Journey into Light: Experience the Sunshine Method

By Judy Leighton

Judy Leighton, pain and stress consultant, invites readers on her spiritual healing and adventure story, finding an unusual way out of the terrifying flashbacks of her lifeand out of the darkness of feeling lost in overwhelming fear and painful memories. She relates how she was gloriously and quickly ushered into the sparkling and radiant sunshine of feeling new again.

Seeking relief from the long-term pain of her flashbacks, she prayed and was led to develop a method that unexpectedly released her from these flashbacks in only ten days. Surprisingly, two weeks later, she also experienced a total remission from a serious and painful rare illness that, over seven months, had brought her close to deaths door.

Feeling completely loved and valued by God, she is now able to enjoy simple pleasures, show deep compassion, and make the healthiest choices.

Her significant healing methodthe Sunshine Methodcan rapidly remove fear and pain from flashbacks. This method also aids in discovering personal, mental, and emotional traps, helping people see how to simultaneously untangle themselves from these interlocking traps and chains in order to find rapid release from them. The method also shows how to have a healthy self-worth now and includes a relaxing mental-exercise program.

Judys mission is to share her healing method to eliminate suffering. In this book, she provides more details about the Sunshine Method and shares stories and letters from some of the people she worked with individually, in groups, and through correspondence.

She reveals how, with the Sunshine Method, ordinary days unfold into the extraordinary.

In 1985, Judy developed the methodology to quickly release fear and pain from memories and the present. Since 1987, she has presented her method in medical centers and public seminars, with psychiatrist Dr. David A. Baron (former deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health and currently professor, Department of Psychiatry, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California) as consultant.

Judys healing method continues to benefit people with serious illness, painful memories, physical pain, and addictions as well as those with the problems of stress and everyday life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524551957

Judy Leighton

Judy Leighton, pain and stress consultant, continues her invitation to experience the Sunshine Methodthe healing method she developed that removed the fear and pain from her memories. At age forty, Judy was losing strength each day for seven months as she suffered a serious and painful rare illness with no known cure. She also had suffered terrifying flashbacks most of her life and was close to deaths door. During this time, she prayed and was led to develop a method that unexpectedly released her from these flashbacks in only ten days. Two weeks later, she also experienced a total remission from her illness. She wrote down how she healed and shared her methodology to quickly release fear and pain from memories with psychiatrist Dr. David A. Baron (former deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health and currently professor, Department of Psychiatry, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California). Since 1987, Dr. Baron has served as her consultant as she has presented her healing method in medical centers, public seminars, and in private sessions. Judys mission is to share her healing method to eliminate suffering. She tells in this book how she became a concert pianist and gave this up to focus on helping people learn about her method.

Book preview

Journey Into Light

Experience The Sunshine Method

Judy Leighton

Copyright © 2017 by Judy Leighton.

Library of Congress Control Number:                            2016917258

ISBN:                        Hardcover                              978-1-5245-5197-1

                                  Softcover                                 978-1-5245-5196-4

                                  eBook                                      978-1-5245-5195-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This work includes some fictional portions. The names, characters, places, and incidents in these fictional portions either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

NOTICE: The method presented in this book is a complementary method. It is not a substitute for other methods, including counseling and medical advice or treatment.

Rev. date: 06/27/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One — There Was Light—But Way More Darkness

Chapter Two — Embraced by Grace

Chapter Three — A Path to Healthy Self-Worth

Chapter Four — Easy Street

Chapter Five — Turning from Darkness to Walking in the Light

Chapter Six — Opening up to Growth and Healing

Chapter Seven — Walking away from Old Paths

Chapter Eight — Leaving the Prisons of Darkness

Chapter Nine — Working Together to Increase Light

Chapter Ten — The Sunshine Method: Part One

Chapter Eleven — The Sunshine Method: Part Two

Chapter Twelve — Walking with Another into the Light

Chapter Thirteen — Letters

Appendix

For People Who Think They May Be in a Crisis or Emergency Situation

Main Messages to Invite Sunshine in

Healthy Self-Worth

Self-Worth Exercise

Self-Evaluation for Peace and Inner Healing

My Method and Differences and Similarities with EMDR and Another Method

Our Duet Story

Letting the Sun Do His Work

Acknowledgments

Author’s Background

On the Cover

The photo on the cover of this book was taken by my friend. We had scouted out possible locations for photos one day and then came back the next day with a camera. My friend also took photos on the following day.

Early one morning, as I was reviewing the possible photos for the cover, the photo on the cover stood out so gloriously. I knew it was the one.

The photo was taken in a location most special to me—a place I have frequented over many years.

In this place, I have felt such deep, immense peace and intense love and joy.

While standing in this special space, I have seen the leaves of the trees shimmering like diamonds in the sunshine as a gentle breeze blows through, filling my heart to overflowing as I enjoyed a sparkling shower of grace.

One day during the first rain in months, I saw the stream surging back to life in this place and was delighted to hear the pleasant whooshing sound of water running in the stream again.

Almost unable to contain myself because of the ecstasy I had felt that day, I stood on a large rock in the middle of the stream in this special place and surveyed the scene of what had long been a dry streambed.

The surging of the stream that day held deep significance for my life.

By the rock, raindrops fell in a small pool, making gentle overlapping ripples and, as I looked upstream, I saw parades of large bubbles gliding downstream.

My heart was full to overflowing that day.

My friend has titled the photo, Beauty of Holiness.

For both of us, it captures the timeless essence of the Sunshine Method.

Like the Sunshine Method, the photo invites each one of us into the light—to enjoy the soft warmth of a summer morning in the just right temperature of a splendid green canopy of shade trees.

It is an invitation into contemplating and feeling universal grace.

Just as trees grow in the light and toward the light, we can grow in grace and toward grace.

The warmth and light of sunshine is an invitation to constantly feel the holy and sweet beauty and unity of knowingness—knowing who we really are and how continually and comprehensively we are loved.

Burning Bush

When I see

a soul aflame

with joy

or pain,

my shoes come off

as I prepare

to enter

holy ground.

Introduction

IF YOU ARE IN PAIN,

IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH FOOD,

OR IF YOU FIND READING OR FOCUSING DIFFICULT,

GO DIRECTLY TO THE APPENDIX

TO BEGIN YOUR HEALING PROCESS.

My heart goes out to those in fear and pain.

After over forty years in fear and pain, I became ill with a rare disease with no known cure. Over a seven-month period, I grew progressively worse and more physically incapacitated with pain.

I was unable to write, walk (only limp), exercise, or drive anymore.

The pains of the chains keeping me in the dark increased, and I faced death.

My deep depression and terrifying flashbacks continued. Even though I had always forgiven others because I knew those people couldn’t help themselves, I was still stuck with the flashbacks of extreme fear and pain from the repeated incidents.

One evening before falling asleep, I asked God, What is missing from the minds of people who don’t do what is best for themselves and others?

In the night, I was awakened and given an answer.

I devoted my energy each day to try to relax and also to repeat the freeing message and other messages I had been given.

Ten days later, my depression and flashbacks of fear, pain, guilt, and confusion were gone permanently from my memories.

I continued my relaxation exercises while repeating the freeing messages, and two weeks later my physical pain also disappeared, and my illness was in remission.

The messages were like keys to the locks linking the many chains that were keeping me in the dark.

The keys eventually opened the locks, and the chains keeping me in the dark fell off so I could journey into light.

I developed a method to help others remove the fear and pain from memories and move quickly out of fear and pain into light—the Sunshine Method.

Over thirty years ago, on January 7, 1987, I met with psychiatrist David A. Baron while at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, and gave him my first paper describing my healing method.

After reading my paper, he totally surprised me by offering to be a consultant for me to make it possible for me to serve as a pain and stress consultant using my method for people in medical treatment centers.

He said he was doing a presentation the very next day at a company to about forty executives to get a contract to provide therapeutic methods for the employees. He invited me to be there, along with the director and several other women of the new company he was consulting for, and asked me to pray we get the contract.

We got the contract, and I began consulting for individuals with my healing method.

From there, my work grew as I presented my healing method at other medical treatment centers and began presenting public group seminars. I’m forever grateful to Dr. Baron and his wife Patti for their support.

Dr. Baron is a former deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health, a former medical director/psychiatrist-in-chief of Kirkbride Center, Philadelphia, and former professor and chair, Department of Psychiatry at Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia.

Presently, Dr. Baron is assistant dean, International Relations, Keck School of Medicine; professor, Department of Psychiatry; and chief psychiatrist, Keck Hospital at USC, Los Angeles.

This healing method invites you not only to step into the sunshine but helps you desire to invite the sunshine into your whole body—truly a journey into light.

The messages and tools of the Sunshine Method invite you to dispel the darkness. Using particularly pertinent messages and a Self-Worth Exercise can help you more easily recognize, and release yourself from, common mental and emotional traps.

You can unlock the locks to the chains keeping you in the dark.

By using the messages and tools of the method, you can also more rapidly and effectively gain a healthy self-worth, confidence, and self-control. You can come to feel that you are 100-percent valuable—and feel everyone else is too.

Repeating the constructive messages can help you let go of, and sometimes remove, fear, pain, guilt, and punishment from your memories. Also, simultaneously you can come to feel the meaning of the messages.

Using the messages of the method can also help you defuse and/or resolve conflicts, let go of destructive tendencies and programming, and make safe and healthy choices in order to experience greater inner peace, love, and joy.

For instance, you may (knowingly or unknowingly) be stuck in confusion (mental and emotional traps) and emotional upheaval as you see or deal with traumatic events, dynamic conflicts, or abuse (real or imagined).

And you may not see a safe, clear, and comfortable way to stand up for yourself or others to resolve the challenges.

In addition, when you’re confused, what you’re hearing, seeing, and feeling about people and events can be so erroneously distorted—meaning you’re misunderstanding and misinterpreting a lot, potentially causing even more misjudgments and miscommunications that can severely harm you and others.

I have many years of experience working with clients with unresolved dynamic conflicts in their family relationships. I have seen how these unresolved family resentments, jealousies, and other issues continue to create more and more misunderstandings and misjudgments.

The messages of the Sunshine Method make it possible for you to quickly resolve a lot of your mental and emotional traps to clear out the confusion, allowing you to experience greater clarity as you strive to gain more accurate information to know the truth about people and events.

As you’re seeing things more clearly and in a better light, you can feel safe and comfortable to make healthier choices and creatively think of ways to safely stand up for and protect yourself and others.

These messages and tools are in the first pages of the Appendix.

You are invited to begin using the messages and tools whenever you feel ready. The stories in this book are invitations to walk with me and with others as we journeyed into light.

In the first chapters, I share my story of over forty years of fear and pain and how I stepped out of the darkness into light. I tell how I quickly healed from a life-threatening disease, how I removed fear and pain from flashbacks, and how I went from feeling valueless to feeling 100-percent valuable.

In four more chapters, I share stories of four people I corresponded with or worked personally with and how I journeyed with them into light.

The later chapters provide more details about the Sunshine Method and stories from people I worked with as we journeyed into light.

Finally, I share letters from people and children I worked with about their journeys into light, including some with no will to live and some quite severe cases in late stages of disease.

Many children and adults have been brought up with the habit of fear and pain over others getting close to them. They sometimes unknowingly make negative, hurtful comments or behave in ways to push others away to feel an illusion of safety. Many times, unknowingly, they associate fear and pain with closeness to others and are unable to feel real safety, trust, and love in a close relationship. Many times they attract another person or persons with the same problem.

The Sunshine Method gives people the tools to resolve and remove the fear and pain from their memories so they can feel safe, trust, and love in a close, loving relationship.

The Appendix contains useful tools, especially on self-worth and on how to see mental and emotional traps and release yourself from them.

Enjoy the magnificent journey into light. Experience the Sunshine Method.

For me, writing this book has given me a great measure of the same kind of surprise and delight Helen Keller describes of her first spoken sentence: My soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage and was reaching through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.

And I would add: … and to all love.

In every word I write, no matter how simple or how broken, my love and compassion go out to each reader, hoping and praying with all my heart and soul that each may be touched and moved to gain access to the divine power available in the sunshine of universal grace.

I write in deep humility, recognizing how weak I was and how broken I have been.

In this book, I tell how the sunshine has transformed my whole life, so the book is really about the sunshine—not about me. I am like the pen in the hand of a master author, willing to let the ink in me flow whenever the author desires.

The words given to me were in the simple language of a child—for that is what I was inside. My ability to understand words was small, and the healing messages I was given are simple enough for even a young child to use and understand.

I was given something tremendous—something so tremendous that this is the third book I have written to share what I have been given.

To me, the sunshine, speaking metaphorically, is not only the source of light for my whole soul. It also feels like a huge magnet drawing me into oneness with it so I can learn to shine like the sun.

Thus, the book is about the sunshine and how it transforms weak people like me—like how water from a fire hydrant can power through a weak, limp fire hose making it straight and strong.

I have learned how to change channels—choosing sunshine to channel through me instead of darkness. The destructive energies channeling through me for so many years were dispelled so the brilliant beams of soothing, sweet sunshine could continue to bless my life.

I invite you to choose sunshine to channel through your life as well.

Chapter One

There Was Light—But Way More Darkness

Because of the overflowing gratitude I feel for being able to quickly remove the overwhelming fear and painful emotions of the repetitive flashbacks from my memories, I want to share with you (adults and children) how I reached and freed myself.

I tell the story of how I walked on a path from the darkness of fear and pain—enduring the stress and emptiness of feeling so completely lost and ignorant—into full light and sustained inner peace.

I was so ignorant that I had no idea how ignorant I was.

My inability to speak much contributed to my ignorance. No one let me talk much or spoke to me at home except to tell me what to do.

Fortunately, because I had been going to church and Sunday school since I was a baby, I heard people speaking there, even though I wasn’t able to really hear or understand much of what they were saying.

I was listening and thinking with my limited ability, and occasionally I would understand and remember short phrases that were helpful to me.

I don’t want you to suffer the unnecessary fear, pain, abuse, humiliation, or numbness I felt growing up or during the eighteen years I spent seeking help from four psychiatrists and one psychologist.

They, and the two ministers (one was also a clinical pastoral counselor) who were in my life, didn’t know how to help me reach myself and solve my problems.

All my counselors were kind, caring, and knowledgeable, and I held on to hope for healing for all those years—hoping someone would know how to reach and help me.

I never blamed my parents or anyone else for my problems. I always blamed myself and my ignorance.

I feel sadness for all the people I have known, and for those I have not known, along with their families and friends, who never have known what it’s like to feel and experience the love, compassion, peace, and joy I came to feel and experience—and still do.

With that sadness, and also the joy of those who have benefited (including myself) from the method I have developed, I’m moved to write some stories of my journey into light.

I’m so grateful for all the overwhelming fear, pain, guilt, and ignorance I experienced. Had I not had those experiences, I would not have ever learned how to go quickly from darkness into the light.

Battered by Life

When I was twenty-one, I felt broken.

My life was bleak and black.

I felt damaged, unable to read with much comprehension, unable to speak much.

I was in individual and group therapy.

I felt a blankness of mind—no creativity.

I cried through most of the group therapy sessions for five years because I couldn’t speak very much.

It wasn’t until I was writing this book that I became aware of more hidden reasons why I felt broken. They began to surface as I became more able to type and speak and answer questions my friend would ask, and then he listened carefully.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t speak much. No one asked me why either.

I was full of fear and pain.

I wanted to know how to get off the not-so-merry-go-round of depression, fear, pain, guilt, and flashbacks that I had suffered with since childhood.

The psychiatrist said one problem I had was that if an accident happened on the street corner, I would find a way to blame myself. My parents had told me that whatever went wrong was my fault. I also learned this later at church too.

I didn’t blame my parents. I thought I must be a bad person.

On the outside, I looked like I was okay, but on the inside of me, I was not.

I love my parents and all the people who were and are in my life.

I offer you my story to show you my journey into light—the unusual path I took to find my way to greater safety, love, peace, and healing.

In one of my early sessions, my first psychiatrist told me about a man who came to him wanting my therapist to help his wife.

My therapist told me he thought he wouldn’t be able help her, so he made up a ridiculous sum of money and told the man that was the amount he needed to be paid at once in order for my therapist to work with her.

My therapist said that to his amazement the man took out an envelope with the exact amount of money.

So my therapist worked with her, and six weeks later, she was healed.

I asked him, How did she do it?

He said, I can’t tell you. You’ve got to figure it out for yourself. And then he added, You need to express your feelings.

I had such limited verbal and reading skills. I was expressing some of my feelings, which were depression, sadness, and fear. I couldn’t feel anger. I was not permitted to.

My therapist told me my depression was really my hidden, unexpressed anger.

I told my therapist some of my stories, but I was depressed all the time.

Then I was depressed because he wouldn’t tell me how the lady healed. How awful.

Here I was—lost, bored in the worst way imaginable because a fear of knowing too much had been planted in me, and with not even an inkling of how to go about figuring things out.

I was telling him what I could, and then I couldn’t sleep because of the guilt and anxiety of telling what I felt I wasn’t supposed to tell. And then I felt the deep sadness and fear that went with the telling and the reliving of my experiences.

He then prescribed sleeping pills for me.

Relating this story moves me to help everyone I can to move out of darkness and journey into light. I don’t want anyone to spend another second in unnecessary suffering.

Also, I can now tell these stories without feeling the pain of them. My purpose is not to add more pain in people’s lives by telling these stories.

My intent is to help people focus on the light instead of the darkness.

My life presents a stark contrast between the darkness I was given from some people and the light I was given from God, even though I didn’t realize or comprehend the meaning of the light I had been given until I was facing death at age forty.

Fear, pain, and guilt, along with the ingrained, repetitive flashbacks from my memories of some traumatic experiences, were the major issues.

Overall, I didn’t feel safe.

When I was a child, my two hiding places of safety and hope were while I was reading fairy tales. These stories were Cinderella and Rapunzel.

I thought one day I would be rescued by a prince and that if I let my hair grow very long, I would be freed.

Some of the few Bible stories I was moved by were about Joseph and his coat of many colors, David and Goliath, and the three men put into a fiery furnace: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

I also loved listening to classical music that I heard in church and also from a classical music station on my radio that I received when I was around eight years old. It would help me go to sleep when I felt so unhappy and my life was so stressful.

These weren’t in the forefront of my mind all the time, but I’m sure they were somewhere in the background, so I was able to keep going.

My parents had no background or interest in classical music. They called it long-hair music.

With my grandparents, along with some aunts, uncles, and cousins, and also some teachers, I felt occasional moments of safety but didn’t see these people often.

I had no one to confide in about what I was experiencing.

My dad was in the military so we moved often to other states and to foreign countries.

Those places of safety, good people, and good feelings I’ve mentioned weren’t there for me very much but gave me a foundation for some inner strength to survive the confusion, fear, and pain I experienced. Also, I was still going to Sunday school and later to church.

I was still reading fairy tales when I was twelve. My dad told me at that age I was too old to be reading them, so I wasn’t allowed to read them anymore. I remembered enough of them, however, that they continued to give me hope to eventually be in a place of good feelings.

Fortunately, my parents had taken me to church and Sunday school starting when I was little, so that gave me a source of good information. But along with some positives came some negatives and some confusing thoughts and experiences.

When I was ten years old, my life had been threatened. Then I couldn’t tell anyone about this because I thought I might be killed if I did.

But even years before that, because of the constant punishments, I wasn’t safe to tell anyone what was happening to me.

(Parents don’t always mean what they say or do, but when you are a young child or even older, sometimes there is no way to know what they are intending.)

How I was treated at home, together with what happened at school, meant I rarely spoke.

Even though I could see, hear, and speak some, I felt somewhat like Helen Keller may have felt—I felt locked inside myself, and it seemed there was no way out.

I entertained a glimmer of hope that when I turned eighteen I could go live on my own, and then I’ll be okay. Then everything will be different.

I couldn’t make sense of anything. There were parts of my brain that were not sharing with other parts, probably because I had to keep secrets and because of fear, and I didn’t know it.

Therapy Begins

When I was twenty, I had a very short marriage lasting only a matter of a few months. I wasn’t able to handle the physical side of being married. I could be hugged and kissed, but I had no sexual feelings and no desire, so I was unable to have sex. I felt repulsed.

Something awful had happened to me once as a teenager, and I wasn’t able to tell anyone. Looking back now, I can see how this also had an effect, together with my other painful experiences growing up, on my difficulty with being in a close physical relationship with a man.

In my first marriage was when I became aware that something was seriously wrong with me because of my memories of fear and pain, and I needed to get help.

I wanted to go see my great aunt and uncle to get help, but they lived in a different city than where I lived. My great uncle had married into our family and was a chaplain in a church-based hospital.

After I saw my great uncle, he said he knew what was wrong, but because he was a family member, he couldn’t help me.

He did refer me to a well-known forensic psychiatrist who lived in the same city where I lived with my parents.

I had to wait six weeks before my first appointment.

I was so relieved and distraught at the same time.

I thought I was going to be okay.

This psychiatrist helped me by speaking with my parents and pointing out the benefits for all of us concerning my moving out to live on my own.

My marriage had ended, and I had also been able to get a job on the military base as a secretary so I could afford to live on my own.

Also, I didn’t know that an experience I had had when I was nine probably was affecting my ability to talk in therapy, and my psychiatrist didn’t know either.

Because I couldn’t talk at home, and with no one to listen to me, when I got to school, I was so excited to be with other children that I couldn’t stop talking.

The teacher would punish me by having me write five hundred times, I will not talk. I started writing this on the chalkboard and then wrote the rest on paper.

I had to do this several times, and then one day I rarely spoke again.

To this day, whenever the possibility presents itself to write something out longhand for longer than a page or so, sometimes I have trouble writing what I think, and I rarely write lengthy things out, preferring to type them.

I also had had a frightening experience when I was seven and was very afraid of feathers and didn’t know why.

We lived in a duplex, and I was walking across our living room and suddenly saw a big, black feather from a crow on the rug.

I was terrified.

My body filled with chills, and I shook with extreme terror.

I screamed for my dad to come and kill it. I thought it was alive and would kill me.

After that, whenever I was in church and a woman sat near me with a feather hat, I had the same reaction and would have to move. I have no idea where this phobia came from.

Also, once I won a baby chick. I was able to hold it and feel its soft, fluffy yellow warmth.

But the day it grew its first feather, I experienced the same terrifying feelings and told my parents to get rid of it. I ran to my bedroom and shut the door.

They did but then bought a parakeet in a cage, and it was in our living room. They thought this would help me get over my fear of feathers, but it didn’t work.

I later talked about this fear of feathers with my psychiatrist. I thought if I could just find out why, then I’d be okay.

He told me I may