Double Exit: Evidence of Soul-Division in Past-Life Regression Reports – Peter Novak (Is.18)
by Peter Novak The word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword and cuts so deeply it divides the soul from the spirit. Hebrews 4:12 Thanks to modern research into Near-Death Experiences, Past-Life Regression, and other afterlife phenomena, one of humankind’s most ancient afterlife traditions—the Binary Soul Doctrine—seems to be making a triumphant comeback. Although few realize it today, cultures all around the globe once believed virtually the same thing about death and the afterlife—that human beings possess not one, but two souls, which tend to divide apart from one another after death. Surprisingly, the data patterns emerging from modern paranormal research seem to be pointing in this same direction, causing many to take a fresh look at some of mankind’s oldest teachings. Many cultures thought that one of their souls reincarnated after death (mirroring our Eastern religious traditions), while the other soul would become
On the Timelessness of Time: A Personal Past-Life Exploration – Melissa Bowersock (Is.17)
Melissa Bowersock, C.Ht. Melissa Bowersock, an author new to the Journal but not to PLT, takes us into the mysterious realms of time through her own experiences. She finds that past, present, and future are interlocked and continuously interactive. A thoughtful article that raises questions about the nature of time itself. I have been fascinated by the enigma of time as much as the next person, maybe more. As a teenager I devoured every book on time travel and/or alternate pasts and futures that I could find. By the time I started experiencing past-life regressions as an adult, however, understanding the concept of time was not high on my agenda. But maybe that’s the nature of true discoveries ‑ finding what you’re not looking for. Once I began doing regressions, I was eager to review as many lives as possible. They were all fascinating in their own way. One particular
Rescripting in Past-Life Therapy: Its Use with Clients as Thinking Beings – Maggie van Staveren (Is.17)
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
Reframing or Rescripting – Hans TenDam (Is.17)
Hans TenDam Rewriting history is a crime. Rewriting somebody’s personal history is a crime against the individual ‑ even on request. Rewriting is done by people who don’t understand what therapy is, probably because they don’t understand what life is about, what people are. There are two types of rescripting, that done by the client himself, without awareness of the therapist, and that induced by the therapist as a conscious intervention. Why clients rescript, is simple: they resist facing the truth because of shame, guilt, humiliation, or sheer terror. The real memory is overwhelming, or ‑ as often ‑ resisted because it threatens a cherished self-image. The worst kind of rescripting as an intervention I have come across was a colleague who advised a client to simply erase a previous life that was bothering her. Erasing a part of our own experience is in the deepest sense probably impossible. But
My Thoughts on Rescripting – Thomas G. Shafer (Is.17)
by Thomas G. Shafer, M.D. Dr. Cunningham has given us an excellent clinical example illustrating the problems with rescripting and some excellent arguments. I have ethical concerns here. There is a vast power differential between the therapist and the client as an innate part of the process. Allowing therapists to rewrite history and change the fabric of time itself raises their power to the point of being God-like. I think God has enough trouble being God without humans, even those with a Masters, a Ph.D., or a M.D. taking over some of the job. Another objection is the complete removal of causality. If I can go back and change time because everything is truly simultaneous, the cause and effect relationship is simply another illusion of my mind. This is all well and good but it quickly dumps us into circular logic because how can changing an event in the past
Refraining from Reframing in Past-Life Sessions – Holly Holmes-Meredith (Is.17)
Holly Holmes-Meredith, M.A., M.F.T. I have been using regression therapy in some form in my private practice since 1981 and have been training hypnotherapists and past-life therapists through HCH, a state-licensed institute, since 1986. I have a strong background in NLP and use reframing and rescripting techniques primarily while working with habit control and current-life inner child work. I find reframing and rescripting profoundly transforming in these areas. In past-life work, however, I consider reframing and rescripting unnecessary and dishonoring of the soul journey and soul lessons; not only of the client, but of all other souls involved in the past-life events and soul experiences. The discussion that follows will explain my thoughts on these important clinical issues. If the client requests inner child work I spend time asking what he wants and expects from present-life regression therapy. A detailed discussion follows which outlines the therapist and client’s responsibilities in
The First Law of Time Travel: Don’t Change History – Thelma B. Freedman (Is.17)
Thelma B. Freedman, Ph.D. As all sci-fi savvy people can tell you, The Federation’s First Law of Time Travel is “Don’t Change History.” There is an intriguing short story by Isaac Asimov about this. An eminent professor of chemistry is giving a lecture to a packed auditorium; he is carrying out the first trial of his new “time machine,” which will carry one drop of water back in time several million years. As he speaks he fires up his apparatus (sparks and humming sounds) and carefully drops the fateful drop of water onto the waiting plate of glass. More sparks and louder humming sounds ensue. The professor continues to talk, describing what the machine is doing, and as he does so everyone in the auditorium (including himself) slowly changes into green scaly reptilian creatures. The professor’s words come out in squeaks (but everyone understands him fine) and the building itself
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: 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. In my personal experience it simply didn’t work, it brought confusion and a lack of resolution. Rescripting, as I have seen it applied, comes from the mind of the therapist/ practitioner and not from the mind of the client;
Reframing or Rescripting in Past-Life Work – Joseph Costa (Is.17)
Joseph Costa, Ph.D. In any field of endeavor there are advocates of doing work in different ways from others that produces successes. In our field we have counselors and therapists who use the methods called reframing and rescripting. In my own practice I use both methods, choosing that which serves the client as the work unfolds. What I present here is from a perspective of energies. For example: I interpret the dynamics of events, feelings and trauma as energy experiences. The events, feelings and trauma have more or less energy involved, based on the degree of the lesson experienced by the client. When a client has an emotional experience that has an effect on his or her future behavior I see that as an energy experience that either benefits the person or interferes with the person’s well-being. We can label this as either a positive or negative experience. In the
Rescripting and Other Delusional Thinking – David P. Armentrout (Is.17)
David P. Armentrout, Ph.D. Some years ago I saw a postcard with the caption, “I have abandoned the search for Truth and am now looking for an acceptable fantasy.” That seems to summarize the goals of rescripting. It also summarizes the dereific processes leading to psychosis. Rescripting means substitution of fantasied content for valid memory. The usual reason given for rescripting is that realty is too terrible to be handled. Psychopathology Mental disorders can be roughly broken down into those problems due to faulty wiring of the cranial computer and its peripherals, and those due to flawed software. In the first group we find various dementias, cyclothymias, autisms and the schizophrenias. There is a region of overlap in which subclinical problems may or may not become significant, as in the case of borderlines who may learn to channel their creativity, or who may dissociate under stress. Generally, these disorders are
If You Can Imagine It, You Can Achieve It; If You Can Dream It, You Can Become It! – Linda Adler (Is.17)
Linda Adler, L.C.S.W. There is wisdom in that title statement and most of us would endorse it, at least to some degree. However, if it were that simple, we would all be exactly who we want to be and do exactly what we want to do without limitation. Unfortunately, there are often underlying causes that prevent us from fully achieving our imaginings and becoming our dreams. I suspect that most of us embrace the concept that we create our own reality, although we might not agree on the exact meaning of that idea. If we are both the Creator and the Creation, we can also be Creative and, in alignment with the Higher Self, re-create our reality. As a Gestalt therapist I was encouraged to be expansive and creative in my work, and was trained to use imagination as a part of the healing process. I was thoroughly schooled at
The False “False Memory Syndrome” Syndrome – Hans TenDam (Is.17)
by Hans TenDam Dr. Hans TenDam shares his thoughts and experiences about the so-called “false memory syndrome,” something of concern to all past-life therapists and, in fact, to all who use altered states in their work. Dr. TenDam grounds his theories in what he has actually seen with clients. The False Memory Syndrome is a bogeyman hindering the acceptance of our profession. It has been discovered that clients who graphically “relived” sexual abuse by a parent when they were very young, had often “remembered” something that did not happen. It has led to court cases and negative publicity. It sometimes leads also to extra work for us as therapists. I have had several clients utterly shaken because of the false accusations of a daughter. The therapist or psychiatrist involved had worsened things further by prohibiting the daughter from having any contact with her denying parents anymore. Yet upon investigation, the
The Interplay Between the Inner and Outer Worlds – Dianne Seaman (Is.17)
Dianne Seaman, B.S., C.P.L.T. Here Dianne Seaman considers the surprising elements of the external world that seem to conspire to help us heal. Drawing on her work with clients as well as a past-life experience of her own, she discusses the seemingly “chance” events that the web of life leads us to find and use. As she might say, we may not always know where we’re going, but the world will make sure we get there anyway. As past-life therapists we try to create a distraction-free environment to prevent anything external from pulling clients out of their experience. However I’ve begun to observe that some distractions actually do the opposite by pulling people into a relevant past-life experience. Some examples: I have an office in my home, and last July I realized some urgent home repairs would cause distracting noise so I gave the scheduled client three options: to re-schedule,
Maybe Controversial? Thinking Outside One’s Parameters – Louise Ireland-Frey (Is.17)
Louise Ireland-Frey, M.D. Louise Ireland-Frey has been a true pioneer in Past-Life Therapy and Spirit Releasement Therapy (SRT), and here she gives us her personal view of her own ventures into “controversial” fields, in this case SRT. She considers some reasons others may have for considering new ideas controversial, but warns us at the end to keep an open mind but not an empty one. Introduction When my recent book, Freeing the Captives, was described as “controversial” ‑ in fact, as “very controversial” ‑ I was astonished. I had not thought of it as being so at all. A therapist friend commented, “I don’t feel that it is controversial, but then I know you and I am acquainted with releasement work. So it is not controversial to me.” We decided that probably the definition of the word “controversial” includes the reaction of persons to subjects that are unfamiliar and beyond
Did They Hide the Bodies? The Population Problem – Erik Youngberg (Is.17)
Erik Youngberg Erik Youngberg, an author new to the Journal, discusses the familiar “population problem” and presents surprising new findings that turn the problem on its head. As well as neatly solving the population dilemma, his article reminds us all to look with a skeptical eye on any “conventional” assumptions. You might already hate for skeptics to ask this question: “How can reincarnation be possible? More people are alive now than have died since humanity began.” They have asked it for over two decades, and it is the most devastating argument against reincarnation there has ever been. As many people have noted, ordinary theories of rebirth become impossible because there are not enough past-life bodies to go around. Of course, reincarnationists have developed explanations, but none that have gained widespread acceptance. After examining the controversy, I will present evidence that it finally can be ended. Before the 1970s, reincarnationists could
Bernie, the Buffalo Soldier and Me: Whose Life Is It Anyway? – Thomas G. Shafer (Is.17)
Thomas G. Shafer, MD In this article, Dr. Shafer discusses his recollections of two of his past lives and then goes on to offer opinions and speculation, largely based on Jewish Hassidic thought, regarding the actual nature of the eternal existence of the soul, the reason for successive incarnations and the role of Past-Life Therapy in the process of spiritual evolution. Bernie was born in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. Creighton University wouldn’t take him because he was Jewish but he did get a scholarship to study engineering at the University of Omaha. And the one thing he wanted to do more than anything else in life was to fly P-38 Lightnings. He did become an aviation cadet but an accident in advanced training disqualified him for fighters and he ended up flying a Stinson L-5, a puddle jumper. When he was shipped to England he made the best of this
A Theory of De-Hypnosis for Past-Life Therapy – Morris Netherton (Is.17)
Morris Netherton, Ph.D. One of past-life therapy’s “old hands” shares with the Journal’s readers his latest thoughts about reaching the deepest levels of healing. Drawing upon his experience with clients, he especially stresses the effects of past physical traumas on the well-being of the body, mind, and spirit today. As a client-centered process, a past-life session is determined by the unique needs and abilities of the client. In my own sessions, I use techniques which most efficiently access unconscious trauma and eliminate it from present-day living. A session starts by locating trauma using either body sensations, strong emotions, or words and phrases that are impactful. The process finds words and gives them emotions or finds emotions and gives words to them. Impact of these words and emotions is then found in the physical body. Greater spiritual awareness is always experienced as a result of the change from fear and confusion
Homosexuality and Regression – Michael G. Millett (Is.17)
Michael G. Millett Dip, C.H.P. Michael Millet, of Great Britain, discusses the choice of a homosexual life and suggests some reasons for this choice. Michael presents the concept of “life-themes” and they are very positive themes indeed; true growth-creating goals that may sometimes be best served by a homosexual life. This is his first appearance in the Journal. Homosexuality can stem from several different causes, or so the “experts” say. Nobody really knows! However, reincarnation offers some possible answers. Past-life regression during hypnosis is a way of discovering how past lifetimes are interconnected to our present life, relationships, situations, goals, pursuits or problems encountered in this lifetime. So why do we pick one kind of life rather than another and indeed why a homosexual life? I personally do not believe we choose a heterosexual life as opposed to a homosexual life or vice versa without good reason. As spiritual beings,
The Evolution of Subtle Energy Bodies? A Preliminary Inquiry – Robert T. James (Is.17)
Robert T. James, J.D. Dr. James joins with others in stating that to arrive at an understanding of that part of our individuality that survives our physical death, we must begin with its evolution commencing at the time of the physical evolutionary origins of the human species. He speculates on ways of exploring those origins. This inquiry is founded upon the actuality of three basic premises: 1) That we are indeed spiritual beings having a human experience; 2) That humans in our present form (Homo sapiens) evolved from lesser life forms; and 3) That some form of our individuality survives our physical death, has lived in the past, and will probably live again. Following ancient practices described by Cunningham (1998), I will refer to this surviving entity as a subtle energy body, thereby avoiding using terms such as soul, spirit, vital essence, or the like, all of which carry many
Opening the Doors to the Self: Relationships and Regression Therapy – Isa Gucciardi (Is.17)
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., has appeared in the Journal’s pages before. She is exploring the many connections between hypnosis and past-life regressions, and the diversity of effects both of these therapeutic modalities have on clients. In this article she examines some relationship problems that had roots in past lives. Recently I heard an interview on National Public Radio’s program, Fresh Air, with the Dalai Lama’s official translator. The interviewer, Terry Gross, asked him if there were ever western concepts he had trouble translating into Tibetan. The translator said the hardest concept he had ever tried to convey emerged from a conference on Buddhism and psychology held in the United States. He had enormous difficulty trying to translate the words which described the concept of self-loathing. It took him almost half an hour to find the words to help the Dalai Lama understand this concept. The Dalai Lama was