STE Experiencers Panel
Dr. Jean C. MacPhail, Ph.D., MB, ChB., Pravrajika Gayatriprana
(Vedantic nun)
Scotland
Lived Life-cycles: Experiences Along the Way. A remarkable lifetime spanning eighty years of various profound Spiritually Transformative Experiences which fall into regular, repeating patterns in a series of four cycles of twenty years. Every one of these experiences was related to intense external stress, and all of them served to neutralize the stress and helped Jean to keep moving forward and even to thrive.
Dr. Jean C. MacPhail, Ph.D., MB, ChB., Pravrajika Gayatriprana (Vedantic nun) was born in Scotland in 1941 and raised by her grandmother, a deeply spiritual and psychically gifted woman. Jean lost her mother to suicide and her father struggled with PTSD and alcoholism after World War II. Jean later attended the University of Edinburgh and worked on a PdH in neuropharmacology in the 1960s, although she rejected straight science and later trained under a highly spiritual Indian swami in New York and became a formal Vedantic nun. Jean is the author of A Spiral Life, which chronicles her first forty years of inner life and meaning.
A Sighting of the Virgin Mary on the Wall of an Expressway Ramp Draws Crowds. On April 10, 2005, a woman driving on Fullerton Avenue in Chicago saw in a large yellow and white stain on the concrete wall of the ramp to the Kennedy Expressway the image of the Virgin Mary. Althea was driving by when she saw a mass of people gathered. She parked her car and went to see what was going on. News of the sacred sighting circulated and there were over a hundred people between the entrance and exit ramps of that expressway. As onlookers left, more people arrived. On the ground by the stain on the wall where the Virgin Mary was seen were over a hundred novena candles and bouquets of flowers. Althea started interviewing people. She will share information from interviews and her Spiritually Transformative Experience which took her to the core of her soul, changing her perspective forever.
Althea Watson started sensing and communicating with the spiritual world before she was seven years old. She has had two Near Death Experiences, many Spiritually Transformative Experiences and Out of Body Experiences. Her abilities include; clairvoyance, clairaudience, mediumship, Energy Medicine, psychometry and tracking energy for environmental investigations. Althea has entered dimensions and brought back information which has been validated. Althea maintains a private practice which includes long distance and office visits aside from lecturing and teaching. She is experienced as a Life Coach and working with survivors of trauma, victimization and those in personal and spiritual crisis aside from those who want a new perspective in reclaiming self, life and love. Althea has been recognized for her insights in health and personal awareness issues. Althea has conducted Energy Medicine Sessions for crisis, cancer and aids centers. She has been a consultant for businesses including Fortune 500 members and a guest speaker for spiritual organizations, theatres, expos and colleges.
What Comes Next? Living a Soul-Aligned Life After Waking Up. We are living in an amazing time of global spiritual awakening. Our interactions with the energy field are becoming easier, stronger and more frequent. What once was reserved for mystics and shamans is now part of our everyday lives. But sometimes being awake in our current world can be hard, and many people struggle to maintain a soul-aligned life after a spiritual awakening. There are often rapid changes, periods of uncertainty, and heightened emotions that can make us wonder if our newly-found awareness of the spiritual world is a gift or a burden. While we may want to have a spirit-led life, accomplishing it can be complicated, lonely and frustrating. During this presentation, we will explore three ways that we can live in a state of continuous spiritual awakening instead of having discreet awakening experiences. And in doing so, we will provide inspiration and support for others to do the same.
Kristin Lemaster, MIM is an energy coach & founder of Soulful Navigation®. As a scientist and engineer who went on to study and practice more than 30 energy modalities over the last 20 years, Kristin strives to help people align their lives with their energy for greater ease and fulfillment. During her energy adventures, she learned how to let her spirit lead in all aspects of her life and magnify her positive impact on the world. Kristin‘s mission is to condense her energy knowledge and experience into a simple and easy-to-understand format that anyone can implement. She also aims to provide a supportive, inclusive, and fun community where people can achieve personal and spiritual growth together. If she can save people the time, money, overwhelm, and loneliness that it took her to dissolve the disconnect between her spirituality and her life, then she will consider part of her life’s mission complete.
Head or Heart? Harnessing the Spiritual Power of the “Left Brain.” Worldwide, there appears increasing enthusiasm for hatha and bhakti yoga (physical and devotional) and ‘mindfulness’ techniques for spiritual growth. There is also much talk of suppressing intellect to allow access to the intuitive capacities of ‘the heart,’ accompanied by glowing descriptions of attainments awaiting the yogi. This strategy reduces many rich spiritual traditions to a simplistic “grab’n’go” consumer model that, although claiming to develop consciousness, serves rather to reduce “stress” thereby producing pleasurable states. Alternative to perspectives presenting logical mind activity as an obstacle to spirituality, this presentation suggests that with effective training, jnana (intellectual) yoga is actually particularly well-suited to many ‘left-brained’ Western minds; rigorous discipline forces the mind open by identifying then eradicating assumptions; unidentified unconscious assumptions of undisciplined minds may prevent the shift from everyday consciousness to higher states. We will consider untrained ‘open mind’ (vague, unformed and chock full of phenomena) and trained ‘open mind’ (clear, sharp), discern “path” from “fruit,” and–citing evidence from branch science–jnana yoga constituting the fulcrum of Judaism, Buddhist Tantra and scientific method.
Sha’alah Ivory, PhD, B.Ed, formerly R.M. & C.P.M has undergone many unusual spiritual experiences from a very early age. She has studied various traditions of dance and visual art, and has been perennially drawn to explore comparative myth and religion. During undergraduate work in philosophies of science and religion and perceptual neuropsychology, she studied applied Vedanta and Seen philosophy in depth. She practiced professional midwifery in Ontario and Texas, lectured in Alexandria, Egypt and Kathmandu, Nepal, and was keynote speaker at the 2004 Polish National Obstetrics Conference and Lead Consultant for Warsaw’s first Birth Centre. Obtaining a PhD (UK 2016) in Business and Law examining pharmaceutical malfeasance and whistleblowing, she was Adjunct Professor and guest lecturer in Business Ethics in Canada, U.S. and the Netherlands, and has published articles in peer-reviewed Psychology and Cinema journals, and Organizational Ethics texts. She has studied meditation, channeling and sacred geometry with Masters Namgyal Rinpoche, Samia Manneh, and a variety of spirit guides. Discovering her psychic abilities under Suzanne Giesmann’s tutelage, she currently offers readings to interested parties.