Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

(A portion of this interview appeared in the September/October 2008 edition of New Visions Magazine.)
Thomas Moore, life-experience virtuoso, looks back and sees the common thread of his life work in his experiences as Servite, composer, musician, college professor, psychotherapist, and now a writer and speaker. Many people have reported that his books have given them a sense of relief, satisfaction and less stress about life and their place in it. He develops “a very careful, precise approach to things from a deep level” and teaches us how to include and nurture “soul” in every aspect of our lives. Author of seven audio works and 15 books, including the bestselling book Care of the Soul, you can find his music on CD and videos and writings on his website, www.CareOfTheSoul.net. His most recent book is A Live at Work.

Dawn: So if you don’t do your life’s calling right away it doesn’t go away?
Thomas: No, not at all. It’s something, this is the thing about this idea of soul that I write about, it’s not something that comes and goes, the idea of having a life work. Usually it’s something that’s in a person’s mind their whole life long. They might even start as a child thinking this is what I want to be when I grow up and most of the time it changes as you have different experiences. But most often, there is a seed there that remains the same. An example would be my own example, where I left home at 13 to be a Catholic priest. I thought that’s what I wanted to do and at a certain point, after putting 13 years into that, it certainly was what I thought was a life’s work, I left it. And yet I’m spending the rest of my life reading about the soul and speaking in churches. I’m doing the work that I was intending to do but it’s not exactly the same.

Dawn: If someone hears a calling early in life but they don’t respond to it, it doesn’t go away?
Thomas: No, it doesn’t go away. I think most people will say that. This kind of thing, the matters of soul, stay. They’re not bound by time, and they don’t just disappear. There is a situation, which is very common, where people start out early in life with a sense of a life work and they never go back to it. It’s not really that they’ve totally forgotten about it, but they’ve gotten caught up perhaps, in making a living. In the book I have a chapter called, Life in a Tower. I talk about how people often get stuck in a good job. It may seem like a good thing but in fact it imprisons them and keeps them from going back to their calling. It’s true that a lot of people maybe have neglected their life work but with a little bit of nudging they remember. I don’t mean they always go back to it, because a lot of people don’t, but they’d be happier if they did.

Dawn: What do you think of the current educational system?
Thomas: Not much.
Dawn: Well, you’re home schooling your daughter, so that says a lot right there.
Thomas: Well, it does say something, yes. My kids grew up in a Waldorf School. They went to a Waldorf School all the way through so all along I’ve been very interested in education. The thing about contemporary public education, and of course much private education, that I object to is that it’s seen as training for a job. Here we run into that same issue: a job versus a life work. I would think that an educated person is someone who understands something about the world, about their place in community and gets initiated into culture, the closest culture where it might be; learning about history and really learning it and arts and how to be with people and nature, a full education. Today we do training, we don’t really educate. So we get nervous when a child can’t use a computer. We’re not so worried whether they can be married or raise children or be responsible and intelligent participant in society. That was an old Greek idea. The ancient Greeks thought that was the heart of education: was to educate people so that when they got older they could really make a contribution to society. We don’t seem to see that. We think it’s more important that our kids develop a skill so that they can make a good living at it and have a certain level of income. I think that’s really a sad situation and leads to all kinds of problems. Testing is the big thing, and you can’t test for a real education.

Dawn: Do you think that the Waldorf School is the best option for educating our children?
Thomas: No, I don’t. I wouldn’t say that. It’s an option.
Dawn: That’s where my daughter is too.
Thomas: Oh, is she?
Dawn: Yes, she is.
Thomas: We are very happy that our children went to Waldorf School. They like it. As so many parents have expressed we didn’t really buy in 100% to the theory but that didn’t make any difference. It was the style of teaching that was important to us. Our children now say that they want their children to go to the same school. They loved it and her teacher has become a very close family friend, one of our closest friends, and that just will last forever, we think. I think as an alternative at this point, if you can swing it, if you can do it, it’s really probably the better thing to do.

Dawn: Besides not labeling our children that they’re a “little dancer”, “little lawyer”, “little healer”, “little writer”, “little actor”, what are the most important things parents can do to help them so they can find their life’s work when the time comes?
Thomas: There are several things. I could think about what I kept in mind for myself, for my own family. One thing is to keep an eye out and see what your children are by nature. My philosophy, based on this idea of soul, is that a person doesn’t come into the world blank and then just sort of finds his way or her way into some job or life position. They come with talents and with individual character and personalities. So you watch that, first of all and allow it to flower. So you support it. Now that I’m home schooling my daughter, frequently she’ll say to me, “What should I do? Now should I write a paper on this? Should I go travel and see this?” I always say to her, “You choose. It’s your choice. Do what you want to do.” and I try to encourage that individuality rather than say, “I think I know what this person should be or do.” I think that’s the most important thing. Then you’re giving your child opportunities. One of the things I did, I’m a musician, and like many musicians you hope that your kids will learn to read music at three-years-old, be accomplished at seven and wanting to listen to Bach every morning. It just isn’t that way. So one of the things I did early on, when the kids were only two- and three-years-old, I put instruments in the house. I had all kinds of instruments and just let them pick them up when they wanted to, when they were interested. And if they took lessons in a particular instrument and then they abandoned it after a year that was fine as far as I was concerned because they have to find their way. Finding your way involves, not failing so much but just trying something out, experimenting, I guess is the word. You have to experiment and I think a lot of people feel guilty about that: that they failed somehow. That they should continue in some particular area. A lot of older people feel that because they’ve been in a job for ten years or 20 years that they can’t move out of it, they don’t have the freedom to move. So what I wanted to do with our kids was give them the sense that they can choose at any time, they can stop something without any guilt and move ahead.

Dawn: That’s great. What instrument do you play?
Thomas: Well, I play piano but I studied composition when I was in college.
Dawn: Oh! My husband plays piano.
Thomas: Oh, really?
Dawn: And he’s a composer.
Thomas: Is that right? That’s amazing.
Dawn: Yes, so he has some of the same things as you.
Thomas: We have a lot in common.
Dawn: When our daughter started playing recorder in first grade, then she went to the piano.
Thomas: Right.
Dawn: And she started to pick-out Hot Cross Buns. He was thrilled.

Dawn: So, what’s the best role education can play for our children, just supporting their own interests?
Thomas: Some of the things education does already: teaching the basics, history, nature, science and the arts. I think our values about what kids should learn are pretty much upside down: the first thing that goes in our public schools is the arts or sometimes sports. I think sports and arts are really important. Plato said that the arts are important to keep us soft, sensitive and aware and sports are important for keeping us tough and I think that still probably holds: that we have to be strong and we have to be sensitive. I’m not saying the arts and sports only do that but at least there is a long tradition about the importance of these two things in the educational process. So I think we have a lopsided emphasis on science. That’s a kind of residue of the 20th century which was the century of science. I don’t think the 21st century is going to be the century of science. I think it’s going to be very different, a very different culture. We’re making a difficult move into new values and I think our education is going to follow and I don’t think we’re going to have that same anxiety about science.

Dawn: Let me make sure I understand this concept: if our children are expressing different talents or interests that they have, the best thing that we can do is to give them the tools and the opportunity to explore them further as far as they want to explore them.
Thomas: Yes, perfect.

Dawn: That’s great! I got it right.
Thomas: I wish I could have said it that way.

(We shared a laugh here.)

Dawn: I’m fortunate in that everything I’ve done up to this point in my life, has really supported what I’m doing now, what I’m moving forward to. I know everyone’s not that fortunate so how important is it for people to begin with the end in mind? I guess they can really only do that though if they know what their calling is.
Thomas: I don’t think everyone knows what their calling is. In fact, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you can really pin down, know and define. Often it’s rather vague. I don’t think I can say what my calling is. It’s there, you know that it’s there; you know when you’re following it and when you aren’t. This is this daimonic aspect of calling. I wrote about the daimon. It means that there’s something about calling that’s more like a call, a voice and you listen to it but you don’t know exactly what it wants of you. In a certain sense you may feel called to certain things at different times of you life and only toward the end do you see a common thread or you see where you’ve been heading. That’s an interesting and mysterious aspect of calling. I think in any one moment you may not be able to say, “This is what I’m called to do,” but you can say that you’re on track or you’re not. A lot of people feel that they’re not. I just finished a book tour where I talked to an awful lot of people all around the United States about this theme and one of the common issues that came up, people said, was that they don’t know what they’re called to do and they’re frustrated because they wished they knew. They know their not doing what really fulfills them but they don’t know what that is, what it would be that would make them feel fulfilled. When I hear that, the first thing I think of is that, probably in general, a person like that is not very close to themselves, they probably don’t pay much attention to what their heart desires, what their heart wants. I think this is a problem of our society: we live so externally. We judge everything by external standards and we don’t have habits of paying attention to our inner emotions so we’re not used to being guided by what’s inside of us. We’re usually guided by what’s outside of us. I think that’s one of the huge problems we have in finding our life work is that it requires, not a withdrawal from life, but both being in the world and also paying close attention to yourself.

Dawn: Right, that makes sense. So you traveled around and talked to a lot of people who read your book?
Thomas: Yes.
Dawn: What was the most amazing transformation that you heard about or saw?
Thomas: It’s a little difficult for me to think of suddenly. Let me just say something about that and maybe it will come back to me. I did talk to a lot of people, 20-25 people, who had stories of being in a profession that just wasn’t right for them. Feeling secure because they were making a decent living at it but knowing strongly enough that it wasn’t right so they took the leap, quit the job and did what they really wanted to do. Usually it was a job in some corporation that gave them a fairly decent salary, shifting to something they had to do on their own, with a great deal of financial insecurity but they felt perfectly fine for having made that leap. I can’t think of a really strong example right now, but that’s generally what was going on.

Dawn: When people do read your book has anyone reported that they found a sense of relief or satisfaction or less stress?
Thomas: People say that about all my books. One of the things that they say that’s very positive is that they feel like they were given permission to go ahead and do what they really felt they need and want to do. I talk to them when I give talks in bookstores and other places. I talk to them about the importance of desire. To find out what desires are really deep and require attention: otherwise you’d feel depressed for not following it through. People do feel assured and given permission and accepted for who they are, from the books, that’s for sure. Now one of the things that I can just tell you, it’s not important but very often people tell me they really appreciate my musings in the books and I hate to hear that. I feel like I’m really trying to develop a very careful, precise approach to things from a deep level and a lot of people take it as musings: just sitting around musing about things. So that’s not very pleasing to me. I hear that too. But I think the important thing is that people do feel that they’ve got permission to really move more passionately into their lives.

Dawn: How do you think the planet, our society and how we raise our children would change if everyone were following their calling?
Thomas: It would change quite radically. I think there would be less depression. People talk today about depression and they see it as just a purely physical thing, chemical reaction. I don’t think that’s true. I think our culture breeds depression, partly because we don’t encourage people to live out their callings. So I think there would be less depression, more joy, less acting out in addiction. I think in that way there would be a lot of benefits from it. It also would also force society away from this industrial model where you treat workers as though they were indentured to you, in service, rather than as employees, as people with a calling. I think another cause of depression and many other problems is that work is so dehumanizing still and people are not treated well. A lot of people hate going to work. I heard that over and over again when I was traveling. I’d say the great majority of people I talked to said that they hate going to work for one reason or another but most often because of the way they’re treated. That’s really a bad scene and I think if people were doing what they wanted to do they probably wouldn’t tolerate that kind of thing.

Dawn: How do you feel your life’s work has changed the consciousness of humanity?
Thomas: I’ve been one of these people to kind of move. I read the signs all the time and just move along. I started out, as I said, wanting to be a priest and when I woke up one day with no good external reason against it or to quit that or to end it, but with a strong inner feeling that it was over, I immediately got out and then I had to fish around for a while. I thought maybe I’d be a musician but realized that wasn’t quite right for me. Here’s an interesting thing, while we’re talking about that, there are certainly regrets, I think. I think very often when you make a life decision, like mine not to be a musician; I don’t regret it exactly but I wonder. Sometimes I wish I would have gone in that direction because it gives me so much pleasure. But you make your choices and they’re not always clear and you may wonder about them your whole life which is fine. That kind of reflection, that kind of remorse is really good, I think, for a person. I finally ended up getting a Ph.D. in religion, which was a wonderful thing for me. I loved it. I thought I’d teach that in college the rest of my life. I thought at that point my life work was so clear and I taught for 7 or 8 years and they fired me because they didn’t like the way I was teaching and writing. It was because I just couldn’t follow that strict academic style, it just wasn’t me. I was left without knowing exactly what to do but people were asking me if I would counsel them, if I would be a therapist for them so I did that for 20 years and then I wrote a book that a lot of people read and I was able to make a living writing, which is wonderful. So that’s what’s happening at the moment but my father’s 95 and he’s still working at a job, a new job, very different from what he’s ever done in his life. So I’m not saying this is the end of it.

Dawn (Miro’s question): Do you think that you or he would ever retire? What do you think of the concept of retirement?
Thomas: Retirement makes sense to me, for a lot of people, but it can mean many different things. I think today retirement is different from what it used to be. I think a lot of people retire formerly early. A lot of times it’s a financial decision because to be in retirement officially has financial repercussions so sometimes people do it but they have no intention of not working anymore, not being a worker of some kind. I think it’s different these days. Now my father, to use him as an example, he was a plumbing instructor all his life and he retired quite early at 62. He wasn’t really ready for it but he was kind of forced to retire. He was of another era and he saw retirement as “you just don’t do a job anymore”. But he’s been so busy. My mother died a few years ago and during that process he saw what was going on in the hospital so he decided to look for a job in the hospital. At 90 he took a position in the hospital, caring mainly for patients with dementia because he was able to deal with people like that, he has a talent for it. Even today, he’s 95, he works two days a week at the job. So he sees it as his new career. Even though I said his idea of retirement was different at the beginning, he had other things to do and he was open to seeing something to do. I don’t think he sees it this as a new career. It’s something he wants to do: he wants to be busy in his life. I think there is a place for retirement but it doesn’t have to mean that you don’t work anymore or that your quest toward a life work is over.

Dawn: I heard a statistic that says that within a few years of retiring, a lot of people die.
Thomas: Yes, well, people do see retirement as death, that life is over or that now you sort of glide toward the end. If people want to do that they can do that but I don’t think it’s a very constructive way of looking at retirement. Maybe we have a bad word. Maybe one day we’ll find another word for it. “Retire” sounds like it’s over. We might mean something else like, I don’t know what we’d call it. I have to think about that, maybe some other language for it. In some cultures, in India for example, I’ve heard from my Indian friends, they say that part of the philosophy that people are brought up in is that the older you get the more you should change the structure of your life to adjust to old age. Part of that is to understand that you can now give something to the people who are younger. It’s your job; it’s your position now to make a contribution to people, to give them the benefit of your experience: the things that you’ve learned. I think that’s a much more constructive way of having a philosophy of retirement. It would be something that you might even look forward to. Then you’d know that you have a position in society, something to do. It wouldn’t be specific, saying that you should move into a certain kind of job but that’s again looking at life work as a job. But it would be an attitude and philosophy that could lead to many things that would be more constructive.

Dawn: That’s one of the things Neale Donald Walsch talks about in Conversations with God. He says that people who are 55-60 and older actually have wisdom that they can teach to the younger generations and that’s really what they should be doing.
Thomas: Yes, that’s what I mean. It doesn’t mean that you have to be smart or the wise person but it means that you have something to do with your life. You can make a contribution but, of course, it has to work both ways. Like my father, having been a plumbing instructor, he loves to talk about plumbing and how water is purified and how we deal with our water. Even now he tells me, he’s gone to schools for the past 30 years to share about plumbing. (the tape recorder switched to the other side at this point and I missed some of what he said) …environment you give something back to people that you know it. So for him it is plumbing. It doesn’t have to be “how to live your life”. It doesn’t have to be spiritual wisdom, it can be plumbing. But nobody has allowed him to come in, nobody has accepted his invitation. They don’t have time. It doesn’t fit their schedule, ever. I think that’s a sad situation.

Dawn: Whoa, I’d make it fit.
Thomas: Well, yes. It’s not just that it would be great; kids would enjoy hearing someone talk about that subject but they would have that personal experience of being with an older person and learning from their experience. Just being with someone like that could give them a lot.

Dawn: Right. So what gives you the most joy in life?
Thomas: Well that’s really hard to say. I think one of the things that comes to mind is, I love my work, for one thing. I really love my work. I hate to have to have a day where I can’t work. I don’t like holidays very much. Part of it is that I’m able, now, to work at home. I’m with my family. I can teach my daughter in the mornings now. I’m connected to the family. My wife also works at home. She’s a painter and she has a studio here. I guess that’s the really the best thing.

Dawn: You love your life.
Thomas: Yes.
Dawn: That is awesome!

(We laughed together.)

Dawn: Well, Thomas, this has been lovely. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.
Thomas: Good. I’ve enjoyed it too Dawn.
Dawn: Oh, good. Thank you.

This original interview was first published in the September/October 2007 issue of New Visions Magazine.
About MaryRose Occhino
Mary Occhino, psychic medium, author of Beyond These Four Walls: Diary of a Psychic Medium and The Sign of the Dove, has a weekly call-in radio show on Sirius Stars 102 and joins Deepak Chopra’s Saturday morning wellness show on the same channel. Her new book, Awaken Instincts, takes her out of the psychic medium “box” by offering seven keys for enhancing every aspect of your life.

DAWN: What is an Intuitive Consciousness Explorer?
MARY O: I don’t just see people who cross over. I see consciousness. My brain, or my consciousness explores the consciousness of others. What I do is read the Akashic field or the Akashic records.

DAWN: How accurate are your predictions?
MARY O: My average is 85 to 90%. That’s not by me, that’s [measured] by Dr. Schwartz [The G.O.D. Experiments]. What I usually tell a person is, “Alright, if you don’t listen, not just to me but to your guides, and don’t do this, this is what’s going to happen.” I can give them both outcomes.

DAWN: Are you ever surprised by what you hear, see or feel?
MARY O: All the time. People sometimes say to me, “Mary, is that your opinion you’re telling me or is that my guide?” I don’t say in my head, “Alright, guide, come and guide me. Alright guide, come and tell me.” We’re not supposed to do that, unless we’re trying to connect with someone who’s crossed over. That’s what I feel. And then I’ll say to them, in my head, “Come to me, tell me, tell me more about you.” I believe we have so many guides that you’re limiting yourself to think that it’s just one person. Different guides come for different issues. I can get their names if I have to concentrate on it, but I feel like it’s a waste of time, really. Think about Helen Keller, this is what I try to explain to people; Helen Keller couldn’t see, speak or hear. But yet she knew who her mother was. She didn’t have to know her mother’s name. She didn’t have to know that mommy was called, “Mommy”, she knew, she sensed it. That’s how I feel. I think we should utilize our instincts as though we were all Helen Keller and not worry about what our mother’s names are because our guides will always be there like our mothers are. Our guides hear us telepathically and they come.

DAWN: Do you have any advice for parents who have children who exhibit psychic abilities or report seeing disembodied people?
MARY O: I would tell them to speak to their children telepathically all the time. The Indigo child book definition is that they’re late speakers but yet they understand everything. They’re late walkers but once they walk, they start running. My mother did it with us, she did it with my children and I’m trying to do it with my grandchildren now too. I believe telepathy is a natural instinct.

In a beautiful, natural setting far from the hustle and bustle of the world, Mariah Fenton Gladis lives and works helping others heal through Gestalt therapy as she continues her own growth and evolution. Living for 25 years with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as "Lou Gehrig’s disease,” she has beat the odds and inspired others who have been diagnosed with this life-threatening illness. Although everyone’s mission on this planet is different, and most people don’t live more than two years with ALS, Mariah has carved out a life for herself as a Gestalt practitioner, teacher, wife and mother, feeling blessed for each day she has. Sitting within view of the three busts she made of her family, and with the help of her husband Ron, we had a nice visit to learn more about this remarkable woman.

Dawn – You’re considered a “medical miracle”. To what do you attribute your amazing resilience and fortitude?
Mariah – I have a very comprehensive self-care regiment and all the love in my life. My husband, Ron, is the hero in this story.

Dawn – It seems to me that you have really had the support you needed to bring you to this place where you are. Obviously you have a mission that you’re determined to live, no matter what.
Mariah – And the responsibility.

Dawn – What were your beliefs about Life and the Universe before your diagnosis?
Mariah – That life was bountiful, and full of possibilities with mountains to climb. I’m living the life that I really enjoy.

Dawn – You have been living with ALS for a long time now. How has it enriched your life?
Mariah – It has made me a more stable person: I literally can’t run away from anything, I have to sit through it. It’s increased my compassion.

Dawn – Does the world look different to you now?
Mariah – I know that each person has their own tragedies, and it’s very important for individuals and the world at large to look at one another with compassion and forgiveness and a real interest and an appreciation for differences. It’s really the only hope.

Dawn – Do you see your work helping that become a reality?
Mariah – That’s my mission.

Dawn – Do you ever seen yourself overcoming this illness and returning to complete wellness?
Mariah – I am well. I already feel well. I am inconvenienced by this but I am healthy. My blood work is perfectly normal and the doctors can’t believe it. One day I hope for a cure but on the other hand I’m okay.

Dawn – Once you accepted that you had this illness what decisions did you make as far as your experience of it and how you wanted it to be different from the experience others with the same illness had?
Mariah – I knew that I could die; I could will myself to die. I believed all the predictions but I never really considered my own death. I always believed in the mind-body-spirit connection. I chose to focus right there. I was given a 10% chance to survive 2 years. That was 25 years ago.

Dawn – And that was 25 years ago?
Mariah – I avoided the people who gave me those predictions. I started taking supplements, changing my diet and doing acupuncture, massage therapy, exercise, meditation and Master Park helped me a lot. I stayed open and listened inside to what felt right to me.

Dawn – Are there other people who have ALS who have been inspired to live more full, more productive lives based on your example.
Mariah – I hope so. I have a very close friend Rita Cortally we only compare notes and usually we do the same thing and she’s alive 19 years. Coincidence or not? She’s not allowed to die and neither am I. I’m not allowed to die, in my heart.

Dawn – The doctors in your life now, have they turned around to see things from the perspective of possibilities for other people who have ALS?
Mariah – I think they notice how long I’m alive but they’re not curious about my regiment. That always surprises me. I had a very close friend, Doctor John Foster, who really helped me. Unfortunately he died three years ago.

Dawn – What type of advice can you give to others who have ALS?
Mariah – Believe in possibilities and don’t swallow the party line. Focus on your overall health and enhance your overall health. Build a strong foundation for healing and that includes a very loving inner life and a spiritual connection of some kind.

Dawn – What do you think has been the most important thing that has really helped you?
Mariah – Love: self-love and the love of Ron, my husband, and my sons Cole and other son’s name has been a driving force; my love for them, to stay alive and not hurt them, to never leave them by an early death. They are 24 and 22. They were conceived and born after my diagnosis. So I felt a heavy responsibility to stay around for them.

Dawn – Have you read any books since your diagnosis that inspired and helped you?
Mariah – Early on authors Bernie Siegel and Steven Levine were very helpful.

Dawn – Do you need extra support or when you teach people or have healing sessions?
Mariah – No, after one day they understand me. They are fluent in “Mariah”.

Dawn – You said that love is what has made the biggest difference for you. Would you also say that’s where your strength comes from?
Mariah – Yes. And that comes from a greater spiritual connection.

Dawn – Do you feel your spiritual connection is greater than it was 20 years ago?
Mariah – Absolutely.

Dawn – Do you feel there are other missions you have yet to accomplish?
Mariah – I have been writing a book for 15 years and it’s just now coming to completion and I have another one.

Dawn – What kind of an impact do you hope your book will make?
Mariah – I hope it will inspire, number one. Two, I hope it will teach skills for people who need them in their lives and relationships.

Dawn – The one that’s coming out now is about your life and work. What’s the next one about?
Mariah – Mostly ALS and my approach to healing: living with a life-threatening illness. It will be called, “Look Mom, No Hands!”

Dawn – I hope doctors will give it to their patients.
Mariah – That would be great. I know when newly diagnosed patients meet me they have more hope for themselves as has happened to us. We met someone who was alive for seven years when we were first diagnosed and that was a relief because we didn’t know of any body that lived past two.

Dawn – So it’s all in that mind/body connection and the spirit feeds the mind and the body and that has been a very key component for you as well. Do you feel that you are being supported by the spiritual realm to do what you are choosing to do?
Mariah – Absolutely and I want to very careful to say I also know that I’m not in charge of any of this and I’m very blessed that there are people out there who can still die within six months. I don’t want to say that I’m doing anything better than anyone else or that I have the answers, I don’t. I believe very strongly in the mind/body connection and I know some people who are doing it and not getting well. It can be very painful to hear success stories too. They wonder what they aren’t doing right. I certainly don’t want to do that to anyone. This is what has worked for me; it might not work for anyone else. There are people who have pursued a similar course and it still might be their time to go so they don’t survive. Ultimately none of us are in control. And at the same time I believe we have a lot of power. It’s the mystery where both are true.

Dawn – Where do you see your work going? How do you see it evolving?
Mariah – I hope my book makes an impact. I love working with a small number of people. I’m a regular part of their lives. I treasure that. I’d like it to ripple out further, as far as the ripple will go.

Dawn – What inspired you to be a Gestalt practitioner and teacher?
Mariah – When I first learned about it I found it was a modality where I could use my full creativity and originality and it was holistic, body/mind/spirit/heart. I knew right away I had found my place

Dawn – Was teaching others a natural extension of the joy you found from doing the Gestalt therapy?
Mariah – Yes, it gave me the proof I needed in my own life that I could make the changes that I secretly believed might not be possible. It renewed my faith in psychology and gave me faith that this was an affective process.

Dawn – Where did Gestalt originate?
Mariah – Germany. Gestalt therapy was introduced by Fritz Perls and although my style is a heart and soul based Gestalt, it’s not what the original Gestalt therapy was unfortunately it was much more confrontational so I have my own branch on the tree that’s heart and soul based.

Dawn – And you feel that’s more successful?
Mariah – I know it is.

Dawn – When you’re teaching Gestalt you’re teaching the heart and soul method. Students also learn how to draw out their own natural strengths as a practitioner themselves. So, when you’re teaching other people to be Gestalt practitioners you’re not just teaching them the techniques, you’re teaching them to find their own selves and bring it out in them?
Mariah – Perfectly said.

Dawn – What makes a really good Gestalt practitioner?
Mariah – A loving heart, a wealth of experience and someone who has done their own inner-work. Their level of master of their own health, that’s really important. It takes a long time. I made a lot of mistakes early on. That’s how we grow and evolve. It takes a long time.

Dawn – What inspired you to start the Gestalt Center in 1973?
Mariah – Other people wanted to learn from me. There wasn’t anyone else in the area that was really doing it. I probably began teaching too young but I was it at the time.

Dawn – Had you ever considered any other career paths?
Mariah – I started out in fashion design but there wasn’t enough meaning in it for me. I went back to school and learned Gestalt therapy.

Dawn – Is your work still evolving and do you see any particular pattern to that?
Mariah – Yes, as I grow it grows.

Dawn – What was the most amazing healing you have ever seen in your Gestalt practice?
Mariah – On a physical level there was a woman who was legally blind. As she cleared her emotional wounds her eyesight returned. She was able to drive again.

Dawn – So what do you want to do after this life?
Mariah – Well, my ideal would be, if I had the ability to help people who are still here. I hope, in the next realm, that I’ll have the ability to provide.

Dawn – How successful do you feel your life has been?
Mariah – Very, most important is my marriage and my children and then my work and being able to live a healthy life.

Dawn – What is the most important part of your day?
Mariah – It would have to be in the morning when I set an intention for my day and/or when I contribute in some meaningful way.

Dawn – In what ways do you like to contribute during the day?
Mariah – Noticing people and supporting them in some way.

Dawn – What fulfills you the most in your life?
Mariah – Love and work.

Dawn – What do you see as your greatest accomplishment?
Mariah – My children.
Ron – You have to understand, she had been given a death sentence in July. We got married in October. She got pregnant on our wedding night and then went on to have two children, which, in the neurological community was not the right thing to do. So that’s the drive. That’s why those children are so important because they validate her life, in a way.

Dawn – They prove that you really are healthy.
Mariah – That’s right. They are such a gift to us and to the world.
Ron – The circumstances under which they were born is just an interesting one, for us. We are so blessed in that regard because we went forward to do that.
Mariah – Looking back I don’t know how we had the courage, it was blind faith, Sacred Denial.

Dawn – You feel the journey that you have taken has made your children even stronger?
Mariah – Oh, yes. They have been amazing, so loving to me, accepting and helpful… and normal.

Dawn – Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do that you haven’t done yet?
Mariah – I’d like to go on a hot air balloon ride. I love to travel; there are a lot of places I haven’t seen yet. I have an image of taking newly diagnosed ALS patients on an empowerment workshop down the Colorado River.

Dawn – What do you see for the future of the planet and our species?
Mariah – I think we’re in a time right now of excruciating lessons. If we can only open our arms and hearts and if leaders can emerge who can inspire people to love and respect more. If leaders like that can emerge now there’s a possibility of more balance and harmony. I really hope that happens. I’m listening to the messages of politicians. If we can get more women in leadership around the world so there’s balance, it would really help things. I see possibilities.

Dawn – Do you work with other realms than just physical realms?
Mariah – No, I have enough to do right here. Certainly I pray a lot. I feel that healing comes through me, not from me. I don’t leave my body or anything like that. I’m a here and now, on the ground psychotherapist. I also reach outside myself for that healing energy and power.

Dawn – What would you like to leave as your legacy to humanity?
Mariah – When you’re lost, use your heart and soul as your compass.

Visit The Pennsylvania Gestalt Center‘s Website for events, classes and healing sessions

My interview with Deepak Chopra
I was thrilled when New Visions asked me to interview Deepak Chopra in 2007. One of the very first healing books I read was Perfect Health and I still do some of the exercises I learned in that book. We connected on the phone for a paradigm shifting 15 minutes and here are the results of the interview:

Intro
Deepak Chopra brought our awareness to the mind/body connection through the marriage of science and spirituality and continues to facilitate our evolution and ultimate enlightenment through his new book, Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment, and his many efforts to raise the consciousness of humanity through projects like the Alliance for a New Humanity. A gifted, insightful, and best-selling author, inspirational speaker, teacher, and storyteller, people all over the world have been uplifted and forever changed by his groundbreaking works. You can catch his Wellness Radio Show on Sirius Stars 102, visit the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, if you missed him live at the Mind Body Spirit Expo in October 2007.

Dawn Do you think we’re close to reaching critical mass in the desire for peace and a balanced life existence on this planet?
Deepak I’m not sure. I don’t know the answer to that question. I think with the technology that we have, information technology, and internet, and media, and newspapers, and television, and movies, and music, and entertainment, we have the capacity for sure. And one of my goals is to try and use this capacity. We’ve created a website for our foundation [Alliance for a New Humanity] called www.anhglobal.org and the goal of the website is to help accelerate that critical mass.

Dawn Many people believe earth is a focal point in the Universe at this time. Do you think there’s a grand plan for this planet and the people on it?
Deepak I would like to believe that, yes. I would like to believe that the Universe is becoming self-conscious through this planet, yes.

Dawn Your newest book is a fiction about Buddha. How important has Buddha been in your life?
Deepak I grew up with Buddha’s teachings and the stories, and the fiction element is only what happens in the mind. The rest is actually based on actual facts.

Dawn What did you most want to get across with Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment?
Deepak That the capacity for enlightenment exists in all of us.

DAWN This isn’t the first time you’ve employed the fiction format. Tell me how fiction and poetry can be powerful mediums for conveying spiritual principles and ideas.
Deepak Fiction and poetry are the only way to get to the soul on a personal level. You can never get to the soul through non-fiction. In fiction you reveal your innermost dreams, fantasies, longings, fears, demons, and everything that’s really important to you. You cannot do that in non-fiction. So, fiction and poetry are a raid (I don’t know what he meant or what words he actually said here.) on the inarticulate.

Dawn Tell me how your relationship with Siddhartha changed through writing this book?
Deepak My relationship with Siddhartha was always a very intuit relationship but I realized also that when Buddha conquered Mara, that was not an external demon, that was his own self.

Dawn Do you subscribe to the belief that humans used to have many more powers and abilities such as enlightened ones like The Buddha and Jesus?
Deepak I think a few humans did but the vast majority of humans have always been like they have been now, yes.

Dawn Do you think we have devolved?
Deepak I don’t, no. I think we are evolving, actually.

Dawn Do you believe enlightenment is our goal?
Deepak Yes, I believe enlightenment is the goal of every human being.

Dawn So how can we achieve that?
Deepak Through the practice of, what in India we call Yoga. The yoga of being, the yoga of love, the yoga of karma and the yoga of knowledge.

Dawn Your books Life After Death: The Burden of Proof and Power, Freedom and Grace seem to be linked. If the mind lives on after the body does that mean the mind is part of the soul or at least linked to it?
Deepak Yes, mind is an expression of the soul and the body is an expression of the soul and the mind as well, as is the world. So the first level of existence is consciousness which expresses itself as Universal Soul, then collective soul, than personal soul, then mind, then energy, and then body and then Universe.

Dawn So does the mind stay with the soul after death?
Deepak Unless one is in the state of unity consciousness the mind is always an individual aspect of the soul and has the seeds of memory, karma and desires.

Dawn I see that you have partnered with The Wild Divine Project for their most recent release: Wisdom Quest. What brought you to that project?
Deepak I just think that the Wild Divine people have the best, most amazing way of expressing subtle ideas and abstract notions. I’ve been working with them for a while.

Dawn You’ve covered many arenas in your career. What do you look for when you decide which project to take on next?
Deepak The only thing I really look for is that, will this help in our personal and also in the collective evolution of others.

Dawn Many skeptics started living a more spiritual life with your groundbreaking work into the link between science and spirituality. What made you realize there was a link?
Deepak I’m a scientist by training, and then of course I practice my own personal disciplines of meditation and going inward and I could see that science was looking for the same thing only it was looking outside and spirituality looks inside. But when you go far enough you end up in the same place.

Dawn Do you have an ultimate life goal or are your goals an evolutionary process that change with time?
Deepak They’re always an evolutionary process that change with time and also with what’s happening in ones’ life.

Dawn What is your greatest joy?
Deepak My greatest joy is creativity, maximum creativity.

Dawn You have known a lot of uplifting people over the years. Who made the most impact on you?
Deepak I think of all the great teachers, maybe Krishnamurti was the most important for me.

Dawn With your brilliant marriage of spirituality and science you’ve always been on the leading edge of evolving thoughts and ideas in our world. What’s on the horizon for humanity?
Deepak I think a quantum leap into the next stage of evolution would be what I would like to believe. You know that Rumi poem, “When I die I will soar with angels, when I die to the angels, what I shall become you cannot imagine.” So I think, awakening of dormant potential, insight, intuition, creativity, imagination, the power of intention, conscious choice making, and ultimately expressing that in the harmony of the Universe.

Dawn What’s on the horizon for you and your work?
Deepak I’m finishing a book called The Third Jesus, and then I’m doing The Missing Years of Christ. I’m also doing a book called Dr. Buddha: The Alleviation of Human Suffering which will be very practical, and something on feminine leadership, so I have lots of stuff going on.

Dawn How about your children?
Deepak My children are working with me on many projects. We have a media company and we work together producing documentaries, movies, comics, book comics.

Dawn Comics for adults or children?
Deepak They’re about superheroes drawn from mythology. You can check Virgin Comics and you’ll see them: mythical Devis and Devas and all that.

Dawn Are they from India or all different nations and cultures.
Deepak They are mostly from India right now.

Dawn Do you plan to expand out into others?
Deepak Yes, we are already. But the ones out there are mostly from India.

Read my reviews of:
Power, Freedom and Grace
Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

Brian Weiss
Dr. Brian Weiss’s discovery of regression therapy, chronicled in his best-selling book Many Lives, Many Masters, forever changed the face of his psychotherapy practice as well as the lives of his clients and readers. He’s a best-selling author, has written eight books, lectures internationally, is Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, continues to see clients in his Miami office and is the foremost authority in the nation on past life regression therapy. His work helps people achieve breakthroughs in their healing, spiritual and life journeys. His most recent book, Same Soul, Many Bodies, talks about life lessons, explains “progression therapy”, its benefits and how it helped many of his clients.

This interview
This is the complete one hour interview I did with Brian Weiss. An excerpt of this interview appeared in the September/October 2007 issue of New Visions Magazine.

Dawn In order to heal a particular issue or condition, does it matter if we regress or progress into a previous or future life that we actually lived or will live? Could it still be beneficial to travel to someone else’s past or future life and still heal ourselves through this method?
Brian It seems to be somewhat specific. When you have a symptom in a current life, it seems to have its roots in a past life and by remembering that past life or the incident that started the symptoms, there’s a clearing affect. This is similar to traditional psychotherapy when people remember traumatic or significant events from childhood or adolescence. The memory itself has a clearing affect on the symptoms and it seems like past life therapy is very similar to traditional therapy in that regard: that by remembering the causes, the symptom in the present time disappears. It also seems that the past life memories are perhaps more important in this than future memories and that’s a complicated subject in itself, the future, because there are multiple, possible futures and going into the future, which modern physics also describes now as a possibility, it seems to help people more with decisions than with symptoms. So, I would say that past life regression is a little bit more specific for curing symptoms and healing illnesses.

Dawn Do you feel past life regression and future life progression are essential to the complete healing of problems and challenges in this life?
Brian Not necessarily essential, for some people more than others, but certainly if somebody has blocks or obstacles to their inner peace or joy or they’re stuck in grief or they’re having symptoms or illnesses coming from other lifetimes, then certainly the resolution of those symptoms or illnesses, or the understanding that regressions or progressions can provide, is very useful and can be very helpful but it is not essential for everybody. Certainly we all have curiosity about what happens after we die, about life after death, are we being reunited with loved ones. But it’s not essential. I think that it’s helpful for everyone to have that enlarged perspective and some people who may not realize how helpful it could be, who think they’re coming to have their regression, perhaps for curiosity reasons, find out that it’s much more important than that. So while it’s important, and often very helpful, it’s not always required or essential.

Dawn What do you think of other healing methods? Are there any that compliment yours?
Brian I certainly use other healing methods in my work. I’m a physician, a psychiatrist and so I will still use traditional psychotherapy, when that is indicated. Sometimes along with regression therapy I’ll use medications if someone has what I see as a significant biological illness. But I use them in smaller amounts and for shorter periods of time because I just use them as an aid to help understanding so that these other therapies are more useful. Because, if someone, for example, is severely depressed they really have difficulty having a regression because the depression gets in the way. So if we can relieve the depression it allows the regression work to be much more affective. There are many other healing techniques: energy work, bio-energetics, that are also quite useful. So this is just one of many healing therapies.

Dawn How has your discovery of progression therapy changed your view of life and the choices you make?
Brian I’m talking about progression therapy but actually at the workshop in Philadelphia [at the Mind Body Spirit Expo] we’re going to be focusing more on regression therapy. We may do one progression also just to demonstrate what that’s like, but into the far future, not into the present life of any of the attendants. So they don’t have to be concerned about that. I find that going into the future, and again, this is entirely possible, if you look at modern physics, particularly String Theory, a subset of quantum physics, which postulates multiple dimensions and an infinity of universes. So when we’re going into the future, whatever that may mean for people, I do it mostly to help people make decisions. For example, I use visualization a lot in my work, and if people, in this deeper state of relaxation, can visualize possible futures and then pay attention to their feelings and what they’re observing and their experiences while they are doing this, it’s very helpful. For example, if you have a very important decision to make about taking a job in Los Angeles or not, you can look at that future where you do take the job in Los Angeles and compare it to the future if you stay in Philadelphia or if you take a separate job, perhaps, in Atlanta. And perhaps you have certain feelings or thoughts, or insights or sometimes just revelations about which one might be best for you. And that’s not just fantasy. There’s much more to it than that because it turns out that people are making better decisions. Or, for example, if you went into a future lifetime and you saw the consequences of your actions from this lifetime as it has been played out in the future, what you can call karma, projecting forward then you can change your behavior in this life to kind of achieve a better or more pleasant future for yourself. Then again, in the workshop in Philadelphia, during the conference, I’ll be doing mostly past life work.

Dawn One of the things you touched on was about multiple dimensions going on simultaneously. That was talked about in Neale Donald Walsch’s book Home with God, in a Life that Never Ends. Might be a benefit to talking to people who are in those parallel universes and seeing parallel lives?
Brian Well, I think there may be, but it’s interesting because most of my work now as a physician it’s so much focused on helping people with symptoms, with illnesses, with physical symptoms, with emotional symptoms, psychological issues as well as helping people with grief so they understand about death and what death is and what it’s not and just feeling a sense of their own eternity or immortality. This is very important and I put that ahead even of experiencing parallel dimensions or the infinity of universes. Those are kind of peak experiences and I think they’re very important when people experience those but they’re much more rare. Incidentally, I was just talking to Neale in Chicago at a conference on Saturday night and we were talking about these very things you’re asking me now. That’s just a small coincidence.

Dawn How would you explain déjà vu? Do you think it’s a view of something we also did in a parallel life or a dream we had that came true or from looking into this life (when the déjà vu happens) from an earlier time or life?
Brian Déjà vu is that feeling of familiarity, as if you’ve been in a place before or met a person before. Most people have experienced that. You could be traveling in Prague and it feels so familiar to you. That can be from a dream, it can be from a similar situation you’ve been in in the present life or it can be also from a past life where you actually have been in that geographical place or you have met that particular person who might be a soul companion or a soul mate or something like that. So sometimes it does come from a past life and I’ve had instances with a person visiting a European city for the first time and they know their way around, it just seems so familiar. They know where the old church used to be, except that it hasn’t been there for the past 150 years. And where the secret room was in the church and what happened in there. So those are kinds of déjà vus that come from past life memories. But it can also come from childhood or from other circumstances so it takes a little bit of investigation to track down the origin of the déjà vu.

Dawn Do you think some souls continue to play the part (role) of a certain lifetime after they have died (like Mother Mary and other masters) and continue in that role, appearing to their followers or devoted ones?
Brian I think that this earth is a very complex place. It’s a physical dimension but there are many, many other dimensions and other levels. And then souls, or spirits, are the eternal part of all of us, but that we’re all connected and that there are many illusions about separateness and individuality, even though it’s a very strong illusion. And so, when people die, that is, they leave their physical body, because there is no death to the soul. They move on to other dimensions and other levels of consciousness and there we experience souls of very different vibrations and they vary quite a lot. So, for example, a very advanced soul can come back to the physical dimension, can take on another physical body, can do this voluntarily. It’s what the eastern people call “Bodhisattva energy”. But it’s not only an eastern concept. It’s in all the western religions and their mystical traditions also and can manifest in that manner or can appear in a different form: a spiritual form, an energy form, in many different ways. Everything is really energy and so when these things happen it can represent several different phenomena. Whether it’s Bodhisattva energy or a master or a guide or a spiritual being, manifesting for some reason to give information, to give a message. What we call grace is really this kind of spiritual intervention: in order to help or prevent danger or something like that. So, I think these things are not rare, they happen a lot. Now, the form in which the spiritual being manifests itself can be in a form that’s familiar to the person so they feel safer or they’re more apt to listen to it or they’re not frightened and certainly it’s within the realm of the powers or abilities of spiritual beings to take on any form they would like in order to manifest to the person in physical form.

Dawn Do some souls help other souls to move on to higher levels of evolution or consciousness after they leave their bodies? Kind of like a guide?
Brian This happens all the time. It’s really set up for this. We’re all progressing along the same spiritual pathway. We’re all going to graduate eventually and so no one truly graduates until everybody does. We’re all connected. All souls really are connected. And even the title of my last book, Same Soul, Many Bodies, that’s a quote from the Roman philosopher Plotinus, who said there is one and the same soul in every body. It has a double meaning. One, that the souls that are reincarnating from past lives to present life and into future lives. This same soul is going into many bodies. But it has a deeper meaning in that, maybe there’s one soul, since we’re all connected, kind of an over-soul or a grand-soul and we’re all emanations of that over-soul. So, we are connected in this sense and we have to help each other out. Whether in physical bodies or outside, past, beyond the physical body, there’s still learning, there’s still evolution, there’s still growth to the higher dimensions and that’s the direction that we’re all headed in.

Dawn Do you think things are working properly with our lives on this planet?
Brian I think they are, overall, even though it may not seem that way, because it’s an interesting planet, this one. This is a very difficult dimension. It has physicality here so we have illness, disease, loss, death, grief, but it also is a place where there can be great joy, love, compassion and a chance to progress more rapidly along our spiritual path, many opportunities for growth here. So, even though it may not look that way, it may look that we’re lost because of the wars and violence and confusion that go on here all the time, the way people treat other people and treat the planet. I think actually we are progressing in the right direction and it’s just that it’s a school. So in school there are tests, people have free will to interrupt, to decide to repeat a grade, to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes. You have to see it from the bigger perspective of there’s really no death, because we’re all spiritual beings. There really is no birth. We exist before birth into the physical body. We will exist after our death. If you see it from that perspective, we’re really not so lost as it appears when we pick up the paper every morning or turn on the news and things seem so bad on this planet. There’s really an evolutionary path that we’re all on and that’s going not so badly.

Dawn Do you think people learn between lives to help them in their next or subsequent lives?
Brian Yes, we’re always learning. Just because we leave a physical body doesn’t mean that we’re not still progressing and learning on the other side. In fact, that’s what we do. We’re learning on the other side too. Then we come back here, into physical state, into bodies, to see if we’ve learned our lessons. It’s also important to learn the lessons at a deeper level, at a heart level and not just in the head or in the mind. For example, if you’re a compassionate person because you know that spiritual beings, which is the true nature of all of us, are inherently compassionate. That’s the correct reason, not because you are punished for being violent in the 14th century. That’s too much of an intellectual reason. This is a school, and we’re always being tested here, but we’re learning on the other side as well as this side.

Dawn Have you experienced anyone having memories of learning in between lives?
Brian Yes, this happens a lot. The work that I do, I put people into deeper levels. Which is very safe, people have seen so many examples of hypnosis in the movies or on television that are not accurate. The truth is, you’re always in control, you can open your eyes at any time and so on and you never do anything against your will. It’s very, very safe. In these deep states people can experience after-death events or experiences also. So there are a lot of people who have studied this particular state called, the “In Between Lifetimes” state, or the Bardo state, it has other names as well, and we keep learning there, too. People describe what goes on in those states. Sometimes the descriptions are limited by the words or concepts or minds of the people, or colored by those factors. But a consensus emerges that learning keeps happening on the other side as well. But we don’t have the limitations of the physical body or the brain when we’re on the other side so learning can happen at an accelerated rate.

Dawn What do you think of ghosts?
Brian Well, there are lots of different meanings that that word has to people. As it’s used mostly here, ghosts are souls or spirits or consciousness that have left the physical body that my not realized that they’re dead, physically, and so they may be hanging around here until they become aware that they may have progress to make on the other side and then they move on to the light, to the life review to all of these stages that many of the researchers, who look at after death experiences, describe. But sometimes ghosts, in the popular sense of the word, may be earthbound spirits who haven’t moved on yet, to the light and beyond to continue their learning, and to choose their next incarnation, but some people use the world ghost to mean spirits, that is, you can be having a visit from a spiritual guide or a mentor or master and call that a ghost, even though that’s not a very good name for it, because ghost has too many other meanings as well. So I use it in the narrow sense of spirits that are still hanging around the earth because they still many not realize that they’re dead.

Dawn Have you ever been able to help any of them move on and realize they were dead?
Brian Well, you talk to the person in that state, in that deep state and you describe the process: of the life review, and why we’re here, and why they came to this school in the first place, the lesson plan, the spiritual path that they chose to work on, the qualities that they chose to learn whether it’s compassion or non-violence or love or patience or these kinds of lessons that we all know about. Then we talk about the light and what happens at the light, the spiritual presence of the light renewing factor of the light and they move on. It’s very easy to do that.

Dawn You say that our ultimate goal is immortality. What does that mean to you? Does it mean the same thing for everyone?
Brian I think I would reword that a little bit now, that the ultimate goal is to understand about our immortality. We already are immortal, we already have it. What that means is that the body is not immortal; it’s the spiritual essence, the soul, the spirit, the consciousness, whatever you want to call it. That’s the immortal part of us. It’s almost like a car and a driver. We sometimes identify ourselves as the car, but we’re not, we’re really the driver. So when the car wears out we leave and we get another car. So, that’s what I mean by realizing that we’re immortal beings, that we’re spiritual entities. And that spiritual beings, and we all are, have certain qualities: love, compassion, non-violence, patience, understanding, non-prejudice, these kinds of qualities. And we have to understand that that’s who we are and that’s why we’re here, to learn. And that’s how we reach higher dimensions. So, we have to not think of ourselves as physical bodies, it’s an illusion, it’s a temporary state. We have to think of ourselves as immortal beings and that’s more accurate.

Dawn With the discoveries of regression and progression therapy, how did it affect your personal life experience? Did you feel more contentment or peace with regards to the future?
Brian Absolutely. This has helped me enormously. Now I’ve had the benefit of doing regression therapy and progression therapy for the past 27 years, since Catherine, the woman in Many Lives, Many Masters first came into my office. That’s a long time and I’ve done this work with more than 4000 patients in my office and hundreds of thousands more in groups from all over the world. Such as the group we’ll be doing in Philadelphia at the Mind Body Spirit Expo, we’re going to be doing regressions in the group: group regressions. And then people will mail me or email me with their experiences. So it’s helped me enormously, to my values, my practices, like I do meditation now and little things that used to bother me don’t bother me so much. My values have shifted so it’s been a tremendous benefit for me, to watch these regressions every day, to participate, to meet great people from all over the world, to travel all over the world and meet these people and have experiences, it’s helped me enormously. I’m very grateful for that opportunity.

Dawn How do you feel about the future of the planet and the human race?
Brian Well, I write about that in the last book. I was doing some sort of research, not the greatest research, it was handing out questionnaires, having people fill them out after we had done group progressions into the future. I did this with individuals too, but most of the work with groups, and we would look at three time periods: 100 to 200 years in the future, 500 years in the future, and 1000 years in the future. I write about the consensus, the correlations that people going into the future, while they’re in the deeply relaxed state, what they describe is tremendous correlation, particularly in the far future. And we’re all here. It’s not the end of the world. Some bad things happen, some good things happen. I write about that a lot in the new book. [Same Soul, Many Bodies]

Dawn Do you think humans can really destroy the planet or is it more a matter of us making the planet uninhabitable for ourselves, but the planet will live on?
Brian Well, my own thinking is that humans cannot destroy the planet. Now technology may grow enormously in the next millennia or more so it may become possible. But currently, I think the danger is not to the planet, it’s to the inhabitants of the planet. So we can make it unbearable or uninhabitable, but the earth will survive and I suppose the plants will too, they’re very resilient. We just have to worry about the people and the animals and this is our school, so we have to take care of it. It’s a beautiful school with great things to teach us, a great place to learn and we really should be very careful about how we treat the planet. But I’m not worried about the planet; I’m worried about the inhabitants.

Dawn I’m right there with you! Are there other purposes or benefits to regression and progression therapies?
Brian I think we’ve covered that, healing physical and emotional…

Dawn Well, what about if someone want to use it find someone who’s missing or wanted to find out the fate of someone they lost touch with but will eventually find again?
Brian There we’re talking a little bit about relationships. The concepts of soul mates or soul companions or people with whom, and we have many more than one and it’s not always romantic, there are people whom you’ve been with before and you will be with again. Clearly you can find them in past lives, you can understand the determinates of your relationship in this life because of what you’ve done in past lives. Relationships change: your grandmother may come back as your grandson or as a niece or something like that. Relationships change but the souls are the same. If you look into the future you can see when you’ll be together again and how your actions in the present life are sort of determining your relationship in the future life.

Dawn But what if it was that a child had been lost somewhere and they look forward into their own future life when that child eventually comes back and they say, “Oh, well I was here when I was missing,” and then in the present they can go and look there and find the child there. (I meant if someone had run away, not died.)
Brian Yes, I’ve had a lot of cases similar or with variations on that. For example a baby that dies, you often find the relationship from a past life in what’s going on and you recognize the soul of the baby, but it’s in a different body, not the baby’s body, but it’s a past life relationship. Maybe they lived to be 95 in that life but they die as a baby in this life, for whatever reasons. It’s not necessarily punishment, by the way, it’s always for learning. I’ve had cases in the current life, not even going into a future life, where a child has died and subsequently the same soul has come back as another child to the same parents. The second child then is talking about experiences that the first child had, in the first person. We’ve seen that quite often. The same goes sometimes for miscarriages. Perhaps the physical body is not going to be strong enough for the purposes of that soul so there’s kind of an agreement made with the mother, miscarriage happens and then the soul comes back subsequently in a stronger physical body. Same lifetime. Or you can look into the future and see where that soul may be coming back again. But the future, remember, it’s more vague because there’s an infinity of futures. There are probable futures and possible futures. It’s almost like a statistical spectrum. So your decisions are always changing the future so what you foresee in that way may not be the future that’s coming to pass. But certainly the other examples, that’s more definitive and you can see the return of the same soul. The present lifetime, for example, is the future lifetime from one of your past lives and here you are together with many of the same souls, the same people again. So it’s not difficult to project into a future lifetime that you’re still going to be interacting. You can almost predict what that’s going to be like based on your behavior in relationships in the current life. So the best thing to do is to practice healthy relationships and those are relationships that are filled with understanding, patience, compassion, love and empathy. And if you do that you’re going to have future lives with better relationships in them.

Dawn In Same Soul, Many Bodies your patient, Victoria, continued to have back pain in this life despite the fact that it had been healed in a previous life. Why did she have to experience the pain again, shouldn’t it have been healed forever from the healing in a previous life?
Brian It’s hard to know the purposes of the soul in that way. Sometimes you do and sometimes the reasons don’t become clear until later. But in this lifetime that certainly was a major factor, in a huge spiritual growth spurt, as it were, for her. I don’t know why symptoms are carried over. Even though she was healed in that life, it came into this life too, but it caused her, in a sense, to wind up in that workshop at the Omega Institute where she regressed to that past life with very profound and intense spiritual experiences that have shaped her life ever since. I don’t know the spiritual purpose in why that symptom was chosen to recur in this life but it certainly was important in her spiritual evolution in her current life.

Dawn Same Soul, Many Bodies is a masterful work of using examples from your patients’ past and future lives to teach life lessons, like compassion, relationships, meditation, spirituality and love. What inspired you to put the book into this form and bring it beyond a reporting of past and future lives which are interesting on their own?
Brian I think I’m always writing at different levels and some of it’s for me too. I love to share the stories of my patients because they’re so fascinating that people have these experiences, whether they were individually or in a group. Victoria was actually in a group and then we did an individual session later on. I write about the larger purpose because it’s not just about healing symptoms and it’s not only about past lives and future lives. It’s also about spiritual energy and the purpose of life and why we’re here. These I think are questions that people have been wondering about, asking about, speculating about for millennia and anything that I can do to contribute to the spiritual growth of people or to understanding or to helping them out, I’m going to write about, especially if this is coming from my patients because that’s part of the case, it’s not just their memories of past lives, but if they’re remembering future lives or in-between lifetimes or spiritual dimensions. I think all of these elements are very important and I never know what the reader is going to relate to. It can be one thing in one case that I felt, “Well, maybe this isn’t so important, but I’m going to put it in anyway because it happened,” and then somebody will connect just to that point and it will help them. So again, it’s kind of the same answer as Victoria’s back pain: I don’t know exactly the reason at the time why this may be important to one person and not so important to another so I just put it all out there because I want people to have the most opportunity possible to connect with a particular piece of information or a reflection. Maybe it will be something they had dreamt about or were contemplating and this just confirms it for them. For all those reasons I try to be as all-inclusive as possible.

Dawn How much of what you’ve written, and the filter you’ve used to explain what you and others have seen in their past and future lives, are based on what you were taught growing up? For example, were you taught that we are here to learn and then “graduate” to higher levels leading eventually to immortality?
Brian No, I think most of it comes from about 1980, 1981 from Catherine and thereafter. Much, much less comes to what I was taught before. What I was taught before was important as a sort of foundation, in a way of looking at things, and certainly what I was taught in the scientific method of observing and developing hypothesis, testing it, having an open mind, that’s very important. As far as the spiritual lessons, almost all of that is from my experimental work, beginning with Catherine.

Dawn Do you think there are worlds within our world that most humans are unaware of?
Brian Absolutely. There are an infinity of worlds. And this is what modern physics and cosmology is showing now. We’re all energies and we all inter-penetrate each others and that’s why you can have spiritual visits, things like that. This physical world is just one of many, many worlds. Sometimes people will come up with an intellectual objection to reincarnation or past lives or future lives such as the number of souls. The number of souls on the planet is greater than ever before. Where do all the souls come from? The answer is from all of these other worlds and dimensions. This is not the only place where there are souls. Or perhaps souls can split and have simultaneous experiences. So, yes, I do believe there’s an infinity of dimensions and worlds and levels of consciousness.

Dawn I really enjoyed reading about the person who started out his past life regression on another planet. How interesting was that to you to find evidence that we can have future experiences of people coming from other planets to here?
Brian That was interesting to me because it makes sense. He’s not the only one, others have talked about this too: that there have been migrations here from other planets. This, of course is too long ago to have any proof. Sometimes we can validate past lives because people find themselves there, track down names or other identifying information or find their children from a past life, but to find something really ancient: a migration from other galaxies or star systems, this is not even from other dimensions, this is from the same dimension, the same universe. It’s very, very interesting. It certainly helped that person, Patrick, a lot. I remember years ago doing a workshop with Dr. John Mack, from Harvard University, we did this workshop in Boston. He had been studying UFOs, something that I had very little experience with. He was finding and using hypnosis to bring people back to their abduction experience. Sometimes he didn’t find an abduction at all but he found past lives. So he invited me to speak at this symposium and I went there and had a great time talking about that. And then I was finding these cases where people were saying, “Yeah, we’re here from other places.” I think we’re probably all aliens. Our souls are ageless so we’ve lived in other dimensions and other galaxies and other worlds. We didn’t begin on earth.

Dawn Was Patrick able to remember any of the information? Like where he had buried the scrolls? Has that come up in modern science for him to have recognized that they had found what he had buried? Has it been an interest of his to find out?
Brian No, not yet. I think it was too vague. So much has happened in those years [60,000 years]. Coastlines have changed. Places that were above sea level are now under sea level. There wasn’t enough specific information. He knows that they’ll be discovered at some point. The important thing for him was the information, the wisdom that he gained, not the specific places where this knowledge will be uncovered again because it won’t be uncovered until the time is right. I have a feeling these things are not coincidences. When we are ready for this it’ll be discovered, but as long as people are still making weapons out of anything, I don’t think we’re quite ready yet.

Dawn Is there anything that you were sure didn’t exist before you began doing this work that you’re now convinced of because of your work?
Brian Life after death. I wasn’t sure about that but now I’m convinced that there is. I think that’s the biggest thing for me.

Dawn My husband always asks why everyone remembers past lives where they were famous? Why doesn’t anyone remember past lives when they were an insurance salesman in Ohio?
Brian Well, they do. Actually, that’s a myth. It’s very rare to have famous people. And sometimes those are just fantasies or projections. But when you’re really doing regressions seriously, from the deeper level, you don’t find that. That’s a myth, that they were famous people. You find slaves, servants, this kinds of thing, overwhelmingly so.

Dawn I have had done past life regression therapy in a group and I did recall a past life, which was famous, I was a former prince in London. I recognized people in my current lifetime that were in that lifetime.
Brian That can be true. We’ve all been rich, poor, prince. People who actually were Joan of Arc, there are about 20 of them, but I don’t know how those regressions were done. I’ve never found one and I’ve done this with hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve had people who were in royalty or who were very wealthy but not in the numbers you would expect. To be a prince or to be wealthy, in that case, that’s not what I mean by these famous people: the ones where you mention a name and everyone knows them, that’s rare. Sometimes it’s a projection. I had a man who thought he was Napoleon. We were doing a regression and we found in him in the French army, in that time, in the uniform, describing battle strategy. He described the enemies, the colors of the uniforms. It all was accurate but as we looked closer we found he was a corporal in Napoleon’s army. He was there. He could see Napoleon but he certainly wasn’t [Napoleon]. In this life he needs more power and he had just distorted that in his mind a little bit. But when we did the actual deep, intensive work he was close, he was there. So to find a soldier, that’s not so rare. To find Napoleon is rare. Sometimes you get distortions because anything coming up from the memory can be distorted. I can ask you to describe your 10th birthday party or 15th birthday party and you might get 98 percent of it correct. But a little bit might be distorted like, “That year we had it at the skating rink, not in the bowling alley. That was my 11th birthday.” Or something like that. But it doesn’t mean the memory’s not correct.

Read my reviews of two of Brian’s books:
Many Lives, Many Masters
Same Soul, Many Bodies