Currents... Announcements and items of interest. (To e-mail Elisabeth, click on "Currents," above)
Free to download: Soul Bonding During Pregnancy
A valuable resource has been donated to this website for free downloading! Soul Bonding During Pregnancy is just twenty-five pages long, but it can open the door to a new experience of pregnancy. It is the result of the collaboration of two women, Pamela Hickein and Bridget Luise Esswein, each of them expert in a different form of prenatal education. (To learn about Pamela's ongoing work in this field, visit The Whole Child Institute.) As explained in the Introduction: "To Bridget, a midwife from Germany, prenatal education meant natural childbirth preparation classes -- helping parents with the physical, spiritual, emotional and mental transition into parenthood. For Pamela, prenatal education encompassed something a little different -- a Japanese prenatal infant learning program taught to babies via the mother through intuitive right-brain communication."
In a reassuring and loving style, you are guided through twelve "Exercises for intuitive, creative right-brain communication." Each one is an inspired adventure in connecting with the unborn child. Here is a small portion of the exercise titled "A New World":
Choose a sound which is a part of daily life, for example, the vacuum cleaner or blender. Connect with the baby. Send him your love and attention. Say, "I'm turning the vacuum cleaner on now." Send him the image of its shape and sound. Breathe calmly and tell him in words or thoughts, "Close your ears. You do not need to let in the sound." You can even image a blue light around you, the womb and the baby's ears. While vacuuming you can frequently stop and pat your tummy, and tell him that everything is okay.
The authors of Soul Bonding During Pregnancy (which is no longer available in print) have generously made it available for free downloading. It is a 3.26 Megabyte Acrobat file. Here is the link:
Double click to download for viewing or printing out, or Right-click and choose "save target as" if you wish to save the file to your own computer. Thank you Pamela and Bridget!
New Website has Articles, CD's to aid Pre-Birth Communication
Kate Street has created a website in support of her mission -- two missions actually: to further awareness of pre-birth communication, and help women discover their power and intuition. She writes:
"I had an incredible pregnancy with my first son where I
experienced vivid pre-birth communication. Through our communication, my son
relayed to me the way he'd prefer to be born and then guided me on the steps to
achieve that birth. He was my teacher, my healer, my guide, and my source of
inspiration. I already had a profound respect for him when he was born and felt
that we knew each other very well.
"My pregnancy and birth experience changed me forever...and opened me up to a whole world of magical possibilities that I'd never known existed. I discovered my power, my strength, and most importantly I learned to trust that little voice inside known as intuition. I want to help other women discover their own source of power and intuition... This is why I created these meditation CD's and website Lovefrombaby.com."
I highly recommend a visit to Kate's website. She has posted excellent articles about pre-birth communication and her personal experiences. Her CD's, available through the website, feature her beautiful voice in guided meditation and visualization to help you connect with your child before birth (or before conception).
From my Bedside Table
One of the perks of
working in the pre-birth communication field is to receive books and CD's from
others involved in th
e
field. Since I've been away from my website for a while, I've allowed a small
pile of gifts to gather, and it's long overdue that I should mention some of
them.
Anita Billi gathered
compelling stories of "paranormal events" such as spirit visitations, and used
them to illustrate what is really an overview of soul experience before and
after earth life. Afterlifefromabove: Healings
of a Paranormal Nature (2006) is warm and inspiring, its confident tone
based upon Anita's personal credo. Her own
experiences are among the most
interesting of all.
Several years ago, Robert Schwartz embarked on a project to answer the question, "Do we plan our life challenges before birth?" This became the subtitle of his book Courageous Souls (2007). In the course of his research, he enlisted psychics and mediums to explore the pre-birth scenarios of his subjects, people contending with a variety of challenges such as illness, loss, and addiction. The most interesting cases (in my view) are those where people have their own apparent memories of pre-birth planning. Courageous Souls is beautifully written and thought-provoking.
New Website for Sarah Hinze
Sarah Hinze, author of Coming From the Light, The Castaways and more, maintains a website and blog at www.RoyalChild.com. Here you will find information about her two most recent books, Songs of the Morning Stars and We Lived in Heaven (both 2006). With these books, Sarah continues her pioneering work of gathering and sharing the stories that speak of soul existence before birth.
Virtual Support Group for Pre-Birth Memory
People who recall their existence before birth (even before conception) are often surprised and relieved to discover others with similar experiences. Michael and Toni Maguire, webmasters of Spiritual Pre-Existence, maintain an expanding list of people with soul memories who would like to connect with others for added support and insight. For information, visit Michael and Toni's fascinating website!
Book Offers Fine Guidance, Overlooks Pre-Birth Communication
Peggy O'Mara, the editor and publisher of Mothering Magazine, has published Having a Baby, Naturally (Atrium Books, August 2003). This user-friendly, oversized book offers guidance for every step of the way from conception through the postpartum period. It draws on research revealing that natural methods (breastfeeding, midwives, home birth etc.) offer benefits to both mother and child. As O'Mara says, "If you want to make an informed decision about your pregnancy and birth, look at the evidence and not at what is commonly practiced. What is considered 'natural' is almost always safer and more satisfying for women during pregnancy and birth."
I am happy to note that the Light Hearts website is one of the listed resources. On the other hand, I am disappointed that Having a Baby, Naturally makes no mention of pre-birth communication. This is an excellent companion book for your pregnancy, full of good information. To round out your pregnancy library, supplement Having a Baby, Naturally with books that do more to acknowledge the other person involved -- your unborn child. I specially recommend The Mind of Your Newborn Baby by David Chamberlain, The Mother-To-Be's Dream Book by Raina Paris, and of course my own Stories of the Unborn Soul.
While Children Sleep
A pediatrician has created a website to share information about "sleep-talking." This unconventional form of therapy has been showing surprising results for clients who have tried it with their children, says Dr. Rhodora Damaso Diaz. She explains:
"Either from desperation or inspiration, I suddenly decided to try having mothers talk to their troubled children when the young ones were asleep. A depressed infant who rarely smiled, another who had very violent behavior and still another who refused to suck unless he was asleep--all improved after their mothers talked to them in a loving way and sometimes apologized for presumed shortcomings. Several had irrational fears and apparently lost them after one to three 'sessions.'
"Was it the mothers' changed attitude towards the children, or was it really just the talking? I want to know more and to tell others. It would be great if people can write about their own experiences. I am willing to give a customized 'script' for each one who needs it, but I will need some information, and not necessarily names."
Dr. Diaz's website is While Children Sleep. She welcomes information, personal experiences, and questions about the 'sleep-talking' technique. Dr. Diaz adds, "I find that as I have more stories of success, more parents come into the office with other problems that do not seem to be easily managed with psychotherapy and usual discussions. Fortunately, many are open to trying this unconventional 'therapy' and come back enthusiastic about it."
Wise Man Builds Bridge Over Quagmire
I've never met the dean of consciousness research Dr. Charles T. Tart, Ph.D., but I'll always think of him affectionately as Charley Tart - partly because back at UC Santa Cruz that's how the professors referred to him, but also because of my warm regard for the man. I'm grateful to the respected scientist who was daring enough in 1969 to publish Altered States of Consciousness, a lifeline for those of us who were experiencing and experimenting with those states. And you've got to love a guy who titled another of his books Open Mind, Discriminating Mind - virtually the motto I try to live by.
Many people seem to think "open mind" and "discriminating mind" are the battle cries of two opposing armies. And so we have the tedious "believer vs. skeptic" confrontations that all too often turn communications on the internet into a quagmire. Dr. Tart has come up with a project that promises to help us out of this limiting standoff. It's a new online journal called TASTE - The Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences. Says Dr. Tart:
"Over the years I have had hundreds of fellow scientists from all sorts of fields quietly come up to me at meetings or write or phone me - when they had decided I was safe - to tell me about their unusual experiences apparently going beyond everyday reality, challenging our concepts of what the world is. These were experiences that intrigued them and/or were emotionally important to them, but which they could not tell to their colleagues or friends for fear of rejection or ridicule. ... These transcendent experiences have included things such as: altered states of consciousness (ASCs), often involving new kinds of apparent knowledge and insights; deep feelings of connection with life or the universe; the apparent paranormal/psychic overcoming of ordinary barriers to communication; various kinds of apparent transcendence of our ordinary physical selves."
Who would have guessed that scientists, so intimidating at times to the non-scientist, are actually shy people, timid about confessing that they too have come up against the mysterious, the strange... the transcendent? Where does this inhibition come from? Dr. Tart explains:
"As scientists, we have discovered a body of precisely observed factual data about the world, created a lot of good theories that make sense of much of that data - and we are part of a cultural heritage of scientism. Sociologists coined the term 'scientism' back in the 1940s, when they realized that many scientists unthinkingly accepted many scientific theories as simple, unquestioned Truths, just like believers in any 'ism,' and thus we often acted like any prejudiced 'believer,' especially outside our immediate areas of expertise.
"This all-too-human narrowness is a significant distorting factor when dealing with the area of life roughly called transcendent, used primarily in the sense of 'extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience...'
"Sometimes being able to tell me about such experiences in confidence has gotten them off people's chests or even been 'therapeutic' (although I'm not a therapist). Sometimes I've been able to give scientific information about these experiences that relieves the reporter, producing a reaction something like: 'Oh, it happens to other sane people? There's an established name for it? I'm not alone, it doesn't mean I'm crazy?!' And often the reaction is further on the order of 'We only know it happens? But we don't know why? Why aren't we intensively researching these things? I ought to research it, but I can't, I would be. . .' (reasons to not research it have included being laughed at and rejected, thought crazy, not getting tenure, losing a job, couldn't get any results published, etc.).
"The TASTE project is an attempt to work toward rectifying this strange, scientistic situation where too many people are forced to deny or repress parts of their own human experience. These Archives are an online journal performing the essential scientific function of full and honest communication of data in this badly neglected area."