Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Mark:
I started getting some intense sensations and that sent me into another regression. But instead of being 10 years old, I felt like I was in a past life. I saw myself having fear and then being killed in that life. And as I died, I came outta my body and I went into another body and it played forward.

There was a stronger body. But then I saw as I played it forward that I was also the killer. I was the one that killed the previous life. Don’t be afraid to go towards any of the darkness. Whether you like it or not, you might get forced into it. If it starts getting tough, keep going with it. So go to it. Go through it, and then you can get beyond it.

Guy:
Guy here, welcome to my Let It In Podcast. And of course if you’re new, welcome along as well. My epic guest today is Mark Beal, and he specializes in hypnotherapy with past life regression and also life between lives. Very similar to the work that Petrovich does with us at the liver flow retreats that we do here. But yeah, it’s a fascinating conversation. I really like Mark. Uh, first time I met him and wanted to share his story beautifully and. I feel there’s a lot in this podcast that you’ll get a lot out of. You know, it’s interesting this work in terms of, you know, did our so soul choose our past before we come here?

These circumstances we have, especially when we have many traumatic experiences and a lot of pain in our lives, and I feel like we, it can feel like we’re emotionally drowning. And when someone says to us, oh, our soul shows this life, it can be very triggering. Right? But ultimately at the end of the day, I’ve found that from as of my own personal exploration, moving through my own pains and circumstances over the years, and of course holding space for many thousands of people now through our retreats and events.

You know, these questions, uh, run deep and I encourage you to stay open and explore this journey along with myself and Mark today. And of course, if you. Are watching our channel anyway, whether it be on YouTube or iTunes, Spotify, or whatever. Then you’re probably open to these concepts anyway, and wherever you are on your journey right now, I feel the best thing is to truly always come back to the present moment, always come back to the heart and.

Always come back into that place, you know? And it’s when we start to be with our emotions and the challenges in life, is that when we can really start to move through ’em, because we have a say, and the only way out is through. Anyway, I’m going on a tangent. It’s a great conversation with Mark. If you’re on YouTube, be sure to let me know where you are in the world.

Drop a comment below just by you actually hitting the subscribe button, the like button, and leaving a comment. Continues to help grow this podcast and I wanna reach as many people as possible. Of course, with our retreats. I’m about to jump on one next week that’s sold out here in Australia, but we’re doing one more in Australia in September that’s almost half full, and we’re gonna be in Croatia in November as well with the living flow retreats. There’s links blow. If you wanna find out more is also free. Meditations and everything, we are here to support you. If you’re ready to dive in, Marc, love from me. Enjoy this conversation. Mark. It’s fantastic.

Guy:
Mark, welcome to the podcast

Mark:
Guy, thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Guy:
All the way in Rio, Brazil, I believe at the moment. Traveling around the

Mark:
Yeah. Right.

Guy:
yeah. Hashtag Living the Dream it sounds like. I love it. I love it.

Mark:
So

Guy:
So,

Mark:
I’ve been working online a lot for the last four years, so.

Guy:
Yeah, no, it’s fantastic. I, I, um, more and more people are leaning into it well, as like myself. I’m, I’m new to your work and I’m sure everyone listen tuning in today will be too, so we’ll kick off. The question I always ask, and if you’re prepared for it or not, but if complete stranger at a dinner table ask you what you did for a living, would you say?

Mark:
Uh, for a living, yeah. For the last 19 years, I’d say I’m a hypnotherapist. I specialize in past lives, in between lives. Uh, I teach it and I write about it.

Guy:
What’s the reaction? Uh, are you finding people are open to these concepts of past lives between lives?

Mark:
I get a pretty good reaction, and often people are surprisingly well-informed. So if I say past lies, people say, oh, do you mean like Brian Weiss, many lives, many masters, or, oh, Michael Newton, journey of Souls. I read that book. It was amazing. Uh, and so, uh, for me writing a book is like a long way of answering that question, but it’s also like a really important question that even there’s that implication as you ask it.

You know, how dare you know, our courage in speaking about spirituality and what might a conventional person think? And so that’s something, I think, something that we all grapple with on the spiritual path. And it’s a theme that runs through my book as well. So I think it’s a, a really ni great question to start off with. And we’ll, I think we’ll keep coming back to it, you know, throughout the discussion.

Guy:
It is. I do find, actually, you raise a really good point, which I do find fascinating, is that why? Why is it such. A stigma to be talking about spirituality or, or, or can be perceived that way. And I’ve had to do a lot of work within myself, especially when I started a podcast and now I, I run retreats and events and, and now I’ve got to the point where I, I don’t care in the slightest. And I mean that in a loving way, and I just speak about it. And, and not that I’ve projected on anyone. If people ask me, I tell them and so forth. And same as the podcast, you know, I’m, I’m much more open about it. But why do you think that is? Were you the same?

Mark:
E. E Exactly. And I think everyone has the same, uh, for a while. So I’ve had the, exactly the same feeling. Now I’ve been had spiritual awakening experiences 27 years ago. That was when I was 25. I’m now 52. So I’m a full grown man. I don’t really care what other people think either. And if you care what people think, you’re in the wrong business. If you wanna do spirituality and past lives and this stuff that people certainly didn’t understand, you know, 20 years ago when I starting. But people have got more receptive and, and, uh, to it. But the other funny thing is that we may think we hold ourselves back thinking they won’t understand it. But so many people will sort of say, look, I wouldn’t say this to anybody else, but now that you’ve brought it up and then they’ll start telling you sort of their strange stories and, and revealing and admitting that they too are a bit sort of weird in their spiritual way.

Guy:
It’s crazy, huh? Yeah. By the way, you look good for 52, mate. I’ll, I’ll give you that. You’re doing well. Um,

Mark:
It is.

Guy:
like the question, I wanna dive into your, your background and stuff in your past. Now you got you in a sec. But from your experience, and like you say, you’ve, you’ve been doing this a long time and you’re teaching it, how much then are past lives our current life?

Mark:
Uh, it, it depends on, I think certain, for some people, past lives are really significant, so they’ll have a karmic connection to past lives and they’ll be influential. Uh, but for me there’s a combination so. Uh, uh, karma is something that comes from not just past lives but this life. And for a lot of people, they need to process emotion. So if they’re hesitant to talk about spirituality, it may be because that was, uh, something they were criticized for early in their life, and that may then be the dominant influence. But if you go through and do some hypnotherapy work and clean that out and you’ve still got it, then it may be that there’s an influence from past lives as well.

Guy:
How do you see it all then, like the circle of life, the, the journey of the soul, if you like, and from, from your experience, from your own experience and working with so many people and now teaching it like, it’s, it’s fascinating that we, we bring these things in and we, we, many of us are actually so unaware of anything outside of the physical 3D reality. We don’t even put. We don’t even explore these ideas until there’s such a great pain or something that we can’t seem to shift.

Mark:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that’s what I look for in past life aggression. So people might think, oh, I’m curious to know who I was. But I, when people say that I’m, that’s not really what I want to hear when I’m doing past life therapies. In which case I might say, you know, maybe there are other things that are more important. Maybe explore this life. But it’s when people come to me and say, I’m feeling a great pain. I’ve tried a lot of other things. I’ve got some of the way there, but I’ve got the strong sense through having read a book like Brian Weiss or through my meditations or a psychic told me that I have some past life issues and they told me a bit of it.

Or I had a dream and I feel strongly that past lives are part of that puzzle and I need to explore it. So that’s something that will draw them to it. And it’s a therapeutic modality in that it is that pain that even forces them to take the, you know, the, uh, unconventional action of seeking out a past life therapist. So it’s not something that people often do as a first course of action, uh, but it can be part of that awakening process is to. Uh, to be, be pushed to it a little bit ’cause the universe can whisper to us that we should do meditation, take healing. But if we don’t listen to those whispers, then it can start turning up the volume a little bit. And part of that pain is something that, you know, forces us into, uh, doing unconventional things.

Guy:
what is this? Thank you for sharing that. And what is the soul’s journey? Then? Why do we carry those burdens in this lifetime? How is that even entwined in it?

Mark:
Well, that is a big question. And there, there are questions that are called imponderable to an extent, which is, you know, what is the first cause? Why is everything here? Uh, but for me, part of the answer is, you know, why? Why am I in the situation I’m in is because of the first rule. I’ve got seven spiritual laws in the book, and the first one is karma. And you’ve got a car. And when I think about karma, you’ve got a karmic connection, karmic actions, and karmic residues. So we have a karmic connection to this dualistic world where we have all of these conflicts and all these difficulties that we face. And it’s through those often that we learn. Uh, so yeah. So does that make sense so far?

Guy:
So far. Yeah. Yeah. okay, why don’t we pick it up then, from your own journey. Let’s, let’s start to dive in there. What, what came first, the

Mark:
That, that,

Guy:
or your own experiences?

Mark:
yeah. That. Uh, for me, what was my own experiences? In fact, I, it was meditation that drew me into it. Uh, so I was 25 when I first, uh, came upon, uh, any of these concepts. I wasn’t really interested in spirituality or religion per se. I was interested in books and trying to read things, uh, from an intellectual, uh, western point of view and really coming at it from a mind point of view and even from the point of view of literature. So I’d read, uh, Herman Hess or uh, Altis Huxley, and then they would start talking about. Uh, Eastern Concepts. So with that, I went to a meditation retreat, just sort of intellectually curious at age 25. And when I sat and tried to meditate, uh, I would, instead of going into a meditative state, I went into what I now know was a hypnotic state.

And I recalled, uh, being 10 years old by a lake, uh, reading a book on holiday. And I could see, and in that regression and that meditation that I was reading a book on hypnosis and I could skip to the end and I could see that I, there was a script. And I remembered, I played it forward and I remember that I was actually doing hypnosis with my mother and my sister at 10, and I thought, am I making this up? So I literally had to call my mother and say, you know, did I hypnotize you when I was 10 years old? And she could validate it for me. So I think a lot of times when people, uh, go into past life memories or even memories from early in this life, they’re not sure if they’re making it up or not. So that’s something we often hear.

But if you can validate it in certain ways, like I did by going to early in this life. And so that was part of a step of trying to meditate, but finding that I had a stronger calm connection to a hypnosis than I did to meditation. But it was really through exploring a whole, a range of meditation retreats over the first two years of me finding this, uh, that, uh, I, I, uh, tuned into, uh, hypnotic states.

Guy:
Wow. So

Mark:
Yeah.

Guy:
describe a hypnotic state to someone and why are they so effective?

Mark:
Yeah, it is very similar to a meditative state. So is it something that you’ve experienced, Guy? Have you done hypnosis or, uh,

Guy:
I’ve done a little bit. So Petra’s worked on a couple of sessions, um,

Mark:
okay.

Guy:
done taken me back and, you know, it’s been laying there, but. Interestingly, it opened up an energy channel in me at the time when I was doing a one-on-one with Petra. So we actually went there to start working with energy more. Um, and, and

Mark:
Okay.

Guy:
another time I went back to the womb of my, uh, my birth when I was in my mother’s womb. And I could feel her anxiety around financial pressures, was, um, quite incredible. And I felt that release. In that moment from

Mark:
Okay.

Guy:
that regression. So they’re the, they’re the two dominant ones I’ve done, normally it’s through meditative states. I’ve explored energy and focused on the energy aspects. Yeah.

Mark:
Yeah. Well, can, can I ask you, what did you feel the, the difference was for you? Did you feel, did you feel ’em to be pretty similar?

Guy:
Yes.

Mark:
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think they are similar and, uh, the line can really blur. Sometimes you can be in a, trying to meditate and going into a hypnotic state, but typically just in terms of, uh, as a therapist, it’s, uh, hypnotic state is more guided and it’s more focused on particularly regressing to, uh, times in the past to root causes, uh, and then healing them. And so in a meditative state, you might, there’s so many things you can do in meditation though, so you might just be orientated on the breath. You might be doing visualization exercises. So it really depends what kind of meditation you’re talking about. Uh, but uh, absolutely it’s, uh, as a hypnotic state, it’s something that bypasses the conscious mind.

So when I talk about coming to meditation from an analytical point of view and trying to understand it with the mind, that’s something that you can do. And, you know, people study that in universities. But I, but for me, one of the first realizations coming to it was that you’re just really bypassing your conscious mind and going into your subconscious mind that h holds all these memories. So when you talk about being a utero with your mother, was that something that, did you talk to her about it and, and say, can you validate these emotions that I picked up on?

Guy:
I, I didn’t talk to her about it. No, I might have mentioned it in passing, like, and she listens to my podcast, so it, it’ll probably come

Mark:
Okay.

Guy:
But at the time, like knowing, you know, my. and my kind of the history of my parents and that it made sense to me at that point in time, And um, and I really felt for her in that like, you could feel her concerns as a, as a

Mark:
Yeah.

Guy:
be, you know.

Mark:
You know what, that’s actually a great point because there can be things that we know intellectually, and you know what? How do I know it’s real? One is we can literally check with that person. But the other thing that really makes it come alive is a reality is that kinesthetic felt sense. And so you may question where the visuals exactly right, but when you get that deep feeling, that’s something that transcends again, the conscious, analytical, rational mind and cuts to the, the emotion, the heart of it, and then the soul of it. And that’s got, you know, that’s a pretty spiritual experience being born.

Guy:
Oh, it’s, it’s incredible and I’ve witnessed two births of my own children. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s unbelievable. And, you know, I’ve, but I’m someone in life that is really lent heavily on that kinesthetic, that that feeling and that sense of

Mark:
Hmm.

Guy:
my life looks like it does today by listening to that more than my head, if that makes sense. ’cause it like listening

Mark:
Uh.

Guy:
listening to my head has really me nowhere. Honestly, you know.

Mark:
Absolutely. I think that’s part of the spiritual path, which is getting out of the head and the, and the body or a, a, a fixation with a finite sense of self and a physical body and a mind, and going into a karmic self that can recall things from the past. That has, has an emotional and spiritual aspect. So that’s, so for people who, uh, feel the past lives or even a spiritual aspect doesn’t exist, they’re really stuck in a finite sense of self, which is dominated by the mind. So conventional, uh, people tend to be sort of scientifically orientated, which is quite mind orientated, isn’t it? And so part of that spiritual journey is sinking into the spirit and the heart to a greater degree.

Guy:
Hmm. So as you’ve

Mark:
Uh.

Guy:
this. Work and started working with people. What examples have blown your mind to go, ha, like, I didn’t even know this was possible. Is this real? Because I, the more I’ve lent into spirituality, and especially now holding space for, for other people to work through and release or have a divine connection or a mystical experience of some sort, I still go, oh my God. Wow. Like people, if. outside racing around don’t even know this. This is possible or exists, let alone explore it. So I’m curious to see what have you witnessed and what has blown your mind over the years?

Mark:
Yeah, two things come to mind. So the first one is literally three days into that first meditation retreat I ever went on, I was, I was, felt instantly very comfortable with it. And then they said, we’re gonna go on a field trip, uh, for, uh, and, and meet the Dalai Lama. He’s giving an audience. So next thing I knew, I knew I was standing in line and there was a line of people and we fall past and we shake his hand. And so they’d been talking about, you know, meditation felt very comfortable and a lot of the things they were saying resonated with me at a, at a, at a level where they’re answering questions intellectually that I’d been looking for and, and that was filling in a lot of gaps. But then when they speak about past life progression or having past lives or reincarnation or body sufferers or enlightenment, that seemed quite difficult to to grasp.

But then you have this flesh and blood being who is known to have 13 documented past lives. Many people see him as a body sufferer and to stand in front of him and shake his hand and have all these questions in my head, but then to fuel his energy and. To walk away and he, I just put out my hand in, in a conventional way, as you might do, hello? He shook his hand and he just sort of looked at me. Everyone else was sort of bowing and being polite and I just greeted him as I would anybody else as I was a businessman. He just sort of looked and smiled and laughed at me, and I walked away laughing and smiling and a lot of the intellectualization about, uh, enlightenment or whatever it could be, went out.

And so that was something that, that was part of what really hooked me on meditation. Seeing that it was something that was possible to be embodied and that transcendence may be something possible even in this human form. So that was kinda mind blowing, and it set me off on a path that meant for the, I was on a six week strip in India. I went back home, couldn’t get all of that out of my mind, packed up my bags and went back and lived in India for a year and had a whole series of spiritual awakening experiences. But one stands to mind where I felt that I got a taste of some of that infinite as well. So that does turn to be a bit of a story, but I think it’s quite interesting in, in terms of, you know, just the meditation journey. And it’s a parallel for the therapeutic journey that I do now. So I’ll, I’ll pause and we can discuss it as we go along, but uh, if I could tell that story, what do you think?

Guy:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I’m interested to know, uh, especially if people like yourself that have spent time in India, like

Mark:
Hmm.

Guy:
take us on that journey a bit. ’cause that’s not anyone. Not everyone can just up and leave and go to India for a year, you know what I mean? And, and explore these, uh, experiences at that depth and start living it. You know, I, I’m curious

Mark:
Yeah.

Guy:
expectations were. Were they shot, were they shotted? Were they met? Like, how did they look?

Mark:
Uh, I fell in love guy. I just, I had, I loved India. I was in love with India, uh, and which is a, and in many ways, India is heaven and hell sort of simultaneously, which is part of its absolute beauty. It just breaks through your expectations, your disappointments. It should be like this or that. Conventional reality is this or that, and anything else is wrong, and so much of it is wrong, but in such a powerful way that it forces you to transcend. So that was something that, you know, I appreciated about just traveling there. But the proce and then, so it was something, again, I just got drawn and connected to meditate and so I went on half a dozen, 10 day meditation retreats. Stayed in RAs for quite a while. Uh, and so I found there’s a progression, which is that there, it draws you in with a lot of good feelings.

So you start off and you’ll get bliss dates for a few seconds and you grasp at them and then they recede. And then you sort of calm down and ease into it, and you can get states that you can sustain for a few minutes and you think, great, I’ve discovered that I can’t wait to do it tomorrow. Then you build up an expectation that that’s gonna happen the next day, and you’d start desiring it. Then it doesn’t happen and you’re disappointed. So point being, as you go through this, there can be a lot of sugar on the spiritual path, but for me, that doesn’t exist for its own sake. But it’s to help some of the medicine go down. So it can be great to have these good feelings. But it’s often there.

It’s at some point some, uh, we have to face some karmic residues I’d call them. So, and that’s something that as a parallel, when I do healing work, I’ll often, uh, people will come and say, I’ve got this pain that I wanna work on. And I’ll say, that’s great, we’ll get onto that, but first we’ll gather some of your power, some of the light, and then we’ll shine that light on some areas of darkness. Uh, and so I find that was where meditation was. Leading me towards. And so, and often I’ll even say in the first session, I’m gonna ask you to feel good and you’ll feel good. But in the second session, I’ll ask you to feel bad to go into darkness, but you end up feeling great, much better than you did in the first session, which doesn’t make much sense, but let’s see how, how that can actually happen.

And so that’s kinda what happened to me spontaneously, where a year into it, I started going beyond some of these blist states into a really challenging state, but one that led to a great outcome. So does that make sound what makes sense so far?

Guy:
does. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m, I’m curious as well, um, just on your journey, ’cause I see this often through that year when you were seeking chasing the bliss states and, you know, and they, they dissipate and it’s like a carrot dangling in front of you. How

Mark:
Mm-hmm.

Guy:
looking back at yourself? Mark was, you know. A, were you aware that there was pain that needed to be healed underneath it all and that was your driving factor to go in? Or was it like you’re avoiding pain ’cause you’re chasing Blist states, that’s why you were there. Like what was the, the, the driving factors that led you there to, and the lessons you learned from it?

Mark:
Yeah, I wasn’t, uh, it was really a existential curiosity. So I don’t think I, I don’t feel that I was really, I mean, that was sort of at a micro level chasing some of those good states. Uh, but I, I was just sort of really curious to see, to understand more about reality as I felt that, you know, there, there was some hole in the understanding and the narrative that we’re given. And, uh, so it was just, it was something I was just, I was really curious and there was some pain, but I hadn’t acknowledged it. So they say that you haven’t meditated until you’ve wept. And so there was some emotional releases that came just by reviewing and reconnecting with my parents’ divorce when I was 15.

And I’d sort of shrugged that off, you know, just a, a tough, normal guy and, you know, I’m okay. But, uh, I sort of realized that I’d carried some pain and I was able to go through that by re again, in a spontaneous hypnotic state, viewing that whole experience, seeing myself as a young. Young guy, uh, and acknowledging that pain. But then I also review the whole experience of my parents being young, being children, wanting to be loved, loving, falling, getting married, falling in love, and then having this pain of divorce. So I saw through the eyes of all four people in our family and was able to, uh, feel the, the pain in all of them, the desire to, to, to have, to love, and the inability to do it skillfully. And so with that came a lot of. Uh, understanding, uh, compassion and forgiveness and release, then I did not go in thinking that was gonna come up

Guy:
Wow. So you, so, and I’m thinking of the listeners here, so you were kind of unaware, unaware that that was even in there. You like, you’ve shrugged it off, you moved on and, and then yet that could have been a driving factor for certain. Perceptions or

Mark:
unaddressed.

Guy:
yeah. Unaddressed trauma really at the end of the day, isn’t it?

Mark:
Y Yeah, unaddressed. It could have been affecting my relationships and you know, just an overall being. And so, yeah, so that was something. So that’s a, this life thing. Uh, and I think by clearing away some of those layers during that first year, I got to a point where I got into a past life thing and I’ve, I’ve got a couple of past lives that maybe I could share later that are more indicative of how past life regression works. It’s one life. That really informs and helps you make decisions moving forward. But the, the next part of it that I could share is, uh, was a spiritual awakening experience that was pretty life transformative to the point where life can never really be the same again. And it’s something that without it, I don’t think I would be here. Uh, and it’s something that I’m curious to see what other, how other people resonate with it and, uh, may have experienced something similar.

Guy:
Share away.

Mark:
Okay. So about a year into this meditation practice. It’s, uh, yeah, I mean it’s, it is tricky as well to put it into words, uh, uh, and all and to keep it brief and everything. It’s the kind of thing that happens in like five seconds and eight hours when, and you’re not quite sure which sort of timeless. But, uh, so, you know, I’ve been meditating a lot and it was late one night and I couldn’t sleep in the middle of a meditation retreat. So I went outside and sat. Uh, on the mountain side, I happened, happened to be in the Cat Mandu Valley, and, uh, started getting some of the f familiar bliss states. I’d also had chakra activation, some Kundalini things, outof body experiences to solutions. And, uh, I was familiar with some of that. Uh, but then I started getting some intense sensations, uh, but they were stronger than I’d previously experienced.

And the, you can, there are things that can feel good, but then they start to feel scary. Good. And that sent me into a, uh, uh, another regression. But instead of being 10 years old, I felt like I was in a past life and I saw myself, uh, having fear and then being killed in that life. And as I died, I came outta my body and I went into another body and it played forward. This was a stronger body, but then I saw as I played it forward that I was also the killer. I was the one that killed the previous life. And so the fear turned into horror, and then it just kept going on and on. I just went into many past lives and many past deaths seemed to be like on every continent, and each time I was simultaneously the killer and the kill, the good and the bad, powerless and powerful.

And part of me was shaking, uh, fearful, horrified, uh, but I felt that I needed to stick with it and that I could handle it if only just. And so I, outta curiosity to see where this was going, I, uh, I, I was able to create a calm and I could just absorb it. And so then the fear and ang and uh, and horror started to recede and started to turn into a sadness. And I got, it gained a clarity where I looked, it looked like killer versus killed. But as I felt into the killer, I felt that they, uh, and they seemed powerful, but they were acting outta pain. And they also had loved ones that had been killed. So it seemed like killer versus killed, but everybody had a shared pain.

There weren’t the opposites there, there seemed to be. And so with that, I was hit by a, a feeling deep in my heart, a visceral sense, like an arrow, but it was, or a spear, but it was a, a concept or a word that I’d heard but hadn’t felt to that degree. It was, and it was compassion. And I felt that for all of the beings. Those that were killing those, or those that were being killed without judgment, with forgiveness and with that, and it seemed like this, all these past lives had been going like a whole horror show of, you know, 10,000 years of human suffering. And, uh, it happened in seconds or eight hours, I’m not sure.

But what, it all just stopped with that feeling. And it was like I could zoom into an atomic reality and see the building blocks of all of those P bodies was just pure energy circulating. And orbiting, but mainly an infinite emptiness or a big emptiness that atoms live in. And then it just zoomed out. So my body, instead of being made of trillions of atoms, felt like it was made of trillions of stars with just pure energy, completely beyond any human mental conception and an infinite spaciousness. So a, a huge darkness of space, but filled with an infinity of light. And so within that was just a, a piece. And then suddenly I felt all my consciousness converging. I back into my body and I opened my eyes and it was morning. And I don’t know if I had slept. I dunno if the whole thing went on for eight hours or five minutes, and I just went to sleep somehow.

But either way, I woke up to something that just felt transcendent, transcendentally beyond. And so, you know, I had those feelings. You have good feelings, and then a bad feeling or disappointment. This wasn’t a feeling, it was just a state. And the only way I can describe it is it felt like a perfection and a completion. Uh, just a, a state of pure being in presence and just a no concept of doing like nothing needed to be done. It just felt like a state of infinite consciousness. It lasted all day and it’s the most real thing I’ve ever experienced. And I had nothing to do except I just outta habit, got up and walked around and saw people.

I was just staggered by their beauty just is the phrase. Namaste. Agree. The definitive within you. I just saw divinity without just nothing but divinity. But as I look closer into them, I did notice a subtle suffering. So one’s got anxiety, one’s not present, and they’re all carrying residues of pain, whether they know it or not. And with that, I felt, again, that spear in the heart, like a visceral compassion and they’re not killing or being killed, but there’s just a little lack of perfection and completion. And with that, this whole sense of there’s nothing to do. I felt, well, if they’re not complete, I’m not complete. So there is something to do.

And that felt to me a root cause to become a healer. And the next day I woke up and my finite self was back as normal. But I didn’t feel bad that I don’t feel so good before. ’cause it wasn’t a feeling. It was, I didn’t feel it was a loss not to have it. I didn’t crave it. Uh, I felt what I, I got what I needed from it. So, and it felt like I’d been beyond my karmic self and that night going through, you know, a hundred past lives and a hundred past deaths felt like going into so many of my karmic songs and somehow processing some sort of karmic residues and into that darkness, bringing a light and touching an infinite self that healed it somehow, and gave me that experience to show me that we’re in these difficult karmic conditions. Uh, in a dualistic world, in a finite body, but there’s a transcendent reality that we can access in this life.

Guy:
Holy shit. That’s

Mark:
Yeah.

Guy:
Thank you for sharing.

Mark:
Yeah.

Guy:
Okay. A couple of questions. With that, how real did it feel when you’re experiencing it? Because there’ll be skeptics saying, oh, you could be just dreaming. You know, like,

Mark:
Yeah. Uh, well, like you said, it’s, it was, it is like, uh, it was, so, it is the most vivid, uh, I, I did lose consciousness at some point, I believe. Uh, and so, but it was, it was the most vivid, lucid, dreaming experience I’ve ever had. And it was also like, just visceral, just like shaking and scared and horrified, and really, you know, really struggling to even sit with it and, and handle it. So. You know, it’s one of those things where if it was, you know, an intellectual exercise and you know, you could start reading into it and what does it mean and cause a con, but it was just visceral. And I think that was part of it. It was like, uh, you know, just, uh, a very visceral, uh, uh, felt experience. It wasn’t a conceptualization, you know,

Guy:
And.

Mark:
it, it actually, but it may, it, it does make you think, you know, if that maybe is, maybe that’s not real, but then it makes you think maybe everything else isn’t real. Maybe that was the only real thing.

Guy:
Exactly. No, I’ve had interesting experiences where I’m like fully conscious, though I’m fully, fully

Mark:
Hmm.

Guy:
that I, I haven’t been able to explain. That felt very real. I’m not, not of this earth. I’m not of this body. So there’s,

Mark:
Yeah,

Guy:
more to it than our little analytical mind can ever comprehend. I’m convinced. Yeah.

Mark:
Absolutely. And that, and that’s kind of the, the point of it really, which is the finite mind is no chance to grasp that, that infinite. And so that’s why it took me outta my finite mind into what I call a karmic self. And then it touched upon an infinite self. And, and so that’s something that I do. And that was something that was sort of an unusual spiritual awakening experience, but it’s something just in general that I still will do as part of my practice. So, you know, when we talk about past life regression, that sounds nice. Who was I? But the fact is when you do therapeutic work, uh, you’re gonna go into your past lives and you’re gonna go to your past deaths.

And that’s also gonna be a vivid felt experience. A lot of times it, it might sound scary. A lot of times it’s a great relief and, and, and not even very dramatic, the process of dying surprisingly enough. So, I mean, that’s something I’ll do pretty much with everyone I work with. I work with 5,000 people, I’ll, I’ll take most people that I can to a past life death ’cause that helps freedom them from this finite sense of death. Uh, and, uh, and it’s something that, and when you can take people into death experiences or even a, a, a fate worse than death, then that’s something that enables you to, to feel into, uh, some of the bad stuff, and that becomes good. So for me, my, that experience was to go into some very dark things, but ended up feeling incredibly good, the best I’ve ever felt in my life.

And I think that’s partly because you’ve gotta feel it to heal it. And the more you can feel and the more hardcore real that can be, the more you can heal. And so for me, one of the lessons to learn that I, when I work with people are it’ll be like, you’ve gotta go to it. And so that’s not avoiding, not trying to have the rainbows and sugar, but not trying to avoid some of the crap that comes up and not trying to only feel good. So don’t be afraid to go towards any of the darkness. And whether you like it or not, you might get forced into it. But if you do. Go through it. Don’t bail out on it. If it starts getting tough, keep going with it. So go to it. Go through it, and then you can get beyond it. And so that was my experience. You can get to a transcendent reality and a piece that passes understanding, and it passes the understanding of the finite mind.

And can you prove it or not? It’s difficult, but if you came in with a lot of anxieties and fears and you leave without them, you can’t prove how or why it worked. But as long as it does. You know, as a therapist, that’s what I’m in interested in. That’s something that I felt personally, and that’s something that I see and it’s a varying, uh, to a degree with, uh, a lot of the clients that I work with.

Guy:
Yeah, well put, so the body has to relive, relive the trauma to a degree to release it. So that’s the going through it. that be a fair estimate?

Mark:
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, uh, it’s, it’s not even, uh, reliving it or, uh, but it, it can just often just see it from a distance. And so it gets, what tends to happen is it just gets enough of the feeling to, to assuage the doubts. And so, you know, if you were to have a not very visceral experience, you might think, well, I was just making it up. But if it, if you have enough of the feeling that you make, it makes it feel real. And it can, but it’s not necessary that you have to like reel, relive painful things and have a catharsis. Uh, it’s something that it is just e enough and it’s a lot easier than it may sound. So my one might have sounded a bit gruesome and, and sometimes it does.

Uh, but it’s, it’s also something that’s really part of the finite quality of this, is that whatever we go through is impermanent and it doesn’t last that long. But if you can go through it and get beyond it, then uh, that transcendent reality is eternal. And what do we have to go through is, is this a short thing on the way? Which is also another way of looking at this whole life. You know, a lot of people are like, you know, like 50, 60 years to go. It’s like it’s not long in the context of many lives or an infinite perspective of timelessness, but we get hung up on thinking that a short amount of time is pretty long.

Guy:
Totally. And then we get hung up on things that have no relevance really to the, to the meaning of

Mark:
Yeah.

Guy:
our lives. Do you feel like, you said that ex, that experience happened to you towards the end of the year in India, if I’m not mistaken. And

Mark:
Yeah.

Guy:
do you feel then that. I’m, I’m interested to know your perspective of it, that like your soul or your higher self was saying, okay, Mark’s ready for this. Like he’s been doing the work, he’s been sitting there, and it kind of all led to this crescendo where you were able to then process such a big in that time. Because if you’d walked in on day one and that happened to you in India, I’m sure you might have behaved differently to how you did a year later.

Mark:
Yeah. Uh, yeah, absolutely. Uh, it, it was definitely kind of a reward for a lot of the work that I’d done, but it was also kind of a kick in the but and a preparation for something that was to follow.

Guy:
Hmm.

Mark:
I mean, ’cause the weird thing is that was the, the best day of my life, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing that happened that month. So, so I get a, yeah,

Guy:
this weirder.

Mark:
yeah.

Guy:
do tell yes.

Mark:
It gets weird, a guy. Um, so, you know, after that experience the next day I was, uh, accepting it and, uh, but I was still thinking as well, like, how do I integrate this into my life? What did that mean? What just happened? And I sat, uh, on the last day of the retreat, uh, in an empty meditation hall. And I heard a voice that said, meditate, follow the spiritual path. And I looked around like who is making a noise in the meditation hall? And I realized, you know, you’ve got an inner voice in your head. But this was a first time I’d felt really a master’s voice speak to me. And it was shocking or inspiring, but it still didn’t really explain, you know, what I’m supposed to do next.

But I bookmarked it and I left the retreat and actually, and had a girlfriend on that retreat. Uh, who I hadn’t known for too long, but we ended up traveling together and went to Lake Ra. And one night she spontaneously sat up, uh, she was meditating and I said, you know, can I switch the light off? Should we go to sleep? And she started, she spontaneously went into a hypnotic trance state and started speaking, uh, about our past lives together and spiritual awakening out of nowhere. No, no intent. No intent, no intention to channel anything. I don’t even know if it was channeling, but either way, it was a multidimensional energy that spoke through her.

And I then asked, I questioned a little bit, uh, her name was Maya. She said, we, Celeste, we’re a multidimensional being. We are here to help you and Maya on your spiritual awakening. I said, uh, and so I started questioning, thinking, is this some sort of personality fragment or some sort of psychological issue? And they said, we understand that you’re testing us or may not trust this message, but we here so that you really understand this message because we’ve given you a message before, like meditate, follow the spiritual path, and we’re not sure that you are listening and that you are doubting it and second guessing it.

And I hadn’t told Maya that. And so it’s one thing to have a message given to you. In your, in a wisdom, but you can still discount it and say, well, I think I’ll just stick with the conventional path. ’cause you know, the fact is my life was great. I didn’t want to be on the spiritual path I was working in, you know, it was great. Uh, and so they say life is suffering. I, well, it might be for you, but mine’s pretty good. But then I just kept getting forced into this. So I feel that it chose me. And then the next morning I, she couldn’t remember it. We’d spoken for an hour about past lives and spiritual awakening and and love and the nature of reality, and she didn’t remember any of it in the morning.

And I was thought I was in another dimension, walked out the door, went to a bookstore, picked up a book that I’d never seen before. I knew about past lives from Buddhism, but I had no idea about what past life regression was. But I just went into this bookstore and it was Brian Weiss mini lives mini masters. I opened it and that was it said, oh, and then, uh, this woman started spontaneously delivering messages from another dimensional space. And I thought, well, thank God it’s happened to, you know, another, at least one other time in the universe. So I’m not going crazy, or this isn’t the first time it’s ever happened.

And that was what connected me to the, to pass life regression as a modality. So, you know, that’s, and it made me realize, well, this is why every time I try and meditate, I just end up going into hypnosis. And it’s not just this life regression, but past life regression, I started to realize that is another thing that exists. And so that was, uh, and that experience, you know, that the week beforehand had prepared me for that. And so then I had that experience of without knowing what, what it was, uh, speaking with somebody, interviewing them when they’re in a trance state and being curious. And, uh, so that’s something that I do now and I’ve now spent 10,000 hours with people. Uh, creating intentionally hypnotic state and talking with them in their subconscious mind about past lives and awakening and, and therapeutic healing.

Guy:
Wow. So like when you picked up that book with Brian Wise, and I remember, gosh, a uni lecturer telling me about that book, and I think he worked in the science department. He was almost embarrassed to tell me, he’s like, you gotta read this book. You know what I mean? Um, but when you picked up that book, then you had the knowing that that’s what you have to go and do now.

Mark:
Yeah, it, it definitely, uh, I felt a, a strong connection with it. Uh, but it’s not as easy as saying, and then that was the day, in the end of the next day it became a past life therapist, so there’s still quite a lot. Well, exactly. So there’s still quite a lot of integration and I had to sort of burn off some past commas, so I did continue. So I continued on the, uh, continued learning yoga and, uh, yoga meditation. Continued going to Tibetan Buddhist or Buddhist retreats and, but also sort of going back and forth between the conventional path. So, you know, I buy a motorcycle and rode across the Himalayas. Was paragliding, learnt a paraglide in Sydney, flew a paraglider over the Himalayas, just doing adventure stuff.

Like I said, my life was pretty good. I wasn’t really, you know, so. I wasn’t in a hurry to give that up and, you know, got nice girlfriends and, uh, you know, just good times. I traveled in like 40 countries and, and, uh, so there was some sort of a price to be paid for, you know, just sitting and meditating and when I, there’s a lot of other things you could be doing, uh, but as I, and so there’s a part of me as well that was torn a little bit between the conventional and spiritual path. And so eventually I thought by the time I got to about 30, you know, maybe it’s cute to travel around in your twenties, but maybe I should grow up and get a real job. And I did that for a couple of years and that was a pretty tricky two years. And it came to, uh, a head when, uh, I was discussing with my colleagues and they’re like, I can’t believe we’ve got such a great job.

If you told me 10 years ago I’d have this job, I’d be so happy. And I thought, this is the worst job I’ve ever had. And I, and I realized there’s no such thing as a good or a bad job. It’s great for them, but it’s just not the job for me.

Guy:
Mm.

Mark:
And it became painful enough that I had to make a change and had to really take a risk. And that was sort of when it gets hard, harder. And that’s when I had to really, and like that first question of yours, it was that, uh, that competition or conflict between the conventional and the spiritual. And I had to make a choice. And I started to feel that my life started to feel like it was shouting at me.

Like, if you don’t choose and take the risk of taking the spiritual path, life’s gonna get. More, more difficult. And so, but I took that risk and it was tough, but I had a couple of experiences. So you mentioned, you know, did you finding that book with Brian Weiss when you were 26, did that do it? Uh, no. It was, it took me leaving, uh, you know, going through a whole lot of journeys, reading all of his other books, certainly. But by the time I was 32 I’d almost forgotten about it. So, uh, yeah. So I’ve got a little, a pa a specific past life that I can tell you about. That actually reminded me then of that path, and that’s how I sort of got back on track.

Guy:
Wow.

Mark:
But I’ll, I’ll pause. Yeah, I’ll pause. I don’t wanna, I’ll, I’ll pause.

Guy:
um, think a point I wanna raise is that it feels like by you actually healing yourself. Through the years of just your own self-exploration is, was naturally opening up the path for you to your, the purpose that you’re so driven and passionate about now through healing your own past lives, your old karmic loops and traumas or whatever terminology we use. I just

Mark:
Hmm.

Guy:
with a lot of people now, is that they, we wanna lean into healing, but we’re actually bypassing the things within ourselves to heal and using the healing modalities. That get heavily leaned into with actually not actually focusing on ourselves first. This is just my perception and belief of what I, I, I’m looking at, and I think it’s just a really strong highlight for you and commend you because I I I, I resonate with many of the things you say, and to have the courage to, leave what you know and to lean into what your heart is calling you forward is a, is a big deal. It’s a huge deal. How many people stay with the, the comfortable jobs, the comfortable salaries, the comfortable, materialistic things that, but then inside of them, there’s a flame that’s not shining bright anymore. And then use their beliefs, their stories, their judgments, and everything that keeps ’em locked in that.

Mark:
Yeah. E Exactly right. And so, you know, you can have all these experiences when I was 25 or 26 that really lit that flame and changed me. But I still could have, you know, not listened. Uh, and you know, there was still a lot of things to process and go through, but I did get to that point. So by the time I’m 32, it’s now sort of six, seven years since those first experiences and I, they were still there in the back of my mind. Uh, but you try and sort of move on. But I realized that I had to go back. And so, uh, I went back to, uh, ended up in Rakesh and again trying to do some meditation. And I was literally trying to think, should I follow a monastic Buddhist path or a, a Hindu yogi path? And I’d sort of forgotten about hypnosis.

And so as I was trying to meditate, I again went into a spontaneous regression. And so I remember being 23 years old in this life, visiting Cairo. Going to the great pyramids and there’s a lot of crowds there, and you go up. But a security guard invited me to bribe him so I could go down. So he opened up a gate, a locked gate. It sent me in there. And so I went down and it was alone in a quiet and a peace and went, it’s a long way down, but I got what felt like to the middle and the bottom of the pyramid. And in that moment I felt something that at 23 I’d have no language for this, but I felt a, a strong spiritual energy. And for the days following, I had vivid dreams, deja vus, and a psychic connection with my friends to the point where I’d know what they were thinking and say it before.

And they had say and freaked them out. But I thought it was funny. I discounted it. I didn’t think it was significant. And so I said I felt my spiritual awakening began at 25 and I started to meditate. But then I realized that was probably my first strong spiritual awakening experience at 23, and I just completely buried it. And ignored it. And then the, I continued on and I, instead, I went from this life memory into a past life memory. And it was something that, uh, I, I felt myself to be as felt quite dark so I couldn’t see much. But then I knocked my eyes adjusted, it seemed to the scene, and it was as if there was a flickering, uh, flame light.

I felt myself to be in a temple. I felt myself to be a priest. Felt this to be ancient Egypt. And that there was a person laid out on a slab that I was talking to and discussing the afterlife, some psychological issues and, uh, guiding them like hypnosis through a past life. So I’m sitting there thinking, am I remembering am I having a past life regression in which I was a past life regression therapist? And so that then reminded me, oh, past life regression is something that Brian Weis wrote about, and I’ve been reading about it over the years. But it was one of those prompts that was just reminding me. And so this is something that a lot of people that I work with, uh, anyone who’s been a healer, has been a healer in some capacity in a past life.

And so I’ve got this story for other people, it’ll be, they were a monk, they were a witch, they were a healer, they were a shaman, they were a Native American, uh, uh, healer, uh, or medicine person, or they literally a doctor. So this is my. Sort of version. And it, it is an interesting connection because when I was 23, I didn’t know it, but I was reconnecting with energy from a past life. And that memory was reminding me of something at 23, but also something at 26 when I picked up Brian Weiss’s book and I’d sort of forgotten about it and buried it again. And I was thinking, you know, do I do Buddhism or Hinduism, but I’m not a Tibetan, I’m not Indian. And it reminded me, you, you 10 years old, you’re a hypnotist.

You know, 26 you picked up this book and it’s something that helped remind me of the karmic connection to the modality. And so it’s one thing to feel that you’ve, you know, you awaken as a healer, but then what modality, which one do you really connect with? And so many healers go through so many modalities. But I’ve only ever really trained in this work. And, and it was, you know, besides studying wisdom traditions. So that was something that helped, uh. Make me feel a karmic connection to that work. Uh, and so with that, I then left Rakesh and went down to Delhi, where they have a, the California Hypnosis Institute of India runs a training course over six months where you can learn hypnotherapy and they also teach you past life regression.

So after that experience, I then went down and, and left behind my and monasteries and signed up to do that, that hypnotherapy training. And, and didn’t look back. But even so, there was still another experience that I needed to really kick me, kick me into action with another past life. But, uh, I think that’s something that a lot of people, uh, will resonate with, and that they, they feel a connection to a certain modality, uh, that, you know, for whatever reason or a certain country, uh, and have that kind of deja vu, that familiarity with a place or with a, with a way of healing that. That they feel connected to more than others. So, you know, you can have multiple connections. You’ve gotta think which one’s stronger, which one is part of my life purpose going forward.

Guy:
Mm. Yeah. No, I, I hear you. Mine was definitely bringing people together to do the work. I, I knew it was clear as day for me, which it happens, you know, and then Lord and Behold is happening. Right. you know, as we come into the end of the podcast and I, I, I wanna bring awareness to you, to your book. That’s out for listeners as well to definitely jump on board and have a listen, but, and check it out. But before, like, if you could summarize. Your journey, the, you’ve said you’ve done tens of thousands, like thousands of people, uh, and on the table and everything, looking back so far, and the impact you’re having, but what you’re witnessing in people’s lives, what do you think are the, like, is there a message you’d like to tell people about this exploration of work or what it can do for them?

Or what’s your biggest lesson from there that you’ve witnessed? From it all. I know it’s a generic, it’s a generalized question, but there must be some through points where you think, wow, I just wish people knew this. Like, you know what I mean?

Mark:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as a healer, particularly, I think we came here to, to learn and grow in duality. And so don’t take things we can think bad things are happening to us, but, uh, it’s important to face up to them and, and get whatever help you can through that. And so that’s why I love what you are doing. So you have, uh, you know, you, you’re running meditation retreats. Uh, and retreats and bringing people together and pointing them towards their inner wisdom as well. And so that’s something, and so you can have a kar connection. So if you, you know, you connect with someone like Guy on the internet and oh, maybe I’ll do that one day, but you know, you, you can click your fingers and the ears have gone by.

So part of it is, uh, take action as much as you can, proactive action to have real felt personal experiences, and don’t regret what you should have done. And, uh, it’s, as you gather, light and strength, use that to shine it onto some darkness and heal. So for me, it’s, you know, going to things, getting through them, sticking with it, and finding whatever compassion or love that you have that can get you beyond into a transcendent reality, which I think is really part of the solution. So if you gather the light that you have, so take that light and use it to shine on some darkness so you can go to whatever you’re facing and keep going through it. Don’t bail out. Treat it with curiosity, compassion and love can be there to teach you, and that we have this difficult situation we are born into in a finite body facing duality and goods and bads and rights, and wrongs and darts. But if you can persist. You can go beyond. And I think ultimately there’s a transcendent reality that is, uh, part of the, an ultimate part of that solution.

Guy:
Well said. Beautiful. Yes. I do wish people would be more proactive and just explore and get the, the learn from the experience not from the head. Right. And then it’ll definitely form it in a different way. Um, just tighten up the podcast. Mark your book, past Life Awakening. What can people expect to get out of it if they, if they purchase it? What, and what, what was the, the, the main reason for putting this book out to the world?

Mark:
Yeah. Uh, it for people who liked Brian Weiss. Uh, Michael Newton, it’s something that, uh, it goes, I, it’s seven case studies. So it goes deep into what’s possible. Uh, and so at, at, at firstly, it’s anar, it’s got a lot of narrative stories, so there’s a lot of context. You get to know the people as characters and you get to live with them and see some of their journey, and, and it takes you through a lot of steps and I think a lot of people can identify with.

And so a lot of people that read it will be healers or interested in healing or have had healing sessions themselves. And so they can see that this is what I can do to heal this life. And if I take another step, this is how I can heal past lives. If I take another step, this is how I can heal and benefit from between life wisdom, and this is how I can, what it means to step through into some transcendent wisdom. So it’s something that it, it really, it tells stories. Uh, it has a lot of heart in it and it points ultimately to, uh, some of the, the spiritual solutions. So I hope it’s something that, you know, uh, helps people to. To, uh, to put words and understanding to some of the experiences that they may have had. Uh, and it may inspire them to take, uh, further action, uh, in whatever healing or spiritual path they’re on.

Guy:
Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful. And where can people grab a copy and where can they find out more about you? Mark.

Mark:
Uh, past Life Awakening Institute is my website. Uh, it, uh, past Life Awakening, the book is on Amazon. I’ve got a page on my book if people want pa uh, hard copies. Uh, it’s available in retailers around the world. So if they go to my website, there’s a book, uh, a page, they can check that out. I’ve got a YouTube channel, past Life Awakening and Instagram, past Life Awakening.

Guy:
Wow. And you work, I’m guessing, predominantly online with people.

Mark:
Yeah, I do now for the last few years. Yeah. So yeah, so I do, I mentor, I have online courses actually, so people who are interested in finding out these modalities can learn about them just through video courses. But then I do one-to-one mentoring. I take people who are already probably healers of some degree. And they, I take them through the first six months where they’ll take, uh, 30, they’ll do 30 sessions with, uh, say a half a dozen clients, uh, and put putting this really into practice. And I’ll mentor them through, uh, you know, step-by-step as they’re doing real sessions. So, you know, I was doing a lot of one-to-many training, but now I like to do one-to-one mentoring in certifying students.

Guy:
Amazing. Amazing. Get that work out there. Well done mate. Well done. Is there any, um. Yeah. Last words of wisdom you wanna leave people to ponder on before we wrap up the podcast?

Mark:
Hmm. um, yeah, if you feel unsatisfactoriness, and it can be subtle. There may be some pains that we sort of ignore or brush over, but, and we don’t really want to hear it, uh, or we try to avoid it. But if you can listen into it. And there can be a bad feeling, but it may have a message that ends up being a blessing and that can help you to explore a more expansive version of life.

Guy:
Amen to that Mark. Thank you so much, mate. I, I appreciate you sharing your, your journeys and your stories. They’re, they’re fabulous. I got a lot out of them. Um, and I have no doubt everyone listening today, so if, like I said, they’ll be links in the show notes for people if they want to check out more of your work, mark and your book. And, um, yeah, appreciate you coming on and everything you’re doing out there is fantastic mate. Thank you. Yeah.

Mark:
Thanks so much, Guy.