by Treelight Green, Ph.D.
Through the years of involvement in past-life work, spontaneous regressions, guiding myself, and being guided by others, I have created a style of working with past lives which to my knowledge is unique and effective. Reliving a past life can be a cathartic experience in releasing emotions and identifying thought patterns and beliefs from which one is operating. However, simply identifying the patterns and releasing the emotions is not always sufficient. A transformation of the past needs to take place in order truly to impact a person’s current life and insure that old patterns and beliefs do not repeat themselves. This can be done through transformational imaging and rescripting.
Though each regression is a dynamic process and varies from person to person, there is a basic formula that I follow. The first step is to identify the pattern or belief that needs changing. What is not working in a person’s life? What needs changing? A succinct phrase is then developed with which to work, for example, “I don’t believe in myself,” or “I always expect the worst to happen.”
The regression begins via a basic induction, deep breathing, and a relaxation process, and I ask the client to move to the source of the event or situation related to the identified phrase. The past life is reviewed. I ask the client to speak in a first person present tense. We move through the life in the order of the significant events, asking Who? What? When? Where? We proceed through to death. I ask the client to look at decisions or agreements made in that lifetime. (Some observations may have been made while the client moved through significant events.) Which of these agreements, decisions, or beliefs need changing or altering? Then we create a new statement, feeling tone, or agreement, and redo the lifetime, transform the past. Transformational imaging and rescripting come into play at this point. Changing the past affects the present.
A personal experience will illustrate the process. Some years ago I identified my own recurring pattern that involved my placing limits on the levels of satisfaction I permitted in my life. Related to this was my tendency to create upsets in my life when things were going smoothly, especially in relationships. I got bored when things went well because it was my belief that change and growth could not happen without conflict. I also carried issues concerning abandonment. It took very little to make me feel abandoned, and at times I equated change with loss. (Some change involves loss, but not all change does). These issues became largely resolved as a result of reworking my past life as Tria, a Polish orphan. I will tell the story in the first person present tense to illustrate my approach to working with past lives and transforming them.
The Original Regression
I am a Polish orphan living in an orphanage. It is very noisy in here. The walls are stone, the floor is stone. Thirty of us eat together—hot gruel and mush. We are treated like animals, so we act like animals. I have a friend, Martin, who sits next to me when we eat. We rebel at our situation in similar ways.
One day I escape from the orphanage but am caught. From talking with Martin I have come to realize that other people have families—and I want one. One day a man comes for me. I am glad. Someone wants me! I end up working as his servant/daughter/mistress for three years. Such drudgery! I live a dual existence with this man named Adolph: by day I live as a boy, doing household chores and going to town to buy supplies, and at night I am his female companion. We sit by the fire while I mend and sew. I don’t say much, and every now and then he boxes my ears to get a response out of me.
Finally I escape this situation, and I am careful not to get caught this time. I live as a man in a cottage—I know how to take care of myself and, after taking care of Adolf, I find that one is easier to manage than two.
When I am 21 Martin passes by and recognizes me, and I recognize him, but we are both wary. We have learned not to trust, but we cannot deny the recognition. We live together as brother and sister, a wonderful relationship, learning from each other how to love and trust. Later on Martin wants a wife. Because I tell him I cannot play that role if I am his sister, he leaves me and I am devastated.
I decide to get myself a husband, and I meet a French musketeer who begins to court me. He is married, though I do not know this, and I think he is my husband. I become pregnant and give birth to a son, Rogenet, of whom I am very possessive. For the first time in my life I have something of my own—my very own child. The Frenchman comes and takes the baby away from me. His horse kicks me in the side and I am left for dead. I die wailing in grief.
The Transformational Work
After I reviewed the life as Tria and re-experienced my excruciating death, I chose to transform that lifetime. I moved back to the point at which I became pregnant by the French musketeer.
In the womb the baby communicates with me. He tells me that he is not an object to be possessed. He reminds me that I didn’t like being treated as an object by Adolf and tells me that if I relate to him as an object, he will leave. I heed his words. As he grows up he teaches me to discriminate and to realize that I don’t have to accept contact just because it is available, healthy or not. Now I can choose that which comes from love and concern.
As a result of listening to my son I stop seeing the musketeer and find a wonderful man, a warm, loving husband named Pol, who treats himself well and is good to me. I feel complete in myself and am totally connected with him at the same time. With Pol I learn that one can change and grow with serenity. A deep calm permeates my life. The relationship with Pol deepens steadily with great continuity. I grow old and die. Pol has died before me. Rogenet has taught us both that there is no separation—we can and do maintain our connection.
As I look back on the transformation of the lifetime as Tria, I recognize that in this lifetime I have often experienced a conflict between staying centered in myself and remaining connected with others. Remembering what Tria learned from Pol, I have learned a better balance between acceptance and discrimination. I have become less possessive and have relinquished my need to feel abandoned. As a result of having changed the past, I have learned how to maintain connection and relatedness. Through Rogenet I have learned that we are connected to ourselves, to all beings, and to the universe. Change and growth can occur harmoniously
Though I had remembered portions of the Tria lifetime off and on for more than ten years, it wasn’t until I transformed that lifetime, learned the lessons, and redid the sequence of events, that the effects ceased to plague me in my current life. Abandonment and the feelings that go with that have not repeated themselves. I flow more easily with changes in life, and only once in three years have I had a crisis surrounding change and loss. I no longer feel that growth occurs only as a result of conflict. The old patterns have shifted significantly.
This method is not foolproof, and all ramifications of a pattern are not always cleared. Sometimes beliefs or decisions carry tangents that do not get addressed, but whatever is not cleared will emerge, either through daily life or via a regression to a different past life. But it has been my experience that whatever is addressed and transformed as an issue is cleared from the person’s life, and the need to repeat the pattern is removed. When the pattern has been seen and the lessons learned and understood, the sequence is changed. Making the change within the regression provides a direct experience of the change, of the new state of mind, body, and psyche. Thereafter a client can, in his current life, reproduce the new contextual framework of understanding and behavior.
Before making any such transformation however, it is important first to relive the experience in its entirety, in order to discover how the psyche is operating and what belief systems and residual energies are present. If the lessons that ground the transformation and rescripting work are not learned, the need to repeat old dysfunctional patterns continues. If they are learned, such work can be a powerful and effective modality for increasing freedom in living.