Looking Through the Curtain…
By Dan Cohen, PhD
Michael Pollan’s latest book, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness was released last week. Like his previous ones, How to Change Your Mind and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, it immediately rose to the top of the best sellers’ list. In addition to their popularity, his books have consistently shifted the cultural conversation of any topic he covers, whether it is food, psychedelics, or now consciousness. Michael and I have been friends since childhood, and we have shared many long conversations about these topics – and others – for decades. In fact, he was my first business partner (lol) … see photo below.
Growing Up With the Fear of Death
Growing up together in the 1960s and 70s, I was wracked by a persistent fear about the unavoidable future when my life and my mind would go dark like a burned-out lightbulb or a child’s soap bubble bursting into absolute nothingness.
Then, as now, scientific experts insisted that the mind, which feels so vividly present, is nothing more than chemical processes in the brain. Whenever the brain died, my mind, my being, would cease to exist. My mind, alerted to its inevitable doom, could never settle with this. The fact of extinguishment was a torment. The fear that accompanied it overwhelmed my thoughts when I was not distracted away from them.
Psychedelic Experiences and Spiritual Encounters
In my early twenties, I took part in the wave of psychedelic experimentation that swept through our generation. During several of those experiences, I saw images and felt contact with an angel, ancestors, and spirit beings, who assured me that my mind was to continue after my body was done. Skeptical and atheist, I needed hard proof of their reassurances. On several occasions, they did just that, creating synchronicities and magical moments that finally changed my firmly held beliefs about death and consciousness.
Among many examples, the most dramatic was the 6 month period where again and again I came upon a single playing card facedown on the sidewalk. Each one of them was a Queen, Jack or King.
The last one appeared directly beneath the pedal of my locked bicycle on a bitterly cold rain swept night in Jerusalem. As I stood over it, rain seeping through the seams of my jacket down into my underwear, the playing card spoke like an angel. “Why do you make us do card tricks?” Torn between belief and denial, I was afraid to turn it over. The angel offered a deal. “One last time, find magic from a single playing card face-down on the sidewalk. But in return, you must promise to cease half-feigned disbelief in the face of mystery.” I accepted, reached down, and picked up the Queen of Hearts. I kept my end of the deal ever since and allowed the magic surrounding me to guide my life.
Exploring Consciousness Beyond the Brain
In the decades that followed, I took a 30-year pause on psychedelics and pursued the possibilities of consciousness existing as a property of the universe. After I trained with Bert Hellinger and others as a Family Constellations facilitator in the early 2000s, I gained embodied access to images and messages from my clients’ ancestors.
These insights were often dramatic. During a telephone session, I suddenly smelled a distinct odor of burning flesh in my office. I told the client, who cried and told me her grandfather lived in colonial Bermuda when he was a boy. One night, his father set the bedcovers on fire smoking cigarettes and burned to death. We wove this into the Constellation, freeing this tragic ancestral trauma from her body.
Meeting Emily and Expanding the Work
When I first met Emily in 2012, I had already been a constellations facilitator for 10 years. The first time she represented in a Constellation, she discovered a previously dormant and other-worldly talent for accessing specific details about family members and ancestors from the systemic field. She could aim her attention and gather very distinct and uncannily accurate images and impressions.
Together, we discovered how working with the unseen field within constellations dramatically improved the efficacy of the trauma healing we each facilitated, while also peeling back the veil between worlds and awakening a vibrant and magical everyday existence as two wisdompreneurs.
In 2013 we created Seeing with Your Heart, which grew beyond our two-person practice into an international training organization which has offered workshops, retreats, and training in 20 nations.
A Glimpse Beyond the Curtain
A few months ago, Michael sent me this image of the cover of his new book. To me, the dark curtain with its tiny crack, depicts a glimpse of what might exist beyond neuroscience’s claim that when the brain dies the entirety of our consciousness is extinguished. Confirming the standard model, the New York Times review begins with the admission that modern science has yet to explain consciousness, and then proceeds to assume that when it does, the answer will be found in the brain.
Inspired by the book cover, I asked AI to create this alternate image, the same curtain viewed from the other side. This second image illustrates the journey into the unknown where we become open channels to the realm of lifeforce, ancestors, spirit beings, and cosmic light.
Healing Through Connection With Ancestors
Mapping this magical territory with Emily and Seeing with Your Heart has calmed my fears and given me confidence that consciousness survives death. Every day, I tune-in and represent someone’s deceased ancestor or loved-one who shares information that is specific, accurate, and beyond ordinary knowing.
Every so often, a client comes for Constellation with the intention to find a measure for ease of the loss of a child. The most intense is the grief felt by mothers whose sons have died from suicide, addiction, or violence. I, too, was once a young man at risk. Looking back at my consuming fear of death, I understand something now: worse than being obliterated is the grief of a mother whose son dies tragically.
To represent these young men in their mother’s Constellation is one of the most sacred and fulfilling experiences of my life. Within a minute or two, they are with me, their personalities intact. I vocalize their unique phrases, match their energy and moodiness, and deliver their messages.
The lasting healing comes from rekindling mother-son communication. One victim of a car crash spoke through me to his mother: “Don’t treat me like I’m dead.” Over time with practice, she cultivated a circulating love between them.
What I have come to accept is that when we truly connect – see through the curtain – we begin to understand that what we perceive as solid reality is an illusion generated by the senses. Alchemy teaches that this illusion can be transmuted by consciousness. Most importantly, death loses its finality when ancestors reassure us they are not gone and that one day we will become them. Knowing this dissolves the fear of death.
Expanding Intuitive Perception Through Training
Emily and I are always growing our understanding and refining our craft. What we notice is how much our intuitive perception – our psychic abilities – have expanded as we facilitate and teach others. Inspired by this expansion, for this year’s Alchemical Constellations Training (ACT), we are emphasizing teaching the foundations of enhanced perception: after-death communication, object and altar Constellations, rituals and ceremonies, sound and energy practices, oral transmissions, remote viewing, and quantum release healing.
For professionals, artists, healers, plant medicine servers, entrepreneurs, and those in transition who find themselves beyond the curtain and seeking guidance in community, ACT is a solid facilitator training grounded in the original principles of Family Constellations. Our approach emphasizes how to see with the heart, free inherited trauma held in cellular memory, and come into rhythm with the pulse of lifeforce vibrations.
A Global Community of Healing
We do it in community. There are hundreds of Seeing with Heart graduates around the planet and many of them continue to co-create and collaborate for years. Whether one of them is crossing the threshold of a major professional breakthrough or facing a painful life passage, our community members form a loosely held and strongly felt network of love, encouragement and support.
Our emphasis on nourishing and nurturing community is reflected in this year’s Alchemy Team, which is comprised of facilitators, hearth tenders, and guest trainers. Unique to the ACT Training is our hearth tender team who provide Constellation support through one-to-one and group constellations in-between classes. In addition to the core training, there are several special topic workshops throughout the year, including a special training-within-a-training on how to apply these tools to expand your own professional practice.
Join Us at the ACT Training
The training includes two five-day gatherings at Menla Retreat in the Catskills. In response to global instability and travel barriers, both gatherings are offered in hybrid format. Online participants are supported by a dedicated international training team. Certification for those attending online requires participation in one live Seeing with Your Heart event by March 2028.
If you are ready to bring your work, relationships, and awareness through the curtain, we are here to guide you.
Book a free consult call to see if ACT is right for you.
