Love Lesson Learned

Another lesson learned today. Volunteering today at OMSI, I trained a new person for the Pompeii exhibit. She was a bit difficult, in that she gradually tried to take over the whole job we were sharing. Fortunately, I was soon offered another position and fled. The work isn’t hard and she could do it fine on her own by that time. I felt increasingly “off” the rest of the day. I left around lunch and tried to nap and meditate after I go home, but couldn’t, because I was too wrapped in anger and despair that seemed to come out of nowhere. It wasn’t long before that that I noticed I had a raw throat, like I was coming down with a cold. Then I spent a couple of hours finished up a project, and then tried again to meditate. This time was more successful, but, after a while, I discovered myself seemingly “trapped” in a golden place. Well, not really gold, more amber, but you get the idea.

I wasn’t really trapped, it just felt like it. Like my body was asleep, I was awake, but I was in this amorphous place that was big and empty. I was floating in the center of this big empty, in fact, I was in a center of a spherical clearing, surrounded by patchy clouds, and behind them was an amber glow. The place had a sense of being hollow and echo-y. I felt very alone.

It was odd to be there. I’ve never had this happen before. The sense of being cut off from the outside world was very strong. I wondered why for a bit, then tried to get outside or reach outside, with only limited success. I remember seeing a patch of ocean, but it was like through a dirty window, and hard to maintain the image. I tried to imagine other places or reach people, but I only had a pale shadow of success. I sent out a distress call to a dear friend to please, please send me a message, a text, to get me out of this place. A part of my mind mocked my efforts, saying that she didn’t care anyway and all this “connection” stuff was just a sick illusion, a lie that I told myself. Fortunately a text did come, within a few minutes, and the sound help me get up.

During the meditation I had focused on my sore throat, with some success, but I couldn’t get any handle on what was going on: was I tired? Had I been talking too much over the past few days, (Volunteering usually requires a lot of talking to patrons!)? I had managed to move the pain from the back of my throat, up higher and it was much less. But, still, I felt distinctly unhappy, sad and lonely, and if that wasn’t enough, the emotions were confused and didn’t seem attached to any thoughts or things that had happened. I sent a distress text to my friend, hoping she could cheer me up a bit, but I couldn’t just sit around a wait, it was getting to dinner time and I was expecting to host a group later, so I had to get up and make something to eat. Then, I was standing over the stove, the answer occurred to me: I had picked up a “hitchhiker!” I don’t know why these things aren’t more obvious to me. Perhaps I just don’t trust my instincts enough yet, or maybe I just have so much internal “noise” that I don’t really catch external influences. Anyway, now I knew.

It took a few minutes to get his attention. Yes, “his,” it felt male and I got the name “Bill,” which was good enough for my purposes. He wasn’t very communicative, but it didn’t take more that a few minutes to get him to notice the “light” and connect with someone he knew, who then took him on. And then he was gone, and the sadness started lifting, but there was still a residue left behind.

My friend hadn’t replied yet, so I let her know, briefly, what had happened, and it wasn’t long before she did cheer me up. She has the ability to make me cry, laugh and feel loved, all with a few texts. And life was good again.

All this happened in the space of one afternoon, and it showed me a few things about myself. One, I think this is the first time I have ever reached out for help when feeling down. I have always had this unspoken idea that I’m supposed to hide unhappy feelings and “be strong” for other people, or, at least, don’t “be a bother.” I’m just supposed to hide and never expect support. This episode has shown me the personal value of relationship and mutual support.

The next thing I got was the understanding that you can’t really be much help to anyone else unless you are willing and able to accept support yourself. Until I was willing to accept support, I didn’t know how it felt or how to do it. I could say the words and go though the motions, but I didn’t know what it felt like to give or receive genuine support. And I’m sure the people I’ve tried to help over the years picked up on that. They knew my actions were hollow, with no real understanding or commitment. It has taken a willingness to be vulnerable, to expose my weaknesses and fears, deep fears, and allow them to be acknowledged, accepted, and soothed, to teach me what it feels like to be truly supported, warts and all. And now that I know what unconditional support feels like, I am better able to offer that to others.

I know this didn’t just happen, all at once, but has been a gradual thing. It’s just that today, for the first time, I saw how well it can work, when I need it. And I see, for the first time, how amazing, truly supportive relationships can be. This has been a real sys-opener for me, and I hope everyone reading this has the opportunity to get beyond the fear, and the needs to hide, manipulate or dominate others, and just get to know what it’s like to accept, and be accepted, unconditionally. There’s nothing like it!

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Ghost Tours in the UK

On our recent trip, my daughter wanted to go on all of the ghost tours, they seem very popular now. The tours mostly just covered local folklore, but each one had spot and story that was worth the effort.

The first one was a walking tour, in York, where the last stop was the most interesting. This was at a main church, but not the main church. I can’t remember what it was called, but there is a statue of Constantine as a young man, outside. The church is currently undergoing a restoration. (Which seem pretty typical for the UK right now. They seem to be in the midst of a lot of preservation and restoration of their historic sites.)

The interesting story for this place starts with a friend of the tour guide. This friend was apparently doing some work in the church before they started the restoration, and he says he clearly saw a group of Roman solders walking through the church. They were only visible from the knee up, the rest being below the floor, and they seemed to ignore the building, walking through objects and walls, and then disappeared after leaving the building. He saw them clearly enough to be able describe their clothing, weapons and armor accurately. Nobody believed him, of course. But later, during the restoration, they discovered a Roman road beneath the church, in the right location and depth to account for the path the solders took and how far their feet were below the current floor level. The guide had more to say, but that was all that I really cared about.

The next ghost tour was on a bus in Dublin. Again, mostly history and folklore on a blacked-out bus. I supposed they wanted it dark and spooky while he was telling his stories. (The summer sun goes down pretty late at those latitudes, so you have to make your own dark.) There were only two stops where we got off the bus, one in the catacombs of Christ Church and the other at a park.

The park was the last stop, and it contained a ruined church. The park is what used to be the church grave yard. The bodies were still there, but the headstones had mostly be moved to the sides and lined up along the walls of the park and the church, roughly corresponding to the places where they had been removed. I saw this more than once on this tour. In Chester, they reused the headstones as paving stones, shades of Poltergeist!

Nothing but the stone walls remain of the church. Apparently it has be burned three times, each time killing people. The first time was after the reformation. Someone got word that a secret Catholic Mass was being conducted there and burned the church with the people inside, killing everyone except a few of the leaders that were then tortured and executed. The second time was a hundred or so years later, when it caught fire during a service and killing everyone inside. The third time took place in the mid 60’s. The church was a ruin at that time, but i guess there was still stuff in it to burn.

The guide told a story that happened about ten years ago, during one of these tours. A Mexican woman was on the tour, and she was a medium. When they got to this point in the tour, she remained outside and refused to enter the church. When asked why, she said that she was not welcome there.

After some time, she did enter the church walls, then gravitated to one corner where she proceeded to have a conversation with a “boy” no one else could see. She described the boy, and his description matched that of a local boy that had died in the fire in the 60’s. At that time, kids of the neighborhood played in the church. Now there is a gate at the one door and it’s locked.

Interestingly, the fire seems to have been set, but it’s still an open case as to who set it and why. Sure, she might have heard about the case somewhere, but the guide insisted that is was a small bit of local news that never made the national or international news.

For myself, I definitely sensed something in that area, inside the church, and especially near that corner. I didn’t want to get to close to it. Later that night, after we returned to the hotel room, I did some remote releasements on entities trapped in and around that church. Sure, maybe I’m undermining a tourist attraction, but I’m sure that the tour will function just fine even if there aren’t any ghosts still trapped in the church. And besides, how can you possibly justify keeping a sentient being trapped in limbo for entertainment? So you can make money? The guides will never know the difference, since they don’t seem to sensitive to this stuff at all, and I really could not, in all good conscience, leave them there.

Perhaps that’s why I was supposed to go on this tour, to free those spirits. I don’t know, but, when it comes to explanations, you pays your money and you makes your choice.

The Smaller Part of Me

I had an insight when I was reading the textbook for my next class, Spirit Releasement Therapy, by William J. Baldwin. I was reading a section that talked about how a soul prepares for it’s next life. If you heard anything about reincarnation, you’ve probably heard that souls actually design their next life. Some people are uncomfortable with that idea: Why would anyone create a life of suffering? I don't pretend to have all the answers, but consider: How would Mother Teresa have become a saint if there were no suffering? And there's the simple fact that things don't always go as planned. With hundreds of lives intersecting on a daily basis, it should surprise no one that a certain amount of chaos throws things off track, from time to time.

The preparation of each life can be a very elaborate affair. In a way, I bet it has a lot in common with designing a video game: There's an initial world to design, then the characters, with their strengths and weaknesses, and then the plot, full of twists and turns, and branches where each choice take you down different path. Some people say that you work with a coach, and perhaps a small group, to develop a proposed plan, which you then present it to a board or counsel for approval. Approval isn't easy. There can be a lot of back-and-forth, if they think you are taking on too much, or not enough, or for any number of other reasons. You also need to recruit people to populate your life and play the major roles. Yup, you need to "cast" all the important players in your life in a way the serves their goals as well as your own. I bet you never considered that those people you can't get along with actually volunteered for that position, and are acting as you requested them to. As you might imagine, designing a life is not a trivial affair.

I have read about all this before, but this time I saw it in a new light, and this new light is a bit uncomfortable. It hit me that the "between life me" is probably a much wiser, more expansive, more spiritually aware and masterful, version of me than the version that's writing this. By comparison, my current personality is probably more like a splinter, a sub-personality created for the purpose of experiencing the life that the greater "me" designed.

I don't know about you, but that makes me feel a bit, I don't know, diminished? I have just gotten used to the idea that I'm a much larger being than I am currently aware of, and that I expect my awareness to expand over time, and over death. But it kind of just hit me that everything I am now, everything I have, that all the growth I have achieved, is just a small portion of "me." That somewhere, off in another dimension or plane of existence, there is a much wiser, a much more enlightened and greater part of me, that is waiting for this me to complete my education and return with the latest set of lessons to be added to the whole.

I keep seeing this greater, wiser, me creating this life full of turmoil and … challenges … and then giving "splinter" me the job of actually living it. I get to take this mess and make it work Ug! I suppose that if it was too easy, there would be no point. And I also get that personal growth has nothing to do with the accumulation of facts and skills, but the uncovering and acceptance of the wisdom that can only be acquired through experiences that test your very soul. While I may be the smallest part of me, I contain the essential awareness and values necessary to meet the challenges I have set for myself. That doesn't mean I can't fail, but that it's within my power to succeed, brilliantly.

Triple Threat

This morning I was reading the textbook for my next class “Spirit Releasement Therapy,” when I noticed that I could not focus on what I was reading. My mind kept wondering back to an exchange with a relative. I kept replaying alternate endings and imagining different conversations. Why couldn’t I let it go and concentrate on my reading? I kept looking at the words in front of me and thinking how I could use them to support my arguments, while I also knew that nothing I could present or say or do would make any difference. The I got it! I wasn’t fighting with my relative, I was fighting with myself! I was fighting with that image of him that I had inside. That was a fight I could never win, a fight that would never end, unless I ended it.

When I looked at it, it was so obvious. It was also really powerful. This thing I had inside of me, what I was really fighting, was a dark, cloudy angry mass that would give no ground and take no prisoners. That’s when I decided to try the Feeding You Demons technique. Hey, what could I lose? So I set up two chairs, facing each other, and sat in one.

First step: Locate the demon in you body and describe it. It took me a while to locate it. At first I saw a pale yellow cloud-like pole, sticking upwards out of my chest. Examining it a bit more revealed a dark mass about the size of a basketball, half in and half out of the center of my chest. The yellow thing passed right through the mass and exited out my  back, curving upward. It seemed like the mass and my body were impaled on an enormous fishhook. I was really only interested in the mass, so I focused on that: It appeared to be a soot-black, lumpy, cloud that was in constant motion. Inside there was an angry red glow, that I could glimpse through small breaks in the outer cloud cover. There were also little bolts of lightning sparking between the different lumps, and it felt angry. Now I knew what it looked like and felt like, it was time for the next step.

Now I projected the demon out from my chest into the other chair, and took a look at it. It looked pretty weird. It was still an angry, black, mass, but it had a head that appeared only as an outline, lit from behind. It had two, glowing, pinpoint eyes, but the rest of its face was featureless. The shape of the rest of the body resembled a jellyfish, a kind of lumpy, deflated-ball shape with indistinct things hanging down. It had some resemblance to paper Halloween decorations that have accordion-like arms and legs, but the appendages were not friendly at all. Not tentacles and not arms and legs, but a cross between the two.

Now I knew what it looked like, I looked into its eyes and asked it three questions. Then I switched places and “shape-shifted” into the demon and answered the three questions, then switched back. The point of the questions is to find out what the demon needs. Then I imagine my body turning into whatever the demon says it needs, and feeding it. As much as it wants. As it ate, I noticed it had almost robot-like arms with pincer-shaped claws on the ends, which it used to grab the stuff I was feeding it. After a while it turned white, but still seemed angry. So I did the whole, switching places and asking questions process, again. This time it became lighter and more fluffy, which meant that it had turned into an ally. So I took the next step of recruiting it to my side, as an ally, and then pulling it back into me. When I tried to pull it back to me, most of it came, but a bit remained. That bit looked like a charcoal sketch. It was stubborn and wouldn’t move. So I did the whole process again.

This time, after the feeding, a beautiful golden while star appeared in the center of the charcoal sketch. This was another ally. So I recruited it and pulled it inside. But, still, some of the sketch remained. Unfortunately I was out of time, so I had to leave it at that. I don’t recommend leaving things unfinished like that, but sometimes you have no choice, and no harm seems to have been done. And, on the flip side, when I look at the things the were annoying me this morning, I don’t react to them nearly as much. Almost not at all, and that’s nice. 

Clients, Dentists and Spirits

Lots has been going on and I’ve had a hard time focusing on things to write about. Finances have been on my mind. It doesn’t look like I’ll have enough savings to make it through to my my retirement kicks in. I’ve been looking for work, but no dice so far. I have a trickle of income from my practice, but it’s no enough to make much difference. I do feel like I’m starting to get some traction getting clients through connections, and that’s good, unfortunately that will take more time to pay off. I have a couple of steady clients, pro bono, but they have connections that could steer more clients my way. But first I have to prove that I can deliver the goods. Things are looking good so far….

I started to do the rounds of local dentists in the area, but just a couple of conversations made it pretty clear to me that I need to finish my certification first. Ouch. So I need to sit on my hands, so to speak, for another four weeks. That will be hard. I also need to put together a flyer tailored to dentists and physicians. Maybe my dentist will be willing to give me a few minutes to help with that.

I am pursuing other avenues though. MeetUp, for instance, produces a slow trickle of leads and other ideas. One of the people there suggested ParaCon, the Paranormal Convention, that’s only a few miles up the road this year. (Is that a coincidence or what?) I though I could be a speaker, but that ship has sailed, but I signed up to be a vender and I’m working on a short presentation/dialogue I can give people as they stop by. Maybe all those times I spent manning a both at trade shows will finally pay off!

Change of subject: More things happening around spirit releasement. (That’s really a mouthful, isn’t it: “spirit releasement.” I’m going to have to come up with a better term than that.) Working on my own, after class, I’ve released about ten additional entities. I can’t help but ask my self, am I making all this up? I mean, it does seem a bit excessive. I guess you can never be sure, but I have seen some tell-tail signs that maybe there’s really something to it after all.

The first sign is the different feeling of each personality. They are really different. They speak differently, they feel different. The emotions they express as they tell their stories are sometimes quite strong. The children especially. For example, there was the twelve year old girl who was stripped, raped repeatedly in some dark place, was told it was all her fault, and then shot. The boy of eight who, with a bunch of others, was told to hide in a cave during a really bad storm. Then the cave filled with water so that they were trapped and drowned. There was the three year old who really didn’t know what happened to him, he just was looney and scared. And then there was an eighteen year old girl that died in someplace very cold and very dark. You know, after a while you reach a point where you just don’t want to know any more. But am I really making all this up? It sure doesn’t feel like it.

The other sign I get is what I feel physically when these entities leave. In one case, when the spirit was present and active, I felt a pressure on the back of my neck, almost like a hand, and there was a distinct jittery, cold sweat, nervousness throughout my body. This is something I’d been noticing, on and off, for as long as I can remember. This feeling tended to come up when I found myself alone without something “important” to occupy myself. As soon as the spirit left, I felt my whole body relax. Those feelings haven’t been back, and I’ve been sleeping better as well. I’d gotten so used to having this guy around, and I had no idea how much trouble he was causing me.

Most spirit attachments don’t have such obvious effects. Good thing, since most people have attachments, to some degree or other, we’d all be running around like possessed wackos, otherwise. On the other hand, when you look at all the stuff you see on the news every day, you have to wonder now many of those people are really running on their own recognizance.

I also feel something else when they leave, an intense, not unpleasant, tingling. It varies in intensity and how much of my body it covers. That might have something to do with how strong the entity was or how strongly it was attached to me. Could be either, or something else entirely. But it a pretty clear sign. I can feel it, even if I wasn’t expecting them to leave when they did. I suspect it has to do with the the return of the energy that they were taking from me. Spirit attachments cause a constant energy drain on your system. Usually it’s too small to notice, but sometimes it can be a real problem. Like an app running in the background on your phone, slowing things down and draining the battery. Shut it down and everything runs that much more sprightly. I think that the tingling is a momentary jolt caused by energy being returned to me.

It’s interesting that I’m getting so much experience with all these kind of things, things I wouldn’t have admitted knowing anything about ten years ago. And I seem to be starting to run unto people who need help in these areas as well, so cross fingers and put stuff out there.

Spirit Releasement

Today we studied the Spirit Releasement technique, and, of course, we got more than we bargained for. This technique is what it sounds like, but not what you may think. It is used to release spirits and entities, of all kinds, that have attached themselves to people, and a variant of it can be used to clear object and places. But, no, it is not exorcism.

The difference is that exorcism uses threats and force to cast entities out of a person, and then leaves them free to jump into anyone or anything nearby. A nasty business. Spirit Releasement, on the other hand, works to heal the entity and return it back to it’s source. That’s the best result for all concerned and doesn’t leave any angry entities flying around looking for trouble. The teacher told us that a priest she knows sends her clients for spirit releasement. He knows what the client needs, but can’t do anything because the client doesn’t meet the church’s strict criteria for exorcism.

I was wondering where we would find people for demos, but turned out to not be a problem. Spirit attachments are pretty common, and most people that have them don’t ever realize what’s going on. (I suppose it’s like people who walk around for years with parasites and never notice) At other times, people spend years in therapy and get nowhere because the therapist is talking to an attached entity, not the person in the chair. (I’m also told that many of the violent people in psych wards are, literally, possessed. Which is why drugs often have no effect.) And it turned out that, of the five of us, at least three of us had at least one attachment. Surprise! The teacher did three demos and I was the third.

I started out thinking I had nothing. I mean, I had worked to clear myself years ago, and I checked every now and then to see if I had missed anything, but today I found out that I was wrong. Twice.

While one of the others was working, I noticed that my left shoulder was acting up. A lot of what the demo person was saying was resonating with me and the darkness in/on my left shoulder. I followed along with the demo and gave the same general commands, in my head, to the darkness in my shoulder. It seemed like something released along the way, but I’m still feeling something in my upper arm, so perhaps something still has been left behind.

That seemed all well and good. Then the second person finished up and I volunteered, thinking I’d like to see what was going on with my head. When the teacher earlier had us in a body scan, looking for anomalous energy, I noticed that my head seemed solid black. By the time my turn came up, however, it had changed to something that felt like a helmet, over my entire head.

When the teacher started talking to the entity on my head and I immediately began to react in a way that has grown familiar to me from regressions and deep hypnosis, I found it extremely difficult to speak. Like a stutter, but worse. And my body began to move and react in a very peculiar way. The teacher said that I was exhibiting the symptoms of cerebral palsy. Interestingly, the idea that I was displaying some kind of disorder, rather then just not wanting to speak, had occurred to me as well. (Also, it seems that children with cerebral palsy wear a kind of helmet to protect them.)

The entity said that it was 10 years old and had been killed by some someones. This had left it terrified of anything resembling a grown-up or an authority figure. The teacher really had her work cut out for her in getting this entity to calm down and to leave with the help of a spirit/guide. That was quite an experience. At the time, I was thinking that I should be embarrassed at the way I was behaving, but I just went with it.

That energy of this entity was familiar. I have been running into it, now and then, for at least the past year, probably longer. Now I’m looking forward to the next time I can be regressed, so I can see if I can finally get through to whatever that entity has been blocking all this time.

The world is stranger than most people think. I guess it’s intellectually comfortable to live in your own little world, but not believing in disease will not protect you from getting sick. And neither will pretending spirits don’t exist protect you from their effects.