Chapter
19

Accessing Your Record

In This Chapter

• Choosing an approach to the akasha
• Remembering through regression
• Intuitive readings
• Unusual revelations

While you’re developing your intuitive skills, you may want to explore the Akashic Record through an akashic reader or a past-life regression therapist. There are various methods available, as we’ve discussed throughout this book. To achieve the best results, it’s important to feel comfortable with both the method and the person you work with. This chapter takes you through what you can achieve and what you can expect with different approaches to your personal Akashic Record.

There are two main types of sessions: one with a hypnotherapist and one with an intuitive. The first requires your direct involvement in the process. The therapist puts you into a state of deep relaxation using one of several different induction processes. Once you’re in an altered state, you’re guided by your therapist to one of your past and/or future lives. The therapist can also make a bridge for you to talk directly with your higher self and guides. Visiting a past life through hypnosis is referred to as past-life regression (PLR).

You can also have a session with an intuitive for an Akashic Record reading. A reading doesn’t require your direct involvement, and sometimes you don’t even have to be in the same room with the intuitive. Although most sessions are done in person, some readers work via the phone or Internet.

The reading can involve channeling your guides, angels, or an ascended master. The intuitive may vision your past life by seeing images and receiving psychic impressions. They may provide information, pass on messages from the other side, or give you direction from your guides. A reading can involve the intuitive going into a trance or simply tuning in and aligning with you and your personal Akashic Record.

Who Can Benefit?

Sessions with the Akashic Record are offered to individuals, couples, and families. Those who benefit most are those who are at a turning point in their lives. You may seek a reading knowing what you want to change, or maybe you aren’t sure why you’re coming but feel compelled by curiosity. You may not know why, but your higher self does. You’re being pushed forward because some aspect of your life is ready to shift. People’s lives have been completely turned around by a reading they considered “just for fun.” The process works regardless of your level of conscious engagement.

Many people seek a session to overcome obstacles in their lives. They may have tried every possible means of shifting the problems to no avail. Sessions can reveal old patterns and limiting beliefs. They can help you understand the obstacles in your path, where they came from, and how to overcome them.

Sessions are geared to encourage and guide your growth and support your best expression in the world. You’ll benefit most if you’re ready to live your life purpose and fulfill your dreams. If you have a strong desire to grow, you’ll receive in-depth information that you’ll be ready to use to change your life.

Why Have a Reading?

You can seek a reading to solve any problem you’re facing. Issues can revolve around finding your soul mate, career success, or family troubles. No subject is off limits. Sometimes people don’t have a specific question but want general guidance to enrich their lives and find more joy and fulfillment.

Readings can be very broad and cover a range of information or be very specific, depending on your objective. Here are some reasons people decide to have a reading:

• To obtain specific information on past-life influences in present problems
• To learn past-life connections with people in their lives
• To investigate a romantic partner and the connections, challenges, and rewards in the relationship
• To discover the origin and purpose of health issues and what can be done to correct them
• For career direction or business advice
• To overcome fears and phobias
• For soul growth and spiritual development
• To access hidden talents and overcome challenges

Verifying Truth

People who receive past-life regressions and akashic readings often wonder whether they can trust their experience. There are several indications to determine the validity of your session. The most important is this: Has your session helped your life? If it has, trust it.

In general, your emotions are your guide to the truth of your experience. Were your emotions intense? Did your experience provoke more emotional response than those evoked in your everyday life? When the emotions you experience in your past-life regression or akashic reading are powerful and self-validating, they change how you perceive your situation. This is an indication the experience was true.

Your experience is also validated when you’re suddenly released from a fear or phobia. If you’ve been terrified of snakes and after your regression have lost your fear or hated public speaking but after your akashic reading can deliver a speech with ease, then the experience was real. Another indicator is the sudden acquisition of abilities after your session that you didn’t learn in this life. Some people find they can play music or draw well, for example. These are indications you’ve had a true and powerful encounter with the Akashic Record.

Not as verifiable but equally powerful is the recognition in your past life of people you know today. Like the children we discussed in Chapter 3 who recognized their previous families, this can be a dramatic internal demonstration. All in all, if your experience had emotional power, a positive impact, and generated new perceptions and or abilities, you’ve had a successful and real experience.

Past-Life Regression

A past-life regression is one of the most effective and useful ways to retrieve information from the Akashic Record. If you choose this approach, you’ll be directly involved in seeing and feeling your past. Sessions can be highly emotional and very real. Releasing the emotional trauma from past lives will allow you to move on. You’ll be free to make new choices instead of repeating old patterns. When past-life trauma is contacted and released, all the energy you used to manage the pattern will be available for living. More than information, past-life regressions provide freedom.

In hypnotic regression, you will be encouraged to process the emotions you encounter. Most hypnotherapists are certified or licensed in some form of counseling. As you would expect, the emotions from past-life sessions can be very intense; otherwise, they wouldn’t be an active force in your present life. The fact that emotions from your past still impact your choices, relationships, and phobias shows how powerful they are. If you suffer from an emotional or mental disorder, although a past-life reading can still be helpful, you’ll want the regression therapist to be a skilled psychotherapist or psychiatrist for your own safety. All in all, professional guidance can help you get the most from your experience.

The PLR Session

Your session will begin with an interview that may include your past history, both medically and emotionally. It will focus on the issue you want to resolve and how it presents itself in your life. The therapist will want to know your family makeup: how many siblings, basic childhood dynamics, whether you’re married, with or without children, and so on.

After the interview, you’ll be invited to lie down or sit in a comfortable place. You may have a blanket, pillows, or other items necessary for comfort. The therapist usually sits next to you and guides you into an altered state. Hypnosis involves systematic relaxation of the body and gentle induction to deeper brain wave states. An induction can include counting backward from 10 to 1, visualizing yourself walking down a flight of stairs or floating on a raft in the ocean, or it can focus on listening to a repetitive sound. The therapist will guide the process and add suggestions such as, “You are deeply relaxed,” “You are fully supported,” “You are floating in complete relaxation and safety,” and so on.

ETHERIC ADVISORY

Many PLR therapists don’t use the term “hypnosis” for fear of conjuring outmoded images. The method is deep relaxation, which changes brain states—allowing alert, relaxed awareness.

Everything the therapist says is an instruction to the subconscious mind. Even while your conscious mind is focused on the therapist’s voice, your subconscious mind is following the instructions—and soon you will be in an altered state. In this state, you’re deeply relaxed yet mentally alert. You’re able to respond to the directions of the therapist, reply to his or her questions, and maintain awareness of your surroundings.

Your PLR Experience

The therapist will make contact with your higher self and ask that your awareness move to the life and situation that holds the key to your present problem. Some people are immediately in the past situation. Others require prompts from the therapist, such as, “Look down at your shoes and describe what they look like,” “Is it day or night?”, or “Are you alone or with people?” It doesn’t take long for you to be submerged in the process. If you recall something traumatic, your therapist will guide you through and help you connect with inner strength and resources you lost touch with in the original trauma. Trust your therapist to keep you safe and don’t worry about getting stuck in a trance state. You will always return to everyday reality.

Throughout the regression, you’ll be working with your therapist on the emotions that emerge. They’ll instruct you in integrating, releasing, and moving on from the past. Lianne Escher is a past-life therapist trained by Roger Woolger, a renowned past-life regression therapist and trainer. In her work she encourages people to fully relive their past-life events no matter how traumatic they were. In doing so, she says, you will completely release them from your body, mind, and soul. You’ll never have these influences in your life again.

After the session, more processing may be done with the therapist, or you may journal your ongoing reactions. You may return for several sessions of counseling to fully integrate one PLR experience.

Professional Training in PLR

Hypnosis is usually an adjunct to psychotherapy or psychiatry, but not always. Some people attend the National Guild of Hypnotists (NGH) training seminars, practice for a while on smoking cessation and weight loss, and then continue training in PLR. A PLR training can be a weekend certification, a year-long once-a-month training session, or a formal three-year program. Supervised sessions are often part of the training practice. While there are many skilled and capable people who have been trained through the NGH, if you are new to this you may want the support and safety of a licensed health care professional.

Psychotherapists and psychiatrists are licensed professionals who participate in continuing education, professional associations, and professional supervision. They receive hypnosis training as an adjunct to their psychotherapeutic practice. PLR training carries no professional continuing education credits and has no standards of practice or quality control. However, because it is practiced by licensed professionals, it tends to be highly credible.

TIMELESS TIPS

Dr. Brian Weiss, Dr. Michael Newton, Dr. Robert Schwartz, Roger Woolger, and Dr. Helen Wambach are good examples of therapists who work with PLR. You can read direct transcripts from their sessions in their books; see Appendix B for their book titles.

Pros and Cons of PLR

There are pros and cons to using hypnosis. Many people are concerned they won’t be able to be hypnotized. You’ll make a good hypnotic subject if you’re an open person with a healthy degree of skepticism. Someone who is gullible actually doesn’t make a good subject! After your initial interview, your therapist will tell you whether they think you’re a candidate.

On the positive side, both hypnotherapy and PLR are very deep and transformative therapies. In one or two sessions, you can come to completion with issues that may have plagued your entire life. You’ll have the support of a trained professional as you process difficult emotions. Your direct involvement adds authenticity to the process. Nobody is telling you about yourself; you’re directly accessing the information.

Conversely, sometimes hypnotherapy requires several sessions to get to the core of the problem and can be costly. Some people feel traumatized again by experiencing again the events they visit, although a good therapist minimizes this. Your session can initiate introspection and processing, which can impact your relationships. While ultimately positive and certainly what your higher self had in mind, it isn’t always welcomed at the time.

You may also be concerned that while in an altered state, you may be influenced by the beliefs of the therapist. It is possible for this to happen—and an important reason why you want to work with a respected professional.

Choosing a Therapist

Deciding on a PLR therapist takes research. If you already see a therapist, ask his or her advice. If friends have been to a PLR therapist, see what they have to say. Word of mouth is often the best source of referral. Escher recommends going to a library and looking at published books. If you find a book that speaks to you, locate the author or someone trained by the author to work with.

If you have no referral sources, go to your local natural food or book store. There are usually magazines and newspapers listing local health practitioners. Some magazines have actual profiles so you can learn about the therapist and how he or she works. If you’re drawn to a particular person, call him or her and request an interview. Don’t sign up for treatment until you’ve either met him or her in person or talked over the phone.

Ask about the person’s training, experience, work focus, and methods used. Be sure the therapist is licensed. Your comfort with the person is important; trust your gut, and if you have a good or bad feeling, follow it. Once you’ve found a few people you think would work, check around and see whether anyone knows them or has worked with them. Get some feedback. Once you’ve found the person, enjoy your process!

Akashic Record Readings

Some people prefer an Akashic Record reading. The information you’ll find in an akashic reading is much more than a psychic reading because it deals with your soul’s path and purpose. Readings are passive events: all you have to do is provide some basic information, and the intuitive takes over. The reading is set up on a soul level and is geared toward your best good.

You’ll be given details on what happened in your past and how it affects you today. The reader will connect the dots and tell you your growth challenges, abilities, and future directions.

Information in a reading is tied up in a neat little package. You can accept what you’re told—or not. However, because you don’t experience the past life directly, it may not have the same emotional impact. You might think of it as an interesting story. Some people report having their memory jogged as the intuitive talks, seeing images and feeling an emotional connection to what’s being said. When it hits just right, things internally shift and the impact is profound.

In an intuitive reading, you can move through extremely challenging events with little re-traumatizing. Rather than shifting patterns through emotional processing, the intuitive shifts patterns by shifting energy. All your memories have an energetic component, and clearing the energy supports the change you are undergoing. We showed you techniques to do this yourself in Chapter 9.

In both phone consultations and in-person sessions, you’ll be asked what you want to focus on and you’ll provide basic background information to help the reader connect with your personal record. Whether your reading is via the phone, the Internet, or in person, your reader might ask for your current full name, the name you use (such as nicknames), and your full name at birth. You may be asked your birth date and place as well. They may want a photograph. This is all to help your reader tune in.

While he or she is tuning in to you, the reader relaxes into an altered mind state. Once he or she has contact with the Record, he or she will provide you with details related to your past lives, current issues, and soul growth. The reader may ask you questions to verify the information or to fine-tune the connection. He or she may ask questions to help you connect with the information he or she is giving you. You may be allowed to ask questions throughout the session, but if not, you’ll be able to ask questions at the end. You can also ask questions of your higher self for direction and soul growth.

Professional Training for Readers

There are no professional training standards for psychic readers of any kind, including Akashic Record readers. Many claim their psychic ability is a gift and requires no training. Others think it can be taught, but only to people with a knack for it. Still others think anyone can learn to varying degrees.

There are a considerable number of training centers for developing intuitive abilities, including channeling. Although some offer training certificates, because there is no governing body or standard of quality, the certificate is simply a statement that your intuitive attended some type of training. It doesn’t tell you how good he or she is or whether he or she stands by the results.

Pros and Cons of Intuitive Sessions

On the positive side, Akashic Record readings don’t require you to engage a traumatic memory. Through the energy clearing, you can expect positive results without the work and drama of processing. People often experience positive changes after one reading. Although some people have multiple readings, it isn’t usually necessary. You can get what you need in one session.

Conversely, intuitive readings are difficult to verify. The information they give you may not be relevant to where you are today and may not make sense for years to come. Also, it’s possible your reading might reflect the bias and mindset of your reader. Because it’s not coming from you, it’s easy to be unduly influenced. Sessions generally cost from $100 to $200, but sessions with famous readers can cost as much as $650.

There are no standards or ways to validate quality. This doesn’t mean there aren’t good, unbiased, relevant readers—there are! You just need to be careful who you pick.

Another way to find a reader or training center is through New Age and natural health magazines. You can usually find such magazines in health food stores, book shops, and crystal stores. Look through the advertisements. They’re usually filled with local advertisers who are easier to check up on. Ask the shop owners whether they have someone they recommend. Check on quality control websites such as Angie’s List (www.angieslist.com). Call and talk to the readers. Trust your gut. If you don’t connect, don’t make an appointment.

Watch out for anyone who tries to string you along from reading to reading. An unethical reader will hook into a weakness in your psyche and manipulate it. He or she may make you think you need his or her help to make it through some trial; otherwise, something bad will happen. You may have an enjoyable reading with someone only to have that person call you later saying they’re worried about you and want you to come in for another reading. Or the reader may start an important piece of information right at the end of a session and leave you hanging, asking you to come back to receive more instruction. These are warning signs that the person is unscrupulous and looking for ways to make more money. No one but you knows your path. Allowing someone to access your Record is a gift. If they abuse it, you have the power to take the invitation back!

ETHERIC ADVISORY

Here’s a big warning sign that a psychic is probably a fraud: he or she tells you something big is coming, such as an astrological transit, a major life shift, an illness, or a career change, and that you won’t make it without his or her guidance. Aside from milking you for money, this is mind control and would never happen in legitimate circles!

Akashic Additions

The Akashic Record holds more than just your past lives. There are many different dimensions to the Record, each with its own lessons and inspiration. Your growth is unlimited, and so is the information you can obtain in the Record. Sometimes you find the information you need accidentally. Your Record is part of you, and it can reveal itself unexpectedly.

Some people find the cause of a present problem to have started in a future life. Sound impossible? Not in the quantum holographic universe. Some people find they are completing a soul mission on Earth that began on another planet. There are more things possible than we can imagine.

Access Through the Body

According to Dr. Candice Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine (see Appendix B), your body is your subconscious mind. It holds your memories and is your access to universal consciousness. Many people find that bodywork, such as massage or energy balancing, can awaken the memories stored in cells, muscles, and the energy field around your body. It can even open the patterns you carry from a previous life.

Accessing the Akashic Record through bodywork has the advantage of occurring organically. It’s always relevant because it’s provoked by what you’re feeling—the pain you have from an injury or illness, for example. It’s your body, and you’re in control—and this type of access is empowering. It opens Akashic Record memory while clearing the energy patterns, creating real and lasting change.

You can find a good bodyworker through massage therapy associations. Look for people who advertise emotional process therapy and/or energy balancing. Also, PLR therapists trained by Roger Woolger all have a body approach to their regressions.

Future “Regressions”

Legend has it that the ability to regress into our past lives was discovered by accident. We can imagine the therapist instructing his hypnotized client to “go to the place in your past when this pattern first developed.” Surprisingly, the person ended up in a past life! Some people have been “regressed” to the future, where the cause of their problems resides in future-life memories.

It’s not as impossible as it seems. Just as with past lives, all you need to do is direct your thoughts to a particular point in time, and you’re there. It’s intimidating to think of visiting the future that hasn’t been written yet, and of course you’re only visiting one possible future. If quantum physics is right, all the possible futures happen—just as all the possible presents are happening. The big leap is to get over the idea that time is linear. If the universe is holographic, wouldn’t time be holographic, too? Time is a dimension; it doesn’t have to be accessed linearly.

Future lives help people see their options, potentials, and abilities more clearly. Here’s an example.

Joe was pressured to follow in the family business even though it didn’t interest him. What he wanted to study was computer programming. When he was 19, he began having dreams in which he was met by an older man who encouraged him to take computer classes. The man assured Joe he had a happy future ahead if he did.

This was a difficult time in Joe’s life. He was conflicted in following his passion versus listening to his father, who distrusted computers. The dreams continued until, against his father’s wishes, Joe signed up for a computer class at the local community college. Eventually, his computer skills were called on to save the family business and modernize the store.

Joe didn’t think about his dreams again until his fortieth birthday. Reminiscing about his decision to take that computer class, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. With a start, Joe realized he was looking at the dream man from 20 years ago!

Dimensional Access

Other surprises have been revealed through the Akashic Record. People have remembered lives in different dimensions, forms, and on different planets.

Many people remember lives in animal form. Contrary to popular opinion about animals, the lives described were purpose-oriented and assisted global consciousness. In animal form, souls were functioning on much higher levels of awareness than the humans around them. People claim that as animals they operated in dimensional reality and used their senses to perceive more than we do with our human senses. Some used what they learned to become psychic readers in this life. A woman who died in childbirth recounts coming back into animal form in order to guide and watch over her child. We’ve all heard stories of animals that heroically saved their owners’ lives. Is it so hard to consider that might have been their life purpose?

AKASHIC WISDOM

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals … We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below our own. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

—From The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston (Holt Paperbacks, 2003)

People report lives on other planets where they’re working in a council to integrate humans into the greater universal civilization. Some people remember being “fallen angels,” and others remember being guides. Here’s one woman’s story:

I was regressed to a past life to find out where my sorrow comes from. I saw myself in the Midwest in what is now Minnesota where the red clay is for the pipes. I saw myself standing in the snow outside my teepee. My family was dead all around me, spread in the snow, surrounded in red. When the therapist asked me why I was still alive, I realized I wasn’t. I looked down at my body, I was a man and I was dead, too.

My family had moved on, into the light, but I couldn’t. I needed to understand why the White Man had come to our lands and why the Great Spirit was allowing them to destroy his people. I wandered the earth for a hundred years until I understood. But I could not leave until I passed on what I learned so I found three women who could hear me and I whispered into their ears the things I knew. My name was White Eagle and I spoke to these women for many years before I was able to pass on.

Interestingly, there was a spirit called White Eagle who channeled through a British woman named Grace Cook. She formed a teaching institute based on these channeled messages in 1936 called the White Eagle Lodge.

The Least You Need to Know

• There are two types of Akashic Record approaches: hypnosis and intuitive readings.
• Hypnosis requires you to be actively involved in the session and allows you to process the emotions that arise.
• Intuitive readings are passive. The readers provide you with the details from your Record that are of importance to you.
• Past lives aren’t the only dimensions that can be accessed in the Record. Animal incarnations, future lives, and lives on other planets have all been found in the Record.