Tag Archive for: personal growth

Case 1: Awakening to the Light and Love Inside of Us

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Our problems, personal as well as global, can be clear pointers to what no longer works for us, and therefore, they can be the starting point to reclaim our power. And even while we as individuals are stuck in a limiting pattern, there is a part of us that remains free from the constraints of our mind programs, and offers a clearer way of perceiving. This internal wisdom is available and can offer guidance that is based in a more permanent reality, the soul state, which is motivated from a background of love and safety rather than a background of fear, which is common in the human state. I see examples of this in nearly every session. Here is an example of the insights that come from this truer reality.

Client Background

Jane’s initial reason for doing a past life regression was to gain clarity on her life purpose and whether or not she should relocate to another state. But what can happen in a past life regression is that a person’s higher self may have a different agenda and want to give insight and clarity on something else in a person’s life that it deems is more important.

Client Experience

Jane’s regression began as a woman in a blissful marriage with children, until her husband died suddenly. She grieved for a long time after her husband’s death, overwhelmed with loneliness and guarding her heart from further emotional pain.

Jane suddenly recognized that she was repeating the same pattern in her present life. But then as the past life personality grew older, she was shown another perspective. She began to pour love into her children and grandchildren, which in turn, came back to her, creating a full, rich life. It was important for her to see how she could overcome her hurt and loss by giving love to others. In the afterlife, she experienced her soul self, a higher level of consciousness free of the learned, limiting, egoic mind patterns. This is usually the most healing part of the session as insights drop in as a result of a larger perspective and higher vibration state. The eternal part of her was able to reconnect with the eternal part of her husband in the past life, whose loss had created years of stuck anguish. She was then able to experience the truth that love transcends all loss.

Client Results

A week after the session, Jane shared in an email this wisdom: “You know that deep love I described feeling for someone else? I am now feeling it for the beautiful essence that lives in me. My heart feels full, complete, and perfect just the way it is. This morning I felt a deep comfort with the person I truly am and was able to begin experiencing what it is like to BE THAT person inside of this body.  And, I love it.  The answer isn’t “out there” as to where I need to move or what I need to do.  It is being at home in me where ever the path leads.  My fear was that in the regression I would run into a real YUK of a person from another life.  That was only my shame and guilt that is so made up.  The real person in all of us is so beyond the denseness we humans can so easily sink into.

When I return for another session, it is not so much about going thru past lives as it will be staying in touch with the beautiful love energy I feel for ME. That kind of love will only radiate more of the same in others. Right now, I am so enjoying for the first time having a sense of who I am and it is with deep gratitude for your skillful way of bringing me home to myself. THANK YOU.”

Eric’s Comments

One of the greatest benefits of past life regression is tuning into the permanent self that transcends these lives. You can actually experience this higher dimensional self to be deeply anchored in the present moment and free of the subtle, subconscious thoughts that hold us back in life. It’s a great respite to become rooted in the clarity of your true self, free of fears and lack. This part of us is always available and lies just beyond our thinking mind. As we become more acquainted with our soul while here on earth, we will begin to awaken from the human condition of “egoic sleepwalking.”

Relief from Depression and Unwanted Emotions

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Depression and anxiety often go hand in hand, so we work with depression much the same way as with anxiety – by looking at the feeling under the microscope of hypnosis and discovering the subtle, negative thoughts that make up the heavy, stuck feeling of depression. Uncovering these subconscious thoughts and limiting beliefs is the first step in diminishing their power to impact your life. They are nearly always untrue, and belief in these false thoughts gives them their power to affect the way you feel and live your life. Dr. Bruce Lipton wrote a book called The Biology of Belief which demonstrates this. When these false beliefs are fully seen through at a higher and deeper level of consciousness, beyond the conscious and even subconscious mind, we can replace these thoughts with empowering ones that are based in a higher truth from the vantage point of your eternal soul self.

While anxiety involves subconscious thoughts that are often future-focused while based in the past, depression tends to be predominantly past-focused, often including the emotion of anger or resentment. Resentment or anger is often about having to put up with something unwanted, or not getting something that was wanted, such as a sense of being loved, wanted, valued, safe and secure, etc.

Sometimes, depression or anxiety can be passed down unconsciously through the generations, like an “unconscious virus”, in the form of thoughts, feelings and emotional patterns such as the way in which love or anger is expressed or not expressed. As children, we not only depend on our parents for food and shelter, but also for a sense of worth and safety. Sometimes parents of past generations were too absorbed in survival or else their own issues to be fully present with their children or to give their children a sense of being loved, wanted and valued. If these core feelings of value were not felt, a person may feel a subtle sense of unworthiness and the seeds of depression and/or anxiety are sprouted in the belief and emotional system of the person…And if this subconscious emotional energy is never allowed a chance to be “emoted” through us, by being directly articulated or expressed, it can remain as trapped energy in the body/mind system, and years later have a subtle “pressure cooker” effect on the body/mind by negatively affecting the way we view ourselves, thus clouding our experience of ourselves and the world. This is why there’s often plenty of negative subconscious self-talk beneath depression or anxiety, and this is what can unconsciously be passed down through the generations. In the Present Life Emotional Healing session, we can become aware of this passed-down thought-form energy and stop it at the unconscious level, as well as ceremoniously heal the past generations. You release this unbeneficial thought-form energy and replace it with your own source/potential that was lost when you took it in.

Also, we examine all other contributing factors to depression or anxiety, such as the food that is fueling your body. Since there is a food/mood connection, certain foods will contribute to a lighter or more grounded feeling. Exercise is also scientifically proven to help the neurotransmitters fire across the chemical serotonin in your brain.

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!

From My Heart to Yours

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Warm Holiday Greetings from my heart to yours! I hope that the end of year festivities have an opportunity to provide some inner reflection, even in the midst of stress that the season may bring for some.

My sincerest wish for everyone is that they continue to further their unique path of growth and evolvement, as that as what we are doing here. Because in doing so, we begin to further wake up to who and what we truly are while living this human life. And the further we awaken, becoming more steeped in this higher dimensional Truth of ourselves, you’ll notice all sorts of “pleasant” trickle-down effects that happen as a result.

To name a few, you begin to feel an overall sense of well being that you know deep down is more real than even the strife, challenges and chaos around you…the thoughts, feelings, fears and beliefs from past programming and conditioning that used to hold you back are now fully seen through and no longer believed, and therefore no longer limit you…you no longer are identified with the mind’s negative messages, and may even be amused by them because they are so ridiculously untrue!…you become the love and compassion that you are at your core, as you sense the interconnection of all of life beneath the surface…you feel the freedom of not really needing anything from anyone outside of yourself. Your needs become elevated to preferences. Instead of looking to attain something from outside of you, you feel a desire to give, whether it be a small gift, an act of kindness, a complimentary word or a silent acknowledgement of a person’s divine Self.

These are just a few positive side effects, of course, so “evolving and awakening” is worth looking into if you’re wondering what to do with your life. And, truth be told, that’s what we’re doing here anyway, whether we’re conscious of this or not. But it moves along much faster as we become more conscious and deliberate on our life’s journey.

A powerful exercise for growth is to spend a few minutes to center yourself and quiet your mind. Then ask your angels and guides (of which you have several) to give you a thought, insight and perspective that would most give you joy and align you with your higher self. Then be watchful over the next few minutes, or even the next few days…the answers may come through a chance conversation with a friend, or a podcast, or an article you come across.

Warmest wishes to you and your continued unique journey of growth and awaking…a journey which we all share together…and the good news is that life generally gets much easier and more enjoyable the further along the growth path we go, even if it feels like two steps forward, a step back, two steps forward again, etc. That is the growth process.

In closing, here is an Asatoma prayer that a friend shared with me:

Lead me from the unreal to real

Lead me from darkness to light

Lead me from time-bound consciousness

To the timeless state of being that I am

-from the Upanishads

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The Key to Unconditional Love in Relationships

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Several months ago, I wrote an article for The Edge Magazine. The Edge is a valuable resource for anyone on their journey of personal and spiritual growth and expansion. As souls, we are all on this journey. However, as humans, we are seldom conscious of it. When we finally become conscious that we are here mostly to learn and grow towards awakening to the unconditional love that we already are, we have reached a milestone in our soul’s development. It may happen early or late in life, or not at all in this lifetime. But it’s probably a good sign that you’re on your way if you’re reading this blog.

Each month, The Edge Magazine features a new topic. This month (July, 2019) is about: The Present Moment — Maintaining This State of Being. Last March, The Edge’s featured topic was about how to move toward unconditional love. Below is my article….please enjoy!

In their 1974 song “Already Gone,” The Eagles sang, “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.”

I don’t know whether or not The Eagles meant it, but it perfectly fits to interpret the “chains” to be the identification with our ego. The ego is based in separation and individuation. Think of the ego as our body/mind self, which contains all of our programming from early on in life. Limiting thoughts, feelings, beliefs and fears are based in the ego.

Our lives can become imprisoned and unconsciously governed by limiting ego beliefs such as “not good enough” or “fear of failure” or “it’s too scary and painful to open up and fully receive love.” The ego works overtime to protect us from possible emotional pain, yet it is also striving hard to find love, joy, peace and security, mostly outside of ourselves.

When we incarnate here, the dance of the ego begins with the trauma of separation. We are dependent on our caregivers for love, security and a sense of well-being. We become conditioned to search for unconditional love outside ourselves, and if we don’t find it, limiting beliefs about our self can form and we can develop a tendency to guard our hearts.

Yet, we are multidimensional beings. There’s another part of us — the soul. The soul comes from Source. Like drops of water which form the wave that belongs to the ocean, we are a human, a soul and we also belong to the one creator Source. In other words, we are not separate from Source energy — and we are not separate from the love, security, peace and joy that we are searching for outside of ourselves.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” Not only does love lie within us, but we are unconditional love. As Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi, once said, “We come from love, we go back to love, and we are love.”

Going back to The Eagles’ song, telling us that we live our life in chains, never even knowing we have the key, “the key” is a mere perception shift. Adyashanti, another spiritual teacher, equates human life to “the greatest slight-of-hand card trick.” He says, “Enlightenment is really just a radical shift in identity.” He means that spiritual awakening is about identifying primarily with the pure light, energy and consciousness that animates all of life, the part of us that can never be harmed or die.” Another name for this level of consciousness is Christ consciousness or Oneness consciousness.

When you operate from Oneness consciousness, you see yourself in others. You see through other people’s ego state of consciousness, which is unconsciously striving for love and connection or else protecting itself from love and connection, and instead view all beings with love and compassion. It is automatic. “Oneness” needs nothing from another, and instead is motivated and fueled by giving and being love.

Experiencing this level of love is a subtraction process. As we quiet our thinking minds and go within through meditation or an inner journey, or by simply becoming fully present, we can experience peace and love within ourselves. When we let go of the mind’s filters and programs and are truly present, we can feel a reservoir of deep peace beneath our fears.

Another way of experiencing ourselves as love is to practice what Neale Donald Walsch, author of the Conversation With God series, suggests: “If you want more joy in your life, be the source of joy for another. If you want more love in your life, cause another to feel loved.” Experiment with it. Relationships go much smoother, he says, when we view them not as a cookie tray to grab something from, but rather as a container to pour something into.

Here’s another experiment: Adyashanti writes, “When the divine part of you silently acknowledges the divine part of another, their divine self knows that it’s being acknowledged and it will feel good being in your presence. They may not even know why.” To be the unconditional love that we already are requires a perception shift out of our ego consciousness. Practice identifying as the love that you are, and then begin to view others as that same love behind their human form and their ego consciousness. It’s like a muscle that you exercise. Over time, it becomes your natural state, mainly because it is your natural state!

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.