Spirit

When I told a coworker who is also a good friend that I was retiring from my employment and was no longer going to practice law, he asked me, “How will you be able to handle giving up your identity as an attorney?” I responded, “Being an attorney is not my identity. It is something I do.” I gave him this answer because I had discovered, or more correctly re-discovered, that I am not my career, nor am I any other role that I play. Rather, I am an eternal Soul who is here to learn, to grow, to experience, to have fun, and, most importantly, to give love and to be loved.

Awakening to this reality freed me from enmeshing myself in my work to the point of unmanageable stress, burnout, and inability to enjoy what I did or do what I enjoyed. Without this spiritual awakening, my journey would have been incomplete, and I would have remained at risk of reverting to the habits, thoughts, and behaviors which had caused me to burn out.

I had many such erroneous beliefs. For example, I believed that my work product had to be perfect. This belief caused me to spend an inordinate amount of time on even the simplest of tasks. I further believed that if I didn’t do everything myself, the work would not get done or if it got done, it would not be done properly. This belief also caused me to take on too much work with little time to do it, leaving no time for anything else. And, I measured my sense of self-worth and self-esteem by what others thought of me, trying to gain their approval by volunteering for extra assignments, being recognized, and winning awards. To the extent this approval made me feel any better, its effects were short lived. These faulty thinking patterns were the perfect recipe for disaster. I had to let them go.

Spirituality was not part of my upbringing. I had no interest in it at all until late 1992. At that point, I had been suffering from less severe, but nonetheless unpleasant, anxiety, which had been going on for over six years. I also had a recurrence of an eating disorder which had plagued me during my early years in college. I was not eating much and was dangerously underweight.

Finally, I decided that I’d had enough. I had heard of 12-Step programs but had never been willing to participate in them. I started attending two such programs, including one focusing on eating disorders. Early on in the programs, I realized that I wanted additional spiritual support. A friend of mine in one of the programs took me to a spiritual center. The spiritual leader taught us that God is unconditional love and is everywhere present. The message resonated with me. I started attending services on a regular basis.

Around the same time, another friend lent me a book on near death experiences (NDE’s). I had never heard of these before. People who have had NDE’s describe leaving their bodies and going to a place of light, perfect peace, and unconditional love. Many of them undergo “life reviews” in which they experience, firsthand, the ways in which they have positively and negatively impacted every person in their lives. When they return to their bodies, they are radically transformed. They are more loving, less self-centered, realize their eternal essence, and recognize the connectedness of all that is. It goes without saying that they are no longer impacted by the everyday stressors we all face. These books led me to additional books on other concepts I was totally unfamiliar with, such as reincarnation.

In 1994, the book “Journey of Souls” by Michael Newton, Ph.D., was released. In this book Michael Newton details how, through a deep hypnosis process which he discovered by accident, he was able to unlock the memories of the soul. From the moment I started reading the book in 1997, it resonated at a deep level. I realized right away that the information it contained was already deep within me. In May 2001, I saw Michael Newton for what is now called a “Life Between Lives” spiritual regression session (LBL). It was amazing.

I was engaged in spiritual pursuits for about ten years. However, for the most part, I was not ready to absorb or apply any of the information I received. In other words, I “talked the talk” but did not “walk the walk.” Thus, when a large organization hired me in the summer of 2002, it was too easy to set spirituality aside and focus almost entirely on my career. My life got completely out of balance and I returned to my self-destructive ways. Towards the end of 2023, I crashed. Extremely anxious and depressed, I was unable to do my work at all. I entered the intensive outpatient program and began seeing an individual therapist.

As I was completing the outpatient program, the anxiety and depression were better, but something was still missing. I then remembered the spiritual work I had done many years earlier but had failed to fully grasp. I decided I needed to return to that work, but, unlike last time, I also needed to take it to heart. I went back to the spiritual center I had stopped attending in 2002. I reread “Journey of Souls” and listened to the recording of my 2001 LBL. The messages in it sunk in for the first time and my perspective quickly began to shift. I started a daily practice of prayer and meditation.

I also went on the Internet to see what had happened with Michael Newton’s work. I learned that although he was, for many years, the only person who conducted LBL sessions, there are now over 200 LBL facilitators around the world. They are trained and certified by the Michael Newton Institute and they conduct LBL sessions in person and by Zoom. They have expanded upon Michael Newton’s original methods, making the experience even deeper and more meaningful.

In early December 2024, I had a second LBL. It was truly transformative and continues to contribute to my spiritual understanding, awareness and growth.

I also had past life regression sessions (PLR). Through PLR, I learned that, to some extent, I was repeating thinking and behavior patterns from previous lifetimes even though they no longer served me. Understanding their origins was eye-opening. There are many hypnotherapists who specialize in PLR.

As a result of my second LBL, I discovered what I had already suspected, that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, I was to move on from the career I’d had for so many years. Eleven weeks after that, I retired. I now hope to reach out to others who may, as I did, find that their careers have come to define them, that the stress of their jobs is getting unbearable, or that, because of their work, they no longer have balance or happiness in their lives.

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