#premonition Archives - Closer To Venus

#179 Rita Tojal: Near Death Experiences and The Non-Physical World

June 22, 2024 by Johnny Burke

#afterlifecommunication, #ayahuasca, #lifereview, #nde, #neardeathexperience, #nonphysicalworld, #pastlives, #premonition, #reincarnation, #shaman, #spiritworld

Johnny Burke: welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke, and today’s guest is Rita Tojal. She is a psychotherapist, astrologer, founder of being Namka and Namka Trips, and she’s also a near-death experiencer. She uses a blend of psychology, spirituality, and somatic practices to help us discover our authentic selves. In this episode, we’ll discuss her multiple near-death experiences, as well as what we can learn from them. Rita, welcome to the program.

Rita Tojal: Hi there. Thanks for having me.

Johnny Burke: One of the things that we do on the show is we try to connect the dots between the different experiences and in the case of a practitioner, different modalities, and you have several of them. So, your path that you’re on now, did that begin with your near-death experiences, or did it begin before that?

Rita Tojal: it began before that. Way before that.

Johnny Burke: Okay, so what was the beginning?

Rita Tojal: interestingly, I am not even aware there was a beginning. It was like there when I was a kid. It was already present. So for me it was more of adjusting to my context because I could see that it wasn’t everyone’s path or not everyone was aware of the things I was aware of and I tried to fit into the place where I was, and then when it really came back to me that I was on a path, even if no one else around me was when I was 14, 15. And I started looking for a spiritual guide. I wouldn’t have used these words, but I was looking for something. I was looking for answers. I felt connected with things that no one else was talking about, and soon after that is when I started studying Tibetan Buddhism

Johnny Burke: Okay. So you had an awareness very early on, it seems like. And you’ve had apparently many events or experiences with the non-physical world. What are some of your earliest memories?

Rita Tojal: This is quite an interesting question for me because the first memories I have are of being much more aware of the so-called non-physical world than of the physical world. I vaguely remember starting to differentiate those two as the non-physical, a boundary, and the physical, when I was in primary school. Because I was forced to ’cause it took me a while to understand that not everyone was in the so-called non-physical.

So some of these experiences would be knowing what people were thinking, knowing things that were going to happen before they happened, and knowing where things were. Like if someone lost something and would mention it to me, I could see where the thing was, knowing where animals were, just kind of knowing things that I couldn’t physically know.

Johnny Burke: Which sounds like psychic activity of some sort as well as premonitions, in some cases. Right. Okay. Interesting. Any other experiences like that? Like, seeing spirits or contact with spirits when you’re younger, which usually that’s how it starts in many cases.

Rita Tojal: Right, right. So I wasn’t calling them spirits, but I had a ton of what’s so-called imaginary friends. but they weren’t really, the way I see it now. They weren’t imaginary friends. I was seeing like entire communities of beings that were with me well, most of the time, at least, um, most of the time I would say yes, until I was at least around 9, 10 when I switched schools. I think they were most of the time with me

Johnny Burke: Any messages that you remember in particular?

Rita Tojal: I was always in touch with quite positive messaging. Every time I thought of something, or I heard an adult worried about something, I felt like a community of beings giving very positive messages about that particular subject. The one I remember the most clearly was when my great-grandmother passed away. And obviously, as a family, we were grieving and suffering, with her passing. But I could see very clearly what was happening to her. And I wasn’t the least worried with her passing. And this is one of my favorite humans of all time. So it’s not like I don’t care about her ’cause I, love her so much, but I could see what was happening and it wasn’t worrying at all. She was fine.

Johnny Burke: Did you experience seeing her making a transition to the next life or the next world, or what was that like?

Rita Tojal: I wasn’t present in the room where she died, so I, I wasn’t like seeing the physical side of it. But I think I saw it through the lens of the kid that I was, I was like eight or nine. I would have different words for it if it was a later experience, but I was seeing her lifting, and her expression was just like feeling phenomenal, and it really felt like she was at home. I knew her body presence very well ’cause I spent a lot of time with her when I was a baby, and she was just like, happy light. She was like a being of joy, and I could feel her, see her lifting and going somewhere that she was really happy about going. There was just something quite enlivening even about that.

Johnny Burke: Very positive, I would say. Interesting. So do you have any contact with that grandmother or anybody else who has crossed over

Rita Tojal: Yeah. Mm-Hmm. I do. Particularly with her and with a friend of mine who died when he was 30, almost 31.

Johnny Burke: Okay. So how do you know that it’s really them and not your imagination? You know that this question’s going to come up, right?

Rita Tojal: Yes, of course, of course. I ask myself that question at times as well. The thing is, the imagination has a different kind of texture, like inner texture somehow. And these communications are just very sharp. I just know it’s them. It’s hard to describe it in words, but they are substantially different. And I guess maybe one thing that makes the difference for me is imagination. I’ll second-guess myself. And I know that this is interesting, but this is like, you know, I can fantasize about many things, and when it’s them, it doesn’t generate that. It’s just like, I’ll know.

Johnny Burke: Now this communication, would that be typically classified as telepathy or is it in a class by itself?

Rita Tojal: I think it’s different from telepathy. It’s interesting because with that particular friend we were very telepathic, the two of us. For the 11 years we’ve known each other in, in physical embodied, life. so with Bruno, maybe it’s a bit difficult for me to distinguish because we were already like that, you know, like it would be the kind of thing like, he would call me if, if he was like, oh, are you, do you need this? We just knew that also because I, could foresee his death. And we have had a very unique of sitting down and talking about it. So we prepared for his death before he went to Tibet and died .

Johnny Burke: So you actually were able to predict his death and actually prepare him for it.

Rita Tojal: and prepare myself for the loss.

Johnny Burke: Did you share that with him or,

Rita Tojal: Yes,it was interesting because I saw it like two and a half years before it actually happened. When I was myself in Tibet and I, saw it happening in a mountain that actually he wasn’t planning, to climb at all. He had plans for other mountains. So I just felt how strange, like, why there? Like, that’s really bizarre. And then, when it was closer to the date, he was actually starting to feel that he was going to die, and he shared that with me. We met just a few hours before his flight to Nepal and later, going to Tibet. And we just talked. We spent like five hours preparing for that being the last time that we saw each other while we were physically embodied.

Johnny Burke: So you both knew that at that time.

Rita Tojal: Yeah.

Johnny Burke: That’s really incredible. Okay. So have you had contact with him since he’s crossed over?

Rita Tojal: Oh yeah. a lot.

Johnny Burke: What do they look like? I hear a lot of different things, but there are some commonalities. I won’t tell you what they are yet, but I wanted to get your take on that first.

[Rita Tojal: Oh, that’s interesting. Okay. I’m curious. So for me actually, with this particular friend, it has shifted since he passed now, it’s almost 20 years ago. In the beginning, whenever we were, I felt contact from him. I was seeing him as he was. When he was, here embodied as I knew him and met him, maybe for around five years. It was like that. So I could kind of feel his physical presence. I would see it was even like if it was a sound, it would come like from a little bit like higher than me. ’cause he was taller.

And then that changed completely, and it started to come more as a kind of a voice that’s more diffused in the air. So he wasn’t having like a physical; he was just kind of spreads and was more in the spaciousness than in a physically contained space. then it’s changed yet again that I was kind of seeing messages from his eyes, which is very interesting. And he had a very particular color of his eyes had a particular blue, so I was always seeing it from kind of behind his eyes, which was quite interesting. And then that changed.

Johnny Burke: Okay.

Rita Tojal: I actually didn’t feel the contact directly for around two, three years. It was more coming from songs or it was more indirect. and now it came back. And when it came back, it’s more of a like we can have conversations, and the voice is, again, more contained somehow. It always comes from him, as if he’s to my right, and we just kind of sit and have conversations. And it’s distinctively him. This is not my imagination. This is not another person. It’s just him. And also, I know because, whenever I’m having those presences with him, my body still reacts to how it reacted when I was physically with him. I just know it’s very distinctively him.

Johnny Burke: Okay. One of the things I’ve noticed from accounts- I don’t like to call them stories, accounts of people having afterlife communication, is that often the person tends to look like they’re in their prime. This was a young man, obviously, in your case, but if someone was, let’s say, older and maybe they were sick, often they would appear like they were much younger. Often like around 30 years old. That’s why I brought that up. So, the obvious question here was, does he seem happy? Does he seem content?

Rita Tojal: That’s so interesting because I have to say yes, he was obviously quite young when he died and was looking fine ‘because he was early thirties. But I do see him a little bit before, like maybe I see him like when he was 26, 27, when he was really in his prime. Even climbing-wise, it was like he was at his best, so that checks. So he felt quite lost in the first, I would say, three to five years of our communication, which was very disturbing. Definitely, after 10 years, he started to feel not only happy, it was like he was his happiness impersonated. And I don’t know if happiness is enough. There’s kind of a divine presence to him now, which is very comforting, I have to say. And also, I met him in one of my near-death experiences.

Johnny Burke: Now, was that the first one or the second one ?

Rita Tojal: The second one. In the second one.

Johnny Burke: As I mentioned before, you have a lot of experiences. Three near-death experiences just in that category alone. You also remember your own reincarnation. So, chronologically, what happened first? Was it the first NDE or did that memory come afterwards? How did that play out?

Rita Tojal: I had some memories of my reincarnation when I was a kid. I actually had quite a clear memory at some point, and I remember disconnecting from all of those memories because it just felt strange. I didn’t feel I had space in my environment to, to even engage with that. And after my first NDE somewhat, that started to come, but it’s really after the second one that more of those memories came. Just became a lot clearer.

Johnny Burke: Do you know what period that might’ve been from ? Centuries, decades? Something like that.?

Rita Tojal: Actually, a few things were happening all at the same time. So it’s this particular reincarnation that I remember very well. Other lifetime, past lives. I remember them. I remember so many of them. And they go all over the place in terms of the globe and outside of Earth. They also go into so many periods of our history, some that I recognize and some I don’t.

Johnny Burke: Do any of them go back before recorded time?

[Rita Tojal: I’m not sure. There are a couple that are quite strange to me, so I, I always feel that with those ones, I don’t have enough contextual information to even know exactly what it is because they’re quite primitive. It’s very survival-like, and I just don’t know.

Johnny Burke: So some of these memories came before you started having near-death experiences?

Rita Tojal: Right. They did because, like I said, I already had some of that as a kid. But then when they became really accessible, like tangible, if I was good at drawing, I could draw them because they’re so visible. I can definitely describe them in detail, and when that happened, when they started being so crystal clear to me, it was definitely after the second near-death experience.

Johnny Burke: So which one really stands out regarding memory and vivid detail? Was it the second one?

Rita Tojal: Yes. Mm-Hmm. The second one, they did different things to me, but I think the one that’s like more clear that I can really remember how I entered in near exactly everything is the second one. Yeah.

Johnny Burke: What are like some of the highlights that things that would make it easy for you to differentiate between a dream or imagination or like a real NDE.

Rita Tojal: I am fascinated actually by the difference of dreams and all of these other experiences because dream is really such a, an accessible way of going somewhere else. So, the way I feel it’s easy to make a difference with an NDE is that, let me just share how this one was for me. So, I had a car accident where I was in a van. And we lost the roof of the van. And the van was, we were hit by a big truck from behind, and our van was just spinning around on a highway, where I was just kept alive because I was like suspended with the seatbelt. but while all of that was happening, I had no consciousness of what was happening because I was brain-dead. So I’ve only kind of gathered what was really physically happening way after it happened.

So in the middle of that car accident, somehow I was like propelled to this space that felt to me like just the gate into death that I had some space where I was like deciding, do I go ahead or do I stay here for a while? Do I go back? Do I not? How it felt substantially different from any other experience to me is that I was really not in my body. There was nobody. The body was just really not there. And not only was there like no physical body, but there was no gravity. There wasn’t anything like light or dark; it was just a kind of nothingness, which was incredibly joyful. Not that it felt particularly joyful at the time. It just felt like nothingness at the time. Only after that can I look and say, oh, that was quite joyful, not during the experience. And then after feeling that complete spaciousness. I encountered my great-grandmother and that friend who passed away. Bruno.

Johnny Burke: This is the second one, right?

Rita Tojal: Yes, this is second. Yes, and they were there. And then a little bit like behind my friend Bruno, there was a light, a big, big light, which I later had a feeling was a tunnel. But what I could see was like a big, bright inviting light glowing behind him. And I felt quite attracted to that light. And I was just in awe of finding these two creatures and that they were like together. because they never met when they were both alive. And I felt an immense amount of love. It’s like everything was love, and it felt so good to be there.

I then became aware, oh, I’m dying. cause until then, I hadn’t been aware; I think this was quite quick. When I felt that, I started engaging in some conversation with both of them. Then, very quickly, my friend Bruno actually just pulled me back. He just kind of put his hand on my, back and he just sent me back, and then suddenly I just felt myself coming back into this body, which was very much like I was trying to put on a wetsuit for a kid or something, it just felt like so incredibly restrictive and like so small, like I could not fit. It felt so uncomfortable. It was hard to breathe. It was everything. Just felt like, Ugh, can’t believe I’m back here. And it was quite-

Johnny Burke: Your responses are very consistent with what other people have reported in those types of experiences. It was a very cool experience, though, from our point of view. It probably had to be terrifying in your shoes, but you had mentioned something about being brain dead. What made you say that?

Rita Tojal: I just heard from the emergency, like I was taken to the emergency room at the nearest hospital, and I have no idea how long I was there for. ’cause I was still not fully aware that I had been in a car accident. Everything happened at. 1:11 AM, so middle of the night.The first time I met a doctor, he told me I had been brain-dead. He was, I think, trying to explain to me what had happened. But I also have to say, I say it because I can feel that that’s what happened.

Johnny Burke: Did you flatline or, ’cause there’s a difference between the death of the brain and flatlining, which means clinically you were dead. Was that the case or not really?

Rita Tojal: Not, at the hospital. I know that didn’t happen in the hospital. Whether that happened or not in the accident itself, I don’t know.

Johnny Burke: Okay, not an easy question. I know that. When you were brain dead, according to the surgeon, were you able to remember things that happened in the operating room or not?

Rita Tojal: No, my experience was all somewhere else, not there.

Johnny Burke: So it sounds like the second, near-death experience is the most pronounced. What are some of the important points about the first and the third? Because you had another one after that.

Rita Tojal: and it’s almost an effort. So on the first one, I would say that one of the things that is very marked for me is that, actually one month before it happened, I had an encounter witha black Jaguar, a Black Panther, this was in Brazil, and in Portuguese, they’re called onca preta so like a black Jaguar. They’re really, really rare.

Johnny Burke: And beautiful too, right? They’re really beautiful creatures.

Rita Tojal: Very beautiful, I was next to a Brazilian guy that had been living there for 40 years. He had never seen them. And I’m just there for like a morning and my eyes cross this animal’s eyes and there was just something in that encounter that completely changed me. So I was feeling like this presence of a world that. I didn’t know what it was, and I had been living in, in the Amazonian jungle for a while, so there was something that was becoming very, it’s like a gate was opening to me.

And then, two weeks after this first near-death experience, I was living in an indigenous community. At that time, I was in Ecuador, but still in Amazonia. And I had a really good relationship with the Shaman, and I had an Ayahuasca ceremony, and this is way before it became a trendy thing to do or anything; I actually had no idea what I was going to do. I only did it because I had such a good relationship with the shaman. And that completely opened like all sorts of portals and it just gave me access to a vastness that I could feel like I was everything. And my first near-death experience happened two weeks after that. So I think it was very much informed by that openness

[00:21:50] Johnny Burke: Or that ceremony.

[00:21:51] Rita Tojal: And by the panther. The panther was like also something out of this world to meet that animal. Like it did something to me that was quite profound. It happened, I was already I think 22, 23, and I was on my own in this jungle. I had been traveling and living in South America for a year, so I was very comfortable in the jungle. I had malaria. So that’s how I started to enter the death process, was that I had malaria, and I was in and out of consciousness for around a week. I have a strange notion of time from that period, but I think around a week.

And then, at some point, I started to die, which really to me how it happened was, all the jungle images that were around me, they started to kind of go to the background much more. And I was feeling like I was in some sort of chamber. It was like a special room or space. There was fire, which couldn’t be there because it was so hot in the Amazonian jungle that it didn’t fit that we had such a fire there. But there was a fire kind of warming up this place where I was. And then I started seeing images that would come from the right. And they would show in front of me as this very clear, very beautiful, black and white photos of people I loved. So everyone in my family was showing up in front of me and I had kind of a moment to say goodbye to thank them to, to have some sort of special moment with each of them. And then, as I did that, they would kind of disappear in a fire. And the next photo would come, and I was just saying goodbye to everyone and was very, very accepting of the death process. I was aware I was dying, and I was just really letting go.

When I did that, and it was actually quite peaceful and there was, a lightness to the whole process that was, I think it could only happen like that because I was in the jungle where, you know, death is so natural and cycles are just everywhere. But then when I was really letting go, I felt, a friend of mine from the Indigenous community, touching my arm. and when he did that, I was again, kind of there, it was a much lighter experience, but I felt, again, pulled, not so much into my body, but into life. I was like, pulled back into life.

And that point of contact, that he did with my arm just made me know, oh, I’m alive. And then I just started having consciousness again. It took me a while to figure out what had happened. I was very confused afterward. I could not make sense of that whole thing. I had to leave, go to a town. Eventually, after a month or so, I came back to Portugal because I was very confused with life at that time.

Johnny Burke: Question about that ceremony when the pictures of your family members would come up and you would say goodbye to them, is there any chance that there was some kind of contact with them that they remember? Or was that not part of that experience?

Rita Tojal: So my family members don’t remember anything, but at that time, I had a Portuguese boyfriend whom I had a very, easy telepathic connection with, and he definitely felt something because when I got to the closest town, I had an email, when he asked me like, what is going on? Like,

Johnny Burke: Okay. Interesting. So they were affected by it then?

Rita Tojal: Yes, in a dream. He felt it. in a

Johnny Burke: In a dream. Now, with these experiences, with the NDEs in particular, there are usually reports of heightened abilities, psychic mediumistic things, and so forth. Did you experience anything like that, or were your abilities about the same as they were before the experiences?

[Rita Tojal: I would say that I got much more comfortable with them. I do honestly believe that those were present when I was a kid as well. It’s just that they were very uncomfortable then. And when I got in touch with so many things that I then had to make sense of. It just became very clear to me that, actually, all those other things are completely natural, and it became much easier to embody them and own them and not be afraid of them as well.

Something that I think could have been at least enhanced was something about healing. Like there’s something that I find that it’s easier for me to do now that I can somehow take myself to that space that I’ve experienced, I’ve experienced in the near-death experiences and, actually, with some contact with a few animals, that if I’m really grounded in that space or essence or like resonance that can have a healing effect on others.

Johnny Burke: Okay, so some sensibilities that you know of were heightened a little bit then. The reason I bring that up, I interviewed a gentleman a while back, Robert Bare, who was part of Spiritual Awakening International. He was also with IANDS a while back. He had two NDEs, but after one, it was pretty intense. He was, he was out, he flatlined. One of the things he noticed afterward is that his psychic abilities were elevated quite a bit, and he also had mediumistic abilities, which he did not have before, which he did not want. And I’ve noticed that with other people where certain things, if you can imagine like volume sliders on a mixer, it’s like someone kind of pushed them up, you know? So that’s, again, pretty consistent.

Talk a little bit about your work, you’ve got several different modalities. How do all of these experiences figure into your work, and what kind of an impact did they have?

Rita Tojal: Well, they had a huge impact; I always knew I was in the right profession, like a psychologist, was something that I always knew I was already one before I studied it. So it was fine in terms of the area like the field where I was the right one, but I had to change it a lot to take in all the information I had just been offered a door into. There could be a part of psychology that tends to separate us from dealing with psychology, and it’s all about like the conscious parts of ourselves, and it’s not really going to the non-physical, let’s say, that I was just not willing to engage with. I was very interested in bringing a lot of the non-physical, a lot of the unconscious, a lot of the things that we are maybe not always, so happy even to go explore.

I was forced to explore them through these experiences, and they were actually very comfortable to me. Then I felt that I had to bring more of that to my practice. So I explore a lot of the, things that are very hidden, and I feel that, because that’s quite easy for me, that really gives my clients the space to do that. So that’s one part, but there’s another part that I feel was very important which was during these experiences of being like in and out of my body and just having to relate with then what is it really this body, I understood that actually the body is so important to healing and a good sense of wellbeing.

So I brought into my practice a lot of somatic work that helps. To have quite a healthy relationship with the body because I figured out at some point that everything, that’s the non-physical is what I am more connected with. It’s maybe what fascinates me the most, but I don’t have to lose it while I’m in the body if I have a healthy relationship with the body. So that changed drastically for me just to involve the body in a lot of the healing. Also, because I don’t feel that we can address trauma or any of this really difficult, emotional and psychological situations without involving the body because those traumas are not happening. in other parts. They just get stored in the body.

It has changed my work substantially. And I guess astrology was just really natural because I do have at least two past lives I remember that are from other planets. So I was just not going to study astrology. It was always something I wanted to do, and I picked this particular family and life knowing that astrology would be on my path.

Johnny Burke: So past lives on other planets; that might actually be a part two. That’s probably a subject, in itself. Very interesting. So it’s safe to say that the hidden, or the unseen world, has had a pretty dramatic effect on you and your work, and it’s informed it in obviously a very good way that’s beneficial for your clients. That’s what it sounds like. Okay. Now, on a practical level. If you could separate yourself from the work, what can we learn from your experiences with the NDEs and the past lives, which I think we’ll talk about at a different time?

Rita Tojal: Right. Well, one thing that I think it’s really valuable to keep our awareness is that the non-physical is never not here. It’s this physical presence that we have that’s temporary. And from that also comes the really important message that some things that may have felt or may feel quite important to us are sometimes really not. that big of a deal and separating and choosing where we put, the emphasis and what are the things that we use our time for is really crucial because, we’re really, in my experience, we’re completely limitless.

But this particular life in which we are embodied in this particular way with this body we have now with this identity we have now is limited in time and can actually very clearly end it any moment. So choosing where we put our energy, what we allocate our time to, who we talk and connect with or not is of extreme importance. In the end, it’s not going to be the things we have or not have, or if we did this or that to our hair. It’s not those things that are going to matter, but definitely the elements of connection, the choices, how we affect it or choose not to engage with things and with people are going to be things that they’re important. I’ve had a few life reviews with my NDEs. And they become really important. So, we should prioritize where to put our energy in this one lifetime. And maybe another thing I would say is, how important it is to love. I know it sounds like such a cliche and so simplistic.

Johnny Burke: It’s not. I’ve heard that dozens of times quite a few, put it that way. Mm-hmm.

Rita Tojal: That would be one of the most important things I have learned.

Johnny Burke: And from what I remember from past episodes, one of the questions that tends to come up in the life review in a telepathic fashion is, how do you think you did? And also, how did you love? And it’s not that person is being judged; it’s more like they’re judging themselves, right?

Rita Tojal: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Mm-Hmm.

Johnny Burke: Rita. Thanks so much for joining us today. Excellent, excellent information. In the meantime, how can our listeners find you online?

Rita Tojal: so they can find me on my website, ritatojal.com. That’s R-I-T-A-T-O-J-A l.com. And on Instagram with @rita.tojal

# 116 Joanna Walden: A Mystical Misfit’s Adventure

April 7, 2023 by Johnny Burke

Mystics

#aura, #hearttechnology, #lightbeings, #pastlife, #premonition, #shaman, #UFO

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke, and today’s guest is Joanna Walden. She is a life coach, transformation specialist, and author of the Inside Hustle, A Mystical Misfits Travel Adventure Into The Unknown. In this episode, we’ll talk about Joanna’s personal extraordinary experiences that have influenced her development and shaped her life into what she has become today. Joanna, welcome to the program.

Joanna Walden: Thank you for having me. Johnny

Johnny Burke: Mystical Misfits Travel Adventure sounds an awful lot like an album title. Were you a, a musician at one point?

Joanna Walden: No, I was not, but I wish dreaming,

Johnny Burke: I might have to steal that. Though. That’s pretty crafty. I really like that. So you work now as , a multi-dimensional transformation specialist. I’ve heard the term transformation specialist before, but not so much the multi-dimensional part. So what exactly is that?

Joanna Walden: Well, essentially I take people from one state of being to another. We really are able to address all of our states of being, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual, and everything is energy, right? So we’ve got to go into the energy first. And so I work in the multidimensional space, so I bring through, information and wisdom from an expanded part of myself that is not Joanna, the personality, but is guided by an expanded field of my consciousness that I’m accessing. It’s multi-dimensional in that respect, but also, we work multi-dimensional with my clients and the people I’m doing group work with. We’re using sound light, sacred geometry, and weaving the energetic space as well at the same time to facilitate changes on all levels of someone’s being in a really holistic 360-degree way.

Johnny Burke: You mentioned multi-dimensional. Does that have anything to do with 3D to five D or is it something completely different?

Joanna Walden: I believe it’s different the multi-dimensional is slightly different to this idea of 3D versus 5D, and that’s a really linear human construct that’s been created. I don’t even think it’s really all that relevant, even though everyone’s talking about moving to 5D and feeling like they’re moving into a different land and it’s not how it works, right?

These are different levels of consciousness, and I think that’s the way that on a human level, we’ve had to describe it, so to speak, but it’s not really what it means. And I think when you really get into it, this is energetic sensitivity and being able to perceive beyond, just the physicality of this reality really is all that means. 3D versus five D is a bit of like these coined terms that are being thrown around at the moment and like, “oh, I’m in 5D. Oh, that’s not very 3d. There’s all this judgment and all sorts.

Johnny Burke: Not very 5D right ?

Joanna Walden: Right! “Oh, that’s so not 5D.” It’s just hilarious because that defeats the whole purpose of what this is all about, which is really moving out of these states of judgment into acceptance, compassion, into, a heart understanding on a deeper level of the wisdom of ourselves beyond this physical incarnation into that multi-dimensional space where we are actually accessing parts of ourself that been all across the cosmos in different lives, timelines, all of that is part of the multidimensional space, right? It’s accessing the bigger imprint that we all carry as energetic beings, not just this incarnation.

Johnny Burke: It’s interesting the way you described that which sounds very much like what I’ve heard before; moving out of the 3D and into the 5D where you lose the judgment. It’s more of like a group consciousness, right?

Joanna Walden: Yeah.

Johnny Burke: Rather than me against the world or me against you. Or some kind of minus-sum or zero-sum type mentality. You mentioned really a lot of things, multi-dimensionality, sacred geometry, multiple dimensions, and some other things that I’m not even aware of. How did you actually start to discover that these things in this space actually exist?

Joanna Walden: Well, I always had a fascination from my childhood. My mom was quite open-minded. She was into the latest rebirthing class, and she was into a sort of serving us tofu casserole and at that stage in the eighties, she was exploring all these things, which back then was quite more basic than what we are all doing now. But she was very much inclined in the space of consciousness and energy, and so, therefore, I even though my dad was not that way inclined,

I definitely grew up in an environment where that was around. I just knew there was always something more.

There were certain things that started to happen, but I was always just very curious. So when I did open myself up to that when things started like I saw an aura when I was about 17 or something. I’d have these premonition visions when I was a youngster that actually saved me from getting into trouble.

Things like that started to happen and I really understood there is this other part that I know deep within myself, it’s just taking a little bit for it to reveal itself to me. And so then I just sort of pursued that even more in the background in the spiritual closet while I was doing my development in life and then getting into the corporate world and as is the case with many stories, I’m sure.

Johnny Burke: Like many of us do. Premonitions and auras; I know that we discussed this briefly the last time we spoke. What actually was the very first mystical experience? I imagine it was one of the two, right?

Joanna Walden: It was a premonition, I believe, when I was quite young, about 15 or 16. This was a bit naughty, but we were going to buy some weed at what we call it, tinny House in New Zealand. I was exploring like a teenager and we’re not allowed to do these kinds of things, so, of course, we’re doing it.

And you can get your license here when you’re about 15. So we were driving in a car to this to this place, and I got a flash of police sirens, flashing lights, and I said, “wait, we’ve got to go the other way.” And so we went the back way where we could see the street from another angle. And sure enough, that was there, that scene that I’d seen in my mind’s eye. So it was like a flash, so I was like, “oh, wow, cool. You know, save myself from the cops!”

Johnny Burke: Excellent.

Joanna Walden: Very handy! Practical use of spirituality right there. Yeah.

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard quite a few experiences just like that. They always happen when the speaker talks about their experience “when I was 17, 16.” And has to do with, well, there’s one experience in particular, where I interviewed someone and she talked about how she’s at a high school party drinking in Santa Barbara and she actually had a vision of the cops coming around the corner, which no one could see, right. There’s no way anybody could see that. And her friends looked at her like she was crazy. About a minute later they came up. And so she was able to keep her friends from getting arrested, but she was also treated as an outcast, as a result.

Joanna Walden: Right.

Johnny Burke: Did you experience anything like that when your abilities began to manifest themselves? Or was that not really an issue?

Joanna Walden: Not really. I think more than anything there’s that general like, oh, it’s so woo woo mentality, there’s that kind of thing that even that’s more in my later years because everyone is so attached to their perceived constructs of reality and what has accepted constructs of reality that they want to put it in a basket of sort of oh, that’s just that stuff. Woo woo stuff over there. When I started stepping into this even more, there was the actual, bit of judgment, sort of dismissal,

I guess when you’re in the spiritual closet, no one else really knows anyways. Right, they can’t say anything. makes sense.

Johnny Burke: Very true. You did mention, along with sacred geometry, multi-dimensionality. I believe you made, a reference to other planets; have you had past life memories?

Joanna Walden: I’ve definitely experienced past life memories in a way.

So when I was in Egypt, for example, the sounds and everything around me felt so familiar. It was like I was at home perfectly. And then it sort of expanded from there because people recognized me, they didn’t recognize me from meeting in this life. They said, “do you recognize me? Do you remember me from 3000 years ago,?” I was like, no,

Johnny Burke: No, they didn’t say that did they?

Joanna Walden: They did!

Johnny Burke: I want to make sure I get some clarity on this. Someone approached you when you were in Egypt, and actually asked a question, do you remember me from 3000 years ago?

Joanna Walden: Exactly that/

Johnny Burke: Yes. I remember we raided the Pharaoh’s tomb and some other stuff. Yeah, of course – you had to think this person’s a nutter! who would do that?

Joanna Walden: It’s really interesting because where it happened was the area of Akhenaten and Nefertiti – the area that they were ruling, I’d interestingly had a dream with these earrings that had a woman Egypt face on them. And I didn’t know for years what that was, what it was related to, but it was the dream, and I was in a very significant place at the time, and I then realized when I was.

I had an experience in the priest tomb of Akhenaten, and I just was in tears. There was just this emotion and the connection with what was painted, the drawings, and just the energetics of the place. And then as we were leaving, I saw the picture of Nefertiti and I was like, oh my God, she was who was on the earrings. So there were all these sorts of connections to that. And that’s when the guy said to me, do you remember me? I know you from 3000 years ago, and I didn’t know what to say.

Johnny Burke: I’m not sure what happened next. What was your response?

Joanna Walden: I didn’t really know what to say. I was so surprised, I was just sort of shocked in awe and no, I didn’t, obviously, I didn’t. I looked at him again but when I went into the sacred area, I was having, all of these emotions and connections coming up, and so there were ties that way and recognition of the land and recognition of the space.

Johnny Burke: But not so much like explicit, detailed visions of flashbacks of another life, or did you have that?

Joanna Walden: Not there, but I did have that when I was recovering from a spiritual surgery in Brazil. In my dreams, I was back in World War I, I was a man, I was in the war and that was definitely a flashback of me, for sure. That was processing I believe, what was going on directly related to the spiritual surgery I had and obviously what wounding I was carrying and what patterns I was carrying from were connected to that life.

Johnny Burke: So a memory of yourself as a man, a different sex. That just occurred to me the other day. I thought, okay, it could be imagination, but how do you really discern whether it’s a product of your imagination or it’s something more than that? How do you do that?

Joanna Walden: There’s a knowing that goes along with it that is just innate. But imagination is the access point to all of this. You have to allow yourself to go there into this space where it is unfamiliar and you actually can’t energetically connect with anything in your imagination that isn’t a possibility within the time-space continuum. Really when you get into the quantum physics of it. So it’s interesting because imagination is definitely a gateway. It’s also a superpower. And so if you start to use that more, you just automatically access it. It’s like that’s on the same frequency in a way, as all of these extraordinary experiences one can have.

If you don’t allow yourself to go into your imagination at all, and you’ll just sit in the ways of what you can see or experience with your physical senses in this version of reality, then you’re not going to be able to get there because you’re not going to be able to operate outside of it. So you need the imagination, and I don’t think you could ever really prove anything as wrong or right, or as an experience, because it’s each individual to the self, and it doesn’t need to necessarily be one way or the other for it to be valid in any way. We are all perceiving so differently through our unique structure, which is very different from person to person as to how we perceive, see, and interact with energetics.

Johnny Burke: Energetics frequency, sacred geometry and now that you mentioned Egypt, I believe there are theories that have to do with energy centers and grids and it seems like all of these things; is a connection there or is that not necessarily so?

Joanna Walden: Definitely. I mean, sacred geometry is the foundation of building blocks of life itself energetically. That often comes through when we are wanting to shift and change ourselves, because you’ve got to start with the energy first, right? At one point I had to look up a word the other day because it was a tesseract, which is actually a hyperdimensional geometry. I didn’t even know that Hyperdimensional geometry was a thing, let alone existed I had to Google it, because I hear it and then I have to look it up to. Are you sure? am I hearing the right thing here? And then sure enough hyper endometrial geometry!

There’s a whole space of understanding. that we aren’t even really accessing. It’s because we come in in this form of limitation to perceive, to have this experience of this reality in a certain way. If we were accessing everything that we have the ability to all at once, we would blow out- we would just like short circuit because it’s too much. We have so much information within us, and we are just remembering and utilizing the parts that are relevant for us at this time on the planet and why we came to be here. So different things are going to resonate to different people or make sense or just have that deep knowing of like the experiential part of it that’s really a part of us operating our own divine technology to be able to show up as we need to on this planet right now.

Johnny Burke: Divine technology. I like that. I’m definitely going to use that phrase as much as I can. It’s very good. You just mentioned a reason why we are here. How do we know that and how did you get insight into when that moment comes or even what to look for?

Joanna Walden: Well, interestingly, a funny thing happened to me when I was 17 or 18, I think I was illegal in a bar, so I was probably 17 and I went to pick up some friends of mine, and it was a bar on the other side of town, it was very unusual for me to be there. But as soon as I got there, I was really drawn to these two gentlemen who were sitting at the end of the bar. At the time, I smoked cigarettes and I had a lighter in my pocket, but I went up to one of them and I said,” do you have a lighter?” he said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come and talk to me.” and I said, ” Oh, right. ” And then he proceeded to just literally offload this whole thing about me, why I was here, a bigger purpose to my life that I had come for a very specific reason on the planet. I can’t recall the exact words but I remember feeling so elated and excited because I knew deep inside that’s what was going on.

I just hadn’t been told it yet, and so it almost gave me permission to explore even further. And also just to some comfort in knowing that there was something going to be happening in my life that would be for the purpose of good on the planet that I was really here. He talked about shifting consciousness on the planet and helping people usher, throw a time of change in transition.

He was pulling stuff out of my back. He was some Reiki Master, but I don’t even know if he was a real person now. I mean, it could have been just some being, showing up and I really don’t know. And I remember saying at the end to him” will I ever see you again?” and he said, “no. If you got what you needed to, you will never see me again. “And then it was done.

Johnny Burke: Wow. All right. Let’s talk about the inside hustle a bit. I know that you had a significant experience in Brazil, I believe it was at a healing center, and it involved a trance channel, you actually saw this happen, right?

Joanna Walden: There were so many things that I saw happen in that place. It’s a spiritual healing center, which is not unusual for Brazil. There’s many of them around, and these trance channel mediums do psychic surgeries on people, but they’re essentially channeling doctors, saints, spirits that work through them to help people. That would happen in the form of either anonphysical surgery or a physical surgery. People, either way, would be put under spiritual anesthetic and then have these surgeries. So I saw live on stage people getting sliced open, tumors being removed. No drugs, no operating room

Johnny Burke: No anesthesia?

Joanna Walden: No, but spiritual anesthesia and I had had an experience of that myself. So I opted for a nonphysical. You basically go up to the trance channel. He writes a prescription and tells you what to do. There’s a handful of recommendations. So one of them would be, have a surgery- so you can have the nonphysical or the physical.

So I had the non-physical one and as I was going through the line to get ushered into the room, and it was just sort of like a church-like area with pews. Everyone sits down, they do some prayers. He comes in and, you are feeling woozy.

You’re feeling like you’ve taken drugs like some kind of medication. I felt pricks and prodding and stabbing and electrical shocks within my body while that was happening. And then after maybe 20 minutes or so, you were released to leave. And I remember when we walked out the door, it was like you could barely kind of walk. You have to follow post-care surgery instructions as you had been in a hospital. When I got home, I looked in the mirror and my pupils were as big as saucers I was so high on this spiritual anesthetic, I couldn’t believe it.

When that wore off hours later. So I was pain-free at that point. But when it wore off, then I started to really feel the pain of what had been done and the spiritual surgery within me. So I had the physical representation of the work that had been done that was pretty profound. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not experienced it myself, to be honest.

Johnny Burke: What part of Brazil was this?

Joanna Walden: An hour and a half out of the capital of Brazil. So it’s kind of in the wild West. It looks a little bit like Australia. There’s not a lot there apart from this tiny town that’s dedicated to this healing center. It’s like you go into a higher frequency dimension. So everything there is synchronicity, it’s like you get exactly what you needed. You’re literally living in a different frequency, and it’s built on a crystal vortex where the rivers run through it. There were so many crazy weird things that happened there, besides just the weird surgeries and stuff.

Johnny Burke: Those surgeries, physical or psychic, it’s pretty crazy. it wouldn’t shock me if there were pockets of the planet where maybe the frequency is higher. I’ve heard people talk about past lives and ancient civilizations like Atlantis and Lemuria- which is supposed to be even older, where a lot of these things were normal. Telepathy was normal.

Joanna Walden: Oh yeah.

Johnny Burke: Telekinesis and loads of other things were very commonplace.

So you actually believe that there are communities, maybe civilizations where they are all in a different frequency?

Joanna Walden: Well, I think there’s the ability for everybody to access that where they’re there., whether they’re doing that or not, it’s not like everybody’s living in this different frequency, although they may be, everyone’s in their own unique experience, right? They’re in their own holographic reality. So what I can access is different to what someone else is accessing. it’s set up for the ability to be able to step into something like that and have these experiences in a higher, potentiality than the norm.

Johnny Burke: You’ve traveled in South America, you were in Argentina as well. Was this during like a sojourn or a trip of some sort?

Joanna Walden: It was, yeah, on the hunt for more experiences to write about, which became my book, so

Johnny Burke: You had an experience in Argentina. I don’t want to provide a spoiler. So, pretty significant. why don’t you tell us about that?

Joanna Walden: Okay, so quite synchronistically I went on a hike one day and it was quite long and more involved than we anticipated. So we ended up calling in at what looked like a farmhouse, but they were obviously into something kind of spiritual because there were these sacred geometry signs on the outside, on the sign. But we needed to get home. We needed a taxi, and we were running out of light. So we just went in there and sure enough, we met Hugo, the 83-year-old Shaman who communes quite regularly with light beings. He’s got all these photos on the wall of all these light beings, objects, experiences, and he brings people to the land, and he actually communes with spaceships, and ETs a few times a week regularly. We popped in there obviously to get him to call a taxi and were into a whole other experience, obviously, which was totally up my alley.

I was like, this is amazing. And so I kept in touch with him, and we organized to go to have a chakra rebalance with him and meet some of his friends who were actually ufologists

So he did a chakra balance and when we were with the ufologists, we went up the mountain a little bit and they took me through this experience where you sing your name into the mountain so that the crystal in the mountain remembers your imprint and your uh vibration. Then you can sort of set up to go and experience these beings apparently which are housed within this mountain,

I unfortunately never got to go for that experience. But what did happen is we saw a spaceship on the way home, which was a light in the sky this was not in a flight path and we’d been calling for this experience. As we were coming down the mountain, this light sort of sped up and came in and started going very slowly in front of us at a height that was not really where a plane would be flying anyway, and right by the mountain.

The ufologists are very excited because they’ve seen this many times obviously. Whereas for me it was my first time. So then they high-fived me after it sped off again at like sort of light speed. They’re high-fiving me saying, oh you’ve seen your first nav, which is ship in Spanish. So that was my experience of calling in that kind of energy and for it to appear and having that experience of physically seeing something that is not normal behavior for a star, satellite or any of those things, it just doesn’t, doesn’t work like that.

Johnny Burke: So crystals are maybe not a hundred percent woo-woo after all. The legend has it crystals have had special powers in situations for thousands of years. You gave a good description of the speed and the altitude of this ship; what did it look like?

Joanna Walden: Well, it looked slightly different than a star, so a slightly different color, but it is a light in the sky, essentially.

Johnny Burke: The shape, flying saucer?

Joanna Walden: No because you can only see the light because it’s dark.

Johnny Burke: Okay.

Joanna Walden: You can’t really make anything out apart from a bulbous light in the sky that is behaving very differently to any other light I’ve ever seen in the sky before.

Johnny Burke: You made a reference to light beings. I’ve heard them called beings of light, but I think this might be different than these star beings. Did you meet any beings like that, or did you see any beings?

Joanna Walden: I did not. I was quite disappointed because I went and stayed with Hugo, the 83-year-old Shaman even though my Spanish was terrible. Stayed with him for four days because he communed with the ETs, and I was really hoping for a bit more of an experience with him. And then we were supposed to also go to visit these beings within the earth, but that didn’t happen for various reasons.

I get a lot of information in my dreams. I get guides showing me multidimensional experiences and training me, and I also get light beings showing up with delivering information. I also go on ships in my dreams and experience light beings giving me different technology to hear them better and all sorts of stuff. I have a lot of that, which is very visceral. It’s not just a sort of made-up dream. It feels different than that. That’s how I have been interacting with that realm. And then I feel different energies come in even though I don’t necessarily see them, although sometimes I can see a little bit of an aura, but I’m sort of retraining myself to have the more visceral, physical experience of it as well.

Johnny Burke: Everybody wants to know what did they look like? But you’re saying in the dreams, the light beings; it’s not like you can see a person standing 10 feet away. It’s nothing like that. Also, you mentioned, I believe spirit guides.

Is that within the same realm or is that a different experience where they give you guidance and give you knowledge drops or

Joanna Walden: It’s pretty much the same thing in my mind. They all inhabit a different dimensional reality, and they show up for us as an expanded part of our consciousness, essentially. We are just tuning into that part and accessing information from it, but they show up as someone different for us to be able to sort of interpret that and have the experience of it in a visceral way. I think that’s just the way it is, and many people also experience it all slightly differently,

I think the guidance really comes from an expanded part of our field. The perception is it’s outside of us or it’s a guide, or what have you, but innate within us anyway.

Johnny Burke: So you mentioned outside of us. It’s not outside of us. It’s all part of the same consciousness,

Joanna Walden: Yeah, because everything’s a part of source energy, so we’re just accessing different parts of it, and our unique representation of that. We are informed by what we hold as an aspect of source consciousness, and we all bring it through slightly differently.

Johnny Burke: It reminds me of what someone told me her quarrel with conventional religions like Catholicism is that it tells us about a God outside of us. She says that’s not correct. Everything is inside.

Joanna Walden: Absolutely. That’s why I called it the Inside Hustle!

Johnny Burke: Well, now we know!

Joanna Walden: Yeah, that’s right. Right? Because it’s not, everyone is absolutely conditioned to look for everything outside of us to try and fulfill certain parts that we feel are missing or to sort of recalibrate ourselves by going outside. But that’s actually not the way energy works at all. You’ve got to recalibrate that or be building that energy or frequency within you first to be able to experience it in the outer reality. That’s a lot of the work I do with clients is to help step them through that process to be able to do that for themselves.

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard that more and more;going outside of us is not the answer. The answer is to go within.

Joanna Walden: Absolutely.

Johnny Burke: I don’t completely comprehend it yet, but it seems to be that is the consensus- at least so far. You do work with light and sound and something called heart technology. Tell us a little bit about that

Joanna Walden: Well, in 2017, as I said, I get a lot of information and experiences via my dream state or in that lucid state where I’m between waking and dreaming. And this particular evening, three giant light beings, probably the biggest light beings I’ve ever seen showed up. And I was sitting in a seat saying, what about this ancient meditation technique. And they said no. I said, but what about this healing modality? And they said, no. And then they said to me, it is always about the heart. It only ever was about the heart, and it will only ever be about the heart. It is all about heart technology. Heart technology is all you need. It is the most relevant and effective tool on the planet right now.

I woke and I Googled heart technology and I got a bunch of cardiac equipment. That was just no good at all. I was like, heart technology?? But what it did is it sent me on a vision quest essentially, where I was sort of guided to reveal what this actually means because they’re talking about the space of the heart as being a multi-dimensional technology it can access the past and future, and make even shifts in corrections in timelines. It can be used for visioning and creation. It can be used to unlock innate gifts and abilities. It can be used for us to access the wisdom that we hold that is beyond this incarnation. Many, many, many things, but it’s our zero-point space which is the point of everything and nothing, the point of the inception of creation itself. So that is a really, really powerful space for us to work with.

And whether we are conscious of it or unconscious of it, we are actually doing it often when we are naturally creating as humans. the heart technology is that’s essentially what it is, and it’s become a foundation of my work because it’s so more powerful and effective for everyone when they’re in that space and connected.

Johnny Burke: Heart technology seems to be a part of energy healing. Energy healing is a smaller part of what shamanism is. Is there a connection there or is it more of like an adjacent?

Joanna Walden: I think shamanism is a perspective, right? It is like a modality. It’s a form of understanding. Whereas heart technology is a technology that we all have within each and every one of us and you’re probably using it some of the time. If you dial deeper into it, it becomes more powerful, obviously, because you’re conscious of it and you can use it in a more powerful way. But I don’t think any of it is necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s all fundamental, but it’s quite foundational, I believe, within our technology as we start to understand our human technology really, like in all of its aspect, and not just the body, or not just the mind, or not just the emotional, but getting into it in a much more, 360 degree or multi-dimensional way really.

Johnny Burke: I ask that question because I’m seeing a surge in energy healers and they just seem to be everywhere before. I think what maybe preceded that slightly was there was a medium explosion. There’s psychics and mediums, they’re just appearing all over the place. Some of them are actually pretty good, but maybe not all of them. That’s probably a discussion for another day. But do you think the energy healers are part of that intuitive blossoming or growth? Or what do you suppose that is?

Joanna Walden: Absolutely. We are really coming back into. understanding of ourselves as energy beings, which is the truth of who we are. We have been conditioned and programmed into a different understanding in this reality, just because we’ve been through the dark ages essentially, and we’ve forgotten it all, and we are remembering these aspects of ourselves. We are remembering what true healing is. We are remembering that just because you’ve got a backache doesn’t necessarily mean it’s got anything to do with your back. It just doesn’t. they operate in polarity; they operate in everything being one mechanism that is holistic and everything ties together and is connected.

it’s undoing a lot of that programming and coming back to what is true and real. And so absolutely this explosion and expansion of everything in related to the whole field of energy, spirit, and consciousness is definitely playing a part in that. And it’s obviously expanding in all sorts of different ways depending on where people are at and what they’re interested in and what stage of their journey.

Johnny Burke: So is there anything else you’d like our listeners to know?

Joanna Walden: Well, to the point that you were talking about before, this is the most powerful place that we can all be inhabiting today is the place where we are not taking on anything from anything that’s gone before, because everything on this planet, including all the belief systems, including science, including everything that we make as the building blocks of how we understand this reality has come from a different time and perspective, and it’s been based in a different level of consciousness. That is a layer of conditioning, which means that it’s informing our ability to tap into ourselves and what is going on in that inner level within us. And sometimes we can’t see any of that when we are too busy operating under the framework of what’s in existence already.

If there was one thing, I was going to say to everybody, it’s to step outside of that.
You don’t necessarily need to train in anything. If you really feel called to something, it might be part of your journey. Yes, but you are actually here to really tap into what your unique energetic blueprint is here to reveal, to show up as your most magnificent self, right? The most powerful being you can be and no matter what that is, it doesn’t mean like being a world leader or anything.

It could be just running a beautiful community garden at your home, that other people enjoy that are your friends. It’s nothing to do with the scale of it or any of that, but for people to really tap into that feeling of fulfillment and what they’re really here to do, I really encourage just to tune out all of that noise, tune out any other learnings or modalities or anything that’s gone before, give yourself a clean slate to start with and see what comes then.

You can’t get into that space of tapping into the most extraordinary parts of yourself if you’re operating out of preexisting frameworks that have been handed to you by someone else or something else, or this current society. And when we really want to make leaps and bounds and you really want to kind of go places and open yourself up beyond, that’s the way to do it.

Johnny Burke: So, in other words, hit the reset button. I like that. Excellent, Thanks for joining us today. Very, very cool information. Very entertaining as well, especially the inside Hustle. how can our listeners find you online?

Joanna Walden: Yeah, they can find me at my website, http://www.Joannawalden.com , and the Inside Hustle is on all of the platforms, audiobooks, and Amazon and all that jazz.

#87 Barbara Bartolome: What Near-Death Experiences Can Tell Us

September 17, 2022 by Johnny Burke

Near Death Experiences

#barbarabartolome, #drmarycneal, #IANDS, #nde, #NDERF, #neardeathexperience, #premonition, #reincarnation

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer To Venus. I’m Johnny Burke and today’s guest is Barbara Bartolome. She is a double near- death experience survivor and founder and director of the International Association For Near Death Studies group in Santa Barbara, California. She’s been on the NBC Today show, in multiple documentaries, podcasts and radio shows. Today we’ll be talking about how her near death experiences, also referred to NDEs, contributed to her life and what we can learn from those events. Barbara, welcome to the program.

Barbara Bartolome: Thank you, Johnny. I’m happy to be here.

Johnny Burke: The first NDE you had was in 1987 during a medical test. prior to surgery. What happened?

Barbara Bartolome: Having a test prior to surgery. It’s called a myelogram and it is where they inject iodine dye into your spinal cord. And in my case, they did it at the back of my neck. I wasn’t under any anesthesia. I was laying on an x-ray table. They were planning to tip the table and watch as the dye went down my spinal cord to see if the area that I had blown a disc in had chipped the spinal cord. And if spinal fluid was leaking out, because that was going to be a bigger surgery the next day, if they had to address that. So they had me on the table, they told me don’t move whatsoever. Don’t talk or anything because you can have headaches for months afterwards with this situation.

So I was laying there being a good kid and I was 31 years old, and I had a five-month-old baby daughter and an eight-year-old son. And they unfortunately pressed the wrong button on the table to tip it. So they started, tipping it with my head down, lowering my head and raising my feet and they didn’t notice it. The two x-ray techs were talking to each other. The two doctors were talking to each other. It was a neurosurgeon and an orthopedic surgeon that was doing the surgery the next day. And the nurse was distracted as well.

I started feeling like something was really drastically wrong, but I didn’t want to interrupt anybody or cause a problem. And so I stayed quiet too long and by the time that I wanted to say something and interrupt, I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t reach my hand out to get their attention or do anything. And so I just laid there in a panic. They heard me hyperventilating and they stopped talking the two x-ray texts and the one x-ray tech that had his finger on the button, leaned over my face and saw that my eyes were rolling to the back of my head by then I just couldn’t control my eyes. They just kept on going backwards. And he kind of panicked and leaned backwards and looked where his thumb was on the table and realized with this very shocked look on his face, that he’d made a big mistake. And that was when I checked out, I literally shut my eyes and my body. And the next second I was up on the ceiling.

Johnny Burke: The sequence of when your surgery, the procedure started to when you flatlined, about how long did that take?

Barbara Bartolome: The medical test was happening and they were only a couple minutes into tipping me before I died and was up on the ceiling. Why I know that I flatlined was because the medical professionals that were in the room, the two doctors, they called for the nurse to call for a heart monitor, a defib unit and they immediately started chest compressions and blowing into my mouth. They were doing CPR down below me. I was up on the ceiling, and I was beautifully calm up there. I didn’t feel panicked or worried or upset. I looked down at my body and I said’, huh, if I’m up here and my body’s down there, and that guy is calling code blue and rooms going into a panic, et cetera. I think I just died.

Johnny Burke: So you’re out of your body. You were on the ceiling. There’s been many accounts like this. Because of your involvement with IANDS, you’ve probably heard many accounts, just like yours, which to the us non-experienced sounds like a science fiction movie. Was it true that when you were up there, you didn’t feel really attached to your body? What was that like?

Barbara Bartolome: Yeah, it didn’t feel attached to the body at all. Everything that was me was up on the ceiling, my whole consciousness, everything that I loved and felt, and I felt very calm, very comforted. I felt wrapped in a warm blanket of love. It ended up being about eight to 10 minutes that I was dead- cardiac arrest because they did bring in a heart monitor and I watched my own flatline.

Johnny Burke: While they were doing this, when you came back, what was the first few things that you said to the doctors once you were revived?

Barbara Bartolome: I kind of have to back it up because there’s a whole story up above that happened, that caused me to be resuscitated. So while I was up there, immediately after I said, ‘ uh-huh, I think I’m dead.’ I felt a presence and the presence to me felt like what I would think God was, it felt eternal. It felt totally loving. It felt accepting. I began to say to it how much I wanted to go back into my life. I was giving my children as the reason. I wasn’t begging to go back. I was just saying I needed to go back, to protect my children. I was in an abusive marriage at the time, and I was afraid of what would happen to them if they were left without my interventions in the situations.

As I was talking to that being, I was saying that about four different ways, very calmly. They were doing all of this resuscitation effort down below. They got the heart monitor in, they got the oxygen cart in, they never got the defib unit in. The neurosurgeon ended up saying to the orthopedic surgeon too much time is passed. She’s going to be braindead. We need to do something. At that point, the orthopedic surgeon stepped forward and said, “stand clear” and everybody moved away from the front of the table and he took his arm from behind his back, swung it in a very high arc over his head. His fist came crashing down on my chest – that’s called the pre- cardial thump. And it’s done as the last-ditch effort to restart a heart with a shock, just like a defib would give a shock to the heart. It hardly ever works according to the information online. In that case, it didn’t work the first time.

The being that was next to me finally said something to me. I had been saying how much I wanted to go back into my life. the being’s voice was so incredibly warm and beautiful. Amazing. I can’t possibly imitate it, but what it said was, “but if you go back, you’ll still be in your marriage, what will you do? ” Then I saw all these little film clips that just went flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash in front of me that were all of the incidents that I’d had with that current husband. It was like to remind me of what I was facing if I went back. Then I was given all this time to kind of consider now what I did is immediately consider all of the things that I had done to try to change him, to try to help him through his anger issues. They were originating from his childhood and all the things that I presented to help him. I then realized I’d done everything I could. There wasn’t anything more to do.

I then said to the being,” if you let me go back, I promise you I’ll get strong enough to leave him. “And the second I said, the word” him”, I literally shut my eyes up on the ceiling and opened them again. And I was back in my body with the oxygen mask on my face, which they had placed on there after I died.

So I spoke into the oxygen mask and said, ” what just happened?” The nurse leaned over me and said, “stop, don’t talk. We need to stabilize you.” So for 20 minutes I just laid on the table, it was really a shock to be back in my body knowing consciously that I had just been out of my body. I’d never heard of the near-death experience in my entire life. And I’d never heard of anything about being out of the body. Never read anything about it. I was completely in shock. When they finally took the oxygen mask off, I said to the astonished team, “what just happened? I was up on the ceiling, and I could see and hear everything”. And the neurosurgeon, he. said,” Oh brother”. So that made me at 31 years old with never having heard of anything like this before, completely recount what had happened in the room. I pointed at people, told them what they did and said, then the neurosurgeon stormed out of the room. Really angry and said,” I’m not going to listen to this.”

I think it freaked him out. the orthopedic surgeon stayed, and he listened and talked and asked me how I felt and what was it like? And he was more interested in it. I saw him about 20 years later and he told me, “Barbara, you had a near-death experience. That’s absolutely true. And I can’t talk about it because my colleagues and my patients won’t like that if I talk about people’s experiences”. But he said you had it.

Johnny Burke: Let’s talk about what happened up there when you were up on the ceiling, and you talked to this being. I believe the first time we spoke, this being was sitting next to you.

Barbara Bartolome: It was next to me, but it wasn’t sitting. I didn’t ever look to see if there was a physical, like a vision of light, or a face or anything. I felt it really strongly and it was right to my left. I felt exactly like there was someone there. For me it felt like God, I don’t know if it was an angel, I don’t know if it was a spiritual being. I have no idea who it was. I didn’t say” who are you?” I just began talking to it.

Johnny Burke: So you didn’t see it, but you felt it. And was the voice telepathic? could you actually hear it?

Barbara Bartolome: No. Yeah because I wasn’t in my body. And so my ears weren’t working because I wasn’t in my body, but it was telepathic, , he didn’t really say anything or I didn’t hear anything from him or, feel any response until he said, ” but if go back, you’ll still be in your marriage” , I didn’t get a response until after the strike on the heart.

Johnny Burke: I’ve been told many times that people that have these experiences will recount them in vivid detail and remember them many years afterwards. I always ask because I know other people are going to ask me,’ how do you know it wasn’t a dream? ‘Why don’t you tell our listeners why you think it was definitely not a dream.

Barbara Bartolome: Or hallucination. Number one, I wasn’t under any anesthesia. Number two, I completely accurately recounted what the medical professionals in the room did while I was flatlining, my heart stopped. So it wasn’t a hallucination. I accurately described their actions and their words and shocked all of them by coming out immediately and saying it all. Most people who are near death experiencers have an experience and they don’t talk about it right away. I was the one who immediately, validated it with them and shocked them all. In fact, the neurosurgeon, he won’t even talk to me about it to this day. He’s completely closed about the whole subject. It scares the heck out of the guy and it’s something that I know- I was right up there on the ceiling and I was watching the whole thing.

Johnny Burke: I’ve been told several times that when you’re in that position that you were and you’re flat lining,you have no brain function, right? Is that true?

Barbara Bartolome: I’m not sure that the brain is really necessary to keep your consciousness alive because I had every piece of my consciousness up on the ceiling. I didn’t feel any pain in my body when the guy struck me or anything that they were doing. I didn’t feel the oxygen mask on my face down below. No messages from my body. But everything of who I was up on that ceiling, watching them do that to my body. So I know that consciousness isn’t tied to an alive or active brain, as far as I’m concerned. We’re inhabiting these bodies, but we are spiritual beings having a human experience as Pierre Teilhard says- not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are much more than our body.

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard that quite a bit too and I would be inclined to believe that, but if we take the scientific position just for a moment, if someone’s flatlining, they’re dead, which means that you’re not supposed to be able to imagine anything, because you’re dead.

Barbara Bartolome: And that’s where medical Intelligence over the years , that’s what they say. And unfortunately, that’s not the truth. Too many near-death experiences have these amazing experiences outside of their bodies and they are not tied to the dead body that’s down below.

Johnny Burke: I think it makes a pretty strong case for the survival of consciousness. It’s not tied to a physical body. You’ve been involved in several organizations, which we’ll get to, but, IANDS, I believe has documented, is it 900,000 or is it more? documented cases of near death experiences? Probably closer to a million,and I don’t think they’re all making that up.

Barbara Bartolome: Yeah. The thing is that most of us don’t want to talk about it. I didn’t talk about mine for like 12 years. I literally spoke to the doctors about it and asked, “what happened, what happened?” No one would answer me. Then when they took me up to my room and did my surgery the next day when I was in recovery, two doctors approached me to tell me what happened during the surgery. I said”, what happened last night? what was that? “, The neurosurgeon held his hand out in front of me, like “stop.” And he said,” I am not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about your surgery.”

No one in the hospital would talk to me about it. And when I told my husband at the time, he completely dismissed it and said, “oh, that couldn’t have happened- you probably hallucinated it” well, I’ve never done drugs. I never did anything. I have the cleanest record and I have actually security clearance with the Department of Defense. I don’t have any reason to have been hallucinating or dreaming or anything else. It was an actual experience and I cherish it big time because it literally helped guide me away from the situation that I was in in my life. And I did end up leaving my husband and I did end up finding a very much happier life down the road with my husband than I’ve been married to for 30 years now. I felt planted in my life at that time to get me out of a very dangerous situation with my marriage.

Johnny Burke: And speaking of NDEs, you had one in your childhood, but at the time you didn’t know what it was. Can you tell us a little bit about how that happened?

Barbara Bartolome: I actually was only about 18 months old. I had never told my family about my near-death experience. I kept it very quiet inside my heart. It was as fresh every day. If I ever took it out and looked at it myself. I remembered every second of it, but it wasn’t like I was going to talk to people about it.In Santa Barbara, I owned a business and I’d been named businesswoman of the year., I didn’t want people to think there was weird things going on in Barbara’s head or something. So I kept it really quiet.

I had been to the IANDS conference in 2009 and I’d heard PMH Atwater speak and she’s a researcher for near-death experiences, very broadly known. She had been talking about the aftereffects and I had not ever heard that there were after-effects. When I heard these, I was very confused after her talk. And I thought why are they saying those are aftereffects? I’ve had those all the way back to my childhood. And I had my NDE at age 31. So after her talk, I approached her and said,” please explain to me how that could happen.” She held my hands and she said,” my dear, I think that you ought to check in with your family to see if anyone there knows of anything that happened to you when you were young because I believe that you probably had an earlier life NDE. ” so I thought at the time, oh brother, now somebody thinks I’ve had two of these?

I decided when I saw my brother the next time that I would ask him, but I didn’t want to tell him about my NDE ahead of time to give him that information. So I said,” Hey, I’m doing this kind of a booklet thing of all of my medical history. So that in case I’m ever in the hospital or something, they can have this notebook of all the information about my medical background. And my brother said,” I don’t know. Let me think about it.” Then after we had dinner, he stopped me outside the restaurant and he said,” Barbie, there’s something that I need to tell you and I’ve always felt like I should tell you. But the parents made us promise back when it happened that we would never discuss it with you, and we wouldn’t tell you. When you were 18 months, you had a really high fever, you were sick with something, I don’t know what it was, and the parents were really concerned and worried.”

What ended up happening was that I went into convulsions, and I stopped breathing. So my father immediately called the fire department, and my mom was holding me and crying, and my little sister was in my mom’s tummy still, so my little sister was about to be born and my mom was going to lose her little one. The fire department ended up telling my dad to put me into the bathtub in tepid bathwater, then slowly at ice cubes to slowly lower my body temperature while they sent the ambulance over to our house. My brothers were sent by my mom to go to the neighbor’s house, rush, rush to get more ice.

And when my brother came back, he said” you were soft, purple, lifeless, not breathing and he said he was so scared.” As he was standing there watching, he said,” you self-resuscitated. All of a sudden, you arched your back and came back alive and took this deep breath in, and that turned you from purple to red. Then you just burst out crying and you were crying really hard.” And the ambulance people pulled up in front of the house, came into our home and wrapped me up in a blanket and took me off the hospital. ” he said I was there for like four days. He said the parents didn’t want to ever talk about it. They said, never speak to me about it.

I realized that with that information and the aftereffects that I then knew about that my childhood fell right into place for me, because there were a lot of things that had happened during my childhood, that my parents thought was weird, and people that were friends of mine thought were weird. There were intuition moments, there were all sorts of things, and, I never could figure out why they’d happened, and I didn’t know why I was different, but that totally answered it okay now I understand I’ve got intuition. Yeah.

Johnny Burke: So that happened when you were 18 months?

Barbara Bartolome: 18 months old. Yeah.

Johnny Burke: I’ve noticed that people that have had these experiences talk about an increased level of intuition. And I even had Robert Bare- speaking of IANDS, who was on the show a while back. He had a near-death experience where he was out for like 45 minutes. He remembered seeing a very huge uptick in these abilities, including mediumistic type abilities, which he told me” I didn’t want it.” Could it be that your childhood.experience kind of elevated it or those abilities would’ve been there anyway?

Barbara Bartolome: No, I definitely think it elevated it and, and it was something I didn’t understand, my parents didn’t understand, my siblings. No one understood it. I would have these incidents where I didn’t realize for quite a long time until I was older, that I should hide them. I shouldn’t talk about them. I shouldn’t let people know. When the phone rang, I blurted out who was calling and would be accurate every time, and my mom would look at me with this really strange look on her face.

When I was like five years old, I was studying on a street corner and my intuition told me that there was going to be a car accident. So I broke the grip on my mom’s hand, and I put my hands over my face to cover my face. My mom didn’t like that because we were supposed to hold her hands. My little three-year-old sister, and myself. She looked down at me and said, “what are you doing? I said, through my hands, “they’re going to crash” and right after I said, a car ran the red light and T-boned the car in the intersection. And my mom kneeled down and shook me a little bit and she said,” I don’t ever want you to tell anyone that you can do that. ” So it was scary to her that I had those gifts and I learned to hide them, but there were times when I didn’t hide them and bad things kind of happened.

I remember in high school I was like 17, and my friends drank beer. I would go with them to a party but I didn’t drink I’d always be the driver home. What ended up happening was that the police stormed the party. And I saw before they got there that they were coming up the roadway to the place we were at. I didn’t know the people that lived there- it was their son that was having the party and the people were off for the weekend. So no one knew beforehand that this was going to happen and the police came and I actually got enough warning that I took my friends and dragged them off into the underbrush nearby the driveway and saved them from getting arrested for underage drinking . That caused one of them to question me. She ended up saying at school on the following Monday that I was a witch because I said, “well, I saw that they were coming.” So she assumed I was a witch. So I had to deal with that in high school; people saying things to me and questioned me and stuff and it was hard.

Johnny Burke: That must have been difficult, and I can see why your mother would tell you don’t ever tell anybody that you have that ability. So would you call that what you just described, is that a psychic ability or is that premonition?

Barbara Bartolome: I think it’s called premonition or precognition. I’m not exactly up on all of that, but it’s happened so darn many times to me that it’s just normal. When I get those hits, I listen. I have this incredible one that happened in 2016 and my husband that I’m married to for the last 30 years, he really understands this, and he gets it and he trusts it. We were driving back from San Francisco where I had given four talks up at the IANDS groups in San Francisco and we were coming back to Santa Barbara. And just north of the city there’s this coastline that the highway comes along, and it was really super windy. This one gust of wind, I saw my husband struggling with the steering wheel. So I said, “Hey, why don’t we slow down from 65 down to like 50? , I think we should slow down. “And he said, “yeah, I think so, too. “And then a couple minutes later, I heard in my ear- I actually heard a voice that said ” danger, big impact ahead.”

So I sat up in my seat and I checked my seatbelt and then I told my husband,” I just heard from the other side there’s a big impact ahead- danger. Could be a tree that’s blown down, or could be a car that’s spun out of control- I don’t know what it is, but we need to slow down more. We need to do like 30 miles an hour.” And my husband looked at me and said,” well, Barbara, we’re on the freeway. We can’t do that.” And I turned around and looked through our van and there were no lights behind us, no cars coming. And so I said,” well, nobody’s around us, so nobody’s going to care if we’re doing 30. So we went for about 10 minutes doing 30 miles an hour. And we came around a corner, and saw a police car way up in the dark way ahead of us. And I immediately knew that was where the danger was. the police car had stopped squarely in the slow lane. He’d gotten out of his car and he climbed up on the side of the semi-truck that had tipped over because the wind had blown it out of control and the dirty bottom of the truck was facing us. So we couldn’t actually see the truck. We could only see the car with the lights on -the police car.

Coming up in the slow lane, behind the police car, and having to change lanes. And right when that happened, whoever it was from the other side that was helping grabbed both of my upper arms. I kid you not, I’m not lying about this. Literally I felt grips on both of my upper arms, and I felt a face come nose to nose with me and whoever it was screamed, “10 miles an hour! I completely echoed that to my husband because I was freaked out that I was being squeezed. My husband slowed down. He just changed lanes. So now he was in the fast lane going past the police car and about 20 feet past the police car, our lights finally lit up the semi-truck and the cab was right in front of us. We would’ve hit that, and it would’ve probably blown up the gas tanks because that’s where the gas tanks are. I immediately started saying thank you to the other side right after we got past it.

My husband about 10 minutes later was completely quiet. Then he said, “Barbara, how do you do this?” And I said, “you know what, Victor, it’s not me. I do listen to the other side. And I think if everybody did, they’d get a big benefit in life. ” What you think is your intuition might not be intuition. It might be assistance from the other side. So I always listen- I listen to them and I’m not scared of them at all. I’m always grateful.

Johnny Burke: Pretty incredible story. You’ve also given grand rounds talks at some of the hospitals and I believe it’s featured in a D V D for medical professionals to learn about NDEs. How important is it for the medical profession to accept and understand that NDEs are real?

Barbara Bartolome: Absolutely important. My example of an NDE and then voicing it to those people that were present. None of them admitted at the time, ‘hey Barbara, you had an NDE. ‘I don’t know back in 1987, if they knew what an NDE was. But nowadays a lot of people, medical professionals included have heard of these. So when someone has one, they just simply need to say that’s called a near-death experience and there’s a lot of information online. There are websites and organizations that help people to acclimate to this situation that you’ve just had. They don’t have to say that they believe in it or that they don’t believe in it. Just give the patient the best care possible by telling them what it is and saying there’s information out there. That’s all they need to do.

Johnny Burke: I think that’s as good advice on that as anyone’s going to get. Of course, there’s going to be pushback from some people that maybe their pastor or the people at their church say ‘those things are not real’, which I think it’s kind of sad, really.

Barbara Bartolome: Well, I’ve spoken at churches, and they’ve completely wanted me to come and talk there and they’ve been very open and accepting of it. So it depends on how the church is led.

Johnny Burke: It depends on the type of church -we have the Unitarian church, then we even Spiritualist churches that have mediums in them.

Barbara Bartolome: When I talked to Salt Lake City, the whole room, 150 people were all Mormons , or mostly all Mormons. They believe in near-death experiences. The problem that I see is that a lot of religions believe God is dead. They don’t believe God’s really present currently here and capable of impacting our lives and helping us and doing things with us. And it’s just really sad because I realize strongly that he’s alive.

Johnny Burke: Let’s talk about what we’ve all learned from these organizations like IANDS, the Afterlife Research and Education Institute (AREI)and the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.(NDERF)

Barbara Bartolome: Well, I think that the NDEs are teaching us to help us grow our souls here on earth. I think that’s kind of our purpose to be here when we incarnate. I think that we’re given all these challenges and, aspects of our life that we need to learn from. And I think that that’s why we’re here. One of the things that I really strongly believe in and have all my life now is the idea of reincarnation. I feel very strongly that we’re here multiple times and that each time we probably choose a particular life, our parents, our siblings, what’s going to happen to us. And we end up coming into our life and growing our souls and learning and then going back, what I call home.

I don’t believe there’s a heaven in a hell. I’m really sorry, but I don’t. I feel like it’s just home where we came from and I always use a heart for the O on home because I think it’s just full of love, which is what I think God really represents to the world is that he’s there, he’s helping us grow our souls and he’s there when we return home again. And all this other stuff that’s been written in the Bible, I think some of it can be true and some of it can be man’s interjection into the whole thing.

Yeah. I really feel we have a purpose in our lives. So I really feel that we come here with an idea of something that we want to accomplish, and a lot of the NDEers talk about how when they were faced with their near-death experience, they realized that their purpose wasn’t completed yet. And I felt that same thing when I was out of my body.

Johnny Burke: The near-death experiences seems to be that portal to the beginning of the life- death- reincarnation cycle because it gives us a glimpse of what our purpose is, and whether we fulfilled it or not. There’s been many accounts where people say they went through something similar to what you did and they were told,’ no, you got to go back- you’re not done yet.’

Barbara Bartolome: A beautiful one is Dr. Mary Neal, who was in a river rafting accident in a kayak. And on the other side, when she was out of her body, she was sitting in a beautiful meadow, and she said that Jesus was sitting next to her on a rock. She wanted to stay even though she had four children and a lovely husband who was a doctor, she wanted to stay. She said it was so incredibly wonderful to be there next to him and be on the other side. He told her that her oldest son, Willie was going to have a terrible accident at, I think it was age 18. And that she needed to return to her life because she needed to be there and help the community that they lived in -Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to come to grips with the situation that had happened to her son. And in fact, he was hit by a distracted driver, at age 19 and he was killed. That was something that she needed to come forward and help the community to understand, not be angry and upset with this distracted driver, that it had been planned long before the accident happened and that this was Willie’s choice to leave at that time.

She also was told that her husband was going to have a major medical issue that he wouldn’t detect ahead of time and that she needed to be there otherwise the children would lose him as well. That happened as well. So we’re here for a purpose. We’re here to contribute to others’ lives. We’re here to do the best that we possibly can. And I really look forward to seeing the final video of my life. When I get to see the rerun of my life and look at the places where I contributed to other people and see how that branched out and touched other people’s lives beyond that. The whole aspect of my life has been volunteering and helping others and finding people that need assistance and finding a way to help. That’s what I do.

Johnny Burke: excellent. I think experiences like this really does give us a glimpse of what really happens when we finally make that transition. So, Barbara, thanks so much for joining us. Excellent information. How can our listeners learn more about you online?

Barbara Bartolome: They can Google Barbara Bartolome NDE. On YouTube, you’re going to get a lot of videos. You’re going to get a beautiful documentary by a French film producer named Anthony Chen and of course, this wonderful podcast audio right now today with Johnny Burke!

#81 Viki Quirk: From Deja Vu To The Akashic Records

August 6, 2022 by Johnny Burke

Akashic Records

#akashicrecords, #claircognizance, #dejavu, #nde, #pastliferegression, #pastlives, #premonition, #soulwalkin, #spritguides

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer To Venus, I’m Johnny Burke and today’s guest is Vicky Quirk. She is an intuitive coach, breathwork teacher, and near-death experience survivor. Today, we will be talking about how she utilizes the Akashic Records to help people heal their past, embrace the present, and move forward into their future. Vicky. Welcome to the program

Viki Quirk: Thank you so much for having me, Johnny. I’m excited to be here.

Johnny Burke: I think this should be fun. So how did you discover when you had intuitive or what people call psychic gifts

Viki Quirk: I can think back to childhood and having a lot of Deja Vu, that’s kind of my first recollection of something being different. But my mom also had Deja Vu, so it didn’t feel all that different. Then as I got older, I would just kind of know things before they happened. And I’m like, I don’t know where this is coming from, it didn’t really become clear until like my late twenties and I was living with my then boyfriend, now husband. And I started seeing things in our apartment and I was like, I don’t know what is going on. And then I got really lucky. I was talking to the receptionist at my acupuncture place. We got to talking about all this stuff and all this work that she was doing, and I was like, oh, let me ask you something. So I started to describe it to her. And she was like,” oh girl, you’ve got some gifts that you are not using. “And I was like, “what are you talking about? “And so her and I talked about. Everything she said was like, yes, that makes sense. Yes, that makes sense.

I then started to explore, what does it mean to be intuitive? What does it mean to be psychic in any way? And started to look into books and then she put me on to a teacher who I eventually studied with for a number of years. And then I was like, ’oh, if I tap into this, if I use it, my life is easier, right?’ And I’m not seeing weird stuff all over the place at night while I’m sleeping. I’m able to manage this. And it was crazy to see how my anxiety subsided, how a lot of things became more easy for me when I started to embrace that. I could feel energies outside of myself. I could also take them into myself and needed to work on that. So it was kind of a serendipitous situation where, who expects to be talking to the receptionist at the acupuncture place and have her say to you, ” Hey, by the way, you’re gifted. ”

Johnny Burke: Actually that’s a really good point because many people get confirmation of these intuitive gifts at, it could be a number of modalities. The Reiki healer experience seems to be an entry point for a lot of people to become aware of the intuitive gifts.

Viki Quirk: Totally. Because I think that. It’s a modality that feels very safe and comfortable, and that is more well-known now than a lot of other modalities are. That was one of my first explorations also too, is after I had that whole revelation in the acupuncture office, was then I pursued receiving Reiki and later got my own attunements to become a Reiki practitioner. It’s an easy access point, but I think it’s a very profound access point. where big things can happen, even though it seems rather simple and it feels safe to most people, it can be a super profound experience in it

Johnny Burke: I think a lot of people are not expecting something like that to happen-not expecting to have an awakening or waking up or whatever you want to call it. So back to your intuitive, ability. You first got a glimmer of that when you were young, but you didn’t really get full confirmation until you’re in your twenties?

Viki Quirk: Yeah.

Johnny Burke: You also mentioned Deja Vu. Were these images? Did this happen in dreams or was it spontaneous?

Viki Quirk: Typically a dream that I would have. Then I would experience the exact same event a couple of days later. Then I was like, wait, did I dream that? Or did I do this twice? In my later teen years, it became much more prevalent than that was happening. And I would sometimes be confused in class cause I’m like, why do I already know the answer to this? I dreamed it and it was just this kind of trippy experience. And my mom had mentioned having Deja Vu, but it wasn’t necessarily a conversation we really dive deep into.

It didn’t really start to click for me is that being a part of my gifts until I was in my twenties, and actually right when my dad passed away. He had cancer twice. The second time around, he went terminal, and he was in the hospital over the weekend. And the second the phone rang, I had this flash to a dream I had had about a year before of the phone ringing, us being called to the hospital and on the way to the hospital. In the dream and in reality, I had the thought of my dad just died and when we got there, he had passed. That was like the purest confirmation I ever could have gotten because it was the exact same situation playing out.

Johnny Burke: Would that be an example of a premonition?

Viki Quirk: Yeah. Yes. I see it as that. That one feels more premonition and other events that I’ve had happened, feel more like a premonition while others are Deja Vu. Others are like, “oh, I’ve seen this somewhere, Oh, in my dreams” or a similar situation. I used to teach Pilates for 10 years. So when you do something all day long for hours a day, it’s easy to dream about it and process it. That piece was really interesting for me because there’d be times I was teaching a client,” Wait, did I teach them the left side of this exercise in my dream, or did I teach it to them just now?” And have to really kind of like navigate it, but that felt more Deja Vu. That was less about it being, I saw something coming and more about somehow, I knew that day I was going to teach those exercises. It was, it feels less dramatic.

Johnny Burke: Déjà vu; would that be like dreaming about a place that you know, you’ve seen before, but you’ve never- Vicky’s never really been there. Have you had experiences like that?

Viki Quirk: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, this house that we’re currently living in, I had that same experience and it’s been interesting for me that so much of what’s happened for me has been at times of difficulties, of times of trauma, which is that’s kind of standard, I think because the veil is thin and when you’re not in your body, you can pick up on a lot more things. I think it was more of me stepping into myself as a person, particularly my late twenties. My guides were like, “Hey, it’s time for you to embrace these things. It’s time for you to utilize these for yourself and to share these gifts with others. “That was almost like a coming home moment for me to start to say,” Oh, I can have this stuff happen.”

And at that point in my late twenties, I had a couple of teachers I was working with. I wasn’t alone in it because I think the other thing is people have these things happen and they feel very alone in it because we’re not living in a society where it’s typical. My kids are growing up with it more than I did. It’s not typical for parents to say,” Hey if you ever feel these things or you have a sense of knowing or you hear things you don’t see in the room with you. That’s okay. Those are psychic gifts. “That’s not a conversation anybody’s happening,

Johnny Burke: Not really. That’s almost like if you’re sitting around the dinner table, you can say ‘great, what past life memories do you have Jimmy? ‘or, ‘Hey, did you have an awakening experience?’ you’re right, we don’t really have those kinds of discussions. They’re not really commonplace. You had just mentioned guides. I imagine that is a reference to spirit guides, right? was your first experience with your guide or your guides and, how did that happen? What did they look like? And did you even know their names?

Viki Quirk: that’s been an interesting experience for me. So my primary psychic skill is claircognizance. So I just know that. So when people will ask me, “oh, what do guides look like?” Good question. I don’t necessarily know what they look like. I don’t have that clear visual of them, but I know what they’re like in their energy or what they feel like to me. Sometimes there will be a face or something that I know. It was in my early twenties. I was about to go on a date with a guy and I got this very male voice in my head that said, ‘this is not a good idea.’ Turned out it wasn’t a good idea. and I should have listened, but back then, I didn’t know, right? But it was like,” whoa, what was that?” And that’s happened to me a couple of times where there’ll be this knowing that I’m hearing a voice.

I have had really cool, very clear visuals of who my guides are in readings with other practitioners. I have one practitioner, in particular, whom I work with all the time, and also in my breathwork sessions. So when I practice breathwork, I’ll get sometimes this really clear visual, and they’ll like float above my face while I’m breathing. And I’m like, “oh, this is a native American guide “or “oh, this is a nomadic witch from a past life, who’s my guide.” And it’s more of the knowing that they’re there and that feeling of somebody is with me and it varies.

My guides have changed over the years and over my commitment to my work and how things have gone. It’s changed where sometimes I feel a more angelic presence, which feels really soft and easy and very soft-spoken. I have one guide, she always speaks to me in this very like, direct way where she’s just kind of like, ‘get it together, girl, like, what are you doing?’ I can always tell when I’m veering off course, because of that. The guide will appear in my writing, if I’m journaling if I’m doing breathwork, if I’m an about to start a session with a client, a guide will appear to me in some way. Usually, I will hear them say like, ‘Hey, there’s going to be some messages in this session that are also for you because you haven’t been listening.’ Mine are pretty direct!

Johnny Burke: So, I’m going to reference something which happened in another episode where this woman was about to end her earthly existence. And as she walked into the kitchen to the drawer, she heard a voice saying,” sit down”. She looked around, obviously, there wasn’t anyone else in the room and she kept walking and in a very loud voice that voice said,” sit down.” I’m not going to go into the whole episode,but is that more of a clairaudient moment, or is that more of a claircognizant or is it a mixture of the two?

Viki Quirk: I think it can be a mix. I think it depends on how she experienced it. The way I always explain it to people is that I know I’m hearing something, but I don’t necessarily hear it. Like right now I can hear the heater in this room making noise. I don’t hear it that way. It’s more like, I know I’m hearing something, but some people do with clairaudience hear it, in the room, like outside of themselves.

For me, it’s more of a voice in my head that I know isn’t mine. It doesn’t sound like mine. It doesn’t feel like mine. It’s not my thoughts. Intonation can be different. Like there could be an accent. My guides come through pretty authentically in whatever their background is in that way. Clairaudience and clairvoyance were two skills I wanted to develop a bit more. And what I’ve worked on in my like 10 ish years of doing this. I’ve worked to develop some other skills because I do think there’s value in you honoring your primary skills and value and exploring other skills that you have as well too. So you can have a more rounded experience and get more out of your communication.

Sometimes you’re going to see something that’s a sign that’s maybe a plat passing, little light or a little blip or a little something. And it’s like, wait, what was that? So you want to have your eye and your third eye all attuned to seeing all the things you want to be able to hear what’s not being said in addition to what is being said. So it’s kind of more of a rounded experience of being gifted.

Johnny Burke: Can we assume that all of us have spirit guides? Because I’ve heard that quite a bit.

Viki Quirk: Yes. I believe we all do. I think what I find when I work with clients and we’re in a session, it depends on how receptive we are to the idea that there’s some things, some beings outside of ourselves that are there to help us that are there to guide us. I’ve had distinct situations in my life where I’ve shut that channel down. Do I still feel if I look back and reflect on those times, do I still feel like I’ve been pushed and kind of directed in a variety of ways and have gotten where I needed to be anyway, despite myself? Yes. And when I look at that, do I know that comes from like my spiritual team, which to me also includes loved ones who’ve passed away, past life versions of myself, myself in alternate dimensions. All of that is there for me.

I don’t believe guides ever give up on a person, but I do believe they try to find other ways if someone’s not receptive to it coming to them in a divine way, in an energetic way. I think they put people in their life to say”, Hey, here’s what you should be doing, or here’s where you should be going.” I think they find other ways.

Johnny Burke: I’ve heard this quite a few times that our spirit guides can be our family that has passed on, and I’ve also talked to a number of people who’ve said your spirit guides change throughout your life, depending on where you are and where you need to go and what you need to learn. That seems to be a common entry point for a lot of people to discover their intuitive gifts. Is it not?

Viki Quirk: Yeah, and I think-

Johnny Burke: it seems like it.

Viki Quirk: If we’re paying attention to major things in our lives and we’re spiritually tapped in at all, we might notice that we’ve had one guide consistently or a couple of guides consistently, or we’ll notice a change. When I think about it, I think I had a complete guide turnover, to new guides when I had my near-death experience, which was during the birth of my older son.

There was so much for me in that whole experience that I totally backed out of all the work I had been doing. I refused and my friend and colleague and my trusted spiritual partner in all things that we talk about today, Andrea Mitchell, she could tell you I was very resistant to the idea of tapping back into any energy. I was very angry that I went into my older son’s birth, not knowing that I was going to have a near-death experience, that I was going to almost die. That anger sat with me for so long, and it took me a long time and it came to a point where I finally said to her,” okay, you can do a reading for me.” My guides came through saying that they did not know that was going to happen.

Johnny Burke: They did not?

Viki Quirk: They did not. That also then set me on edge because I was like, wait a minute- you’re supposed to know All the things.

And they’re like, ‘we know a lot of things. We can know many things. We can know many versions of things, but humans also have free will. And there were choices that were made during your birthing process that led to this thing happening you didn’t have in your soul’s blueprint.’ And at that point, my soul that I was born with exited my body and I had a soul walk-in happen, which I didn’t know any of this at the time, this all became known to me in processes literally years after the fact. But that was a moment where I tried for almost a year to shut down any intuitive hits. I was getting any psychic information and I did a pretty good job of it, but not completely. My guides weren’t going to let me go that easy.

But when that soul walk-in happened, and I finally came to terms with my guides didn’t know, they couldn’t have warned me. That whole team of spiritual guides that I had I felt changed within the next couple of months after that. And I had a new set of guides appear that I think we’re more in alignment with the soul I have now, and also more in alignment with where I was and could be kind of a fresh set of spiritual eyes and ears and support for me that I wasn’t so angry at.

Johnny Burke: So that’s the first time I’ve heard the term “soul walk-in, but I also think it ties into something you mentioned earlier, which is, I think pre-birth planning, which means you have a blueprint. You are in that in-between space that Dr. Michael Newton obviously wrote about, and you pick your mom, you pick your dad, and the boyfriend that’s going to break your heart and all that good stuff. And then you come back down here, and you forget about it, but then you have a near-death experience, which apparently your guides did not know about, but it’s because basically you had one soul go away and a soul walk-in. It’s almost like a musician saying’ I don’t like that plugin so we’re going to use this one, that’s a better,’ whatever. Maybe that’s a crude analogy, but it sounds like it’s almost like a transplant.

Viki Quirk: Yes, and so when a soul walk-in happens, there’s some reason that the soul that the person was born with is going to leave. Or sometimes two souls will inhabit a body together. And this can happen for a variety of reasons. What I’ve learned in my studying of this over the last couple of years, and just my own experience of it is oftentimes a soul believes they have met their purpose or surpassed their purpose for their incarnation in that lifetime and they’re ready to move on. I believe in what I’ve gathered in my own diving into my own stuff around this is that my soul was like, I’m tired. This has been a really hard lifetime. There’s been a lot of traumas. There’s been a lot of stuff. I’ve done a lot of work. I’ve changed in a lot of ways. I’ve grown in a lot of ways, but I’m ready. I can’t be here, and this body is failing. So if this body wants to continue on, I’m willing to turn it over to another soul that’s willing to incarnate into an established body versus coming into a newborn.

Johnny Burke: The example I just gave you a few minutes ago about a woman planning her suicide was warned by spirit or guides or whoever that was. I don’t really know, but the spirit basically told her, ‘if you go through with this , we’re going to bring you right back to the same type of situation or another lifetime.’ Could that be she is that person, her soul is going to walk into someone else’s body in the same situation, does that make sense?

Viki Quirk: Yes, it does make sense. In that case, I could see it happening where her soul is like, okay, I’m out and returns to the spirit realm and maybe hangs out in the spirit realm for a while, or then incarnates into somebody else. But another soul could step in, and she survives that attempt of suicide. If she dies from that attempt of suicide, she might come back, her soul wouldn’t have necessarily walked out for another one to walk in. Her soul could return to the spirit realm and then get reincarnated into another person with all the same lessons and experiences are going to vary. They might be a different flavor of those things, but that can happen.

That’s part of when we look at what our repeated patterns are in a lifetime, the things we consistently do. I always look at it from two perspectives, like what was going on for you and your upbringing that may be developed as a coping skill? And what’s happened to you in past lives? What lessons were there for you in other lifetimes that maybe you didn’t fully learn, or you didn’t fully inhabit the teachings of. So now you’re here to give it another go, and you have different resources in each lifetime. Is this the lifetime where you have the resources that you need to learn these lessons so that these lessons no longer appear for you in future lifetimes?

Johnny Burke: The subject of past lives is almost inescapable; this comes up quite a bit. Can you tell us what you have learned from your past lives, and do you recognize anyone you know today from one of your past lives?

Viki Quirk: Yes. Past lives have been interesting. I didn’t know anything about past lives until I had started working with my teacher, Vanessa, on intuitive work. And then she was doing some hypnosis work with me privately, and we got to talking about past lives. That’s how I got introduced to the Akashic records through my own hypnosis sessions with her.

And so it was very interesting for me. I believe in therapy, it’s valuable. But I also believe in bringing in these spiritual components, because what would happen when I would explore my past lives, either in a full past life regression session of hypnosis or through an Akashic record reading, I was like,” wait a second. I’ve done all this before. This is a pattern for me, or some stuff was just this lifetime, but I have these other past lives that can feed me information about how to work with this.

One of the first past lives that ever came up was between me and my husband. We were sisters in Russia in a past life, and it was a terribly difficult past life. We had a lot of trials and tribulations. We had a lot of challenges. And then when I looked at our relationship at that point, we weren’t going through the same thing. We weren’t sisters again, but we were having a lot of trials and tribulations and we kept coming back to each other, which was the same thing that happened in that past life. I have past lives with my mom, with my sister. I’ll have clients who sometimes I have past lives with, which has always trippy.

Johnny Burke: So it’s easily recognizable for you. I’ve always asked just out of curiosity, how many of the people in my current life are most likely someone I knew in a past life, and the consensus is, almost everyone. Would you agree or not?

Viki Quirk: I think it depends on the degree to which they were significant in our past lives as to how they may show up in present life. So I think we can encounter a lot of people in our life. People randomly that we bump into at the grocery store kind of thing, who we’ve had lifetimes with before, but that doesn’t make them significant. I also find it interesting when I do readings for people in the same family, past lives will come up between certain family members that only come up in one person’s reading, not both people’s readings. Because that past life was only significant to that person. So I do think we’re encountering people all the time.

I figured this out when people used to say to me, ” you look so familiar I swear I know you from somewhere. And if I tap it in that moment, yeah, I have a past life with them, but it’s not significant in this lifetime. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to me. It might be more significant to them.

Johnny Burke: One of the things I think we can take away from this because you’ve mentioned pretty much the gamut. Past lives, Akashic Records, pre-birth planning. Soul guides, spirit guides rather. Is it a no-brainer for you that basically our consciousness, our souls, we don’t die? Our physical bodies obviously expire, but we keep coming back. For the people that don’t believe and are very skeptical, what would you tell them about this when they ask” how do you know this person isn’t just making this up to get attention or to sell a book on Amazon?”

Viki Quirk: It’s hard because I think it’s different for each person. I’ve dived deep enough into all of this. And I’ve had too many things happen that makes sense to what I’ve been told when I read for myself or when someone else reads for me, there’s just too much in my body that says, “yes, this has happened.” There’s too much there. I can’t deny that. When I work with other people and I do get on the rare occasion, it’s usually a loved one or a friend has referred someone to me for reading and they are very skeptical. I’ll say to them, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Some of it can be fear of what they’re going to find out and what they’re going to feel compelled to or feel like they have to do with the information they receive. And so when I have those readings where someone’s like,” no, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. “But they’re resistant. I’ll usually ask their guides, to give me something that they can connect with safely that feels comfortable for them. That feels like they’ve already known this and I’m just confirming it for them. And guides will usually share something from a loved one who’s passed that there’s no way I could’ve known it because they didn’t tell me anything about it, except that I got it from their guides.

And then I can start to build that trust and that rapport. And then people start to make their own connections, which is the most beautiful thing in a session to see is to see the person say,” this is connected to this, and this is connected to that.” Then they start to open up to the idea of a past life. I find it easiest in that supportive and safe space to have that conversation.

When I’m out kind of about in the world, most people will ask what I do and I say I’m in an intuitive coach and they’re like, what does that mean? And I’ll get to tell you about it and then I see people glaze over. That’s okay. I don’t push it, but if people are curious and they ask about it, I’ll say, tell me some things that have happened in your life that feel like you’ve done them before, but you hadn’t really. And that’s when they can start to really connect to, they’re like, “yeah, I got drawn to playing the violin, but it makes no sense. No one in my family’s musical. No one I know even knew what a violin really was besides like some squeaky string instrument.” But if I asked them, “do you feel like you’ve done this before “they say “yes, I feel like I’ve done this a thousand times. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s because they did it in a past life and their soul is like” This is good for you. Do that again. Let me draw you into that. Let me get you to something that’s going to help you.”

Johnny Burke: Let’s talk about your practice. So with the Akashic Records and past lives and maybe even the in-between space where we make our blueprint; how do these things manifest in your work with your clients?

Viki Quirk: My work has evolved quite a bit. When I first started out, I was kind of just doing straight Akashic Record reading. Like a whole protocol I went through, and I was just looking at that. But what I started to realize, as I worked with a variety of people and dive deeper into the work myself was to me, the Akashic Records are the library of everything that’s ever happened in the universe. Everything that’s happened in multiple dimensions and anything that can happen in the future. Each one of us has our own reference book that we can pull out that’s going to have that information. And the librarians are the Akashic record keepers. They’re the ones who hold our information. If we can use that, we should call in all the other things that we can use too because they’re already in the Akashic records, we should call on loved ones who’ve passed away.

So I will call on loved ones who’ve passed away and ask them to be part of a session if they want to be. If they have something to share. I asked for guides who were in animal form guides, who are of a divine nature, but not necessarily one that we have a name for. Angels. I call everybody to the party. That’s what I tell clients. I want everyone to come to the party and we’ll see what everyone has to share. So when I go into a session with someone, yes, I’m opening their Akashic record with their permission because that is sacred information. And then I’m calling in all these other components as well.

I do energy work within them. We can release energetic blocks, which will then release over time and space. So that’s what’s cool. If you’re in your Akashic record, you’re healing something present day, you’re healing it in your record, which means you’re also healing it in past lives that are available to that. And you’re healing it seven generations from in present life backward and seven generations forwards. So you can do a lot of things in there that have this reverberating effect, where it stretches outward beyond anything we can imagine.

Johnny Burke: How were you drawn to pursue understanding the Akashic Records? And also you mentioned something about healing something in the past, has that changed the past life data point? Or does that reverberate forward and have an effect on the present and the future.

Viki Quirk: So my draw to it came from my teacher, Vanessa. When I worked with her, it just made so much sense to me. And it started to fill in gaps in blanks that I couldn’t fill in with therapy. So it was like the work that I was doing on myself. I would kind of stall out on some things, but as I started to explore my own past lives, I was like, “wait, I didn’t resolve this in that past life.” So that energy, there’s like this cord or a tube where, I kind of think of it like a little hamster’s house with all those little tubes that run around. So we’re like in the base, in our present life of that tube, and we can have energy running back and forth between past lives.

So I’m like, “oh, I didn’t resolve this back then.” So if I energetically work on it, what was the story of that past life? What was happening then? What does that past life version of me need to hear or have happened in order for him or her to feel complete so I can stop having that flow of energy back and forth?

So if I work on it that way, this is amazing. Then my present life also changes so we can get all that information about the past life. We can always access that story. We can always access the lessons in the wounding and all of that, of that time, but we don’t need it affecting us in the present. So we can heal it to the best that we can now. Past lives, sometimes those versions of ourselves do not want to have something healed. They are stuck in that. If that’s the case that comes up for me or somebody else, we work to then seal off that connection to the past life that’s bringing energy into the present that’s affecting the present. And we can still access all that information, but we don’t have that feeding of energy coming through. We can leave that past life where it is, but we are also then able to heal and change what comes going forward.

People always get caught up in the idea that if you’ve healed something that means you’re done. You never see it again. That’s not my belief. My belief is if you’re healing something, it’s pretty much always active. It’s how you respond to it each time it appears, or there can be some things that you heal that you don’t see again, that you’re just complete with because you’ve had lifetimes of it, or you did it really big in this lifetime. So for me, it can work to go backward and forwards from what’s presently presenting. So that was the draw for me in the Akashic records is I can use this to help my present, and then in turn heal past, and then in turn, lay the foundation for something different to happen in the future.

Johnny Burke: From a practitioner’s standpoint, how would the path to becoming a past life regression therapist or an Akashic records reader be different? Why would they take one path versus another?

Viki Quirk: that’s an excellent question. And that’s one that I get asked more than I ever thought I would. The Akashic Records is not a past life regression. So if you’re doing a pathway for aggression, you’re actually in hypnosis, typically going back into that past life and you’re experiencing that past life as it’s happening, Whatever past life you get drawn into, you’re experiencing that. When you have an Akashic record reading, someone’s telling you, and you may have recollections while you’re in a session, but someone’s telling you what’s happening in that past life or the key points of it. So there’s a difference between experiencing it or being told about it. I’ve had both, I prefer to be told about it. Because when I experience it, I get kind of stuck in, ‘oh, I should’ve done this, or I should’ve done that. And what if I tried it this way?’, but that’s not really what the regression is for. It’s not to go back and try to redo it. It’s to go back and see what was there to heal it. It gives me to know the story versus relive the story.

I think practitioners will choose what fits them best or what they feel is most effective. I’ve found both to be effective for me, but I don’t feel drawn to help people go back into those past lives. I think there can be traumatic events there that sometimes we’re not prepared for, and we can feel re-traumatized by that regression. Now, if you have a good therapist, who’s done all the things they need to do. They will process that with you and get you through that. I have a degree in social work, so this is also a more appropriate avenue for me to work with the Akashic records this way. I am trauma-informed and have trauma training, but I also know where my limit is and will properly refer someone out. If there’s trauma that’s coming up, that needs to be processed,

Johnny Burke: okay, they’re both realistic methods or modalities for learning about our past and possibly healing them. It’s just a matter of preference. They’re both valid.

Viki Quirk: Yeah. And I’ve had clients who’ve done both. and like me have found benefits in both modalities. I think you can use both. I know a couple of really great past life regression therapists, that’s all they do and it’s awesome they see me for Akashic record reading. And I see them for a past life regression. So I think you can do both. There’s no hindrance there at all. It’s totally available. And what you feel best with.

Johnny Burke: That’s a good thing to remember because I think some people might think ‘should I do one and not the other, might there be a conflict?’ So what are the biggest takeaways you feel that listeners need to know about your work, and also how this has changed some of your views, your experience?

Viki Quirk: Wow. So that’s a big question. My focus is always on my work on meeting the person where they are and their life right now and helping them to unravel what’s already happened so that they can comfortably stand in their power to move forward. It’s important that I build the trust and rapport with the person I’m working with, but also that I teach them some skills so that they can tap into whatever they define for themselves as their spiritual team. The Universe, God, whatever it is for them, I can help to teach them some skills to do that so that they can build the trust in themselves, in their intuition, and in their relationship to source, spirit, God, their guides. So that to me is the most important part. And I think that’s been my process, which is why I work so hard on helping other people with it. My process has been learning to trust myself, learning to trust that what I see and hear and know is true, even if other people don’t see it that way.

I think that’s true if we’re talking about something spiritual or just something we’ve experienced in our life. This work has allowed me to grow beyond the human experience, to see where I am a soul, having a human experience, which is kind of cliche to say- I feel like everybody says that these days, but for me, it’s also been that evolution of, I’m choosing to be here right now in this body. I should make the most of this human experience and I can access this other information that helps me to be in this human experience. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. We don’t have to be fixated on where’s my soul going next. We got to be where we are and work on these things because otherwise, our soul’s just going to do it again. So why not work on it and have a different experience next time around?

Johnny Burke: Very good point, Vicky. Thanks so much for joining us today. Excellent, excellent information. How could our listeners learn more about you online?

Viki Quirk: my website,is www.Vickiquirk.com. And I’m on Instagram. That is @Vicki_ quirk.

#73 Ingrid Honkola: Beings of Light

June 11, 2022 by Johnny Burke

Near Death Experiences

#abrightlyguidedlife, #ascendedmasters, #beingsoflight, #earthboundspirits, #nde, #neardeathexperience, #pastlives, #premonition, #pureconsciousness, #soulcontract, #themiddleway

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus, I’m Johnny Burke. Today’s guest is Ingrid Honkala. She is a scientist, lightworker, life coach, and author of A Brightly Guided Life. Today, we will be talking about the Beings of Light

Ingrid Honkala: Thank you so much for having me here, what an honor, and what a blessing to be able to share with you with all your audience. Thank you.

Johnny Burke: I think it’s going to be a very interesting chat. So, when you were young, apparently your parents discovered that you could hear and see things no one else could. You also had two near-death experiences, which actually came first?

Ingrid Honkala: I was never like an ordinary child, but what came first was my first near-death experience when I was close to three years old.

Johnny Burke: Can you tell us a little bit about how that happened?

Ingrid Honkala: Yes. this accident happened because my parents used to work and they will leave very early in the morning and leave us in the care of a maid. And this lady didn’t really pay attention to us when they were not around. And my parents left my oldest sister, who was close to four, and I decided to go play on the patio in the house.

And in this patio, there was a big tank on the purpose of this tank was for collecting water for handwashing clothes. I mentioned the time because that’s where the accident happened with my sister. We found a ball, decided let’s play across the tank. This was a huge tank Johnny, just held about 900 gallons of water. we climb on the time and she threw the ball on me, but she didn’t apply enough force. And then the ball fell in the water and I leaned forward thinking, “oh, I can grab it” when I touched it, it roll on the surface of the water and I fell in the tank.

The first feeling was this water was freezing cold very, very cold. And I was shocked by the coldness of the water. Then next was the realization of why I cannot breathe. I’ve never been in a pool, never had had, the head under the water. So I didn’t know that if you fall in the water, you drown.

And then I enter in this state of absolute panic. I want to breathe and I want to just escape from this tank, but there’s nothing I could do. I was in a state of complete horror when the most amazing thing happened; just like that, I went from that horror to a state of absolute peace. And I didn’t understand at that moment, but, all I knew was that I didn’t need to get out of the tank I didn’t need to breathe anymore. I didn’t need to go anywhere. Nothing was needed. I was just experiencing well-being peace, serenity grayness, or just like, oh, this feels so good.

People ask me, how can I remember this if I was so little? There was a lot of contrast; the tank was a very dark area. The moment I went to calmness, the first thing I saw was light- light that came from below and was able to illuminate the whole tank. Right before I went into the calmness, the silence,. I was hearing my heart. My heart was pounding in my chest. I could hear it in my head, like a drum, it was boom, boom, boom. , That added to the fact that I lived in a very busy house so I was used to a lot of noise. When I enter into the space of calmness, there was absolute silence. That silence came with peace with relaxation- I love the silence so much, Johnny that I craved the silence for the rest of my life.

Johnny Burke: Did you see anything else when you were in the tank?

Ingrid Honkala: Yes. Yes. So what happened next is I started to see bubbles that were surrounded by light and they were floating in the tank and I was like, well, this is nice. And then I started to chase these bubbles and there was a moment in which I saw a body floating in the water. And I had the absolute clarity that knowing, oh, that’s my body. And I didn’t feel afraid. I didn’t. It was just the sense of like,the sense of familiarity. Like, this is kind of normal.

Then it came to the other big contrast. I was born as a very sick child and I spent almost the first three years of my life unwell I didn’t even know Joni what to feel well was. And now I am in the state of absolute well-being. So of course I see that body and I’m like, you know what? I’m not going back to that. And I just turned around and left the body behind.

The moment I did this, I started to see flowers and these were flowers that were blooming from nowhere. And I enter now in a deeper state of joy And I’m just being carried, not needing to go anywhere, do anything, desire nothing when, in just a flash, I appear in the maid’s room and I was looking at her from above, like floating in the ceiling and I just like oh that’s Maria, but she was completely unaware of what is happening. from there in another blink like that, I appear in my mom’s path, she was walking. She didn’t have a car. She left early that morning, and she was close to her bus stop. And when I saw her floating from above, I said, ” Ooh, that’s mom”

This is amazing. This is actually what also validates this whole experience. It was my mom, the moment I said that’s “that’s mom,” she stopped. She didn’t give another step. She did nothing. She just stopped. Like, she knew that something was happening at home with one of her babies. So what she did at that moment, she turned around and he started to run back home.

Johnny Burke: Really? Started running?

Ingrid Honkala: Yes, that was amazing. But at the same time, it’s like, I saw her running. But then I got distracted by an image of a dog. I saw a dog at the end of the street. And the moment I see the dog since I just love animals, I was with the dog. Oh, this was cool. And then I changed my point of view or perception. And I saw a park. And the moment I saw the park, I was in the park. Like time and space for me had vanished. I could be anywhere at any time.

Johnny Burke: What you’re describing is what is often described in the afterlife, where unlike on the earth plane, manifestation is pretty much instant. (At least that’s what I’m told.) In other words, you think of something- you’re there. You think of a person-you’re with them. So I think it’s actually pretty common for near-death experiencers to talk about these events, as fantastic as they sound. So what happened next?

Ingrid Honkala: What happened after that? I’m playing this game of having fun, and I’m playing this game of going places.. I appear in a realm and the realm was made of pure, bright, intense, shiny light. And for the first time in the three years of my life, almost three years, I felt I am home. It was a sense of. returning home. It was the sense of when you get home after a day of being really busy, tired, and just feel so good. So welcoming, I had seen my body suspended in the water until this moment, I really didn’t have the clarity, the realization that that was not me. At this moment, I have that realization. I am not that body. I am not that persona. I am not that. And I realize myself as a being of light

Johnny Burke: That you were a being of light? right. Okay. So that’s basically like saying that body, our body is not really us. I think that’s what you’re trying to explain. That’s, very interesting. what else did you see?

Ingrid Honkala: From there, I started to have the sense of dissolving, like being able to sense the hall. And from there, I went to experience what some call the non-self, I just called it nothingness but when I mentioned nothing, people get afraid, but I said, no, it’s nothing because he’s nothing that I knew. It wasn’t the limited thinking. There was no color, no meaning, no sound, no form. The absence of everything? I think I knew, but at the same time, the wholeness, the totality of everything. And the only thing I can use as a form of expression, it’s experiencing the absolute presence and just pure consciousness.

And I’m in this state of being when finally my mom arrived home. She knew exactly where to go. We live in a big house. She could have gone to any other room. No, she went that directly to the patio. My sister was still there leaning into the tank, trying to get me and I say that the purpose of my sister there was to show my mom Ingrid is there and I cannot get her.

Johnny Burke: She couldn’t reach you, I remember that part.

Ingrid Honkala: Yes. So my mom jumped in the tank, she got me out. She knew CPR , she knew CPR for children, so she knew exactly where to go. So this is another amazing thing; all these synchronicities, how they play. And then she did all she knew, but I was so disconnected from this body, from this reality, that I didn’t feel anything. And, in just like a I felt that I had jumped from the tallest building in the world, and there was nothing I could do to stop this, but it was the sense of like, like, No!!!!! I don’t want to leave home! And I felt like I was. being pulled, like I was being sucked back into the body. like a vacuum cleaner. I’m the only reason I knew I was back is that all their sense of coldness and the sickness of the body, feeling trapped, it was just overwhelming. And. I did not want to be here. I was angry.’ I don’t want to be here.”

Johnny Burke: That’s also pretty common when the near-death experience survivor gets back into the body. Let’s talk about your life after that happened. How did it change your intuitive gifts; Did it amplify them? And what was it like growing upafter this experience?

Ingrid Honkala: A combination of wonder and trouble when I came back, I didn’t want to be here. I came back with an awareness I didn’t have before. So when I look at my parents, it was the sense, you’re not just my biological parents. I experienced oneness. I felt them as my equal. I didn’t identify with the role of parent or child. Look at my body and I’ll be like, I’m not this child. So I never felt like a child. It was hard because I look at all the children and I could not relate. I would just be like, “what is happening to these people?” They don’t know anything. I was so little, they didn’t have the language or the way to convey what was happening, But other things came as validation. I was acting differently , it was like I was rejecting to be here.

Then not long after I started to have abilities. I was three and now I could read and write, I could resolve mathematical problems. So for the people around me, for my mom, my parents was hard because they didn’t really know what was happening with this girl. Good thing my mom worked with children. She was very patient. She was actually among the first people validating the possibility to experience other things. The most amazing things started when I started to see and communicate with beings of light. that was the way in which I was able to actually function start, being able to experience my, human experience.

Johnny Burke: The beings of light, would you say they’re the same thing as spirit guides or angels, or possibly different types of beings?

Ingrid Honkala: Yes, they are all kinds of different types of beings. I started to experience things by the age of six. I started to see what we call spirits. So when I started to see what we call spirits, I was very frightened. The first experience was terrorizing. I got up, I ran to my mom, my mom already had, shared with me that she could see spirits too So that’s why she was the first person validating w the fact that I was seeing things because she had abilities too. The spirits and the beings of light are not the same.

Johnny Burke: So they’re not the same?

Ingrid Honkala: Just wait! That’s what I thought. That’s what I told my mom. And then my mom was explaining what is that you see? And then I started to explain and she started to cry and she said, I think that you can see angels. And I said, mom, but I don’t know because they don’t have wings. That’s all we knew the Catholic teachings. I was curious, and I already have been talking with the beings of light for a few years. This was when I was six.. First, I asked them, I call them dark spirits because they were really dark. And I said,” what is with these darkest spirits? ” the beings of light were always being very kind, very compassionate, really sweet. They said to me, “the thing that you call a spirit, in essence, we are all the same. We’re all the same. The difference is the level of awareness that you have about who you truly are. That was amazing. I asked them, after that, “are you angels? My mom said that you are angels.” And they sent this answer that they gave me also was amazing because they said “We are what you want us to be”.

Johnny Burke: That I’ve never heard before. There were spirits in your house. You had a housekeeper that was not very nice to you and she was trying to cast a spell, and then it was explained to you, by the beings of light that those were spirits in your house, but they are protecting you from this person. So you’re saying these spirits and the angels are essentially the same things. It’s just, they’re on different levels of awareness.

Ingrid Honkala: Yes. Yes. To answer your question, later in life, when I started to learn also what ascended masters and other beings, and then I asked them, “are you ascended masters?” they answered,” in essence, we’re all the same.”. The difference again, is the level of awareness you have about who you truly are. So I said, “so how do you get to these levels. And they said ” experience understanding, awakening, clarity.” As we are awakening the truth that we are, then we start touching our true nature. And the closer you get to the core that you are is what we will call a being that is more advanced. See, we, humans need to have a, kind of higher in everything. So we would say our being that is more in touch with the true nature will be a being that is more evolved .

Johnny Burke: Okay.

Ingrid Honkala: But in essence, we’re all the same. We’re all light..

Johnny Burke: I think that makes it a little bit easier for people to understand the nature of spirits and different levels and different vibrations. How have these experiences changed your views of spirituality or religion?

Ingrid Honkala: I just think that everything is necessary because sometimes we need to start somewhere. There’s something that is beyond me as a person. There’s some divinity, there’s an energy. There’s something else. So religion actually comes from the word Religare, which means reunite,connect. And that was the idea that people with the knowledge will connect and transmit that knowledge to others.

I’d been already studying since I was very young. At nine years old, I was already reading the Bhagavad Gita. I was already reading the scriptures, the Bible,, the book of discernment, Vivekachudamani, the book of self-realization. I was already compiling all this knowledge and I started to study the Indian cultures of the Americas. And wow, learning about this incredible knowledge that these people have, and it all came from their connection with source. I started to realize the core of all religions is the same. See if the core of our religion is love, compassion, kindness, understanding, clarity, knowledge, wisdom, then that is the truth. And the rest is how we, transmit that teaching. And that’s where sometimes people lose the focus of attention. They start getting lost in the ritual and lose the connection with the truth of the teaching.

What is the core of that teaching Jesus came and talked about love. Buddha, talked about love, all these incredible, amazing masters and teachers were talking about those core principles. When I asked the beings of things that we call emotions and feelings like love, joy, peace, compassion, kindness, they said “Ingrid, those are not just emotions. Those are not just feelings. Those are principles, universal principles. “So , whatever religion you practice, go to the core principles of. And then you can start peeling the layers of all the conditioning and go back to your heart.

Johnny Burke: All right. Let’s talk about the book for a minute, there’s quite a few quotes that I really liked that I think are very illuminating, (speaking of beings of light.) Here’s one,” the beings of light told you they have forgotten who they truly are and feel lost, but sooner or later, they will find their way home.” is this how that being of light explained to you that all earthbound spirits– like the ones that were in your house, eventually find their way home?

Ingrid Honkala: Yes, including us, Johnny!

Johnny Burke: Okay.

Ingrid Honkala: Yes. So our human experience is actually the best ground to be able to experience contrast and to be able to appreciate what we cannot remember. How can you appreciate wellness, if you never have been sick? How can you appreciate joy if you have not been sad? So this gives us what we need to go to that place of balance- what is called the middle way.

When there’s a person that has left the body, and he’s what we call a spirit that is trapped in that sense of it’s still having a lot of interest in the earthly stuff, that person had lost the focus of attention so that being is still trapped in thinking or feeling yeah, that, the physicality is reality. So that’s when these beings get trapped and they cannot continue. They just have a keen interest in the matter of this world and they cannot leave. So people that are already in deeper touch with their true nature can help beings here on earth or in the spirit realm that are still lost and don’t know the way.

Johnny Burke: So the beings of light can as a rescue team for some of the earth-bound spirits? That’s definitely good to know. Here’s another one. This is when you were talking about your aunt, who was not very nice to you. You ask the beings of light,” wasn’t my aunt supposed to love me?” Their answer was “she does love you, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s here to teach you.” Is this an example of a soul contract?

Ingrid Honkala: Yes, actually that’s a good example, and we make these contracts because that’s the idea that we come here like, don’t waste your time, you have to wake up. This is what we call a challenge. And this is what can turn into pain and suffering. Our main experience here as humans is to experience the contrast that is going to shake us up so we can wake up. And we can not understand at the moment, something hard is happening to us. How can I have called for this? This is ridiculous because we cannot see it at the moment.

Well, what we have to do in moments like that is just be patient,kind with ourselves compassionate, and just embrace. And later in life, it usually happens we look back and really pay attention. Most of the time we can get to that place of oh, I understand why that happened.

Johnny Burke: And it was necessary …

Ingrid Honkala: And it was necessary, exactly. For a change.

Johnny Burke: Like you said earlier. That actually implies pre-birth planning and life in between incarnations. So, do you remember any past lives of your own?

Ingrid Honkala: I do actually and I started to have access when I was about 17 years old. I was born with respiratory problems. I was born very sick. Until the age of 17, I was always sick. I had asthma, chronic bronchitis, and the moment I had access to my, past lives and then, I was able to see many lives in which I died from respiratory causes. And was able to see that I was in a battle actually, and I was killed by a sword that went through my lungs. And when that happened, I drowned. My first NDE was drowning. I drown in my own blood. And after that life for many lives, I died from respiratory problems. And when I came back from that recognition, that very day I was healed for the rest of my life from respiratory problems. I have never been sick since.

Johnny Burke: That is in the book as well.

Ingrid Honkala: Yes that’s in the book and something that is not in the book, because that just happened a couple of days ago , I had a kidney stone so I went to the hospital and they did a, x-ray of my chest to see the rocks in my kidneys. And then when they did that, x-ray they came all alarmed to the room because they saw a scar in my lungs and then they thought this could be cancer. Who knows what? and then for a couple of years, they wanted to do these follow-up checkup of x-rays and things. And then when they did again, the doctor saw it and he’s like,” the only way you could have had this scar in your lung is if you ever had tuberculosis”, and I was shocked and I didn’t say of course nothing to the doctor cause he didn’t understand, but in like about five or six past lives, I had died from tuberculosis.

Johnny Burke: right. I do remember reading about that. That’s really incredible. Now, as the book describes, you had several visions. One is,” as a being of light was talking, I had a vision of meeting and marrying Daniel and a little girl running and giggling in the distance. You said, ” who is she?”. And the being of light responded,” your daughter, Anna.” so are the beings of light showing you your future husband and your daughter before she was born?

Ingrid Honkala: Yes, actually, I started to have visions when I was four years old. So at four, when my parents brought me to see the ocean, I turned to my mom, and I said, “mom, someday, I’m going to know what is under that blanket. “And at five I told my dad I’m going to be a Marine scientist. And then later when I was nine, I had many more, but these are like very clear, important because they mark moments in my life that actually happened At nine. I saw who my husband was going to be, which is my husband now, Mike . I was nine and I met him 23 years later. At 12, I knew I was going to work for NASA and I was appearing in front of the building, and 20 something years later, this is what I’m going to work without not even having a contract, nothing, but I knew. Later when I was living in Europe, I had a vision of Daniel as my first husband. And, I had the vision of Ana we, we lost Ana but later I also understood it was a soul contract with her. She only needed to come for a short time. Then yeah, it kept just going like that.

The beings of light are showing everything is just here and now. In our human mind, we only see the time working in the horizontal, but the time is actually working in the vertical.

Johnny Burke: in that space, not on the earth plane. That is a really incredible story. How do you help others understand near death experiences and out of body experiences?

Ingrid Honkala: Oh yeah, this is really really important. And it’s part of this process that we have these experiences so we can help others integrate. What is really beautiful is the possibility to help people, to help children. So I have been able to help, not just children, but their parents to integrate, to understand.

Johnny Burke: This reminds me of another quote from the book. ” I heard them saying someday you will pass these teachings onto many others. ” Would you say you are now an apprentice to the beings of light or are you being of light?

Ingrid Honkala: Oh, we are all beings of light , Johnny. We are all light. There was a moment when I asked them “why me?” And then they said, “because you are special.” And I said, “what do you mean when you say that I am special?” And is the answer was amazing. They said, “everybody, every single one is special but they don’t know it yet.”. So we are all light- we are all an emanation of God. We’re all the image and likeness of God. We’re all the light, but we have layers like an onion of conditionings, beliefs, and then like an onion, we have many, many layers, and what happened when you peel an onion? You cry a lot.

Johnny Burke: it’s very true.

Ingrid Honkala: So.

Johnny Burke: There’s no question about that. Is talking to the beings of light the same thing as Trying to talk to your spirit guides and your angels? You just said we’re all basically the same essence. How do you get in contact with them?

Ingrid Honkala: By quieting your mind. That’s why these techniques from millennia are being passed to us on meditation, mindfulness, concentration. The moment that you start calming your mind. And you have say that you are the radio. Now you put your dial in the right place. After my near death experience, the first one is like, the doors never closed. And then the beings of light said” Ingrid of course the door’s never closed because there are no doors.” We are the ones that create the doors, see where the ones that limit ourselves. We’re the ones that think I cannot do it. Or I am limited to think up in this body, or I am this story, or I am this drama, or I am the situation. The moment that we start calming them and connecting with the true nature that we are -silence, peace, calmness, consciousness. Then we are creating space. We can move that dial and now be open to receive.

Johnny Burke: That sounds like very good advice on tuning in as you say it, and I think quieting the mind is advice I hear quite a bit. Ingrid, thanks so much for joining us today. How can our listeners find out more about you online?

Ingrid Honkala: They can go to my website www.ingridhonkala.com.I have a YouTube channel and I am on Facebook and Instagram Twitter, all that.