The Force Is with You Always!

By Richard Koepke

This book teaches people how Spirit operates directly in our lives today and what we must do to live life to the fullest and with malice toward none. It teaches spiritual principles on how to live life with gratitude, acceptance, joy, abundance and wellness. It connects us with our eternal being within and encourages us to create our own soul music without.

Have we lost our way as a society? In the wake of humans murdering over 100 million other humans in the past century, many of us are seeking answers to the ever increasing cultural violence surrounding us. From capital punishment to going postal, we live in a very violent society. Hardly a day passes without news of government torture prisons, drive-by shootings, a ten year old boy murdering his father, or a congresswoman being shot in the head. Shocking revelations, such as American government doctors using unsuspecting American citizens as human guinea pigs for decades of medical experiments, further alienate the government from the people that they are supposed to serve.

It seems to me that we need a new vision of humanity that our faltering institutions have failed to provide. I believe that we need to replace institutional blight with greater spirituality. We need a new spirit of integrity that replaces the often deceitful and violent leadership we currently embrace. We need to challange the "don't get mad get even" mentality in our society with greater understanding for one another. We need to be role models for positive reinforcement (learning) rather than the punishment that only teaches more violence and hatred, and, like the Montagues and Capulets, the never-ending need to seek revenge. This book addresses how to live a life of health and wellness in the midst of a truly sick society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456766863

Richard Koepke

Richard Koepke, author of Best of Both Worlds: The Unauthorized Metaphysical Autobiography of Dorothy Hoogstraten and The Force is With You Always, is a therapist, ordained clergyman and psychic medium that helps people make changes in their lives to find inner peace and outward understanding through spirituality and clinical acumen. He is a therapeutic healer and teacher of skills. Rev. Koepke holds a magna cum laude Bachelor of Arts degree in Religion and Social Sciences from Wagner College in New York City (where he won the Outstanding Pre-Seminary Student award), a Master of Divinity degree from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and a Master of Science degree in Education from State University College of New York at Buffalo. He is a Pastoral Counselor and Clergyman, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Licensed Mental Health Counselor and a Certified Psychic Medium. He has completed six units of Clinical Pastoral Education (Advanced Standing) in both the mental and general hospital settings. Rev. Koepke is a spiritual leader, teacher and healer who seeks Universal Truth. He believes in never-ending self-improvement and wants to leave the world a better place for his having passed this way. His mantra is: "Can I be a better person today than I was yesterday?" He wants his own life to be an example of running the good race and fighting the good fight of faith. Rev. Koepke has been a featured guest on the international CBS FM Radio show, The Psychics Next Door, and continues to be sought out for his uncanny abilities to help people in all walks of life. Like the Phoenix bird in Greek mythology, for the past 35 years he has used his teachings and therapeutic skills to help literally hundreds of marriages, families and individuals work through their therapeutic issues, and, out of the ashes of the old that didn't work, create whole new relationships stronger and healthier than before. People not only like coming to Rick's counseling sessions, they make themselves better people as a result of his nonjudgmental, spiritual, actively interventional change agent approach. In addition to his ongoing private practice, he has also worked in a Pastoral Counseling group practice, a Pastoral Counseling agency and a Mental Health Clinic treating the severely mentally ill, while at the same time pastoring both Lutheran and Presbyterian churches for some 30 years. He has pioneered therapy and eating disorder groups in the 1980's and 1990's and was also a public speaker for the former ABBA (Anorexia and Bulimia Buffalo Association), running an eating disorder group as well. Additionally, Rev. Koepke has spent much time doing many continuing education units in the field of addictions. Having been provisionally certified to teach both social studies and music in New York State, he has substitute taught for both Cleveland Hill and Amherst High Schools in Buffalo, NY. He has home tutored and coached the modified boys basketball team at Cleveland Hill High School for several years as well, including summer basketball camp in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. More recently, he has helped many in need seeking answers with psychic readings. His hard earned wisdom has guided many to new life and new beginnings in a very positive way. He is a natural healer that very much comes through in his compassion for others. Rev. Koepke was an "A" student in high school, an all-state as well as all-county percussionist, along with with six straight "A" ratings in solo competitions, and the recipient of the John Phillip Sousa music award as Longwood High School's (Middle Island, New York) outstanding musician. He has played in 4 Long Island symphony orchestras (Brookhaven Symphony, South Shore Symphony, Huntington Festival Orchestra and Suffolk Symphony) while still in high school and then college (including playing with and/or being conducted by such musicians as Van Cliburn, Leonard Rose, Tossy Spivakovsky, Clayton Westermann and Aaron Copeland's assistant). He has played percussion for several theater groups including the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Theater Group, which included the Broadway musical, The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd. He also played percussion for Showstoppers, a troupe of about 20 actors performing showstopper numbers from Broadway musicals for various groups. He made his way through college and seminary by playing percussion during summer vacations at the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport, NY, doing 6 Broadway shows a season, each running two weeks long. (Gateway Playhouse includes many former acting students such as Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman.) He has played in several bands during his college days as well (including rock bands and wedding gigs). Knowing the mind-body-spirit connection to health and wellness, and also understanding himself to be divinely guided, guarded and protected to do this work, Rev. Koepke hasn't so much as taken an aspirin or any other medication in about 15 years. His last cold was over a decade ago. He currently jogs 5-6 miles about 4 times a week, meditates in harmony with his God force and takes a cat nap whenever possible in the afternoon between sessions to rejuvinate for evening sessions. He takes care of himself so that he is free to take care of others. As you can see from all of the above, Rev. Koepke never stops growing and developing. He has helped many, many people in his lifetime and we thank him for his dedication and selflessness to serve others! This book illustrates some of his basic concepts for healthy living.

Book preview

The Force is With You

Always!

Richard Koepke

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2011 Richard Koepke. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/29/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-6686-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-5025-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-5026-8 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011906798

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

In the Beginning

Grasshopper Implants

Living a Healthy Lifestyle

Magnificent Obsession

The Pain Within

Living in Gratitude

Accepting Whatever

Love Never Dies (and Neither Do We)!

The Age of Aquarius

Soul Music

The Force is with You Always

Living in Abundance

Spiritual Supervision

Living in Joy

Having a Sense of Humor

Telescoping the Future

A New Vision

The Best is Yet to Come

Biography

DISCLAIMER

I have seen many, many people during my 35 years of professional life and some cases no doubt may appear similar to others. The identifying facts in the counseling session vignettes, psychic readings and personal vignettes presented in this book have been purposely altered in order to protect the identities of my clients and the people I have known or read for psychically. Any similarity to real individuals, clients, parishioners or querents seen by me over the past 35 years is purely coincidental. The situations that I have presented are genuine, but the facts have been altered to protect individual privacy and secure professional confidentiality/confessional privilege.

IN MEMORY OF DOROTHY HOOGSTRATEN

(DOROTHY STRATTEN)

1960-1980

(Dorothy Standard Time)

Introduction

In the Beginning

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Henry David Thoreau

LATE DECEMBER, 1999, THE Chinese Year of the Rabbit, which happens every twelve years, was a year of great significance for me, as my birth year was also the Year of the (White Metal) Rabbit. The next one just arrived in February, 2011, the first Chinese Year of the Metal Rabbit in 60 years, when that Mary Poppin’s wind changes for me once again. Additionally, I turn from the 50’s to the 60’s energy field in 2011, with a whole new decade of living and a whole new wind and energy field there as well. The game’s afoot, Watson.

Anyway, in late December, 1999, just at the turn of the millennium (Remember Y2K?), I was channel surfing (something I rarely do) and ran into A&E’s biography of Dorothy Stratten, the murdered 1980 Playmate of the Year. Something deeply spiritual was triggered in me that night as I watched that program. I had never heard anything about Dorothy’s sensational death before that evening, but only later as I began to research her some more, did I vaguely remember that I had once seen this 1980 Playmate of the Year on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in late April, 1980. I did not remember until even later still that she was also featured in an ABC Playboy Roller Disco Special that I had seen on TV back in October, 1979.

In those twenty years previous, I really knew nothing about her at all and had not focused my attention to her specifically. I had gone to the Buffalo Playboy club back in the early 1980’s mostly for lunch with a friend who had a connection there, lusting the bunnies and learning the tricks of bumper pool from them, but never bought a Playboy magazine myself– only when I got interested in Dorothy did I finally buy her magazines online. In hindsight, I see now that those two TV experiences involving Dorothy and also going to the Playboy club for lunch had been implanted in me by Spirit for where my life was headed long before I had ever met Dorothy, but which were totally insignificant to me at the time they actually happened.

Somehow, after watching her biography that night in late December, 1999, I had a burning desire to find out more about this very lovely lady who died in August, 1980. I would have never dreamed that a book would have been written about her, or that she would have been in movies and TV shows– after all, she was only twenty years old when she was murdered. Something was very odd about her case. Anyway, that factually questionable biography set me on a quest to find out more about her as a real person. I was in quest of the historical Dorothy Hoogstraten.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. That spring of 2000, I had a client come in for counseling that talked about a psychic reading that she had just received in Pennsylvania while visiting relatives that was very accurate. I had never been to a psychic before, but thought I might try it myself for entertainment purposes.

I went to my first psychic reading on June 13, 2000. The psychic was a weekly regular on a local radio station that I never listened to but whom someone told me about. During that initial reading, the psychic said that I would be doing psychic work myself some day, that I would write a book (but not right away), and that I had absolutely no idea where my life was headed– none! My life was going to be changing dramatically, she said! I left that first psychic reading skeptically thinking that she probably told that to everyone as I had no plans whatsoever to either become psychic or write a book.

The psychic also suggested that I start developing my own psychic intuition, so I thought, why not? I’d like to become psychic, but always thought that you either had it or you didn’t– which turned out to be a faulty belief. I now realize that we all have it, but some of us just don’t develop it. I started reading about anything psychic in nature. I began watching psychic medium John Edward on TV and took development classes in order to nurture that spiritual gift. I eventually became a certified psychic medium myself and started channeling Dorothy somewhere along the way. Because of my interest in her, Dorothy had asked me in an April 11, 2001 reading, at the beginning of my journey, if I would write her metaphysical autobiography. It took time for my psychic ability to develop, but the book was finally published in 2009.

This book is the sequel to where my spirit guides have been directing me all this time. In that second psychic reading, April 11, 2001, my guides asked me if I would be sad to leave the church. At the time, I thought they meant the poor city church that I was pastoring on a half-time basis, not the organized church itself. They were telescoping their plans to move me out of the restrictive cage of Christianity so that I could eventually go out to all the lilies in the field with my teachings– long before it actually happened. In another reading, they used the analogy that, as Broadway shows did not stay on one stage but went on tour to many different stages, they would eventually want me to take my teachings on the road in like manner as well.

More recently, they asked me to write a companion to the first book that pulled the meat and potatoes out of my enlightenment for those not necessarily interested in Dorothy Hoogstraten (Stratten), but who were interested in my spiritual teachings instead. This book is the result.

Each of my books teaches spiritual lessons that I currently embrace. You might say that this second book, however, is my greatest spiritual teachings album, my own Sermon on the Mount, if you will.

As you may already know, Jesus’ greatest teachings were lumped together into three chapters of scripture from Matthew 5-7 by the biblical editor who very loosely called them a sermon (form criticism) – a very meandering, disjointed sermon that was never actually historically given by Jesus, Cecil B. DeMille notwithstanding. You might say that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus greatest hits album of those times when the rabbi sat down and taught his disciples– the mountain symbolic of raising the consciousness of both his disciples and himself. My own personal enlightenment has come following years of transition and spiritual growth on my life’s journey (my own personal pits and poppy fields along the yellow brick road).

One thing I truly hope my teachings do, much like Jesus of Nazareth, is to get organized religion back on track once again. This book is my personal olive branch of forgiveness and reconciliation for all the harm that has been done to me, especially by organized religion. How do you love your enemies and those who harm you? Additionally, for those practicing spirituality outside the organized church, I wish to lead them through this book to new and higher levels of spiritual enlightenment, for he who is not busy being born is busy dying.

As I work with people, I often help them see the greater spiritual connections in their lives than first meets the eye or is obvious. Many people do not look at their own personal life experiences as spiritual lessons, or even think along those lines, but they are.

Today, for example, I was at Monroe Muffler getting my car inspected and met a woman doing likewise while getting ready for a weekend trip to another state for a sports tournament. It turned out that she had very loose ball joints and the vehicle was unsafe for her to even drive the five miles home, much less to another state. I believe that Spirit had her get that inspection before her trip so that she would be safe going to her tournament and not have a terrible accident on the road in mid-winter snow season. Was the timing of her inspection a coincidence? Was she being given a spiritual lesson from Spirit as well as Spirit helping her out? I think so– and so did she when we talked about it.

The Chinese word for crisis means dangerous opportunity. Life’s challenges are really opportunities for us to grow! Learning compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, acceptance, gratitude, truth, love and joy all seem too often lost in our world of road rage, people running not even yellow but already turned red lights, talking and texting on cell phones while driving and having exhaustion diseases from living life as a rat race instead of enjoying each moment for its own sake now.

For example, one couple I saw had an argument on the way to a hockey game that lasted all night long and ruined their date. I taught them the concept that then was then and now is now. In other words, when he got into the car, upset that she was late again and that they were now too late to have a nice dinner before the game, said some negative you-focused things to her, then caught himself and tried to apologize. She got mad and wouldn’t accept his apology, and they snipped at each other all night long instead. It turned into the worst date of our lives. If they could have lived in the now and let go of the negative first two minutes of the date, they would know that then was then but now is now and let it go. They could have talked out their hurt feelings in minutes and then had a wonderful date (at center ice, no less), but they didn’t live in the now, deal with it at the time it happened instead of you-focused blaming, and then let it go as the past.

Why this book? It seems to me that we human beings do far too much harm, wage far too much war and make far too many torture prisons while ignoring the larger need to replace our sick institutions, loaded with institutional blight, with something better. There is far too much violence and far too little enlightenment in our society today. Our governments are often the worst offenders. Tyrannical government is truly governmentulous!

Isn’t the belief that might makes right what causes so many wars in the first place? Mine is bigger than yours, something like that! For example, isn’t John Kennedy’s assassination approval of President Diem of South Vietnam just three weeks before his own assassination, while also trying to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba at the very same time, absolutely no worse than others assassinating John Kennedy a few weeks later? Isn’t that just a simple example of Jack’s karma coming back at him (and later Bobby, too)? In my opinion, two wrongs will never make a right– just ask Tim McVeigh! Oh, you can’t, because three wrongs were done instead of two. When will we ever learn the spiritual lesson that capital punishment deters no-one? We are a barbaric, vengeful and violent society indeed, from A to Z, from capital punishment to going postal! There is hardly a day that goes by in America where the news does not report some story like a ten year old boy murdering his father and then calling 911 or a congresswoman being shot in the head.

This book scratches the surface of a new vision for a better world than our faltering institutions could ever possibly envision in a gazillion years of the SSDD. Our world needs to shine a light in the midst of the world’s darkness and learn a better way than the Don’t get mad, get even Dirty Harry world we currently live in. Those in charge at the very top are often the worst offenders, their brains infested with the sickness of the power that corrupts, while carrying an entitled double standard around for their own abuses so that they rarely ever come to trial like a Tim McVeigh.

In short, we live in a world of power not unlike that of Jesus of Nazareth with the authorities of his day! If it is the case for Tim McVeigh to suffer capital punishment, then why is it not the case for those who are in power as well? Shouldn’t we prosecute those guilty of such things as illegal wiretaps and torture prisons with Tim McVeigh-like justice as well? How is it that that never seems to happen? Justice is anything but equal in our society!

In the previous century alone, it is a documented fact that well over a hundred million humans were murdered at the hands of other humans, often in positions of power–- this is not enlightenment but insanity (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Plume, 2006, 11). Our ability to make war and to torture has far outreached our ability to see Spirit and value every life as sacred. Something needs to change in human nature for us to begin to value life once again and to progress as a human race beyond corporate greed, political insanity and psychopathy masquerading as governmental leadership.

How many Vietnam War veterans do I know in my own generation, for instance, that are absolutely disillusioned by both our government and also the civilian reaction to their serving their country honorably? They expected what our WWII veterans received, but were sadly disappointed by their reception coming home.

Today, for example, I saw two separate Vietnam War Vets in counseling. One was in a Mash-like capacity during the war that had sown soldiers back together in the field. He is still grieving the effects of Agent Orange, especially on civilians. It ended up killing, maiming or deforming a million people and was anything but harmless!

Another Vietnam Vet I also saw today is still very angry that he was not welcomed back home with dignity after surviving the Vietnam War by both the American public and the government whom he had served (sense of entitlement). He has felt betrayed by what he calls phony Americans that preach one thing but live another ever since. The hippies that preached love metaphorically spat on him when he returned home, calling him a baby killer, while he believes his government lied about the war and covered up what really happened through the controlled and suppressed media. He has never fully gotten over Vietnam, well over three decades later. He still suffers from all the institutional corruption that he never saw coming at him and that he has never let go of. He feels that our government has never come clean with the truth– either about Vietnam or, more recently, about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction that were supposedly in Iraq. He continues his suffering from past victimization by what he calls phony Americans, living a lie. And he fought for America!

It seems to me that we need much more than what our current institutions can possibly envision in the midst of their institutional blight and spiritual myopia. We need a whole new vision of the world and a much greater spiritual awareness of living or else we will be doomed to repeat the twentieth century all over again. He who does not learn from history…! How many more millions of murders will it take for us until we finally see the light that our institutions are so far off course that it is virtually impossible to fathom any change in, say, C.I.A. covert operations and torture prisons, without total rebellion, which I do not personally advocate?

Can any one person change the hopelessness of our own current institutional blight and governmental psychopathy? LAPD is in the news again today for murdering a drunken Hispanic man with a knife in a park, setting off yet another riot. Instead of dropping the knife while being arrested, he apparently raised his hands above his head to surrender and was gunned down by the notorious LAPD. (Anyone still remember Rodney King?) The more things change…!

By contrast, this book teaches people how Spirit operates and what we must do to live our lives to the fullest and with malice toward none. It teaches how to live life with gratitude, acceptance, joy, abundance and wellness. It helps us connect with our eternal being within and encourages us to create our own soul music without. I hope you enjoy it.

I truly love God and Spirit. I have spent my entire life loving God and also my neighbor, though I am certainly not perfect and have admittedly made many mistakes along the way. I don’t even pretend to be self-righteous, personally. I am mortal and that’s not what I am saying at all in this book– far from it, as my own personal vignettes within these pages will certainly illustrate. I have made many very human mistakes while trying to live a spiritual life. What I am saying, however, is that I have learned a few lessons along the yellow brick road and wish to share my enlightenment with you, the reader. Do with it what you will. I am a sower of seed. What kind of soil receives the seed is still up to you.

I have come to understand that there is much more to life than can be empirically measured scientifically! There is more to us than surgeons can remove– our soul, for example. Spirit is and always will be in charge of the universe. The great I am Presence in the universe creates and sustains what we know as the universe today.

I wish for a new vision of humanity that acknowledges God’s Presence and also God’s creative energies still at work in our world today. The hippie movement that I naively entered college not really understanding at all, including the Beatles, had a few things right after all. Chief among them were the rejection of our many institutions that have meandered well off course and lost any credibility whatsoever, our government’s political corruption that needs a complete enema, truth serum and polygraph tests administered to even begin to be believable these days, the military complex that thinks that war and the latest weapons of war are the only answer to human problems (all we are saying is give peace a chance), and, finally, social enlightenment that says that we are all equal brothers and sisters in Christ– black and white, rich and poor, Arab and Israeli, Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton and everyman (in prison, that is). Imagine not having a defense (war) budget as we know it, but create with some of those funds a peace budget that helps humanity throughout the world? Instead of waging war on Afghanistan, for instance, what if we helped them build schools and other more humanitarian infrastructures instead? Maybe we could give peace a chance as war is not the answer and never will be.

In short, we need a whole new vision of the world that is much more enlightened and much less corrupted. I believe that we need a society that finally recognizes our institutional blight and replaces it with a new spirit of integrity instead.

So, what about you? Do you want to continue the current way of things that on average murders millions in its wake every single year? Are you willing to see another hundred million plus human beings murdered in this century before you finally speak up against the prevalent lack of respect for human life in our seemingly blind, corrupt and hedonistic leadership today? Have you absolutely turned a blind eye towards injustice, wherever it may be found, while those in power get ever richer?

Not to decide is to decide. It is my hope that in this new Age of Aquarius, spirituality replaces institutional blight, and peace on earth, good will toward humankind becomes our new spiritual pathway. A new vision and a new leadership are needed to create such change, for power corrupts and those in power want to keep the status quo and all their corruption and abuses hidden and intact.

The international organization prominently in the news lately, WikiLeaks, is but one attempt to get any honesty at all into government. Can we afford the price of continuing the same corrupt governmental video replay this century as the last?

Safety (or even world peace), it seems to me, is better achieved through open disclosure and honesty between people than through secrecy and covert operations. Those who live in the shadows are always afraid of the light of Truth. The idea that we need secrecy instead of honesty to protect the world is like saying we need the devilish snake to run the Garden of Eden! Isn’t protecting secrecy in addictive family systems merely a license to protect the abusiveness, depression, anxiety, sexual abuse and domestic violence hidden within? Isn’t deceit and outright lying possible signs of codependency and dysfunction rather than wellness? In short, does our dysfunctional government need long-term counseling?

It is truly my hope that out of the ashes of our societies’ current malevolent sickness, a new wellness might arise. This book focuses on how to create wellness and spirituality in the midst of a truly sick society. We need to do a much better job in teaching respect for all life. We need a new vision to see that we are all part of the larger whole and what hurts one of us hurts us all. We need a new world of reconciliation rather than to continue living in the disharmony of those in power controlling and ultimately abusing the rest of us, for where there is control, there is no love.

Grasshopper Implants

IN THE 1970’S, THERE was a TV series called Kung Fu in which a young boy whose grandfather had died was taught many spiritual lessons by the Shaolin (Buddhist) sect that subsequently accepted him into their Monastery. The character of Kwai Chang Caine (played by David Carradine) was called Grasshopper by his master teacher in reference to a lesson in internal awareness he had once been taught.

The pilot episode of Kung Fu (1972) explains Caine being called Grasshopper:

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.

Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?

Caine: No.

Po: Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet?

Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?

Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?

Now a grown adult, Caine, having become a Shaolin priest himself, goes from episode to episode wandering in the wilderness (the American Wild West) invoking his spiritual teachings via flashback in order to help those whom he encounters. Those spiritual lessons had been carefully implanted by Spirit in order for Caine to help others in the fullness of time. Nothing in life is coincidence – rather our experiences on life’s journey serve Spirit’s larger purpose of soul growth! We are always where we are supposed to be, learning the lessons to be learned. If we sway too far off our life’s path, Spirit will auto-correct us, as all roads we take along