Review:
Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future
                                                                By Susan Wisehart

Reviewer: Barbara Stone, PhD, LISW, DCEP, ACEP Certification Trainer and author of Invisible Roots: How Healing Past Life Trauma Can Liberate Your Present.  Book reviewer for Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology

The truly important questions in life are “Why am I here?” and “What is the purpose of my life?”  When we find the answers to these questions and get in touch with the reason we incarnated on the earth plane, then our lives transform into joy, vitality, and peace.  Susan Wisehart’s book Soul Visioning takes the reader step by step through a process to make this transformation possible.

Part One of the book describes in detail seven steps of connecting with your soul vision and includes understanding the evolving relationship between the soul and personality, answering the call of the soul and discovering your ideal future, clearing limiting beliefs holding us back, energy psychology tools, practicing true forgiveness as the key to happiness, and case examples.

But part one is not something you can just read and absorb all the benefits by osmosis.  You have to actually work the steps, plunging into the depths of your own soul and using the writing exercises in the book and listening to the guided audio processes that supplement the exercises, free downloads from the internet.  These beautiful, well-done recordings identify peak life experiences and take you on a soul-guided journey into your ideal future to find the next step in creating your ideal future.  This process is a valuable addition to a person’s spiritual growth repertoire—to keep finding the next best step all along one’s life journey.   

Part Two of the book moves into spiritual regression therapy, with case histories of the healing impact of past life regression, life between life regression, and soul visioning sessions.  This part is filled with deep wisdom and healing guidelines that come from direct interaction with the spirit world.  One example is a client’s spirit guide advising her to set her intention at night before going to sleep to ask the spirit realm to rebalance and recharge her energy field. 

This book helped me clarify my spiritual values, let go of dysfunctional patterns, and release the limiting belief that embracing my soul’s mission of working with past life trauma is not safe.  I realize now that the only truly safe place is in the center of one’s reason for incarnating!  Susan Wisehart is a gem, both a gifted therapist and an excellent writer.  Her last name reflects the truth that she has a very wise heart!

Venture Inward Magazine Review
Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future
January 2009

                                   Envision Your Soul

How can we make the shift from experiencing ourselves as persons who have souls to experiencing ourselves as souls expressing through a personality? I’ve asked students to draw a picture of their souls and to diagram how their souls connect to their conscious selves (see intuitive-connections.net/issue1/soul/souldraw1.htm for examples). Very often people draw a self-portrait with something like a kite flying above that is supposed to be the soul, as if it were an appendage top the body. It requires some deeper imagination, thinking outside the box of the body, to envision the person(ality) as emerging from the soul.

One of the ways this failure of the imagination affects us is how we respond to self-help books on “manifesting.” It is easy to create affirmations about what we want and then to repeat them as if this mantra will bring about the fulfillment of our desires. What is also easy is to assume the conscious ego mind can pull off this trick. Sometimes it works, but often we get stuck, because the ego’s leverage is actually quite weak compared to our soul. What we really need to do is the more difficult task of discovering what our soul wishes to manifest in order to fulfill its mission in life. A book has just come my way that reflects this same concern and presents a very workable alternative solution.

Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future (Llewellyn Publications) by Susan Wisehart, presents a seven-step process for connecting with yourself at a soul level as a way to gain deeper leverage into the manifesting process. Noting the relative weakness of the ego-mind in these matters, the author, a long-time transpersonal therapist, introduces spiritual processes to do the job the ego can’t. Let me outline the seven steps to give you a better idea of her program for the soul’s envisioning.

The first step is to review one’s life to find a truly peak moment of experience. The purpose of this exercise (the book provides a link to an .mp3 audio file that one can use as a guided meditation) is to put the person in touch with one’s spiritual ideals. This first step is essentially the same that the students of Edgar Cayce regularly learn and practice at their gatherings.

The second step resembles the ideals workshops conducted in Edgar Cayce workshops. It asks the person to outline how the spiritual ideals realized in step one would manifest in the various areas of one’s life. As the author puts it, “What if you could wake up tomorrow and have your life be just the way you want it to be, guided by your soul wisdom? What quality of being would be expressed in your thinking, feeling, and doing?”

The third step involves a soul-guided journey into one’s future. Rather than simply think about what you’d like to happen, in this process you first become aligned with the consciousness of your spiritual ideals and then let this higher consciousness guide your imagination into the future. Once again, the author provides a downloadable .mp3 audio guided meditation for this journey.
The fourth step involves a self-inventory to determine what blocks may exist to fulfilling the ideal future. These blocks tend to be self-limiting beliefs as well as payoffs the person receives for living a more limited, ego-based life. It is important to become aware of and to confront these sources of resistance.

The fifth step takes the reader on a journey into energy psychology, where we learn a variant of Gary Craig’s “Emotional Freedom Technique,” a method of self-acupuncture that uses no needles. It involves using one’s finger to tap oneself at certain meridian points while stating affirmations that help release blocked energies.

The sixth step directs the use of the energy psychology methods to implant and imprint new attitudes and beliefs now that the blocks have been removed.

The seventh and final step involves practicing several exercises in forgiveness, often turbo-charged by accompanying energy psychology techniques. The purpose is to clear the mind of guilt and similar feelings that make it more difficult to maintain the consciousness of soul qualities.

This holistic and transpersonal approach to manifesting one’s soul in life feels far more comprehensive and in-depth than the usual verbal affirmation approach. I have found that past life recall has helped me move to a more soul-centered attitude, and was pleased to find that the author includes resources for both past-life and in-between lives journeys to aid in the healing and transformation process.

Reviewed by:
Venture Inward Magazine
Henry Reed
3777 Fox Creek Road
Mouth of Wilson, VA 24363

Published: January 2009

New Age Retailer's Fine Print 
Independent book reviews from retailers across the country.

Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future
Susan Wisehart
$17.95 HC, 9780738714080, 336 pages, 6" x 9", Llewellyn Publications,
800/843-6666, www.llewellyn.com

Soul Visioning is a combination workbook and instruction manual for spiritual healing. It is written for those who are ready to pursue a serious course of psychological seludy in search of a more balanced and constructive life. While Susan Wisehart is writing about the world of emotions and enlightenment, there is nothing ethereal about the product she offers us. The book is filled with practical information which is then made personal and relevant by the use of numerous case histories.

Part One gives us an overview of the soul’s relationship to the personality and takes us through the author’s seven-step workshop entitled Soul Visioning. (You can find out more about the workshop and related materials at www.soulvisioning.com.) It also contains an excellent section about how to write an effective affirmation, as well as one of the best discussions of forgiveness which I have ever read.

Part Two describes the role of regression therapy in psychological and spiritual healing. The most unique thing about the book is the concise review of energy psychology and its effectiveness in reducing negative emotions to allow healing to manifest more quickly than is sometimes possible with traditional therapeutic techniques.

Keep your eye out for new books about energy psychology. This is going to be a hot topic going forward. — Anna Jedrziewski, Spirit Connection New York, New York, N.Y.

Crystals and tarots give way to more practical and mainstream subject matter.
   by Juan Martinez -- Publishers Weekly, 9/22/2008   (Excerpt)

Traditionally, the New Age category has catered to aficionados of the esoteric and the occult. Today the genre gratifies a more mainstream consumer. Fading is the era of crystals and tarots. Nowadays, readers seek science-based titles that will help them become healthier and more spiritually aware. As New Age is continuing to expand into other categories, many titles that were once the provinces of health, psychology, self-help and spirituality (to name a few) have now assumed the New Age mantle. According to Jo Ann Deck, publisher of Celestial Arts and Crossing Press, the new New Age reader is “more practical and less interested in nebulous philosophical and spiritual exploration.” As a result, the genre reads more like Dr. Phil and Jack LaLanne than Carlos Castaneda and Ram Dass.

Llewellyn publisher Bill Krause cites current world events as the reason behind the drastic change in New Age literature. “Political, environmental and cultural changes are upon us in the form of elections, wars and even 2012 [see sidebar, p. 34]. The public is looking at a wide range of spiritual practices to find solace,” he says. “Things that were once looked upon as niche or fringe are now looked upon as interesting solutions worthy of exploration.” Llewellyn's Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future by Susan Wisehart (Oct.) combines self-help principles with New Age philosophies to “connect you with your higher self to guide you into the ideal expression of your soul in your work, relationships, health, finances and spirituality.”

This shift in focus presents new challenges for publishers while simultaneously providing a new and more expansive market. Though Gina Clark, editor at Alight, agrees with Deck's and Krause's assertions about why New Age works have changed, she has an additional theory. “[Today] publishers of New Age titles are looking to do more than entertain,” she says. “They have a vested interest in improving quality of life.” Because traditional New Age books were geared more toward enjoyment and enlightenment than the new breed of didactic literature, Clark thinks the category's biggest challenge is determining a proper definition for itself, “since [the category] can include everything from numerology to astrology to the beliefs and ritualistic practices of ancient cultures.”

As reviewed in the Aug./Sept.
Association for Humanistic Psychology Perspectives

SOUL VISIONING: Clear the Past, Create Your Future
Book Review by Dr. Barbara Terao

Wishing to live in the now, as so many sages advise, and wanting to manifest our best dreams, as so many books and movies promote, seem to be treasured goals that appear across cultures.  To achieve these goals requires skill and wisdom, both ancient and modern.  This is where Susan Wisehart's book comes in.  Her book is a well-lit path in a field littered with misleading signage.  From spiritual forms of therapy accessing past lives to cutting-edge neurobiological techniques, her book brings personal growth and self-insight to a whole new level.  Her goal is nothing less than for each person to live by the ideals of his or her Soul.  Wisehart, whose last name is Scottish, is a holistic psychotherapist, licensed marriage and family therapist, and certified hypnotherapist.  In Soul Visioning: Clearing the Past, Creating the Future she has distilled thirty years of experience into this veritable guidebook to emotional healing and self-discovery.

The magnetic notion of the Law of Attraction notwithstanding, we can't all get what we want, whenever we want.  As such teachings become more popular, it's easy to get the impression that anyone can find and follow their bliss, as Joseph Campbell liked to say, or at least understand the role of perception in helping or hindering us in that quest.  Yet so many of us remain stuck.  Wisehart jumps right into these stuck areas in Chapter One of her book, calling them obstacles to Soul expression.  As she states, "Many of the popular manifestation models take us only so far, largely because our decisions typically come from the ego or personality self, instead of our higher Soul guidance."  Four types of obstacles are identified and addressed throughout Part One of the book.

Part Two is called Healing Through Spiritual Regression Therapy and highlights experiences of those who have had Past Life Regression (PLR), the therapy developed by psychiatrist Brian Weiss, and Life-Between-Lives Regression (LBL), developed by psychologist Michael Newton.  Talk about uncovering old issues!  Some people found that their current stumbling blocks were related to past lives from long ago.  Wisehart includes parts of the transcripts from PLR and LBL sessions so readers can see for themselves how spiritual regression therapy helps people make sense of their lives, resolve old wounds, and move forward.  She also shares the results of her follow-up interviews with those clients.

The case histories delving into past lives—and deaths— would be more gruesome except for the fact that trauma is not experienced with its original intensity.  Wisehart carefully guides the two-hour process, noting "You can view the scenes from an observer mode (like watching a movie) if needed."  People bring forth memories of past lives that are most relevant to their current situation.  A client she calls Gayle went back to her death in a Civil War battle.  Wisehart "gave her the suggestion under hypnosis to go to the root cause of her blocks to use her healing gifts in this incarnation."  Gayle, a nurse, knew that she stifled some of her healing abilities.  She found that this was linked to the remorse felt in her previous life as Sergeant Samuel Smith, who felt terrible when so many of his men were killed in battle.  She was avoiding, in this lifetime, being responsible for the lives and well-being of others.

A Life-Between-Lives session involves "going back to one's most immediate past life, going through the death, and then transitioning into the between state" in order to enter the spirit realm and find out, perhaps, a bit more about one's purpose and Soul progress.  One doctor reported that her LBL session helped her to be more in touch with her guides "in a conscious way." Another woman found herself in a meeting with her Soul Council: "There were beings giving their opinions on what my next lifetime (this current life) would be about—what my Soul most needed to evolve."

The spiritual regression therapies are fascinating.  I can understand how they can help people become unblocked.  But to even approach that kind of deep work, many clients need to do some basic therapy, perhaps using some of the techniques described by Wisehart in the first half of the book.  These are the methods and exercises I was able to utilize to great benefit as I read the book.

Susan Wisehart differentiates between creating from the ego mind and creating from our Soul, sharing her seven-step process to do the latter.  She calls it Soul Visioning, which "guides you to the experience of your own Divine Self, which will help to illuminate and transform your life."  The author has crafted a series of visualization exercises to help people clarify their Soul ideals and move toward them in both attitude and behavior.  These guided journeys can also be purchased on a CD or downloaded for free from her website, soulvisioning.com.  Some of the chapters include writing exercises as well.

I found the guided meditations to be powerful experiences in terms of what they (my Soul, in Susan's terms) revealed to me.  The Peak Experiences guided meditation involves a life review that helped me see patterns that in turn revealed my most precious values, the Soul ideals by which to live my life.  The Soul Visioning guided journey introduced me to a helpful character, my ideal future self who is in, as Wisehart puts it, "the synchronous flow of your divine destiny."

In case you experience something less than synchronous flow, Chapter Five offers several breakthrough technologies that can help.  I especially liked the method of Whole Healing—Easily and Effectively (WHEE).  Bilateral stimulation in the form of tapping on alternate sides of the body is a surprisingly simple and effective way to lower anxiety and get beyond traumas and issues.  Wisehart includes such energy psychology methods in order to help readers challenge their limiting core beliefs and clear the path to a more intuitive, harmonious way of living.  These practical tools are a good compliment to the spiritual work of the other chapters.  Integrating these various methods, readers and practitioners will quickly find their feet on paths of healing.

 Barbara Wolf Terao, Ed.D. (bwterao@gmail.com) has a "soul ideal" of continuing to notice the connections and oneness of all things.  Her connection with Susan Wisehart began through the International Association for Near Death Studies and continues with the pleasure and privilege of reviewing her manuscript for this book.