Tess Chronicles: Messages from One Woman's Spirit Guide in Hypnosis (Visit 4)

Visit 4: Five Questions

The way I am instructed to arrive at the place in which I meet my spirit guide is by what Cynthia calls a "cloud mattress" in hypnosis. When I am on this cloud, I am magically lifted higher and higher to a place beyond the world and beyond time and space. As the cloud goes higher, my body becomes so light that I am no longer aware of it. The physical world and my body seem to disappear. 

This time I arrived at the place with the gates. (This was mentioned in a previous visitation.) Unlike the last time I was here, the gates were wide open. 

(Sometimes they are shut, sometimes partially open.) 

I enter into a garden area. There is a gravel path to the left, which I had seen before in other visitation sessions, and a fountain to the right. I have been through these gates before, but each time I see this place it is slightly different, except for the gravel path.

The path goes around the corner. I decide to walk it. As I reach the corner someone meets me on the path. It's a man in a white robe with a long beard. He says his name is Joseph. We are familiar with each other.

I am above average height for a woman in "real" life, but I am much shorter than Joseph, like a child. I feel just like a child. We go over to the fountain, I put my hand in the water and my hand merges with the water. I start splashing the water around and throwing it in the air, and the water is so light that it stays in the air, like light particles. I am mesmerized.

Then he says, “Let’s meet the others.” We go up a small steep hill and as we get to the top there is a very steep long hill below. It looks treacherous. I say, “I can't go down that or I will fall.” He says, “Oh, you can, you just need to walk down it.”

We get half way down the hill to a ledge with two rocks to sit on. It's overlooking a grassy slope and below that are the lights of the world. I can see that the world is dark with lights dotted everywhere. It is a beautiful arc shape appearing below the field.

Then there are a few others who come to join us and sit behind us. (I don't meet any of them but I somehow know they are other disciples.) Jesus walks up the grass and sits next to me. I still feel like a child. 

He greets me as with "How are you my child?" gently cupping my face with his hands.

Cynthia starts to ask questions. The first one is hard [to concentrate on] but I manage to stay in the moment. During the second question about the church, I say to Jesus, “Oh, I don't really understand that question and I don't think I can answer that.” He says, “It is not for you to answer but for me.” Then at this point the answers come without me even thinking. They just easily come through me. 

At the end, Cynthia tells me to ask any personal questions. I ask mostly about money. Jesus tells me not to keep asking that. He says that all will be okay and that I have a bright future ahead. 

Once the questions are finished Jesus says he must go because they have much to do. I think that seems strange, that doesn't he always have time for everything and everyone? I think, why is he in such a hurry? What does he need to do? 

It seems funny to me that he’s so busy. As if reading my mind, he turns and says he always has time for me and everyone if I need him.

He asks if I need anything else, but I don't have any more questions. I just think it would be nice if he would stay and just hang out. 

Then he turns and leaves down the grassy hill, and as he and the others (who are ahead of him) leave they disappear into the grass. They blend into it. E

verything is always green and alive in here. The grass is longish, lush and slightly damp. Nothing ever feels dry.

Here are the questions I (Cynthia) had Tess ask.

1. What is the purpose of the world?

We need to create peace and harmony around us. All of the worlds need to connect together. There are indeed other worlds. And we need to connect the energy, like rods between the worlds.

We leave there [our pre-incarnate state or true Home before we are born] with every intention of bringing peace and harmony to the world, but we never remember when we get here because we are so distracted by everything around us.

We need to remember. We need to remind people. We need to connect back to where we came from or we will never remember to bring peace and harmony to the world. Everyone has been here so many times and so many people fail. The world is not a happy place. Neither are the other worlds.

We get distracted by greed. And every time we go back there [our true Home] we say we will remember the peace and harmony next time we come to the world, and then we get here and we forget.

We need to remind people where to go to reconnect back to a higher consciousness and bring that to the world.

2. What is the best way to remember? How do we do that in this world of distractions?

It’s about going back there to visit. But it’s not done through going to church.

It’s about reminding people that there is an energy of love, and this energy is what connects us all.

That energy will lead them to remember where they came from. But everything is connected through energy—all of us. Little by little, we will teach the world. We have to show that there is a force of energy that connects us all. The church on a whole doesn’t work to do that.

After the session, Tess said she was told that hypnotherapy was a good way to remember. I imagine then that techniques like meditation and yoga and prayer would fit into this, as well. Processes that still the mind and access different levels of consciousness.

3. What’s going to happen to church and religion as consciousness progresses?

Only energy and a higher consciousness will take us to the next level. The church is only one level. It never takes the world any further because it's of a human level. The church is good in that people come together, but they don’t go far enough. The church has been around for thousands of years because it works on one level, but it doesn’t work on another.

The only way to move forward is through the remembrance of the energy of connectedness.

This is the only way we will remember that our job is to bring peace and love. 

4. There is a lot of talk about consciousness changing in 2012, some even believe it’s the end of the world. From your perspective, what is that all about?

It’s of human talk. Time has no importance.

After the session, Tess said that in relation to the 2012 question, she felt there was going to be a shift away from the church. It should be noted that this session took place in December 2010.

5. How will the world look when healed?

The world won’t exist when that happens. 

Please know that you can only try your best to bring healing to the world, but not only one person can do it alone. Little by little through your efforts, we will all move on to another world.

After that, Jesus told her that she was on the right track and they were very proud of her. She was told that she had been here many times before. Then Jesus said,

“Okay, we’re done.”

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Growing into My Animal Rights Activism and Spirituality

Twenty five years ago on any given Saturday afternoon you could find me on the street corner of Martel and Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, standing behind a beige card table with stacks of anti-vivisection brochures, mostly on cosmetic and household product testing, photos of bunnies with their heads in sockets and their eyes being burned, the usual stuff. I was there representing LCA (Last Chance for Animals, a LA based animal rights organization) encouraging passer-bys to sign my petition and boycott Proctor and Gamble, and the like.

I don't know how I got there. Meaning, I don't know how I got involved in animal rights. There was no defining moment. No person or animal who inspired me. No book I read. No movie I saw. No revelation. Nothing. I don't even remember deciding to become a vegetarian at that time. I just made a sign and showed up at a protest that I somehow heard was taking place. It all happened organically, as if I had no choice but to be carried along the winds of destiny that was my life. It was what was supposed to be.

Growing up, we had tons of pets: unneutered and unspayed cats, constantly having kittens (gasp!), a dog, a bird. I loved them all. But I wasn't obsessed with them. I didn't like animals more than people. Though I do remember becoming abnormally distraught because my brother accidentally ran over a bird with the lawn mower. It wasn't love that ignited my passion, it was injustice. And maybe that is love. I don't know. At a young age, I knew something was unjust when it came to the treatment of animals. I'm a Libra, the sign of scales and justice, so perhaps it was bigger than me, after all.

My grandma worked in a slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska where I was born. I remember the unforgettable stench of death wafting through the air. You could smell it on Omaha back then. It was like the whole city had B.O. The slaughter houses were smack dab in the middle of the town. Today they're hidden away, inconspicuously, on the outskirts, so consumers aren't reminded of the horrors behind the slaughterhouse walls, animals discreetly transported at night when no one can see them. Omaha was smellier back then, but more honest.

I spent formative years in Wisconsin, home of cheeseheads, dairy cows, and hunters, like my dad, who eventually became the Head Editor of the Agricultural Department at Kansas State University. (Go figure he'd have a vegan animal rights activist daughter.) It wasn't unusual to come home from school to find two huge deer hanging from the rafters in the garage, blood dripping from their beautiful majestic bodies into dark red puddles on the concrete floor below. I stepped around the blood, trying not to look at them, trying not to feel anything. We ate frogs, squirrels, fish, quail, rabbits, deer, anything he hunted. I hated it all. I didn't like meat except turkey. He never hunted turkeys. Had I grown up on McDonald's or Taco Bell or processed roast beef deli slices and hotdogs I may have loved meat. But I grew up on a different kind of meat. Meat that tasted like the dead animal it was.

The wind eventually shifted directions, and animal activism took a back seat to my first love, spirituality. I had begun Transcendental Meditation in childhood, and had already been a student of A Course in Miracles for four years by the time I was standing on Melrose. As I delved further and further into the teachings of the Course, I continued to eat vegetarian, phase out dairy products, leather, wool, down feathers, donate money to animal rights groups, and shop cruelty-free, but animal welfare was no longer at the forefront of my consciousness. A Course in Miracles was. I lived and breathed the Course for ten years. It somehow required all that I had. It wanted my full undivided attention. And I gave it to it. So much so that it led me to becoming a hypnotherapist.

Then, about four years ago, the winds of change began to blow again. They gently picked me up and set me down someplace I hadn't been before, somewhere between animal rights and spirituality. I'm no longer solely focused on one or the other. I am laser focused on both. My life isn't about animals or people, it's about animals and people. To me, it's all the same. There's really only one of us here and what we do to the smallest of us, we do to all of us. Likewise, when one of us heals, we all heal. I've come to realize that I had to tip those Libra scales one way and then the other in order to find my perfect balance. I now feel more equipped to tip society's scales toward healing and justice for ALL.

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Your Daily Grind is Your India

Hi Friends!


So I'm taking this week off to finish writing my book, YOU'RE ALREADY HYPNOTIZED: A GUIDE TO WAKING UP. Yeah, I know, I've been saying that for years now. But believe it or not, I really do see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm just working on final, final edits. I've decided to make it an ebook available for download and for electronic readers, so I've still got to get the cover designed and figure out exactly how to go about making an ebook. I have also recorded about forty hypnotherapy sessions that will be available with the workbook section of the book that I need to somehow get on a new site for downloading. (If you have any suggestions or know how to do this, please email me.) In the meantime, here's an excerpt from my book. Thanks for your support. We'll talk soon. Now back to the grind. 


Excerpt from YOU'RE ALREADY HYPNOTIZED: A GUIDE TO WAKING UP.


Over the past nine years as a hypnotherapist, I have seen a thousand clients with a thousand different issues, and though I treat each client individually, at the root, every problem is the same: We are asleep. We don’t remember who we are. We have forgotten our identity as children of God—or goddess, love, our higher self, truth, spirit, source, the universe, or whatever you prefer to call that spiritual apex—and that forgetfulness has caused a sleep-like state that has manifested into myriad specific problems seemingly “out there."


To heal is to awaken. But we must first understand that we are asleep before we can awaken. Only then can we begin the process of undoing the false ideas we have accepted into our mind. Healing doesn’t actually require us to do anything. Rather, we must undo the roadblocks or, as I call it, “de-hypnotize” or “deprogram” ourselves.


The path of awakening is highly individualized. For some, the most spiritual and healing thing they can do is daily meditation. For others, however, it is to get out of the house and get a job, or learn about food and lose weight, or give up alcohol. By tackling the behavior, they develop the self-esteem needed to look at the underlying issue. It would be silly to tell a heroin addict to reflect on his deeply buried psychological and spiritual issues. He couldn’t do it. But if you change the behavior first by getting him clean, he would then have the capacity and perhaps the willingness to look at the cause of his addiction.



I’m not here to decide whether meditating or getting sober or finding a job is the right place to begin your awakening. I don’t have enough information to make that call. That’s why this book addresses common issues from all levels: physical, psychological, and spiritual. How do you determine the most “spiritual” thing to do? It varies with circumstance. It wouldn’t be mindful to pay for yoga classes every day if you owed people money. It wouldn’t be enlightened to follow a guru for months while neglecting your children, or spend hours in meditation in a filthy house. It wouldn’t be virtuous to teach healthy living while secretly living as an addict. Nor would it be holy to care about people, but not about animals and the environment, or vice versa.


This doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect before we do what we feel guided to do or are passionate about. If we all waited until then, we wouldn’t start anything. It just means we must be honest with ourselves. Awakening requires a certain amount of consistency. The outer and the inner need to reflect each other as much as possible. But until we are healed, we will be dreadfully inconsistent.


I remember a client who said her life’s goal was “to achieve enlightenment,” yet as we talked, I noticed she had trouble standing up for herself—she was scared to quit a job she was miserable in and too insecure to leave an unhappy marriage. I wanted to tell her, “If you’re too afraid to change jobs, you’re not exactly ready to transcend mortality.” But I didn’t. In hindsight, maybe I should have. The best I could do for her was to help her gain enough self-respect and confidence to be decisive and communicate her needs. Once she achieved that, her life took off. She switched jobs, got a divorce and a new boyfriend, and is much more fulfilled.


We can’t skip steps up the ladder of enlightenment. Our quest begins right here, today, exactly as we are. It’s true that no one becomes enlightened with a drinking problem. And no one can love herself, yet hate her thighs. No one is free who carries monstrous debt. And no one reaches self-mastery by being duplicitous, hurtful, or despising himself or anyone else. Not because we’re being punished if we do those things, but because our choice to do those things blocks our highest self.


Enlightened people don’t need drugs, food, people, or things in order to do, change, cause or fulfill anything.  They have no lack. They’ve awakened to the truth that all they need is within. Our wounded behavior reflects our sleeping mind. And a sleeping mind is not aware it is sleeping. It desperately and unsuccessfully looks for its identity in the world. Our only real purpose here is to wake up. We begin that process by using whatever is in front of us—addictions, phobias, grievances. Anything can lead to awakening if we follow it far enough.


Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, hypothesized that we spend the first half of our lives developing an ego and the second half trying to get rid of it. I interpret this to mean that we must express individuality before we can know oneness. That’s why people rarely seek to know their spiritual self in their youth. They’re too busy figuring out who they are in the world. We first need to know how different we are from everyone else and gain confidence in ourselves before we can see the truth that underneath it all we are all the same. We must develop a keen sense of our individualized, egoic self before we can transcend that self—only then do we become truly revolutionary.


The spiritual journey is an inward journey of awakening your mind, not an outward excursion. You don’t have to trek through India, do yoga, or spend long hours meditating. All those things can be important if you feel guided to do them, and certainly the world would be a better place if we all stilled our minds each day, but everyone’s path is different. It’s a mistake to think the spiritual path is big and fancy and brightly lit or that it involves only what we think of as “spiritual.” The spiritual path is actually quite small and quiet and doesn’t necessarily look good in purple. It’s so humble that we constantly overlook it. You may be expecting a magic wand to change everything while neglecting the potential miracle of growth right in front of you.


Your daily grind is your India. It is the spiritual classroom you chose in order to learn your life lessons. Each new day brings you to a precipice with the opportunity to leap into greater awareness. You just don’t see it because it’s hidden in the mundane like washing dishes after you use them, accepting your body as it is, letting go of addictions, being able to receive a compliment or say “no,” or “yes,” learning to walk away or to stay, choosing love when you want to choose fear, and finishing what you start. Those perfunctory tasks can teach us the mindful qualities of integrity, discipline, honesty, responsibility, and respect—all necessary ingredients for self-realization.


That’s why Buddhist monks lead simple lives: wake up, meditate, eat breakfast, clean, meditate, eat lunch, meditate some more, prepare dinner, meditate again, bathe, and sleep. Their day-to-day routines rarely change. Nisargadatta Maharaj, arguably the greatest Indian sage, was the keeper of a small goods store and lived in a very modest apartment on a crowded street in Bombay. People flocked to his apartment from around the world, crowding each other to sit on his bare floor and listen to the wisdom of non-dualism that flowed. Nisargadatta’s life was uncomplicated and ordinary in form, but extraordinary in content.

12 Keys to Life

1. Do not be guided by fear.

There is nothing more detrimental than making decisions out of fear.

2. Seek not to be loved, but to be loving.

My clients are generally single men and women in their thirties and forties. And most of them are unhappy. The rest of my clients are in relationships, and guess what? They’re unhappy too. So who’s happy? Well, I know a few and their happiness has nothing to do with a partner or lack thereof. We have been programmed to believe that if we just find the right partner our problems will be solved. But I’m sorry to say it is an illusion. Sure, you can be fulfilled with a partner but you can also be fulfilled without one. What you seek is within. Everyday my prayer is the same, “Help me become more loving.” Let go of the need to be loved and seek instead to be loving. Only then will you find true fulfillment.

3. Pick a spiritual path.

And stick to it. All of our problems would disappear if we committed to daily spiritual practice. Truth is simple. You can read about this in an earlier post.

4. Read great writers and philosophers.

Studying people who are smarter than us is crucial because there is nothing more important than knowing we may not be right. Here are some books I like.

5. Listen to music.

Crank up one good song a day. Start with this video of Unity by Trevor Hall featuring Matisyahu

6. Clean yourself up

Release your past. Heal your addictions. Let go of debilitating emotions. And don't spend a ton of time and money trying to do it. Go through my $1.99 hypnosis MP3 downloads on a wide variety of topics and begin healing today! 

7. Surround yourself with people who can teach you.

This is easy and the pay-off is huge. Wise people push you. They hold you accountable. They don’t necessarily coddle you, they elevate you. There’s a reason a lot of enlightened people have gurus. Every smart person had a teacher.

8. Give away what you don't need.

Good feng shui and good karma. Your home, your closet, your office--it's all a  reflection of your mind.

9. Maintain integrity.

Your self-respect is all you’ve got. Treasure it.

10. Become vegan.

Becoming vegan is like volunteering. That's how I see it. There seems to be a sacrifice involved but it’s really a gift that comes back to you a hundred-fold. I have not experienced a single choice that has had such beautiful and far-reaching effects, not only in the world, the environment, and the animal kingdom, but in my own life and body as well. Start small. Educate yourself on what you're eating and where your "food" comes from. Check out Go Veg to get started.

11. Don't procrastinate.

The world awaits your gifts. We need your vision, your talent, your perspective, your ideas. I guarantee you, depression is inevitable if you don't apply yourself. Reread number 1.

12. Be of service.

Adopt a pet, or a child. Volunteer. In the least, smile and say hello to those you pass along your way. If there is no love or joy in your life it can only be because you are not giving love or joy.

All of these keys have one thing in common: they are challenging. In this world of complacency and complicity, we have gotten lazy. And it shows. I understand the pull towards indolence, I fight it on a daily basis, but it is a battle that must be fought. It is only through challenging ourselves that we heal, that the world become a better place, and that we achieve greater things. If not you, who? You are the who we are waiting for.

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