Healing Reunion from Beyond

In another situation, I was doing Reiki on Ronnie, an eighteen-year-old boy who had been having problems with drugs and had dropped out of school. His mother, Jill, was present for the session as they were having trouble getting along and were frequently arguing with no resolution. He had been able to stop using drugs for a few months and was determined to remain drug-free. I thought I would help him in his resolve by using Reiki (again doing hands over his eyes plus on the top and back of his head) along with some hypnotherapy. My goal was to relax him, work on overcoming the addiction and to (for lack of any other way to say it) transmit healing energy into his head in the hope of addressing any brain damage from the drugs.

I decided to try Reiki on Ronnie since I had used Reiki a few weeks earlier on Tom, another young man who was in recovery from drugs and alcohol. When I worked on Tom, I had felt pulsating energy going into his head from my hands for approximately five minutes. I stopped when the pulsating stopped and I felt a calmness in my hands. When Tom came for his next session two weeks later, he reported feeling better and more clear-headed. I placed my hands over Ronnie’s eyes and I felt a large wave of energy come into my back. I saw a picture beginning to form in my mind’s eye. It was of a man about thirty five years of age with brown hair parted on the left side. This man was slightly overweight yet muscular. He was wearing blue jeans and a plaid lumberjack shirt unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up and his undershirt showing. I felt waves of love for this boy flow through me along with the words, “I’m sorry I had to leave you when you were so young. I don’t want you to follow in my footsteps. Drugs and alcohol are no good. It hurts me to see you and your mother fight so much. I wish you would try to get along with her.”

When I finished, Jill said, “I could feel my ex-husband in the room.” She told me that they had divorced before he died from alcoholism. I decided to ask a few questions to see about the validity of what I had pictured. When I asked Jill to describe her deceased ex-husband, she said he was thin with long hair. Immediately, I started to question what I had seen. Then the still small voice within me said to ask if he always looked like that. When I did ask Jill, she quickly responded that her husband was much heavier when he died and his hair was shorter like Ronnie’s hair, only unlike his Ronnie’s which was parted in the middle, his hair was parted on the left side. I asked what he tended to wear. She said he usually wore jeans and long sleeve plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up on his forearms. Jill then pointed to how my sleeves were rolled up saying, “like yours.” She went on to say that often he was very casual wearing his shirt open with the undershirt showing underneath.

While I was listening to Jill, I noticed that the slight pain I had on the right side of my head running down into my shoulder was still there. I had attributed it to the longer than usual period of time that I had held my arms up in order to keep my hands gently over Ronnie’s eyes. Again, the still small voice within prompted me to ask if her ex-husband had any physical problems when he died. She said, “yes” and indicated by pointing to the right side of her head and shoulder that he had a pain in that area from an injury he received from doing some carpentry before he died. Silently within myself, I did Reiki on myself and said a prayer for the deceased man. The pain immediately lifted.

• Today, consider how communication with those who have passed on continues. It's as if they are broadcasting on a different frequency, e.g., 107.5 FM instead of 92.1 FM: the one you are listening to each morning. Now think of Ronnie and his father. Now ask yourself, "If I were to be in spirit as Ronnie's father was, is there anything I would wish I had expressed to a loved one while I was still alive? Imagine the loved one (parent, child, friend, relative) seated in an empty chair and speak to them. Now, considering Ronnie's father communicating to him, ask yourself if there is anything you want to express to any loved one who has passed on.

An Example of How Love is Enduring

Getting back to the sequence of unusual experiences that led me to explore alternative healing and therapy, this is what happened next. Some very surprising things happened while I was introducing Reiki to people in my practice for the purpose of relaxation training. This would involve the person sitting in a chair while I would place my hands gently over his or her eyes. On a few occasions I would experience the following sequence of events.

1. I would feel sensations coming into my back; it felt as if the energy of a person was stepping into me. The film Ghost depicted what I felt.

2. Then I would get a snapshot-sized picture of a person in my mind which seemed located slightly to the right of my right eye. I would then describe the picture to the individual in the chair receiving Reiki.

3. Words would pop into my mind along with a strong wave of love for the individual in the chair; it seemed to be coming through me from the person I was picturing. I would feel filled with this strong feeling of love that was not my feeling for the person sitting in the chair. I would sometimes be moved to tears as though I was witnessing a very moving reunion between two people long separated. It was like the feeling we all may get watching a movie that touches us. For the next few minutes, I would relay messages that would just pop into my mind. The messages felt like they were coming from the person I was picturing and were intended for the person seated before me. This would all take place while I continued to hold my hands over the eyes of the person receiving Reiki.

4. I would bring the Reiki session to a close in the same way I would bring someone out of trance after doing hypnotherapy. I would make the usual suggestions that the person bring his or her awareness back into the room and awaken refreshed. The person in the chair would identify the deceased loved one. It was usually a relative, lover, or friend.

5. Each time I would find myself struck by how the therapeutic principle of expressing the unexpressed feelings between people and resolving unfinished business seemed to hold true from beyond the grave—especially expressing messages of love and forgiveness.

For example, in one situation, I told Bonnie, the thirty-six-year-old woman seated before me, that, “I’m getting the picture of an elderly woman wearing white bobby-socks and a long blue dress with white dots on it. She wants you to know that she loves you very much and she wants you to start believing in yourself.” I could really feel a deep love coming through me for Bonnie from somewhere beyond me. Later, Bonnie identified the person as her deceased grandmother. Bonnie told me that she had experiences where she had not only felt the presence of her grandmother but could smell her perfume.
Next to the picture of Bonnie’s grandmother, I saw the picture of a man in his mid-thirties wearing bib-overalls. I assumed it was her grandfather at a younger age. It wasn’t. From the description and the words that came through, Bonnie identified the man as a friend from high school that had committed suicide. The message that came through was, “It wasn’t your fault.” This was followed by, “I never blamed you for not calling me back that night. I want you to stop blaming yourself and forgive yourself.” A little later on the message was, “I know you would’ve called me back if you knew what I was feeling.”

I had Bonnie talk to the man in the same way I would have had her do if I were having her use the Gestalt Therapy technique called the empty chair. The individual talks to the empty chair as though the person with whom they have unfinished emotional business is seated there. This could be with someone in her life currently or from the past.

Bonnie had her eyes closed and I asked her to visualize the man. She sobbed as she expressed her feelings of guilt and sadness over not calling him back that night when he later took his own life. Each time Bonnie spoke, I would immediately receive and repeat the words, “I know.” These words were accompanied by a warm feeling of an all-knowing compassion which felt like it was coming from her deceased friend. Finally, after all these years, she was able to release these feelings that would return to haunt her from time to time.

• Today, when you feel feelings of love and affection think about the implications of Bonnie's experience. , consider how love is more than a feeling. Reflect on how the love housed in your heart is an enduring energy that continues after the death of your body as it did in the case of loved ones in Bonnie's life.

Since My Spiritual Awakening . . .

Since my spiritual awakening 15 years ago (my 15th year anniversary was just last week) , I have been blessed to have had many experiences with people and animals. The healings have occurred with the receiver and I in the same place, and where the receiver is not present but is located at a short distance or as far away as hundreds or thousands of miles. The animals control for the placebo effect and with some people I have controlled for it as well. One woman couldn’t make her session due to a migraine headache. I called her and asked her if she would like to try an experiment by lying down for a few minutes and simply preparing to receive a healing energy. She said, “I don’t believe in that kind of thing.” I told her she didn’t have to believe and there was nothing to lose. We hung up and I told her I’d call her back in ten minutes.

I imagined her sitting in my office in a chair while I then visualized her leaning her back against a sheet of paper with the Japanese character that is referred to as the distant healing symbol. I then proceeded to place my hands on her head the way I would if she had been in my office. In ten minutes she called me and told me, “my headache is all gone and my back, which has been killing me for two weeks, feels better as well. When I laid down, I felt a cool river of energy flowing under my skin.” I did not know about the back problem so no suggestion was made. I then asked her to describe where she felt the pain in her head to see if it correlated with where I felt it in my hands. Sure enough it was the back upper right of her head and the left upper right on her forehead as I had felt in my hands. I was as amazed as the woman was by these results.

Spiritual Energy Therapy: A Marriage of Science & Spirit

What I am about to describe is something I came to call Spiritual Energy Therapy. It is a unique marriage of science and spirit: my clinical training and experience and Reiki. It integrates expressive therapy, cognitive therapy, hypnotherapy, and Reiki energy healing. I combine the two separate camps of energy healing and spiritual healing. Healers who call themselves energy healers, I believe, are trying to keep what they do separate from spiritual healing in order to maintain some kind of scientific neutrality. In my experience, the terms, spiritual and energy, are inseparable as both describe the life-force energy that animates us and all of life, namely, the spiritual energy of love.

• Today, consider that each time you shift from fear, anger, or sadness and depression back to the expansive energy and peaceful power of love by focusing on what you would love to have happen in your life, you are engaging in an important transformation of your spiritual, life-force energy. Going from the negative emotions that contract your body and nervous system, you are doing something very important for health and happiness. More next time on the miraculous experiences I've had since my spiritual awakening 15 years ago. My experiences hve taught me that who we are in the core of our being is the expansive energy and peaceful power of pure love.