"Heaven," says Lori Lipten, "is all
about unconditional love."

children, Stassinopoulos also takes part in
Lipten's monthly "higher empowerment"
meetings, which provide ways to empower
one's self intuitively, she says.
"The lessons I have learned from Lori I
will take with me throughout my life," says
Stassinopoulos. "Plus, she is warm and fuzzy
— I love that about her!"
A male 50-something creative director of
a marketing agency, who prefers not to use
his name for this article, agrees with that
assessment.
"I immediately.liked Lori" says the Jewish
resident of West Bloomfield. "She is a sweet,
warm woman"
He initially saw Lipten b&ause he likes
to visit a variety of energy hiakrs and hear
their perspective on issues ongoing in his life.
"I didn't know what to expect," he says.
"Lori allowed me to see what could have
been bad news job-wise from a different per-
spective and was incredibly helpful."
Plus, the client's father, who had been dead
for 20 years, showed up.
"Through Lori, he related things to me
from my childhood and made me aware that
he knew things that happened to me since he
passed away. It was bizarre — but an incred-
ible gift and incredibly powerf-ul."

Understanding The Soul
As human beings, we have freedom in
choosing our life path, Lipten believes,
but there also is a soul path, and souls are
essentially compassionate.
"In a world where suffering, pain and
cruelty exist, will I still choose love, kind-
ness and compassion?" This, believes
Lipten, is the Divine question for those
who live human lives.
She cites Viktor Franld (Man's Search
for Meaning), a psychiatrist and Holocaust
survivor who lost almost his entire family,
as one of her heroes.
"In the midst of his horror, he chose love"
she says, just as many Holocaust survivors,
who had every reason not to, touched into
the pure [soul] essence of who they were"
As a whole, Lipten believes, "Jews, as a
soul group, are part of a much bigger pic-
ture than our earthbound egos allow us to
see. In alignment with being 'chosen, we
are here with the deeper purpose of serv-
ing humanity."
Some individual souls experience "soul
loss" says Lipten, where all or parts of a soul
— most often because of some type of phys-
ical or emotional trauma — may choose
to leave the body and move to a higher
spiritual realm to feel secure and protected.
Sometimes we "give" our soul to others, or
individuals "steal" part of our soul.
Souls may not always be able to reintegrate

on their own, says Lipten, even after death.
As a shamanic practitioner, Lipten says she
"travels to other realms" to both retrieve and
help with the reintegration of souls in both
this and other dimensions.
Wendy Appleton, 63, of Huntington
Woods, is a psychotherapist with a master's
degree in social work. In April, she went on a
"soul retrieval retreat" to Costa Rica with 24
other women, led by Lipten and psychothera-
pist Megan Gunnell.
"We don't get through life without some
of us losing little pieces of ourselves" says
Appleton. "Lori is able to collect those pieces
and put them back where they belong."
Starting at age 7, Appleton, who grew up
in Oak Park, had dreams in which her family
would disappear.
"I would wander around looking for
them" she recalls, "and I suffered from bad
headaches. I managed to function; but
although [I was] not clinically depressed,
there was sadness."
Without knowing why, Appleton says she
always evaluated people in this way: Would
they hide me?
Much later, she read Anne Franks The
Diary of Young Girl but couldn't bear to watch
plays or movies about the Holocaust. She
always had to buy extra food so she could
grab it in an emergency.
"When I first met Lori in 2003, she
immediately knew I was Jewish and asked
me what family members had been in the
Holocaust. None: I replied. (0h, my God: was
her answer. `You were there. She described
me as a little boy, separated from my family
and beaten to death [by the Nazis].
All my dreams and fears made sense"
says Appleton. "The heaviness and sadness
and fear lifted and haven't once been back"
"When you're aligned with your soul path,
you feel peaceful" says Lipten, so when a
soul retrieval and integration is complete, an
individual finally has the capacity to move
forward and evolve.
Appleton commends Lipten for her
"responsibility and integrity" and has gifted
each of her three adult children with read-
ings "to try to figure things ouf' as they travel
along their life path.
She also has reconnected with deceased
loved ones with Lipten's help.
"Lori gives you information from Heaven"
Appleton believes."It's information no one
else knows — sometimes even you — and
is then verified. How can you believe that this
[life] is all there is?"

❑

For more on Lori Lipten, go to www.
Iorilipten.com .

Ronelle Grier
Contributing Writer

T

1

hroughout the ages, what
happens after we die has been
a source of discussion, debate
and dissertation by persons of all
religions and backgrounds throughout
the world. Despite the thousands of
texts written on the subject, there is
no official Jewish position on life after
death, although most scholars agree
the soul lives on in some form after
the physical body dies.
Most Jewish spiritual leaders believe
the focus should be on living righ-
teously on Earth rather than putting
emphasis on the afterlife.
The idea of life after death, includ-
ing reincarnation, is supported by
many of today's scholars as well as
centuries-old Jewish texts.
In her book Journey to Heaven:
Exploring Jewish Views of the Afterlife
(Urim Publications; 2011), author and
biblical scholar Leila Leah Bronner of
Los Angeles writes that the Hebrew
word gilgul, which means
circularity and refers
to the actual transmi-
gration of souls, first
appears in the Zohar,
the 13th-century foun-
dational literary work
on Jewish mysticism.
Several passages in
the Zohar allude to
the idea that one's
conduct on Earth
determines his or
her fate after death, says Bronner, an
early member of the Jewish Orthodox
Feminist Alliance. The text includes
vivid descriptions of a place called
Gehinnom (Hell), where all but the
most righteous souls go for purifica-
tion before they can ascend to higher
levels.
Well-known
. spiritual medium
Rebecca Rosen helps
others by communi-
cating with the spir-
its of their deceased
loved ones. Rosen,
who believes the
Rebecca
soul lives on after
Rosen
death and that spir-
its visit Earth to help
their loved ones find peace and heal-
ing, spent several years in Detroit and
regularly returns here for readings.
Rosen, who now lives in Denver and

is the author of Spirited: Connecting
to the Guides All Around You (Harper;
2010), said in a phone interview that
the messages she has received from
spirits have led her to believe the
afterlife consists of several different
levels, and one goes to the level earned
on Earth.
"Envision it as a school with grades
K-12; none is worse than another" she
said. "Where you go depends on the
level of wisdom you achieve."
The concept of Heaven varies from
person to person, she said, just as their
lives differed from one another.
"It's your personal vision of Heaven,
depending on what you loved in life
and what gave you joy and peace,
whether a vacation in Hawaii, work
that you loved, golfing — it's case by
case" explained Rosen, who said her
psychic encounters are supported by
many Jewish schools of thought, espe-
cially Kabbalah, which she has studied
for the past year-and-a-half.
"There are so many parallels in
the ancient kabbalistic teachings to
what I've experienced the last
14 years as a medium" said
Rosen.
Rabbi DovBer Pinson is
a Brooklyn-based kabbal-
ist, scholar and author in the
field of Jewish mysticism and
philosophy. A popular lecturer,
Pinson spoke in the Journeys
in Judaism series sponsored
by Seminars for Adult Jewish
Enrichment (SAJE) in May at
the Jewish Community Center
in West Bloomfield. His books
include Reincarnation and Judaism:
The Journey of
the Soul (Jason
Aaronson Inc.; 1999)
and Jewish Wisdom
on the Afterlife: The
Mysteries, the Myths,
and the Meanings (Q Rabbi DovBer
Pinson
&A Books; 2006).
According to
Pinson, Hell is not a place, but a pro-
cess.
"It is the journey from individual
self to becoming part of the collective
memory of God" he said. Every per-
son has positive and negative dimen-
sions, he explained, and the goal is to
express the positive while overcoming
the negative.
"Every soul has a specific spark; our

Afterlife on page 10

Jyly 19 . 2012

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