The Afterlife Healing Circle: How Anyone Can Contact the Other Side
192
The Afterlife Healing Circle: How Anyone Can Contact the Other Side
192eBook1 (1)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
The afterlife healing circle is a way we can safely communicate with those on the other side, whether they are loved ones who have passed or future offspring who have not yet been born.
This unique book will bring hope to the anxious and the inconsolable by showing readers:
It’s never too late to say goodbye—or too soon to say hello.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601633798 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 06/22/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Inner shift specialist Candace L. Talmadge has been a professional writer since 1976. She has been a syndicated political columnist and written full time or freelanced for major print and online media. Candace publishes the Green Stone of Healing® speculative fiction series under the byline C.L. Talmadge. Connect with Candace at www.thehealingcirclebook.com.
Jana L. Simons’ resume looks like it belongs to several people. She changed industries and fields numerous times until she found her true calling, teaching soul-sense development and a unique form of energy healing known as Sunan therapy. She also coauthored with Candace an exploration of emotional healing resolution through Sunan therapy. Connect with Jana at www.facebook.com/thehealingcircle.
Jana L. Simons’ resume looks like it belongs to several people. She changed industries and fields numerous times until she found her true calling, teaching soul-sense development and a unique form of energy healing known as Sunan therapy. She also coauthored with Candace an exploration of emotional healing resolution through Sunan therapy. Connect with Jana at www.facebook.com/thehealingcircle.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Ever watch The Changling? There's a corker of a scene in this movie. A medium ostensibly in a trance state supposedly does automatic writing. Thunder booms; the wind howls; the shutters bang open and shut; the lights flicker on and off; a huge chandelier swings ominously above the woman and other participants in the event. It's meant to be dramatic, but the effect is laughable. It's just a lot of hoopla and weird goings-on. Right now readers may be wondering, What does this scene have to do with the afterlife healing circle? It's about a séance!
Our answer is nothing — and yet a lot. The big-screen drama has precious little to do with what actually happens during the afterlife healing circle as we practice it, or with any of the legitimate reasons for conducting one in the first place. But whether we like it or not, our use of the afterlife healing circle has been known more commonly as the séance, even if the two are as different as day and night.
We wrote this book to explain how and why our version of the afterlife healing circle is a powerful grassroots spiritual tool and nothing at all like the séance, its much-better-known stepsibling. In the next chapter we will look briefly at how the circle has been associated with healing and the sacred, from ancient times to the present and in multiple societies across the world. We are not new in using the circle as a healing tool, but we are advocating an approach that brings all of self to the circle and thus makes a type of communication possible in ways not generally associated with the more prevalent uses of the healing circle.
To succeed, we must shatter the séance stereotype that was born out of ignorance and prejudice against the emotional and spiritual (intuitive) parts of self. Derided by some, proscribed by others, the séance is, tragically, degenerate fodder for side shows. One such spectacle was witnessed in Las Vegas a number of years ago by paranormal author and lecturer Ken Hudnall. Ken, a prolific author who hosts an online radio program called The Ken Hudnall Show, was in Sin City doing a ghost tour that ended with a séance. He was suspicious from the outset because he was not allowed to inspect the room prior to the event. To up the drama factor, the stagers included elements of Voodoo and Santeria among the séance rituals with which Ken is very familiar. There were chicken bones in motion, a tambourine playing, and objects on the table that appeared to be moving by themselves.
"It's easy to spot collusion," Ken says, "because usually somebody in the audience is a shill." But on this occasion, he could not figure it out, and remains puzzled to this day.
"At the end of the séance," he explains, "the lights go out, the medium begins to scream, there's a big bang, and the girl beside me jumps into my lap," Ken recalls. "When the lights come on, I'm holding the girl and the medium has vanished. Everybody was absolutely fascinated, and I'm looking for the trick."
Trickery and the séance have gone hand in hand too often, such as a séance in Grosse Point Farms, Michigan, in the 1940s that was intended to be sham. Two college students who were amateur magicians and known locally as séance debunkers received $100 to stage a fake séance in an affluent woman's home. On the appointed night, the event appeared to go off without a hitch. There were eerie sounds, and a likeness of the dead husband of one of the guests appeared out of a mist to answer her questions.
Afterward, the student who led the séance wandered into the kitchen and found his partner pounding on the back door. This second student, who was to work the apparatus to generate the special effects, had been locked outside throughout the entire evening and had been unable to play his backstage role. Unnerving, isn't it? Especially for those who are convinced the whole séance proposition (and, by extension, the afterlife healing circle) is always phony.
Those students' experience in the bizarre has been shared by countless others. People often dabble in the séance as a casual pastime with no more apparent significance or meaning than a game. It begins as a lark or a joke to alleviate boredom, to enliven a party gone flat, or to satisfy idle curiosity by seeing if something or someone really is "out there." This casual approach is begging for problems if not downright disaster. Unaware of what they're really getting into, many people make well-meaning attempts at spirit communication. They try table tipping or Ouija boards, which may be sold as games but are not toys. A young woman we'll call Tammy Jenkins found this out the hard way.
Scared and bewildered, Tammy, who declined to provide her full name, phoned us one day, desperate for reassurance. She also wanted an explanation for the chilling and bizarre event she had just experienced. She and a friend had decided to use a Ouija board to contact her late grandfather. Things went fine at first. The pointer, moving under their hands, spelled out the nickname her grandfather had always called her.
Then it stopped. Something changed. The pointer moved again but haphazardly, as though whoever or whatever was propelling it didn't recognize Tammy or her friend. It tried to spell out a word that appeared to be "help," then spun around and around in wild circles. At that instant both young women experienced a nasty feeling in their stomachs. Their eyes blurred, and Tammy recalled actually dozing off for a brief period. After they ended the session, all the tapes on top of the VCR fell sideways and spilled onto the floor. No one was anywhere close to the tapes when they fell.
Tammy's unnerving tale of her experiences with a Ouija board incidents is by no means unusual. A visitor on the Yahoo.com Answers Website tells about dabbling with a Ouija board at a slumber party in the sixth grade. Immediately after the kids asked about the entity that responded to their summons, all of the faucets in the bathroom turned on. No one could have entered the bathroom without being noticed because it opened only to the bedroom. "It was pretty scary," the poster writes.
* * *
The séance is probably the most misunderstood and thus abused and debased of all spiritual practices. The very word immediately brings to mind what most of us consider the unreal and therefore absurd notion of "conjuring up spirits." The séance stereotype certainly was the foundation for that outrageous scene in The Changling, and a much more recent séance-related movie even has that word in the title: The Conjuring. Skeptics' view of the séance can be summed up by Brian Dunning, who writes the Skeptoid blog: "Contacting the dead has never passed any kind of controlled test, has no plausible theory, and is a fraud committed upon susceptible consumers," he asserts.
Members of some religious communities share the same attitude, although for different reasons. Texas resident Jeanne M. Perdue cited Ecclesiastes 9:5–6 in the Bible as her caution against contacting the dead: "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they no longer have any share in what is done under the sun."
The S-word also evokes a good deal of fear. "Trying to contact the departed through Ouija boards, séances, etc., is one of the most dangerous things anyone can do," warns Phyllis Sloan, PhD, an author and spiritual science minister based in Maryland. "It is playing Russian roulette trying to contact spirits. God does not like it and the punishment is severe." We all have our own understanding about what God does or does not like or allow. And we, the authors, would argue that negative events are more about experiencing the consequences of our beliefs and actions than about divine punishment. We agree, however, that there certainly has been a great deal of fraud involving séances in recent decades, if not centuries. We also are well-aware of the potential for hazards. The good news is these dangers can be avoided, and one reason this book exists is to teach readers how to do just that.
Here's the bottom line: The afterlife healing circle is simply one means by which those in physical bodies may communicate with those who are not — meaning those who are on the other side. It makes no difference whether those who do not have physical bodies are considered dead or not yet born. We use what we call the afterlife healing circle to experience the reality of being (life) as a continuum — after physical death and before physical birth.
Personal experience then enables us to decide for ourselves, rather than take someone else's word for it, what we believe about the possibility of multiple lives and what transpires before birth and after death. We need to experience this for ourselves because that is the most engaging and compelling way we learn and grow. A Chinese proverb sums this up best. It states, "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand." Only direct personal experience enables us to even begin to comprehend a subject that seems at first unfathomable or bizarre.
Conducted correctly, our version of the afterlife healing circle is one of the most powerful spiritual and emotional experiences available to anyone in a group setting. Moreover, learning to conduct the afterlife healing circle and participating in it is grassroots spirituality at its purest, under the direction of those involved, acting as their own connections to spirit and not relying on intermediaries' interpretations or dogmas. Knowing for ourselves more about what happens after the physical body dies, or before it is born, is empowering and freeing in ways too numerous to count or even understand without having had the actual experience.
* * *
So, if conducting a séance can and does lead to trouble, why do it at all, even under a different label? That's a valid and pertinent question. Indeed, Phyllis Sloane, the minister and author who states she is also a psychic and clairvoyant, advises that the best route is simply to pray for information from God about those not in physical bodies. "Spirits at this plane are evil," she says, "and they impersonate those who may be heroes of those who hear them. I have been in this field as well as psychotherapy for over 40 years and I cannot tell you how many people have run into serious trouble with contacting spirits. Some have never recovered. They become what medicine calls schizophrenic."
We respect her concerns because they are valid. We certainly agree that prayer is beneficial, which is why we do it daily in our own ways. But we have been conducting and taking part in our version of the afterlife healing circle for decades with no adverse effects for ourselves or those who also participate. The properly conducted afterlife healing circle involves no danger, as this book will explain and demonstrate.
Moreover, we often need resolution that we cannot find or obtain through more conventional means, such as prayer, meditation, or counseling. In Chapter 3, we will introduce you to a woman we refer to as Clara Jones to maintain her privacy. For 20 years she tried both psychiatry and psychotherapy. They were very helpful for her but, in the end, both were simply too limited in approach or understanding to address the one issue that was still eating away at her. After all of her treatment and hard work on self, she still yearned for emotional and spiritual resolution with her dead mother.
This longing is universal. Astrid Stromberg, PhD, says callers to her Brilliant Essence radio show who mention departed loved ones invariably have unresolved issues concerning their deaths. "Usually people start out by saying, 'Are they okay?'" explains Stromberg, an inspirational speaker. "But what they really want to say is, 'Do they still feel my love? Do they still feel the connection? Do they still see me live? Do they still know how I feel? Do they know how their experience of them dying was felt by me and the ones who lost them?'"
In other words, when someone we love and care about dies, we experience a profound and painful disconnection and loss, and we cannot help but long to reverse it or at least alleviate it. The problem, for Clara and many others, is that traditional psychotherapy provides little to no help in relieving grief, and unresolved grief can cause significant mental and emotional distress.
A similar emotional and spiritual crisis can result from an unwanted or poorly timed pregnancy. That was the issue of another woman we will tell you about named Debra Wilde (a pseudonym to protect her privacy). She needed emotional and spiritual support to resolve her fear and self-doubt. Parents-to-be Marc and Rondi H. (their last name abbreviated for privacy) also required something that no doctor or pregnancy counselor, however expert and well-intentioned, could give them. They needed to feel reassured and confident in their hearts and souls, not just know in their heads, that the pregnancy and birth were going to be fine.
Part of the issue is simply that traditional psychotherapy, grounded in behavioral and cognitive sciences, is too limited to admit the possibility of life beyond the physical, whether it's after death or before birth. Science speaks to and satisfies the mental part of our being, but offers nothing to fill or even acknowledge the very different needs of the emotional and spiritual parts of self. This half of self knows and senses that the physical is not the only reality, and its legitimate needs deserve as much respect and support as the mental part's interest in science.
The afterlife healing circle speaks to all of self, not just one or two parts. Briana Henderson Saussy is an intuitive counselor and teacher who helps clients access their ancestors and ancestral knowing. Very familiar with circles, she says, "A circle gives you a safe place where you can feel your pain, you can feel your disorientation, you can feel your grief, and it's grounded and protected so you can feel these things and not be devoured by them, not be incapacitated by them."
Precisely. Within the circle it is safe to vent one's grief and anguish, surrounded by loving support. But beyond providing a safe place in which to express pain, the circle as we practice it can help launch or accelerate healing, too. Healing, which we will define in greater detail in Chapter 2, is the purpose of the circle. It heals, in part, by providing uniquely personal answers to those questions that Astrid outlines. This approach also heals by respecting and then restoring or establishing an emotional and spiritual connection to the beloved departed or the not yet born.
The afterlife healing circle cannot, however, substitute for a deeper exploration of unresolved matters between the living and souls on the other side (the dead and the not yet born). This is one of the afterlife healing circle's limitations. It is not the same as therapy, and therefore is not an appropriate place to explore very sensitive issues, such as sexual abuse, that are best addressed in a private setting with either a traditional or alternative therapist or counselor. Nor can the afterlife healing circle function as an experiment or provide objective proof of anything. It offers only an entirely subjective experience and should be employed and regarded as such. There is nothing dangerous or negative about subjectivity, provided we do not insist that our subjective experiences determine the reality or lives of others.
The power of the afterlife healing circle is directly related to the presence of love, the most subjective factor of all. Love helps heal a lot of the pain caused by the separation that we call death, and eases the soul's entry into the physical body that we refer to as birth.
* * *
The desire for resolution is sometimes so strong that, if unfulfilled, it can lead to serious consequences. One such consequence is poltergeist phenomena. A poltergeist is thought to be present when objects, some of which can be alarmingly big and heavy, move, fall, and even become airborne of their own volition. Parapsychologists and other researchers have conducted extensive studies of poltergeist events. They have found one element common to the majority of these instances: the presence of a female, usually a girl in her pre-teens or teens, or sometimes a young woman in her 20s. Researchers have noted the female's presence without any true understanding of its connection to the phenomena of self-propelled objects.
We believe the poltergeist is misunderstood. In our opinion, a poltergeist is most often not a separate soul or entity tossing objects about at random. Rather, the poltergeist effect is rooted in the suppression and denial of anger, one of the strongest of all emotions. And what has always been the most unacceptable emotion for a girl or woman to display in societies all around the globe? Anger, of course.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Afterlife Healing Circle"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Candace L. Talmadge and Jana L. Simons.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.