Brain Enhancement through Past Life Journeying?
Emily Willingham posted an interesting article on Slate.com with a unique take on “One Simple Trick for Being a Better Thinker.” Since all information is processed through the lens of past lives, I immediately saw an application for her ideas. She’s written a book on the topic and her article related this surprising finding: rather than supplements, brain games or even microdosing:
The three activities with the best support for generally salutary brain effects are physical activity, mindfulness-related practices, and interaction and resonance with other brains.
Willingham discovered the social aspect to be crucial and frames this as empathy:
We all have access to the tools to cultivate empathy; in fact, they are mostly free. Empathy expert Roman Krznaric, for example, wrote about the six habits of highly empathic people. His list includes developing curiosity about strangers, trying someone else’s life (such as doing a favorite activity of theirs that’s new to you), listening, opening up, and developing “an ambitious imagination.”
That’s where what I have to offer fits in. How better to “try someone else’s life” than to try on a different aspect of our own personality in the form of a past, or adjacent, life? This also involves those other aspects — developing curiosity about strangers, listening and opening up, and an ambitious imagination. I’d substitute “trusting the first image” for imagination. My point is, the most powerful exercise in empathy is to spend an hour walking in someone’s feet, wearing their costume, and feeling what you were/are experiencing through this Other personality’s experience. And if Emily Willingham is correct, this can lead to thinking better and “general salutary brain effects.” Brain Enhancement through Past Life Journeying? Yes!
Wm. J Baldwin Spirit Releasement and Past Lives Video Blog
I finally came to a topic that was better handled with a video than a blog post. This might be controversial, since it mentions extraterrestrials attaching themselves to humans but that was the subject of Willam J Baldwin’s book, and for some reason, Regression Therapy teachers include this form of energy clearing in their curriculum. Interesting that this is done without mentioning Baldwin’s name, possibly due to his obsession with dark force entities aka demons. But it was a fascinating deep dive for me to go through Baldwin’s books Healing Lost Souls and CE-VI - Close Encounters of the Possession Kind.
Clothes from 8000 Years Ago were made from Trees?
Clothing at a Neolithic site in what is now known as Turkey that was previously thought to be made from linen, wool or flax has now been proposed to be constructed from trees - specifically from oak bast:
Bast fibers sit between the layer of bark and wood in trees, and are commonly sourced from willow and linden trees, in addition to oak. Importantly, timber from oak was used in the construction of some Çatalhöyük ((pronounced cha-tal-ho-yook) dwellings, which shows these people were no stranger to the tree.
Why is this of any importance? I love hearing about archeological studies that update our understanding of ancient cultures. The best ones toss out outmoded assumptions based on new findings. When I’m guiding a client to a past life, I ask, “What, if anything is covering the lower part of your body?” As the client orients themself in this other personality’s physical form — ideally seeing through the eye, hearing through the ears, and feeling what that person was feeling — if that past life personality had an awareness of the makeup of their clothing, the response might be, “It’s not wool, or linen, or anything obvious. It’s like it’s made from part of a tree.” At which point, the conscious mind might try to interrupt with, “That makes no sense. You can’t make clothing out of a tree.” Well, it turns out, you can, and previous cultures ingeniously did. Trusting the image, trusting the feeling accessed in response to a question requires being open to an answer that doesn’t seem logical, and being brave enough to respond in spite of uncertainty about the information. This follows up on a previous post about gladiators being a professional occupation, upending ideas long accepted and reinforced by movies (with apologies to Russell Crowe.)
“Trust the first image” is rule #1, and following the information that’s received leads to a much deeper and more interesting past life session. This becomes even more crucial when opening to Future TimeLines, where we may not have a “logical” basis for the information. This is why I won’t guide clients to Future Lives until they’ve explored more than one past life and navigated the Non-Physical Experience between lives. With that experience, we are more open to exploring a world where even the home or work environment might be strange and unfamiliar territory. If this interests you, please contact me for a free 20-minute discovery call, so I can hear about your interest in exploring past lives and answer any questions you might have.
https://gizmodo.com/clothes-from-8-000-years-ago-were-made-from-trees-new-1848041648
Followup on a Billionaire's Quest for Proof of Surviving Death
In January I wrote about Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace, and his Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. BICS had announced an essay contest “seeking evidence of the survival of consciousness” after death. At the time I was intrigued but didn’t think I could prove in an essay what my Past Life Journeying has proven to my satisfaction: that our consciousness continues after the death of the physical body, making the case that this non-physical state is the continuity of our consciousness, with occasional forays into the physical by incarnating into physical bodies.
Well, the winner was noted parapsychologist Jeffrey Mishlove, who’s Thinking Allowed TV and video series I was familiar with, since Mishlove has the most extensive interview with Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe) available. According to the Mystery Wire website, Mishlove’s essay:
“Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death” was a unanimous choice by the panel of judges. Mishlove’s essay included video snippets and testimonies regarding near-death experiences, reincarnation cases documented by memories of past lives, and seven other types of evidence that consciousness survives physical death.
(“Video snippets” - Doh! Why didn’t I think of including video links?) Bigelow was so impressed with the quality of the submission that he paid out $1.5 million, almost twice the money allowed, in order to award 11 runners-up and 15 Honorable Mentions. BCIS intends to publish all 29 essays on its website and in print to be made available “for free to hospitals, hospices, religious organizations, and others to be determined.” Gratitude to Robert Bigelow for putting his money to expanding awareness of consciousness after the death of the physical body. And if anyone is keeping score on billionaire’s going into space, Bigelow’s already been there, just not in person. His Bigelow Aerospace has produced “habitable space structures” for NASA and "the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which is attached to the Tranquility module of the International Space Station.”
Shamanic Drumming as a Consciousness Altering Tool Confirmed
…but we already knew that since I wrote about this in 2018*. It was a confirmation of my own experience with drumming in a shamanic setting, but then, I’ve been tapping into the altered state that drumming provides since joining my first rock and roll band at age 14. The takeaway that got my attention from this new study was this:
Shamanic practitioners were significantly different from controls in several domains of altered states of consciousness, with scores comparable to or exceeding that of healthy volunteers under the influence of psychedelics…These findings suggest that psychedelic drug-induced and non-pharmacologic alterations in consciousness have overlapping phenomenal traits but are distinct states of consciousness, as reflected by the unique brain-related changes during shamanic trance compared to previous literature investigating the psychedelic state.
In my article, I advocated for non-pharmacological explorations, accessing altered states without psychedelics, and according to this study:
…shamanic trance, which is an altered state of consciousness anecdotally similar to the psychedelic state, can be achieved with or without the use of psychedelic substances by listening to repetitive drumming.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.610466/full
Some of my favorite sessions have been with clients who’ve experienced shamanic journeys and followed Gail Gulick’s first rule for journeying: Trust the first image. (The 2nd is equally important: Promise to come back!) This study gives evidence for both insightfulness & complex imagery and elementary visual alterations from repetitive drumming. Plus it deals with one of my personal assumptions: that shamanic journeying accesses a distinct state of consciousness that overlaps with that produced by psychedelics. Establishing the reality of a distinct state of consciousness from repetitive drumming gives me hope that someday, someone will study the Past Life journeying experience with this same brain mapping technology, and possibly determine what I believe is also a distinct state of consciousness. Until then, check out this post from 2018:
My Interview with South Carolina Voyager Magazine
I was approached for an interview with South Carolina Voyager magazine, an online publication that reached out to me as an area entrepreneur. The interview was published today, with a few typos, unfortunately. But any day I get to talk about my work and give credit to William and Diane Swygard for introducing the Awareness Techniques us a good day. Here’s the link:
https://southcarolinavoyager.com/interview/conversations-with-bobby-baranowski/
Gladiators as pro wrestlers? That can’t be right? Or can it?
An article from National Geographic inspired a lesson in guiding clients in their past and future life journeys. Unfortunately, the article is behind a pay wall but the title tells it all: “Two gladiators enter- only one leaves alive, right? Think again.” Once again, new discoveries prod modern science to reframe long held beliefs, in this case, about ancient Roman gladiators. The new theory, based on the research of Brice Lopez is this:
A FEW GLADIATORS WERE CRIMINALS OR PRISONERS OF WAR CONDEMNED TO COMBAT, BUT MOST WERE PROFESSIONAL FIGHTERS.
This revision points to gladiators as a warrior class, basically a profession, with highly skilled athletes thrilling audiences in enormous arenas. Lopez doesn’t make the comparison to pro wrestling, that’s my attempt to provide a modern day model, but he does postulate the equivalent of “tapping out” instead of fighting to the death.
His conclusion: Gladiators weren’t trying to kill each other; they were trying to keep each other alive. They spent years training in order to stage showy fights, most of which did not end in death. “It’s a real competition, but not a real fight,” says Lopez, who now runs a gladiator research and reenactment troupe called ACTA. “There’s no choreography, but there is good intent—you’re not my adversary; you’re my partner. Together we have to make the best show possible.”
It’s the background of this that excites me. If a client were accessing a past life as a gladiator, feeling the “costume” of armor and the thrill of combat, their conscious mind might interrupt their process — “Wait, I’m fighting with what’s basically a chef’s knife while wearing as much armor as a Roman soldier? And I’ve fought my opponent many times before? This can’t be right. I must be making this up.”
Many if not most of my recent sessions have involved demolishing commonly held beliefs about what modern science has decreed to be fact. Past Life Journeying is the experience of being “boots on the ground” and experiencing the inner world of people living their daily lives in inconceivable circumstances. It requires surrendering to the process in order to access the inner state of the past life personality. I don't devote much of my research to finding historical confirmation of past life events, and discoveries such as Brice Lopez's confirm my belief that we get better data from Past Life Journeys than from historical texts, especially when those historical proclamations are being re-written on a regular basis.
Here’s Brice Lopez in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lbrl2MLWE0
WILLIAM J BALDWIN: "HEALING LOST SOULS" AND ALSO ETs, PART 1
Or: “Florida Man sees alien interference in most of his hypnotized clients.” I recently did a deep dive into the work of Willam J. Baldwin, author and innovator of the Spirit Releasement Technique. Why? I received an email from Udemy, an online training website because I’d researched their Past Life Regression course. (Only $9.99!) Udemy and regressionist Mark Beale were offering a followup course in:
Spirit Releasement Therapy- Spiritual Entity Healing: Earthbound Spirits, DFEs and ETs; Learn about and manage spontaneous entity events during spiritual healing sessions.
(Actually it was their “Advanced Demonstrated” program.) I was familiar with Baldwin’s work because it has been incorporated into another, much more sophisticated Past Life Regression certification program offered by EARTH, the Earth Association for Regression Therapy. When starting out, I looked into their program but bailed when discovering it required a prior certification in Hypnosis, and if you’d read any of this blog, you might know my opinions on the necessity of utilizing Hypnosis to access Past lives. Without ruffling feathers, I’ll propose that we open ourselves to the possibility that, in the 3rd decade of the 21st century, we no longer need to be hypnotized to access past lives. So I was surprised when consulting the website of https://www.earth-association.org, their core curriculum now includes:
“Detecting and releasing intrusive energy and spirit release”
This seems like a direct reference to Baldwin’s work, although no mention is made of Baldwin on the website. Among their Advanced Regression Therapy Trainings is an “Advanced Energy Workshop” whose title page is headlined “Spirit Release and Energy Training.” (Notice the emphasis on the spirit release above the energy training.) An earlier, pre-COVID option in their graduate training program was centered on the spirit release technique. Another certifying organization, The Spiritual Regression Therapy Association, has a similar program titled “Soul Evolution - Transforming Past Lives Workshop” featuring “a group intrusive energy clearance.” Because this is what is being taught to incoming regression therapists, I felt the need to know more about this intrusive energy clearance that I have not, except for one client, encountered in my years of practice.
William J.Baldwin (1937-2004) was a dentist who in the early 1980’s became an ordained minister and then, in the 1990s, earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. But it seems that his entity releasement work was filtered through his role as what his encyclopedia.com page refers to as a pastoral counselor. In 1995, he published “Spirit Releasement Therapy - A Technique Manual” directed at practitioners, and in 2003, “Healing Lost Souls: Releasing Unwanted Spirits from Your Energy Body” where I found this origin story for his joint practice with his wife, Judith:
“In our counseling practice, most of our clients through the years have discovered discarnate interference. Many firmly stated they had never before believed in such a thing, yet the direct experience is hard to deny. I could not pass it off as imaginary, the result of paranoia or delusional thinking. As a scientifically oriented investigator, I recognized and observed this phenomenon, and formed a hypothesis that was not unlike historical descriptions of spirit possession.”
This is followed by a footnote which refers to a book titled “Exorcism” by Olga Hoyt, indicating how his role as a “scientifically oriented investigator” has been filtered through his status as an ordained minister. Baldwin acknowledges this:
The foundation of Spirit Releasement Therapy is the knowledge that all God-created beings contain the monad, the indestructible, eternal spark of God consciousness. All else is illusory and transitory, part of the duality that constitutes this physical reality which encompasses good and evil, light and dark, right and wrong, and other polarities. The Book of Revelations outlines the beginning of the game, the act of choosing sides: Light or darkness.
Again, his religious beliefs are front and center in his work. So how did a dentist who learned hypnosis to treat his dental patients, who then pivoted to past life regressions, make the leap from there into entity releasement, and from there into sending those Dark Force Entities controlling extraterrestrials back to the light?
To my surprise, after only a few months of doing past life regression sessions, I recognized signs and symptoms of what seemed to be discarnate interference in a growing number of my clients. Like many people, I had assumed this condition to be imaginary, contrived, the result of paranoia and delusional thinking...I recognized the connection between human and entity as a parasitic condition, and I began using the term "spirit attachment" instead of “spirit possession.”
I think I found an answer in a book Baldwin wrote in 1999 that is equal parts ahead of its time and extremely strange: “CE-VI - Close Encounters of the Possession Kind.” For those not familiar with the CE-VI, this refers to J. Allen Hynek’s scale of human/alien contact proceeding from Close Encounters I - seeing a UFO from 200 feet away with no contact - to Steven Greer’s extension of the scale in 1993 - CE-6 - intentional contact with UFOs. A famous 1977 movie by Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, brought this concept into popular consciousness. But as an ordained minister, Baldwin discovered :
In clinical practice, we find that more than half our clients are apparently carrying the burden of attached ETs and suffering their influence.
Having published his “Spirit Releasement manual” in 1999, Baldwin and wife Judith had already encountered enough “attached ETs” to propose their own categories of interfering energies:
Over the years of clinical experience I discovered what appeared to be three main types of intrusive, attaching entities: the so-called earthbound spirits (EB) of deceased humans which are bound or stuck in the earth plane and unable or unwilling to move on to the higher realms; the dark force entities (DFE), which includes the classic demon; and aliens or extraterrestrials (ET).
If you’re keeping score, that is:
EB - earthbound spirits
DFE - Dark Force Entities, aka demons
ET - aliens or extraterrestrials
That must have been an interesting clinic he ran at his Center for Human Relations in Enterprise, Florida. The red flag for me arose with this:
In an altered state, also understood as a hypnotic trance, they (the clients) relate to us what happened to them.
I have never recovered a positive opinion of hypnosis after watching “Hellier” season 2, where they brought in an incredibly unethical hypnotist to work on a willing subject to induce an alien abduction, causing him obvious distress, which was filmed and included in the series. To me, this puts an asterisk on all of Baldwin’s work. Subjects in trance are highly suggestible; this is why it is so effective at altering unwanted behaviors such as smoking and overeating. My research is continuing into why this is now a part of the core material that past life regressionists are taught to include in their toolkit.
Back to Baldwin: His heart seems to be in the right place. In the preface to “CE-VI,” he acknowledges that “the channeled information can be totally fabricated by the client, consciously or unconsciously….However, it may be exactly what it appears to be: actual communication with an alien race.” His focus shifts to the “perhaps millions of people (who) suffer with the effects of non-physical or other-dimensional beings which interfere or connect with them in some way.” Baldwin credits his wife Judith’s “spiritual gifts of discernment: clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience...She can perceive discarnate entities of all kinds, determine the degree of soul fragmentation, and gather information regarding past-life carryover of unfinished business.” (The mention of “unfinished business” is to me a clue to Baldwin’s knowledge of the Swygards’ work, since it is a phrase included in “Book 1 - The Awareness Techniques.”) But I don’t think those clients the Baldwin’s were treating at their Enterprise, Florida clinic stood a chance against their deeply held religious beliefs. As Baldwin admits:
Most people affected aren’t aware of the interference until they discover it in a therapy session; the majority of my private clients uncover these unwelcome intrusions.
The equally strange and ahead of its time aspect of Baldwin’s work is that after uncovering and working with the attached alien interfering energy, he bypasses it to address the Dark Force Entity that is controlling ET, often without ET’s knowledge. So he not only sees ET interference but his pastoral counseling training gives him insight into the Dark Force Entity controlling ET. (Does this mean Spielberg’s “ET- The Extraterrestrial” could have been a horror film?) But he avoids the blunt force of Exorcism, opting for a kinder, gentler approach of reasoning with the DFEs before sending them to the Light. What’s interesting is that William J. Baldwin imposed a Christian overlay on hypnotherapy to create Spirit Releasement Therapy and entity removal, which has been adopted by past life regressionists but only after removing Baldwin’s name and his Christian overlay. More on his Spirit Releasement methods in Part 2.
NEUROTHEOLGY, INTENSE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES & PAST LIVES EXPLORATIONS
https://psyche.co/ideas/how-an-intense-spiritual-retreat-might-change-your-brain
A fascinating article about the field of Neurotheology, which the author, Andrew Newberg, has been involved with for 25 years. Newberg is co-author of "How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain." This article describes how scientists and theologians are combining their efforts, utilizing brains scanning technology while people are in deep meditation:
"Insights from the field of neurotheology can help us better understand how intense spiritual experiences affect the brain and might ultimately help people figure out the best ways of having them."
Newberg and co-author Mark Robert Waldman noticed in their research:
"…five elements seem to be common across many enlightenment experiences, whether they occur during spiritual retreats, daily meditation or prayer practices, psychedelic experiences, or even spontaneously."
Intensity
a sense of oneness or unity
a sense of clarity
a sense of surrender
transformation as a result
Clients have emailed me after sessions to describe what they call "expansive" and "transformative" experiences that helped them to find clarity about their presenting issue, and since "Wow!" is what I hear first from clients after a session, "intensity" is definitely a regular occurence in past lives work. From my own experience, I can attest to the power of accessing the Between Lives state as "oneness or unity. " That leaves "a sense of surrender" which is a part of the process — we let go of our present body and personality identification and allow ourselves to experience life in a different body and personality.
I would love the opportunity of having my brain scanned while accessing a Past or Future life, or even better, when in the Non-Physical Experience in-between lives. But for anyone looking to experiment with a non-psychedelic drug method of changing your brain, I suggest a series of Past Life explorations, or my new TimeLine Journeying process
MY "SHELF ELVES" DELIVER A STATUE!
Egyptian Princess Akhenaten
Only a week after running a very exciting but strange life in Egypt I discovered this 12 inch statue in my favorite resale shop, Scallywags in Weaverville, NC. That it reflected the images I “saw” in my session made it seem like a present and a synchronicity, telling me I’m on the right path, especially since it’s not the kind of tchotchke you expect to find in a resale store. Apart from its beauty, the reason it resonated with me so strongly is that my modality is verbal, not visual. In guiding my own sessions, when I ask myself “What, if anything, is covering my feet?” I hear a verbal prompt that leads to an image. (Lately, that prompt has been telling me “Sandals” in some form.) This session was challenging because I was presented with an awareness that I was laying on the ground, on my side. When I asked why I was lying on my side, I was given this image of a young boy of about 10 with an elongated skull, looking up at grownups, some of whom also had elongated skulls while others didn’t. I'd like to think I was given this image so that I would ask why I was laying on my side, and reveal my elongated skull. In this Question and Answer process, sometimes the questions are as inspired as the images.
This was a lesson in “trusting the first image” that I stress to my clients, and reminded me how difficult that can be when that image is far outside the norm. What’s fascinating is how far outside the norm my recent sessions have stretched.
If these images of Akhenaten, daughter of Nefertiti, trigger anyone’s “adjacent” life emotions, contact me and tell me about it at timelinejourneying@gmail.com
A 1960's Reincarnation Musical Based on a 1920’s Play?!
My Spidey-sense was tickled by a reference to the 1970 movie “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” because of a vague memory that it had something to do with reincarnation. As it turns out, it deals with a hypnotic regression session that unexpectedly reveals a past life. That this would happen to hypnotherapist Dr. Brian Weiss a decade later makes it even more interesting. (Time Loops, anyone?) Digging deeper, I discovered that the movie is based on a 1965 Broadway musical of the same name. A musical from 1965 dealing with ESP, hypnotherapy, reincarnation and an immersion in a past life from the 18th century? Ethical standards of the 1960’s being less evolved, the male psychiatrist falls in love, not with the patient, but with her past life personality. Drama, hilarity and a show stopper of a song ensues.
It gets better: the 1965 play was loosely based on a 3-act play, Berkeley Square, from 1926 (!) that explores time travel and the romantic complications that it provokes, which in turn inspired a 1933 movie of the same name. The loops continue backwards as the play was based on an unfinished novel by Henry James that was published as “The Sense of the Past” in 1917, a year after James’ death. Let’s start there and see how the story evolves.
James’ book deals with a man who “feels himself going back in time as he crosses the threshold” of an 18th century house, and meets his remote ancestor of the same name when viewing his portrait. On a later visit to the house, he is transported to the early 19th century where romantic complications occur. The book was unfinished but notes indicated the plot’s progression.
Berkeley Square, the 1933 movie, was based on a 1926 play that ran in both London and on Broadway. The movie depicts an American man who inherits a house in London and becomes “increasingly obsessed with his ancestor’s diary, causing his fiancee…great concern.” The time travel element is introduced as the man, Peter Standish, is convinced he will be transported back to his ancestor of the same name, and “all he needs to do is follow his ancestor’s diary, since he already knows what will happen, from reading it.” He is transported back to 1784, and tries to follow the diary and his ancestor’s marriage to his fiancee, Nan, but struggles when he falls in love with her sister, Helen. Peter becomes a “man out of time” as he juggles life in the 18th century with his knowledge of life in the 20th, and returns to his modern life. But he is changed by his experiences and the feelings he had for his 18th century lover, so he breaks off his engagement. The movie ends with Peter visiting Helen’s grave, where he discovers that she died young but left an epitaph on her tombstone expressing her conviction that they will be together, “not in my time, nor in yours, but in God’s.” So we have time travel, reincarnation, and the protagonist falling in love with someone other than who he was supposed to marry, according to his ancestor’s diary.
Some elements made it into the 1965 stage musical, “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.” I assume “forever” is referring to Time and not Distance. Now the story begins with a woman, Daisy, who has ESP, an enhanced ability to make plants grow, and a smoking habit. She seeks help from a psychiatrist, Mark, for hypnosis. Under hypnosis, “she describes living in a previous life in late 18th century England as ‘Melinda.’” Melinda’s romantic complications stem from her marriage to Edward, an unfaithful painter. (The Broadway musical features a different actress portraying Melinda.) In further sessions, Mark falls in love with Melinda but doesn’t reveal to Daisy what he uncovered. He does consult his colleagues who dismiss him, and in Act 2, a rich guy enters the picture offering to finance a study of Daisy’s case, and get this, “in exchange for Mark’s help in discovering who he will be in his next life, which will allow him to leave his fortune to his future self.” (This is not something I have considered for my TimeLine Journeying process, but I will take it under advisement.) Daisy, who was dealing with low self esteem at the outset, discovers what is happening and that Mark prefers Melinda to herself, and tells Mark that she is “through being a go-between for you and your dream girl.” She leaves and is about to board a plane to return home when “her ESP powers warn her that the plane on which she plans to travel will crash. She realizes at last how special she is…leaves her starchy fiancee and she and Mark unite to explore their extraordinary future.” Whew… Reincarnation, ESP, hypnotic regression, a tumultuous romance in a past life, a “starchy” fiancee in a current life, romantic complications, and a happy ending, plus 15 songs! (An interesting followup would explore their relationship after the musical ends.)
Now we get to the 1970 movie version: Barbra Streisand plays Daisy, and her performance of the title song, though it wasn’t a hit for her at the time, has become a beloved standard*. The film version Daisy is also a clairvoyant (and extremely hypnotizable) chain smoker seeking help from a psychiatrist, Marc, for hypnotherapy, which reveals her past life as Lady Melinda, “a seductive 19th century coquette.” Marc doesn’t inform his client as he falls for Daisy’s former self, while Daisy falls for Marc; again, it was 1970, and boundaries in Broadway musicals are crossed when true love is involved. (Streisand plays and sings both Daisy and Melinda in the film.) Daisy discovers Marc’s true feelings for her Other self, and leaves. According to Wikipedia, “When she returns for a final meeting with him, she mentions fourteen additional lives, including her forthcoming birth as Laura and subsequent marriage to the therapist in the year 2038.” (I assume, since this is 69 years in the future, this occurs in a future incarnation.) Got all that? ESP, hypnotic regression, a tumultuous past life uncovered, romantic complications, with the addition of future lives where true love is found.
Quite the journey from an unfinished 1917 story to a 1930’s film dealing with time travel, to a 1960’s Broadway musical referencing hypnotic regression and a financial incentive to explore future lives; not what I was expecting when I heard a reference to the film version of “On a Clear Day” in a podcast.
In a scene from the film, the psychiatrist, Marc, has jeopardized his job by researching reincarnation with Daisy but instead of being fired, the university president informs him that a rich donor, a Mr. Stratton, is willing to fund his research. Why?
It occurred to him that if it’s possible to identify one’s previous incarnations, it might be also possible to determine one’s future ones, in which case Mr. Stratton could leave his money to himself.
When asked if he is okay with this direction, the president replies:
No, I think reincarnation is appalling. It kills ambition, perpetuates human misery, and propagates false hopes. And it’s obviously a pack of lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-9ONjJSTNQ&t=3s
This scene might be a built-in “disclaimer” that the subject they were dealing with is “a pack of lies,” undercutting how ahead of its time it could have been. That the original musical was on Broadway in the mid-1960’s sheds new light on mainstream awareness of hypnotic regression in that time period, and also makes Diane and William Swygard’s non-hypnotic past life explorations even more radical. I welcome any opportunity to marinate in popular culture’s awareness of past lives, with the bonus inclusion of the possibilities and complications inherent in time travel; it was a complete surprise to encounter Future Lives on that menu.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz5DLO8fclA
Quotations from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_a_Clear_Day_You_Can_See_Forever_(film), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_a_Clear_Day_You_Can_See_Forever, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Square_(play), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Square_(1933_film)
BASHAR WEIGHS IN ON REINCARNATION
Even though I swore I wouldn’t give Darryl Anka $35 for another Bashar webinar, I couldn’t resist when the June 19, 2021 stream was titled “Reincarnation - A Deeper Explanation.” My misgiving is not based on the information from Bashar, the future self that Darryl Anka has been channeling since the 1980’s. I appreciate Bashar’s always unique take, but it’s the format; there’s not enough Bashar. This June event was particularly frustrating. The 90 minute webinar was 5 minutes of commercials; 12 or so minutes of Bashar speaking on the topic (when he could have spent the whole 90 and not exhausted the possibiities;) an hour of people chiming in on Zoom and asking their personal questions, unmoderated (!); then a final recorded segment of Bashar answering pre-submitted questions from a moderator. Too much audience, not enough Bashar. I know in the modern era, the audience is the co-star of the show, and including them, whether sing-alongs from musicians, or Q&A’s from speakers, is mandatory. But paying $35 when much less than half of the time allowed is spent on the topic is frustrating. In the Bashar stream I saw last summer, his info was fascinating, but the questioner who got in first spent over 20 minutes turning it into a personal session, and it got old. Rant concluded; on to the topic.
I have learned —proving an old dog can learn a new trick — to recognize my resistance to new ideas as an opportunity to expand instead of rejecting them outright, as I used to do. So when Bashar addressed a topic I am resisting — how multiple people can connect to a past life personality — I took the opportunity to “doubt my doubts” and listen. My first impression was to be unimpressed; using a graphic I’m probably restricted from sharing, it seemed as if Bashar was validating his audience’s experience when they connected to a historical figure, such as the all-too-often cited Cleopatra. Maybe I felt that way because of how much he caters to his audience in the webinars instead of recognizing how I’m resisting a new idea?
After “doubting my doubts” about this subject, it took a second listen (available for 24 hours with purchase) and extensive consulting of my notes to appreciate how Bashar is committed to explaining the mechanisms behind the process, as he describes it, “how it appears as if the same soul is having different physical incarnations one after the other.” This differentiation between the experience and the mechanism was the purpose of this webinar, and one that I didn’t appreciate until I focused on my notes. Bashar’s deeper explanation of reincarnation begins with grasping how linear time, or the Space/Time lens, distorts our reality:
But this is the explanation when many people say, “Oh, I used to be Cleopatra or I used to be Julius Caesar, in one of MY incarnations.” That’s the perspective of the distortion caused by the Space/Time lens. But if you understand the simultaneity of everything, you can realize of course, any being can connect to any other being, and that’s why you can have 50 people, 100 people, a thousand people, all saying “I used to be Cleopatra”. Because it’s not that they used to be Cleopatra, because Cleopatra exists exactly at the same time you do. But a thousand people can make an energy connection to Cleopatra in the present, and thus download information that may, through the distortion of the physical space/time lens, make it seem as if that was you, because you’re assuming that the same soul is having these incarnations over and over and over again.
Bashar is talking about taking “information” from these historical sources, which is different than being in that past life personalities’ body. In my TimeLIie Journeying process, the intent is seeing through the eyes, hearing through the ears, and feeling what that personality was going through. 99% of the time people have been told they were Cleopatra by an amateur or unscrupulous practitioner, and not been guided to the experience. When someone claims to be Cleopatra, I ask, “What was her inner life like? Did she really love Antony and what was their relationship like? How comfortable was she in her ruling position? What was her emotional state in the days leading up to her death? What was it like for her to drop the body? Did she remain attached to that body, and if so, what was the unfinished business that kept her earthbound? And lastly, what is the message from this Cleopatra life for your present life? And how are you feeding back to this adjacent Cleopatra TimeLine?” Without asking and receiving an answer to these questions, it’s just like a reading from a book. Wisdom derived from even the greatest of history books can not compete with the life lessons from a deep Past Life Journey.
Credit given to Bashar for acknowledging what the experience of having a multitude of people connecting and downloading information from that individual must be like, (and how it’s a 2-way street!):
… understand that it’s not that it was YOUR past life, but that it is another person existing at the same time, that has their own life, but you get to extract whatever information from their experience of life that you need, while they can do the same to you. Who knows how many connections Cleopatra had? Who knows how many times Cleopatra must have assumed, “Oh, this must be coming from one of my future lives,” when in fact again, it’s all simultaneously co-existent.
In this framework, it’s more evidence for simultaneous lives, which is an approach I’ve never considered. I’m not completely sold on this. It still seems like consulting another’s experience instead of accessing it for oneself. But Bashar uses this example as an opportunity to “deconstruct these ideas of old fashioned definitions of experience…behind everything you experience in physical form”:
So, again, this helps you live more in the moment; understand the mechanisms, and how different a description of the mechanism can be from a description of what appears to be the experience from a space/time lens perspective.
That deconstruction of our outmoded ideas about our present physical experience is central to Bashar’s message, so I have come to understand this use of the Cleopatra example. I still wish there were more Bashar in his presentations. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think. The event is available for download at:
https://www.basharstore.com/reincarnation-a-deeper-explanation/
SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THAT BRAINS SYNC AS PEOPLE INTERACT..
Scientists are now recognizing that brains synchronize when people interact, something we enlightened folk already knew. Now they have the data which upends the current materialist theory of consciousness.
“An upshot of this proposal is that it can potentially validate our most intimate experiences: When we become aware that ‘we’ are sharing a moment with someone else, it is no longer necessarily the case that we are fundamentally separated by our distinct heads — we could really be two individuals sharing in one and the same unfolding experience,” says Tom Froese, a cognitive scientist from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan.
Makes me wonder about what scientists are calling “inter-brain synchronization” when I’m conducting a Past Life session with someone. During a session, my brain is synchronized with my client’s brain, while they are connected to and accessing memories and emotions from an “adjacent” life, and we’re all “sharing in one and the same unfolding experience.”
If anyone has access to an EEG machine, let me know.
TUT DOES TIME LOOPS
Mike Dooley remains a source of inspiration in his “Notes from the Universe” emails. They’re even more inspiring when they recognize Time with a capital T. His reference to our future self “reaching back” is something I wrote about in my review of Eric Wargo’s excellent 2018 book “Time Loops” (https://pastlivesproject.org/temporal-component-blog/eric-wargo-his-book-time-loops-and-retrocausality) but this note sums it up beautifully:
You could always send a golden thought balloon…(t)o the most rocking possible version of your future self, and thank them for reaching back to you with inspiration, hunches, instincts, and impulses, to help you bridge all gaps, connect all dots, and leap tall buildings.
You know, to bring about your quickest merger.
And then…remain open to the new ideas you start receiving, no matter how crazy and outlandish they may seem.
BB'S INTERVIEW WITH DALE GILLILAN
I was interviewed by martial artist and coach Dale Gillilan for his podcast series; Your Path to Mastery. I’ll admit it was a bit daunting to be interviewed for a series that promises
“the information that you need straight from current masters of many disciplines”
but I’d done a Zoom session with Dale and he was impressed enough to invite me for this interesting talk, very different than anything I’ve ever done. The link to the episode is below, Dale’s website is:
https://toolsforthejourney.com
With gratitude to Ashley Long (createtheleap.com) who connected me with Dale Gillilan.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s1e6-bobby-baronowski/id1558773542?i=1000517698978
PS - yes, my name was mis-spelled, it’s an occupational hazard with a 10 -letter last name.
AFTERLIFE JOKES!
Here is something I didn’t know was a thing: Afterlife jokes! On the otherwise very serious near-death.com website, author Kevin Williams has put together pages of jokes about death, dying and the afterlife. Here is my favorite:
I just read a list of “The 100 Things To Do Before You Die”. I was pretty surprised that “Yell for help” wasn’t one of them.
Kevin Williams: https://near-death.com/afterlife-jokes/
GEORGE CARLIN'S WISDOM ON SELF HELP
George Carlin’s always unique slant on self help, followed by an an actual self help tip from Michael Talbot:
OR… open your awareness to noticing what feels like an “echo” from another existence; these “various pieces of” ourself might
“One of the easiest ways for you to begin to decipher your past lives is simply to analyze your current psychological makeup. Many past-life researchers believe that past-life origins can be found not only for current emotional and physical problems, moods, habits, talents, and ways of relating with people, but even for food preferences, clothing tastes, nuances of personality, facial expressions, and body language. By determining which of these various pieces of yourself are holdovers from other lives, you can begin to formulate certain pictures of who and what you've been before.”
FROM "YOUR PAST LIVES: A REINCARNATION HANDBOOK" 1987
Michael Talbot is more well known as the author of "The Holographic Universe" (1991)
THE LESSON OF THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM
The Antikythera Mechanism has been in the news lately as 21st century technology has been used to create a replica that gives insight into its design and its abilities. From an excellent article on art.net.com:
Discovered in 1901 off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera, the mechanism was actually an astrological clock that would have shown the movement of the five known planets and predicted astronomical events such as the phases of the moon and lunar and solar eclipses—but with the earth placed at the center of the universe.
A COMPUTER GENERATED RENDERING OF THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM
This is what was found off the Greek island of Antikethera in 1901. As described on the always awesome Daily Grail website:
“…we can only stand in awe of the talents of whomever originally conceived of, and built, the Antikythera Mechanism in ancient times.*” The complexity of this mechanism has expanded our appreciation of how advanced Greek civilization was when this would have been in use over 2,000 years ago. BUT…
The Antikythera Mechanism, for all its sophistication was based on the belief at that time that the “Earth was placed at the center of the universe.” No one is re-writing our understanding of the cosmos based on thais mechanism (not yet, anyway.) That is why I remind researchers and practitioners of past lives to be aware of the context of the wisdom of the giants on whom shoulders we stand. The Awareness Techniques, which inspired me on this path, was published over 50 years ago, in 1970. Brian Weiss first published his work in 1988, and Michael Newton in 1994, and dear Dolores Cannon started publishing in the mid-1980’s. All of this information is at least 25 years old; in Cannon’s case, readers can see her evolution over time and 19 books. Like this mysterious ancient technology, we have inherited these amazing spiritual technologies, but I feel compelled to ask this question:
What is the Past Life Exploration field’s version of the Antikythera Mechanism, seeming to be advanced for its time but limited by the beliefs of the mid-to late 20th century?
The recent expansion of my explorations to include Future Lives, which I am introducing as TimeLine Journeying, was one such evolution. My own experiences, both with clients and in my own personal work, pushed me beyond the construct of only considering past lives and even linear time. And while it was an uncomfortable leap forward, TimeLine Journeying is proving to open new realms of discovery. My goal was always to ask, “What is the next step forward for Past Life Exploration?” Asking that question has guided me through the Time door and suggests:
-opening ourselves to non-linear time,
-to the possibility that the origin of our issues and even talents could be in a Future incarnation;
-and into a fascinating exploration of the concept of simultaneous Time.
More about Time on my Temporal Component blog here on the website, and more to come in these pages.
*https://www.dailygrail.com/2017/06/recreating-the-antikythera-mechanism/
THE CASSANDRA OF THE ATTENTION ECONOMY
This is different — it has nothing to do with past lives per se. But since past life journeying is all about expanding consciousness, it is worthy to consider how our consciousness is being contracted rather than expanded by our increasing internet usage, and the way we’ve allowed the internet to influence our consciousness. Michael Goldhaber predicted the internet would destroy our ability to focus by rewiring our brains way back in the mid-1980’s. He coined the term “attention economy” to refer to the way we “spend” the finite resource of our attention, and how in 2021 it evolved into “a world in which everyone is desperately seeking their own audience and fracturing reality in the process.” Sound familiar? Reframe the concept of the attention economy by substituting the word “consciousness” for “attention” and consider how we’ve allowed our connected devices to rewire our consciousness economy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/opinion/michael-goldhaber-internet.html?referringSource=articleShare
NETFLIX'S 6 PART DOC "SURVIVING DEATH"
Netflix’s 6-part documentary “Surviving Death” has been getting much well-deserved buzz lately. It has great credentials with the participation of investigative reporter Leslie Kean whose 2017 book, “Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence For an Afterlife” figures prominently in its DNA. In that book from which the series derives its title, Kean wrote of her interest and exploration of physical mediumship and her personal experience with a disembodied hand in one seance. The first episode gives an indication of what is to follow; beautiful camera work and imagery, exceptional music and highly emotional stories from the participants of Near Death Experiences.
And then it gets really weird, incomprehensibly weird at times. An enormous amount of screen time is given over to the phenomena of ectoplasm, a gauzy and cloud-like physical manifestation of “spirit energy” that was all the rage in the late 1800’s. This out of left field topic was given serious consideration by the Society for Psychical research, a scientific organization founded in 1882 that is still operating in London and whose photographic evidence is included. Interesting that the "evidence" presented for this phenomena is 100+ year old photographs.
Then it takes another weird, almost fatal turn. The better part of 2 entire episodes are given over to psychic mediums who contact the departed to bring messages from “the undiscovered country” as Shakespeare described death. This becomes an uncomfortable peek into multiple families’ grieving processes that continues throughout the middle episodes; in fact, it should have a “trigger warning” for anyone grieving. It’s painful to hear story after story of lives cut short interwoven with psychic and physical mediums attempts to convey personalized communication from the dead. All of the practitioners involved appear to be sincere, even though one of them is borderline outed as using FaceBook as the source for specific information.
Episodes 4 & 5 focus on ADC; you will learn to love acronyms after this series. After Death Communication is when signs and symbols from the departed, some of them pre-arranged, appear as tearful confirmations of the soul’s survival. There is no medium bridging the gap between worlds and this is the most effective part of the series so far, although once again, heart wrenching stories of grief and loss provide the impetus for this phenomena. EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomena and spirit photography are also given screen time in the middle episodes, a further movement toward the fringes of paranormal research. (If you’re pressed for time, watch episode 1 and skip to episode 5; if you stay for the middle ones, bring a box of tissues.)
Time out for a rant here. “Surviving Death” was recommended to me since the last episode focuses on Reincarnation. Episode 5 profiles a couple dealing with the loss of their daughter in an auto accident, they established a non-profit to allow parents to explore both science and spirituality in a grief support group. The father tells the interviewer that his inspiration was the need to gather “proof of their continued existence.” As a Past/Other Lives practitioner, I feel like that “evidence” is available every time we access an Other Life personality, and “proven” when that past life personality reaches the ends of that life, dies, and enters into the non-physical realm between lives. I was gritting my teeth when I started this documentary series because the NDE (Near Death Experience) researchers are getting so much media attention (and funding) for an experience that is anecdotal and non-reproducible, while past life research is sidelined. This Between Lives state which I call the NPE (Non-Physical Experience) CAN be experienced. As an example, the otherwise excellent Past Lives Podcast out of the UK is in my podcast feed but the majority of the authors interviewed are dealing with NDE’s and its only 1 out of every 4 even deals with Past Lives. Rant temporarily concluded, until we get to episode 6 titled “Reincarnation.”
The final episode deals with Jim Tucker’s work with the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Tucker is known for his involvement with multiple cases of children’s memories of past lives, most beginning at age 2 or 3 (and interestingly fading by age 6 or 7.) Three well known cases are shown in detail. The families' stories are fascinating and well-documented, even though some of these children are now teens or older and no longer in touch with that past life information. The middle episode documents a boy from Oklahoma who “remembers” a life in Hollywood as a movie extra and then owner of a talent agency. This is the section I was cringing while I watched. The teenager is being re-traumatized while being confronted with this information from the past, at one point leaving the room, in another he is close to tears. It was painful to watch the filmmakers disregarding his discomfort for the sake of their TV show. A particularly distressing section involves a visit to the home of the daughter of the deceased. She is accompanied by a relative who knew the deceased and asks the obviously uncomfortable teen questions about specific memories. (Yes, I know the parents must have agreed to their son’s participation but that doesn’t excuse this denial of the boy’s discomfort.) It’s only at the end of the 3rd section, another well known case of a boy who remembers his past life as a pilot from World War 2, that the teenager himself shows the wisdom lacking in the researchers. He acknowledges that his past life memories were an attempt to complete unfinished business from his wartime death. To continue my previous rant, these people should be given the opportunity to release the trauma from those past lives, which is probably why this information is coming to the surface. Instead, they’re being paraded before the camera in an attempt to prove the survival of death that the title references.
Something good did emerge from watching this mini-series, and that was a revelation about my discomfort with the word “Reincarnation.” I never use it and rarely refer to it in my presentations, and I came to a realization about it after watching these episodes. Reincarnation is presented here as “I used to be someone else, and I am remembering details from that life” and that is seen as definitive proof that “Surviving Death” is possible. Apart from my previous rant about ignoring the issue of unfinished business from those previous incarnations, this focus on “I used to be this other person” needs to be expanded. What if we could consider that “This past life personality and I are in a relationship that extends across time and space?” Not the sort of approach likely to get a 5 episode deal from Netflix, but maybe this show and its flaws can open up a dialogue about how Past Lives exploration can provide experiential evidence for the survival of the soul after death, the “proof of continued existence” that seekers give away to mediums and paranormal technologies. Rant concluded. “Surviving death” is available on Netflix.