Tag Archive for: awakening

An Eloquent Description of Experiences with Past Life

Changing Times

Reading Time: 2 minutes

As the consciousness level of the planet rises, we can see evidence of this not only in the conflicts of the world, but also the fact that most people’s mental and emotional issues are beginning to surface….all for the sake of growth and evolution. Dr. David Schnarch, author of the book Passionate Marriage, puts it in a beautiful way: “Nature has an eloquent way of holding our happiness hostage, and the price for ransom is our own development.”

This shifting of consciousness is a time of re-evaluating past beliefs, old systems of doing things and out-dated modes of operation.  Everything from past authoritarian governments that rule with an iron fist, to our own personal beliefs, is challenged.

One belief to re-evaluate is how we react to uncomfortable emotions. It may seem that life is about avoiding the uncomfortable feelings, situations or emotions that arise. But this strategy back-fires because of the Law of Attraction. Life events happen that will trigger whatever thoughts, feelings and beliefs within you that no longer serve you. So the best way to move past an issue within you is to fully face it, feel it in your body, extract the gift of insight and wisdom that is contained within it, and release what no longer serves you from your body/mind system. This is how you can change yourself from within. It is then that we realize that the subconscious fears that have been governing our lives turn out to be paper tigers of pure imagination, and we can begin to operate in a manner that is freer and easier. The Present Life Emotional Healing session is an effective means to experience this.

Many times, a soul’s greatest work here on earth can be simply summarized as, “Stop believing the false mind programs.” It’s our egoic mind programs that hold us back or make us feel “less than” or not good enough. Probably the best thing about past life regression is that it connects you to the ‘you’ that is free and transcendent of the ego’s negative conditioning. The false programming that you were given doesn’t make any sense from the soul’s viewpoint, so it’s quite a respite to experience your true self without it. The unconscious mind programs that had been governing your life stick out and seem ridiculous. An awakened teacher, Neelam, once said, “First things first. First find out who and what you really are, and then see if your problem still makes any sense.”

Life Between Lives Session

A Life-Between-Lives Narrative

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Recently a client wrote up a descriptive narrative of his Life Between Lives experience. The following is an account of an advanced soul. I felt it would be interesting and beneficial for anyone interested in reading it. Enjoy.

 

Life Between Lives Session [1-29-2013]

 

Prologue

What follows is a description of my LBL (Life Between Life) session with Eric Christopher.  Eric is a Board Certified Regression Therapist from the International Board for Regression Therapy and is a Certified Life-Between-Lives Therapist who trained with Dr. Michael Newton (Journey of Souls).  The session was nearly four hours long, so there is much to describe.  The following will depict what happened thematically, not necessarily in the order in which it was experienced.  And it will take the form of a narrative rather than a form including prompts and responses.  Many aspects of the experience had more nuance than I had the ability to express during the experience.  Therefore, I may add more description and texture to this narrative than I had originally expressed during the session.

 

Regression
I was first directed to regress to a past life that would be beneficial for me to view (not necessarily the last life I lived).  I quickly was drawn to a piece of heavy orange cloth.  I immediately recognized it as the saffron colored robe of a Buddhist monk.  (It will not come as a surprise to those who know me at all that I would be drawn to a such a  life.)  The scene expanded until I saw myself as a young monk wearing saffron orange robes standing in front of a temple.

Then I jumped back to my childhood where, as a young child, I had been identified by a couple of elder monks as some sort of special incarnation.  As such, I was relinquished by my mother to the monastery where I was raised by monks and given special spiritual training.  My mother was both very proud and very sad when they took me away to the monastery.  I lived a very happy life at the monastery.  Many different monks were involved in my training and education.  Each had specialties that he taught me.  I learned quickly and was adept at many spiritual things.  I was able to astral project at will, and had powers to do such things as raise large boulders with my will.  I had many other powers.  Eventually, I grew older and my robes switched from saffron to the ochre color worn by certain senior monks.  The sheer joy of having such powers eventually gave way to serious responsibility.  I needed to deal with the needs and demands of all the monks around me.  After many years of apprenticeship and spiritual adventure, there were many years of responsibility.

 

This life comes to an end during a siege of the monastic temple.  A very small group of senior monks (including me) stood in our ochre robes in front of a semicircle of a large group (100 or more) saffron robed monks preparing for an attack by an army.  As monks who live by a spiritual code, we were allowed to fully defend ourselves, but we could not take the offensive on the soldiers who are attacking the temple.  They have cannons.  We have spiritual powers to blunt the force of the canons.  I know when I am standing in front of the monks that I will die in this battle.  I am looking forward to the adventure of death.  Our group of senior monks had set up a strategy to use our energetic powers to neutralize the attacking army as much as we can.  We were organizing the other monks to carry out this strategy.  The soldiers end up destroying part of the temple, but the spiritual power of the monks is successful in neutralizing much of their destructive force.  In the end, the army retreats because it becomes apparent that it cannot win the battle outright.  It’s a stalemate.

As I expected, I am mortally wounded in the battle.  Many monks gather around me and try to use their powers to keep me alive, but it is my time to die.  Again, I am looking forward to it.  The ochre robed elders will miss me, but that is tempered for them because they understand life and death.  One young saffron robed monk standing near me is distraught by my death.  My spirit goes up behind him, and I touch his shoulder.  He is aware of this.  It both reassures him and makes him miss me more.  But it helps him understand that death is not the end.  I quickly shoot up above the scene into the heavens and leave it behind.

Off To LBL Land
After my death, no tunnel or guides showed up.  I rose up into the sky and then flew like a light beam though the cosmos for what seemed like a considerable time.  I flew through something like a meteor shower that acted as a cleansing process.  Then I began to descend, gaining density as I did.  I felt as if I were falling between two haystacks, or more precisely, two feather-stacks.  Eventually I became aware of my spirit group.  I was finally standing still but was separated from other spirits by something like a gauze curtain.  One of them stuck something like a shepherd’s hook through the gauze substance and pulled me into their space.  I found myself standing with three other Buddhist monks.  There is an immediate transference of some memory.  The four of us comprised our soul group.  We were all very happy to be back together.

I needed to heal and rejuvenate my spirit in a small domed area set aside for that.  “Cells” were repaired and memory was returned.  My energy level accelerated, and the robes I was wearing disappeared.  After the healing, I felt more coherent and present, and I was reunited with my group.  At this point, we have all lost our bodies and our genders.  All four of us are light forms.  I am relieved about the genders because the idea that all four of us were male had initially disturbed me for some reason.  There was a sense that identification with either sex limits the vibrational level.  My group of four looked like pillars of white light streaked with purple.  We weren’t solid beams.  We looked more like a large number of thin light beams bundled together to make a single form.  It struck me that we looked rather like Star Trek characters being beamed somewhere.

 

At this point, we took some time as a group to explore my last lifetime.  We sat together on a marble floor under a dome built to enhance energy as we talked about the foibles of our past lives.  There was great kindness and much humor involved in the reviews.  There was a spirit equivalent of belly-laughing when we examined the fact that I had taken my monk spiritual powers so seriously.  The powers that felt so marvelous as a human were largely inconsequential as a spirit.

 

Then the discussion got more serious.  My group pointed out that I had missed something in this life by not having grown up in a family and that the primary accomplishment of my lifetime was in showing much kindness to others.  The group showed how the acts of kindness were passed on to yet others and formed an outward wave.  There was tenderness in their recall of the small kindnesses as well as the sense of humility with which they had been performed.  It was obvious that these seemingly insignificant acts of kindness are a important gauge as to the value of one’s incarnation.

 

There were some unspoken requirements as to what qualifies as “kindness”.  Kindness requires a certain intent.  It can’t be done for any sort of gain, even the most subtle kind.  One can’t expect any recognition or gratitude or reward.  If it is done for any of those reasons, it does counts as better than poor behavior, but it doesn’t count as selfless kindness.  Expressions of gratitude or reward can accepted with humility as long as there was no expectation or hope of receiving it.  Any such expressions need to be acknowledged and quickly dropped lest they take on a life of their own.  Especially, there can’t be any sense of pride connected with the act.  We aren’t “better” because we perform acts of kindness.  Acts of kindness need to be performed simply because one has the opportunity to perform them.  The act has to be released like a little bird being given its freedom.  The bird might fly back and might not, but it needs to be released with the expectation that it will fly away.

 

Finally, I had an interesting sense of one other aspect of this issue.  What seems to be really at work with this kindness issue is that it functions as an exchange of Oneness.  The acts of kindness described here could be called selfless acts.  And, in a very real sense, that is what they are.  It is the One interacting directly with the One without any contamination or dilution by the self.  It is through such acts that the One comes to recognize itself in Other.  So in a sense, selfless acts of kindness are a type of sacrament.  And that is why they are so treasured in the LBL region.

 

LBL Levels
I was able to explore a couple of things relating to LBL Land.  First there is the concept of spiritual levels.  It seems that while in a sense there are levels, such a concept is really a human construct.  I got the sense that what we are really talking about in this realm is “densities” and their relationship with experience.  Newer souls (which I called “Newbies” during the session) seemed to have a denser vibration.  The more incarnations a soul experiences, the less density it has.  In human experience, dense things tend to be heavier and lower than less dense things because of gravity.

 

So while we tend to express these concepts in human language, we start using terms that are helpful in a sense but lead to human buckets that begin to lose accuracy.  So we can talk about new souls, older souls, and advanced souls.  However, what we are really talking about is souls with few incarnations and much density, souls with more incarnations and less density, and souls with many incarnations with just enough density to hold them together.  However, density here does not mean lower because we are not dealing with gravity.

 

A sense of hierarchy does not seem to exist in this realm.  A sense of varying density does.  I experienced walking among a large group of newbies and realizing they were mostly unaware of my presence.  The newbies were all dressed in white togas with dark blue trim worn proudly, like fraternity jackets.  Then, as I walked among souls that had a moderate number of incarnations, they were more likely to be aware of me.  It was apparent that incarnations were the key to what I was seeing.  However, at the same time, I was aware that not all beings in the LBL  realm incarnated.  I felt but did not deal with them.

 

There was a sense that newbie teachers have their hands full.  Yet, that said, no one “looks down on” newbies.  Instead they are observed with more of a watchful curiosity.  Every soul watching was a newbie at one point.  None ever forget that.  So every soul does what it can with great gentleness, patience, and support.  The spirit world is an incredibly patient place.  While it is difficult for advanced souls to interact with newbies due to vibrational differences, their very presence is transformative for them.

 

Life Reviews
I had a glimpse into two incidents where I was involved in the life review of other souls.  One was the review of a kind of intermediate density soul who had just returned from a very difficult life.  In this review, I sat behind a bench on a raised dais (like a judges’ bench) looking down at the returned soul.  From the returned soul’s perspective, the review must seem quite daunting.  Certainly there is some parallel with human court rooms where a conscious attempt is made to ensure that the plaintiff feels the full impact of the court’s authority.  Yet the sense from the souls on the judges’ bench is one of role playing to ensure that the returned soul reaps the rewards of some hard learned lessons.

 

In the review in which I participated, souls from different levels are represented and each had specific roles to play.  One judge to my left pretended to be tougher than he actually was because that is what was called for to make a necessary impression.  Others balance this impression.  Kind of good cop / bad cop.  This soul being reviewed had been badly abused as a prisoner, but he had shown much kindness to others in the midst of his misery.  He proud to have made great progress in this life.

 

Then I was part of another life review with a soul from my level.  No bench is evident in this review.  We sat on the floor with this soul and just talked.  This soul wasn’t required to incarnate but lived a life just to remember what incarnations were about.  There was no judgment with this soul, just different things being pointed out.  This soul returned with the realization of how easy it is to get caught up in thinking life is all there is and developed great empathy for how seductive incarnations can be.  This soul was very, very relieved to be back.

 

ETs Etc.

There was some exploration of my connection to and my lives in non-human incarnations.  This part of the regression is a bit “fuzzy” compared to the rest of the session.  While some of these images seemed quite vivid at the time, they seem faded and disconnected in retrospect.  The lack of memory of this material is very curious to me.

 

The exploration of ET existences included previews of future lives.  There was some bouncing around between different lives with intervening times back in LBL land.  I had the sense of going to school and then coming home. The energy involved felt wonderful.

 

There was a stream of other visions.  I saw one lifetime as a humanoid ET in subtle type of uniform.   It felt like a very peaceful life.  I saw a time living in a city that floated in the air above the surface of a planet.  I felt my energy divided between that world and ET world at same time.
I saw myself in communication with a mantis being.  In ET folklore, the mantis beings are at the top of the hierarchy and are described in terms of wise elders to whom all other beings in the universe defer.  I have read as well that they are credited with having something to do with the creation of the universe itself.  I sensed it was an honor to be allowed to talk with this being. I felt humbled and felt some sort of bond between us as well.  I got the sense from this being that a spiritual shift is coming and that this shift will help movement to the One.

 

Again, this material was less coherence in retrospect, so it is difficult to draw any broader sense of meaning.

So …
I explored several questions that I had prepared ahead of time.  My primary question had to do with my main purpose in this life.  I long felt that I had a special purpose in life, a special job to perform. This feeling was accompanied with a feeling that I had “volunteered” to live this life at this time.  I wanted to know if I have lived my life on target, or have I wasted my time?  Looking back over my life, it feels like I’ve accomplished a lot of the things that don’t make any difference on the other side and have not accomplished much else.

 

What I found here was similar to what I found in reviewing the past life as a monk.  In that life flashy spiritual powers weren’t considered a primary accomplishment.  In this life, my purpose seems to have been connected to helping Earth and humans to transform into a new era.  As such my energy as a being was more important than what I actually do.  My job, it seems, was simply to BE.  My sense was that beings with the right kind of energy have been placed all around the earth (in the same way that David Wilcock talks about cathedrals & pyramids and such being placed at energetic points) to help change the earth’s vibration.

 

I had the sense that one other from my soul group incarnated in this same general area where I reside, and the other two live in a distant location.  The job of the four of us is to BE and to balance energies.  I felt my brother is a part of my original soul group from which my current group had split off earlier.

 

More on LBL Levels

I had requested during the session that I be allowed to explore LBL land in respect to animal spirits.  When prompted to seek out animals. I quickly dropped down a few levels (i.e., increased my density) to find dogs.  Not far beneath newbie humans, I found a huge field of dogs.  I felt great harmony among the dogs.
I then looked for dolphins and found them (interestingly) just above newbie humans. They were filled with graciousness.  I sensed that they come to Earth to help change the planet’s energy.  Dolphins and whales apparently have a stunning effect on the energy of oceans.

 

I saw more levels and sensed that everything is layered, yet it isn’t not layered “sequentially” (whatever that means).  Again human/earth concepts get in the way of understanding.  In LBL land, we can go down layers to help.  We cannot go up, presumably because there is nothing to offer a level above where we are located.

Future of Earth
I was directed to see if I could ascertain the future of planet Earth.  I’m not sure about what I saw because it corresponded to assumptions I already had.  Either my assumption affected what I saw, or my assumptions are affected by what I already know on some level.  Take your pick.

 

I generally saw calamity.  As a result, the habitable space on the planet is reformed.  Earth has a significantly smaller population.  Newbie souls are tending to incarnate elsewhere.  A different soul pipeline is now connected to Earth.  Earth humans, more intelligent about their spirituality, are able to coexist naturally with animals.  Animals, in turn, have intense awareness of interconnectedness with humans and spirit world.

 

 

The End

How to Love Yourself

How to Love Yourself

Reading Time: 3 minutes

One day when I was leading a group, someone shared that their goal was to learn to love themselves, but felt it was an impossible task. Others agreed with this statement. Most of them were either bombarded with an endless barrage of negative self-talk, or they felt strong guilt from some past actions. I offered that the easiest way to love yourself is to really know your yourself…to realize that you aren’t who you think you are. The ‘you’ that you have a hard time loving isn’t really ‘you’. You are not your programming and conditioning. Negative thoughts about self come from somewhere, they all have a beginning point in an event or circumstance – you’re not born with these thoughts, unless there’s a past life influence, but even then they began at some point in that past life or the one before, etc. Sometimes the programming can be subtly and unconsciously passed down through the generations, with parents influencing their children based on how they were raised, how love or anger was communicated or not communicated.

Just like you can open the hood of a car to explore how it’s wired and how it works, you can engage in deep self-reflection to see how your programming and conditioning began. An effective way to do this exploration is to go within to access a higher state of awareness. For example, if you have a strong feeling of guilt because of a past action, you could imagine floating above that scene and investigate what was going through your mind at the time. Perhaps you did something regretful because at the time you thought you were gaining or getting something from it, given the mindset that you had of yourself and the world at that time. The only purpose of guilt is to point to what you could do differently next time, and in that moment of awareness you are doing precisely what your highest purpose in life is…to learn, grow, evolve and awaken. The primary way humans learn is by making mistakes. So from the viewpoint of your soul, mistakes are only seen as an opportunity to grow, and in that moment of seeing, your soul is happy. The highest part of you is timeless and guiltless; it doesn’t care how long it takes to get a lesson. Just as you can tinker with a machine to make it run more smoothly, we can be aware of the amazing impact we would have on ourselves and the world if we released the negative thought programs that govern our life and replace them with clarity, confidence, creative potential and freedom – all qualities of our truest self. We’re not here to berate ourselves, or remain stuck and recoiled in fear and guilt, living from a false sense of self. We’re here to challenge ourselves to shine and thrive, to learn to live from our potential, and to experience that the joy of doing so feels better, freer and “more real”.

You are the infinite being that can be aware of a passing mood or thought, and investigate where beliefs originated. There’s a part of you that can be aware of your thoughts. Who or what is this ‘I’ that can say ‘I’ feel happy, and then can notice ‘I’ feel sad 10 minutes later? Thoughts, moods and beliefs can come and go, but the more permanent ‘real’ you is the constant, unchanging awareness, forever anchored in the here and now, that can notice the mind’s ever-changing moods and thought patterns, like watching sticks or debris washing down a stream. The awakened sage, Eckhart Tolle, says the next step in human evolution is to become aware of our thoughts, thus creating a gulf between ‘us’ and our thought patterns. Therein lies the difference between suffering and liberation. It depends on where we place our identity…the ever-changing mind or the mysterious, expansive, boundless awareness that can witness it.

 

What is a Past Life Regression?

What Past Life Regression Really Is

Reading Time: 8 minutes

To many people in our western culture, past life regression can seem far-fetched. I understand this. Growing up as a pastor’s son, we didn’t talk much about reincarnation, much less about past life regression. The purpose of this article is to explain the process in a way that makes more sense, not only for those whom the concept of reincarnation is new, but also for those who are considering doing a past life regression someday. This article is even for those who have already experienced it, because anyone who has ever gone deep into a past life regression knows that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fully describe it in words…and there’s a good reason for that. After 23 years of guiding over 4,000 clients through past life regression, I want to articulate how the process unfolds.

We are multi-dimensional. In western culture, our primary identity is a body that has a soul. Yet it would be far more accurate to think of you as a soul who is using a body. If you’ve ever witnessed a dead body that had his or her eyes open, you’d notice that something seems obviously different than when they were alive. The life, energy and consciousness is missing, the animating light called the soul is gone from their eyes. The body then appears like a shell and who and what they really are is no longer attached to their body. The part of you that lives on after you leave the body is pure energy. You can’t harm or destroy a soul because it is outside of this physical dimension. The energy particles are vibrating at a much higher frequency and consequently no longer visible to our sight, similar to a fast-moving fan blade.

So this is what you are now as you read this – a soul using a body. The ‘relatively real you’ never dies. The body is released and you transition to a higher vibrational state, and then eventually return to a different body to continue your soul’s mission (usually). Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is the multitude of cases in which people remember intricate, personal details of past lives and then later verify them. I won’t go into that here, but for those who are interested, there’s a website dedicated to many of these cases…reincarnationresearch.com, especially note Ian Stevenson’s research. Or visit victorzammit.com. Or go to youtube and type in “Children Who Remember Past Lives.” Anyway, the point is that as a soul, you are eternal, indestructible and transcendent of this dimension of time and space, and these days there’s enough evidence of that that even a logical minded skeptic can believe in reincarnation just on the sheer evidence.

What keeps you anchored in this realm of time and space? Your identification with the body, along with your full focus and attention being placed on all of the objects in this physical dimension, such as another person, a tree, a cat, etc., rather than on the life energy behind these forms or even between the space of objects. Not only that, but at a young age you begin to subtly identify with all the mind programming and conditioning from each life experience that goes along with the growing up of this body. So we take the body and the conditioning of the mind to be who and what we are, rather than the life energy force that animates the body and transcends this existence. It is why awakened sages have compared the human experience to “the greatest slight of hand card trick.”

So if you’re already this eternal being, you should be able to tune into what you already are, the part that lies beyond this realm of time and space. How? You begin by withdrawing your focus and attention from this outside, material world and turn it inward. Hypnosis is a great tool to do this, quickly creating the effect of an extremely deep meditation. To the degree that you ignore your left-brain or analytical mind, and instead focus entirely on the right-brain’s intuitive flow of information in the present moment, is to the degree you begin to tune into and resonate with this eternal part of yourself. The logical left-brain is an important tool to navigate and live in this physical dimension, but it certainly blocks you if you want to experience the higher vibrational dimension, and the soul aspect of yourself.

Past life regression is an efficient means to ‘tune into what you already are’ because it offers a slow, steady, systematic method: You first allow yourself to ‘un-identify’ with the dominant thoughts surrounding your current body. Then allow yourself to identify with a different body/mind personality that begins to form in your awareness. It is important to focus your full attention on the intuitive information that drops into your consciousness regarding this different body/mind, while simultaneously letting go of your left-brain’s analytical tendency to comment on that information. Another way to say this is to experience the information that comes to you by sensing and feeling it with your body wisdom. As you do so, a slow unraveling of information regarding that life will drop into awareness piece by piece in the form of mental pictures, emotions or intuitive insights as the journey of that life becomes increasingly clearer. The information may alternately come to you from the 3rd person or 1st person point of view. The life may take unexpected turns, but eventually you’ll get an impression of the end of that past life. This is the point where you begin to slowly identify with the lighter dimension of your soul-being that experiences a variety of lives for its own journey of growth, evolution and awakening.

As you continue to focus your full attention on the experience of tuning into and moving deeper into soul identification, you’ll notice the following: A deep sense of well-being; the continual mind chatter in the back of your mind completely stops and is replaced with a vast, expansive, calm awareness that feels like a higher version of ‘you’; information ‘drops into’ you in a very different manner than usual….the reason that words cannot describe it is because words belong to the realm of our mind, and now information comes from beyond the mind in what can best be described as a ‘telepathic download’ of simultaneously occurring pictures, sense impressions, insights and/or instantaneous intuitive ‘inner knowings’. Clients notice that words feel inadequate to describe what they’re experiencing, as if words capture merely the tip of an iceberg. As you continue to tune into and resonate increasingly more with the soul aspect of self, the above characteristics become more pronounced, and insights that drop into you are permeated with love, clarity, wisdom and selflessness because there is no more sense of self that is lacking anything. From this higher state of vibration, you have access to all the love, joy, peace, security and creativity that was ever lacking in the human experience, should you choose to place focus and attention on it. At this point, there’s a deep sense that your ‘real’ self is actually never separate from these qualities. Most clients will feel this higher dimensional aspect of themselves towards the later part of the session. And if they go even deeper during a Life-Between-Lives session, they may notice that there is very little information that they do not have access to.

Keep in mind that we are multi-dimensional beings. So past life regression is ultimately an exercise in tuning into the spiritual aspect of self that is vibrating at a faster rate, a rate that allows you to move closer in resonance with the spiritual dimension of guides and departed loved ones, as well as accessing information that will enable you to grow, evolve and awaken. From the soul’s higher vantage point, it becomes clearly evident which subconscious thoughts and beliefs are holding you back and limiting you, as well as who gave them to you and which life experiences caused them to take hold. Most importantly, you know beyond words that they don’t belong to the ‘real’ you, so they can be released. It’s an exercise in awakening to a more conscious aspect of self. Carl Jung once wrote, “Healing is about becoming conscious of that which is unconscious.” Past life regression is certainly an excellent means of shining a spotlight on any unconscious, limiting beliefs or perspectives that are holding us back in life, in addition to experiencing the freedom of what it would feel like to let them go.

When you come to the session with an intent to gain a sense of another existence that you’ve had as an eternal soul being, especially with the intent to gain insight, clarity and resolution with any sort of problematic issue, your inner guidance system will show you a life that will be precisely for your benefit to see, and it will contain one or more soul lessons that will perfectly pertain to your present life situation. However, the process will be blocked if you try to consciously direct or analyze the session, because the information can only be accessed by tuning into a different, more subtle, intuitive stream of information.

The mystic Edgar Cayce once declared, “Imagination is the gateway to the soul.” This is true for past life regression. Your imagination launches this inner journey. The past life information then starts coming to you slowly and feels like you’re making it up. However, research shows that it may be an actual past life, a metaphor, or a mixture of both. To the degree that you focus on whatever impressions your intuitive guidance shows you without analytical mind commentary, is to the degree that you’ll move deeper into the experience. Roughly 10 minutes after the first past life images begin to come, the session kicks into a ‘higher gear’ and information begins to drop into your awareness in that ‘telepathic download’ of images coupled with ‘intuitive knowing’ described above. It later begins to feel ‘more real’ as emotions may suddenly emerge out of nowhere, followed by the reasons behind the emotions 5-30 seconds later.

Paradoxically, even though the session begins by feeling like you’re making it up, it always ends at a level of consciousness that feels much more ‘awake’ and ‘aware’ than your ordinary, everyday level of consciousness. Trying to describe this state creates a conundrum. How do you describe a state of awareness that makes your normal, everyday level of waking consciousness feel like it’s asleep? As we tune more deeply into our soul self, we become increasingly anchored in the present moment. As this happens, it becomes more apparent that our ordinary states of waking consciousness rarely consist of being completely present…we’re usually lost in the world of our minds, subtly pulled into the future or past, along with the mind’s endless commentary, which according to sages is exactly where all of the suffering resides. So when you are free and separate from all of the mind’s negative self talk, limiting beliefs, continual chatter, etc., a vast, calm clarity replaces it, along with a ‘knowing’ beyond words that you are never separate from this clear, awake, peaceful awareness. This cannot be comprehended by the mind, because it’s a state of consciousness that is best described by Eckhart Tolle as “above thought”.

Thus, past life regression ultimately brings you to the truth of your being, the truth of who and what you really are, which can only be experienced when limiting thoughts and beliefs from the past are no longer part of the equation and your mind is silent. This truth can only be felt, sensed and known as a direct, immediate experience in the ‘eternal’ here and now moment, as it is unknowable by the mind…words can only point to it. Past life regression is an exercise that connects and anchors you in this higher level of consciousness. The vast majority of clients experience this understanding by the end of the session.

After the client emerges, I often hear: “Wow! That wasn’t what I expected.” Indeed, it is an experience that is literally beyond words. There are few experiences as sacred, profound and holy as tuning into your own wholeness and completeness.

Approximately 95% of the time, clients emerge from a past life regression with a greater understanding of themselves, their soul, and their present life experiences. The degree of positive impact ranges from subtle to profoundly life changing, depending on the essence of the person, and the ripeness and readiness for change. There is a theme to this work: As you go within, your inner guidance gives you precisely what you need, usually to the degree that you are urgently seeking answers or resolution. The reason for this was simply put by one of my client’s spirit guides: “Just as the body’s instinct is to breathe, the soul’s instinct is to grow and evolve.” Thus, you tend to see what will be most beneficial for your growth as a person and as a soul, and problems tend to dissolve into solutions when viewed from the vantage point of our higher spiritual Self.

A Sure Antidote for Depression and Anxiety

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There is a reliable antidote for depression and anxiety, and that is wisdom, which is to understand a “truer” version of yourself, which is to spiritually wake up, which means beginning to identify more with the life energy behind the body and less with the mental and emotional programming of the body form. The biggest value of past life regression is that it essentially helps in this process of spiritually waking up because you can directly feel and experience yourself as the life that animates the form. It can’t be known by thought, but from a higher dimension of consciousness beyond thought, whereby which you experience yourself as vast eternal stillness and presence.

From the perspective on earth, the sun appears to rise each morning and set each evening. But this is only relatively true. From space, it’s known that the sun never actually rises or sets, but shines continuously. Similarly, the identification of being the human is only “relatively true”, and according to the Buddha, is the root of suffering. As you become more aware of the one sustaining life behind not only your body, but all other forms, and you identify with it more and more, the subtle beliefs behind depression and anxiety begin to fall away. You identify more as a being of pure creative potential, which in actuality is a “truer, more absolute” version of yourself. This is a truth that can be known by experience, and not merely as an intellectual concept.

Eckhart Tolle writes that the most significant thing that can ever happen to a human being is the process of becoming aware of your thoughts. As this happens, you eventually begin to identify less with the incessant mind stream of negative chatter that holds you back in life, and more with the awareness that notices a thought or a subtle unconscious, limiting belief. This is the beginning of the “waking up” process, where you see an out-dated thought or belief for what it is…just faulty mental conditioning that you believe in less and less. Again, the biggest value of past life regression is that you fully experience the separation between you and the incessant thought stream. You instead experience yourself as vast stillness, awareness, and enormous potential. From that vantage point, all negative beliefs about yourself seem erroneous and silly. In this manner, it serves to help you in the “waking up” process.

What Is Spiritual Awakening?

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Here is one description: For some, it comes quickly. For most, it is a slow, incremental, ever-growing realization like the unfolding of a flower…a knowingness begins to come into focus…that is the awareness that you are the life behind the form. Bit by bit, the identity that you automatically have in the back of your mind without thinking about it of being a man or a woman — this primary identity slowly takes a back seat and gets replaced by a primary identity that feels more real, ongoing and less fleeting — the life force/presence/awareness that uses the body of a man or woman.

In addition, you understand that ultimately, that same life is behind every other form. So when you see another person, animal or plant, in the back of your mind, you know that the same life force that gives them life and animation ultimately is the same life force behind your body. It is as if you are noticing for the first time the screen as the backdrop to a movie, or silence as the backdrop that makes a sound possible, or the space between objects. You incrementally begin to focus on, and identify more with the one life behind all forms.

Some by-products of this realization are a deep sense of well-being, a trusting in an intelligent, universal design, and thus a releasing of any inner argument with “what is”. Both global and personal challenges are seen to be the process of life’s profound built-in self-correction system, which is a movement toward evolution and growth to become more conscious and aware of itself. There’s an appreciation and acceptance of however the present moment presents itself, and more of an awakening to thoughts or subtle beliefs (ego’s clever tricks) that try to pull you out of the one and only present moment. If you are the one life behind the numerous forms, that means you are always secure and lack nothing, because there is no ‘other’. Therefore, subtle fears become replaced with a growing compassion, and there is a quiet celebration of the vastly different flavors that the Oneness has become.

There is a recognition of the historical teachers that gave expression to this truth, a teaching that is now being communicated by a growing number of current individuals. Adyashanti describes being human as “the greatest slight-of-hand card trick” and that the awakening of this “trick” begins first at an intellectual level, then drops to the level of the heart, and finally the gut.

For me, there is a humble understanding that this awakening process will become much deeper and richer as identification with what’s relatively ”more real” continues. With it comes a growing peace and desire to share it with others.

The Treatment of Others as a Reflection of Spiritual Evolution

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I would like to share an article that a client of mine found very helpful in regards to conflicts arising in her relationship. The article was written by Adyashanti, a liberated spiritual teacher who talks about awakening and enlightenment as another dimension of ourselves that we unconsciously overlook in this human experience. “Enlightened” teachers are popping up more often in this age of higher consciousness with the common message that whatever you think enlightenment is, that’s precisely what it’s not…it’s really just a radical shift in identity. Another teacher named Scott Kiloby sums it up as, “Enlightenment is not a goal to achieve or an idea to grasp. It’s the timeless presence that you already are.” You are ultimately the life that’s giving animation to your body right now, and try as you might, you cannot separate yourself from this life and the consciousness/awareness that goes with it. However, you can overlook it and identify primarily with the form that will decompose one day. This is the human experience.

I think you’ll find this article valuable.

How You Treat Others

Spiritual people often want unconditional support and understanding from their friends, family, and mates, but all too often seem blind to their own shortcomings when it comes to the amount of unconditional support and understanding that they give to others. I have seen many spiritual people become obsessed with how unspiritual others are and assume an arrogant and superior attitude while completely missing the fact that they themselves are not nearly as spiritually enlightened as they would like to think they are.

Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely you interact with others—with all others, not just those who support you in the way that you want. How you interact with those who do not support you shows how enlightened you really are.

As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making demands on others and life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy.

It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a liberating effect on others. The biggest challenge for most spiritual seekers is to surrender their self importance, and see the emptiness of their own personal story. It is your personal story that you need to awaken from in order to be free.

To give up being either ignorant or enlightened is the mark of liberation and allows you to treat others as your Self. What I am describing is the birth of true Love.

For more information about Adyashanti, visit www.adyashanti.org.

The Purpose of Relationships

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We wrongly assume that relationships are to “live happily ever after.” They actually serve a purpose for us: to raise our biggest issue, weakness, or area of improvement to the surface. Life is sort of designed that way…that which is our biggest hurdle or limitation will continually be raised to the surface for the purpose of being acknowledged, released and healed. When this happens, we can either dodge it and ignore it, and it might go away, but only for awhile. The same repeating issue will come up again in a fiercer way until you look at it and deal with the roots. That means to become awake to the subconscious limiting beliefs that hold you back and cause you stress. When you become conscious of these old mind programs that govern your life, they lose their power and you become freer. Relationships then thrive.

The soul is mostly interested in growth. Growing = living from love instead of fear. It also means becoming more awake to who and what you really are…to what is really living this life. To the degree we awaken to our truer self is to the degree that we live without fears holding us back. Life becomes our canvas to create the painting of our life. Life was meant to be lived with joy, not dread. But if dread arises, that’s because it’s part of the design…go inside the dread, or the anger, or stuck feeling. Within it holds the keys to when it began, and what false beliefs hold it in place, and then what it needs from you to let it go and become free of it.

What We Are

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I often ask my clients toward the end of a session: “Is there anything in the universe that can harm you? The answer is always an immediate, definite and emphatic response, “no!” That’s a strange answer to anyone. The world is full of things that can harm us. But in that moment, they are responding from a timeless aspect of themselves that lacks nothing and has no fears, a soul dimension.

We are multi-dimensional beings. Of course we are separate individuals, who can deny that? But that’s only one relative level of truth. Another part of us is the energy, light and consciousness that animates the body. You could call that a “more real” aspect of ourselves because it’s eternal and doesn’t rot like the body. You can’t harm a soul with a knife because it’s pure energy. Probably the best evidence that we are soul beings using a body is in the fast growing cases of children remembering accurate past life information, or subjects who have done a past life regression and later verify the details obtained from it. Certain cases are solid.

But even the fact that we are different souls using a body is a relative level of truth. A ‘higher’ truth is that all souls come from the same one creator energy source, so there is oneness under the surface. We are like unique, individual waves that forgot we are also the ocean. But this forgetfulness is part of the design, and seeing through it is to awaken from any suffering that is inherent to the dream. Thich Nhat Hanh says,“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.”

This highest dimension of ourselves can be glimpsed at any moment. In fact, it’s only available here and now. When you are fully present with a flower, a latte, a person, the wind, a cat or the smell of dead leaves, in that moment you are not in the world of the mind which subtly pulls you into the future or past. Instead, you become pure presence and awareness…effortless and changeless…limitless and indefinable.

Though life experiences come and go, there is something that is unchanging – that which can be aware of any passing thoughts, moods or experiences. It’s that same sense of “me” that exists at age 5, 25, or 85. This awareness even transcends the body according to cases of near death experiences.

So who are we? It depends on which dimension of ourselves we choose to identify with. Identifying with our higher dimensions brings a natural by-product of more compassion, empathy and love. Judgment falls away because we don’t identify others with their opinions, moods or actions, but see these as a product of their ongoing programming and conditioning. At a higher level, they are what we are — changeless awareness that transcends the stories of who we are.

Little girl running on pathway in Sun moon lake, Taiwan.

One Way to Wake Up

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There’s a part of you that needs and seeks security, love and contentment, and a part of you that already is all of those characteristics. How do we access this aspect of ourselves that lacks nothing and views the world from a viewpoint of love and wisdom? Hint: it’s the timeless soul part of you that is animating your body as you read this…the part of you that you can never shake yourself loose from because you are it. For most of us, this may only be an intellectual concept that we may or may not believe, but how do we actually experience and deeply feel this aspect of ourselves? To tune into the pure energy part of us that survives beyond this space/time dimension, we have to apply our moment-to-moment focus and attention inwards. When we do this, we leave this realm of time, space and form behind (not our body, but our awareness) and start to gradually tune into the soul aspect of ourselves. The outcomes of this are a deep sense of peace, and also information comes to us in more of a “telepathic” way that feels like a combined download of snapshot images and intuitive “inner knowings”. As we continue to focus inward, the deep contentment and stillness expands, we experience a “knowing” that this is our truest nature, and thus we begin to identify with it far more than the incessant, often negative mind chatter that is part of our human experience. From this vantage point, we can become aware of any subconscious belief that limits us in our life, and we can experience what it would feel like to let it go.

What I’ve described is probably the biggest value of doing a past life regression, yet it isn’t what most people think of when they hear “past life regression”. The real value of it is that you get an experiential glimpse of a “truer” part of you that actually feels more awake, aware and wise than the conscious part of you. When you begin to live life from this aspect of yourself, you are “in the world, but not of the world,” and it is a freer way to live. Once you’ve experienced how to go within, it is possible to focus your mind and connect to this higher aspect of yourself on your own, with practice. And over time, the need to use self-hypnosis to “re-plug” into your soul aspect of self is no longer necessary and can be done anytime. It becomes a matter of which dimension of yourself you chose to identify with and interact in the world from.