Let Metro College Guide You, Spiritually Speaking

Posted March 2013

CHRISTOPHER THRALL / dish@vueweekly.com

‘Learn how to develop your intuitive or psychic abilities,” the website suggested. “Explore past-life regression, discover the world of dreams, soul travel or Tibetan Buddhist happiness.”

The class calendar suggested finding out about karma and reincarnation or death and the afterlife. I could discover cleansing, Tarot or tea-leaf reading and the spiritual use of herbs in evening or weekend sessions throughout the year.

Everyone could use a little Tibetan Buddhist happiness. I called Metro Continuing Education to check out their Spirituality courses. Since I was lost among the multitude of offerings, I needed to calm myself down a little. Padman Pillai, a hypnotherapist who teaches meditation and the Forgiveness course, was available to soothe and centre me.

I understood meditation, but what was involved in teaching someone forgiveness?

“Forgiveness is a healing process for ourselves,” explained Pillai, “not for the other person. We have a choice of forgiving something that happened, or to harbour it where it will poison the body.”

Pillai teaches the tear-stained catharsis of letting go of this psychic garbage in six-hour courses once per semester. His other courses teach meditation techniques—both introductory and advanced—in four-hour sessions throughout the year.

Metro Continuing Education offers meditation and mind power classes to prepare a student for further study, or just to handle the daily stressors of life. Meditation teaches us how to relax, release toxic anxiety and settle fears while forgiveness teaches how to let go of intensely painful emotions from our past. Both classes are full every time, sometimes extending to a waiting list.

Pillai has been meditating for 30 years, and uses his experience as a hypnotherapist and teacher of 20 years to engage these internal processes. The former pharmaceutical marketing representative now teaches tools to rid oneself of emotional baggage and how to deal with hurt. It’s no wonder he’s so busy.

“They ask me to teach more classes, but it’s a question of time,” says Pillai. He works on the Professional Board of Hypnotherapy, which promotes the service around the world, and runs his own successful practice as a motivational speaker. He also helps people stop smoking and conquer their phobias, weight or sexual dysfunctions. Teaching the six stages of forgiveness is just another way he can help others.

I was finally relaxed and thought I could consider the options available. However, as I looked through Metro’s Intuitive/Psychic offerings, I discovered courses on developing my own psychic abilities or the Boundless Healing of my mind, body and soul. I needed guidance, so I spoke to Marlene Christiaan, instructor of the popular Calling the Angels seminar. Once or twice a season, Christiaan takes a group of 20 people through the three-hour effort to call angels.

“First of all, I get the students to write a letter,” says Christiaan. “When you’re calling angels, you need to be succinct about what you want.”

She then walks her class through several meditations, where they meet their guardian angels then join the archangels in an effort to heal planet Earth. Finally, everyone receives a personal channeled message. Students leave her class able to contact their guardian angel at any time.

Christiaan has been channelling angels and working with their messages for over 10 years, since she was first introduced to gemstone energy. Since then, she has developed a strong channelling relationship with the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Christiaan identifies especially with the latter and has focused on Mary Magdalene in a book she is writing.

She comes by her skills through her ancestry, as both her grandmother and great-grandmother had gifts. She has also had a lifetime of experiences with angels.

“Even as a three-year-old child,” she reveals, “I would black out for a time and awaken wondering why I couldn’t fly any more.”

When the entire CBC station she worked at out East was laid off, she seized upon the opportunity to dedicate herself to her craft.

Now, like Pillai, she is too busy to offer more classes and cut down on her waiting list. Besides Calling the Angels, she also offers a seminar on Taking Your Angels to Work, which introduces power, success, ethical living and spiritual enlightenment co-existing in corporate life. The upcoming Christmas season means book store appearances, working on an angel calendar and a little vacation time.

The real value of the Spirituality offerings at Metro Continuing Education is secure, however. Both Pillai and Christiaan teach the skills necessary to apply their teachings on my own. While each recommended advanced study under further guidance, I would be able to forgive and call my own angels after their instruction. These instructors, and Metro, put the power into my hands.

Whether I craved meditation or mind power, psychic development or simply a retreat to find the sacred feminine, I could find a safe instructional haven in Metro’s Spirituality courses.

 

Christopher Thrall,
Dish Editor
Vue Weekly