Remembering Past Lives (4 page)

He then left the corridor to return, first to the sand box of his childhood, and from there, into the present. In his own words, “For the first time in present-life memory, I was free of the bondage of inferiority and fear.” For him, the past-life regression experience was in an instant enlightening, liberating and empowering. Knowing that having been wrongfully punished in that past life for a crime he had not committed freed him of all reason for his feelings of inferiority.

Today as a practicing attorney, his specialty is representing clients who have been wrongfully accused and, in some instances, sentenced to long terms for crimes they did not commit.

In an unrelated case, the subject was a twenty-two-year-old male student with a long history of compulsive counting. When leaving or entering his home, he counted the number of steps between his parked car and his front door. When stopped at a railroad crossing, he compulsively counted the number of railroad cars. He had the irresistible impulse to count steps in a stairway, trees in park settings, and books on a library shelf, to list only a few. As a student, he kept a very close track of time, to include the exact number of minutes before a scheduled class and the time remaining in a class session. Although his compulsion to count was often a distraction that interrupted his concentration and performance as a student, he was convinced that any failure to count could result in either loss of control of situations, or at worst, serious misfortune.

Although he viewed his counting compulsion as simply a learned pattern of behavior with little past-life relevance, he volunteered for our past-life research in hopes that hypnosis might empower him to either overcome the compulsion or at least assume better control of it. As it turned out, he was highly receptive to hypnosis, particularly in his use of reverse counting to induce a successful trance state. Upon regressing to early childhood, he experienced an interesting manifestation of the counting compulsion in which he gathered small pebbles scattered about in an open field and counted them one-by-one as he placed them in his pockets. He knew he would later count them over and over again before adding them to his large collection.

Upon leaving the childhood regressed state and entering the past-life corridor, he observed what appeared to be a stone door with a small opening in it. Upon approaching the door and looking through the opening, he saw a young man with a small stone in hand adding a carving a mark to a long line of marks on the stone mall. Suddenly he recognized the room as a prison cell with the carved marks indicating the number of days served. Then, with a rush of feeling, he recognized the young man as himself serving a long past-life sentence for robbery. As he continued to view himself adding a mark to the number of days served in prison, he all at once knew the source of his compulsive counting. Equipped with that insight, he turned from the door and while lingering briefly in the corridor, felt his long history of compulsive counting dissolving away.

Upon leaving the corridor behind and returning to the familiar childhood experience of collecting rocks, he lingered long enough to take charge by removing the rocks from his pockets and, without counting them, tossing them by the handfuls into the open field. Upon returning to the present and exiting hypnosis, he experienced total freedom from any compulsion to count. Finally liberated through past-life enlightenment that identified the source of his compulsion, he became empowered to pursue his life goals with new commitment and complete freedom from the distractions of a controlling compulsion of past-life origin. Through past-life enlightenment, the compulsion to count was instantly and permanently expiated.

Another example of the liberating power of the past-life corridor experience involved a chemistry major whose academic performance was threatened by her extreme obsession with perfection. Unable to control the obsession, she finally surrendered to it. Unfortunately, the intensity of the obsession only worsened. Her academic progress was slowed by her pattern of dropping courses because her test scores were less than perfect. The effects of her obsession, however, extended beyond the classroom. Socially, she demonstrated intolerance for anyone whose behavior did not measure to her so-called “standard.” As a result, she became progressively discontented and withdrawn in her social interactions.

As a participant in our past-life research, she decided to use the Past–life Regression Corridor program to explore the origin of her obsession that had begun to dominate her life. Upon entering the corridor, she observed to her surprise an interesting but disorderly vista lacking, in her opinion, appropriateness in color and design. As she continued to survey the corridor, however, she began to notice its interesting and creative features. She saw intricate patterns among its doors and wide variations among the designs in the floor. An array of colors among its doors and wide differences in their shapes stood out in sharp contrast to the subdued pastels characterizing its ceiling. It was then that a ceiling skylight suddenly commanded her attention. As she looked through the expansive skylight to view the night sky, she was struck by the interesting uniqueness and wide-ranging differences among the stars, including the extensive variations in size and brightness. Enthralled with the beauty of this sky-view, she concluded that its unique, creative design was a part of a magnificent cosmic scheme that applied also to the past-life corridor and to life itself. With that realization, she exited the corridor and ended the trance state.

Reflecting upon the profound experience, she developed a more realistic view of herself and others. Her self-defeating obsession with perfection underwent an instant and dramatic change. Her life as a student instantly took on greater satisfaction and success. In her words, “My past-life corridor experience was the beginning of a personal success story that continues to this day.”

The Power of Memories

These few case studies demonstrate the actual power of memories to add dimension and value to your life. Recovered memories, freed of the emotions that encumbered them in past lives, can now bring understanding and meaning to their residue effects in the present life, completing a lesson that otherwise had the negative effect of a failed grade.

This is experienced as the “acceleration of
Karma”
that has become possible through our ever-expanding base of psychological and esoteric knowledge along with our increasing understanding of the natural, social, economic, and complex cosmic environment in which we have our being.

Memories exist unconsciously in the subconscious mind and more distantly in the Collective Unconscious, but when appropriate personal memories are brought into consciousness, freed of emotional “baggage,” they become empowering resources that enrich your current life and add dimension to your whole being.

And, certainly of equal importance, every true advancement of an individual adds to the collective base benefiting all humanity and our world.
Alone, and together,
growth is the underlying reason for our existence.

Remembrance of Life-between-Lives

When you first explored your Past-Life Corridor, note was made of a particular door at the far end of the passage that was marked as entrance to experiences of “Life-between-Lives.”

As a culminating part of the After-Death Experience there is an important opportunity that involves a review of the lessons learned—actually a condensation of the experiences into the essence that becomes a permanent part of your Soul.

It is important to accept, at least on a tentative basis, the idea that there is a Great Plan behind the adventure of life, and that through our many lives an individual plan takes shape recognizing past progress and the goals still ahead. In no one lifetime can you do it all, but a part of your being is a personal planner (or
trainer
,
if you prefer) who, with the help of certain Intelligences or Spirit Guides, develops a basic plan for your next life.

This is not a fixed plan pre-determining every detail of your life and destiny but a general outline that provides the basis for structuring the components of your next personality—the general attributes of the Causal, Mental, and Astral Bodies, and from this a model is formed into your Etheric body that becomes the matrix for your birth physical body. As part of the personal plan, there is selection of the environment that will be helpful to the fulfillment of your plan.

All of this culminates in a potential planetary pattern for the birth moment, and the opportunity provided by available parents. But, as you can see, no plan is perfect – you can't get all the details to match perfectly with your goals. It's no different in that regard than any business plan, book outline, battle plan, or even your vacation plan. Some opportunities are not available during appropriate time slots, sometimes the unexpected happens, and so forth. As we know:
That's Life!

Just as you can explore individual past lives, you can explore that last “life-between-lives” to better understand the plan for your present life.
Do you really want to? Would it actually be beneficial?
Remember, you can't change it from that perspective. Your current life is real, not theoretical. Every day you make changes and adjustments to your life plan based on perceived realities and opportunities. You can't do that from “the other side.”

With reincarnation, your perception changes as you realize that you are not limited to just one life, rather each life is part of a continuum that is your real life—all your past and future incarnations, all your lives-between-lives, and that which is part of your re-existence and all that is beyond the need for incarnation. Rather than being limited by your body, you become
Unlimited
Consciousness.

Putting It All Together.

That's what the ability to remember your past lives provides. You have the ability to tap into the continuum of your previous lives and to eventually have all the skills and essential knowledge at your conscious command.

No, it will not be the stories” of those lives—the life of a barmaid in eighteenth-century France, or the short life of a Roman soldier or the even shorter life of a Russian revolutionary. You won't remember life as Cleopatra or Henry VIII, or live again as an American patriot or die of hunger in ravished Pacific islands during World War II. Even though true, those are just stories, no longer of any importance.

What are the real lessons of past lives?
You learned Love, Sacrifice, Courage, Honor, Dedication, Persistence, and more. You learned to live for an Ideal. You learned the value of a Plan. You learned to Balance the singular with the plurality, to balance feeling with wisdom, to balance urge with foresight. You learned to live with Nature rather to than to abuse the Mother who nourishes all who live on Earth. You learned to run the distance, rather than to limit your steps. You learned to see the future, not just tomorrow, to become farsighted not shortsighted, to see the whole and not just a part, to bathe in the whole spectrum not just a single color.

Your Consciousness is a whole, of which each personality is only a unit, is one with all consciousness, and yet you will never be lost within that totality for you have earned your individuality. You will always have an identify even as you work on behalf of the totality that is the Life, the Consciousness, and the all-comprehending Being of all the Universe, visible and invisible and beyond anything knowable.

Memories are of the past, the present, and the future, for when you become timeless the future becomes the present and the past exists in the present.

Remembering your Past Lives is your step into the Timeless. It may sound too perfect, but it is also practical for your memories bring the knowledge and skills to make for a better life right now.

As the super waitperson in the finest restaurant says when serving the best meal you will ever have—
ENJOY!

Sources for this book, and Suggested Reading Resources for Further Study

Beyond Reincarnation: Experience Your Past Lives and Lives
Between Lives
by Joe H. Slate (2008).

Doors to Past Lives: Practical Applications of Self-Hypnosis
by
Joe H. Slate and Carl L. Weschcke, 2011, Llewellyn.

Self Empowerment through Self Hypnosis
by
Joe H. Slate and Carl L. Weschcke, 2010, Llewellyn.

Empowerment through Self Hypnosis Meditation CD Companion
by
Joe H. Slate and Carl L. Weschcke,
2011, Llewellyn

If you enjoyed Remembering Past Lives, you may also enjoy the following titles.

Journey of Souls

Case Studies of Life Between Lives

Michael Newton, Ph.D.

ISBN: 978-1-5671-8485-3

This remarkable book uncovers—for the first time—the mystery of life in the spirit world after death on earth. Dr. Michael Newton, a hypnotherapist in private practice, has developed his own hypnosis technique to reach his subjects' hidden memories of the hereafter. The narrative is woven as a progressive travel log around the accounts of twenty-nine people who were placed in a state of super-consciousness. While in deep hypnosis, these subjects describe what has happened to them between their former reincarnations on earth. They reveal graphic details about how it feels to die, who meets us right after death, what the spirit world is really like, where we go and what we do as souls, and why we choose to come back in certain bodies.