20 MINUTES TO MASTER ... PAST LIFE THERAPY

Past life therapy teaches us that the conditions we encounter in our present life are not simply a punishment for ‘bad karma’ – our misdeeds in a former life. Nevertheless, it may well pinpoint where we are inflicting misery on ourselves as a way of ‘shriving our guilt’ from the past. It shows us that, as spiritual beings, we are part of a lives-long learning process. We may need to experience what we construe, from the limited perspective of our present earthly life, as an ‘awful life’ in order to balance out other experiences, or to round out our compassion and empathy for other people. It shows us the long, intricate strands of our relationships weaving their way through many roles and interactions over dozens of lifetimes. It can also teach us that the people we think hate us most, in fact love us enough to put us through hell. Not because we deserve it, or as a punishment, but because we have chosen to learn that particular lesson, to have that necessary experience.

The regression techniques used to reach the past life cause can include hypnosis, deep meditation, guided imagery, shamanic journeys, massage and bodywork. All entail a change of consciousness, a moving out of ordinary, everyday awareness. This enables ‘time travel’ to take place, a moving back in time to re-experience the incident. By reframing this incident, if necessary, healing takes place. For convenience, in order to make sense of our experiences, these other lives are called past lives, although time is by no means linear nor chronological. However, by ‘going back into the past’, we can change our present life.

BLOCKAGES

A point where we are stuck in the past. Blockages may be physical and bodily-based, emotional, mental or spiritual. An ingrained attitude such as ‘poor me’ (victim mentality) is a blockage as it impedes well-being. An old scar or wound, invisible though it may be in the present life, may block the free flow of energy through the body creating a state of disease or illness.

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Our ‘personal consciousness’, or self awareness has several levels, or sub-strata, some of which incorporate ‘universal consciousness’ and connect us with everything around us – and all that has gone before.

Besides our everyday, ordinary awareness, we have a hidden consciousness of which we are only dimly aware. This is the subconscious, the repository of all our experiences, memories, dreams, hopes and expectations. The subconscious mind motivates much of our experience in life, without us being aware of it. We repeat patterns, live out ingrained expectations, follow its dictates. Much of the contents of our subconscious mind are the direct opposite of what we consciously think. By accessing the subconscious we can change our behaviour and heal our disease.

Beneath the subconscious is the unconscious, the collective unconscious as Jung called it, where lurk family and racial memories going back into pre-history. This too has a powerful effect on our lives. The collective unconscious is global and universal, we share it with everyone else.

Surrounding all of this is the ‘higher consciousness’ of our spiritual self. Time does not exist for the higher consciousness. This consciousness is past, present and future – there is no distinction. Higher consciousness is more than global, it is cosmic: we are everything else at this level.

In past life work, all these levels of consciousness may be activated.

IS RELIVING A LIFE ENOUGH?

It depends on your reason for regressing. It is sufficient to satisfy curiosity, to give a sense of: ‘Yes, I have lived before.’ It may give you an insight into what is going on. However, as Denys Kelsey, one of the pioneers of past life therapy, puts it: “Insight does not necessarily imply cure.” Simply reliving a life is rarely enough for more serious purposes. Most of the therapeutic work involves freeing something which has become stuck in the past, the burden of which has been carried forward into the present. That burden may have created a pattern of reaction, based on the now inappropriate past. This pattern needs to be rewoven so that a new response is possible. The primary cause may be emotional, physical or mental, but it will imprint on the present life and may be experienced as some form of illness or other disease, not necessarily physical. Past life therapy seeks to clear the cause, and the disease is healed.

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELIVING A PAST LIFE AND HAVING PAST LIFE THERAPY?

Most definitely. Rerunning a past life is for the curious. The ‘who was I’ approach is not therapeutic. It rarely makes any major difference to your present life or brings about permanent change. It may give an insight, an ‘Aha, so that’s why …’ moment. It may also boost your ego for a short time, depending on the experience. But the effect usually fades.

The therapy approach uncovers the reasons behind your present behaviour or difficulty and changes the picture. It expands your understanding of yourself. Therapy means healing. It is curative. Your life or health should improve, sometimes dramatically, after past life therapy.

WILL I RETAIN CONTROL OF THE PROCESS?

It all depends on the method used and on the individual therapist. Some regression therapists are strongly directive, retaining control of the process at all times; others work with a client-centred approach that allows the client to work at their own pace and in their own way (with help or direction from the therapist when needed).

CAN OTHER PEOPLE ‘SEE’ MY PAST LIVES?

Yes. Psychics, astrologers and shamans all have ways of reading past lives for other people. I use a combination of astrology and far memory to do karmic readings, for example. When I first started doing this work I would see lives unrolling in front of my eyes just like watching a film. It was most graphic. If I looked at someone’s face, I would see their past life faces superimposed. I still use this ability, but now ‘see’ much more subjectively, and often work without meeting my client face to face.

FAR MEMORY

The psychic ability to tune into other lives, whether one’s own or other people’s.

Some psychics and shamans use ‘far memory’, some contact your Higher Self, others contact a guide who knows your past, while others may use a ‘set formula’. One astrological approach has a formula which purports to tell you exactly who you were, whilst karmic astrology identifies your patterns and probable experiences but not the precise detail of your lives. People reading for you may use the aura, the Akashic Record or the birthchart, or journey into other realms to gather information. These readings can be extremely useful in giving you an overview, or in pinpointing particular problems. Sometimes simply knowing, accepting at a deep inner level: “This is true for me,” is enough to recognize the root cause or change the pattern. At other times this is a starting point for personal regression work. Indeed, some regressionists work by tuning into a past life for you and having you tune in too.

GUIDES

Guides are discarnate beings, that is they inhabit the spiritual dimensions rather than the physical. They come to assist us when required. It is widely believed that our guides are souls who have known us in other lives, although it is also possible that they are another aspect of ourself.

There are psychics who can enter into the other life with you, using their energy to bring about change. They are fully involved with you as you were then, feeling what you felt (or feel, if you yourself are doing the regression). At a subtle level they heal the past and you receive the benefit in your present life. Joan Grant and Christine Hartley frequently utilized this approach. I may do so myself during karmic readings or regression sessions but I prefer to facilitate my clients doing the work themselves in regression as I believe we each need to take responsibility for our own healing. Shamans, particularly those using North or South American Indian methods, may well journey to your past lives, ‘recovering’ a lost part of yourself, bringing it back and helping you to integrate this into your present life.

THE AKASHIC RECORD

The Akashic Record is an esoteric narrative of all that has been, and will be. It is woven into the fabric of the universe. It encompasses all possibilities. It can be ‘read’ by psychics, amongst others, to give details of past lives and present purpose.

THE HIGHER SELF

The eternal, spiritual part of us that is immortal and which, because it experiences all our lives, contains our totality of being. It is ‘higher’ because it is vibrating at a faster rate than the physical body.

THE ADVANTAGES AND THE DANGERS

The advantage of any form of past life therapy is that it enables extremely deep change to take place at the source of the problem. It is not dealing with symptoms, it addresses the cause. In fully experiencing or reliving the past, in reconnecting to lost parts of the self, in integrating previously unacceptable facets or in allowing oneself to fully feel the feelings and emotions of that life, and in refraining and rewriting the past, profound healing takes place.

The greatest danger lies perhaps in the ego. If there is an underlying need to compensate for any feelings of inadequacy in the present life, then an ego trip is an ever-present possibility. So too is getting caught up in a ‘fantasy in fancy dress’; wishful thinking is hardly therapeutic. An experienced practitioner will know how to recognize a fantasy, and how to work with it symbolically to bring about healing. The danger from the practitioner’s ego arises when the practitioner is over-confident: “I’ve seen it all, I can handle everything.” Life has a funny way of throwing up a few surprises, so retaining humility and the ability to learn on the job are vital.

The other great danger lies in practitioners who are inexperienced and/or unable or unwilling to stay with the process if deep trauma surfaces. Many hypnotists immediately instruct their clients to forget all about it, thus driving the trauma even deeper. Other practitioners tell their clients to detach, to move away from the experience instead of reliving the pain and blocked emotions that they failed to allow themselves to feel the first time round: thus perpetuating the blockage. They try to ‘make it better’, putting a plaster on it rather than real healing – which may require cauterization and catharsis. Just because it is forgotten at the conscious level does not mean it goes away. It wreaks havoc from the depths of the unconscious. The opposite may apply, someone may go back into an emotion in which they are endlessly stuck, recreating the situation from which they need to detach. Different problems require different solutions and the therapist must be flexible enough to deal with whatever comes up. The danger is that, if, for instance, someone relives having their leg blown off and the trauma is not healed once they are the other side of death, then leg problems may well be triggered in the present life as the ‘seed’ is activated.

A subtle danger may arise from reactivating a past life ‘tendency’ or life state not relevant to the present life (or which it was hoped to reverse) but which is brought into the present through not being released when the regression finishes. For example, a man reconnected to several lives where he had been celibate and deeply spiritual. In his present life he was married and following a spiritual pathway. After the past lives surfaced, he suddenly felt that he could no longer follow his spiritual path and remain married. He turned away from his wife, excluding her from his life and accusing her of sabotaging his spirituality. His astrological chart indicated that his purpose in incarnating this time round had been to learn to be both spiritual and sexual at the same time – something he had been unable to do in the past. He had the opportunity to heal a deep split in himself. It would have been relevant, following the many celibate lives he relived, to ask whether the vows of celibacy by which he was then bound were appropriate for his present life.

Had the answer been ‘no’, then steps could have been taken to release himself from that vow. As it was, not only was his marriage destroyed, but he cut himself off from the potential to heal the two warring factions within himself.

A similar danger arises where people are told, or choose to believe, they are soulmates, that they have always been together and should be together again. I have seen marriages wrecked, relationships ruined, people devastated. Suddenly recognizing someone as a past soulmate can cause a wave of lust to arise that carries all before it, and may well obscure the real purpose in meeting again. Disentangling is difficult. So it is as well to look exceedingly closely at any potential ‘soulmate’ relationship and to check whether that really was what you intended this time around.

SOULMATES

Sometimes called twin flames or twin souls, soulmates are often seen as two people (or souls) who have been together throughout eternity. They are ‘meant for each other’, complete each other. Plato said that, way back in the beginning, one soul had split into two, creating soulmates. (He also said that ‘ever the two shall wander, seeking each other’).

However, from regression work it would appear that we all have several soulmates, a group of souls with whom we travel throughout time. It is also apparent that our soulmate is often the person who is willing to help us learn the hardest lessons in life.

THOSE FOR WHOM IT MAY BE UNSUITABLE

Whilst it is possible that past life therapy may help a schizophrenic or Multiple Personality Disorder sufferer to bring together parts of a psyche that are fragmented, it needs an extremely experienced therapist to undertake this work. As a rule of thumb, anyone who has had psychiatric problems of any kind or who is taking drugs (prescription or otherwise) should approach the therapy with caution and should certainly be totally honest with any prospective therapist. Past life therapy can help, sometimes dramatically, with depression, phobias and some compulsive patterns. But it can also precipitate compulsions and obsessions of all kinds and may bolster up delusions and illusions through an apparent ‘reliving’. People with psychiatric problems could, therefore, find the overview offered by a past life reading, or karmic astrology, a gentler introduction to other lives.

People who are prone to fantasy, and to living in the past, can use other lives as an excuse for not living the present life fully. Equally, it is possible to become obsessed by a character in a past life, or to become stuck in an old pattern. So many people say, “I can’t help it, it’s my karma,” notwithstanding the fact that past life therapy is designed to prove just the opposite. So, if you fall into these categories or are not yet ready to take responsibility for your own life (or lives), you may find a bodywork, emotional release or shamanic-based approach keeps you more grounded in the here and now whilst releasing from the past life patterns.

Anyone out to prove they were ‘Someone’ may have difficulty with past life therapy. They may well reject perfectly valid lives, and the healing opportunities they embody, in the search for that elusive ‘proof’ of position, power and authority. This approach is extremely vulnerable to fantasy and wish fulfilment, both on the part of the practitioner and the client. Hypnosis is probably the best approach if you must have facts, figures and historical presence.

Finally, anyone not prepared to look at their dark side should certainly steer clear of this therapy. It throws light on all of ourselves, not just those parts we find pleasing. Its value is that it helps to integrate our totality. But, if you are not ready for what this might entail, you are not yet ready to look at your past lives.

USING PAST LIFE WORK IN CONJUNCTION WITH OTHER THERAPIES

Past life work deepens and expands psychotherapy, bodywork, emotional release and spiritual growth work. It combines well with flower essences and vibrational medicine, reflexology, crystal healing and many other complementary therapies.

CHAPTER 2

POSSIBLE PAST LIFE CAUSES (#u759fdf75-4c3a-5a53-b772-b6769bdcdb37)

Each individual case is different, but ‘themes’ or common core experiences often underlie similar presenting problems. A few of these are explored below to give you an idea of the scope of past life therapy.

PHOBIAS