pull them out and look at them.
Initially I only took two. Then when I got them home, there was sort of a sense of incompletion. So I felt very called. I had to drive clear across Denver to go back. The other two were still there, and I took the third one of them. I didn’t care as much, I didn’t feel drawn to the forth one so, it still may be up there. That’s how I got them.
I brought them home and I cleaned them up and replaced the feathers on MudHead, and they came down from Denver and have been part of me ever since. That’s how they came into my life. But I only started realizing that there was something going on with them when I brought them here. (She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington) Particularly when [her partner] died, that was back in December, that was when I realized that there was something going on with them. They’re very much a powerful influence.
Yeah, the strongest I’ve felt, personally.
And he (the spirit we call the Teacher) is not angry, he’s not upset, he’s just passionate. He’s passionate about what he believes. He’s passionate about the importance of it. And he wants to do something…what did he tell me…something…
Wonderful…?
Something important. And I don’t think it really involves me, it’s more I’m hosting him, providing him a place to collect himself.
Or a platform to…if it’s…telling his stories and getting his information out there is part of the process. Perhaps when certain people see it, perhaps they might be drawn to it.
Well I think I will still see if I can send his Kachinas back. Because he is, despite his feelings, he is part of that. That pueblo. He may have left them and he may deny that he is, but he is. And if I can send them back then, perhaps, that will bring him some peace. But I think that even if I send them back, that he is going to leave. He’s found a comfortable and congenial place because I value the same things he does. And as long as he finds it meaningful, I’m not going to object too much to it.
But I can tell him that I would like that if he is the one that showed me that cavern, with the carved figures…when I did my own…
[instructions]
Generally I’ve tried to meditation, but I have so much static, so many people coming at me, that I don’t always really get through to that place of calm.
What do you mean, so many people coming at you?
I’m aware of presences, as I start to go down. I’m aware my husband’s talking to me, I’ve got my mother, I’ve got all sorts of wild things going through my mind. It’s very difficult to get beyond them. And this time that I did, I was shown the picture of a large eye. You know, the third eye?
Yeah, Ok.
And that when I went through that eye, into what was beyond, I think I told you there was someone with me, who was showing me? I found myself going through the light, going into a huge cavern, where there was…it was infinite. You couldn’t see the beginning or the end or anything. And I was taken into a side room, and it was almost as if somebody had a flashlight, or something was illuminating the walls. Because I thought that if this was the Akashic records…I was expecting them to be books, and in English. And it wasn’t.
All of the walls were intricately carved, almost like alabaster or marble, intricately carved with…it looked like Indian art. You know those three-dimensional friezes where they have all these figures? You know, east Indian, real India. You got these three-dimensional friezes of figures, often quite sensual?
Ok
And the whole wall, and the ceiling…you couldn’t see the ceiling, everything was covered with these intricate carvings, and I was told, this is your soul group. This is where you belong.
And that has always been an issue for me. Where do I belong? And so, essentially they’re telling me, “Stop worrying about where you belong, in the earth plain, this is where you belong. This is your group, so to speak. And that was very comforting. And the fellow that was with me, very reticent, very quite. I asked his name, and I got the message, “You’re not ready for this.” If that was him, then he could help me, if he wants to teach, then take me back. Show me, show me what is there. Because apparently he can also go backwards or forwards as he wishes.
End of recording
I think it's fascinating how the spirit taught her though pictures, even though she didn't know he was there. In the end the spirit left on it's own. He left her the understanding that she wasn't the person he needed to fulfill whatever purpose he had in mind.
This instance ended well, with the spirit comfortably gone and the dolls are now just regular dolls. It doesn't always happen that way: objects with energy or attachments of various kinds are out there and can cause significant trouble. Sometimes they can be cleared, but other times it's just better to get rid of them. One options is to send them to one of the Paranormal Museums that know how to handle and store these kind of objects in a safe manor. If you think you may have a haunted or cursed object, contact me and I'll see what I can do for you: AQuestioningSpiritTherapy@gmail.com.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
It couldn’t get more embarrassing, could it?
I started this post last week, but I finally finished it up today because it feels like I now have a context to put this in. People who know me know that I don’t like to post things like “I feel bad about this and I don’t know what to do about it.” I like to have some kind of closure around stuff before I write about it. Today I’ve reached a point where I’ve processed this enough to have some perspective on it, and I hope that what I found is helpful to you.
—
I just returned from a hypnotherapy MeetUp (East Country Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy, for those in Portland) It’s mainly for therapists or therapists-in-training, but anyone can show up. They keep it fun, but I also find it informative and challenging. This time I had a face-palm insight that has caused me to rethink how I relate to people, in a big way.
At this MeetUp, we usually focus on one particular topic or technique, with a short lecture, and a practice session where we pair off, taking turns being therapist and client. When I walked into this meeting for the first time, a familiar feeling came up, one that I didn’t acknowledge until tonight. I didn’t have a name for this feeling, and it’s not pleasant, but I just powered through it, as usual. The meetings take place once a month, and each time the feeling would turn on when I stepped in and disappear as soon as I left. It wasn’t until the meeting before this that I noticed how it was interfering with my ability to do the exercises: I was too busy being wrapped up in defending myself, by being glib and superficial, to access the feelings my partner needed to do her part of the exercise. I also notice how quickly that tendency disappeared once I left.
Note to self: Context is everything. If you are on any kind of self-improvement, personal-growth path, you know what I’m talking about. Just when you think you’ve got something handled and it’s all good, then, Bam! there it is again! You can get really frustrated and upset with yourself, and feel like you’re falling backwards, but it’s not that way at all. The same issue, (or issues that are very similar) can be linked to many different contexts, and only show up in that context. This is really important. You may think you’ve handled your social anxiety, but if you’ve only done it for family dinners, it can come up again at work functions, school reunions, restaurants, bars, and church functions. Each time keyed to different internal and external cues. I have gotten to the point where I’m pretty confident in social situations and meeting new people, but this group throws me right back to school, when I felt sure that I was the stupidest person there, and was afraid to say anything lest I be teased or, worse, wrong. I feel I have no trouble being open in most situations, but in this situation I can feel the vail of dumb descend over my mind as my defenses go up. I just know that everyone in the room is smarter, more skilled and knows more that I do. In this case, I even hit by the sights, smells and sounds of those college classrooms where I felt so inadequate.
This issue is really powerful, and one of it’s aspects is that I have to pretend “it’s all good,” while I’m furiously scrambling fake it, while hiding my ignorance and incompetence. Mostly by doing as little as possible until I can get out, hide, and try and figure it all out where no one can see me. Because I can’t think when anyone’s watching.
This really caused me to drop the ball at last month’s meeting, when I was the subject and couldn’t break through my “vail of stupid” to authenticity answer the questions. What’s worse, my partner was an experienced therapist who, I’m sure, knew I was blocking and resisting, I wasn’t fooling anyone, which made it even more embarrassing. She graciously let me off the hook, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
—
Exploring this issue more deeply I have uncovered a surprisingly deep well of fear and self-deception. I am so afraid of not being the smarted person in the room, because that’s the only way I can feel safe. I can play analyst here and say that this clearly goes back to being bullied and endless teased as a child. My defenses were to say and do as little as possible, to deprive them of ammunition, and to be smart and have clever comebacks. Now I find I can’t really trust people I perceive as smarter than me because I can’t be sure I will be able to see the attacks coming in time to defend myself.
Quite a pickle. The good news is that all this introspection has really turned down the volume on this stuff and I’m beginning to cut myself a little slack. What is, is. Deal with it, don’t wallow in it. It’s time to allow myself the same compassion I would easily give someone else in the same position. And, the funny thing is, now that I’ve gotten over the initial angst of making this discovery, I do feel better about myself, I’ve released some things in my life that didn’t serve me, and, all in all, I feel better about myself, strangely enough. And my relationships seem better as well, cleaner, purer, somehow. Maybe being less afraid allows me to show up more and just enjoy the experience.
As usual, send contributions and comments to AQuestioningSpiritTherapy@gmail.com.
—
I just returned from a hypnotherapy MeetUp (East Country Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy, for those in Portland) It’s mainly for therapists or therapists-in-training, but anyone can show up. They keep it fun, but I also find it informative and challenging. This time I had a face-palm insight that has caused me to rethink how I relate to people, in a big way.
At this MeetUp, we usually focus on one particular topic or technique, with a short lecture, and a practice session where we pair off, taking turns being therapist and client. When I walked into this meeting for the first time, a familiar feeling came up, one that I didn’t acknowledge until tonight. I didn’t have a name for this feeling, and it’s not pleasant, but I just powered through it, as usual. The meetings take place once a month, and each time the feeling would turn on when I stepped in and disappear as soon as I left. It wasn’t until the meeting before this that I noticed how it was interfering with my ability to do the exercises: I was too busy being wrapped up in defending myself, by being glib and superficial, to access the feelings my partner needed to do her part of the exercise. I also notice how quickly that tendency disappeared once I left.
Note to self: Context is everything. If you are on any kind of self-improvement, personal-growth path, you know what I’m talking about. Just when you think you’ve got something handled and it’s all good, then, Bam! there it is again! You can get really frustrated and upset with yourself, and feel like you’re falling backwards, but it’s not that way at all. The same issue, (or issues that are very similar) can be linked to many different contexts, and only show up in that context. This is really important. You may think you’ve handled your social anxiety, but if you’ve only done it for family dinners, it can come up again at work functions, school reunions, restaurants, bars, and church functions. Each time keyed to different internal and external cues. I have gotten to the point where I’m pretty confident in social situations and meeting new people, but this group throws me right back to school, when I felt sure that I was the stupidest person there, and was afraid to say anything lest I be teased or, worse, wrong. I feel I have no trouble being open in most situations, but in this situation I can feel the vail of dumb descend over my mind as my defenses go up. I just know that everyone in the room is smarter, more skilled and knows more that I do. In this case, I even hit by the sights, smells and sounds of those college classrooms where I felt so inadequate.
This issue is really powerful, and one of it’s aspects is that I have to pretend “it’s all good,” while I’m furiously scrambling fake it, while hiding my ignorance and incompetence. Mostly by doing as little as possible until I can get out, hide, and try and figure it all out where no one can see me. Because I can’t think when anyone’s watching.
This really caused me to drop the ball at last month’s meeting, when I was the subject and couldn’t break through my “vail of stupid” to authenticity answer the questions. What’s worse, my partner was an experienced therapist who, I’m sure, knew I was blocking and resisting, I wasn’t fooling anyone, which made it even more embarrassing. She graciously let me off the hook, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
—
Exploring this issue more deeply I have uncovered a surprisingly deep well of fear and self-deception. I am so afraid of not being the smarted person in the room, because that’s the only way I can feel safe. I can play analyst here and say that this clearly goes back to being bullied and endless teased as a child. My defenses were to say and do as little as possible, to deprive them of ammunition, and to be smart and have clever comebacks. Now I find I can’t really trust people I perceive as smarter than me because I can’t be sure I will be able to see the attacks coming in time to defend myself.
Quite a pickle. The good news is that all this introspection has really turned down the volume on this stuff and I’m beginning to cut myself a little slack. What is, is. Deal with it, don’t wallow in it. It’s time to allow myself the same compassion I would easily give someone else in the same position. And, the funny thing is, now that I’ve gotten over the initial angst of making this discovery, I do feel better about myself, I’ve released some things in my life that didn’t serve me, and, all in all, I feel better about myself, strangely enough. And my relationships seem better as well, cleaner, purer, somehow. Maybe being less afraid allows me to show up more and just enjoy the experience.
As usual, send contributions and comments to AQuestioningSpiritTherapy@gmail.com.
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Shamanism 101
Today I started a course in Shamanistic studies. It takes years to get the stuff down, so I consider this just an introduction. I’ve had some training in shamanic techniques before, but that just scratched the surface, and I’m sure I’ll be digging deeper into this as time goes on. It really feels like following this path is the next step in my evolution.
This class went amazingly well. What that means for me is that I actually got what we were supposed to be doing in the journeys. If you don’t know what a journey is, think of it as a guided meditation. (That’s not really it, but you can find out more on the internet, so use it.) It wasn’t so long ago that this kind of stuff didn’t work for me. I was way too much inside my head to be able to feel, and way to self-conscious and worried about “getting it right” to let go and just let what happens, happen. It was a wonderful surprise to discover that I could be water, be air, earth and fire. Very cool. And I saw, and felt, that being air is how you fly: You become air, and just do what air does, up among the clouds.
As a little background, I’m been working on a post about fear. I completely rewritten it four times, and It’s still not ready. Maybe because it’s just a process I need to go through, maybe what I’m actually doing is changing my relationship to fear, not getting rid of it. More on the later, as it came up in my journeys. Before I talk about my journeys, I want to talk about what happened at lunch.
I didn’t bring any lunch, since the course paper work said that there was a place to get food “across the street.” Well, “across the street” turned out to be a mile up the road. And I was walking. It’s all good though, cause I had a good walk, once I got over the bitch’n. It was cloudy, with some sun, with an interesting wind. I was enjoying the wind when it hit me that I really enjoyed the wind. And this wind was saying “Hi!” It really seemed like an old friend. I have always liked wind, no matter if it’s soft and warm, or harsh and cold, or teasing and playful. I love clear air and a fresh breeze. Talking about this later in class, the instructor pointed out that air is the element associated with being in your head, and, boy, have I been in my head most of my life!
Since I had so much time to walk, I figured it was time to wonder why my feet were so cold today. That part was easy: Fear. But fear of what? It took some time to tease out the the answer, seeing how I had to fight for each word, but I finally got it: I was afraid that I would find out the real reason why I was so selfish. Who me? Selfish? I’m still wrapping my head around that. Here I’d thought I’d made real progress in that area, but, apparently, there is still much to learn. I have a feeling that that word doesn’t mean what I think it means.
I think we had three journeys. I can’t remember them all separately, so I’m going to tell it the way I remember. (I know, I should write things down. But I really don’t want to. I don’t have a good reason for that, I just really, really, dislike taking pen in hand and trying to write down how I feel. It’s much better to talk, next comes typing, which isn’t so bad, but writing comes dead last, in my world. I must have a lot of bad feelings wrapped around writing. From my childhood perhaps?)
I remember starting with an exercise where we tried being each of the four elements, earth, water, fire and air. That was fun. I’m not sure if I was actually being each element, but I sure felt like I was full, or made of, each element. Earth felt all peaty, like soil, water, cool, crisp and weighty. Fire seemed my least successful as I just felt energetic, but air was the most fun. I felt cool and light and transparent and ready to take flight.
Next, we went to the lower world, the land of essences, as I understand it. I went to find my “place,” and discovered a meadow of waist-high grass, along a meandering stream, inside a thick, pine forest. As I approached the stream, I found a clear area of dirt and lots of “Me”s: Many different instances of myself, all different ages and from different times, all different incarnations and realizations of the possibility that was me. Most were faint and ghosts-like, and payed no attention to me, but there was one who was solid and, lets say, mature. He was on his knees, working on something. A drum perhaps. And he seems angry or annoyed with me about something.
My mind has a real tendency to wander off, and this time was no exception. I don’t even know where I go. It’s just that I frequently I realize that I’m suppose to be doing something, or the instructor just said something and I can’t remember what I’m doing, or what the instruction means, because I can’t remember the context. That is why my recollections are always a bunch of separate scenes, punctuated by periods of amnesia.
Anyway, going to meet my guide: I was sitting on a log, with an ordinary-looking guy: thin, youngish, in ordinary clothes. Said his name was Allen. “Allen? Really? What’s your real name?” was my response. He just smiled a wan smile and shrugged. I didn’t get any further with that. At some point it occurred to me to return to the old guy and try and find out what he was so upset about. I had just started that conversation when the instructor called us back.
The next journey was into the upper world. That was my favorite. We needed to find a way up, and, since you can use whatever method you like, I picked a tree. There is a pine tree near my house that is very tall and straight and, when you put your head against the trunk and look up, it seems like it goes on forever. So I rode that tree up, into the sky, through the clouds, into space and into the upper world. I’m told that it looks different for different people, but for me, it was hazy with pastel colors. Sort of like walking on clouds. I found myself a bench to sit on, overlooking the world below. I had a sense that I could look down there and see whatever I wanted: The world, my life, my past, my future, other worlds, anything. At some point, I called in “grumpy old guy” to finish our conversation.
The conversation still didn’t get too far, but I learned a bit more. First, he was disappointed with me because of “so much fear.” It was my turn to be upset: This, after all the work I have been doing on fear? Anyway, I eventually got that there are fears that I’m so not willing to admit to myself that I don’t even feel them. I had just asked the question “How do I deal with fears that I can’t even feel?” when I ran out of time an had to come back.
Coming back was super fun, I just stepped off the overlook and flew down through space and the clouds, slid down the tree and “poofed” my feet onto the ground. I wish I could do that all the time! I wonder if it’s possible, one of these days, that I might get so comfortable with flying that I might just step off some high place, forgetting that gravity tends to have its own way, in this world, at least. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I’m really looking forward to the next class. In the meantime I have a lot to chew and meditate on. As usual, send questions and comments to rodwhitehouse@ieee.org. Take care.
This class went amazingly well. What that means for me is that I actually got what we were supposed to be doing in the journeys. If you don’t know what a journey is, think of it as a guided meditation. (That’s not really it, but you can find out more on the internet, so use it.) It wasn’t so long ago that this kind of stuff didn’t work for me. I was way too much inside my head to be able to feel, and way to self-conscious and worried about “getting it right” to let go and just let what happens, happen. It was a wonderful surprise to discover that I could be water, be air, earth and fire. Very cool. And I saw, and felt, that being air is how you fly: You become air, and just do what air does, up among the clouds.
As a little background, I’m been working on a post about fear. I completely rewritten it four times, and It’s still not ready. Maybe because it’s just a process I need to go through, maybe what I’m actually doing is changing my relationship to fear, not getting rid of it. More on the later, as it came up in my journeys. Before I talk about my journeys, I want to talk about what happened at lunch.
I didn’t bring any lunch, since the course paper work said that there was a place to get food “across the street.” Well, “across the street” turned out to be a mile up the road. And I was walking. It’s all good though, cause I had a good walk, once I got over the bitch’n. It was cloudy, with some sun, with an interesting wind. I was enjoying the wind when it hit me that I really enjoyed the wind. And this wind was saying “Hi!” It really seemed like an old friend. I have always liked wind, no matter if it’s soft and warm, or harsh and cold, or teasing and playful. I love clear air and a fresh breeze. Talking about this later in class, the instructor pointed out that air is the element associated with being in your head, and, boy, have I been in my head most of my life!
Since I had so much time to walk, I figured it was time to wonder why my feet were so cold today. That part was easy: Fear. But fear of what? It took some time to tease out the the answer, seeing how I had to fight for each word, but I finally got it: I was afraid that I would find out the real reason why I was so selfish. Who me? Selfish? I’m still wrapping my head around that. Here I’d thought I’d made real progress in that area, but, apparently, there is still much to learn. I have a feeling that that word doesn’t mean what I think it means.
I think we had three journeys. I can’t remember them all separately, so I’m going to tell it the way I remember. (I know, I should write things down. But I really don’t want to. I don’t have a good reason for that, I just really, really, dislike taking pen in hand and trying to write down how I feel. It’s much better to talk, next comes typing, which isn’t so bad, but writing comes dead last, in my world. I must have a lot of bad feelings wrapped around writing. From my childhood perhaps?)
I remember starting with an exercise where we tried being each of the four elements, earth, water, fire and air. That was fun. I’m not sure if I was actually being each element, but I sure felt like I was full, or made of, each element. Earth felt all peaty, like soil, water, cool, crisp and weighty. Fire seemed my least successful as I just felt energetic, but air was the most fun. I felt cool and light and transparent and ready to take flight.
Next, we went to the lower world, the land of essences, as I understand it. I went to find my “place,” and discovered a meadow of waist-high grass, along a meandering stream, inside a thick, pine forest. As I approached the stream, I found a clear area of dirt and lots of “Me”s: Many different instances of myself, all different ages and from different times, all different incarnations and realizations of the possibility that was me. Most were faint and ghosts-like, and payed no attention to me, but there was one who was solid and, lets say, mature. He was on his knees, working on something. A drum perhaps. And he seems angry or annoyed with me about something.
My mind has a real tendency to wander off, and this time was no exception. I don’t even know where I go. It’s just that I frequently I realize that I’m suppose to be doing something, or the instructor just said something and I can’t remember what I’m doing, or what the instruction means, because I can’t remember the context. That is why my recollections are always a bunch of separate scenes, punctuated by periods of amnesia.
Anyway, going to meet my guide: I was sitting on a log, with an ordinary-looking guy: thin, youngish, in ordinary clothes. Said his name was Allen. “Allen? Really? What’s your real name?” was my response. He just smiled a wan smile and shrugged. I didn’t get any further with that. At some point it occurred to me to return to the old guy and try and find out what he was so upset about. I had just started that conversation when the instructor called us back.
The next journey was into the upper world. That was my favorite. We needed to find a way up, and, since you can use whatever method you like, I picked a tree. There is a pine tree near my house that is very tall and straight and, when you put your head against the trunk and look up, it seems like it goes on forever. So I rode that tree up, into the sky, through the clouds, into space and into the upper world. I’m told that it looks different for different people, but for me, it was hazy with pastel colors. Sort of like walking on clouds. I found myself a bench to sit on, overlooking the world below. I had a sense that I could look down there and see whatever I wanted: The world, my life, my past, my future, other worlds, anything. At some point, I called in “grumpy old guy” to finish our conversation.
The conversation still didn’t get too far, but I learned a bit more. First, he was disappointed with me because of “so much fear.” It was my turn to be upset: This, after all the work I have been doing on fear? Anyway, I eventually got that there are fears that I’m so not willing to admit to myself that I don’t even feel them. I had just asked the question “How do I deal with fears that I can’t even feel?” when I ran out of time an had to come back.
Coming back was super fun, I just stepped off the overlook and flew down through space and the clouds, slid down the tree and “poofed” my feet onto the ground. I wish I could do that all the time! I wonder if it’s possible, one of these days, that I might get so comfortable with flying that I might just step off some high place, forgetting that gravity tends to have its own way, in this world, at least. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I’m really looking forward to the next class. In the meantime I have a lot to chew and meditate on. As usual, send questions and comments to rodwhitehouse@ieee.org. Take care.
Friday, September 2, 2016
And So It Begins…
Last night was one of the worst in recent memory. I couldn’t sleep for my stomach was tied in a knot, which was caused by something that happened earlier in the evening. Sometimes being on a spiritual path knocks you upside the head, and this was a big knock. Things are not over yet, and I expect that it will be some time before the full meaning of this, comes clear.
I held my MeetUp last night, at a local coffee shop. Only one other person showed up, a recent friend of mine that also happens to be a retired English professor. I had mentioned earlier that may guides had told me that I was going to write a book. I had also said that I had no idea when or what it was to be about. When I became clear that no one else was going to show up, she proposed to help me write that book, in exchange for help I had given her in handling a spirit in her house.
I held my MeetUp last night, at a local coffee shop. Only one other person showed up, a recent friend of mine that also happens to be a retired English professor. I had mentioned earlier that may guides had told me that I was going to write a book. I had also said that I had no idea when or what it was to be about. When I became clear that no one else was going to show up, she proposed to help me write that book, in exchange for help I had given her in handling a spirit in her house.
We discussed the idea and she outlined how I would get started. For my part, I was resisting, but I’m not sure exactly what I was resisting. I don’t mind writing, (obviously!) But something about the situation was bringing up something, something I couldn’t put a name on, but I have felt before.
This something first popped up when I did my first QHHT session as a client. I never really got much detail, but an enormous about of guilt and grief came to the surface. It seems that I had been someone who was responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not millions of people, and wholesale destruction as well. Despite the powerful feelings and the physical symptoms from that session, I have never been 100% convinced that I didn’t just make the whole thing up, well, to be important, and all that. Once the session was over the emotions slid back beneath the surface again, only occasionally reappearing, in brief flashes.
This something first popped up when I did my first QHHT session as a client. I never really got much detail, but an enormous about of guilt and grief came to the surface. It seems that I had been someone who was responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not millions of people, and wholesale destruction as well. Despite the powerful feelings and the physical symptoms from that session, I have never been 100% convinced that I didn’t just make the whole thing up, well, to be important, and all that. Once the session was over the emotions slid back beneath the surface again, only occasionally reappearing, in brief flashes.
Last night, I’m still not sure what I felt, but it seemed like I was feeling the huge swells caused by some powerful force below my awareness. Something so large that it only needed to roll over in it’s sleep to cause tidal waves on the surface of my mind. I can never leave well enough alone, so, like most boys do when they see something they don’t understand, I kept poking at it with a mental “stick.” Unfortunately that left me stuck inside it most of the night, with my stomach knotted, thoughts swirling in my head and unable to sleep.
Let me try and explain what was going on in my head. First there was a buzzing, and anxiety, and a set of memories that kept playing, over and over. The first memory was of a “dream” or past life, take your pick, were I was a priestess, traveling on a ship. Though I was technically a priestess, I was for all practical purposes, a mid- to high-level bureaucrat. One of those faceless people who do the grunt work of managing all the details of keeping a temple complex running smoothly. I was on the ship, with a single, armed, escort, because I smuggling holy artifacts to a trading outpost to protect them from the coming disaster. I really didn’t want to be there, but I was ordered to by my superiors, and there was nothing I could do about it. Apparently politics were such that we were not allowed to admit that we knew what was coming, so we had to make what preparations we could in secret. I kept getting more and more details about this, as the scenes played over and over in my mind.
The next memory was something that happened when I was about five, and playing with a neighbor girl. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, in an area that was pretty undeveloped at that time. The street we were on had houses on just one side and we were surrounded by undeveloped forest and fields. The girl and I were playing in some area away from the houses and she needed to pee, which she did, in front of me. I remember watching with mild interest. After that, we went…somewhere, and the next thing I remember is “I don’t want to feel any more.” Where about that time I disassociated so strongly from my body that it took decades of self work and a therapist to get back in, sometime in my 50’s.
Now for the last memory, the one that turned out to be the key. This is about a girl I had a crush on, starting in the first grade, and on through the last time I saw her in school, junior collage. Despite the fact that we were in the same grade all that time, I don’t remember noticing her very often. The first memory I have of her is in the first grade. We walked to her house after school and playing “horses” in a neighbors yard. Later, as I remember it, I was attacked and bitten by a dog on the way home. After that, I never spoke to her again. I would see her at school, but I was deathly afraid to ever go near her.
I ran into her at our twentieth high school reunion and her story of that time is quite different than mine. Apparently, she followed me around a lot, and hung out at my house enough that she knew my mother. I have no recollection of any of this.
Back to last night. I got up, at some point, very late, to walk a bit, in the hope the my stomach pain was caused by gas and standing up would allow me to burp and release it. No such luck, but, while I was pacing, thinking about my grammar school crush, a strong need to cry came over me, and the words “I am so sorry!” Once I had let that run it’s course, I felt a feeling of release, and then went back to bed. Soon I realized that everything in my head and body had subsided enough that I could finally get to sleep.
Today, my stomach still hurts, and it still feels a bit weird inside my head, but it feel…different, something has shifted. Something has begun and we’ll see what happens next.
Let me try and explain what was going on in my head. First there was a buzzing, and anxiety, and a set of memories that kept playing, over and over. The first memory was of a “dream” or past life, take your pick, were I was a priestess, traveling on a ship. Though I was technically a priestess, I was for all practical purposes, a mid- to high-level bureaucrat. One of those faceless people who do the grunt work of managing all the details of keeping a temple complex running smoothly. I was on the ship, with a single, armed, escort, because I smuggling holy artifacts to a trading outpost to protect them from the coming disaster. I really didn’t want to be there, but I was ordered to by my superiors, and there was nothing I could do about it. Apparently politics were such that we were not allowed to admit that we knew what was coming, so we had to make what preparations we could in secret. I kept getting more and more details about this, as the scenes played over and over in my mind.
The next memory was something that happened when I was about five, and playing with a neighbor girl. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, in an area that was pretty undeveloped at that time. The street we were on had houses on just one side and we were surrounded by undeveloped forest and fields. The girl and I were playing in some area away from the houses and she needed to pee, which she did, in front of me. I remember watching with mild interest. After that, we went…somewhere, and the next thing I remember is “I don’t want to feel any more.” Where about that time I disassociated so strongly from my body that it took decades of self work and a therapist to get back in, sometime in my 50’s.
Now for the last memory, the one that turned out to be the key. This is about a girl I had a crush on, starting in the first grade, and on through the last time I saw her in school, junior collage. Despite the fact that we were in the same grade all that time, I don’t remember noticing her very often. The first memory I have of her is in the first grade. We walked to her house after school and playing “horses” in a neighbors yard. Later, as I remember it, I was attacked and bitten by a dog on the way home. After that, I never spoke to her again. I would see her at school, but I was deathly afraid to ever go near her.
I ran into her at our twentieth high school reunion and her story of that time is quite different than mine. Apparently, she followed me around a lot, and hung out at my house enough that she knew my mother. I have no recollection of any of this.
Back to last night. I got up, at some point, very late, to walk a bit, in the hope the my stomach pain was caused by gas and standing up would allow me to burp and release it. No such luck, but, while I was pacing, thinking about my grammar school crush, a strong need to cry came over me, and the words “I am so sorry!” Once I had let that run it’s course, I felt a feeling of release, and then went back to bed. Soon I realized that everything in my head and body had subsided enough that I could finally get to sleep.
Today, my stomach still hurts, and it still feels a bit weird inside my head, but it feel…different, something has shifted. Something has begun and we’ll see what happens next.
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Timey, Wimey, Meaning of Life Stuff?
I recently had an exchange session with another local QHHT practitioner. It was my turn this time. Truth be told, I am not a good subject. I can’t seem to help resisting, obstructing, and otherwise getting in the way. I’m not sure if I just don’t trust others or don’t trust the process, but I find it really difficult to go with it. The resistance shows up externally and internally. At my worst, my body jerks and flails around, at times working up a real sweat, and my face and mouth going through distortions and contortions at any attempt to speak. Even my best, I still feel a marked reluctance to notice, acknowledge and share what I’m perceiving. I have noticed, recently, that the physical stuff had really tapered off. It’s still a problem, but I’ll take what I can get. The good new is, in this session, I got a possible explanation for what has been going on, but I’m not sure if I like the answer or not.
My first life was as a WWI fighter pilot. In the first scene, he is flying his plane to his first post. He is very young, maybe 18, and is excited and idealistic. He flies through some clouds and lands on a grassy airfield. I am really struck at how bright the colors in this scene are: The blue of the sky, the clean, white, crisp clouds and fantastic green grass. He hands the plane over to a mechanic and stands on the field looking proud. I saw this life, mostly, from the outside.
In another scene, (I’m not sure if it was the next one) he seems much older. Maybe only a short time, but he looks much older and has lost all his innocence and is deeply sad. He seems to be standing in roughly the same place as the first scene, but is now staring at a crashed and burning plane. On of his friends, I suppose, but he’s not thinking, just staring. I can’t remember if there was more to this life or not but it seems to stick here.
My first life was as a WWI fighter pilot. In the first scene, he is flying his plane to his first post. He is very young, maybe 18, and is excited and idealistic. He flies through some clouds and lands on a grassy airfield. I am really struck at how bright the colors in this scene are: The blue of the sky, the clean, white, crisp clouds and fantastic green grass. He hands the plane over to a mechanic and stands on the field looking proud. I saw this life, mostly, from the outside.
In another scene, (I’m not sure if it was the next one) he seems much older. Maybe only a short time, but he looks much older and has lost all his innocence and is deeply sad. He seems to be standing in roughly the same place as the first scene, but is now staring at a crashed and burning plane. On of his friends, I suppose, but he’s not thinking, just staring. I can’t remember if there was more to this life or not but it seems to stick here.
While I’m looking at this life, I keep getting the image of a white room. It’s completely white and empty and the light seems to be coming from the walls. There is also a strong impression of echoing footsteps. This impressions are confusing and seems to have nothing to do with the life I’m looking at. I do my best to ignore it.
Next, I’m in another life as a sort of a white, dolphin-like, creature, traveling through space in a huge, transparent, ball. The ball is clearly a spaceship of some kind: I can see it from the outside and, while it’s mostly transparent, there are mechanical structural, parts as well. There are many of us inside the ball and there is a sense of joy and happiness. In the next scene we’ve landed and disembarked on a beautiful world that is mostly water, clean and unspoiled.
Things are getting pretty confused in my head by now, I’m getting the White Room and the WWI life at the same time. At first my impressions resolved into a “split screen” with the White Room on the left, and the WWI pilot in the right. In the White Room, there was a rather ordinary looking, guy, sitting in a plain chair, dressed in contemporary clothes, leaning forward and intently watching the WWI pilot. It didn’t feel like he was watching on a screen or through a window, it was like the room was missing the right-hand wall and he could look directly out into the past. Of course, the pilot could not see him, or know he was there.
Once I allowed that scene to be, I realized that I was seeing it from a third vantage point, and I was seeing some kind of white, lumpy, thing in the bottom center of my view. With a little more allowing, I got that the “I” that was watching was the dolphin creature, sitting in a kind of lounge chair. The white lumpy thing in front of my was my lower body. (Frankly, that is still a little weird.) In fact, all three were (are?) me, in different…um…incarnations? Timelines? Realities? Whatever! (You have no idea how confusing it is to try and wrap my head around this experience!)
The story so far: Creature “me” is watching both a “contemporary me” and a “past me,” while “contemporary me” is studying “past me.” Got all that? Time to call in good old Higher Self, as I have no idea what is going on.
You might want to take a deep breath before we go on. We’re about to take a deep dive into Dr Who territory: The creation of the universe, all universes and what existed before anything and everything you can imagine. Ready?
First, Let me say that the most dramatic of the physical actions during sessions were caused by attached entities that have since been removed, but the remaining issues are a necessary adaption for a job that I have taken on that encompasses at least three lifetimes. I haven’t really digested all of this yet, so I’m just going to just present what I know and let you draw your own conclusions. I don’t know where to start, because everything is tangled . I ask you to just follow along, as best you can, and I hope that all the pieces will come together in the end.
As I said, my higher self has always had trouble communicating through my body. It turns out that the problem is that the “control interface” of my physical being is scrambled. During this session, I could clearly see how hard it was for my Higher Self to coordinate my body. I watched it struggling to operate and coordinate the lips, tongue, breath and vocal chords. Speech was difficult, to say the least. “I” know how to operate my physical self, of course, but nobody else does. The kicker is that this was done on purpose: I needed a specialized “system” for difficult conditions.
Now for the timey, wimey, part. The three scenes I was watching are distinct points where space/time was distorted and the timelines were tangled and confused. These points are where artifacts of the base substrate of all realities cause dislocations and discontinuities in the fabric of reality. In a way analogous to the way flaws in the silicon crystal lattice of a semiconductor disrupt signal flow by snagging charges and holes and keep signals from getting through, timelines of different realities “snag” on these flaws and get tangled up, co-mingling time streams and confusing causation. Some time streams get locked into a defect, endlessly spinning, circulating, folding back on itself and intermingling with other trapped streams, unable to progress and evolve. It appears that these flaws have existed since the creation of the universe, but were initially submicroscopic and inconsequential. No longer, now they pose a problem to our plan for all reality. The job I appear to have taken on, along with many others throughout existence, is to help heal these defects.
Those three instances of me were (are?) stuck (or are positioned?) on the three points where one of these artifacts intrudes into my time stream, sort of like the way that woodgrain can show through a coat of paint. How am I supposed to heal this? I have no idea. I suspect that I’m going to need a lot of help, though.
Remember my scrambled “control interface?” Apparently, a complicated and unusual “communication protocol,” if you will, is required for an incarnations to exist in these tangled time-spaces, and still be able to stay in contact and to coordinate with each other through my, universal, higher self.
I don’t really know what to make of all this. If it’s supposed to make me feel really important and special, it doesn’t. What I mostly feel is fear, at the job, if it’s real, and what people will think and say when they read this. I don’t want to be one of those people that live in their own crazy reality. On the other hand, maybe I just have a terrific imagination and should write Dr Who stories.
If you have any comments or contributions, please post them, but notify me as well at aquestioningspirittherapy@gmail.com, because this site doesn’t notify me when people post comments. Take care.
Things are getting pretty confused in my head by now, I’m getting the White Room and the WWI life at the same time. At first my impressions resolved into a “split screen” with the White Room on the left, and the WWI pilot in the right. In the White Room, there was a rather ordinary looking, guy, sitting in a plain chair, dressed in contemporary clothes, leaning forward and intently watching the WWI pilot. It didn’t feel like he was watching on a screen or through a window, it was like the room was missing the right-hand wall and he could look directly out into the past. Of course, the pilot could not see him, or know he was there.
Once I allowed that scene to be, I realized that I was seeing it from a third vantage point, and I was seeing some kind of white, lumpy, thing in the bottom center of my view. With a little more allowing, I got that the “I” that was watching was the dolphin creature, sitting in a kind of lounge chair. The white lumpy thing in front of my was my lower body. (Frankly, that is still a little weird.) In fact, all three were (are?) me, in different…um…incarnations? Timelines? Realities? Whatever! (You have no idea how confusing it is to try and wrap my head around this experience!)
The story so far: Creature “me” is watching both a “contemporary me” and a “past me,” while “contemporary me” is studying “past me.” Got all that? Time to call in good old Higher Self, as I have no idea what is going on.
You might want to take a deep breath before we go on. We’re about to take a deep dive into Dr Who territory: The creation of the universe, all universes and what existed before anything and everything you can imagine. Ready?
First, Let me say that the most dramatic of the physical actions during sessions were caused by attached entities that have since been removed, but the remaining issues are a necessary adaption for a job that I have taken on that encompasses at least three lifetimes. I haven’t really digested all of this yet, so I’m just going to just present what I know and let you draw your own conclusions. I don’t know where to start, because everything is tangled . I ask you to just follow along, as best you can, and I hope that all the pieces will come together in the end.
As I said, my higher self has always had trouble communicating through my body. It turns out that the problem is that the “control interface” of my physical being is scrambled. During this session, I could clearly see how hard it was for my Higher Self to coordinate my body. I watched it struggling to operate and coordinate the lips, tongue, breath and vocal chords. Speech was difficult, to say the least. “I” know how to operate my physical self, of course, but nobody else does. The kicker is that this was done on purpose: I needed a specialized “system” for difficult conditions.
Now for the timey, wimey, part. The three scenes I was watching are distinct points where space/time was distorted and the timelines were tangled and confused. These points are where artifacts of the base substrate of all realities cause dislocations and discontinuities in the fabric of reality. In a way analogous to the way flaws in the silicon crystal lattice of a semiconductor disrupt signal flow by snagging charges and holes and keep signals from getting through, timelines of different realities “snag” on these flaws and get tangled up, co-mingling time streams and confusing causation. Some time streams get locked into a defect, endlessly spinning, circulating, folding back on itself and intermingling with other trapped streams, unable to progress and evolve. It appears that these flaws have existed since the creation of the universe, but were initially submicroscopic and inconsequential. No longer, now they pose a problem to our plan for all reality. The job I appear to have taken on, along with many others throughout existence, is to help heal these defects.
Those three instances of me were (are?) stuck (or are positioned?) on the three points where one of these artifacts intrudes into my time stream, sort of like the way that woodgrain can show through a coat of paint. How am I supposed to heal this? I have no idea. I suspect that I’m going to need a lot of help, though.
Remember my scrambled “control interface?” Apparently, a complicated and unusual “communication protocol,” if you will, is required for an incarnations to exist in these tangled time-spaces, and still be able to stay in contact and to coordinate with each other through my, universal, higher self.
I don’t really know what to make of all this. If it’s supposed to make me feel really important and special, it doesn’t. What I mostly feel is fear, at the job, if it’s real, and what people will think and say when they read this. I don’t want to be one of those people that live in their own crazy reality. On the other hand, maybe I just have a terrific imagination and should write Dr Who stories.
If you have any comments or contributions, please post them, but notify me as well at aquestioningspirittherapy@gmail.com, because this site doesn’t notify me when people post comments. Take care.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
Taking Care of Family
I regularly go to a hypnotherapy MeetUp where I learn new techniques, and every time I do, I ask for volunteers to practice on. I usually get a couple of takers. This is one of those sessions.
The new techniques are for quick inductions, like you see in hypnosis stage shows. But this client really didn’t need anything because she, as long as I have been working with her, she can go under with a single command, but I got my practice in anyway.
The client wanted to get completion with her older sister, call her A, who had died a few years ago. In the process she ended up visiting another sister and some other people as well. The client is female, in her 70’s, and had two sister, one which was very psychic and one that was staunchly atheist/materialistic and thought all that paranormal stuff was pure bunk.
The induction went fast, and she when directly to a beautiful place: “I found myself sitting on a stone floor in front of a stone throne that was two steps up from where I sat. Behind me was an almost life-sized Buddha figure. The room was ringed with small stained glass windows with Christian themes. The stone floor and throne setting seemed very old and had a roughish, primitive appearance. The floor, though, was very smooth and comfortable. The room seemed to me to represent various faiths that I had encountered and the idea that I had accepted parts of each one and the room illustrated that. I think I laughed out loud several times as I found the room quite delightful.”
She did laugh, and cry, many times throughout the session.
When she finished describing the room, I asked A to join her: “I had a very hard time not seeing her as a dead body, but gradually bits and pieces of her personality began to come through. She said to me, laughing ‘I can sparkle and (?) for you if that’s what you want, but you know we don’t really need that.’ Not her exact words, but that was the general idea, that if I needed to see her as lively and ‘lifelike’ she could do that.”
“I had felt that I had let her down as she was dying by not impressing on her that she should look for the light, a guide, etc., but she had turned to a standard form of religion not long before she died, and I realized that I hadn’t felt right about ‘imposing’ my beliefs about the afterlife on her at that point.”
“We ‘talked’ for a while, and she reminded me that we both knew there were no boundaries and that we could communicate without outside support. I gave her permission to ‘drop in’ whenever she felt like it.”
The client laughed and cried during this conversation. She then said her “so longs” to A (No Good-Byes here, they would be talking again!). Something she said made me suspect there might me more to do here, so I suggested that she see if there was someone else she wanted to talk to:
“Then I looked for my other sister. Call her B. She died a few months after A. I had felt really bad that I was unable to understand what she was saying the last time we spoke, as her voice was very rough and she was sort of mumbling. I felt worse that I had no idea whether the last words I spoke to her conveyed anything of my feelings about her. We never did address that in this session, but it didn’t seem to matter.”
“When I first saw her in this session she was sitting in a sort of office – a small room with books, papers, a computer. She said she knew she was dead, but thought she might just as well stay in her little room as she didn’t believe there was anything else out there.”
I was looking for a way to get B to consider leaving the room. B had said that she was writing letters, so I asked something like, would the people they were addressed to ever read them. That gave B pause, she had never considered that. Somehow in the conversation, the fact that one of her sons had died, came up. A suggested the client go with that: “I asked her if she knew that one of her sons had recently died. At this point, Rod asked me to encourage her to open the door of her room, and when she did, the son was standing there. They eventually walked off happily together.”
Then the client switched back to A: “She more or less brushed off all my apologies, conveying to me that it wasn’t important, that what I had or hadn’t said to her didn’t impede her in any way. Our Dad came to get her, and the two of them walked off together. I just realized that it didn’t occur to me to try to speak with my Dad. He said to A that, although he had never actually said it to her, he hoped she knew that he had always loved her very much.”
“While she and I were talking, I felt that I wanted to hug her or touch her in some way. I realized that we had never been ‘huggy’ with each other, but we did have a very strong bond. She was very lighted-hearted and laughed a lot, which was typical of her in life.”
“Rod brought me back to the original room.” (The “Chapel”) “I felt much more peaceful that I had at the beginning.”
I had a “Ah Ha” moment during this session. There was one point where it felt like I had lost focus, or my mind had wandered. This has happened, from time to time, and I usually just feel bad and double my efforts to stay focused. This time I got something totally different, because I realized that it had happened right after I had the client to give a suggestion to one of her sisters. What had actually happened is the that energy of the room had shifted, which I believe meant that the sister we had been talking to had had an insight and we were making progress!
When I read this, I can’t help but think that there are some important points that are missing, but I just can’t remember them. Lesson learned: I need to start recording all my sessions.
The new techniques are for quick inductions, like you see in hypnosis stage shows. But this client really didn’t need anything because she, as long as I have been working with her, she can go under with a single command, but I got my practice in anyway.
The client wanted to get completion with her older sister, call her A, who had died a few years ago. In the process she ended up visiting another sister and some other people as well. The client is female, in her 70’s, and had two sister, one which was very psychic and one that was staunchly atheist/materialistic and thought all that paranormal stuff was pure bunk.
The induction went fast, and she when directly to a beautiful place: “I found myself sitting on a stone floor in front of a stone throne that was two steps up from where I sat. Behind me was an almost life-sized Buddha figure. The room was ringed with small stained glass windows with Christian themes. The stone floor and throne setting seemed very old and had a roughish, primitive appearance. The floor, though, was very smooth and comfortable. The room seemed to me to represent various faiths that I had encountered and the idea that I had accepted parts of each one and the room illustrated that. I think I laughed out loud several times as I found the room quite delightful.”
She did laugh, and cry, many times throughout the session.
When she finished describing the room, I asked A to join her: “I had a very hard time not seeing her as a dead body, but gradually bits and pieces of her personality began to come through. She said to me, laughing ‘I can sparkle and (?) for you if that’s what you want, but you know we don’t really need that.’ Not her exact words, but that was the general idea, that if I needed to see her as lively and ‘lifelike’ she could do that.”
“I had felt that I had let her down as she was dying by not impressing on her that she should look for the light, a guide, etc., but she had turned to a standard form of religion not long before she died, and I realized that I hadn’t felt right about ‘imposing’ my beliefs about the afterlife on her at that point.”
“We ‘talked’ for a while, and she reminded me that we both knew there were no boundaries and that we could communicate without outside support. I gave her permission to ‘drop in’ whenever she felt like it.”
The client laughed and cried during this conversation. She then said her “so longs” to A (No Good-Byes here, they would be talking again!). Something she said made me suspect there might me more to do here, so I suggested that she see if there was someone else she wanted to talk to:
“Then I looked for my other sister. Call her B. She died a few months after A. I had felt really bad that I was unable to understand what she was saying the last time we spoke, as her voice was very rough and she was sort of mumbling. I felt worse that I had no idea whether the last words I spoke to her conveyed anything of my feelings about her. We never did address that in this session, but it didn’t seem to matter.”
“When I first saw her in this session she was sitting in a sort of office – a small room with books, papers, a computer. She said she knew she was dead, but thought she might just as well stay in her little room as she didn’t believe there was anything else out there.”
I was looking for a way to get B to consider leaving the room. B had said that she was writing letters, so I asked something like, would the people they were addressed to ever read them. That gave B pause, she had never considered that. Somehow in the conversation, the fact that one of her sons had died, came up. A suggested the client go with that: “I asked her if she knew that one of her sons had recently died. At this point, Rod asked me to encourage her to open the door of her room, and when she did, the son was standing there. They eventually walked off happily together.”
Then the client switched back to A: “She more or less brushed off all my apologies, conveying to me that it wasn’t important, that what I had or hadn’t said to her didn’t impede her in any way. Our Dad came to get her, and the two of them walked off together. I just realized that it didn’t occur to me to try to speak with my Dad. He said to A that, although he had never actually said it to her, he hoped she knew that he had always loved her very much.”
“While she and I were talking, I felt that I wanted to hug her or touch her in some way. I realized that we had never been ‘huggy’ with each other, but we did have a very strong bond. She was very lighted-hearted and laughed a lot, which was typical of her in life.”
“Rod brought me back to the original room.” (The “Chapel”) “I felt much more peaceful that I had at the beginning.”
I had a “Ah Ha” moment during this session. There was one point where it felt like I had lost focus, or my mind had wandered. This has happened, from time to time, and I usually just feel bad and double my efforts to stay focused. This time I got something totally different, because I realized that it had happened right after I had the client to give a suggestion to one of her sisters. What had actually happened is the that energy of the room had shifted, which I believe meant that the sister we had been talking to had had an insight and we were making progress!
When I read this, I can’t help but think that there are some important points that are missing, but I just can’t remember them. Lesson learned: I need to start recording all my sessions.
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Unexpected Benefits
This Sunday I attended the monthly Paranormal Pub, put on by MUFON and McMenamins. Admission is free and I find it’s a great way to spend a Sunday evening. And it’s only a short walk to several great pubs, if you don’t want to go home afterwards. The speaker this month was Susan Pease Banitt clinical social worker and author, talking about past life regression and it’s role in healing trauma. McMenamins serves a variety of adult beverages and I suspect that my partaking may have had a role to play in later events.
I like to show up early, so I can get my drink and get settled into my favorite spot before the crowd shows up. I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me, and then, as luck would have it, some people I’d met a few times before, at other events, showed up and joined us. The person who sat next to me was someone I thought was pretty cool, but that may be because I’m pretty sure this aint our first BBQ. I generally don’t say anything in these cases, it seems best to let sleeping dogs lie unless it comes up for some other reason.
At the end of her talk, Susan offered a group past life regression for anyone who wanted to stay. Of course, we all stayed.
My regression didn’t seem all the remarkable. I saw three scenes, all three were dominated by the big round eyes of a young girl, about six or so. I couldn’t see much else about her except a dress that tagged her as native american. For myself, I saw dirty, knobby, bare feet and extremely ragged pants. I got the impression that I was European, maybe mid thirties, and very dirty, ragged and in really bad shape. My impression is that I was the girl’s father, but I never knew about her, or I abandoned her mother before she was born. I saw nothing about the mother, so perhaps she was dead. It seems that, somehow, I’d found my way back to the tribe in this terrible state. The first scene seemed to take place in the late afternoon on a rainy, overcast day. The light had that particular flavor to it. The girl and I were standing outside. I think there might have been other people around. Nothing else happened.
In the second scene, it was night, and I was sitting with the girl, in front of a big fire, outside, with many other people. In this scene I had the impression of teepees in the background. Again, it was just a snapshot with no action.
In the last scene, I was lying on the ground, in the dirt, it was day again, morning perhaps, and the girl was standing next to me. I was dying. I was inside the camp, for there were a few people and teepees around, but no one was paying any attention to us. I soon raised up floated away, watching the scene grow smaller and smaller below me. The girl was watching me the whole time. The little girl was the person sitting next to me.
Afterwards, I felt...off. And the feeling got worse and worse as time went on. It only took a few minutes before I was fighting to hold it together against fear, shame and indecision. I just wanted to get out of there. Part of me was yelling at me to talk to someone and get some sort of help, but fear of “being a bother” took control and I fled without saying anything to anyone. I drove home, doing all I could to hold it together under an onslaught of fear, guilt and shame. I apologize to everyone there for being so rude as vanish without a word.
After a miserable night, I dragged myself up to see that nasty shadow was still there. I know I had to do something about it, I had an unusually busy day with clients and other appointments, and the last thing I needed was to have this cloud hanging over me, interfering.
I like to show up early, so I can get my drink and get settled into my favorite spot before the crowd shows up. I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me, and then, as luck would have it, some people I’d met a few times before, at other events, showed up and joined us. The person who sat next to me was someone I thought was pretty cool, but that may be because I’m pretty sure this aint our first BBQ. I generally don’t say anything in these cases, it seems best to let sleeping dogs lie unless it comes up for some other reason.
At the end of her talk, Susan offered a group past life regression for anyone who wanted to stay. Of course, we all stayed.
My regression didn’t seem all the remarkable. I saw three scenes, all three were dominated by the big round eyes of a young girl, about six or so. I couldn’t see much else about her except a dress that tagged her as native american. For myself, I saw dirty, knobby, bare feet and extremely ragged pants. I got the impression that I was European, maybe mid thirties, and very dirty, ragged and in really bad shape. My impression is that I was the girl’s father, but I never knew about her, or I abandoned her mother before she was born. I saw nothing about the mother, so perhaps she was dead. It seems that, somehow, I’d found my way back to the tribe in this terrible state. The first scene seemed to take place in the late afternoon on a rainy, overcast day. The light had that particular flavor to it. The girl and I were standing outside. I think there might have been other people around. Nothing else happened.
In the second scene, it was night, and I was sitting with the girl, in front of a big fire, outside, with many other people. In this scene I had the impression of teepees in the background. Again, it was just a snapshot with no action.
In the last scene, I was lying on the ground, in the dirt, it was day again, morning perhaps, and the girl was standing next to me. I was dying. I was inside the camp, for there were a few people and teepees around, but no one was paying any attention to us. I soon raised up floated away, watching the scene grow smaller and smaller below me. The girl was watching me the whole time. The little girl was the person sitting next to me.
Afterwards, I felt...off. And the feeling got worse and worse as time went on. It only took a few minutes before I was fighting to hold it together against fear, shame and indecision. I just wanted to get out of there. Part of me was yelling at me to talk to someone and get some sort of help, but fear of “being a bother” took control and I fled without saying anything to anyone. I drove home, doing all I could to hold it together under an onslaught of fear, guilt and shame. I apologize to everyone there for being so rude as vanish without a word.
After a miserable night, I dragged myself up to see that nasty shadow was still there. I know I had to do something about it, I had an unusually busy day with clients and other appointments, and the last thing I needed was to have this cloud hanging over me, interfering.
Finally, my rational mind kicked in and the obvious dawned on me: I’d picked up a hitchhiker during the regression. That’s a new one on me, I’ve never even heard of even the possibility of that before! Fortunately I had time before my first appointment, so I had a conversation with my new tenant. I can’t remember his name now, but he actually was from that time. He and a girl had tried to run off together, but the men of the tribe had caught them and killed him. Somehow he managed to latch onto me and I pulled him into the present. It only took a few minutes to send him on. It felt do good, after all that turmoil, to be so relaxed and peaceful again. I couldn’t enjoy it long, though, places to go, people to see, and all that.
I can’t be sure of this, but I suspect that having some alcohol in my system made it easier for him to latch on to me. Maybe this was all meant to be, so it would have made no difference but, who knows? Another insight I’ve had about this is that I think that my reaction was so strong because his feelings hooked into and amplified latent feelings of my own. That could be another reason why and how he was able to effect me so strongly, his deep resonance with my emotions, on a subconscious level, that allowed him to slip past my normal defenses.
I’m sure he is gone, but an echo of his feelings still remain. So here’s another aspect of this whole incident: Perhaps his purpose was to help me to bring up and deal with emotions that I’d allowed to slide out of sight, where I could ignore them. This, and other events, are making it pretty clear that I’ll be confronting some uncomfortable issues pretty soon.
I can’t be sure of this, but I suspect that having some alcohol in my system made it easier for him to latch on to me. Maybe this was all meant to be, so it would have made no difference but, who knows? Another insight I’ve had about this is that I think that my reaction was so strong because his feelings hooked into and amplified latent feelings of my own. That could be another reason why and how he was able to effect me so strongly, his deep resonance with my emotions, on a subconscious level, that allowed him to slip past my normal defenses.
I’m sure he is gone, but an echo of his feelings still remain. So here’s another aspect of this whole incident: Perhaps his purpose was to help me to bring up and deal with emotions that I’d allowed to slide out of sight, where I could ignore them. This, and other events, are making it pretty clear that I’ll be confronting some uncomfortable issues pretty soon.
Friday, July 29, 2016
Between Life and Death
“Is there a state between life and death where spirits hang out?”
I was asked this question recently. My first reaction was that it almost seems a bit silly, then I realized that it’s a reasonable question, given that our culture doesn’t officially recognize any sort of life after death, outside of religion. I suppose there’s a whole book to be written about the way people invoke God, Jesus and a Higher Power in one breath and distain for the supernatural in the next, but that’s not for today. I should just accept that most people are either completely ignorant when it comes to spiritual matter, or have aa very simplistic, childlike conception that hasn’t been thought about since they were six.
Short answer about life after death: There appears to be another place where souls go after death. Some call it heaven, others like to objectify it as another “plane of existence” or “energy level.” Whatever it is, the transition is often described as a journey through a tunnel to a white light. However, not all spirits make that transition, and they end up hanging around with us, unseen and unheard, for the most part.
Souls can stay for many reasons. Common ones are, fear of punishment/judgment from a religious upbringing, addiction or drugs, power or sex, unfinished business, and, perhaps the saddest cases, souls simply don’t know they’re dead. This can be because they died suddenly, or while unconscious, and, because they believed that death was nothingness, conclude that they must be still alive.
I know that seems odd, I mean, how could you not know you’re dead? Aren’t there lots of clues that *something* is different? The problem is that souls need a physical body to function properly in this reality. Without it, the tend to lose track of time and space, and even memory gets tricky. Without a body that keeps track of time through its needs and process, awareness tends to live in a perpetual “Now.” With, perhaps, only a dim awareness that they’ve repeated the same actions and asked the same questions, over and over again. Physical bodies seem to also play a role in forming the new memories that allow a conscious to draw conclusions, make deductions and “move on.” Souls appear to be more or less stuck in the attitudes and state of mind they had when they died. Souls usually can only be reasoned with on a basic, emotional, immediate fashion. Childlike, in a way, you can reason with what’s right in front of them, part of their current reality, but if you try and get too complicated or abstract and you will lose them.
I’m sure that, right now, people with extensive experience with the “other side” are probably giving me a hard time right about now. They have had contacts with spirits that were highly intelligent and helpful, or otherwise don’t fit the description I just gave, and I agree. The reason is, there’s a distinction between “souls” and “spirits.” Souls are the departed that have not yet returned to the light, and Spirits are entities that either have gone to the light and returned or have never incarnated in the first place. There is a process of reintegration that all souls must go through to be able to function effectively in a discarnate form. You can look to Sylvia Brown’s books, Answers About the Afterlife or many other places for descriptions about what that’s like. The point here is that I’m talking about Souls that have not yet gone back to the light, not Spirits, that have returned.
Could you say that souls, stuck in transition, so to speak, are between life and death? In a way, I suppose, but I wouldn’t say that. Their bodies are most definitely dead, no question there, but their souls have not completed the incarnation cycle, so perhaps. It occurs to me while writing this that immortals would also be “stuck” and unable to complete the cycle. I have no personal interest in living forever. I think eternal life is overrated. Without the periodic refreshing of viewpoint, knowledge and enthusiasm that comes from each incarnation, existence would devolve into a increasingly meaningless succession of days and events that would blur together into utter blandness.
As a final note, I want to add that I feel that the “supernatural” is much more complicated than anyone seems to think. It’s as rich in variety and life and experience as our “natural” world, perhaps even more so. We only see a small portion though our very limited lens, and one of the reasons it seems so confusing is we only see disconnected parts of it. Like the Blind Men and the Elephant story, where each man touches a small portion of the animal and concludes that the whole animal is like the tail, the foot, the trunk or the ear, we each get our own piece of the “other side” and we draw our own conclusions, which are distorted further by our own limitations and beliefs. All in all, it’s not surprising that people from different cultures and different backgrounds paint very different pictures about what they perceive.
I was asked this question recently. My first reaction was that it almost seems a bit silly, then I realized that it’s a reasonable question, given that our culture doesn’t officially recognize any sort of life after death, outside of religion. I suppose there’s a whole book to be written about the way people invoke God, Jesus and a Higher Power in one breath and distain for the supernatural in the next, but that’s not for today. I should just accept that most people are either completely ignorant when it comes to spiritual matter, or have aa very simplistic, childlike conception that hasn’t been thought about since they were six.
Short answer about life after death: There appears to be another place where souls go after death. Some call it heaven, others like to objectify it as another “plane of existence” or “energy level.” Whatever it is, the transition is often described as a journey through a tunnel to a white light. However, not all spirits make that transition, and they end up hanging around with us, unseen and unheard, for the most part.
Souls can stay for many reasons. Common ones are, fear of punishment/judgment from a religious upbringing, addiction or drugs, power or sex, unfinished business, and, perhaps the saddest cases, souls simply don’t know they’re dead. This can be because they died suddenly, or while unconscious, and, because they believed that death was nothingness, conclude that they must be still alive.
I know that seems odd, I mean, how could you not know you’re dead? Aren’t there lots of clues that *something* is different? The problem is that souls need a physical body to function properly in this reality. Without it, the tend to lose track of time and space, and even memory gets tricky. Without a body that keeps track of time through its needs and process, awareness tends to live in a perpetual “Now.” With, perhaps, only a dim awareness that they’ve repeated the same actions and asked the same questions, over and over again. Physical bodies seem to also play a role in forming the new memories that allow a conscious to draw conclusions, make deductions and “move on.” Souls appear to be more or less stuck in the attitudes and state of mind they had when they died. Souls usually can only be reasoned with on a basic, emotional, immediate fashion. Childlike, in a way, you can reason with what’s right in front of them, part of their current reality, but if you try and get too complicated or abstract and you will lose them.
I’m sure that, right now, people with extensive experience with the “other side” are probably giving me a hard time right about now. They have had contacts with spirits that were highly intelligent and helpful, or otherwise don’t fit the description I just gave, and I agree. The reason is, there’s a distinction between “souls” and “spirits.” Souls are the departed that have not yet returned to the light, and Spirits are entities that either have gone to the light and returned or have never incarnated in the first place. There is a process of reintegration that all souls must go through to be able to function effectively in a discarnate form. You can look to Sylvia Brown’s books, Answers About the Afterlife or many other places for descriptions about what that’s like. The point here is that I’m talking about Souls that have not yet gone back to the light, not Spirits, that have returned.
Could you say that souls, stuck in transition, so to speak, are between life and death? In a way, I suppose, but I wouldn’t say that. Their bodies are most definitely dead, no question there, but their souls have not completed the incarnation cycle, so perhaps. It occurs to me while writing this that immortals would also be “stuck” and unable to complete the cycle. I have no personal interest in living forever. I think eternal life is overrated. Without the periodic refreshing of viewpoint, knowledge and enthusiasm that comes from each incarnation, existence would devolve into a increasingly meaningless succession of days and events that would blur together into utter blandness.
As a final note, I want to add that I feel that the “supernatural” is much more complicated than anyone seems to think. It’s as rich in variety and life and experience as our “natural” world, perhaps even more so. We only see a small portion though our very limited lens, and one of the reasons it seems so confusing is we only see disconnected parts of it. Like the Blind Men and the Elephant story, where each man touches a small portion of the animal and concludes that the whole animal is like the tail, the foot, the trunk or the ear, we each get our own piece of the “other side” and we draw our own conclusions, which are distorted further by our own limitations and beliefs. All in all, it’s not surprising that people from different cultures and different backgrounds paint very different pictures about what they perceive.
Monday, July 11, 2016
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?
I held a group regression at my place yesterday. Only one person showed up, even though I had a large number of RSVPs. She is a woman in her 70’s, single, living with her daughter and her daughter’s husband. I don’t know whether she’s divorced or widowed. She’s been to four of my group meetings before, and been hypnotized twice before. She considers herself a poor subject, but, as you will see, she’s quite the opposite.
I showed this text to the client and she added some comments that I put in quotes in the text.
After she arrived, we chit-chatted for about half an hour, waiting for others to show up. After catching up, we got on to the subject of my next meeting, which is “People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead,” by Gray Leon Hill. In the course of that conversation, we discussed the symptoms of spirit attachment and she suspected that she might have one, and she agreed to let me help her look into it, when we had time. Once enough time had passed that I was pretty sure no one else was showing up, I suggested that we skip the regression and explore the possibility of the “hitchhiker.”
My plan was to do a standard induction and then ask her subconscious (or higher self) if there were any other entities present. To that end, I had her imagine her beautiful place. But as she described that place, she mentioned that she was holding a book. That made me suspicious, and it only took a few more questions to determine that she was not in this lifetime. My guides said to go with it, so I did.
Client, “Either the book was written in a foreign language or I was unable to read, as I realized today that words in the book didn’t make any sense to me.”
She was a 12 year old girl, wearing an old, simple, dress that was too small. The left side of her face had some kind of defect or deformity that caused it to droop. She was sitting under a tree in a field of grass and could hear cows in the distance. There were trees around, but her area was mostly open.
When I asked her to go to the place where she lived, she chose, instead, to go to a cave. She always called it a “hole” for some reason, but, what she described was more like a large cave or system of caves. When she arrived, she was standing and looking up through an opening to the sky. She described the sky as so intense a blue as being almost purple. When she looked around, she saw a bunch of “little men” or elves working with fire and making metal things. (The client was laughing at this point, not believing what she was seeing) After a while, one of the “little men” took her out of the caves and back to her house. It was like she knew the way well enough, but one of the men always took her back when it was time.
She lived with a sister, that was a couple of years older, and a grown woman who seemed to be some kind of caretaker. The lived in a plain stone house off by itself. They seemed to be very poor, the house empty and very cold in the winter, and the food was pretty bad, yet they had this woman, who was not related to them, to cook and take care of them.
Long story short, her sister left four years later, she spend a lot of time with the elves, especially in the winter, when it was cold, and then she died at the age of 24. She apparently had some congenital problems, was constantly in pain or discomfort, and some injury had finally tipped the scales. The odd thing is, the buried her before she was dead. That’s not quite what you think, she felt herself being lowered into the grave and laid there looking at the sky, just a little indignant, but otherwise not particularly upset that they didn’t wait until she was dead. She died shortly thereafter, before they started to cover her up.
She then rose up, looked at the scene briefly, couldn’t answer any questions about the purpose of that life, then went to visit her sister. Apparently they were supposed to stay together their entire lives, and had tried this many times in the past, but each time, something always split them up. She seemed to be able to have this conversation with her sister, even though she wasn’t, physically, there.
After that, the client rose up into the sky, shedding the “weight” of her physical life, bit by bit, until she was just a few “molecules,” among countless other “molecules” of light. Each one a being. She was enraptured with the feeling of being part of the oneness again.
A remarkable thing happened at this point, her face changed: It looked dramatically younger, slimmer, and her skin looked like ivory. Her face reminded me of a classical greek statue. (At this point, I noticed a distinct scar, a straight line angling from her forehead to just outside of her right eye. Afterward, when we were talking, I couldn’t see it any more, and when I asked her about it she didn’t know what I was talking about.) She wanted to remain in this state, but something, or someone, was calling her to find another body and she didn’t want to.
Client, “I think this is fascinating. I saw my daughter’s face change that way once when she was describing a past life as a servant in an Egyptian temple whose job was to make sure that the lamps never went out.”
This seemed to be a good time to call in the subconscious, but there was a problem. Even though I got affirmatives when I requested to speak to the subconscious and ask questions, it wasn’t able to answer. The client saw a “big block” in front of the subconscious. So I started talking directly to the “big block.”
The blocks’ name turned out be Harry, and he’d been with the client since childhood. He joined her because she was self confident and he could undermine her confidence by constantly whispering discouraging and suicidal thought into her ear. (The client had mentioned earlier that she’d learned to distinguish these “not her” thoughts fairly early in her life and learned to block them out, mostly) Harry had died from indecision, his leg had been caught under a falling rock and he died from thirst before he could make up his mind about cutting off his leg.
Client, “I was told when I was in my 30s that I had an entity who had been attached to me for several lifetimes who sent me ‘death messages’ as a way of controlling me. The first time I consciously recognized this, I was driving over the bridge to Vancouver when I got a mental picture of myself driving off the bridge and being killed. From then on, I was able to recognize when those kind of messages were coming at me from the outside. When Rod asked Harry when Harry had attached himself to me, I ‘saw’ sets of numbers, and felt that Harry had attached himself in different lifetimes when I was 83, 49 and at birth.”
It took some convincing to get him to leave. He was very afraid of what “they” would do to him because of all the “bad” things he’d done. We eventually we able to locate a sister, I believe, that he cared about and trusted enough to let her take him into the light. At this point, the client was smiling and crying at the same time. I tried to find out what was happening here, but, between one thing and another, I didn’t get a clear answer.
Client, “I was overcome with joy at the point at which Harry left me, because I saw a large clay pot on its side with water pouring out. The falling water was unutterably beautiful and meaningful to me, and I can still visualize it and experience remnants of the feeling.”
Afterwards, she felt lighter, and smiled and shook her head whenever she mentioned the “little men.” She realized that her “sister” is here, in this lifetime, as a relative, but they are not close this time. Apparently they decided to “take this lifetime off” from whatever goal they are working on. I hope to see her again soon, and see what changes God has wrought.
Client, “Actually, I was very close to that sister in this lifetime, and she was still my sister, although there were many years in which I didn’t live near each other. She’s the first person I knew who had psychic experiences and told me about them. Her husband told me that the last time the 3 of us were together we were Chinese, and my sister had me beheaded so I couldn’t take him away from her.”
“My feeling is that the lifetime I was regressed to wasn’t particularly important. The significant things in this experience were, to me – rising into the sky after my physical death and the sensation of ‘shedding’ material things. I actually had a sense of things ‘falling off of me’ as I rose until I was just consciousness; traveling in unison with the other ‘beings’ that I described – at least to myself- as ‘other cells in a body’; the untrammeled joy I felt at the sight of the water pouring from the jar, which occurred just as Harry was coming in contact with whoever came to fetch him.“
“Getting rid of Harry was also gratifying. I didn’t feel any anger toward him, as it was obvious to me that he hung on to me as a way of ignoring his own problems.”
“I think I just realized what the falling water symbolized. I think it was for Harry. He latched onto me after having died of thirst, and hung on to me because he was using me to supply him with spiritual nourishment because he didn’t know how to find his own. I think the water represented the immense amount of spiritual ‘thirst quenching’ that he realized was available to him once he had the courage to seek it for himself.”
I showed this text to the client and she added some comments that I put in quotes in the text.
After she arrived, we chit-chatted for about half an hour, waiting for others to show up. After catching up, we got on to the subject of my next meeting, which is “People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead,” by Gray Leon Hill. In the course of that conversation, we discussed the symptoms of spirit attachment and she suspected that she might have one, and she agreed to let me help her look into it, when we had time. Once enough time had passed that I was pretty sure no one else was showing up, I suggested that we skip the regression and explore the possibility of the “hitchhiker.”
My plan was to do a standard induction and then ask her subconscious (or higher self) if there were any other entities present. To that end, I had her imagine her beautiful place. But as she described that place, she mentioned that she was holding a book. That made me suspicious, and it only took a few more questions to determine that she was not in this lifetime. My guides said to go with it, so I did.
Client, “Either the book was written in a foreign language or I was unable to read, as I realized today that words in the book didn’t make any sense to me.”
She was a 12 year old girl, wearing an old, simple, dress that was too small. The left side of her face had some kind of defect or deformity that caused it to droop. She was sitting under a tree in a field of grass and could hear cows in the distance. There were trees around, but her area was mostly open.
When I asked her to go to the place where she lived, she chose, instead, to go to a cave. She always called it a “hole” for some reason, but, what she described was more like a large cave or system of caves. When she arrived, she was standing and looking up through an opening to the sky. She described the sky as so intense a blue as being almost purple. When she looked around, she saw a bunch of “little men” or elves working with fire and making metal things. (The client was laughing at this point, not believing what she was seeing) After a while, one of the “little men” took her out of the caves and back to her house. It was like she knew the way well enough, but one of the men always took her back when it was time.
She lived with a sister, that was a couple of years older, and a grown woman who seemed to be some kind of caretaker. The lived in a plain stone house off by itself. They seemed to be very poor, the house empty and very cold in the winter, and the food was pretty bad, yet they had this woman, who was not related to them, to cook and take care of them.
Long story short, her sister left four years later, she spend a lot of time with the elves, especially in the winter, when it was cold, and then she died at the age of 24. She apparently had some congenital problems, was constantly in pain or discomfort, and some injury had finally tipped the scales. The odd thing is, the buried her before she was dead. That’s not quite what you think, she felt herself being lowered into the grave and laid there looking at the sky, just a little indignant, but otherwise not particularly upset that they didn’t wait until she was dead. She died shortly thereafter, before they started to cover her up.
She then rose up, looked at the scene briefly, couldn’t answer any questions about the purpose of that life, then went to visit her sister. Apparently they were supposed to stay together their entire lives, and had tried this many times in the past, but each time, something always split them up. She seemed to be able to have this conversation with her sister, even though she wasn’t, physically, there.
After that, the client rose up into the sky, shedding the “weight” of her physical life, bit by bit, until she was just a few “molecules,” among countless other “molecules” of light. Each one a being. She was enraptured with the feeling of being part of the oneness again.
A remarkable thing happened at this point, her face changed: It looked dramatically younger, slimmer, and her skin looked like ivory. Her face reminded me of a classical greek statue. (At this point, I noticed a distinct scar, a straight line angling from her forehead to just outside of her right eye. Afterward, when we were talking, I couldn’t see it any more, and when I asked her about it she didn’t know what I was talking about.) She wanted to remain in this state, but something, or someone, was calling her to find another body and she didn’t want to.
Client, “I think this is fascinating. I saw my daughter’s face change that way once when she was describing a past life as a servant in an Egyptian temple whose job was to make sure that the lamps never went out.”
This seemed to be a good time to call in the subconscious, but there was a problem. Even though I got affirmatives when I requested to speak to the subconscious and ask questions, it wasn’t able to answer. The client saw a “big block” in front of the subconscious. So I started talking directly to the “big block.”
The blocks’ name turned out be Harry, and he’d been with the client since childhood. He joined her because she was self confident and he could undermine her confidence by constantly whispering discouraging and suicidal thought into her ear. (The client had mentioned earlier that she’d learned to distinguish these “not her” thoughts fairly early in her life and learned to block them out, mostly) Harry had died from indecision, his leg had been caught under a falling rock and he died from thirst before he could make up his mind about cutting off his leg.
Client, “I was told when I was in my 30s that I had an entity who had been attached to me for several lifetimes who sent me ‘death messages’ as a way of controlling me. The first time I consciously recognized this, I was driving over the bridge to Vancouver when I got a mental picture of myself driving off the bridge and being killed. From then on, I was able to recognize when those kind of messages were coming at me from the outside. When Rod asked Harry when Harry had attached himself to me, I ‘saw’ sets of numbers, and felt that Harry had attached himself in different lifetimes when I was 83, 49 and at birth.”
It took some convincing to get him to leave. He was very afraid of what “they” would do to him because of all the “bad” things he’d done. We eventually we able to locate a sister, I believe, that he cared about and trusted enough to let her take him into the light. At this point, the client was smiling and crying at the same time. I tried to find out what was happening here, but, between one thing and another, I didn’t get a clear answer.
Client, “I was overcome with joy at the point at which Harry left me, because I saw a large clay pot on its side with water pouring out. The falling water was unutterably beautiful and meaningful to me, and I can still visualize it and experience remnants of the feeling.”
Afterwards, she felt lighter, and smiled and shook her head whenever she mentioned the “little men.” She realized that her “sister” is here, in this lifetime, as a relative, but they are not close this time. Apparently they decided to “take this lifetime off” from whatever goal they are working on. I hope to see her again soon, and see what changes God has wrought.
Client, “Actually, I was very close to that sister in this lifetime, and she was still my sister, although there were many years in which I didn’t live near each other. She’s the first person I knew who had psychic experiences and told me about them. Her husband told me that the last time the 3 of us were together we were Chinese, and my sister had me beheaded so I couldn’t take him away from her.”
“My feeling is that the lifetime I was regressed to wasn’t particularly important. The significant things in this experience were, to me – rising into the sky after my physical death and the sensation of ‘shedding’ material things. I actually had a sense of things ‘falling off of me’ as I rose until I was just consciousness; traveling in unison with the other ‘beings’ that I described – at least to myself- as ‘other cells in a body’; the untrammeled joy I felt at the sight of the water pouring from the jar, which occurred just as Harry was coming in contact with whoever came to fetch him.“
“Getting rid of Harry was also gratifying. I didn’t feel any anger toward him, as it was obvious to me that he hung on to me as a way of ignoring his own problems.”
“I think I just realized what the falling water symbolized. I think it was for Harry. He latched onto me after having died of thirst, and hung on to me because he was using me to supply him with spiritual nourishment because he didn’t know how to find his own. I think the water represented the immense amount of spiritual ‘thirst quenching’ that he realized was available to him once he had the courage to seek it for himself.”
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
some new info
Hey,
This is what I've just read and it's something really new and interesting, you can read more at http://prahudyro.clubtunesonline.com/lnzztshm
Rodney Whitehouse
I'm Baack!
This is the first thing I’ve written in a while. Since I’ve moved, certainly, but it’s probably been close to six months since the divorce started in ernest and I started working. Both occupied so much of my attention that there wasn’t anything left for writing. Now that my life is settled again, I realized that the job was still sucking up way too much of my attention and I had to quit.
That decision represents a milestone in my journey. I now have now chosen to fully commit to my hypnotherapy practice and this “alternative” health world for my income. That may not be as brave as it sounds, since I have saved quite a bit and I won’t be hurting for quite a while, if I’m careful. But it’s a big deal for me because of my insecurities around money. I am pretty uncomfortable without a steady income, no matter how much I have in the bank.
The thing is, I knew right away that job wasn’t right for me, but I went to work there anyway. Shortly after I moved here, I went to that store (It’s one of the big, national retail chains) to pick up a few things. I could tell then that the energy of the whole place was very uncomfortable. But, like we all do, I talked myself into accepting a bad choice because I “ought to.”
A big part of my spiritual journey has been the stripping away of all the “supposed tos” and waking up to what is really going on. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories. Mostly because pretty much everything I see happening in the world can be easily explained by greed, lust (for money, power, sex), and fear. Couple those drives with little knowledge or interest in the long-term consequences of their actions, and you get today’s world. I do monitor, to some extent, what conspiracy groups are up to, but I looks to me that, if there really was a global conspiracy, then these people would be playing into the conspirators hands. I may write more about this in the future, if I get inspired or have enough questions on the subject.
This was something I was discussing at my last MeetUp. I have been having meeting at my house, and it’s been fun. I have a regular and we have tea and snacks and hang out in the kitchen or living room talking about whatever. This time, I found myself struggling to articulate what I have managed to see about life, without having it sound just like another new-age platitude. And I couldn’t do it.
I see that there is what we need to get by, and there’s what want. But, what do we want, really? There’s what we are told to want, by you parents, friends, and all the ads you see every day, but how much of that desire is really yours? There are endless ads, everywhere I go, that all want me to spend money and buy stuff. And I see around me the message that successful people have lots of stuff. You want to look successful, don’t you?
What I’m seeing is that I’m supposed to buy stuff, then I have to spend more to take care of that stuff, to go out, take trips, have parties, raise kids, send them to expensive schools, and still save enough that when I won’t, or can’t, work any more I can continue to buy stuff and continue the same cycle.
Most of my life I have been trapped by the fear of not having “enough.” I could never do what I wanted, because it was a waste of time, unless it was one of the “sanctioned” consumer activities like going out to eat, partying, taking a vacation, traveling, shopping, etc.. And I never questioned the point of it all. Why bother? Especially when most of what I did seemed to be about how I looked to other people. I suppose it all fell apart when I realized that everything I did was to look good or get approval from other people. I wasn’t getting it, and I was embarrassed when I did get it. There is the paradox.
So I had to ask, what do I want? I do want to be like everybody else and just have the nice “stuff,” but there’s got to be more than that, surly? Thinking long and hard, and fighting through layers of conditioning, I’ve realized that I want to help people and explore the “forbidden” parts of our culture: The paranormal, the psychic, UFOs, the unexplained, all the stuff the “respectable” people don’t take seriously. And my gateway to exploring this inner world is hypnosis and hypnotherapy. I get to help people to gain understanding about themselves and what’s going on around them, and bring them a measure of peace. That is very cool. And, at the same time, I get to witness, first hand, fascinating excursions outside of this materialistic paradigm. That is also very cool.
That’s probably enough for my first day back on the blog. More later, bye!
If you have any comments, questions or topics you’d like to see me cover, send me a note: AQuestioningSpiritTherapy@gmail.com
That decision represents a milestone in my journey. I now have now chosen to fully commit to my hypnotherapy practice and this “alternative” health world for my income. That may not be as brave as it sounds, since I have saved quite a bit and I won’t be hurting for quite a while, if I’m careful. But it’s a big deal for me because of my insecurities around money. I am pretty uncomfortable without a steady income, no matter how much I have in the bank.
The thing is, I knew right away that job wasn’t right for me, but I went to work there anyway. Shortly after I moved here, I went to that store (It’s one of the big, national retail chains) to pick up a few things. I could tell then that the energy of the whole place was very uncomfortable. But, like we all do, I talked myself into accepting a bad choice because I “ought to.”
A big part of my spiritual journey has been the stripping away of all the “supposed tos” and waking up to what is really going on. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories. Mostly because pretty much everything I see happening in the world can be easily explained by greed, lust (for money, power, sex), and fear. Couple those drives with little knowledge or interest in the long-term consequences of their actions, and you get today’s world. I do monitor, to some extent, what conspiracy groups are up to, but I looks to me that, if there really was a global conspiracy, then these people would be playing into the conspirators hands. I may write more about this in the future, if I get inspired or have enough questions on the subject.
This was something I was discussing at my last MeetUp. I have been having meeting at my house, and it’s been fun. I have a regular and we have tea and snacks and hang out in the kitchen or living room talking about whatever. This time, I found myself struggling to articulate what I have managed to see about life, without having it sound just like another new-age platitude. And I couldn’t do it.
I see that there is what we need to get by, and there’s what want. But, what do we want, really? There’s what we are told to want, by you parents, friends, and all the ads you see every day, but how much of that desire is really yours? There are endless ads, everywhere I go, that all want me to spend money and buy stuff. And I see around me the message that successful people have lots of stuff. You want to look successful, don’t you?
What I’m seeing is that I’m supposed to buy stuff, then I have to spend more to take care of that stuff, to go out, take trips, have parties, raise kids, send them to expensive schools, and still save enough that when I won’t, or can’t, work any more I can continue to buy stuff and continue the same cycle.
Most of my life I have been trapped by the fear of not having “enough.” I could never do what I wanted, because it was a waste of time, unless it was one of the “sanctioned” consumer activities like going out to eat, partying, taking a vacation, traveling, shopping, etc.. And I never questioned the point of it all. Why bother? Especially when most of what I did seemed to be about how I looked to other people. I suppose it all fell apart when I realized that everything I did was to look good or get approval from other people. I wasn’t getting it, and I was embarrassed when I did get it. There is the paradox.
So I had to ask, what do I want? I do want to be like everybody else and just have the nice “stuff,” but there’s got to be more than that, surly? Thinking long and hard, and fighting through layers of conditioning, I’ve realized that I want to help people and explore the “forbidden” parts of our culture: The paranormal, the psychic, UFOs, the unexplained, all the stuff the “respectable” people don’t take seriously. And my gateway to exploring this inner world is hypnosis and hypnotherapy. I get to help people to gain understanding about themselves and what’s going on around them, and bring them a measure of peace. That is very cool. And, at the same time, I get to witness, first hand, fascinating excursions outside of this materialistic paradigm. That is also very cool.
That’s probably enough for my first day back on the blog. More later, bye!
If you have any comments, questions or topics you’d like to see me cover, send me a note: AQuestioningSpiritTherapy@gmail.com
Friday, March 25, 2016
In the library
I haven’t written in a while, life has gotten in the way. I’m one of those people who have trouble thinking and writing when my life is up in the air. I feel that, without some kind of anchor, some fixed point that can be the foundation that I can stand and build on, I can’t do anything. Like floating in mud: There’s nothing I can push against. Right now, nothing is constant, and that makes it very difficult to focus on anything fun or just relaxing; there’s just too much I “should” be doing. I know some people thrive under these conditions, but not me. But I have the time, and some things seem like they need to be said, so I’m hiding out in the library and seeing if I can get it down.
Thing number one. A woman has come to my paranormal MeetUp a couple of times. Most of the people ended up avoiding her, because she talks non-stop and spouts every vaguely spiritual factoid and conspiracy theory, from ancient to modern, as gospel truth. I’m sad to say that, while I spent a couple of hours talking to her, I focused almost exclusively on the content of her beliefs, not on why she believed them. I was able to uncover some of her history, and she apparently underwent a near death experience, or two, and other things in her life that have caused her to crack wide open and accept everything that comes down the pike. I seems pretty amazing that she can hold a job, but she does.
Thing number two. A large part of my work is getting people to open up and accept new ideas. Just yesterday I wrote and response to a comment on one of my posts. The comment said, somewhat forcefully, that, since physics doesn’t allow for spirits or the paranormal, they don’t exist. My response was to point out that physics is entirely neutral on the subject. Physics, and science in general, is neither complete nor entirely consistent: New discoveries are being made and old theories are being overturned on a fairly regular basis. And that there are plenty of scientifically recognized phenomena that are not currently explained, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, for example. The scientific method, by definition, says nothing about phenomena that have not explained, or what might yet be discovered. I doubt what I said made any difference to the writer of the original comment, he or she will continue to believe that science “disproves” any possibility of the paranormal, and no amount of logic or evidence will convince him or her otherwise otherwise.
This is a case of the absolutely closed mind. What’s surprising about most closed minds is the utter flimsiness of their arguments. They believe their position is so unquestionable that there is no reason to construct a reasonable argument for their position. Not airtight, mind you, just reasonably logical and in line with current science. Their belief is primary and supporting evidence or logic is not required or even necessary.
What does this have to do with the woman at the MeetUp? Well, the thing is, they are very much the same, only the content of their beliefs is different. They both use their version of science to support their views, and neither one has any interest in any factual errors or inconsistencies in their arguments. But, while serious scientists may roll their eyes at the naivete of the physics guy, the MeetUp woman is “crazy.”
That’s one of the issues of stepping outside of the lines: how far do you step? Being psychic or having paranormal experiences doesn’t mean you can toss away logic and throw all caution to the wind. Yes, researchers have worked out that psychic phenomena don’t play by the same rules as physical ones, but there’s no reason to assume that don’t exist, it means that we must we practice great discernment in what we accept and reject, until we discover what those rules are.
I am generally very circumspect in what I accept, for, once I step outside of personal experience, the waters get muddy pretty quickly. I put a lot of things on the shelf labeled TBD, with varying degrees of prejudice. For instance, I put anything to do with Ancient Aliens on that shelf as “Not Proved,” but, at the same time, I recognized that there are quite a few historic anomalies that have yet to be explained. They also go on the shelf ,as “Unknown.”
In my opinion, the MeetUp woman is suffering from a spiritual crisis and needs spiritual help. A good therapist could help, as long as they don’t try and drug her into acting “normal.” For her, right now, all the barriers, are down, all filters off, and everything is accepted as true. I expect she is a case where solid material worldview has been shattered by an undeniable experience, and now all bets are off. This happens when too much spiritual growth happens too fast, and the person loses touch with the ground. I don’t want to say “lose touch with reality” here, because it’s not about “reality,” it’s about maintaining enough grounding in the common gestalt to be able to communicate and function in daily life. The problem here is that what we consider “real” is more a matter of where you were born, what church you go to, your political party, and your education level, than it is of concrete facts you can measure in a laboratory and we all can agree on. (There are someplaces in the world where not believing in a supernatural being (Allah) might get you hanged.) Our personal and collective concepts of reality are actually made up of an arbitrary hodgepodge of beliefs, assumptions, and some facts, held together with blind faith. While that structure provides some flexibility, and anomalous event of sufficient power can shatter the whole system, leaving the person with no yardstick to use when evaluating new information. Most of the time, the belief structure re-constitutes itself, but some times it can take weeks, months, or even years.
I was warned about this kind of thing from the very start of my spiritual education and told stories about people who took on too much. Usually it’s minor, we get sick or we feel emotionally weird for a week or so. But occasionally it’s much worse. I know how it is, once we discover there’s a new world out there, we want to grab it all, as fast as we can, but be careful. Just like jumping into too much physical activity, too fast, can injure you physically, and throwing yourself into school or work too completely and burn you out mentally, too much spiritual growth, too fast, can make it difficult or impossible to function in the everyday world. If this happens, you need to take time to step back from what you’re doing and rest. Take a vacation from spiritual stuff for a little while. I know that this stuff can be very exciting, and hanging “out there” is so much more interesting than going to work, but you need balance. And you need to eat.
Sometimes the event is not the result of anything the person did, it just comes “out of the blue.” Interestingly, most of the time this happens, the incident is suppressed and the person has no conscious memory of it. Their life, personality and feelings can still go sideways, they just have no idea why. It’s only if they go to the right kind of therapist that they recover the memories. Then begins the process of dealing with the trauma, for those memories were suppressed for a reason, but it’s the only way to get their lives back.
This woman’s issue is not about having psychic experiences, it’s about her unquestioning acceptance of everything she reads as absolutely true, with an “all or nothing zeal.” If I was working with her, we would spend some time uncovering the event and what it was about her belief system that fell apart so completely. That, plus some basic spiritual counseling should put her on the path of healing.
I am sad that I didn’t try to understand what was going on with her. I was too busy invalidating all her beliefs to think about it. I have no idea if I could of helped her, without taking her on as a client, but I should have spent more time on the issues and less on the symptoms. Lesson learned.
I have been uncovering several things about myself lately that I really don’t like much, that was just one of them. The main one right now is that, without external validation, and the right kind of pats on the head and kudos, I don’t want to do anything. My job, writing, anything. And, if that wasn’t enough, what was good enough yesterday is not good enough today. “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” is always there. Ug. There’s nothing new here, and now that I see it, it’s obvious that it’s been going on all my life, and caused me a lot of trouble at work and in my relationships. I don’t know if this can ever be “cured,” but I have been working to uncover and release hidden beliefs around this, and, now that I’m aware of why I feel like I do, I can mindfully change my behavior, which can’t hurt, and can, hopefully, lead to some more openings.
Thing number one. A woman has come to my paranormal MeetUp a couple of times. Most of the people ended up avoiding her, because she talks non-stop and spouts every vaguely spiritual factoid and conspiracy theory, from ancient to modern, as gospel truth. I’m sad to say that, while I spent a couple of hours talking to her, I focused almost exclusively on the content of her beliefs, not on why she believed them. I was able to uncover some of her history, and she apparently underwent a near death experience, or two, and other things in her life that have caused her to crack wide open and accept everything that comes down the pike. I seems pretty amazing that she can hold a job, but she does.
Thing number two. A large part of my work is getting people to open up and accept new ideas. Just yesterday I wrote and response to a comment on one of my posts. The comment said, somewhat forcefully, that, since physics doesn’t allow for spirits or the paranormal, they don’t exist. My response was to point out that physics is entirely neutral on the subject. Physics, and science in general, is neither complete nor entirely consistent: New discoveries are being made and old theories are being overturned on a fairly regular basis. And that there are plenty of scientifically recognized phenomena that are not currently explained, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, for example. The scientific method, by definition, says nothing about phenomena that have not explained, or what might yet be discovered. I doubt what I said made any difference to the writer of the original comment, he or she will continue to believe that science “disproves” any possibility of the paranormal, and no amount of logic or evidence will convince him or her otherwise otherwise.
This is a case of the absolutely closed mind. What’s surprising about most closed minds is the utter flimsiness of their arguments. They believe their position is so unquestionable that there is no reason to construct a reasonable argument for their position. Not airtight, mind you, just reasonably logical and in line with current science. Their belief is primary and supporting evidence or logic is not required or even necessary.
What does this have to do with the woman at the MeetUp? Well, the thing is, they are very much the same, only the content of their beliefs is different. They both use their version of science to support their views, and neither one has any interest in any factual errors or inconsistencies in their arguments. But, while serious scientists may roll their eyes at the naivete of the physics guy, the MeetUp woman is “crazy.”
That’s one of the issues of stepping outside of the lines: how far do you step? Being psychic or having paranormal experiences doesn’t mean you can toss away logic and throw all caution to the wind. Yes, researchers have worked out that psychic phenomena don’t play by the same rules as physical ones, but there’s no reason to assume that don’t exist, it means that we must we practice great discernment in what we accept and reject, until we discover what those rules are.
I am generally very circumspect in what I accept, for, once I step outside of personal experience, the waters get muddy pretty quickly. I put a lot of things on the shelf labeled TBD, with varying degrees of prejudice. For instance, I put anything to do with Ancient Aliens on that shelf as “Not Proved,” but, at the same time, I recognized that there are quite a few historic anomalies that have yet to be explained. They also go on the shelf ,as “Unknown.”
In my opinion, the MeetUp woman is suffering from a spiritual crisis and needs spiritual help. A good therapist could help, as long as they don’t try and drug her into acting “normal.” For her, right now, all the barriers, are down, all filters off, and everything is accepted as true. I expect she is a case where solid material worldview has been shattered by an undeniable experience, and now all bets are off. This happens when too much spiritual growth happens too fast, and the person loses touch with the ground. I don’t want to say “lose touch with reality” here, because it’s not about “reality,” it’s about maintaining enough grounding in the common gestalt to be able to communicate and function in daily life. The problem here is that what we consider “real” is more a matter of where you were born, what church you go to, your political party, and your education level, than it is of concrete facts you can measure in a laboratory and we all can agree on. (There are someplaces in the world where not believing in a supernatural being (Allah) might get you hanged.) Our personal and collective concepts of reality are actually made up of an arbitrary hodgepodge of beliefs, assumptions, and some facts, held together with blind faith. While that structure provides some flexibility, and anomalous event of sufficient power can shatter the whole system, leaving the person with no yardstick to use when evaluating new information. Most of the time, the belief structure re-constitutes itself, but some times it can take weeks, months, or even years.
I was warned about this kind of thing from the very start of my spiritual education and told stories about people who took on too much. Usually it’s minor, we get sick or we feel emotionally weird for a week or so. But occasionally it’s much worse. I know how it is, once we discover there’s a new world out there, we want to grab it all, as fast as we can, but be careful. Just like jumping into too much physical activity, too fast, can injure you physically, and throwing yourself into school or work too completely and burn you out mentally, too much spiritual growth, too fast, can make it difficult or impossible to function in the everyday world. If this happens, you need to take time to step back from what you’re doing and rest. Take a vacation from spiritual stuff for a little while. I know that this stuff can be very exciting, and hanging “out there” is so much more interesting than going to work, but you need balance. And you need to eat.
Sometimes the event is not the result of anything the person did, it just comes “out of the blue.” Interestingly, most of the time this happens, the incident is suppressed and the person has no conscious memory of it. Their life, personality and feelings can still go sideways, they just have no idea why. It’s only if they go to the right kind of therapist that they recover the memories. Then begins the process of dealing with the trauma, for those memories were suppressed for a reason, but it’s the only way to get their lives back.
This woman’s issue is not about having psychic experiences, it’s about her unquestioning acceptance of everything she reads as absolutely true, with an “all or nothing zeal.” If I was working with her, we would spend some time uncovering the event and what it was about her belief system that fell apart so completely. That, plus some basic spiritual counseling should put her on the path of healing.
I am sad that I didn’t try to understand what was going on with her. I was too busy invalidating all her beliefs to think about it. I have no idea if I could of helped her, without taking her on as a client, but I should have spent more time on the issues and less on the symptoms. Lesson learned.
I have been uncovering several things about myself lately that I really don’t like much, that was just one of them. The main one right now is that, without external validation, and the right kind of pats on the head and kudos, I don’t want to do anything. My job, writing, anything. And, if that wasn’t enough, what was good enough yesterday is not good enough today. “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” is always there. Ug. There’s nothing new here, and now that I see it, it’s obvious that it’s been going on all my life, and caused me a lot of trouble at work and in my relationships. I don’t know if this can ever be “cured,” but I have been working to uncover and release hidden beliefs around this, and, now that I’m aware of why I feel like I do, I can mindfully change my behavior, which can’t hurt, and can, hopefully, lead to some more openings.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Heaven Is Real?
I just read “Heaven is Real, But So Is Hell,” by Vassula Rydén.
“*Heaven Is Real But So is Hell* contains a first-hand account of the supernatural world of God and His Angels and of Satan and his demons. It brings a timely and critical message for our world and ill be one of the most throught provoking books you’ll ever read.” — From the dust jacket.
It’s not meant to be fiction, but it reads like a cross between The DaVinci Code and Constantine, minus all the fight scenes. Being psychic from an early age, Vassula paid little attention to the things she saw until she started writing messages from God and her Guardian Angel. To date, the messages number in the thousands and form the basis of her world ministry to reunite the three branches of Christianity: Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. Along the way, she has met with the Pope, has been villainized, converted thousands of people, had her writings declared heretical by some church authorities, fully consistent with the teachings of Jesus by others, and has amassed a huge following around the world. Along the way, she has had numerous encounters with Satan and demons and her messages, as quoted in this book, talk a lot of the war between good and evil. To be saved, they say, everyone has to pray unceasingly to God to save them from the influences of Satan, who is around us every day, ready to pounce at any sign of weakness.
I Googled her to find out what’s been going on since the book was written. The book was published in 2013, but the it’s accounts seem to end in the early 1990’s, and I wanted to see other points of view and what’s happened since. As far as I can tell, her battle still continues, with millions pushing for church reform and many, very vocal, opponents that call her every evil thing you can think of and would gladly burn her at the stake or crucify her, if they were able. She’s probably one of the most important religious figures of our time, and you’ve probably never heard of her. How such a large movement merits no mention in any religious or secular publication that I’ve seen is a topic for another time.
What’s important to me about this book is the supernatural parts of the story. This book documents many miracles of different kinds, like instant healing, and other manifestations that occur in her presence. How does this jive with the rest of the world, the paranormal and, most importantly, other religions? The picture her messages paint, is of a very Old Testament theology where you must repent your sins and love God or go to hell. There is no other option. Where does that leave other world religions? As being one of the “outsiders,” someone raised in our Christianized western culture, but not significantly steeped in any particular flavor of “church,” I look at this from a different perspective. As you probably know, I am uncomfortable with demonstrative, in-your-face, Christianity, too many bad memories of suppression, discrimination and hypocrisy, both in the past and the present, I suppose. I realized today that if I shift mental gears and think of it as just another world religion, I can accept it as easily as, say, native American traditions. But when I see the actions of the ugly, bigoted, hateful, self-important Christians around me, I find it difficult for me to be comfortable with Christianity as a force for good in the world.
Where I’m coming from is that Christianity is just one spiritual option. I know, theists of every stripe don’t like that, but it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me, in a just universe. On the other hand, if the Gods are out to get you, it really doesn’t matter what you do, you’re screwed anyway. For that reason, I choose the philosophy that things aren’t really all that bad, the evil is something we put in the world, not the other way around. I know many people can’t conceive of a world without Satan, but that’s not my world. Why that is, is a discussion for another time.
The thing is, “miracles” don’t always occur in a Christian, or even religious, context. The paranormal happens every day, all around us. The research by Rupert Sheldrake, Dean Radin, and many other scientists show that the paranormal is, indeed, more “normal” than “para.” Think for a minute what would happen if this research was accepted my mainstream science, what would it mean to the religious if everyone could work a miracle in the same way that anyone can write code? then all the saints and miracle workers, throughout the ages, would be nothing more than garden-variety psychics, more more “blessed by God” than Madam Zolla, the medium. If “anybody and do it,” no God necessary, then what happens to religion? Of course, religions are about much more that miracles, but most of them depend on them for their legitimacy.
My view is that these messages are focused primarily on Christians, if other pick up on it, great, but their purpose is not to convert the world, but to try and unit the fractured and bickering sects of Christianity. Overall, Vassula’s message appears pretty much the same as what Jesus said 2000 years ago, yet the authorities are fighting it just as hard now as then. Time will tell if her effort does bears fruit. But, if you’re from another spiritual tradition, you should be aware of what’s going on. These messages and miracles are very real and are very powerful, within their contexts. There are lessons here for every tradition about letting your personal and cultural biases and preference rewrite whatever spiritual messages you are exposed to into something “comfortable.”
I don’t believe that miracles and contact with non-corporal entities is only limited to some religious or spiritual context. It’s possible that we’re on the cusp of a spiritual transition that makes religious preference akin to the choice between iPhone and Android. Where God is accessible to anyone who cares to look, without going through gatekeepers that tell you what to believe and how to believe it, and, maybe, on the way we will finally get over our stubborn insistence that “like me” equals “good,” and “not like me” equals “bad.”
Monday, February 15, 2016
Alex Malarkey
Today I’m finishing up “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven.” I can say that I have mixed feelings about this book. The book is the true story of Alex Malarkey, a boy who had his spine severed at the base of his skull in a auto accident. Although that type of injury is presumed to be fatal, he survived. He remains a quadriplegic, but he has no brain damage and recovered his ability to speak. Way beyond what doctors expected. During the accident he left his body, witnessed many things that occurred where he was not physically present, and then spent a week in heaven while his body was in a coma. After he woke up he sees angles often, and many explicable things happened around him in the time after his accident.
My feelings are mixed because of the point of view of the book. Even though I was raised in this “christian” society, I have seen way too many hateful things done “in the name of Christ” and way too much hypocrisy to be comfortable with the language of this book. I’m sure it’s aimed squarely at Evangelical Christians, because it will turn off pretty much everyone else. Phrases like “our God is awesome” border on paganism, at least according to the theology that I’ve learned, that there is only one God. Are they claiming the one-and-only creator of the universe as their very own, and nobody else’s? Alex mentions the Devil frequently as well.
That said, there are many events in this book that are not explainable by medicine or science, and I’m sure that every non-religious public figure, and most conservative religious, will write write them all off as coincidence, selective memory, hallucinations or anything else that makes them comfortable. I’ve read Christian theologians arguing against any kind of “direct influence” of God in todays world. “Small” miracles are acceptable, but big, bold, blatantly supernatural things are just not how God works.
Near the end of the book, Alex Malarkey received what’s called the Christopher Reeve operation, that would allow him to breath on his own. This case received so much publicity that there were front page stories in the local newspapers. Kevin Malarkey noted that an editor had removed all references to God from the statements they’d made. I find that interesting, but probably not for the reason you might think.
We live in a secular society, enforced by the Constitution. But for most of our nation’s history, Christianity has gotten a free ride, in terms of getting it’s practices and views inshrined into the customs and laws of these United States. What other religion has all it’s major events made into national holidays? “In God we trust” printed on our money. Christian prayers at governmental events. During the Kennedy era, there were jokes about how silly it was that we could have a Catholic president, (as opposed to Protestant) These things have changed in may way over the past 50 years, but we still hear, way too often, that “We are a Christian nation.” And that, in practice, “Freedom of Religion” only applies to Christians, as they fight to get their “Christian” principles back in the law books.
In this climate, it’s understandable that editors might not want to appear to fan the flames by publishing too much “faith in God” stuff. That could make it appear that they are endorsing that point of view. I find that a little surprising, considering that this is rural Ohio, but, perhaps, they hoped that the story would be picked up by the national new services and they didn’t to come off as bible thumpin’ hicks. I thought the idea of object news is to report what happened and what people said, not to edit it to make readers more comfortable. Isn’t that censorship?
These editors appear to be treading a thin line. But I think what’s really going on is more subtle: Our society is so afraid of anything non-materialistic that even articles were religion plays a central role need to be “sanitized” to remove anything “supernatural.” I suppose there’s a certain amount of sense in that, since all of the three major world religions claim exclusive rights to God’s grace and any miracles that come from that. I find it endlessly amusing that the media of our culture are just as afraid of Jesus, as they are of UFOs, ghosts, spirit mediums, channeling, and paranormal events and research in general.
Now I’m going to throw my own interpretation on what Alex Malarkey reported. From my point of view, the boy Alex’s descriptions of heaven and other events are very childlike, and very much suit the Sunday schools lessons aimed a six-year-old, which he was at the time. I’m not saying that’s where he got his information, I’m saying that the message and information was expressly tailored for a six-year-old.
My feelings are mixed because of the point of view of the book. Even though I was raised in this “christian” society, I have seen way too many hateful things done “in the name of Christ” and way too much hypocrisy to be comfortable with the language of this book. I’m sure it’s aimed squarely at Evangelical Christians, because it will turn off pretty much everyone else. Phrases like “our God is awesome” border on paganism, at least according to the theology that I’ve learned, that there is only one God. Are they claiming the one-and-only creator of the universe as their very own, and nobody else’s? Alex mentions the Devil frequently as well.
That said, there are many events in this book that are not explainable by medicine or science, and I’m sure that every non-religious public figure, and most conservative religious, will write write them all off as coincidence, selective memory, hallucinations or anything else that makes them comfortable. I’ve read Christian theologians arguing against any kind of “direct influence” of God in todays world. “Small” miracles are acceptable, but big, bold, blatantly supernatural things are just not how God works.
Near the end of the book, Alex Malarkey received what’s called the Christopher Reeve operation, that would allow him to breath on his own. This case received so much publicity that there were front page stories in the local newspapers. Kevin Malarkey noted that an editor had removed all references to God from the statements they’d made. I find that interesting, but probably not for the reason you might think.
We live in a secular society, enforced by the Constitution. But for most of our nation’s history, Christianity has gotten a free ride, in terms of getting it’s practices and views inshrined into the customs and laws of these United States. What other religion has all it’s major events made into national holidays? “In God we trust” printed on our money. Christian prayers at governmental events. During the Kennedy era, there were jokes about how silly it was that we could have a Catholic president, (as opposed to Protestant) These things have changed in may way over the past 50 years, but we still hear, way too often, that “We are a Christian nation.” And that, in practice, “Freedom of Religion” only applies to Christians, as they fight to get their “Christian” principles back in the law books.
In this climate, it’s understandable that editors might not want to appear to fan the flames by publishing too much “faith in God” stuff. That could make it appear that they are endorsing that point of view. I find that a little surprising, considering that this is rural Ohio, but, perhaps, they hoped that the story would be picked up by the national new services and they didn’t to come off as bible thumpin’ hicks. I thought the idea of object news is to report what happened and what people said, not to edit it to make readers more comfortable. Isn’t that censorship?
These editors appear to be treading a thin line. But I think what’s really going on is more subtle: Our society is so afraid of anything non-materialistic that even articles were religion plays a central role need to be “sanitized” to remove anything “supernatural.” I suppose there’s a certain amount of sense in that, since all of the three major world religions claim exclusive rights to God’s grace and any miracles that come from that. I find it endlessly amusing that the media of our culture are just as afraid of Jesus, as they are of UFOs, ghosts, spirit mediums, channeling, and paranormal events and research in general.
Now I’m going to throw my own interpretation on what Alex Malarkey reported. From my point of view, the boy Alex’s descriptions of heaven and other events are very childlike, and very much suit the Sunday schools lessons aimed a six-year-old, which he was at the time. I’m not saying that’s where he got his information, I’m saying that the message and information was expressly tailored for a six-year-old.
This is my interpretation of views outside of this reality: What you see is expressly aimed at you, personally. It’s adjusted for what you can accept and are comfortable with. While NDE experiences can seem very different, they do have commonalities that link strictly Christian experiences to completely new-age pagan ones. And there is the strong implication that there is some intelligence orchestrating how these experiences play out. In Alex’s case, it’s clear that the message was aimed squarely at the Evangelical Christian community that he is a part of, while Dr. Eban Alexander’s NDE, for example, was notably non-Christian and clearly for a different audience.
I have never be comfortable with the idea the “God is running everything.” I get this message from every corner of the faith spectrum, but I always have assumed that it’s all about my own intension and “natural laws” of the extended reality. I’m beginning to question my assumptions. One thing I do think is true, is that the realty beyond this one is unknowable, in the sense that it can’t be expressed in this one, and all attempts to do so are bound to express only a fraction of what’s there. Like trying to explain what life is really like to a subsistence farmer in Africa. You may think he understands, but you know that what may look like heaven to him is anything but. Every description of the afterlife will express only a small fraction of the whole picture, and it will be ripe for misinterpretation. It could very well be that there are “natural laws” in the extended reality that push us toward a peaceful and loving world society, or it could be an intelligence that is pushing for that goal, using every tool at its disposal. There’s probably no way to definitively know, short of crossing over. I don’t believe that the afterlife is Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever, but it’s the essence from which the core of all these religions sprang.
As uncomfortable as the language of this book makes me feel, I believe there’s a message there for me. I think I need to be a little less judgmental of these views and really try on the idea that, while I’m responsible for my life, I’m not the only one who has input, and it’s Ok to ask for help. That’s difficult for me, especially when the helper is a nameless, faceless, being of unknown origin and providence. The quality of my meditation have changed markedly, in the past few months, and this might be where they are leading.
P.S. I have been reading the articles about Alex Malarkey recanting his story and saying the book had “substantial inaccuracies.” You never know what to make of these types of stories, they play so well into our cultural narrative that you can never be sure where they may have come from. It’s clear his story elicited considerable anger from certain conservative parties, sales of the book were lagging and the message was being “reinterpreted” in certain quarters to suit various agendas. It’s possible it’s all fiction. It’s also likely that the book interpreted parts of the story in ways the rest of the family was not comfortable with. It’s known that Alex and Beth Malarkey (his mother) had grow extremely uncomfortable with the types of attention they were receiving as a result of the book, so, perhaps, recanting looked like one way of getting out of the spotlight. It’s even possible the fractions within their church were putting pressure on them to recant. In any case, we will probably never know for sure. It’s been said that if Jesus showed up today, conservative Christians would label him a dirty, socialist liberal, undermining the Christian/American work ethic and family values by helping the poor and forgiving prostitutes and sinners, just as the authorities of Jesus’ own time did. As in all articles of faith, judge for yourself. The material world will be no help.
As uncomfortable as the language of this book makes me feel, I believe there’s a message there for me. I think I need to be a little less judgmental of these views and really try on the idea that, while I’m responsible for my life, I’m not the only one who has input, and it’s Ok to ask for help. That’s difficult for me, especially when the helper is a nameless, faceless, being of unknown origin and providence. The quality of my meditation have changed markedly, in the past few months, and this might be where they are leading.
P.S. I have been reading the articles about Alex Malarkey recanting his story and saying the book had “substantial inaccuracies.” You never know what to make of these types of stories, they play so well into our cultural narrative that you can never be sure where they may have come from. It’s clear his story elicited considerable anger from certain conservative parties, sales of the book were lagging and the message was being “reinterpreted” in certain quarters to suit various agendas. It’s possible it’s all fiction. It’s also likely that the book interpreted parts of the story in ways the rest of the family was not comfortable with. It’s known that Alex and Beth Malarkey (his mother) had grow extremely uncomfortable with the types of attention they were receiving as a result of the book, so, perhaps, recanting looked like one way of getting out of the spotlight. It’s even possible the fractions within their church were putting pressure on them to recant. In any case, we will probably never know for sure. It’s been said that if Jesus showed up today, conservative Christians would label him a dirty, socialist liberal, undermining the Christian/American work ethic and family values by helping the poor and forgiving prostitutes and sinners, just as the authorities of Jesus’ own time did. As in all articles of faith, judge for yourself. The material world will be no help.
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