Depossession, also known as"Spirit Release"
It is possible that a person may inadvertently and unwittingly become a host for another being, usually a human soul that did not cross into the Divine Light and who has attached to a living person for the benefits that a living body provides. Betsy Bergstrom, shaman and teacher of phenomenal Compassionate Depossession work, calls these "suffering beings". Possession by a suffering being can cause physical, emotional and spiritual damage as the being lives off the energy of its host. On her website, Ms. Bergstrom says
These
suffering beings may live off of a person’s energy and influence
them in a variety of ways. Illness, depression, phobias, emotional
problems, substance abuse, suicidal tendencies and other issues may be
in part due to the influence or overshadowing of beings that have
attached to the client. These
possessing beings are often people whose
own death experience has become compromised in such a way that they did
not successfully make their own journey to the Light.
Compassionate
Depossession is a humane therapy that benefits both the client and the
attached suffering being, even if that suffering being is reluctant to
cross into the Light. The compassionate healing embedded in this
practice insures that a possessing spirit becomes unable to return to
the host or to anyone else.
What is Possession? Why "Compassionate" Depossession?
I write this while attending Ms. Bergstrom's Compassionate Depossession workshop in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. This training and this teacher have changed forever the manner in which I approach depossession work and also the manner in which I view all of my fellow relations, living and non-living.
This work is Middle World work, or healing within the energetic analogue of the ordinary reality that we live and breathe, eat and sleep, work and play. Working in Middle World requires scrupulous attention to personal power, being "power-filled" as Michael Harner would say, and to shielding and protection. Ms. Bergstrom teaches wonderful and extraordinarily powerful methods for both. I admit to having been skeptical about possession before attending this workshop. It did "ring the internal bell" very strongly, though, so I did not hesitate to sign up for it. Betsy has years of experience at this work. Spirit and ruthless experience have been her teachers, so I listened carefully and respectfully to what she had to say.
Why would a being not cross over? Possibilities include a traumatic death itself, attachment to earthly life, family or personal things, confusion, or not knowing that they are indeed dead, or perhaps shame at having lived a "bad" life and not wanting to be held responsible for past actions. The disembodied being finds a life force to attach itself to so that it can be sustained. To the possessing being, this gives the pale shadow of life as s/he used to know it.
To the person with an attached being, a possessing being, any or all of the following may be evident:
- Low energy levels
- Character shifts or mood swings
- Inner voice(s) speaking to you
- Abuse of drugs and/or alcohol
- Impulsive behavior
- Memory problems
- Poor concentration
- Sudden onset of anxiety or depression
- Sudden onset of physical problems with no
obvious cause; i.e. changes to vision or hearing
- Emotion and/or physical reactions to reading this
Both the suffering being and the possessed person are really suffering from this unfortunate state of cohabitation! The being doesn't belong in your energy field, and you as the possessed person shouldn't have to have a fractured life from involuntarily donating life force in return for diminished faculties!
Before Betsy, my Depossession training went something like this: rip the "thing" out of the person ("it" doesn't belong there, anyway!) and heave it at the light to "get rid of it". The one time I did this, it felt violent, dirty and scary. I felt like a bully.
Compassionate Depossession is different; it's efficient and effective for both client and suffering being and causes little or no trauma to either. Every being is made of Light, and to the Light we all must return; it is inevitable. It is our destiny.
My personal experience with Depossession, both as a practitioner and as a client
as a client:
After our initial training it came time to pair up in class and practice this technique of Compassionate Depossession. I had been "presenting" like mad - loss of attention, urgent desire to take a nap and sleep, back aches, hearing problems, vision problems. So I asked to be the "client" first in our triad of client/therapist/energetic backup. I was pretty sure that I wasn't possessed after all, but as we began I discovered differently.
My fellow student practitioner started the processs, and identified an area of my body that was hurting. Upon asking to speak with that portion of my body directly, I exhibited symptoms of stroke: my left side sagged, eyes wouldn't focus, and I couldn't use my left side at all. "I" was still there and observing, and knew I could take back control whenever I wanted to: I wasn't scared; I was utterly fascinated. Dialog with the suffering being revealed his name, and revealed that he felt lost, sad and alone. He'd evidently outlived his wife, and had had a stroke at the end of his own life. How he came to live inside me I do not know.
As the process of separating this suffering being from my energy field and helping him cross into the Light came to a beautiful and transcendent close, I was left with myself. My left eye that had been becoming increasingly blurry for the past few years was once again giving me better vision than my right eye. Sight out of both eyes improved dramatically. Also, my hearing, which had been puzzling me these last couple of years, seems to be back to normal. I noticed a couple of years ago that though I seemed to have the normal self-sense of still hearing sounds, but speech was eluding me. I'd hear someone say a sentence, but would have to have it repeated several times because I just couldn't make out what was being said. Weirdly, I could still hear tiny insect sounds and subtle outdoor sounds; I just couldn't understand what people were saying. I thought I might be losing my hearing on the left side.
As of today, one day after this depossession, my hearing is back to normal. My internal sense of volume never wavered, things sound just as loud as they always did, but now I can understand what people are saying again.
as a practitioner:
After my amazing experience, we traded positions in the client/practitioner/backup triad: I was now practitioner. My "client", a lady shaman, had a specific back issue. When I initiated the process and made contact with the inhabiting suffering being, "he" made me promise to help her back pain before he'd go. I did agree, and via our protocol, he went. But we weren't done yet. Another inhabiting, suffering being rose to take his place. Betsy says that suffering beings are "stacked" inside us, sort of in a hierarchy, and they get removed weakest first. Stronger beings stay behind; they then get to wield more power and influence. When I tried to establish contact, I got nothing. Signaling for an experienced teacher and getting her assistance, the newly-ascendant suffering being turned out to be a guardian spirit of land that had attached to her when she had hiked into an unmarked sacred site by accident. The teacher was able to figure out what this was and to encourage it to go back, lesson having been learned. The student informs me that her back problems have now mostly resolved, but have shifted. There may be other beings in residence. For me there have been more - this is just one of my stories.
About Possession
Through her extensive experience doing these depossessions over the years, Betsy Bergstrom asserts that the average person on the North American continent has about four possessing spirits who are suffering beings of one sort or another. After my own dramatic and immediate physical change, I'm a believer in both this concept and in this work. Ms. Bergstrom believes that, because we here in the West have, for the most part, non-existent death rites, we are not doing our complete duty when it comes to helping newly deceased spirits cross from this reality into the next. That is one reason that Psychopomp, or Soul Guiding is such an important duty for us modern, Western shamanic practitioners.
Possession, though common, is a relatively unknown phenomenon of life in our Western world. Through her experience, Betsy says that some suffering beings are merely confused and have taken up housekeeping in a convenient host body to draw on life force and live a sort of half-life through the dimished veils of perception of their inhabited body. Other suffering beings have figured out that they are no longer living, and have become crafty experts at finding bodies in which to live, overshadowing their hosts. Other cultures have well-established means of dealing with possession, and much of my teacher's training and research started there. Possession is able to happen when we 'open our energetic doors' by saturating ourselves with energies which allow us to become more porous to other beings. These can be the energies of violence, chemical influence (which lowers our 'shields' and makes us more porous), inappropriate anger such as grudge-holding and feuds, and by entertaining other less-than-compassionate energies in our energy fields.
To close the psychic doors and to seal off those affinities that we have created for being possessed, Betsy recommends filling ourselves with our own power by calling back the energies of our True Self. The method she uses is a guided meditation that is easy and quick, deep and powerful. It is remarkably refreshing. To experience the True Self guided meditation (about 22 minutes long), use this gadget
Jeffrey Rich