#pastlives Archives - Closer To Venus

#120 Nicki Ojeda: Tarot And Past Life Readings

May 6, 2023 by Johnny Burke

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus, I’m Johnny Burke and today’s guest is Nicki Ojeda,@tarotwithtatiara also known as Tatiara. She’s a tarot and past life reader.

She has over 35 years of experience, and today we will talk about the use of Tarot in healing, personal growth, and the importance of myth, symbolism, and archetypal awareness in her work. Nikki, welcome to the show.

Nikki Ojeda: Thank you for having me.

Johnny Burke: How did you get started? As a tarot reader and then a past life reader, did they both happen at once, or did one come before the other?

Nikki Ojeda: Well, that’s interesting. I always had mystical experiences as a child, including past life memories. And those tamped down pretty early on because of my family’s, rather toxic Christian background. That’s more on the back burner. Then when I was 15 years old, I started working at a little witchy herb shop and one day I just told the owner who became my mentor, I just said, “I’m into Tarot cards” and, I don’t even know why I said that.

And my mentor gifted me with the herbal Tarot deck, which had all the herbs that would be correlated Be correlated with each card. And so I learned the symbolism of herbs and tarot and essential oils, which I incorporate. in my work I learned about it all at the same time, at a pretty young age.

And it wasn’t long after that I was working at Renaissance Festivals and I started doing professional tarot reading. It took a lot longer for me to own the past life readings. I really didn’t start doing that for another 10 years. It took that time to really learn how, because I had some like-minded friends and we were doing it together, having experiences together, including a communal past life memory with like five of us. So it took some time for me to really trust myself and own that. I’m definitely beyond all that now.

Johnny Burke: So the past life memories, you had them when you were pretty young then, right?

Nikki Ojeda: Yes. The first one was when King Tut was on the cover of National Geographic, and I was with my mother in the dentist’s office and we were looking through it and I was distraught and crying. I was saying,” it’s all broken now. and that used to be red.” And she was just like patting me on the head like, okay.

And then another really strong one was when she was my sister and there was a windmill and we had like little caps and I found out later that we have Dutch ancestry, so that’s kind of interesting. Which brings up the reincarnation on ancestral lines or not.

Johnny Burke: The first one you said you were in a dentist office, and you were looking at,National Geographic. What actually was the memory?

Nikki Ojeda: Of being in Egypt.

Johnny Burke: Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s, that’s what I thought. Okay. So it seems like you had some kind of predisposition to this world of the unseen world, as a lot of us like to describe it. So looking for the Tarot and gravitating to that type of thing, it didn’t seem like it was that much of a stretch.

Nikki Ojeda: No, I feel like I came into this world this way. I feel like the family that I was in the later generations, like my brothers’ kids, Iinfluenced them.

He told me in the best way because the other influences were like a toxic brand of Christianity. Then they were like a hundred years behind the times I would say. I went to Jesus camp and I was different. I didn’t try to be different, but I just couldn’t do that. I couldn’t fall for it. I did till I was like eight or nine, to tell you the truth. Then the time came where it was-

Johnny Burke: It’s an experience for sure. I didn’t have that type of Christian upbringing, but I was born in New Jersey. Pretty much everybody went to church and went to CCD after school. I just thought it was normal. Do you also have like mediumistic type abilities?

Nikki Ojeda: Yes. I’ve had definite experiences, one of them, a friend got murdered and another one committed suicide, and they visited me.

And with the second one, my friend was there, and she said that my face became his, and I got very cold and it’s like, I felt like I was behind myself and he was in front was like he was saying goodbye. Really, it was, really sad.

When I’m doing past life readings for people, they will have some sort of relative come forward or even Tarot readings occasionally, some dead relative that they know of will come forward. I don’t try to make that happen, and I never have, but I don’t say, oh, ‘I’m a medium. We’ll talk to your ancestors. ‘

But they do come sometimes when there’s a message,

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard that more than once. Definitely. Let’s talk about the Tarot. It’s been described- this is one of my recent guest speakers, A book of ancient wisdom hidden in plain sight. Would you agree?

Nikki Ojeda: Yes, that is a beautiful description. All these legends are fascinating. Of course, they’re not proven, but the earliest decks are from the 13 hundreds and one legend I really think is cool was that the minor arcana is akin to the standard playing cards, and it was used as a game. They say that the major arcana, which is almost like a pictorial initiation journey or even like the hero’s journey- like Joseph Campbell, it’s very much an archetypal journey. And the people who were the seer or the village witch or whoever that would be had their copy of the major arcana and they would mix them with the minor arcana, and keep the other set hidden.

That’s a legend anyway, makes sense in a way, because they were out to stamp out anyone who wasn’t the status quo when it comes to anything mystical was not tolerated. We all know that.

Johnny Burke: The explanation that I got from this particular speaker was, that it was transferred into symbolism- wisdom because they didn’t want some maniacal ruler or despot to burn the books, as it were. With the tarot. There’s no main book to burn, is there? It’s a deck of cards. So I thought that was really interesting. So how old is the Tarot? I’ve heard different things about this.

I’ve heard some people say it goes back to the 17th century, but others tell me that it goes back much, much farther.

Nikki Ojeda: Well first in real life, the earliest cards are from the 13 hundreds, but there is every reason to believe that they are older. Though we can’t prove it, my intuition tells me they go back as early as the earliest mystery schools and people writing things down, but the ideas are even yet old. These are just the archetypal ideas of, initiation and learning and growing and spiritual development really for the major arcana. And then you add the might arcana, and that’s, that’s how it affects your everyday. I believe they’re just as old as they can be for us to have those ideas when someone finally puts them together.

Johnny Burke: So mediumship, past life, and Tarot readings, how are they different and how are they similar?

Nikki Ojeda: Okay, I do want to point out that, past life readings are not the same thing as past life regressions. That gets mixed up a lot with people. A past life regression, you are being put in a trance and ideally, you’ll have a reading afterward, but you’re guided in. Now I’m the one who goes in, I give the Tarot readings, I go in, I view everything, and I, have my certain consciousness keys that the life that is relevant will come up because it’s all about empowering especially with past lives. It’s all about taking a look at these unconscious patterns that are in the way. And sometimes there are things that you can’t logically connect with your life events, almost like you came in with this challenge or that difficulty or something. Sometimes it’s that clear, but either way, I have it to where the life that is relevant will show itself. that’s the difference. I’m kind of going in to look at what has caused the thing in question. And now with Tarot reading, I call it a look at your current trajectory. I don’t believe that things are set in stone. I believe there are certain things that are sort of contracted to happen, like soul contracts and stuff.

But how that happens is like a mandala of possibility. so by having this extra awareness, then the querent can have a little more insight and empowerment to make these shifts and balances, to sort of call in the right outcomes where possible, there are certain things we have to go through, but even just having the insight is empowerment. So I’m definitely all about that. And, like I said, with the mediumship, that sort of just comes with certain readings and with certain people, it doesn’t always happen,

Johnny Burke: Doesn’t always. Okay.

Yeah.

Nikki Ojeda: As far as talking to spirits of the dead, mediumship is concerned they come, but they aren’t always there.

Johnny Burke: Question about spirits; I’ve had this question for quite some time. Do you think that spirits, that, not the ones that just come through during a mediumship reading or Tarot reading or anything else, but spirits in general? I’ve heard people say there isn’t such thing as earthbound spirits, whereas other people, other intuitives say, yes, there definitely is. What is your take?

Nikki Ojeda: The most honest thing that I can say is that it really doesn’t matter. Because everything’s all in our brains. Yes, you can say that, but there are also forces outside of us. Two, and it’s all about dancing with this unseen realm and having a good relationship with this unseen realm. But sometimes as humans, we’ll personify certain energies and archetypes because we can’t relate to the infinite as easily. It’s like a way of filtering down the infinite sometimes, so as we work with larger energies and sometimes, it is just so obviously, a spirit because I’ll say a certain thing that lets the person know that it is them. There’s, there’s a strange example that I’ll cite.

There’s an interesting incident where I was doing a reading for someone and a person came forth and she had the message for him of ‘Periwinkle peace’ and other descriptors, he knew that it was his grandmother because she would talk about this periwinkle wallpaper or something and how peaceful it was, and he immediately knew. So there’s often little things like that. They’re not just universal. That’s one way that we get clues. And then when you’re attuned to intuition in the unseen realm, you’ll really start to be able to tell what those feel like as opposed to archetypal energy.

Johnny Burke: The archetypal energy; that’s yet another question. I think what a lot of us are trying to figure out is what is the difference between residual energy, which is like a repeating tape loop, and a spirit being that has an intelligence that actually recognizes you and takes you in and it seems like it’s living.

Nikki Ojeda: Well first some things are just always going to be a mystery, but the residual energy, it kind of always acts the same. It kind of always feels the same for the most part. it’s not as personal. It’s more just like feelings, energies, and then sometimes I think that’s what happens when you have a ghost or, or something like that it’s just like an energy signature, it’s, it’s not as personal from what I know, but I know it varies and some things will just always be a mystery, like with what the difference is. But I think that the main difference is that these other spirits that are coming to you are here to guide you.

Johnny Burke: So you do believe that we can contact spirits, we can make contact with the dead then?

Nikki Ojeda: If they’re available, yes, but I think they’re not all going to be available.

Johnny Burke: Here’s another question about the tarot. Um, I heard this actually very recently.

There is no, there are no bad cards in the tarot. Unlike some TV shows and movies depict the hangman or the fool, that seems to have a negative connotation. Is that accurate that there are no bad cards in the Tarot?

Nikki Ojeda: Well, it just depends on what you mean by that. They’re all information and opportunities. I don’t consider them as negative, in the sense sometimes it does mean that you’re going to have a challenge or going through something. probably the tower and the Ten of Swords or the two that I would consider like, okay, this is going to be something of an ordeal. But does a death card mean someone’s going to die or something like that? No. it’s like something has to come to an end. Something’s going to come to an end, and if we can find a way to let go of what needs to go, we are thus empowered. But it’s always an opportunity.

Johnny Burke: Okay, so when you’re shuffling the cards, and a lot of us are thinking, how can you really overcome the randomness of how the cards are dealt? Do you believe the cards that are shown are exactly what that person needs at that moment?

Nikki Ojeda: I think they are because, there’s a big ritual that I go through before I’m doing these, even if it’s a group of readings in a row now, will the message always be what they need? We’re all fallible and humans, and so it’s up to me to try to interpret in the most empowering way and offer practices, not just like, ‘oh yes, you do have this challenge and you’re messed up here. Good luck. Bye-bye.’ No, it’s all about offering checks and balances for the energies, and lots of times they’ll feel it, and every now and then you just get a bad reading or they’re, they’re not into it or they try to control the reading or that’s always going to happen. But it’s kind of rare.

Johnny Burke: Okay. When you draw the cards for this particular person as a psychic, are you making the interpretation based on the energy from that person, or is it coming from something else? Perhaps a spirit guide, something like that?

Nikki Ojeda: So when I do Tarot readings, I don’t call on particular spirits.

I just put things in place to where I allow myself to be that channel. There’s like a protective thing so that when one does communicate, like I tell people, just because a spirit said it doesn’t mean it’s true, but you can feel when it’s aligned and when it’s not. But I don’t even focus on spirits at all when I’m doing that.

I tune in and I’ve learned to just get out of the way and just start talking. I’m very intuitive and being able to trust that was a process too, even when I was already doing it professionally. I’m just much better now, which makes sense. And a lot of that just has to do with getting out of the way and allowing that energy to come through as purely as possible. So I don’t think I will just start talking.

Johnny Burke: Okay. Now symbolism, myth and, and archetypes are obviously very important with your work. Does that relate mostly to the Tarot, the past life readings or perhaps both?

Nikki Ojeda: It definitely relates to both and they’re everywhere. They relate to how I do personalized essential oils for people so that they can work with archetypal energies. I give them hows, and we even do personalized archetypal, one-on-one, embodiment workshops. It’s to get in there because lots of times things are in the body. By learning how to work with that, that’s a whole nother conversation. But the point is that symbolism and archetype and myth is woven into everything that I do because there’s like opening your third eye, but also you touch into your heart and the space below your belly button is where a lot of energy is too.

The archetypes are the whole gamut of human experiences and consciousness, and there’s the collective unconscious, and we use them in filmmaking and when a movie is really good, there is archetypal and mythological stuff going on.

There’s deep symbolism beyond just what you see when it’s a really good moving experience, and when that’s not there, it’s not a very good movie unless it’s just a silly little thing you enjoy. But generally speaking as humans, the more we tap into that purposefully and there’s lots of different ways to do it. I don’t believe one way is for everybody. I don’t think the Tarot will resonate with everybody.I respect how different we all are, but utilizing our own personal symbolism it’s a path. It’s exploration. It’s all about knowing thyself.

Johnny Burke: Okay for the person that doesn’t know anything about this, what exactly is an archetype? In other words, how would you explain this to a high school kid?

Nikki Ojeda: It’s like a primordial energy pattern. It’s like the first of its kind on one level, or it’s a universal cluster of meaning that we all automatically know, like mother or hero or healer or criminal, you it’s just part of our collective human experience, and then they get increasingly more complex. And then it depends on where you’re coming from. You have the psychological, I read Carl Jung at 11, and didn’t quite understand it, but it was putting me in touch with the numinous and I just kept with it. Then it came back full circle, and now I really utilized the best of his ideas and more so, the people who moved on and developed those.

Those archetypes are like the self and the inner child. And then we have saboteur and shadow, anima animus. So that’s one way. And then like back to like film tropes, those are a form of archetypes too. So, Plato called them forms. So they’re like first forms, primordial energy patterns. That’s the best way to describe it.

Johnny Burke: Okay. Speaking of primordial energy patterns, ancestral DNA, plays a part in your work as well. So what exactly is that and how do you work with it?

Nikki Ojeda: So that brings up a big thing I really have had to learn to do, and that is to be a trauma-informed counselor. Because lots of times the things that we keep coming up against in repeat readings and any healing journey is the patterns from our family and even from our society. And it creates a sort of proclivity to be a certain way no matter how much healing we’ve done. It’s like having a good relationship with, okay, I have a proclivity to get triggered by ‘x’, and working with that ancestral DNA, we can transform what we can, but we often have to have this radical self-acceptance and compassion that is an important part of the healing journey and figuring out a way, that’s another conversation of getting in there and keeping the good guidance. The ancestral and generational energy and seeing where they had trauma that they embodied. We all have these horrific backgrounds somewhere. Whether you were family was burned at the stake or whether you had holocaust or slavery or fill in the blank. So it’s just different personalized proclivities that are something that we can’t just brush aside for deep healing and deep transformation and spiritual growth. It’s just something that has to be looked at and shifted with that non-judgment of oneself.

Johnny Burke: If someone were to come to you and said, well, I’m interested in the tarot, but I’m interested in past life readings. Is that the same thing? I know you just answered this question a few moments ago, but is that the same thing as past life regression? What type of person is going to be better off having a past life reading as opposed to doing a past life regression session with a hypnotherapist??

Nikki Ojeda: If it’s not moving and if it’s causing you more pain to even look, it takes a little bit of bravery to want to look within and do that. Like I tell people, this is not a parlor trick for me. I’m really seeking to empower and help people shift these energy blocks. There are certain situations where maybe, after a couple of past life readings, it only feels worse, I would say that if someone is only being further traumatized, that perhaps they should do a regression and definitely have all the mental health support that they feel they can use for that to support themselves. Lots of times I’ll do Tarot and past life readings for people. It depends on the nature of the knowledge they’re seeking.

Johnny Burke: Would it be beneficial, speaking of which, to do the past life reading first to get some insight and then draw the cards? Or does it not necessarily matter?

Nikki Ojeda: it doesn’t necessarily matter. I will tell you though, when I do past life readings, I draw three Tarot cards. It’s my doorway in. And then I go from there. It’s just something to my initial filtering down of the infinite, and that’s how I go in. I draw three cards for them. It’s just a personal thing that I do to hone my vision, I guess you could say, and get something else out of the way -it always works.

Johnny Burke: When you draw those three cards right before the past life reading, are you working off the energy of that person? Okay, so you’re not really sending a query to the unseen world yet at that point.

Nikki Ojeda: Well, I sort of am in the beginning as I really set my intention, I really set a protective circle and an intention that everything will be in our highest good. So in that sense, I’ve already got my tendrils out there. Even if I do video readings and if I do it over the phone, energy is non-physical, but yes, I am definitely tapped into that person.

Johnny Burke: So when you do readings over the phone, I know a lot of these readings are done remotely. You do or do not have to see the person you’re talking to.

Nikki Ojeda: I rarely do it over the phone since the advent of Zoom, but I really don’t have to see them. It’s like I hear their voice and that’s just another way of getting their energy. Just the fact that we’re talking, just the fact that we are connecting.

Johnny Burke: Let’s talk a little bit about protection. You mentioned a few moments ago that before you actually engage, it sounds almost like a prayer for the highest good. Tell us a little bit about that.

Nikki Ojeda: Well, first I clear the miasma off of my consciousness. If I’ve got things going on, I leave them over there. I call my soul back from whatever’s going on, and I leave that over there, so I am here now. I am attuned with my true north highest self, and I call in my divine guides and guardians to be there even if I don’t know who they are, I just have them guard the channel. The rest is beyond words where I just sort of tap in and allow almost like the old casting of a magic circle, though I don’t necessarily do that. Like when I’m at an event and I’m doing readings, after readings, I just have my own protective energy and that strong intent.

Johnny Burke: Because not all energy is good. At least that’s what I’ve told.

Nikki Ojeda: Right, and even if it’s not malicious, it might not be beneficial or it’s also like clearing away clutter. It isn’t always like an evil spirit or something like that. In fact, that seems to be rather rare, but still happens.

Johnny Burke: It still happens. Okay. Anything else that our listeners should know about the Tarot and past life readings for that matter?

Nikki Ojeda: be willing to do the work and know that it’s always a path. And once you step on the path of self-discovery, self-inquiry, I would advise don’t step off of it, because it often looks harrowing, like one step, back two steps forward, but it’s worth it. And it’s all about learning how to accept that we are here to climb that mountain of challenges that life gives us and to retain your power. Do not become dependent on a reader. Any reader that you’re with should have testimonials and should be empowering for you to be on your own self-healing journey.

Johnny Burke: All right, good sound advice. So Nicki, thanks so much for joining us today. How do our listeners find you?

Nikki Ojeda: My website’s www tarot with tatiara.com. I have a linktree tarot with Tatiara with if you want to see everything I’m on, and that’s pretty much my handle on my socials. Just Tarot with Tatiara.

#119 Yvonne Kason: Souls Lessons From The Light

April 28, 2023 by Johnny Burke

Near Death Experiences, Past Lives

#dryvonnekason, #nde, #neardeathexperience, #pastlives

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke, and today’s guest is Dr. Yvonne Kason. She is the president and co-founder of Spiritual Awakenings International, the past president of IANDS , multiple NDE and STE Experiencer, and author of several books, including her latest book, Soul Lessons From The Light. In this episode, we will be talking about the events that inspired the book as well as her many experiences. Dr. Kason, welcome to the show, or should I say welcome back to the show.

Yvonne Kason: You can say either one.

Johnny Burke: Okay. Excellent, you’ve been on Closer to Venus, I believe, twice already, and you’ve

Yvonne Kason: Was it twice? I thought it was once. Oh my

Johnny Burke: No, it was twice. You’ve had many experiences, near-death experiences, mystical experiences, spiritually transformative experiences, and even past life recall. So, what actually happened first, and what put you on this path?

Yvonne Kason: Well, that is what this book is all about. Soul Lessons From the Light. I’m really, really happy about it. This is the story of my own spiritual awakening and how I came to be the person I am today running spiritual awakenings international. As I share in the book, it basically, it started in my childhood. I didn’t realize it when I was a child, because now, as a kid you don’t have a barometer to measure what’s normal, and what’s paranormal. Right. It was just stuff that happened to me, right?

I now realize the stuff that happened to me, that I actually had two near-death experiences as a child. I had one when I was five years old, and I had another one when I was an 11-year-old. But I didn’t know that. When I was a five-year-old, what happened was, I was traveling with my parents in Europe and we were at a train station and I was looking around and I saw a station hand jump off the platform onto the railway tracks and climb up onto the next, platform. And I remember thinking, oh, that looks like fun. So I decided to do the same thing.

So I leaned forward to jump onto the track. All of a sudden it was like time stood still like I was sort of suspended in space. It was like my life was a movie and someone had pressed the pause button, but my consciousness, my thinking still moved on and suddenly my point of perception rose up and I was like maybe 25 feet above where my body was. I could see my little body there jumping out. from that perspective, 25 feet up. I could see what I had not seen when I started jumping, which was that there was a train pulling into the station and I was jumping right in front of a rapidly oncoming train. And I remember because I hadn’t looked both ways before you jumped on the tracks, they teach you as a child to look both ways before you cross the street.

I remember was very odd that I wasn’t at all frightened. Very, very calm, very, very peaceful, and is like, ‘oh, I see I’m about to be hit by a train’ with this very, very unusual calm. And then all of a sudden it was like somebody released the pause button and the motion picture of my life started again and somebody grabbed me, pulled me back onto the train platform, and woosh! the train, wooed in, in front of me, you know, with a gust of wind and I was not hit. As a five-year-old, I didn’t know what that was, but now I know it was an out-of-body experience when I was close to death, that would be categorized as a near-death experience, but at the time as a five-year-old, I thought it meant I could fly.

I think I was having out-of-body experiences and dreams because I have clear memories too of flying down my street, et cetera. I mean I clearly wasn’t really doing it. I must have been doing it in my dreams, but I was convinced I could fly and that’s how I understood it as a five-year-old. I started kindergarten that fall, and I made a little friend, and I said,” Guess what? I can fly. “And I went to show my friend I could fly. He said, “No you can’t. “And I said, sure I can.” because I had such a clear memory of what I understood as flying. So I climbed up on my fence in front of my house, I spread out my arms, like wings, and I jumped off, wanted to fly down the street to show ’em. And of course, I just fell down to the ground. And I still remember to this day, my reaction. I was puzzled. I couldn’t figure it out.

Johnny Burke: Is it true that when people have near-death experiences at a very young age, they don’t figure it out until much later?

Yvonne Kason: Oh, absolutely.

Johnny Burke: even in their twenties

Yvonne Kason: For me, it was much longer than that. I had another one when I was 11, which I can tell you about if you wish, but I didn’t figure out that these two experiences were near-death experiences till about five years ago. It’s amazing because A, I’ve had three adult near-death experiences; one in 79, 1 in 95, 1 in 2003, but all three of those were the mystical, white light type of near-death experience. They were so different from my childhood ones, which were out of body type of near-death experiences, that I didn’t even put them in the same ballpark, that I didn’t realize this was the same type of phenomenon.

I was researching near-death experiences and other spiritual experiences, since 1976 actually, when I had my kundalini awakening. I started researching all sorts of paranormal phenomena, but somehow my childhood experiences were just lumped into stuff that happened when I was a kid. It was never labeled as something paranormal in my mind. And it was only about five years ago, I was actually preparing to give a presentation on near-death experiences, and they kept niggling the memory of these two childhood experiences. And I thought, okay, I’m a researcher. Let’s see how many near-death experience criteria these experiences have, and. Oh my goodness! They both qualify as near-death experiences. No wonder my life’s been the way it has been! I’ve been having near-death experiences since I was a kid.

Johnny Burke: Since you were a child like many of us, you’ve learned that there are many different types of near-death experiences, or NDEs as they’re called. Are all near-death experiences spiritually transforming?

Yvonne Kason: Yeah. Yes. No, they are. Yes, they are. It’s a subcategory. Near-death experiences are one subtype of spiritually transformative experiences, so spiritually transformative experiences. Is a term that I in fact coined back in 1994. It’s an umbrella term and I talk about it in my book, but it’s an umbrella term because I found myself in my own spiritual awakening journey where I was having lots of different types of experiences. So I had these two experiences in childhood that were out-of-body experiences I now realize were near-death experiences.

My next big STE happened when I was in medical school. I had a profound experience, which I now know was a kundalini awakening with a mystical experience. Yes, but I didn’t have time to think about it, I was busy studying for my medical school exams and stuff, so I just sort of put that aside. Think about that later. But when I was a medical resident, I was in a plane crash, a medevac plane crash where I was almost killed, and that’s when I had my first mystical near-death experience, out of the body- up into the light, feeling the love of the higher power totally transformed me. I lost my fear of death. I know what souls live on after they die, like totally transformative.

Then a few weeks after that, I had a psychic awakening. I started having clairvoyant experiences, clairaudient experiences, clairsentient, experiences so here’s me. I’m a young medical doctor, top of my class, and very bright. I know I’m not crazy. I’m having a whole bunch of different types of experiences that I think must, in some way, be related because they’re all happening to me. I started researching what’s known about near-death experiences, what’s known about mystical experiences, what’s known about psychic experiences, and what’s known about Kundalini Awakening.

I came to this understanding that what made sense to me was that they’re all connected and that we need a way to, in the Western world to talk about them and not hokey, pokey, fluffy, this, that, and it’s not mental illness, it’s not hallucinations. These are real experiences happening to people. The term came to me spiritually transformative experiences as an umbrella term that would encompass the broad range of types of experiences people are having. Near-death experiences are one subtype.

You also asked me, are all NDEs spiritually transformative? My answer to that was, yes, but they’re not always the same degree of spiritually transformative. The ones that are the most spiritually transformative are the mystical type or the white type, where people go into the white light and meet the higher power. They might have a life review, all that sort of stuff, and remember their past lives. That is by far the most transformative and life-changing.

Many people have mystical experiences. Some have them spontaneously while meditating. Some have them while looking at a sunset. Some have them because they’ve fallen in love. Some have them because they’ve been initiated by a guru. Others even have them taking psychedelics. There could be many triggers to a mystical experience. Near death is one of the triggers of a mystical experience. So whatever the trigger to the mystical experience, the mystical experience is the most transforming type of spiritually transformative experience.

Johnny Burke: So the NDE is just one trigger and a very good point about the mystical experience. There seems to be many routes to get to that experience, such as, you just touched on it, plant medicine. Psychedelics and that type of thing. Meditation,

Yvonne Kason: Yeah. Meditation in my research was in fact the strongest trigger, and that’s what the Yogis and the Buddhists have encouraged people to do, which is to meditate regularly. I understand that by meditation you learn to still the chatter of your mind and when you still the chatter of your mind, it makes it possible for your consciousness to open to these states in a much greater way. All types of STEs.

Johnny Burke: now you had mentioned after one of your NDEs you started having instances of clairvoyance, claircognizance. I interviewed your colleague, Robert, Robert Bare and he mentioned the same thing after his experience, actually, I think he had two NDEs and he actually told me that those types of abilities were magnified. And at some point, he had mediumistic type abilities, and he didn’t want anything to do with it. So that’s a pretty common thing, isn’t it? That those people that have those experiences do have an elevated psychic ability of some sort.

Yvonne Kason: Well, how I’ve come to understand it and what I’ve experienced in my own life and what I share in my book is that it’s like the range of normal human consciousness seems to be expanding. And that’s what happened to me. My childhood experiences started to open the door in my consciousness. Then when I had the Kundalini awakening in medical school, that opened the door even further. And maybe that’s why I’ve had so many near-death experiences in my lifetime because the door was already open when I was in my twenties. It was easier for me to cross over, but those aren’t the only experiences I had, I also had mystical experiences along the way. I’ve had inspired creative experiences; I’ve had past life memories and mediumship. Yes, that’s all been a part of uh, my journey too. And it’s an interesting point you bring up. It’s that it wasn’t like I was looking for these types of experiences or even wanting to have these types of experiences, they were happening to me. And it was actually a challenge most of my life because I didn’t really understand what was happening to me. For many years I didn’t even have names to call these experiences.

My near-death experience in the medevac plane. I asked somebody right after it happened if it might have been a near-death experience. And I remember they said to me, “Well, did you see a tunnel with a light at the end?” And I went, “No. “And then they went, “Well, were you completely clinically dead?” And I said,” Well, no, I was close to death, but I wasn’t dead. “And then they said, “Well, it’s not a near-death experience. “So I thought, okay, it’s not a near-death experience. What is it? What am I going to call it? Yeah. So I started looking and trying to find even a word to call it, and the best word I was able to find for many years was a mystical experience.

So I would call it my mystical experience that happened in my plane crash. And being in the closet about it, not talking to people because that’s the other challenge of having these various spiritually transformative experiences, you have nobody to talk to. I tried to talk with my medical colleagues, and they all dismissed it as some sort of hallucination that was brought on by an electrolyte imbalance or low blood sugar or something, and this was no hallucination. That near-death experience in the plane crash changed me profoundly in a very, very positive way, in a very deep way. I lost my fear of death. I became much more tolerant of people of multi faiths because I just understood. I knew that all faiths were trying to understand the same truth underlying the universe and that the loving higher power loves everybody regardless of size, shape, and color, or what way we’re trying to climb the mountain. We all have incomplete understanding, and it increased my capacity to love and forgive. This is not low blood sugar, you know? So,

Johnny Burke: Although it might seem like low blood sugar you need some crackers and cheese or

Yvonne Kason: That’s Right. And the effect was so permanent, and all of my near-death experiences are incredibly powerful, and clearly etched in my memory, which is one of the characteristics of near-death experiences; how clearly the memory is etched. If you asked me, what do you have for breakfast two months ago? I don’t know. You know, unless you eat the same breakfast every day, you’re not going to remember. But I can remember these experiences. And the other thing about these experiences and my mystical experiences is talking about them or writing about them or remembering them brings the feelings back and I start feeling that love again and that joy and that elevation, like I’m feeling it right now because I’m starting to think about one of them. That doesn’t happen when I talk about how I had a really good chocolate cake yesterday. I might salivate, but that’s about it. I, you know, so, so, there’s something really different about these memories. They’re very, very powerful.

And I had to be in the closet, particularly as a medical doctor and I had a teaching position at the University of Toronto. I had to like to live a double life for most of my life, and I talk about this in the book. In my public life, I was this mainstream medical doctor, and I had this great teaching position, et cetera. Then my in the closet, private life, I was a spiritual seeker, and I was a mystic and I was having all these incredible experiences and I was studying everything I could; various spiritual traditions, from different spiritual teachers, from medicine, from psychology, from transpersonal psychology, trying to understand what was actually happening to me.

There sort of came a coming-together point, and for me, that happened in 1990 when I finally came to a place within myself where I felt confident enough within myself to say, okay, I don’t care if nobody believes me or not, but I know. I’ve had a near-death experience, and I know that I’ve had a Kundalini awakening and I know I had a mystical experience and I know that I’m having a psychic phenomenon and I’m not crazy. This stuff is real and, and it was around that time that spirit gave me my calling experience, that it was time to come out of the closet.

Johnny Burke: Your experience obviously speaks volumes, but with your work with Spiritual Awakenings International as well as for that matter, you’ve no doubt seen hundreds. If not more cases, documented cases of past life memories and near-death experiences, and other mystical experiences. I think it’s very hard to really explain to someone that I had a past life memory; I’m a man and in my past life, for instance, I was a woman. So how can you really dismiss that as your imagination or one of your memories because you’ve actually changed gender,

Yvonne Kason: Yeah. yeah.

Johnny Burke: That’s just one example, right? now you’ve had many of these different experiences and you also mentioned the mediumistic type of ability. Were there any instances of afterlife communication?

Yvonne Kason: Oh yes, very definitely. It seems to me that my particular consciousness is because I’m an avid meditator and I’ve been meditating regularly for, over 40 years now. I think it both grounds you and it also makes you more open to many types of spiritually transformative experiences. I’ve written a book on spiritually transformative experiences and was able to, because not only have people told me, and I’ve researched it, but I’ve experienced almost every type.

So yes, after-death communications, the ones I like to share is, I was, engaged a few years back and my fiancé unfortunately, passed away due to complications from heart surgery before we were married. So I was grieving the loss and I was actually flying to speak at a conference about near-death experiences. The plane was just at that very, very top part of the clouds just before it breaks through into the bright sunshine where it’s all sparkly and light around you.

And I’ve always said, that is the closest I have found on Earth to what it was like when I was in the white light realm in my near-death experience. It was that soft, sparkly luminescent light that was right at the top of clouds. And I remember thinking oh, I’m close to heaven! I’m close to heaven! I don’t know if, because I was thinking of heaven if that made me open to the possibility -all of a sudden,

I could smell my fiancés after shave – he liked to wear Old Spice. And so I remember I could smell it really, really strong, the Old Spice. So my first thought was, oh, there must be somebody around me in the plane who’s wearing Old Spice. And I looked around and actually, there were no men anywhere near me in the plane. And so, oh, that’s strange. And then all of a sudden it was like I could feel his presence. I could feel his energy, like how I knew it was him, it’s hard to say. It’s like I could feel his energy and I could feel his love. It was like he was just bathing me in love, and I actually heard his voice say, I love you, and I had this incredible experience; it was like our souls were in communion or something for a few minutes and then it disappeared, and the way went the smell of Old Spice. And to me, this is just hysterical because it started with the smell of his cologne and I don’t know how these things work, but that’s one example of after-death communication.

I had another one about a year or so ago I want to share with you because some people might find this very interesting. I received a text message from a close friend who had just died, and I’d heard that these things could happen that people could communicate using, sometimes computers or text messages, but yeah, electronics and I had just gotten the news that this woman who is a very close friend had passed away. So I was sort of praying for her and I was crying a little bit, and all of a sudden, my cell phone went off. It’s like, oh, who’s sending me a text message? I looked over, and it was from her, she was gone. She couldn’t have sent the text. And she said, “I’m thinking of you.” And it was like, oh my goodness. I couldn’t believe it. At first, I thought, is somebody playing a prank? Has somebody got into her cell phone and they’re sending me a prank message. But no, it was from her. Anyway, I’ve had several after-death communications over the years, and yes, very definitely. That’s been one of the phenomena I’ve experienced.

Johnny Burke: At one point your medical practice became focused on counseling patients who had those kinds of experiences; paranormal, spiritual, tell us a little bit about when that happened and what you learned from it, and what we can learn from it.

Yvonne Kason: I specialized my medical practice in the counseling of patients who’d had near-death experiences and other spiritually transformative experiences. I did that in 1990. I was actually the first Canadian medical doctor to specialize my practice in that area. The reason that I did that is because I had a very, very, very strong, what I call a mystical experience.

I had been invited to speak at a conference in California, in Solimar that was on Kundalini Awakening, and that was actually the first time I’d spoken at a major international conference on Kundalini. It was put on by the Spiritual Emergence Network and the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. And I’ve not mentioned, but I had met, Gopi Krishna in India and he had mentored me and taught me a lot about Kundalini. So people wanted to know what I had learned from him about Kundalini. There were Experiencers there, people who’d had Kundalini awakenings who were so moved by the fact that I, as a medical doctor, had come right out and. I have had a Kundalini awakening. Cuz their experience had been that they had been told they were mentally ill, told that this was some sort of psychiatric disorder, told by their churches it was work of the devil, told by their family that we don’t believe you. You’re hallucinating, whatever. Marriages broken up. horrible. The same sorts of things that unfortunately happened to NDE experiencers were also happening to Kundalini Experiencers. And they were so appreciative. That I as a medical doctor even knew what a Kundalini awakening was, let alone I was saying, I’ve had one myself, and I believe you. I understand you. You’re not crazy. They felt so validated. It was so important. People were crying and hugging me. I was so deeply moved by this. I was profoundly, deeply moved.

So I went for a walk. Solimar is right on the Pacific Ocean and there were these big sand dunes there, and I went for the walk in the sand dunes, and it was at night. Clear sky and all of a sudden it was like, the heavens opened, and my consciousness just cracked open. Where my head used to become like a sun, like a beacon of light, radiating light in all directions. And I could taste, they call it emta like this nectar dripping in the back of my throat. And as I was in this incredible state of consciousness, I suppose you’d call it illumination with the light. I just knew I didn’t hear a word spoken. I just knew that I was being called, that it was time to come out of the closet and I needed to advocate for experiencers, so I came back to Toronto. I spoke to my department head at the university and said, “I’ll resign my university position if you want, but I want to now specialize in helping people who’ve had diverse types of spiritual experiences and researching it.

I think my guardian angels overshadowed him that day because he said to me, “well, Yvonne, as long as you’re doing research, it’s okay with me. You don’t have to give up your university position.” So I ended up launching the Spiritual Emergence Research and Referral clinic. That’s what I called it. Then that became my career specialty. People from all over Canada, even from the United States, were coming to see me in my office as patients because they wanted to find a medical doctor who would validate their experiences. And so I built up a tremendous amount of clinical experience over the years, counseling experiencers. In addition to my research and in addition to my personal experiences. That’s why I started writing books and raising awareness everywhere. I really felt called because the medical profession was doing harm by labeling experiencers as crazy. The public was doing harm by labeling experiencers as crazy. And churches were doing harm by labeling experiencers a work in the devil, right?

Johnny Burke: They’ve done more than their share of harm, but that’s a discussion for another day. Or actually, wait, I think we’ve had that discussion already. Fast forward to the present. You’ve taken your experience being an experiencer and you’ve co-founded Spiritual Awakenings International, which seems to be a haven for spiritual seekers, especially those people that want to come out of that closet.

Yvonne Kason: Yeah, absolutely. Even the Birth of Spiritual Awakening International is from an STE, a spiritually transformative experience. It was almost a year before we launched it that I was talking with Robert Bare. I was at that time nominated to be president for IANDS and he was nominated to be vice president. And I had approached him about that we would run together as a slate rather than as two individuals, which we decided we would do. While we were talking, he’s intuitive too, as an experiencer. He got a download, and he says,” You know Yvonne, I think in the future we’re going to found another organization together. We’re being called to found another organization in the future. “And my reaction was well, I’m going to have to meditate about that and I’ll get back to you.

So right after we got off the phone call, I went into meditation because something reverberated inside of me when he said that. Cause I hardly knew him. I’d only recently met him. And, when I meditated, I personally had a powerful STE what I call a download of higher guidance. I was told Yes, you and Robert are to found a new organization and it’s going to look at all types of spiritually transformative experiences and I was given the name and the name of the organization is Spiritual Awakenings International. Is like, wow. I was shaking with the intensity of the message. So this is now the second time in my life that I’ve had a calling.

So the first one was when I went out of the closet and this time you’re going to found Spiritual Awakenings International and you’re going to do it with Robert, this man that I hardly knew. So anyway, and that came to pass about a year later in 2020, we launched Spiritual Awakenings International. We served our terms in IANDS and then when we both knew it was time to move on.

My focus has always been I include the near-death experience, but it was always greater than the near-death experiences. It included all types of spiritual awakenings. And the other difference is that my priority at this point in my life is no longer research. I’ve done tons of research. My priority is supporting Experiencers. And so that’s, I think what you’re saying that SAI or Spiritual Awakenings International is a safe haven for experiences, and also my writing this book, Soul Lessons From The Light is also to create a safe haven for experiencers. I think when people read this and hoping that’s going to support and encourage other people who are also going through the ups and downs and challenges of having a life with lots of these spiritually transformative experiences

Johnny Burke: The website for S A I, which I think it’s going to be known as sooner than later, is spiritual awakenings international.org, right?

Yvonne Kason: Correct. Mm-hmm.

Johnny Burke: I will definitely put that in the show notes in the transcript as well. one last question, a lot of us really want to know Heaven, Home. it real?

Yvonne Kason: Oh absolutely. Oh absolutely. And it is home. It is home. It is everything that you are craving. And my last near-death experience, which was in 2003, I was completely dead for a period of time. That was my only near-death experience where I was actually clinically dead for a period of time. When I was whisked out of my body. My spirit was whisked out. I had a slip-and-fall accident. I hit my head, a serious brain injury, and I died instantly. And I felt my spirit whisked out of my body by a fourth grader than myself, up through this dark, expansive space. Some might call it a tunnel, but it was like a dark, expansive space. And then I entered the white light realm.

I was greeted there by two beings of light. Two saints from my particular spiritual tradition, Paramhansa Yogananda and Mahavatar Babaji. They were in their light bodies glistening with light and they telepathically because all communications are telepathic there, communicated with me that I had died. That my work was done in the incarnation of Dr. Yvonne Kason. And the feeling was like a celebration. It was like a graduation party was being held in my honor, the love of the higher power was so profound. I remember that I had thought it was like uh oh, here comes the life review. I’d heard about people having a life review. Like who’s had a perfect life? And, everyone’s made mistakes, myself included. And it was incredible because of the powerful love up there, it’s like one of the saints turned and looked at me and like they could read my thought and then it was like just with a glance. Transmitted the understanding to me of Don’t worry about it. And the understanding that the love of the higher power is so profound that the higher power understands that just like children when you’re learning to walk, they stumble, they fall, they skin their knees, they bump their head. It’s part of the learning process that the divine understands.

And I just sort of dissolved into this incredible love of, like all is perfect with the universe and this is where I belong, and this is where I fit. And this is where I’m completely understood, and this is where I’m completely loved. But even beyond that I then went into a sort of a state of consciousness where it was visual. Like it wasn’t anymore like I was seeing the beings of light, the white light realm, but it was that my capacity to know and understand was infinitely huge. And I suddenly like a veil had been removed from my consciousness.

I suddenly could now remember all of my past lives and it was like an aha experience. Suddenly my weird and wacky life is starting to make sense having all these experiences I talk about in my book. It suddenly made sense in the context of all my past lives, as it all fit together. It was like the jigsaw puzzles of my many lives were all put together and I could see the whole picture and it was all coherent that all made sense because for my soul that has incarnated in all these different bodies, both male and female, and all different colors and all different races and different times in history, and different planets, that our soul journey’s incredibly vast and complex. My particular soul had been having spiritually transformative experiences for many incarnations, near-death experiences, mystical experiences, psychic phenomena. Kundalini inspired creativity. So from a soul perspective, my soul was just sort of continuing on from where we left off last time around and so it all made sense. I wasn’t so weird and wacky after all. From that perspective. Mm-hmm.

Johnny Burke: I like that. I don’t really know what else to ask after that. That was incredible. anything else that we should know?

Yvonne Kason: I’m very, very excited about my new book, Soul Lessons From The Light. It’s just come out. While I was practicing medicine, I was never really free to talk about all of the experiences that had happened to me. So I was always a little bit cautious because I didn’t want to lose my medical license. But I’m retired now and I don’t have to worry about repercussions. So it’s wonderful. But there’s another thing I want to mention.

The other thing about this book is it’s the result of a miracle and it’s a testimonial. So it’s very, very special to me for that reason because as I mentioned, I had that near-death experience in 2003 when I died. When I hit my head, I had a very serious traumatic brain injury. From that, I was given the choice at the end of timeless time on the other side, because you know, time doesn’t pass the same on the other side. I accepted to go back to my body, and I was told it would be more difficult. and it was difficult because when I came back to my body, I was disabled due to traumatic brain injury for more than 12 years. And I went to neuro rehab. I did everything you could think of. Detoxes, cleanses, taking out all my mercury fillings, everything you can think of to try and heal, but my brain injury didn’t heal, and I had lost my ability to write. I’d lost my ability to practice medicine. I’d lost my ability even use a keyboard on the computer.

I had to work really hard to get that back. But a miracle happened on February 24th, 2016, and I do have the story in the book too. I experienced a miracle when I was deep in meditation in Encinitas, California at the South Realization Fellowship retreat at a spot that I consider a holy spot where Paramhansa used to meditate and go into Samadhi into God Consciousness.

They say in yoga that where saints have communed with God, there’s a very high spiritual vibration imprint left there so that if you go and meditate in these spots, that you get a spiritual blessing. And I certainly felt that because on that spot, all of a sudden while I was meditating, I had inwardly experienced an eruption of light in the center of my brain. It was like an illuminated fountain of liquid light in the center of my brain that had been in darkness for 12 years. It felt like my brain woke up and my brain was healed.

I had a miraculous brain healing experience, and it was like a floodgate opened in my consciousness at that time. And all these ideas for what I was going to write in my books, my next books were flooding through my consciousness and I got the strong inner message pass on what you have learned. So this is what I’m doing now with my new book. This is the second book I’ve written since my brain healing and Spiritual Awakenings International is another part of passing on what I have learned. This is a testimonial to a miracle. I could not have written this if it hadn’t been for that miracle. And my last message in the book that I’m just going to leave you with is that there is always hope. Never give up hope, because, with God, all things are possible. I’m not using God in the religious sense. I’m using it in the spiritual sense with the higher power, with the loving force behind the Universe. All things are possible. Miracles do happen, and I’m a testimonial to that and this book is a testimonial to miracles do happen.

Johnny Burke: Excellent. All right. Dr. Kason, thanks so much for joining us today. How can our listeners find out more about you online?

Yvonne Kason: My personal website is dryvonnekason.com. Or you can go to the spiritual awakenings international website, spiritualawakenings international.org.

#117 Magdelena Jensen: Past Lives, Channeling and A Vision of Mary Magdalene

April 14, 2023 by Johnny Burke

Past Lives

#afterlife, #afterlifecommunication, #channeling, #ghosts, #leprechaun, #marymagdalene, #paranormal, #pastlives

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke, and today’s guest is Magdalena Jensen, former music industry exec turned transformational coach, conflict mediator, and host of MJ’s Magic Hour Podcast. In this episode, we will talk about her meeting with Mary Magdalene, what she learned from past life regressions, and encounters with her spirit guides.

Magdalena, welcome to the program.

Magdalena Jensen: Thanks, Johnny. I’m super excited to be here. This is going to be a fun conversation.

Johnny Burke: Without question, former music industry execs. So were you in

A & R or were you touring? Were you a musician?

Magdalena Jensen: All of the above except musician . I learned to play a lot of instruments as a kid. and my mom is musical. My dad is musical. but it was just never my thing but music has always been a really important part of my life.

So I started as a tour manager. That’s the story of many people that enter the music industry without parents already in it, right?

So I started out as a tour manager and kind of clawed my way up, quite frankly, and ended up owning, my own company, a music agency. Co-owning with my co-founder I co-founded a record label as well in which I am still the creative director. Just for shits and giggles because it’s fun too . It’s fun,

Johnny Burke: You said it not me. Yeah. Yeah.

Magdalena Jensen: It’s a little creative outlet for myself. And I co-founded a Pan-European nonprofit and fundraised a few hundred thousand euro for some projects we did.

Johnny Burke: Sounds like a lot of fun. So, how did you make the transition from that world to the world of the transformational coach, energy healer, and that whole scene?

Magdalena Jensen: Yeah. great question. I burned out really badly in 2008, almost five years ago at this point, I burned out. I was. burning all the candles at all ends, and it’s an industry that doesn’t really allow for a concept of work-life balance or a much, prioritizing your wellness. I burned out in 2018.
I was in the hospital for it, but I hadn’t really identified that I need to, I need to make some major changes, right? And so I went straight on back into kind of the hustle and grind of being a small business owner and being a woman in the music industry with this constant need to prove yourself. And in the music industry, there are very few metrics for success. There are only 10 people who can be at the top of the charts every week, right?

Johnny Burke: It’s true, very true.

Magdalena Jensen: So it’s a very cutthroat competitive environment and I needed a change and as the pandemic changed the world, it also changed me and was a massive impetus for me to make a huge lifestyle change.
I retrained. I had already trained as a non-violent communications conflict mediator a decade before. And so it was very natural for me to kind of move into this self-development, personal development, wellness direction.

Johnny Burke: Okay. So what exactly is a transformational coach and how is it different from let’s say, like an energy healer or anything in that realm? Because I know there’s lots of different modalities. So what is the difference?

Magdalena Jensen: Yeah. So I am not an energy healer for sure, but I am a transformational coach, and I am a conflict mediator, as I said, and I’m a sacred space holder. I do bring a lot of energetics into my coaching. But very precisely I work with the whole person, I coach the whole person through whatever kind of change and transformation they want to create in their life. A lot of people are like, oh, are you a life coach? oh, are you a career coach? Yes and no. Right? I’m all those things in one because I don’t believe that it’s possible to fragment ourselves as human beings. And in fact, I believe that that’s what leads to so much misalignment. It’s certainly kind of that ignoring of myself as a multi-dimensional human being is what led me to burnout.

And I believe that’s the case for many, many people. When I was kind of looking to make some changes and looking to retrain a holistic approach was really, really appealing for me. I’ve always been really interested in neuroscience, how the brain works, human interactions, social psychology, all of these kinds of humanities and human-related topics

Johnny Burke: Isn’t it true though? I find many people that are energy healers also use the transformational coach somewhere in their identity. Do you find the same thing

Magdalena Jensen: Maybe, I don’t know. I think that all things can lead to transformation. I think what’s maybe really significant and important in the work that I do is that I believe that you are whole, complete, and resourceful exactly as you are. You are not broken, and you do not need to be fixed. We have everything we need. I am not above you. I’m not a guru. I don’t know more than you. I help you to know your best truth, to know what is best for you. I help you really dig into and uncover your wisdom sovereignty, autonomy, and freedom. These are some of my top values, integrity.

So I really try to keep in a partnership with my clients. I will never put myself above them. I find that in the spiritual healing community, there can be a tendency towards gurus or pedestal someone or, putting yourself into a place of being a bit of a victim or below someone else and really looking up to other people, that they have an ability or something that you don’t have. I’m not interested in that kind of dynamic.

Johnny Burke: I’ve just noticed that when I talk to people about energy healing because we are all energy after all. The life coach and the transformational coach, tends to be in that same group for some reason. Let’s talk about some of the things- you’ve had some experiences, actually had quite a few of them. Spirit guides, encounters with ghosts; the experience with the spirit guides, does that come first?

Magdalena Jensen: Actually, I don’t think so. I it’s a little bit difficult for me sometimes to put these in a timeline in my head. As a kid, I grew up in a household where we were very much encouraged to interact with our angels where elemental beings, elves, and these sorts of things were kind of a part of our upbringing .I can offer you two things that were some of my first experiences, palpable, tangible experiences that I recall in great detail from my childhood that people thought I was totally full of shit when I was talking to them about it.

Or when I relay this story as an adult, one of them is that I 100%, saw a leprechaun.

Johnny Burke: Wow.

Magdalena Jensen: As a little girl in kindergarten, my kindergarten teacher, Susan Jesse, was amazing. I remember everything about her. For St. Patrick’s Day, she had made a sort of, a trail of footprints around our classroom to kind of encourage us to go hunt the leprechaun sort of thing. And I saw it, I saw that elemental spirit being, it was a flash of green light. It came out kind of from behind the bookshelf peeked at us all like it didn’t want to be seen and sprinted under the radiator and went back into hiding. I loved it. It was so cool. And of course, I went home and told my mom. My mom a hundred percent believed me. Everybody else thought I was insane. but I’m really fortunate to have had parents that picked my side over everybody else’s side my entire life. So I was encouraged by these sorts of what some might consider fantasies. And we also grew up, we lived in a quite a new age community in southern Oregon, west coast at the time.

Then this other experience, is one of my absolute favorite experiences, because I was not the only one to witness it. So I have corroborators, including my whole family. So there was a gold mining town, historic gold mining town, Jacksonville, Oregon, right next to us. And one of my dad’s really, really close friends lived in one of the old big mansions in that town. It was called Tuval Mansion. And his wife refused to live there. She was a million percent sure that this house was haunted, and she absolutely would never sleep there. And to be fair, that house creeped me out so much as a child. There were like really cold corridors. Doors slamming at random times. It was the creepiest house ever.

I almost never went inside of it. And she wouldn’t live there, so he bought the house next door for her to sleep in actually, I know

Johnny Burke: That’s great.

Magdalena Jensen: I know

Right. And so they eventually sold the house because obviously it wasn’t like super great for their marriage, and they moved somewhere else and I remember we went back a few years later because the mansion was turned into a bed and breakfast and at Christmas time they were having like a, you know, open house come, have a hot cocoa in the new, beautifully restored mansion bed and breakfast situation.

So we went with my parents and my mom. We were sitting in the parlor, and it was quite a big open welcome room after the foyer and there’s a dining room off to the side of it, very visible from where we were sitting. And in the dining room, there was a whole buffet of, cookies, cakes, chocolates, all candle lined, beautifully lit up in candles. This is wintertime, no open windows. I want to add all of these details because they’re relevant. So we’re sitting in the parlor and my mom is asking these new owners,” how are your guests enjoying their night’s sleep in this beautiful old mansion? Have you heard any complaints? Have you had any strange stories? Because we’ve heard some interesting stories about this particular home.” and they said, “oh yeah, we’ve had guests come down and say it’s freezing in their room in the middle of summer and needing extra blankets or, doors slamming in the middle of the night, waking them up, or knocking on the ceiling. But there’s no one living above them. We’ve had a few things, but we’ve always dismissed it because we don’t believe in ghosts .”

At that moment, when they said they didn’t believe in ghosts, all of the candles on the buffet table in the other room exploded. And this wax just like rushed out of all of these big, beautiful pillar candles all over the table. Catching fire to a cloth napkin. It was just like this as though a huge gust of wind would’ve come through to almost knock these candles off. Do you know what I mean? But there was no wind. Everything was closed. It was winter. So at that moment when they denied the ghosts, it was like, this brrrrrrrr! you can’t deny us kind of.

Johnny Burke: did you see anything like other than=

Magdalena Jensen: No apparitions, but it was an incredible felt presence. Whoever, whatever it was, 100% wanted to make sure that their presence is known and recognized and not denied. That was very clear.

Johnny Burke: Yeah, that’s pretty convincing, especially since you’ve had other people there to corroborate that. wow. I’ve never seen anything like that, but I’ve heard stories. Any more otherworldly experiences besides that one?

Magdalena Jensen: When I was 12 years old, I had a dream about my past life, and at the time I didn’t know that that’s what it was. and I only started to kind of understand that maybe that’s what it was when I was a later teenager. And then it was for sure, confirmed for me actually last year when I did a past life regression.

So I had a dream that I was in a wheat field in Northern Europe. Summer, hot day, beautiful wheat blowing in the wind. My farmhouse was over there.

My family was home. I was a young Jewish girl. I was maybe about 12 years old.

I just had this image of me coming home and going into the farmhouse. There was a menorah or some candles. There was something so clear to me that I was in a Jewish family. and from that time, I became absolutely obsessed with the Holocaust. I read every single possible book there was, starting with Anne Frank’s diary. I lived in Warsaw, Poland for a really long time where I took classes, in the psychology department, in the former SS headquarters in the former Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. I had this really kind of deep, deep, deep connection to all of that. And when I was a teenager, it just sort of came to me that maybe I was a Jewish girl in a past life, and my family, or I was persecuted in the Holocaust.

Johnny Burke: It’s pretty intense to say the very least. It seems like you’ve pretty much run the gamut, past lives, ghosts, leprechauns, that’s a first.

I’ve heard a lot of things, over the past few years. I’ve not heard of a leprechaun. still waiting for the unicorn That doesn’t come up yet.

Magdalena Jensen: Not yet. I can verify also the past life situation real quick- I did a past life regression last year with a hypnotherapist and the first life that I was I entered into was myself, a Jewish girl just after the moment that my whole family and my whole village in that same setting that I had seen when I was 12 were burned to the ground and I escaped and I was safe, but my family was not, and I went into a couple of scenes from that lifetime and some lessons that I pulled out of that particular past life regression. But for me, it was just a very, very clear corroboration of what I had seen when I was 12 and this inkling that I had kind of always had then.

Johnny Burke: So what you saw when you were 12 was confirmed in the past life regression in the session itself?

Magdalena Jensen: Right.

Johnny Burke: Okay. I’m curious, during the session, did the therapist record the session for you?

Magdalena Jensen: Yes, as well as take notes for me.

Johnny Burke: I’ve noticed that a lot of those therapists will do that. If the sitter in this case, was under the impression that nothing happened, they might have been in a trance, something like that. There’s actually a recording of it.

Magdalena Jensen: Yeah, I noticed in that past life regression, I was actually really afraid to do one for a really long time because I was afraid to let go of that much conscious control. But I noticed while I was in the process of it, I was having almost two layers of consciousness going the whole time. One was this really deep access to past lives and the other one was, a very clear contact with the present and where I was and like this metalevel awareness of what was happening.

Johnny Burke: Very good description. I like that. Almost everyone I’ve talked to remembers being awake and conscious of their surroundings. One girl I remember told me she didn’t remember the session, but she had a recording-

I always ask if there’s a recording. So you’ve had quite a few experiences.

Now we’re going to talk about the main one. I know you’ve been waiting for this and well, actually, I’ve been waiting for it too.

You had a meeting with Mary Magdalene and I believe this happened after your miscarriage. How did that happen? Other than the miscarriage, was there anything else that might have triggered that?

Magdalena Jensen: Well, my namesake is Mary Magdalene. My name is Magdalena Maria. and I always have had this thought that it’s impossible that this woman was a prostitute. This story makes no sense to me. I don’t get it.

And why would you demonize someone in that regard? in that way. So I always sort of knew that, but I have to say that I lived in Poland for my entire adult life, and I was raised Catholic as I said, but in Poland, the Catholic church is very stringent, conservative, corrupt, pretty disgusting. So in my entire twenties, I really turned my back on all of that. And I would’ve considered myself probably a very staunch atheist, maybe agnostic. I recognize a higher power because that also makes some kind of sense. I wasn’t praying, I wasn’t interested in any of my angels that I had grown up with, et cetera.

Johnny Burke: Quick question. This is important. I want to get some clarity on this because I think the difference between an agnostic and an atheist, every time one of my friends brings us up, I’m not really sure whether they even know what that means anymore. And it could be those definitions are changing. So since you brought it up, what are the differences between an atheist and an agnostic?

Magdalena Jensen: From how I understand it, an atheist is someone who believes that there is nothing. Higher power, nothing beyond us. When we die, we turn to dust. There is no such thing as an infinite soul. Perhaps there is no such thing as a soul. From an atheist perspective, we are not spiritual beings in a flesh bag, right.? From an agnostics perspective, I think there is an openness to there being something beyond what we can see- a choice to have faith in something, without there being that much acknowledgment of God as most people understand it, or Yahweh or, Jesus or Mohammed, Buddha, any of the ascended masters, gods in any of the religion.

Johnny Burke: they’re not sold yet. In other words. I’ve just noticed some people say, I’m an atheist, but I believe in reincarnation. And I thought, wait, stop.

Magdalena Jensen: Yeah.

Johnny Burke: Doesn’t make any sense.

Magdalena Jensen: That doesn’t jive together.

Johnny Burke: I didn’t bring it up, but I’ve noticed that more than once.

So tell us more about the experience, what the vision actually looked like…

Magdalena Jensen: I experienced a miscarriage- that was probably the most challenging experience that I’ve ever been through in this lifetime. and I was so excited to become a mother. It was, definitely when that happened, it was like the fulfillment of my purpose. And so when I experienced the miscarriage, I went into utter depths of despair. I was, for the first time ever in my entire life questioning what’s the purpose of my existence. And suddenly I was finding myself unable to get out of bed and having these kinds of thoughts that, you know, I don’t need to be here anymore. Like, what’s the point? Having studied human psychology and having lost friends to suicide, I don’t believe that I was in that kind of state. But I scared myself with the kind of dark thoughts that I was having.

I remember that I was in London lying in bed, in depths of despair, crying suddenly so out of energy and I was just lying there contemplating these things and with my eyes closed and all of a sudden in front of me comes this- behind my eyelids, comes this vision of a woman with a red hood, like a red cloak, kind of flaming, she didn’t even have to say I’m Mary Magdalene. I knew instantly who she was. It was just so obvious. I don’t even remember what she said,

I don’t even know if There was a verbal exchange. It was more like a,

Johnny Burke: Telepathic.

Magdalena Jensen: Yes, telepathic. Your purpose is to rediscover your purpose. You are needed here. You are incredibly powerful. You will be a mother and you have to stay. This life is for you for a reason, kind of messaging. Obviously, I started crying again. I was shocked. I was so confused, but I immediately became obsessed with Mary Magdalene- immediately I think she did encourage me to go read her story. She said, you have nothing to do. You don’t know what to do with yourself in these moments of despair, go research me, find me, find my story, I’m getting goosebumps as I say all of this, by the way.

Johnny Burke: So how did you know- and I can just imagine anybody who’s going to be listening to this is going to say, okay, so how did you really know it was her? Or even an angel or some otherworldly being, what can you tell us to dispel any skepticism that wasn’t just your imagination or, a dream?

Magdalena Jensen: I wasn’t asleep. It was not a dream. It was the middle of the daytime. I’d just been crying. I don’t know if I can dispel skepticism. People can choose to be skeptical if they want to but, I know it was Mary Magdalene’s spirit coming to me. She is my namesake. I know that based on the research that I’ve done about her since then, and the way that my life has shifted since that encounter. What I have discovered as truth through that research, and the way that my entire life has unfolded since. There’s just an inner knowing. I just know, and I am claircognizant, and so I don’t have to explain that. I just know things.

Johnny Burke: That I didn’t know; that would help explain things. I think a lot of us have heard reports or sometimes even experienced things that are not of this world that are extraordinary. I think the skepticism sometimes comes from a desire to really know the truth, but they’re not sold yet. But other people, since you brought it up, who have the clairs: claircognizant, clairvoyant obviously is probably the most well-known of the clairs. They tend to get it, and I do hear a lot of them say it’s a knowing exactly the way you did.

Magdalena Jensen: Yeah, it’s just a knowing I can’t explain. Plus I think what’s important to highlight in this conversation is that I chose to have faith. The way that my life has unfolded since then has simply affirmed in a beautiful way that that choice to believe that and to have faith in that makes sense and, therefore, more and more accurate for me.

Johnny Burke: Faith is a good thing, isn’t it? Faith is good as long as you’re not misled by some of the institutions, which I won’t bring up, we all know who they are. Speaking of otherworldly experiences, you also had a visit with a a-was it a psychic or was it a psychic medium?

Magdalena Jensen: It was a clairvoyant. Specifically. I’ve done two, I’ve done a channeling of my higher self, through a medium. And recently, one week ago today, I had a reading with a clairvoyant.

Johnny Burke: When you say clairvoyant, are you still talking about a medium or a clairvoyant that doesn’t use the term medium?

Magdalena Jensen: She calls herself very precisely a clairvoyant, and she was very clearly channeling messages from my baby that is coming through, that already visited. It was the baby that was then miscarried in physical form.

She channeled from also my spirit guides.

Johnny Burke: So do you have any idea, I’m just dying to know this. Do you have any idea what your spirit guides look like visually? Did you ever have that experience?

Magdalena Jensen: That’s a good question. I have experiences with my deceased grandparents, so I know what they look like. But quite frankly, no, I haven’t actually thought about that. For some reason, my mind hasn’t needed to satisfy that curiosity.

Johnny Burke: Really? now you mentioned something about your grandmothers, I know we talked about this briefly before. Do you still have a connection to them now or was this a one-time occurrence?

Magdalena Jensen: I feel like I can access my grandmothers when I need them, and they also helped me after the miscarriage. They really held me through releasing some of that pain and that grief, very palpably held me. Like I felt them on either side holding me once when I was in the bathtub. That was an incredible experience. The message that came through the clairvoyant last week about my spirit daughter was the information that I’ve also had an inkling about.

My mother had a dream right after she met my husband, now husband, for the first time. She had a dream where she saw me and my husband, the backs of us holding hands with a little girl in between us. So I’ve always sort of known that a little girl will come just from that dream.

So then in the clairvoyant channeling session last week, she, I guess you could say, confirmed that there’s a daughter that would like to come through and she’s shared a really interesting message with me. And that is what the daughter used to be, not in this lifetime, in a different lifetime, she was my grandmother.

A that it’s very important to remember that when this daughter comes earth side, so that I remember that even though she is a tiny, small being, she also carries wisdom for me and she used to nurture me in another lifetime, and now it’s my turn to nurture her on the physical plane. But also, I need to remember to keep learning from her.

Johnny Burke: That’s cool. That’s like the bloodline from your ancestry continues. That’s several generations ago. From this past life , you don’t know the decade or the century? Okay.

Magdalena Jensen: I have a feeling that I’ll know when I get pregnant again, and I’ll know when she comes earth side that I’ll be able to kind of discern or realize some of this information. But something else that was really interesting that the medium or the clairvoyant confirmed for me.

She confirmed the claircognizance. She said” I just have to tell you that your energy when I’m tapping into you and your guides, you are a wise, wise, sage for many hundreds and hundreds of years. You have been a wise woman in previous lives, and you carry so much knowing in you.” And that very much aligns with the past life regressions that I did, because some of those lives that I saw, two of them specifically- one where I was a wise woman. I was tribal leader, wise woman, sage. I was persecuted for my knowing,

Johnny Burke: Some of your experiences, do you get the feeling that they are all connected? or not necessarily?

Magdalena Jensen: Absolutely. Because they are all experiences that my soul has had in this lifetime or in previous lifetimes, I don’t know how to answer that in any other way. I feel like they’re an accumulation and these experiences have happened to me throughout this lifetime. In order to remind me of this wisdom, of this knowing that I have.

Johnny Burke: Everyone else says the same thing; they all say everything’s connected, especially those types of experiences. Anything else our listeners should know?

Magdalena Jensen: My experiences are not necessarily unique. We all are infinite souls incarnating in this flesh bag, in this moment in time. I know. I love that term. It makes me laugh, we got to laugh. Our ego mind, the brain that we have is not able to comprehend infinity that concept is we can have some kind of intellectual understanding, but we aren’t necessarily capable of comprehending with our mind the depths of what that truly means and the potential of that either.

There’s a whole lot more out there than our meager ego minds are able to comprehend. And so stay open, stay open, and invite these sorts of experiences into your life because it’s a delight to have them, and we’re all capable, of tapping into them.

Johnny Burke: Of having those experiences and they’re not gifts because it’s an innate ability. Magdalena, thanks so much for joining us. Very, very
interesting stories. So how can our listeners find you online?

Magdalena Jensen: my website, Magdalenajensen.com.

#110 Rissa Miller: Smoke, Tealeaf and Tarot Readings

February 25, 2023 by Johnny Burke

Tarot

#divination, #pastlives, #smokescrying, #spiritguides, #tarot, #tealeafreading

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke today’s guest is Rissa Miller. She’s an editor, herbalist storyteller, and a seer doing both Tealeaf reading and Smokescrying . Today we will talk about her unique divination practice, as well as how her past lives have influenced her current path. Rissa, welcome to the program.

Rissa Miller: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Johnny Burke: Excellent. I love it when people are excited. Herbalist, storyteller, and a seer. How did you find yourself on this path?

Rissa Miller: It’s been a lifelong journey, to be honest with you, and all of those things fit together in my story. I can tell you that this is a path I started probably in a past life. But I do have childhood memories of learning about herbalism of playing with the heritage set of Tarot cards that I have that were my grandmother’s and mother’s and now mine. I can tell you for sure that tea has always been a part of my life. Absolutely.

Johnny Burke: So you believe that you had this type of practice, in a previous life, in a previous incarnation?

Rissa Miller: One of my past lives that I remember I was gathering herbs in a forest and it’s a very distinct memory. I can feel the basket on my arm. I can feel the plants under my fingertips. It’s a very sharp memory.

Johnny Burke: Did you have an idea of what century it was or even maybe what decade?

Rissa Miller: I can feel myself and I know I have a corset on in that memory. So that spans almost a thousand years that women wore corsets. But, it was during that time, from the clothing, I would guess 16 or 1700s.

Johnny Burke: Okay. All right. And the memory, you remember a lot of details.
I do hear that quite a bit. Why do you call it a divination practice?

Rissa Miller: It’s always evolving. That’s why I call it a practice. I think that someone who does divination is always learning, is always in a process of evolving with their divination art. To me, it is most definitely an art. When I do tealeaf reading or smokes crying, there’s always a physical drawing as well as the vision that comes through from the medium.

I did three readings yesterday and I can tell you I learn every time something new about my cards, something new about my tea, and always something new about people, how they receive their messages, how they manage their feelings and emotions around a reading. There’s always a learning curve every single time.

Johnny Burke: You’re pretty confident in your practice, especially since you remember it from a previous incarnation, which sounds like it was about 400 or 500 years ago. You have three different types of readings, tealeaf, smoke, and tarot, and we’ll get into all three of them individually. How do you determine what type of reading to give someone when they come and see you?

Rissa Miller: most people know what they want when they contact me. They are very familiar with tarot and they’re comfortable in that space, or they. Hilarious this may sound; they’ve seen Harry Potter and they want to do a tea leaf reading because they had them in the movies and books. They were also in the Outlander books as well.

That’s just a bit of free advertising for those of us who do tea leaf reading. And I am super grateful personally. But definitely, folks are familiar with tasseomancy from those media outlets. Then I would say someone who wants smoke, they are usually someone who’s very adventurous, who is very spiritual, who has already experienced other kinds of reading.

Occasionally I get someone who will contact me and say, can you direct me to what might be good for me? I usually in that case, will ask them what their astrology sign is if they know it. And I will let that guide me towards smoke, which would handle air and fire or tea, which would handle earth and water.

Johnny Burke: So astrological signs are a kind of a guidepost too. If someone doesn’t know what they want, based on that info, you can give them a suggestion.

Rissa Miller: Absolutely. Yeah. It, I have found over the time I have done this, that different mediums resonate more with people born under particular signs. It’s a very unscientific survey, but it’s just been what I have observed over the years.

Johnny Burke: It makes perfect sense to me. Which one of these, modalities did you actually learn first? Or should I say relearned? Because I’m sure you did that before many years ago.

Rissa Miller: Tarot came into my life first because it was a family practice, but I didn’t embrace it first. I knew it. I was familiar with it, and I didn’t grow to appreciate it until years later. I would say that I fell in love with tea first.

I remember being 16 years old in this life, and my mom for the holidays gave me a container of loose tea. Nowadays it’s no big deal. You can get loose tea at most major groceries. But 30 years ago it was a specialty item, and it was a really fantastic gift. Unfortunately, the little metal tea ball that it was supposed to be held in, broke in the cup and the tea just became loose in my teacup.

I guess it was a moment when destiny intervened because as I drank the tea,

I noticed the leaves sticking to the side of the cup and they looked like shapes to me. I immediately saw a cat, I saw a basket, and my mom said, that’s a really old divination practice. You should keep looking. And I did, I started keeping a notebook of the things I saw of the different shapes and, it was before we had easy access to the internet and there were notebooks available in the library where I grew up on tea leaf reading.

So I developed my own system of reading symbols. I had no guide, so I used my spirit guides to show me the way through the cup, through the symbols, and I just made notes. I made drawings. That’s how the drawing practice started too.

I would just draw what I saw in each cup.

It did go through a phase where I think many spiritual people do, and I became skeptical of everything. Probably from the influence of those around me. Not my family, but other people. I put all of this back for a little while and focused on just the facts. I found I missed it so much and I thought, I need to give back to being myself. And if these people aren’t with me, that’s fine. They can go their own way. ,I pulled my tea cups back out. I pulled my tarot cards back out, especially the old deck that had been in my family for so long and re-found my way into trusting the messages that came through for me.

Johnny Burke: Seems to me that spirit guides are ubiquitous, whether I talk to a medium, an intuitive, someone who has past life memories, a practitioner I interviewed a past life, a hypnotherapist that specializes in past life regression, and he didn’t experience spirit guides, but his clients did pretty often.

So, question about the Tarot, because I do believe many people will dismiss it as a parlor game, like a Ouija board. Obviously, you think there’s a lot more to it than that. What can you tell our listeners about that practice where it actually has some, substance? can it tell the future? can it tell the sitter, your client, something about themselves that maybe they were not aware of?

Rissa Miller: 100%. That happens almost every time I read for someone. As far as telling the future, I don’t necessarily think that’s what my divination practice is about. Yes, we absolutely occasionally get hints of the future in divination. What I like to tell people is when they come to me, what’s going to happen is they’re going to see a very articulate reflection of where they are right now, and that means both light and shadow. I always emphasize that because it would be lovely to do a reading for someone that was all good news, and occasionally I get to deliver those. I was so fortunate I got to do one last night for someone and, it was delightful to hand a young lady an all-positive reading. However, it doesn’t matter what medium you’re using, if it’s tarot cards or runes or your medium, it doesn’t matter. There’s always a shadow. We have to have it to complete who we are.

I was a photographer for many years, for over 20 years. That was my profession. And shadows define the light. You have to have them. They’re an essential part of a picture. They’re an essential part of a drawing. And it’s true divination. So when you’re looking at your past, which sometimes divination brings up frequently, I see messages about things unresolved, sometimes about past lives. Smoke is really good for that because it’s so ethereal. There’s always this part of the past that almost everyone has something they haven’t quite put to rest yet, and divination will frequently shine a light into that shadowy corner reminding them this is your baggage. This is the challenge that you still need to think about.

So your question about Tarot being like a parlor game. The history of Tarot is that it was a parlor game. It came from the 13th century in Italy, and it was originally a parlor game. It was not used for divination until the late 17 hundreds when the spiritualist movement started. So it does have that history hanging over it, right? Spirit boards too. Spirit boards came into being like a Ouija board. Spirit boards happened during the spiritualist movement, and they were definitely an instrument of fraud for some people.

No matter what tool you’re looking at whether you’re talking about a scrying mirror or any other divination method, it depends on whose hands it’s in. If you put a set of wrenches in my hand, I couldn’t fix your car. That is not my area of expertise. A tarot deck, tea, a mug, a set of runes. They’re tools. They have to be in the hands of a practitioner who understands them, has a relationship with them, and has enough faith in themself to use them properly. Practice helps too.

Johnny Burke: I’ll bet it does. A word about the spirit boards, Ouija boards for instance. Not for the amateurs. The impression I get from it is that it’s like a portal to trouble if you’re not careful.

Rissa Miller: The story that was told to us in the 1970s by filmmakers. Originally spirit boards were used by all mediums. They were a tool, just like a tarot deck. You can use tarot decks to speak to the dead as well. I would say that it’s one of those things that if you put fear out, you will get back something to be afraid of.

And if you put confidence out, you will get back a clear answer. There’s a great expression. If you stare into the abyss long enough, sooner or later it stares back.
That’s true with any form of divination, any mediumship. I think that if you invite trouble, you’ll get into trouble.

Johnny Burke: We definitely don’t want that.

Rissa Miller: That’s true of the living as well.

Johnny Burke: We definitely do not want trouble. I bring that up because many of the people I talk to, especially the mediums, really stress the need for protection because there are apparently beings out there that are not so nice and that’s just not some fairytale.

Rissa Miller: I would absolutely agree. One of my favorite side jobs is I’m a ghost tour guide and there are absolutely negative entities that show up on ghost tours like shadow people, and things like that.

Johnny Burke: Shadow people; that came up a few interviews ago. Crystal Anne Compton. She talked about that and spiritual attacks and again stressed the need for protection.

Now, you mentioned a few moments ago that you can use the cards to speak to the deceased as we like to call them. Can you give us an example of how you would go about doing that?

Rissa Miller: Sure. Absolutely. So a lot of divination has to do with intention.

If you intend to speak to someone specific, that’s simply who you ask for. At least that’s how I work. You don’t always get who you want, but you frequently do, especially if it’s someone your seeker has a strong connection to. I have absolutely done readings where deceased pets came through, where deceased family members came through, and it has been very evident almost immediately to the seeker that’s who was speaking to them. Sometimes the cue is tiny.

I have multiple decks that I will use to read.

A young lady recently chose one, and the minute the card turned over, there was a ladybug on it, and that was her recently deceased father’s nickname for her. She immediately knew he was present by the ladybug. That was the first message the cards gave her. She was 100% sure that everything they came after was from him. I felt pretty confident about it too because the messages that came in that reading were absolutely the father that loved his daughter that was still trying to guide her and speak to her from the other side that was not just her dad, but in her own words, her close friend. So that’s how that reading felt, that’s how it went, and it completely resonated that way for both my seeker and me,

Johnny Burke: The messages that come through is that through claircognizance? clairvoyance? Is it similar to like a mediumship reading?

Rissa Miller: Similar. Yeah. I would say that tea and smoke are even more, open-ended than tarot, but basically, I trust my spirit guides to give me the information I need for each individual seeker that I am working with. As long as I maintain that level of self-trust, it’s there every time. It’s the only thing that can really break it is doubt. I feel like I have occasionally had seekers come to me who was given a gift, and the gift is like a gift card to come get a reading, but it isn’t really a match for them. and I almost immediately can tell that they’re skeptics or they don’t really want to be there, or there’s some barrier, some wall they’re putting up between me and the reading and it’s almost palpable. You could almost feel it between you and the person. So when someone is not open, and it doesn’t matter how strong of a message is waiting for them, I frequently can’t reach it because they won’t energetically allow it. It’s like you were talking about boundaries against dark entities. There’s all kinds of boundaries you can build.

Johnny Burke: I imagine there is. You actually describe yourself among other things as a seer. It’s not really something we hear about every day. What exactly is that?

Rissa Miller: It’s an old-fashioned word, and it’s another word in the category of psychic. But I feel like our society has attached a lot of baggage to the word psychic. And Seer is much more old-fashioned and it’s right in the same vein.

A seer is someone who can see through the veil, who can see the other side and bring you back clearer messages.

Johnny Burke: That’s very similar to a medium. It seems to me that there’s some kind of an intersection. I’ve been told all mediums are psychic, but not all psychics are mediums. More often than not I hear that it’s either correct, or it’s yes, you’re in the ballpark. Obviously for every rule, there’s exceptions, but does that sound accurate?

Rissa Miller: It is interesting you ask that. For a long time. I resisted the label medium, and it was mostly because of tv to be totally honest with you. I feel like mediums are portrayed in a very specific way, and I didn’t want to be grouped into the,

Johnny Burke: like with a turban around their head.

Rissa Miller: Definitely one cliche. Yeah.

Johnny Burke: very much a cliche, but yes, I can see where there’s a lot of negative associations actually with both because unfortunately there is some fraud. But I think a lot of it, at least from what I’m, told is, its activity from well-meaning people, but their skills are just not quite developed and they leave themselves open to criticism because they probably should not be practicing until they become certified or they can commonly bring forth something evidential where it’s pretty much a no-brainer. Not everyone can do that.

Rissa Miller: No, not everyone can. I feel like there’s a lot of I’m going to say testing that goes on. Even, with the seekers who come to me, they’ll test and want specifics from me. And with the tea and smoke, it’s actually very easy to pull specifics because they take their own form. There’s no edge to that. It literally can be anything. When it comes to reading cards, you have to really trust your intuition because the cards have their own set meanings, whether they’re right side up or inverse. There’s 78 cards in a tarot deck, and each one of them have if you considered both the upright and inverse meanings, dozens of possibilities.

But then sometimes the message isn’t in any of it. The example with the ladybug; the ladybug was part of the drawing on the card. It was nothing to do with the true meaning of the card as far as quote-unquote definitions. So that’s one of those moments where have to truly trust yourself enough to move within that reading, to move with that seeker in that moment. It has been my experience that the details are always there, you just have to trust that you’re getting the right message at the right moment. I’ve even had people’s names spelled out in tea. I have seen things that are specific.

Johnny Burke: Spelled out?

Rissa Miller: The example I’m coming up with in my mind right now was a woman named Jill, she was the ex-wife of one of my seekers and he came to me for a tea leaf reading at an antique shop only because he said he saw it advertised and wanted to try new things. He was a big tough looking guy and not my normal tea leaf reading client. I sat down with him, he had his tea and the name Jill popped right out at me and I said, do you know someone named Jill? And he became very emotional, he said that’s my ex-wife. She left me because I was an alcoholic two years ago. I’ve since cleaned up, but I have no idea how to talk to her. And I just found out she had cancer. So the name Jill was spelled out in the cup for a reason, and we delved further into the cup and the other messages.

I had a touching email from him about a year later that he had followed the guidance in the cup and they were friends again getting to know each other it was going great and she was also healthy again too. He had helped her get through her cancer treatment.

Johnny Burke: Okay. Let’s talk about smoke scrying, because I’ve never had any discussions about that. It seems to be similar in dynamics to the tea leaves, but I think you explained this to me a while back that the spirit guides, or whatever that energy is, can actually influence the smoke. Is that true?

Rissa Miller: 100%. So smoke scrying is actually one of the most ancient forms of divination available to us still, as human beings. as long as people have had fire, they’ve had smoke, and people have been looking for messages in smoke and fire and ashes since that time. So it is incredibly old. It was actually practiced they believe by the Oracles of Delphi as well. Smokescrying is gazing into smoke and seeing the pictures that form. It does move very quickly, and you have to pick a spot where it’s not going to be influenced by say, events or, air conditioner, open window, things like that. You have to have the right atmosphere. I’ve also found it’s much easier to see it in front of a black background or something very dark. Technicalities aside, smoke moves fast, and it takes incredibly specific shapes. Faces come out, letters come out, and it moves really quickly. I have often taken pictures or videos during sessions for people, and then when you examine them again, you see even more, in real-time. Someone recently asked me how many opportunities for new clients, significant new clients will I have this year? And this smoke instantly split into three streams. It just answered that fast.

Johnny Burke: Three. Three new clients?

Rissa Miller: Three significant new clients.

Johnny Burke: Three significant. It’s interesting to know that smoke has been around pretty much since the beginning of time, it’s not surprising that might be the most ancient practice Let’s go back to your past life memories. Every time this comes up, I am always tempted to ask were you able to access the in-between space? The space in between incarnations.

Rissa Miller: I have not walked in it that I remember, but I have seen it when other people have passed. What I have seen looks like a big open meadow. I have seen it more than once. It a sunny, open place that I have seen, and I spoke to another psychic about it, and he said that it is the same for him when he is accessing spirits that are between lives. He called it Summerland. I always call it the meadow.

Johnny Burke: Summerland?

Rissa Miller: That’s his name. It’s better than the meadow, but to me it’s the meadow. And I have seen animal spirits there, I have seen human spirits there.

It is an incredibly calm, peaceful place. And it almost seems like a version of a place to wait and rest. The souls there are regenerating, they can still watch, and they can still see you and they can still interact from the space of the meadow, but when they are in that space, they are also resting to come back.

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard it referred to as the resting place among other things. and also a place where soul contracts, and agreements are made; you pick your family, you pick your parents. Contrary to that old cliche, you can’t pick your parents- actually, I’m told that you actually do. You may not get the parents you want, but you get the parents you need to learn.

Rissa Miller: Right? Right.

Johnny Burke: You’ve gotten distinct intuitive impressions that these things do exist. It’s not a fairytale, it’s not wishful thinking. And you also mentioned that when the spirits are in that place, they can still see us. And did you say, interact with us?

Rissa Miller: I think so. I think that spirits interact with us all the time in large and small ways. There’s an unawareness that is caused by a lack of self-trust and a lack of trusting our own intuition. But I believe it happens, nonetheless. I feel like these little signs and symbols seep through all the time. Whether or not we’re paying attention is another thing, but I’ve experienced it myself. I’ve had so many people share with me these stories and experiences. They can’t explain away that they’re just too coincidental to be a coincidence. And I do have a background in journalism. That’s my inner skeptic – in journalism, they would tell you, there are no coincidences. You just have to find the thread.

Johnny Burke: There are no coincidences.

Rissa Miller: You just have to find the thread. I feel like these interactions still happen, some people feel them, some people sense them, and some people are very aware of them. Then a lot of people, even as they’re witnessing them, they decide to write them off. They decided, oh, that couldn’t be, that’s not right. That’s not possible.

Johnny Burke: Have you ever sensed one of these spirits- I don’t know if you do online readings. I’m not really sure if you can do that.

Rissa Miller: No, not at all. Online readings are actually my largest category.

Johnny Burke: So in other words, if there were someone with me or some entity with me right now, you’d be able to sense it?

Rissa Miller Maybe, I don’t feel anything with you right now. I’m sure there is somebody there, but I’m not tuning into them. I have definitely had that happen during readings. I’ve had it happen a lot beforehand. I have actually even seen entities before I go to a reading and then I see a picture of someone, oh, this is my relative who recently passed, and I say, he was here earlier. Here’s the message, or sometimes I’ll say there was somebody here wearing, a green ball cap and they were sitting slouched in a chair really tall. And they’ll say, oh my gosh, that was my nephew. He died in an accident. He always wore the green ball cap. Things like that.

Johnny Burke: So when you have those kind of images and messages, speaking of our inner skeptic, how do you explain to somebody, it’s not just you reading someone’s energy or even reading their mind?

Rissa Miller: I can’t explain that away honestly. I could be reading their energy. I could be tuning into their thoughts. Some people are incredibly loud thinkers. I actually prefer to read for people. I don’t know. I don’t read for my close family, and I don’t read for my, closest circle of friends and family because I know too much about them. I would absolutely interject my own feelings into a reading for them. So when I’m reading for strangers, I don’t want to know anything about them going in unless they have a question they want me to focus on. Sometimes even that isn’t the reading they get.

I get a lot of questions about romantic life and career, and sometimes the answer that comes back is, actually, before you get into your next relationship, you need to do X, Y, Z thing for yourself. Or before you leave this job, you need to tie up these other loose ends or get more education or whatever the cup or cards or smoke might tell me. It’s always what I convey. It’s often not what people want to hear, but I can’t always explain it, that’s where the trust comes in. That’s actually been probably my biggest lesson in this lifetime is learning to trust myself enough to believe my intuition.

Johnny Burke: Speaking of your intuition, when was it that you discovered that you had past life memories, to begin with?

Rissa Miller: When I was a child. I actually have very clear memories of it from childhood. So it’s been my whole life that I have remembered certain lifetimes.

Johnny Burke: When you were a child, do you remember ever seeing any kind of spirit beings or anything like that?

Rissa Miller: Oh, definitely. More than I do now. I absolutely did, and I was very lucky that when I explained to my parents that I, remember dying, or I recently saw a man in a hat walk through the wall. They didn’t judge me. They accepted it as it was and said, we’re sure you did.

Johnny Burke: in your bloodline, because you mentioned that the Tarot was a family business- did you ever have any evidence that maybe your mother or anybody in your family before had this kind of ability?

Rissa Miller: I have no doubt that someone did. Unfortunately, so many members of my family are passed that I can’t ask directly. I would say that I have ancestors that my part of my spirit guide team that I talk to regularly and that guide me through my readings and my life. But unfortunately, I don’t have any hard data.

Johnny Burke: r It’s very hard to have something at hand that’s actually tangible. The subject of spirit guides comes up a lot. So what is it like to recognize one of your spirit guides as an ancestor? That’s someone you never met, right? Is it just a feeling or how did you determine that?

Rissa Miller: I knew for a long time and, it was actually another medium that verified it for me, which it was quite validating to have someone else say, by the way, this other spirit guide looks like this. And I’m like, yep, I know exactly who she is. In that way, I did get external validation- it helped a lot in giving me more confidence in my ability to seek her out when I need her and speak to her.

Johnny Burke: Okay, to sum up, your past life memories shape your current practice in a way that gives you a tremendous amount of experience for one person. Is there any other way besides the memories that it bolsters your work and perhaps makes it a little bit stronger?

Rissa Miller: I do have all of this past life history with what I do, including with herbs. I would say that the plants, the tea, and incense that I use for my smoke, all of that is part of the memory, using the plants, and having a relationship with them. Yes, all of that is, part of my past. It is ingrained in my blood from a long time ago. I fully embraced it in this lifetime as two of the lives I remember dying by betrayal. They’re the other two life memories from past life memories that I distinctly have. I started this life with very little trust in people.

So it has been a big challenge for going into this lifetime to learn to believe that I knew the answer, that I could trust myself and could trust my own judgment of people since I had suffered these betrayals in past lives. I think that accepting that’s where I was in those lifetimes and then coming forward with the lesson has been incredibly beneficial to all of my work, all of my day-to-day living. Collectively, they belong to my ancestry and spirit circle as well, so that I don’t have to live through the same mistakes in this life that I did in those past lives.

Johnny Burke: I guess the significance there is you’ve learned from another life where you’ve learned from the mistakes, so you don’t have to repeat them again in this life, which again, makes your practice truly unique. Your divination practice. Anything else about these topics that you’d like, our listeners to know?

Rissa Miller: I think the big takeaway I would love to share with your listeners is to trust their own intuition. I think so many people hear the little nudges that come through, the little twitch in your gut, the feeling in your shoulders, that’s your intuition. It’s talking to you and it’s usually right, like 99.9% of the time.

I think that society as a whole would be great if we all learned to have that level of self-trust. Collectively.

Johnny Burke: Good point. totally agree. Rissa, thanks for joining us today. great information. very interesting. How can our listeners find out more about you online?

Rissa Miller:I am at TeaandSmoke .com

#109 Eli Blilious :Past Lives and Life Between Lives

February 18, 2023 by Johnny Burke

Past Lives

#afterlife, #brianweiss, #deathbedvisitation, #drmichaelnewton, #hypnosis, #lifebetweenlives, #lifereview, #pastliferegression, #pastlives, #soulfamily, #soulgroup

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke. Today’s guest is Eli Blilious. He is a certified hypnotist who specializes in past life regression and was trained by Dr. Brian Weiss. He helps people overcome limiting beliefs and past life patterns, including phobias, as well as identifying the people that we have incarnated with lifetime after lifetime. Eli, welcome to the program.

Eli Blilious: Johnny, it’s good to be with you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Johnny Burke: Trained by Dr. Brian Weiss, you studied at the Michael Newton Institute. Oh my!Both men were pretty much giants in the field of past life research. How did you find yourself on this path?

Eli Blilious: So it started when I was about 13 years old. My mother gave me a book that Brian Weiss had written and that started my interest in past life regression. But when I turned 18 I lost my parents and I sought out a hypnotist just to try something. I really had no idea what I was walking into. But I wound up doing a past life regression with this person and it’s exactly what I needed at the time. I had an experience where I actually was able to connect with my parents who had passed on and it was a very emotional experience for me, but one that was very healing as well too. So that that left an impression on me, as you might imagine.

And later on in life when I had an opportunity to study hypnosis and then eventually study past life regression and life between lives regression, I took that opportunity and it became my life’s calling.

Johnny Burke: Okay. So your first experience or foray into that realm was as a sitter-as a subject, not a practitioner.

Eli Blilious: correct.

Johnny Burke: This is a very touchy subject, obviously.I had no idea that you lost your parents and did a past life regression and actually made contact. What was it like and was there some kind of evidential thing that came forward or came through that convinced you that was them?

Eli Blilious: Yeah there’s a couple things that came through. First of all, it was a very, not just emotional, but a kinesthetic experience. When I say kinesthetic, feelings in my body that I didn’t expect to experience during a past life regression. There was definitely a very strong floating feeling as always floating through space. People can say was that your imagination? The feelings I felt were not my imagination. I knew that going through it. And then my father, during the regression when I connected with him, referenced a specific ring that only he could have known about. You’re talking about a confirmation -that was a confirmation for me.

But when you’re going through the experience and you’re connecting at that level and experiencing what you’re experiencing both kinesthetically and emotionally, it’s a confirmation in and of itself. That’s the best way I can describe it to you, because it’s one thing to see things. It’s another thing to feel things in your body and to emotionally experience what you experience. Does that make sense?

Johnny Burke: Yes. It’s a real connection. I’ve heard that several times, and it reminds me of something, I don’t know if we had a chance to talk about this before, but did you ever have any experience with mediums? Did you visit one ?

Eli Blilious: I’ve gone through a couple of mediums here and there. I have.

Johnny Burke: I think there’s an interesting parallel. Often people go to mediums to try and connect with loved ones like you did. I think the past life regression- maybe a parallel is not the greatest analogy, but still you can access things that you didn’t know about or you didn’t expect.

Eli Blilious: In having gone to mediums. There’s one that I can think of now who I’ve gone to, she described in detail what my parents look like, things that nobody could have known unless she had some sort of contact with the other side and with them. On the same token, when you do a past life regression or a life between lives regression ,you can connect on a level that sort of confirms for you that you’re with those souls. So there is that definite parallel there. And in fact, there are some mediums who refer clients over to me, and even if they don’t refer them over to me , I get people call me all the time saying a medium told me I had this past life so I need to work through something. And even though they weren’t referred to me directly or specifically because they’ve had this experience with a medium.

Johnny Burke: I think it’s very appropriate that practitioners in different spaces like mediums and psychotherapists, psychologists, and so forth are actually starting to collaborate and refer people back and forth. I think we’re gonna see more of that, don’t you think?

Eli Blilious: I do I, I’m seeing it more and more now, and I think it’s only gonna grow even more than that, I just think this is just sort of a need. We are able to help people in a way that they’re not, and they’re able to help people in a way that maybe we’re not .

Johnny Burke: Good combination. So going back to your experience,you mentioned that you connected with them, it’s not a common occurrence in a past life regression session, is it?

Eli Blilious: It’s not, it does happen sometimes. As a practitioner, what I find is that what the person needs to experience, that person will experience. So whether it’s a past life memory, whether it’s an experience from that space between lives, whether it’s something from the womb before they were born, even a current life memory, if there’s something in their current life that sort of leaves ’em stuck in some way, that might come up as well too. Whatever needs to come up comes up. And I think that’s what I needed at that time. That’s why I had that connection. Not a common thing. I didn’t have an expectation going into it at all. In fact, if somebody were to call me today and say well, I wanna do a past life regression with you, do you think I’ll connect with my parents or my loved ones who have passed away? My answer might be, well I don’t know. I wouldn’t make that assumption. Whatever you need to experience will come up for you.

Johnny Burke: What were your beliefs in the afterlife before [00:05:00] your journey into past lives and life in between lives and your practice in general?

Eli Blilious: I think my earliest beliefs were that I believed in the idea of reincarnation, I didn’t think of it like Heaven and Hell, but I didn’t really have an idea what that space would be like, to be honest with you. What did surprise me, as I both learned about it and was trained and obviously experiencing it as well too, is that it’s a space of no judgment. It’s acceptance, it’s love it’s, pure is a, is a good way to describe it. It’s just a pure space where there is no judgment just sort of like a very neutral, healing, pure space, if that makes sense.

Johnny Burke: As in pure consciousness perhaps. I’ve heard that from not only past life regressionists or hypnotherapist, but other people that could be a shaman, it could be a medium, it could be an energy healer. People I’ve talked to on the show have basically demonstrated that there’s more than one way, one route to get to that space.

You mentioned the life in between lives space, which I know Dr. Michael Newton wrote some very, pretty incredible books about- Journey Of Souls, which really sounds too good to be true . Should we talk a little bit more about past lives before we do that? Or should we just jump right into the in-between space?.

Eli Blilious: Well, let’s talk a little about past lives first, and then it’ll, transition into the light between lives.

Johnny Burke: I can imagine for some people, including myself, it could be a little confusing, let’s do that.

Eli Blilious: When somebody does a past life regression, the past life memories that are directly impacting their lives now tend to come up. So let’s just say an important lifetime with a family that they incarnated with. Now, they might go to that lifetime, right?

So I’ll give you an example. I had a woman come to see me and she just said I’m super protective, overprotective of my son. I know it’s not healthy, but I can’t help And sure enough, she goes to a past life memory where this child was, I think her daughter in that lifetime, if I remember correctly and the daughter was killed and she couldn’t save her daughter, essentially. And that one experience created the need to be overprotective in her current life. By experiencing that and essentially allowing processing it, reframing it a little bit. She was able to let that, go to not be as protective as she was prior to the session.

I’ll give you another example that’s completely the opposite. I had somebody come to me and she had, I think it was a brother-in-law, who she just didn’t feel comfortable with. He didn’t do anything to her, nothing. But she just had this feeling about him. And sure enough, in a past life he killed her in a past life and she was holding onto that. And after the session she was able to interact with him on a level she was never able to before, because that was that lifetime and this is another, and that was different, I call it a play, it’s a way of what we agree to do in a lifetime. So I’m gonna play the good guy. I’m gonna play the bad guy. I’m gonna play the

Johnny Burke: you’re reading my mind again.

Eli Blilious: The needy one or whatever it is. I agree to play in this lifetime so that you can grow so that I can grow, and so we can grow from the experience. That’s what I’m gonna play for you. It’s almost like actors on a stage, but we are given free will to do what we want to do, but we’re, we’re inclined to sort of be a certain way in a lifetime, If that makes sense. But for her, after that session, the dynamic completely changed.

Johnny Burke: it’s a healing of sorts, isn’t it?

Eli Blilious: is. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Johnny Burke: What you just mentioned is a proper segue way into the in-between space, because you mentioned soul contracts or agreements where, as you mentioned, I’m gonna be the good guy. You’re not, you’re gonna be this, you’re gonna be whatever, the girl that breaks my heart or someone that takes me on a job to rob a bank and I get killed, whatever it is. And I’ve heard it’s like casting a stage play or a movie.

Eli Blilious: Yeah, there’s an agreement in place, and I say well, okay, in this lifetime I’m gonna play this role in your life and you’re gonna play this role in another person’s life. And we make that agreement ahead of time knowing that by doing this, by having these experiences, we’re gonna grow as a soul from the experience.

Johnny Burke: It’s for the entire group. It’s not just for one person, right? I think Michael Newton called them soul families or soul groups.

The Long Island Medium says life, Is like an episode of Saturday Night Live. Everyone changes costumes and characters, but at the end of the night, everyone hugs. That lends itself to the analogy of the stage play or the movie where it’s like casting and you have a role, you have a job.

Eli Blilious: We all agree to play these roles and, there’s a value in learning, in being, whether it’s a thief, a clergyman, whether it’s an accountant or to play the good guy, the bad guy, the needy person we want to try all these different roles on, we wanna try all these different costumes on as you like to describe

Johnny Burke: Mm-hmm.

Eli Blilious: And by wearing these costumes and playing these roles, we’re learning and growing as a soul.

Johnny Burke: Now with your sessions, do you ever record them?

Eli Blilious: I record all them.

Johnny Burke: You record all of them. That must be quite an experience.Let’s say someone goes through a regression and maybe they’re in a trance or they fell asleep. Has anyone ever said I don’t remember anything? Then you play the tape back and they get to experience it all over again. Has that ever happened?

Eli Blilious: It’s only happened once. Most people remember what they experienced during the session. I will say that. It’s really interesting to hear back from clients a couple of months later and they watch the video again because time has passed and they wanna watch it. then they described to me the connections they made after the session. When I say connections, the realizations, they came to. They’ve had some time to sort of soak it in and process what they experienced, the whole thing. So for them, it’s an invaluable thing to have the video, even if they remember every single part, every single minute of the session. It is rare I’ll say that, to have somebody speak in a different language, but I’ve had it happen a couple of times.

Johnny Burke: I have heard of cases where someone went through a session and they said nothing happened, and then the therapist would play back the tape, the recording and sometimes their voice would change. When I think about your experience, you were trying to figure out what happened to your parents, just like millions of other people.Like, what happened to my brother or my mom, or a friend? And you had no idea that they were gonna come through. But I’ve been told it’s a genuine feeling, like it’s unmistakable. It’s not

Eli Blilious: it’s like a recognition. It’s hard to describe it any other way, but you automatically know this is who they are. it’s almost like that familiar feeling you have when you see somebody or you can even compare it to something you enjoy eating as a child- sort of like, oh my God, that brings you right back. But there’s the recognition when you go into that space.

Johnny Burke: All right. Is it something like perhaps a Deja Vu or?

Eli Blilious: No I don’t describe it as a deja vu. I describe it more as a loving connection. They’re there to greet you, they are actually a portion of each session when I’m talking about life between lives now, where it’s pretty common to have the soul family, soul group to greet you essentially; welcome you back to that space after incarnating and having that experience on earth. And they’re so happy to see you. It’s almost like a party in a way. They’re so excited and so happy and it’s like seeing a long-lost friend. So it’s the same idea, but of course, they are your family, and it’s a deeper connection.

Johnny Burke: I love that,and everyone loses someone at some point. For the people that go through the grieving process, I don’t think they can hear that enough. It also reminds me of deathbed visitations, which happens obviously right before that.I’ve been told there are thousands and thousands of cases where someone’s in hospice and they start talking to a deceased relative. I know that’s not your line of work, but do you have any insight into that? How do we know that’s real and it’s not the drugs or the morphine or anything that’s actually causing a hallucination?

Eli Blilious: There’s no way for me to sort of confirm this for you, but it’s my belief that this starts to happen even six months before somebody passes away-if they’re ill. I’m not talking about it if it’s an accident, and it’s interesting that you bring that up because I just lost my father-in-law a short time ago and he was progressively getting weaker and weaker. But he started to have that experience more than six months before he passed away. When he wasn’t on any drugs, nothing like that. He would start to say, people would come to visit him, sit on his bed.So, my belief is it’s almost like a preparation, letting you know, Hey, we’re gonna be here for you .

Johnny Burke: We’re gonna help you cross over.

Eli Blilious: Help you cross over and it may not be time now, but it will be soon time for you to do that. when that happens, we’re gonna be here for you. That’s my belief anyway.

Johnny Burke: it’s actually a very common belief amongst hospice workers, because they see it all the time. I know it happened with my mom; she was talking to my grandfather asking would you like some more wine? I wasn’t there, but my sister was there and I thought, what are the chances? And the more and more I talk to people that are in that space they’ll tell you. Yeah, it happens all the time. When you talk about preparation, I’ve never heard that before, that kind of communication happens months in advance. Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the proverbial veil is getting thinner?

Eli Blilious: Yeah, and there’s a belief which I subscribe to, that the veil is very thin if there at all when you’re first born. And also as you prepare to transition from this life. So I do believe that’s the case. So that veil is thinning at that point. And so you’re, able to connect with other souls and they’re there for what’s coming. It maybe not be part of this conversation necessarily, but I think hospice people do God’s work. I just think the work that they do is amazing.

Johnny Burke: No question.

Eli Blilious: Just as a side note,

Johnny Burke: That experience of the deathbed visitations, I think the more people that hear that this happens all the time. It’s not the drugs, it’s not their imagination any more than a near death experiencer flatlines and watches the people in the operating room and can tell exactly what they did. How do you explain that?

Eli Blilious: No, you don’t. And just to that point for a moment, every single time I do a past life regression there’s a death scene as well too. And without fail, they float out of the body and they watch what happens as they pass away, almost as if they’re floating above and looking down, and they can describe who’s there and all these different things.

So they all have that in common. So they all float out of the body. and some hang around longer than others, but that’s what they do. And initially, they watch what happens. They see themselves pass away. Who’s there with them what happens next? That sort of thing. So that’s something that I see almost every single session.

Johnny Burke: One of my guest speakers ,a medium called Jock Brocas, a very cool guy and very experienced, told me about a show called The Ghost Inside My Child. And many of these kids had not only past life memories, but they had memories of their death as well.

That’s got to be pretty heavy to watch. But again how do you explain that? How does a five-year-old kid know about a death that happened 40, 50, a hundred years ago? where in some cases you can actually go back and verify if you’re equipped to do the research. How do you explain that?

Eli Blilious: Not that it’s common, but it’s more common than people realize. I probably get a call once every six months, or certainly once a year with a child who has past life memories, and who’s very young. And they can describe in detail their lifetimes and who they were, what their name was all these different details.

the only thing I can guess is that they were allowed to continue to be unveiled to have the accident information for a longer period of time than people have it. And there must be a reason why they’re doing that And maybe it’s because they want to be able to share that information with that lifetime. I don’t know.,but I think there’s probably some reason why they are allowed to remember that, whether it’s for their sake or the people that are around them.

Johnny Burke: Speaking of being unveiled for a little bit longer than normal ,have any of your clients experienced a life review, like the Council of 12 or anything like that?

Eli Blilious: Yeah. So that’s a pretty common experience in a life between lives regression council of 12, council of three, the number doesn’t make a difference. That review is a very common experience, and it’s one that’s meant to sort of review the lifetime they just had. Feedback. when I say feedback, it’s not judgmental. Just saying, these are some of the things that you encountered. These are some things you did and your next lifetime you’ll respond a little bit differently to some of these types of experiences.

So I find it to always be a very nonjudgmental, yet direct feedback in terms of what their life was like. the Council of 12, some people think of it like you’re sitting there in front of judges and that sort of thing. And while they’re there to critique and give you feedback, it’s always positive it’s always done in a way that it’s meant to make the person feel as though they did the best they can.

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard that from other people when they talk about the life review. Often it is as if someone is telepathically asking them, how do you think you did?

Eli Blilious: . Almost all communication in that space is telepathic. So it’s just thought-based. It just sort of comes to you. Certainly, that’s also a common question. How do you think you did and what do you think about this experience? What do you think about what happened here? That sort of thing.

Life between lives regression, you typically connect with your spirit guide pretty early on. You can have multiple guides by the way, and most people do. But the primary guide is the one who usually comes with you to that review and is there with you to encourage you and to sort listen to what’s being said and, hear what you have to say about your lifetime.

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard of practitioners having a session and getting the information from that person’s spirit guides or their own spirit guides rather than having a deceased person come through. During one of your sessions could you see with your mind’s eye or the third eye any spirit guides or was that pretty much the experience of your clients?

Eli Blilious: It’s pretty much the experience of my clients, but I will say since I started doing this I do get strong intuitions and very often I’ll ask questions that I don’t know where the questions come from. They sort of just come to me and I just sort of ask and they seem to be the right questions. So it’s hard to explain what I’m saying to you, but essentially I’m intuitively getting information that helps me to sort of help my client through the process. I don’t have the experience you just described, but that’s the type of intuition that I get with a client.

Johnny Burke: Whether it’s a past life regression. or a life between-lives regression, what is the farthest back in time that you’ve gone with any of your clients?

Eli Blilious: The caveman years. Certainly I’ve done that. Everything from, ancient Egypt to Atlantis is common too. So yeah, you can go very, very far back. It’s not always my goal to go so far back. It’s about going to the lives that are impacting them now, that’s really my goal when I do a session like that.

Johnny Burke: Isn’t it true that with your position and your profession as a hypnotist, your job is to actually go back to that point, whether it’s yesterday or last month or when the client was six years old, to focus on a particular issue. Isn’t that how I believe Brian Weiss stumbled upon a past life of one of his patients that discovered a life how many thousands of years ago?Could be 3000. I’m not sure. He wasn’t planning

Eli Blilious: No. No, not at all. , that wasn’t his plan at all. So as a hypnotist, we look to uncover the sensitizing event for whatever the challenge might be. That’s what he was doing as well too. He was looking to find out what was the sensitizing event and that just led him back to this past lifetime, three or 4,000 years ago. Just to give you an example if I may, I work with someone who had a fear of thunder and lightning, and they went right back to a past life. The person who I was working with was a woman, but in that lifetime, she was a man, and she was in battle. Hand to hand and she was dying, leaning up against a tree, and there was thunder and lightning in the background. And that connection of dying with thunder and lightning in the background created that phobia later in life, which disappeared by the way after the session.

Johnny Burke: Once you brought it up.

Eli Blilious: Yeah. Which was totally resolved. So the unconscious mind will take you to where you need to go in these sessions. it’ll guide you to what is most beneficial for your experience.

Johnny Burke: Do you also find in your practice, that you can provide a remedy for something that a traditional therapist could not?

Eli Blilious: Of course. So, when I say of course, if it stems for example, from a past life, there’s nothing a traditional therapist can do about that if it stems from a past life, in most cases. Whether it’s a phobia, whether it’s a relationship pattern, or whatever that might be. I had a woman who I worked with who had severe anxiety, and severe insomnia. She went to a million doctors and they did the best they could, but she did a past life regression, and the, sensitizing events came up. We addressed them she was able to overcome her anxiety. so if it stems from a past life, I can be of tremendous value.

Johnny Burke: Do you think this kind of therapy is going to grow in popularity as people begin to realize that it’s just not hokey nonsense woo-woo stuff? It’s actually credible and it’s real?

Eli Blilious: I do, and I think as people share their experiences with others, which is, typically how this goes, you know, you get the word out. I get people who come to me who are skeptical. And I’m, okay with that. It’s okay to be a skeptic and there’s nothing to matter with it actually until you experience it. But then they go through the process and if it brings value to them they’re gonna let somebody else know and they’re gonna try it out, whether it’s with me or somebody else.

Johnny Burke: So in your with Brian Weiss, that must have been fascinating. What was he like and what was the training like?

Eli Blilious: He’s a very old soul and a very gentle soul as well too. You go through these exercises obviously, where you do it yourself and you also practice on other people, and that’s part of the training, of course. It’s really some of his insights and his stories that are memorable. and just his approach, he’s an amazing guy who’s doing this for many, many years, and right now he doesn’t do anymore one-on-one. But he does ’em in groups at this point, I think. He’s an amazing guy who’s had amazing experiences and brought this to the forefront.

Johnny Burke: He did. His books, as I told you before, sound too good to be true. I was reading it and I thought, this is so cool. It can’t be true. What are your thoughts? Did you study with him? Or at the institute?

Eli Blilious: With Michael newton or,

Johnny Burke: Dr. Michael Newton.

Eli Blilious: No, I didn’t get a chance to study with him by that time he was already semi-retired. So I studied uh, I called it an institute, and that’s what they called as well too. But it was obviously his trainers. they have a group that trains people regularly I was fortunate enough to train with ’em. Whether you’re training to become a past life regression hypnotist, or to learn life between lives, you experience it as well too during this training, which is just amazing. So you facilitate it, you experience it. It’s just an amazing experience.

Johnny Burke: So you have experienced it not just as a practitioner, but also as a participant, can you share maybe one of those examples with us?

Eli Blilious: For me it’s more about a feeling of freedom. When I say freedom, I don’t mean freedom from like chains. I just mean when you’re no longer in the body sort of floating there through space, it’s just like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I had an experience as I was transitioning into that space between lives almost like the sun started to rise in front of me and I was just blown away by the experience.

When you’re in that space and your information about your soul history and the many lifetimes you’ve had and your progression and learning more about your soul group, profound doesn’t do it any justice. People who do life between lives, regressions, the one thing they always describe it as is a profound experience. It almost always changes their perspective in terms of how they look at life. There’s so much more to it than just this costume that we’re wearing, right? This role that we’re playing. So if actors, like I believe we are, we’re gonna go back behind the set pretty soon and say, okay, what am I gonna do next time?

Johnny Burke: Yeah. that brings up another important question. We’ve got the idea about the stage and the roles and again, it sounds a little bit too good to be true, but maybe it’s a lot more work than I think it is. What has your experience and the testimony and the content of the sessions, taught you and the rest of us about karma?

Eli Blilious: It’s my belief based on the work that I do that karma is a little bit misunderstood so, yes. We’re meant to experience both sides of the cart. So in other words, if we kill somebody, we’re meant to also experience what that’s like to maybe be murdered by somebody. And yes, you can hold on to certain things through lifetimes because you’ve been wronged but the idea really is in my opinion, is to let all this stuff go. Okay, so you stole a hundred dollars from me in my past lifetime. Okay, well that was the role you agreed to play. Whether I’m rich now or I’m poor now, or if I’m healthy or I’m sick, this is what I’m meant to experience. Now, it’s hard to do that in the moment, if you’re going through a difficult time, it’s hard to say, okay, well this is what I’m meant to experience. so for me, it’s less about karma, and more just about experiencing what we’re meant to experience if that makes sense.

Johnny Burke: It does -I’ve heard people say there is no good, there is no bad, there is just experience. And as you said, You have to, in order to tell the truth, you have to learn how to lie. In order to experience love, you have to experience hate. Because if your life had no conflict whatsoever, it would just be a vanilla existence and be pretty boring because you didn’t have any test or anything that you had to overcome.

Eli Blilious: What would be the purpose anyway?

Johnny Burke: Reincarnation past lives, the cycle of life in between lives. , it’s pretty obvious that you not only believe it, but you’ve actually seen enough where you think it’s pretty much a given.

Eli Blilious: It’s absolutely a given. For those people who go through it, who decide to try past life regression, life between lives, the very least they’re gonna walk away with is saying, wow, there’s much more than I thought there was ,and death is not the end. And just that in and of itself is priceless as far as I’m concerned. Just to know that there’s more to this and what happens when we die? It’s just, to me it’s priceless.

Johnny Burke: I think if we look at it like death is not the end. It makes it like maybe 1% easier, and over time I think it helps heal wounds a little bit better. Am I right?

Eli Blilious: Absolutely. and if we’re playing these roles, why do we wanna hold onto animosity, hatred, whatever it is that we’re dealing with in our lives, just not worth it, right? So in other words, if we’re angry at somebody, is it worth holding onto? regardless of what they did or didn’t do to us,

Johnny Burke: Do you think that for those people that let go of the animosity and just let go of it, that lets them escape the wheel of karma, or is that not necessarily true?

Eli Blilious: I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it certainly makes their lives easier, I think. So when you use the word karma, to me it’s like, if you can learn to sort of accept certain things that are hard to accept, that’s one more lesson. Maybe it’s one more thing you don’t have to go through in a different lifetime. So from that perspective, that’s how I describe it.

Johnny Burke: Anything else on this topic that you think our listeners should know about?

Eli Blilious: Anybody can have the experience. in terms of success rate, it’s really, really high. It’s in the high nineties and it’s rare that somebody doesn’t have the experience. And if you’re curious, find somebody you know maybe nearby or whatever, and just do it.

Johnny Burke: Excellent. Eli, thanks for joining us today. Excellent Excellent information, this type of thing has a lot of value. How can our listeners find more about you online?

Eli Blilious: Sure. I have a website. try hypnosis now.com.

#107 Stephen Towill: Past Lives and Life Inbetween Lives

February 4, 2023 by Johnny Burke

Past Lives

#LBL, #lifebetweenlives, #pastliferegression, #pastlives, #spiritguides, #spiritualhypnosis, #stephentowill

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke, and today’s guest is Steven Towill, a clinical and spiritual hypnotherapist based out of Glasgow, Scotland, Steven has helped many people overcome trauma, fears, and depression, and specializes in past life regression and spiritual hypnosis. Today we will be talking about all things past life and between lives through hypnosis. Steven, welcome to the program.

Stephen Towill: Hi Johnny. Nice to be here.

Johnny Burke: By profession, you are a hypnotherapist. How did you find yourself on the path of exploring past lives for your clients?

Stephen Towill: Yeah, it goes us back quite a long time. So I’m 48 now. I think it was when I was about 17. I’d quite a curious So I was really interested in all things unexplained, and hypnosis was one of these things that I just, the curiosity about, I think I saw it when I was even younger than that and always wondered what is this strange hypnosis? I think it was a, about 17, I taught myself, and my little brother, six-year-old brother who was my first ever Guinea pig, and also my first ever past life regression subject. It was just curiosity and real, just wonderment about what is this strange thing of hypnosis, but then why do people have this phenomenon of talking about these past lives?

From a little brother, it was a guy who was married, so a six-year-old, explaining that he was married with a child and he was worried about a skin disease that he was dying of. He wrote children’s books, but he was worried about leaving his family behind. So this is a six year old explaining this, so it’s amazing.

Johnny Burke: I didn’t realize that you actually taught yourself hypnosis ,and you were 17?

Stephen Towill: Yeah, it was, 1991, so there was no internet, found a book, it was one of the driest books I’ve ever read. It was very psychological, it’s kind of base book. It gave me a brief insight into what hypnosis was. It was the only book I could find in a library at the time. It had my brother picking daisies or flowers out of a carpet that weren’t there to start with. And I thought, wow, okay. And then after that it was friends and neighbors and my mom’s friends coming over.

I’ve done a lot of training in hypnotherapy later in life, but that was how I started. It was self-taught. There was no books that I’d read on spiritual concepts other than maybe these odd ghost stories, unexplained books that I used to read, but I was finding my own way, which was un tainted on influence by other people’s perception.

Johnny Burke: You mentioned ghosts a moment ago. When you were younger, were you that kind of kid that saw spirits or had any kind of mystical experiences or?

Stephen Towill: I didn’t have a lot of experiences. I’ve had a couple of little ghost stories. Funnily enough, my young brother, the six year old, he’s very, very tuned in. He gets ghost experiences quite a lot, but me personally, it was more just real curiosity. I wasn’t one of these ones that was maybe talking to the dead, spirits. Yeah.

Johnny Burke: It happens quite a bit. So this would explain how you went on the path of exploring past lives through hypnosis. You also explored the life in between lives space, which apparently takes place in between incarnations.

Can you tell us what exactly is that and how do you differentiate between a past life experience and an in-between life experience?

Stephen Towill: Yeah. So LBL or life between life, that’s a term that comes from a work by Dr. Michael Newton. So I call it between lives. When I was doing past life, I never did anything really spiritual. I had a couple of strange experiences actually doing the past life, but I never took it any further. But things like the Dr. Michael Newton work that when I read it, I discovered okay, there’s a transition point. So, I guess what the life between life, it’s really the spiritual experience.

It’s the transition point when they reach the end of that life, what happens next? You’ll find that most people just by simply asking them what happens next, they’ll start explaining this. It’s kind of afterlife experience of floating up, being lighter, having no body, and it’s from there, then you can really start interacting with more spiritual experiences.

Johnny Burke: So in that space that is the in between space, can you offer an example of an event that took place during one of your sessions?

Stephen Towill: For the between life experience? this is what we are, we are spiritual beings. The between life is more a reality than actually what we see here is a reality. From a session, if you take someone beyond a past life or to this between life place, what’s more likely to happen is that they’ll be aware of maybe guides that start to come in and the way that I’ll use it a lot for understanding what the past life was about. You find that what past lives really do for people is it brings healing, it helps them overcome the fears and phobias that they may have now.

From the between life, you can get a lot more understanding. You can ask guides, why was this person showing this particular life in this session? What is it they need to learn about it? Is it something they need to heal? Is this life affecting them and it’s affecting them now? So really the between life place is a place where you can really interact with guides or beings of ascension, whatever you would like to call them, to help us understand and to move past blocks that we’re maybe in in this life. It’s a spiritual place. to me, the reality. That’s a bit closer to really what we really are, rather than this perception that we’re in now of some kind of earthly experience of living lives and working through it.

Johnny Burke: The in between space, implies we live, we die. We go to that space and then we eventually come back. Isn’t that right?

Stephen Towill: The way I like to look at it is we don’t really die, so what we do is we awake. A good way of thinking about it is something like a virtual reality headset that we’ve got on at the moment, and we’re living this current life to learn and grow and, then at the end of the life or the end of the game or the experience, we take the headset off and then we’re back to we’re a bit more than what we really are.

Johnny Burke: Very good point. It reminds me of a famous John Lennon quote: I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s more like getting out of one car and into another.

Stephen Towill: Yeah.

Johnny Burke: I’ve also heard several times, that space that you just described is more of reality than what we are in currently in our earthly existence; really interesting. When a client has a past life experience, you also mentioned guides,

I believe you’re referring to spirit guides, right?

Stephen Towill: Yeah.

Johnny Burke: Do you have contact with spirit? during a session or does the client have the experience with the spirit guide?

Stephen Towill: It will be the client’s experience. I’m not communicating.

I see myself as a facilitator. If I was to try and connect with guides and then bring that to the session, I’m sort of see that as almost an interference in the experience for that person. I like to almost take a backseat as a facilitator, as a guide to guide them through their experience to help them to I guess learn what they need to learn, heal what they need to heal. What I’ve found is the less that I interfere in that session, it’s almost like the mind knows exactly where it needs to go, where it needs to be shown. When you’re allow that person’s mind to take them to their experience and let it flow as it’s supposed to, you usually find that it was a much more successful session.

Johnny Burke: I get that. People that that come on to Closer to Venus often talk about spirit guides. So as far as you’re concerned, that’s not a work of fiction. That’s a reality. Do you agree?

Stephen Towill: Yeah, the way that I see a spirit guide, they’re the same as us. They’re just another conscious being that has more experience maybe. So it could end up that we become spirit guides once we’ve worked through this earthly incarnation or number of incarnations.

Each life is bringing growth. Each life is bringing opportunities for us to expand and to learn. Eventually we will exhaust that learning. See, I think a game’s a great way of looking at it. Imagine playing through a platform game, and you maybe get your little character gets killed by a ghost or something. So you go back to the start, you start again, and then you think, okay, I get killed with that ghost. Or if I jump over? Oh, I’ve jumped over and passed that point. And as you walk through the game, through the levels, then eventually you complete the game. Then may be someone says, well, I’m stuck on level 54. All right, that’s a hard level. But if you did that and try that, see how you got on with that? And that person goes away and does that, they’ve passed that level.

So in a way, you’ve completed that game. You’ve got experience of the game, and you can help other people to get through that game. And that’s why I see a spirit guide as; they’re another conscious being with some experience and what we are maybe going through and they’re helping us to work through that.

Johnny Burke: Okay. So spirit guides do show up in a variety of ways.

They show up in sessions, they show up in memories. They are apparently present during mediumship readings and things of that nature. What are some of the characteristics of a past life reading or a session which the client clearly is convinced it was not a memory or a work of fiction? How do they know the difference?

Stephen Towill: What I would say to someone is, it’s a recall. So in a way it is imagination. You’re using your mind to reconstruct just in the way that, if I had to ask you about your vacation last year, what did you go? Or was it like?

You would need to use some kind of reconstruction and with your mind, your imagination to remember what happened.

It’s a reconstruction of what is. But I know what you mean in terms of, am I just making it all up? Is it this false? Is it a false memory or just imagination?

and some of the things that sort of support for clients that may help them to really accept it. There was a client yesterday, she was the opposite sex, so she was actually a male. It was quite funny. She said, “I’m hairy.” And it was this hairy guy that she was.

So there’s this switching of gender sometimes that happens through the experience. When I’d done another client once, a big guy with s beard was talking about his little ribbons and his shoes. He was a little girl with a white frilly dress on. To kind of imagine something that, but then as the emotions, this really deep emotions, sometimes there’s a real, connection to their life and to the people. And it may be that they are. experiencing real love of a family and a family unit in, this past life. It may be that they’ve lost that connection in this life, and they’ve been showing some simple things like how important it is just having a family. But it’s the deep emotion that seems to be there when they love these, what we would say is imaginary children that they’ve got, if it was all imagination, why do they feel so connected to them?

What happens is that some of these family members are also members in their current life. So it’s like, soul group type things, but there’s a recognition of who this person is. The, the way they ask is , look into the eyes of this person.

Does it remind you of anyone? And you’ll usually say, “oh, that’s my mother”.

It’s like this realization that this person, male or female has someone else in their current life. so there’s that as well.

There’s also some people who have then went off and researched some of the actual things that had come up through the session and found that it ties into moments in history or things that happened in history, or even names that they’ve found. So there’s this element as well. I think you’d mentioned before, I think it was the police sergeant..

Johnny Burke: Bob Snow, the, retired homicide detective- that was crazy.

Great episode though, he was a hard-boiled skeptic. He eventually found the diary of the artist who painted the hunchback woman , J Carol Beckwith.

And he recorded all of his past life sessions. He eventually found the diary because he found the painting in a gallery in New Orleans and looked through his diary and corroborated, I think 26 out of 28 events that were in his past life regression sessions.

So what you just mentioned about confirming certain things, reminds me of what Dr. Ian Stevenson, one of the reincarnation research pioneers back in the day, I think he was the psychiatry chair at University of Virginia. There’s certain cultures where the kids, the children, remember past lives, he would go find them, do the research, find the family, then the child would talk to the family and tell them things that he or she could not have possibly known. I think in about 1500 cases, the family accepted the child as a reincarnation of their lost loved one.

Stephen Towill: Yeah. the doctor Ian Stevenson stuff, that’s fascinating as well. He said, children, they don’t even need hypnosis. A lot of children recall.

There’s actually a Amazon Prime show that’s called the Ghost Inside My Child which researched a lot of children that are affected by these past lives.

Dr. Ian Stevenson, said between about the ages of two and seven, the children seem to just naturally recall a lot of this stuff, and quite interesting because there’s a e Swiss guy, Piaggi, he did a lot of cognitive development. He was one of the assistants on developing the MENSA test. He did a lot of the research on cognitive development at that exact age, two to seven is before we start developing this critical element of the mind.

With hypnosis that’s what you’re trying to do is almost bypass this critical faculty that is probably deciding that this can’t be true or whatever. Getting past that so that we can work more with the unconscious experience. So it’s fascinating that Dr. Ian Stevenson come up with that age where children were recalling it, but it ties also to Piaggi’s cognitive development of before the critical mind starts to dismiss a lot of things.

Johnny Burke: Great explanation. I’ve actually never heard that before, but it makes absolute perfect sense. It’s great. It would explain why after a certain age, a lot of these intuitive types kind of push away, almost deny their experience. Inevitably it seems to come back where they think, okay, I have to accept it.

I’m able to speak to the dead. But it seems natural when they were young.

The experiences I’ve heard almost always involve a child before the age of 10 or even nine.

So you mentioned earlier that in some of your sessions, the client will recognize someone from a past life in their current life. Does that happen often?

Stephen Towill: It’s common. Not always, but it’s common. So sometimes I may ask, if you look into the person’s eyes, is there anything familiar? And they’ll maybe say no, but it’s very common. They will make a realization that, “that’s my mother, that’s my aunt, that’s my grand, that’s my daughter.” That also then sort of really ties in with, the doctor Michael Newton stuff.He did 7,000 test cases through his career researching really what happens at this death point- this life between life and that then brings you back to this soul family, soul group type of idea.

Johnny Burke: Exactly. Many people have come forth and said that these soul families can be as many as like a thousand people. We don’t really know the mechanics of it, but the implication is this group travels and reincarnates together as long as there is something to be learned. And once I guess they can get through the maze or the game, as you would say, then maybe they move on. So certain people in our lives, we may have had several lives with them before.

Stephen Towill: Well, with the soul group or the soul family, I guess we would incarnate lot with these same souls because we work very well with them.

The interesting thing is that we hear these concepts of soulmate and it could be a soul that you’re just really tied to, that you work a lot with, so it may be that this soul is here to challenge you, to make life difficult for you, to help you to overcome a restriction that they may bring to help you to become stronger .

It could be a very dominating father or a restrictive, dominating mother or something that is actually oppressing us in some way.

But through our experience with them, we may rebel a little bit, maybe we are here to learn about standing up for ourselves or to overcome someone that will place a lot of overpowering sort of behaviors over us. These dynamics, it can be brothers, sisters, mothers, that whether it’s good for you or bad for you in the way that you perceive it, in a way it’s allowing you to sort of work through it and to grow and to learn and to come to a point where whatever they do doesn’t affect you because you don’t allow it to. You grew past it and you’ve strengthened yourself.

Johnny Burke: That would give credence to very well-worn platitudes like

God puts this person in your path for a reason. the other thing I’ve heard is, challenges are opportunities, right? Now that we’re talking about this, that in particular makes sense. Or another thing I’ve heard is, what’s the lesson here? When you’re faced with someone or something, which is oppressive, maybe in some cases really horrible. I’ve been told that in these in between spaces, a lot of these things, even the really bad things could have actually been planned.

Stephen Towill: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the time. There are a few stories I could give you. There was one, this was something that happened over in Glasgow.

It was a girl that was murdered. Terrible thing. Her mother, real struggled after this happened, no support networks for her. Had to battle her way through this, dealing with the death of her daughter.

I had a friend at the time who had worked with her mother to try and help her. He was a practicing medium, and he was invited to this gala that she had organized to try and help the charity to support parents that had lost children.

I remember being at this gala ball and I realized that she just looked like a regular girl, just a regular sort of person. You wouldn’t expect to have done such an amazing thing. But she had set up this whole charity. She had been helping so many, many people to overcome death and bereavement for the parents, connecting them with these networks that through her experiences she eventually had found.

It brings you back to this idea of I guess the soul agreements and soulmates and that I can’t say whether it is or not. It’s very possible that daughter had made an agreement that she would come into this life, but she would leave early.

But by leaving early, it would present her with that opportunity to go on and become this person that has just changed so many people’s lives and set up this charity. And it shows that through adversity and difficulties, things that we see as bad events, sometimes it’s an opportunity to do something incredible.

Johnny Burke: So it seems to me that once we try to get an understanding of the cycle; living, leaving our earthly lives, going to the in-between space, coming back. It’s very hard for some people to get their head around the fact that this horrible event, like someone having cancer or some other really bad experience could have actually been planned so that the soul group, not just the person, could benefit by learning, and that way they raise their vibration.

Stephen Towill: Yeah. I guess it’s hard for some people to. The way I see that, it’s like a virtual reality. If we even look to into things like quantum physics that start to then tell you that the physical matter, at the atomic level, there’s 99% space. Even when you go into the nucleus of an atom, it’s a proton neutron, which then you go into quarks, which are events things that are appearing and disappearing. And they say that atoms are the building blocks of our physical reality. So if the atoms are all 99% space, it then means that we are living in this construct of something that’s not really physical as we think it is.

For me it’s a construct that has been created ;an energetic construct here for us to learn, to grow, to experience. And like you said, we come in and it’s like we take these roles, these characters, we’ve got these agreements, there’s free will and anything can happen. We can make any choice that we want, but it’s almost like there’s a sort of structure, there’s [ things that are likely to happen in this life to allow us to, grow, to face the challenges that we need to face to help us to grow past these things. And I think it’s a good analogy, the whole movie type thing, or the play; we take these characters and then at the end of it we return back.

And then it may be that we take new characters in the next one where, in a completely different play. There’s a good way of looking at it.

Johnny Burke: And it reminds me of when people say, and I think Elon Musk, among other people, was quoted as saying,” I’m pretty sure what we’re experiencing is a simulation”. I get when someone says, I think it’s a simulation, but I think the analogy of a movie or a play, and it could be a Shakespearean tragedy for all we know, it’s slightly easier to relate to.

Like, in one episode not too long ago, I was telling the speaker about how my girlfriend when I was 18, she was mean as a snake, and immediately he said,” you know, Johnny, you probably signed up for that.”

Stephen Towill: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Johnny Burke: That goes back to what we said before of when we’re confronted with a difficult situation. If we ask, what’s the lesson? There usually is one, right?

Stephen Towill: Yeah, Imagine there’s a woman and a guy, he’s mentally, physically abusive to this girl. You could say to that girl,” see, if I click my fingers and he disappears and the whole situation disappears. how would that go for you? “And she would say, “this is hell I love him and I don’t want to leave him, and I think that he could probably get better. I really believe in him, but it’s bringing me down so bad. He beats me up, puts me down so much and I’m just struggling, and I just want it all to go away.”

let’s say five in years’ time, she is out of that relationship. She finally broke free of it, but she’s now meets this other guy and this other guy starts to do similar things, maybe saying a couple of derogatory comments, putting her down, and she thinks, wait a minute, that’s exactly like that last guy. I can see all the same traits and I am not going back down that route again. It took me so long to break free of it. I don’t want to go down that same route again. In another five years, she’s now married with a nice guy. She’s maybe a couple of kids.

You can say “do you remember 10 years ago? I said to you, if I click my fingers, the whole situation will disappear?” what if I click my fingers now and all of that disappears? And she says,” well, do you know something? 10 years ago, that was hell and hard. But when I look back on that, that guy, in five years’ time, I could have ended up down two or three years down the line, make all the same mistakes I made in the first relationship, then I wouldn’t have met this other guy and I might not have my kids. And also, I wouldn’t realize how good this guy is, how lucky I am to have this guy. if I hadn’t experienced how bad some of these other people could be on me. So, in a way, I don’t want to lose my past.”

And I think we can all do that. We can all look back to some of the things that have happened in our past, difficult people, that you’ve had to work with, but over maybe the next five, 10 years you actually get better at dealing with these types of people. you can do the work much better. You can deal with life experiences better because you grew through them. So it’s this opportunity,

I think some people will struggle. Some people won’t manage it, and that’s again, why we may repeat doing the same life a similar life again to try and give us another opportunity to work through that lesson that we need to learn.

But I see all challenges in some way, there are some kind of gift. They’re here for us to grow, to be stronger, and to become a better person through that experience, not to let other people bring us down, or take away our happiness.

Johnny Burke: That sounds like everything actually does happen for a reason and they are challenges. And some of these challenges, maybe not all of them, are opportunities. In other words, what is the lesson here? Steven, anything else regarding these topics that you want our listeners to know about?

Stephen Towill: I think it’s really simple. Out of all the sessions that I do, what I find is that it seems to be all about our growth, all about us developing in some kind of way. I did a session maybe five or six years ago and it was nature that I was really shown, and it was to remember nature that everything that we see around about is of God, of creation. We become maybe disconnected from that. Maybe that’s why people are going out into nature. We don’t go into nature.

We actually are nature. We are all part of this creation.

And to remember that, and through people’s experiences, all it is about growth. It’s about us learning. The more that we can learn, the more lessons, like you said, what have I got to learn here? It’s a great question. You ask yourself, why am I going through this and what is it that I need to develop in myself? what do I need a change in my life to get past that? And to remember guides, they’re all there. They’re helping, you can’t see them, but they’re still helping, and they will be supporting us and through this growth and to remember that we’re all part of the same thing.

Johnny Burke: The guides are there. It’s something that comes up, quite a lot. The spirit guides are there, and everyone has them. Excellent. Steven, thanks for joining us today. excellent stuff. very entertaining. How can our listeners learn more about you online?

Stephen Towill: I’ve got a website www.StephenTowill.com. One of the easiest places to find me is Instagram: stephentowill_hypnotherapy I do a lot of kind of funny spiritual stuff

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