This article on Past Life Therapy originally appeared as a two part series in the January-February & July-August 1998 issues of OPEN EXCHANGE. In this article, Dr. Pollack discusses how past lives can affect us in our current lifetime and how past life therapy can assist us in resolving long standing issues.
Tom was unhappy with his life. He just didn’t seem to be able to connect with people, to have close relationships, to really open to others. He had done various types of traditional psychotherapy, with no significant lasting changes. Out of curiosity he came to see me to determine if there were any connections between his current life problems and prior lifetimes. During the session, Tom visited a lifetime as an Indian about 6,000 years ago in what is now Peru. During that regression, Tom discovered that the way he lived his life back then was a direct parallel to his current lifetime alone, separate, disconnected. Upon identifying the causal factors and completing some healing processes in the past lifetime, Tom returned to this life feeling very different. Soon after this session he began making close friends and embarked upon the first significant love relationship of his life.
When Susan was less than 3 years old she came across a history book open to a picture of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Becoming very excited, she began to correctly name every one of the signers. At age 7 Susan visited Philadelphia for the first time with her parents. While they were walking through the old part of the city, Susan started leading her parents around and pointed out various buildings with Colonial American history.
I injured my low back in a sky diving incident 25 years ago. Over the years the discomfort and pain I experienced became worse and worse, limiting my activities rather significantly. In early 1996, while the client in a series of past life therapy sessions, I discovered that I had lived at least three prior lifetimes in which I had been killed by being knifed or speared in the low back. After processing and healing the past life experiences my back began to heal. While the actual physical damage I did to my back is still present and I have exercise some caution when undertaking strenuous activity. I am now free of the debilitating chronic pain I had experienced for over 20 years.
Are these just stories made up by the deeper mind, like dreams? I don’t have these answers. I know my back is better. I know that little Susan could identify the people in the painting she saw in the book, while she was still in diapers and with limited language development. I don’t think these answers are really important. If someone experiences some kind of healing or resolution of a problem, does it matter?
It is important to distinguish between Past Life Regression and Past Life Therapy. Regression is the process of guiding someone to recover past life memories, usually just for curiosity, not healing. Past Life Therapy is the process of guiding the individual through resolution and healing of the past life issues/events that arise in the regression. Belief in past lives or reincarnation is not necessary for the process of past life therapy to work; it is not required of either the client or the therapist.
How Do Past Life Memories Come to Us?
Past life memories may come to us in many ways: the deja vu experience of going somewhere you’ve never been before and having it feel very familiar (or the same experience, positively or negatively, about a person you’ve never met before); recurrent dreams of a specific place, person or event; or an unexplained fear or phobia. Quite often, people who fear water, public speaking or heights, to name only a few, uncover traumatic past life experiences that explain them. As these traumas are explored and resolved in past life therapy, the phobias often cease to exist.
Most PL therapists believe that these past life expe riences are more than dreamlike unconscious metaphors, but rather, are actual occurrences that have been recorded in a deeper, subconscious part of ourselves that survives beyond the time of a single life span. Just as significant events of childhood can affect our choices and patterns as adults, even though we don’t remember them, ancient memories in previous existences can have the same prayerful impact on our current lifetimes: choice of parents, choices we make in our lives, people we are drawn towards, even physical ailments of our bodies.
How Do Past Lives Affect Us Today?
People often find that past life patterns (such as those described in part 1 of this article) can influence a person’s behavior, attitudes, likes and dislikes, relationships, phobias, and virtually every aspect of life. Past life therapy techniques can assist a person to uncover the events in pastlives which cause the unwanted and non-useful behaviors and chronic problems in this life. Once the cause of a problem or behavior is discovered, it can be resolved and healed. The bad news is that the more unpleasant the experience or painful the emotion connected with the past life, the stronger the memory trace. The good news is that the stronger the memory trace, the more accessible it is for resolution.
Michael induces past-life
trances in class participants.
Many people reject the idea of looking into a past lifetime for problems as they claim to have enough troubles in the present life. This sounds reasonable; however, in clinical practice, clients discover that present life conflicts and problems often stem from traumatic events in prior lifetimes. When we explore present issues and conflicts in regression therapy sessions, the problems nearly always (some regression therapists say as often as 90%- 98%) result from painful events in what seem to be earlier lifetimes.
Resolution of past life trauma can ease or resolve presentlife conflicts. The objective of past life therapy is to eliminate the residue retained from prior lifetime experiences. Healing in the present moment involves resolving the unfinished business of the past which continues to influence a person’s emotional balance. Such unfinished business can be from a past life or from earlier in this lifetime. This opens the way for a fuller experience of the present moment, the current lifetime.
Experience has proven that many emotional problems and conflicts can be quickly and effectively resolved through past life regression therapy, usually in far fewer sessions than with conventional talk therapy, which often treats the symptoms, but not the root cause.
What Happens In A Past Life Session?
Normally, in a regression session the client is not directed into a past life. They are guided to locate the source or cause of the problems or conditions they describe. Their own inner mind reveals the time, place and circumstances which can feed the present life situation.
It is the task of the past life therapist to guide clients in an unbiased and non judgmental manner in unraveling the mystery of past life memories and to see the bigger picture, the spiritual meaning, of the pastlife experience. His experiential learning and understanding can bring immediate and permanent relief of present life problems. During a regression, the assumptions, decisions, conclusions, and judgments surrounding the event, the other persons invoked, and the death itself are explored, as this mental residue can forth basis of beliefs which contaminate subsequent lifetimes, including the current life. New statements of belief can be substituted for old, invalid ones.
The entire meaning of an event or lifetime can be changed. When the processing is completed, there often is no emotional charge on the formerly traumatic events. Then, when the scene is described again, the client will no longer experience any of the physical sensations in the body that were formerly associated with the problem or conflict.
Recall an unpleasant event or series of events from your childhood. As a result of these events you began to make some decisions about yourself and your world, based on the limited perspective of a young child. These became some of your belief systems. Now, imagine if there had been a big brother or sister or some other adult present during those events who told you the truth about what was happening; gave you a more rational adult perspective? Can you imagine how different your decisions/beliefs might have been, and how those different decisions/beliefs might serve you positively today? In large part, this is what can take place during a past life therapy session.
Among the issues/problems/conflicts that often can be successfully treated with past life regression therapy are: unfounded fears and phobias; eating disorders; relationship issues; physical ailments; recovering lost talents; and finding a purpose in life. In addition, many people experience regression to explore lifetimes they lived place in history that is of interest to them, simply out of curiosity.
Past life therapy is essentially almost unlimited in its application to human condition.
With the knowledge and wisdom gained through rough past life regression therapy and the power of forgiveness, the emotional leftovers of past times can be healed. Then a person can live and love more fully hi the p resent moment. Past life therapy is a powerful, safe, swift direct approach to resolving issues, and the results offered are immediate and lasting.
Copyright© 1998, Dr. Michael C. Pollack, Ph.D., CCHT
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