Non-Linear Memory of a Past Life

“One reason I love what I do is that I still get surprised at what comes up in a session, no matter how much I think I know.” As Clara was getting ready to settle into the hypnosis part of our session, for past life regression, I said to her, “For example, someone would come to see me for fear of water, it’s easy to assume that this person was drowned to death in another lifetime; or someone has a fear of height, it’s easy to assume this person died in another life from falling. Many times it was so, but sometimes it was not so, and then when the regression ends, it would all make sense, in a very different way.”

Clara nodded her head. Her body had already reclined a little bit on the couch. I meant to take the pressure off her by saying that, so that her conscious thinking mind could get out of the way. When there is nothing to expect, we can be taken by surprise and there is no need to think much about what is happening.

Clara was newly introduced to the idea of reincarnation. Growing up in a South American country, she never thought about it twice, until about two years ago, her friend lent her a book on Past Lives, which piqued her interest. She was living in Mexico at the time, so she referred her sister to see me first.

That was how I heard of Clara before I even met her. Clara told me she wanted to work on being more assertive and confident when communicating with people. I asked her to give me some examples of being assertive and confident. Clara said at home, for example, she’d like to go travelling with her husband more. He travels all over the world for work. But she found it hard to voice that desire, especially having to take care of a sick dog. There are other family gatherings that when confronted, instead of saying what she needed to say, she’d just walk away and remain quiet. Another case where she needed to assert herself was with her mother-in-law, who never really accepted her as coming from a different culture.

I asked Clara what made her feel there were past lives involved with what she shared with me. Clara said she was not very sure, but she was just curious after reading the book.

We agreed to go for past life regression directly, instead of working on the assertiveness directly. Clara told me she had a concern that she might not be able to be hypnotized. I said to her past life regression is quite easy. The harder part would be to trust what would come up. “It often feels like you are making it up,” I told her, “As every answer you give me by-passes the conscious analytical thinking mind. That part of the mind will tell you that you are making it up as we go along. I’ll invite you not to engage with that part of you. Just flow with it. Continue to ‘make it up’, because whatever you are thinking you are making up will have an ease to it, rather than thinking hard on how not to make it up. And, sometimes, when I get ahead of myself, some questions I ask, if in the moment you don’t know the answer, the best answer to me is ‘I don’t Know.’”

Thus Clara settled herself in, and went to a favourite place by a lake, with a big tree to her left. Guided by her unconscious mind, we went on from there to a past life.

The first scene Clara stepped into was in front of a cottage. She was female, standing there, with a long dress and an apron. It turned out she lived in that cottage as a 22-year-old Amy all by herself. Inside the cottage, there was a fireplace. She immediately smelt soup being cooked.

I instructed Amy to go to a moment when she interacted with another person. She went to a market in the village. Amy carried a basket, in which she had bought some carrots.

Walking down the market, Amy said she was a little scared. I asked, “You are scared because…?“

“Because people don’t notice me. They don’t see me.” Amy became a little more distressed, “As if they don’t know I exist.”

My first suspicion was that maybe Amy had already died, but she herself didn’t know it yet. I had come across past life regression experiences like this before. Or, should I say: Past-Death Regression?

But I decided to flow with Amy for now, letting her tell me until I had a better clue. I instructed Amy to look around, see if there was anyone at all she felt friendlier than others in the market. Amy found a chubby, older lady selling bread. I instructed Amy to go to her and say hi.

The bakery lady said hi back to her. Since that lady could see her, I knew it was not a ghost regression session.

It turned out the bread lady knew her and her family. Interacting with the lady helped Amy remember her family. She grew up in the same cottage with her mother and father, who were both angry and withdrawn. “They never talked with each other. Father was strong, strict, and kept everything to himself. He drank a lot. Mother never talked either. They were both angry. I was very sad and scared. They don’t notice me. They always disregard me.”

Amy’s mother died while Amy was still quite young. Her father went on a journey all by himself and never came back. Amy never learned skills to relate and interact with others.

It reminded me of Clara’s parents. She told me her mother never had a voice. Her father made all the decisions. Sometimes history repeats itself, in different lifetimes.

Things started to change when Amy turned 25. She met a guy, who turned out to be her husband in this life. And she had a chance to develop social skills, and enjoy a family.

Amy died at an old age, in a rocking chair, with three grandchildren around her.

“I see what you mean when you said it would feel like I was making it up.” Upon re-emerge, Clara commented, still having struggle to fully open her eyes. “It just came to me. I don’t know from where. Like, the information came from nowhere.”

“So do you think you made it all up?”

“I don’t know… What do you think?”

I reminded Clara that she immediately smelt the soup being cooked when she walked into the cottage. That kind of information came quite directly. “And”, Clara added, “I heard Romania in my head. I think that was where it took place.”

At one point, I had thought about asking for that information, but decided it was not very relevant to what we were working on, and we were running out of time in the session as the intake took longer than usual. But regardless, Clara heard the answer.

“Also, the emotions,” I said, “such as being scared in the market even though you didn’t find anything to scare you about, were another indication for the validity of the past life regression. I asked you first what happened to your mother, and you said you didn’t know. It was only through the bread lady we found out more of her. If you made up the stories, it would not be hard to make up what happened to her.”

Clara was in deep thought. After a past life regression session is more or less like after a dream. The scene starts to fade, but still deeply holds our attention. After all, Clara’s past life as Amy was one of those “surprising” past lives. Amy’s life had two phases, before and after meeting her husband. After meeting her husband, with his loving help, things became normal. Amy could have a normal life. But before, her parents’ silent treatment and living in fear were such strong imprints in her that Clara couldn’t speak up and voice out, tapping into that energy in the current life. There was a big attachment to fear on that.

Sometimes the memories collapse. The intensity of emotions in the first part of Amy’s life and the similarity with the early family life of Clara, made it feel hard for her to speak up. And her subconscious mind didn’t remember the memories sequentially, as Amy already moved on to living a normal life in her later years.

Amy was able to speak her mind even when she had disagreements with her husband.

I reminded Clara, “If Amy could transform like that, the ability is still in you. The strength in her is the strength in you, and you can choose to draw on that now. You get to choose what you, Clara, draw on from the life of Amy, before 25, or after 25. Remember whenever she had something to say, after 25, she certainly knew how to say it. Which phase of Amy’s life would you choose to hold to your heart moving forward from now on?”

“After 25 years old Amy.”

“I think that’s a good choice.”

Clara’s life is about to “normalize” as well, since she just got married. Regardless of her mother-in-law’s disagreement, and regardless of how close her husband is towards his mother, he insisted on marrying her, and Clara could already feel the opening in her.

I marvelled at the intricacy of our minds. When I first told Clara, no matter how many times I had done past life regressions, I still got surprised by what came up, I didn’t necessarily mean for hers to be the case.

It all makes sense, in a creative subconscious way.

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2 Responses

  1. Corina says:

    Well I am from Romania. Soup, cottage, market, basket, even some details about her parents sounds very realistic to me. We love soup, every day (we just call it “ciorba”). The whole story seem very realistic. Onmy maybe her name was Ani, not Amy or Ana Maria, which could be shortend as Amy. But as this is a details soemtimes I know name memories can have less accuracy in this type of memories. It could still be her name, the onlu thing it would not be such a typical name, especially in the past in the country side. But who knows.

    • Kemila says:

      Thank you Corina for the comment. The name may as well be Ani! In regression, the names still need to go through the current mechanism of the person’s mind so the mind could only process a name in the language that person speaks. I sometimes ask my clients to “spell” a name rather than “pronouncing” it, but then “Amy” seemed to be easy enough for me the hypnotherapist to assume, so I didn’t ask her to spell the name, but your comment is very valuable here. Thank you!

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