Peter Woodbury

Addressing trauma is becoming very central to the healing industry. Brené Brown, Gabor Maté, Stephen Porges are a few of the important current voices addressing the matter of trauma healing. One of the things we have learned is that talking about trauma is oftentimes mostly retraumatizing. The field of trauma healing has moved into areas of trauma reprocessing through practices like EMDR and hypnosis.

Hypnosis is helpful in trauma treatment for a few reasons. One, we process emotions very differently under trance than we do in the waking state. When we remember a traumatic event and talk about it, it is a static event, like a horror movie, that just loops and retraumatizes us. When we reprocess trauma in trance states, the trauma situation is dynamic. By this I mean, the experience is alive, in a way. We may see or feel different things than we did when the trauma occurred. Oftentimes, the experiencing of the trauma in this dynamic way, is healing. We may experience a deeper understanding of the situation, we may feel divine presences, we may be watching from above, we may gain new insights. All of this helps the trauma to be reprocessed, to get worked through, and for the client to feel unstuck.

In my work as a regression hypnotherapist, the client and I go well beyond the “this current life” perspective. Oftentimes, the client has “irrational” anxieties, phobias and triggers that have no explanation from a current life view. (Of course some early childhood traumas can occur preverbally and not be available to conscious recall or may be repressed to protect the individual). Regression therapy is oftentimes like “exploratory surgery” as we are exploring feeling states and feeling/reaction patterns without a clear destination, other than to alleviate suffering.

As I teach regression hypnosis, it is important for me to highlight a few very important requirements to make a session safe, healing and productive. I teach students to develop their own styles, but I insist that they work with prayer to sanctify the process. Just like a surgeon works in “antiseptic space” so as to limit infections, so does a regressionist need to create sacred space to protect against spirit level intrusion. One time, and only once, I did a large group regression without prayer and the results were very negative, unlike what usually happens. I can go into more detail in another post, but suffice it to say that I never did that again! And my sessions have been at best healing and productive and, at worst, neutral.

The other important element for a safe regression is to never use force. When a client is done or wants to finish, listen to them. Less is better, especially when working through trauma. The more you can give the client control, the better they will feel afterwards and the more likely they are to continue to work with this modality. Actually, giving the client control of the process is already part of the healing experience.

Given the above two requirements, my technique is an odd one and difficult for students to grasp, especially the largely New Age population that attend my courses. What I do when trauma arises in a regression, is that I hold the space and amplify the emotion. So if a person is going through something intense, my words most oftentimes are, “Good, let that come through…”. The tone of my voice is important so that the client gets a sense of safety, that I am not scared or overwhelmed. I might add, “you are surrounded by light and protection, let it come through…” Oftentimes the client is going through a death, or an assault or mourning something intense, so why on Earth would I hold them in that space?

A few reasons: (1) We are emotionally disallowing in the waking state. When we see someone crying, we usually say things like, “there, there, it’ll be ok..” and shove tissue paper at them. It is usually a reflection of our discomfort with their expression of emotion. So we have learned and teach the repression of emotion. I remember learning a long time ago that, “the emotions we shove into the basement, just lift weights down there”. Repression and suppression of emotion doesn’t work. We pay a price for it. Our bodies are built to feel, release and handle the release of intense emotion. I believe it is spiritual to feel your feelings. Our bodies are not built for the suppression/repression of emotion. Many illnesses and destructive habits are born of unfelt feelings. (2) In a regression, I am “emotionally allowing”. I want to facilitate the release of these emotions, but to release them, they have to be felt. We can’t skip the feeling part of the process. I had to learn how to get comfortable with my deep well of feelings and work them through so I can help clients work theirs through. I see a world that is largely “emotionally constipated”. Is the preponderance of thyroid disease at least in some way connected to “choking” down emotion? I think so.

What I see as common practice in the New Age is to take our traumas and put them in beautiful golden boxes, for example, and then have these ceremonies where they are tossed into the ocean to sink and never be heard from again. This doesn’t work and actually creates shame in the client as they feel they did something wrong as the trauma reactions are still there. They even lie and tell their spiritual friends that the ceremony worked wonderfully. This is just a pretty version of repression. More of the same. Traumatized clients don’t need help in discovering new ways to avoid their painful feelings. They need brave and wise practitioners to walk them through their traumas and help them get to the other side. No one dies from feeling their feelings, but many lives are shortened from avoiding them.

I understand that it is difficult to break the habit of wanting to “rescue” people who are in pain. But rescuing is something you do if the pain is in the present moment, if someone has fallen in front of you and is in pain, by all means help them. But when someone is coming to a regression to do deep healing work and is experiencing something painful, encourage the feeling to come through. Don’t rush to take all that pain and throw it in a golden box. They don’t need your help to avoid the ugly and messy aspects of deep and repressed emotions. They already experts at that. They need to feel safe to feel, to be encouraged to feel, and to have someone believe in them, that they have the strength and courage to work this through. It has been my experience in my almost 20 years of practice that this works. People work through these emotional congestions. They feel lighter. The past doesn’t burden them in the same ways as it had previously. If there is one thing the regression world need is more practitioners that have worked through their own pain, felt the feelings, honored them, learned and retained what they came to teach and then released and moved on to new experiences. I think this one odd aspect of my personal practice is what makes my work unique, very difficult to pass on and keeps me in demand.

Another important caveat to mention is that I have never given the suggestion, “behind this door are some of the most horrific experiences of this or any of your lives…”. Never. The most common suggestion I give is, “behind this door is something very good for you…something you are ready for…”. Now when I give the latter suggestion and the client finds behind the door something intense, I assume that is exactly what they need to work through, and my experience has proven that. Very early in my development as a regressionist, a client came seeking to resolve a chronic laryngitis that had no known medical cause. In the regression, he came to the doors and the first had a man with a spear behind it. I assumed this was bad and took him to door number 2. Guess what? Man with spear was there too. I didn’t get the message and we went to door 3. Yup. Man with spear. I didn’t know what to do so I had him imagine a bench and sit there and contemplate. He understood quickly. This man had killed him by spearing him in the throat and he had died with this anger and resentment and it stayed somehow energetically lodged in his throat. He was shown what were the conditions that led to his death by the spear and what had happened afterwards. He got the big picture. He was instructed to reexperience the death with peace and understanding. So he did and has never had a recurrence of the laryngitis. This taught me to both trust the process and know that there is a wisdom in a regression that is much wiser than me.

So, get out if the way. Let people feel to heal. Guide, facilitate but most of all, get out of the way. Be a soul listener. Listen to the whispers of the soul. They will guide you towards exactly what the client needs to experience to heal.

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by Peter Woodbury

We have been inundated in recent years by the “abundance” consciousness, the “prosperity gospel” and the “law of attraction”. We demonize lack as a “poverty” consciousness. The proponents of these concepts drive Ferraris and own islands in the Caribbean. Who wouldn’t like an Island in the Caribbean? So we can clearly understand the allure of these ideas. But my thesis today is that the misapplication and misunderstanding of these concepts is largely used to justify greed, excess and selfishness.

I recall from Cayce readings 1637-01 & 02, where a man is told about a past-life in the “Peruvian lands” and how he had gotten involved with some ill-gotten gains, a “treasure”. He had apparently stolen and hidden this treasure from the rightful owners, the native Peruvian people, who had trusted him. So guess where the after session questions went? The man started asking Cayce if the treasure was still in the same place and could the Cayce source “give latitude and longitude of object of quest”! He wanted to go dig it up! After some back and forth, the Cayce sources basically said that these sources will not be used for your continued self-destruction. The theme of the reading was to assist the man spiritually to understand ideals, his karma and how it was influencing him in this life, and what he could do constructively about it, but the man was having none of it. He still maintained the greed and selfishness consciousness of that experience. He wanted the “fool’s” gold not the true gold of the soul.

In the Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda has a conversation with a “renunciate” – someone who has foregone worldly things (derived from the word renounce – to give up or reject) and is solely focused on the spiritual life. In their conversation, and I paraphrase, the renunciate explains, “It is so interesting to me that I am called a ‘renunciate’ when I am attempting to fully claim my divine inheritance.  I think the general population should be called renunciates, for they are the ones that have renounced the divine and filled their emptiness with material things that are of no eternal substance”.

Then we come to the Master, Jesus, who in in John 10:10, states, “I come that you may have life and have it more abundantly”. This seems to be the essential quote of the proponents of the “abundance” consciousness and “prosperity” gospel. But what did Jesus mean by “life and life more abundantly”? Cayce said Christ is the consciousness and Jesus is the pattern. The pattern for every soul to follow to reunite with God, through the oneness or Christ Consciousness. Now, last I checked, Jesus traveled by foot or donkey, he wore robes. I don’t recall Him having jewelry, fancy transportation or a fat bank account. So if He is the pattern, He certainly wasn’t saying that “abundance” had anything to do with material possessions.

I believe that is the key. What is this abundance Jesus spoke of? Well, He was abundantly connected to God, and in this abundant connection, His needs were taken care of. He didn’t hunger or thirst (until the end) as He trusted in God. Cayce said that He is the example of what is possible for anyone who puts their FULL faith and trust in God. I believe the abundance mentality is the mentality of faith in God, and having that trust that your needs will be met. The “Enough Consciousness”. Let the prayer be, “God, may I, and every soul alive today have enough, have what we need. Not more, not less.” Wouldn’t that be a beautiful world if we shared what we had in excess? Isn’t that the miracle of the fishes and loaves? We achieve abundance through faith and sharing.

There’s several themes in Cayce’s work that have had profound influences on me. One of those is that if you seek to serve, if you seek to “feed my lambs, feed my sheep”, your needs will be met. And if you have a service to offer the world, you can be in the middle of the desert, and people will find you. The original “internet” is the connectivity of all souls on the subconscious level. I had an unusual upbringing in many ways and one of them was that I had been throughout Europe, Africa, South and North America and the Caribbean by the time I was 12. My father wanted me and my siblings to have a large view of the world conditions as they existed. Among many lessons, I saw the gamut of wealth to extreme poverty. My father, an accomplished psychoanalyst, drove an old red Toyota (that only he could get to start!) for at least 25 years. My parents believed in service and in finding the JOY in service. In applying what I have learned throughout my life, I do believe I have an abundant life. I enjoy helping people. My work as a regressionist is dedicated towards helping people reconnect with their soul consciousness. I have more work than I can fulfill, so I have begun teaching. I feel I am on target with my purpose and mission, but I, too, drive a 20 year old Toyota (my dad would be proud!). I have found purpose and meaning in my life through centering myself in loving service and finding the joy in loving service. My physical needs are met, but like the old joke, “I have enough money for the rest of my life…if I die next Tuesday!”  I believe I’ll have enough, whenever that “next Tuesday” comes!

I hope that as we move forward in this 21^st century and towards that time of peace, that we all become forerunners and examples of the “ENOUGH” mentality and consciousness – through loving service, having what we need, sharing and receiving from each other, and claiming that abundant spiritual life that Jesus came to teach us about.

I have dedicated my life work to both conducting regression hypnosis sessions and teaching regression hypnosis. Hypnosis is a frequently misunderstood phenomena. Most people think that hypnosis is this very unusual state of consciousness, where you lose control of your will and become a puppet to the hypnotist’s suggestions. This is largely a myth. 

First of all, all hypnosis, to a great degree, is self-hypnosis. A person has to want to be hypnotized in order to even have the possibility of being hypnotized. Anyone who really doesn’t want to be hypnotized, most likely wouldn’t be. For a person to enter a trance state, they would need to feel safe, comfortable and open to the possibility of entering a trance state. 

In most hypnosis situations, a person enters a dually conscious state. About 80% of people can pretty easily enter a mild to moderate trance state. In this state, they will remain aware of themselves and of the hypnotherapist’s voice, but also have some sort of “experience”. For most, the experience is visual – they will see something. For some, it will be feeling oriented – they will feel something. It’s a bit like being seated in a movie theater. As the movie plays out, you may become more involved in the drama of the movie, but you also remain aware, to varying degrees, of yourself in a theater, watching a movie. 

One of my favorite explanations about hypnosis came from my pre-session interview with a client. I always ask a client about any previous experiences with hypnosis. She said she had and here is her paraphrased account: 

“I saw a hypnotist for smoking cessation about 20 years ago. Didn’t work at all. I stayed completely conscious. But I have never smoked again since I left his office.” 

I love this story because it really addresses the popular concept of what hypnosis is vs. the reality of how hypnosis works. I define hypnosis as the suggestibility of the mind that is achieved between wakefulness and sleep. I would add that we are suggestible even in the waking state. We take in about 5% consciously and our subconscious mind is taking in the other 95%. That’s how advertising works. Or how charismatic cult leaders work. They reach into the subconscious mind indirectly to make you want that cheeseburger, car or to get you to send in your money. But once we get in-between the waking and sleep states, the mind opens even more to suggestion.  

I’ll use the words suggestibility and hypnotizability interchangeably. Hypnotizability is a skill, and like any skill some people have a greater natural talent at a given skill. And as a skill, hypnotizability improves with practice. So some people are more easily hypnotized and some are more difficult. But the more you practice, the better you get at it. Edgar Cayce, for example, was pretty good at entering trance from the start, but with a lot of practice, he became a trance virtuoso! 

So when someone comes to work with me, I explain that the session basically has two basic sections. The first part is called the induction. The induction will feel to the client like a guided meditation. I will talk softly and guide them in breathing and relaxation. I will check in with them and once they are in a relaxed state, I will begin to make suggestions. Here, I’ll explain my own regressions and how I experienced this transition. As we went from the induction phase to the second phase of being given suggestions, my thought was, “Am I really hypnotized? I feel relaxed but I feel normal”. I was skeptical. Like the woman who stopped smoking, I, too, thought that hypnosis would require entering some exotic state where I had little to no conscious awareness. While some people do enter such a deep state, most enter the mild to moderate trance state, where you remain self-aware. I try to explain to a client that trance states are not exotic, as we experience them every night as we fall asleep or when we meditate, sometimes even when we are driving. 

Then I’ll explain that the conduit for a session is going to feel imaginative, as if you’re just making something up. This is where some people struggle, as they have a difficult time going with imaginative processes. In the waking state, we tend to poo-poo the imagination as child’s play. But people like Cayce, even Einstein and Tesla, put a high stock in the imagination. Cayce called it “the imaginative forces”. He said that the imagination was the “bridge” to the psychic/soul realm and that anyone with a good imagination, could become a good psychic! 

Next I relate my first session. My dear friend, Tom Baker, led me to a door and told me that behind the door would be an important past-life for me to remember. As I opened the door and went thru, I began to see a very old wooden ship with a well-dressed blond man on deck. Guess what my first reaction was? “What is this? Did I watch a Christopher Columbus movie recently?” I was trying to make conscious sense of something that was arising from the subconscious soul mind. Basically, my Peter self was trying to make sense of a soul memory. There was a cognitive dissonance created (a sense of confusion). But I was also talking to Tom about what I was seeing and next I told Tom, very matter-of-factly, “This well-dressed man is the purser of the ship.” This changed everything for me as I had never used that word nor did I know what it meant. I have had nothing to do with ships in my “Peter” life, but I knew he was the purser, the banker of the ship, the person who paid the staff, bought the supplies, balanced the books. So this knowledge about something I wasn’t consciously knowledgeable about helped me to “suspend my disbelief” and more fully engage this imaginative process. It then became a full story about this man’s life, what I believe to be a previous life of mine. 

To be continued… 

Peter will be hosting a monthly Facebook LIVE talk & chat on the Edgar Cayce Facebook page on the second Thursday of the month at 11 a.m. eastern U.S. time. Peter will speak about hypnosis regression and take questions. Hope to see you there! Even if you cannot attend live, you can watch the replay and leave your questions in the comments section and he’ll answer them as soon as he can. 

There will also be a blog entry, like this one, each month about regression hypnosis topics to accompany the Facebook discussion.  Posted In:

“…to find that ye only lived, died and were buried under the cherry tree in Grandmother’s garden does not make thee one whit a better neighbor, citizen, mother or father! But to know that ye spoke unkindly and suffered for it and in the present may correct it by being righteous—that is worthwhile!”

—Edgar Cayce reading 5753-2

I remember the first time I read this reading, I felt that the Cayce source wasn’t really big on past life recall. What is emphasized in this reading is the here-and-now and how, in the now, you have the opportunity to meet patterns, to bear your cross and act constructively when in the past, you may have acted otherwise.

Then I discovered that the 2^nd most popular Edgar Cayce reading type was the “Life Readings” He gave approximately 2,000 of those (they are second in volume to his “Health Readings” which comprised about 2/3 of the total of his readings). In Cayce’s Life readings, an individual was told about 3 to 5 past lives, and the emphasis seemed to be on (1) connecting with ideals from past lives and seeking a continuity from the past into the present, (2) connecting to latent gifts and talents that would be helpful to explore again in the current life, (3) pratfalls from previous lives – basically destructive behaviors and patterns to be cautious about in the current life and (4) relationships from the past that are current in the present – for example, past lives with current family members, partners of work colleagues.

So past lives were very useful in this context of awakening the individual to these subconscious influences. I oftentimes say that when we are born into this life, it’s like walking into the middle of a movie. We won’t quite understand the drama that’s playing out very well. A regression helps to understand the missing scenes. For example, my attachment/abandonment issues have to do with at least one past life of being left at an orphanage. My intuitive ability has roots in a past life as a savant in Egypt. Living only in Massachusetts and Virginia, as an adult, has to do with a life during the American Revolution. My mistrust of one sister has to do with her being my mother when I was left at the orphanage. My family’s complex relationship with my father comes from having mutinied when he was a military leader. All of this recall, has helped me make sense of myself and has led to significant spiritual development. Once I realized that my mistrust of my sister was related to the experience of being left at an orphanage, and understanding it wasn’t personal (it was in Ireland and she and her husband couldn’t feed all the children), I was able to release this subconscious grudge I had and was able to “forgive” her.

In my almost 20 years at the ARE, Past Life Regression Hypnosis has become the focus of my work. I teach the ARE course and have for several years. The almost 6,000 regressions that I have conducted so far have taught me a great deal about the process of regression. Let me emphasize two important aspects:

1. I am a “poster child” for talk therapy! Both my parents were psychiatrists and I was in talk therapy for almost 30 years. It was enormously helpful, though a bit slow and largely intellectual. The classic criticism of talk psychotherapy is epitomized in this statement from Woody Allen: “In my 50 years of analysis, I have come to understand all my problems much better. Nothing much else has changed though.” I have found regression hypnosis to be of a different ilk as the experience is: (1) oftentimes highly emotional, (2) experiential (you are experiencing not thinking) and (3) spiritual – You are able to enter the “oneness”. In the experience of being left for adoption, I could also feel my mother’s pain, I understood that this was happening all over Ireland – it wasn’t personal. I realized I was identifying with the boy of my previous life. The healing happened as I entered the bigger picture – what I call the oneness. I now say that our injuries happen from the separation consciousness and our healing comes from the oneness consciousness.
2. Experiences in regression hypnosis are much more vast than merely past life recall. In addition to past life recall, individuals can (1) contact their guides – we have a team of guides, or a council, that is with us from before we incarnate, helping us stay focused on what we’ve incarnated to accomplish, (2) future life progressions – individuals are able to project into future life experiences, such as Edgar Cayce did in his dream of 2100, (3) contact deceased loved ones, especially shortly after the physical death, and (4) enter dreamlike or symbolic experiences that help the individual understand some core question. There are more than these 5 experiences, but in my work these appear as the main types of experiences a client can encounter in a regression.

In summary, quite contrary to my original take on Edgar Cayce’s source view on past life recall, I know have come to experience it, both personally and with clients, as a profoundly helpful spiritual experience that has deep and lasting benefits to the individual.

You can now learn Past Life Regression online October 21 to 25, 2020.

Click here for more information:
https://www.edgarcayce.org/events/event-listings/conferences/hq-conferences/past-life-regression-hypnotherapy-training-certification-2020/

Peter will also teach 2 in person classes:

November 6 to 8, 2020 in Virginia Beach
December 4 to 6 in the Dallas area
(see Peter’s schedule for more information and to register)

It is really nice to see all the spiritual takes on the Covid pandemic situation. From the Earth needing a break, to families needing to reconnect, to an illness getting us to finally turn within, as might happen with an individual who gets ill. I’m eager to add to the dialogue.

I have had the privilege in my time at the ARE to be recruited into positions that I otherwise wouldn’t have considered. For example, I was asked to facilitate ARE conferences, which I did for 4 years. I attended every conference given at ARE in those 4 years. Almost 100 conferences. I call it my metaphysical Ph.D. program! Then again recently, I was recruited to be the host of the ARE talk show – Reflections – The Wisdom of Edgar Cayce. It has afforded the unique opportunity to have enlightened conversations with the likes of Judith Orloff, Eben Alexander and John Holland, to just name a few. I would have to say that my most “enlightened conversations” have been with John Van Auken. John and I have built a friendship that has spanned my almost 20 years at ARE and about 10 ARE tours to Egypt together.

I recently interviewed John as a Facebook Live experience. We have had many great conversations, but this one really took off. I felt that “when two or more gather, I shall be in the midst of them” phenomena. We discussed a wide range of topics, including the metaphysical possibilities of the Covid situation, our dream messages and the Cayce readings. I left the conversation with so many insights and even more seed thoughts. Let me share some of those with you.

The title of this column, As Above, So Below, is in reference to the mystical mirror between the physical and the non-physical. For example, Jesus advised studying nature for its teachings, as in noticing how the lily comes from the swamp, just as He had risen out of Nazareth. A current example is the internet. It is a physical manifestation of the spiritual reality that we are all connected. As Cayce said, all subconscious minds are connected, and he gave the health readings by tuning into the subconscious mind of the person seeking the reading. What I took from the conversation with John, is how the Christ Consciousness, has historically solely been manifested through individuals. The Piscean Age can be seen as the Age of Self. The constellation of Pisces actually comprises 2 fish. The first fish correlates to the Age of Christ, and represents the selfless aspect, the Yin. The second fish, is the counter to the Christ, the Yang aspect so to speak, and can be called the Age of Self Glorification, the selfish aspect. In contrast, the Aquarian Age is the Age of Others, the truer Age of Christ or Oneness (I use Christ and Oneness interchangeably as Cayce defined the Christ Consciousness as the awakened consciousness of Oneness).

So in the Piscean Age, with Jesus as its spiritual core, the oneness was manifested in the individual. What Jesus taught has taken over 2,000 years to gestate. It would seem that the Aquarian Age is the age of the collective awakening to Oneness. As Cayce stated: “first to the individual, then to the group, then to the classes, then to the masses” (254-34). In this manner the “pandemic” mirror shows us how one person can infect another and this contagion can grow exponentially until almost all of us are infected, with only a few showing any “symptoms”. It can be interpreted that spiritually, we are all harboring the latent seeds of the Christ Oneness Consciousness and we are slowly awakening as a collective to it, one person to another. The Second Coming of Christ is not in His physical return but in our collective awakening to The Christ Consciousness. Becoming Christ Oneness Conscious families, workplaces, communities, cities, counties, countries and world. We awaken each other to the Oneness by our thoughts, behaviors, actions, and, most importantly, by our Ideals and by “touching” each other. Social distancing prevents a viral contamination but spiritual intimacy is required to pass the Oneness. We have seen this for years in our Search for God Study groups. Hugging is essential.

This period is being called “The Pause” and also “The Great Awakening”. I see humanity at an important juncture, an important transition. I like to think in metaphors as it is a helpful tool to help conceptualize complex subjects. I see the Age of Pisces like a ship that has been on its 2,500 year voyage. It is pulling into the dock and the passengers have to exit the ship and board the “USS Aquarius”, the new ship soon to leave port on its own 2,500 year voyage. Many don’t want to leave the age of (small s) self, the selfishness and greed, to embark on a voyage of Oneness and collective consciousness and responsibility. The Coronavirus Pandemic is the “as below” symbol of the inevitable “as above” spiritual “contagion” that must come to pass. In symbolic terms, the Latin root of the word corona means crown or wreath. One of the most powerful chapters on the Search for God material is the one titled, “The Cross and The Crown”. The chapter addresses our individual and collective need to “bear our crosses”, to face our karma, in our prodigal voyage home. We are all facing collective karma as we depart this previous age, as we would at any transition, and as we do at death. As Cayce spoke, “spiritual influences must come to rule the world”. We are clearing the spaces personally and collectively towards that aim. We are all the “chosen ones”, like John, making the way clear for the collective Christ/Oneness awakening. The Cayce work has been preparing us. As Cayce said, “the times and half times are over.” We are traversing the “as below” (small c) corona on our way to achieving the (big C) “Crown”. The metaphor of the physical contagion speaks well of the seeding of the spiritual enlightenment to come.

Let us all be both patient and active in keeping faith and moving along to the new Age of Aquarius, ready to start its voyage of Oneness. Let us cast out fear as we understand the greater movement afoot, as a mother would in birthing her child, and understanding the purposes and meaning of the short term pain and the long term blessings. And let us help the passengers board while leaving their baggage behind.

As you know from reading my blog and my lectures, I oftentimes delineate between this New Age we are entering and differentiating it from the outgoing age. Today, I’d like to add some further reflections.
A benchmark of the “Old Age”/previous age was in that the healer was outside of self. The doctor was outside. In the time of Jesus, all you had to do was show up – blind, dead, etc. – just show up and the heavy lifting was done for you. God through Jesus activated the faith to enable the miracles. I think what drew the large crowds wasn’t so much Jesus’ radical teachings about Love, but the phenomena of the miracles. People wanted relief from their suffering. I think His teachings were largely over their heads. I think He was planting seeds. Sometimes I imagine Jesus speaking and the crowd growing restless. Slowly a chant of, “Heal, HEAL, HEAL!” rising up and Jesus ending His talk and beginning to heal. Some of the essential teachings of Jesus were about the Kingdom of Heaven being within and that greater things will we do with God’s guidance, as He did. Then 2,000 years later, Edgar Cayce comes along and in a trance state accesses people’s subconscious minds and offers individuals the path to healing. But again, the healer is outside of self.

I feel my work, as connected to many doing this work, is about accessing God within. I think that while in the Old Age people were more shut off to God access, in the New Age, we are much more able to “enter the inner temple” and “listen to the still small voice” and experience God within. Many people come to sessions merely curious but open minded and are quite shocked at the levels of consciousness they are able to attain and the profound change that has occurred in a mere hour or two of tuning into God within. I further believe that what had only been accessible to Initiates, is now available to almost everyone. Cayce talked about how the Great Pyramid of Egypt had many spiritual purposes. There are 3 main chambers in the Great Pyramid: “The Room of Upsidedownness”, “The Chamber of the Second Birth” and the “Chamber of the Open Tomb”. In the latter two spaces, there are small openings in the rooms that lead outside. Conventional archeology says those are air ducts to regulate temperature and air quality. Cayce said those were passageways for the soul as it left the body. In these 2 chambers, the Initiate’s consciousness would leave the body for three days and be awakened/reminded of the Truth of the soul, the eternal nature of the Soul and the multidimensional realities of consciousness. They would enter the “many mansions” Jesus spoke of.  They would no longer be “sleeping beauties”, but Awakened Initiates.
I believe in modern times, we are taking the “pyramid” to the people. We don’t lay people down in an open sarcophagus with soul pathways closeby, but in our offices, we guide people out of the ego/daily consciousness into the Greater Consciousness. They have a transcendent experience that, oftentimes, changes them deeply. There are popular current books about near death experiences by people such as Anita Moorjani and Eben Alexander, which are very very similar to what a person can experience through a regression session. You don’t have to almost die to meet God. You don’t need ayahuasca to have a transcendent experience. You don’t need anything other than the intention. We are all wired for God contact. In the New Age it is readily available. What was part of the mystery schools and the teachings of the Initiates is now available to everyone. The Old Age was about individuals awakening. The New Age is about Collective Awakening.

My hope in doing my work is to facilitate a “Soul Contact” experience for those who come to me. Good things happen as a result. My method also involves a good deal of post-hypnotic suggestions so clients/initiates will keep going within for guidance. In the spirit of Jesus’ lesson of teaching people to fish, rather than just giving away fish, my work ideal is to teach people how to access these spiritual levels of consciousness on their own. It’s not a great business model 🙂 but it works. I am also tooling my work more towards teaching people how to lead others into “Soul Contact”, what has traditionally been called Past Life Regression.

I have a final thought regarding the “Second Birth” alluded to in the Great Pyramid. In the same vein of Jesus’ teaching that we “must be born again”, I find that moving a person from the physical into the spiritual and back into the physical is a sort of “rebirthing” process. People come back into their physical consciousness having changed. The experience of something greater than themselves can be and often is, profoundly constructive. In the three dimensional language of Earth and using water as an example, I think of the body/earth consciousness as ice, the mind as water and spirit as steam. In a regression, you move a person from the ice, through the water into steam. Then once they have experienced the steam consciousness, they don’t have to come back into the same “ice tray”. They can pour themselves into a new form that serves them better. Mind is the builder. The Mind is fluid. I connect this process to what Jesus called being “born again”. In the New Age, you don’t have to die to reincarnate. You don’t have to have a near death experience to awaken. You don’t need drugs, music, or anything outside yourself. All you need to do is turn inward, seeking with an open heart and mind, holding to that Truth that “if you seek, you shall find”. Find out for yourself. There’s never been a better time to access God within. As Cayce said, one of the markers of the New Age is the thinning of the veil between the human consciousness and the God consciousness. See for yourself.

Now you might ask if you need a regressionist to lead this process or if you can do it yourself. You certainly can do it yourself. I recommend you say a prayer of protection first and then initiate a meditation or use a guided recording to assist you. What I do think happens in a session with a regressionist is close to what Jesus alluded to when He said, “when two or more gather…” Having a regressionist helps with the first session. As a client you can feel your way through the process and feel secure that you have a “watcher”, someone facilitating the process. Basically, someone guiding you in and out. But once you’ve had a session, especially with someone that uses my method or a similar method (of giving you post hypnotic suggestions encouraging you to follow this pathway yourself in the future), then you should be able to do this on your own. Also recording the induction (guided meditation) of the regressionist and using it later to guide you, can also be helpful.

As much as the current affairs of our world look like a mess on the surface, in the deeper realms of consciousness, God has never been so close. If you feel any lack of God connection or soul life, I recommend you try to seek within. It isn’t guaranteed but it is worth the try. Give God a chance to work with you. You very well could be very pleasantly surprised.

I was recently asked, “How can I find love?” This issue is a common one that I see in my practice. Let’s first take a look to see what Mr. Cayce had to say on the topic:

(Q) Why have the last five years of my life been so entirely devoid of all contact with men?
(A) As a testing period to that which has been and is the basic building of thy purposes in the earth.
Edgar Cayce reading 369-16

So what might Cayce mean by this? A testing period is clear in that it’s a period of being denied something we want. What do we do while we are waiting? Do we try and numb the pain or seek a closer contact with our Source? So do we use this period of denial of what we are seeking as an opportunity to attune and turn within? That seems to be what Cayce is alluding to; that we use a period like this to connect with “that which has been and is the basic building of thy purposes on the earth.”

What are our basic purposes on the earth? Well, it’s different for each of us, but it does require that tuning into the still small voice within to find out. Meditation, prayer, and a spiritual support group like A Search for God Study Group would be helpful.

Now from my perspective as a psychotherapist, I’d wonder what happened to you in your relationships and what might be continuing on from those? Do you feel there are any lingering wounds? Relationships follow patterns. Did you feel there was a pattern that just got worse and worse? This would be useful to explore in psychotherapy.

The other common theme in the Cayce work is that like attracts like. So when it comes to relationships, we need to be like that which we want to attract. I oftentimes ask my clients this question, much to their chagrin, “Would you date you?” Basically, are you the kind of person you’d want to spend time with? They oftentimes say, “No, I wouldn’t want to date me! I’m trying to get away from me!” That’s an honest answer but highlights the problem. We need to become the person we’d like to spend time with! Then the Universal Law of like attracting like will serve us. It helps to make a list of qualities we are seeking in a partner and then ask ourselves which do we have and then work on the ones we are bit light on. The converse of the law being that if we date too soon after a break up, we will attract broken people, like us. In the words of the incomparable sage, Cher, “if you don’t like your own company, don’t expect anyone else to!” Is that not just perfectly put? Thanks, Cher!

And I’ll end with the wisdom of Ann Landers: “Love is friendship caught fire!”

Sometimes we want all the heat too soon. Take time to establish a warm friendship and see if the sparks of that fondness take you to the next level.

In Kevin Todeschi’s book, Edgar Cayce on Soulmates, he makes this summary statement about Cayce’s readings regarding the matter of soulmates:

“A soulmate is an ongoing connection with another individual that the soul picks up again in various times and places over lifetimes. We are attracted to another person at a soul level not because that person is our unique compliment, but because of being with that individual, we are somehow provided with an impetus to become whole ourselves”

Oftentimes, when we feel attracted to someone, or not attracted, and we can’t quite put our finger on what exactly is the cause, we will say it has to do with “chemistry”. Chemistry becomes this elusive element that is either there or not. We may even feel comfortable telling someone that the chemistry isn’t there as it really renders all involved blameless. It’s the French version of, je ne sais quoi, meaning “I can’t quite explain why”, – the reasons come from a place we can’t quite explain.

It is my understanding that the feeling arises from the subconscious mind, and subconscious memory. Cayce tells us Karma is actually soul memory. I would add that it is subconscious soul memory. According to Cayce, our past lives influence us emotionally. We are drawn or repelled to people and places oftentimes because of our subconscious karmic memories and the related feelings. This is why I have coined the term “karmystery” as a better term to explain the deeper causation of our attractions and disaffections.

As a child I loved reading teaching stories, like Aesop’s fables. The hungry fox can’t quite reach the grapes, so he tells himself, “they were probably sour anyway!” and hence the term “sour grapes”. Most fables offered a puzzle and I enjoyed solving them. Then I happened upon the story of the Princess and The Pea. This was one my young mind couldn’t quite grasp. I’ll try and make the story more accessible as I retell it.

A king and queen want their child, a prince/princess to marry a royal peer. But they fear imposters will come, prince or princess “wanna bes” so to speak, so they devise a crafty test. They set up the royal guest room with a large bed with 100 mattresses and put a small pea under the bottom mattress. They know that just the right person for their child will feel the pea. So the candidates arrive, sleep on the trick bed, and one after the other, after reporting sleeping so well on the guest bed, are unceremoniously shown the door. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you!” Until one candidate awakens and reports, “I cannot tell a lie! I slept terribly this night! It was like a boulder was under the bed!” The king and queen rejoice as they have found just the right candidate to marry their child. They have found their soulmate!

Do you have any problems with this story? As a child I thought, “They pick the complainer? Yes, they are honest, but they want their child to spend their life with someone so sensitive that a pea feels like a boulder? Huh?” But I did notice that people did seem to partner in odd ways. “Hmmm”, I thought, “Maybe there is something to this story after all?”

It wasn’t until I learned Edgar Cayce’s story about soulmates that a deeper meaning to the fairy tale revealed itself.  The young prince/princess are us. We are not suitable with just anyone. We must find our soulmate.  The 100 mattresses represent “100” lifetimes, or “sleeps”. Many lifetimes ago, a small seed was planted. Pea as the letter P, could stand for the Past. Something happened many lifetimes ago, in the past, that hasn’t been resolved. The soul partner “awakens” to this deep subconscious reality in their sleep. This no longer dormant past life influence remains between the two soulmates and draws them together, like a magnetic attraction. They have “karmystry”. It wasn’t there with any of the other candidates. I would also like to add that Cayce tells us that we have many soulmates, and not all are romantic. We have Peas out there with many individuals and we also have “Ps” as Patterns, that will connect us to others, not because of a past life with together, but due to a mutually shared pattern that we can help each other work through. In this way, our soulmates provides us the impetus to work through the shared karmic pattern and resolve one of the key purposes for incarnation.

There’s an ancient curse that goes something like this: “May you live in interesting times!” We are certainly so cursed or blessed! We are living through some very interesting times. Let us see what we might glean from the Cayce work. In times of personal challenge, the Cayce work has served as an aid to many. But what about in times of collective challenge? Can the Cayce work be helpful in those times as well?  The answer is a resounding yes! I get encouraged daily by the guidance in the Cayce work about the time we are in.

The years ’58 to ’98 (which some have taken to be other than 1958 to 1998, which I do not believe to be the case) were described as a 40 year period of intense testing on the Earth plane. If we look at those decades, we can certainly see what was meant. The 60’s started with ideals and a desire to break out of gender and other stereotypes and limitations. But by the end of the 60’s, the icons of hope had been assassinated, which led to the downward slope in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The 2000’s have really been the hangover from those years of collective excess.  And we are still trying to find our way. Cayce described 1998 as the dawn of the Aquarian Age and the transition from the Piscean ideals to those of the Aquarian.  In Revelation, Cayce interpreted the “1,000 years of peace” as potentials that could be actualized in the Aquarian Age. Indeed, even Jesus esoterically advised to “following the waterbearer”, the astrological symbol for Aquarius. Continue reading →

I was doing a private class for 2 students and they needed to practice. I usually do not get regressed in classes as I am usually supervising. But since there were only 2 students, i thought it would be good practice for them to regress me. They co-regressed me. The following is the transcript from the session. It went about 2 hours.

February, 2017

D: Perhaps you open the door. Soon you’ll begin to notice what is just beyond the door. Allow these images to become clearer and clearer to you and when you feel that you have a picture of what’s happening around you, describe what you’re seeing and feeling.

Peter: The door looks like a… like a picture on a wall, sort of thing. And then it’s not really a door, it’s an opening. And on the other side of it looks like space and stars.

D: Beautiful.

P: I can go through it, it’s just a white space and then there’s an opening like a window to just this – I don’t know, this space, this world.

Continue reading →