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
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.)
