Book Review | Blue Star Visions

Dec 03

Gratitude Creates a Happier Life

By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

We all want to be happy and have a good life. Some people seem to naturally be cheerful and others struggle with depression. Regardless of what type of person you are, current studies show that one of the ways to be happier is to be grateful for all the blessings and good things in your life. We learn to see and be grateful for even the little blessings like seeing a cardinal at a birdfeeder, getting a card in the mail, or having a good meal with your family. By focusing on the positive things we experience each day we become more aware of the blessings in our lives. Gratitude opens the heart to love.

Robert Emmons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, has done research on gratitude for eleven years and has done many studies. Some of his studies show that people who keep a gratitude journal and write down five things they are grateful for every day are happier. The benefits for keeping a journal are psychological, social, emotional, and physical. Psychologically people felt more alert, alive and aware. Socially students found an increase in their grades. Emotionally people experienced more positive emotions. Physically people exercised more, their sleep was better and they awoke each morning more refreshed.

Emmons has a youtube on the gratitude studies he has done. You might find this one of interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRrnfGf5aWE

Emmons has also written books on Gratitude such as Words of Gratitude and Gratitude Works.

Here are several quotes on gratitude that I found uplifting.

Gratitude “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”

― John F. Kennedy

“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.

Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.”

― Thomas Merton

How have you found gratitude helps you? Have you ever kept a gratitude journal? If so what benefits did you notice?

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Oct 31

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Inner Guidance: Our Divine Birthright by Anne Archer Butcher
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review | One Comment

Anne Archer Butcher’s book Inner Guidance: Our Divine Birthright was just released. I eagerly awaited this book when I heard it was coming out because I have heard some of Anne’s amazing stories and knew what a wonderful storyteller she is.

On the day the book came out, Anne gave a talk about it. Some of her talk is in “Chapter 7 – Ocean of Love: Inner Guidance during an Out-of-Body Experience” and “Chapter 8 – There Is No Death: Inner Guidance Assists with a Loved One.”

   In the talk Anne said one night she got a headache. Her boyfriend Jon sat beside her on the couch holding her as she became dizzy. She sensed an unspoken communication from inner guidance that said, “Someone close to you appears to be dying.” She saw a black spot hanging in the middle of the room, and then felt pulled out of her body and sucked toward it. She crossed into the dark tunnel and flew through it at great speed. At the end was a golden ocean of Light and Sound that sounded like a thousand violins and bells. She knew she was home and wanted to stay there forever.

While in this inner world another inner message came to her that said there were ten things she must remember. She wanted to stay in this world, but was told she had much to do and she was sent back to the physical world.

When she returned to her body her eyes were bright red like they were sunburned. She wondered who close to her would appear to be dying.

At the talk Anne mentioned two of the ten things on the list she was given.

• In truth, there is no death—only the illusion of death

• Remember, everything is always happening exactly as it should, whether it appears that way or not.

The next day while Anne was teaching her high school class she was told to come to the principal’s office. Jon met her there and told Anne that her sister Debbie was dying. He’d already bought her a plane ticket to fly to see Debbie. When Anne got to the hospital, she was shown inwardly that there was a deflated balloon in Debbie’s head. Anne told the doctor about it. The doctor realized Anne was having a spiritual experience and that she knew more than he did. He thought the deflated balloon sounded like a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. Anne’s inner guidance confirmed that it was and the doctor performed an operation that saved Debbie’s life.

This is just one of the amazing stories in the book. One of my favorites was when a school of dolphins saved Anne from a shark and brought her safely to shallow water. Another was when she was teaching a high school class. One day she put her hand to the chalkboard, it was moved across the board, writing something that she didn’t recognize. She continued to write quotes on the chalkboard for her other classes. With the librarian’s help she discovered what she had written came from Plato’s Republic. She came to understand that the quote-writing phenomenon was a form of inner guidance to open a door to great wisdom.

Other stories include having a walk with a lost elephant and manifesting a hot air balloon rider. In each story she explains the spiritual principle she is learning and talks about the inner guidance she received.

After reading this book I don’t think I’ll ever look at life in quite the same way ever again. A lot more is going on in this world than we realize. Anne says:

“This connection with God is our divine birthright. Why? Because God has provided every blessing and gift we could even need. We just have to raise our awareness enough to be able to recognize the blessing and know we’re worthy of them. Why? Because we are Soul. A spark of God.

“It’s completely up to each of us whether we use this amazing spiritual tool, inner guidance. It takes attention, practice, and above all, trust—knowing that we’re worthy of such a beautiful gift.” (p. 260)

If you want to find out more about inner guidance so you can tap into this gift, read this wonderful book of adventures and experiences that are so incredible they seem like miracles. Yet we can all have them if we learn how to listen to our inner guidance.

Here is a youtube with Anne talking about her experience of being rescued by the dolphins.

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Sep 17

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Happiness Is a Choice by Barry Neil Kaufman
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review | 2 Comments

Happiness is a Choice

I just finished reading Happiness Is a Choice by Barry Neil Kaufman. Kaufman’s perspective is that happiness is a choice and we can learn tools that will enable us to be happy. Many years ago he decided to make love and happiness a priority and it greatly enhanced his life as a result.

Kaufman is a therapist, author, speaker and the founder of Option Institute. His own life was profoundly changed when his third child was diagnosed as severely autistic. He and his wife turned to God to find understanding and inspiration on how to deal with this challenging condition. They decided to embrace their son’s uniqueness and worked with him every day for over three years. Eventually their son overcame his autism completely, which is nearly unheard of in the medical field.

Through his work at the Option Institute Kaufman discovered that people who are successful in finding happiness share certain character traits. In his book he goes over each of these traits and shows us how to use them to have a happier life.

The qualities Kaufman and his group found were: make happiness a priority, personal authenticity, let go of judgments, be present, be grateful and decide to be happy. Let’s look at them one at a time.

The first is to make happiness the priority and bring happiness and love center stage. In our society we make happiness dependent upon achieving our goals. If a child is asked what they want, they might say a bike; a teenager might say a driver’s license; and an adult might say a better job or relationship. It’s not until people are in their sixties that they begin to talk about health, peace, happiness and love.

When a person was asked why they wanted an event or item, they said it would make them happy. Kaufman challenges this idea and said, “Why not be happy now and then pursue whatever we want?” (p. 176). He goes on to say if we don’t tie our happiness to getting something, we are free to do anything we want. We don’t need love, recognition or praise to feel good.

Second is personal authenticity, which is the freedom to be yourself, rather than suppressing your thoughts. Kaufman let go of a ÷≥friendship where the other person wanted unhappiness and anger reinforced. Instead, he found new friendships based on acceptance, respect and love. He said, “We cherished each other as we were rather than as we wanted the other person to be” (p. 128).

The third trait is to let go of judgments and accept people and situations as they are. When we discard judgments, we can embrace people and situations more openly. “Judgments about people and possibilities limit our thinking and what we might try to accomplish” (p. 201).

Kaufman goes on to say that we can challenge and change the judgments we make. “The secret to happiness lies not in events, but in our responses to them” (p. 208). As an example of this Kaufman talks about a family whose child had cerebral palsy. The parents thought his condition was terrible. When they let go of that judgment, they were able to discover the beauty in their child and discovered God in the condition. If we embrace situations without judgment, we can find the elements in every event that serve and teach us.

The fourth characteristic is to be present by learning to discard regrets about the past and worries about the present. One woman discovered that only when she stayed present did she truly experience God. She released the pain of her past and chose happiness as a gift to give herself and her loved ones. “Our focused attention greatly enhances the power and pleasure of any event, as well as our ability to handle and draw lessons from it. When someone speaks, we can look at her directly and listen to her words. . . thus amplifying our appreciation and understanding of her commentary as well as honoring her attempt to communicate with us” (p. 237).

Next is being grateful by appreciating specific people and events, even during hard times. When people are happy, they have a sense of gratitude. Kaufman found that as he walked the path to being happier and more loving, he never ceased to be awed by the blessing of inner peace he’s found.

He’s also recognized inner guidance and a “user-friendly” universe that makes happiness possible. When we are grateful we enjoy and appreciate an experience and see the blessing and wonder of it.

Last is deciding to be happy. This encompassed all the other qualities, for if we prioritize happiness we will be authentic, present, grateful and nonjudgmental. Kaufman ends by saying we can chose to live in happiness and love and greet everyone around us with appreciation and delight.

For me the idea of choosing to be happy is an exciting one. I can make happiness a priority in my life. I can create my world and how I respond to it. I can be happy no matter what challenges I’m facing by not judging the situation as good or bad, and by being grateful for all of life’s gifts. This book can help anyone who wants to be happier and is ready to take the next step into a fuller, richer, happier life.

Here is a YouTube video with Barry Neil Kaufman  on Happiness Is A Choice- No Matter What

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Jul 29

0

The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review | 2 Comments

In this blog post I want to exam the topic of happiness. Happiness is one of the most googled topics on the Internet and depression is high around the world. What causes some people to be happy and others unhappy or even depressed? What contributes to happiness? Can people increase their level of happiness and if so how?

I was discussing this topic with one of my sons and he recommended a book called the The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor.

In the book I found the answers to my questions, including some great techniques to be happy. What stuck out for me about the book is the idea that we can be happier no matter who we are. Just as there are things you can do to have better health and/or improve your brain, there are simple techniques you can do to be happier.

In the introduction Achor says that most people have a formula that they have been taught by schools, parents and society. “That is: If you work hard, you will become successful, then you’ll be happy.” As a result of this thinking we believe that we have to have something good happen before we can be happy. I’ll be happy when I get a raise, reach a goal, lose weight or get a new house.

Achor tells us that this formula is broken because with every goal we accomplish we set a new goalpost for success. Moreover, the formula is backward. Happiness is a precursor to success not the other way around. “Happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement—giving us the competitive edge that I call the happiness advantage.”

This discovery is based on thousands of scientific studies and Achor’s own work with Harvard students and Fortune 500 companies worldwide. Achor observed that Harvard students who felt that being there was a privilege excelled, whereas those that were focused on the stress and pressure missed out on opportunities.

Achor came up with 7 principles for happiness.

▪                Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage

▪                Principle #2: The Fulcrum and The Lever

▪                Principle #3: The Tetris Effect

▪                Principle #4: Falling Up

▪                Principle #5: The Zorro Circle

▪                Principle #6: The 20-second Rule

▪                Principle #7: Social Investment

In each section Achor explains the principle and then gives techniques for improving happiness. When talking about the first principle “The Happiness Advantage” Achor said that positive brains have a biological advantage over neutral or negative brains. If we capitalize on the positive we on are smarter, more motivated and more successful. Achor gave different techniques in the book to increase the happiness in your life.

One technique I’ve been using is to write down at the beginning of each day three positive things that happened during the last twenty-four hours. I found that this keeps me focused on the positive things in my life.

Another technique I’ve tried is to commit conscious acts of kindness. This can be as small as smiling at someone or opening a door for someone, to weeding my Mother’s garden or having a friend over for dinner. It makes me feel good to do something for someone else.

A third technique is to exercise. I try to do this every day. It’s warm in Minnesota this time of year and I enjoy swimming, biking, hiking, and yoga.

Achor also suggests meditation to calm the mind and step away from multi tasking. Instead I take time everyday to contemplate. I often sing the word HU to uplift my consciousness.

Here are a few additional ones

Write about a recent positive experience three times a week. By doing this you relive the experience.

Spend money on “doing” things that you enjoy. For me it might be on going to a play or going on a trip.

Make plans to do things that you can look forward to.

I highly recommend reading The Happiness Advantage if you’d like to be a happier, more creative, positive, successful person. We can all have the happiness advantage.

Here is a humorous Ted Talk YouTube with Shawn Achor. It’s worth listening to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXy__kBVq1M

To brighten your day here is a YouTube of a baby laughing.

I’d like to end with a quote on happiness.

“I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.”

Martha Washington
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Jun 19

0

Success with Kickstarter, Do?U Adventures
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review, Writing | 4 Comments

Last year Anna Skarie did a guest blog on Kickstarter. She and her mother, Joy Dey, wrote Just Another Monday (SWAK Publishing), a children’s book, and used Kickstarter to get enough money to publish it. I wanted to do a follow up on their ongoing adventure. Anna and Joy made their goal on Kickstarter and published their book! They are now selling and promoting the book thought fairs, museums, libraries, bookstores and schools. They made a large copy of the book so all the children could see it when they read it outloud. In the older grades they talk about publishing. Here is a picture of Anna with the large sized book.

The adventure begins.

Anna and Joy call their book a DoU (do-you) Adventure and have an entire series in production. On each page the child decides what to do and turns to that tab. There are 70 different adventures the children can have.

The story starts with:

A dragon lands right beside you! Yikes! Do you. . .

Run like crazy

Or

Hop on?

The child then decides what to do and turns to that tab.

Children reading the story with their father.

Here are all the paths the adventure can take.

Anna and Joy at Pease Elemary School , Joy is on the far right

The book is mainly for children who are old enough to choose their own adventures, but my grandson Asher who is only 5 months enjoyed the bright colors and turning the pages. The book is made with heavy cardboard so it is sturdy enough for babies.

Good book!

What is on the boat page?

If there is a child in your life who would like to have lots of adventures with a dragon you can order the book off Amazon.

Their website is sitwithakid.com

Future Events

Saturday, July 6th – Twin Ports Bridge Festival event and booth

Saturday, July 20th – Two Harbors Chalk-A-Lot

Saturday/Sunday, August 24th/25th – Austin Artworks Festival reading and booth
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Jan 18

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The Forty Rules of Love, A novel of Rumi by Elif Shafak
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review | 6 Comments

A friend recommended I read The Forty Rules of Love, A novel of Rumi. It is an uplifting novel that links the East and West and is told in the form of a story-within-a-story. I’m always interested in learning more about Rumi, one of the most popular poets in the world, and his master Shams of Tabriz, so I read the book and now want to share this rich story with others.

The main modern day character is Ella a present-day, Boston housewife who feels trapped in an unhappy marriage. She stayed at home to raise their three children, but now that her daughter is in college and the twins are in high school she has started working part time at a literary agency. She is assigned to read Sweet Blasphemy, a manuscript about Shams of Tabriz, a wandering Dervish, and Rumi.

At first Ella doesn’t think she can relate to the novel, but as she continues to read, she becomes curious about the author, Aziz Zahara. She Googles him and discovers he has a blog. On the blog she reads one of Rumi’s poems.

Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life of

Love, living is a burden—as you have seen. page 43.

While reading the poem she feels like everything on it is written for her eyes only. Ella decides to email the author. Aziz replies and they begin to correspond. Ella shares her problems and Azis his philosophies.

Meanwhile, in the manuscript Ella is reading, Shams wants to find a companion to share the wisdom, the forty rules of love, he has spent his life learning on his travels. His guardian angel tells him to go to Baghdad to find a master to point him in the right direction. Shams goes to a dervish lodge in Baghdad and eventually hears about a man who is also looking for a spiritual companion. Shams knows this is the man he’s looking for but the master tells Shams he must wait until spring. During the long, harsh winter, Shams keeps from being discouraged by keeping one of the forty rules of love in mind.

“Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.” page 72.

Shams eventually meets Rumi and the two men go into seclusion for forty days as Shams shares the forty rules of love. Rumi becomes so absorbed in taking the next step spiritually that he neglects his students, wife, sons and duties. He and Shams build a strong spiritual bond. His bond with Shams leads to jealousy and suspicion and eventually tragedy, but out of this comes Rumi’s eternal poetry that talks about the deep love between the student and master.

After reading the book, I wanted to learn more about the author just as Ella was curious about Aziz. I discovered Elif Shafak is the most popular female author in Turkey. I was delighted to find a good author who has a spiritual message. The book is about all kinds of love including the love between a man and a woman, the love between a mother and her children and the spiritual love between a master and his student.

Here is a link to what Elif Safak has to say about the book.

http://www.elifsafak.us/en/haberler.asp?islem=haber&id=13
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Dec 26

0

Riding the Sound Current by Steve DeWitt
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review | One Comment

Many years ago I awoke one night in the Soul body to find an olive-complexioned, Asian-looking monk in a tan robe standing in my bedroom. He asked me to come with him and then vanished into a hole in the ceiling. I looked askance at my spiritual master, whose glowing blue form hovered in a corner of the room, and he nodded that it was ok for me to do so. Leaving my physical body behind, I followed the monk and saw him flying up what looked like a fluorescent tube or tunnel. About midway up, the tunnel’s gravity seemed to reverse and we dropped down onto the starlit surface of an alien planet. When I uttered surprise at how bright the stars were, my guide explained that the planet was Mars and that the brightness was due to its very thin atmosphere.

We were standing in a desert landscape with arid plains in the foreground and dark mountain ranges in the distance. The monk pointed across the rock-strewn plain where hooded figures in brown or tan robes were being chased by soldiers in jeep-like vehicles. The robed monks appeared to be heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Many were shot and killed by their pursuers, while only a few made it to safety in the mountains. My guide informed me that the monks were freedom fighters struggling against the tyranny of the ruling Warrior class.

Outlandish as it may seem, this wasn’t my first Soul travel visit to another planet. About twenty-five years earlier, shortly after I joined the path of Eckankar, I had been guided in the Soul body to a supra-physical spaceport on earth, where I boarded a spacecraft and was taken to a planet in the Beta Centauri system. There I visited a museum dedicated to a very ancient time period when earth was a colony of this planet. What I saw there and during a subsequent series of past-life recall dreams led me to write my first book, The Golden Kingdom.

At the time of my first visit to Mars, however – an experience I later used in my second book, Warriors of the Sound Current, to introduce the protagonist, Jeff, to his mission – I had no idea I was going to write a novel set on different planets as well as other planes of reality. The Soul travel experience I was granted merely seemed to create an overwhelming curiosity within me about the Sound Current, the spiritual planes and the other planets of our solar system. I set myself the spiritual goals to visit each plane and hear its corresponding Sound, and to Soul project to each of the planets.

Soul travel is different from astral projection, which is movement in the astral body on the astral plane. In astral projection, one is tethered to the body by the silver cord. Soul travel, in contrast, is the ability to expand one’s consciousness beyond the limitations of the physical body, as well as the astral, causal and mental bodies by contacting the Sound Current. (The Sound Current is another name for Divine Spirit, which is visible as light and audible as sound.) Over time, as I gained some experience in spiritual travel, I came to realize Soul projection isn’t traveling at all because Soul, being one with the essence of God, is everywhere, in all places, at all times. Soul isn’t conscious of Its omni-presence due to Its identification with the human self, but in Its true state of being It really is everywhere. It follows that for Soul projection to work I had to inhabit my true state of being and awaken my awareness in another place where I, as Soul, already was.

This process is very natural for Soul, and most of us do it all the time. The hard part is to bring a memory back to our physical consciousness from what we have seen and experienced in this higher state. Not only do we have to train our awareness in Soul to be intense enough to manifest a physical memory of our travel, but even if we do, the censor of our mind will try to scramble it, clothe it in incomprehensible symbols, make us forget, or try to convince us it wasn’t real. All these hurdles can be overcome, but it takes patience, perseverence, creativity and an open-minded attitude.

Some of the techniques I used to find success with my spiritual goals are mentioned on my website www.soundcurrentrider.com. In the months and years that followed my first Mars encounter, I did eventually manage to travel to all the planets of our solar system – even Pluto, which isn’t a planet anymore – and to visit and hear the Sound Current on each of the spiritual planes as described by Paul Twitchell, the modern-day founder of Eckankar. These experiences formed the inspiration to write Warriors of the Sound Current, which is a work of fiction but features as major characters several of the people I met in their own Soul bodies during my travels. The landscapes, cities, state of technology and inhabitants of the planets are rendered as I saw them, and the spiritual experiences encountered by the protagonist, Jeff, are pretty much verbatim descriptions of my own, including insights and lectures given by various spiritual masters.

Scientists will of course dispute that societies actually exist on the other planets. Our probes on Mars have found nothing but rocky desert, Venus is too hot and poisonous, and the big outer planets are naught but gas, they say. As yet they have not fully realized that vibration is the fifth dimension, and that other realities can exist at different vibrational levels within the same space. For most it will take a fundamental shift in their view of life and the universe before they are able to accept that most planets are inhabited, our reality isn’t the only one, and the heavenly world isn’t what they think it is. Once that shift has taken place, they will hopefully learn about the frequency modulation technology that will allow anyone of us to physically travel to planets accross the galaxy just like we fly on airplanes accross the ocean today. Until then, we must practice Soul travel if we wish to go there – and prepare to not be believed when we return.
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Dec 17

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A Year with Rumi by Coleman Barks
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review | 22 Comments

What’s Not Here by Rumi

I start out on this road,

call it love or emptiness,

I only know that’s not here.

Resentment seeds, backscratching greed,

worrying about outcome, fear of people.

When a bird gets free,

it does not go for remnants

left on the bottom of the cage.

Close by, I’m rain. Far off,

a cloud of fire.   I seem restless,

but I am deeply at ease.

Branches tremble. The roots are still.

I am a universe in a handful of dirt,

whole when totally demolished.

Talk about choices does not apply to me.

While intelligence considers options,

I am somewhere lost in the wind.

This month my husband and I made an unexpected trip to Milwaukee to attend my aunt’s funeral. On the way to the funeral we saw dozens of eagles at Lake Pepin. Tree after tree had groups of eagle in it so I had to stop to take photos.

The funeral was the celebration of a well-lived life and a time to gather with family and friends. While we were in Milwaukee there was a blizzard across the state of Wisconsin and Minnesota. We drove home the next day to a world transformed by snow and ice. I was enchanted by its beauty and took photos from the car window.

Rumi’s poetry and the photos of winter capture some the grace and beauty of life. Life is a gift to be cherished while we are here. A Year with Rumi is a series of Rumi’s poems for each day of the year. The translation is by Coleman Barks who is one of the best translators of Rumi’s works.

Rumi lived in the early thirteenth century in Balkh (the Persian empire). In 1244 he met Shams Tabriz, a wandering meditator. “The inner work that Shams did with Rumi and Rumi with Shams produced poetry. It springs from their friendship.” p. 1.

Here are a few of Rumi’s poems from the book.

Sometimes I do

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that light become this art.

p. 18

Let the Beauty We Love

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

p. 28

Water and the Moon

There is a path from me to you

That I am constantly looking for.

so I try to keep clear and still

as water does with the moon.

p. 56

Love’s Confusing Joy

If you want what visible reality

can give, you are an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

You are not living with your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love’s confusing joy.

p. 60

I hope you enjoyed Rumi’s poems and the photos of the beauty of winter. Have an enjoyable holiday season.
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Dec 02

0

Richard Martini, FLIPSIDE
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review, Past lives | 7 Comments

Last year I wrote a blog on Michael Newton’s book Journey of Souls, Case Studies of Life Between Lives about his research as a hypnotherapist. In his career as a hypnotherapist Newton regressed over 7,000 patients who talked about what happened to them between their former incarnations on earth. His subjects described what it feels like to die, what the spirit world is like, and how they chose their next life with their soul group.

That blog drew a lot interest. People were fascinated to hear about where we go after we die and what happens there.

So when a friend called recently to tell me about a documentary Richard Martini made about Michael Newton’s work, I was immediately interested. Richard Martini is an author and award winner filmmaker who came across Michael Newton’s work during his own spiritual search that started after a dear friend died.

On her deathbed Martini’s friend told him she had a reoccurring vision of a spiritual classroom where everyone wore white. After she died, Martini had a spontaneous out-of-body experience where his friend guided him to that classroom. He felt he’d actually visited her. After that experience, he had many questions. Had he really found her? Could he see her again? He began studying near death experiences and past lives.

While doing his research Martini came across Michael Newton’s work and attended one of his talks. Afterwards Martini spoke with Newton about doing a documentary. Newton was interested in the project, so Martini filmed Newton and other hypnotherapists trained by him. Martini also filmed subjects being regressed to their life between lives.

When filming the documentary Martini learned that each of us has a soul group of three to twenty-five beings that come together between lives. Working together, souls in the group go over their last life and choose their next life, including who they will reincarnate with. In each life soul has something it wants to learn.

While Martini was making the documentary, one of the hypnotherapists suggested he get regressed. Martini agreed to do a session and had an amazing experience of his own. He found himself in the body of a Native American medicine man. His bare feet were cut and he was standing in water. His entire tribe had been killed by another tribe. He looked inside his tepee and when he saw his beautiful wife’s throat cut open, he felt the same terrible grief he’d felt in that life as a medicine man.

During the session, Martini also attended a class where he learned about “energy reconstruction” and met his dear friend who’d died.

In an interview Martini said that Brian Weiss did major work in the field of past lives. He hypnotized people and took them back to the life where their illness or fear started. Weiss wrote about his work in Many Lives Many Masters.

Newton went even further. He regressed people back not only to the past life where their problem originated, but to their soul group. His subjects learned that they had planned to have an illness or certain problem to help them grow spiritually, and to learn something about divine love. Subjects often came back from their sessions cured of their illness or fear.

In the interview Martini also discussed the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Her last flight was taken in July 1937 in the tense period before World War two. Martini talked to a number of witnesses who saw her plane in a hangar in Saipan. He concluded that she was forced to land and taken prisoner by the Japanese. After United States shelled Saipan, witnesses said she was executed as a spy.

As well as doing the documentary called Flipside: A Journey into the Afterlife. Martini wrote a book called Flipside: A Tourist’s Guide on How To Navigate the Afterlife.

Below is a YouTube video by Martini discussing about his book. In the video he talks about Michael Newton’s work. Newton had a suicidal client who he hypnotized and told to go back to the source of her pain. She regressed back to her soul group between lives. Newton was so astounded at hearing about this soul group that he quit his practice and for the next thirty years took patients to this place between lives.

Here is a trailer for the video Flipside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK7vndjaUJg

Martini has an interview on the 100^th Monkey Radio Show.   You can hear it on this book website. When you get to the website scroll down the page until you get to the 100th Monkey Radio show and click the link.

http://www.flipsidethebook.com/
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Sep 15

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DYING TO BE ME by Anita Moorjani book review
By heidi.skarie@gmail.com | Book Review, Past lives | 4 Comments

DYING TO BE ME by Anita Moorjani is a remarkable book about a woman’s near death experience and what she learned from it. What makes the story so unusual is that Anita had fought cancer (Hodgkin’s Lymphoma) for four years using both alternative and traditional medicine. The disease progressed to the point that all her major organs started shutting down and the doctors and her family expected her to die at any moment. She slipped into a coma and had an incredible near-death experience (NDE).   While out of her body she knew she had a choice to die or return as it was not her time. She eventually decided to return and knew she was healed on an energetic level and that her physical body would catch up quickly.

Anita states in her introduction that she understood that one of the reasons she came back to her body was so her message and experience would touch others. One message she shares is that miracles are possible and that we are loved. Soon after she recovered from the cancer, she began speaking and writing about her NDE and eventually wrote this book.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part Anita talks about how she was born in India and raise Hindu, but grew up in Hong Kong in the midst of different languages, cultures and religions. This lead to her living a fear-based life that eventually manifested in disease. “I also understood that the cancer was not some punishment for anything I’d done wrong. . . where I was at that point in time was a culmination of every decision, every choice, and every thought of my entire life. My many fears and my great power had manifested as this disease.” (Chapter 7)

In the second part Anita tells about her NDE, what she experienced and understood while in the other worlds, her healing, and about her a new life afterwards. While Anita’s body lay in a coma, she was able to see and hear her family and the doctors. She felt calm, peaceful and healed. She understood that even if her physical life ended she would never truly die. Though she was aware of Danny, her husband; her parents; and Anoop, her brother, and their unhappiness, she felt wonderful. “I still felt enveloped in a sea of unconditional love and acceptance. . . I deserved to be loved simply because I existed, nothing more and nothing less.” (chapter 7)

She described her NDE as being love, joy, ecstasy, and awe. In this place of expanded awareness she also became aware of the presence of her father, who’d died ten years earlier and of a dear friend, who had died a few years ago. Their presence gave her comfort.

The universe now made sense and she understood she’d gotten cancer because her fears didn’t allow her magnificence to shine through.   She had been harsh with herself and didn’t show the beauty of her soul. “I understood that I owed it to myself, to everyone I met, and to life itself to always be an expression of my own unique essence. Trying to be anything or anyone else didn’t make me better—it just deprived me of my true self! It kept others from experiencing me for who I am, and it deprived me of interacting authentically with them. Being inauthentic also deprives the universe of who I came here to be and what I came here to express. . . I also realized that I’m not my body, race, culture, religion or beliefs.” (Chapter 7)

Time was different in this realm and Anita was aware of simultaneous lives playing out. In one incarnation the essence of her older brother Anoop was her younger brother who she looked after.

She also knew her husband Danny’s life and purpose was inextricably linked with hers. If she died, he would follow soon after. If he did, everything would still be perfect in the bigger picture.

In the last section Anita shares what she learned about healing from her experience. She writes, “we can live as a reflection of who we really are, by allowing our magnificence to shine through.” (Introduction) In this section of the book there is also a question and answer section.

Anita wrote the book in hopes that by sharing her experience others can reduce their chances of getting ill. For people who are already sick, there might be something in this book that will help them with the healing process. Anita says, “It’s my hope that you find joy in each and every day of your journey and come to love life as much as I do these days!” (Introduction)

I highly recommend this unique book. Anita is amazingly articulate in the way she’s able to describe what her NDE was like. She shares honestly why she got sick and how she was able to heal. This book will bring comfort and insight to anyone who reads it and contemplates Antia’s message.

Have you or anyone you know had a near death experience? What are you thoughts about Antia Moorjani’s experience? Please feel free to comment on this blog.

In closing, remember your own magnificence and that you exist because God loves you unconditionally.

Here is a You Tube of Anita doing an interview on After live TV

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