Tag Archive for: mental and emotional healing

Healing Intense Fear and Abandonment

Case 11: Healing Intense Fear and Abandonment

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Carl Jung said, “Healing is about becoming conscious of that which is unconscious.” As we see through our limiting blocks, we become freer. One way to help us awaken is to place full focus and attention on whatever holds us back.

Client Background

Mike (name changed for confidentiality) came in with a “gripping, intense fear of rejection and abandonment” that was dampening the potential of his current relationship, causing misunderstandings, as well as social anxiety. Most intense, negative feelings are the result of old, stuck emotional energy in the body that gets replayed in different circumstances with other people throughout our lives. So, during his session, we allowed these specific fears to show him when they first occurred.

Client Experience

The fears brought us to a scene of Mike as a 5-year old boy in this present life, a common starting age for most issues. His mom and dad played an innocent trick. They pretended to leave the house and go on a family outing while Mike was sitting in a chair backwards with his legs caught in the wooden slats of the chair. While the adult mind can laugh it off in retrospect, the 5-year old child’s brain is not developed enough to process intense emotions, and so he could only feel the panic and fear from the abandonment of his caregivers.

Since this small child was unable to adequately express, articulate, or discharge these emotions from the body, these feelings became stuck energy in his chest and stomach area. Then, through the Law of Attraction (like vibration attracts like vibration), the vibration from this fear-based energy formed repetitive patterns with similar emotions which replayed in various times throughout this life for the next 40+ years.

An unconscious part of us finds and attracts circumstances and people into our lives that replay these stuck emotions in the body, which often relate to one of our soul lessons. However, once the origin of this fear is discovered, the mind can process the information and then release the negative energy from the body, replacing it with one’s own source energy or potential. This healing process lightened Mike’s vibration and heightened his perspective. Then, as he began processing and releasing the stored energy of past trauma, his consciousness spontaneously showed him a different lifetime.

In this one, he had died in a car accident at night, alone on a dark road at the age of 20. This past life death scene related to a lingering sense in this life of being alone and lost, as well as a feeling of impending doom that surfaced within his consciousness every time he drove across the state late at night to visit his parents. It also explained why he had the persistent thought in high school, “I just want to live past 20.” As the origin of these thoughts and feelings entered his awareness, they could be energetically released, which also freed him of perplexing physical ailments on the right side of his body. Once we uncovered the first layer of fears from his childhood, the second layer revealed itself.

Client Results

After the session, Mike wrote this in a review: “My session with Eric was very enlightening. I was able to see the event with a clarity that I never have before. I saw details that I had not remembered before and we were able to go through it step-by-step. I was never afraid or upset, but able to understand and release all the complicated elements of it. I have even been able to talk about it with friends now without fear.

Throughout the next day after my session, I became increasingly aware of a physical change in my body. The center of my chest felt oddly solid. As I thought about it, I realized that for as long as I can remember, I had a hollow trembling in my chest at the base of my sternum. It was only the absence of it that made me aware of how serious it was. I had even gone to see a doctor to have my heart checked, but he said it sounded normal. I’ve had several stressful things happen since and was able to handle them in much more rational ways.”

Eric’s Comments

Although these were two different lifetimes, they were very connected and similar in emotional content. Mike’s feelings of abandonment, rejection and aloneness became much less, and the relationship with his partner improved and became closer and deeper. This is an example of how we can liberate ourselves from the pain and suffering that occurred in the past, bit by bit, layer by layer. Then we can begin to live more easily from our authentic selves which are unclouded by limiting fears.

Relief From Anxiety, PTSD and Phobias

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When we put the feeling of anxiety under a microscope (which hypnotherapy does), we see that it is usually made up of subtle, subconscious fear-based thoughts. These thoughts have a beginning point in a past situation, event or circumstance. Anxiety occurs when these outdated, subtle subconscious belief programs are still operating in your present mind and affecting your life in a negative way, even though they are typically not relevant or even true. Fears are designed to keep us safe and protected, not block us from living a fulfilling, enjoyable life. Anxiety happens when the fear that’s trying to keep you safe is working way too hard, far beyond when it’s no longer necessary. The root of the problem is not you – it is the subconscious thought programs in your head. One of the first, and most profound leaps a person can make on their healing journey is to know that you are not your negative beliefs or fears. These outdated beliefs will begin to lose their power and can be changed and corrected once we put the spotlight of attention and awareness on them from a higher soul perspective. Carl Jung said about healing: “That which is unconscious must ultimately be made conscious.”

Anxiety can also be due to strong emotional energy from the past that is stuck in the body/subconscious mind system. Once we tune into this strong emotional charge in the body, it can be energetically released by our present moment consciousness. It is especially effective while simultaneously tuning into an eternal part of yourself that has no fears, which is what we can easily do with spiritual hypnotherapy. It is easy because, try as you might, you cannot separate yourself from the eternal consciousness that is animating your body, so when we go deep within we can experience a level of your consciousness that has no fears and is already whole and complete.

The subconscious mind operates like a computer program that hangs on to old, outdated messages that no longer serve you. A subtle yet powerful shift occurs when you begin to see that you are not your thoughts, you are the eternal consciousness that can witness and change your thoughts. A session is about releasing the stored trauma in the body/subconscious mind while empowering you to change the thought programs that no longer serve you and replace them with those that benefit and strengthen you. Each session provides empowering and noticeable shifts in you. To gain a more thorough understanding about anxiety, please read about the Present Life Emotional Healing session and also the article Relief From Depression and Unwanted Emotions.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD is an example of a past stressful event being kept alive in the body/mind system. As mentioned above, we can energetically release this stored trauma in the body while connecting to the eternal part of you that has no fears and is whole and complete. In addition to this powerful method, another means to relieve the effects of PTSD is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Visit www.eftuniverse.com to learn more about this effective method. It is a self-applied acupressure tapping technique that calms and soothes the body and mind’s fears while you focus on the root of the problem – the past stressful event itself. This also releases the stored fear/panic energy in the body, or anything with a strong emotional charge. Another way of looking at it is that the subconscious mind program gets reset – the thought pattern that pairs this past event with panic thoughts and feelings gets reset. The result is that you can focus on the past stressful event and finally feel relaxed, with the same emotional charge as though you were remembering a relaxing afternoon picnic.

The problem with past stressful events is that the more we try to run away from it, and at times cover the pain of it with chemicals or other addictions such as work, food etc., the more it will subtly impact your life in a negative way. Oddly enough, trying to get away from the past stressful event actually fuels the fear of it and thus its adverse effects. Paradoxically, the key to putting out the fuel of the stressful past is to fully face it and release the energy of it. It is painless and only takes minutes, and you typically don’t need to do it ever again.

EFT, when applied skillfully, is a powerful method. To relieve strong PTSD, I often combine EFT with spiritual hypnotherapy to re-program the subconscious mind and the body which holds and stores the fear-based thoughts and feelings.

Phobias

We work with phobias in the same manner as PTSD. A combination of EFT with spiritual hypnotherapy is highly effective. Typically, one or two sessions are all that are necessary.

 

Stories of the Afterlife

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One of the most influential books I’ve read was Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls. I read it in the mid-1990’s and it propelled me into doing the work that I do now. It was about a psychologist who, initially by accident, found a way to help people connect to their wise and eternal soul self for the purposes of healing and gaining clarity and insights about their life as a person and as a soul. I knew I had to get training with him before he retired, and fortunately I was able to do so.

Michael Newton died in his mid-80’s a few years ago, but his work was so inspiring to so many people, an organization was created around his powerful and impactful hypnotherapy methods of helping people to awaken to their immortal identity and higher consciousness within themselves. The organization is called the Michael Newton Institute.

The organization has published many books about case studies of life between lives and our soul’s journey, as well as producing a quarterly journal called Stories of the Afterlife. I wanted to share a sample of the most recent journal so readers could get an idea of what it is about.

Here is December 2022’s Stories of the Afterlife. Please enjoy!

Case 12: Two Past Lives that Helped Release Her Anxiety

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Client Background

A woman (I’ll call her Beth) came in having struggled with anxiety her whole life. She had panic attacks, feelings of unworthiness, and low self-worth. She wanted to try past life regression to help deal with these feelings and negative beliefs. Past life regression connects you to your higher self which will in turn show you the precise life or lives that can help you move forward in the way that you are requesting. Beth’s higher mind knew exactly what would be most helpful for her.

Client Experience

Beth saw a past life where she grew up in an orphanage where she kept to herself because she never felt like she fit in. She described her past life at age 12 as follows: “The woman who runs it is strict and mean. I don’t like her. I don’t remember my parents, and it feels lonely and sad being there. I don’t like being by the other kids, and I feel like I don’t fit in.” She left the orphanage in her late teens and worked at a tavern, but still kept to herself, never feeling like she belonged. She lived by herself the rest of her life. Then one day in her 50’s, she was out walking when she fell, hit her head, couldn’t get up and she died alone. She felt her soul drifting up into a lighter, higher vibration, and then she began to sense other beings sending her comfort and reassurance. She reported, “it feels like love, purifying energy and peace.” In the soul realm, she reviewed the life she had just left and saw how her low self-esteem and feeling of not wanting to be noticed carried over to her present life. From the vantage point of the soul, she understood her soul lesson in that life could be applicable to her present life. She described her soul lesson as follows: “I shouldn’t close myself off and assume that people don’t like me. I need to be more comfortable with myself and choose who I want to be around.” She then received a download of fully seeing and feeling what it would be like in her past life and current life if she lived from that wisdom.

She was then shown a second life of a high-status man who was a respected leader and in charge of making decisions for a community. He felt comfortable and confident speaking in front of others, with no self-doubts whatsoever. He was adept at fencing and even taught his wife and daughter how to fight with swords. When that life was over, her soul drifted up and at one point noticed that there were others with her that felt very loving. She described one of the presences as either a male spirit guide or an angel. She said, “They’re telling me that I have the ability in my present life to be that confident and self-assured as long as I remember who I am.” She then added, “I can really feel my heart center opening up a lot right now.”

Client Results

Two weeks after her session, Beth reported that her anxiety had become much less, especially when she was around people. She no longer felt the tight anxious feeling in her chest when around new people. She had not experienced any more panic attacks and felt much more confident at work. She also noticed that her intuitive abilities had increased and she was more confident in making decisions. She also reported that her heart center had continued to open up and expand, and she noticed feelings of love more frequently, even to the point of tearing up.

Eric’s Comments

Past life regression works at a very deep, subconscious level. It not only shows you the root of an issue, but also the perspective shift from a higher vantage point that needs to happen to bring healing and resolution to presenting life issues. This perception shift can be felt fully throughout the body, mind and soul, and settles in as a deep knowing that overrides any subconscious fears of “not good enough.” In short, you experience fully the truth that you are a brilliant soul being using a body. As Suzanne Giesemann channeled, “We are here to master being a soul in a human body.”

Case Study: A Lifetime of Anger Released

Case 13: A Lifetime of Anger Released

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A client (I’ll call her Ann) came in with “demons of anger”, in her words. It’s valuable to set an intention prior to doing a past life regression session. Her intention for her past life regression session was to “see a life or lives that can most help me understand and heal my anger about not feeling good enough”.

Ann saw herself in a past life as a boy who never knew his parents and was raised by relatives in a home in which there was care, but not closeness. Home felt cold. As a teenager, he fell deeply in love with a girl at school, but she died of an illness. After graduating from school, he moved to a new town and found a job cleaning. Eventually he married a woman that he didn’t really love, describing the marriage as “a convenient escape from loneliness…there was no love between us and no bonding with the kids.” As he grew older, he worked as a blacksmith in a small town, and felt stress and guilt about not being able to provide more for his family. “My wife and I have nothing to say to each other. After the kids grew up and were out of the house, they don’t visit much, and life feels hopeless and wasted.” He died in his mid- 50’s in a hospital, alone and scared.

He felt regret soon after his death as he reflected upon his life, saying, “I didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t accept the life I had.” He then moved into a shaft of light that pulled his soul into a higher vibration in the spiritual realm. Ann described it in this way: “It’s getting lighter. It feels like waves of energy are taking care of me. I feel calmness, forgiveness and not alone. There’s an energy that makes me feel connected, and a forgiveness for myself. It was a hard life with not enough money or food and I felt stress that whole life. I couldn’t provide as a man because there wasn’t enough. But I also didn’t provide love for my family.”

In the spirit realm, I typically ask, “What you would do differently if you lived that life all over again, only from the higher vantage point of your soul?” Ann responded: “I would have shown my wife and kids love and acceptance.” She then immediately began to feel what her life would feel like if she had actually done that, which is typical in the past life session. “I can now feel how different and much lighter that would feel if I lived from that perspective. I would have taught my kids things and been at weddings, and then enjoyed grandkids.” She described the soul learning in that life to be: “Don’t sweat the small stuff. Appreciate the life around you…the family you do have. Appreciate what you can in life.” She then felt a deep compassion overcome her for people on earth who are hurting.

It became evident that the feelings that were left unresolved in that past life carried over to affect the mental and emotional energy bodies in this present life, thus contributing to the feeling of anger about not feeling good enough. We then released the thought-form energy from the past life that had carried over and replaced it with the wisdom and light of her higher soul self.

Two weeks after the session, Ann shared how her session impacted her. She wrote in an email: “I have noticed a huge change. Driving home after my session, I felt an immediate sense of calmness and comfort. I felt like the empty and questionable pieces of me had a tangible reason. I finally felt free to feel better. I had no idea what to expect from the session and the fact that I was given a glimpse of a past life was riveting…especially the fact that I was a man. The trauma from that life, without parents, gave me such compassion for the life I live right now. My relationship with actual parents may never be repaired, but I have a clear understanding of why I may have been a difficult child for them. My life is forever changed and my anger for not feeling good enough is gone. I have already had success in my personal and business life because of my session. Thank you, Eric! I am truly grateful!” 

This is a good example of how a past life regression session works. A client can discover where the root of a problem or issue lies, release it, and then view both the past life and present life from the higher-dimension vantage point of the soul. Wisdom, clarity and compassion are natural by-products from resting in this high-vibration state of being. It’s a level of consciousness that we all have access to as we go deep within. We ultimately are not separate from it, but it can easily become obscured while living in this human experience. That is, until we can awaken to this higher level of awareness within our own being, and that IS our true permanent self.

What is a Past Life Regression?

Our Answers Lie Within Us

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We are on the threshold of a new paradigm. More and more people are beginning to understand and identify ourselves as multi-dimensional beings. I was recently invited to speak at my alma mater, Saint Olaf College, by some students who were interested in the work I do. I spoke for an hour about past life regression. Ten years ago, I was also invited to speak there about my work, but past life regression was never mentioned because it was too  “outside the box.” I was delighted to witness the expansion of people’s beliefs systems. I explained that although we are human beings, but we are also spiritual beings using a body. This means that as we go deep within, we can gain a respite from the busy world of our lives and of our minds. As we go deeper, we tune into a built-in inner guidance system that is invested in our growth and evolution. Deep peace and clarity can be experienced, as well as answers and solutions to long standing problems. Here’s a case example that demonstrates this:

One of my clients (I’ll call her Shelly) was curious about experiencing a past life regression and decided to focus on a feeling of anxiety that was always beneath the surface, particularly in large crowds. She had a vague fear of not trusting people and was often on edge, even at home, as though an intruder might break in. She also had a phobia of having anything around her neck.

As she allowed her consciousness to go deep within, she became aware of a life of an African male slave brought to America on a ship, feeling confused, scared and angry. Here are a few descriptive excerpts from the session: “Fields… cotton…I bond with others, but feel alone. We don’t laugh…always a sadness…I run away…there’s overwhelming fear, I’m going to be caught. I’m running as fast as I can go…starting to hear dogs…run through a stream…feet cut…they’re closer…caught me…whip me…going to hang me. I leave the body just before they hang me…I watch it from above…I’m free…”

In traumatic deaths, the soul often leaves before the body is actually dead. As we progressed further into the freedom of the soul realm, we released the fear and confusion that was left over from that life and replaced it with energy of the soul — happiness, playfulness and joy — the part that was lost when the fear energy covered it up. Because we are all energy beings, dense, fear-based energy can become like a sticky residue on our physical, mental and emotional energy bodies, particularly after traumatic deaths, and thus affect the current incarnation. During a session, a person’s inner guidance will typically show them a life that is most impacting this life. Several weeks after the session, Shelly emailed this message:

“It wasn’t until after the session that I really realized how anxious I was. Immediately after the session I felt different, lighter, like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I couldn’t believe how great and relaxed I felt! I was curious to see if the change was permanent or if my anxiety would slowly creep back, but it never did. After a week or two, I realized looking back that I had been anxious all the time, not just in ‘certain situations’. I had never felt as relaxed as I did after the session, nor for that long a period of time. What turned out being something I wanted to do out of curiosity and for fun, ended up being the most positive life changing experience and the best money I’d ever spent!”

The healing part of the session occurs in the peace and clarity of the soul realm. But it is important to realize that this is actually a higher dimension of ourselves. We are multi-dimensional beings, so an aspect of us is already steeping in what we are looking for at a conscious and subconscious level, namely deep peace, love and clarity. Within ourselves lie tremendous resources for insights, releasing of limiting feelings and beliefs, and discovering the truth of our being. Once we have experienced it, we know it. But it’s easy to forget in this dense physical reality…the veil is strong, but certainly is getting thinner. We all need gentle reminders of our inner resources.

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Using Past Life Regression to Find Your True Self

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Past life regression is one of the most potent ways to connect to the higher, wiser part of yourself in order to resolve issues or move through stuck periods in your life. We become so focused on the worries and stress of life that we rarely connect with the quiet, still witness behind the worries. We become hypnotized into identifying with the continual swirl of thoughts in our mind, rather than on the deep presence that can observe those thoughts. During a past life regression, you become that presence. Then the Buddha’s words become clearer, “All suffering is due to wrong identification.”

It is natural to be skeptical about past life regression when viewed from an ordinary ego-identified level of consciousness. Yet what is often overlooked in nearly every moment of daily living is that ‘you’ are the energy and consciousness that animates the body, and as such, that ‘you’ is eternal and indestructible. For most people, that truth may remain only as an intellectual concept until they die. So if an aspect of yourself is infinite now, then it makes sense that you can begin to ‘tune into’ or resonate with that ‘truer’ self. It’s simply a matter of identifying more with the part of you which is the constant, non-fluctuating self. An effective way to access that ‘self’ is to go within, closing off the relative world of time and matter. This leads to becoming focused in the present moment.  Hypnosis provides a quick and powerful means to accomplish this because it deeply relaxes the body and quiets the mind the deeper you go into trance. A gulf begins to grow between the peaceful presence/awareness of ‘you’ and your thoughts. It becomes easier to identify yourself as the awake and aware ‘witness’ of your thoughts rather than being sucked into the mind’s incessant chatter. In this state of stillness, you can set the intention to see other lives you have experienced.

Past life regression sheds light on your soul’s intention of using your life for growth and evolution. Here’s how it works: As you surrender to whatever your unconscious mind reveals, an impression of another lifetime will emerge. It’s important to trust the process and permit the story to develop. It will ultimately reveal something profoundly beneficial for you. If you try in any way to consciously direct the images that come, it will block the process. Typically a previous life will mirror a deep issue that you’re dealing with in this life, even unconsciously. These mental impressions can be interpreted either as a past life or a symbolic metaphor, like a dream image. After the death scene, you can reflect on how you lived that life from the viewpoint of the eternal soul aspect of yourself. Often the strongest healing part of the session comes when you experience the deep peace, freedom and insights after the human drama. You gain a sense of how you wish you had gone through that life. Perhaps you lived it governed by small fears that held you back in various ways. From the perspective of ‘now time’, outside of time/space, you can ‘re-script’ that life by making different decisions about how you would have wanted to live that life, much like lucid dreaming. You can create a life where you consciously allow the freedom, appreciation, joy and love of your soul self to shine through, unimpeded by subtle, fear-based mind programs and conditioning that are common in the human experience. You not only create that empowered life but feel in your body and mind what it’s like to live in this awakened manner.

At times your higher mind may show you a past life in which you’ve known deep wisdom and strength if your current life lacks these qualities. You’ll be given that life to see so you can merge the powerful love-based qualities of that life with your current one. It all comes from an elevated level of consciousness that corresponds with ‘tuning into’ a higher dimension/vibration aspect of yourself, namely the part that is animating you right now.

A recent, typical example was a woman who struggled with anxiety. She experienced her past life as a woman of high status, forced to keep up appearances in an uptight, rigid society. She was afraid to express her true feelings while trying to please others. Her deep concern over other’s opinions held her back from fully living life, which caused her to feel alone. She was then shown a second life as a woman living in a poor village who was deeply connected to the entire community. During harvest time, everyone worked together, forming genuine bonds without any pretenses. She felt what it was like to be her true self without concern of appearances, and felt the exhilaration of experiencing authentic human relationships. In the time between lives, she could see how the first life mirrored her current life, while the second life revealed a way to live in which fears were replaced with the excitement and freedom of forming heartfelt connections with others. She saw that she had a choice about which way she was going to live this life, and how, up until now, she had been living a fear-based life, overly concerned with other’s opinions. Thus, at a subconscious level, she was able to shift the perspective that held her back in life. Past life regression not only revealed her soul lesson, but also allowed her to fully feel what it’s like to ‘get’ that lesson and live without the subtle fears that blocked and limited her. Because this all occurred at a deep subconscious level, it had a powerful and lasting effect. Over a year later she shared that the session had been quite impactful for her. It’s not uncommon to experience noticeable results in one session.

We are multi-dimensional beings. We have a body, yet at a deeper level of relative truth, we are also the soul essence that animates our body. At the deepest, ultimate level of truth, we all come from the one energy source that animates all life, and from which souls emerge. As humans, we live life as unique, individual ocean waves that forgot that our true essence is the ocean itself. Past life regression is an inward route to gain an experiential glimpse of these deeper levels of your being with heightened clarity. Life trials come and go, and so do lifetimes, but what remains? You do. Past life therapy tunes you into this constant aware presence of ‘you’ that transcends all earthly dramas.

An Eloquent Description of Experiences with Past Life

Changing Times

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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.”

How to Love Yourself

How to Love Yourself

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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.

 

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What is Hypnosis?

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‘Hypnosis’ is perhaps one the most misunderstood words that exists. It is actually the opposite of what most people think, which is often derived from stage hypnotists and movies. The two main myths are: 1) you are not in control; 2) you are not awake and aware. No matter how deep you go in hypnosis, you will be in control and you will always be wide awake and aware. For example, when you are swept up in the drama of a film in a movie theater, you are actually in a fairly deep state of hypnosis. In an engaging movie, you are very focused on the story that is unfolding on the screen to the point that you barely notice the people eating popcorn near you. But of course you’re not asleep…you know that if you wanted, you could get up at anytime and buy popcorn or use the bathroom. The same is true with any form of hypnotherapy – even at the deepest point of the session — if you wanted to, you could open your eyes and declare that you want to use the bathroom, or write something down, etc. It’s just a different level of consciousness that you’re accessing.

Hypnosis is a relaxation of the body and mind, together with a focusing of the mind. A definition of hypnosis is “a bypass of the analytical and critical thinking factor of our minds.” To apply this to the movie example, it’s when we don’t continually tell ourselves during the film: “what’s happening on that screen is not real, it’s only light images from a projection booth, and besides, those people on the screen are only acting, none of this is real, etc…”. If we continually focused on those facts, we could not let go and enjoy the movie. We go into varying states of hypnosis every day, such as when you are driving down a road while being lost in a daydream. Therefore, anyone can and has been hypnotized.

It’s important to know that all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis. I don’t actually hypnotize you – you hypnotize yourself using my suggestions and your imagination. Therefore, you can allow yourself to go into as deep of a hypnotic experience as you want to be, and you’ll always be awake and aware, knowing that you’re in the chair. During the experience, you may hear a car going by, or a dog barking outside, but none of that disturbs you as you continually focus inward.

The power of hypnotherapy is that we can use it to access and change the subconscious thought patterns that govern our lives. When we dream at night, sometimes those dreams are filled with metaphors that mirror the issues that are going on with us, whether we are aware of them or not. Who gives us these dreams? No one else does, yet we don’t consciously give it to ourselves. It comes from an unconscious, very wise part of us. Using hypnotherapy, we can easily access the same part of us that gives us our dreams, yet the difference is that we are awake and aware during the process. It is a very effective tool in healing because we can access and heal the emotional core of our anxieties or any stuck, limiting pattern where the root of the problem lies – the subconscious mind.

With spiritual hypnotherapy we can also access information from other lives that our eternal soul has lived, simply because we cannot separate ourselves from our indestructible soul self which exists outside of time and space. As we quiet our thinking mind and go deep within, we can tune into our “more permanent”, eternal aspect of ourselves.