Sunday, March 21, 2010

Report From "Experiencing Past Lives"

Yesterday was the "Experiencing Past Lives" seminar in Boston with psychiatrist/author Dr. Brian Weiss and psychic medium John Holland.  As I posted yesterday, my interest in this was due to research regarding a screenplay I wrote a few years ago that introduced me to Dr. Weiss and his book on reincarnation, Many Lives, Many Masters. I'd never heard of John Holland before but discovered he is actually a local boy from Dorchester, Ma.
I'll warn you now, there was no earth shattering moment for me.  So if you're waiting to read about my claims of being Cleopatra or something you can just go back to whatever else you should be doing today. For anyone interested, here are the details.

Dr. Weiss lead the morning session which included some lecture, a regression meditation and a psychometry exercise. Weiss said that the day was meant to show that "life doesn't stop with the death of the physical body" and this would be done from different perspectives. He said there is indeed, "life after death" and "life before death" (that was a cool term I'd never heard before). He's worked with 4,000 patients exploring past lives since he wrote his first book on the subject 30 years ago.

Weiss did a guided regression meditation for the 1,100 people in the hall.  I easily went into a deep meditation, didn't feel my body anymore and was just totally blissful and relaxed.  It felt like a very deep Holosync session.  I went in and out of being aware of Weiss' words.  I recall him saying, "now you are being born" then something about being outside a door and opening the door to a past life.  He told us to look around at all the details, take in as much as we could. At this point I'm not seeing or feeling anything except total peace and comfort. Next I remember him saying that lifetime comes to an end and now we are in spirit realm surrounded by masters and guides. At that point I saw and felt a subtle difference in the darkness and saw faded human shapes around. Then he guided us back to be fully awake and present. I thought it was a 15 minute exercise. It was actually 45 minutes long.

About 2/3rds of the room raised there hand to having some sort of vision or feelings from early childhood, inutero or a past life. He said 60% is the rough average for these group sessions. Lori and I both came up blank but with a pleasant experience and no sense of the time that had passed. In talking with others we both realized how much of the guided words we didn't hear/recall at all.

Next was a psychometry exercise. Psychometry is reading the energy from an object, picking up things about it or its owner. Everyone exchanged a personal object with someone else and held it close to them in silence for a couple minutes. There were some amazing reports between what was learned between strangers from this one. Some people saw where objects came from, who owned them previously and even predictions about where people were heading next.  Lori and I exchanged with each other so tough to say what was picked up versus what we already knew. I held her engagement ring and started to see old white/grey hair. I knew the diamond came from her grandmother so I thought I was going to see her image but it changed and got harder. It wasn't some old woman's hair style it was the rounded steeple top of a church - like this. Neither of us know if it's meaningful.
Lori held my wallet and got a sense of tightness and anxiety then relaxing. That pretty much sums up my wallet.

The afternoon featured medium John Holland giving a funny, high energy talk. This was such a huge change of personality from Brian Weiss who is probably the calmest, most stoic and deadpan person I've ever seen speak. John told his personal story and some of the psychic experiences he's had then he started doing readings for the room. I'd never seen a medium work and didn't know what to expect. It was WILD. So many jaw dropping, bone chilling, and tearful moments happened as he zeroed in on specific people and relayed messages "from the other side." It doesn't even matter if you believe or not, this was fantastic drama and entertainment. The room was so full of emotion as people laughed out loud or broke into tears based on what John told them. Before this event I didn't understand why anyone would care to see a medium unless it was for a personal session, but seeing it all happen live was very cool, surprising and powerful. Messages came from people who had passed decades ago, three months ago, due to illness, suicide, accidents.... the whole gamut. Every message boiled down to conveying love. Some spirits asked the loved one in the room to reach out to other relatives and convey what they heard here. It was quite moving. And for the skeptics - there was no assigned seating, no meeting of people with John or staff before hand, no information given ahead of time.

They day ended with a joint Q&A session where it was reiterated that there is no death; we go on.  The main message from the other side - there is nothing to fear and your loved ones are always with you. Nice.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I too was amazed that 45 minutes had passed during the "past life regression" meditation portion of the program. I felt as you did, but did get Victorian era clothing when I "went through the door." I am told that practice makes perfect in past-life regression exercises, so I will keep on trying. During the "item exchange" portion, I got tons in information for the person I was working with, which amazed both of us. As for John Holland - he is the real deal. I was lucky enough to get a private reading with him a few years ago and attend some of his other events - he brings humor, integrity and compassion to mediumship with tremendous, accurate validations. Yesterday's readings were incredible-although I did not get a reading, I still got so much out of the readings he did for others and I laughed and cried with them.

Anonymous said...

It's great it was a positive, warm experience, but I tend to not believe people who charge to hear their rap are legitimate. If you are truly interested in helping people, why charge? But then again, doctors aren't exactly volunteering their talents left and right.

AF Grant said...

That is some twisted logic - not believing people who charge for their services and thinking people who want to help others should work for free. Do you think police, firemen, government... should all be volunteers?
Do you pay for services if you don't think they help you?