Nurturing
Relationships
The word nurture originally came from Latin and means “to feed and cherish.” Food is a fundamental need. We need it to survive. To grow into healthy adults, we also need to be emotionally cherished. Once we are adults, we need to nurture and care for ourselves. But even when we are strong and independent, there are times when we need the love and support of others. At such times, we feel small and vulnerable, much like a needy child. Before long, with some care and attention, most of us are back on our feet, moving on with our lives.
We want to be there for our friends and relatives when they are vulnerable and in need. We want to know how to cherish them and pick them up when they fall. To fulfill our roles as caring friends and relatives, we need to be strong, resilient, and loving. How do we ensure we have the emotional resources needed to fulfill this role?
This chapter is not about duty. It is not about trying to be good. Trying to be good and dutiful takes effort. It doesn’t have to be this way. When we are loving and caring toward ourselves, our love and care for others comes naturally. In this chapter, we explore cases that illustrate the wisdom needed to nurture each other.
Balancing Needs
Many of us believe we should always assist others. This belief is fine when we are helping someone in an emotional crisis, knowing the crisis will pass. But it is not a good idea with those who are always in one crisis or another. Such people can come to rely on our help, reinforcing their feelings of powerlessness. In the long term, we do not benefit either. We’ll grow tired of always picking them up. We may even deteriorate into illness or resentment. How can we support them in a way that is empowering? Achieving this balance between weakening and empowering others can be tricky.
Keith, nearly sixty, has a successful career in the computer industry. Quietly spiritual, but not affiliated with any religious tradition, he is in the habit of doing his best to keep people happy. Keith comes for a Life Between Lives session feeling he is ready for an undefined change in his life.
In the session, Keith feels surrounded by his guide, sensed as a spiritual, calming presence. The guide has not been getting through to Keith and lets Keith know.
It seems I haven’t listened to my guide. I’m sorry I didn’t listen! He says it’s okay. I want to say thank you to him. He is so understanding. He has been with me a long time. He is embracing me. It feels so good! He tells me to calm down.
The practitioner offers some calming words to Keith, suggesting he can listen and understand more easily when he is calm.
My guide wants to take me someplace. He is going to show me something I do not want to see. I do not want to see it!
The practitioner suggests Keith ask for help.
He says it is okay. But I feel that I was killing people in some war. I do not like it. It is not right, and I should not have been doing it. I am hiding. I am underground over a hill.
What am I to see? Oh! I asked to do this. I need to be more aggressive. Those people [I killed] are okay. They are soldiers. Why did I have to do this?
Keith discovers he planned to be more aggressive in this past life as a soldier. He doesn’t feel comfortable with aggressive, masculine energies. But this discomfort indicates he is out of balance. He needs to be stronger and less submissive, admitting he allows people to manipulate him now, and in many past lives too. Keith is now taken to a past life where he is female.
I am the mother of a child, a little girl, Anna. I love her and I am very gentle with her. I am combing her long, dark hair. She likes it, and also likes it when I bake.
She dies young by running out of the house and being hit by a car. It is my fault. I should have watched her. [crying]
The practitioner asks what Keith is meant to understand from seeing this.
I am to understand what it is like to lose someone I loved. But she is okay. She is with me now [as his present mother]. She is in my heart. I protect her. I would die for her. [cries] She is with me and she will be with me forever.
I don’t know why I don’t understand these lessons.
I was told she would be with me a long time and she is very connected to me. I now understand why I have been so protective of my mother. I’ve had many lifetimes with this soul.
I still don’t understand the war, something about manipulation. Oh. It is about protecting. I like to protect.
The practitioner wonders if protecting is a natural quality of Keith’s.
Yes. Sometimes to protect you must be aggressive. To be less aggressive is to be manipulated. You cannot protect if you are manipulated. The same way you protect yourself, you protect others.
Keith likes protecting and looking after others, rather than himself. He is told, quite clearly, that the guides do not want him to keep doing that.
My guide says I do not need to be physical. I can use my words, as I am good with my words.
Keith needs to feel more powerful, but he doesn’t know how. The practitioner suggests he ask to be shown.
Listening to others deviates me from my path. Ahh! I need to protect my path. My guide is telling me now that I don’t need to do what others tell me to do. I do not need to please others or protect their feelings. I am to do what my heart tells me and follow my path. I am not to let others manipulate me or distract me. I don’t feel that they are manipulating me, but I do defer to them often. I just want them to be happy. Like with Anna. I wanted her to be happy for a long time, but I failed. She died so young.
The practitioner asks if there was a soul lesson and soul choice for Anna in that short life. Keith reports that there was an agreement between them. She was meant to die young. The practitioner suggests Keith sense the power of that agreement, allowing any feelings of remorse or guilt to be released.
It is okay. Anna is laughing. She says it took me almost a whole lifetime to understand. She is in this life to let me protect her as my mother, and I am doing well. I love her so much.
To defer to others is easy for me. I wanted to make Anna happy. Then I wanted to make everyone happy and keep them from bad things.
In the past life, Anna’s mother expected her daughter to grow up and have a happy life. When this didn’t happen, she blamed herself, feeling she’d failed her child. The need to make things right was so strong that it affected the soul, like an imprint of a traumatic memory. This imprint manifested into Keith’s life as a need to make people happy. It gave him a feeling of setting things right. But sometimes, instead of helping, he weakened those he wanted to help. He took on responsibilities that belonged to others, not him, thereby sabotaging their opportunity to build strength. Keith begins to see the connection between the past life and his need to please.
I can do both, protect AND be strong. Others don’t have to influence me, and I don’t need to let them.
There are people who will be put before me and who will show me what I need to do. I am to be patient. I do not need to be all or nothing, all passive or all aggressive. My guide says to notice how his colors are mixed. I am like his colors, I am mixed, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I think that refers to some song. He is laughing.
The guide now takes Keith into another lifetime to consolidate his new realizations.
I don’t see anything; I just feel cold. There is ice all around, like in Alaska. I think I am in in an igloo. So cold!
I am wearing lots of fur. It smells good. This is where I learned to love dogs. He is showing me one dog I had. He was special. I was happy, though I did not like the cold. But that is the way we lived. I am male again. I don’t like that.
As explained earlier, Keith doesn’t like experiencing masculine energy, seeing it as aggressive. The practitioner asks about the lessons of this life in the cold.
It is about being without, having nothing, and having the fear of being without. It’s about surviving. Yes. So much ice, so many people died, so hungry. No fish. Too much ice to get to the fish.
I don’t like being hungry. My guide is telling me that is why I have excess weight now. I carried the imprint of not wanting to be hungry on my soul.
Keith now becomes strongly emotional.
We can’t eat the dogs! Some want to eat the dogs. I won’t let them. I tell them NO! I am very angry.
The practitioner points out that Keith is protecting the dogs, using his power and his voice.
Yes. They listened to me. I said we must wait. I told them to wait. We were okay. It was the dogs who led us to the fish. We all laughed about that. It was good.
The practitioner notes that Keith was a leader, suggesting he sense the strength of his voice and power.
Yes. They listened to me. It was one of the first times I said NO! like that. I loved the dogs. Our people listened to me from then on. They wanted to listen to me, and I like people listening to me.
My guide said, “See how easy it is to follow your heart.”
Keith touches his heart.
Your heart can protect you like the gun. You do not need a gun. The heart is what protects, not a gun. I learned that from being a soldier. It’s what you believe. It’s not what you do, not what you kill. You do not have to kill if you believe. I like that I learned that. That gives me goose bumps. Your heart protects. So many died, but they are okay. They all learned so much. Their lives were not wasted. No life is ever a waste.
Keith realizes he had a sacrificial life, a life where he played a role for someone else to learn an important lesson.
Did I learn a lesson in that life? My guide says I am learning it now. Sacrifice. It is not all about me. Sacrifice—such a short life, but a BIG lesson for the other soul. Like Anna in that life with me when I was learning about loss. She sacrificed herself for my learning.
He says that there really isn’t any loss. We are all here together forever. I understand our journey is about loss, the painfulness, and the lessons, and it is all okay because you survive it. He is filling me with that feeling of there being no loss. Wow!
The practitioner asks if there is a universal message here.
Think with the heart. We think with our heads and it is not necessary at all. Every decision can be based in the heart, every single one. It is simple. Follow the heart. That is what the world needs now. I should tell people. Think with the heart, not the head, not the ego. He says it is truth and he is filling my body with truth. Wow! It is so simple.
The practitioner follows up with Keith several times after this session. A year later, he describes the session as life-changing. He lost several fears, including his fears of rejection, making wrong decisions, and disappointing others. He is happy in his work and has been promoted. Another year on, he feels called to move across the country to a place he has never visited. He follows this call. Now he is happily relocated and open to do whatever spirit wants for him. He is living from the heart and sharing that with others.
Keith’s case tells us we should follow our heart. This means following our feelings. To trust our feelings, we need to clear the emotional baggage we carry. Keith did this. Keith felt some change was imminent and it was. The old imprint that had him running around trying to make everyone happy was gone. Now he could trust his feelings to guide him. He knows when to lead and when to pull back, when to give and when to say no.
Tough Love
Finding the balance between weakening and empowering when helping others is especially delicate when the person we want to help is close to us. Chad, a thirty-year-old horticulturist, loves working outdoors. Chad comes to a session wanting to know what lessons he needs to learn. He is falling into the same trap as Keith. During the pre-briefing, the practitioner learns that he has a specific issue with his sister.
Chad describes his sister as angry, impulsive, and in the habit of overspending. She is always in debt and rarely pays off her loans. Being a generous soul, Chad is easily manipulated, repeatedly lending her money. In the session, he asks his guide what he should do about this.
It is not for the highest good of all to keep lending. I am enabling her. I would be helping myself on my journey if I stood up for myself more. I don’t like people getting angry at me, but their anger is about them, not me. I am to walk away from angry people and go somewhere nice.
When Chad is with the council of elders, he receives further information. Their advice is about using our intuition. This is another way of expressing the guidance Keith received about thinking with the heart.
I need to think more positively and be grateful, putting myself in other people’s shoes.
Intuition helps me stay on my path and make decisions. Feelings don’t lie. When a decision feels good, it is right. It is intuition and that is how our guides help us. I don’t use it often enough. My mind is too busy. I talk too much in my head. They are suggesting I meditate, mindfully meditate. I am to clear my mind and be aware of the thoughts that come in, quieting the mind so I can listen.
Chad learns that his self-talk distracts him from listening to his intuition. He is trying to be perfect and worrying about making mistakes. Calming his mind will allow his fears to arise with a deeper understanding. He will feel more in control when he learns to either release or manage his concerns, whichever is appropriate in each situation. His guidance will support him, so he knows when to be generous with others and when to pull back.
By following our heart and the guidance of our intuition, we tap into wisdom and compassion. We can see what is in the best interests of our loved ones and follow through with the appropriate approach. Sometimes we need to look after our own needs, even when others do not agree and want more from us. Other times we are called to sacrifice our needs to help another. We need flexible, wise boundaries to balance our needs with the needs of others.
Healing the Unloved
There is one message that is often repeated by various guides during regressions: we need to fill our hearts with love before we can really help others. The case of Mary demonstrates the importance of this message.
Mary, nearing sixty, felt haunted by the thought that she had failed her mother. These unsettling thoughts became more intense since her mother had died recently.
Mary’s mother grew up in a violent household. As an adult, she married an aggressive alcoholic who beat her. Taking her children with her, Mary’s mother left her husband when Mary was ten years old.
They moved into what Mary described as “an old, dumpy house” and times were tough. Even though Mary was young, her mother expected a lot from her. Needy and critical, her mother said one day, “How could I be wanted?”
Mary had to grow up quickly, as her mother needed Mary to take care of her. Being a devoted daughter, Mary tried to meet her mother’s needs and expectations, but this was impossible; her mother was “an unfillable well of sadness, shame, and unworthiness.”
After her mother died, Mary thought about her mother’s life, concluding that it was very sad. Then she wondered if she did enough for her mother, worrying that perhaps she hadn’t.
Mary never felt loved by her mother. As she talks about the passing of her mother, tears well up in her eyes. Coming for her Life Between Lives session, Mary has only one thing on her mind.
I just need to know if my mom really loved me.
Soon after the practitioner begins the session, Mary experiences a past life as a happily married, wealthy woman with several children.
Home feels good. There’s nothing to want for.
A few years later, her peace is shattered. Her nine-year-old daughter in this past life suddenly dies. She is grief-stricken and struggles to give her other children the attention and love they need.
It feels like part of me is gone. The other children need me, but I can’t be there all the way. I never got over the loss of my daughter. I couldn’t give my children what they needed. The love was there but it couldn’t be expressed.
Mary knows what it feels like to have a mother who is emotionally empty and cannot connect with her children. It is exactly what Mary experienced in her current life with her mother.
During this past life, Mary is the mother who emotionally neglects her children. And she doesn’t understand the hurt inside her children caused by having an emotionally absent mother. But now Mary realizes she did love her children. She just failed to express her love, caught up in her own grief. Now she sees her mother was the same. Of course her mother loved her! She just couldn’t express it. Mary not only knew the answer to her question, she felt it reverberate through her body.
A week after the session, Mary wrote to the practitioner.
It’s the most unusual thing. Because of our session, I know my mother loves me. I always felt she didn’t love me because I thought she saw something in me that was not lovable, not worthy of love.
I have been given a gift from my higher self. It’s the gift of knowing I was loved by my mom. I was unable to know this deep down. Knowing is the only word I can think of to use, yet it doesn’t feel like the same knowing as everyday terms.
I am so grateful. This is the most valuable of gifts.
Mary didn’t feel the truth of her own mother’s love until she relived her past life and remembered the true depth of a mother’s love. Mary realized that because her mother was full of grief and emotionally empty, she was unable to express her love.
Insight into the pain and struggles of our loved ones gives us power. We see their behavior in a new light, realizing we are not bad or unlovable after all. We can feel love and compassion for ourselves and for those who are still hurting. When we are filled with love, nurturing our relationships with others is easy and natural.
Forgiveness Heals
Forgiveness is healing. Little else is as nurturing as being forgiven and feeling redeemed. But forgiveness is not something we do just for others. When we forgive, we free ourselves.
We are not talking here about feigned forgiveness. Feigned forgiveness is avoidance. Some hurts are so deep and painful that we want to put them out of our mind. We think if we forgive the perpetrator, the pain will go away. But we are mistaken. We might have put the incident out of our mind, but it hasn’t gone away. As soon as we encounter a situation like the betrayal from the past, we find ourselves thrown back into the original pain.
To forgive, we not only need to look at the perpetrator’s actions, we also need to look at our own. If we are cloudy about our own motivations, we do not have the clarity to see the truth. Instead we justify our own actions and blame others. We need discernment and much courage to see the truth. Only after we have seen into our soul and the soul of the other, do we know the truth. Forgiveness comes from a deep understanding of the perpetrator and of ourselves.
The case of Natasha, a forty-year-old woman, shows us this path to real forgiveness. For nineteen years, Natasha was sexually and ritually abused by her stepfather. After he raped her at age six, she fell under his power. The abuse caused turmoil in Natasha’s life and she spent many years in therapy, healing her shame and self-hatred. Despite her emotional work, Natasha was still suffering feelings of rage and sadness. She came to her Life Between Lives session wanting to understand the deep reasons for her stepfather’s abuse.
Early in the session, Natasha experiences a recent past life as a man named Max. Max is married with two children, but he would like to be free of his marriage. He is rich and money-driven. He has no respect for his wife, is sexually “cold” toward her, and beats her and their children. His only interest in his wife is to maintain their social status. He is totally caught up in all the material external things, including money, fame, and social recognition. Max never reflects on his behavior, becoming more and more abusive toward his wife. Although they hate each other, they hide it from their social acquaintances.
His wife sees no way of protecting herself and her two young children other than killing him. She knows carbon monoxide is deadly, quick, and painless, so she poisons him with this gas.
Until he passes over, Max is not aware of the impact of his behavior, but Natasha soon sees through the man she was in that life. During the regression, she reflects on his behavior.
Being like Max doesn’t give you anything good. I was playing out what I thought I had to do. “WAKE UP!” I look into his eyes and tell him to wake up. Weirdly enough, I want to say this to the man I was: “I forgive you. Max, you were like a child. And thank you.”
Natasha reports that Max now feels respected and acknowledged. He knows he didn’t lead a great life and did need to be forgiven. Now Max’s wife appears, and even though she made a sacrifice to be his wife, she agreed to do it. They forgive each other. Natasha, as Max, has another realization.
I also need to apologize to my children, for leaving them and beating them badly. Somehow, I thought that I was a good father, but I see it differently now. They were really damaged.
After reviewing her life as Max, Natasha is no longer bothered by that lifetime. She meets her council of elders, and they give her information about her progress as a soul.
They say that Max’s life was an important one, because [cringing] I didn’t learn anything. So now I have a choice to really buckle down if I want. I can discover what my lessons are, learn, and wake up, or I can just continue down that path, kind of circle around the drain, and then go down it. It is important for me to understand that I did not move forward as Max. It was an opportunity for me to make different choices, and I didn’t.
The practitioner asks how Natasha feels about this.
I understand exactly what they say. I kept the lid on the box the whole time. I refused to open it.
They used to call me Butter Flower and they are doing it again, saying, “Now you’re getting it, Butter Flower!” They say I was sitting on the fence for a long time. I thought about it a lot and in the last three years of my current life I buckled down.
The abuse in my current life was to wake me up! It was forced. They tell me that in other lives I had all the ingredients to be more conscious but, in that life as Max, I overrode my awareness.
The council points out that the abuse in her current life was brutal and painful for a reason.
All that pain made it much more difficult for me to stay complacent. The abuse was meant to create a crisis.
The practitioner asks for more details about this arrangement with her stepfather’s soul.
We both agreed to play our parts. We made an agreement before we lived this life. And I knew, going into it, that it would hurt. He was chosen because he could do it.
The practitioner questions Natasha about her stepfather being capable of abuse and if there were any other reasons why he was chosen.
His soul was capable of abuse. That is why he was chosen. We did not really have a strong bond when we made the plan. My guide and his guide were there when we signed the contract. My father is on a very different path than I am. They show me his soul, and his light is very dim.
The practitioner wonders about the essence of the lesson from the abuse. Natasha exhales slowly and pauses several times as she receives the information.
Compassion. Forgiveness. And awakening in consciousness. Yeah, and waking up, I just hear, “waking up, waking up!” And experiencing the other side of the coin. I have been in the role of the abuser before.
The practitioner asks how the council is rating her progress.
The heavy lifting is behind me. [she smiles] And they are very proud of me! They know it was a big test.
Natasha has a deep-seated fear of men, and the practitioner wonders how this can be healed.
My fear of men comes from having experienced both sides, the lifetime when I was the abuser as a man, and this lifetime when I am abused by a man. For a long time, I turned a blind eye to it, and I did not want to look at it. I agreed to clear up a lot of this stuff in my present life and the abuse by my father is one of the biggest parts.
I must learn to go within and look inside. They say part of my work is to have faith and trust myself. Forgiveness is first, and not just for other people. I came in with very specific work to do, and the biggest piece is about men. It’s learning to respect men, while knowing my own value. Also, I need to confront my own pain around this.
There are all these emotional places I did not want to go to, but I do have to go. It’s the only way. I just need faith. They show me that I am turning a corner. They tell me to remember this conversation.
Natasha’s forehead is gently touched by the practitioner, to help her remember, knowing she will need this memory as she moves forward in her life. This helps her integrate the learnings from the session and clears any remnants from the past.
Natasha now understands the reasons she suffered the abuse. Her soul was stalled and, in Max’s life, had made no progress at all. The abuse was designed to force her to wake up. Her suffering set her on a path of searching for answers. She has been working on self-improvement for several years, and this healing path guided her to her Life Between Lives session.
She also discovered she had been a perpetrator in her past lives. She forgave Max, and this helped her begin the process of forgiving her stepfather. As she and Max shared the same soul, she was effectively forgiving herself, as Max was a part of herself that she’d disowned. Forgiving and embracing the lost parts of ourselves brings us to wholeness, expressed in religions as holiness. Forgiveness is the heart of our soul journey. We cannot be whole without it.
A few years after the regression, Natasha had forgiven her stepfather, enabling her to begin dating and to open to love.
The forgiveness I feel toward my father is a huge relief. I know it was my soul that chose what happened to propel myself forward. And it has worked so successfully.
Forgiveness is one of the most powerful actions we can take to nurture our relationships. When forgiving feels out of reach, ask to understand the greater perspective of the hurtful behavior. Once we fully understand the highest perspective of the situation, any need to forgive disappears. Forgiveness is automatic and all our pain melts away.
Severed Bonds
Connection is fundamental to relationships. And yet we can be in relationship and feel disconnected.
How do we connect with other people? We connect in pairs. This means the fundamental connection with others is always one to one. Even when we are with a group, each person connects to all the others individually. It is like a network. If three people are friends, there are three relationships. If four people are in the group, then there are six relationships. Even though a relationship is between two people, a third person can influence the quality of their connection.
Our sense of connection is not stable. It comes and it goes. Still, the quality of our connection to others greatly influences our relationships. This is profoundly true of the connection between mother and child.
During her Life Between Lives session, Valentina, thirty-six, describes her sense of disconnection from her mother.
I am coming through the birth canal and there is a lot of disturbance. It isn’t peaceful, too much is happening. It is stressful and painful for my mother. Everyone is worried. They are trying to get me out. She is afraid, not able to trust the process and connect with the baby that is arriving.
Looking back on her birth, Valentina describes the environment as hostile, saying she didn’t feel much connection to anyone.
As she grew, there were other times when she felt disconnected. On one occasion, when she was a little toddler, she wasn’t cooperating with her mother, who wanted her to get dressed. Instead, Valentina was playfully jumping around in her cot. Her mother became angry, worried about being late for an appointment. Suddenly she grabbed Valentina’s hair and threw her down. Valentina recalled how she felt.
I hit my head on the rails on the cot, on the right side of my head at the back. I have a feeling of fear. I feel scared and vulnerable.
It is a feeling that makes me want to go into my own world to feel safe. My trust in her to protect me and my feeling of being secure is disturbed. I get a sense of closing down, feeling safe within myself and needing to be self-reliant.
Even now, feeling insecure affects my confidence. It is important in early childhood to feel secure and connected.
Valentina describes disconnection as a sense of closing into her own world. Others have described it as a sense of contraction, rolling up into a ball, and distancing themselves from others.
Connection was one of many themes running through Valentina’s seven regressions. She discovered that reconnection is achieved from experiencing both sides of the coin. Like Mary in an earlier case in this chapter, Valentina learned from her past lives that she too had disconnected from her children. She forgave her mother and became a more loving and connected mother from understanding the nature of connection and disconnection.
Many parents do not understand the nature of connection. They think they are being helpful when in fact they are pushing others away.
Importance of Self-Love
Attachment and connection are different. When we are attached, we have expectations of our loved one. We think we are connected but we are not and we end up trying to control, manipulating our loved one to give us what we need.
Connection is different. When we are connected, we have no expectations. Our love is much bigger than that. We see the humanity in our loved ones, their vulnerability, their strength and their protective stances. Nothing they do can permanently break our sense of connection to them, even though they may deny it and go their own way.
Marie, a fifty-seven-year-old nurse, feels disconnected from her loved ones and wants to know how to re-establish relationships with them, especially her son. She felt connected to her son until his early teens, when he started isolating himself. He is now eighteen.
The practitioner asks Marie’s guides why Marie is having these problems.
Marie has preconceived ideas about what love is. When her experience is different from her expectations, she is unable to stay open. She closes herself off and cannot receive love. She doesn’t understand that you automatically deserve love. You don’t have to earn it.
Many humans hold this misunderstanding.
Unconditional love is a like a sense that you know is there. It is not a thing that you can prove, and it is not actions. You may have an inner knowing of love or you may not even be aware of it at all. You just trust it is there.
When people are close emotionally, it is easy to trust that the love is there. You sense their sincerity and you don’t have doubts.
You need sincerity and honesty to build trust. This comes from the heart rather than the mind. It is sensing rather than thinking. When you love, any action you take comes from a sense of sincerity. You might give, because your heart tells you to give, but you don’t expect anything back.
Wanting proof of others’ love is not actually important. In fact, wanting proof gets in the way of connecting. It pushes your loved ones away. Marie tries to provoke a reaction from her loved ones, thinking she will then know they love her.
The practitioner notes that Marie will go to her son, pleading to help him by asking what’s wrong. Usually he is not interested, saying with hostility, “Leave me alone.” She will then often provoke him, making a scene, crying or yelling, hoping to get his attention. The guide explains why this is happening.
When she does this, she is acting from her needs and not his. She must stop this if she wants to be sincere in her relationships. She needs to know that her needs and the needs of her son are both important. And this applies to all relationships.
She must understand that the love we need the most is the love we give ourselves. When she is her own closest companion, she is no longer dependent on others. Then she can focus on just being, instead of trying to manipulate others into meeting her needs.
Here we accept that everyone is perfect and exactly as they should be on their journey. Humans need to accept themselves. This means loving and nurturing yourself instead of supporting others in the hope that they will love and care for you.
When Marie acknowledges and nurtures herself, then she can extend this to others, no matter what their circumstances and no matter what choices they make. That is unconditional love.
Valentina helped us understand the deep pain of disconnection from those we love, particularly when children feel disconnected from their mothers. Marie’s case gives us direction on how to connect to our children as parents. Both cases remind us of the power of present time: unconditional connection with those we love.
A Gift of Unconditional Love
There is nothing really to say to introduce this case. Its power resides in the story itself.
Kelly, age forty-nine, comes for a session seeking wisdom and guidance in her personal, professional, and spiritual life. Kelly is a soul who is strongly connected to her higher self. This is evident from her recent past life as a nine-year-old Jewish boy, Joseph, who lived in Austria during World War II.
Joseph and his five-year-old brother had a happy life with their family in Austria until the Nazis came. They were separated from their quiet, loving parents and taken to a concentration camp. Joseph stayed calm in the camp, looking after his brother, observing and comforting the others. He watched the guards and wondered how they could treat children with such neglect and cruelty.
We feel mostly fear. We fear we will never see our parents again. And we fear the hunger and cold, having no blankets or coats, or anything. There is a lot of yelling from the guards. They don’t look at us; they try not to look at us. But I look at them in their faces anyway. I want them to see me. I know they have children. I don’t understand how they can do this. They can’t all not have families of their own! But no one takes care of us. I have a girl, Ellen, as my friend, and she talks to me. She is not always comforting because she brings all bad news. She says we won’t be here long. It will be over soon.
Joseph notices one guard and senses an uneasiness inside him.
There is a guard. I see his face. I feel like he hates his job. I know he does, and he hides it with his yelling. But I know inside he doesn’t like what he does. He feels pity for us. I try to stand near him. I feel like I remind him of his own son. My brother and I are always together, always holding hands and I never take my arm off him, if I can help it, to keep him warm and to keep him safe.
Joseph describes what happens when he, his brother, and Ellen are taken to the gas chambers.
There comes a time when they move us. They move us to a building and Ellen tells me we’re going to die there. She says they call it a shower, but it’s not. It’s poison. She says to not fight it. Just breathe it in and make it fast. She asks us not to scream. She doesn’t want to hear us scream. My brother and I promise not to. So, we go inside and it’s very crowded. We are all pressed together. Some adult people are with us too now, but I don’t know where they came from. We are waiting, it seems like forever. We know this is the end. I am praying. I pray to God that it’s quick. Then, the mist, it is like a shower, but it isn’t. I take a deep breath and ask God if I can go at the same time as my brother, so we can go up to heaven together. It’s very fast! I come out before my body is done living. I feel no pain or suffering in my death.
The practitioner asks Joseph to describe what happens after he leaves his body.
I’m lying on the ground. I am naked. Everyone is falling around me. But I don’t see other souls. They each have their own way. I know my brother is safe and Ellen is safe. And a light is there. I pass right into the light. It folds around me. I’m instantly okay. I felt bad for the guard. Pity was the last thing I felt, not fear, and I am in the light. It’s very, very bright, and I feel at peace.
Joseph passes into his life between lives and is welcomed by an angel. He soon retains his soul consciousness and is given insight into the reasons for this short, challenging life.
My last life was so short. Oh! I only went to teach the guard compassion. And that he should overcome the coercion to do the job they wanted him to do.
Kelly is told that Joseph was brave and did what he was supposed to do. The practitioner asks for more information on Joseph’s purpose.
I was to give comfort and compassion. It was so scary. There were so many people panicking. If I didn’t panic, it would comfort them. I showed strength and courage so that they knew they could do it too. By accepting, it would be easier, and it didn’t have to be so bad. To show acceptance demonstrates that, no matter what, you are okay.
And I see that I looked at the soldier, looked at his face, as I was going into the gas chamber. I knew I was going to die, and I saw that he regretted everything. He wished he could follow us in there. That he could go too. But he says in his mind that this is his punishment. He will endure it then, whatever he must, to the bitter end.
I see now that he is my father in my current life!
There is a pause as Kelly takes in this revelation.
Joseph energetically connected to the guard, reading the guard’s emotions, and seeing that the guard’s aggression was just helplessness disguised as power. Joseph also connected to each of the children, calming them with his serenity in the face of great adversity.
Kelly is still connected to the guard who shares the same soul as her father. She mentions that her father refused to discipline her or her siblings, wanting to be the fun-loving parent. And he completely avoided watching any war movies.
During the session, Kelly discovers that Joseph’s life was a sacrifice. She could have finished incarnating several lifetimes ago. She volunteered to help the souls of the guard, the brother, and the children on their soul journey. While incarnated, Kelly and Joseph are connected to their higher self.
Just as we have a one-to-one relationship with each other, we also have an individual connection to Source Energy, often referred to as our higher self. Joseph felt this personal connection to God, and the peace it gave him was significant. He was able to positively affect others. Although we are always connected to this energy, we can deny it. When we are afraid or negative, like the children and the guard in the camp, we feel alone and abandoned. This is disconnection. Because Joseph still felt connected, he became a conduit for the loving energies from above that were able to calm the inmates of the concentration camp.
Sometime later, Kelly writes to her practitioner, expressing some of the insights she received during and after the regression.
I realized how we are all one, all interconnected. Then this message came to me: We are collectively like a pond of water. If a stone is thrown into the pond, only a few drops of water touch it, but the whole pond experiences the stone. Our individual souls are the drops of water that make up the pond. What the pond experiences, we ALL experience together, even if the event doesn’t touch us directly. What we do to one another, we do to all and do to ourselves. Thus, it is so important to treat each other as we wish to be treated. This is how we are all connected by God’s love and energy. In the regression, I saw how all souls seem to be individuals, yet completely connected at the same time. To think we can somehow be separate and alone is impossible! We just couldn’t exist if that were true.
Each of the cases we explored in this chapter demonstrates the importance of opening to our soul journey. Keith and Chad teach us the importance of building strength and resilience, so that we can act from the heart, balancing our needs with the needs of others. Natasha shows us a way to forgiveness through understanding her own soul’s journey. Valentina teaches us the importance of feeling connected to others. Mary demonstrates the power of seeing both sides of any trauma, which leads us to compassion. Kelly, through Joseph, demonstrates the power of our one-to-one connection to love energy, thereby reassuring others in need.
When we are open to connect to others and we are living from the heart, we are our true selves. Our true self naturally nurtures others. We are calm, even in challenging circumstances. We are accepting and not judging, expressing unconditional love to those around us. We know what to do because our heart tells us. And we trust the universal plan, understanding that whatever happens is ultimately for the highest good.