Cassie Zievers is a lifelong spiritual adventurer. She dreamed about going to The Monroe Institute® for twenty-nine years before finally attending a GATEWAY VOYAGE® program in October of 2003. When asked for a comment she stated, "It was bloody well about time!" She has three grown children and is starting a business as a meditation teacher and hypnotherapist in Minnesota. Cassie has also written about her GATEWAY VOYAGE® experiences on the Love Blobs website.

It was blissfully warm and sunny when I arrived at The Monroe Institute® for my TIMELINE program in March 2004--a far cry from the harsh Minnesota winter I'd left behind. The mild weather was some consolation as I had arrived with a persistent headache. I was determined, however, to make the most of my time at TMI.

The TIMELINE program was different in tone and overall feel than my October 2003 GATEWAY VOYAGE®. GATEWAY had been a very high-energy program with lots of laughs and fun. TIMELINE was the same whenever we gathered as a group but when there was work to be done the tone was often more somber. I realized that TIMELINE would not be anything like GATEWAY. That was fortunate because I would soon come to find that I was stepping into my "grandma space." Although I had an idea of what I hoped to accomplish and gain from the experience, I knew better than to hold too tightly to expectations. Life may well have other plans, and that was definitely the case this time around!

On my second full day things really started bubbling up to the surface. The headache persisted and was accompanied by a bit of nausea and a vague sense of fear--for no apparent reason. These symptoms grew in intensity as the day wore on until the pressure felt unbearable. I finally sat down on the couch in the Fox Den with trainer Lee Stone to discuss my feelings. Lee mentioned that at times, when we delve into our past lives we may confront some dark images. He reminded me that we can maintain a safe distance from such images.

Instead of feeling comforted, I felt even more agitated after our talk. It wasn't what Lee had said; it was me. Even having a massage later on didn't help much. My agitation increased until I felt ready to jump right out of my skin! When I finally got back to my CHEC unit for the first of the afternoon's exercises, I was tired of the pain, tired of the nausea, and tired of being afraid. I knew that the only way out was to go through it. Lying in my CHEC unit I spoke out loud, to no one in particular, "Alright, let's get this over with . . . bring it on!!"

The first lifetime I was drawn to took place during the time of the Roman Empire. I was a soldier in battle, and I saw myself lying on the battlefield bleeding to death. I had taken a number of men down before I got skewered in the stomach myself, and I remembered how that felt. I was tired of the carnage, tired of war, sick of the fact that I had been dragged into it yet again. Perhaps I let myself be killed in order to finally be done with it. Coming to grips with this suddenly relieved my nausea.

The second lifetime I was drawn to was every bit as emotionally charged as the last one, if not more so. I was in a house on an island off the coast of Greece. It was light and airy inside, a beautiful house that I shared with my sister. My name was Olara and my sister and I were always arguing. The event I witnessed was apparently a pivotal one for the evolution of our relationship. We had ALWAYS argued. We were both steadfastly entrenched in our positions and very ego oriented. This day was no different than any other in that respect . . . or was it?

As we argued I finally realized there was no way for either of us to ever win . . . ever! I would have to be the first to let it go, so I disengaged and refused to participate any further. This ticked my sister off even more. She stomped around the house, shouting things she hoped would push my buttons and get me going again. I sat in the living room hoping to wait it out. She stormed back into the room; I never saw the knife. In one rapid motion she cut my throat. I sat there in utter shock and disbelief. Even in my wildest dreams I never believed her capable of that and curiously, didn't blame her now. I moved quickly into forgiveness, never stopped loving her, and as my life ebbed away I left that scene.

Part of this exercise had been to ask some important questions, like "what did you learn from this experience?" I laughingly answered, "Do not engage the Borg!" Humorous perhaps, but an important point. I was never going to win and neither was she; I had simply been the first to realize it. I then asked, "Who was she to me in my current life?" There was a moment of hesitation as I heard my guide ask someone else, "Do you think she's ready to know?" Then came the answer: "Your grandmother."

That response blew me away! It also answered some nagging questions about my relationship with my grandmother. We had always argued about anything and everything--stupid, pointless little things. I got really tired of it in later years. I had never done this with anyone else in my life. It also struck me as odd that she had always felt eclipsed by Grandpa. I dearly loved him from babyhood. She felt that meant I loved her less and nothing could convince her otherwise. Then I was called back to California during the last two years of her life. I cared for her right up until the end, despite difficulties, and she finally understood that I loved her. Our relationship was finally healed and seeing it from a past life perspective, I truly comprehended the magnitude of that healing.

Just in case this wasn't quite spectacular enough, there was yet more to come--a reward for all my pain beyond the healing I had already been given. The exercise was to go and speak with my future self. This older me had lived my full life and, now near death, would give me some insight into my future. The first image showed me standing in my daughter and son-in-law's house. She had just given birth to a beautiful baby boy. As I stood there holding my grandson, my son-in-law leaned over the bed talking to my daughter lovingly. The baby was warm in my arms. I turned away from them and presented my new grandson to our ancestors--those I have known and those I have never known but am bound to by love. I lifted the child up and told them "Look what my baby girl has done for us today!" It doesn't get any better than this!!

Postscript:
Headache or no headache, I had found myself acting very uncharacteristically during the program. I kept telling silly, pointless stories. Anyone in the group who would stand still for three minutes got quite an earful! Near the end of our week together, I finally realized what was happening. I had indeed stepped into my "grandma space" and had become my grandmother!

© 2004 by The Monroe Institute

As the managing editor for a New York City company that develops medical record software, Allison Moore is responsible (in theory) for anything having to do with words. She writes everything from help systems to marketing materials, and publishes most of it in-house. Growing up with a minister father who was involved in psychic research, Allison was always aware that there was more to being than the physical universe. Ordained in the meditation tradition she's practiced for thirty years, Allison has explored metaphysical tools throughout her life and was one of the original GATEWAY OUTREACH Trainers.

Every program I've done at The Monroe Institute® has been wonderful. That's what we all say, and we all say it because it's true.

I did my first GATEWAY VOYAGE® twenty years ago, and every program since has been fun, surprising, enlightening, expanding, enriching, button pushing, growth producing, and deeply felt. Each one took me somewhere I didn't know it was possible to go. Each one taught me something about who I am. Each one opened another crack in the wall between me and wholeness. Each one was a unique and powerful experience.

Then I did TIMELINE.
Oh, mama!

I thought I'd had powerful experiences before. In TIMELINE, I didn't just stick my finger in the wall socket. I stuck it in the generator. (That laughter in the background is the rest of my group cracking up as they read this. "Power" was my word for the week. They heard it so much, they probably wished I would move on to enlightenment or world peace instead.)

TIMELINE was an order of magnitude beyond every other TMI program I've ever done. I don't say that lightly. Every program has been and still is very important to me, and I look forward to doing them again. I recognize that I got what I did from TIMELINE because of what I'd learned over the last two years from LIFELINE, HEARTLINE, and the REMOTE VIEWING PRACTICUM. They laid the conduit, made the connections, and installed the junction boxes. Then TIMELINE flipped the switch.

It built on the reintegration of self from LIFELINE. It expanded the healing and acceptance of HEARTLINE. It took the exploration of time from the REMOTE VIEWING PRACTICUM to a whole new level. It offered new avenues to guidance, opening doors unveiled in GUIDELINES®--all without going beyond Focus™ 15.

In LIFELINE, the trainers said that the mere passage of a conscious human through Focus 23 could awaken souls that were "stuck" there, that there was something about our energy that could make us uniquely effective in retrievals. Bob Monroe talked about why souls want to incarnate, what they achieve in doing so. During TIMELINE, in Focus 15, I got a taste of what Bob and the LIFELINE trainers meant. It's the core, the pure essence of human existence. It's who you become when you stop depending on answers and start living the questions.

TIMELINE encouraged us to explore the powerful stillness of Focus 15, a place many of us have perceived as the Void-a great emptiness where nothing much happens. "Sublime stillness" might be a more accurate description. When you truly embrace the emptiness even for a heartbeat . . . well, each one's experience is unique.

In TIMELINE, I passed another milestone in the journey toward accepting my experience as it is, rather than judging it against someone else's. I began opening to receive information kinesthetically. That may be more challenging than receiving visually because it's harder to talk about, but it may also lead to deeper experience. I learned more about grounding and how important it is when we want to work with higher energies.

And it wasn't just me.

Every one of the twenty-one participants took the bounty that TIMELINE offered and ran with it. The energy shifts began early in the week and kept building. Shells cracked all over the place, some gently, some dramatically. We defined ourselves not as a group but as a tribe. And as a tribe within a tribe. We recognized that the whole encompasses all those in other programs-all those who have explored this territory before us, in parallel, in other times and places, and in times yet to come.

The experiences of power I was having were not about me alone. It was clear that everyone else was equally powerful, and our combined effort was off the charts. Our group included an unusually high number of healers, declared and undeclared. Perhaps their willingness to open to the energy amplified the currents that were both set in motion and ably grounded by facilitators Lee Stone and Charleene Nicely. Each participant functioned fully as a node on the grid, passing the energy through, clarifying, augmenting, and grounding as needed. A comment or suggestion from one often opened a gate for another. An issue confronted by two became a learning exercise for two more. And we laughed-a lot.

Adding to the ambience was the amazing lightSOURCE software, which displays a series of endlessly evolving designs based on sacred geometry in tandem with a Hemi-Sync® soundtrack. Several times during the week, lightSOURCE was projected on the large screen in David Francis Hall. We could meditate on the mesmerizing kaleidoscope, or stand in front of the screen and bathe in the light. There is something unexpectedly poignant in seeing those images playing over and around a human form. Standing in the light was equally moving.

The exercises in TIMELINE include tools for identifying and clearing limiting beliefs, in this life and in other lives. Some exercises are about experiencing physical death and making transitions. (How else do you get from one life to another?) What did you learn from a given life? How has it enriched your being? Whether you approach other lives literally or figuratively, they provide an effective vehicle for expanding your perception and transforming your awareness of who you are.

TIMELINE is one powerful experience you do not want to miss.

Hemi-Sync® is a registered trademark of Interstate Industries, Inc.

© 2004 by The Monroe Institute