“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” C.G. Jung1
This is the story of how I first learned that I had the ability to give psychic healing sessions. It happened while I was visiting Monterey Bay, California.
The ocean in Monterey Bay contains a thermal upwelling. An upwelling is a place where the winds and the landscape cause the rich ocean depths to rise to the surface. What is produced as the cold nutrient-dense water rises upwards, is a cacophony of life.
The bay has a rich and diverse abundance of sea life. Within it are submerged forests of kelp, playful otters that float on their backs while using their rounded bellies as dinner tables to open mussel shells, fishing boats offloading salmon at the pier and boisterous pelicans gobbling up scraps of fish. All this is framed by venerable old pine trees sculpted by salt and sea breeze, and steep valleys with jagged hills. As it turned out, it was the perfect place for me to take the next step in my journey of awakening.
When a powerful time of transformation is afoot, everything becomes numinous with symbolic meaning. As I look back, I see that the upwelling of the dark rich ocean depths was the perfect metaphor for the psychic healing that I was about to experience – for as the suppressed material from the unconscious mind rises to consciousness, it immeasurably enriches and transforms one’s life. But in that moment, caught up in the magic of the bay, I was too enraptured by its beauty to be pondering its meaning.
The sense of safety and nurturance I felt in Monterey was a sharp contrast to my former life in L.A., where I had been poor and homeless trying to eke out a living as an artist. The bay gave me a respite to go deep inside – and when I did, I felt a great peace and inner stillness. Then suddenly, I found myself propelled into the memory of a past life. It was vivid and crystal clear, not like the shadowy glimmerings that I had previously experienced.
A veil had been lifted. It was as if I had stepped into another dimension and was no longer confined by time and space. Where did this new capacity come from? Perhaps it was within me all along waiting for the right moment to awaken.
In this new dimension, there was no past or future. Nor was it limited to just this planet – for there are many places where consciousness takes form in this unlimited Universe. I had connected with a realm of boundless possibilities – and was free to play in it like the otters amongst the waves of the bay.
But this universe is a place not just of light but also darkness. Divine Beings exist there as well as dark lurking demons. For this reason, it is important to know how to navigate, lest one wind up in the wrong place.
Navigating the psychic realm
Just as light illuminates shadow, my new sense of clarity and grace called forth memories of trauma long buried in the unconscious. They spanned a multitude of past lives. If accessed all at once they could have overwhelmed my mind. And so, it was important that they be contacted with discernment a little bit at a time.
But how could I, with my limited understanding, know how to filter such a vast database? Luckily, I had been previously instructed by my Teacher to call upon the Divine for help. Through Its infinite wisdom, It directed which memory would come first into my awareness and to what degree.2
The Divine wants nothing more than to help us to awaken, but we must have the courage to ask for Its help. If we do that, It will faithfully guide us on our healing journey.
So, the simple rule for navigating the field of consciousness was this: keep Christ and the spiritual Great Ones in the forefront of my mind and ask Them to direct me to my highest good. Thus, they guided me in a place of limitless scope. According to a knowing far greater than my own, they showed me only the things that were the most appropriate for my spiritual well-being. They never gave me more than I could handle in that particular moment of my healing.
The first memory I was shown was one I had encountered many times before. It was death in a concentration camp at the end of my most previous past life. Only now, instead of appearing as if through a fog that the psyche had created to protect me from its pain, I remembered it with crystal clarity. I re-experienced angst, shock, and terror, as I was overwhelmed by an evil that seemed to be reigning supreme over a war-torn world. Once again, I watched my family starving to death before I myself was put into the gas chamber.
The intensity of what appeared in such lucid vividness seemed almost too much to bear. And yet the lifting of that inner fog was also a gift, for although it was meant to soften my trauma, it was also obstructing my inner sight.
To deny one’s sight out of self-protection is to deny one’s capacity to be a seer. This is the price that a seer must pay for his gift – for he will witness not only light but also darkness.
Healing Trauma Takes Time The memory had brought me to the verge of emotional shock. I would need time to integrate the trauma it evoked. This would have to done gradually, at a rate I could digest. The anamnesis had been haunting me since childhood, and I would need to return to it many more times before it would be fully healed.
Healing doesn’t happen just with one revisiting of a memory and “poof” the pain is gone. Trauma etched deep within the psyche can take many years to unwind. To get to its core is like peeling an onion layer by layer, going deeper and deeper as time goes by. Time is forgiving and softens things, and this allows us to go to the next level of our journey.
“Can you handle a little bit more?” The Universe would ask. “Here, I’ll let you go deeper now. You’re ready. A little more memory, a little more feeling with more clarity – a little more recollection of the terror you once went through.
“And you know what? You’re okay now. So what does that tell you? You thought you didn’t survive. You thought the evil would go on forever. You thought you had been abandoned by the Divine. But here you are remembering. And you’re alive and well in beautiful Monterey Bay.”
I remembered bit by bit as my healing continued. And as that happened, my abilities as a seer grew.
But there are still memories I’m struggling with. I was twenty-nine then, and now as I write this, I’m seventy – and still, I am healing and growing. Thousands of lifetimes is the soul’s journey of awakening. The psyche needs time to integrate and grow – not just to get past something, but to transform it into wisdom. Like the roots of a tree, it grows around its wounds – and becomes stronger through the process. And so as difficult as it was, remembering those terrible experiences had an element that was illuminating and empowering because it was causing me to further awaken.
With every remembering, the veil parts a little more, and there’s a little more understanding. And slowly as the dross is cleared, we have more access to the infinite wisdom that so many of us have forgotten but was within us all along.
We are all seers in our own way. We created our own blindness so that we could survive our pain. But that blindness can slowly melt away as we become whole. The process of becoming a seer and of healing are one and the same.
For those of us who are adventurous on the path of truth, the journey of healing is a joy – the joy of discovery. Even though sometimes like in every great adventure, the hero is slogging through muck and goo.
“How do I get this stuff off of me?” Sometimes it takes a long time for the muck to be washed away.
There was a metamorphosis going on. The caterpillar was turning into a butterfly. What was happening inside the cocoon? What was the secret to its transformation? Everyone’s alchemy is unique to themselves. It happens in its own time and it cannot be rushed.
I returned from my walk after my epiphany. My mind felt bright like it had opened to a new universe. Even though the memory was difficult, the faculty of remembering was lucid and exhilarating. Through facing darkness, I had contacted an inner light. I felt elated, euphoric.
I was staying with my friend Peggy who had an apartment near the fishing docks. I found her relaxing on the couch, listening to jazz. I still remember the album she was listening to – its name was “Big Magic.” She welcomed me with bright blue eyes. I sat down next to her and put my hand on her knee, excited to share my revelation.
But the moment I touched her, a strange thing happened. Tears began to well up in her eyes. Suddenly she too was going through a doorway and was reliving a memory of her own. She also was remembering a past life.
I realized that this capacity to go into another dimension and remember had somehow been transmitted to Peggy. I sat with her and supported her while she relived her memory. I watched over her to keep her safe until it was time for her to return to normal consciousness. This was the first of many such spontaneous healings that happened with different people. I learned that I had the ability to help them to go deep and receive information that they needed to become whole. In the years that followed, I gave many more sessions.
What happened in Monterey changed my life. I had learned to access other dimensions that exist far beyond the confines of normal consciousness. Through them, we can regain parts of ourselves that we have lost, and become more complete, more whole.
I also had the gift to help people to contact these places within themselves. Memories would emerge – flashes of insight that would empower them on their healing journey.
But I realized that my capacity to share my gift was dependent on my willingness to witness my own pain. By doing that, I would become free of the fog that shrouded my inner sight, and see beyond the walls that were preventing me from connecting psychically with others.
I was excited about my own healing – but I was even more excited about my newly discovered ability to assist others. I had always wanted to help people to awaken. Now I understood that I’d had this gift all along but needed to heal my own pain before I could contact it. This is what happened that day in Monterey.
I didn’t know where the gift came from. I just knew that if the Divine chose to use me as a vehicle in that moment, it would mysteriously come forth. Sometimes people’s lives would be changed through it – and sometimes even spared. The door that opened within me had, through some mysterious Grace, enabled me to open those for others. That gave me great joy.
Now I understood that all the suffering I’d been through had been for a reason. For born from it was the gift of compassion, which is the most important quality any healer can have.
If you ask for the gift of sight, remember that you will see not only light but also darkness. This is the price you pay for becoming a seer. It will cause you to dive deeply into the shadow, for unless you know it as your own, it cannot be transformed. Facing one’s darkness creates compassion, and that is a healer’s greatest gift.
In the next chapters I will describe the healing sessions that grew from this first experience in Monterey.