An Ancient Technique For Helping Grief with Dr. Irene Blinston | EP 488

Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that caused us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges. Challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth, and I am your host, Brian Smith. Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth. I'm Brian Smith, and whether this is your first time joining us, or you've been walking this road with me for a while, I'm so glad that you're here. The show exists because grief changes everything, and most of what we're taught about, most of what we're taught about it just isn't enough. We talk about loss, love that doesn't die, and the possibility that people we've lost aren't as far as the way they seem. I bring on guests who are doing the real work that kind of goes deeper than the five stages in the pamphlet. Dr. Irene Blintstone is a transpersonal psychologist, an independent researcher, and one of the rare voices of mental health who takes the sacred seriously as science. For over two decades, she's been exploring the territory most psychologists won't touch. Mystical experiences altered states, and what happens when the veil between the living and the dead grows thin. She holds a PhD in transpersonal psychology, and her research has taken her from studying children who witnessed sacred apparitions to the ancient practice of mirror gazing, a ritual used in the ancient world that she's helping to bring back to life as a grief healing tool. Her book Gazing into the Afterlife explores a psychomantium, a practice so old and so quietly powerful that most of the modern world's forgotten about it and forgotten it even existed. In this conversation, we're going to go somewhere most grief conversations never go. We're going to talk about what happens with ancient wisdom and modern psychology, stop arguing with each other, and start working together. When the ritual of sitting in darkness with a mirror becomes a doorway, when grief becomes not something just to survive, but a portal to whom you're becoming. So if you've ever felt the presence of someone you've lost and had no language for it, no framework that made room for it, this one's for you. If the thought of just moving on has felt like a betrayal, like continuing to love the person you lost makes you somehow broken in the eyes of the world. I want you to stay with this. And if you want to continue the conversation after the episode, head over to GriefForGrowth.com and you'll find an article about today's discussion where you can comment and connect with me and other listeners. So let's get started. Let's welcome Irene Bunston. I'm glad to have you, Dr. Bunston. One of the things before we get started, just so people understand, you're a transpersonal psychologist. And some people may not know what that is. Could you explain to people what a transpersonal psychologist is? Well, transpersonal psychology is we cover all the conventional psychology information and all the teaching. But we go beyond that. So we study spiritual traditions and a lot of what conventional psychology might consider psychosis or psychotic episodes are looked at in other spiritual traditions as normal. It's a spiritual experience. So we looked at a lot of religious traditions and spiritual traditions. We also looked at parapsychology. We looked at altered states of consciousness and even looked at the consideration of the continuation of consciousness or survival of consciousness after death. So we go into all of what might be considered woo woo areas in conventional psychology. But I think it's really important because especially for today, there's people who are there on their own spiritual journey. And we have to look at their situation as part of their normal being or treated in such a way that we don't automatically go into a diagnosis of psychosis or something abnormal. Yeah, I got to tell you, I absolutely love that. And I've only spoken with one of the persons, a trans transpersonal psychologist before. Personally, I believe everybody should be transpersonal. I was going to say every mental health professional should be transpersonal. I think every health professional should be transpersonal because it's treating the whole person and it's understanding that we are not just our bodies and not just chemical reactions, but we have a spiritual component as well. That is absolutely correct. Yeah, I never thought about it that everybody, you know, all mental or not just mental, but practitioners, whether in the physical health area or the mental health area. But that's something that, you know, our research, hopefully, it's not always easy because we have to fund our own research most of the time. But when we can get our research out there, you know, to show empirically that these things happen and people are really okay, they just need to be treated or handled in a different way that honors whatever their tradition is or their belief system is. So that's actually a good idea. Yeah, my daughter is a mental health professional. She's a mental health counselor. And when she was going through school, and my daughter is also very intuitive in the spiritual side of things. And when she was going through school, of course, they said, you know, none of that, none of that's allowed. And we can't talk about those things. And, you know, even, you know, the fact is that people consciousness, I mean, we're finding out the consciousness has so much role in mental and physical health, even. And then, you know, then they said, well, we don't know what consciousness is. So let's just put that aside. We'll just we'll just treat the body. Right. Right. Exactly. That's exactly right. And I mean, it is well, we have to go into looking at hard science and the materialistic perspective. And reductionism, because if it can't be measured or reproduced, then it doesn't exist. And that's where the difficulty comes in. And even when some really serious psi research, parapsychology type research was conducted, I mean, and really serious analysis that was quantitative, it was still ignored. And so there is a really and I think it still exists. But I don't know if you're familiar with a professor from Davis, Charles Tarte. Yeah, he was one of my professors. I absolutely loved him. He, you know, he did a lot of really deep research where he did some really serious analysis and he covered all the bases to be accepted. And they still ignored. They still ignored his research, trying to get it published into like, professional journals that were in auspices of more of the hard sciences. It was ignored. And so that's why I have to say I remember when I was in school, I actually was going to have Charlie Tarte on my committee for my dissertation. And he wouldn't be on it. And he told me he told me that and he presumed I wanted to be an academic and be like a lecturer and try to go for a tenure position as a professor, which was not in my ballpark. But he was telling me that I would never be accepted. And that he was going to try and encourage he was encouraging me to think of something else to study. And this is when I was doing the study of the religious apparitions that were experienced in childhood. And to show my thing was to show that they had an effect on people. And it's the same, I think that it's a spiritual experience regardless. And we see this also in the psychomantium, or at least in my experience as a facilitator during the research. I saw people transform. But how do you explain it? I mean, we did analyses. We did both quantitative and qualitative analysis on the data. And that's why I wrote this book. I was actually asked to write the book Gazing into the Afterlife by the director of the research unit. He passed away. And when he was on his deathbed, he was asked me to write the book myself and another cohort mate in the research. Only she was not really available to do it. So finally, I wrote it myself. But it's getting it out there. This is really like, I get on a soapbox kind of. Sorry. We are denying ourselves our ability to learn our potential. And to get it out among the people. Like for me, I mean, granted, it's like, it's really nice and prestigious to get an article accepted in a professional journal. But my concern when I was going through school is I want the general public to know about this. So I wanted to write my books. And, you know, I wrote articles for journals, because that's kind of expected. But I wanted to write books that the general public could read to show that what they have experienced has been researched. Yeah. And I got to I work with Dr. Gary Schwartz, who's been working on. Soul phone project for quite a while. And Gary's been doing all kinds of cutting edge research for, I guess, 25 years or more now. One of the first books I read when I started studying the afterlife was the Afterlife Experiments, where he brought in mediums and did controlled experiments. And the thing is, people don't know that this research even exists. As you said, once once it's done, then the thing is getting it published. And I've done some research myself into the research. And that the things that materialists will come up with to explain these side phenomena, which have been well documented, because their their mentality is it's impossible. Therefore, we have to explain it away. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I think about that. It's like, uh, scientism that I mean, it's its own religion. It is. Yeah. And it's dogma. I mean, yeah. And it's really important for people to understand that. Because what the materialists or the scientism people will try to convince us of is, this is the real point of view. There's other people are woowoo. Yes. And this, because we can't explain this, therefore, it's impossible. And that's that is itself a dogma. That is itself a point of view. Right. Exactly. And it's they, they're, it's, it really is. I don't want to use the brainwash, but it's akin to that. You know, and, and they're, when they're in school, that's why I loved going to the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. We didn't have any barriers put on us. And, but when they're in school, this is what's pounded into them. Yes. And even in medical school, too. Absolutely. It's like, this is, you know, this is the way you treat these things. This is what you do. But truly behind all of that is the funding for the research, who's paying for it, you know, who's, you know, who's supplying the funds for that. So it can get kind of corrupt. And that's where you really have to know how to discern what you're reading when you're reading articles and journals, you know, to find out what you like, first and foremost, who funded this research. But in the case of anything that is woowoo, what they might consider woowoo, I think it's really important that we be, you know, that we're able to get this out and that we be in a space of, I'm not afraid. If I get talked down to or rejected, and that's kind of where I come from. Several students at the school when I, after I graduated, they brought me in to do speaking to some of the classes at the Institute. And there was one student goes, how can you do that, though? Because no one's going to believe you. You're never going to get published. You're never going to get, you know, and I thought, oh, my God, the fear is already, you know, it's embedded in them. And I just said, I don't care. If they want to reject me, that's okay. Well, I just need to get the information out there. I have to tell you, I'm really grateful for people like yourself who are willing to put themselves out there, people like Gary and others. There are others who have put themselves out there and, you know, get criticized and can really, you know, you said you end up having to fund your own research because nobody wants to fund it. And this doesn't have to be a battle. This doesn't have to be a war. We know that traditional psychology works and psychiatry works and medicine, Western medicine works. We're not trying to replace that, but why do we have to deny this whole other aspect of what a human being is? Right. And that can get into the whole right to try, you know, yeah. And sadly, with a lot of cases with grief, too, because, you know, insurance covers certain therapies, right? And so when we're looking at grief, this is something that somebody is going to have to pay for out of pocket. Yeah. Although there are a lot of transpersonal psychologists out there, people that I went to school with, they're practicing clinical. I'm not clinical. They're practicing clinical psychologists and they do have, you know, they take insurance. So they have to follow APA guidelines and things like that for the listener. APA is American Psychological Association. Right. And for me, I don't have to worry about that. Everything that I do, yeah, just about everything that I do is really spiritual guidance. So I go at it from, you know, I mean, if you even wanted to look at pastoral counseling and things like that, that's really what's happening with the psychomantium work that I do. And any work, if I'm working with somebody who's had, like, Aboriginal experiences, spiritual experiences, truly, I think that it is spiritual guidance because they're having spiritual experiences. Just from my perspective. Well, you know, as you were saying, I know you've worked with children who have had Aboriginal experiences, who have seen things for people that might not understand that term, you know, seen things that are spirit, you know, I've spoken with someone who talks about this being or this being of light that would come to her room at night when she was a child. And it's completely, you know, guided her life. Yes. And, you know, if she were taken to a traditional psychologist, they would say there's something wrong with you. Exactly. Exactly. And that's, I'm glad you brought that up because it's going into my research about apparitions. But I actually, I actually have participants that were adults that were recollecting their experiences as children. And some of those people, I mean, I have really strict criteria. It had to be a corporeal apparition was just like, you know, you could sit down and have coffee with them and shake her hand. And those were the criteria. And so, and I put a call out around the world for participants for that research. And that was from my doctoral dissertation. And I had so many people write in. They didn't qualify, but it was like someone they felt safe to tell their story. And so I had a million, I mean, not millions, but I had about a thousand emails that came in. And so these are things that people hold in. And one of the things I think you had mentioned in the intro, but I can't remember, sorry, was that they're afraid to say, because people are going to think they're crazy. Yeah. That was probably the number one reason why these children, when they were kids, they kept it a secret. In several cases, I was the first person they told. From even from childhood, they didn't tell anybody because they were so afraid. One person said, I'm afraid they're going to put me in the nuthouse. Well, it's true of that is true of near-death experiences, et cetera. And the thing is, I love when people start doing the research because we find out these things are not as uncommon as we think. And I was, and lately I've been running into a lot of people who have lost spouses. And I've done a little research myself, and it's like 60 to 75 percent of people who've lost a spouse have had some sort of after-death communication with them. I was talking with a client just a couple of days ago, and she was telling me about the experiences she's had with her husband who has passed. She said, and I wish I could believe this was true. I want to believe this is true, but she doesn't feel like she has the permission because, you know, because no one talks about it. Right, right. Oh man, that's, that is another huge one is, and it happens so often. In fact, things are getting a little lighter now as far as, you know, the clinical perspective of apparitions, whether it be visual apparitions or auditory apparitions of of deceased spouses, because it happens so often. But still the point, I think, with the direction that the grief counseling has a tendency to go towards is the letting go and moving on. And fortunately, continuing bonds theory, even though continuing bonds still has that ending part of it, it's, that is becoming a little better known and more utilized. But my feeling is, is like, I mean, just like in other traditions, you know, your relationship with the deceased, it's not ended. It's just in a different form. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And, you know, I was just thinking of another client I have that had a dream of his wife who had passed where she was physically in the room. It was kind of funny, because he was telling me before he would kind of like to have this experience that would have happened. He was a little bit scared, but she ended up, you know, in the room with them. And then other members of his family had similar experiences with her. And these are the things that people don't typically, I mean, people will tell me that, but they won't tell their friends that. Right. Yeah. And that's unfortunate. Yeah, again, that's that, you know, the strong grip of the, you know, scientism and materialism. I have in my book, the Phil experiment. I don't know if you've heard of that, but it was a group of skeptics. This was in Canada, and I, for the life of me, I wrote my book a long time ago, so it was been over a year since I've even gone through to edit it again. But there's a group of Canadians, skeptics that got together, and they were going to prove that this whole seance thing was, you know, all fake. And because they were all skeptics, none of them were trying to fool anybody else, you know, because their point was to show this, and they actually conjured up a spirit, for lack of a better way to describe it, that was communicating by knocks, and, you know, knocking sounds. And they named him Phil. But they had no explanation, and they continued these experiments trying to communicate with this. And they actually named a spirit Phil, and they had this whole story about this person that they made up, and that's who they were going to try and contact. Something came through, and so they just called it Phil, because they didn't really, to me, I thought, while they were skeptics, they weren't really researchers, so to me they weren't asking enough good questions to get information. But they didn't know what to think of it, because they actually, like the table was moving, and they were seeing all of this paranormal phenomenon going on right in front of their faces, and, you know, they were doing it as research, so they had to, you know, keep track of all of this and write it down, and I just thought that was so interesting, because little did they know that they actually conjured something up, you know, they had no explanation. Yeah, well, that's why people mess around with Ouija boards, and sometimes people, my father tells a story about one of his relatives that when they were young was messing around with the Ouija board and thinking there's nothing that's going to happen, and they end up scaring themselves. So you have to be careful when you're messing around with things that are on the other side. But to the psychomantium, or to the mirror gazing, as might be a more common term, explain to people what that is. Well, it is based on scrying, and that's, Dr. Moody, he actually wouldn't take anybody to go through his psychomantium, unless they could actually scry and see something in a crystal ball. Oh, I didn't know that. So because his work was, he was basing everything on apparitions. Okay, he wanted his people to be able to see apparitions of the deceased. And so he wanted he was real selective, and they had to be able to see an image in a crystal ball before he would take them through. And that's the same idea with a mirror. With mirror gazing, you're not looking at your own image. The mirror is tilted, so you can't see yourself. And it's a very dark room. And so, in my case, I have a tent-like structure, and it's all black, and everything is dark, and it's basically like sensory deprivation. So there's no smell, there's no sound, there's, you know, very low light. So you're looking into this mirror, only you don't see yourself. And the point is, is that you go into kind of a, well, it's not kind of, you do go into a slight altered state of consciousness. And that's when things, that's when your critical brain kind of relaxes a little bit. And so you're able to be open to more things coming in, and to have that experience. But the psychomantium is basically an environment set up specifically for a connection to be on the veil. And as far as I'm concerned, the mirror is the portal to the other side. And so that's what, you know, I tell people, don't expect an apparition because it's really rare. It could happen, but be open to anything and everything. And use that mirror when you look into the mirror, you know, that's to the other side. And it's kind of like eating phonome. And you can talk to your deceased loved one. Yeah. So this is where you can communicate. And I always tell them that sometimes they'll come in, it's not very often they'll come in, they're a little concerned about going in trepidatious about being in there by themselves. But by the time I'm done with what we called a pre-interview, which was getting them prepped to go in, I would tell them I'll sit in there with them. I'll sit right outside the curtain, or I'll sit outside the room, whatever they want, and use the logo, okay, I want you to sit in there with me. And by the time we get to the psychomanthem, they don't want me in the room. They want me out of there. And they're more than comfortable to be in there by themselves. And this is based, as I understand, on is an ancient Greek practice. Yeah, that's it. Dr. Moody was, I don't know if you're aware that not only was he psychiatrist, but he also had a PhD in philosophy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And he's a brilliant guy. Yeah, he loves Greek philosophy. And so he went to Greece, there used to be a video on YouTube, a long time ago, of him in his trip to Greece, because he had a film crew there. And he found what was called a necromanthem, which was like the Hall of the Dead, so to speak. But he talked about this cave, and it actually goes deep into a cave. And in ancient time, it was actually a ritual that took like, I think he said 29 days. And so they would go through like fasting and you know, really be prepped to go in there. And then when they went in, there would be like, and this is like the Oracle of the Dead. And there'd be like a bat of some kind with water or water with oil on the surface. And then they could see again, like a mirror, a reflective surface. And so they would do the same thing, they wouldn't see themselves, but they would look into it for that apparition or to get a message. And so if they wanted to contact a departed loved one, or just like, you can contact anybody really. I mean, you can contact consciousness of somebody who's alive as far as I'm concerned. But in those cases, they may have been looking for a, you know, prophetic, something prophetic, they may have been wanting to contact a loved one. There were probably a multitude of reasons that they would go in for that ritual. Yeah. So in your experiences with the Psychomantium, what type of experiences did people have? Very, they had a variety of experiences. The majority of experiences were what they would see was like colored symbols or like lines or like a lightning bolt type of image that they would see coming out of the mirror. Typical colors were like green and purple. Some would be like pink or fuchsia when they would describe because in the research, we would have them describe what they saw. That was called a post interview. And we would ask them questions, we recorded it. And then they would also write it down, you know, write down what their experience was. But that, I mean, people would have a sense of smell. One person said they could smell their grandmother's kitchen when she was cooking sweet things. And so it was a very heartwarming type of experience. A lot of people felt a sense of presence. Even though they may not have seen an apparition, they felt the sense of presence there. Then there are people who did talk, you know, they had communication. And there were others who did two situations where out of well over a hundred, we only did analysis on a hundred of the participants. We had well over a hundred there. And two of them saw an apparition. So it's rare that an apparition is witnessed, but two did. I think probably the outcome of most of the people was when when they would come out, they would have a sense of peace overall. They may go in like they're, you know, in the pre-interview when we're prepping them, we usually have them talk about the loved one they want to contact. So they may, you know, laugh and cry and, you know, have all kinds of emotions. And then when they come out, the majority of the people just, you know, they were like, I'm really glad I did this. I was sense of peace. And some of the people that went in, I mean, I was pretty horrendous. Some of some of the reasons for their grief. I was on another interview and I said a word, I guess I wasn't supposed to because they YouTube cut it out. But basically they unalive to themselves. And, and the person wanted to know why. And, and so when she came out, she was, she felt at peace. And, and then another was a homicide. A brother was murdered. And so she went in and, you know, because they don't know what happened. They just hear about this. And so she wanted to go in and find out what happened. And to be honest with you, that was such a long time ago. And I, all I know is that she, she was glad she did it. And she, you know, felt a sense of peace afterwards. And I don't know if she got the full story, but one, one, actually I did two, two homes, at least two, now that I think about it. And another one was a sibling killed another sibling. And the mother wanted to know why. And so she went in and had her experience and she came out and she said she talked to her son who did the deed. And anyway, she came out and she goes, I understand now. And just that understanding that knowing helped her feel more at peace. And that's what it's really all about, right? It's really about peace. It's really about how people feel about the experience as opposed to the details of the experience itself. Yeah. Ultimately, you know, the goal is for them to, I mean, if they're grieving, we wanted, we were looking at did it reduce the symptoms of grief? And that's, and 92%. And it lasted over time, Brian. Yeah. We sent out a questionnaire again, I think it was a month or two months later. And the reductions all stayed the same, if not lowered. So it was really impressive. Yeah. And that, as I said, to me, to me, it's like, does it work? You know, we don't even know necessarily how it works. It works and it reduces, reduces the grief increases peace. That's where we're looking for. And it reminds me people that have medium readings. A lot of times people will say, I had a medium reading and it might say it's subjectively, but it's like, I feel so much more at peace now than all the therapy that I've been through. Yes. Just having that connection with that person. And that connection, whatever it is for people can really bring some peace. Absolutely. And you know, that's one of the things because the majority of our facilitators were in the PhD program to become clinical psychologists. And so for them, they would go in and it was just like this, especially one person. She's just like, this is amazing because she was a practicing therapist before she came into the program. And she goes, one session in our sessions for the research work, one hour before, one hour in the psychomandium, one hour after, she was a three hour session equals years of therapy. And she was just like a maze. It's like years, one session. And that I witnessed it myself. Another thing that I think that it was probably it's really good for her, at least in my experience. I took two people through with complicated grief. And one was seriously bad. But she was really suffering. Her career was everything was going downhill for her. So her therapist actually sent her to our research. And I was fortunate enough to take her through. And this woman, her daughter was killed. She was in a bicycle troop. They were going on a trip somewhere. And she got hit by a van and killed. And this was her only child. And they were like best friends. And she was devastated. And it was over a year and she was still just like the day it happened. So when she came in and she talked and we did our thing and she went into the psychomandium. And when she came out, I was touched. She was her energy was completely shifted. She was smiling. She was crying, but she was smiling. And she says, oh my gosh, I understand. I get it. And so we went and talked and this is one where she was able to communicate. She felt she communicated with her daughter. And her daughter said, you feel that the only way to stay connected is through pain. But we're always connected by love. And I get choked up when I always repeat that. I just got chills when you said that. Yeah, and it just, it choked me up. I mean, it was hard because I'm supposed to be all neutral and everything. And I'm like, okay, don't cry. Don't cry, don't cry. But she was lit up. Absolutely lit up. And she came back a year later. And I mean, she was just transformed. She was over it. And so she came back a year later, asked for me, and I took her through again. She wanted to talk to her daughter about leaving her career and going into a more spiritual type career. And she just wanted to talk to her daughter about it. So it was fairly interesting because these kinds of transformative experiences can transform everything in your life. Perspectives, expectations, desires. Yeah, it's it. And for me, working with that person, I mean, I actually needed to be debriefed because it was so profound. So when I see that, I'm just like, if this could help in one session help people with complicated grief, what, you know, or prolonged grief disorder, I always call it complicated. Yeah, that that makes so much sense to me. And as someone, my backgrounds in engineering and I admire western science. I think I know science has brought us lots and lots of great things. But every time I hear stories, I feel like we're trying to do stuff with one hand tied behind our back. If we could give our professionals these tools because we can always go to people, you know, we can go to lay people, we can go to mediums and mediums do fantastic work. But if we could give people with the credentials and the training, the psychological training, this tool, they could say for this person, you know, EMDR, for example, can do almost seems like miraculous things for people because they have these experiences where they go through the sessions. It's I can never wear stands for but it's I have movement sessions and people can be transformed in one session. They can now with the EMDR, I think the standard is like seven to nine sessions with the MDR. But oh, Irene. Oh, goodness. The name just Alan Botkin. He Oh, Alan Botkin. Yes. Yeah, he got a hold of me when I was still a student. And I guess he found because I was doing the web page for our research. And he wrote me about his experience doing EMDR with a patient who had an experience with contacting the deceased. Yeah. And now I see that even as a textbook, I don't know if he wrote it, but there's a textbook out where they're teaching that for using it for grief work, I believe. Yeah, there's a specialized form of it called RRGT. And I worked with some people that do that, but it's hard to find someone that actually knows how to do it. It's like you can't just go look up RRGT and go down in the corner and find someone that can do this with you. And this is what I'm saying. We've got these great tools that we're not getting out there. And I remember when I heard about the psychomantium, I knew that Raymond Moody does some work with it. I didn't know people were actually using it clinically with people. And that's wonderful news to me. Yeah, and unfortunately, my concern was, like when Raymond, his book came out back in the mid 90s, I think Reunions was the book he wrote about his research. And then he was on Oprah. And anyway, it was just like, oh my gosh, why didn't know what kind of reaction would be from my book? But I only, I refer to one person and she was trained under Raymond. And she's in Oklahoma. My psychomantium, I was in a fire in Paradise, California and my psychomantium burned. And so I don't have a psychomantium right now. So there's, I'm referring to her. And so there's one person. And that's, you know, I created a certification program. I just starting it and putting it together to reach out to anyone who is interested in becoming certified as a facilitator for psychomantium. But right now, there just isn't anybody out there. In fact, almost all of the students that went through as facilitators when we were doing the research, they're all clinical. So they're all doing clinical psychology work. And that's, they're not, no one is using a psychomantium anymore. Yeah. And that's just not available. To me, that's the shame of some of these tools that we have available. And there's a woman I work with. I guess I can say her name is Judith Hancock's. And Judith was trained in our RGT. And I went through it with her. I've had the experience and it's really amazing. But every time I talk to a client about it, I have trouble finding someone to refer to for them to be able to do it with them. So it's what I love about the work that you're doing is getting this out there. And if we get enough people pushing to mainstream this stuff, hopefully it will eventually happen. There's a saying that, I guess science advances one funeral at a time. So we have to wait for some of these older people to like die out and make room for us to bring these ancient wisdoms. I mean, the thing is, these things aren't new. These ancient wisdoms to our society. That's exactly right. And that's one of the things it's kind of like, we're looking at something because it is so old, millennia old, that it can't possibly fit with our modern world now. And that's one of the things about Raymond that I really admire is he's like, we're going to make this work. So he just developed his own way of doing the psychomantium and renamed it from a necromantium to a psychomantium. But that's just how he is, Dr. Moody, because he says it's the theater of the mind. He's so cute. So let's talk about some of the other research you've done. You've done, we kind of touched on earlier, research with children who have seen apparitions. Adults. I studied adults. Adults who, okay. Yeah, right. Who had apparitional experiences as children. Yes, yes. So tell me about some of these experiences. Oh, gosh. There were a lot. But for the ones, again, the criteria for my research was it had to be a corporeal apparition. And that's like strict. And the reason that I did that is well, when I wanted to graduate. And so I narrowed it down because I was doing qualitative research, not quantitative. Okay. And so I wanted to analyze and look at the qualities of their experiences and you know, I used heuristic method, which is, you know, because I had the experience as a kid. And so anyway, I really narrowed it down and it had to be a biblical figure. So there was no angels. And so I had, like I said, an influx of all kinds and a lot of them I couldn't use because they were not corporeal. But a lot of people were saying as kids they had apparitions. but they were like wispy or ghost like. But it was they would say and the majority I'm Catholic, I was raised Catholic. And so in the Catholicism, it's always an apparition of Mary. Yeah, but the majority of the participants in my research saw Jesus. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I had a Native American we saw Jesus and I had a Jewish person who saw Jesus. So yeah, it was very, very interesting. And it buried in how they came about. One participant, I think she said she was about nine years old. Her parents used to fight all the time and she remembered laying in bed and she was raised. I can't remember what religion she was raised, but it was a Christian type religion. And she was praying to Jesus to please make her parents stop because she was freaked out. And she said all of a sudden her room, there was these lights purple and blue sparkly light. And that's another thing. It's like the quality of the light that they would describe was really amazing. It was so bright, it would blind you, but it didn't hurt my eyes. And so with her, it was a purple and blue sparkly light. And Jesus was there and she was laying in bed praying and Jesus showed up and he put his hand like where she was laying hand on her shoulder. And she immediately calmed down and immediately relaxed. And then he slowly just faded away. You know, he just disappeared. And then she fell asleep. And so, but remembered it all her life. I'm really fascinated when you said there had to be a corporeal experience because you touched on it early with the psychomantium when you said that only a few people saw two people, I think you said saw apparitions. And when I talk to clients about afterlife communications after death communications, you know, corporeal experience, apparitions are rare. Corporeal expenses are even more rare. Most people see, you know, fleeting things, lights, thimes, feathers, you know, all those things that we expect. So you really narrowed this down to, you know, a really strict set of criteria. Yes. Yeah. And that's what made it even more fascinating. Yeah, the research. And like I said, I got so many emails from around the world. And there was one I couldn't use it. But and I think it was because I had a limit. They couldn't be over 12 years old when it happened. And I think this boy was 13. And in South Africa, this one blew me away. And I wanted to use it so badly, but I couldn't because I had to stick to my criteria. He was riding his bicycle and a car hit him. But he found himself on the other side of the road, standing next to Jesus. Jesus had his arm around him. And he looked and he saw the car had run over his bicycle. And the person who was driving was like freaking out looking for the kid. And he was there with Jesus holding on to him. And I was just like, wow. Okay, that one is really interesting because evidently Jesus picked him up and carried him away so that he wouldn't get hit. And what is even more interesting to me was after that, I guess he was kind of this like little bully type of boy. And didn't you know, he's just disrespectful and all of this stuff. And after that experience, he changed completely. And he was like helping the neighbors and whatever his mother or father would ask for. And he always wanted to help everyone. And he said it really, he goes, I can't explain it, but it was like, I just suddenly changed. So that's huge. It's really interesting. I just released a podcast interview last week, a guy named Jonathan Ashford who had a near-death experience. He was a total materialist. He was a sea level executive, totally hedonistic lifestyle. This is the way he describes it. And he has this experience. He crosses the other side. He meets Jesus. And now he came back. He quit his job the next day. He doesn't take money for anything. He lives like a monk. He doesn't, you know, and it may complete change in personality based upon this experience that he had. So as you're saying that, you know, I've talked to people that have gone through that. And it's really interesting to have someone doing research to, again, I don't know why we need to have these things validated, but we seem like we do. Right. We all, well, I wouldn't say we all know someone because when my daughter passed away, my experience was that when I started sharing with my people that I've known for years, things that I experienced, then suddenly they started opening up. I mean, I'm like, I would look at them and say, I've known you for 20 years. You've never told me this story. So I think a lot of us have these stories. We just were scared to share them. Exactly. Exactly. When I was doing my research, I went to Europe and I was going to marry an apparition sites, but I was staying, you know, I would stay at a bed and breakfast and I stopped in England first and I was at a bed and breakfast and the woman came to pick me up because I wasn't driving and I told her about my research and she said, oh, I saw Jesus. And he's just like, of course you did. You know, just people would open up like that. It's kind of like, oh, it's safe for me to say this right now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So did I hear you say that you had an experience when you were young? Yes, when I was, I can't, you know, when you're a little kid, ages and I was like, I'm this many that I was probably between five and seven years old and I saw an apparition who I perceived to be Jesus. At the time, I was raised Catholic and I'm agnostic now. I'm in search of knowing and yeah, I perceived him to be Jesus. It was in church and I was there. I have four brothers and my mother was there with us and trying to keep us all settled. But when I saw him, he was up on the altar and I was just like, whoa, he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the people because there were two sides, like pews on each side and he was looking at the people on that side and then when he moved his eyes and he came down, he locked eyes with me and he communicated something to me and I can never talk about it because I just burst into tears whenever I do without any control whatsoever that he did communicate with me telepathically and so I was just like, mom, and you're wearing church, right? And I'm like, Jesus is up there at the altar and I'm screaming and so she's like, yeah, yeah, okay, he is. Calm down. And my mother was really esoteric. I mean, she was, she was a classic esotericist is very cool. She taught us how to be more psychic and I was raised with really interesting stuff and so I figured if anybody's going to believe I saw Jesus it would be my mother. Now, if it would have been like an aunt or a great grandfather or something, she'd be all over it because it was Jesus. It's like, yeah, right, okay. And that was the shutdown. Yeah, that was the shutdown. It's like, it's not safe to tell anybody. And that's the message that unfortunately a lot of us get and that's again, that's the work hopefully that you're doing that'll help to remove that stigma that we have. Now, you said earlier, you said that you're agnostic now. You're in search of knowledge, which that means, but clearly you believe in something beyond this life. Yeah, that's why I'm agnostic. I was a precocious kid and I was in Catholic school. I went to Catholic school for eight years and I was always asking questions and then when they wouldn't answer, it would make me mad. You know, I talk about the Bible and this and I'm like, well, how could that happen and why is this or that or whatever? Yeah, don't ask questions. I just thought, you're all a bunch of liars. This is all a bunch of BS. And so by the time I was 11 years old, I would tell people I'm an atheist. I don't believe in this stuff. I'm an atheist and my father was an atheist. Yeah, it's a really interesting combo with my mother and my father, but yeah, he was an atheist, kind of hardcore. But after, after I had the apparition of Jesus as a kid, I would have the same dream every night. Jesus would, I would find myself in a meadow opening of a forest and I'd be there with like, there'd be like 12 of us little girls and Jesus was teaching us. And when class was over, and this was at night, like it was, I was asleep dreaming. And whenever class was over, I'd run up to Jesus and put my arms around him or whatever and he would touch my head or put his hand on my shoulder. And I would just bolt up right in bed. And I could never remember what he taught us. And that happened every night. I don't know, for probably a good five years. Maybe more. And then it was three nights a week for a long while, then it was two nights a week. And by the time I became a teenager, they stopped. And so then when I was 18, it happened again. And we all grew up, these little girls. So when I was 18, they were all like 18-year-olds like me. And so the same thing happened. Class was over. I ran up and hugged him. He touched me and I bolt up right. And that was the last one. And that was a grief thing for me because I felt like I was abandoned. It's like you abandoned me. But at the time, I had realized I'm not atheist. That's just anger. I'm not an atheist. I was just angry. I'm agnostic because I know there's something. I just don't know what it is. And so I'm in search of no says. Yeah, that makes sense. And to me, that sounds like that was more than a dream. That was something that was you projecting in the astral plane or something. Yeah, I didn't know anything about it except for I thought I'd have this dream every night and I never could remember what I was being taught. And in the person looked like Jesus to me. You know, so I always say now it's like someone who I identified as being Jesus. But later in my 20s, I was with Whitney Stryber. He had talked about going to night school and I was like, oh wow, that's interesting. Did I go to night school? Well, there are a lot of people that believe that we all actually project every night and most of it we don't remember. And sometimes we'll wake up and we'll have a feeling like there was something that I learned, but I can't remember what it was. And I always jokingly say, people talk about Jesus. I'm like, he's the hardest working man in the afterlife because he's all over the place. Because it's really interesting because people say, well, you saw Jesus because you expected to. People that are strict materialists, atheists see Jesus. People that are Hindu are like, what are you doing here? I did not expect to see you. So there is something about that image, that person that seems to be universal. That and you just made me think about in the Hindu tradition, Babaji, that there are people, I think Christians who actually saw an apparition of Babaji. Yeah. So, I mean, it's fascinating. I love my research. I don't know if you can tell. I absolutely love my research. So it fascinates me. And I think as long as we are keeping all of this secret, we're never going to grow in our abilities. Yeah, you know, this to me is a sad thing. I completely agree. I feel like we have lost who we are until people, we are lost people because this stuff, again, it's ancient. It was widely accepted. It was just taken for granted. Everybody, you know, there weren't materialists, you know, even the scientific people, the science people said, well, there's an orderly universe. This must have been created by an orderly God or creator. The way to get to know the creator is through his creation. And they expect it, regularity, etc., because there is something that's over this, some intelligence behind it. And when we take that away, then we end up with this, you know, as I look at it now, it's like we're not treating the whole person. Going back to the mental health and the physical health people, we're not treating the whole person. So some of these things like RRGT, the psychomantium. I've talked to people that are micro dosing plant medicines now that are having incredible results. Cure, you know, like curing, well, actually curing all kinds of things that we think are impossible with Western medicines. I'm really excited about your research too, because I want to see this, you know, become mainstream. I would love that because I, I mean, I think that my feeling is that we are, we can be multidimensional beings. And I think the reason that I was more interested in children's experiences, you know, adults when they were children, is because we were not as indoctrinated when we were little kids. And so we're more open. And I think we experience that multidimensionality easily. And just like people, like kids with their invisible friends. It's so that kind of thing fascinates me as there's there's an even when I'm going to go off the rails here, but even with ET encounters, you know, I wrote a chapter for a book about the Fatima apparitions in Portugal. And I, you know, it was, they were looking at it from, you know, the way that the children in Portugal were describing their experiences and what the people that gathered saw in the sky. This is where they saw the sun spinning in the sky. They were looking at it from all of the ET or alien encounters. And so they asked me because I'm pretty much, or I think I still am, like the only person who has a specialization in childhood religious apparitions. So they asked me to contribute a chapter. And I thought, okay, I can do that, but I don't want to do all this research on ET. I just graduated. But I'll tell you, I got so sucked into that. I was fascinated because John Mack, I don't know if you're familiar with him. He was a psychologist who studied. He did some case studies of his clients who claimed to have been either abducted or had encounters. And the stories that they told and the descriptions absolutely sucked me in. Oh my gosh, I went down the rabbit hole. It was so interesting, Brian, because they described light, their experiences of seeing light, almost verbatim as the children in Portugal and my participants. Even the quality of the light. I had a participant who said, I know it's taken me a long time. They had to do an art piece for me. It's taken me a long time, but I can't find the right paint for the light. And so she said she got this pearlescent paint and they would describe it as so bright, it would blind you, but it didn't hurt my eyes. And so that was one of them. And then also the touch. So that for the participants who actually were touched by the apparition, there's that same kind of descriptions in the 18 counters from these case studies. John Mack wrote a book. I think he wrote a couple of them. And so that fascinated me to no end that the similarities. So it makes me wonder about the multidimensionality. Is it other dimensional? Are we seeing through the veil, so to speak? The same kind of thing with the cyclomantium is the portal, the mirror, opening the veil. In fact, I think once a mirror is used for that purpose, it needs to be covered and used for nothing else. That's my belief. It's like you've opened the portal and you have to cover it too. To close it. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, that's my belief because yeah, you cover mirrors when people die. And there's different reasons that they do that and even back in time. So yeah, so to me, it's like the mirror that you use as a portal if you're doing cyclomantium work or mirror gazing for contact on the other side. You need to keep it covered and use it for only that. Yeah, interesting. So we talked about the other side. And so for someone that's in grief, because that's a large part of my audience, people who have lost someone. What does this research suggest for people that are saying, what does this mean to me? Well, I mean, it depends on, I mean, if they're in grief, the level of suffering from grief, like I said, I had two people with complicated grief or problem grief disorder. And one was profoundly transformed. The other was experienced transformation, but I wasn't as heavily affected by it because it wasn't so hugely profound. It was like a healing for the one person. The other was like an awakening for lack of a better way to describe it. But I think that we had lots of levels of grief symptoms, you know, like anger, sadness, you know, and all of them were reduced. So if a person is grieving and suffering from grief, especially if they're suffering over, you know, the typical, you should be over this by six months. I was like, there are no deadlines, okay. But if it is, you know, extended period of time where your life is being disrupted, or you're feeling sad all the time in your life. In fact, I think you did an article about when am I going to be field normal again? Yeah, it's that same kind of thing. And when they go through the psychomantium, they heal those, you know, they heal some part of them. So they feel at peace or they feel like they're so happy. They did that, they have a better understanding and they've reduced their grief symptoms. Yeah, if not eliminated them. Yeah, that's what it's about. You know, the thing is that, you know, a lot of the facts you mentioned continuing bonds, because that's always been my approach. I don't see any other way that we can deal with their grief, you know, in a realistic healthy way. Because what people, everyone, whether you're a materialist or you're, you know, scientific, scientism, whatever, we all agree that the love doesn't die. Our love for that person continues. And I've heard many people say, you know, grief is love with no place to go. And as I've heard that, I'm like, but there is some place for it to go. We just don't know it. We haven't been given permission. So we've been told, you know, I can't, I don't have that person to express that love to anymore. And it's like, yeah, you still can. I think that's what relieves the symptoms. Right? Yeah. And I think that, again, this is where it comes into, we don't know what we're capable of. And the, where people are seeing apparitions of their deceased loved ones, and not just in the psychomantium, but, you know, there's just a lot of stories of grieving spouses who see their deceased spouse, like at the head of their bed or whatever, in a kind of a wispy way, ghost-like way. But they feel comforted because they know who it is, you know, that that person is common. They feel better about it. So these types of experiences that used to be considered, I mean, automatically as a psychotic experience or hallucination, gratefully now, are a little more accepted, especially in the newly bereaved. But it's still, you know, I think that, as long as people know what they can do, you know, with my book, my book is specifically about the psychomantium and people's experiences in the psychomantium. I talk about the different types of grief, which you have brought up too. I think one of the hardest ones is disenfranchised grief. But these are things that can be worked through. Every type of grief can be worked through in the psychomantium. And it may even be too with that special EMDR. But people just don't know. They don't know. In fact, I belong to a Facebook group. Well, they believe in afterlife. I can't remember the name of it. Evidence of the afterlife. I make a proof of the afterlife. But there are tons of grieving people in there. And they want so much to be able to talk to, see their lost loved ones. But it's like there's mediums in there and they'll make appointments with mediums and stuff. But it seems like most people probably don't even know about the EMDR part. I think mediums have been around just like the Oracle did. They've been around forever. So everybody knows about mediums. But they don't know about the other modalities that they can use to help them. So did I hear you say that you're working on a certification program for people? Okay. Yeah, I am. It's I started to put it together last summer. And I was going to have it a year long. I'm just hardcore because my whole thing is do no harm. And you have to, because obviously, the Psychoman team is not for everyone. You know, it's I mean, you really have to screen people because you don't want anybody who has a history of psychosis or anybody who's on special types and you know, anti psychotic medications or anything like that, because you don't want to trigger any kind of episode. So you have to be really discerning. And you also have to follow the protocol where you prep them. You're there with them, even though you may not be in the room, you're outside the door of the room that they're in. Then you debrief because the majority of the time, Brian, this is just like so classic. I have this in my book. When you open the flap to the Psychomanseum and they look up and they're like, nothing happened. They say that because they're going to an alter state and they don't remember anything. And so that's why the debrief is so important because we can ask them questions. And I ask them leading questions to get them to start talking about first steps. And when they were in there, did you lower the light? And then it's like, yeah, I lowered the light. And when I did that, I saw there were some colors in the mirror. And then you take them further. You know, it's like, oh, yeah, that's right. There was a wolf that jumped out of the mirror. So these are things that you have to be because one is you can actually ruin the experience for someone. If it's not done correctly. And another is you can maybe even make the grief worse. So you really have to know what you're doing. And that's why it's like with me, I was the lead facilitator in the research and I did training for the facilitators. And so I'm really strict about that because I want and that's why the certification because I want to know that when they go out there to do the work that they're actually prepared to do it and they're going to do a really good job. Well, I hope this happens. It's just another tool in the toolkit that we can use to make that connection with the other side. We talked about mediums. Mediums are great. I work with mediums. Many readings are fantastic. But there's something about having that your own experience through a facilitated after-death communication. I've done meditations like that or the ROGT or something like this where you can have your own experience. I think that's next level. So I applaud you for what you're doing. We're coming to the end of our time. I want to thank you for being here. If you're okay with people reaching out to you, let people know how they can reach you and remind people of the name of your book. The name of the book is Gazing into the Afterlife. Using the mystery of the psychomandium to heal grief in all its forms. It's actually, yeah. So Gazing into the Afterlife is the title of the book. They can reach you. I have a website portal2healinggrief.com. It's all one word, Portal to Healing Grief. And on there, they can see what I have available and also be able to contact me through my website. Again, thank you for the work that you're doing. It's been a pleasure having you here today. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon. Thank you. Thank you so much.