Seeking Jordan

A New Book about How a Father Reached Through the Veil and Communicated with his Son, Jordan, Who Had Passed On to the Other Side

Matthew McKay, Ph.D.

Among the boundaries dissolving in our postmodern, apocalyptic age, the veil between the living and the dead is becoming thinner and more transparent. As Cayce predicted, mediumship itself will not provide the proof of survival after death. However, the various mediumistic methodologies can provide healing for the bereaved. That love does not die is something that those in grief can come to experience directly, and personally, leaving no need for the “proof” that cannot be provided. A good example of this process of transcending this particular boundary comes in the new book, Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. The author, Matthew McKay, Ph.D., a psychologist and scientist, lost his son Jordan, and then made many efforts to communicate. The results are quite educational.

If you have lost someone you deeply love, or have become strongly aware of your mortality, it’s hard to avoid wondering about life after death, the existence of God, notions of heaven and hell, and why we are here in the first place. The murder of Matthew McKay’s son, Jordan, sent him on a journey in search of ways to communicate with his son despite fears and uncertainty. Here he recounts his efforts — including past-life and between-lives hypnotic regressions, a technique called induced after-death communication, channeled writing, and more.

When author Matthew McKay’s son Jordan was murdered, he set out on a quest to discover the truth about why we are here and what happens when we die. He became determined to listen and look for his dead son in any way he could. McKay shares what he learned along the way.

McKay writes, “Pain is the path to truth. It refracts light to reveal things not otherwise seen. In the heart of the pain is a moment when the universe, and our place within it, becomes more visible,” writes McKay in the book’s preface. “So far I have learned this: nothing is truly lost. Nothing. The soul is constant, never broken. Pain seems to damage us, but the damage is an illusion. The idea of safety or protection is an illusion. It is all safe — everything we love.”

Seeking Jordan is the story of how McKay came to know these things. He is not a psychic or a medium — quite the opposite in fact. He is a psychologist with a deep love of science who never expected to take this journey. But as he has learned, in the heart of pain exist things he never imagined.

In the first four chapters of Seeking Jordan, McKay shares a variety of techniques he used to connect with Jordan — including EMDR, Induced After Death Communication, past-life and between-life regressions, channeled writing, and more. McKay ultimately learned how to reach his son. In this book he provides extraordinary revelations — direct from Jordan — about the soul’s life after death, how karma works. The next nine chapters, which were cowritten with Jordan through channeled writing sessions, share the insights McKay learned about life and death from his dead son.

McKay writes, “In the same way that Jordan is watching over me, your loved ones are watching over you. They see what you feel and fear and hope for,” writes McKay. “They see the path you are taking, and they often know the direction you need to go. In the same way Jordan helps me when I’m afraid or full of doubt, the ones you love will reach out to you — in dreams or feelings or direct replies — if you ask.”

To explore Seeking Jordan on Amazon.com, click here!

Interview with author Matthew McKay

What were some of the ways you sought to make contact with your son?

In the beginning I looked for signs he might be present, anything unusual in our environment. Family and friends kept track of dreams or messages from Jordan. We went to a medium, we went to a psychologist who specializes in Induced After Death Communication, and I learned how to do Channeled Writing. In the end, I found that channeled writing was the most effective way to make contact with Jordan—literally any time I wanted.

What is Induced After Death Communication - how does it work, and what happened when you tried it?

This is based on research by psychologist Alan Botkin. He discovered that by making a small change in a well known protocol for treating trauma, that his patients spontaneously received direct messages from the dead. He worked primarily with vets who experienced traumatic losses in war. After the first “accidental” IADC (Induced After-Death Communication) Botkin did the revised procedure with 83 vets who were being treated for trauma. None were told what to expect, but 81 (97%) heard the voice of someone they loved who had died.

I saw Botkin in Chicago, did the trauma process, and heard Jordan say these words to me: “Dad . . . Dad . . . Tell Mom I’m here . . . I’m all right. I’m here with you . . . Tell her I’m OK.”

What is Channeled Writing, and how did it help you to communicate to your son, Jordan?

Channeled Writing, also called automatic writing, has been used for hundreds of years as a means to communicate with the spirit world. Spiritual seekers and famous poets have used it, including W. B. Yeats. The Channeled Writing process I learned includes using meditation to get into a receptive state, writing out a question, and listening for the answer (often heard as a whispered voice inside one’s head or simply a thought). You just write the answer down, and move on to the next question. All of Jordan’s words in the book came from Channeled Writing.

How did you come to write a book with your son - after his death?

Ralph Metzner, a psychologist who taught me to use Channeled Writing, suggested that I could use Channeled Writing to do a book with Jordan. I asked Jordan if he was

interested in a book project, even though I had no idea what it would involve. He was not only willing, he outlined the first 10 chapters of the book and established the entire scope of the project—within 5 minutes.

What did you learn about the spirit world - life after death - from Jordan?

Souls reincarnate for hundreds of lives. Between lives they are home—in the spirit world. Immediately after death, souls are met by guides and loved ones in an environment created to look familiar and reassuring. Following a brief transitional period, souls begin a life review where they examine every significant moment of the just completed life. Life review helps us learn how each decision we make affects everyone around us. After live review, souls join their soul family—a group of souls who both learn and reincarnate together. Guides (teachers) oversee the learning process—both on earth and in the life-between-lives. Each soul’s lesson plan for what they will learn on earth is called karma.

Why are we here - did Jordan say anything about that?

We are here for one purpose only—to learn.. We are not here to be redeemed or to earn a place in heaven by doing good works. The reason we reincarnate, living hundreds of lives, is to learn the lessons that each life teaches. In the same way bees bring honey back to the hive, we return to the spirit world after each life, carrying all the wisdom and new lessons we have learned.

What did you learn about God from Jordan?

Jordan says that all of consciousness—collectively—is God. As consciousness grows and evolves, God develops and evolves. As each soul learns, because we are all a part of God, God learns. And not a “person,” a specific entity. We don’t see God in the spirit world. God is us.

Can anyone contact the dead, or do you need special powers?

You need no special powers to talk to the dead. I have no special powers. I’m not a medium. I am not clairvoyant or clairaudient. Channeled Writing is something anyone can learn. It requires doing a brief meditation to open the channel and help you become more receptive. Have an object with you that connects you to the spirit on the other side. After the meditation, write out questions. Start with questions that will have simple yes or no answers. The answer will come as a thought—write it down. As the process becomes more comfortable and familiar, write out questions that require a more complex answer (thought). Find words for whatever answer (thought) shows up in your mind.

Why is there so much pain in life - according to Jordan?

Jordan indicates that all the pain in the world is necessary for our mission of learning. We come to this planet to learn how to love with, and in spite of pain. These are lessons that CANNOT happen in the spirit world where there is no pain and we love without effort or cost.

We come to a physical planet to face resistance and obstacles. As Jordan says, “You can’t learn to throw a curve ball in heaven. First of all, you need a physical ball. Then you need gravity and wind resistance. There are no great pitchers in the spirit world.”

Every lesson we learn here is taught by pain and resistance.

You’ve used hypnosis to lead people on past life and between life journeys—and you’ve been on them yourself. How do you do it? What did you learn?

I learned an hypnotic induction, from the work of psychologist Michael Newton, that allows people to return to past lives, and the life-between-lives (the spirit world). It takes about four hours, but offers profound truths about our individual life purpose—what we came here to learn and what we came here to do.

Later, in order to take these journeys myself, I consulted psychologist Ralph Metzner, who helped me visit past lives I had shared with Jordan. I also witnessed experiences I’ve had in the life-between-lives, including life review, meeting the “council of elders” and reuniting with my soul family.

Did Jordan make contact with others after he died? How did he do it?

Jordan made contact with many family and friends after his death. These contacts included vivid dreams with specific messages, visions, the overwhelming feeling of his presence with telepathy, and my own experiences with channeled writing, induced after death communication, and mediums.

What are you and Jordan doing and talking about now?

Right now Jordan and I are collaborating on a new process for creating spiritual growth. It’s something that can be learned in an 8-week group workshop. He has laid out all the steps of the protocol, and I’ll soon be testing to see how it works (I’m still a researcher, after all). This may also turn into another book we’ll work on together.

To explore Seeking Jordan on Amazon.com, click here!

All Together: The Living and the Dead

An Excerpt* from Seeking Jordan

At the funeral, all eyes are on the coffin. As if the one inside was the victim of misfortune, struck down by some malicious fate.

Death isn’t bad luck, because there is no difference between the living and the dead. The one in the coffin is doing the same thing as the one grieving in the pew: loving and learning.

There is no difference between the living and the dead because the young have already been old, already taken a last breath, already watched planets die and galaxies collide. The one in the coffin is finished with this play. That’s all. And has taken everything learned back to “the whole,” back to the light.

The mourners go home. And while they grieve, the departed one is in the circle, greeting a brother from one life, or greeting a father, a daughter, a friend from others. Greeting a lover who left early, and a lover who in another play was left behind. Greeting the ones who were teachers, who were antagonists, who were protectors or protected. Greeting the one who ended a past life, who was a murderer.

The circle is always complete. We are always in it, and the funeral is an illusion. While souls actually experience no separation (just as Jordan is still with me), most human minds believe that the loss of the body is the loss of the person. And that if something cannot be seen, it isn’t there.

The human mind, having amnesia for all past lives, identifies each person (soul) with a single body. And if that body/person can no longer be seen, it is assumed to be gone. Lost.

But that isn’t the case. Jordan’s soul is right next to me, guiding me as I write this. Souls do not leave us, and the circle does not break just because that brilliant collection of molecules called a body is put in a box.

I know this, yet still I sometimes feel alone. I ask Jordan, and he explains:

The illusion of separation is perpetuated by religious images of the afterlife — an extraordinary realm so different from our planet that its inhabitants seem unreachable and lost to us. But again, it is the human mind creating fictions.

Images of the afterlife imbued with religious constructions of god and fantastic beings (for example, archangels and demons) are inventions of priests and holy men who attempted to make the journey while still embodied on Earth. Often aided by drugs or assaults on the body (including pain, sleeplessness, sensory overload, or deprivation), they saw in the “afterlife” what they wanted to see, what they feared seeing, or simply what their minds created in an altered state. The Tibetan and Egyptian books of the dead, the Upanishads, and the visions of countless mystics are examples of these journeys.

The Christian image of heavenly hosts singing god’s praises is also just a lovely hallucination. Such images — clouds and harps and angels at the gate — create hope. But paradoxically, they place embodied souls further away from those in spirit, making it seem that discarnates are in a place that’s sublime, distant, and inaccessible. These invented images hide the fact that departed souls are as much with us now as they were in life — perhaps more so, because now they are present as soon as we think of them. Telepathy covers any distance, instantly bringing souls together.

Souls in spirit love us as much as ever, think of us as much as ever, laugh with us at the absurdities of life, feel concerned about our pain, and celebrate our good choices. There is a simple reason for this. The relationship between living and departed souls is as deep, as vibrant, as committed, and as much in the present moment as ever it was on Earth.

This seems true to me. I am more in contact with Jordan now than I was at any time from when he left for college at eighteen until he was murdered at twenty-three. I consult with him often — about everything from family issues to personal choices. I send and receive messages of love and encouragement. And we are writing this book together.

I cannot hold or kiss my boy, which is a tremendous loss. But I can talk to him anytime, anywhere. There is no barrier — in this or in the spirit world — that can keep us apart.

The Struggle with Doubt

The only thing now standing between us is my own doubt. The doubt visits often, whispering that my conversations with Jordan are wishes rather than truth, and that all he has taught me is a fabrication, my own thoughts attributed to him. When in doubt, I withdraw. I seek him less. I feel frightened that I’ll discover something false in what he says, which will destroy my faith in us.

The doubt is unavoidable. I’ve learned that I must live with its whisperings even while I listen to Jordan. The doubt never leaves, because in this place absolute truth is hidden from us. Mother Teresa wrote that most of her life was spent with no sense of the presence of god. And whether or not the god she thought existed is really there, this dialectic remains: the quest for truth and the uncertainty are inescapably one experience.

Jordan says we are like shortwave radios, tuned to the frequency of some distant voice. Through the static, we pick up a phrase or two. We try to sew that into some coherence, but we have caught only a part of it. Through desire or projection, we may supply the missing words and get most of it wrong. But still we must listen.

I’ve learned one more thing about doubt. My need to send Jordan love and feel his love in return is bigger than doubt, bigger than the uncertainty and loneliness of living here without being able to hug my boy.

To explore Seeking Jordan on Amazon.com, click here!

Beginning the Conversation

An Excerpt* from Seeking Jordan

Time moves us downstream from each loss. The living relationship is further away, left on the bank where we last embraced, where the last words were spoken. Across that distance stretches silence, the helplessness of what can’t be fixed or undone.

The last time I saw Jordan was at lunch at Saul’s, a deli he was fond of. I can’t remember what we spoke of. He was doing well — a job he liked, a lovely young woman he’d recently moved in with. I do remember the corner where I hugged him goodbye, feeling his thick, wiry hair against my cheek, his strong arms around me. I said, “I love you,” as I had thousands of times, and then I began half-running to my car, late for something.

I had no inkling this was the moment we were leaving each other, and that every moment since would bear me further from his arms, his eyes, his sweetness. It was so ordinary, so embedded in our daily lives, that it held no portents of loss. And when I look back, I feel as if we are still there, still hugging on that corner. I can feel him holding me, and sometimes I can believe the embrace still exists — that I can have it, reenter it anytime I want.

But time moves us downriver. I craved more than memory, more than the few words I’d heard in Chicago. I wanted a two-way conversation, like we’d had at the deli. I wanted to ask questions and hear answers. I wanted to know my boy again.

In hopes of having that conversation, I consulted Ralph Metzner, a psychologist who has learned the art of channeled writing — an ancient technique for reaching across the divide of death and communicating to souls in the spirit world. Ralph himself lost a son, and he spent years searching for ways to reach him.

There was another connection: Jordan and Ralph’s stepson, Eli, had been best friends. I knew instinctively that anyone I connected to through Jordan could be trusted. And Ralph had known Jordan well.

***

His office is set up in the former dining room of an old Victorian. High mahogany wainscoting reaches to a shelf near the ceiling; there is a crystal chandelier. Ralph, a thin man with wispy white hair and eyes that have a wounded look, explains the process so I can learn the steps and do it at home. Channeled writing works best when it is done in the same place with a set ritual. It helps to have an object that connects you to the dead, and it is also beneficial to first engage in a practice that helps you enter a receptive state. Breathing meditations work well, as do candles for focusing attention.

“How will I know I’m not making it up?” I ask him.

“You can’t escape uncertainty,” Ralph replies. “There will always be doubt. Just listen to Jordan; see what he says. Your feelings about it will guide you.”

***

I have a desk that my parents gave me when I was eleven. Whenever I sit at it, I feel how objects connect us to people who are gone, and sometimes to an earlier version of ourselves. I sat here as a child, doing homework, distracting myself with small toys, and looking into the enticing darkness of my backyard.

Now I sit here alone, assembling objects: A cobalt blue glass mask, with a lit candle behind it, that my daughter, Bekah, brought from Mexico. And a blue business card Jordan created while he was in high school. It reads, Jordan McKay, CEO, Omega Technologies. There was no Omega Technologies, but it got him into countless trade shows for Apple and other technology giants.

I begin with my breath, counting the exhalations till I reach ten, then starting over. I focus on my diaphragm, the genesis and center of the breath. Some spiritual traditions recognize this spot as the locus of “wise mind,” where we can access the deepest truth of our lives. When thoughts arise, I notice and label them — “There’s a thought” — and return attention to my breath. After a while my mind settles, and a calm begins that touches every part of my body.

I suddenly wonder if this is some kind of hokum I’ve fallen prey to. Then I worry that I haven’t done it right, that I haven’t prepared sufficiently to hear Jordan’s words. “There’s a thought...and another thought.”

I stare at the flickering candle behind the mask. I imagine that it is Jordan’s presence, like the sanctuary light in the Catholic churches of my childhood. And now my mind begins to quiet again. I open my notebook and write the most urgent question: Are you happy?

The answer is instantaneous; it arrives before I’ve finished the question. It comes in the form of a whispered thought, with the timbre and pitch of Jordan’s voice. I write:

More than you can know.

Then I write more questions and record the answers.

Do you miss me? I have you with me.

What are you doing? Studying. Learning things. Getting ready for what I have to do next time.

Next time? I’ll be back soon. I want to help the planet. Last time I wasn’t going to have time to do anything, so I practiced focusing my will, finding beauty.

How can I connect to you? Watch for me when I come to you. Watch the signs. Feel me inside. Trust that feeling when you sense I’m with you. The circle stays strong with love. Just remember your love for me. Open the channel so you can hear — just like you’re doing now. This is the circle, letting me through. I love you, Dad. That’s how it is. I’m right with you. I’m here with you and Mom. Just feel it. It’s real. My arms are around you. Always.

What is the circle? The practice of love keeps the circle. It’s like a discipline. Practicing love isn’t collecting sad memories. It’s feeling the whole person, without thought, without judgment. It’s holding all of them at once.

The circle is all of us, living and dead. All connected, all talking to each other. It’s no different now than when we talked at Saul’s. Our relationship is the same, Dad.

I’m exhausted; I blow out the candle. I want to believe everything I’ve heard, but I hate self-deception. It’s a response I inherited from my father, a man who despised the ways people lie to themselves to justify their needs and actions. But suddenly it’s clear: I will have to live with that remembered contempt in order to keep listening. If I want to open the channel so my boy can talk to me, then I’ll also have to live with doubt, perhaps even ridicule.

# # #

To explore Seeking Jordan on Amazon.com, click here!

Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

See his video introducing his book at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFziTwGHn4g