Karen van Kriedt, Spiritual Facilitator

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My life has been full of spirits and out of the ordinary experiences, beginning with my first memory as a toddler: I was inside a tunnel whose spiraling blue walls sparkled with sunlight while golden globes rose inside the walls like hot air balloons. The tunnel ended in a spiral some feet in front of me. I was sitting there completely unafraid and wide awake to the beauty when my mother’s arms appeared from above and pulled me up. She held me close and sobbed.

I had learned to walk in Hawaii so, for many years, I tried to make the memory be about me getting rolled by a beach wave, but the details didn’t jive. Eventually, I recounted the story to someone who had died and come back. She told me that her tunnel had looked different, but she was sure what I experienced was a near death. Perhaps this accounts for the many spiritual encounters I have had, perhaps it doesn’t.  

Here are a few of my more significant experiences: 

In 1959, at eight years old, I saw my last past life's death. I was sitting on the floor looking at a book and minding my own business when, out of nowhere, the room became transparent. My brothers and sisters played around me and, nearby, my parents cooked dinner. I could still see them all, but I was seeing through them, I also saw a river of energy. Across the river, soldiers were lining up men in cloth caps who I thought of as woodsmen. There was also an old woman in a flowered housedress and wearing a babushka who held the hand of a little girl with braids. While I watched, the soldiers aimed their machine guns at the people, including the grandmother and little girl, and shot them down. The only sense I’ve ever been able to make out of this is that it was my death in my last past life, and I was at that moment the same age to the second as the little girl who was murdered holding the hand of her grandmother. 

That same grandmother visited me again when I was in my forties. I had been praying for a year or more for two things: a vision of the goddess and a mother who loved me. I had imagined seeing the goddess as a beautiful fairy in the sky and that some older woman might take meon to mentor me. One morning as I drove the winding West Marin roads on my way to work still groggy with sleep, a wall of mist opened up on the left side of my vision. Yes, I was driving. In the mist, stood the old grandmother still in her housedress and babushka. I was instantly wide awake. I felt what I can only call divine love coming to me from Grandmother and pouring back to her from me, while tears waterfalled out of my eyes. I got what I had prayed for, two in one: a vision of the goddess and a mother who loved me. 

Back in my childhood: one night from my bed, I heard my parents talking. My mother was crying and my father sounded worried. He had a septic ulcer and needed what was a serious surgery at the time, possibly fatal. As I listened to them, I thought, “I know what to do about that.” I had no idea what I meant at the time and have little idea now, but the next thing that happened was: I left my body and traveled through the house past by my sleeping brothers and sisters, through the door that had been left ajar by my ever-anxious mother, and to the table where my dad and mom sat. Without further ado, I entered my dad’s abdomen. I have no memory of what I did, but the next time I heard them talking about the surgery, my dad said, “The doctor can’t explain it. It’s just disappeared.” He no longer needed the surgery. 

As for experience, trainings and certifications: In 1985, I graduated from the Berkeley Psychic Institute. As part of my commitment to BPI, I did hundreds of readings (aura, rose, past life) as well as energy healings for the public at large over six years. In the late nineties, I co-founded and co-managed a psychic center called The Sanctuary where I continued to read and heal, as well as assist in classes. Around 2010, I read Sandra Ingerman's book on Soul Retreival and became interested in shamanism. Eventually, I studied with teachers from Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies. As a shamanic practitioner, I’ve done a number of journeys for myself and others. I also discovered my favorite spirit guides - power animals - with whom I have a powerful affinity. During COVID, I trained with Mark Beale, founder of the Past Life Awakening Institute and worked online with many clients. It is his protocol that I use to help my clients reach deep relaxation when I do a guided shamanic journey. For more information, see guidedshamanicjourney.com 

Of interest relating to my course Psychic Survival Skills: Not only have I run my energy for easily a thousand hours over my lifetime, I have also taught the skill to many individuals and groups. It is as easy for me to do as falling off a log. I find it interesting that, when I was a young teenager, I would wake early in the morning and receive information from an invisible teacher - the same information that was being taught at BPI when I joined fifteen years later. I even had learned to call these techniques by the same names they were using at BPI. Lewis Bostwick, the founder of BPI, would have auditoriums full of people raise their right hand and swear to bring what they learned from him into their next life so that he "wouldn’t have to teach them again." Once he told me that I had three gold bars over my left ear which told him I had been a student of his in three prior lifetimes. He said he wasn’t sure what I had come back for. I wouldn’t have put much stock in any of this if I hadn’t remembered the tools and techniques he taught spontaneously on my own so many years earlier. 

Related to my Guided Shamanic Journeys offering: At one point in my life, I came to an impasse as a healer. It seemed to me that all the time and effort I put into “healing” other people was mostly futile. It seemed to me that, for healing to take, people needed to see with their own eyes, come to their own conclusions, and be willing to take the steps necessary to change. I felt that, as a healer, I was superfluous. So I stopped doing the work for a number of years. When I studied with Mark Beale of the Past Life Awakening Institute, I discovered that most people are able to see and move through non ordinary reality, and don't even seem particularly surprised about it. Then, when someone I was working with spontaneously met a power animal, I started regularly inviting my client’s spiri guides to participate in the process. The outcomes have ranged from enlightening to life-changing, and in some cases, to miraculous. In these sessions, I am mostly along for the ride. I keep the container safe and give a gentle nudge now and then while my clients do the heavy lifting and reap rewards for themselves.