Book Recommendation for The Things They Carried

I just finished The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. It was an odd reading choice for me because I've never been a fan of war stories or of war, for that matter. Still, it would be inappropriate for me to present myself as a pacifist. I believe in peace but I know there's no such thing as a good story or an interesting life without tension and conflict. People go to war because they can't figure out a way to resolve their conflicts otherwise. I believe this is the reason we come into incarnation, to learn that process. Earth is a school.

The Things They Carried turned out to be a remarkable book. I read it because I knew the author wrote it as an exploration of memory, writing fiction in first person in a nonfictional voice, using himself as a character, a fascinating undertaking. O'Brien does not disappoint, far from it. I identified with his emotions in war, not as if I had participated in it myself but through my own life experiences. He doesn't call them psychic experiences, but they are.

He tells of wrapping dead bodies and strapping them to helicopters. That reminds him of the first time the death of someone traumatized him. Whether fiction or non, he tells of the death of his little girlfriend who died of a brain tumor when they were both nine. Then she came to him in dreams, dreams he learned to intend before falling asleep, where they played, talked, and carried on their friendship. I couldn't help recalling when I was seven because my best friend died in a car wreck. Two months later she leaned over a cloud and talked to me in waking life, an event that helped shape my beliefs about possibilities.

During another grueling experience in my life, a divorce, I found my consciousness floating outside my body. I often had the feeling that my spirit might just slip out and leave my body. I feared I would simply abandon it and not return; but because I was so distraught, sometimes I feared I wouldn't and would have to stay. O'Brien, the character, experiences the same angst when in a battle or performing some of the hateful duties of a soldier. His consciousness seems to leave his body.

O'Brien, the author, invokes the familiar aspects of the Viet Nam War that we all recognize from news reports, movies, and books as well as the portrayal of post-traumatic stress syndrome, the psychological condition that exemplified the conflict. He invokes in an original way through a personal exploration of memory, what's real and what isn't, but also what could have been. He toys with erasing memories, a cleverly appealing outcome for negative ones. His conclusions apply not only to memories of war but also to all our life experiences. His use of magical realism, a valuable technique I rely on it my own writing, adds verisimilitude to his conclusions.

The Things They Carried speaks to us all. I recommend it with gusto.

AWESOME ONLINE VIDEOS ATTEMPT TO VERIFY PAST LIFE MEMORIES

Last Sunday I spent the whole day watching these videos. The site is called Rational Spirituality, and the link is below.
http://www.ianlawton.com/rsvideos.htm
The first set features Michael Newton, the hypnotherapist who regresses people to the between life state. He has written a couple of books on the subject Journey of Souls and Journey between Lives.
Following are videos of cases by a researcher in Australia who regressed people, then took the subjects to the places they remembered. The subjects recognized places they had never been. Sometimes they spoke foreign languages.
Next comes the Indianapolis cop Robert Snow, who researched his past life memory.
There are fascinating cases of children who relate details of other lifetimes.
Researchers and religious figures, including an imam and the Dalai Lama, discuss the pros and cons of the philosophy of reincarnation.
I highly recommend these videos. They are thought-provoking, entertaining, and inspirational. The human mind and heart are truly awesome. Enjoy!

THE VOICE IN MY HEAD, A TOUCH, A SENSE OF PRESENCE

Eyvonne Carter-Riley was a dance teacher on the same faculty with me when I taught drama in Phoenix. She recently wrote to me about her experiences of an inner presence: "I love the paranormal too and have had my share of things happen. Sometimes frightening at first- but always turns out a good message, right? One happened while I was living in Wickenburg in March of 2002 after a day of sobbing my eyes out because my daughter said she wanted to live with her father (a year & 1/2 after the divorce). My little ballet studio was falling apart, and I was just feeling lost what to do. I cried so hard I made myself literally sick and went to bed at 7 pm. In the middle of the night I felt something on my shoulder, and it woke me up. Then I heard a voice say clear as a bell, 'Eyvonne you're going to be ok, you've done nothing wrong. Good will happen for you.' The voice was female but no one I recognized. Well..... I lay there frozen with my eyes wide open, scared to pieces and trembling! Then I fell asleep for another 10 hours. About 6 weeks later I decided to move out of Arizona to Nevada for a teaching job- that fell in my face - but at least to a new life that picked up from there."
 
An inner voice that speaks in our mind or a physical touch with no one present—such experiences can provoke many responses—from wonder to comfort to fear for our sanity. How should we react? What should our attitude be? I say look at the outcomes.
 
Eyvonne relates what happened to her on another occasion when she sensed a presence, rather than hearing a voice or a touch on her shoulder: "April of 2003 the day after our wedding is when I get rushed to the hospital (by hubby) at 2 am because I had severe stomach pains and found out it was gall bladder (no warning really- I thought the squeezy tummy was nerves from all the TV cameras at my wedding!) I had emergency gall bladder surgery 14 hours later. The surgeon said I had only hours or it may have been fatal - it was that badly infected. But besides hubby with me I felt someone else there also!"
 
Again in a life-threatening situation, Eyvonne heard a voice that saved her life.  She said of that encounter: "Then Jan 2004 2 weeks before my 50th birthday I'm in a car accident! It happened so fast yet everything seemed slow motion. I heard 'relax' (that female voice again) from somewhere! I was driving a company car - a taxi helping out to move the company from the old office to a new office area. (I was dispatching limos at the time.) I also had gotten a taxi license, but it's a pit of a job. I begged to do dispatching. It's 4:30 am (ugh) and at a 4 way stop sign I looked and saw no one but me at the intersection over by the New Orleans Casino. I saw a truck coming from the opposite direction but it was safe for me to go, so I thought. I get T-Boned from a mini-van that was clocked at 95 in a 25-mile zone- a stolen vehicle with Mexican guys that spoke no English.
 
"My car was bent into a U and it had spun 3 times before I came to a stop. The guy in the truck saw the whole thing. I got badly bruised from the air bag, cuts on arms and face from glass, my back wrenched and bruised, and whiplash. I was hanging out the side of the car in the seat! After the truck guy got me unbuckled, I stood up and fainted! Then I came back to consciousness to see the ambulance pull up. I walked to the sidewalk at first not knowing it was all for me! Really crazy. I go back to the car and used the radio system to alert the office. The taxi authority and the limo office people were there within minutes to see the smushed taxi and me standing there and the Mexican guys all pissed because they've been arrested.
 
"I felt my angel was there. This accident made the news and everyone that saw the car said it's a miracle I was standing there. I was sent home for the rest of the day, too shook up to do anything. I was home by 7:30 am and sat in our Jacuzzi for about 4 hours. But my dancing will never be the same after that. So had to put away ever teaching ballet again. But main thing I survived it. And someone was there, my guardian angel for sure."
 
Whether you label them imagination, delusion, or divine intervention, these stories show undeniable facts. They happened when the experiencer was in great emotional need or physical danger. They comforted her and preserved her life. The outcomes have always been positive and good. That tells me that Eyvonne's paranormal experiences are the kind that can be trusted.
 
Not all such experiences are so benevolent and beneficial. If the voice in your head is overly emotional or tries to get you to do something you wouldn't normally do like take drugs or harm another person, there is reason for concern. In such a case, it's best to see a psychological or spiritual counselor, someone you trust to give you a fair hearing.
 
I am grateful to Eyvonne for sharing her experiences. Today she has a business in Las Vegas. Here's her contact info:
Talking Dogs Mobile Grooming
www.talkingdogsmobile.com

PURPOSEFUL PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES

"I visited your blogspot," wrote Hope King of Tempe."I understand well about psychic experiences. Dreaming about plane crashes and earthquakes prior to their happening nearly ten years ago was terribly frightening and led me to avoid the news at all costs for many years. Other than that horrible summer, I tend to find my psychic experiences comforting. When loved ones pass on I often get a visit within the next two weeks. I worried when my father did not come to me after his passing last May. Finally, I felt him, but his energy was filled with fear. I let him stay with me for maybe ten minutes, then surrounded his presence with white light, and called upon Jesus to take him to heaven. Several months later, I wondered what the outcome of all of that was. I shuddered to recall his fear and wondered if he was in a good place. Within two or three days, I came home one day to see my father - plain as day - sitting on my couch comfortably and with a smile on his face. It was only an instantaneous vision, but I know that he came to give me my answer. He is in a good place."

Hope is, in my opinion, a wise young woman who is coming to trust her psychic experiences to help support her life. One of her strengths is acknowledging her intention to receive a visit from a loved one who has passed on. If she believed such events would be impossible, she could have hampered her ability to see her father.

Sometimes we think that psychic experiences happen to us. Maybe we imagine they are visited on us by an unkind or even malevolent force. "The devil is behind it" style of thinking. Conversely sometimes people believe positive forces are behind psychic moments, often attributing them to angels or divine intervention.

For a long time I believed I had no control over psychic experiences. This is what happened to me: I spoke with the ghost of my dead friend then convinced myself it didn't happen. I had dreams that came true and decided not to continue to have those dreams. A guide or angel or some ineffable presence spoke into my mind, and I thought I was going crazy. Over the years, I've been my own worst enemy when it came to such matters by intentionally suppressing them. It has taken years of study and effort to come to trust these aspects of myself.

I believe intention is the most important element. By that I mean a conscious state of will. People can decide to have precognitive dreams or decide not to have any. They can decide to acknowledge their intuition or to ignore it. These experiences are far more under conscious control than many of us realize or admit. If this weren't so, how could people who consult psychics or mediums, including yours truly, ever trust the people we go to see? We pay them money to invoke their own psychic abilities. Why not invest in our own?

The websites listed below will help you wrap your mind around your own intention as a major player in psychic awareness. I realize that trusting science and scientists is an imperfect path to truth, but it's an important one, nevertheless.

An American born Swiss researcher, Dr. Arthur T. Funkhouser says intention can be employed to create precognitive dreams. If you'd like to participate in his research, you can do so at this URL: http://www.deja-experience-research.org/index.php/everydayde

Lynne McTaggart, a British author, sponsors a website and occasional scientific experiments on intention. http://theintentionexperiment.ning.com/

If you just want to play some games instead of doing research, try http://psiarcade.com/. The psi arcade is fun but it's sponsored by a serious research institution, The Institute of Noetic Sciences, http://ions.org/. Perhaps you read about them in Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

Whatever approach you take, know that it's all in your power. It's all in your intention!
Love and light,
Toby

Out of the Psychic Closet: The Quest to Trust My True Nature by Toby Fesler Heathcotte

SECOND SIGHT: DR. JUDITH ORLOFF’S INTUITIVE JOURNEY

Here is an excerpt from a book I highly recommend.

SECOND SIGHT: DR. JUDITH ORLOFF’S INTUITIVE JOURNEY
By Judith Orloff MD
Adapted from Second Sight (Three Rivers Press, 2010)

I’m a psychiatrist and intuitive in Los Angeles. What I do isn’t my job. It’s my life’s passion. With patients and in workshops, I listen with my intellect and my intuition, a potent inner wisdom that goes beyond the literal. I experience it as a flash of insight, a gut feeling, a hunch, a dream. By blending intuition with orthodox medical knowledge I can offer my patients and workshop participants the best of both worlds. Now, listening to intuition is sacred to me, but learning to trust it has taken years. I’ve described the details in my memoir Second Sight which is meant to assure anyone whoever thought they were weird or crazy for having intuitive experiences, that they are not! This brief synopsis gives you a good sense of the book.

I grew up in Beverly Hills the only daughter of two-physician parents with twenty-five physicians in my family. From age nine, I had dreams and intuitions that would come true. I could predict illness, earthquakes, even the suicide of one of my parent’s friends. This confused and alarmed me, as it did my parents who were entrenched in the hard-core rational world of science. At first they tried to write my intuitions off as coincidence. Finally, though, after I dreamed my mother’s mentor would lose a political election--which to my horror, came true--she took me aside and told me, “Never mention another dream or intuition in our house again!” I’ll never forget the look in my dear mother’s exasperated, frightened eyes, nothing I ever wanted to see again. So from that day on, I kept my intuitions to myself. I grew up ashamed of my abilities, sure there was something wrong with me.

Luckily, I’ve had many angels in human form who’ve pointed me to my true calling as physician. In the sixties I got heavily involved with drugs in an attempt to block my intuitions out—not something I’m recommending to you! Following a nearly fatal car accident at age sixteen when I tumbled over a treacherous 1500 foot cliff in Malibu Canyon, my parents forced me to see a psychiatrist. This man was the first person who ever “saw” me--not who he wanted me to be, but who I was. He taught me to begin to value the gift of intuition, and referred me to Dr. Thelma Moss, a intuition researcher at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She was to become my mentor and guide to developing my intuitive side.

While working in Thelma’s lab I had an amazingly specific dream which announced, “You’re going to become an MD, a psychiatrist, to help legitimize intuition in medicine.” When I awoke, I felt like someone was playing a practical joke on me. I’d never liked science, and I was bored around all my parent’s doctor-friends. I was a hippie living in an old converted brick Laundromat with my artist-boyfriend in Venice Beach, working in the May Company’s towel department. (I’ve had a great love of towels and sheets since!) The last thing I envisioned doing was medicine. But because I was beginning to trust my intuition, I enrolled in a junior college just to see how it would go. So one course became two, became fourteen years of medical training--USC medical school and a UCLA psychiatric internship and residency.

The irony was, that during my medical training I strayed far from the intuitive world again. Traditional psychiatry equates visions with psychosis. Working in the UCLA emergency room, I’d keep seeing psychotics who were wheeled in screaming, strapped to gurneys, accompanied by cops with Billy clubs. These patients professed to hear God and to be able predict things. They also felt their food was poisoned, and that the FBI was on their tail. No one tried to sort through this mishmash of claims. Typically, patients would shot up with Thorazine, hospitalized on lock-down inpatient units until their “symptoms” subsided. Seeing this so many times I doubted whether it was safe or appropriate to integrate my intuitions in medicine.

When I opened my Los Angeles psychiatric practice in 1983, I had every intention of it being traditional; I’d use medications, psychotherapy, but I didn’t intend for intuition to play a role. My practice was extremely successful. Since I was a workaholic and also loved helping people, I had twelve hour days, though very little personal life. But then I had a heart-wrenching wake-up call that changed everything. It was an intuition that a patient, on antidepressants, was going to make a suicide attempt. Because she was doing so well--nothing supported my hunch--I dismissed it. Within a week she overdosed on the antidepressants I’d prescribed and ended up in a coma for nearly a month. (Had she not survived I would’ve been devastated.) The hardest part, though, was that I thought I’d harmed her by not utilizing a vital piece of intuitive information. This was intolerable for me. From then on, I knew, as a responsible physician, I had to integrate my intuitions into my work.

After this episode, my journey to bring intuition into my medical practice began. I didn’t know how I’d do it, but I put out a silent prayer to the universe to help me. Soon, I began meeting people, more angels, who showed me the way. Gradually I grew comfortable with my intuition, set out to write “Second Sight.” This took me seven years to complete because I had so much fear about coming out of the closet as an intuitive. I was afraid of what my physician-peers would think, that they’d mock me or blackball me from the profession. My mother warned, “They’ll think you’re weird. It’ll jeopardize your medical career.” Ah Mother: I loved her, but thank god I didn’t listen. Finding my voice as a psychiatrist and intuitive has been my path to freedom.

Sure, there’s a risk when you stretch yourself, but the rewards are enormous. Now, I’m blessed to travel around the country giving workshops on intuition to auditoriums full of extraordinary people--health care professionals and general audiences--who long to embrace their inner voice. I’m heartened to see that many physicians are eager to deal with patients in the new way I offer. I gave an intuitive healing workshop at the American Psychiatric Association convention, a annual gathering of the most conservative psychiatrists in the world. I’m pleased to report the response was wonderful.

I’m sad to report that my mother didn’t live long enough to see this. In 1993 she died of a lymphoma. But, on her deathbed, she decided to tell me our “family secrets.” She told me, “I want to pass the power onto you.” I was astounded to learn that I came from a lineage of intuitive healers on her side of the family--my Jewish grandmother who did laying on of hands in a shed behind the pharmacy she and Grandpop ran in Philadelphia. East coast aunts and cousins I’d never met since I grew up in California. Also, my mother, herself, had a strong inner voice which told her how to treat patients for over forty years. She’d listened to this voice and secretly used her innate healing powers to keep her lymphoma in remission for many years. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her. She said simply, “I wanted you to lead a normal, happy life, not to be thought of as weird like your grandmother was.” Oh Mother... I’ll always be grateful for what she shared, but, still... she’d waited so long. Even so, I believe in the wisdom of the paths we’ve been given. Mine has been to fight for what I believed in despite what my parents or anyone said. An invaluable but rugged lesson in empowerment.

These days, no matter what I’m going through, especially when my heart is torn in a million pieces my intuition has sustained me. I hope that my journey in my book “Second Sight” can help you. One thing I’m certain of: if you follow your intuitive voice, you can’t go wrong. Stay true to it. Intuition is about empowerment, not having to conform to someone else’s notion of who you should be. It’s about being true to yourself, and all the goodness that comes from that.

***GET YOUR COPY OF SECOND SIGHT PLUS 80+ BONUS GIFTS FROM Deepak Chopra, Shirley MacLaine, DR. Joan Borysenko, and more at http://WWW.DRJUDITHORLOFF.COM



Judith Orloff, M.D is author of the new bestseller SECOND SIGHT, an inspiring and controversial memoir about coming to terms with her intuitive gifts, upon which this article is based. Her other books are Emotional Freedom, Guide to Intuitive Healing, and Positive Energy. She is assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and an international workshop leader. For more information about new updated edition of Second Sight and Dr. Orloff’s books and workshops visit www.drjudithorloff.com http://www.drjudithorloff.com/second-sight-promotion

New Review of Psychic Closet by Lori Newman

The e-book of Out of the Psychic Closet: The Quest to Trust My True Nature, e-book is now available for purchase from Twilight Times Books, http://twilighttimesbooks.com/PsychicCloset_ch1.html
 
The paperback book of Out of the Psychic Closet: The Quest to Trust My True Nature, print book available for pre-order from Barnes and Noble online,
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Out-of-the-Psychic-Closet/Toby-Fesler-Heathcotte/e/9781606191392/?itm=1
 
Below are some Reviews and Endorsements for Out of the Psychic Closet:
 
Out Of The Psychic Closet by Toby Heathcotte
 
This is a book of believing in yourself and finding the courage to look deeper into yourself to find your own truth.
Toby suffered a deep loss as a young child; a good friend was killed in a car accident. When the image of her deceased friend came to Toby to tell her she was alright, Toby’s mother denied such an image was possible. For years Toby struggled with the ability to believe in herself or what she had seen or felt on that day.  To believe in such things, let alone talk about them, would bring feelings of doubt and fear from others, especially those very close to her.
Even though the journey was a difficult and sometimes lonely one, Toby found the strength within herself to find her truth. To search out what she believed to be true and find peace with that knowledge. This is a book of her struggle to understand her gift and to make peace with it in order to bring knowledge to others. Toby was plagued with death in her family through out her young life and into her adulthood and believed at a young age that death and diing should be something to fear. Through her own research and determination, Toby has found that this is not true.
Her book Out Of The Psychic Closet brings a very comforting understanding to a gift that many are either afraid of or unwilling to believe in. Toby follows up her belief with in depth examples and research to sustain the facts she has written about. But this is also a story about a woman’s thirst for knowledge about herself and no matter the emotional or mental cost to Toby, she continued to look for and understand her own inner truth. Once she was able to believe in herself, life, and her gift took on a new direction, one of inner peace.
I connected with Toby on so many levels through out her book. I recommend Out Of The Psychic Closet to all who are in search of understand their own gifts and willing to make the first step to say, “I am not afraid.” We all in some form or another have that little voice guiding us, giving us direction; it is up to us to listen.
A great book that gave me goose bumps, and moments of reflection of happenings like those, Toby wrote about, in my own life. A must read
 
Review by Lori Newman Author of Here All Along
www.whenwelisten.com

My Workshop Schedule for Feb and March

Below are the events I'll be participating in during the next two months. I hope to see you at one or more of them.
 
February 5 - Workshop - Five Ways Out of the Psychic Closet, Well Red Coyote - Sedona 7 pm
 
February 13 - Book Signing, Oro Valley Library noon - 2:30 pm
 
March 13 and 14 - Tucson Festival of Books, University of Arizona