Last month I wrote a blog post article titled, “A Preface To Writing About Dolores Cannon”, which was a long explanation of how and why I came to have an interest in Dolores Cannon. I wrote this preface because I wanted to share my experience, of gradually coming to a realization that the major World Religions don’t provide a satisfactory explanation of who created us, why were we created, what are we supposed to be doing, what is going to happen to us, is there a life after death.

For people who are reaching the point where they are looking for more complete and fulfilling answers about life, I believe that Dolores Cannon has the answers that these people are looking for, but possibly only if they get introduced to Dolores Cannon’s material in the right way.

Luckily for me, I first saw Dolores Cannon in a YouTube video where she had been invited to speak to a general audience of people for 2-3 hours. Because she was speaking to a mix of people, some of whom were not knowledgeable about her, Dolores gave a timeline of events in her life, from her beginning with hypnosis, her first encounter with someone’s past life, her discoveries about Past-Lives, Time-Between-Lives, Spirit-Guides, Life-Review, Future-Life-Planning, and many other concepts that she went on to write about in nearly twenty published books.

On the internet, there are probably a dozen different videos of Dolores’ 2-3 hour lectures that she gave to audiences around the World. These are an excellent way to become introduced to Dolores Cannon and her material. However, the WORST POSSIBLE WAY to happen upon Dolores Cannon, is through the many videos on her own official YouTube website, the weekly “Metaphysical Hour” videos.

There are three important ways that these “Metaphysical Hour” videos are absolutely undermining Dolores Cannon’s lifetime of work. #1) These “Metaphysical Hour” videos that were created during the last ten years of Dolores Cannon’s life, jump right into advanced topics, which more than likely will confuse and scare new listeners away within 10-20 minutes. #2) The guests that Dolores Cannon has on her “Metaphysical Hour” program do not have the same credibility as Dolores Cannon, some guests are on the fringe, but new or first-time listeners can mistakenly believe that this is what Dolores Cannon teaches. #3) Listeners call in to the “Metaphysical Hour” program with their questions and opinions, and often so misunderstand Dolores’ teachings, that their flippant banter can confuse the heck out of new or first-time listeners.

I think that one of my main objectives in writing my “Preface To Dolores Cannon”, “Introduction To Dolores Cannon”, and whatever else I subsequently write, is to undo the damage and prevent the damage caused by the “Metaphysical Hour” videos. I strongly believe that there are hundreds of thousands of people on Earth teetering on the edge of making life-changing discoveries, and that their one shot at finding Dolores Cannon is ruined by their first impression from a “Metaphysical Hour” video gone wrong.

With the hope of giving people just enough of the necessary preliminary information to get started with Dolores Cannon the right way, here is my introduction:

In the late 1960s, Dolores Cannon was a stay-at-home mom approaching 40 years of age, with several young children, and a husband who had made a career in the U.S. Navy.  Dolores and her husband Johnny, were living on a U.S. Military base in Texas where her husband was stationed.  As a hobby Dolores Cannon and her husband Johnny were dabbling in hypnosis as a way to reduce stress & anxiety, and as a way to lose weight and quit smoking.  A military MD on this base, asked Dolores and Johnny if they would be willing to help a young housewife, who was struggling with anxiety and being overweight.

When Dolores and her husband Johnny hypnotized this young housewife, she began describing in detail an environment, circumstances, and surroundings, that over the next half-hour appeared to be a previous life that she had lived, in a different time and place.  Dolores and Johnny were shocked, they had never heard of anything like this happening to anyone.  “Past-Life Regression” was a term and concept that was unknown to 99.9% of the population in the 1960s.

In the coming weeks, Dolores and Johnny hypnotized this young woman in perhaps a dozen sessions, recording the audio of these sessions using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and taking hand-written notes.  After these sessions, Dolores later replayed the audio tapes in order to add more information and detail to her written notes.  Then Dolores began performing research to verify the accuracy and validity of details given by the young housewife under hypnosis, things such as figures of speech she used, terminology, customs, manner of dress, and architecture styles of far away places and historical times.

Dolores and her husband Johnny observed, and noted from the background that this young housewife had given about herself, that she did not have the education, experience of travel, or access to information that would have allowed her to have knowledge of many of the things that she was describing from her past lives.  After each of these sessions, this housewife was confused and not pleased when she was informed by Dolores about her recollection of past lives under hypnosis.  Within six months this young housewife moved away with her family, and did not have any further contact with Dolores.

Neither Dolores, her husband Johnny, or this young housewife had any intention to uncover past-lives, or participate in anything psychic or paranormal.  This was a surprise, unknown, and confusing to them.  Each of their family backgrounds had consisted of the traditional Christian beliefs in God, Jesus, Heaven, and Hell, not Reincarnation.

Within a year, Dolores’ husband was severely injured in a horrific car accident when he was returning to base one night, a head-on collision with a drunk driver.  At the time of the car accident, his transport to the hospital, and his first 24 hours in the hospital, her husband Johnny nearly died several times from blood loss and the severity of his injuries.  He spent the next 12 months in a body-cast.  He never regained the ability to walk.

Dolores’ priority became taking care of her severely handicapped husband and four children for the next ten years, with no time for anything else.  In order to survive on her husband’s military disability pension, she relocated her family to the Ozark Mountain region of Arkansas, near the town of Springdale.

Later, in the 1980s, now in her fifties, with her children growing up and leaving home, Dolores began her hypnosis work again, and study of Past-Life Regression.  Within a short time, Dolores had hypnotically regressed some participants into a Time-Between-Lives.

Though many more discoveries were made by Dolores in the following 30 years, I want to focus now on the implications and meaning of Past-Lives and Time-Between-Lives.

In Dolores’ more than thirty years of research, she was able to individually hypnotically regress several thousand participants.  In the first ten years or so of her research, Dolores was particularly interested in verifying that the participants were not making up stories from their own imaginations, or something they had read, seen on television, or watched in a movie.  This verification was more easily done in some ways, because people did not have easy access to information on the internet until the late 1990s.

To give an example, one of Dolores Cannon’s hypnosis participants was describing over several sessions, their lifetime as a young person enrolled in a Jewish school for scholars, and later becoming an instructor at this Jewish school in approximately the time 0 B.C.  In order to determine the veracity of what this person was describing under hypnosis, Dolores spent months trying to find the most prominent and renowned Jewish Rabbis, historians, and scholars to ask questions.  Each of these Jewish experts of teachings, customs, practices, were astonished at what Dolores was trying to verify, as some of these things hadn’t been discussed or practiced for the past 2,000 years, and very few people knew of them.

As Dolores began proving to herself beyond doubt, that her hypnosis participants were not imagining or fabricating past-life memories, that these past-lives were real, there were many more questions that needed to be answered:  What is it about a person that survives death, but gets to live again, is it their “soul”?;  When does a “soul” enter a human body?;  When does a “soul” leave a human body?;  How long does a “soul” live?;  How many lifetimes does a “soul” experience?;  Do animals have “souls”?;  Why don’t people have memories of all their past-lives?

When some of Dolores’ hypnosis participants began describing their Time-Between-Lives during their hypnosis sessions, a more complete picture was provided:

At the end of a lifetime on Earth as a human, the Soul detaches from the human body.  Sometimes this detachment is described as the breaking of a “silver cord” that tethers the Soul to a human body, and rising into a different dimension, plain, or realm.  Sometimes this is also described as entering a tunnel of bright light, that is not painful, but has a sensation of love.  The description of the experience as a Soul just having left a human body, is that it is lightness, unburdened by care, worry, fear, regret, shame, anger, apprehension, anxiety, or any negative feeling. The human lifetime is instantly seen as not having been a big deal, it was only temporary.

For a Soul that may have had a traumatic life or a traumatic death experience, there is a period where the Soul is not required to do anything but recuperate.  A “Spirit-Guide” will greet a Soul, and reassure it.  A newly arrived Soul will be allowed to choose according to their preference & imagination, what type of resting accommodation that they wish, any type of house or home for instance.  There are beautiful gardens among others things, and an opportunity to meet other Souls that they may have interacted with in the past.  In a way, this dimension, plain, or realm, is similar to how Heaven is described.

At some point, there will be an individual Life-Review for each Soul that has returned from having experienced a lifetime elsewhere.  For a Soul returning from having experienced a life as a human, there is no judgement whether an action was good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, but the Soul is shown how each action or decision impacted others in great detail.

After a Soul has had its Life-Review, together with the council of Spirit-Guides, it will be jointly decided and agreed upon, what type of life experiences and life lessons does the Soul want to undertake in its next incarnation.  It is possible to incarnate on other planets, other dimensions, or return to Earth at any time in the past or future.  General circumstances on Earth can be selected, such as what kind of family to be born into, what level of physical health, economic circumstances, social circumstances.  But a key point, is that the Soul has a type of contract that it agrees to, it is not forced to do anything that it has not agreed to.

In this introduction to Dolores Cannon, I will now present and give answers to some common initial questions about hypnotic-regression, past-life-regression, past-lives, time-between-lives, reincarnation, according to what Dolores Cannon learned and taught:

• Can a Soul incarnate as an animal?  Yes, a Soul can incarnate as an animal, insect, plant, or even a rock.  However, it was explained to Dolores that once a Soul has experienced life as a rock, plant, insect, or animal, Souls do not go back to these lower life-forms, they incarnate as a higher life-form the next time.
• Do animals have a Soul?  Yes, it was explained to Dolores that animals have something called a “Group-Soul” or “Shared-Soul” when they live as a herd, pack, flock, or group.  When an animal becomes a loved pet of a human, it begins its progression to having its own individual Soul.
• How many lifetimes as a human does a Soul get to experience?  As many lifetimes as it takes, usually in the neighborhood of a hundred lifetimes or more.
• As a Soul evolves and progresses after having experienced many lifetimes, does it incarnate as a more successful person?  No, not necessarily.  Dolores was shown that in some instances, the last thing a Soul might need to experience in a human lifetime, is poverty, drug-addiction, alcohol-addiction, homelessness.
• Why are some people born with severe illness or disabilities?  In the Spirit dimension, plain, or realm, where each Soul is aware of the life experiences and lessons that it must learn, the opportunity to experience a human lifetime with a severe illness or disability is seen as a chance to experience and learn many things in a single lifetime, and is a desirable lifetime, even if it will be short.
• Do Souls incarnate together?  Yes, it was explained to Dolores that during a lifetime as a human, Souls often incarnate together, but with changing relationships.  In one lifetime, one Soul might have the role of mother, and the other Soul as daughter, but in a subsequent lifetime, these Souls might reverse roles.  It’s as if in the Spirit dimension, plain, or realm, these Souls agree to play different roles in each other’s human lifetimes.
• Is there a God?  It was explained to Dolores that there is a God, but this God is more like a force or an energy, not very much like the God described in the Bible with human characteristics.
• Did Jesus exist?  Yes, it was explained and shown to Dolores that Jesus existed on Earth, but he was more like a very highly advanced Soul on Earth, it’s difficult to explain.
• Is there a Hell?  No, there is not a Hell, where anyone is imprisoned, tortured, and punished.  However, it was explained to Dolores that there is a dimension, plain, or realm where “lower-vibration-entities” exist.  These are Souls that despite many incarnations, and many subsequent life-reviews as a Soul, they never learn their lessons, never evolve.
• Why don’t we have memories of our other lifetimes?  We don’t have memories of our other lifetimes while living as a human because this knowledge would interfere with how we live our current lifetime.
• Why do bad things happen to good people?  As part of a Soul’s contract that was made and agreed upon prior to coming to Earth and living as a human, a Soul decided whether it was willing to learn about suffering, pain, loss, unfairness, despair, anguish, and so forth.
• Is there a Devil and Demons?  From what I have been able to learn through Dolores’ teachings, there are “lower-vibration-entities”.  The best example that I can give, a Soul that has incarnated many times as a human, been through many life-reviews as a Soul, and consistently returns to Earth and does bad things, never learns the lessons it is supposed to learn, these Souls can linger either in a human body or resist ascending after the death of a human body, and cause problems, such as a “Demonic Spirit”.  This is the best explanation that I can give at this time.
• Who was Hitler?  Dolores did a lot of inquiring regarding this question.  It was explained to Dolores that prior to coming to Earth to live as a human, the Soul that was going to be attached to Hitler was supposed to experience a lifetime of creativity, but not in a bad way.  Everything somehow went wrong, Hitler was not supposed to turn out like this, but he did. (Probably had a lot to do with a policy of non-interference and free-will on Earth.) However, supposedly when Hitler died and it was time for this Soul to detach and ascend to the higher dimension, plain, or realm to have its life-review,  the Soul would not go, it continued to linger unattached, it wouldn’t ascend to face its life-review, it’s still there in “limbo” as far as we know.
• When a person is hypnotized, where is this memory of past-lives coming from?  Initially, Dolores did not know what to call this part of the mind, so early on she called it the “subconscious”.  But within a few years, Dolores realized that this term “subconscious” was not accurate.  Dolores later began to call this source of memory and information the “Higher-Consciousness”.  ( I tend to think of the “subconscious” as a completely human part of the brain, not connected with anything higher than a human-being-level.)
• Is this “Higher-Consciousness” the same thing as what some people call the “Collective-Consciousness”?  It isn’t really the same thing, but at times it has many similar aspects, such as the idea of both of these providing access to all knowledge and information.  I think of “Higher-Consciousness” as a person’s own individual personal access to their own individual memories and knowledge.