20 MINUTES TO MASTER ... PAST LIFE THERAPY

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 disease. 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 ‘disease’ 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 ‘disease’ went deeper than that. As a teenager, Muriel had suffered from nocturnal epilepsy. A chiropractor 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 chiropractor 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

The ‘seed’ from which the physical body develops in the present life. The etheric blueprint carries all the information, and scars, from past lives that will affect emotional and physical health and well-being in the life to come.

SEXUAL DIFFICULTIES

Sexual difficulties too can stem from varied past life causes. One of the most common problems is that vows, such as celibacy or everlasting faithfulness, taken in other lives are not rescinded before reincarnation. They then subtly interfere with present life relationships. Having taken a vow of celibacy, for example, may result in impotence when faced with a sexual partner. The subconscious can simply switch off sexual arousal when confronted with the deep inner conflict of ‘I desire this woman’ and ‘I vow eternal celibacy.’ The time frame may need to be renegotiated: ‘for ever’ becoming ‘for this life only’.

Old patterns of behaviour can also be carried over. Some people endlessly recreate their past relationships, sometimes compelled by a vision of what they did not have, at others obsessed with the search for what they did have. They may also carry inappropriate patterns of behaviour. One man, suffering from premature ejaculation, experienced furtive sex with another servant in his past life. There was always an urgent need to ‘be quick’, someone might find them. Another man was sexually hung up on his mother. All his fantasies were about sex with her. Not surprisingly, he regressed to being her lover in a former life.

More difficult to adjust to are gender changes which can create underlying problems. Both men and women find themselves ‘in the wrong body’. Some necessitate a sex change, others respond to past life therapy. Some conditions are complex. Not every case of homosexuality necessarily relates to a man having been a woman before and retaining the desire for sexual contact with a man (or vice versa), but some do. If that person is happy to accept their sexual orientation, then all is well. But it can create a painful conflict in someone who cannot adapt or who comes under pressure to conform to ‘a norm’. (Most homosexuals and lesbians are following their consciously-made life plan just as heterosexuals are, their orientation is different not wrong.)

I regressed a woman who said she had always felt like a young boy with homosexual tendencies. She ‘fancied older men’. This did not appear on the surface as a problem because older men were only too pleased to have an affair with this attractive woman. But, inside herself she felt cheated. She was in the wrong body for the experience she craved. When she regressed, she was indeed a young homosexual. In the between life state, she had wanted to experience life in a woman’s body but she had not sufficiently planned and programmed her new identity. The old patterns took over.

CHAPTER 3

REGRESSION TECHNIQUES (#u759fdf75-4c3a-5a53-b772-b6769bdcdb37)

The techniques used to induce regression are many and varied. Some have been in existence for immeasurable time, others are new. Shamans, and other spiritual disciplines, have used drugs, chanting and repetitive dance to induce trance states for hundreds of years. In a trance state there are no boundaries, time does not exist. Memories can be accessed, knowledge harvested, blockages removed. The shamanic culture is both ancient and universal. The note of a Buddhist cymbal, or an African tribal drum, will take you into a different state of being. Sound, smell and touch can stimulate memory, as can places or people.

Some therapists will use touch, others imagery, some hypnosis, but all are creating an altered state of consciousness in which it is possible to access the otherwise inaccessible parts of our being. Many start by achieving a state of deep relaxation, others by pressing appropriate parts of the body. Regression may be incidental to the main purpose of the technique as in body or energy-based therapies such as Shen, Shiatsu, Process Acupressure, etc, where the intention is to release an energy blockage rather than necessarily stimulate past life memories. Many regression therapists combine several different approaches in their therapeutic work.

HYPNOTIC TRANCE

An artificially induced state of so-called ‘sleep’, deep relaxation or altered awareness, is called ‘trance’. From brainwave measurements, it is clearly not sleep as the brain remains active. The subject may, when brought out of trance, be unaware of actions or activities undertaken in this state, although in many levels of hypnosis the subject is fully aware of what is going on and retains that consciousness. Hypnosis accesses the subconscious mind, that level of consciousness that lies ‘beneath’ ordinary, everyday awareness, and which retains all our memories. The subconscious mind is extremely powerful and can bring about deep healing.

There is a difference between a hypnotist, who merely accesses the memories, and a hypnotherapist, who uses those memories therapeutically to effect change.

In hypnotic trance, the subject is directed back through time or told to go straight to a particular time or experience. Appropriate questions are used to guide the process. Control of the experience remains with the therapist.

Regression under hypnosis is vivid, the subject experiences all the feelings, pains and joys of the life. The therapeutic value varies according to whether or not the therapist believes rerunning the life is all that is required and whether the therapist recognizes symbolic and other states. If healing and reframing techniques are also used, the therapeutic value of the experience is likely to be enhanced and longer lasting.

ACTIVE IMAGINATION

In active imagination, the subject is encouraged to ‘act as if’ until the scene becomes real. So, for instance, the therapist may ‘see’ the scene first, describing it until the subject joins in; or may direct the subject through various actions such as opening a wardrobe and selecting clothing. Control of the process is transferred to the subject when possible.

The reliving of a life may be graphic or gentle. As with hypnosis, the long-term benefit depends on the approach employed by the therapist. One of the advantages of this technique is that the subject can experience the life at different depths according to what is necessary for healing to take place. This technique is an excellent introduction to past life work and can be a powerful therapeutic tool according to the level of expertise of the therapist and the ancillary techniques employed.

GUIDED IMAGERY

Guided imagery may be rather like active imagination. After entering a state of deep relaxation, the subject is taken on a journey which will lead into a past life image. Appropriate questions such as: “What are you wearing?” “How do you feel?” may be used to guide the experience. Control of the process remains with the subject, facilitated where necessary by the therapist.