Archive for April, 2009

We both use intuition when visiting the ancient sites of Egypt. Mine is more an intuitive echo, an attraction towards a certain area, a doorway, a stone or a patch of sunlight, which might hold a secret, whereas Robert, the cosmic detective, deduces and concludes, measures, seeks out and finds clues and evidence from the ancient archive. He picks up stardust, magnetic hints which zoom into his head like comets.

He is Sherlock Holmes and I am his Dr Watson. His brain can almost be heard whizzing around like clockwork and waves of energy seem to surround him like sonar. When he is on the track of something he is unstoppable and has no idea of time passing. Atmosphere pulls me into a haze, a trance, a stream of consciousness, a meditative inner state where receptors are open to unseen currents and tensions, ley lines and whispers of the collective memory. Between us we navigate the furrows and folds of ancient invisible boundaries and scoop up the residue of forgotten plans.

Thus it was that upon seeing the Great Sphinx for the first time we both gulped because we saw things as they once had been. Anubis, crouching, his slim body stretched out in guardian repose, long legs forward, spine straight, a guard dog. No lion – even in the imagination. We sensed a watery place, a navigation, an inundation, not rain, but flood. The dumpling head that sits there now seemed to scream out like a denial. The pharaoh’s face, that Mona Lisa enigmatic smile: Above it in our inner eye loomed the sharp and listening ears of Anubis.

This was how it started. The search for clues. Collecting and reading, in many cases, translating early travellers’ tales, which we collected from all over the world, with their descriptions of the small chamber hidden in the haunches of the body, and these descriptions not made by experts or Egyptologists or even archaeologists, but by ordinary adventurers, travellers writing home with descriptions of what they had seen. They saw what we can never see because the restoration work, as it is called, has succeeded in covering up all the interesting bits in 1926 with tons of modern cement and concrete.

Many times we tried the patience of the Inspectors who accompanied us into the sphinx enclosure and the Valley Temple. We stayed too late, we strayed too far, Robert leapt across rooftops and slithered into pits and trenches, immune to everyone and everything, not hearing whistles or the clanking of keys telling him it was time to leave, or noticing the light fade. The keys that we sought were not those that close and lock but those that open and reveal. We hope that we have opened a whole new dawn for the silent sphinx and that other people will follow up the story and help to solve the Sphinx Mystery…..

Listen to the interview with Kala and Robert and Olivia Temple on The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show. The show airs on May 29th, 2009 and can be found in the archives here: http://exploreyourspirit.com/Media/shows2.shtml#TEMPLESPHINX

More About Robert and Olivia Temple:
Professor Robert Temple is author of a dozen challenging and provocative books, commencing with The Sirius Mystery. His books have been translated into a total of 44 foreign languages. He combines solid academic scholarship with an ability to communicate with the mass public. He is Visiting Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and previously held a similar position at an American university. For many years he was a science writer for the Sunday Times, the Guardian, and a science reporter for Time-Life, as well as a frequent reviewer for Nature and profile writer for The New Scientist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and has been a member of the Egypt Exploration Society since the 1970s, as well as a member of numerous other academic societies. He has produced, written and presented a documentary for Channel Four and National Geographic Channels on his archaeological discoveries in Greece and Italy, and he was at one time an arts reviewer on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Kaleidoscope’. In 1993, his translation of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh was performed at the Royal National Theatre in London. With his wife, Olivia, an author and artist, he is co-author and translator of the first complete English version of Aesop’s Fables, which attracted a great deal of international press attention at the time of its release, as the earlier translations had suppressed some of the fables because of Victorian prudery. OLIVIA TEMPLE is an artist and writer, who has contributed to many well known magazines in the UK. She was co-author with her husband of Aesop: The Complete Fables (Penguin Classics). She organised the Egyptian, Greek and Italian archaeological research trips for the Project for Historical Dating, and took part in all the archaeometric dating work in Egypt with the permission of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. She works closely with her husband, she translated all the French early travellers’ reports on the Sphinx, consulted on and edited the book, and took many of the photos which appear in The Sphinx Mystery. She has co-designed this website. Olivia is also director of an opera and theatrical design archive. More info at: http://www.sphinxmystery.info

The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show is a proud sponsor of the North Carolina Renaissance Faire which was just held in April in their new location in Wake Forest. At The North Carolina Renaissance Faire, you can step back 400 years into time and history.  This full scale, interactive theater experience is like no other. The Faire offers you a chance to visit the days of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I. At this 16th Century Faire, you’ll find over 110 artisans hawking their wares, you’ll enjoy musicians, jugglers, and the ribaldry of actors in many distinct staging areas. You’ll see brave and bold knights competing for the favor of the Her Majesty’s Court (and for their lady’s affection) during any one of three full-contact jousts held in the Queen’s Tiltyard

The North Carolina Renaissance Faire, Inc. actively seeks out local period themed entertainments and merchants to include in our festivals. The next event scheduled is the MidSummer Fairy Fest. Join the NC Historical Society for their 1st Annual Fairy Festival to benefit the Historical Enrichment Society on June 20th and 21st, 2009.

A wonderful photographer, Craig Carpenter from Luster Studios shared some photos with me that he took during the Ren Faire, which are spectacular! Craig has a talent in capturing the real feel and flaire of what the Ren Faire is like. You can view his photography here: http://www.lusterstudios.com/renaissance-fair-north-carolina-wake-forest-renaissance-faire/ 

Thanks for sharing these Craig!

All the best,

*~Kala~*

With the world’s economy on such shaky ground as the old structures crumble to make way for the new, there are millions of people who consider themselves in dire financial straits. They are facing such potentially core-shaking events as home foreclosures, job losses, and bankruptcy. Many are experiencing utter desperation because they just don’t know what to do.

If that’s you—or if you’re in any situation that has you feeling in dire straits—I invite you to do the most powerful thing possible: surrender. Give everything over to your Spirit to sort out. Turn it over to the wise, powerful aspect of you to handle, and be willing to listen for and act on your Spirit’s guidance in taking any practical steps that need to be taken.

I invite you to use this experience as your proving ground for your beliefs—to put your spirituality to the test—so that you can demonstrate the very truths you’ve adopted and have made your intention to live by. And what better time is there to do that than when your back is to the wall? Up against the wall is a power place when you decide it is. When you’re up against the wall, the most powerful response is to say to your Spirit, “I surrender this to you.”

Only One Thing is Standing In The Way of The Abundant Life You Were Designed to Live

Your very design as a human being calls for you to thrive, live in harmony, and be abundantly blessed. But there is an important part of this that many have missed. This harmony and abundance depends on you listening to your Spirit’s voice above all other voices, and following its guidance faithfully. That is how the Creator set things up for humanity to live a life of joy, ease, and harmony.

But you cannot expect the level of abundant blessing you were designed to enjoy when you allow the loud, panicked voice of the Fearful Self to drown out the calm, sure, wise voice of your Spirit. And heaven knows, this whole economic scenario is riling up our fearful aspects and causing them to scream bloody murder! Financial trouble strikes right at the major hot buttons of your Fearful Self, also known as your ego.

The threat of losing one’s home, of not having enough food, of not being able to provide abundantly for one’s family, of feeling like a failure, and so on—these all hit ego right where it lives (no pun intended). Because ego’s agenda lines right up with the agenda of your primitive brain, known in the Triune Brain Model as the reptilian brain, that part of you that is concerned with your physical survival, it is particularly stressed at anything to do with threats to survival or status. And when ego’s buttons are pushed, it is loud and insistent on getting your attention.

But you can’t let the threatened ego take over and drown out the voice of your Spirit. You need to do whatever it takes to soothe the poor, terrified thing into quietude so that Spirit’s voice can be heard in response. The key to doing this is to raise your vibration, because the higher you go, the fainter ego’s voice is, and the clearer Spirit’s voice.

The Fearful Self Must Be Allowed Its Say, or There Will Be No Peace

The thing is, though, ego is not going to let this happen without first being heard. Ironically, in order to quiet its voice, you will first need to let it express itself. Your helpless little-child ego-self is going to need to wail it out and your teenaged ego-self is going to need to yell about how unfair it all is. Every level of ego will need to discharge its anger and express its fear. That is not dwelling on the negative; it is managing your vibration by managing your feelings. Trying to go higher without clearing out all this emotional energy is futile. Stuffing your fear and trying to paste a smiley face on it in the name of being positive is just not going to work.

You may recognize this emotional release as being Step 3 from the Step-By-Step Frequency Raising System. Whenever you feel the fear and emotional energy building up, have a #3 and clear it out on purpose. That is how you clear the way to the empowering guidance of your omniscient Spirit.

After releasing the fearful emotions, use some of the many tools listed in the Step-By-Step system to transcend your fearful ego and go higher in vibration, and, thus, closer to your Spirit. Uplifting music, aromatherapy, physical exercise, appreciating nature—or a combination of these or others—will help you move higher and higher. As long as it feels pleasurable to you—as long as you’re feeling better and better—you know what you are doing is uplifting you.

Surrender Again, and Again, and Again

If you find yourself worrying or trying to think your way through the problem, it’s time to surrender again. Your Spirit, always in alignment with the Design for Harmony, knows exactly what to do to bring you to your highest level of well-being, no matter the circumstances or the problems you may have created by allowing ego to lead. When you are aligned with your Spirit, it will tell you the practical steps you need to take in the process of sorting out a problem or moving to a more peaceful situation. Your Spirit is also a dispenser of miracles if you’re sufficiently surrendered and available to receive them.

The solutions your Spirit has for you won’t require engineering by your left brain—your left brain will only be needed to carry out the instructions Spirit gives you. Your left brain won’t be able to come up with the ideas to solve the problems—it would have already done so if it were able. Spirit will provide the ideas and solutions, but you have to be tuned in to receive its messages.

When you worry, plot, plan, and control, you are on the wrong wavelength to receive the perfect guidance of your Spirit. When worry sets in, just turn it around by saying, “I trust you Spirit. I surrender this to you.” How often do you need to surrender? How ever many times it takes. Your frightened ego will try to convince you that relying on your Spirit is impractical, but that’s only because it can’t see high enough to grasp what your Spirit is able to do that it can’t.

Keep affirming your trust in your Spirit. Praise your Spirit for its brilliance and power (this is not for your Spirit’s sake, but for your own!). And to really keep yourself in the zone, go ahead and thank your Spirit with all the enthusiasm of someone who has just been told that all her problems have been solved, because that is the very outcome that is being created when you trust your Spirit and follow its guidance to the abundant life you were designed to live.

Listen to Kala’s interview with Julia on The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show as they discuss Julia’s first book and life experience in Recreating Eden: http://exploreyourspirit.com/Media/shows3.shtml#RECREATINGEDEN

More about Julia Rogers Hamrick…..

Julia Rogers Hamrick, visionary author and teacher, has been a spiritual-growth facilitator since 1982 when she underwent a radical spiritual awakening, including an occurrence of spontaneous cosmic consciousness, as a result of surrendering her life to Spirit in response to a health crisis. With this experience as the foundation, her teaching focuses on deliberately creating new realities through managing our vibrational state, with an emphasis on the relationship between vibrational frequency and our experience of life. Most recently, in a whisper from the Divine, Julia was gifted with the remembrance of the parallel reality called Easy World, “where everything is easy.” Upon sharing this extremely simple concept, it began spreading like wildfire as people at all points of spiritual evolution have clicked with the words, “I live in Easy World, where everything is easy,” have found their lives transforming with utmost ease, and have shared Easy World with others. Her new book Choosing Easy World is due to be released soon.  More info at: www.juliarogershamrick.com or  www.iliveineasyworld.com

On tonight’s show, my guest is Annamaria Hemingway and we’re discussing her book, Practicing Conscious Living and Dying: Stories of the Eternal Continuum of Consciousness.

Annamaria’s book shares real life stories, showing death as an integral part of life, with personal accounts of near-death experiences and after-death communication.  Over the years, I’ve spoken with many people who have had near death experiences. I’ve also communicated with people in spirit from the other planes. In the courses that I offer as a teacher of esoteric teachings, one semester of study is dedicated to what is often referred to as the Death Series, where students learn how the soul prepares to leave this plane over a period of time. When one does not fear this process, it allows one to open up to the journey with more awareness and consciousness.

Birth, Death, Rebirth, it’s the Cycle of Life. Join us here in the interview as AnnaMaria and I discuss Conscious Living and Dying.  http://www.exploreyourspirit.com/Media/shows3.shtml#HEMINGWAY

Since the seventies, past life regression has been widely practiced and many books – some  impressive and well-documented – have been published on this subject.  It is therefore  surprising that dreams were not examined for past life residues as well.  After all,  it stands to reason that if past life memories can be accessed under hypnosis and in altered states of consciousness, they have to be present also in our dreams. Several  factors must have contributed to sustaining this blind spot in our field of vision. Dream researchers must have avoided the subject out of fear of professional ridicule. Jungians must have felt threatened by the idea that past life selves might be entitled  to some of the space in the unconscious that had previously been occupied by the archetypes . And for the average dream worker  it would have been perfectly normal to stay within the “neuro-net” of traditional  methods of interpreting dreams.

What shook me out of my “neuro-net” twenty-nine years ago was  a dream that was “different”. Before I had this dream,  I had never given reincarnation any thought.  But during five years of a Jungian analysis in London, I had come to know my dream-world  like the back of my hand.  And this particular dream  was not part of the dream-world I knew.  It seemed to belong to another  identity,  another country, and another time. Moreover,  it was completely devoid of symbolism, which  – as we know – is the alpha and omega  of the dream language.

In this dream,  I am a man; I am standing with my back against a barn-door in a medieval  European town  while an angry mob is pelting me with stones. I am terrified and in pain. To get away from my tormentors,  I say I have to urinate. They let me step inside the barn so that I can relieve myself in private.  I am still aware of taking my penis out of my pants. Then there is a blank. Next  I am being driven on an ox-cart through town,  surrounded by jeering crowds. A red-robed priest is taking me to the court of the Inquisition. I have collapsed on the waggon-floor, sobbing uncontrollably, while deeply ashamed of my lack of composure. For until the public mood had changed,  I had been a celebrity in this town.  While in this man’s body, I had been aware of his distinct personality, his sensitivity, and the complexity of his feelings. This disqualified him as an archetype, which, according to Jungian theory,  is a “type”, rather than a person. From that moment on I became convinced of the existence of reincarnation and was on the look-out for more past life dreams.

At the Jung Institute in Zurich where I started to train a year later,  I met two analysts who had dared to venture into this borderland of the psyche,  knowing full well that it was politically the wrong thing to do.  One, a Dutchman,  Erlo van Waveren,  had been a personal analysand of Jung who,  in the fifties,  had worked  with him on his past life dreams under the seal of secrecy.  In 1978 – seventeen years after his analyst’s death – van Waveren had finally plucked up his courage and published a book about his experiences entitled Journey to the Rebirth. The second rebel was Dr. Elisabeth Ruef, a highly respected senior training analyst at the Zurich Institute and the co-editor of Jung’s Collected Works. She gave a  public lecture series on past life dreams in the wake of van Waveren’s book publication. But while van Waveren – as a patron of the Jung Institute – got away with the heresy,  Elisabeth Ruef was later crucified for it by her colleagues. This taught me that it was not safe to discuss my past life dreams in analysis, and my process went underground. It was kept alive by its own dynamics, by information obtained from an exceptionally gifted past life reader, and by whatever  strange energies I osmotically absorbed while translating Jane Roberts’ book Seth Speaks into German. When this unconventional  part of my training was over, most of my important past lives were integrated;  in addition, I had learned to identify past life dreams and was ready to work with them therapeutically.  After my graduation from the Jung Institute in 1987 I went into private practice in Santa Fe without  ever  advertizing myself as a past life therapist. But those who needed to integrate their past lives through dreams found me anyway.  These people were drawn to this work not by curiosity – as is sometimes the case with those seeking past life regressions – but by an urgent inner necessity. Their process, which was  initiated and timed solely by their own unconscious, was  often painful and lengthy,  but almost always life-changing.
Five years ago, so much extraordinary past life material had accumulated in my files that I felt obligated to leave a record of it. Thus I embarked  on the daunting task of writing a book about it. Many things became clear to me only while I was organizing the dream material.  I discovered the “bloodlines of the soul” – the character traits and individual life themes that run like red threads through our incarnations.  I also observed the relentlessness with which we reap what we have sowed in previous incarnations. This moved  karmic responsibility into the foreground of my awareness.  The book never let me go,  even  in my sleep.  Information filtered down  in my  dreams like the “dew of heaven” of the Kaballah. And when during the day I turned on the television,  I noticed that  “other lives” were creeping into the vernacular. This made me wonder if the archetype of reincarnation, which I was trying to capture in my writing, was beginning to stir in the collective unconscious, too. Still, I had been working in such isolation, that  I had no idea how my book  would be received  when it was finally published in April. A Jungian colleague had predicted that it would be ignored by other analysts. This had taken the wind out of my sails. Consequently, when I made a submission to this year’s IASD conference in Berkeley,  I expected it to be rejected by the dream researchers as well. And when it was accepted,  I still thought that nobody would show up for my presentation.  I was stunned when more and more people filed into the room to hear what I had to say about past life dreams. I was grateful, moved , and a bit overwhelmed  by the enthusiasm with the new information was received. However,  what really got my attention was an e-mail I received two weeks after the conference. It came from a stranger in Istanbul who identified  herself as an IASD member who had not been able to attend the conference. She said she was the leader of an internet dream group of 160 Turkish speaking members,  and lately past life dreams had been very much on their minds. She might even  have  had such dreams herself. Would I please send her a copy of my presentation?  She would read it very carefully.

Then I finally realized that I had been all along part of an international network of dreamers  who were becoming conscious of the past life phenomenon at the same time. What this growing awareness might mean and what effect it might have on human attitudes is difficult to assess at this early point.  It might be a sign that the Aquarian Age is finally dawning on us with a trail of new ideas and greater awareness.  It might also help the peace movement  in our troubled,  hate-and- fear driven world. For who would want to make war on the enemy “out there” knowing that you become what you hate and despise  in one of your next incarnations? And who can afford to look down on members of another race, creed and gender when the evidence for having been all those things ourselves can be found in our own dreams? This throws a new light on Bill Stimson’s inspired statement who founded the Dream Network  over twenty years ago: “To work with dreams in the deepest sense is to be a leader in the revolution of human consciousness.”  (Published in DreamNetwork, Vol. 24 No. 3, Fall 2005 & http://DreamNetwork.net)

Kala speaks with Sabine Lucas about her book Past Life Dreamwork: Healing the Soul through Understanding Karmic Patterns on The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show. Interview coming in August 2009

More about Sabine Lucas….

Sabine Lucas was born and raised in Germany and educated exclusively in European countries. She holds a Ph.D. in German and English literature from Heidelberg University and a Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. While living in England, she taught German language and literature at Reading University and worked for BBC London as a language consultant. Later, as a student in Switzerland, she supported herself by translating Jane Roberts’ books Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality and Jung’s English correspondence and lectures for the German Collected Works edition into German. Dr. Lucas pioneered dream groups and dream workshops in Switzerland and Austria in the seventies—a time when they were still a novelty. After moving to California in 1983, she worked part-time at the Mental Health Clinic in Mariposa, California, while training future mental health professionals at the California School for Professional Psychology in Fresno in dream analysis.

Since 1987, Sabine has been in private practice in Santa Fe, where she is licensed as a Professional Mental Health Counselor. Although her interest in past life dreams and the concomitant self-exploration goes back to 1976, it has been part of her clinical practice only for the last fifteen years. In the course of this time, she has been able to develop her own unique method of working with past life dreams and of integrating past life material in such a way that it enriches and empowers, while keeping the person balanced and grounded.Dr. Lucas is a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, of the Association of Graduate Analytical Psychologists of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, and a diplomate of the American Psychotherapy Association. More info at: www.pastlifedreams.com

In considering the concept of a continuum of consciousness that includes an afterlife, it is important to look to ancient civilizations, such as that of the Egyptians and Greeks, who had no problem in understanding their place in the cosmos. These early ancestors worshipped natural phenomena, such as the sun gods found in most cultures around the globe and believed that they too were part of a constant cosmic cycle of death and renewal. They lived in close harmony with the rhythms of the natural world, in which all forms of animal and plant life were, as they believed, connected. Through observing natural cycles, these people were able to make sense of the mysteries of birth, death and rebirth. They understood the symbolic analogy that nature provided, which enabled them to experience and feel a cosmic, numinous, sacred higher power that guided the workings of the universe. Life was considered to be a continuum of consciousness, controlled by a form of psychic energy that manifested in symbolic metaphors. It was during this period that archetypal divinities made their presence felt in human consciousness.

Nature provided and instilled a feeling of “oneness” with an expanded form of consciousness, because the natural world constantly had – and continues to have – the ability to renew itself and with every death, rebirth follows. This continual process symbolized the eternal life of the soul, and there were many examples. Each evening, the dying sun – often at its most luminous point – descended and set like a golden globe on the horizon. This is the place where the sky meets the earth, and a thin white line symbolizes the thinnest of veils that separates the visible from the invisible world. The moon was also constantly reborn, and renewed itself each month. Similarly, the shore of the ocean was hidden and then exposed by the turn of the unceasing incoming and outgoing tides, and the barren starkness of winter gave way to the reemergence of spring and new life.

As the memories of winter begin to fade and the days become longer, the subtle changes that are taking place in the change of season give us the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with this ancient wisdom. Through contemplating how the once barren landscape has become full of vibrant new blossom and foliage, we are reminded of the sacred analogy of The Tree of Life, which symbolizes creation, life, and return to the Divine, providing simultaneous images of the microcosm of the Self merging into the macrocosm of the supernatural realm. This metaphor found in many world religions can instill in us a magical sense of connection to the primordial origins and divine roots of human existence.

In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl who was imprisoned for three years in Auschwitz, one of the notorious German concentration camps, illustrates how this sacred connection could still be accessed, even in the most desperate and dire situations. As a doctor, he tried to tend to the sick prisoners and relates how he witnessed the experience of a young woman who was dying in the Nazi camps. Through the window of her hut, she could see a single branch of a chestnut tree that had two blossoms in flower, which comforted her, and she remarked to Frankl:

This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness. I often talk to this tree…It said to me, ‘I am here – I am life, eternal life.’

In modern-day Western society, sacred communion to the natural world barely exists, as the ability to maintain our relationship and sense of wonder with these symbolic images is no longer a part of human consciousness. We now try to control the forces of nature, for example: we attempt to clone life forms, and genetically modify crops and consequently view ourselves as set apart, rather than as being a part of the teeming life force of the planet. As a result, the ability to connect with our Divine legacy has been lost, and people are unaware of and unable to recognize the archetypal images that manifest all around them.

Unfortunately, the voice of the natural world and its divinities can no longer be heard. Swiss Psychiatrist, C.G. Jung described people as only being able to refer to a belief, because they had lost this primordial understanding. Jung lamented that today’s people no longer experience sacred connection to the natural world, and have no understanding of the real world that is alive in rivers, oceans, mountains and nature in general. As a result, they live their lives in exile, with only unconscious stirrings to remind them of their true purpose and ultimate destiny. In his book, The Earth has a Soul, Jung states: “Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos. He is no longer involved in nature and has lost his participation in natural events…his immediate communication is gone forever, and the emotional energy it generated has sunk into the unconscious.”

However, as we approach the oncoming spring solstice and can celebrate the spiritual meaning of Easter, which in Western traditions is symbolized through the death and resurrection of Christ, we also have the opportunity to journey inwards and reconnect with the powerful, symbolic imagery provided by the natural world to reflect on how rebirth in nature also powerfully symbolizes our hope of resurrection. This capacity for renewal was also illustrated through world mythology, for the ancient vegetation gods, such as the Greek god, Adonis, died during the summer solstice, as the sun descended in the west into the depths of winter and crossed the threshold into the darkness of the underworld. Fertility goddesses from many other cultures such as the Norse goddess, Idun, made similar underworld journeys. But although “death” claimed them for a while, at the winter solstice, the gods and goddesses were believed to reappear in the sky, when the returning sun commenced its journey in the south and heralded the promise and stirrings of regeneration.

Through meditating on these ancient myths and primordial images, we can recognize once more the soul in nature and remember that our own soul is merely clothed in the physical body, and emanates from the same life force that is visible everywhere in the natural world. This understanding can enable us to live life with a sense of purpose and meaning – as a joyful celebration of our existence – and help us become fully involved in the practice of conscious living and dying.

More about Annamaria Hemingway….

Annamaria Hemingway MA (ABD) is the author of Practicing Conscious Living and Dying, published by O Books. She is also a spiritual counselor and member of the International Association of Near-Death Studies. More info at: www.practicingconsciouslivinganddying.com

Kala and Annamaria Hemingway discuss her book Practicing Conscious Living and Dying on The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show.  Listen in the archives here: http://exploreyourspirit.com/Media/shows3.shtml#HEMINGWAY

Pagan Pages is an online magazine, with the stated vision of… “From Knowledge Grows Acceptance.  The magazine covers a wide spectrum of topics to do with metaphysical and spiritual traditions. Recently, Pagan Pages columnist Michele Burke interviewed me about my book, 9 Life Altering Lessons: Secrets of the Mystery Schools Unveiled.  I’m usually on the other side of an interview asking the questions, so if you’ve been interested in finding out more about the 9 lessons book and what inspired me to write it, this interview covers a lot of ground about the book and how it came to be….

My interview with Michele is featured in the April issue of Pagan Pages magazine,

click on the link below to read:

http://paganpages.org/content/2009/04/interview-with-kala-ambrose/

At The North Carolina Renaissance Faire, you can step back 400 years into time and history! This full scale, interactive theater experience is like no other. The Faire offers you a chance to visit the days of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I! At this 16th Century Faire, you’ll find over 110 artisans hawking their wares, you’ll enjoy musicians, jugglers, and the ribaldry of actors in many distinct staging areas. You’ll see brave and bold knights competing for the favor of the Her Majesty’s Court (and for their lady’s affection) during any one of three full-contact jousts held in the Queen’s Tiltyard.

The theme of this Year’s Faire is….

Queen Elizabeth and her Royal Court have been invited by the Earl of Bedford to come and visit with him at his estate in Kingston-Upon-Hull, a major shipping port about ten days journey north of London. Good Queen Bess has accepted his invitation and the town is all abuzz with the exciting news of her imminent arrival. Lord Mayor Charles Babington has requested that the Towne Cryer, Master Harold, gather the citizens into the Towne Square for some important announcements. Just as his honour, Lord Mayor Babington, finishes checking with each of the towne merchants to verify that all preparations are in order for the Queen’s arrival, the gathering is interrupted by Count Bernadino Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, who asks to address the crowd. It seems, he announces, that a courier, sent by King Philip with an important dispatch for the Queen, is missing. The Count offers a generous reward for anyone who locates the diplomatic pouch containing the dispatch, generating much excitement amongst the crowd.

Suddenly, Captain Richard Langstrom of the Mermaid’s Revenge pushes his way through the crowd, dragging a drunk and disheveled Spaniard behind him. “Is this the scurvy dog you be looking for?” he asks roughly. Indeed, it is the missing courier but, alas, he has misplaced the diplomatic pouch and too much ale has dulled his memory. The search for the missing pouch is on, with Count Mendoza leading the charge and enlisting the aid of the Sheriff and his Deputy and the good citizens of Kingston-Upon-Hull in the hunt.

Where is the missing pouch? What important message for Queen Elizabeth is contained within? And… what is the story behind the mysterious ship, the Mermaid’s Revenge, and its questionable crew? Come to the North Carolina Renaissance Faire and find the answer these questions and more. The fun and excitement of Elizabethan England is right around the corner.

Relive the old days and visit the NC Ren Faire this April 4th and 5th! For more information, visit: http://ncrenfaire.com

Doing More of What Works – The Secret of Effortless Change
Virginia Satir, the family therapist, once said something that has stayed with me for many years. She said: “You know, Richard, most people think the will to survive is the strongest instinct in human beings, but it isn’t. The strongest instinct is to keep things familiar.” She was right. I’ve known people willing to kill themselves because they can’t face the thought of life without the partner who’s died or left them for someone else. Even thinking about how things could be different overwhelms them with fear.

There’s a reason for this. One of the ways we make models of the world is by generalizing. We survive and prosper by making things familiar, but we also create problems for ourselves. Each day you see new doors, but at a practical level you know each is still just a door. You don’t have to figure out what each one is and how to open it. You shake hands with thousands of people, and even though it’s a brand-new hand each time, it’s not a new event, because somehow you’ve made it “the same.” It’s been filed in the compartment in your brain called “shaking hands.” But if you go to a country such as Japan where traditions differ, and you stick out your hand and someone bows to you instead, that action completely shatters the pattern. You have to come back to your senses to figure out how to respond in that new situation.

But that’s the way it’s supposed to work. When we’re really thinking properly, we make everything familiar until the pattern doesn’t function anymore. Then we review it and revise the way we’re thinking. Sometimes, though, we make something familiar, and even when it doesn’t function anymore, we stick with it, and that’s when it starts to make our lives dysfunctional. Instead of redefining the situation and coming up with a new behavior, we keep doing the same thing . . . only harder!

Pop psychologists talk about “the comfort zone” when they should more accurately be calling it “the familiarity zone.” People persist in situations that are extremely uncomfortable simply because they’re used to them. They’re unaware that they have choices, or perhaps the choices they present to themselves—like being alone for the rest of their lives because they’d left an abusive partner—are so terrifying that they refuse to change.

For years, psychologists have tortured rats by making them do things like run mazes for bits of cheese. The interesting thing about these experiments is that, when the scientists change the position of the cheese, the rats only try the same way three or four times before starting to explore other possible routes. When humans replace the rats, however, they just keep on and on and on, in the hopes that if they just do the same thing often enough they’ll get the desired result.

Apart from proving that rats are smarter than people, these experiments show us that people will often stick to their habits until they’re forced to change . . . or die to avoid that change. All the work I do to accomplish change is based on one important principle. I go in and find out what works and what doesn’t work. I slice away what isn’t working and replace those areas with new states of consciousness that work better. It’s as simple as that.

The way I see it, there are three steps to making enduring change:

1.  People must become so sick of having the problem that they decide they really want to change.
2.  They have to somehow see their problem from a new perspective or in a new light.
3.  New and appealing options must be found or created, and pursued.

As Virginia also said, if people have a choice, they’ll make the best one. The problem is, they often don’t have choices. In these cases, hypnosis proves a valuable tool. By definition, we have to alter our state of consciousness to do something new. Hypnosis not only facilitates this but it allows us to minimize or remove the impact of past experiences and to create and install in their place newer, more useful, and more appropriate states. With hypnosis, we can help people discover choices and explore them. And, since time distortion is a characteristic of the phenomenon we call “trance,” just as it is of dreaming, we can lead people through choices very rapidly. The learning tool of altered states permits us to familiarize the subject with a new experience in a fraction of the time it would take for them in an ordinary waking state.

For this to happen, we need somehow to reduce the impact on the subject of their past negative experiences, to make way for new and more useful ways of experiencing oneself and one’s world. The way I work (and the techniques outlined in this book) permits a person who had been held prisoner by his past to make room for change. Some of the patterns in this book lead people to “relive” their past in a new way, while other activities allow people to look at their past, and it just doesn’t feel like it quite belongs to them anymore.

But, to do any of this really creatively means that we need to understand how people create their representations of their world, as well as how we can help them build new and more resourceful alternatives. Why they behave the way they do is far less important than WHAT they’re doing to set up their problem states and HOW they maintain them. When we know that, even the most impossible problem can have a solution.

When I started out, I asked some psychiatrists what were their most difficult clinical problems. Without hesitation, most of them said, “Phobias.” This answer is easy to understand. Phobics always have their phobic responses, and they always have them immediately. They never forget. People often describe themselves as “phobic,” when in reality they’re suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder. Anxious people have to work up to their anxiety attack; phobics don’t. They see or even just think ELEVATOR and instantly go, “AAARGH!” They never make an exception. Phobias can either be learned, say, from a parent or caregiver, or instantly acquired by some emotionally overwhelming incident. Phobias are a graphic demonstration of the brain’s ability to learn something really quickly—often in a single pass.

Addressing phobias intrigued me for several reasons. Not only was I ready to respond to the challenge of doing the “impossible,” but I knew how useful it could be if people could learn to use the brain’s ability to learn quickly and easily to acquire more useful responses. Think of how different someone’s life would be if they learned to feel instantly and completely delighted every time they saw their partner—and vice versa. Even though people are often disabled by their phobias, they are always incredibly creative and committed to having them. They need to experience a unique trigger, make complex decisions, and have responses in less time than it takes to describe it. If they fear heights, they have to know precisely what “high” is to have the response. One of the weirdest height phobias I ever encountered was in Michigan. I asked three hundred people if anyone had a really outrageous phobia, and a very distinguished gentleman, aged about fifty, raised his hand and said, “I’m afraid of heights.”

This didn’t seem particularly outrageous, but when I invited him up on to the stage, which was just a couple feet high, he turned pale and said, “No.” I reached out my hand and said: “Step up on just one step,” but he stepped backward and his knees gave way. To me, that’s a real, flaming phobia. I went down in the front of the audience, turned him around, ran him through the Phobia Cure (see Chapter 16), then asked him what he did for a living.

He said, “I’m an airline pilot.” Something about my reaction or expression prompted him to say, “I know what you’re thinking, but once you’re in the plane it’s not the same.” He explained that walking up a flight of stairs was impossible for him. He could only fly planes, such as 747s, that were accessible by a ramp. He told how, when he was in the air force, he had to close his eyes, then be lifted backward into the cockpit. Once he was inside an F-16, he was fine. He couldn’t climb a ladder to the plane, but he could fly it at twice the speed of sound and drop napalm across Vietnam without a second thought.

His problem had to do with the distinctions he made in his mind of how high “high” was. It had nothing to do with going up; it was all to do with looking down. Once he was high enough up, he was okay. He even told me: “If I get in an elevator and I go up to the eighth or ninth floor I can look out the window, or off the balcony, and I’m fine. But if I get off on the first floor, I’ve got a problem.” If he was in one of those glass elevators, he wouldn’t be able to look out. He couldn’t cope with walking around and looking out of the first floor, but felt quite safe if his room was on the sixteenth floor. The only thing was, he had to go up to his room with his back to the glass, staring at the wall or the door.

How he developed his phobia to such an elegant degree is probably all very complicated, but it doesn’t really matter. What’s significant is that he made the distinction that being at a certain height meant he could fall—but if it was much higher, he was safe. As soon as he got high enough, the phobia simply stopped functioning. Somewhere in his brain were a starting point and a cutoff point—both very specific, and both functioning entirely outside his conscious awareness. His starting point for a height phobia was the lowest I’ve ever seen. When he left the air force and became a commercial pilot, he had no problem flying people around in 747s, but he couldn’t take a single step up. Of course, I did everything I could to get him fixed as quickly as possible. I don’t want crazy people in the cockpit of my plane. I want people who are completely unflappable, with great sensory acuity, so they know exactly where real danger begins and ends.

Interestingly, phobias often make a kind of sense. People usually become phobic about something that could actually harm them under certain circumstances. When people come to me and say, “I want to be completely fearless around spiders,” or “I don’t want to be bothered by heights, no matter how high up I go,” I always make them step back and take a realistic look at what they are requesting. In some countries, such as Australia or Africa, having no fear of spiders would be extremely stupid. Some spiders are very poisonous. Likewise, a man with a phobia of heights who told me he wanted to be able to dance fearlessly along the rail of a balcony four floors up needs a reality check. The outcome in curing phobias should always respect the fact that part of the person’s brain has actually been working very efficiently to help them avoid danger. The real problem is overreaction. The brain needs a new perspective to be able to change. At the time I began investigating phobias, everyone was arguing over the right approach to psychotherapy. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of different schools of psychology, all fighting over who was right. The interesting part was that none of them was successful. Nobody was actually managing to cure anyone of their problems. To me, it seemed particularly foolish for a group of people who couldn’t do something to be arguing about the best way to not do it.

These therapists were limited by their own unconscious patterning, which predisposed them to failure. They were all looking at the CONTENT of the client’s experience—the “why”—to discover what was wrong and find ways to put it right. They were paying too much attention to trying to interpret what their clients were saying, and not noticing what they were doing. I approached it differently. I advertised in the newspaper for people who’d had phobias they’d recovered from and offered to pay them money just to sit down and talk about their experiences. I didn’t really expect to get more than a few, but it turned out there were many, many former phobics who were happy to talk about themselves. They all told me more or less the same story. They said things like: “One day, I’d just had enough. I said: ‘That’s it! No more!’” Then they all said: “I looked at myself and for once I saw how stupid it was to be acting the way I was and I started to laugh . . . ,” and then they changed.

I noticed that when they made the change, they switched to WATCHING themselves doing the behavior. Those people who lost the phobia were no longer thinking of the experience as if seeing it through their own eyes but were literally recalling it from a different point of view—that of an observer. No matter how scary the phobia had been, it no longer affected them the same way when they took up this detached or “objective” point of view. Inadvertently, they’d discovered how to dissociate from the problem experience.

People who still had their phobias, on the other hand, were looking at spiders or planes or elevators as if they were actually there. Because they were representing the thought from a point inside the experience, part of their brains responded as if the experience was actually happening and plunged them even deeper into a state of panic. Even though each of them had differing stories to tell about their particular phobias, the only difference I could see was in the way they were representing the experience of their phobias to themselves. So I had some people with phobias apply what I had learned. I had them “step out” of their bodies and watch their responses as if from across the room. And it worked. They got rid of their phobias really quickly. Their brains simply shifted the way they perceived their situation, and their problems went away.

The psychiatrists responded by sending me more and more people with phobias. Some of them were extremely creative and entertaining in the way they had set up their problems. For example, one man had developed a phobia about leaving Huntington, Ohio. He’d be driving along quite happily, then come to the city limits, skid to a halt, and freak out. He hadn’t been able to leave town in four and a half years. Since I was always trying to find easier and faster ways of doing things, I had him imagine he was Superman. I got him to float out of his body and fly alongside, watching himself driving his pickup truck. He flew for a couple of miles, then saw himself begin to get nervous, jam on the brakes, and start to panic . . . BUT HE FLEW ON!

What made the difference was a trick. Inside his mind, not only was he calmly flying along, but he also left town for the first time in years. Now, since part of his brain could perceive THAT experience as real, I could start to put together the stimulus he had with the response he desired. We sent him out to go for a drive, and he was away for hours. When he came back he was astonished. He said he’d driven to the city limits, come to a bridge leading out of Huntington, all the time waiting for his phobia to kick in—but he just drove on. Needless to say, some psychiatrists were deeply skeptical. They kept telling me that change had to be painful and slow, and I said, “Well, that hasn’t been my experience. I’ve changed rapidly, many times, without any trouble.”

Actually, we all have. Maybe you read something in a book that changed your life in a second. Someone might have said something that instantly changed not only the way you did certain things but the entire quality of the experience you were having. Suddenly, without actually realizing it, something happened that switched off the problem and turned on the solution. It fascinated me that among all the warring factions, a few therapists scattered around the country seemed capable of acting as genuine change agents, and I was driven by curiosity to know how they did it. That was my rule then and remains my rule now: if you want to find out how to do something you can’t yet do, find someone who can and ask them. Now we call that process “modeling,” and some people have turned it into an unnecessarily long and complicated process.

When I first began investigating modeling, I was astonished to find that highly successful people were flattered to be asked how they got that way and were usually happy to talk. The only problem was that they didn’t always know how they came to be the way they were.

Exercise:
Changing Feelings by Dissociation

1.  Recall an experience that still causes you sadness or distress. As you remember it, make sure you are reexperiencing it as if it were happening right now. See every­thing through your own eyes, feel all the feelings—including the associated emotions—through your own body. Pay particular attention to any sounds; these might include anything that was said by you or any other significant participants in the original scenario. It may also include your own self-talk. Make a mental note of the degree to which this memory still causes you pain.

2.  Now pretend or imagine you can step back out of the experience so you can see yourself there, as if on a screen. Push the entire scene away from you, further and further, noticing, as it moves into the distance, how the colors begin to leach away and the detail diminishes. Push it as far away as you need to push it to notice a distinct difference in the way you feel about the events.

Note: Unless you particularly wish to have the discomfort back, you can leave the experience where it is—or even spin it away into space and have it explode into the sun.

Kala speaks with Dr. Bandler in late Spring 2009 about his work, visit ExploreYourSpirit.com and watch for his upcoming show!

More about Dr. Richard Bander…

Dr. Richard Bandler’s books have sold more than half a million copies worldwide. Tens of thousands of people, many of them therapists, have studied Bandler’s blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and precise thinking at colleges and NLP training centers in the United States, Europe, and Australia. A widely acclaimed keynote speaker and workshop leader, he is the author of Get the Life You Want and Dr. Richard Bandler’s Guide to Trance-formation (HCI; 2008). For more information on NLP and Richard Bandler’s workshops and seminars visit www.richardbandler.com