Articles published
Sybil Magazine in 2017 (USA)
Freedom of choice or destiny?
Index
Freedom of choice or destiny? Getting the big picture
Learning from and producing ‘coincidences’
Is it choice or fate?
Spiritual development - expectations, positive elements and pitfalls
Meditation or enlightenment waterfall
Opting for intuition
Mediums, meditation and imagination
Mediumistic abilities and spirits
Interpreting dreams
Regression therapy treating suicidal thoughts
Of life, death and enlightenment
Freedom of choice or destiny? Getting the big picture
Big questions about life issues permeated my life since I was young, often making me go round in circles until I had the impression of hitting a wall. I heard many times from different sources questions are halfway to an answer, but this did not satisfy me. I wanted complete and full answers to issues like why I was born, what am I doing here, was I free to choose, did fate exist, and others.
The older I got, the more pressing these questions became. I tried attending various temples, different sects, and reading about different philosophies. My questions remained. How could I comprehend the Universe with a limited brain? Sometimes, answers seemed to be really far out.
In my early twenties, I was going through a big turmoil, and landed in an organisation that taught me transcendental meditation and other types of meditation. Doors to the unknown were opened to me. Meditating, was like seeing with eyes closed. I could go far and away, I could perceive things without the need to define them. I started trusting my imagination would bring me wherever and whenever I wanted. I felt freedom, the sentiment I most wanted to feel.
I was getting closer to answering my queries. I was feeling the Universe, instead of rationalizing the Universe. Even so, my questioning mind told me time and again, I had to listen to my reasoning. There was a constant clash between heart and mind, and I hesitated whom to follow.
After decades of struggle over heart and mind, I learnt to trust my inner intuition, over my intense logical thinking, at least in most cases. It is like giving in, bit by bit, to trusting heart, our inner intuition, over mind, each and every time. There is always a “new choice”, each time a new decision. I am learning the more I am able to trust the Universe – whether we call it God, Tao, or any other name is irrelevant – the easier life becomes. I am allowing myself to give in in very tough situations, and letting myself follow the path of least resistance.
I realize that following the path of least resistance, does not mean doing nothing, nor just waiting for things to happen. It means contributing to the common good in the personal and compassionate way each of us are most able to. Life will certainly go on teaching us new lessons, once these new lessons become old and trusted.
Throughout my life, freedom was one of the most dear concepts to my heart, whilst, at the same time, being one of the harder lessons to learn. Now I feel each time we are in a cross-road we have a limited amount of choices, but these limited choices open up infinite new paths and opportunities. In other words, our choices are only limited temporarily, as they depend upon what we decide, but they are infinite over time. We can go wherever we want to go, choice by choice, decision by decision, lesson by lesson.
Learning from and producing ‘coincidences’
Preparing this article, inspired me to review life’s coincidences. I started looking back through my life, analysing big and small coincidences, until I remembered the biggest coincidence of all, at the very start, the meeting of my parents, and my consequent birth.
I realized then, all events in life were coincidences, in successive order. In a way, every event in our lives is a coincidence of different elements coming together, so that X or Y happen.
Once, I needed an assistant at the office, and recruited one of the candidates I interviewed. She became one of my biggest pains during a few years. Her behaviour made me sick, bed ridden. Resting at home, I started reading 2 books I bought before in Amazon: one of them, a friend suggested, “Soul Survivor” by James Leiningher; the other was suggested by Amazon, “Children’s Past Lives” by Carol Bowman.. In Carol Bowman’s, she often mentioned past lives training given by Dr Roger Woolger. So, I searched for ‘training and Dr Woolger’, and found a beginner’s workshop starting next day. I decided to attend, and to travel to another country, although sick and feverish. This was the starting point of my career as a Regression Therapist. How grateful I was (and am) to that unpleasant colleague!
There are opportunities open to us at every moment. We can grab them, or not. I was once having lunch in a Belgian café near my office, and looked at the girl beside my table. She was reading a Cosmopolitan magazine in English. I asked her if she was English. She answered she was German. We became friends. Many years later, I was in another restaurant in NYC with my son. He complained to me, I should not be speaking to people in other tables. I answered: “I got to know your father, because I started speaking to a girl next table. If I did not speak to her, you would never have been born. She was the one who presented me to your father”. I believe, somehow, he understood the idea, because he never complained about this again.
If ever we are puzzled on what to do, at a crossroad, and want some input from the Universe, we can deepen our comprehension and vision by meditating. Likewise, we can seek inspiration by reviewing a past life, attending a systemic constellation workshop, or placing tarot cards. We can also take an inspiring walk in the forest, or open any book by chance, and place the finger in a word. There are myriad other ways to get a hint on how best to proceed. Just follow your intuition on what to do, which advice to follow. In a split second, your life could take a completely new course.
In a way, coincidence is just a definition. Our life results from our choices. Whatever appears our way, will be the result of our preceding decisions and actions. We can facilitate happy coincidences at every moment. It is a question of will.
Is it choice or fate?
We all heard of cases of people who escaped death, only to die in a similar way some days later. And we remember the comments people made: “It was their time to die, it was their destiny”, as if nothing could prevent it. The more of these cases I encountered, the more I questioned the inevitability of fate, with questions like ‘Are we all born with our days counted?; Is fate going to be a determinant in our lives since the very moment we are born?; Is our death pre-determined?’
One day, I went to a spiritualistic session (I did not know anyone at the table) that somehow questioned my belief in fate and, consequently, allowed me to focus on the issue in a more open way, as the medium turned to me and told me: “My dear, we do have freedom of choice”. That affirmation shocked me, as it appeared to come out of the blue, but it regarded a profund question that stirred me for years. This event was a turning point in my life, as before this observation I used to think in a circular way, that we were born in a certain family, place, with a pre-determined fate.
I started to realise that each decision will generate distinctive new choices with different results. Each decision will lead to a different result. In the long-run, these decisions will cover a whole spectrum of possibilities and new opportunities. In a way, we have infinite choices, although not in a specific moment.
As an exercise, stop for a moment, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and remember some decisions you took in your life that seemed insignificant at the time, but which had an enormous impact in your life. Now, just imagine how different your life would be now, have you chosen something else. Again, our decisions do count. It’s like we have to learn some lessons this lifetime, and each time we choose a different path, we get closer, or futher away, to what we have to learn, to our mission in life.
So, now, going back to the questions at the first paragraph of people who escaped a certain death, only to die some time later in a similar way. How could these similar events take place in the life of the same person? The plausible explanation seems to be that life nearly repeats itself, until we learn through these apparently repetitive events, and are able to chose something distinct, more suited to the accomplishment of our life’s mission. We are free to decide our path, nonetheless, life will present a certain number of challenges, as often as necessary, up to the point where we will be able to learn what is valuable to us. When we learn what we have to learn, only then, are we offered a diverse path, with distinctively new challenges, lessons and resulting consequences – be it this life, or the next. The sooner we learn our lessons, the better.
Spiritual development - expectations, positive elements and pitfalls
At 21 years old I attended a meditation organisation, Lifewave, created by an Englishman who lived 5 years in India. He sent so-called Enlightened Beings (EB) to teach meditation in the city I lived, Brasilia.
I learnt various types of meditation techniques and studied spiritual development theories, from Bhudism, Christianism to Induism. During this period (2 years), I was meditating one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, and six hours on Sundays.
I believed these EB were perfect, because they had meditated a lot over many years. However, I observed they got very human non-enlightened qualities, like everybody else, contrary to the impression of perfection they wanted to present. It seemed like a contradiction to meditate so intensily, to be ‘enlightened’ whilst showing so many weaknesses. I got so disappointed with these contradictions that I left the organisation. Maybe they should have told the meditation students they were like everybody else, just people who put more effort into meditating. That would have helped me appreciate more the benefits of their teachings.
Now, with hindsight, I am grateful for all I learnt in Lifewave. In one of the meditations, in the first four months I was there (I stayed there for 2,5 years in parallel with my university studies), I came to a place where everything was cloudy white – and I was everything. I felt no happiness, no sadness, no worries, just perfect balance. The feeling of totality, unity and harmony was very pleasant. That was surely the Nirvana. After leaving that meditation, I thought I would reach the Nirvana again soon, but that was not the case. Reaching it became an objective for me. I suppose we have to get a kind of Bhuda consciousness to get there.
Another experience gave me a similar feeling to the one I got at Lifewave, as a powerful medium, who I admired displayed an intense curiosity that veered towards lack of ethics.
Finally, after reviewing these and other similar situations, I arrived to a conclusion that, no matter in what stage of spiritual learning we are, we are still fallible -- as our shadow side may manifest now and again. I also learnt that what we consider as our shadow side, our weaker or so-called nasty side, may be useful in certain circumstances (in case other people display their shadow side intensily, for instance, and we need to defend ourselves). So, we should also accept and cherish our shadow side, as it might be needed.
The only way to feel whole is to understand and accept all of our qualities, whether we call them positive or negative. I am still learning this lesson. Maybe, once we accept all of our qualities, and those of others, we will reach the Nirvana forever, so be Enlightened for good.
Meditation or enlightenment waterfall
I started meditating regularly when I was 20 years old and it helped me to become calmer and more relaxed, something I was badly in need of. Later on, meditation helped me to focus on exams, to deal with typical life traumas with some ease, and to develop an understanding of spiritual issues.
The first meditation technique I learnt was to concentrate on breathing in and out, imagining it to be through the third eye. This is the most basic and probably the most powerful technique I ever tried. I studied and practised many other techniques such as meditating on the sound of a mantra, on light, on external objects (like the fire salamander of a candle or on elemental beings). But the first meditation I learnt remains the most fundamental and effective, as the air, (prana in Hindi), is the most vital life-giving force we all need to live.
Ideally, the more regularly we meditate, the better. It is more effective to meditate 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening, than say, 1 hour every other day. Meditation in the morning clears up any night experiences we may have had and prepares us to face the day. Meditation in the evening clears up the experiences we had during the day, thereby preparing us for the night.
Meditation allows us to feel more deeply whilst at the same time it can provide a certain distance. It is as if we were watching an intense film, but with the knowledge it is just a film. After meditating one feels balanced and calm. It’s like we are acutely aware of what is going on, but with a feeling of detachment from the events before us. It’s like realising that our soul is always present but that our body is its temporary abode.
Meditation is the main spiritual development tool available at any time. Life’s surprises, changes and various other techniques all have an impact on spiritual development, but probably none so great as meditation. As well as increasing our capacity to concentrte, meditation also helps us trust and further develop our intuition, eventually leading to an enhanced mediumistic capacity.
In a way, it makes us more aware of ourselves and our surroundings and we feel more integrated in the Universe. Why should you meditate? Because it is the most natural process allowing us to feel we are an integral part of nature.
Meditation opens up a myriad of spiritual realisations we may not have had otherwise. It prepares us for death – our own and that of other beings close to us – in a way no other technique, life event or knowledge could.
Last, but not least, various spiritual masters mention meditation techniques as being required to reach Enlightenment. Maybe meditation is not the only thing, but it brings with it a waterfall of spiritual knowledge to the meditator. May this knowledge and the peace it generates brings us all closer to Enlightenment!
Opting for intuition
My German grandfather used to say ‘When we do what we like most, we will succeed’. I did not understand it and struggled between what was logical, reasonable and what I liked. I realised it was easier to follow my likes when reason supported them. However, following my intuition contrary to my best logic generated a huge dilemma.
I remember times when I was a young adult at the university. I tried not to skip any courses. But, sometimes, I would wake up early morning with the deep feeling I should skip classes that day. Notwithstanding my feelings however, I would decide to attend, only to arrive and realise there were no classes that day. At those moments I asked myself why I didn’t follow my intuition.
Obviously skipping a university class is not such a serious business, as one can always study later. There were more important decisions in life, when I should have followed my heart, not my logical brain. For instance, I was studying both Economics and International Relations, but I hated Economics and loved International Relations course. I did not have the courage to drop Economics, even though I knew I would never really want to work in the field. I should have followed my intuition and have dropped the subject because in this way I would have gained 3 years to do whatever else I enjoyed.
So, what is intuition? Is it our deepest inclinations, our deepest likings, or just a subconscient awareness of what is best for us? And how do we know which is which at the moment we have to decide something that can deeply impact us? These are all good questions that should be considered at major decision time.
Out of experience, I believe it is best to risk increasing our bravery a bit further each time by following our intuition. Moreover, if most times, we get it right, we are in a good learning path to follow our hunches.
Nonetheless, if we realise in certain situations that what we considered to be an intuition was wishful thinking, then we should stop, analyse how we felt about it just a bit before we took action, how we decided on that course of action and try to understand what went wrong.
Alas, there are no ready-made rules on how to determine if our deep intuition is present and leading us to the best course of action, or whether it is just a passing non-intuitive feeling. Each of us has to try and test our own logic, reasoning, feelings and inclinations to understand the way a decision is taken, and allow ourselves to push a bit further, until the point where following our intuition becomes second nature, and our life flows with ease.
Mediums, meditation and imagination
I often hear people admire mediums, as if they were some race apart when in fact all of us have mediumistic abilities to a lesser or higher degree. People often view mediums as glamorous because they see, hear, feel or smell things other people may not be aware of. It is like having better instruments to interact with the environment and, sometimes being able to predict the future through seeing images, through premonitory dreams, or by having a strong intuition about what would happen if…
This may all be true, and it seems like a glamorous thing, but like the Tao symbol, half black, half white, with a dot of the opposite colour on each side, there are always two sides to everything (at least two). Being a medium means having the accute sensibility of feeling deeply, feeling what is positive more deeply than most, and feeling what is negative more deeply than most too. Because of this extreme sensibility, the medium is always seeking for ways to be more balanced, like a tuning fork which needs to be perfectly harmonious.
In order to be harmonious, the medium may try different ways to alleviate the unbalance felt in the environment, like meditating more often, doing more exercises, singing or any other activity. Regular meditation, more than any other activity, will allow the medium to have a direct link to the higher self, or the higher realms, with the possibility of reaching increasing insights of the spiritual world. Meditation will, nevertheless, also make the medium more sensitive to the environment, resulting in an increasing need to meditate.
So, the medium is like a channel for the spirit world to communicate at the physical level what is important and necessary to keep balance and harmony. Mediums will need to meditate evermore, in order to increase the communication capacity they have with the spiritual world whilst, at the same time, increasing the sensitivity in the physical, emotional and mental levels. Furthermore, with regular meditation the medium will come back to a balanced point (temporarily).
I heard many people willing to acquire more mediumistic capacities, which is possible to be done in various ways, like mentioned above. Meditation is not the only way to further develop these capacities. Following shamanic transes further one’s imagination capacity and mediumistic sense, as does attending family constellation groups, regression therapy groups and many others. Developing our imagination is a good way of freeing ourselves from our blocages, whichever the nature of these blocages. Our imagination is able to travel far afield, further than we could ever do with our bodies.
So, if there was a recipe to be a medium, I would say, be attentive to your environment, be open to new ideas by freeing up your imagination and curiosity, and meditate regularly. Life will charge itself to increase the spiritual phenomena around you, so that you can develop your courage to meet with all types of spirit and be ready to help souls, incarnated or not, at various levels.
Mediumistic abilities and spirits
I lived in a haunted house in Brasilia for 17 years. I did not know what to do to avoid being distraught by the phenomena the spirits provoked. I tried ignoring the spirit manifestations, which I observed mostly in the evening. When I went to bed I tried saying in my mind “I will sleep no matter what”. Sometimes it worked and I managed to sleep. Other times, I felt scared and asked my mother to sleep in her bed. I could feel someone shaking my legs… I could feel the contact, but I could not see who it was. I would also hear weird screeching noises in the garden... But, when I looked through the window, I could see noone and nothing was moving. Our gardner’s cart was still in its place.
Over time, as my mother, my brother and I became more conscious of the issue, the manifestations increased. We contacted and paid two well-known mediums from our city to end the phenomena. It would improve a week or two, but would get much worse afterwards. The only person who managed to finish with the problem was a very poor lady from a slum, Myrtle (not her real name), who did not want to receive any payment for services. The manifestations stopped thanks to Myrtle’s mediumistic capabilities and the shamanic ceremony she conducted.
I started being aware I could feel the presence of spirits, hear their noises and observe the manifestations (in different places). Occasionally, I would see spirit, but I did not know how to remove them. With time and more experiences of this type, I developed some techniques to identify their presence. So, if I felt a cold breeze near me, when nothing else was cold, or sensed a good or a bad smell without any apparent cause, I would know a spirit was present. Sometimes the smell would accompany me or whoever I was with, but at others it would not.
A medium can feel, see, hear and/or smell the spirit manifestations if they are in an open environment, or even feel them in the body of another person (but sometimes the spirits manage to hide well). So, how to remove spirits? There are various techniques that can be used, depending on the medium’s capacities and the situation. If the spirit is in the body of a person (I will call it the host), the medium can talk directly to the spirit, using the host to serve as a channel, or the medium can invoke the help of angelic helpers, or spirit animals (spirit helpers) to get away the spirits and take them to the Light.
Another option, especially for a haunted place, is to start with a prayer, and use our imagination (anyone can do it since to some degree we all have mediumistic capabilities) to make a beautiful, powerful ceremony, aloud and clear, and invoke the support of the spirit helpers to take them to the Light.
Using mediumistic abilities on dreams
When we were children we used to have lots of dreams and nightmares. We welcomed the dreams, but not the nightmares. So we found ways to block the nightmares, also blocking the dreams. Afterwards, we would sleep, wake up in the morning with the impression we had no dreams. Most of us have to decide we do want to dreams again, accepting the nightmares that come with them, to access their insights once more.
What are dreams, or frightening dreams (also called nightmares)? They are an attempt of our subconscious mind, or, as some call it, our higher self, to pass messages to our conscious mind. Whether we remember them or not, all of us dream.
Dreams bring us messages of different types. Perhaps a suggestion on how to solve a difficult problem in our life, or a key to solve complicated theories. Maybe a premonition about something that will happen in the future (like a preparation for the event). In my experience, the difference between premonitory dreams and problem-solving dreams is that premonitory dreams seem to have simple images which are self explanatory, whereas problem-solving dreams have lots of symbols that need to be interpreted. Some dreams, though, may mix a bit of problem solving and premonition, but each of us will need to developer own techniques to differentiate between them. There are also simpler dreams that can be the result of something that resulted in a strong emotional effect on us.
How can we best profit from dream messages? The easiest way is to always have a paper, pen or pencil beside the bed, so that when we wake up and recall the dream, we can write it down immediately, including all details we remember, no matter how senseless it seems. Dreams will often come with heavy symbology, being apparently senseless. The best people to understand the messages of dreams is not a therapist or a clairvoyant, but the dreamers themselves, because they will be more aware of their own thoughts, feelings and problems then anybody else. They will know, by intuition, to what situation the dream refers to.
If we don’t get the message immediately - it seldom happens - it is useful to go around the dreams and their details in our head, trying to make a parallel between the dream and some questions and issues we have in our current life. If we put our energy into understanding it, we could have the ‘Eureka!’ feeling of understanding its message in a week or less.
Once, for instance, I dreamt I was in an old car I had once owned, entering a weird garage. I heard the voices of a Brazilian and a Dutch speaking, and then I saw some black and white puppies someone tried to drown. I wanted to try to save whichever puppy I could, but trying to leave the garage was nearly impossible, as the way out seemed to go on and on, further and further up… What was the message in this dream for me? It took me a week to decipher: “Sell those old shares, which will become more devalued as time goes on”. It was very true.
Regression therapy treating suicidal thoughts
Regression therapy is a powerful therapy which uses hypnosis to help patients return to memories of an important issue to get over present traumas. The main idea is to remember the past to forget it and to be able to carry on without significant untreated wounds. There are several other techniques that can be used to complement past lifes regression therapy, like family constellations, shamanism, meditation and prayer. A good therapist should have an assortment of techniques at hand to apply to the benefit of the patient.
Once I had a patient I will call Alex, (not his real name), who seemed to have collected most of the troubles a person could experience in one life, such as a very troubled abusive childhood, unloving parents and absence of family help whilst growing. He had tried to commit suicide.
Alex wanted to understand why he had gone through so many issues in his life, and wanted to understand his family relationships better, be more self-aware and empowered.
I prayed for God to help me help this patient before he came into my office. I did not know where to start to help him, as there were so many issues, but I felt it was better to start with something positive, like a happy past life, so that we could move on from there. Alex agreed to revisit a happy past life. This was a good start… In that past life, he was worked as a fisherman, he married, had children and died at an old age from natural causes.
Afterwards, I told him to go to the most significant past life related to the present and he went to a life which started well. Alex was a woman in that past life, lost everything (all dear family members died in an acccident), and decided to end her life earlier than life would have wanted.
After death, her soul met with the spiritual guides. They came and explained that her soul did not follow the plan for that life. The plan was to go through life’s challenges and die old of a natural death. Alex asked if he could go home (to the Light), and stay there… The spiritual guides told Alex his soul could not go and stay in the Light until he managed to go through life until its very end (implying he should die of natural causes, after doing all he could to be alive and well).
This message was very powerful for him. All at once Alex understood why he had such a difficult early life, why he should not commit suicide and do his best to live as long as possible and die in a natural way…
Of life, death and enlightenment
We face big and small challenges throughout our lives. Small challenges become significant if they repeat themselves often. For instance, imagine a traffic irritation: you are driving, and someone coming from the right lane cuts in front of you without signalling. You naturally get upset, but how do you react? Do you think, 'Oh, just forget it, thank God nothing more serious happened...', or do you get infuriated and make a bad sign to the person? I remember reacting in each of these ways often. Maybe, this is why traffic difficulties occur repeatedly. Somehow, we have to change our reactions to testing situations.
Imagine now another situation: having waited 2 months for a dentist appointment, when the day arrives you have completely forgotten it in spite of having closely followed your agenda. Who do you blame for it? Do you blame yourself, do you blame the bad weather, the cat or whoever else?
Such trivial irritating challenges tend to repeat themselves. If we don't pardon ourselves for being angry at traffic conditions, or forgetting an important meeting, similar episodes will tend to recur, until we learn to detach ourselves of these events and become more compassionate towards ourselves and others.
There are also examples of more serious events, like the death or separation of dear friends or family members, the loss of a job, or moving houses. In each of these events, we need to learn detachment of people and/or the events, and be able to turn that page of our life book, as a means to be able to continue forward.
The more we learn detachment and compassion, the closer we will be to liberation of the need to reincarnate and continue learning. When we adapt in a more positive way, new challenges will appear. It's like each time we learn to react in a positive way to challenges, our consciousness expands. We also develop new capacities to face more trying situations - like developing both a psychological shield and the creativity to find ways out of difficulties.
Life seems like a succession of letting go of our old attitudes, feelings and persona, until we are completely free of our old manner of being. At the same time, we become more loving towards ourselves and others. Evolving spiritually will mean accepting our so-called positive qualities while recognising also our shadow/negative qualities. We should understand that our shadow qualities may also be needed at times for our survival, understanding and integration in life.
As a conclusion, if we learn perfect detachment, compassion and love during life, and have positive thoughts at the moment of our death (eg. feeling happy we accomplished a lot in life; that we had a loving family/partner, or that it is the right moment to leave), we can be liberated from the need to reincarnate. Liberation will be the perfect detachment from the feeling of happiness or sadness, and we will be in a state of perfect balance, perfect harmony.
