cause may be a desire, thought, feeling, emotion, vow, promise, decision, evasion or traumatic experience, amongst others. Very often, at a moment of trauma, a section of our consciousness (part of our overall self) detaches itself and remains ‘stuck’. Past life causes may manifest in the present as a phobia, chronic illness or body state, addiction, mental disorder, inability to make relationships, inexplicable attraction or aversion to someone, recurring nightmares, or a simple sense of unease.
KARMA
Karma means action. It is the principle of cause and effect. Taken simply it means that for every action there is a consequence. What has been put into motion in the past has effects in the present. Karma is, however, both subtle and complex. Thoughts and attitudes can create karma just as strongly as can tangible deeds and events. What we set in motion now, and our motivation, will influence our future. Karma is also the conditions our soul needs in order to grow spiritually, it is what we create for ourselves. Karma operates at different levels: personal, group/family/racial, collective and cosmic.
The other side of the coin is that particular skills, interests, likings, or for that matter passions in this life may well also be the result of past life experiences. Knowledge of these may help someone to handle their present life better, or point the way to an appropriate career choice, hobbies, etc.
So, as well as clearing blockages and old disease, past life therapy can be used to trace relationship patterns and old connections, to reconnect to the purpose of incarnating, and to previous knowledge and skills. It can also look forward to ‘future lives’: what is still to come.
WHAT CAN IT DO?
Past life therapy can be helpful in many different areas: phobias, irrational fears, health problems; removing fear of death; understanding eating disorders, family dysfunction, addictions, sexual difficulties, marital and relationship problems. It defuses negative patterns, finding the reasons for present life difficulties, and setting positive change in motion.
It can change your life dramatically, eliminating guilt and anxiety. It will help you to develop your potential, unlock latent talents, create better understanding of others, reveal your life purpose and reason for incarnating, and initiate new patterns of response, not reaction. By rewriting your life script, you can remove outworn emotional and doctrinal conditioning, and attune to an inner source of knowledge. Past life therapy creates a sense of knowing and accepting your whole self as an immortal spiritual being on a human journey.
LIFESCRIPT
A lifescript is made up of all the ‘oughts and shoulds’, the ‘I musts’ and the conditioned responses and expectations arising from the past – whenever that past was. It is the sum total of all our karmic experience and it includes our lessons and intentions for the present life. If we follow a lifescript unconsciously, we rerun all the old patterns. Changing our lifescript can bring about profound healing at all levels of our life.
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