‘For four days we gathered at the Byron Bay Community Centre, and ignored the call of the beaches and the pull of the Byron life style. Instead we took deep inner journeys, travelled across lifetimes, heard stories of cosmic and inter-galactic adventures and connected these experiences with the spiritual awakening that is taking place in our human consciousness.

For some attendees it was the opportunity to learn, integrate and experience, for others it was the chance to belong, share stories and trigger memories. Our souls had called us together at this time to re-connect, re-focus and re-member.

It was this Soul connection that had drawn me to the Conferences, not just to meet like-minded people, but to speak about the Soul and its capacity to trigger near death experiences. Experiences that I believe are designed and created by the Soul to help individuals lift the veils of forgetfulness, re-connect with their essence and release their hold on their Egoic self.

In any embodiment of being a human, the Soul can have its greatest impact when there is a close relationship between the Soul and Ego, as this strengthens the capacity for the Soul’s work. The close relationship helps the Ego surrender its hold, thus facilitating the Soul’s multi-dimensional nature to take hold and fully embody ALL THAT IS.

While each person’s NDE will be relevant to their past Soul experiences and relative to what their purpose is in any lifetime, helping the Ego to surrender its hold creates a very different life for the being who returns. A life lived via Soul in connection with Consciousness, is very different to a life lived via Ego without Consciousness, without connection and full of separation. The Soul knows this and wants itself to grow as much as it can during each incarnation – while also facilitating each human incarnation to fulfil its purpose.

Paulina Howfield

So before incarnation our Soul chooses a body, parents, a country of birth, a gender or transgender, petty tyrants, specific meetings with significant others and certain agendas that it aims to fulfil. Some of these plans are best fulfilled via experiencing/remembering the Sea of Consciousness that we are all a part of. This Sea of Consciousness is timeless, formless and full of unconditional love. It has no judgement, no separation, no beginning and no end. And this is what we experience in an NDE.

In this Sea of Consciousness we experience existence without the binding of the Ego and the sense of separation that is created by our thoughts. We become aware that we are not our bodies, that nothing exists in isolation and nothing is separate. There is a sensation of unconditional love, profound joy and wisdom and a deep connection that saturates the cells of the body leaving permanent change.

Whether the experience involves meeting loved ones or religious figures or bathing in the light of consciousness or, conversely, involves experiences that are debilitating and frightening to our human selves, the Soul is always providing the best opportunity for growth, understanding and awakening. These experiences are visceral interactions with universal consciousness and the non-physical realms that are meant to be transformative. The Soul has no 3D judgement and doesn’t make things good or bad – it simply knows it volunteered for the experiences, always for deeper growth and further understanding.

While the effects of an NDE and what it teaches is also dependent on what each of us came to do and need to remember, I believe NDEs also aim to help experiencers grow and develop to eventual permanent Awakening. So the experience itself is not just an indication of what happens after we die. It is a prompt or nudge for what we do next with regard to permanent awakening and is a deliberate trigger to help us embody this truth and incorporate that awareness in all that we do in our lives.

So they prompt experiencers to embrace Dying as a metaphysical and spiritual concept, whereby the individual can focus on learning how to prepare for the Afterlife and navigate the energies that exist there. This is important, as how we navigate the Afterlife – or what the Buddhists call the Bardot – helps us liberate our Souls from the cycle of free will. Reincarnation continues until a Soul’s every thought and action within a physical body is in accord with the plan that is originally laid out. When the body/mind is no longer a hindrance to the free expression of the Soul – and the conscious mind has merged with the subconscious and super-conscious – the earth cycle is finished and the Soul is liberated. It attains complete human-divine unity, its cycle of reincarnations is finished, and the soul then merges with its spirit and, therefore, with Consciousness. At this time the Soul record (memory) is forever retained. This record is, at all times, the sum total of what the Soul personality has been: all it has thought, all it has experienced; all it has eaten, drunk, and felt through the ages.

This Total Soul Recall is important to every Soul’s journey and helps each human fulfil a purpose. It can also help western culture understand that the Soul’s quest for permanent awakening is critical to understanding why NDE’s occur and how they impact lives. It is also important and relevant to how they are investigated and explained, because there is a purpose to these experiences that cannot be quantified, measured and tested in the investigative style of the left brain.

Many who have experienced a near death talk about a mission; a sense of purpose, and/or an understanding of Something Other. This remembering of a purpose – at the deepest part of our being – is part of the awakening that comes with an NDE. As we remember we re-connect, we realise who we really are, what we came to do and how we can best fulfil our unique purpose. Our sense of connection to Something Other is the recognition of our multi-dimensional nature, our Soul and our inter-connectedness with all things in all realms.

Paulina Howfield, Karijini Canyon, Karijini National Park.

NDEs drop us into the heart, take our breath away and dissolve the words. Understanding them via the expressions of our Soul and engaging with them through multi-dimensional truths is a profound way to learn more about them and can potentially help all of humanity as we move deeper into the spiritual evolution of our species. This enables us to bridge the Ego and Soul with insight and deeper truth and also embody Consciousness while in human form. It helps us to die with peace and certainty and easily navigate the stormy waters of the collective unconscious and astral realms after death of the physical body. It also enables us to know what to surrender to, and how to embrace ‘paying attention’ rather than trying to fix things.

Ultimately it also teaches us about the realms of consciousness and multi-dimensions that we are a part of and helps us recall the truth, so that we may journey consciously back through the stars and fully re-merge with the Source.

So next January if you are on holiday but want some respite from the usual sun, surf and outer adventure lookout for the Afterlife Explorers and Close Encounters Conference in Coffs Harbour and have some inner adventures and cosmic travels instead. Your Soul will be grateful and the once the merging begins anything can happen.

You can find out more about Paulina Howfield’s work on:  matrixharmonics

The Afterlife Explorers will be in Coffs Harbour in 2018: afterlifeexplorers

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It’s been a big year and boy, have the months slipped by.  2016 started quietly enough for me, but soon the pace quickened as the hectic events of the year unfolded. Numerology put me in a five year, so I was ready for the changes that would inevitably come. (A recent guest on my internet radio program RadioOutThere.com summed it up when she compared life to a toilet roll. “The further you get into it, the faster it goes”. That’s some philosophy, wise words from a former academic!) The year really kicked off with a trip to Melbourne in late January to MC the second Australian Afterlife Explorer’s Conference and also give a talk. The initial conference was in Sydney the previous year.

The founder and director of the Afterlife Explorers Conferences, Mick Turner, had a near death experience, (NDE) as a deep sea diver in 1998. He followed this with past life regressions, which revealed the link to this life. It inspired Mick to investigate the whole question of the afterlife and ultimately share the knowledge with the Australian public.

There was a strong theme of subjects relating to NDEs in Melbourne, with the keynote speaker PMH Atwater from the US leading the way. PMH is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on NDEs, and gave two very stirring and thought provoking presentations. She experienced three NDEs in 1977 which led to a series of best-selling books, and many people in the audience were able to relate to the events which transformed her life.

The success of the first two Afterlife Explorers Conferences means that this important event has now become a fixture on the spiritual events calendar in Australia.  Once again I will be the MC in the theatre, and my presentation, based on my books Afterlife and No Goodbyes is called ‘Life Changing Insights From the Other Side’.

The line-up of speakers is impressive for the afterlife conferences. Many people might expect an event of this nature to mainly feature a collection of new age authors, mediums and spiritual gurus , many of the presenters have a scientific or mainstream background and approach the whole question in a very down to earth way (pun intended!). However the spiritual connection is an important factor in every presentation.

The 2017 conference includes topics as diverse as Quantum Consciousness and Near Death Experiences, Identifying embodied ET Souls, Dream Visits from the Dead and The Science of Ghost Research.

International keynote speakers include Dr Robert Davis (USA), Professor of Neuroscience for over 30 years at the State University of NY in Neuroscience and electrophysiology; Rosemary Ellen Guiley (USA), author of 60 books on metaphysical, paranormal and unexplained phenomena; and Linda Backman (USA),  a psychologist specialising in soul regression hypnotherapy.

There is also a very impressive list of Australian speakers, including Mary Rodwell, a world leader in the exploration of ‘Star Seed’ children and their role in awakening human consciousness and Michael Roads, a modern mystic and author of 20 books on his experiences and explorations of alternate realities and dimensions.

Colleen Dooley, a former resident of Byron Bay will speak about The Life Between Life Experience (LBL). Colleen moved to Melbourne in 2015 having founded of the Institute of Hypnoenergetics, but loves coming home to spend time in Byron Bay whenever possible. Colleen will speak about the life and work of the late Dr Michael Newton, founder of the LBL Spiritual Hypnotherapy and author of such iconic books as Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls.

I had a past life regression with Colleen in 2012 for my book No Goodbyes, which helped me revisit lives in Central America, and in the Middle East. I was delighted when Colleen told me this week that she will also be speaking about past lives.

Well known Sunshine Coast medium Julie McKenzie will be doing platform demonstrations on centre stage during the lunch breaks and people will be able to enjoy their lunch with the potential bonus of connecting with a loved one in the world of spirit.

Each day begins at 9.00am with an audience meditation conducted by healer and spiritual coach Richard Yiap, who is also one of the speakers. The first day’s program concludes with a special energy transmission by intuitive advisor Elisabeth Robinson and the conference wraps up with a sound healing by ‘sound oracle’ Ananara Zolta.

There are also two special workshops conducted by Rosemary Guiley on the Friday night and Linda Backman on Sunday January 15.  Verandah Magazine publisher and editor Candida Baker will be the  MC for the talks in the Cavanbah Room.

The third International Afterlife Conference will be held at the Byron Theatre (Community Centre) between January 13-14. For more information about the program and the full list of speakers go to: afterlifeexplorers

To purchase tickets go to: afterlifeexplorers.tickets

To win one of two free two-day tickets, leave a comment in the box below saying why you would like to go to the conference, or on Verandah Magazine’s Facebook page: facebook.com/verandahmagazine

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