"Trust is always the first issue" is Bruce's mantra to everybody on his workshop everywhere on the planet. I know, I've been attending twice! Trusting your own capabilities to look beyond the horizon of the physical world is the hardest of them all. My journey to visit the afterlife by myself has been on a long path from believing the truth in tons of books to knowing the truth by actually seeing and feeling it.
I stumbled across Robert Monroe's books about out-of-body travel when I was 22 - this year I've reached 41. They became the closest thing to my inner felt truth and they still do today. I was longing for more after "Far Journeys" in 1988 and somehow Bruce's Afterlife books crossed my path in 1997 where it all continued. It was almost like a new stream of chapters from where Robert Monroe had left me. I felt gratitude. And suddenly, Monroe reappeared in Moen's books! What a twist in that tale!
After several years of waiting, Bruce finally came to Europe in July 2001 where I attended his workshop in Ireland. Thanks to Mike Pettigrew for hosting it in his home on that beautiful countryside. It was a great weekend with many intriguing stories and experiences. I touched and tasted the afterlife then, but didn't quite delve into it. My life was in turmoil and I never got the true patience nor calmness to really give myself the chance to continue experimenting at home to learn Moens tools properly. I stopped believing that I could do it but never stopped believing about the non-physical reality. But it gave me the incentive wishing to translate Moen's books into danish.
Thankfully I fell in love in a beautiful girl during that period, with the same passion for knowing more about the afterlife and she even had the skills to write! Anja established a book publishing company and released our joint translation effort this year, which is the danish version of Bruce Moens first book "Voyages into the Unknown" (6 months of hard work from two amateurs during a time span of 3 years!). I had told her passionately about my weekend in Ireland. So we decided to attend a workshop in Poland, giving Anja the opportunity to finally meet Bruce and to tell him that we had finished our first translation. 4 years had passed since I had tried the afterlife exploration and dared to try it again. I was really nervous - would I get a better glimpse of experiences this time?
The week was great in Krakow back then in April 2005, a combination of the standard 2 day workshop followed by a 3 day partnered exploring experience! Lots of nice people and lots of fun playing together in groups. Imagine 50 people gathering in a non-physical place and getting verifiable data back on actually seeing the same things and each other. Amazing! We also had the luck of enjoying the company of Bruce and his wife Pharon. We were the only English speaking people including the translator and hosts, which gave us many cozy hours after workshop training.
After the usual frustrations of not seeing it the way I wanted, I finally had my first "real" experience on the second workshop day, visiting an old mother (of a workshop participant) in the afterlife, who had recently died. I only had been given a piece of paper with her polish name, written down by her daughter (which I didn't know about when I began the session). I was seeing her comfortably sitting in a rocking chair, knitting, in an old fashioned kitchen with a stow and fireplace. She wore a black dress with lots of small Marguerite flowers in white an yellow painted all over the dress. She was having a great time and her message was that all was well and her children shouldn't worry. My “seeing” came in glimpses of milliseconds with a lot of silence and blackness in between that contained all the information I needed. I had believed from the beginning that I was to envision a full 3D universe, wide screen experience. But this is not how I got it. I think it will expand into more coherent seeing as my practice does its work on the non-physical senses. The old saying has its truth; You have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk. I've talked with several clairvoyant persons after my experiences, and they all agree that most of the time this is how things are perceived, both in vision and in feelings. It is important to relay the first impressions and not interpret them. It is good to know that I didn't feel limited in my capabilities – it boosted my self confidence. And most importantly, everybody with the attitude towards willingness to try and desire to see, will experience it!
When I relayed to the daughter what I had seen, she could recognize her mother faintly by my descriptive outline, but it wasn't precise enough to convince her. She couldn't recognize nor remember the dress. I had a fair success that day with a decent amount of hits and a good bunch of misses. However, the next day presented itself with a surprise. The daughter had visited her older sister who still had all her mothers belongings. The younger sister retold my experience to her and suddenly with a big surprise the older sister burst out: "but that was mothers most precious dress!", and went into the bedroom fetching the exact same dress from the closet that I had described. Was I surprised and joyful, when I got that precious verified data the next day! Bruce congratulated me for finally having had an afterlife experience that even was verifiable. He remembered my frustrations on the Ireland workshop. Never underestimate the value of details in what you see in your afterlife exploration...
Thanks a lot to Johanna, Bruce and the rest of the team for hosting this wonderful workshop! It was our first trip to Poland and we will revisit!
We both returned home to Denmark with lots of memories and lots of intentions. It was really up to one self again to do the exploring in your own home. That is the hardest part. If you don't have the curiosity to keep you going and the desire to see, then what can drive it? I felt satisfied with having had a good verifiable experience in Krakow. Why would I want to get more? This was my usual ego that crept in to avoid any disappointments. It nailed me for the next two years!
One sunny spring day during my two week vacation this year I was bicycling home on a long 60km trip through the countryside. My mobile phone rang and it was my friend and colleague from work. He was relaying a message from another colleague in the company, but I noticed that he wasn't in the office. He told me that he was booking a flight ticket to Iran for tomorrow, because his father had finally died in the hospital after several months of illness. He had already visited him a month earlier to see him one last time. Something strange happened, which I never ask people. I burst out, “why don't you let me check in on your dad to see if he is alright?”. I was completely surprised by myself! How did I suddenly get the self confidence to ask that? But it was now out in the open and he accepted eagerly. He knew that I was doing “non-physical stuff”, and it would be a great relief for him and his family when he arrived back home to tell the good news. I promised to phone him later this evening to tell him what I had found. The remaining trip home I was kicking myself for such an outburst. I hadn't done a retrieval exercise since the workshop in Krakow! I was full of anxiety and thought about several solutions to ask my clairvoyant friends to assist me in checking in on his father. I for one had no intention of doing this. It was too valuable and I wanted to give my friend the best comfort I could find.
I finally came home with a lot of agony built up inside and told Anja about what had happened. She happily said, “well, lets do it together!”. Why didn't I think of that? I suddenly had my confidence restored and I could fill in on a promise to her that we should do partnered exploring that we had wanted to do together when we came back home from the Poland workshop, but dismissed as “I can't do it now, lets wait a bit”. After dinner and some relaxing we went ahead with the afterlife exploration, doing all the relaxing and visual energy gathering exercises we've been taught, followed by the actual visit. It took approx. 10 minutes. This is what I saw:
I used the technique of pretending to induce the contact of getting into the non-physical reality that Anja & I were walking in the spring forest with all the colors, smells and impressions being in a forest can give. It was my idea that I wanted to meet the Helper with Anja in a clearing of the forest ahead somewhere. But it changed when suddenly Anja turned towards me and asked that we should build up the feeling of love inside by standing opposite of each other and look into our eyes. As we did that, I saw and felt a whirl of energy around us who gradually lifted us from the ground and upwards. A very beautiful sensation! After a while it stopped and I felt we were standing in the dark, waiting for a helper to come. A person arrived but I couldn't see the face or outline, other than that I felt it was a woman. I asked her to guide us to my friend's father – she acknowledged, grabbed my hand and we were moving in the blackness for a good while. The movement stopped and I let myself adjust and observe the surroundings. Gradually, I felt a hospital-like room appear with a bed in the middle. The walls were made of blueish-dark shiny tiles. In the back of the bed, a nice old man were sitting upright and smiling at our arrival. Beside him were two older people who felt like the parents visiting the patient in the bed. I introduced myself to my friend's father and stated my purpose of the visit. He welcomed us. As I had this brief talk with him I got the impressions of his face. I couldn't see the complete face with the eyes but I clearly noticed his bald head with white short hair around the sides. A few single hairs were still on top. He had a short white beard going almost from ear to ear, but no beard between nose and lips. He sat there in a white shirt. He told me that he was fine and that he was looking forward to seeing his children again when it was their time. He emphasized that he wanted a simple quiet funeral in white surroundings and with happy people. No big fuzz and crying. I asked him about what I could tell his son to prove that I had really visited his father. He promptly showed me his right hand very close to my face. On his little finger was a fat golden finger ring which was round and flat on the top (about a centimeter wide), with red ornaments or rubies I couldn't distinguish. I thanked him for the visit and we left the scene. I actually forgot to thank the helper, but I hope that the overall gratitude for this information was relayed as a thank you to the helper. After a while I “returned” to my living room with Anja. I felt quite elevated in my head, like half a meter or so. Funny feeling that lasted about a few minutes. She almost opened her eyes at the same time as me. Unfortunately, she hadn't seen what I had, and really didn't get into the exploring. It made me quite unsure of the whole experience. But I had seen something and it was better than nothing.
I phoned my friend and told him about the whole experience with all the details that I could remember. He didn't say a word during my report. I finished my findings with a vague statement that I really hoped that it was his father that I had met. His whole voice changed and became soft. “You really saw my father. Everything you saw was correct. I'm shaking all over. I'm very moved. You don't know how much this means to me. Thank you so much. The ring you saw was his signature ring that he used to sign documents when he was working as a professor at the university in Teheran”. It was a revelation to me. Never had I experienced this amount of detail and got it all verified. Everything I had seen was verified. The detail about his wishes for the funeral was also verified. He had been very explicit about this towards his family while he was still alive. I told him about my absolute gratitude towards getting my experience verified and that it meant equally much to me. I wished him a good trip to the family and we both said good bye.
Ten days later we met at work. I had finished my vacation and he was back from Iran. It was nice. We felt a new kind of relation to each other and I could see the happiness in his eyes. He told me about how his family had received the news about his father and what it had meant to them. It had completely changed the feeling of grief in the closest family members. Before he went to Iran he worried the most for his mother. But the news from me had changed her attitude completely. It was now her that embraced the other family members with comfort. She told the story over and over again to everybody that came to visit to pay the last respect to her husband. My friend asked her mother if she didn't get tired of this story. She responded promptly that this story can never be told enough! I got warm greetings and thanks from her. I'm so grateful to have been able to give this information to someone in dire need of comfort. It has shown me how big a difference it makes for all remaining family members when you get to know that a loved person is not lost forever but lives on happily in another reality.
I also got another intriguing verification. My colleague told me that his sister and her mother-in-law, both living in Italy, had also come to the funeral. Her mother-in-law had a dream where she had seen the father in a hospital bed and that he was feeling well. She had told this to the family just before the funeral had started, and everybody was excited that she gave the same good news that they had received from Denmark. What a wonderful thing this was. How fantastic it is that news was brought to the family from the non-physical reality from different sources to ensure that a loved-one was safe and well. We never are alone in this world.
Gunther Strube,
gbs@efterlivet.dk, May 2007
PS: Thanks to Johanna for encouraging me to write this article. My thoughts and expressions was also deeply inspired by Stine, who has begun to learn the tools of Bruce Moen's Afterlife exploration technique. She has a deep longing for doing afterlife retrievals, to help those who needs to know. I hope my experiences will encourage her to find her own truth.