My New Year Present

Who’d think that I’d work on the New Year’s Day? No me. But I had forgotten to block my online calendar, which has become a public space online, for that day off. Or maybe I simply assumed that nobody would want to book a hypnotherapy session on this day, therefore didn’t bother.

Obviously that was not the case for Heather and Linda (Not their real names).

So it was too late. Surprise! I found that on the New Year’s Day, I had to work, happily.

Both of them indicated that they wanted a Past Life Regression. So on this first day of a new year, before moving forward in time, two women want to go back, to view what they were.

My partner Tim is sitting around as usual, reading his novel. He has become a “professional reader”. There are things he needs to arrange with our upcoming trip to Morocco, but he seems to be too relaxed about it. I’m telling him that my second client may bring a friend, who may stay afterwards and become my third client of the day. Tim is saying nothing else but an “Okay”. And he continues with his book reading.

I sigh. And get myself ready for the first client, on the first day of the year.

Heather is only 23 years old. Her eyes, skin and hair are all on the golden colour side, shining healthy bright. Some inner changes in the past few months have created some curiosity which has led her to feeling the urge for a past life regression. Heather also tells me that she has had this relationship that she couldn’t end, nor could she continue with. She wanted to let it go, but it bothers her. The man actually served as a catalyst for the new direction that she is now on, but he is not following that direction himself. All is too confusing. What unfinished business did they have?

On the other hand, Heather feels that her healing ability is being awakened. And that ability is very powerful. I couldn’t help but notice Heather’s voice – a very clear beautiful bell sound voice. I ask Heather what her creative expression is. She tells me she makes a living by being a nanny, “It suits me, because I’m very good with children. I suppose being the eldest child of six made me a natural nanny.” Before moving here, Heather worked with the elderly in an Alzheimer patient’s facility.

And lastly Heather says she also plays music, sings and writes.

Heather quickly slips into a past life as Isabel in the late 19th century. She worked in a bakery, her family’s business. She was married with Joseph who worked with a mining company, his family’s business. They met each other at a young age, when they were attracted to each other, and shared dreams with each other – Isabel dreamed to have her own café, rather than sharing a bakery with her parents, brother and sister. Joseph dreamed to become a fiction writer.

They got married. And had two children. Joseph became inattentive, unpleasant, unsatisfied, and complaining. Isabel became passive, upset, and unhappy – a typical dis-empowered woman for that time. Their dreams drifted farther and farther away from their day-to-day life. Isabel has been waiting for Joseph to change, or to initiate the change. And then an accident happened, and Joseph died.

Isabel went on to live till 86 years old.

When Heather comes out of hypnosis, she can’t believe how ordinary her past life was. What about the super power healing ability past life?

I tell Heather normally we don’t go where our ego mind thinks we should go, we go where the inner mind, or the soul wants us to go. Nothing is not extraordinary for the soul. There is a great learning in the life of Isabel. Having courage to speak up, instead of waiting for others to give us permission to live up to our own dreams and aspirations. Is this still not true even in this life as Heather?

Maybe Heather is right, she does have some “extraordinary” past lives, even some famous ones, but that’s irrelevant in this moment according to her soul. Besides, on the first past life regression, people normally don’t go to a traumatic past life – Just look at what we did to healers in our human history.

The second client Linda is 53 years old. She is from China and has lived in Canada for over 30 years. She insists that I hypnotize her in Mandarin, even though her English is very fluent. Linda says her husband doesn’t believe in this past life stuff. I ask her, “Is that all right for you that your husband does not believe in it?”

Linda thinks for a while, and says, “I assume it doesn’t matter.”

Regardless of being a Chinese practicing Tibetan Buddhism insisting speaking Mandarin in the session, Linda quickly drifts to a French past life. The scenes come very vividly to her. She can describe people’s clothes and the room layout in details, yet there are no person names coming up in the session. Linda very soon identifies the French woman’s father as Linda’s husband. Father was an influential figure in the area. He arranged his daughter’s marriage, with a young man who was not sure if he wanted to marry her, but did it under the same pressure from his father. There was tension and awkwardness in the marriage, until they had children, one after another. Very soon, four children and the husband became the French woman’s entire world. In that life she lived till 80.

Like Heather, Linda is surprised on what comes up in the session. she thought she’d go to a life as monk or something with religion. The French woman was too “ordinary”. I ask Linda if she can see the parallels with this life. Linda says yes, both internally and externally.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?”

Linda leaves with newly found pieces for her current marriage.

Two women, thirty years apart, the same lesson in their past lives. I marvel how similar they are and how coincidental that is on this New Year’s Day for me to witness. Wait a minute. Maybe they are my New Year’s Day present, sent by grace!

It is easy to assume that to speak up for oneself is to argue, to make oneself right, but it is simpler than that. To speak up for oneself is to live one’s life by his/her own design, no matter how wrong or how right that is, because the point is not about right or wrong, but what works for one’s own life. To speak up for oneself is not to wait for permission from anyone, it is to give yourself permission and to take actions according to your own design, regardless of the circumstances or how others think.

I take a deep breath, and get on with the rest of my day, wondering what a gift these two new clients have brought me. For the moment, I leave Tim alone; knowing all is well if I decide it is so.

“Can I talk with you about Morocco?” Tim walks into my office.

I stop typing on the keyboard, raise my head, smile – oh life is so full of surprises, “Certainly. What can we talk about Morocco?”