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by Mary Grace McCord While attending Yale Medical School in the late 1960s, Brian Weiss met an agitated patient who retold the trauma of rising over her own death scene and floating toward a departed loved one. Within that moment of hearing her story, the young physician noticed that suddenly her demeanor changed. “Like others who have told of returning from a near death experience or NDE, she seemed to sense a transformation that felt peaceful and prayerful; even joyous.” Noting from then on the occasional otherworldly recollections within various clinical settings, this budding physician would soon “answer a call from the universe” and ultimately help pioneer a New Thought philosophy called spiritual psychiatry. Bringing a holistic perspective to the left-brain science of health and illness, over the years Dr. Weiss has “opened the clinical mind” by shifting the psychiatric paradigm to embrace a more artistic model of non-linear, right-brain intuitive intelligence. His medium is hypnotherapy; his results are world-renowned. As founding chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, Brian Weiss, M.D. now serves as its chairman emeritus. Featured on Oprah, 20/20, Larry King Live, CNN and The Discovery Channel, he founded The Weiss Institute in Florida and serves on the faculty of New York’s Omega Institute. His best-selling books include Many Lives, Many Masters; Through Time into Healing; Only Love Is Real; Messages from the Masters; and Same Soul, Many Bodies. Several titles include a meditation CD, offering the author’s soft-spoken demeanor alongside his keen experiential insight. Dr. Weiss’ writings are included within our school’s Parapsychic Science and Metaphysics curricula, and AIHT enjoyed chatting recently with the field’s “unofficial dean of reincarnation” following empowerment conferences in Chicago and Phoenix.
Vibrations: Initial hypnotherapy research by scholars such as Helen Wambach, Ph.D. intended to debunk the idea of past-life regression. Instead the research made Wambach a champion of regressive hypnotherapy. She later embraced progressive hypnotherapy, an approach to help us “remember the future.” How did your own work in regressive and progressive hypnotherapies begin? BW: Well, I too was skeptical. Patients who seek a mental health specialist sometimes have unexplained phobias or disturbing dreams that limit their enjoyment of life. There may be symptoms of illness but no clinical evidence. Some just feel emotionally “stuck,” which can lead to depression. With hypnotherapy, clinicians do more than just help clients to discover “When did you first notice this feeling?” Hypnosis itself is not so mysterious. It’s a form of deep concentration, through which subconscious wisdom comes forth–often in symbols, metaphors, visions, the repetition of a phrase, or a gut feeling. A trained therapist may help explore the subject’s perception of whether the signs are literal or figurative. Vibrations: It was the recollections of a hypnotherapy patient named Catherine that brought forth your own connection with accessing intelligence from other realms… BW: That’s right. When someone’s hypnotic recall is that they’ve lived as a mercenary soldier or an impoverished orphan, as “opposite” partners within a series of arranged marriages, that they’ve walked with Jesus or discovered other planets, a therapist’s challenge is to help patients detect a pattern or a message—but with no way to actually discern whether or not the recollections could be proven or disproven. But Catherine spoke of family matters, from my family not hers, that no one could possibly know—specific words from my father who had died and healing inspiration from our long departed infant son. From this intersection of personal conviction, my understanding of past regression has expanded to include progressive hypnotherapy—tuning in to “remember the future” and thus help our present-day situations as we build an energetic bridge to better days. Vibrations: Also, can progressive hypnotherapy bring us present-moment knowingness and confidence that we are indeed moving in the right direction as well? BW: Yes, and yet let me emphasize that reaching beyond our self does not require formal hypnotherapy. Meditation and visualization are ways that we can journey back or journey forward and access our “unusual mind” for deeper clarity and discernment. Meditation doesn’t always come easy, though. At times I slip away from meditating for weeks or months, under the guise of not having time or not feeling a need. But then my energy starts to lag. It’s harder to be creative and I feel out of tune, off-balance. So I ask students to be patient with themselves when learning to meditate. Self-hypnosis can become a gradual or a relatively sudden deepening of the meditative relaxation response. But it too is a trained discipline and when it seems as though nothing is happening, just remain open to believing that breakthroughs come in their own time.
Vibrations: And we “must be present to win,” right? In class you said your first actual self-regression came after about three months of practicing, with focused intention. BW: Some people can open their psychic corridor through walking meditation or breathing meditation. It’s in affirming that every step, every thought, every molecule of oxygen, etc. can be appreciated as a sacred interaction—in and out, exchanging energy back and forth. Mindfulness shifts our consciousness from mundane reality to infinite possibilities. Thus we gain the power of detached, non-judging observation. Another important tool is dream-journaling. Jot down all the tiniest details instantly upon awakening and your subconscious mind will stay with the puzzle of noticing connections—maybe not instantly, although sometimes it flashes like a bolt from the blue—a sudden ah-ha of enlightened insight. Vibrations: I love that word that you’ve written about, ‘evidentials.’ This suggests a secret context that only one individual soul could know or interpret; the personal details that perhaps have never even been spoken, as with Catherine’s visions of your family. BW: That’s why it’s so much fun to ask a small child, “Do you remember when you were big?” because a young mind is very open to accepting other realms of possibility—and after all, truly there isn’t just one future. The things we choose now, with our own free will, can either enjoin us with or edge us away from Divine grace. Every day and many times a day, some people reach up and receive miracles. We never want to turn away. When glimpsing toward other realms, our visions are the reflections of intentional contact with higher forms of intelligence. Guess what? That higher consciousness is us! There is a keen efficiency in the universe. The coincidences and synchronicities are Divine sparks of insight. Becoming more patient with momentary ambiguity, trusting and going with the flow, we return to being “conduits and conveyors of peace.” You and I are both mortal and immortal, and there is nothing to fear. There is really no death, only life after life. I’m aware of having lived at least a dozen other lives so far. All religions demonstrate that our souls are eternal and can never be destroyed. Leaps of consciousness are our rocket boosters; and we always reunite with loved ones. Knowing that we will reconnect in body and spirit can bring comfort and peace; our own unique ‘evidentials’ that as we send better energies into these present moments, we create the certainly of happier future lives. Plural. In moments of doubt or concern, go into your heart and “choose to return to love,” as Marianne Williamson reminds us. Because the kingdom of heaven resides in each person’s heart, all joy and happiness come from our own center, straight from within. It’s no surprise that love is the only true power: then, now and forever.
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