Our Unconscious Symbolisms

Dale was a new client, referred to me by a client who I have worked with for three years. So, before our online appointment started, I already knew he was a GP medical doctor who was recently diagnosed with cancer and who was interested in a past life regression session.

When we connected at our weekend late evening virtual appointment, I was first very surprised at how energized, full of life, warmly smiling and strikingly handsome this 41-year-old looked. What a strange combination! A mainstream doctor wanting to have a very alternative approach: past life regression. And a healthy-looking doctor diagnosed with cancer!

I kept my curious thoughts to myself and showed up on the screen ready to listen and to work.

“I know,” as if Dale was reading my thoughts, “it all started about six years ago, I read Dr. Brian Weiss’s book, Many Lives…” Dale was searching in his memory for the rest of the title of the book.

“Many Lives, Many Masters.” I finished it for him.

“Yes! That’s it!” Dale opened a beautiful smile. I would love to go to his dentist. A strange thought came to me. Dale continued, “Ever since then I had a curiosity to have a Past Life Regression session. Of course, Dr. Weiss had retired from private practice. In 2018, I contacted a local hypnotherapist for it. The gentleman honestly told me that he was not specialized in past life regression, but he could offer me hypnotherapy. So, I went for a hypnotherapy.”

I wonder how many people separate “hypnotherapy” from “past life regression”. For my practice, “past life regression” is simply a branch of the “hypnotherapy” tree.

“So, was it a positive experience with that gentleman?” I asked. It is important for me to learn from their previous hypnotherapy experiences.

“We only had one session. It was …” Dale’s eyes looked up to his left, accessing a memory six years ago, “…very relaxing.” It seemed Dale couldn’t remember much of that one-time experience.

“And then you never contacted anyone else after that?” Six years seemed to be a long time to wait for a genuine curiosity.

“Well, then I was speaking with a psychic who was supposed to know people’s past lives. Unfortunately, I didn’t find a connection with her when I had a consultation, so I left it there, until a week ago, I was chatting with a new friend (my client) and even though she never had a past life regression session with you, she knows you do it, and she still highly recommended you.”

We got to do the work. Dale said his recent diagnosis also slowed him down a little bit in his work, and he started to reflect a little more on his life. He said he was very open to whatever the subconscious mind would take him. In the future, Dale would also like to explore his current family relationships.

With this broad direction, considering Dale being a first-timer in past life regression, and him being analytically trained, I decided to use a more structured induction to facilitate his journey: A stairway and a hallway with many doors. As I have detailed in my first book Past Life Regression, “it is one of the most commonly used methods, for its clarity and simplicity. Going downstairs is a typical hypnotic deepening. Clients are given enough time to drift into a deeper trance. I usually use 10 steps counting down. Sometimes when I perceive a client needing more time; for example, the finger spreading was delayed, I would count down 20 steps instead.”

Dale went to a medium-sized room, unfurnished. Nobody else was there.

The beginning of such a session is usually super confusing to the person who experiences it, but also equally confusing for me the practitioner. However, my questions are the key elements here. Some questions can deepen the experience, some questions can open up the experience more, and some questions can unfortunately bring the client out of the hypnotic trance.

I was not sure if Dale’s subconscious mind took my instructions literally and took him through the stairway and the hallway into a room like that, or if it was a real room he walked into in a past life scene.

“Take an emotional temperature of the room. How does the room feel?” The subconscious mind remembers things emotionally, so that kind of question keeps the client in a hypnotic state.

“It feels… very sad,” Dale said.

Now we were getting somewhere. For all I knew, there had to be some reason for an empty room to feel sad.

I instructed Dale to come out of the door and describe the place from outside. That was when Dale disclosed this is a single-storey house on a “very beautiful mountain”, like a cabin, “I always like that mountain, so beautiful!” I had a feeling it was Dale, rather than a past life personality, speaking; and the mountain was a real mountain that Dale had been to.

Instead of having my suspicion verified, I decided to let the flow continue. The sadness of the room told the story: There used to be a simple family of three living here. The 12-year-old carefree daughter one day “contracted” an evil force spirit from a boar. The evil energy gradually took over the entire family. The joy or life force was gone. “It’s almost like the exorcist movies,” Dale commented, in disbelief. And he confirmed that none of these people was his past life. Eventually, all of them died and were buried under the house.

I thought there must be a reason for Dale to view this, so I asked him what happened to the evil-possessed boar.

“It just wanders around.”

I instructed Dale to confront it. Dale said he was very afraid of looking at the boar in the eyes, as if, like those three people living in the mountain house, his soul would be stolen by the boar. I activated my toolkit and my imagination to work with Dale on this. Eventually, Dale was able to confront the evil force in the boar.

Upon opening his eyes, Dale told me the mountain was a real one in Peru. “I felt such a connection with the mountain when I visited it there! So beautiful! But there was no house there when I visited!” Dale looked puzzled.

“There was no house there when you visited the mountain some years ago in this life, but maybe the house was there in the past. Since our session was a time-travel into the past. Or, maybe you were able to see what happened in the past. Maybe, your soul is connected with the mountain, that was why you kept thinking it was ‘so beautiful,’ I don’t think you meant only the physical beauty of the mountain.” Dale nodded his head eagerly. I boldly continued, “Maybe you are the guardian of the mountain, on your soul level. Where we went was not a typical past life, but it’s very timely for your journey in this life. You can call it a symbolic regression, or a soul’s timeless regression. Whatever it was, I feel it’s exactly what you needed at this time as Dale.”

Dale took a deep breath. “Exactly. That was exactly how I felt. I am so glad that you helped me confront the evil force.”

We finished the session by going back to the house and neutralizing the sad energy there.

“I have a feeling,” I spoke what came to my mind, “There is a shaman in you. It’s time to not be afraid.”

With a beam in his face, we both turned off the screen.

I sat in the semi-dark room quietly for a little longer, breathing. How many times when a client come for a structured past life regression, and the subconscious mind takes us on a symbolic journey? A few examples came to my mind. I knew when the clients trusted and went for it, at the end of the session, the symbols were all so easily decoded and the solutions to their current problems were revealed. When the clients insisted that they didn’t do it right, and insisted it had to be exactly the way that was portrayed in books like Brian Weiss’, they got more frustrated by their “incorporative” subconscious mind.

I also recalled about 13 years ago, I was doing regular hypnotherapy exchanges with a colleague Kore. Once she intended to bring me to a past life. I went somewhere else.

It was a wide-open field, mostly dry parched dirt. I was hiding, or more accurately, trying to hide. There was an urgency in my tone.

“You are hiding from…?” Kore urged.

“…people!” I was almost annoyed by Kore. Isn’t it obvious?! Why are you still asking? I have no time to answer. I felt a group of people were getting closer. Like any good hypnotherapist, Kore didn’t stop asking. “You are hiding from people because…?”

I had no idea of the reason until she asked. “I came here to make a difference; but now instead, they are going to try to make a difference in me, and I have to hide.”

I don’t know how Kore understood it. Those words came out of my mouth 13 years ago and profoundly surprised me. Just like Dale’s experience, it was my subconscious symbolism, to reveal, to me, my soul’s journey. The language I used to help illustrate to Dale was that through the traumas on the Earth reincarnations, the soul has a dent, in regression sessions like his, it’s for us to be aware of such a dent, so we’ll have the opportunity to smooth it out, to heal it.

In my case, “I came here to make a difference.” I knew I had light, and it was exciting for me to bring the light. But instead of shining my light, I came here, aware of its darkness, and felt that compliance was the game to play here, I got scared. So, instead of changing the world, I am afraid to be changed by the world. In this life, I am very aware of such fear. It holds me back. It makes me play small. In a sense, “hiding” becomes a game I play. And oh, aren’t I so good at playing it!

Sitting in my room, looking at the dark screen where Dale’s face was shown, I breathed a little more. Thank you, Dr. Dale.