Nancy L. Eubel, MBA, MHt, QHHT, Rt
Abstract
In this article Nancy shares her experience of remembering both a past-life vow and a traumatic imprint while attending the 2nd World Congress on Regression Therapy in India. Both the vow and imprint were created in a former incarnation after the death of her husband and when she was subsequently thrown on his funeral pyre by other villagers. She leads you through the transformative process of clearing them beginning with an intuitive message she received about the impending death of her current-life husband. It continues with his subsequent passing and then his materializing in front of her while she was visiting the Taj Mahal with others attending the conference. During a group regression led by Hans TenDam on the last day of the World Congress she relived the funeral pyre experience and was guided in taking the necessary steps to release it. The final piece was later completed through a shamanic healing. Although this is a personal journey, it exemplifies the power of past-life experiences on our current life, the lessons they can teach us, and the potential for positive change they create.
Past-life remembrances can contain more than one element or layer of symbolism. They can include physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual components—but can also include past-life and pre-birth vows and energy cords that connect one life to the next and attach one person to another. My personal experience of the play out of events after Frank, my husband of 22 years, died suddenly of a heart attack was one of those rich opportunities. The full story appeared in A.R.E.’s July/August 2007 issue of Venture Inward magazine titled “Love Manifested at the Taj Majal.” This is an excerpt from that article that speaks directly to life lessons unfolding in interlocking pieces of my life moving me closer and closer to resolution of a pattern that was ready to by healed and a vow that did not serve my higher calling.
During the days that followed Frank’s passing I heard messages from him in my mind’s ear. I was not surprised to “hear” from Frank. As a student of the Cayce readings and a hypnotherapist I did not need to be convinced of the continuation of life after death. Communication from him reinforced my belief in our connection through the ages.
After his death I had an absolute knowing why, in past times, widows of India joined their husbands on the funeral pyre—a traditional Hindu custom called sati (now outlawed in India, but still practiced in some rural areas, which I later learned was often not by the widow’s choice.) Initially I thought that all widows had this same understanding, but later learned that it was my experience, not theirs. Why the knowledge came to me then was not to be revealed until later.
I continued to conduct my hypnotherapy practice and was amazed at the potential for healing through past-life regression. In August 2005, I presented a workshop at the National Association of Transpersonal Hypnotherapist’s convention and met Dr. Sunny Satin another presenter who was a trainer of clinical hypnotherapy and past-life regression around the world. Through him I learned of the upcoming World Congress for Past-Life and Regression Therapies to be held in Delhi, India in March 2006, a little more than a year after Frank’s death and some thereafter registered for not only the Congress, but also for a past-life regression training course taught prior to the start. This would give me about a week and a half in India—an exciting thought because I had always felt for some unknown reason that going to India had to be earned.
In preparation for the trip I read a book about Indian customs and discovered that widows are not looked upon favorably. They are considered to be bad luck and a burden on society. There are movements to change how these husbandless women are treated, but I read that they still undergo humiliation and ostracism. This triggered something deep within me that made me very fearful. When it came time to leave for Delhi I decided to put my wedding ring back on, and not let anyone know that I was a widow, so as not to be shunned. Usually quite organized when taking a big trip, this time I just threw whatever clothing seemed appropriate into my luggage.
I was fortunate to have a private room at the Tivoli Gardens Hotel in Dehli were the events were occurring. I even had a private patio enclosed by high, wooden doors with a bench, table, and beautiful flower petals strewn on the stone floor. It was the wedding season so every evening there was dancing and fireworks at the hotel. The women were dressed in beautiful saris in all the colors of the rainbow.
I was the only American in the past-life regression class – all but one other was Indian. I told no one of being a widow. My clothes, as I discovered after unpacking, were almost all black. So, here I was in the midst of women in vibrant colored clothing with beautiful designs, wearing widow’s black.
After the class ended, the Congress began and several ARE members arrived, some even from Virginia Beach. After the opening ceremony (where we were showered with flower petals as we entered the room) the first event was a bus trip to the Taj Mahal in Agra. Although I was extremely careful with the water and what I ate, the night before the trip I became ill. When I got on the bus the next morning I was even more reclusive because I was not feeling well.
Time has a different essence in India than it does in the States, and everything proceeds at its own rate, not necessarily at the prescheduled time. The trip that was to take two hours took an agonizing (because of my physical condition) 4 ½. We arrived in Agra in time for lunch. I ate with the people from Virginia Beach, and asked them not to mention to anyone that I was a widow. I was becoming even more paranoid about being found out.
Finally, we were at the Taj Mahal, and I began to explore this magnificent place with a couple of ARE members from North Carolina, Janice Lane and Dr. Linda Ferguson. Although the Taj Mahal is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, I knew very little about its history. The Taj (as it is called in India) is a place of the heart chakra – a place built as a testament to undying love. It is also heavy with the grief of losing a loved one. The Mughal Emperor Shāh Jahān commissioned its construction in 1631 as a mausoleum for his second wife, Arjumand Bano Begum, known as Mumtāz, who died after giving birth to their fourteenth child. The Shah is also interred there.
We walked toward the crypt which is at the far end, meandering our way through the gardens. People were passing us in both directions. One of the American men crossed in front of me dressed like Frank often did, in a blue button-down oxford cloth shirt and a floppy Australian hat, and, poof, there was Frank!!! His manifestation didn’t last long, but there he was at the Taj Mahal, seemingly in the flesh and blood. I was stunned and could barely breathe as we continued on to the mausoleum. Suddenly, there he was again! He walked past me, and then he was gone. By now I was in shock. Finally, I was inside – inside the heart of this place built as a monument to everlasting love – love through all time. Thankfully it was dark, so I was able to regain a little bit of my composure. As we exited and looked down at the Yamuna River this sacred river seemed to take on some of my pain.
The journey back to Delhi was seemed interminable as I was needing solitude to process all of the emotions that had been building and now were raw as a result of just having seen Frank, not once, but twice. Their intensity continued to escalate. During the following days I found myself withdrawing more and more from the other participants as I went deeper and deeper within, but nevertheless changes were occurring. I found myself juggling my clothes to bring in color and soften the black.
One of the final workshops I participated in was intended to find and release past life experiences in the body. As we were led into a deep healing past-life regression I found myself suddenly in a village in India in a former time. My husband (Frank in this life) had died, and I was a widow. The villagers were shunning me. Then I actually felt their hands on the right side of my head and shoulder pushing me onto his funeral pyre!!!! It was terrifying. No wonder I understood why I had the knowledge of sati. As this was happening I realized that their hands were on my head at the exact place where I have experienced TMJ (Temporo-Mandibular Joint disorder) pain and headaches! Whenever, consciously or unconsciously I fall into the mindset of the victim in this life, I activate this past-life pattern and weakness in my right temple and jaw: I respond to tension and feeling out of control by gritting my teeth and internalizing it.
Once having recognized not only the cause and the pattern, it was clear what I was here to do, to heal the mindset of being a victim expressed in this prior life as being shunned, gritting my teeth, and accepting my fate as a widow. Additionally, I decided to clear the vow made in that lifetime to never leave Frank, as it benefited neither one of us. That night I asked for guidance. The answer was that I had to tell someone at the Congress that I was a widow. Okay, I could do that.
Of course, as that was my intention the opportunity presented itself the next morning—the very last day of the Congress. At breakfast a gentle woman from Denmark joined me, and it was quite natural to tell her of my husband’s death. She was quite kind and expressed her concern with her heart and did not ask many questions. That was easy…
I was then guided to take the next step, the big one, and tell an Indian man that I was a widow. That evening on the way to the closing ceremonies I encountered Dr. Sunny Satin (an Indian man) and Walter Semkiw, M.D. from San Francisco. During our conversation it was very natural to tell them that I was moving back to California after the death of my husband. Amazing – I was neither shunned nor thrown onto a fire. I survived!
The next day I had all to myself to finish the healing. When I awoke I got up and, without thinking, combed my hair to the opposite side of where I had combed it my whole life, indicating a reversal in thinking. I sat on the bench in the patio for most of the morning I talked out loud to Frank. As I poured out my feelings the words flowed like beautiful poetry, quite unlike the way I normally speak. They seemed to match the lovely flower petals at my feet.
I left India the next evening knowing that I had completed that which I came there to do. After I returned home I became very sick for almost a week as the body still had work to do. It is the densest energy so it had to take its own time to purge each cell of the old contract and patterns so that it would not be replicated by new cells. When it was done I put my black clothes to rest.
How was it that Frank could show himself to me even if it was only briefly? In God’s Other Door, Hugh Lynn Cayce explained that spirit communication is controlled by the mutual desire of both the spirit and the person in the physical body. Attunement on both planes is the key. In one reading, Edgar Cayce said that “That there is continued consciousness is evidenced, ever, by….the ability of entities to project or to make impressions upon the consciousness of sensitive or the like.” 1472-2 This reading also said, “When the body (material) attunes self to that plane wherein the sensuous consciousness is in obeisance to the laws of physical or material, and the spiritual or astral laws are effective, those of the astral plane may communicate, in thought, in power, in form. What form, then do such bodies assume? The desired form as is built and made by that individual in its experience through the material plane….Hence a necessity of a physical experience, that the desires that build may be made, changed, or acted upon.” 5756-4 Clearly Frank’s desire to help me, and mine to purge the energy of the vow and the emotional charge of this past-life enabled him to manifest in the material at the precise time it was needed.
This was not a mental exercise. Each pointer along the way: the energy of sati, the messages, Dr. Sunny Satin, the book about customs, Frank’s appearance at The Taj, and even the illness and the black clothes, were all stepping stones to bring these patterns and agreement from the subconscious to consciousness to release them. This is our work in the material world.