Article: Some Concerns About Rescripting – Janet Cunningham (Is.17)

Janet Cunningham, Ph.D.

The technique of rescripting is not one that I use, and I have never had a clear explanation of its benefits, although I have discussed it with colleagues who use the method. As I understand, rescripting grows out of quantum physics and current thinking that all time exists now; there is no past, present or future, there is only the eternal Now.

My concern for rescripting in past-life therapy comes from three primary positions:

  1. Even though all time may exist now, the fact is that in this physical dimension and in physical bodies we do exist in time; time is a truth of our lives in this reality.
  2. In my personal experience it simply didn’t work, it brought confusion and a lack of resolution.
  3. Rescripting, as I have seen it applied, comes from the mind of the therapist/ practitioner and not from the mind of the client; e.g. “What would you like to say to…”, “How would you change …” For this reason, accusations of a therapist “planting false memories” is a very real issue. This will be addressed by other contributors to this cluster of articles, so I will not elaborate further on this topic.

The subject of all time existing now and how that is applied in rescripting follows, using a hypothetical example. Let us say that in a past life, “Bill” uses vengeance and force against another person to get his way. It caused undesirable outcomes in that life and started a pattern of using force that was repeated in two more lifetimes and affects his current life. The theory of rescripting, as I understand, is that since all time exists now, a client can be guided to re-script or change the script of what occurred in the past. Bill may be guided to use negotiation instead of force in his dealings. In so doing, that lifetime and additional lives in which force was used against another person is changed; the past has been changed. The “memory” of those lifetimes now exists as Bill using negotiation.

Past-life therapy is more than finding an issue and changing the memory/experience. Ideally, the client (a) explores the entire life, learning about the various experiences that impacted him/her, (b) releases energetically from emotional, mental, and spiritual levels according to the particular memories and issues involved, (c) understands how s/he is affected in this current life, and (d) gains insight (such as a life lesson that was to be learned and whether or not that was accomplished) from the perspective of higher consciousness.

In the above example, by having Bill change the experience of the past, he loses his opportunity to recognize and honor his soul’s journey in learning over several lifetimes that using force doesn’t work well. Higher spiritual revelations are replaced by conscious determinations (by the therapist) indicating what needs to be changed to be more acceptable. To me, the honesty of the experience is what is acceptable.

Many years ago, I was doing some informal work with a couple of women which resulted in my having a regression. I saw myself on a rocky cliff with a man whom I loved deeply. He suddenly lost footing and tumbled over the rocks and into the water below. I rushed down to try to rescue him but, because of a lack of strength and the harsh currents, I was unable to save him. At that moment, my practitioner guided me out of the water and after some healing words brought me back into the room. Of course, I was consciously aware that she was doing something totally against good regression training – but I decided to go along with her to see how I would respond.

The result of that experience was (1) I was unsure of what actually did take place: Did I drown? Did I come out of the water? I didn’t know. And (2), The experience was unresolved.

Because that lifetime and the experience was not a primary focus in my life, I simply let it go. It wasn’t until approximately 5 years later that, in another regression experience, that lifetime returned to memory. This time I stayed with the lifetime to see what actually did happen, and learned that I felt that I couldn’t live without him, and chose to let myself be carried away by the currents, drowning. From a Higher Self perspective, I learned that that soul and I had many lives bonded together and that one of my life lessons in that life was to learn that I could live alone, without him. Did I learn that life lesson in that life? No. And, it was important for me to honor that I did not learn that soul lesson then, and recognize that I have learned it in this life; I can live without him.

I don’t need to have my past changed; I want to learn from my past.

 

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