We'll start at the middle of the story, middle age to be exact. (You didn't think somebody like me was going to start at the beginning, did you?)

Television appearances come with the territory in my line work, so I wasn't surprised a few years ago when I got a call from The Shirley Show, an Oprah knock-off which ran for several years here in Canada on the CTV network. They were doing a show on reincarnation, and someone apparently had filled them in on the events which took place at the end of my Uranus opposition in mid-1987.

The producer was wondering if I would be willing to tell my 1987 story on national TV. Sure, sez I (Moon in Aries in the Third House). Herewith is a summary of what was broadcast from coast to coast in Canada.

Up to June, 1987, I had led what many might call a fairly ordinary, albeit offbeat, life. (Précis: another Boomer yuppie hits age 40--midlife crises.) Astrology was only a hobby (one amongst many others), a hobby used more for conversation purposes in parties (and bars) than anything else. I had become very successful in hiding from myself and anyone else the fact that a great spiritual journey was rumbling about under the surface waiting to explode.

That all changed in June, 1987. I was undergoing Rolfing, a form of deep tissue massage designed to release chronic muscle tension. While many people find Rolfing painful, I discovered that by asking my practitioner to work in sync with my breathing, there was no pain and I could release the tension through the exhale phase of the breath cycle. I had not had any yoga experience up to that point (in this incarnation) and did not realize the breathwork was setting the stage for something far more than a release of muscle tension.

Friday June 5th, 1987 was one of those delightful sunny spring days Toronto used to have before global warming destroyed Spring in Canada. Warm, but not too warm, and a clear blue sky unsullied by pollution or clouds. It was the sort of day when office workers call in sick and take their cure tanning on a beach to begin an unofficial three-day weekend.

I arrived on time (Sun in Virgo is annoying about being on time) at the old house on Bayview Avenue (a misnomer if there ever was one for Lake Ontario can not be seen from anywhere on Bayview Avenue--perhaps it had been named years ago by an overzealous real estate agent) for my 2 pm appointment.

My Rolfing specialist (also named Richard) was only about 10 minutes late this time so I barely had a chance to figure out which of last year's Mclean's magazines I would sleepily thumb through in the waiting room when he called my name.

We went up the steps to the room on the second floor (that's first floor for those of you from England--here in the colonies we call it second floor. What residents of Great Britain call the ground floor, we in Canada call the first floor.) exchanging the usual small talk....yes spring was wonderful this year.

The sun poured through the window as I got on the table and lay face down, wondering which part of my back he would work on today. He had started at the base of the spine and was slowly working up. We were about halfway up so far. It was taking extra appointments because there was so much tension.

No surprise there for up to April, 1987, (when the landlord wanted that ridiculous 66% rent increase for my place of business leading to my decision to close it) the business I had started (Capricorn rising) at the edge of the fashionable Queen Street West district for more than 10 years had been high octane competitive work. Actually it had been easier to close than I thought (except for laying off the two staffers--that was by far the toughest part). Frankly I was relieved to be free of the 70 hours/week pressure, not to mention that the Bozo factor amongst certain clients had been driving me bats.

Rolfing was a blessing, getting rid of those years of built-up frustrations before I moved on to something new in the Fall. I hadn't quite figured out what that something new might be but with all my experience in the furniture and design business, I wasn't worried. It was boom-time in Toronto. And I'm one very resourceful individual. I hadn't successfully tapped-dance my way through the '81-'82 recession without learning a few things.

Richard announced he was going to work at the exact centre of my back (which I vaguely understood at the time to be the heart chakra), and I began my breathing pattern. When I had locked it in, he put his elbow on the muscle knot in my mid-back and began leaning his weight into it during the exhale phase.

But something different happened this time. Instead of the usual ebbing and flowing of breathing with the pressure on my back, suddenly everything started buzzing and I found myself flying through a star-studded universe with a long silver cord leading from my stomach off to the undiscernible distance. By this point in my life I had been around enough to know this was an out-of-body experience (OBE) and it was okay. I just went with what was happening as I had never had an OBE before.

What happened was that very quickly I found myself back in southwest England (Devon) in the late 1600s (circa 1689) re-experiencing the end of an earlier lifetime of mine. But it was not a pleasant ending. There was a horrible thunderstorm going on, and I was being killed. I was on my back on a table on the ground floor of a cottage. My arms and legs were pinned down on the table by a group of men. One had a large knife. He had just sliced open my abdomen and was removing my intestines. I quickly moved out of that body and looked down on the proceedings. The short, stocky bald guy on the table looked nothing like I do today. But it had been me (or at least my physical vehicle) 300 years ago.

I decided it was time to return to Toronto and 1987. I felt a rushing sensation as I followed the silver cord home and fell back into my current body. I realized I was back laying face down on Richard's table breathing deeply to catch my breath. But I could still hear the thunderstorm and the rain beating on the roof of the cottage in England as I opened my eyes to watch the sun streaming in the window on Toronto's Bayview Avenue at the same time. It was something right out of the Twilight Zone.

It's not often I am at a loss for words (the size of this website is proof of that), but I was speechless. So I said nothing. This was completely out of my realm of experience in this incarnation. Richard looked at me quizzically but said nothing. He's a Taurus--they're like that. So stunned was I that I booked another appointment in two weeks (which was routine) without even thinking about it. I left in a daze.

During the next two weeks I spoke to no one about what had happened as I wasn't particularly interested in being locked up in a mental ward. Yet I had to know more. So I began digging about in libraries during the next two weeks. I discovered that in England in the late 1600s executions were commonly done by drawing and quartering, which I had just witnessed, well, the drawing at any rate.

In my OBE I hadn't stuck around for the quartering which would have entailed tying a horse to each arm and leg and pulling the person apart, but presumably the man on the table got the full treatment after his bowels were ripped out. However, a cottage with a thatched roof was not the normal venue for a government-sanctioned execution. So, there were still a lot of unanswered questions.

I got my answers promptly. I arrived at my next appointment with Richard as scheduled (another beautiful sunny Friday in June). Richard announced he hadn't finished his work from last time and would be picking up where he left off. I just climbed on his table face down, began my breathing, and.....well you guessed it......off I go back to England in another OBE.

This time I got the events which came before the execution. It seems in that life I was the innkeeper in a small village and had a bratty little shit for a son. Eventually the kid got so out of hand the innkeeper in a rage raped his son and murdered his son with a knife. The villagers, discovering what had happened, tracked down the innkeeper and executed him vigilante-style.

Once again, I decided it was time to end the OBE and return to Toronto and 1987. Once again there was the "twilight zone" of the thunderstorm from England the sunshine in Toronto (I warned you about the Purple Prose, remember?). But upon return this time I had answers. In fact, more answers than I had sought.

I asked Richard if he had a moment to talk, and he smiled and said he did. I had to tell someone, for suddenly my current life made a lot more sense. What the OBE showed me was the person who was my son in England in the 1600s, was in this life: my mother.

Now I understood the non-stop beatings and abuse I had had from her when I was a child (from infancy onward). She was simply getting even. It all made sense now. Years of therapy had brought me to accept an abused childhood but had not answered the question as to why it had occurred.

I later learned from my astrology studies that during the first 29 years of our life we relive in symbolic form the karmic issues from our past lives which we are here to resolve in our current incarnation.

For instance, when I was 19, I had a ruptured appendix. My condition was serious enough that the doctors only gave me a local anesthetic for the surgery. They were afraid if I went to sleep under a general anesthetic I might not wake up. I was awake as this group of men hovered around my abdomen and made the deep lateral incision in my stomach--in exactly the same place as the innkeeper's disembowelment--except this time it was to save my life, not end it.

I carry the horizontal scar on my stomach to this day. Were the surgeons in 1966 the same group of people as in England in the late 1600s? Oh, probably. I haven't spent a lot of time on that one. But the villagers had their karma as well. Everything balances out in the end.

I got far more than I realized on that second OBE trip back to England, and there was still more for me to learn back here in Toronto. When I walked out the door from the second June session with Richard, I realized that in every person I walked past I could instantly see their past lives in a huge kaleidoscope which tied into events in their current life. It was overwhelming.

But I was being instructed. What I had just experienced was not unusual. Quite the contrary. It was the rule. I was just being made aware of it consciously where others were not yet at that point. Eventually I was shown the switch to turn the past-life awareness on and off. I was grateful for that. I've got my own karma, I really don't need to be blown away by everyone else's.

Suddenly my had life changed. My culturally programmed ego-constructed barriers had just gotten rapidly kicked aside (Uranus opposition). I had to face a broad new metaphysical reality and deal with it or go bonkers. Well, Sun in Virgo, Capricorn rising, I started to deal with it. New and cutting edge? Moon in Aries, that's fine.

Astrology gave me the intellectual understanding of what was going on. Over the next few months, the once-and-former hobby became the chief tool I used to figure out my own life. I soon discovered when I picked up someone else's chart, the insight's for that person would flow equally as well.

Today I do that for a living and am teaching Karmic Astrology to those advanced astrology students who are ready for it. It is now a teachable form of insight. (Click here for the first volume of the textbook.) Of course, I also have clients who check in for their personal growth as well through individual appointments.

The alternative health field, of course, was a natural for a journey like this for there has been some significant emotional mopping up I have had to do and still am working on. I discovered it's not good enough just to know what happened, I had to find out what could be done about it (I have a very Cardinal chart). As things have been shown to me on my journey, I realize they are there for me to share with others.

Karma, I learned, leads to dharma. The two are part of as inseparable continuum. Health is simply a manifestation of that continuum. By 1989 (Pluto square) I was dealing with a major back problem which brought me to the edge of death. It was a condition so rare it doesn't have a name, but the medical profession gave up on me.

Adhesions on my spinal cord were growing against the vertebrae. It was centred in my heart chakra. (Pluto squaring Venus) Paralysis followed by a slow painful death was the allopathic prognosis.

By assembling a range of alternate health modalities I set out to find the cure. It was metaphysical, not physical. I was learning how to transmute the energy of death into healing (check my Eight House) and take the spiritual journey. I was offered the opportunity to pass on (die) on two occasions and turned it down both times.

The early '90s were a time of testing and growth. I was being given a crash course in every metaphysical schema known. There were times when each day was a new crises, and in the solving of the crises a new gift was given. The learning continues through to today, but without the crises (thankfully).

The saga of this health crises led me first to Karmic Astrology. There I figured out how to time my work with alternative health modalities with my astrological chart for maximum healing. Years later I learned that I had only rediscovered something the ancient Greeks did routinely 2500 years ago. In the midst of that I had a full awakening of kundalini, which happily has now gone back to sleep.

Later on I became a Reiki Master while in the midst of the explorations which led to New Growth (tm) Energy Healing. I began to understand what any gardener can tell you about growing great roses: you first dig a bit of manure into the ground, and then carefully time your watering, cutting, and pruning. Abundant love and sunshine help, too.

Today my health has returned. I am neither dead nor paralyzed. I walk a mile every day and climb up and down the steps to my third-floor apartment with zero pain, although I am still careful about lifting heavy objects. And my spiritual horizons have no boundaries. The lessons I have learned on my personal journey I have come to realize are only the lessons I am here to share with others. Happily I've now reached the point in my life where I can learn my next round of lessons without the cliff-hanging drama of the past. Life does get easier if we give it the chance.

There are those of us who have learned the meaning of the 23rd Psalm from life experience. But I don't recommend it as your first option. My advice to my clients: do yourself a favour and avoid the mistakes I made. I haven't made them all, but I've made enough of them.

And as for my Mum? After a long battle with heart disease and cancer, she passed peacefully in her sleep in 1996 at age 83 (three months before my Chiron return) following a fall which broke her hip. By that time we were on cordial speaking terms, as I had found forgiveness, compassion and unconditional love for her.

Did I ever tell her about the innkeeper and his son? No. Unfortunately, her schizophrenia had so ravaged her mind over the years, it was unlikely she ever would have understood. But that's okay, too. One day she'll have an incarnation where she will be able to put the pieces together on her own. I'll be somewhere else by then. May God bless her in the meanwhile.