Hello all, I'm new here.   

I just did my 2nd retrieval, which is a belief systems territory retrieval using Bruce's "After Knowledge Guidebook" and CDs.

I am a computer software kind of person, but I'm also open to this kind of stuff. I have been for years. I find it all very fascinating and quite believable. 

Anyhow, my struggle is that I really think that these retrievals are all concocted by my imagination! In this retrieval, I saw my guide. He was a very ordinary, balding, kind of nerdy middle aged man. He took me to where I finally got the impression of a young man sitting and watching something. Then it became a huge church with a fire and brimstone Fundamentalist Christian preacher up behind a podium. 

My guide persuaded me to talk this other guy to getting up and going to the side somewhere. I don't know why it wasn't a big deal to the other parishioners or the other people (who were just foggy images of nothing), but I was able to talk Mark Blaggett or Bloggett from Joplin, Missouri, to come to the side because "I really needed his help."   

When I asked for proof of his existence, he pulled a picture of his daughter (he's 32) out of his wallet. Dark hair/red outfit..probably 4 years old. I  really couldn't get her name though. The problem with all this for me is that it's all very very fuzzy and vague and images keep changing and nothing stays in focus. 

I was able to then send love energy and that is when my guide stepped in and spoke with Mark about his family. I think that snapped Mark out of it, so to speak. He was really full of fear about religion and felt like if he didn't leave there, his soul would go straight to Hell. My guide convinced him to go with him to see "family" that missed him and that church would still be here. We went, and ended up at a beautiful midwestern town scene in Focus 27. Then his maternal grandparents arrived...or maybe they were just older deceased relatives. It wasn't clear...

My thing is that I think this was in my mind because of all the things I've read in Bruce's material and other material about religious people getting stuck there. I get the sense that my imagination concocted this whole story out of bits of info stored in my brain, and my mind WANTED this retrieval to be successful (and it was). It just went too smoothly.

I can see how my issues are around this. I am very frustrated with the relgious "right" and have been for some time. So maybe this was my own way of addressing that?

Have others in here gotten past the point of wondering whether they are just imagining things?
Thank you for reading this,
Steve

My retrievals were basically the same as you state it, vague, not too clear on the visuals, had trouble staying focused, had trouble believing I was not making it up, therefore I should go pull weeds or something, lol, I just wanted it to work. I wanted to be a retriever. and yes I think you're going at it in the normal way, with all the doubts that go with it. is why I like the title of one of Bruce's books "Beyond all Doubt." beyond all doubt comes later. I believe you will go in your imagination to do the type of retrieval that you are able to do, such as you say you realize how constraining religion can be, so there you were where you were supposed to be. and u have to start asking yourself what is the imagination? Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." need I say more? what retrieving meant to me personally is I needed to know if I could be effective to life, for life to committ a random act of kindness, actually by being kind to another you are being kind to yourself. we are all in this together. and the funny thing is, alot of those people you retrieve turn out to be your own self in disquise. thats when it really starts getting interesting. yes, I stopped doubting somewhere that it was real, it didn't matter if it was real after awhle because I was a changed person because I started doing a lot of self retrievals mainly. then I started retrieving people who were not even dead yet. retrievals to the left of me, retrievals to the right. lol. there is a progression if u stay with it and u will get assistance. theres guides out there who have had your number all along. the best advice I ever got from Bruce was the idea to "play along with it." he didn't say too much about the crashes that would come, lol, but I understood the play along thing. love, alysia

Steve,

  The feelings of doubt are in my view an entirely normal part of the process.  It took me almost four years of believing I was just making it all up in some grand self-deceptive hoax before the evidence I gathered covinced me otherwise.  It won't take you as long as it took me.  You are already working with Helpers and perceiving your retrieval experiences well. 

  The evidence part is what helped me move beyond doubt.  Each time you gather some evidence, there is the potential that it will be verified as accurrate.  When it, is the beliefs that cause the doubt and perceptual blockages will be chipped away.  The hardest part of the process for me was being willing to suspend judgment and leave the possibility open that my experiences were real.  And that hard part was the most necessary for ultimate success.

  I know that if we are willing to trust what our nonphysical senses are telling us at some point we begin to perceive more accurately through them.  It's kind of like learning to play the piano.  As a beginner it helps to believe that some day there will be more music than clinkers.  And with practice fueled by desire that happens.

By the way, I WOULD say your experience is a classic example of a textbook BST retrieval.

Bruce