Past Lives Cafe
Fascinating true stories of past life experiences that illuminate, reveal and heal.
Past Lives Cafe
The Power of Surrender: Relinquishing Control Reveals True Potential
What happens when a philosophical trained chef who's spent decades studying personal growth finally confronts his own past lives? Joshua Ashton never put much stock in past life regression until he experienced it firsthand during a QHHT session that changed everything.
Details
In this deeply introspective conversation, Joshua reveals how his journey through time unveiled two profound past life experiences—one as medieval healer drowned after failing to save a lord's son, and another as a community organizer in ancient China who sacrificed himself for the collective good. These experiences illuminated a pattern of self-sacrifice that had followed him into his current life, offering powerful insights into his tendency to put others before himself.
Joshua's background as both a chef and spiritual guide provides a unique lens for understanding leadership and personal growth. "Leaders need to be focused on working for the people," he explains, drawing parallels between kitchen management and spiritual development. His approach to growth emphasizes simplicity—stripping away complicated narratives to address core emotions directly. Through his work with Inner Puzzle Pieces, Joshua helps others identify critical breakthrough moments in their personal development, describing the energy when someone nears discovery as "like Moses at the sea—you can literally feel the energy open up."
The conversation takes fascinating turns into the nature of hypnosis itself, debunking common misconceptions about trance states. As Joshua reveals, "The way to gain control is to relinquish control," a paradox that applies not just to hypnosis but to personal growth generally. His visceral experience during regression—feeling physically turned upside down during deep trance—offers listeners rare insight into what deep hypnotic states actually feel like from the inside.
Whether you're curious about past lives, seeking to break free from self-limiting patterns, or simply fascinated by the intersection of psychology and spirituality, this episode offers profound wisdom on how looking backward can sometimes be the most powerful way to move forward. Connect with Joshua through his website or social media to discover your own inner puzzle pieces and transform your personal growth journey.
References
Email: joshberg713@gmail.com
Phone: (410) 776-4084
Website: www.innerpuzzlepieces.com
Facebook: Joshua Ashton
Patti Hawse: KarmaFest Website
The Egg: YouTube
Important Information
Past Lives Cafe is intended to bring you uninterrupted glimpses into others' past life experiences. Some have regressed in a group setting or individually in their dreams, as part of a tribal ceremony, through a guided meditation, with a certified regressionist or QHHT practitioner. Please contact Chione@QuantumJourneyGo.com with any questions about this modality or to share your own experiences on the podcast.
Thank you for your interest!
Welcome to the Past Lives Cafe. I am your host, keone, an intuitive energy worker and acclaimed past life regressionist. Come with me as we journey through the spiral of time to forgotten places. Today I am welcoming Joshua Ashton, a self-described philosopher with a focus on the integration of spirituality and psychology. At a young age, he realized that the only true resource we have in this world is each other. With a focus on the individual, he has cultivated a multifaceted approach to assisting others in altering the way our brain functions, the synapse path that lead us to detrimental habits, altering the very electricity that we, as humans, create and direct.
Speaker 1:Through two decades of trial and error, as he honed his skills as a chef, josh is finally prepared and comfortable enough to offer this form of meditative alteration to others. One unique aspect he seems to focus on is the feeling he finds when someone is so close to discovering what he likes to call puzzle pieces, a piece of the puzzle to opening our minds to authenticity, abundance and overall growth. He is now doing this through his website, wwwinnerpuzzlepiecescom, and that website information will also be available in the show notes. Thank you, josh, for joining me today. I am so grateful and I will say this introduction of Josh only touches on a small part of the bright soul and light that he brings to any room and any gathering that he is within. I met him not too long ago when he was kind enough to allow me to do an internship session of QHHT with him, and I have been a huge fan ever since.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I feel very honored and privileged to be able to be here and be invited today to talk about all of this, because it was such a transformational experience for me and it's funny because I didn't put much stock in past life regression. Before this session we talked about that a little bit. It was one of those things. I find myself discovering some aspects of spirituality that I didn't put much stock in often, and it's always a very pleasant discovery when it happens.
Speaker 1:I conducted a QHHT session with Josh and he was pretty honest during the lengthy discussion before the actual induction and regression began that he was doing this because it was recommended from a mutual friend of ours, patty Hawes, and many of you know her from Karma Fest that just had its conclusion. So he was not just not putting a lot of stock into past life regression and what he may potentially get out of it from a spiritual standpoint, but I think the lengthiness of the process really surprised him as well. He had worked all day at a full time job and I had also been working all day, so when we got together it was later in the day, early evening. We both were pretty tired, but also trust. The easiest way to do that is to be real and just to talk as two humans and to just establish some common ground between us. I'll just be honest, josh. When I first started learning QHHT I thought you're just wearing these people down. Choice a bunch of regrets, but to fall asleep Just like Jesus. I'm ready for bed.
Speaker 2:Put me down. All right, yeah, fall asleep, put me in your hands.
Speaker 1:I have since looked at things a lot differently. I have met the most amazing people and have heard the most incredible stories that I could ever imagine, and so, while the process can be quite methodical and long, I cannot say enough about the amount of information that I have gleaned from people and seeing them express their spiritual growth. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, I think this shows more about my description of the process. I think it's about the conversation around what the process is like, what you can glean from it because you're part of the process. I think it's about the conversation around what the process is like, what you can glean from it because you're part of this process, is super important. You're the one leading this throughout therapy sessions. Typically you're lasting an hour, an hour and a half max, and you feel kind of rushed. If you've got a bunch of things, you can't really tease out all these emotions that you're feeling. So to be able to allow time to just sit and allow the comfortable or uncomfortable silence to exist for a bit as you're feeling these emotions out, it's super important. It might feel like a weighty part of the process, but it's what you discover in that space. That's the reason that we're doing these in this space in order to grow and find all of that.
Speaker 2:I've done some of the inner puzzle pieces sessions with a bunch of people and you know you start out looking at okay, half hour, 45 minutes, but no time set.
Speaker 2:All of a sudden you look down and you're in for an hour and a half Easy, super easy, because there's so much to be gleaned from just the smallest piece of information sometimes and you have to tease all of that out and honestly, in my life I'm a bit of a control freak and I'm not comfortable allowing other people to have control.
Speaker 2:So it was super important for me to feel that comfortable space and to allow that to just exist as it was, and I think the next session that we have is going to be super, super different, a lot deeper, because we talked about how I almost went into this really full trance space and it was really exciting to almost feel that area. When it was like I was losing control, I had this knee-jerk reaction because I was laying flat. I physically felt like what you see in the movies when people go into trance and their whole body flips upside down. It was visceral feeling that my whole internal gyroscope felt like I was being turned upside down and it was a very knee-jerk reaction to stop it. Because what is happening right now?
Speaker 1:That would be something that someone would react to, but it was interesting to me because you are not unlike so many people who the last thing they want to do. I mean, we're human beings so we're built for survival right.
Speaker 1:So the last thing we want to do is relinquish control. I think the most interesting part of it is that, while Josh is probably one of the top 3% of the type of person who is able to go into a deeper trance, most people hold on to a larger level of awareness, and it's okay to do that. But I am super happy that you were able to get even deeper, because if I hadn't had that experience with you during my internship, I would not have been prepared for it when I experienced it once I became certified, because I learned a lot of things from you that I didn't even share with you.
Speaker 2:This will be the first time he's hearing it.
Speaker 1:One of the things that happens Josh can speak to it as well. When someone is so deeply somnambulistic, which they have embodied, the individual that they see themselves in Somnambulism does not have to be a deep trance, but he was able to get there, probably because I wore him down. But one of the things that happens is that their voice gets very quiet. Almost seemed difficult to talk.
Speaker 2:It felt difficult to talk.
Speaker 1:yes, Because you were living it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was there, I was experiencing it and it was difficult to talk to because my consciousness was there, right, it existed, and my conscious brain was.
Speaker 2:Because my consciousness was there, right, it existed and, like my conscious brain, was observing everything that was happening, right, but it wasn't directing it. My subconscious was the one directing it and bringing it all out. When you were asking me to speak up or say it again, I had to push my consciousness in to repeat the words that I said and retreat again, because it was very hard to speak up. That's part of why, like now, I'm such a huge believer of it was because of how visceral all of it felt. It wasn't until the beginning there that I started describing, you know, what I was seeing and what I was feeling. And then I came out and I said something and I started tearing up and crying, that I was like, oh okay, this is really present, this is really attached to me and my soul and what I experienced before. It felt really foggy and hazy and to me I felt like I was talking normal.
Speaker 1:One of the things that had happened during Josh's, and so he was bereft, explaining to me how incredibly ill, and I believe you diagnosed it as heart disease or some sort of heart genetic issue maybe.
Speaker 2:I can't say what it was. I don't know looking back on it, but it was just something that I couldn't fix. It was something I could diagnose and I was trying to work on it, but they rushed me and there was too much going on and there was political movements in that area. I had grown up in the castle with whoever the individual was the Lord at that point in time, and then he had just gotten so distraught when his son was passing and I was pressured and pushed and it was so many different dynamics that were happening in that space. I can still see it and feel it. I haven't gone back and listened to it yet. The link you sent me has expired too, so I haven't come back and downloaded it, which I'd like to do again at some point.
Speaker 2:I know a guy can help you with that for me, I'll do like a step out and step in on my spiritual journey. In general, and even before I realized I was on my spiritual journey, sacrificing parts of myself for other people has been a huge focal point. I was a doormat for many years and I thought that's what you did. I thought that's how you showed love, finding again and again in these two different past lives that I continued to sacrifice for the greater good, one to the detriment. One was the medieval Fife. 10 was the detriment of me and everyone around me, and the other, which was the Asian feels like China, was to their betterment. They did prosper. For that, I was successful in my sacrifice, but it was a reminder to hold myself firm and to make sure that I'm looking out for myself throughout all of these processes and to not blindly trust the people around me and their interests in my best interest. Right, because no one's going to hold your best interest above their own, and they shouldn't. That's not something they should be doing. Right, you're the one that should be responsible for your growth and your best interest, and you should be the one constantly looking out for that. You could have organizations set up to look out for individuals' best interest, but it's not ever going to actually be as strong or poignant as you would do for yourself. It's not going to be as directed because, also, how can I determine what your best interests are? How can someone else do that If you're not actively telling me what is going to benefit you? Yeah, money's great. That's an easy, obvious pinpoint for what would be in someone's interest. Oh, give them money, right, cool. But outside of that, who's to say what's going to actually cause you to prosper and grow internally?
Speaker 2:My mom had this magnet on her fridge for a number of years. It's been there forever, and the other day I was at her house and I finally asked her for it, because no one ever looks at it or reads it. It says what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? And I've been thinking about that for such a long period of time. To put it simply, it's not a simple matter. I would help people grow.
Speaker 2:It's easy to say those words. It's hard to define what all of those words mean in that space, right? What does it mean to help people grow? Because you can assist someone in growth and throughout the process and to find resources, but you can't do the growth for them. They have to decide that's what they want to do. They have to take the steps to do it. You can lead a horse to water. You cannot make them drink, and I think that's been a large focus. What kind of drew out in this past life regression was the focus to remember that you're here to assist, you're not here to direct, you're not here to sacrifice. You can't do the things for somebody. You can't live in their body and skin and show them how this could work like that. It's not going to help them anyway. That wouldn't help them.
Speaker 2:Throughout that process we need to learn on our own and for ourselves and we need to find what path works best for us.
Speaker 2:Largely enough, that's been what my study is right. So my study that I've been doing for the past two decades has been to gain a semblance of all the different paths that there are now. There's millions, right, but a lot of them take very similar kind of fields or energies to them, right, and they all stem from our emotions. Our emotions are the architect of where our reasoning and logic stems from. Our traumas and our triggers and our wounds. All of those things speak back to our emotions. So if we can identify what emotions we're going through, then we can figure out how that works with the rest of our brains and we can figure out why we're doing these detrimental habits. Some people need to know the why and some people just need to work through the habit itself. The energy when I feel someone close to finding a puzzle piece is kind of like Moses at the sea. Right, the sea starts to part. You can literally feel the energy of this open up and you can see their third eye go wide as they like. Oh, it's really that easy.
Speaker 2:You can feel them get closer and closer to it, and in the past I used to try and speed it up right there. You can't. You have to like sit with it and let it tease itself out and bring it into play, right? I think a lot of growth is easier and it's made simple when we bring it into play. Because life can be so serious. Growth can be such a serious thing to talk about, right, but that's not going to assist working through it, because if it's serious, then every single lesson matters. Every single failed test is a failure and a reflection on who we are. And that's not true, right, like the point is to fail. The point of life is to fail. It's to fail again and again and again and again and learn through that process. If you can figure out every little misstep that you've had along the way, then that failure isn't for naught. The failure will show something. My favorite quote is one I'll paraphrase from Winston Churchill, and it's basically if you can accept failure, you are guaranteed to succeed.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:If you can release the shame of failing and just play with it right Like shit, all right. Fucked up again, All right, let's go. Let's keep moving on, Take another step, All right. So not going to do that again, Not going to do it like that again. Let's try it this way this time.
Speaker 1:Exactly. The point isn't the failure, it's what we learn and glean from that failure and what specific script we potentially have running that creates that failure again and again.
Speaker 2:When I get stuck in cyclical thinking. I have found ways to work out of that, and one of them is finding how to create an off ramp, as I like to call it right. When I find myself in cyclical thinking thinking if it's when it first started happening and I was first recognizing that I need to find a way out of this I did things that I call like putting a pin in it right. If something felt like I was able to work through it or notice something different in this cycle versus a cycle beforehand, I I did what I like to call putting a pin in it, and it's almost like meditating for a second and thinking of your brain and its synapse path, so thinking of it like a circle, a cyclical space, and taking a pin and pressing it into the gray matter of your brain so that when you come back around to that, there's a little bump there that says, oh, that's right, I've been here before, there's the pin, that's what I recognize. This time I can exit easier because this pin is there.
Speaker 2:And it was funny.
Speaker 2:I was talking to a really good friend of mine and he's a very logical person and when I explained it like that like pressing a pin literally into the gray matter of your brain. He got it and it clicked for him and that's a super huge, powerful tool that he uses now when he's going through these spaces. With anything you can use that tool when it comes to creating a routine, starting your morning off. You know. You can use that tool anywhere, provided you take a moment to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of having wanted to do something different. And okay, next time I'm going to put a pin in it when I cross this pillar in my house or this space. I'm going to do this instead of that and I'm going to sit, I'm going to press that pin in and the next time I go to pass that it's going to be a visceral reminder like, oh wait, nope, we're doing this over here. This is what we're doing now, and it can help really build a better mindset to get us out of spaces that aren't helpful.
Speaker 1:So, josh, the process that you're talking about is about moving forward and being successful moving forward. What made you decide to look backwards and do this regression with me? Because I feel you as far as how to identify and resolve things that continue to derail us or we've fought to death, and now it's time to make a move.
Speaker 2:For many years now probably about four or five I have found and proclaimed that I've divorced myself from aspects of karma. Found and proclaimed that I've divorced myself from aspects of karma. So not to say that I don't hold myself accountable or right, but the original understanding of karma isn't from this life. The Buddhist understanding of karma is from our past lives. We're not living the karma that we have for our actions today or tomorrow. Those are consequences. That's different a little bit than the energetic karma that's described by the Buddha. So where that comes from, how it comes into our life, is the very foundation, the path that our soul has been on. What we've done before is the foundation of what we do in this life. Each life is meant to build off of each other. You're meant to go through different learnings through each life. We've chosen this. We've chosen to come here. We've chosen to live through all of these different spaces. Each thing is meant to show us something and it was just time to look back again. It was time to really gain an understanding of it and to feel where I was before these things had happened, before today's life. Why am I here here? Why am I like this? Because I'm not always the easiest person for everybody, right? I give unasked for advice in spaces, especially when I care about people, right, like I can't help it. Sometimes it's like my love language, but it's figuring out why this is there. Why is that so important to me? Why are these things so big? And trying to kind of find what's different, not repeating the pattern? Right, because the reason we're going through all these different lives, the karma, is from reliving the lessons, finding a way to work through the lessons, finding a way to grow and grow our spirits throughout the process.
Speaker 2:I'm a huge subscriber to the egg theory, right, and if you haven't read it, it's called the egg genre. It's a really short five minute story. The theory is that there is, there's only one soul, there's no more than one soul, and this soul lives every single life in existence and after it's lived every single one, the egg cracks. It's a really beautiful theory because it's so simple and it makes so much sense, right, like we're all one. Right, like God's the father of sorts, right? So you know he's the one guiding us through all of these aspects, he's the one that's looking to help the egg crack, so to speak, and when the egg cracks, we'll be like him in a sense.
Speaker 2:The theory states we are growing to become like him. Right, and I just think it's so beautiful. There's always a feeling of what came before, there's a feeling of what I experienced in a past life, there's dreams that I've had of past experiences, but being able to see it right in front of me, literally see it, watch it happen, live in the eyes of it again, was profound question, but I'd like to hear your theory around it because it's clear to me if you're looking to say no more vows, contracts, curses from any sort of karmic relations I've had in the past.
Speaker 1:You clearly understand and agree with having past lives, but what about the idea that these are not memories but more so constructs, where you're looking at something that is more or less a manifestation of some subconscious pattern where you may have given up a part of your own life for the benefit of someone else? One of the things we didn't say was, in the lifetime that Josh saw, where he could not save the Lord's son, they ended up drowning him, so he literally was sacrificed for that son, was sacrificed for that son, and so what I wanted to ask you is how do we know that life that you visited maybe wasn't just a construct of that concern that you have? That's a pattern versus a true past life.
Speaker 2:I think this is why I subscribe to it so much now, as I felt it At the start. When you first let me into it and you were asking me what I saw for the viewers, the drowning was the first thing that I experienced. As she let me into it, the first thing that I saw was water and being held below it. I think I had shackles on with weights and honestly I would probably say that it was constructive. I didn't feel it so viscerally Even now. Still, the emotional reaction I have when thinking about it and thinking about being genuine, being genuine and operating in good faith in this environment, as I was trying to help the son and being undercut by everyone around me, was just such a hard. It was a hard feeling to recognize because I've seen it happen in my life before. Even now, and you know, I don't think we could say for any real definite for sure. I mean, I can tell you all of my experiences and I can tell you why that I feel that way about it being real versus a construct, and but I'd also labor to argue that it's kind of irrelevant. Right, I say that I subscribe to things like the egg theory too, but as I was talking about it and afterwards, when you were explaining some things about it, what you subscribe to is really irrelevant. I say that it's irrelevant because it's just the extra haze or fog that colors our viewpoint of the world. Simplicity is super, super important that I've found ways to work through things, because if we can simplify what the emotion is, what we're feeling and what space we're in, then it's easier to grow through it. Once we add more variables about God, the universe, our soul, where it comes from, we're adding more overlays on top of how we identify what our labels are and what separates us in a lot of different ways as well, and that's not something that's going to be really helpful in growth and community. It just adds an extra level of story that you have to explain and have to elaborate and justify and you have to put it into place.
Speaker 2:And so, as much as I'll say, I subscribe to this and I really viscerally feel the past life in this space. We couldn't really say with any definite terms that it was a past life, except for just all the emotions that it evoked in me, and sure you could say the same thing of a construct, but I feel like I would have felt some kind of recognition in that space. There would have been some other, different thing, because this is all stemming from my subconscious. It wasn't stemming from my conscious mind.
Speaker 2:I was surprised at a lot of the things that I saw instead inside, viewing what I see and just repeating what's being seen in front of me, as I was put in this meditative space and I was taken aback by all of it. All of it was very surprising as it was happening. I was like oh, this is what I see. Okay, this is what I see. I think there would have been levels of doubt inside of me if there was some kind of construct, because, you know, I think in other areas where, you know, I've experimented and done things with hallucinogens, I think there's some things I can recognize in that space that were constructs versus things that were viscerally happening in front of me and this just seems entirely in its own class. You know, it's entirely set aside, it's different, it's unlike anything that I've experienced before.
Speaker 1:I love that answer because you answered it for yourself. It was real, but who's to say for sure and who cares? Yeah, because at the end of the day, what you got out of it was a recognition of something that you knew needed to be addressed.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's the point for what I find throughout all different growth paths Everyone that I've ever worked with I find myself saying is that really relevant though, when they're talking about a story, a situation, an experience they have with somebody family and they'll go off maybe about oh, maybe that person was feeling like this or maybe that person was feeling like that, but are those things relevant? You're justifying, you're trying to look through their eyes and see their viewpoint, or you're trying to add this huge overlay. What's relevant in this space? Simplicity is where we will find the best and most powerful forms of growth.
Speaker 1:Occam's razor right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's something I always think of.
Speaker 1:I love Occam's razor of. That's why I like the egg is right too easy the thing that I thought was also really phenomenal about your session was the second life. You mentioned that you were in china yeah, prior to the current communism structure.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yes.
Speaker 1:Right, the thing that I thought was super cool about your experience there you were in a position where you were trying to gather all the farmers within your community to work together for a common good in order to be prepared. If someone had a better harvest than someone else, then you could pull resources and ensure that everyone was being fed and that no one was going hungry because someone got ill and couldn't sow seed, or someone happened to have blight a worm or some sort of fungal thing, but somebody else was able to truly harvest a crop and I thought that at first it seemed like a very esoteric type of life actually, because I'm thinking is he Karl Marx?
Speaker 1:And what he's saying? He's Asian. I know Karl looked a little different but he did look Asian.
Speaker 2:No, that was a good allocation.
Speaker 1:And I'm listening to you characterize your overall concern for that societal well-being.
Speaker 2:If you remember too, a war had been started, officials had come around to conscript and we'd essentially sent them running. We knew they were coming around and a large portion of what happened the reason we needed to pull together as a community was because we had shunned a larger government. We had said we're not doing the thing. We had rebuked them and they didn't have the resources to come after us while the war was going on. But we had to pull together because we weren't able to gain anything from them during that period of time. They weren't going to be able to give us anything or protect us. We had to do all of that and self-govern on our own. There's one lesson I learned. If I could point to any lesson I learned inside of the kitchen when I was a chef, it was that my job as the chef was to work for times as hard for me than they would for another, for the other sous chef. They would listen directly, they would do things as fast and to the best of their capabilities and they would be genuinely upset if they didn't do something right. And that's just integration.
Speaker 2:Leaders need to be focused on working for the people, everybody. Your job is to do service. You're in service. You have to service those things for your employees and for the people at the bottom rung, because they're the ones doing the work. I can't do all of it on my own. I can't be every single chef's position. They're doing all of that. I can only direct them. They're going to be as enthusiastic doing the thing as I can lead them to be In order to gain morale and to gain the enthusiasm you need to gain community.
Speaker 2:That you've got their back. If they know that, then they've got your back. If someone calls in and they say I'm so sorry, I can't make it in because of X, y and Z, I'm not gonna be able to come in, all right, that's fine. Have your day off, take care of yourself, come back tomorrow stronger. And everybody knew that they got that chance, they got that ability to do that. They knew they could call in and tell me when something was real and I'm not going to give them shit for it. You've already got is more important than work. So go do it and come back and work harder tomorrow, please. Whenever that happened in the kitchen, everybody knew that we all had this opportunity to do that from time to time and so when that happened, people worked harder.
Speaker 1:Your example is perfect juxtaposition, because that ended up being the antithesis of what happened in that regression. Yeah, Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the antithesis of what happened in that regression. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, if I recall, they ended up using you as a scapegoat. But you, if I recall this as well, you understood why.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in that specific setting I knew the tea leaves right. I could read what was going to happen. This was going to happen eventually. The idea was literally just to set the example for them and to live as best we could during that period of time. I knew from the get when we rebuked them. I don't remember exactly how. Maybe we killed somebody. I think maybe we killed them.
Speaker 1:I think you did too. I think during your defense maneuvers, someone ended up dying on the kingdom side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it got like really heated and one of the officials got killed and they were pissed off about it. We knew this was going to happen. I knew I was a dead man walking as soon as that happened. I just knew it. So what do you do with that time If you know you're dead already? What do you do? You just give. You just give and give and keep giving and show other people how to give, because if we're all giving in this space and making sure everyone around us has everything that we need, then we're all going to prosper.
Speaker 2:We have so much wealth in this world, there is so much, there's more than enough to go around in this world, every person, to have an equal share of the pie. Not to be communistic I'm not going the Karl Marx way but to share right. The point is to share. We teach our kids to share. We go a great length to teach our kids to share and play with others, but as adults it seems like we lose that. We're all trying to get as much of this pie as we can and it seems like that's probably the biggest detrimental factor of capitalism is trying to get more of the pie, like you want, your market share, which you know is fine in some cases, but if there's no regulation in place, then they can do whatever they want in that space and it's just take instead of share.
Speaker 2:There's got to be some form of sharing in that space and that's all I wanted to, example, when I was living as the Asian farmer. It's just I knew what the government was doing wasn't right. I knew we couldn't sustain, we couldn't afford to give all of our kids and all of the men in the village to be workers. We couldn't do that there and so we sacrificed. I sacrificed myself and I think, looking back on it, there's not much that I would change in that life, the life where I was in the fiefdom with the Lord. There's definitely some regrets and some changes that I feel in that space and I felt really downtrodden. I feel like the one in Asia was peaceful, like it was understood, accepted.
Speaker 2:Yeah it was accepted and it was known going into it that that's how this was going to play out and that was okay and I was at peace with that.
Speaker 1:It was like a grand sacrifice it really was, and we debriefed a little while afterwards and Josh was exhausted and it was late and he had worked and I had worked, so we didn't spend a ton of time. And then I headed out from his place and I had quite a dive home and I thought I might hear from Josh, maybe within the next week or so, but I didn't and I didn't push, because everybody has their own experience and they have to think through it, integrate it. I could tell that you hadn't downloaded the link and there's a whole lot of reasons. One, you may not have been notified with that. Two, you may not have wanted to revisit that. Three, you're just too damn busy. I mean, who?
Speaker 1:knows or you're a dude and you got better things to do, right.
Speaker 2:I mean there's just a million reasons. Yeah, right, or I hate the sound of my own voice sometimes. Who?
Speaker 1:doesn't I somebody?
Speaker 2:wants to know who doesn't want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, somebody once told me, if you don't hate the sound of your own voice, then you haven't been listening which I thought was super cool, hilarious.
Speaker 2:I love that one that's great.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, that was that I thought. I thought that was poignantly funny. But so I finally reached out to Josh and just said, hey, I just wanted to check in and just see how you were Because, again, this was my internship. I was not taking this internship lightly. I was present, I was trying my absolute best and I wanted this to be more than just an experience. I wanted it to be something that was worthwhile in, whatever that meant to my client.
Speaker 1:So, in Josh's, what he experienced had some importance to him and I just tossed it out there hey, josh, how are you doing? I just wanted to check in and see if you had any questions and his response was just overwhelmingly positive. He thanked me for the experience and that he had been feeling really good after that, almost like a weight had been lifted from your shoulders and you're not the only person that has said that to me or to other regressionists something that I witnessed, it in front of my eyes with Josh that revealed things about himself that he recognized, as I had mentioned before, as something that was just part of his innate character and also a thread that had existed throughout the lives, as you recognize them in memory and dreams, and I was honored enough to witness them during your session.
Speaker 2:I was very pleasantly surprised at the level of depth and seriousness that you were holding this space in. There's very few spaces that have been this in-depth and this particular that have been this in-depth and this particular very detail-oriented, in particular about how you went about this internship and how much time you spent with it and how much time you were willing to give with it, because, if I remember, we went to like 90 minutes during the QHH session. So throughout the whole time we were always supposed to be in there for an hour. We went an hour and a half and almost a little bit more than that, and we would have gone further if we'd hit the subconscious space better, but I was really burnt out by the time we got to subconscious conversation.
Speaker 1:Josh is absolutely right. During the QHHT learning process, we're not supposed to hold, especially someone who was under, so deeply. We shouldn't let me put it this way deeply. We shouldn't. Let me put it this way. We shouldn't hold them past an hour. The one reason I went past is because he was home and you didn't have to travel yeah, I would not have been comfortable driving after that. I was wiped yeah, I mean like pleasantly wiped.
Speaker 2:It was a very nice. It was like I felt cleansed but at the same exact time I was done. After that it was, I think, definitely one of the most revealing spiritual experiences I've had in a long time. I've done lots of different journeys with Patty. This was similar, yet different in so many different ways, yet different in so many different ways.
Speaker 2:The way leading me into trans, what you were saying and how you were saying the things into leading me into trance was phenomenal. It was a really oddly pleasant experience. I don't know how to describe it because it was a very strange space to be in, cause. I've experienced semi-trans spaces before. When dealing with hallucinogens. I've felt similar spaces, but this was curated really well Like. This is the path. There's this bubble and we're taking little steps along this path and going in this direction. It's hard to describe because I saw a bunch of different things as you were leading me through and there were these very purposeful pauses between what you were saying. You added a gap of time and space in between something that you were saying and I remember feeling almost every time like on the edge of my seat. I don't know how to describe that it was.
Speaker 1:The cadence of that script.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I love the way that you've just said that. One thing you have to know about Josh is he is a consummate meditator, even if it's for five minutes, and I knew that about you.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Which is probably one of the reasons you were able to drop in, even though there was a trust factor there, obviously. I mean just going to have it like we said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't know you were having interactions with you before this. This was the first time that I had met. You was during the space and it was inside of my house, which is a new person inside of my house, already making me a little uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I didn't clean as much as I would have liked to.
Speaker 1:He was very concerned about the cleanliness, which I found super refreshing. What would you say, josh, to not the clean freak? But what would you say to the person who believes that they can't drop in or believes that they shouldn't allow or relinquish that ego space to their subconscious? What would you recommend Because you were so adept at it?
Speaker 2:I love this. So in that space, the belief system that creates that hesitancy, is what's going to be the limiting factor, right? There's a very powerful theory that is the way to gain control is to relinquish control, and no one in this world can change you. So, no matter how powerful of a trance you've been put into, there is nothing that anyone can do that will fundamentally alter who you are. You get to decide. That's the most powerful thing. I often find myself saying to people that I'm in debate or argument with that. I wish I was wrong, because if I was wrong, then I can change that. I can decide that's different. I can change something within me. We can't come to an agreement because this is the space that we're in right now. I'm trying to gain an understanding with you, but no one can alter or change who you are fundamentally. Only you have control of that. It's so powerful and I think and true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, yes, and there's nobody I could say that I would trust more than Keone to guide me through this space. She was very concerned about how I was feeling going into it and what she was doing throughout the process. She is very focused and attentive to any and all of the possible pitfalls throughout this space. It was like being cradled throughout the whole thing. We were both new and fresh at this. Like being cradled throughout the whole thing. We were both new and fresh at this, and that's one of my favorite experiences in the world is never having done something and letting someone that's just starting out doing this thing do it right. There's some spaces where that can be worrisome, but with someone as attentive as Keone was, I was put at ease immediately.
Speaker 2:It's funny I have this fun little story about the first time I ever hitchhiked. I had to hitchhike to Washington DC. So I'm leaving a festival grounds already. I'm comfortable standing at the edge of it holding a sign for DC. I had to be on a bus in four hours. This couple that picked me up, this cute little pop-up Winnebago old school one they had never picked up a hitchhiker before, so it was really fun that I got picked up as a hitchhiker and they had never picked up a hitchhiker before. They were really cool, they were older than me and they're asking me all of these different questions about meditation.
Speaker 2:And you know I don't make a point to meditate as much as I would like to, to sit down and do it, but I do find myself throughout my daily life putting myself into a meditative state. When I was meditating regularly, the goal was to eventually remain in meditation while I go throughout my daily life, allowing a blankness, state of mind, so to speak, allowing your mind to be at ease and not allowing things from the past, other traumas and triggers, living in the present moment and existing in that moment. When I'm at work as a chef, you have a million things on your plate. There's so many different things that you have to do, but right in front of you there are vegetables that are alive, that need to be cut, that need energy put into them so that the people eating them, after you cook them, can experience the love. So dropping into that space and just being right there with your knife as an extension of your hand and the vegetables as you're chopping, is the form of meditation, and that's just dropping into the present moment and just letting go of all of our fears and all of our worries.
Speaker 2:It's the baggage we talk about. Those fears and those worries are the things that we carry around. You can set those down. You don't have to carry that. It's comfortable to carry that. Oh, why am I like this? Because of this baggage. Here's my baggage, that's why I'm like this and instead of this is who I am right now, and that's okay. It doesn't have to be a reason why we don't have to carry those worries and that baggage around and we can react in some ways and that's okay too and just exist in that space.
Speaker 1:I love that. In doing that is your power.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, You're reclaiming your power once you say I've had it carrying this thing around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, One of my favorite. There was a little video that pops up and it's a black coach, black high school basketball team and every time they come off the court he asks them what's your biggest fear? And then lets them go past and then at some point in time somebody quotes back to him Our biggest fear is not that we are inferior. It's that we are more capable and powerful than we can ever imagine. The fear is that we are that powerful. The fear is that we would abuse that power if we claim all of it. That's part of the failure, the reason why it has taken me 20 years in this form of studies because I understood from a very young age that people listened to me and I was influential. If you have the ability to influence people, you have to consider that as you're moving. You can't just influence them to go do this thing, oh no, it didn't work out for them, it messed up things for them, oh no, that's on them. No, that's not how you should be utilizing your voice.
Speaker 1:I think it's super important to admit how influential we are as parents, as teachers, as spiritual directors and coaches, which is what you are doing and have done throughout your life as bosses, as spouses. I think you're right. I think we say things often without understanding the the impact that we're making on others, and we should speak more responsibly.
Speaker 2:When someone comes to me and asks me a question about something in their life, it's a moment where I have absolutely worked out the path, where it's to take a moment, no matter what is happening in front of me, it gets set down and set aside so I can focus on what they're looking for. It's a point to allow them the gravity and the space to get out what they're looking for and then to genuinely consider what would be best for them Not what I think is best, not what worked best for me what would be best for them in their position and to outline the possible different options and spaces. The consequences and you know what I would suggest at the same exact time is it's your life. You're the one that needs to decide on this choice. You're the one that needs to make that choice and I would support whatever you do.
Speaker 1:I love that you're giving people the nonjudgmental space to think about their options and then decide for themselves with appropriate feedback. But decide for themselves what makes the most sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's a funny thing I discovered as a car salesman. I've done everything, by the way chef, car salesman, mortgage and I do cemetery plots now. So there's a funny thing I discovered as a car salesman. I've done everything, by the way chef, car salesman, mortgage and I do cemetery plots now. So there's a funny thing I discovered in car sales.
Speaker 1:That's the life cycle right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, yep, done it all Purposefully, I think. I went into car sales and I decided that I was going to be the least pushy car salesman out there. People were going to love me because I wasn't going to shove them into a car anyway ever here or there. And I discovered that I didn't get any sales.
Speaker 2:You have to be at least a little bit pushy. And I think I discovered why. I theorize that it's because, at the end of the day, if it's not a good deal, they want someone to blame. That tricky car salesman talked me into it, which is fine, I was fine taking that responsibility on. At the end of the day, I discovered I had to. If I was going to make it as a car salesman, if I was going to sell cars, I had to be at least a little bit. A little bit pushy, just a smidge. It's a great deal. You're getting a great deal, guys, it's going to work out well for you. And oftentimes when I'm saying those things, it was a good deal, but not being pushy at all just didn't work. I think that speaks larger to when people are asking for these opinions. A lot of times they don't want to take specifically the responsibility for it. Well, you're the one that encouraged me to do this. You said this would be the best way to go about it.
Speaker 1:What would you say is one of the big misconceptions about hypnosis whether it's self-hypnosis or being with someone else going through a process like this that you would like to clarify?
Speaker 2:I think the most common misconception is that your conscious thinking brain isn't present, that you're going to black out, you're not going to remember anything and then you're going to come back and you're going to have this recording of things that you said throughout the space. And that's not really how it works. It's a meditative state. You are there and there is a letting go that needs to facilitate the process and you're going to be present for it and that's okay. And as I was in that process and as I was experiencing it, I was just saying the things that I saw and letting my mouth and my brain do that. I was seeing things as I was led through the space. Where are you ending up at? What do you see? And I see water. Okay, why do I see water? What's happening? Glug, glug, I'm below the water. Okay, what's happening? Glug, glug, I'm below the water. Okay, what's happening here? And I just started describing it more as you asked questions and I didn't know what was coming up next, but I was fully present in that state. I was there.
Speaker 2:If I had felt at any point in time out of depth or something, I could have easily come back in and snatched back control and woken back up. However, I wanted to you have that control. You're not just gone and someone's here and we can fool around with some wires and connect this here or there and change things, and you know you're not going to have any say in it, you're not going to remember anything. You're not going to remember this when you wake up and you're going to be a chicken. You know, like, that's not. That's not how it works.
Speaker 1:Oh, sadly, because we could have had a lot of fun Josh.
Speaker 2:Right? Well, that's what we're looking to get into next time. We're going to figure out how to get into that deep space. That's why I want to do it again, because I want to do the subconscious thing, I do too.
Speaker 1:He had such amazing commentary throughout no-transcript. Before I let you go you are doing so much work with puzzle pieces I had the website, which I would definitely post on the show notes. Is there any way that someone outside of your website can reach you if they want to schedule time with you?
Speaker 2:on Facebook. I'm open to any and all followers, any commentary. I engage directly with anyone in whatever form of communication. You can get there. My information is on the website and direct Facebook Messenger on Facebook and you can come and get a lot of information just off of my Facebook as it is. Just scroll down and see a whole bunch of different things. The past several months have been largely political. I'm sorry, I feel strongly about things, but past that there are a lot of other spiritual things back there as well, so I will say Josh is the real deal.
Speaker 1:He does everything with his heart and even if it's political commentary, it is with his heart and it's not a rant or a. It's not a diatribe with hate at all.
Speaker 2:I strive, I strive. I don't always succeed, but I strive very strongly to not say any detrimental thing about one side or the other. We can get very polarized and say very mean things to each other sometimes, and I'm not saying I don't feel those things. I'm saying that if it happens it's not purposeful and I don't wish to be mean or hateful in this world, and that's the point of it. Right, we have to come together. We have to find a way to have common agreements in this area. We have to, or it's not going to work. We need each other. That's the point.
Speaker 1:I agree. Outside of the fact that it appears that he and I have similar political leanings, the bottom line is that he's reacting to a situation and not specifically a group of political platforms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very well said. Very well said Because, despite often aligning a bit with a certain blue party, they could do a lot better. Let's put it at that.
Speaker 1:And let's hope they do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's hope, let's hope.
Speaker 1:Thank you, my friend. You honor me with your presence again and I swear to you listeners, when I get Josh under my little thumb again and we can dig deep into another past life. I see a book in our future.
Speaker 2:I'm not kidding. Yeah, I do too. Yeah, we're going to-.
Speaker 1:Yes, he is the top 3%, who can really drop in deeply. And that doesn't mean if you can't, you can't have an amazing experience but we want to exploit his abilities to the good of all.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yes, because if the egg theory is true, then we can check all the different lives abilities to the good of all. Absolutely yes, because if the egg theory is true, then we can check all the different lives.
Speaker 1:Thank you, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely Thank you very much, it was a privilege. Yes, you as well.
Speaker 1:This concludes this episode of Past Lives Cafe podcast with Joshua Ashton. If you would like to contact Josh, this information will be in the show note. If you or someone you know would like to discuss a past life experience on this podcast, please reach out to me at kioni. At quantumjourneygocom, the enchantment continues on the Mystical Mermaid Lounge podcast that I co-host with Chloe Brown. A welcome space where we nourish the souls of all spiritual seekers the souls of all spiritual seekers and remember. While we can't relive the past together, we can heal it. Thank you so much for listening. If you are interested in my services, visit me at wwwquantumjourneygocom or drop me a note at pastlivescafebuzzsproutcom. Stay well and be present.
