Past Life Therapy: The only introduction you’ll ever need

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 reframing 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.

2 POSSIBLE PAST LIFE CAUSES (#ulink_7c378525-efd5-522b-95c7-2fde94fa2bf8)

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

Many people consult past life therapists about phobias or chronic anxiety states of one kind or another. If the cause has not been found in a previous incident in the present life, then even conventional therapy might suggest exploring other lives. A common phobia such as fear of snakes, for instance, may well go back to a death from snake bite, or being lowered into a pit of snakes (sometimes as punishment, sometimes as an initiation). I have seen a case where fear of birds went back to being very badly injured in a battle, and regaining consciousness to find a flock of vultures pecking away at the apparently dead body.

A phobia which is seemingly much less common, but which I have frequently encountered, is fear of people vomiting. Almost everyone who suffers from this has regressed to a life where they were with a group of other people, usually in conditions of fear, who were vomiting uncontrollably. In at least one case it was on a ship during a violent storm, in several others it was during some kind of plague when all the sufferers were locked in a room together. It may also relate to one’s own death under such conditions.

Sometimes phobias are very specific. I had one client, for example, who could not stand deep, still water. She was fine with running water, rivers and seas. In the regression, she had drowned in a quarry pool.

Once the past life cause is discovered and healing done at that point in time, the phobia usually disappears or significantly decreases in the present life.

EATING DISORDERS

Whilst many eating disorders do have roots in emotional causes in early childhood, some may be a carry-over from other lives. A common cause of over-eating is starving to death in the past, especially when the last thought in that life was, “I’ll never starve again,” but I have also seen the then socially-acceptable practice of bulimic vomiting at Roman orgies being carried over into the present life as a repeating pattern. (This also surfaced in a fear of vomiting when the slave who looked after the vomitorium was run through with a dagger for himself involuntarily vomiting as his master did so.)

Anorexia too may be linked to past life beliefs about the body as ‘bad’ and sexuality as sinful and can link into past life sexual abuse. Fashion can play its part. Not that long ago, many girls starved themselves in England, for instance, in order to achieve the desired eighteen-inch waist.

If patterns like these are not changed prior to the new incarnation, the hidden thoughts remain and create over-eating, bulimia and anorexia. Going back to the between life state can be therapeutic.

EMOTIONAL BLOCKAGES

There are so many emotional blockages carried over that it is unusual not to encounter one or two during a regression session. Emotional blockages often surface spontaneously during bodywork as our physical body can hold the memory. The blockages arise from two basic causes: one, part of oneself being stuck in that old emotion, continually re-experiencing it; or, two, having been afraid to feel the feelings, continually holding back. The trauma may be too intense, we cannot allow ourselves to feel. But so many of our emotions are deemed unacceptable that we get into the habit of not feeling. The healing consists of either detaching from the feeling, or letting oneself feel it until it dissipates – acceptance is a great healer.

ADDICTIONS

If we die with the thought “There will never be enough …”, or desiring “More, more,” then we are likely to come back with an addictive personality. If the thought was, “There will never be enough love,” then the addiction is to relationships and what passes for ‘love’. If it was ‘money’, then the addiction is to material goods – the miser hoarding his wealth. On the other hand, that person may still be stuck in poverty consciousness: believing that there will never be enough money is often enough to ensure that there never is!

Denys Kelsey mentions addiction being linked to the practice of giving alcohol to deaden the pain of surgery in the days before anaesthetics. In battle conditions, on ships, etc, a bottle would be passed around those awaiting the surgeon’s knife. At least one alcoholic he regressed died with the thought: “There won’t be enough for me.”

People with this kind of strong desire often reincarnate quickly before any healing has been done, bringing the potential for the dependency back into the body. Something which has always struck me in my alcohol and drug counselling work is how young people are when they discover their ‘drug of choice’. I remember an alcoholic telling me with great relish that, aged 8, he drank a whole bottle of sherry and felt for the first time that he was totally satisfied: “It was something I had been looking for all my young life.”

Some drug addictions continually re-run an earlier dependency on ‘medicine’: sleeping drops, ‘nerve tonics’, etc, which contained morphine or other addictive substances. Laudanum was very popular with several generations of women. In some cultures, drugs were routinely used either as sedatives or as spiritual aids. Other addicts may be replaying an opium addiction – thousands of Chinese were introduced to opium by the British government who had a vested interest in maintaining the addiction; and the gin palaces of the British Industrial Revolution killed the pain of existence for many thousands more people.

HEALTH

Health is an enormous subject when looked at from the past life perspective. Old attitudes such as ‘hard-heartedness’ can affect the present life: hardening of the arteries and heart attacks being common manifestations. Old emotions, injuries and traumatic experiences create physical dis-ease. A woman who had constant heartburn in her present life relived drinking a cup of poisoned wine given her by a lover. The heartburn was easily cured by erasing the memory of the poison through her imaging drinking the antidote. We can also recreate our old feelings when we put ourselves in present life situations which resonate. Before therapy, having her current-life lover feed her a tempting morsel had almost choked her, as she could never be quite sure that he wasn’t trying to kill her.

The past life reasons behind present life illness are sometimes dramatic. An elderly lady had suffered from asthma all her life. When she arrived for regression she brought with her not only an inhaler but also a friend who was skilled in resuscitation techniques and had revived her on more than one occasion. In the event, however, neither were needed.

She was guided back through time until she found herself in the Middle Ages acting as a kind of go-between who received the reports from spies and informers and passed these on to the witch-finders. It was something in which she had unwittingly become embroiled and could not then break free. She described herself as an insignificant looking, lonely man. He felt suffocated by what he was doing but could see no way out. If he tried to leave or to protect people, he would be put to trial by his employers as they would assume that he had been bewitched. He wanted to commit suicide but this was a mortal sin and he was too afraid of the consequences.

Eventually the burden became too great to bear and he took a horse and rode off without caring what would happen. He was followed and was stabbed by a sword, which caused him to fall from the horse. The horse then rolled on him, crushing his chest. He died literally unable to breathe and gasped his life away in a most distressing manner that exactly matched an asthma attack. As the elderly lady relived it, the physical symptoms were very real. She gasped and fought for breath, making the most horrendous noises. But, because she was both reliving that life and aware of the present connections, she would assure me from time to time that she was ok. This was not an asthma attack. Knowing that she needed to go through this, I encouraged her to stay with it as she passed through death and into the between life state. There, the trauma fell away. Her breathing quieted, almost to the point of imperceptibility. We cleared the residues of that life to heal the present.

When she ‘returned’ from the regression, she was full of compassion for herself as she had been, saying that he had had no choice. What surprised her was how afraid to commit suicide he had been as, in her present life, that would have been what she would have done in a similar situation. It is difficult to believe nowadays just how great the fear of mortal sin and resulting everlasting damnation was but this had graphically portrayed itself to her. The fear had been even stronger than the feelings of guilt and wrongness, which were in themselves overwhelming. With that kind of inner conflict combined with violent death, it was no surprise that her current life played out the drama in such a physical fashion.

She recognized that her asthma was the direct result of both the sense of suffocation and guilt that she had felt then, and also the physical sensation of her death. It had imprinted itself on her present-life body, which continued to ‘gasp her life away’. It also explained why she had become a pioneering psychic and healer. She wanted to make reparation. Her compassion and forgiveness for herself healed the root cause. Following the regression, her asthma attacks ceased.

Several points of ‘dis-ease’ may arise from one life. Muriel relived a life in the theatre. She was badly beaten by the manager of that theatre, who was jealous of her success. He constantly criticized her: “She was no good” (despite the fact that she was a very good actress). She could not break free and felt most inadequate. Much of the beating was on her back. In her present life, Muriel suffered from constant sore throats, back trouble and lack of confidence. These conditions were exacerbated when she and her partner got involved in amateur dramatics. She felt that her partner was that theatre manager.

In the regression, she went to the end of her life. She hung herself on the stage, in a most dramatic fashion, saying, “That will show them all.” She wanted to be seen when ‘they’ entered the theatre the next day. She wanted ‘them’ to be affected by her death. She wanted ‘them’ to notice her. The death was a slow one, her neck not being broken, and she suffocated to death. Muriel commented that it explained why, in her present life, she could never complete a performance without having a sore throat and a cold. She associated the slow asphyxiation and pressure of the rope around her neck with the current life throat trouble but also felt that she was in some way sabotaging herself as a result of that constant criticism in the past.

However, the ‘dis-ease’ went deeper than that. As a teenager, Muriel had suffered from nocturnal epilepsy. A chiropracter had then realigned the vertebrae in her neck, and she never suffered another fit. In the regression, she commented that her body jerking at the end of the rope was just like having convulsions. As her neck was not broken, the vertebrae were pushed out of alignment. In her present life, her ‘etheric blueprint’ had recreated that pattern.

When we began to look at the healing options, she simply wanted to leave that body there. To get away as quickly as possible and go into the halls of healing, which she described as ‘absolute bliss’. In a spontaneous soul retrieval, she then saw a man rushing in and taking her in a 1950s taxi to the hospital where she was born.

It became clear that, whilst that part of herself had ‘slept’ in the halls of healing, other parts of Muriel had had other lives. In order to be born whole in this present life, that ‘sleeping part’ had had to be rushed to join the rest of herself at birth. Its memories had been activated when she went back into the theatre. Past life therapy then healed the ‘cause’ and she was able to perform without difficulties. Later, when she visited a chiropracter again, she saw herself just prior to putting the rope around her neck. Her guide said to her, “You don’t have to damage your body, you have come to the end of that life and can come with me.” She then saw the empty rope. The situation had been reframed and her body was able to release the memory.

Soul retrieval

Reconnecting to a part of the overall self that has been ‘left behind’ in a past life.

Etheric Blueprint