Christmas: Jesus’ birthday of legend

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

We celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December each year. History tells us that this was a made-up date to coincide with the Winter Solstice, and other pagan feasts. But was it?

The History

nazareth2jesusofwrejc1

Jesus of Nazareth

From Jeffrey Furst’s book:Edgar Cayce’s Story of Jesus comes a description about the day Jesus was born.

“Yes, we have the information that has been indicated respecting some of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, the son of Mary, in Bethlehem of Judea.

“The arrival was in the evening — not as counted from the Roman times, nor that declared to Moses by God when the Second Passover was to be kept, nor that same time which was in common usage even in that land, but what would NOW represent January sixth.

“In the evening then, or at twilight, Joseph approached the Inn, that was filled with those who had journeyed there on their way to be polled for the tax as imposed by the Romans upon the people of the land. For, those had been sent out who were to judge the abilities of the varied groups to be taxed. And each individual was required by the Roman law to be polled in the city of his birth.

“Then there was the answer by the Innkeeper, ‘No room in the inn’, especially for such an occasion. Laughter and jeers followed, at the sight of the elderly man with the beautiful girl, his wife, heavy with child.

“Necessity demanded that some place be sought — quickly. Then it was found, under the hill, in the stable — above which the shepherds were gathering their flocks into the fold.

“Just as the midnight hour came, there was the birth of the Master.”

Why the 6th of January 6 BC?

Actually, the answer is quite simple: according to our present calendar, Jesus would have been born at the midnight hour of the 25th of December, which implies that we celebrate Christmas at about the right time, date-wise, but when the British calendar was converted from the Julian to the Gregorian 11 days were surpressed in 1752. It is probably this fact that accounts for our continuing to refer to the 12 days of Christmas. The Greek Orthodox Church still uses the Julian calendar and Christmas is celebrated by countries under its sway as the 6th of January.

The year is not as simple: evidently, the Star of Bethlehem must have been a conjunction of two visible planets, Jupiter and Saturn. The only year around that time in which this conjunction took place was 7 BC. I have a theory that the Star appeared after the Annunciation and carried on until a short time after Jesus’ birth, effectively the whole nine months of his gestation period.

In the chart I have erected, Jupiter and Saturn are still within 1.5 degrees, but, soon after this point in time, they separated further and to the casual observer the Star would have seemed to disappear.

The ‘proof’ of the correctness of the date (originally, 25th December 7 BC) can be shown through Numerology: the date adds up to 17, which, according to Linda Goodman, represents the Star of the Magi. When the digits are added together, the result is 8, the number of the Christ, seen as a man (head, feet together, and two outstretched arms) on an equal-armed cross.

Cardinal Cross

Earth Medicine Wheel

The other point I should like to make concerns the Cardinal Cross which the Ascendant/Descendant and Midheaven/IC lines form.

“In traditional astrology, this is the cross formed in the zodiac by Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. However, in connection with the esoteric system proposed by (Alice) Bailey in her Intuitional Astrology, the cross is associated with the crisis of initiation, and with the life of spirit and the Monad. Bailey calls it the ‘Cross of Transcendance’, and traces in its sequence an evolutionary development. Aries is…the birthplace of ideas. What appears in Aries as spiritual energy meets the soul stage of Cancer, and finds incarnation for the first time in form. It reaches a point of equilibrium in Libra, in which soul and personality achieve a balance of co-operation, so that in Capricorn the will nature arrives at fulfilment, and a ‘visioned goal’ is reached.” (Dictionary of Astrology by Fred Gettings)

There is a modern take on this ancient idea that you can read here:

http://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/2345

Conclusion

Jesus’ birth would ordinarily be something that we have to take on faith. But my feeling is that the celebration of an event like this over two centuries gives it a legendary effect. In the end it doesn’t matter when (or even if) he was born; what matters is that we believe it to be true.

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Astral Travelling?

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

Have you ever had a feeling of flying, while asleep in your bed? As a child, this would happen frequently. Now, however, it would take an act of will to achieve astral projection.

Childhood Dreams

Christopher & Columbus

Christopher and Columbus

One of my earliest recollections of flying in my dreams occurred when I was about five years of age. Superman was on the TV, played by George Reeves. In my dreams, I would take that three step run and jump, and begin to float above the earth, moving higher and higher to avoid trees and buildings in my way.

Since I lived in the city of Toronto during those formative years, the sense of freedom was marvellous. I got a similar feeling when I could run free, after moving to the countryside in New Lowell. Later, when I learned how to ride a bicycle, the wind in my hair gave me that same sense of freedom.

Over The Years

I never lost that ability to fly in my dreams, but as the weight of life began to keep me grounded in reality, I found that these flights happened less and less, until one day, I realized that I felt earthbound.

The Hometown Band’s Flying is a gentle reminder of what we all need to remember when we’re earthbound.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/NQRTSVuXv_4?rel=0

Some Experiments

In the early part of 1996, I tried a series of tests to see if I had the ability to astral project to specific people at will. I did not tell these people that I was going to attempt to do so, because I didn’t want their anticipation to create the event. I wanted it to happen purely on my part, to see if I could do it, and if they managed to ‘perceive’ me, all the better.

It will probably come as no surprise that my ‘targets’ were women who were good friends of mine. Women are much more perceptive and receptive than men, when it comes to psychic awareness. Also, I had various emotional attachments to them, from casual friendship to an ongoing sexual relationship.

Over several different nights, I settled myself down to a comfortable sleeping position, held a picture of the person I wanted to visit in my mind, then drifted off to sleep. In most cases, I had a sense of actually visiting them in their homes, but I suspected that was only in my imagination. The only person I seemed to visit in her bedroom was the one with whom I had a sexual relationship.

Casually, over the few days following these experiments, I asked my targets if there had been anything unusual that had occurred. Each related that she had seen me in their mind’s eye, as part of a dream or daydream. Most couldn’t add anything more than that, but I was satisfied that ‘something’ had occurred.

Only my sexual partner was able to say more than the rest: she said that she woke up from her sleep with the feeling of my body pressed to hers. However, she told me that she had said, “Chris, get off me, you’re heavy.” Needless to say, I got off her, according to what she told me.

Final Proof

More recently, I was in contact with a former lover, who wanted to connect spiritually. She set a time when we would meditate together: early morning for her, middle of the night for me.

I focussed on her in a physical way, and seemed to have been in her space. But it wasn’t until she was able to email me later that I realized how ‘there’ I was. Her words were, “You flattened me.” According to her, she had been sitting on her bed, when my energy seemed to knock her on to her back, and rested upon her.

Conclusion

The experiments I tried in 1996 showed that some part of me did astral travel to where my friends were living. And the heaviness experienced by my then lover was ‘real’. I thought it was just a ‘one-off’, but the recent experience with a different former lover showed me that I can actually astral project, with the physical effects still there, too.

It seems to me that my spirit is far weightier than my physical being, which is why I try not to project or react in any way that might cause harm to another.

I believe I am much more than just a body on this earth. This is not something I can prove to anyone else. You, the reader, must prove this for yourself.

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Dreams: is there a higher education?

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

I never did attend university, but I finally graduated from high school, in my dreams. It may have been much, much more than that.

Graduation

Dreams figure greatly in my learning processes. The one that seemed to recur regularly was the one where I returned to Barrie North Collegiate to sit a final Math exam.

Math was my strongest suit in high school. I even managed a perfect Math exam in Grade 13. So, why I should find myself returning to class seemingly every night, I could never comprehend: had I overlooked something? Was I supposed to improve on my score? Or was it that I had intended to continue my education, but I just hadn’t felt ready to do so?

The dream itself would have familiar elements, like the feeling of not being prepared for the test, coming to class late, not being sure where in school the class was being held: anxiety feelings, for sure.

Then one night, I had a dream that was in three parts. Therefore I split the dream’s contents into three poems.

Graduation

Over the last thirteen years, my dreams had
Never been able to stop returning
To high school, as if I had a burning
Obligation to continue to add
Unknown quantities, like Sir Galahad,
Never shrinking from my quest; a yearning
In my heart to pursue my soul’s learning
Vortex into my mind, where Good meets Bad.
Eagerly I went to class, took the test
Repeatedly until I got it right.
Several times I wondered if sometime
I’d break from the depths, climb my Everest
To the top, scale the Spiritual Height…
Yawn, fathom my same base, prepare to climb.

Sonnet XXX

My First Night

MillerChristopherDavidWBAGE2

Composite Chart Jan 19/84

My First Night

Somewhere in the middle of the morning
Of January nineteenth, I went to
University, with no forewarning,
Let alone a cheery ‘How do you do?’
In the course of my wanderings that first
Night, I drank wine with a group of nine/ten
Individuals who helped me quench my thirst,
Teaching me how to release my frightened
Insecurity: my self-illusions
And egotism were shaken; naked I sank.
The ‘me’ that survived the dissolution
Insisted that no-one could love a blank.
One of Them said something I knew was true,
Never having understood: I love you.

Sonnet XXXI

When viewed together, these first two sonnets show the change that occurred that morning of January 19, 1984. I had finally gone to Universe-ity. What I didn’t understand until much later was that the group of nine or ten (I couldn’t be sure how many, as there seemed to be so many of them) were connected with me. They weren’t necessarily ‘me’, but they were there to support me in whatever endeavour I was to attempt.

The Next Morning

One of the group was my Inner Guide, who completely blew my mind when he said that he loved me. But it wasn’t in the ordinary way we mean when we say “I love you”. It was more like, “I know you inside and out, and I love you in spite of that”. That gave me a fresh perspective on everything.

The Next Morning

As morning broke, in my dream, all of the
Newcomers were handed four test papers
In which we were to take backgrounds, see,
Link, with the character traits, the diverse
Lines of action, and complete the story.
Unfortunately, I misplaced them and
Spent three searching hours, an allegory
To illustrate my mental sleight-of-hand.
Recruiting my friend, we located them
As ev’ryone was preparing for lunch.
The experience is an apothegm
Inscribed in my spirit, packed with a punch:
Only when my Constant Companion stood
Near, was I complete, to do as I should.

Sonnet XXXII

The Body, Human

This was the foreshadowing of the change that would come in my Astrology work, when I moved to England.

The Body, Human

At the first moment of our human birth
The cycles of heaven stop, mark the place
Each planet holds on the horoscope’s face
So we’ll know our potential here on earth.
That does not mean an abundance or dearth
In the chart, makes the person only trace
Nth degrees of choice; in all parts of space
Grace allows us to do some things of worth.
Goodness knows that bad things come about;
Reason tells us that we can’t all be good
Or else there’d be no balance in the scale.
Up we must strive, for there can be no doubt
Nor can Life’s meaning be misunderstood:
Deep in our bones, our spirits never fail.

Sonnet VI

Today

One of the things that I used to do in high school was write English versions of Latin poetry. Here’s a famous one I translated which asks the big questions.

Today

Why do you want to know Heaven’s secrets?
Who am I? Who are you? When will we die?
Don’t put your faith in a fortune-teller,
Who makes up an astrological lie.

It’s better to let the future happen:
Whether you’ve been assigned many more years
Or just this last one – only God can know;
You’re just being worn down by your worried tears.

Taste the essence of ev’ryday life
And restore a bit more to your short span,
For as long as we share what we have now,
Our enemy, Time, can’t upset The Plan.

Live each day to the fullest, today
And fears of tomorrow will fade away.

(From Carminium I.11 by Horace aka Carpe Diem)

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Be Careful What You Ask For…

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

…you might just get it. Have you ever wondered why some people sail through life, while others get mired down in the excrement? Would you believe it’s because of what they say, not what they do?

Jesus Said It First

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.” (Matthew 23:25-26, KJV)

Jesus spoke in parables because he knew what he said would be difficult for some to hear. In this case, he was referring to ritual cleansing which means that the person is clean on the outside, but still rotten to the core. The verses that follow this quotation are just as powerful but not as obscure.

radford-crop-alien

Glamour?

Our steady diet of celebrity watching has made us all a bit envious of their lifestyle, fame and fortune. Whereas it is true that a celebrity’s life looks great, would you really want to walk a mile in her stilettos? That’s really the point of this discussion.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/glamor defines Glamour as ‘a magic spell; an enchantment‘. Have you ever thought of it that way before? It kind of reminds me of that old song, You Put a Spell on Me.

So here’s the thing, an enchantment is a false state of being, where a person is no longer in charge of his own life, but under someone else’s control. The world of Glamour was created for that very purpose: to hypnotize the masses into following the exploits of some rather ordinary individuals (if truth be told). That way, they won’t notice the hell-like state of their own lives.

Healthy Living?

Then there’s the other side of the same coin: the fascination for living a healthier lifestyle. We are told to buy this product, do these exercises, avoid these choices and spend, spend, spend. The whole purpose is to part us from our hard-earned cash, and keep us so busy that we (again) won’t notice what’s happening to us.

Most ‘healthy’ food and drink is anything but healthy. There are so many products with chemical additives, that we lose sight of our true goal which is to improve our health. In the end, we stuff ourselves with what is effectively crap and then wonder why we still feel sick..

Freudian Slips?

Anyone who is really paying attention to what is going on around them will certainly attest to the fact that most people ‘talk a load of tripe’ (you can look that one up on the thefreedictionary.com, if you want). What are we all thinking? It turns out that Sigmund Freud was right all those long years ago when he spoke of inadvertent verbal errors as a clue as to what the person really meant or, at least, what was on his or her mind. Take a look at the following link for some great examples:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201203/slips-the-tongue

If our thoughts are focussed on sexual matters, our body is already primed for action. (Ask any man…) So, you can appear all pious and pure, but if what you’re thinking slips out of your mouth, everyone will know the real you..

One’s Own Worst Enemy?

Say you’re going for a job interview (a lot of people are, these days, if they’re lucky): before you leave home, you mention to a family member that you probably won’t get the job. Why? You will give yourself the rationale that you didn’t want to be disappointed should you fail to get it. Well, friend, you’ve just set yourself up to fail!

We are so well programmed from such an early age that we don’t even know that we have boarded the ‘failure’ train. It may have been something one of your parents said. It may have been something that you thought to yourself in the middle of the dark and lonely night. And it needn’t be.

A Hint?

If you want to be healthy, wealthy and wise, here’s what you need to do: BE POSITIVE! Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. In it are quite a few gems of wisdom. Review some of them in the following link

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1121350-the-power-of-positive-thinking

Just remember, amongst other career choices, I was once a Hypnotherapist. I know whereof I speak. Blessings.

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Spiritual Healing

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

Healing Hands

In 1987, I joined a healing circle. The method involved moving one’s hands up and down the back, but not touching anything. In effect, one is healing the person’s aura.

First Hints

In 1976, my then girlfriend, Mona, suffered a pinched nerve in her right foot. As a waitress, standing on her feet all day, this caused her considerable pain and suffering.

In my wish to help her, I placed my right hand over the site of the pinched nerve and said a little prayer, asking that the pain be relieved or reduced. Instead, the pain went away permanently.

Because I had no idea what happened, I just chalked it up to my prayer being answered.

 

The Healing Circle

When I joined Cynthia’s circle, I had no idea how the healing process worked. At first, I actually placed my hands on the person’s back, but, of course, it was then explained to me that the hands should be at least an inch or two away from the person’s clothing, so that nothing is being touched.

I’d heard about people having an aura, but I’d never interacted with their energy before. After a while, the energy becomes palpable.

The idea is to channel spiritual energy into the person to help them to realign/balance their aura, to remove their sense (and reality) of dis-ease.

 

The Proof

In 1993, I was working in as an Accounting Clerk for a business in Torquay. One of the secretaries was having a hard time of things in her personal life, so I sat one lunch hour and spoke to her about it. She had enjoyed the conversation so much that she said that she would need my help during the next week (due to so many things she was having to juggle). This proved to be prophetic.

That night, in a hurry to make a sandwich for her partner (she had been stitching curtains for a show home), she used her hand to push out the corned beef from the tin. This short-cut ended up slicing her right hand to ribbons. She ended up in casualty, where they stitched her skin back together. There was tendon damage as well, and they thought it would take a lot of physical therapy to get her hand working again.

What it actually took was a healing session everyday during our lunch hour for three weeks. She did take the course of physical therapy, but everyone wondered how she fully regained the use of her hand so soon. She never told them her secret.

 

Conclusion

We all have this inherent ability to help heal others. It does not have to be a ‘hands-off’ situation, as demonstrated in the healing circle. It can be as simple as a mother’s calming touch. Touch is healing, too.

 

 

Spiritual Healing

 

Halfway ’round the world, four-and-a-half years,

Egotistical light years, ago, I

Asked the Spiritus Sanctus to help my

Little self wipe away the silent tears.

So mired was I in irrational fears

That I shunned the White Light of the Third Eye,

Hoping to still see the Heavenly Sky

Even though I knew that I was shifting gears.

So what happened? Without warning I met

Perhaps the mirror image of my search

In a fellow traveller: even-Keeled,

Right-thinking, way ahead of Ancient Set;

Instinctively I jumped off my Tree perch

To join forces with her and be Eagled.

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Expanded Consciousness

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

We don’t realize that we’re on a spiritual path when we are young. It is only later that the ‘strange’ events add up to a significant number of coincidences. Here are a few of mine.

Scared of the Dark

When I was a child, I used to see a grizzly bear in my bedroom when the lights were off. At least it seemed like a grizzly bear. I never did see it when the lights were turned on because it simply disappeared. But the ‘feeling’ was of a fierce creature.

But that wasn’t my only experience in the dark of my bedroom at night. I used to have the strangest of sensations when falling asleep. Somehow, I would grow like Alice in Wonderland, filling the room until there was room for no other. In the far off corner of the room, I could see the door silhouetted by the hall light, at an interesting but weird angle.

What I know now is that my consciousness was expanding before I was fully asleep.

Pseudo Epilepsy

The other strange quality of my childhood was the result of crying (or being upset in some way) and not being able to catch my breath. When that happened, I would pass out, and my breathing would be restored naturally.

The doctors told my Mom that it was a form of epilepsy and that I would outgrow it. As we now know from my post called “Hypnotherapy: a Personal Journey”, I never did outgrow it. It just waited until I was 39 and then I found the reason by regressing to my difficult birth.

As you can imagine, it was very inconvenient to pass out during a vigorous game of football. Most of the kids probably thought I was faking it.

ESP

skippy woods

That’s ‘Skippy’ on the right, me in the centre: his house behind

When we lived in Windermere (in Muskoka, Ontario), the most excitement that sleepy village of 102 people had during the off-season after the (3,000+) tourists went home was if a fire broke out somewhere.

We lived in the Manse next to the Fire Hall. Whenever an alarm was sounded, the siren went off in our ears. One day, I heard through my bedroom window the sound of ‘Skippy’ Woods calling out to his grandmother. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but the thought went through my head that he’d seen a fire somewhere. With that thought, the siren sounded, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was my first conscious awareness of ‘knowing’ something ahead of time.

Reincarnation

As mentioned previously in “The Great Debate” I had a theory in High School which my more skeptical friends thought was ridiculous: the theory was Reincarnation. In my naivety, I tried to explain that when we reach our death in one life, we pick up from exactly the same point at the moment of our birth in the next. You can imagine the roastings I got. That’s probably why I am sympathetic to the Cathars of the South of France in the 13th Century.

Why I should be precocious enough to expound such concepts in 1965, I shall never know, because I had been raised as a preacher’s kid, and that kind of stuff should normally have been erased before it took seed.

Young Hypnotist

After my Mom hypnotized me to help with my Latin studies, I thought I could do the same for others. It turned out that during my first summer as a 16 year old Day Camp Counsellor, I had to stay overnight in the camp (together with three local senior campers) in Penetanguishene. The camp had been vandalized the previous couple of nights, so the ‘powers that be’ decided someone needed to protect the campgrounds.

The three senior campers were so nervous, that I suggested I would ‘talk to them’ and help them calm down. I basically took them through a light hypnotic induction, gave them post-hypnotic suggestions that they would be able to sleep peacefully, and then brought them back to waking consciousness.

I didn’t tell them that they’d been hypnotized, or they would have told their parents, who would have complained to the authorities. (You can see where this would have gone.) I asked them how much time they thought had passed. They all agreed on five minutes, so you can imagine their chagrin when I told them it had been more like 50 minutes. Needless to say, they had a peaceful night’s sleep and the campgrounds were intact in the morning.

Astrology

In 1977, I came across an advertisement in a magazine. I have no idea, now, what that magazine was about. The ad suggested that for $3.49, a birth date, place and time, the applicant would receive a printout that would explain their characteristics. What harm could that do? I thought.

When the computer printout came back, I was quite interested in what it would relate to me. Reading it, I kept saying, over and over again, “How could they know that?” It sparked my life-long interest in the subject, and slowly led me down that career path.

Psychic England

I used to wonder if it was something in the water that made the English so spiritual. Of course, they have a long history of nature worship, Druidism and Wicca, but there was something more to it than that. Turns out, it was probably the Ley Lines that are anchored in the British Isles. My moving there in 1985 was the start of my further psychic development.

To begin with, I partnered with Kate, my Astrologer friend, in her “Made in Heaven” business. She would get the information, I would draw the charts (by hand in those days) and then sit down with her to discuss what I’d uncovered in the process. She used to say to me, “How do you know that?” I would respond, “I don’t know!”

Healing Circle

It was through Kate that different aspects of spirituality were presented to me. She had been attending a healing circle run by a woman named Cynthia. It met once a week at Cynthia’s home, and in essence we learned to use our hands as tools for spiritual healing.

In the beginning, I would try to touch the aching back of the person I was to heal, but I was soon shown that holding the hands away from, but near, the afflicted area was much more powerful.

Then Cynthia invited us to join her Psychic Development Circle, and that is where I started to experiment with energy while the group held hands (in a circle) before the other work began. It was a bit cheeky of me, but what I found was that I could ‘influence’ the energy to reverse direction, so that instead of running counter-clockwise, I could make it go clockwise. The other sitters used to experience the effects of this as a thump of energy when they were holding hands in the circle.

Hypnotherapy

By 1990, I was living full-time in Torquay, instead of commuting there on weekends from Berkshire, where I’d been working until late 1989. So there was a bit of a void, as I was definitely underemployed.

I decided to take the ‘mail-order’ training course offered by Neil French’s Hyonotherapy Centre (Bournemouth) and after six months qualified as a fully-fledged member of the International Association of Hypno-Analysts. I then advertised my services in the local Herald Express and hoped that my career would take off through word-of-mouth.

Within three years, I was hankering to have a ‘normal’ job again. Hypnotherapy was not paying the bills.

Fountain International

898f56ce-cf94-40eb-b795-f08b54fe9ef4

A Few Moments

During this same time frame, I joined a loose-knit band of spiritual seekers whose main philosophy was that ‘a few moments of your time each day was all that was needed to heal your community.’ I was their Treasurer for a number of years, and enjoyed contributing to their Magazine, while sometimes editing it.

Along the way I met a great many individuals, including David Lowe (you know him by his pseudonym Lewis Adler), and I learned how to use dowsing rods.

I also visited some very important historical sites, including Montsegur, Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor, and Rennes-le-Chateau. My present interest in Gnosticism was the result.

Conclusion

So, that’s a little bit of my story: from childhood fears to far-flung lands. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride with me. And if you have any questions about any of these topics, feel free to ask me. Bless.

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Hypnotherapy: a Personal Journey

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

There is a saying, “Life is a journey, not a destination”. This is mine: what I will attempt to do is connect the dots of the events along the route that became the spiritual signposts of my inner growth towards wholeness.

The Symptom: Chest Tightening

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Mr Smiley

Everyone knows the feeling of being unable to breathe easily. Usually it occurs when we are suffering from a chesty cough when combined with some nasal passage restriction.

But what happens when it comes ‘out of the blue’ and you find yourself with a feeling of tight bands around your chest becoming more constrictive and not being able to catch your breath?

When it happened to me in the first few months of 1989, I decided to go to a Hypnotherapist to help me discover what the cause was.

Why Hypnosis?

In 1965, our parents’ marriage was having problems. In order to help the eldest of my three younger sisters and myself, our Mom decided to let us (individually) sit in on some Hypnotherapy sessions she was undertaking with a local Pastor. (In Ontario, only medical professionals or ministers were allowed to use hypnosis for therapeutic purposes. In those days, even stage hypnotists were frowned upon by the legal authorities.)

This was done to give us a feeling of calm while the process of a family break-up was on-going. We were not hypnotized directly, but only indirectly, as we sat quietly waiting for our Mom to undergo the session in the same room. I can see now what the purpose was, but then we weren’t given a choice in the matter.

My experience of it was that I went into a slight trance fairly easily, and it was very relaxing. But whether I took on board the post-hypnotic suggestions, I cannot say for certain.

Help with Latin

Mom and me

Mom and Me

Later that same year, I started studying Latin. I must have had a stumbling block when it came to that language, because for the first time in my academic career, I almost failed a subject in that first term. I can’t remember who brought the idea up about using hypnosis to aid in my mastering the language, but at the beginning of 1966, my Mom hypnotized me and read me the Latin declensions and conjugations.

What happened during that session was that in the state of relaxation, I began to correct her pronunciation of the words, as if I were an expert in linguistics.

If you want to know if that one session made a difference, the simple answer is, “Yes“: I went on in High School to master Latin and got an 88% mark in Grade 13.

Past Life Regression

By the time I was 32 and living in British Columbia, I recognized that something in us remembers prior life information. In particular, while reading Pierre Radisson‘s story about the Hudson’s Bay Company, I was struck by how much his words seemed familiar to me, so I decided to visit a Regressionist to see if I might have had something to do with fur trading and the discovery of Indian territory.

I suspect, when I was first hypnotized, that I was determined to have been a Coureur de Bois (‘runner of the woods’). because I came up with something that I subsequently used as the opening of a story called Beaver House. It may have been wishful thinking, only.

But the second part of the regression brought unexpected information. It turned out I was a first century Roman Governor of the region of Italy that we now know as Tuscany. In fact, a scene that I replayed that day was of my death by errant stone from the hands of a citizen of Siena. (I was able to locate the spot while scouring maps of Tuscan towns and cities much later.) My slave, who was also my lover, had been unable to prevent my death, and felt devastated by my passing.

In the third part, I found myself in No Man’s Land during a battle in the Great War. There I came across an enemy soldier who had been wounded but not mortally. In halting English, he asked me to shoot him, to put him out of his misery. I didn’t want to do it, but was persuaded by his pitiful pleas.

As soon as I shot the soldier, I realized in the regression that he had been my slave in the Roman times, and that this was in settlement of his debt, as it were. I came back to normal consciousness after that scene, my eyes filled with tears.

Hypnotherapy in 1989

It took several sessions to discover the reasons for my problems in that time frame. I wasn’t sure I liked the process since it was obvious that the Hypnotherapist wanted to communicate with my unconscious self to get at the truth. In my head, I remember thinking, “Over my dead body”…

By session 3, I did a leap back into a prior life, this time as an American soldier in World War II. I went through the recreation of a scene from my childhood dreams of being blown up by a land mine. (Looking back on it now, I recognize that dream as being a fantasy to help me get through my fear of the dark as a child.) I wandered around, after my death, in a kind of fog, and when I was brought back to normal awareness, (If so, then this is cryptomnesia of something I read when I was 10.) I joked about the fact that I’d just been through my death, so I’ll probably be born during the session that was to follow in a week’s time.

Eavesdropping

Ewart (the model)

My father

Session 4 (of a scheduled 10 sessions) was a bit of a frustration for the Hypnotherapist, so he tried speaking to my unconscious. There was no way that I was going to let that happen, so when my index finger did not move on his instruction, he quietly asked, “Chris, what’s going on?”

It was at that point that I could hear a muffled conversation going on between my mother and father. They were having an argument, and it suddenly occurred to me that the argument was about me. You see, I was in my mother’s womb, and this was the point when my father refused to be a part of our future. I hadn’t thought it possible to have that memory, but there it was, and it felt real.

Then I got to experience my long, slow, painful and frightening birth. I had been stuck in the birth canal for several hours, and my fear was that I (or Mom) was going to die, even before I was born. Then I broke through, and took my first breath of air. What a glorious feeling that was. I had survived!

Confirmation

After that session (which proved to be my last, since the bands around my chest disappeared), I wrote to Mom and asked her about the incident. Her response is quite telling. She wrote, “I’d hoped you hadn’t heard that. It was the moment that your father left me, and I knew from then on that I would be raising you on my own.”

It must have been the moment that I knew that I wasn’t good enough to be loved, since he didn’t want me. That shadow hung over everything that I tried to accomplish up until 1989. This process took that cloud away forever, and I no longer feel threatened by anyone or anything. May I recommend it to you? You won’t regret it, I promise.

Picture credits: all photos are from my personal collection.

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Terror Attack: lone wolf variety

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

There are about 90 radical extremists living in Canada that the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are tracking. In the past three days, two of these terrorists decided to begin a campaign against the Canadian Military and the Canadian Government for supporting a coalition against the Islamic State (aka ISIS/ISIL). (Written in October 2014.)

The First Strike

AttackTerrorWREJC1

Terror Attack chart

According to the Quebec Provincial Police, Martin Couture-Rouleau ran down two soldiers with his car in Saint-Jean-sur-Richeleu at about 11:30 am Monday, October 20th.

He was later shot and killed by the police after rolling his car into a ditch and threatening them with a knife.

Here’s a link to the Mail Online story.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2801102/radicalized-canadian-muslim-convert-runs-two-young-soldiers-car-shot-dead-police.html

This happened after CSIS raised the risk level of terror attack from low to medium.

Precedence?

Of course, being Canadians, we all wondered if this was an aberration of some kind; after all lone wolves had carried out other strange actions, without them being classified as a ‘terror attacks’. One such incident happened in New Brunswick earlier in the year, when a young man by the name of Justin Bourque opened fire on five police officers in Moncton, killing three and wounding two.

Here’s a link to the CBC story dated June 6th:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/justin-bourque-moncton-shooting-suspect-in-police-custody-1.2666921

This person gave up rather than risk being shot to death. But a seed must have been planted in someone’s mind.

The Second Strike

At 9:51 am on Wednesday, Oct 22nd, a man named as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, shot an unarmed reservist standing guard in front of the National War Memorial in the nation’s capital, Ottawa.

He then drove the short distance to the Houses of Parliament and was subsequently shot and killed by the Sergeant-at-Arms, after a horrific gun battle.

Here’s a link to The Star story

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/22/one_person_shot_at_war_memorial_in_ottawa_police_say.html

Ottawa was put into lock-down until later that night.

Reason?

It would seem that in both cases, the individuals had attempted to leave the country to go to Syria to join the Islamic State side. But, as a way to keep them from becoming jihadists, their passports were revoked.

What we are learning now is that this is the last resort, but the only way that the security services can stop them. But they remained at large, because the police cannot arrest someone for thinking about being an extremist. Even when their intentions are reported on social media, an act has to occur before anything can be done.

Just watch the news for a change in that scenario: it is my prediction that the law will change to allow the police to arrest and charge people who have signalled a wish to cause a terror attack.

Why? So the rest of us can sleep safely in our beds.

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Can history teach us anything about the present?

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

Most of us look back on things that have happened in the past as distant memories, some with fondness, and most with gratitude that those times have gone forever: but have they really? The reaction on the street to Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, St Louis reminds us of an earlier time when civil unrest was the name of the game. (This was written in August 2014.)

quote-the-past-can-teach-us-nurture-us-but-it-cannot-sustain-us-the-essence-of-life-is-change-susanna-kearsley-42-86-62

The Past: it’s dead and gone

No, it’s not. If you are on the losing side of any situation, you know how bad it feels. Revenge becomes the only true purpose to your life, and until that thirst for justice is quenched, you will activity seek to ‘right the wrongs’.

Of all the conflicts that are currently in the news, none has more immediate effect than the one between the two sides of the police line in Ferguson, St Louis, Missouri. For white Americans, the race riots of the 1960’s are a thing of the past. For African-Americans, the problem of discrimination has never gone away. There is an anger that has been kept on the back burner in some households for so long that it is now seeking expression by boiling over into the street. Back in 1961, John Howard Griffin did the unthinkable: he decided to see what it was like to be African-American, and the result was an eye-opener. He then wrote Black Like Me to share his insights with the rest of his fellow whites.

http://www.novelguide.com/black-like-me/top-ten-quotes

First Nations People: suppressed and ignored

In Canada, we have a similar situation, but one that is more insidious because it is not openly acknowledged as being a problem. The Native people were meant to be permanently marginalized by being kept on the reservations. After all, ‘their’ land was stolen from them by the Europeans, even though they didn’t believe in ‘ownership’ of land. It was the Europeans who didn’t want to share anything with them. The reservations were created to keep them out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

Add sexual inequality to the racial prejudice against Native Canadians, and you get headlines like this one in the Toronto Star:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/05/01/1000_native_women_murdered_missing_in_canada_over_30_years_rcmp.html

But this is happening the world over, even as we drink our morning coffee.

The Near East: a cauldron of emnity

During The Great War (WWI), Lawrence of Arabia (T.E. Lawrence) took a rag-tag group of Beduin and created a formidable Arab army which took on the Turks in Palestine and won! But then, true to form, the French and English governments sat back and waited until the Beduin got bored with trying to work out arrangements for governing from Damascus, and then took over control when they left.

In the ensuing years, this area of the world has become a much sought after parcel of land. When the state of Israel was created in 1948, the Palestinians were displaced, and they have been trying to get a country of their own ever since. But they are a forgotten people and the world turns its back on their suffering, even when an armed conflict is totally one-sided in effect. Of course, Hamas is to blame, but the innocent people of Gaza are the ones who lose.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/gaza-cease-fire-breaks-as-militants-rocket-attacks-spark-retaliatory-israeli-airstrikes/2014/08/19/46ca861e-27b0-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html

Islamic State: a war waiting to happen

Lately, the news has shown that the next thing to come out of the Near East conflict is an extremist group calling themselves ISIS. They want to create an Islamic State out of Syria, Iraq, and anywhere else they can conquer. The West see them as the ‘new’ al Qaeda, only worse. There’s even talk of the West perhaps working with Bashir al-Assad to help rid the world of these ‘terrorists’. Well, on the other side of the same coin, there is word going round that ISIS was created by the West to finally give them a reason to invade Syria. The beheading of James Foley is just a tactic to make the United States pay a ransom for people who have been kidnapped. Everyone now knows that the result will be another beheading if the ransom isn’t paid.

The undercurrent is something which is unexpected: the most extreme terrorists are those from the West that have been radicalized by social media sites supporting the Islamic State. So, it isn’t a bunch of Muslims from some far-off country that is threatening the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom; it’s their own people turning against them.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/isis

Russia: humanitarian aid or arms?

The news yesterday was that the Russian ‘aid’ convoy waiting at the Ukraine border decided to cross into the Ukraine without permission. Today, they are supposedly leaving again after delivering their supplies to allies (read,dissidents) in Eastern Ukraine. Taken at face value, this was a very humanitarian act, but was it just an act, as the West is suggesting?

Vladimir Putin is getting a lot of bad press lately, especially since the annexing of the Crimean peninsula. What is totally absorbing is how the Russian reporting of that story takes what can only be viewed as a positive spin. Have we got it wrong?

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/factbox-the-costs-and-benefits-of-russias-annexation-of-crimea/497712.html

Historically, this area of the world is important to Western interests. This land was taken away from Russia at the end of the Napoleanic Wars, and they’ve been using any means at their disposal to keep it ‘in the family’, initially as part of the USSR, and now as an area annexed directly by Russia. Can you blame them? To the Russians, this is just balancing the ledger.

Ebola: a new disease to scare us into action

Finally, there is a new and deadly disease waiting to break out of Africa and into our precious countries. But wait, you have an experimental drug that ‘might’ help those infected? Let’s get the World Health Organization (WHO) to allow its use in order to prevent us from being killed by it. What, there aren’t enough doses of the vaccine to go around? Let’s give it to those worthy of saving.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/who-to-pick-who-gets-canada-s-ebola-vaccine-1.2735161

Could you decide who should or should not get the vaccine? That’s like playing God.

Conclusion

There is a Golden Rule. We all know it. All the religions of the world have their own versions of it.http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm But we don’t seem to pay any attention to it, chosing instead to see that ‘our’ side is the only right one; and the ‘rest’ are wrong.

May I sincerely suggest that we need to remind ourselves that ‘we are all in this together’? It’s time to stop using terms that separate us, instead of uniting us. Otherwise, we run the risk of losing everything we hold dear, life itself. That’s what history can teach us about the present…and the future.

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A Mother’s Letter to her Son

Posted on May 30, 2015 by cdsmiller17

In October 1974, my mother wrote me a letter to explain my history. In doing so, she told me a little of her life’s story. Here is what I have discovered about my mother from her birth in 1923 to her death in 2003.

Jean Bryson Age 77

Edith Bryson

Mom’s start in life was a little rocky. She was born to a woman whose husband had died the year before (a full year before…). All she knew was that they were from Orillia, Ontario and that this woman had several children, with two young ones still at home. The Children’s Aid Society got involved because the scandal would have created a problem for the unnamed father’s family (as he also had two young ones still at home).

As my maternal grandmother couldn’t cope with a new baby on her own (and to avoid causing the scandal) she put Edith up for adoption after about three months.

(Years later, after a few hiccups, I found her birth mother’s family on ancestry.ca: she had been born May Theed. She married William Pettifer and after he died, married Thomas Bryson.)

Jean Elsie Groom

The couple that adopted little Edith just before she was nine months old, changed her name to Jean Elsie. Her new father was a Bank Manager with the Bank of Montreal in Toronto. Both he, Arthur Groom, and his wife, Elsie, had emigrated from England and had been unable to have a child of their own. As is often the case, they subsequently became pregnant and had a son, whom they named Cullis (Jean called him Dodo).

Two events stood out in my mother’s memory from her childhood, and as I was growing up, she shared them with me. The first involved hockey (so that got my attention): evidently, she had attended a Toronto Maple Leafs game with her dad; she was sitting near centre ice and got hit in the face by a puck from the face-off. It broke her nose.

The second was about a dance she went to in High School: her dad had bought her the dress on his own, and she felt that was a beautiful thing for him to do.

However, it must not have sat well with her mother, because there seems to have been a bit of animosity between them. Finally, it all came to a head when Jean was about 16. I believe she came home late one night (beyond her curfew, I would imagine) and the next morning, her bags were sitting by the front doorstep and she was ‘invited’ to leave home.

Jean Elsie Stewart

Not one to leave the dust on her shoes, she joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corps and got posted to Kingston. It was 1939 and World War II had just started in Europe. There she was promoted to Sergeant (her bark was worse than her bite, according to what she told me). Also she met her first husband there, a Major in the Royal Canadian Air Force. I believe they married in 1943.

As you might expect, she was a bit closed-mouthed about her particular role in the CWAC, but she did mention once that she was attached to Military Intelligence. No doubt she was in the steno pool.

Mom characterized her marriage to Edmund Vaughan Stewart as ‘on again/off again’, so it came as no surprise to me to find that the Voter Lists for the years between 1945 and 1950 show her living on her own.

Then she met my father, James Ewart Miller. She called their relationship, ‘the affair of the century’ and then added that most people involved in such things think that way. She got pregnant, but couldn’t persuade him to make an honest woman of her. Oh, and the fact that she was still married didn’t help the situation. Vaughan offered to raise me as his own, but my Mom held out hope for a change in Ewart’s heart.

I was born in February 1950. Mom’s new life started as a working single parent. Vaughan divorced her a little more than a year later.

Jean Elsie Thorpe

Some time in late 1953/early 1954, Mom started seeing Ruskin Peter Thorpe, the man who would marry her in early 1955. He had great prospects: studying for the ministry, he was considered a great orator and a biblical scholar. The slight problem of marrying a divorcee with a young child was discussed with God and God told him to go ahead. From then on I had a new surname, and no one was the wiser (including me, to be honest).

Within 18 months, Mom had her first daughter, Anne. However, the pregnancy wasn’t an easy one as she had to be confined to bed for the last few months to avoid miscarriage. Then she got pregnant again within a year, only this time the baby was stillborn. (Years later I found out from my sisters that Mom had named him Stephen.)

Then, after a couple of years, Mom had another daughter, Rachel. This child was very premature, weighing just 3 lbs 6 oz. However, she survived, and the family dynamic changed.

By the time Mom was 40, she had the last of her girls, Elizabeth. Now we were a family of six.

During the years that followed, it was obvious that something was wrong with the marriage, but as children we were not privy to the inner workings of their relationship.

In the summer of 1968, Mom went to Saskatchewan to take some University courses. We never questioned this, but I suppose now that she was intending to complete her education. Back home in the fall, she and I traded knowledge about how best to précis passages in English. She also challenged me to translate French and Latin poetry. It’s a time I remember fondly.

Then in the summer of 1969, Mom moved out with the girls to Loon Lake, Saskatchewan to take up a position as lay preacher. I was left behind with Rus.

Mary Jean Thorpe

Somewhere along the way, Mom decided to change her name and dump the Elsie part (her adoptive mother’s name). Whether it was inspired or not, I discovered years later that her mother had died in 1970 or thereabouts.

From Loon Lake she and the girls moved to Aldergrove, BC, where she took a job with the local weekly newspaper.

Then Rus moved to BC, too, so Mom served him with divorce papers.

I visited their new home in 1975, and decided to move to BC as well.

Jean Bryson

mom-on-examiner-cover

On the front page of the Barrie Examiner dated January 30, 1983, there is a photo of Mom bundled up against the blistering cold. She had moved back to Ontario to pick up a thread that had been dropped more than 15 years before. However, it didn’t turn out the way she expected so she moved back to BC, this time living in Salmon Arm. A friend, Andy Schneider had opened a spiritual centre there and Mom wanted to help out.

She began studying the Alice Bailey books and seeking to find her spiritual way in the world.

She also found a loophole in the strict ‘closed file’ of her adoption, and discovered her birth name. So she changed her name to Jean Bryson. It was as if she had gone back to her beginnings and experienced it for the very first time.

Mom lived in Salmon Arm for a good many years, finally agreeing to return to the Lower Mainland of BC when her eyesight started to fail her. She settled in Abbotsford so that she could be closer to Rachel.

Along the way, she came to England to visit me (even though a psychic had once told her that she would die in England), and we kept up communications until the last.

In fact, she rang me on Easter Monday, 2003, to see why I hadn’t been in touch for a couple of months. As usual, I’d been going through some difficulties in my relationship, and I hadn’t wanted to burden her. During our telephone call, she started to cough, and I ‘heard’ a death rattle (I don’t know how I even knew what that would sound like). When we rang off, I felt perturbed.

I got a message from Anne a couple of days later to the effect that Mom had been taken to the local Abbotsford Hospital. I flew out immediately.

Evidently, she had suffered a stroke the next day and had been unable to move. Rachel came in a day later and found her on her bed. It was too late to stop the damage however, and Mom was paralyzed on the left side.

When I finally got there, I sat by her bed and told her she didn’t have to “conquer” this problem because ‘there is nobody wanting anything, nobody needing anything; just relax.’ (This is a phrase from my Hypnotherapist days.)

She lasted a few weeks, but the hospital staff suggested that she come home to Anne’s place to die. She held on until the wee hours of the morning after Mother’s Day.

Epilogue

Scattering Mom's ashes

Mom’s body was cremated and we waited 10 years to scatter her ashes in the Pacific Ocean off White Rock, BC on Mother’s Day, two years ago. She has been gone 12 years now.

Thank you, Mom, for being the rock that this family built its foundation on. We miss you every day, and we will love you forever.

Posted in family, history | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments