Helping Parents Heal and Communicating with Loved Ones with Mark Ireland

In this episode, Mark Ireland shares his profound journey through grief and the exploration of life after death following the loss of his son, Brandon. He discusses the impact of his father's legacy as a psychic medium and the founding of Helping Parents Heal, an organization dedicated to supporting grieving parents. Mark delves into his experiences with mediumship, the evidence he has encountered, and the importance of community in healing. He also reflects on the intersection of science and spirituality, emphasizing the need for open-mindedness in understanding consciousness and existence beyond the physical realm.

Mark Ireland is the author of Soul Shift: Finding Where the Dead Go and The Persistence of the Soul, moving accounts of his personal quest for answers about life after death, following the passing of his youngest son. Mark is also the son of renowned mid-twentieth-century psychic-medium Richard Ireland, and co-founder of Helping Parents Heal--an organization with more than 31,000 members that assists grieving parents. Additionally, Mark has participated in mediumship research studies conducted by the University of Arizona and the University of Virginia.

His website (with links to his books, organizations, and resources).

Link to song, ‘What You Can’t See’ (lyrics were read at the end of the podcast)

Link to his Album

Transcript

Annalouiza (00:01.88)
Greetings and welcome back friends. On today's episode, we are looking forward to our conversation with Mark Ireland. Mark is the author of Soul Shift, Finding Where the Dead Go and the Persistence of the Soul, moving accounts of his personal quest for answers about life after death, following the passing of his youngest son.

Rev Wakil David (00:26.075)
Mark is also the son of renowned mid 20th century psychic medium, Richard Ireland, and co-founder of Helping Parents Heal, an organization with more than 31,000 members that assists grieving parents. Additionally, Mark has participated in mediumships research studies conducted by the University of Arizona and the University of Virginia. And I'll just take a quick note here that we do have a good editor, so.

If you do what I did, he'll edit out any stumbles. So thank you. Again, thank you so much, Richard, for being with us today. I really appreciate you.

Mark Ireland (01:04.952)
Yeah, it's awesome to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Rev Wakil David (01:07.697)
Yeah, we like to kind of set the tone a little bit by asking when you first became aware of death yourself.

Mark Ireland (01:15.928)
I'd say that the first experience I had with it would be with my grandfather on my mom's side had passed when I was about seven, but it was a little more sunk in a little more when my grandmother on my mom's side passed when I was 14, because that's the first time that I remember attending a funeral and actually seeing a body in a casket and all that kind of thing. But prior to that, because of my father and how I was brought up,

and the things I'd seen, I believed, I knew that that's not really her. That was just a vehicle she operated in during her lifetime, that lifetime.

Rev Wakil David (01:57.469)
Yeah, nice.

Annalouiza (01:58.68)
Wow, so early interaction with death. And so what is the role of death throughout your whole life? What has it given you?

Mark Ireland (02:10.346)
I think, you know, just unlike I was discussing before we started that we live in a culture where death kind of gets swept under the rug. People don't want to acknowledge it there. I suppose many of them are death deathly afraid of death. But so they just tend to ignore it or push it aside instead of just dealing with the fact that it happens. It's a natural part of existence here on this planet for for

Annalouiza (02:26.23)
Yes.

Rev Wakil David (02:26.333)
All right.

Mark Ireland (02:39.222)
all of us and everyone that we love. We don't know when it's going to come or how we're in what order. Just like with, as you mentioned, the passing of my youngest son, Brandon, when he was just 18 was not something I ever expected. But it did prove to be a catalyst that shifted my life in a different direction that quite frankly became one that was much more meaningful and much more helpful in contributing to the needs of other folks in their healing processes.

Annalouiza (02:40.334)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (03:08.797)
Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. And having looked at your site and the things that you're doing, I'd love to hear more. us more about the work you're doing, the book. I guess you have two books out now, but you have a fairly new one. And other things, yeah, just tell us more about that.

Mark Ireland (03:22.776)
Sure.

Well, I'd say, you know, when this happened, when my son passed unexpectedly, it was a he was about to go on a hike on the mountains and Scottsdale, Arizona, behind our home at the time. And I had this kind of odd premonition feeling. And I figured, well, I'm just being a worrying father. But I did feel like this something severe could happen. And indeed, you know, later that day when he left, he's just like.

We're going dad, like stop worrying, you know, and I figured he's 18, you know, I'm not going to manipulate the situation and try and keep him from going. But we did, you know, we were across town later that day, got this emergency call, came back. The base of the mountain had hundreds of scores of spectators, a fire truck, an ambulance, and a helicopter. And it was a short time later we were informed that he had passed, although we didn't know how or, you know, what had happened exactly.

Annalouiza (04:19.773)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (04:20.248)
His buddy who had attended to him just said that he had been passing out and he had noted that his extremities were kind of numb. And he said that his heart was beating rapidly. So I think really one of the first things that happened after that that kind of pulled me back into my dad's field and what I'd grown up with, just that extra confidence in knowing there is more and having some evidence was I talked to my now by this

point, my dad had been gone for a number of years, but I had an uncle in Tucson who was still around and he had very similar abilities to my father. He asked if he could help in any way. And I said, well, yeah, if you get any kind of message, I'd really appreciate it. Three days later, I'm in the mortuary and I, we connect by cell phone and he says, Hey, Mark, I have something I wanted to share with you. He said, you know, last night I tried my meditation, but I couldn't get anything. But this morning I was doing my morning meditation.

And your dad came to me and he wanted you to know that he was there for Brandon when Brandon crossed and helped him adjust. Brandon was a little confused initially, but your dad helped him understand what was going on. And Brandon wanted you to know you're the best parents he ever could have had. So those are all the nice warm fuzzy things. But then he gave me the evidence. He says, your dad said Brandon's death was caused by a lack of oxygen that causes heart to fail.

Annalouiza (05:38.179)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (05:44.967)
for you.

Annalouiza (05:45.944)
Hmm.

Mark Ireland (05:46.542)
Two days later, I talked to the physician who had conducted the autopsy because we didn't know the cause of death. And she said, well, your son, Brandon, he had a severe asthma attack that drove his blood oxygen level down and caused cardiac arrest. So my uncle gave me the evidence before the autopsy was even completed. So that accompanied the feel-good statements. And that's how I was viewed because I'm a somewhat analytical person too. But I feel I'm balanced between the right and left brain in terms of who I am.

Rev Wakil David (06:03.996)
Thank you.

Rev Wakil David (06:14.909)
Thank

Annalouiza (06:16.066)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (06:16.408)
I'm grounded, hopefully believable. I tell the truth. But for me, look for, if you get those pieces of tangible evidence along with the feel good, that just means that much more. And then three weeks after that, I was watching a news excerpt on the NBC affiliate in Phoenix and they were showing this study being done at the University of Arizona using.

Annalouiza (06:19.988)
Thank you.

Rev Wakil David (06:21.336)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (06:30.838)
Mmm.

Rev Wakil David (06:30.971)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (06:42.708)
mediums under blinded conditions where they couldn't see the sitters, but they had to provide information about a target, discarnate individual. And I was really impressed because the medium at the time, Alison Dubois was a virtual unknown, but she was a lab subject and she was giving a lot of highly detailed information. I don't remember all of it, was, you know, and then the nature of what the person was like and that they liked to go to Las Vegas and the games they liked to play in Vegas.

Annalouiza (07:02.572)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (07:11.704)
and all these various things. think type food that was their favorite food and what the person was like. And then they debrief with these sitters afterwards and it was pretty much all right on the money. And I thought, wow, I'd love to get a reading from that woman and I'd love to be in that lab someday. Both things later happened. In fact, the very next day I got a call from a man named Jerry Concert who was friends with my father. And Jerry says to me, hey, Mark.

I know what you've been through and I know someone who might be able to help you. Her name is Alison Dubois and here's a phone number you can call, you know, to set up a reading. So I figured, okay, that's a sign right there. So those two things were two of the early things that really kind of helped me along and kind of pulled me back into this field. And then I had a lot of interest in it too, kind of to explore it on my own from my own perspective. One of the other really early things, this,

Rev Wakil David (07:43.815)
Haha.

Wow.

Well.

Mark Ireland (08:08.215)
I can't remember if I did this before after talking to my uncle, but was definitely within the first few days. I wanted to have a direct experience. So I kind of in a determined, hopeful way, I went into a walk-in closet, turned off the lights, sat on the floor and got into a meditative state. I'm not a great meditator, but I was able to quiet my mind significantly. And within a short period of time, I saw my son's face scroll across here, like my mind's eye.

Annalouiza (08:34.754)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (08:36.15)
And he was smiling and I felt joy, like just radiating off of him. felt, he's joyful. But then I saw a symbol go by and it was a cross with an oval loop at the top. I'd seen people wear those, but I really didn't know what it was. So then I had to go to my computer and Google cross with oval loop and found out it was an onk, which is the oldest cross of human history with the lower portion representing physical life and the oval loop representing eternal life. So.

Annalouiza (08:50.38)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (08:55.335)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (09:04.683)
I felt I got a coded message to satisfy that analytical part of me, to give me something that I didn't know the meaning of, you know? And that made it even more meaningful. So those were three of the real early things that kind of pulled me back into this. And then after that, I met with some top mediums, I met with some people doing research in the field and kind of started some of my own initiatives later on after those first things that had happened.

Rev Wakil David (09:12.573)
All

Annalouiza (09:12.803)
you

Annalouiza (09:32.782)
Wow, I am so delighted by your journey to find out more about this and I'm sorry for your loss of your son and I'm grateful for the communication you've had with him. Like it's all a part of this, right?

Rev Wakil David (09:35.291)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (09:46.247)
Yeah.

Yeah. So you've written two books. Do you want to talk about those a little bit?

Mark Ireland (09:52.598)
yeah. So the first book, this is it, it's called Soul Shift. And this is more of a memoir of the things that I just explained to you, you know, really what had happened. But it goes back to like how I grew up with a father who had these abilities and how I saw those in daily life. You know, there was the amusing stuff, the psychic stuff where you couldn't get away with anything, you know, as a kid. I remember one of my favorite stories was when my parents were first married.

Rev Wakil David (09:57.325)
huh.

Rev Wakil David (10:10.333)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (10:15.247)
Hahaha

Mark Ireland (10:22.564)
She, my mom was staying at home. My father left for the day and she had been working on becoming a vegetarian and she'd been doing this for a couple of months. But one day she just was, had a craving for a hamburger, went out, got this burger and came back home. And later that day, dad comes in. First thing, you know, he walks in the door. The first words out of his mouth were, so surely did you enjoy your hamburger today? You know, so it was that kind of stuff. But I would see him, you know,

Rev Wakil David (10:34.205)
Thanks

Annalouiza (10:35.138)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (10:44.59)
you

Rev Wakil David (10:45.275)
Right.

Mark Ireland (10:50.528)
many, many, many times over my lifetime, him doing a demonstration of psychic phenomena, primarily. He had his own church. It was an interdenominational church, he called it. Now he was initially, I think, you know, up till age 12, he was taken to a Methodist church. But then he just felt like the mainstream dogma didn't really fit what he was experiencing. And he, he didn't feel like that was his home. And he asked his pastor some real tough questions.

Annalouiza (11:14.35)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David (11:19.207)
Hmm.

Mark Ireland (11:19.736)
You know, like it's pretty amusing that a 12 year old kid is saying, so you have a son, right? And the pastor's like, yes, I do. He goes, do you love your son very much? He goes, yes, very much. And he goes, well, who loves your son more, you or God? He goes, well, God does. God's love is infinite. And he says, well, if your son was very bad, could you throw him into a pit of fire?

He goes, well, no, there's no way I could do that. And he says, well, if you can't do it and God loves him more, how is God gonna throw him into a pit of fire if he's very bad? So that was my dad at age 12. And so he had these abilities, but he was an intellectual too. He was very well read in all different religions, Western and Eastern. And he eventually did get, he went to the Morris Pratt Institute.

Rev Wakil David (11:43.527)
You

Rev Wakil David (11:53.661)
Wow, yeah.

Mark Ireland (12:09.346)
was ordained in the spiritualist, national spiritualist association of churches. But, and then he was a traveling minister for them and he would do demonstrations in different churches and things. But eventually even that was too dogmatic for him. And he, he started his own church called the university of life in Phoenix. And it was really what he wanted it to be was a more of an education center type of environment for people to go on their own journey, their own learning, as opposed to just shoving stuff down this vote.

But the Corp, I mean, he would include a lot of the teachings from Jesus and things like that. But he would also demonstrate what the New Testament calls the gifts of the spirit to say, hey, these things are real, and to show people there's more than just physical existence. So I've had an interesting childhood. And I kind of got pulled back into this. have a feeling maybe it was meant to be all along, because I got married at a young age, had two

Rev Wakil David (12:56.957)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Mark Ireland (13:09.518)
two sons and was just kind of cruising along in a business career and more focused on normal life like most people in the US and this should be and brought me back. Not that I ever doubted the spiritual part. It was always there, but it just wasn't the focal point for me. And I really didn't know how it would fit. And it's all kind of expanded and just kind of unfolded in front of me in a very natural way since then. You know, just like the founding of the Helping Parents Heal organization.

books. And then my latest book is this one. So the first one's more of a memoir that talks about the story and everything that happened, the various mediums I'd met and the researchers. this one is a deeper dive into the whole phenomena of mediumship and just other forms of evidence for it, know, near the experiences, deathbed visions, reincarnation, all these various things. But my main

Annalouiza (13:43.726)
system.

Mark Ireland (14:08.972)
area of knowledge and focus is the mediumship piece of it. So I intermingle in that a personal narrative, my own stories and experiences, but I support them then with the research that's been done by a variety of organizations over many, many years, going back to the early work of the SPR, the Society of Psychical Research, all the way through Duke University, J.B. Ryan's work, and then more recently, like Wind Bridge Research Institute.

Rev Wakil David (14:13.383)
Nice.

Rev Wakil David (14:23.015)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (14:38.948)
I'm sorry, Windbridge Research Center, Dr. Julie Bichel, and my friend, Tricia Robertson, who's with the Scottish Society of Psychological Research. So there's still people involved in these things, and I wish there were even more. The University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies is another. They're doing good work. But more than anything, I just feel like it's the grassroots effort that's going to change

Rev Wakil David (14:49.341)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (14:53.723)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (15:06.392)
things as far as this goes, because academia is still clinging to materialism, physicalism as their dogma of choice for a number of reasons. But it's hard to get things changed. So I just feel like it's nice that there are some people doing the work, doing the research. The evidence is very compelling from a variety of disciplines. But until that happens, I think

Rev Wakil David (15:11.239)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (15:15.418)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (15:27.783)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (15:32.44)
People are just interested. know, they have experiences. They want to know what that experience means or how, you know, to read about it and learn more about it. And there's, you know, that that's why I say, I just feel like the grassroots levels, the grassroots movement will take care of all of this over time. You just can't quell what's inside the human spirit, you know.

Rev Wakil David (15:40.529)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (15:51.389)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's so true. There's a sense, know, again, I kind of grew up in this scientific, cynical world, and my first reaction to a lot of this early on was that, you know, you've got to just be making that up. But then I've had so many experiences where I have known for sure that I was witnessing something

Annalouiza (15:51.456)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (15:55.982)
Human curiosity.

Rev Wakil David (16:21.351)
participating in something that was outside of that. then, you know, in my older years, I began to realize I don't know anything. And that really, you know, our perceptions, our capacity to perceive things is so narrow. And it's based on our stories, it's based on the senses that we actually, you know, acknowledge. And so there's no reason to think that there's not much, much more going on than meets the eye, so to speak. So I really appreciate that.

Also, we've had another guest on, well, we had a couple of death doulas on, who started a program about parents, people who've lost children. And so I love that you're doing that and have created this helping parents heal. And maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what that is doing.

Mark Ireland (17:09.55)
Yeah, that all started because it was probably 2009 or something like that. I was doing a workshop because my book had just come out and my father had a book. This is a sub story, but it's kind of interesting. I'd mentioned before that I was going to get a reading from Alison Dubois. Well, two weeks before that reading, a gentleman handed me a box and inside the box was

a typewritten manuscript called Your Psychic Potential, a Guide to Psychic Development by Richard Ireland, my dad. I'm like, where'd you get this? He goes, well, you were out of state at the time when your dad was about to pass and he gave it to me for safekeeping. I said, that's all good and fine, but it's been 12 years since he died. Why are you giving this to me now? He goes, I don't know. I just feel like I'm supposed to. And then two weeks later, I have the reading with Alison. One of the first things she says to me is, she says, well, I have your father here.

Rev Wakil David (17:40.189)
Wow.

Annalouiza (17:41.154)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (17:53.02)
Right.

Mark Ireland (18:03.33)
And he showed me a book, but I think it's his book, but he's handing it to you to take forward. Does that make sense? I'm like, I think I get that. And that book is right here. I was actually able to get this published in 2011.

Rev Wakil David (18:10.951)
Hahaha.

Rev Wakil David (18:18.269)
Wow.

Annalouiza (18:19.416)
Okay.

Mark Ireland (18:20.462)
So that was pretty wild. I know I probably had more experiences in like one year than most people do in a lifetime. But I feel like it was part of my path to have that, to give me the confidence and to be able to share my stories, to give more people hope. And some of them then have their own experiences. think people have experiences. Sometimes they just don't even notice them or realize it. They're just, if you think about our exposure to

Rev Wakil David (18:26.481)
Right.

Mark Ireland (18:50.744)
know, TV and computers and smartphones and all this, all the time, we're just distracted. So things that are subtle are overlooked. And that's, I think generally the communication of spirit is very subtle. That's my experience because I've had some direct experiences myself that have been pretty remarkable. Not that I've tried to become a practicing medium or whatever, but I've done testing of myself with people and

Rev Wakil David (18:59.773)
Zzzzz

Annalouiza (19:05.292)
Right.

Rev Wakil David (19:05.456)
Yes.

Annalouiza (19:14.007)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (19:18.392)
had some stuff spontaneously happen that was pretty compelling.

Annalouiza (19:21.612)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (19:21.911)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. We had one person come to speak of her near-death experience, and it happened many years ago, and she said she was working at a psych hospital at the time. So I think this is also true that people think, and she said, you know, when this happened, I didn't tell anybody because I assumed that I was going crazy, you know, or that people would think I was going crazy. So it's really true that I think even though, because it's subtle, perhaps, and because it's not accepted, that people probably stifle it or ignore it or...

Annalouiza (19:36.631)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (19:51.687)
You know, don't pay attention.

Mark Ireland (19:53.187)
I think.

Annalouiza (19:53.218)
Or like one of our guests too, talked to, and I always think back to this, like how we're language supremacy issues, right? It's like, if we don't hear it in English, then it's probably nothing, right? And we were talking about at the end of life, how our elders are actually communicating quite a bit through their body, through the spirit, through the energy. And people dismiss a lot of these things because.

They just think that verbal communication is the only way you get understanding.

Mark Ireland (20:25.572)
What's funny is, you know, most of the people or many people who have near-death experiences, they explain the communication method when they're in that other state as being telepathic. And mediumship is typically thought of as telepathy between a living and a discarnate person. So I think that it is a telepathic communication, at least typically it is. There may be other modes, clairvoyance, clairaudience.

Annalouiza (20:35.404)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (20:35.645)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (20:42.441)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (20:48.045)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (20:51.896)
that can be thrown in, but a lot of those are human descriptions of things that we try and silo, you know, they all, for my dad, they all blended together, I think, and for some of the better, more gifted mediums, that's the case. And just to give an example, a personal experience I had, just to show how subtle it can be, but also how compelling. For a three year stint, I had been invited to come back each year to do a talk at a...

Annalouiza (20:58.345)
Right.

Rev Wakil David (20:58.396)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (21:04.642)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (21:05.02)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (21:18.968)
Spiritualist Church in San Francisco called the Golden Gate Spiritualist Church. It was founded in 1924 by a woman named Florence Becker, who I had heard was very similar to my father and her abilities. And then she passed, I believe in 1970. But the church had been going on and they had invited me to come do a talk. And each time I came, I brought a medium friend of mine, Tina Powers from Tucson. And so I would do a talk and she would do readings, basically share messages with the congregation members.

And so this one time we were going, she goes, Mark, I think you're going to get a message to share with the people there. Will you do it? I'm like, well, sure. If I get something, I'll be happy to. She kept hounding me about this over and over. I'm like, why is she hounding me about this? Even the day we walk into the church, she's like, Mark, if you get a message, will you share it? I'm like, yes, Tina. So we go in, we're a half hour early. I go into the healing room there and there's people in chairs getting, laying on of hands, healing.

Rev Wakil David (21:58.352)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (22:07.591)
Ha. Ha ha ha.

Annalouiza (22:07.978)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (22:18.508)
I sit on a bench to a piano or an organ and just trying to get into a meditative state, really just to prepare for my talk, to calm myself down and get mentally prepared. So I shut my eyes and I'm sitting there. While I'm sitting there, this name pops in, Max. I'm like, okay, Max. And then they Maxine right after that. I thought, maybe it's Maxine and not Max. But that's all I got. And I didn't see the words. I didn't hear them. They came like a thought or an idea would come to you. Just popped in.

Annalouiza (22:48.099)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (22:48.258)
Very subtle. Anyhow, I go do my talk and then at the end I'm like, well, Tina made me promise if I got anything I'd share it. So I just have to ask if the name is 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, and they were delivered stillborn and they grew up on the other side. So that's a secret only known to a handful of long-term board members.

Rev Wakil David (23:16.219)
Mark Ireland (23:16.696)
And then afterward, he says, I want to take you upstairs and show you something. And it was a landscape painting that I believe Florence Becker had done. He says, see that long winding road? And I'm like, yeah. And see the two little figures at the end of the road? Yeah, that's Max Maxine. So something so subtle where if she hadn't pushed me and nudged me, I probably would have not said it because I just thought, I'm just making that up. It's my imagination. But that gave me so much confidence, too, to know it was like, OK, look, that was subtle.

Annalouiza (23:35.212)
Yes, yes.

Rev Wakil David (23:38.257)
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Annalouiza (23:40.002)
Yes.

Yes.

Mark Ireland (23:46.584)
but it was very accurate and it was not one name, it was two names and they're not common names. And look, they tie so directly to that church and the founder, pretty wild.

Annalouiza (23:48.424)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (23:55.47)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (23:56.285)
Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. It really is. Yeah.

Annalouiza (23:58.158)
I love that she primed the pump for you to be able to like be ready and often times and you know, we talked about the walking light talk about death everywhere, right? Death and death. Let's talk about death. Let's plan for death. And part of that same reason is that so when that subtle moment when people really want to come out and start talking, there will be safety and you know, we'll be ready. We'll be ready to receive the information that they need to give us. So I really love that. it's so wonderful.

Mark Ireland (24:01.809)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (24:24.029)
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Annalouiza (24:30.726)
it's my turn. was just like, I got goosebumps actually from hearing that. was like,

Mark Ireland (24:33.956)
And I do have that analytical side too. you for a long time growing up, I'd wonder how does this work? How, you know, we're here, you know, we have a brain and all this, how does this work? And how can there be that? I was trying to reconcile and it wasn't really until I learned about quantum mechanics that it made more sense to me. It's like, okay, it's, you know, the observer effect demonstrates that mind effects matter and entanglement.

Rev Wakil David (24:34.333)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (24:41.387)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (25:02.084)
demonstrates this ability for, in simple terms, two particles that have ever been connected in a special way, could be separated as far apart as the opposite end of the universe and whatever happens to one, instantaneously reflected in the other. So those things made it seem like, okay, this is more of kind of a facade that we're living in. It's not the ultimate reality. It's not the ground of being. It is...

Annalouiza (25:02.423)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (25:18.541)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (25:24.04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Mark Ireland (25:30.55)
it's something that we project into, I think. you know, that was something that really helped me. I'm not saying that I am a physicist or that I understand the intricacies of that at deep level, but just those principles and what's been demonstrated through repeated experiments mean a lot. If consciousness is first and affects matter, it's primary. And that means that

Annalouiza (25:33.538)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (25:42.301)
Thanks

Annalouiza (25:46.423)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (25:57.208)
There's intention to the universe. There's intention and purpose to life. And to me, this is my opinion. It's about exploration and experience to grow in love, to grow, be more than we were before, to round off our rough edges.

Annalouiza (25:59.288)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (26:00.935)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (26:15.374)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (26:15.517)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the episode.

Annalouiza (26:18.38)
May it be so, right? So Mark, what are your biggest challenges around this work that you do?

Mark Ireland (26:26.264)
Well, there's a couple things that I'm involved with. One is the Helping Parents Heal organization. And I never really got to that because I got sidetracked with the book. so I was doing this workshop and one of the we had a break and a woman came up to me and she says, hey, I just moved to Arizona from Florida. And she says, I'm actually a medium, but I can't I wanted to come to this workshop to meet like minded people. And she says, it's interesting that your son passed on a mountain because I just met another woman whose son.

Rev Wakil David (26:32.655)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (26:32.727)
you

Mark Ireland (26:54.852)
passed on a mountain, although it was the Himalayas. He was on a school trip with the University of Arizona and they were going up Mount Everest and they went up too fast and too many feet in a day. He ended up getting altitude sickness and dying from that. So anyhow, I just said, here, give her a copy of this book. And if she wants to talk to me, here's my contact info. And I got a call like a day or two later from Elizabeth Boyce. And then she says, hey, Mark, I already read your book.

I love it, I wanna meet you and your wife. And then we got together and then after talking briefly, she says, hey, I've got this organization or this group on Facebook called Parents United in Loss, but I'm gonna have my first in-person meeting. Would you be my initial speaker? And I said, sure. So I went to that, there's 30 or 40 people there that showed up and it went pretty well. And then she started having these meetings every month and I'd go sometimes, sometimes they didn't.

In 20, I guess it was 2011, I was changing jobs, looking at what I wanted to do. And my friend Tina Powers, the medium I'd mentioned earlier, she says, Hey, Mark, I think your real mission in life is to help other parents who have been through the same thing you've been through. Maybe you could start an organization to do that. So I started mulling that over and I thought, well, you know, I don't need to reinvent the wheel here. Elizabeth has something, but she only has one location.

Annalouiza (28:08.622)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (28:20.427)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (28:20.509)
Listen.

Mark Ireland (28:20.612)
So maybe she'd be open to expanding it, know, blueprinting what she does in her meetings and trying to get other locations set up. And she doesn't have a website, so I could help her with that. And she doesn't have a newsletter, and I could help her get that going. So I call her up and I'm like, hey, would you like to do this? And she goes, that would be wonderful. I said, maybe another name like Helping Parents Seal. And she's like, I love that name. And so that's how it started. And then now today, a little more than a decade later, because that

Rev Wakil David (28:32.817)
Ha

Mark Ireland (28:48.162)
Yeah, I think it was 2012. We really got it rolling as helping parents heal. We have the, what you read earlier said 31,000, I think we're over 35 or 36,000 members worldwide. have 170 ish affiliate chapters, not just in the U S but overseas as well. And we have a conference every other year and it draws a capacity crowd of 1100 people. and it is a very healing event, very helpful and healing.

Rev Wakil David (29:03.602)
Wow.

Mark Ireland (29:18.36)
We have a variety of presenters from near-death experience people to top mediums like Gordon Smith, James Van Praagh, Maureen Hancock, Suzanne Giesemann, and then grief experts, Dr. Jeff Olson, was an ER doctor who's had experiences in the ER room.

Rev Wakil David (29:46.045)
Mm.

Annalouiza (29:46.156)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (29:46.542)
So, and then just bringing those folks together to meet each other and to, you know, I found one of the keys to healing really is having other people that you can become friends with who can relate to you on that same level. So challenges around this, you know, I don't run the day-to-day, I'm chairman of the board, but Elizabeth, she's the president, she and Irene Vivalidas, who's our VP, they run it day-to-day and they're very busy.

Annalouiza (29:50.35)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (30:00.962)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (30:01.425)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (30:14.86)
My biggest challenge really is for an ancillary part of that. 10 years ago, I started my own mediumship certification program. And I started that because after my first book came out, people were coming to me, hey, Mark, I want to get a reading. Who's good? Who should I go to? And I knew maybe a half dozen people at the time, but most of them were like celebrity mediums who had long, long wait lists. some of them weren't even doing private.

readings anymore because they were too busy doing, you know, gallery readings. And the ones that did, maybe they charged more than people wanted. And I thought, you know, there have to be other people that have disability at a high level and they're just lesser known. So I just put it out there. I got a protocol put together from my conversations with Dr. Emily Williams Kelly at the University of Virginia and Tricia Robertson of the Scottish Society of Psychical Research. And then I put the word out and people started coming to me and I'd run them through the test process and

Rev Wakil David (30:55.964)
Thank

Mark Ireland (31:12.772)
Some would pass and some wouldn't. And I've refined the process again and again and again. here, 10 years later or 11 years later, I have certified over 41 mediums. And we started using that protocol for the provider list for helping parents heal. Because helping parents heal has providers in a variety of areas, from therapists to mediums. So a lot of these parents find that having a session with a good medium can be very healing.

Annalouiza (31:28.374)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (31:28.4)
perfect.

Mark Ireland (31:42.528)
I now vet the mediums for helping parents heal that want to become providers. So the challenge in that is just keeping up with it because we've been overwhelmed with people wanting to be tested. you know, the, pass rate is pretty low because, you know, there are people that have some intuition or some level of ability, but it's not good enough. I need the very best because we're dealing with people in grief and they're fragile. So, the standards are high.

Rev Wakil David (31:47.527)
yeah.

Rev Wakil David (31:53.821)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (31:57.821)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (32:07.899)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (32:08.312)
you

Mark Ireland (32:11.298)
I'd say the pass rate's probably around 15%, maybe 20%, something like that. But it's, you know, because of the interest, it's just backlogged us. So we have this long list of people to test. I have a volunteer assistant out of Chicago who helps me a lot. But, you even so, it's just, it's tough to keep up with it. But I know it's valuable work and it's meaningful.

Annalouiza (32:14.286)
Wow.

Rev Wakil David (32:30.589)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (32:32.686)
Well, I appreciate you really having a good protocol to find the best. because it is such a need to take care of those grief stricken families that need good, safe people.

Rev Wakil David (32:34.096)
Yeah, great.

Rev Wakil David (32:40.572)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (32:47.089)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (32:50.717)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (32:50.756)
Yeah, and my goal isn't really to use that as like research to write science journal articles. It's more a practical purpose of just finding good folks who do this effectively. So that if I make a reference to somebody, you're never guaranteed you're going to have a good reading. It doesn't always work, but it heightens the odds quite a bit.

Rev Wakil David (33:02.877)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (33:12.379)
Yeah, yeah, perfect. Great. Was there anything that frightened you about the end of life?

Mark Ireland (33:20.632)
Really not the idea of being on the other side or leaving this body. It's just, I don't want to suffer, you know, in a physical body that's incapacitated or whatever. don't think any of us want that, but I don't dwell on that kind of thing. You know, maybe I'll go like that. It'll be a piece of cake. I kind of hope for that, but I just don't think it's worth worrying about it that much because it's just whatever's going to happen is going to happen. But that would be about it. You know, I think we don't.

Annalouiza (33:27.342)
You

Rev Wakil David (33:27.377)
Haha.

Rev Wakil David (33:30.843)
Reason.

Rev Wakil David (33:46.033)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Mark Ireland (33:50.572)
If we existed before, as I think we did, you know, we just don't remember what it's like. But so I rely on, you know, the descriptions from the near-death experiencers or even my dad's trance work, which mirrored that so closely. It's really remarkable how communication takes place on the other side and how the value of you as an individual has nothing to do with your worldly achievements or your material gain. It's really about who you are here.

Rev Wakil David (34:02.215)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (34:20.155)
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Ireland (34:20.47)
And your aura shines more brightly and things like that. If you're a good person, somebody who's been helpful to others and loving and really is driven by a desire to serve.

Rev Wakil David (34:34.269)
Beautiful. Yeah, that's exactly, exactly right. And exactly the thing that I think a lot of people say, know, hope we can help, I can live the best possible life, you know, and, and that'll be reflected in, like, many people have, it's been said, you know, you die the way you live, you know, so I think it's very true. And I also I love I think you said, what you said reminded me of a quote, I probably won't get exactly right, but it's something like,

Annalouiza (34:37.358)
you

Rev Wakil David (35:03.227)
Nobody lies on their deathbed and thinks I should have gone to that meeting. I wish I'd gone to more meetings.

Mark Ireland (35:08.547)
Right.

Mark Ireland (35:11.876)
Well, in my years in the corporate world, which were many, I've seen a lot of folks like that who did whatever they had to do to get where they wanted to be. And I was never like that. And I probably didn't have opportunities that I would have had otherwise, but it just wasn't in my nature to do that. And I feel sorry for them because I think later on, you know, they're going to realize that maybe their life could have been a little more meaningful than it ended up being because

Rev Wakil David (35:23.026)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (35:41.634)
of what they value. They place so much value on something that wasn't as important as just being a good person.

Rev Wakil David (35:50.205)
My last interview with my boss in my corporate life was, you know, you're such a caring, wonderful person. Everybody comes to you for counsel and this thing, but you'll never get ahead in this corporate world that way. And I said, yeah, you're right. Thanks. I'm resigning. So yeah, I think it's really a very good point. Thank you.

Annalouiza (36:12.814)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Ireland (36:16.1)
But I will give credit for that experience that I had because it was in leadership roles and I managed from a position of trying to help develop people and help them prosper. But I learned to communicate well through that. I learned how to write. So those are valuable skills that helped me.

Rev Wakil David (36:19.483)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (36:25.819)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (36:32.637)
Mm-hmm.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And doing that work from the corporate world, you do the ripples again that we talked about earlier, is that you are affecting people, showing an example of what it can be like to be a compassionate, caring leader. And it doesn't have to always be sociopaths, you know, to lead. So yeah, I appreciate it.

Mark Ireland (36:57.636)
We had a meeting one time with people brought in from different areas. And this gentleman from LA, he was talking about how angry he was with his son and how disgusted he was because the son had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, you know, and now his life is ruined and all this. And I said, you know what? I traded places with you in a heartbeat. My son just passed and he's like, and it just put him in his chair. And he reached out to me like a week later and he says, Mark, I needed

Annalouiza (37:16.876)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (37:17.117)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Mark Ireland (37:27.716)
share with you. I really want to thank you. He said you made me reassess how I viewed that whole situation. I had a good talk with my son and we've worked everything out and I, you we're closer than ever now. So one of the mediums that I met early on was Linda Williamson from England. She's now retired, but she had told me a number of things like that there would be this big group, this big organization happening and I'd be key in it, but I didn't know how or when and

Rev Wakil David (37:37.661)
Wow, beautiful.

Annalouiza (37:37.754)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Ugh. What a gift.

Mark Ireland (37:56.194)
Little did I know what it would end up being, but she also said, you know, sometimes we think that we want to, we want to have a spiritual life or whatever, and we're trying to figure out what that means. And you're in this corporate world business. Well, you're doing it right there. You know, it's okay. You know, that's part of, of touching people because you're going to touch people there and meet people there. And maybe it's even more meaningful because those, some of those are going to be more closed off and you're going to open them up.

Rev Wakil David (38:12.251)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (38:25.147)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, we can do the work wherever we are.

Annalouiza (38:27.262)
Mmm, loveliness. Yes, it's so lovely. It's a great reminder that just like our last guest, the legacy is our day to day, really. It's how we live it. Mark, what do you do when you get a little tired of the work that we do? How do you resource yourself?

Rev Wakil David (38:38.685)
Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Ireland (38:50.094)
Well, my wife and I just went to Lisbon and Barcelona recently. So was pretty good. Barcelona. Yeah. So we like to travel. So that's a good thing. I'm a musician too. So I play guitar. I write songs. I sent you one. So I enjoy that. That's therapeutic for me. I now have a band where I live.

Annalouiza (38:53.548)
Ooh, that's kind of fun. Barcelona.

Rev Wakil David (38:53.821)
That's good.

Annalouiza (39:02.028)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David (39:08.669)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Ireland (39:14.968)
So we get together and practice and that's a great release for me. And I love the creative aspect of music. So my dad always said, you know, he felt like creative artistic stuff is just like a cousin to psychic, you know, an intuition and all that. It's kind of an alignment. And so, you know, as part of somebody who wants to try and develop their abilities to a greater degree, you know, having an interest in an artistic form fits right in with that.

Rev Wakil David (39:21.234)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (39:21.411)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (39:30.531)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David (39:31.826)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (39:43.346)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (39:43.524)
kind of expands you too.

Rev Wakil David (39:45.661)
Yeah, I just read something that I've been spreading around about. This quote was basically that the one thing that carries on through all of our existence, even after we die, is music. That the songs we sing or the music we share or the creativity that we share, yeah, that's so great. Well, is there anything that we haven't asked you that you'd like to share with us? We're close to the end here.

Mark Ireland (40:09.036)
No, I think that's it. mean, the general substance of what my work is about, my books are about is covered there. I have a lot more stories and a lot more experiences, but you get to just, and anyone who's interested in reading the books can pick them up, you know, either through my site or Amazon or Barnes and Noble or whatever. And, or if you just wanted to hear more of my stuff, I have a media page on my website with a lot of other interviews, been on coast to coast a couple of times.

Rev Wakil David (40:26.833)
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Ireland (40:37.752)
been on Suzanne Geisman's, Alison Dubois' podcast, a bunch of other folks. So there's all kinds of stuff there. Had two students from Arizona State University Cronkite School of Broadcasting had done a documentary on my story. This is about a decade old or so, but it's still pretty good. It's only like 20, 25 minutes long. And people may want to see my dad's demonstration of psychic phenomena.

Rev Wakil David (40:44.039)
Great.

Mark Ireland (41:04.932)
I've got a video of him on the Steve Allen show in 1971, doing blindfold billet readings. So those are all things accessible through my website, as is helping parents heal and my certified medium site, my music and my dad's videos. There's links to all that on my site, which is markirelandauthor.com. Mark with a K, Ireland like a country, author, markirelandauthor.com.

Rev Wakil David (41:09.149)
Wow. Yeah. Nice.

Annalouiza (41:18.222)
Love it.

Rev Wakil David (41:21.757)
is

Rev Wakil David (41:28.274)
Yeah, I will.

Annalouiza (41:31.992)
That's.

Rev Wakil David (41:33.565)
Yeah, great. That'll all be in our podcast notes. So really appreciate it. And when I asked if you had a poem or quote, you sent me a song, which I said rather than playing and recording, which can be a little tricky on this medium, it just be nice to have you tell us a little bit about the music and we can read or you can read the lyrics if you'd like.

Mark Ireland (41:54.5)
Yeah, I'll read the lyrics. I've got them here. And then if anyone wants to hear the song, like I said, there's a link on my site. just any page, I think it's any page other than the home page. If you go to one of the others, you'll see a little grouping of links on the right side. And it's the last one. It says Mark Ireland's music. But this song I wrote, first I had come up with the music to it. And I really liked the feel of it. And I wanted it to be like a conversation.

Rev Wakil David (41:59.025)
Yeah, we'll have a link.

Rev Wakil David (42:12.797)
Perfect. Perfect.

Mark Ireland (42:23.566)
where you're talking to a skeptic or somebody who's cynical or atheistic mindset, not to try and beat them over the head or anything, but just to give them a different perspective. So I'll read you this. It starts out the first verse is, you just believe in the things you can touch and see. Purpose and meaning, you say, are just legends from long lost days.

Rev Wakil David (42:25.981)
Mm.

Rev Wakil David (42:30.749)
Yeah.

Mark Ireland (42:53.026)
No deeper call to make life sane or mysteries left unexplained. Just bide your time here, embrace the pain. That's kind of the atheist mantra. It's an nihilistic view of the world. Then the chorus says, please set aside the cynic mind and you may catch a glimpse of something quite divine. Just close your eyes so you might see signs of a deeper truth that lies beneath.

Rev Wakil David (43:03.899)
Yeah, embrace the pain. Yeah.

Mark Ireland (43:23.03)
Mind was first and dreamed this world, not the other way around like you thought. Verse two is, everything you see is but a small slice of reality. Your senses can't perceive all that is or that will ever be. You're part of this mind, connected to the source. When you look out, the world takes form. And when I said that, I'm referring to the observer principle.

quantum theory. When you look out the world takes form you'll come to see that nothing's ever lost. And then I repeat the chorus. Please set aside the cynic mind and you may catch a glimpse of something quite divine. Just close your eyes so you might see signs of a deeper truth that lies beneath. Mind was first and dreamed this world not the other way around like you thought.

And then verse three is, listen now, my friend, when you leave this world, it's not the end. Consciousness, you see, is not an effect, it's primary. This world's facade can fool us all. Senses filter out the grander view. Except for love, this life is but a dream.

Rev Wakil David (44:41.661)
Yeah,

Mark Ireland (44:45.23)
So I felt kind of inspired when I put the words together to the music and it did come off. And I think the music feels like it fits that too. It's kind of Pink Floyd-esque.

Rev Wakil David (44:49.084)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David (44:54.141)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love the music too. So we will have a link to that so they can listen directly to it. Yeah, I love the mind was first and dream this world, not the other way around. That's so important for us to remember. Well, thank you again, Mark. It's been so nice having this conversation with you.

Annalouiza (45:13.71)
Yes.

Mark Ireland (45:14.552)
Yeah, it's been wonderful to meet you both and thanks for the time.

Annalouiza (45:16.568)
So lovely.

Rev Wakil David (45:17.883)
Yeah, we hope to be in touch in the future. if you ever want to check in with us or, yeah, pass the word around if you know others who have good stories to tell, we always want to hear them. Let me stop the recording here. And then we can.

Mark Ireland (45:30.66)
Well, here.