Are You Having a Spiritual Awakening?

by Dana Taylor

Register for February’s Sharing Circle at https://spiritualawakeningsinternational.org/event/sai-experiencers-sharing-circle-february-3-2024/

Spiritual Experiences That Change Your Life

Have you experienced a Near-Death Experience (NDE), a Spiritually Transformative Experience (STE), mystical experiences or simply have a spiritual curiosity? If so, you might want to know about Spiritual Awakenings International (SAI). Founded in 2020 by Dr. Yvonne Kason and Robert Bare, MPA, PHd, Spiritual Awakenings International is building a global network and community of individuals and groups interested in Spiritually Transformative Experiences. Dr. Kason’s career as a medical doctor was influenced by her dramatic Near-Death Experiences. In 1990 she became the first Canadian medical doctor to specialize her practice in the research and counseling of patients with diverse types of STEs. Too often people have been categorized as “crazy” and put on medications after sharing experiences that seem beyond the bounds of reality. While times are changing, many people still feel isolated and confused after STE’s. Spiritual Awakenings International offers a community-building forum and an educational platform. Experts and experiencers share their information and stories in a growing library of Zoom recordings. These are available for viewing at the SAI YouTube channel.

SAI CONFERENCE 2023

Each year SAI presents a two-day on-line conference with a variety of speakers and panels. Donations are requested to cover the costs, but registration is free. This year’s conference, SPIRITUAL AWAKENING: THE DAWN OF CONSCIOUSNESS is June 10 and 11. Participants must register for each day separately to receive the Zoom link. Suggested Conference Donation $50 to $200 – Donate Now!

Saturday, June 10 Conference Schedule

The Conference starts at 8:30 AM Pacific Time, which is 11:30 AM Eastern Time, 4:30 PM in the UK, and Sunday, 3:30 AM in Auckland, NZ, 1:30 AM in Sydney Australia.

(All times listed below are in Pacific Time – PDT.)

8:30 AM PDT – Meditation – Brian Sackett – “Connecting with Spirit”

9 AM PDT – Mark Anthony – The NDE Zone: Connected by the Light from the Cosmic to the Subatomic”

10:30 PDT – Dr. Emma Bragdon – “How 20-40,000 Brazilian Spiritists Care for Individuals in Spiritual Emergency”

12 noon PDT – Supporting STE Experiencers Panel – Dr. Pier Luigi Lattuada “Transe-Cognition: For a Coherent Hermeneutics of Spiritual Awakening” & Isabel Clark “Hope and Support for Travellers Between the Worlds: The Work of the UK Spiritual Crisis Network”

1:30 PM PDT – Jyoti Ma – “The Spiritual Emergence of Mother Earth”

3:00 PM PDT– Dr. Lawrence Edwards – “Kundalini Awakening: Maps of the Journey

4:30 PM PDT– NDE Experiencers Panel – Dr. Norma Edwards, Don Hoes, Dr. Louise Livingston, Lewis Brown Griggs

6:00 PM PDT – Spiritually Transformative Experiences/Consciousness Researchers Panel – Monique Rebelle, Dr. Danny Geren, Dr. Mona Sobhani, David Gerrelli

All events are 1 hour and 15 minutes in length, except the morning meditation that is 15 minutes long.  

There will be a 15 minute break between events.

Sunday, June 11 SAI Conference Schedule

The first English event begins at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, which is 1:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM in the UK, and Sunday, 5:00 AM in Auckland, NZ, 3:00 AM in Sydney Australia.

(All times listed below are in Pacific Time – PDT.)

8:15 AM PDT – Spanish Music: Roxana Río

8:30 AM PDT – Spanish Panel: Ana Cecilia González, Francisco Valentin, Dr. Ingrid Honkala, & AJ Parr 

10:00 AM PDT – Dr. Jeffrey Long – “Evidence of the Afterlife: Groundbreaking New Findings from the Largest Study of Near-Death Experiences Ever Reported”

11:30 AM PDT – Dr. Yvonne Kason – “Kundalini Awakening: A Universal Key to STEs & Expanded Spiritual States of Consciousness”

1:00 PM PDT – Spiritual Emergency Experiencers Panel – Sean Blackwell, Dr. Ann Berger-Knorr. Mariam J. Saleh Esq., and Ellen Drummonds Curtis

2:30 PM PDT – Anne Archer Butcher – “Miraculous Dolphin Rescue from Shark Attack – An Amazing Mystical Experience with Dolphins in the Atlantic Ocean”

4:00 PM PDT – Rob Schwartz – “Discover The Real Meaning of the Life You Planned BEFORE You Were Born”

5:30 PM PDT – STE Experiencers Panel – Dr. Jean MacPhail, Althea Watson, Kristin LeMaster, Dr. Sha’alah Ivory

Events are 1 hour and 15 minutes in length, except the morning music that is 15 minutes long.  

There will be a 15 minute break between events.

Visit Conference Website

Read all about the speakers and various offerings at the Spiritual Awakenings International Conference 2023 website. Registration for each day is required to receive the Zoom links. Cost is free, but donations are requested and appreciated.

She Returned from Heaven to Help Others

Book Review by Dana Taylor

On the beautiful Niagara Falls evening of November 8, 2003, Dr. Yvonne Kason slipped on a piece of black ice and hit her head on the hard rock of the walkway. A flash of excruciating head pain quickly dissolved as she died. Her consciousness rose from her body and entered non-physical realms where she met her spiritual gurus and reviewed all her past lives.The tale of that Near Death Experience (NDE) would be riveting on its own. However, in Dr. Kason’s book, Soul Lessons from the Light, that story comes late in the book because it is the fifth NDE of her remarkable life.

Yvonne Kason was born and raised in Canada. Though her childhood included mystical experiences, she pursued a career as a medical doctor and planned to have a standard Family Practice when she graduated from medical school in 1977. Those plans were dramatically altered in 1979 when she survived a small plane crash on a medevac flight over the frozen wilds of northern Ontario. She had to escape the sinking plane and swim through frigid water in heavy clothing to reach a small sacred island, far from civilization. In that harrowing escapade, her consciousness slipped from her swimming body and watched the drama unfold, even as she also visited heavenly realms. That Near Death Experience eventually became the material for her book, A Farther Shore, published in 1994, and put her in the national limelight. Dr. Kason expanded her medical practice to counseling for people who struggled with Near Death or other Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STE’s), a phrase she coined that has been adopted into the common vernacular. She became a well-known speaker on talk shows, media interviews, and various conferences around the world.

While maintaining a high functioning professional life, Dr. Kason also developed a deeply devoted spiritual life through intense meditation practices and contemplative retreats. She experienced kundalini awakenings, visions, spiritual downloads, past life recall and pretty much all the clairs at one time or another. Thus, Soul Lessons from the Light is so much more than a spiritual memoir. It defines and explains a wide variety of mystical experiences. Chapter 10 lays out the abc’s of psychic/intuitive experience from “abstract intuition” to “UFO encounters.” Even though I’ve been studying mystical matters for decades, I had an ah-ha moment when I read her definition of a Kundalini Awakening and realized that was the name for something I experienced way back in 1983.

Because Dr. Kason has spent so many years helping people work through their life-changing spiritual experiences, she offers a perspective of professional guidance, even as she shares her very personal revelations.

Today, Dr. Kason is truly a walking miracle. For that 2003 fall on black ice caused a severe traumatic brain injury that left her disabled for thirteen years. The life she had carefully built, as a doctor, lecturer, author, and counselor completely disappeared. She struggled to perform basic physical and mental functions. Her income and ability to take care of her son became precarious. What she missed most was the ability to meditate and reach the blissful mental states she had known. Determination took her a long way toward recovery, but it was an eruption of liquid light in the center of her brain in 2016 during a meditation that healed her injury and allowed her to resume a high-powered life.

In 2020, she and Robert Bare, another NDE experiencer, were intuitively guided to co-found Spiritual Awakenings International (SAI), an organization dedicated to building a world-wide community of people who’ve had Spiritually Transformative Experiences. The SAI YouTube channel holds a growing library of fascinating people sharing their STE’s for the world to hear, often after decades of keeping their experiences a secret from family and friends for fear of being ridiculed or considered delusional. SAI’s third annual multi-speaker on-line conference is coming up on June 10-11, free to all (donations requested).

Soul Lessons from the Light opens the realms of heaven and earth for the spiritual seeker. As Dr. Kason says in her closing chapter:

Due to my personal experiences of multiple STE’s and miracles in my life, I know there is always hope for a better tomorrow. We must never lose hope. If we turn to the Higher Power in our hearts, the Divine hand might unexpectedly intervene, and invisibly reach out to offer assistance, healing, or guidance in our time of need.

Listen to Dr. Kason introduce her book and share the experience of her 2003 NDE at the Spiritual Awakenings International channel:

Find Soul Lessons from the Light at Amazon

Visit Spiritual Awakenings International