Here’s a letter I received from a client after phone session:

Marlana,

I had a phone session with you for clearing negative karma around intimacy & relationships. I was in love with someone I worked with for months after we dated and it didn’t work out. We remained great friends though. You cleared the karma surrounding us since we’d known each other in past lives. You said if anything romantic is meant to spring from us, the past is now cleared and our relationship will be too.

He had been starting to become aloof and not return my phone calls, prior to your session with me and I was very hurt and upset for a long while. The very next day after the session, I walked into work feeling good & centered. I was flowing internally, a distinct flow that was peaceful.

Then, in the morning, while I was at my desk, he came into my room and then right up to my desk and said” Hi”. There was something different in his way of being. He apologized for not calling me. He was warm, friendly, but inviting… Very different from the slightly cold aloofness that had been troubling me the last few weeks.

I noticed I was peaceful over the next few days. Five days after the session I met someone who was really great, when I hadn’t met anyone in months. It didn’t work out, but he was the first promising person I had dated in a long time. I’m free and fulfilled in a way that I haven’t been in so long.

Now, in the present time, the man I work with (who I think is the love of my life) and I started seeing each other again. I don’t have those same fears of rejection and insecurity. I’m relaxed, myself, and I’m so happy being with him. This is a significant transformation in the way I was being in relationships.

You’re a good woman and you made a huge difference for me. Whatever happens I’m forever transformed and I know there’s love there for me. Thank you so much. I’ll be speaking with you again. I wish you only the best.

Thank you,

Jodi (not her real name)

How many times have you tried to save money and just can’t seem to do it? Have you wondered what it is within you that holds you back from doing things you want to do, but somehow you feel a little guilty if you have too much fun? How about those sexual hang ups? I would like to say that we can blame all of our problems on dusty old oaths and vows that we took in past lives, but that’s not quite the case. At least not ALL of our issues can be immediately cleared up by removing unwanted vows.

However, when we let go of old vows and oaths taken in previous times, that can be a significant step in your process of getting unstuck and moving on to the next level of growth. Most of you, who are reading this article, have probably had lives where you have been spiritual seekers of various types. Many of these spiritual systems incorporate vows, oaths, promises and so forth as part of the “path to enlightenment”.

In and of itself there is nothing wrong with taking these oaths. The problem arises when that particular life time is over and you are now living in a different set of beliefs and aren’t aware of having those old vows. The issues become more complex if you’ve had many life times where you took oaths in one, vows in another and covenants in yet another life time.

All of these rituals are powerful because they are intentional and often the words “forever” or “through eternity” are incorporated into the promise which really seals them deeply into your energy body. You can imagine that after many lifetimes of making these sorts of promises and each time leaving little remnants behind, your life could get pretty confusing. Part of you may be trying to spend money to keep a vow of poverty, while another part keeps wanting to give everything away due to a vow of materialism.

Clearing away these stray oaths and vows can be a bit tricky at times because they are often deeply connected to beliefs that these promises will bring you closer to God. Even so, we can usually catch them by clearing them energetically or when we work by phone we can clear them using Past Life Integration.

We are so afraid of the word fear that we name it all kinds of other things to pretend it isn’t fear. Anxiety, stress, on edge, panic, worry, nervousness, concerned and scared.  Sometimes we even morph our fear into other emotions like hurt and anger.  We act out our fear by being irritable, blaming others, lazy, isolating, busy, partying, and even smiling and laughing.

So does this mean we are all afraid all the time. No. It does mean, in my opinion, that we are coping with things that we are often either magnifying or minimizing the fear factor.  Mental health is not about getting rid of fear or anger or grief or whatever emotion is going on. Being mentally healthy is about recognizing emotions for just what they are, feeling them for the moment and letting them go when they no longer serve.

Try just recognizing the many faces of fear in your own life. Just label them, and notice how long they hang around. Notice how much energy you are putting forth to pretend it isn’t there or to avoid feeling or taking care of the source of that fear.  Think how much better you would feel if you didn’t spend all that time renaming, pretending fear doesn’t exist or fighting fear in so many various ways. Now, one more step further, what if you could actually enjoy all that extra time and room in your mind with having fun and smiling because you’re happy rather than to cover up your fears.  Just think about these things, be careful to be kind to yourself and not slip into beating yourself up because you aren’t doing the happy dance instead of the fear tango. (grin)

So, if I designed my own life before I came in, then I should be able to re-design it while I’m here now.  I think we can.

My experience in working with clients is that we have planning meetings with other souls prior to each lifetime. During those planning meetings we set objectives for our soul and the committee helps us design the basics for our lives to help us meet those objectives.  I think of it is planning for a vacation.  We don’t plan every single moment of a vacation, but we often will plan to see or do certain things so we can have certain experiences.

My sense is that some of us have very ambitious souls and we may plan for more than we can deal with gracefully.  Since we have chosen to forget that we planned it for ourselves, we tend to name this experience as “a hard life”.  We can easily get caught up in how difficult life is and loose the focus of how many really great things happen in our lives and that amplifies the troubled spots.  Ever have to come home from a vacation to rest?

I think we can change or lessen the harshness of life by learning to change the focus from how challenging our lives are to how grateful we are for the blessings we have. I do know how trite this sounds, and yet when I really feel the gratitude, I do truly feel better.  I also think we can change the harshness of our lives by changing our situation, and by talking to our Angels and Guides and letting them know that you want to soften your life.  Learn lessons quicker, rather than waiting for things to be so difficult you can’t handle it.

I believe we can learn our lessons in joy rather than suffering.  I know that one of my lessons is learning how to be joyful, how to allow others to love me, and how to receive good things from others and the universe itself.  So not all lessons are painful. (warm smile)

Self Healing, in my opinion is actually what is at the foundation of all healing, even when it appears to be coming from outside of our own being.  Healing is about getting systems back in balance.  When we heal ourselves we are making decisions to feel better, be better, act better or live better.  The confusing part is that so many times those decisions are being made below our own awareness.  This lack of awareness make it feel like we aren’t deiciding or choosing the healing ourselves, but that the healing is happening to us.

Energy work is just one of the best ways to clear out the blocks we have below awareness that stop us from accepting or allowing us to heal ourselves.  Other ways to help let go of those unconscious choices is through mental health therapy or counselling.  Self-Help books are wonderful for beginning the awareness process.  After all, we have to become aware that we are NOT aware before we can become aware that we are NOT aware. (grin)

Growing up with the assumption of being selfish often leaves us believing we are selfish, and if we are selfish, then we must be bad, in general. Bad people are not worthy of good things including being loved by others and certainly not ourselves.

Clearing all of these beliefs in a phone session or through email is a great place to start the process of letting go of these illusions of being bad.  You don’t have to do energy work to clear the beliefs, you can do this work without it, but energy work speeds the process up quite a bit.

So, first become aware of how you  are talking to yourself.  When you hear yourself speaking to yourself in hurtful ways or not listening to your own hurt or pain, imagine how you would feel if you were a child and someone spoke to you in such harsh ways.  My guess is that you would not talk to another person on earth as harshly as you speak to yourself, so why would you do that to yourself?  Let yourself off the hook.  Simply start correcting your self talk.

Instead of beating yourself up about something, try giving yourself the benefit of the doubt, a second chance, like you would anyone else.

Think about how you would feel if you were worth being nice to, or treating with respect.  Pretend that you are worthy, even if you don’t believe it, but just pretend that you do deserve to be treated well.  How do you feel when you pretend that you are a decent person?

How will I know if I’m being distracted by wanting to know about my past lives?

The bottom line to learning about who we were in a past life, is to be sure your motivation is to resolve those issues in the past as a way to heal who you are as a whole being. If your motivation is simple curiosity, then be very careful. You can add unnecessary drama and even trauma to your life by getting information without making sense of it, resolving and letting go of that old, no longer beneficial, energy.  That’s what Past Life Integration does, it helps you let go of the old and keep the lessons you’ve learned from all that past life experience.

Curiosity is a code word for distraction from our purpose for being here in physical form. We need to stay focused on continuing our remembering of being unconditional Love in physical form. We are here on Earth because we want the experience of knowing we are God/Love and we can be Love even in the experience of duality as both human and Spirit.

Does the Past Life Story somehow connect to the current life issues?

Often the story will make sense to you in this life time. Let’s say we are working with that part that was hung. The “symptoms” of that life time may show up in your current life as constant neck problems.

Integrating this past life character may bring great relief from those neck problems because that part of you is no longer holding on to that trauma. This releases the memories from your DNA.

Some phobias that seem random can be relieved by resolving past life trauma. No promises, because phobias, like many emotional or mental health issues are complex.  It may be that a phobia is held in place by old fears as well as more recent fears and even by beliefs that have been reinforced over the years.  the bottom line is to give yourself a break.  Understand that no matter how strange your worries, fears or rages may seem, you probably have a reason for those feelings.  Just because that reason is below your awareness doesn’t mean you don’t have a valid reason for feeling them.

Is Past Life Integration the same as Past Life Regression?

No. I actually don’t do what most people would call past life regression. I probably could, I am a Doctor in Clinical Hypnotherapy, so I have the credentials that would support doing regressions.

My understanding of past life regressions is that the facilitator helps the client get into a relaxed state, a trance, and then walks them back through time and keeps going back until the client begins remembering events. The client may even change voices, gain an accent, speak a different language and so on.

So, why don’t you do Past Life Regressions?

I have a basic philosophy that the value of knowing about our past lives comes in our integration of how it is affecting us in this life time. If we are unable to resolve the issues within that past life, then it actually distracts and potentially traumatizes us in this life time.

Let’s say you go back in time and find out you were hung for a crime you didn’t commit. In a past life regression, you may actually go back and re-live the trauma of being hung. You feel and remember the sensations of being hung, not to mention the emotional pain of being killed for something you didn’t even do.

What good is it to you to go through that horrible event, just for the sake of knowing it? Nothing, that I can think of. I would have nightmares and feel horrible for weeks maybe months knowing something like this about me. I don’t even watch the news because it’s too intense. <weak smile>

So, regression alone, is not good for us, in my humble opinion.

Are you saying that Past Life Integrations are without emotions?

When you finish bringing your past life character into your heart you may have a positive feeling and a sensation of wholeness. During the Integration itself, there are times when some people definitely do feel what the lost part has gone through. So, yes, you may experience brief waves of grief, fear, abandonment or whatever fits your situation. The key is that we go all the way through the feelings to the healing.