In today’s episode of Healing from Within, your host Sheryl Glick, author of her newest book, The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite Love which shares insights into how to understand and utilize The Universal Laws of Energy to open one’s heart and mind to a higher awareness of Life Spirit and our Human Potential. Sheryl welcomes Dr. Susan Allison, a transpersonal therapist, a non-fiction writer and poet, and author of Conscious Divorce: Ending A Marriage with Integrity, Empowered Healer and the book we will discuss today, Our Spirits Dance: Poetry of Soul Mates co-authored with her late husband Thomas Hickenbottom.
Dr. Susan Allison will share how she fulfilled a promise to her friend and husband to share the poetry they wrote that expressed love in a multi-dimensional view of eternal soul life and the joy of soul mates. As a transpersonal psychologist Dr. Susan Allison helps her clients and readers to heal from the loss causes by divorce as well as heal physically and emotionally from major illnesses using a holistic approach helping individuals see themselves clearly as spiritual beings having a physical life. Dr. Allison has a doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology is an energy healer, hypnotherapist, ordained minister and shamanic practitioner.
Sheryl believes we come with a life plan or destiny to meet the people who are important in our spiritual development and to have the experiences we may have signed on for even before we came into this physical world.
On a full-moon light Susan and Thomas met at a writer’s group, had tea afterward and not believing in love at first sight, was star struck and went home, stayed up all night and wrote full-moon poems to share at the next group. Their poems has the same title and similar message…they continued to write love poems through three separations caused by fear over the intensity of their feelings.
Before their wedding in Santa Cruz, California, they wrote poetry to celebrate their love with three recommitment ceremonies and kept writing poetry to each other for the 17 years that they were married. Commitment is probably the most important element in forging trust and continued closeness in a relationship. I have just finished reading a book “Song of the Heart” by an amazing healer and toward the end of the book and her very tumultuous marriage though she gave her all to the marriage with a loving heart she always felt separated from the true affection of her husband of 39 years..and she wrote,” In a moment of true harmony with him… she told him “I haven’t felt loved or emotionally supported in our marriage and I have always felt alone. Her husband looks down and all around and tells her she is not wrong…he has not been a hundred percent committed to the marriage…His commitment he tells her has been to his own personal comfort as he wants to live as long as he can….”
Sheryl says, “I would venture to say that that is the case in many modern day relationships today burdened by the pressures of a technological fast moving society where instant gratification is demanded and also because fear or the traumas and hurts from our childhood patterns discourage trust and intimacy even though most people say that is what they most desire….
The first year or Susan and Thomas’ relationship was based on the importance of having faith, being tenacious and committed inspiring readers to have courage to keep their hearts open and love more deeply no matter what. They knew they both had to work on themselves first and become the highest and best they can be and continue to attract each other in an evolved frequency of consciousness.
Many people discuss the word soul mate or twin soul . Susan says the term soul mate has become a cliché, “At first I hesitated to use it but it describes our union well. Both of us had the feeling from first night we met that we were twins, mated spirits in the flesh, so tuned into each other that it was uncanny at times. Our poems express the otherworldly quality of our union, and also the physical connection that immediately felt familiar.” Some of the signs of soul mated love may often be love at first sight, a recognition or familiarity right away, clairvoyance with one another, intense spiritual and sexual energy, feeling this powerful energy and merging even when apart, challenges that test the union, but actually strengthen it rather than sever it and the continued merging of souls after death. The twin flame union can be challenging because it is so powerful, we can feel out of control or as if we are losing our identity. This may hesitate. At times I felt panic and pulled away from Tom but we were both able to trust the process and merge in a higher vibration of unconditional love. We continued to be individual souls, yet could feel ourselves in each other.
Susan has written several books on divorce and how to successfully navigate the challenges of that life experience.
Susan has a long history as a spiritual seeker, and has combined her more esoteric, mystical path with a more traditional one in the field of transpersonal psychology. She has a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology…studied Process Therapy a method in which clients act out their feelings with movement talking to imagined people in empty chairs reenacting scenes from the past that need healing and closure and releasing stored emotions. She has trained in the Plains Indian vision quest tradition and Hawaiian shamanism studying shamanic trance and shamanic extraction. Allison began an exploration of energy healing becoming A Reiki Master and Reconnective Healing Practitioner. She received her doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology and today her practice is about helping people empower themselves into a new way of being and living. Believing we have three souls: a body soul, a mental soul, and a spiritual soul and that each can be developed and in sync with one another for ultimate wholeness. She has studied with many brilliant teachers and shamans and one of the greatest avatars has been her husband Thomas Hickenbottom. As a practicing Buddhist, successful poet, novelist and historian her husband taught her to write Haiku and prose poetry and to use image not adjective to write from her gut rather than her head from her soul rather than her physical life.
The following is a poem the night Susan and Thomas met.
The Way
Shining down the darkness in the middle of the Way:
I see the moon within your breath
in all you do and say,
hear the words you do not speak,
sense what’s left unsaid,
feel the feelings in your heart,
think what’s in your head.
I don’t know where it’s going
this friendship begun tonight,
but I know with all my being
it’s everything that’s right
From Will You Marry Me
When
I think of
Love, really deep
Love
Your spirit
Orchestrates
Uncharted mystical melodies for
Me
As you sleep, your loving spirit
Rises like a flame burning
Rises and dances with my spirit
You are always a part of me
My spirit is always with you
Everywhere, all the time, beyond time and space
Susan wrote “On our last anniversary Tom was too weak to buy a card or flowers, but as I curled next to him in bed, he gave me the most beautiful gift ever. He turned to me and whispered, “These years with you have been the best of my life….We held each other and cried and I kept saying Thank you…we hoped to have another twenty years together on earth, but we filled our days with so much love, laughter, passion, travel and celebrations with family and friends, that I feel full and complete in my life and very, very grateful. All I have to do is close my eyes and be there in those wonderful experiences and places we shared together and of course I can feel his spirit and visit him any time.”
You gone
I realize
You need to leave me
To journey away
To journey within
But these sheets are so thin
This bed so bold
Without your body heat
My only companions
Shallow sighs
Against frosted window panes
Even the crickets
Are silent tonight
Sheryl wonders if Susan and her late husband who passed in 2013, are still connected, and if as an intuitive healer, if she most receives messages or feelings from him. Susan tells us the connection between her and Thomas is still strong, as she shares in the book’s preface: “And my soul mate waits for me. Now that Thomas is a spirit without a body, we are still in contact, and this doesn’t surprise me. For months after his death I felt ecstatic energy pulsating in my body and believe he joined his spirit or energy to mine. Even now when I read his poetry, listen to certain songs, talk about him or look at photos I feel intense energy pulsating from my lower chakras and then rising up and out the top of my head.” Her final poem Immortal describes how she can visit Thomas in a level of heaven ( perhaps the astral plane) and continue their beautiful union, even after physical death.
So can love continue beyond the grave. As Dr, Susan Allison says, all soul unions may continue and it is not just a fairy tale.
People frequently ask spiritual teachers and healers like Susan and Sheryl, how to met their soul mates and the key we believe is to love yourself fully, and love what you’re doing in your life and not be looking for someone…just developing your gifts and talents and interests, being helpful to others, looking past judgment and blame to seeing that everyone has something of value to offer the world and become the best version of yourself that is possible. WHATEVER YOU WANT BE THAT….if you want tenderness or loyalty or fun, then be gentle with yourself …follow your own intuition and do what brings joy.
Allison says that from childhood, she wrote poetry, short stories and plays and has continued to write poetry and songs into adulthood. She described non-fiction as being different from poetry as they come from different parts of us. “Writing non-fiction is a very linear and intellectual process for me whereas poetry and songs come from a deeper or more intuitive place perhaps from a muse or my heart and gut. Writing a poem is best done when my brain is asleep or resting and my inner self is awake and waiting to create.”
Sheryl wholeheartedly agrees with Susan. In The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite Love, Sheryl shares stories, healing theories and practices that access our physical life and our inner soul or energetic force of life helping readers to know that consciousness survives physical death. Sheryl downloaded a poem from that higher place of wisdom and eternal life while awakening from a sleep state...
Remember a place high above my earth home—a land of light, which reflects the pure bright colors of the rainbow….
Remember teachers of divine beauty, love, wisdom and hear their thoughts which sound like music to prepare you into your physical life with the finest preparation to succeed in all you do….
Remember the peace and joy, laughter and smiles, the encouragement and love in the glances from their bright inquisitive eyes…
Remember when you walk on the plains, fields, meadows, and roadways of your earth life who walks beside you and who holds your hand, and always feel loved, protected and safe—for you are.
Remember that before beginning this life you chose your parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers, and your friends, and they will mirror both the best and worst in your own being. Then you may choose to love them without judgment or blame….
Remember as your heart beats and your feet tap and you dance to music only you might hear from your guide or angel in an eternal place of true love, that you are never alone.
Remember you and remember me as one together in unity and love for all time in life, and yes, in death.
Sheryl and Susan have shared the possibilities for living in harmony and peace within our own energy or soul system and for developing our own highest aspirations for love while learning to appreciate life as both a physical and spiritual being…we have discussed the nature of every person’s goal to love and be loved and the Universal Law of Attraction which states what we give out to the world comes back to us in similar ways.
Susan wrote…When I met Tom I felt so alive and full of energy and purpose. I was writing poetry all night, starting shamanic work and preparing for a vision quest. Then I showed up full of light and love like a flower opening and there was Tom who saw my light and I saw his. We were two lights, two perfectly matched souls who saw our higher selves in each other’s eyes. So to meet your soul mate just keep showing up in ways that make you happy: feel love for yourself and your life and shine your light! Your soul mate is waiting.
In Sheryl’s new book “The Living Spirit Answers for Healing and Infinite Love”, she suggests that every relationship no matter how long or short serves as a vehicle for our souls to discover our own finest and highest love of life and self and writes…..”Over the years many of my Reiki clients have expressed sadness about their inability to manifest and maintain loving intimate relationships. Every soul seeks to love and be loved, but there are skills and a certain level of awareness that must be developed in order to draw the right connections to you…...The expression, “Birds of a feather flock together,” or” Like finds like” holds some credibility….many of us find that certain situations or relationship dynamics repeatedly show up in our lives. These are lessons designed by Spirit for our growth, and once we’ve learned them, they will disappear from our lives as if by magic to make way for something better…Do not dwell on the appearance of “failure,” for there is no such thing. There are only experiences leading ultimately to our highest good.
Sheryl and Susan would remind you whether you are in a relationship or not be inspired to open your hearts and minds more fully…. and love more deeply… so you may allow your inner soul development and continued well being.
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