Spiritual Awakening through Mystical Encounters! With Ishtar

Ishtar 0:00

I woke up one night, I was initially in sleep paralysis, and I did something to kick myself out of it. I didn't want to be in sleep paralysis, and this rather dark figure was moving towards me. And years later, actually, when the films of the Harry Potter books came out, and they did the Dementors I was like, are they reading my mind? It had the same effect, I had this sort of very dark entity that felt like almost trying to keep me in fear and feed off the fear. And the advice was just open completely into love. Opening a vast bright light that I really didn't know I had in there.

Jannecke Øinæs 0:42

Hello, Ishtar a warm welcome to the show.

Ishtar 0:46

Thank you very much for having me on. Yeah, Jannecke.

Jannecke Øinæs 0:50

I'm excited to speak to you today. I know part of your story, which has been fascinating, fascinating me. And we work together before you created a like meditation for my membership. And I'm so happy to connect again, to go really in depth of your NDA II experience that you had quite early, actually, I think it was around 13 years old. And today, you are an a shire monk. And maybe we'll learn what that is later on. And you are a gardener, a writer, meditation teacher, Intuitive Astrologer doing all kinds of beautiful spiritual work. And it seems like this came from this nd e experience but also that you've been quite open, that you've had quite a lot of mystical experiences, even back to your childhood, like very early memories. And I find that so fascinating. Like when we're children, what do they actually see? Because we do forget them that annoys me so much that I do for get all the impressions, but you have some memories. So could we start there that you share a little bit about how you experience life as a child with these extraordinary experiences?

Ishtar 2:14

Absolutely. I'm happy to help you to start there. And well, let's see. I mean, one is a bit of a caveat, whenever I share these stories at the same time, I also, I like to communicate that I think in many ways, I'm just a very normal child as well. And so and I say that partly because a lot of the stuff that I was experiencing, you know, you kind of accept the world that you're born into. And a lot of this stuff is like, Okay, this happens. This happens. This is interesting. You never think of it as extraordinary. Anyhow, I'll, I'll jump into the stuff. But for me, it really, that sort of stuff started rather early. It was not until I was in I think an AP Psychology class in high school that I discovered that it wasn't supposed to have memories before age two and a half, or something like that. And so this stuff happens well before two and a half. I think the first one I often think of is when I was in my crib. And this was before I could crawl out of my crib. This is this is this is also before I think I was wielding language as well. But I was in the crib just chilling out probably four in the morning or something like that, because I used to get up really early. And I'd be sitting there and I just been some sort of interesting naturalistic infant meditation. Anyhow, I was used to having guests and visitors in the bedroom, they would go sleep in the bed that was across from the crib. And one night this lady came in who had white kind of somewhat poofy white hair that looked like my you know, living grandmother's hair. But this this lady was considerably shorter than my grandmother, she had a blue night gown on with some sort of white lacy border on top. She also had a particularly strange sort of bluish silverish kind of glow around her. And I wasn't frightened by this. I didn't think I had a concept of what a ghost was. I didn't. There's no sense to be afraid. And so I was just sitting there watching her and she walked by my crib. She didn't look at me, but I kind of felt her. I felt her regard for me, I felt some kind of attention that felt very positive. And I was just watching her and she kept walking through my bedroom and then she walked out the back wall of my bedroom which would have just gone into the backyard or nowhere. And that I'd never seen anybody walked through a wall before in life. And I thought wow, that's that's really interesting. Think. So there she went, I just kind of referenced that, partly because I think I had some kind of notion that whenever I'm able to get out of this, you know, crib contraption, I will try to do the same myself. And it was probably a few years, two to three years after that probably one of the first times I was looking at a family picture album with my mother, that the little lady walked by the crib, by I noticed her, it's like, hey, you know, there's, there's, there's there, she isn't that my mother said, Oh, that's your, that's your great grandmother, she would have really loved you. But you know, she died a year before you were born. So there you go. So that that was a really benign way to have a lot of that stuff kicked off. Because as I went through childhood, of, you know, I kind of had visitors coming into the room, and sometimes visitors when I was out and about or I would, you know, see people who apparently weren't physically there, and other people weren't necessarily seeing themselves. And, you know, this kind of went on, I thankfully, I watched the, you know, the film Ghostbusters original movie. And that proved to be, I think, a psychological crutch for me somehow, having having a kind of a comedy film, about irreverent, half con people dealing with ghosts, was was a psychological bomb that allowed me to handle what I think was kind of an intense situation emotionally intense, so that I wouldn't have beings walk into the room. And then I would, eventually I would develop this procedure, where I would sit in this tiny little rocking chair that fit me and I would have them sit across from me, and I would close my eyes, and I would go into just kind of go backwards, I didn't have any meditation instruction or anything like that, I'll just close my eyes, I find myself relaxing backwards into this big vastness. And inside that big vastness, then I would, I would sort of projected in front of me, in a way for the purpose of helping the beings. And by doing that, they would, when I would open my eyes, they would, they would be gone, they'd be somewhere else they would have moved on. So yeah, this was not a trained procedure was just something that that kind of came. And a lot of this stuff would seem maybe improvised, I suspect later and becoming interested in, you know, reincarnation, and that sort of thing, I suspected that some of these things that, that I sort of just sort of knew to do, as a child were, you know, maybe potentially bit smuggled in from somewhere else, you know, God, God knows, I was lucky that my parents encouraged imagination, actually grew up in sort of a somewhat rationalistic household, which I was glad, you know, science and critical thinking, and these sorts of things were sort of encouraged. And so, you know, I had these experiences and and, you know, half of my mind was, you know, really like, oh, shit, this is happening. The other half was like, this is probably just in my imagination. So it's fine. You know, it's, it's, you know, I just have must have a vivid imagination. And so I think that actually allowed me to roll with it. And also not be happy, so disturbed, as as I might have been. And so, you know, kind of had both both both sides in there.

Jannecke Øinæs 8:45

Yeah, if I just may jump in, because I'm really curious about how these beings look like. So if you could explain that from the perspective of someone who has never experienced that. I'm always curious how you see them? Is it sort of inside your third eye that you see it with? Sort of your spiritual self, your Astral self, that you are connected to a wider consciousness? Or do they appear very physical? And do you have any perspectives on why you would see them? Is that because you have an expanded consciousness? Because I'm always curious, like, why do you see them and why don't I see?

Ishtar 9:32

Okay, so, maybe I'll start with start with that last one. Well, one I really don't know. I mean, I used to just say because I was born on Halloween, I would use that, you know, explain all you know, oh, you know, Halloween birth, you know, you see aliens, whatever, you know, something like that. But I think part of it, even especially the really early memory stuff, like I remember not knowing how to speak and forming words that I remember. How to walk and early memories I'm not supposed to have later, when I was reading Yogananda autobiography, at least he forwarded the the idea that that, you know, people would this really early memory, probably Yogi's, another lifetime put putting in, you know, time in the cave, as it were. And I think there's something of that carried over, because there was also a lot of naturalistic meditation that would happen, and you don't underneath all these phenomena, I had this sense of sort of an underlying unity, with like, the bookshelf with with my, with my mom, with my dad and my sister with, with the trees. You know, that was that was kind of like, a foundation. And that foundation, I think, created a lot of openness that also translated up here. And so the the first part of the question, how do you see these things? It comes in a few varieties for me, and I think everybody's different on this count. But I think probably the majority were, as you were describing it, in a sense, sort of, in the third eye, I think, which which also, you know, made me very skeptical, because that's not you know, as, as restful, maybe though, there were 25 to 30% of the cases, which were as if with a real person, which, I don't know which one disturbed me more, actually.

Jannecke Øinæs 11:19

Did it disturb you?

Ishtar 11:22

Oh, yeah. God, yeah. Yeah. Especially when I was a kid. Yeah, like, because some of the characters, like, if you ask how they appeared, some of them they weren't, they would appear as if they were an actual person with with regular features, but others would would appear with kind of what I think sort of exaggerated features. Like, maybe half their face would be blacked out, or something like that, or there would be one time I was in Los Angeles, and I don't wasn't a real person, I tried to sort of chase them. I saw a man in 1940s dress with a with a heroin needles stuck in his arm, you know, and stuff like that, or I'd see people with with sort of thoughts. I think pictures from their lives that were significant whirling around their head, or I would, I would sort of feel people and some of them, I don't think they necessarily had great lives, like they had committed some heinous crimes, perhaps. And they were afraid. And, you know, they were, they were maybe coming to some, you know, eight year old, or seven year old, for help, for whatever reason. And so, you know, dealing with sort of dead disturbed adults who done nasty things to people wasn't always, that was not like, comfortable always for me, but I was stout enough, that something in me was stout enough, at least, that when when push came to shove, I was able to kind of sort of manage them as if I was a 40 something year old, professional at it, you know, like, you know, sit in the chair, you know, do the thing, we're going to hook you up, you know, you don't need to be afraid there's no, there's no hell in the way that it's been described to you, you know, you this stuff would just kind of come out of my mind is we'd have these telepathic communication, sometimes very rapid fire, and it's going to do this thing. And it's going to be fine. And then I would say these things with, you know, internally with such certitude. So that was it interesting what once I had this, I've shared this other thing I know, maybe moving on to other territory, but this was one of the most significant events for me, really. And I was I seven or eight. I can't remember exactly what early very early grade school, though, and I woke up one night. So before the start, I was initially in sleep paralysis, and I did something to kick myself out of it. I didn't want to be in sleep paralysis. I don't know how it worked that up. Anyways, this this rather dark figure, I featureless dark figure was moving towards me. And years later, actually, when the film's of the Harry Potter books came out, and they they did the Dementors I was like, what were they? Were they reading my mind, you know, the art director, JK Rowling, or, you know, the people that went into that, because it had the same effect, I had this sort of very dark entity that felt like, you know, my body was being turned to ice and it was almost trying to keep me in fear and feed off the fear. But which was interesting, but then something, you know, just came up, you know, from from the deep recesses of my own consciousness, like, like, with how to deal with this being said, and the advice was just open completely into love. Which, you know, it's one of those sort of, easier said than done. bits, bits of advice, but but somehow with the advice, there was the capacity to do that, as well. That's exactly so we found myself just opening as if I was like, opening wow, you know, kind of a, you know, a vast bright light that I really didn't know I had in there and And then the thing that was trying to you know scare the hell out of me was its itself appeared to be incredibly frightened. So it ran the hell out of my bedroom. And I never saw it again. So that that this is the sort of a two part story. So that was incredibly empowering. To have that sense that this this, I don't know if you use the word demonic or something like that. So this sort of rather dark creature that was trying to feed off me just, I could I could scare it myself by by being this channel of love, is it seven or eight year old was like, okay, all right, we're cooking with gas, you know. So that must have been about like a year, I think year a little bit under a year later, I was still kind of early elementary school. Another being came in that that seemed very much like that first mean, like, like it was a, it showed itself reappeared as sort of a, sort of a sludgy, fuzzy black brown, like a dark, and it was felt it felt very depressed. And it felt and it came in and, you know, kind of told me like, you know, I've, you know, I've heard about you from, from the other sounds like, okay, you know, and but it wasn't, wasn't trying to try to move on me like, like, the first one had, it wasn't in some kind of predatory thing. It was definitely I could tell it was kind of opening to ask for help with some kind. And, without even getting to the next thing, sort of the words just kind of came out of my out of my mind, which was, yeah, I can help you I can, you come and work for me. And if you work for me, that that'll work to get you on to the sort of your next evolutionary stage. And that those are the thoughts that came out. And then that and then I said, what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to essentially serve as the bouncer, I want you to stand guard, you know, around the perimeter of my room, but especially at the door, where they seem to like to come in, I want to make sure that you make sure that you only bring serious, only serious entities that actually want to move on get to come in. I don't want to deal with anybody else. But people who really are ready to let go. And can you do that for me? And they said absolutely. So they signed up. And they they were kind of sometimes it was a little bit disconcerting, actually got sometimes I would often I wouldn't see them, but sometimes I'd be walking out, you know, my bedroom door, and then I would be more open state of consciousness. And I'd be like, oh, yeah, it's a guy. It's my bouncer. He's good. You know, he's, he's, you know, a couple of friends on sleepovers, you know, asked me, Is there some like Ghost by the side of your door? And I'd be like, yeah, he's cool. And so, you know, I still thought this was like, half in my imagination, right? Because I'm, I'm being raised on science and verifying things. And I thought that was good. You know, I didn't, I didn't want the world to turn into like a crazy place where people just believe everything and we'll burn people, right? That seems like bribes. And so I was a fan of the Enlightenment era, but And yet this shit was still going on. The third part of the story is years later, I'm 17. I'm about to turn my room into an ashram, basically. Because I've decided I need to meditate six hours a day, I'm gonna give my whole heart, mind body and soul to the goal of enlightenment. I'm doing this and I, if I can't move to the Himalayas, or wherever, I'm going to turn my own room into a spiritual center. So I got rid of most of my possessions, which seems like a good idea. Sort of, like I didn't even know I didn't want my bed to be on legs. I thought oh, that's that's that's vulgar, garish. These these people need their beds on legs, you know, they're not serious, stripped it down. And I had a series of I had a series of three mornings in a row, where I woke up in a state of sleep paralysis seeing an entity and the first morning there was was a garish sweater man. And the first morning I had a couple others that hung out in the room and did a similar job to the first guy. I had this fellow who was the lady No, it was Edwardian lady was the first lady. And it was this lady who also would freak me out. But I knew she was on my side, walk toward my bed and just decided to stand right behind my head, you know, which is not cool. And I was trying to look up at her and break out of sleep paralysis, but I felt only benevolence from her which was interesting. And the second morning in a row, garish sweater man who was you know, smiled more, some guy who I think lifted the house in the 50s through the 70s walked behind and I was able to stay awake a bit longer. And and I was able to have hear him tell me. You know, on behalf of the other ladies like we're actually thanking you it's been lovely removed And on now. And, and by the third morning, it was the dude by by the door dude. And when he appeared, it was quite poignant actually. Because when he initially appeared to me and most of the time, he was a sort of undifferentiated mass of felt like, you know, trauma really had appeared as sort of this black sludgy sort of substance. And when, when I saw him that morning, and this time, I was fully out of sleep paralysis as well, half of his half of his body and half of his face had that had the coloring of a human face and had features. And on the on the human side of the face, a tear was running down as his eye. And he said, you know, we did it. Thank you. So you won't need my protection ever again. You went on to explain that because you've turned this room into an ashram. You know, just entities will not be entering because whatever, you know, they somehow, somehow the ways just going to be clear for you to do your, your meditation work. And I said, okay, and I never saw him again. But it was, it was actually very poignant. To see that a tyranny on his face, kind of look like maybe look like the makeup in Brandon Lee's version of the crow a little bit, you know, to describe it. So that was, yeah, that was, to me, those were very significant bookends are an ending of the chapter of having to see spirits and ghosts in that room, grew up growing up.

Jannecke Øinæs 21:44

Wow, what a fascinating story. And, I mean, what a responsibility for a young boy to take on such an assignment from the other side, dealing with this, and having no one to speak about it with probably because he said, like, you were raised in, you know, a scientific way, although there were kind of an openness there. But I still think that Oh, my goodness, like that pressure for a small boy, that must have been, like you must have been, or are a very mature soul to be able to handle that. And then I know that you had an N D, E, I'd love to hear it, the details of it. And I'm curious about how that sort of plays into all the goals. Because it's really interesting that you've had such a contact with, you know, Lost Souls and Dark Souls, and I get so many questions that you know, is this part of part of your soul journey to sort of rescue these souls? But then this nd e comm so just, let's jump into that, and then we can explore this further.

Ishtar 22:56

Yeah, well, that that was that was a complete wake up call. And, you know, like, like, most of us, I think it may be happening a bit more consciously for me at age seven. Or, you know, like, I was, like, let's be an ego, like, more like, That looks like fun. Let's let's be one of these adults with their, you know, stuck in like, one particular personality or whatever, identify that look alike and all that fun. So, I went into that in earnest. And, and also, like, so many, you know, had a rough time at school. So I decided to, you know, I was I was going to be kind of, you know, good at like putting on masks and being likeable and doing all this BS, especially as you know, teenagers do that a lot. And so by the time I was 13, I was damn good at it. Maybe not damn good. But it's, you know, much better than it was years years earlier.

Jannecke Øinæs 23:47

You weren't good at like being an adult or trying to be, well, I didn't quite ..

Ishtar 23:53

know, I was, I was, I was good. I read right. I was, I was I was good at playing the fake game that pretty much every human being does. You know, and not nobody really says what they mean for the most part and people, you know, you know, acting. I mean, most most people are fantastic actors, as Marlon Brando would point out from time to time, you know, and, and so, I needed a wake up call and had no idea that I did. And, you know, like, at HP by age 13, a lot of this stuff was the supernatural stuff was not as present I was kind of pushing to a certain extent a lot of in a way. I wanted to be, you know, good at sports and good at school and have friends and, you know, the stuff that, you know, teenagers, young teenagers and tweens kind of want and then you know, it was it was like the almost the last day of school which was of course, a fantastic time of year. Summers summer breaks around the corner. And I you know, had actually just play ate the first sort of scrimmage baseball game because I was loved playing baseball. And I had broken my arm getting hit by a pitch. So, you know, came home with a sling. And so I would that would that was my big complaint, oh, you know, kind of woe is me. And I was I was talking with my, my mother before going to bed and just out of nowhere, for me, out of the clear blue sky, came the words out of my mouth, you're going to die soon, which was didn't really make any kind of rational sense. Because I was never worried about my mother's health. And I would worry about my dad's health. But not my mother's that was never, never a thing. And it was never an anxiety that I ever had or even really thought. So I was taken aback by it so to was my mother, which I found interesting, because she was a very formidable, you know, very intelligent, six foot tall woman. You know, and so she was taken aback for like, a couple of seconds, and she sort of pulled it together and said, you know, don't worry, I'll be, I'll be around for as long as you need me. Is that, okay? You know, that, you know, it's like, where that couple of went to bed. That but then it woke up the next morning with with almost almost cartoonishly in, you know, just kind of springing up vertical and, and panting as if I'd been running. And, and at that, at the very moment, my mother and father were walking outside my door. And so it kind of got their attention by saying, you know, there's, there's something I gotta tell you. You know, there's something I gotta tell you, but then I was extremely frustrated, because, like, I couldn't remember what the damn message was, I was supposed to tell them. And so I was I was there just with a lot of anxiety. You know, like, Oh, my God, what is the thing? What is it, you know, and they had to come in the room and sort of call me down, took like, three to five minutes to calm me down. And then they went off on their way they took these morning walks together, and I went and, you know, prepared myself to go to school, had a fine day at school, came home with, you know, awards, which was always a big thing for me. And we were taking my week, after school, we took my sister to her new job, sort of at the edge of town, at the new movie theater. And as we were pulling out of the parking lot and sort of crossing one of those four lane highways of another car was behind a car that wasn't going to hit us, you know, that my mom's fault. I and, you know, there just happened to be a car that started speeding, and in a place where they shouldn't and we couldn't see them. And so just looking to talk to my mother that I was actually going to say Could we not put in the Luther Vandross tape because I've been hearing too much Luther Vandross. Looking to my left, there was a big old Lincoln, right about to hit us. And, and so everything that that came after was completely unexpected to me. Like for instance, I thought that, you know, I was pretty sure that this was the end of my life, like this, this is the things going really fast. And, and instead of panicking or seizing up or tightening up, everything started to go really loose. And my mind was sort of going into even sinking very quickly into this big vast space and I had time for, you know, one or two thoughts, the first thought was shit. The second thought was, I really thought this life was going to go more than 13 years. And that was an interesting thought, because it was coming from a much deeper place than I was used to functioning at and it was not coming from the commentator in the box up there, it was coming from that deeper place. And as soon as I had that thought this this process of was something I was doing, but the whole life flashing before the eyes thing happened which I was always very skeptical that that was an actual thing that could happen. And I was like, Ah, how and and but there was an only only here it wasn't what I read about on TV or you know, saw on TV or anything like that. It was I was seeing my whole life. Totally no gaps, seamless flow and and I was experiencing things in ways that I didn't I wasn't able to experience at the time I was seeing. For instance what I mean by that is sometimes I would have these these in the scene. I was feeling everything all my subterfuges and then behind the subterfuge, I would feel this veil spool of joy that that I had been ignoring in the moment. And then sometimes I would be feeling the all the other people who were part of the memory, I would be feeling inside them in ways I certainly was not. When these when these memories were laid down with me also was this, I won't say it's like Jiminy Cricket or, you know, like, like a conscience, it was far bigger than that there was there was this, I could almost call this a holy, completely objective aspect of self that I had experienced before in life, but I often didn't want to experience it. Because usually, it was in the context of, you know, that's a bad idea. Like, that's unwise, maybe you don't do that. It's like, I'm going to do it, you know. But here with me in this in this setting, it was it was a delight to be close to this omniscient, all seeing wholly objective, vast flavor of consciousness, and it was basically guiding me sort of sort of taking me through the life and pointing stuff out saying focus on this, or look at this, or both, both the cons and the pros. And the cons. Of course, it was no, no, it wasn't judgmental, really, at all. It's just sort of, yeah, this is what you did there. We were in fear there, look at that, look at how you lied, you know, because you were afraid, or look, look at how you acted from there. And, and so you know, that when as we would see those things, it was if they were being peeled off of me, it was and it was as if I had been carrying all of this weight, even as a 13 year old with a relatively unchallenging life, I had been carrying this weight that I had not known about. And then then there'd be times when it would show me these these beautiful moments that I would not have selected myself as sort of the great moments of a life. And these moments tended to be ones where I had, I was on sort of unconsciously having profound mystical experiences. Like, there was one in particular when I was on the recess, sort of the asphalt, or playground, and it was just starting to rain, but we're still out for recess. And I was looking into this puddle with the drops falling into it somehow, in that moment, I had fallen into this vast, vast silence. And at the moment, I just I didn't recognize it for for how important it was. Because it's not a flashy experience. But the this, this sort of narrator who was curating my life with me said that, you'd let yourself go all the way in, and that's what's what's basically, that's what you're here for, you know, stuff like that. So we went all the way back, you know, luckily, 13 years, goes by even faster, and a few milliseconds of the short life. And we were back to the ran through the tape. And it was as if, like, I had had a, a full, a full skin, which was invisible, but weighed everything taken off of me. And so in that moment, right before impact, it was probably the most alive I had ever been in life. And I had this sense, and I even had the words then which which was strange for, for me at 13, I have to say, but I had the sense was, Oh, my God, everything has been made of love the whole time. You know, in that moment, it was just so obvious that why was I Why was I sort of resisting so much, when all I was resisting was was this big, infinite vastness, this this love that was in every every mode of dust. As I still remember, the to this day, I still remember the, the scene of the sky, through the through the windshield, the clouds, you know, my mother's shoulder, everything that I was seeing that scene, I still remember it just in that sort of total quick clarity. And then, you know, the impact came. And, you know, you could stop me at any time to my head went into the, the car window, so that's what knocked me out and concussed me and I woke up and they were taking us out, sort of cutting the car apart with those big Skilsaw type things. And, you know, I remember being pulled out by these by these EMTs. And, you know, just I remember noting Ma, they really know how to handle the human body. Gotta move me around, and we're, we're in the ambulance. And, you know, my mother called out to me a couple times, which I think was amazing. This This touched me more than all the mystical aspects of this was, was the sense that she was she was sticking around. Basically, just to make sure that I was okay. I didn't You know, register that at the time, I was also good cost. And she asked me a couple times if I'm okay. And I answered twice. And the second time, I know she registered it, because her breathing pattern changed. And, you know, from from sort of struggling to very even. And this was part of the scene was also interesting and later found out as what was in other sorts of I don't know, nd II cases because I had sort of dual perception, I was both in my body lying flat with, you know, on the gurney, looking up, answered questions. And at the same time, I was sort of hovering at the top of the, of the ambulance, no particular place almost kind of everywhere. And so when, when she let go, it was as I felt her, you know, I felt her like, like a, like a weird wind, you know, but not really a physical wind. Like, I want to also use the word astral wind, and just for lack of a better term, felt felt to go and I didn't put that together at the time. I, you know, I wasn't thinking anything, really. But I suppose I wasn't thinking that this was the last time I was going to talk to my mother, you know, I guess I figured we'd be okay. And, and so then we got to the hospital. And it's kind of a blur. And I know that we're working on my mom behind the curtains to my left, while I was still sort of strapped onto a gurney. And I found out that horrible news found out the news from from our dad, you know, that at our mother couldn't make it. And so that was just, you know, cannon ball of grief to the gut. And I think the next next day and a half, two days, was was still like the cannon, the cannon ball wasn't really good for much, much, you know, human interaction, or all of that, or that sort of thing. And after that, over the next summer, it was it was a summer, you know, following an event that would definitely change the course of my life. Because that that stuff that happened right before impact kind of stayed with me, that that sense of this sort of different senses of this vastness, that I that I had been mostly ignoring the past seven years, really, and that I really didn't know that I knew when I was a kid, but I didn't know what it was. So didn't pay it much bind, or think it's significant. And so I would be going through the stages of grief and the way that Elisabeth Kubler Ross, we had that book on my mom's bookshelf on death and dying, so it's kind of go to that. Other books, I'd be punching out punching at the wall of my garage, and in fits of anger, you know, saying, I really didn't necessarily believe in a Supreme Being but I said, if there is when I'm really pissed, you know, why, why my mother could take it from me, etc. And even when I was pounding on the garage, there was this very bizarre sense of peace inside me, and, and so at first, I thought this was shock, which, which made sense to me, like, okay with that, but then the shot kept getting better. So when I started to notice that I would, I would play these little games, where I would move by awareness. And, and, and so it was as if I would go, I could just go inside at will. And I would find, I kept going down this almost infinitely long and infinitely wide. hallway, that was that was bigger than the entire world out here. And what I would put my attention in that I would have the secondary experience of having when I could only call bliss, move up my body, move up my spine, move up the top of my head. I also had, I wasn't really afraid of anything anymore. I figured it's just because, you know, we got taken, you know, real, real close to death and survived. And that's probably part of it. But I would try to be manipulative. You know, try to I would try to be fake and I couldn't even do it. I would start laughing. Because it was it was so patently I something in me just do that. This is patently ridiculous, you know, why would you do that? You know, that's, that's so silly. You know, why would you why would you leave your center? More or less? Why would Why would you leave that? Why would you leave the bliss and joy, the science of like, yeah, why would I you know, in that phase ah, and so I had that going on all the time that I'm still a teenager who's grieving his mother's death and trying to trying to hang out with friends. So it was an interesting cocktail to have all of that going on at the same time.

Jannecke Øinæs 39:54

Wow. Thank you for sharing. I had no idea that actually your mother passed asked. And I'm curious when you can see spirits and did see spirits? Did you also see your mother later on?

Ishtar 40:12

Oh, not at that time. And that that was a point of immense frustration, of immense frustration. Because I thought, you know, surely with all these, you know, randoms around, like, I feel proud to see my tear Mother, you know, to give me some kind of solace. But but, you know, there were there was one night where I was sure it's good to see her, but then I fell asleep. And then I woke up with the most bizarre feeling, but I could chalk that to, to having seen my mother. So I basically felt Oh, I guess not, then yeah, like, a couple years later, I think I was 14 or 15. I went to this workshop billed as meet your spirit guides down at the local metaphysical bookshop, I was not expecting any, any actual experiences from this, right. There's that anyways, I did what they told me to do that some some like exercise, or meditation or something. And then I was sitting in the chair, and then I went out the top of my head. But there was a tube and I was like, what the throne up as if I was going on this, like infinitely high glass elevator. And I went up to some floor, and I was in a room. And there were these beings who had like, like charts and graphs of by life up on a wall. And they were talking about me. And then and I said, I kind of thought something up there. And they said, like, Oh, good job. But nice, nice, nice, nice move, but you're not supposed to be up here. You know, don't we, you know, don't don't bother, you've got everything you need down there, you don't need to contact us. And also you won't be seeing your mother, you know, for a while. You're fine. They should be totally fine. Go down, you know, use your resources, you're fine. And I was like, okay, that it went down in my 15 year old body, you know. And then I sort of think the workshop leader. So like, that was really good. You know, kind of like, you know, went on my way. And so so yeah.

Jannecke Øinæs 42:20

Do you think perhaps you didn't get to see her? Partly because she has moved on?

Ishtar 42:26

I saw her later

Jannecke Øinæs 42:28

Yeah?

Ishtar 42:28

Oh, yes. I saw her late. I pretty sure she, I mean, she may be in another body. But you know, that's, that's another thing. I think that when you die, you're in sort of a timeless realm. And you can you can, your soul can both be incarnate in a body and potentially also come and visitation. I think it's maybe conceivable you could even run into your own ghost from another life. You know, then, like, Get a move on it. So thanks. Thanks a lot anyways, but that's very speculative. All of this very speculative. But no, actually, years later, I this was years, this was after being in monastery Well, one. One was kind of quasi, but maybe in the deepest I was in my meditation, teacher training, which is the sort of long period where we would meditate I was meditating like, 10 610 to 16, if I wasn't sleeping 10 to 16 hours a day for five, six months. And like, about halfway in, I went to the bathroom. And I, you know, wash my hands and everything was looked up the mirror. And then, you know, it was an unusual way of looking in the mirror, because it was filled with this kind of golden light. Like, that was not the lighting of the room at all. And it's like, huh, and, and then in my own face, was and you know, of course, there's a lot of like physical resemblance. And I didn't have I looked a bit more androgynous at age 20 than I do in this big beard. Now, I saw her face, but it was it was it was her face in the sense of like, I was somehow having this experience of the point in consciousness, where the soul of my mother and my soul were essentially the same in a way. And it was that was a proof. And that was the words I could stick on to that, because it was a it was a profoundly moving experience. It was a sense of, you know, without without having her show up as an apparition saying, like, good jobs and assumption like that. That was it was a sense of this is this is what the whole game was for. You know, this, we need we needed to get you here. You know, we needed to get you into a meditation teacher training that you're that you're putting you're at at age 20. Which, which, which if she had lived and I'd had a normal life. Now, I think I would have been too happy. I probably would have had mystical experiences, but I would have probably become a lawyer or something. And you know how to have another sort of another sort of good life, but I wouldn't have been I pushed to meditate six hours a day as an 18 year old. You know, and and I'm glad in the sense of glad that happened. So that was that was profound that at age 20, and then later, I was on my honeymoon and Florence, Italy, this was 10 years after that. And my wife really hurt her ankle badly. And so she couldn't come up the tower, but she really wanted me to go up the tower. And I was like, I don't know if I can help you have to go up that tower, the Giotto bell tower by the by the Duomo in Florence. It's like, okay, all right. Okay, I'll do it. And so I walked up the tower. And then I realized, I remember that when I was a kid was a boy, my mother used to frequently tell me, been out of my mind, she used to say, like, when you graduate high school, we're going to go on, we're gonna go to Florence together. And, and, you know, we're going to, you know, have a vacation, because it was one of being an exchange student in the early 70s was one of her, you know, sort of very joyful periods, you wanted to share that with me. And then in remembering that I realized these are very narrow stairs, chances are, you know, my some, you know, my feet are going over the places where hers had gone, then I came, somehow I was I was alone up at the top. And I like everybody, you know, so full, and that was just me, looking out out the window over Florence, and I smelled her perfume, which was, which was bizarre. But it was definitely her people had forgotten, of course, what that it smelled like, but once it came back, there was nobody around wafting perfume anywhere. It just, it just showed up. And I felt this almost a sense of being embraced, you know, of which was interesting. And, and it was right at sunset. So you know that that's very subjective. But for me, that was very interesting. So that was part two, part three with my mother was was more recent it was, while I'd been out here in Portugal, it must have been 2020 or 2021, those two years kind of blend together for me. Anyways, I was driving home from the grocery store. We've got this sort of dirt road. And I looked over to my right, and I think I was looking at the one of the farm fields, and then I somehow was struck with a sense, I need to look behind myself. So I was driving very slowly, there was no one around so kind of basically stopped the car looked behind me. And this was a full body thing, not not a third eye thing, but a body's in space, blocking, you know, the view of what would be behind them otherwise, it was my mother, and it was my then recently departed grandmother, my mom's mom, and they were, they were appearing younger than they were when they, when they both passed, I think my, my mother, I don't know, must have been 20s or 30s. Or something, maybe that around the time she had been like 32 or 31 in her life. And my grandmother looked you know, was also looked maybe 2030 years younger than she was when she passed. And they were again, they were this gold theme came back. They were surrounded with this just extremely beautiful. Golden lightness, extremely beautiful, because it had almost carried feeling energy with it. Like, like, it was as if it was a musical note at the same time that it was a it was a color. And they were just smiling and laughing and looking at me as if they were intoxicated with bliss. And and it was three seconds. One with us. Three, maybe three and a half seconds, that I was just looking at them from my driver's seat. And there they were. And I you know, they weren't saying anything to me. I think they weren't even barely thinking anything. But they were there. They were almost selling me were great. You're great. It's all good. Basically, you know, and we're so glad. Yeah, it wasn't really more specific that I kind of, you know, maybe wanted to have a sense that there was we're so glad you're as crazy as you are something like that. But that really wasn't honestly part of it. And then and then they just as soon as they were there, they blanked out. I mean, like with that with us with a weird crackling sound. And then it was just the view of my backseat of the car, and the road and everything. And then I sort of waited for about a second to see if it had settled and it was totally set up so that it just drove the rest of the way home. So that was that was a long story. But you know, there's the

Jannecke Øinæs 49:46

Yeah. I think yeah, these these stories are so important that they show us that life goes on right if we're open to that thought and open to that perspective and It's so healing, I think so many people are grieving longer and deeper and harder, because they think it's totally over that the relationship will never be, you will never see your loved ones again. And that's a difficult thought. That's a very difficult thought. So yeah, so it's just so inspiring. Now, I'm curious, what you would say, after all these mystical experiences, what is the deepest insight you have received, like the deepest insight that has amazed you about this universe?

Ishtar 50:35

Hmm, I almost I almost can't even use the word insight, or I have to use it very loosely. Or maybe the way it's really meant to be used, because it ain't anything that's readily translatable to the intellect, or to words, it's more of the profound sense of wholeness, the added to that the sense that of everything is made out of love. And, and in the almost the sense that, you know, like, when I would be depressed as a as a teenager, like, you know, the sense that everything's working against me, right, you know, like, Ah, you that's awful, right. And this would be the opposite of that. This would be the the, in some ways that the magical sense that oddly, strangely, weirdly, although and, you know, I was maybe trained to think of this body is a randomized, insignificant accident, this you know, the, the magic is, I know, in some ways, here's the thing you kind of are in a non sort of, egotistical way you kind of are the center of a grand cosmic play. And what's so has everyone and everything else. And, and, you know, the sense that you had, there's one, there's this transcendent oneness that can be experienced, not just intellectually, but in a bone marrow heart, sort of way. And that not only is there is that there, but it actually in a weird way, also deeply cares about the tiny little wave that we are of this vast ocean, there's this ocean of consciousness and the game of life is to come back into it and know it.

Jannecke Øinæs 52:28

Right. I've been thinking about it, sometimes there's a way to know, did you feel that it was God that you met on the other side that took you through your life review? Or was it more like, Have you thought about that may be your higher self, or?

Ishtar 52:45

I yeah, I mean, those of you that sense both of those, I, if I use the word God, there's all sorts of different facets of God, you know, you i the computer, the daisies outside, but I would say it kind of felt like if I was putting it that those terms were the higher self melts into, into sort of the universal divinity, that that's, that's what that flavor, kind of felt like, like where the most evolved version of whatever we want to call this particular consciousness where this where this note, you know, falls into the universal sound. That's what it felt like,

Jannecke Øinæs 53:30

I love to hear about those life reviews. And I love that they exist, because to me, it's a testament to how important our lives are, and every minute and every choice. And I'm sometimes amazed that I remember so little of my life, like what did I do yesterday? What did I do yesterday, that is so hard to remember what I did yesterday. And then I'm so happy that it is collected somewhere, you know that our lives matter that every moment matters, because have been so lived, even though we don't remember all the moments like I'm 44 years old, like, I've experienced so much, where does it all go? But it is memorized somewhere with a loving presence. And yeah, I'm just so fascinated by that. And that you experienced that, you know, when it comes to time, in such a short amount of time, in a few seconds, zip, all that. That blows my mind. Now, did you like having that life review? Has that helped you in the way that you feel that you have become a better person that it's easier to be human? Because I could imagine that when you've experienced that that that transform, the way you perceive yourself like that? For instance, you saw yourself being in fear and laughed at yourself or being that or had another perspective. Does that help you in your humaneness today? In all kinds of situations?

Ishtar 55:12

Oh, yeah, God, absolutely. I would also say, looking back at my teen years, which certainly followed that, I would then be person who probably needed as much help as I could get in terms of, I mean, it's like, you know, a good robust, you know, nd II as that was, wasn't enough to keep me from effort going into crazy, reactive mode. I mean, it was not a by no means a one and done thing to me it was it was an alarm clock to try to get my ass on a meditation cushion. And get me going. And I actually, actually some people who noticed that there was a difference in my consciousness in the months after which then it was great for three months, I was like, you know, like, really clean and not not velcroing and all these reactions and triggers. But So somebody asked me like, Hey, you do actually seem different? You know, how do we this make this happen for me? And it's like, I sort of jokingly said, Well, I guess you could try to should try to go get in a car accident and just almost die, but not die. And then we both laughed, because that's such a terrible idea. You know, so,

Jannecke Øinæs 56:24

yeah. All right. Yeah, it seems like this has been part of your life purpose to do what you're doing today. And that sometimes we can go astray. Have you had some thoughts about that? Like destiny and free?

Ishtar 56:36

Well, oh, god apps Absolutely. Have. And I'll throw the destiny and freewill debate over here, because that's a that's an interesting rabbit hole. But I mean, certainly, it put my life in a different perspective, like some of the things that interested me. Like, when I was five or four at the at the public library, my sister, we get one of those time, like books that open it. And if I saw Buddhist monks, or if they saw monks doing sort of, to mow practice, with the snow around them, you know, I was I was fixed in. I mean, I mean, there were things like that, that, you know, they would deeply affect me in the moment, and then I would just kind of, you know, go about being a, you know, a kid in Wisconsin, right? I didn't think that such a such a kid could have that kind of destiny, and didn't think of it. But then after getting into it, I was like, oh, okay, though, those do appear like they were they were breadcrumbs. And they were echoes from something that I've been doing maybe for many lives of ad apps. Absolutely. And to answer the question, yeah. To go back to the previous question, like, how does having a life review changed things? I'd say like, Absolutely. Anytime anyone, given gets a little taste of say, the sense of themselves, the aspect of themselves that has deathless and infinite and, and always at peace, anytime anybody gets into that even a little bit that, that their whole life can change on that. I mean, and yeah.

Jannecke Øinæs 58:13

And then there are all of us who are not having these experiences, and meditate and meditate, but I'm just making a joke down. Now, I have had some few out of body experiences. But I had to work very hard to get them. But that gave me the answer. And that gave me the verification that there are more birth and death. And that was a, it was so important for me. Because I think if I didn't have that, even doing all these interviews, it would still just be a belief and a hope that what you guys are telling me is true. But since I've had an out of body, or several out of body experiences, and I've felt myself in a different kind of body. I know that that's possible, then what isn't possible that anything would be possible. Like that's my belief now, because what I saw there was just so weird, that the fact that nobody had told me about this, then I was like, what? Haven't they told me?

Ishtar 59:24

Wow, where'd you go? Did you did you go? Did you go meet friends? Were you on the other side of the world? Were you were you.

Jannecke Øinæs 59:30

I shoot it up into the heavens. I wanted to find God. So it was like God is in heaven, isn't he? So I shoot it up in heaven. And I had this mystical experience of seeing the symbol that's sort of this is a long story, but seeing a symbol that was an answer to a deep question I had earlier there were several autobody experiences where I was walking on the streets, seeing people and Going through walls, all that flying around seeing beautiful landscapes, and also lucid dreams that were very, very real. And also stepping outside of my body, just the whole process of moving out of my body being in that vibrational state that I had been taught in a course. So everything I had been taught in that course was true. Like, I thought it was, I don't know, like, I didn't fully believe in it when I was doing the techniques. But when it actually panned out, I was just so amazed. And this happened when I was like 26 or 27. So it was way back when, but it did change my life because it is going from believing to knowing. Yes, yeah. Which makes a whole difference. Yeah. Yep. Now it's so this has been very inspiring. I have some questions that I ask all my guests and the first one is what is self love to you?

Ishtar 1:01:00

Hmm, I think the deepest bit of self love is actually opening up to I think that love is an innate endemic field. In fact, I think it is the prime constituent of, of who we actually are, I don't think it's just an emotion that gets passed around his currency right where you can have less of and more of and that's that's a normal part of human experience. But I think Celt, the deepest self love is going to that place where we actually are being bathed in our own innate wellspring of love that that's always there. And that's that to me as most but I also think that good self massage and, and even sort of certain certain amount of positive self regard, there nothing to shake a stick at, and wouldn't throw them away. But if one can come through, for me, it was mainly through meditation practice, if one could come to that point where they're starting to experience that innate well being. It's, it's, you don't need much else after that.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:02:13

And what is the deeper meaning of life from your perspective?

Ishtar 1:02:17

Bliss!

Jannecke Øinæs 1:02:20

Wow, nice. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much Ishtar. If there are anyone who wants to connect with you work with you, how can they do so?

Ishtar 1:02:34

Oh, reach out to me through probably my websites, I've got a couple of them which which will probably list in the in the shownotes somewhere. One of them is www dot ascension dash meditation.com. The other one is, is even more woowoo. I work as an astrologer which is the torborg www dot awakened light astrology.com. I also have a of, of a poorly, poorly cared for YouTube channel, which I'm probably going to be adding some more videos to this week. So there'll be more than three on there.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:03:14

Thank you so much for coming to the show and sharing your story and thank you for your beautiful work.

Ishtar 1:03:21

Thank you very much.