Navigating Grief and the Afterlife with Mark Ireland- EP 344

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth. Today, it's an honor and a pleasure to introduce a very special guest. I know I did a podcast recently, I said it was a very special guest, and it was my friend Claudia Milligan. This is my friend Mark Ireland, also a fellow member of Helping Parents Heal. And Mark's not only a dear friend, but he's also a board member with me at HPH. And he is the one that got me started with Helping Parents Heal after my daughter passed. In fact, Mark was one of the first people that I reached out to. Someone told me to reach out to this guy Mark Ireland because he's had the same experience. Uh, Mark had lost his son Brandon and written a couple of books at that point. And I reached out to Mark and he was generous enough to connect me with his books. And we've been friends ever since. I think it's been about 8 years now. Today, Mark is with us to share some of his profound insights and his experiences. He's just re-released his book, The Persistence of Souls, and it's a work that delves deeply into the enduring nature of the human spirit, our connections that transcend physical existence. It's more than just a collection of ideas. It's really a beacon for those seeking comfort and understanding in the face of loss. As I said, one of the books that really helped me early on in my journey. Mark's journey, as I mentioned earlier, has been shaped by personal loss. The passing of his youngest son Brandon set him on a path of exploration and discovery that challenges the boundaries of what we understand about life, death, and the afterlife. But actually kind of started even before that, because Mark's father, Richard Ireland, is one of the world's most famous mediums. So I could say a whole lot more about Mark, but I'm gonna let him say it himself. So I'm gonna welcome to Grief to Growth Mark Ireland.

Thanks, Brian. It's great to be here with you. You're a good friend and, uh, I didn't realize it had been 8 years. Boy, time is going fast.

I'm, I'm gonna guess about 8 years cuz Shayna's anniversary will be in June and it'll be 9 years. And I met you shortly after that.

Yeah. Well, it's been an interesting journey for me and it's unfolded in a really profound way and much more than I would ever have imagined, you know, uh, 20, 25 years ago in my life.

Yeah, so let's start with Brandon's passing, because I know that's a pivotal point in your life. We'll go backward and forward from there. So tell me about your son Brandon.

So Brandon was, you know, you talk about old souls, he meets the criteria, I think, because he's a very genuine person, very caring and empathetic and compassionate, made friends with kids that weren't popular. Didn't really care how he was viewed or perceived, didn't really have an ego. He just enjoyed being around people, and, uh, he was like a magnet for other kids and stuff. And then after his passing, I think there were a lot of kids just looked up to him in a way, kind of like, you know, that's, that's the kind of person I should be, or that I should strive to be. Um, but his, his passing occurred suddenly at the age of 18. Um, that morning he had told me he was going to go on a hike in the McDowell Mountains behind our home in Scottsdale, Arizona. And I had this kind of ominous feeling, like a premonition kind of thing, that it could go bad for him. Tried to talk him out of going, but, uh, I failed. He, again, he was 18, and I'm like, you know, I can't really be too manipulative. He's, he's grown into pretty much a young man. And his last words to me are, we're going, Dad. Um, so we were across town and doing something else. And I got a call, distress call, late that afternoon. We rushed back, didn't know what was going on exactly. We'd just been told that Brandon was feeling funny and passing out. And then by the time we get there, there's a horde of people at the base of the mountain. There's an ambulance, a fire truck, and a helicopter. And then they introduced us to a chaplain, and I knew that was not good. And then it was within just a few minutes that I had to ask him, I said, did my son pass? And he said, yes. I was trying to actually help the guy out because I felt he was, you know, not— it was hard for him to say that. And so that kind of thrust me into a point that was the shock of my life, just like you had. And you, you just wonder, you know, am I going to get through this? Am I going to go on? What's going to happen? And then you're just, just crushed inside. But I did have the advantage of growing up with the father I had, Richard Ireland, who was a psychic medium. In the early days, he was ordained by the NSAC, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, and he was more or less a touring minister for a number of years. And then he got different church assignments, one in Leroy, Illinois, another in Norfolk, Virginia. And eventually he settled in Phoenix and started his own non-denominational church, which was very progressive at the time. Even today, it would probably be viewed as progressive in that it really embraced the things that are talked about in the New Testament, the gifts of the Spirit. And he never really understood why mainstream Christian church, or at least the more fundamentalist varieties of that, would look down on those things as a negative, because he saw them as, you know, this is your validation of the miracles and the works that you guys talk about all the time, that it still exists and it can be done. So I grew up with that. And then my dad went into the secular world too. He was on TV shows. He was even nightclubs. He would always say, well, people at the church didn't like me working nightclubs, but I felt like I needed to go where the people needed me. And, you know, he says like Jesus would go where the sinners were, you know, and that was his whole philosophy. And, uh, not that those people are sinners necessarily, but he just said that kind of in a facetious way. Those were the people who maybe would be not interested in religion or church, but they could see something there that's a demonstration of a phenomenon that they're not familiar with that would open their mind up to, to start contemplating getting, wow, maybe there's more to this than just physical life and the brain and the body. And maybe, maybe I do have a soul, or I am a soul, kind of thing. So that— having that after Brian's passing, I immediately went back there. And all the things I'd seen through the course of growing up, not just the psychic demonstrations, which people can see on a clip I've got, uh, the Steve Allen Show in 1971, but also the spirit communication that would come through with great specificity And, um, I'd see people break down crying, you know, because you give them messages from someone who'd passed with their names and maybe how they were connected and hobbies and things to verify who it was. And so at that age, I, I knew like, hey, we are more, and that comforted me greatly. Um, but you know, at that time, I talked— my dad had been gone for 12 years on the day of Brian D Smith's passing, and I called my uncle. He was still around and he had similar abilities. And he says, is there anything I can do for you? And I just said, well, if you get any kind of message or connection, I'd really appreciate it. And 3 days later, I'm in the mortuary making arrangements, and my uncle and I connected by cell phone. And he said, Mark, I just wanted to let you know something. Last night I tried to make a connection, but I was unsuccessful. But this morning I was doing my morning meditation, your dad came to me. He wanted you to know that he was there when Brandon passed. Brandon was a little confused as to what was going on, but your dad helped him adjust. Brandon wanted you to know you're the best parents he ever could have had, which is the nice thing we like to hear. But then he gave me the evidence, and he said, your dad said Brandon's death was caused by a lack of oxygen in his bloodstream that caused his heart to fail. At this time, we had no cause of death. They hadn't revealed what was going on or even speculated 2 days later, the physician who conducted the autopsy called me and said that, um, your son's death was caused by a severe asthma attack that drove his blood oxygen levels down, causing cardiac arrest. So my uncle gave me the cause of death 2 days before the autopsy results were revealed. So that was really the first piece of evidence that I got that was one shared with family and friends and brought a lot of comfort, um, and kind of plunged me back into my dad's field and down this path that I've taken.

Yeah. So growing up with your father, what was, what was it like being the son of Richard Ireland?

I actually relished it. It was really fun. Most kids were not that skeptical. They wanted to know more, like, what's it like? Does your dad know everything? And he kind of did. I mean, it was tough to get away with stuff in the household. My brother got busted for having people buy him beer when he was underage and hot-rodding his car. He was 10 years older than I was, so he took the wrath more at that stage of life. I remember a story with my mom when my parents were first married before I was born. She had been striving to be a vegetarian for a couple of months and being successful. And one day she just had this craving for a hamburger and she went out and got a burger, came back home, and that night Dad gets home and the first thing out of his mouth is, so Shirley, did you enjoy your hamburger today? Yeah. So that's kind of part of what it was like. But the other part was just seeing um, when he'd do demonstrations, just blowing people's minds. I even remember setting friends up, you know, that were skeptical and bringing them to see him. And he would do a variety of different things, but the main one that he would do, like, especially in secular venues, was called Blindfold Billet. And what he would do is use 10 strips of Johnson Johnson white medical tape, which is pretty much totally opaque and very strong adhesive, over his eyes, and then 3 black opaque blindfolds and more tape over that so no one could accuse him of peeking down. And then he'd ask people to write messages and send them up. And then he would get the paper. He would, I suppose, use a combination of psychometry and clairvoyance to answer their questions, giving them first and last names, and then really going far off the paper in many cases with more information. I had a friend I brought one time, and he was highly skeptical, and he sent his paper up. And I'd actually written a paper to my dad, said, 'Mike Cusack is my friend, blow his mind.' So I sent that up. So he gets Mike's paper and he goes, 'Mike Cusack.' And he says, And then he went completely off the paper. He's like, well, what's this about this young lady in Seattle? Um, and I think he named her too. And Mike's just like stunned. We didn't know what was going on, but we could tell there was something there. And then afterward he, he said, well, he was interested in this young lady in Seattle and he had just called her that day, and no one in the world knew about this. So that's the kind of stuff. And I think one of my people's favorite stories is the one involving my now wife of many, many years. On our second date, I went to pick her up. I was 19 years old and running late as usual. So I'm like, uh, I gave her a couple options. I hadn't even made date plans. I'm like, do you want to go see my dad's psychic demonstration? She's like, sure. So we go there. I'm late there. He's already taped blindfolded giving messages. So I'm like, here, write a message on a piece of paper. She goes, what do I write? She— I said, just ask for maybe something of the future, you know, that you want to know. So she wrote, will my mother ever get married? And her mom at the time had been divorced from her dad for a number of years and was dating another man, but she was kind of non-committal and he wanted to get married. So she sent that paper up, and a little while later, um, my dad's like, uh, Susie Sap Soup. And her name was Susie Sipe. And she goes, I'm here. And he says, well, I think you've asked me a question about your mother and if she'll be getting married. Well, I don't know about your mother, my dear, but you have made your choice of man and he's with you tonight. I'm like, Dad, this is Mark. Susie's my date. He goes, oh my gosh, I just married off my own son.

Wow. Wow. Wow. So then that obviously came true.

It did.

So, you know, it's interesting. I want to ask you this question, because I know a lot of media— you and I both know a lot of mediums, and we talked about difference between mediumship and being a psychic. So your father was both, is that correct?

That's right. Really, to be— I think the old phrase is, every medium is psychic, but not every psychic is medium. So he was extremely psychic, but also he was a medium because he could bring through spirit with very specific messages. So I think it's just like a different level or depth of that ability. He had a book, I'll tell you a story real quick. About how I got this book, but the book's called Your Psychic Potential: A Guide to Psychic Development. And it really chronicled, or was, um, an encapsulation of workshops he did in the late '60s, early '70s, teaching people how to develop abilities. But he talked about this range starting from the emotional to the intuitive to the psychic to the medium, and these levels, and just a deeper and deeper level. Um, so there's a variety of ways, and I talk about that in my new book too, um, you know, of how mediums and psychics get their information, whether it be through clairvoyance, clairaudience. You know, clairvoyance would be like clear seeing, which could either be in your mind's eye— I've had that— um, uh, clairaudience would be hearing a name, not necessarily auditorily though, it could be in a different way, like you hear it in your mind or an idea pops in that's a word or words. Telepathy— a lot of people think mediumship is telepathy with the deceased. And telepathy has been validated by Duke Parapsychology Lab years and years ago, especially with the Pierce-Pratt experiments, if anyone wants to look those up. And I mentioned those in the book too. And psychometry is where you touch or feel a physical object and kind of read the energy off that. I think my dad had all those things. And he had very direct spiritual experiences where he actually could see spirit. I mean, like, I believe eyes open. And my uncle was the same way. Because when he had that experience after Brandon passed, I asked him a lot of questions. I'm like, well, how do you see? Do you see see here, or see through your eyes? And he says, I saw your dad just like I see you. He goes, he had not— I have seen him since he passed, but it had been a number of years. He looked just like he always had. He really hadn't changed in terms of his visual appearance. So yeah, he was both medium and psychic.

Yeah, I would ask that question because I know some mediums listen to the show. And again, I have a lot of friends in media, and they'll say, oh, but it would say, well, Mark, everything you talked about is being a psychic. That's not being a medium. But your father was clearly both.

Yeah, I think the thing is that most of the clips I have and everything were from public demonstrations or TV shows. And back in the '60s and '70s, it had to be kind of packaged that way more for entertainment, and no one would have gone for talking to the dead. Now it's pretty popular. So that other work was done more in his church. And so That's what was demonstrated to a greater degree, and people would come to him for mediumship as well. And, you know, I would even in the psychic demonstrations often see it pop through. So maybe, you know, he's doing 80-90%, you know, psychic messages, but then he's like, okay, I got somebody named Fred here, I think it's your uncle, he, he loved T-bone steaks, you know, he did this and he did that kind of thing pop through. So it was it just would happen kind of organically with him. So yeah, it was both, but it's just, you know, most of what I could share now was the psychic stuff, because that's what was captured at the time on those TV shows and stuff.

Sure. Now, you, you mentioned your uncle has this ability, or had when he was in, when he was in the physical, and your father has it. And I know it tends to run in families. And I know you've got some ability yourself. Stay with us. We'll be right back. You know, one of the hardest things about grief? Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deep deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

Yeah, my great-grandmother on my grandfather's side, she, I guess, read tea leaves. My grandmother, who is my dad's mom, she became a trance medium, actually, back in the 1950s and started a church that's not terribly far from you in Ashley, Ohio. It still exists. It's called the White Lily Chapel. Ashley is north of Columbus by about 25 or 30 miles, I believe.

Okay.

My dad actually was born in Marengo, Ohio, which is on the road from Columbus to Cleveland on I-70 or 7— I think it's 71. Probably 30 miles northeast of Columbus. But, um, and really, my, my dad's abilities were discovered when he was 5 years old. He was taught— he was born cross-eyed, so they took him at age 5 to the Columbus Children's Hospital for corrective surgery on his eyes. And that's after the surgery, his eyes were cupped and bandaged. And, uh, it was after that that, uh, he was actually tied down to a bed because they're afraid he'd mess with the bandages and They made him promise— this one nurse felt bad and she said, I'll let you up if you promise not to mess with the bandages. And he agreed. She let him up. She went on her rounds, came back, and he's bouncing a ball against the wall, catching it. She thought he'd taken the bandages off, but he hadn't, um, which was even more startling to her. She then got some of the other doctors to observe this, and then they tried some games with him, like put him in a bed and have one person stand at the foot of the bed and another in the hallway and say, who's in front of you now? And he got it right all the time. So it ran in the family. And I have had some pretty unique experiences. I think one of the most profound at a young age occurred when I was, I think, 18 years old. I was dating this girl and I had a dream one night that she was seeing another guy and it made me jealous. But the funny thing was I knew his first and last name and what he looked like. So I, uh, the next day I said, hey, I had this dream and it made me jealous. She goes, tell me about it. I go, nah, it was just a dream. She goes, no, please tell me. I said, well, the guy looked so and so tall, he had this color hair and he was this build, and his name was Bob Dooley. She says, I dated a guy named Bob Dooley in Kansas. He looked exactly like that. So that was kind of crazy. But more recently, I think the one most profound one that I've ever had that I would actually attribute more to mediumship than just psychic— oh, and back to the whole psychic thing, who— no one really can define where the information comes from. So for someone to say, oh, you're psychic, you're not a medium, there's a, there's a whole array of phenomena that give you that information. And who's not to say my dad wasn't getting that psychic information from spirit. I think in many cases he was. But anyhow, the one more recent that I wanted to talk about involves— for a 3-year stint, I was asked to speak at the Golden Gate Spiritualist Church in San Francisco. Now, this church was founded in 1924 by a woman named Florence Becker, who by all accounts was very similar to my dad in her abilities. She passed in 1970. So but this church has gone on and survived all that time. And so I would go there for this 3-year period each time to do a talk. And then I brought my medium friend Tina Powers with me, and she would give messages to everybody at the end. This particular time, she's like, hey, Mark, I think you're gonna get a message to share with the congregation. Will you share it? I'm like, okay, sure, if I get something, I'll share it. Then she kept pounding me about this. Mark, if you get a message, will you share it? I'm like, yes, Tina, you've already asked me. And so even then, the day going into the church, as we go through the threshold, over the threshold, she's like, Mark, if you get a message, will you share it? I'm like, yes, Tina. So we're about 30 minutes early. I go into the healing room, uh, where these people are getting laying on of hands healing, and I sit on the bench to an organ or a piano. And I sit there and I just quiet my mind. I'm kind of both trying to prepare for my talk, just mentally wind down, but also see if anything comes to me. While I'm sitting there, the name Max pops into my mind, and then immediately the name Maxine. So I thought, oh, maybe it's Maxine, not Max. And that's all I got. Now, I didn't see the names, I didn't hear the names. They came in like an idea would come to you, or just a thought would pop in. So it's kind of odd, but that's what I got. And so I went and did my talk, and at the end I said, okay, Tina made me promise if I got anything that I'd share it with the people here. So I have to ask if the names Max or Maxine mean anything to anyone here. And the pastor of the church, his jaw drops, and he's like, Well, Max and Maxine were twins born to the church founder, Florence Becker. They were delivered stillborn and they grew up in spirit. Um, she— then he says, I think we know who is here right now. And then he said, um, there's only a couple long-term church members that know this. It's a secret. And then he took me upstairs and showed me a painting that I believe Florence Becker did. It was a landscape painting and it had this long winding road, and at the end of it were two little figures And he says, "That's Max and Maxine." So I could now see why Tina pushed me, because it was such a subtle thing that I could have easily dismissed it as my imagination. But yet it was very profound and really specific with two— not just one unusual name, but two unusual names. So that— but for me, it's been sporadic. It's not something I've worked on really, you know, like you. I, I took a mainstream path. I was in the business world. You're in engineering. And I was more focused on that. So it's not something I sought to develop. A number of years ago, I did some test readings with friends that were pretty profound. Even with Michelle Clare recently, she had her boyfriend pass, and I, I tried to connect. I wrote down some notes, and I took them and sat down with her, and they were pretty much on target. So I think it's there kind of in a latent way, but it's not something I've tried to tap into on a regular basis.

Yeah. But you've had some experience with Brandon since he's passed too, right?

Yeah, I have. I mean, I'd say the most common one is me thinking about him, just kind of feeling this rush of energy, or I feel like he kind of comes to me when I'm— I do music, like you've heard some of the music that I've done in the studio, but I'll write some songs, a couple of which are spiritual in nature. I feel like he kind of has a hand in that. But I think some of the ones that have been more profound further back you know, about a year and a half after he passed, I went to bed one night, and I prayed for a direct connection while in a dream state. And that one is the one and only time I've had this extremely lucid experience that was more real than waking reality. And I saw him in this glowing white room, it was three-walled. But where the fourth wall should have been was infinity. It was just the strangest place. It was almost like we were meeting in the middle between the two worlds or something. And he was sitting like on a counter, but there was really no counter. It was just part of that wall, I guess, or what I perceived as a wall. And he, he said to me, I said, Brandon, I can't believe you're here. I've got to go get Mom. I got to go get your brother Steve. I got to get your buddy Stu. And I said, I missed you so much since you died. And he said, I didn't die. My father died. And I thought, wow, he left me with a puzzle. And I didn't know what that meant. And it was probably, I don't know, a week later, his buddy Stu came by and I was telling him about it. And then it just kind of came to me in an instant. And I thought, oh, well, he didn't die because life continues on, consciousness continues. But part of me died. But it was really kind of a rebirth into the next phase of my life. So the old me, the one that was focused on all the non-important stuff like career and money and advancement and career, shifted. Not that I'm out of a job, I'm still working, but my whole attitude and mental approach to everything changed. And so that's how I took that. And I'll tell you something really interesting about this. A woman I've never met wrote me about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and she said, I was reading your book, my first book, Soul Shift, and she came to that story and she jumped for joy. Goes, I had the same exact experience, a 3-walled room that was glowing light. Where she met her child. She said, I doubted whether it was real or not until I read yours, and you had the same exact experience. Yeah, so that was pretty cool. Um, and, and my wife had a direct experience too. Um, 2 weeks after Brandon passed, I did talk to an intuitive. This is before I kind of met some of the higher level mediums, but she was good, and she told me within 6 months you're going to see Brandon at the side of your bed. Well, 6 months later we went on a cruise, and this was actually going to be to celebrate Brian's graduation from high school. But since he couldn't go with us physically, we took his buddy Stu and we took our older son Stephen. After 7 days— before we left though, we had loaned Brian his bass guitar. Actually, you could see it behind me, that blue one in the middle is Brian's bass. And, um, we had this musician friend, James Linton, who had his own studio. He was a guitarist, composer, and singer. And he asked if he could borrow it because he didn't have a bass to complete some of the songs he was working on. So we loaned it to him. And the way we'd met James was actually he was hiking with a group of people on the day Brandon died. He got to Brandon but too late to help, and we found him because he'd written an entry on an online obituary with his contact information. So anyhow, we go on this cruise, loan James the bass. We come back, uh, the day we get back, my wife sits at the foot of our bed And while sitting there, she feels Brandon's presence, and she actually sees him as a shadow figure out of her peripheral vision. The very next day, James calls and he says, Susie, I've got something to tell you, but I don't know how to share this. And she thought he'd broken the bass, but he says, well, I was sitting recording this song, and I felt the presence of someone else with me in the studio. And then I saw a shadow figure out of my peripheral vision. He knew nothing about Susie's experience, but it was identical. And then he said, I saw flashes of white light, and I thought I was hallucinating. So I went and drank some water, I got, uh, something to eat, I took a shower, but each time I came back, it got stronger. And finally I said, okay, Brandon, what do you want? And he said at that point he felt guided to redo the lyrics of this song and redo the bass. And he said, uh, it's the best song I've ever written, but I didn't write it. It's called The Other Side. So that was another direct experience that my wife had. So just the number of things that I've had happen, not only through mediums, but directly— we haven't even really touched on the mediumship stuff, except for my uncle. It's just been overwhelming. And I think it's really, it's kind of been meant to be, you know, to prepare me to do this work and to talk about this subject matter with confidence and with a sense of knowing instead of just blind faith.

Yeah, well, I know that in spite of your, your background with your father and your uncle and all your experiences, that you're still somewhat of a skeptic in terms of like, you know, you don't, you don't just fall for anything. And you're also very methodical and scientific in your, in your approach. So that's one of the things I really appreciate, you know, about you is that something you and I think share is that like, yeah, we believe this, but we still want to see, you know, we want to see evidence. So I know what that feeling is like when your, when your child passes suddenly. But you had this knowing from your, from your experiences with your father and growing up and stuff. So how did those play out in your, in your grief process?

Well, initially, it was just helpful to me to not be quite as despondent. And my healing was actually much accelerated over most of the people I've met who have had a child pass. I'd say within 2 weeks, we were actually at a decent place. I mean, we weren't healed, but we were much better. And at the 3-month mark, we were like pretty far along. 6-month mark, way far along. I'd say within a year, we were kind of like on a normal path again, and experiencing joy. I remember one of the first thoughts I had after Brian passed was, will I ever experience joy again?

Right?

Because I just felt so shattered.. But we, you know, I did experience joy. And some of that joy was when I'd have these experiences too, just to keep giving you that confirmation, you know, and that validation. But there's a lot more to the healing process than just mediumship readings. And I don't encourage people to have them too regularly, because it can become addictive. Yeah, you really need to space that out and develop other practices, just like what you do now with your Grief to Growth process and helping people look at kind of the full array of things. And I even have what I call the 5 pillars of healing. Healing, which involve other factors as well.

So, so after Brandon passed, and you and Susie are on this, this path, at what point do you decide about starting Helping Parents Heal? I know there's a really interesting story around how that whole thing began, too.

Yeah. So if I go back to, I think it was late 2009, early 2010, somewhere in there, I was promoting my first book, Soul Shift, and I was doing some workshops. So this particular workshop I was doing with Jamie Clark,. And I was presenting material from my dad's book that I'd mentioned earlier, which was from his ESP workshops back in the day. And so during a break, a woman approached me, her name was Suzanne Wilson. And Suzanne said to me that she was also a medium, she just moved to Arizona from Florida. And she came there because she wanted to meet like-minded people. And then she gave me a couple messages that were pretty funny. That confirmed to me she connected with my uncle or dad or both of them. And then she had mentioned that she had met a woman who had recently lost a son, also on a mountain. I thought, well, that's unusual. And I said, why don't you give her a copy of my book? I gave her a copy. And I said, and here's my contact information you could share with her. It wasn't a day or two later that I get a call from Elizabeth Boyson. And she's like, Mark, I read your book in one sitting. I loved it. I want to meet you and your wife. So we arranged a meeting, and after we talked for a little bit, she goes, well, I have this group called Parents United in Loss. It's a Facebook group, but I'm going to have my first ever in-person meeting, and I'd like you to be my first speaker. So I'm like, okay, sure, I'll do that. So she has this meeting. I think 30 or 40 people showed up, and it was good. And then she started having them on a monthly basis. I'd come when I could. I couldn't make them all, but I came as often as I could. Um, so I then— I think it was 2011, I was leaving a job, a corporate job, and thinking about what I wanted to do next. And I talked to Tina Powers, a medium I'd mentioned earlier, a friend of mine. She says, you know, Mark, I think your real mission in life is to help other parents who have been through the same thing as you, and you might want to consider starting a foundation or organization, some part to some type to do that. So, um, I thought, okay, that makes sense. And I started mulling it over and I thought, well, why reinvent the wheel? Elizabeth has a group that works. The only thing is that it's just one location. She needs a newsletter and she needs a website, and maybe we could blueprint what she does and have other affiliate locations pop up. And so I called her and said, hey, would you be interested in doing that? She's like, oh yeah, that sounds great. I said, oh, maybe a different name, like maybe Helping Parents Heal. She's like, oh, I love that name. I didn't like Parents United in Loss because it sounded like a downer. So that's kind of how it started. And some of the initial members that had come to those early meetings became board members, our first round of board members. And then I put together a website for her, and we put together a newsletter, and then we had someone on the board do the newsletter. And then we kind of blueprinted out her process and how she conducted meetings and what we covered and guest speakers and things things like that. And then the thing just, just mushroomed. And today it's been a little over a decade and we have 175 affiliate locations worldwide. We have 26,000 members and we have a conference every other year that's going to draw— well, drew 900 last time, it'll draw 1,000 in 2024. And that's the capacity of the, uh, of the hotel. So it's, it's been crazy to see it evolve. And now We're getting, you know, one thing that was really funny about the last one, the hotel staff was all worried about all these bereaved parents showing up, like, oh, this is going to be such a downer, you know. And by the time we left, they're like, this is the best group we've ever had, you know, we are so high energy. I think there's a number of reasons for that. One is, you know, I talked about those 5 pillars. The second pillar of healing that I see is meeting other people who have been through the same thing as you, because then you can develop relationships, you have something in common to talk about. Because if you haven't been through it, you just can't understand, you know, you can't have that kind of deep connection. So that was part of it, I think, these people getting together. And then also we have phenomenal speakers, you know, we've had great presenters, Gordon Smith, one of the top mediums in the world, Dr. Mary Neal, NDE experiencer, and on and on, just so many, Marc Anthony, and many others, Suzanne Giesemann. So just having that quality of people that come there totally you know, basically is in a volunteer fashion to support the organization is huge. But that's kind of the evolution of it and where it's going from here. It's just getting bigger and bigger. And I think the main reason for that is we're the only organization of its type that allows the open discussion of spiritual experiences and afterlife evidence. And that's the fifth pillar of my thing. And that's the hope element. Openness to afterlife evidence and and sharing spiritual experiences with others. You don't want to go to a meeting, get shut down when you want to share something, and someone else is craving to hear that, that validation. When people first go through it, you know, maybe they're not ready for a reading, or maybe it's going to be a little while before they could try and learn a meditative process to try and connect directly. But they can start by reading books about the topic, whether they're on NDEs or mediumship or whatever, and then learn a bit, a little bit more about it. And then maybe have an experience themselves, whether that be trying to get a direct experience or having a mediumship reading.

Yeah. So are the 5 pillars covered in your book, Mark?

Um, they, they— you know what, I, I can't remember if they're there or not, but I'll touch on them real quick.

Yeah, please.

The first pillar is support from family and friends if you can get it. Not everybody has a healthy family relationship, but if you do, that's a real plus. And for that family to understand that it's okay to talk about the child— people want to talk about the child. They don't want you to sweep it under the rug or try and hide The second pillar we covered, it's meeting people who have been through the same thing. Third pillar is service. When you get to a point where you're healthy enough to provide service to someone else, whether that be working in a soup kitchen, whether that be working for a foundation of some sort, or just helping the homeless or whatever it is, you know, when you give, it comes back to you and it helps you. The fourth pillar is letting go of feelings of guilt. I mean, you probably encounter this all the time. Many, many parents or people who've had a child pass, they blame themselves. I should have seen this. I should have done this. I should have done that. And they really couldn't have changed the outcome. But they're just hurting themselves by hanging on to that. And in that same category, I would put harboring feelings of anger towards others and not forgiving them for what they consider blame, whether that be a medical professional, whether that be someone involved, responsible, they were deemed responsible for an accident. You know, Ernie Jackson and how he forgave the young lady who had the accident that took his son's life, immediately forgave her. That's a rare thing. But he knew that it would relieve him because harboring that anger just hurts you. And the fifth pillar is the hope element. That's being open to afterlife evidence and spiritual experiences. That, and because it's the hope element, because it tells you the game's not over, the relationship's not over, it's just different. And if you're open to that, it can bring so much healing.

I completely agree with everything you just said. You know, it's really interesting having been part of Helping Parents Heal for as long as I have and knowing you and Elizabeth as well as I do. And we talk about it. In fact, we say it at every meeting, we don't— we're not dogmatic. You don't have to believe anything in particular to be a part of Helping Parents Heal. But I always follow that with a little caveat. It's like you can't hang around with us for very long and not have the hope element, the belief, the belief that life continues. And people ask me about working with me, like, do I have to believe what you believe? And I'm like, you don't have to, but you're probably going to end up believing it pretty soon, or we probably won't be working together for very long. Because I think that is just key in, in trying to, to move forward from this.

Well, I think it's really cool that it's not perceived as a woo-woo thing anymore, really. There's so much evidence out there, scientific evidence for these phenomena, ranging from mediumship sessions conducted under controlled conditions to near-death experience accounts that just can't be explained away. I always point to the one by Anita Moorjani, where she's, you know, on her deathbed in a coma, and she leaves her body and she's down way down the hall, the corridor, hearing and overhearing a conversation between her husband and the doctor about all the specific information that she's on the verge of death and all these different things, and then later being revived and sharing that. So the skeptics who would say, well, you know, the brain was still functioning in some way. And she overheard that. Well, she wasn't there, you know, her body was in a different place. So the, the NDE phenomena, they— what's lucid, lucid dreaming, deathbed visitations, where people will say they're here for me, and they'll note people that are there on the other side who are waiting to take them back as they leave, including people not known to have died, later find out, oh, so-and-so is here. So like, well, they can't be, they're still alive. And then the family finds out later, no, they died last week or whatever. So there's just so many of these kinds of things that, that provide that kind of evidence for folks that I think is very helpful and valuable for people that are open-minded. They're skeptical but open-minded. And I think that's a healthy way to be.

So let's talk about, about mediumship, because that's, that's a very controversial subject for some people. And I know you and I both believe that it's been scientifically— well, we know it's been scientifically validated. We've read the studies, we both know Dr. Gary Schwartz, we know the work that he's done. You know, Julie Beischel, people have looked at that. But we have to admit, there are mediums out there who are bad, they just don't know what they're doing. There are mediums out there that are frauds. So I know you have a mediumship certification program. So tell me how that started, what that's about.

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, there are some frauds. I actually encountered a woman who was subject to one and made me furious. So I mentioned it in the book and really talk about that openly, and how to avoid that. And but I think there aren't that many frauds. I think there are a lot more deluded people that just don't have the ability or don't have it at a high enough level to try and help the grieving folks.

I agree.

Really, what I— when Soul Shift came out, it was a few years after that, I was just getting barraged with requests for who's a good medium, who's a good medium. Well, I knew, you know, Alison Dubois, I knew Linda Williamson in England, I knew Lori Campbell. These are top mediums that were on TV and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, I could give you their information, but they're, they're booked way out, you know, and some of them may charge more than some people want to pay. So I thought, there have to be other gifted people that are just unknown. So I thought, I'll put together a program and kind of test these people And then it's not like I'm not trying to be a Julie Beischel and put them through this rigorous scientific test to get a journal article. Rather, I'm just trying to separate the wheat from the chaff to figure out who's good at this that I can refer people to in good conscience. That's what I did. So I reached out to Dr. Emily Williams Kelly at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies. She works in the same area that was really started by Dr. Ian Stevenson, who had done all this reincarnation research. Which is now being conducted by Jim Tucker. And then you got Bruce Grayson in that department doing— that has been doing all the NDE research. And Dr. Kelly was doing some mediumship research studies. So I was a test sitter for her. And I really talked to her about what protocols she used. And so I kind of modeled what I was going to do after that. And then Tricia Robertson is another friend of mine. She's— was the president of the Scottish Society of Psychical Research. She worked with the very esteemed Professor Archie Roy. I mean, he was at the highest tier of respect and won prizes in the UK as one of the most respected scientists of all. He's an astrophysicist who was interested in these phenomena and got involved, did experiments with Tricia. And Gordon Smith was actually one of the test mediums. But these were extremely difficult conditions they put the mediums through. Um, but anyhow, I talked to her And she helped me refine the protocols. And what I came up with that I use today is I require any participant that wants to be tested to go through 5 blinded readings via Zoom with no video. They can turn on video later in the session, but in the beginning, no video. They're given only the first name of the sitter, know nothing about who they're going to be reading for. And it boils down to they have to provide statistically significant information. With a, with a high degree of pertinence and accuracy. So I can give you an example. Like, um, each session is recorded and then transcribed. You've been a test sitter for me, so you know you have to transcribe it and break paragraphs into individual statements that can either be graded correct, incorrect, or indeterminable. And then if you feel like a statement warrants it, you can assign bonus points. And I've changed— initially there's just one value of bonus, but now I've gone to two different levels. Because some hits are pretty strong, but maybe not warranting the highest level of bonus. So there's a 2-point and a 5-point bonus. So as an example, let's say that a medium says to the sitter, I believe you've had a son pass. His name starts with A, and I think he liked pizza. So the, the sitter might say, okay, yeah, I did have a son pass. His name is Anthony. So A, that's good. I'm gonna— that's correct. And I'm gonna give you a 2-point bonus. And then pizza was actually his favorite food, that's good. I'll give you a 2-point bonus for that too. If the medium says, I've got a son that passed, his name was Anthony, and his favorite food was pizza with bell pepper and pepperoni, then it's like, okay, I'm— those all 3 are correct. I'm giving 5-point bonuses to those latter 2. And then if something's indeterminable, it's usually like a prediction that hasn't come to pass, uh, or it's some piece of information the sitter just doesn't know and can't find out. Maybe it pertains to somebody overseas that they don't know, used to be a friend of the son or whatever. But I only allow up to 33% of those types of statements. Anything more than that I count as incorrect because a good reading shouldn't be like half indeterminable statements. You have to have enough correct statements that make sense to validate it. So it takes a total of 75 points to pass minimum with 65% accuracy minimum. So if somebody had 65% accuracy, that's 65 points. Plus they'd have to have at least 2 of those 5-point bonuses to pass. And that's on an average of 5 readings overall. I've had probably, you know, 8 to 10 of the mediums score 90 points or higher, some of them in the mid to high 90s. So there's some really good people there too. Had a few just barely get over the hump, but, you know, those are the protocols that are in place, and those people deserve to pass just as much because they did exceed, uh, the requirements to get there. And today I have, after 9.5 years, I have 41 certified mediums. Okay.

So it's, and I, and I, you're right, I've been a test sitter, of course. And it's a pretty rigorous process that you, that you put people through. And it's interesting, in the United States, at least anyway, there's no body that I know of. I mean, there's yours, and there's a couple other ones that, but there's no overall arching body that that certifies mediums. And so there's a lot of people don't know, it's like, how do I know if they're any good or not? So you're performing a great service by doing this.

Thanks. I felt like there was a gap there. I mean, there are some people that have medium recommendations, but they're more based on testimonials. Yeah, for my purposes, that's not sufficient, because anyone could give you a testimonial. You have to kind of put people through that just to find out. And it doesn't mean that other people can't do it. Some people fail because they just can't do it in these circumstances. And they may have some ability, week. But I figure anyone surviving this gauntlet, you know, is going to be somebody I'm going to be trust— trusting to give readings to people. And just so folks know too, I've done this totally as a public service. I don't— not only do I not make a dime, I've actually invested thousands of my own money into putting this together, um, for the website development, for the upgrades to the website, and then time just to do the grading. And I have a volunteer named Kathy Rook who deserves a pat on the back too, because she helps me with a lot of the scheduling and now I've teach— taught her how to do some of the, the scoring and stuff, so she's very helpful to me. I wouldn't be able to keep up with everything if it weren't for her. And right now we've got like a waiting list of 10 mediums waiting to be tested because we can only do 2 at a time, and we have a boatload of sitters to be tested too. So we are looking for new sitters, but unfortunately it seems like we find very few sitters that really will follow through and do it correctly. You're one of the few. Because it takes time and energy to do it on the back end, and you have to commit to that. And sometimes if people get a bad reading, they don't want to waste their time doing it. But we're obligated, you know, for the medium to do that, because even the best mediums, if they're tested 5 times, they might have 2 great ones and 2 good ones, but one dud, you know. Um, so it's just, it's tough to get sitters that are willing to do that. So if anyone's hearing this and they would like to be that, just know, you know, we'd love to have you. If you know, committed to doing all the backend work. And, and we do get some outstanding people, but I'd say right now it's probably only 15 or 20% are passing. But that's actually a good thing because it shows you that, that the process is working. So we're getting the very best people.

So I, I wanna make sure I heard that correct. You said only 15 or 20% are passing at this point?

Right now, that's what I'm seeing. It's a low percentage. I haven't done the actual statistical analysis to see how many, but that's my gut based on what I'm seeing. Not many are passing right now. Seemed like early on I had more, but, um, lately it's not been as many. But the ones that do, you know— but I have raised the bar too over the years several times.

Yes.

Because what I found is like, okay, um, I want to make sure I'm getting the best people, and I don't want this to be too easy. I want to be reasonable, but at the same time, I feel like I really want to make sure I'm getting the best people, because the reason for doing this is to have a resource for grieving people.

I think it's awesome. And, you know, the thing is, if someone can't pass the protocol, it doesn't mean they're not a good medium. Right? You said some people don't take tests well, some people can't get into law school because they just can't take tests. It doesn't mean they're not, you know, they're not smart. And, and it is a— and I've been being a sitter, so I felt sorry for some of the mediums because I can tell that they're nervous, you know, they feel like they're under pressure. And, and as a sitter, we're, you know, we're fairly rigorous with people, you know, If someone says, you know, you're— you do you have a grandmother in spirit? And did she like to bake? And she wore glasses? You know, that's to me, that's not a hit. None of those things are. So because we can look at someone that's, you know, my age, and I probably do have a grandmother in spirit, and most of our grandmothers like to cook, you know, or cook somewhat. So that's why it's blinded.

Yeah, that's why the video's off too.

So yeah, and that's one of the things, you know, we find, you know, it is blinded, and they only have a first name, so they can't, they can't pick up on some of those, those clues. But you, you cover a lot of the criticisms people have of mediums, like they only make general statements, or they get as much wrong as they get right. So right, if you throw out 100 statements, you're going to get 20 that are right. And people are going to, you know, naturally, our confirmation bias is, oh, I got a great reading. But you're accounting for all of that in the system that you've got. So I want to tell people, if you go to your database, and we'll talk about where that is, you can be confident that that person has gone through a pretty rigorous process.

Doesn't guarantee a good reading, because you can never guarantee that, but your odds are enhanced.

Yeah.

And I would say too, really, the best readings occur when the medium is comfortable and not in their head about being accurate or, you know, being tested. And I know that that probably hurts some folks, and they didn't pass because of that. But any of these meetings, I think any of these mediums that I've listed, you can go confidently because they've already been through that. So you don't have to feel that guarded. If you know, some people are skeptical enough, they're like, well, I still want to know who I am. Well, if you want, have a friend set up the reading for you and then pop in. But I don't think you need to worry about that with these folks because they've been through it. They're trustworthy. I know they're all high ethical ethically, of high ethics.

Right.

So it's not like something you have to worry about. And since they've gone through the gauntlet, they've— we've done the work for you, I guess, is what I would say.

Yeah, I completely, completely agree. And you can actually, as a sitter, you can mess up a reading. If you go in with a very negative attitude. I mean, skeptical is fine. But if you go in cynical, if you go in closed-minded, closed-mouth, you know, you're gonna say no to everything that's not a major hit, or you're looking only looking for one thing, you can pretty much— it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're gonna have a terrible reading.

Or if you have psychic amnesia, that hurts too. But it's like, I remember at the very first Helping Parents Heal conference, I don't know if you're part of the organization at that time or not yet, but we had a woman who was there. And John Holland was one of our mediums who was doing a gallery reading. And he approached her and she stood up and he was telling her things pertaining to her son who had passed and said, well, he's showing me, you know, medical garb, like someone in, uh, in a medical environment with, with, uh, you know, that type of clothing on or whatever. And she's like just silent and like, no, I'm— and he goes, what do you do for a living? She goes, I'm a doctor. It was just like she was just— I don't know what it was, but she just didn't respond. So yeah, I'm a doctor. Yeah, you gotta hit there. So You'll see that time to time. See, if you're having a reading, you want a good session, you don't tell everybody everything up front. You don't spill your guts. You want them to earn it. But at the same time, give them the confirmation, the validation when they get it, because then you'll find momentum. Because then they— it's like, that helps with the energy of the process, I guess I'd say.

Yeah, yeah. So tell people where we can find your, your certified mediums.

Sure. Actually, if they just go to my website, there's links to all kinds of stuff. So my website, which I'll tell you in a second, it has a link to Helping Parents Heal, it has a link to the Certified Medium site, it has a link to videos of my father. It also has a media tab where I've got other interviews. I've got a short documentary, I've got a clip when I was on Discovery Channel, when I was in the University of Arizona lab, uh, with Lori Campbell under blinded conditions for a test back a while back, and other stuff too. But that's markirelandauthor.com. Mark with a K, Ireland like the country, author.com. markirelandauthor.com. All those links are there. So it's just a one-stop shop for folks.

That's awesome. So let's— we have a few minutes left. I want to talk about your book, of course, and we've talked about it a little bit, but tell people what they can find in it.

Yeah, here's the COVID I was really happy with what the publisher did, and they kept my title. They didn't try and change it, which I appreciate. In the past, that hasn't been the case, right? But I came up with the title Persistence of the Soul. They gave the subtitle Medium Spirit Visitations and Afterlife Communication. So while my first book was more of a memoir and my journey after Brian D Smith's passing, and the, you know, the personal experiences supplemented by the 4 mediumship readings that were conducted, this one is more— I'd say it's 2 books in 1, because it's personal experiences that continued on after that, that are very validating, and very touching and helpful. But it's also scientific evidence and historical evidence that are there supportive of those So for people that just want the stories, they can just read that and kind of skip the, the, the scientific, scientific pieces of information. People that are more analytical, they may be more focused on that, and the general public may kind of want to read it all. But, uh, it was just a different approach. I wanted to, um, continue to share that evidence, but I wanted to have it backed up by the science that's available through some of the organizations you talked about, some of the research done by Windbridge. Some of the research done going back to the— the Society of Psychical Research in 1882, and there's stuff even before that. Um, and then, um, more currently, you know, Windbridge is modern-day current stuff, the University of Virginia work that was done, and then Tricia Robertson's work with R.G. Roy. So some of those— really, at the end of the day though, there's a limited body of the science just because unfortunately academia is still wrapped up into materialistic philosophy and the whole physicalism thing. And until they embrace the possibility that consciousness is primary, and the material reality is a byproduct of that, I don't know that they're really going to move forward. So my view of it is, I really appreciate the people who have done the science on these topics and embrace that. But I don't know how fast the academic world is going to shift into doing more of this research and taking ownership of it, which I think they should. But in lieu of that, I think, you know, we got a grassroots movement going here with people like you and me, and people are going to demand it and want it. And there's nothing wrong with what is called anecdotal evidence, you know, that's the personal experience. Because for any of us, the greatest changer of our perception or worldview is personal direct experience. So that will shape you and help you more than anything. You can read other people's journal articles on what's been done. But when you have your own personal experience, that's what really creates a shift, I think.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting cuz as a, as a scientist myself, my, my degree's in engineering, you know, chemical engineering. You know, I've done a lot of, lot of lab experiments and lab experiments are great, but what are, what do we really, as you said, what changes us? What it, it's personal experience and everything's about, you know, our experiences and other people's experiences. And a lot of times people will get this super, I guess, scientific mindset if you wanna call it that. Call it materialistic, and say, well, I can't— they'll tell you, don't trust your own experiences. Oh, I had this NDE, and I left my body, and it was, it was realer than real. And I, and I saw this, and I felt that, and I came back, and I'm a changed person. And by the way, I was also healed of the cancer that I had. And people, well, but do you— can you really trust that? Because science hasn't proven that's true. And I kind of laugh when I even say that.

Yeah, for them, if it can't be weighed or measured in some way, it's not real, which is kind of silly, because that just assumes that, you know, matter is real. And that's the foundation of everything. And the brain is the generator of consciousness rather than a sifter of a reducer of it. And they can't prove that. I mean, really, and I'm not a quantum physicist, but anyone who just looks at the very basic findings of quantum physics back to the time of Max Planck, you know, he was an idealist. He was not a materialist, and so were his peers, many of them. Um, the observer effect has demonstrated that consciousness affects matter. So what does that tell you? You know, uh, it's, it's pretty crazy, but they, for some reason, that doesn't occur to them, or they, they still look at matter as primary even though they don't even know what's underneath subatomic particles and what makes it all work, you know, beyond our realm of observation. So, to me, it's like, it's like that song that I came up with, What You Can't See. And it's like, mind existed and brought the material world into being. And whatever that mind is, the conscious, you know, whether you call God consciousness or whatever, you know, that primordial consciousness, exists outside of time and space, seems to, from my perspective. And this is like a showroom or a place for us to come have experiences and do stuff. But I don't think it's— it's obviously not a permanent home, because we were only here for a set amount of time.

It's a really interesting conundrum that the materialists have gotten themselves into. I just discovered the idea of idealism, I don't know, 5, 6, 7 years ago, I guess, I ran into a guy named Bernardo Kastrup. And I've read everything, pretty much everything that he's written. And so when you, when you embrace this idea that consciousness is fundamental, which is what materialism is about, that consciousness is what truly exists, you can answer so many questions. I mean, the answers just kind of come. But when you embrace it the other way, when it's the other way around, that we say material is fundamental, it's fundamental. You, you left with a bunch of questions, like, first of all, what is consciousness? How does consciousness arise out of the material? What, you know, where does it come from? Where does it go? Again, scientists can't even answer, you know, what it is. We all know that we have this experience of consciousness, but they can't explain why we even have it.

Yeah, subjective experience, or like Bernardo says, you know, We know what it feels like to see the color red, you know, things like that. But there's no way you can see how the brain could cause that. So, and we just feel like we're more, I think. I don't think it's an illusion. But, you know, they have some wacky explanations these days, from the materialist perspective, that really don't make any sense.

Oh, and up and up into and including that consciousness is an illusion, as I think it's Daniel Dennett that, you know, I'm like, come on, You've convinced yourself that your consciousness is an illusion. It's the only thing that you know.

I remember when I had to do my first book signing ever, a number of years ago, some hardcore skeptical materialist guy who had a, you know, this science mind, hardcore materialistic science mind, he came up to me, goes, well, how do you even know that I'm conscious? And I'm like, and at the end of the day, I just said, hey, look, dude, I'm not a scientist. I'm just here because I had a son pass and I've had experiences that I know are real. And then he just softened. He's like, oh, I'm so sorry, you know. But I had to put it on a human level instead of like debating some debunker type guy. And he wouldn't be open to any of the science that I presented or the experiment I did at the University of Arizona lab, you know. But that's his loss.

Yeah, frankly, though, that's a question that I've asked myself, because the only thing I know for sure is my own consciousness. I assume that other people are conscious, and it's based on valid assumptions. We have the same biology, we seem to have the same experiences, you respond as though you're conscious. But I can never truly know that. I can't experience your consciousness. And that's the thing that's interesting about the whole thing, because it is a subjective, you know, thing that we can only— we can't describe it to somebody. You have to experience it.

But we experience love. And we know that we're loving.

Yeah, yeah.

Person or other— maybe it's some other part of ourselves that's, you know, part of this consciousness web or network or whatever. Yeah.

Well, I think his question is, I think it's totally misguided. Because again, that's, that's that materialist mindset, right? But what I'm saying is, what we do know, what we do know for sure, you know, that you're conscious, and I know that I'm conscious, you know, I know that, you know, I know that because I experience it. And that's all I can truly experience is that, is that consciousness. So when materialists say you're conscious, yeah, I believe, I believe other people are conscious. I absolutely 100% do. Like I said, it may makes sense. But it's, it's, it's, that's, that's the idea that consciousness is fundamental, as opposed to the rising of the material, the trusting that what I experience is, you know, that's, that's all I know. It's like, what is it? I think therefore I am, right? I know that I exist because I'm conscious.

Yep.

Yeah. So Mark, it's been really great catching up with you. I want remind people again, I know you mentioned your website before in the book, but I want to make sure that we have that in there so people can know.

There's a book, it's called The Persistence of the Soul. And you could get it anywhere, Amazon, Barnes Noble, it's— Amazon has it now in 11 different countries. But if you just go to my website, there's links to all of that stuff. Mark Ireland author.com, Mark with a K, Ireland like the country, author, Mark Ireland author.com. I said that 3 times because I I, in my past, I work in the advertising field, and we were told that you have to say something 3 times for it to sink in.

Absolutely true. So any last thing, any last thoughts you want to leave people with about either your book or helping parents heal, or just your general philosophy on life?

I always like to leave this one. It's general philosophy. It's like, if somebody's hearing this right now, and they're in a dark place, or feeling down, that I think, you know, all of us have a path and a purpose and a reason for being here, a set of experiences we're going through. And sometimes pain and suffering comes into play, but that's often what can make us grow the most. And if we could just see our way through that and just hang in there and keep— that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. So I just encourage people to say, you know, you're not here by accident, you're not in a chaotic, random universe. There is meaning to your being here. And just—

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