Maggie van Staveren, L.C.S.W., C.Ht.
It is important that we take a second look at our work as past-life therapists. We have learned a lot over the past few years. We are more aware of who we are, who our clients are, and more aware of the nature of our work as past-life therapists. Perhaps there is more than one technique to use with our clients. Now that we know more, let’s take a look at rescripting.
We and our clients are spiritual thinking beings in human form. The very word “man” means “thinker” in its Sanskrit origins. We think and by our thinking we create. Our greatest power is to choose our thinking. There is that part of us, soul, that can instantly communicate and create by thought.
As spiritual beings we live many lives in human form for a purpose. The purpose is to experience everything in this dimension and thereby learn the soul lessons we all have to learn. In our human existence we have experiences and make choices which have an influence on our beliefs about ourselves, other people, and our environment. Our beliefs are really a construct in which we can safely operate under current conditions. This psychological construct protects us and keeps us safe in our environment until we are ready to depart these safe boundaries by new information or understanding.
As spiritual beings we live many lives in human form for a purpose. The purpose is to experience everything in this dimension and thereby learn the soul lessons we all have to learn. In our human existence we have experiences and make choices which have an influence on our beliefs about ourselves, other people, and our environment. Our beliefs are really a construct in which we can safely operate under current conditions. This psychological construct protects us and keeps us safe in our environment until we are ready to depart these safe boundaries by new information or understanding.
As I change my thinking and expand my beliefs, I grow and change, and others in my life are affected. As a healthy human being I have done enough regressions to know that it is taking me many times in human form to learn what I need to learn. I’m a slow learner, so to speak. As I learn and grow, I have come to the belief that all my lives are happening at the same time. I visit them in my dreams, experience them in regressions and have discovered that my own therapeutic work benefits others.
Since we are spiritual beings, the work we do as past-life therapists is transpersonal in nature. We work with the inner and the outer: the spiritual and the human. Our goal is Union, with One and with each other. Dr. Hazel Denning put it very well in her article “Rescripting: An Opinion” in the Journal, V. III (1) Spring, 1988: “…love is the goal of all our lives.” Our work as therapists and counselors is to assist and empower each person to improve their human lives and learn their soul lessons to eventually become One-Love.
That we can assist our clients towards becoming One-Love is the beauty of past-life therapy. In the hypnotic state we invite our clients to let go of their misleading brain thinking and access the greater Soul-Mind. Through the Soul-Mind we can get the memories of possibly all of our lives. We are able to access the events, thinking, choices, and feelings of these lives. The Soul-Mind also has the wisdom of all lives, our purpose in this lifetime, and soul lessons learned or not learned. We can improve the current life by getting understanding from the Wisdom of how an event in the past is affecting our client in the current life. Our work, as transpersonal, uses the Inner to get information about how choices made have interfered in learning soul lessons. It can also be used to find out what new choices can be made or how a certain situation needs to be seen with the soul lesson in mind.
In my work as a past-life therapist I rely on the Mind of the client, which is joined to my Mind during trance therapy, for the information needed to allow a person to make a new choice based on the understanding given by their Wisdom. I use this information to encourage the client in viewing their life differently or to assist a client to change the events in their past life with the new thinking, demonstrating a change in choice in line with soul learning. This new choice possibly expands their belief system and gives them more understanding.
The following case demonstrates what I’m trying to say about the use of Soul-Mind information. The broader understanding is used to rescript the event. It reveals that going back and changing thinking and behavior of the past-life personality has simultaneously affected the client in 1999.
The client (M) is a person who was working as a hospital body therapist and was doing part-time past-life therapy with the goal of becoming a full-time past-life therapist. She had doubts about herself, and stated she had a fear of being ridiculed for doing transpersonal work. Something down deep prevented her from seeking past-life therapy clients. It was becoming more difficult for her to market her new career.
In M’s past-life session we find a female (C) in another time, walking down a road, feeling dejected, with a shawl around her shoulders. She is chased by a crowd who throw rocks at her. She was being evicted from the village for healing the sick in unorthodox ways.
The therapist (T) discovers that C, in trance, hears voices and gets healing instructions from them. C has accessed her Wisdom which begins with a Light appearing.
T: What is the Light saying to you?
C: Light touches my heart. Light is around me. It acknowledges that healing is truth. No falseness in voices. No falseness in healing.
She pauses, as though listening, and says:
C: It is changed.
T: What changed?
C: At first I did it quietly. As I began to do it more openly and saying nothing, those that didn’t understand began to criticize and question what I was doing. I wasn’t able to explain it. I only knew I did it. I didn’t explain. As ridicule increased I withdrew and did it more secretly. I didn’t explain to them what I did and how I was doing it, so they could understand. They resent me.
T: If you had explained?
C: I should have asked the voices how to teach. I should have asked the voices how to give them understanding. When it first began, they were just silent onlookers like a husband to the wife or a mother to a child. If I could have explained to them what I did and how I did it, then they would have been part of it. Then they would have had understanding too.
T: How do you feel about yourself now?
C: I would like to do it over again and ask the voices to help me teach and give the others understanding so that I can stay and don’t have to leave.
T: Can you do that? You were expelled from the community. The deed has been done?
C: There is that part of me that knows I can change it.
T: Do you want to do that?
C: Yes.
T: Go back to the first instance when you could have told them what you were doing.
C: Female is sick on bed. They bring her to me. Her husband is with her. I quiet myself. I listen and wait and know when the Light reaches me. The Light that Is. I ask from help from Voices. She has pain in her head. Before I touch her I explain to the husband that I pray and when I pray I get an answer to my prayer. I ask his consent to do what the answer to my prayer tells me. As he squeezes my hands he says “Yes, I love her. Please help her.” I tell him to come and hold her hand so she knows she has his approval. I put my hands on his wife’s head.
(C explains to the husband in a way that he can accept what she is doing. By asking his permission she includes him in the healing process of his wife.)
T: What happens now?
C: People are gathered outside. I go outside and they look at me. I ask them if there is something I can do. They say “What do you do?” They’re asking. They’re open, curious and want to learn. They don’t know what I do and yet they see. The husband tells them that his wife has no more headaches.
T: Go to the end of the day.
C: I am home. I now have expanded what I do. I now heal and teach. I can now reach more people and also help them do what I do. There will be more who understand. I can stay now.
(Note how the change is naturally affecting the villagers and has also expanded her work as a healer and a teacher).
T: Ask the Light how the change in how you do your work will help a descendent of yours named M (name of client in present) in the future who is being ridiculed by others for her healing work.
(T wants to know how this rescript will affect the clients in 1999. The past-life personality (C), connected to Wisdom, gives information).
C: I ask the Light what this means to M. For M it means she no longer needs to be afraid. Opened self up. When people ask about her work she has now opened herself up to an opportunity to answer questions and teach others as they ask about her work. Doesn’t need to be afraid of being rejected. She now sees it differently. She knows they truly want to understand. Seeing it that way she is now able to answer questions and to teach them when they come.
The therapist now knows that M, the client, has information which will help her understand that she will not be ridiculed as she helps others understand the nature of her work.
At this point, we know that M has an understanding on a deep level of how she needs to see others when they ask her questions about her work. She no longer needs to be afraid of being ridiculed or attacked, but knows that when people ask questions about her work they are really asking and seeking understanding of the work she does. This is a change in her thinking.
It is these kinds of cases that helped give me understanding of the benefits of rescripting. I see the use of rescripting as appropriate in my work with clients as a past-life therapist.
I don’t use rescripting all the time; at times I use reframing. I use both techniques as a natural outcome of information given by the Soul-Mind of the client. I agree with Dr. Chet Snow when he says “…At this level all experience is apparently viewed by the mind as simultaneous, and therefore rescripting is not changing a fixed past (or future) but is a cognitive reordering of individual awareness of events.” (Give Journal citation).
As a professional past-life therapist I feel strongly that rescripting is as appropriate a technique to use as reframing because both techniques ask for a change in thinking as indicated by the Wisdom of a spiritual thinking being. In the trance state there is no time or space, all is in the moment, in the Now. Yes, we need to be professional and work as an assist to the client with their best interest at heart. As therapists it is our obligation to learn to be in the Mind, connecting to the Mind of the client during our past-life therapy session, to get the best possible results for the client.