On the Purpose and Value of Past Life Regressions
The River Lethe (by Kennington) is the underworld river which flows around the Cave of Hypnos: when drunk from, makes the soul forget.
We have all heard about past life regressions, have maybe toyed with the idea or even tried it out for ourselves to remember who we were in a possible past life.
But what is the purpose of such exercise? Is this merely a fanciful escape from our everyday reality, allowing us to perhaps experience living as some glamorous historic figure such as Cleopatra or Napoleon? A decade into my work as a hypnotherapist conducting past life sessions, I can safely say that such scenarios virtually never occur. Quite the contrary: people frequently find themselves in the past to be lesser personalities. This is actually quite logical: since our consciousness evolves,,, our current personality is the most evolved version of ourselves. With my clients, we have explored past personalities as slave traders, prostitutes, frustrated housewives, kidnapped children, grieving mothers, tortured soldiers, Nazi interrogators, crippled clowns and cruel priestesses - hardly the type of personalities most would like to identify with in wishful fantasies.
In fact, the experience is emotionally tough, and spiritually demanding. It was not without reason that Ghandi called it "nature's kindness" that we tend to forget our past lives. Why on Earth would we then attempt the seemingly unnatural, and restore memories lost beyond the river Lethe?
But what is the purpose of such exercise? Is this merely a fanciful escape from our everyday reality, allowing us to perhaps experience living as some glamorous historic figure such as Cleopatra or Napoleon? A decade into my work as a hypnotherapist conducting past life sessions, I can safely say that such scenarios virtually never occur. Quite the contrary: people frequently find themselves in the past to be lesser personalities. This is actually quite logical: since our consciousness evolves,,, our current personality is the most evolved version of ourselves. With my clients, we have explored past personalities as slave traders, prostitutes, frustrated housewives, kidnapped children, grieving mothers, tortured soldiers, Nazi interrogators, crippled clowns and cruel priestesses - hardly the type of personalities most would like to identify with in wishful fantasies.
In fact, the experience is emotionally tough, and spiritually demanding. It was not without reason that Ghandi called it "nature's kindness" that we tend to forget our past lives. Why on Earth would we then attempt the seemingly unnatural, and restore memories lost beyond the river Lethe?
As human beings, we don't just have a physical, but also a multidimensional existence, which includes our energy body. Our universal life force energy (also known as ki, chi or prana) centers around main centers, the chakras, which have been studied extensively by various Eastern traditions (for instance Chinese, Tibetan or ayurvedic medicine, yoga, some martial arts practices). Western psychology is currently discovering that chakras form a hierarchy, each corresponding to certain psychological, even medical issues (see e.g. Myss). Lower chakras (i.e the base, the sexual and the core chakra) relate to basic, "worldy" issues, such as physical survival and belonging to the tribe, relationships and procreation, financial stability and personal power. As long as a person's energy is mainly centered around these chakras and is concerned mainly with these issues, there is no point in discovering past lives. Only when a person reaches a certain level of maturity and becomes interested in higher issues (corresponding with the energy of the heart chakra and above) like compassion, helping others, assisting others, exploring multidimensional existence, and finding one's life purpose, at that point exploring past lives becomes invaluable.
Past life explorations set in motion a series of development, which greatly furthers one's understanding of the "human adventure," as well as the purpose of our own lives. This development typically unfolds in three stages:
Stage 1: "Cause & Effect"
To genuinely experience a past life memory for the first time, is like being lifted out a single street, and suddenly seeing the whole town and - even higher - the whole country in which one has always lived in, but never knew of. A complex, interconnected web of experiences begins to emerge, which we all share and from which we can all learn. This is what the ancients called karma, yet, we must not think of it as some sort of of linear, retribution-type of justice, rather as the ripple effect of human choices throughout time.
Beyond many healing benefits (for example curing of phobias), the most beautiful thing which tends to occur at this stage is leaving behind the victim mentality. The past life experience allows for "getting into the mind of the opponent." Once I had a client, here we shall call her Ann, who felt nearly traumatized every time someone seemed to laugh about her. One of her sessions revealed that in a past life she was a boy who was sold by his parents, and used as a kind of clown or jester. She thought back of the master being "evil." However, she also saw that when the boy died of a childhood disease, the same master sat weeping next to the bed in which the boy lay unconscious: For the "master," this lifetime was a lesson in appreciating another human being beyond economic considerations. In fact, he has learned to love the boy genuinely.
Beyond many healing benefits (for example curing of phobias), the most beautiful thing which tends to occur at this stage is leaving behind the victim mentality. The past life experience allows for "getting into the mind of the opponent." Once I had a client, here we shall call her Ann, who felt nearly traumatized every time someone seemed to laugh about her. One of her sessions revealed that in a past life she was a boy who was sold by his parents, and used as a kind of clown or jester. She thought back of the master being "evil." However, she also saw that when the boy died of a childhood disease, the same master sat weeping next to the bed in which the boy lay unconscious: For the "master," this lifetime was a lesson in appreciating another human being beyond economic considerations. In fact, he has learned to love the boy genuinely.
Stage 2: Synchronicity
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The day after my client had this past life session, a good friend of her showed up in a Harlequin sweater. She said, seeing this pattern gave her goose-pimples and sent chills down her spine. Although she "just could feel" that this was somehow of utmost importance, she would have been ready to dismiss is as a "strange coincidence," but I pointed it out for her that this indeed was a case of synchronicity. When a seemingly unrelated outer event (friend wearing Harlequin sweater) corresponds with an inner event (remembrance of a past life as a jester) in a personally meaningful way, synchronicity is occurring. "Signs" like this are extremely common in past life explorations, and tend to mark the beginning of the second stage, when deeper connections are to be explored.
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So, we continued with another past-life session. It turned out that this current good friend who showed up in the Harlequin sweater was the incarnation of no one else, but "the master" itself. Once upon a life, my client was teaching him how to love, presently she is often teaching him, how to have faith. The eternal words of William Shakespeare: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" get a truly deep and wide-reaching significance in this context.
Stage 3: Syntropy
We are mostly familiar with the term "entropy," the tendency of material system to develop towards chaos. But there is also LIFE which on the contrary develops towards greater and greater levels of harmony and organisation. Interestingly, there is mathematical evidence that we seem to be influenced by the future just as much as we are influenced by the past. This might sound like utter science-fiction, but psychologically it actually makes sense. Imagine, for instance that a swimmer is preparing for the Olympics. So, she's swimming many hours every day, and when we ask her what's the reason for her vigorous training regime, she would say "The Olympics." The Olympic Games she is talking about is in the future, which influences her present schedule. On the third level of past life exploration this dimension opens up: connecting the dots from the past, the present and the future, a person's existential program becomes evident. A seasoned explorer of the inner realms will be clear about his or her mission in this life ... as well as in the next.