Ghosts?

I was listening to a podcast (Mysterious Universe, highly recommended) and they were doing an episode based on an old book of ghost stories. These are always interesting, and most of the good ghost stories point to the reality of a continuity of consciousness after death. They also usually occur because of some trauma that lead to death, sometimes in the physical area of the haunting, and sometimes both. But later when I was thinking about this, I realized that in my past life explorations, I never came across any ghostly activity nor has anyone I've ever worked with. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that I haven't come across it in my work. Then, when I was reviewing my notes for this blog, I found something I'd written* after running a particularly traumatic death I'd experienced in combat in World War 1. I was on a mission, my assignment was to deliver a message on the battlefield. This was a trench warfare situation, we were dug in, literally, in these trenches and holding this ground from troops advancing on our position. I was ordered to take a message to the next set of trenches, which involved moving to the edge of our position, going up to surface level and over to the next set of trenches some distance away. I made it without drawing fire, but when I got to the next encampment, I found they had been breached and the enemy soldiers where waiting for me. (The strangest part of this was that I was a German soldier so the "bad"guys were American troops!) Before I could sound the alarm, I was knocked unconscious  and then when they realized I couldn't be interrogated for the message I was carrying, I was shot and killed. As I transitioned out of the body, I was still aware of my soldier duties, and my fears that my failure to complete them would lead to my fellow soldiers being killed and the position that we were holding overrun. That, plus my awareness of the family I was leaving behind was emotionally devastating. 

From my notes -

I looked down expecting a soldier’s uniform but saw a ghostly physical body.

That was my attempt to describe what I saw after I left the physical body, It was no longer the body I had inhabited for the last 20 years. That is where I had the revelation that inspired this post. Again, from my notes -

(I realized) that we all are ghosts temporarily when we have memory and awareness of our physical body but are no longer in that body.

Maybe some of us are stuck because of the shock in that moment of disconnection from our physical bodies. There was a separation from the pain that the physical body experienced when being shot, but the emotional pain of separation from duty and comrades and loves ones lingered (temporarily) into the between lives state. For one brief interlude, I experienced myself as a "ghost". Luckily, it passed and I accepted myself as no longer in a physical body. But I now have a new perspective of that ghostly experience, one that considers it as a semi-physical echo of a traumatic event. I can see the haunting as a formerly physical individual in need of comfort and guidance. 

*This post shows how crucial it is to take the time to journal after a past life exploration. The information we access when still in what Swygard calls an "integrated" state, that is, still connected to our higher consciousness, tends to slip away, and writing down notes immediately after captures information that would otherwise be lost. Its like remembering a dream that is vivid on awakening, but disappears in the barrage of day to day details. 

The "R" word and the "J" word

As a recovering Catholic, I don't think in terms of the Bible much, but thanks to Ashley Long from createtheleap.com, I became aware of a book by Herbert Puryear titled "Why Jesus Taught Reincarnation". I started researching and was reminded that the Church used to include reincarnation in its teachings. In fact, according to Kevin Williams, 

"When Jesus began his ministry, many people wondered if he was the reincarnation of one of the prophets. Some people wondered the same thing concerning John the Baptist. And even Jesus affirmed to his disciples that John the Baptist was indeed the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah." 

"For all the prophets and the law have prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who was to come." (Matthew 11:13-14)

"And the disciples asked him, saying, 'Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?'

"But he answered them and said, 'Elijah indeed is to come and will restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they wished. So also shall the Son of Man suffer at their hand.'

"Then the disciples understood that he had spoken of John the Baptist." (Matthew 17:10-13)

 

This I did not know. The first quote on this blog is from Origen, and I learned more about him.

"The first great Father of the early Orthodox Church was Origen (185-254 AD) who was the first person since Paul to develop a system of theology around the teachings of Jesus. Origen was an ardent defender of pre-existence and reincarnation. Pre-existence is the religious concept of the soul as not being created at birth; rather the soul existed before birth in heaven or in a past life on Earth. Origen taught that pre-existence is found in Hebrew scriptures and the teachings of Jesus."

I'd never heard of the concept of pre-existence, but it resonates with my idea of the continuity of our consciousness before and after our physical incarnations. 

"The doctrines of pre-existence and reincarnation existed as secret teachings of Jesus until they were declared a heresy by the Roman Church in 553 A.D at the Second Council of Constantinople...(I)n 553 A.D., reincarnation became an enemy concept to the Judeo-Christian West. The reason reincarnation was declared heresy was given by Gregory, the Bishop of Nyssa. The five reasons he gave were:

1. It seems to minimize Christian salvation. (Inconsistent with the idea of eternal damnation in hell)

2. It is in conflict with the resurrection of the body. (Inconsistent with the rapture and final judgment)

3. It creates an unnatural separation between body and soul. ("For thousands of years, Christians believed that when a person dies their soul would sleep in the grave along with their corpse" until Judgment Day)

4. It is built on a much too speculative use of Christian scriptures. (Because there many quotes from Scripture referencing reincarnation?)

5. There is no recollection of previous lives. (Until now....)

All Hebrew and Christian scriptures support reincarnation: the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Christian Gnostic gospels, the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, the Kabbalah and Zohar. 

http://www.celestialgrace.org/bible/Reincarnation_and_the_Bible.pdf

Thanks to Kevin Williams for his research. 

 

 

 

Ben Franklin quotes

Found this amazing quote from Ben Franklin, who wrote this epitaph at age 22 that was never used: 

The Body of B. Franklin Printer,
Like the Cover of an Old Book,
Its Contents Torn Out
And Stripped of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies Here Food for Worms,
But the Work shall not be Lost,
For it Will as He Believed
Appear Once More
In a New and more Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author

The grown up Franklin said this-

"I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning." 

 

Great quote not about past lives

But still very relevant.

“Your life in retrospect has much more coherence that it does as you’re living it.”

Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, in a talk given at the International Conference on Altered States of Consciousness in Albuquerque, New Mexico in October 2002.

    John Mack got a laugh with that line in his presentation, because he was referring to the professional character assassination that he endured when he started writing about people who had alien encounters and “the transformational aspects of extraordinary experiences”. In the context of my work, I would add that it also applies to our past lives. We get to be the biographers of our previous incarnations, objectively seeing the entire arc of a life and how it relates to our present life and what came before. 

    The synopsis of the lecture reads: "UFO encounters, near death experiences, shamanic journeys, and spontaneous religious epiphanies* all have the power to bring about a significant transformation of consciousness. By this is meant that the experiencers’ worldview, as internalized in the course of their upbringing and inculcation in this culture, is shattered. This, in turn, results in the potential opening of heart and spirit to a wider appreciation of reality and a (re)connection to realms of the sacred and divine.’ 

*I would, of course, add past life and between lives explorations to that list of transformative experiences.

Its everywhere I look....

It seems that every book I read or podcast I listen to mentions past lives or the "R" word. An affirmation of Nietzsche's idea that "If you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back." This from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I get a daily quote via email from the book, which I re-read last year. I was amazed at how woo-woo his life was in his own words. It seemed a night didn't go by without a light being showing up in his sleep quarters. Here is Yogananda-ji's recollection of his past life:

“Lahiri, surely this cave seems familiar to you?”

As I maintained a bewildered silence, the saint approached and struck me gently on the forehead. At his magnetic touch, a wondrous current swept through my brain, releasing the sweet seed-memories of my previous life.

“I remember!” My voice was half-choked with joyous sobs. “You are my guru Babaji, who has belonged to me always! Scenes of the past arise vividly in my mind; here in this cave I spent many years of my last incarnation!” 

My 'magnetic touch' is a work in progress....I welcome those "sweet seed memories of my previous life."

Swygard's Spiritual Big Bang Theory

I have referred to the above numerous times, and feel the need to clarify it for those new to this work. Here is William Swygard's own explanation from Awareness Techniques, Book 1, published in 1971 and re-issued in 1975-

"In the Central Universe, the Creator is at the very center. This is His headquarters and the fountainhead of His awareness. From this center, He releases Spirits. To release Spirits, which are part of Him, He increases the vibration of His very awareness. and in so doing, He maintains this increased awareness for about one hour Kalaranda (Earth) time. When His consciousness recedes to its original size, the "residue" becomes individualized Spirits, and each is given a name. They are admonished, by name, to "Go know My Creation, and return It to me." From this command, they gain more consciousness..."

So we individual aspects of the Creator are here to experience and by experiencing, we gain more consciousness and add to the knowledge of the Creator. This concept was very important in my development, because it allowed me to switch from "What am I here to learn?" to "What can I create from where I am now?" 

Diane Swygard said it best - "Renew your hope and enthusiasm and "Go, know the Creation and return it unto the Creator." 

 

 

 

The "R' word

My local library has a digital copy of "Complete Idiot's Guide to Reincarnation" so I could not resist checking it out. I was pleasantly surprised to find a well-researched and -written wide ranging overview on the subject. Since quantum versus Newtonian physics came up  at the last MeetUp, and since I read Michael Talbot's "The Holographic Universe" lately, I wanted to put together a short summation of that concept. CIGTR did that as briefly as a complicated subject allows. 

"(David) Bohm has taken the early concepts of quantum physics several steps further. He theorizes that wholeness is the primary reality, and he calls this the implicate order.

Out of this implicate order, which is in a state of unceasing change, stable structures appear. Everything we see as stable and solid, which Bohm called the explicate order, is a projection of the unknowable whole. Energy, light and matter are made up of holographic interference patterns, and any fraction contains information about the whole. In other words, the whole contains the parts and the parts contain the whole.

Writer Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe) … notes that our brains construct “objective reality” by picking up and interpreting frequencies that are from another dimension that is beyond time and space. This means that the brain is a hologram within a holographic universe, and any part of us contains information about the whole explicate order. Bohm believes that consciousness itself is a subtle form of matter, and the relationship between the two lies in the implicate order.

What are the implications for reincarnation? Bohm believes that space is full of energy, that its not empty. The universe is a ripple of energetic excitement in an ocean of energy, a three-dimensional projection of the implicate order. Because the implicate order is the foundation of our universe and is beyond the space-time dimension, it contains everything that ever was or will be… Experiencing a past life regression means tapping into the implicate order where past life memories are contained. According to holographic theory, each person has access to knowledge and experience of the whole implicate order. This theory of physics bears a striking similarity to the knowledge of mystical traditions. 

    What we assumed was solid in the material world of Newtonian physics turns out to be an illusion: a projection of energy, of frequency wave forms. Furthermore, we are not only part of the projection, but we also create it. We even create the constructs of time and space. When we enter an altered state of consciousness, we are accessing energy traces in the form of frequency waves and patterns in the implicate order. 

Accessing the implicate order may allow us to access less-dense realms of existence where spirit guides, guardian angels, and other souls exist."

Try reading the above and replace 'implicate order" with potentiality, and 'explicate order' with physical reality. An easy to grasp definition of the holographic concept is that all of the information of the whole is contained in any fraction of the hologram. So when we are 'running' a past life experience, we are a fraction of the hologram accessing the whole, the potentiality of all that is, and our consciousness is 'reading' its energy traces and patterns. And since all information in a hologram is contained in any fraction of it, we have access to it because we are a fraction of the whole that has been released from Source. Remember Swygard's beautiful version of our origin story - "Go, know my Creation and return it to Me."

"Shelf Help*" -Pros & Cons

I read both of the following paragraphs while doing research yesterday.

 

"The unconscious mind (subsconscious mind) is like a voice and video recorder that has been recording everything one has heard and experienced every second of one's life, and past-lives, even when asleep, unaware, or unconscious.  One is never truly unconscious since messages and their corresponding energy/commands are still being absorbed whether one is consciously aware of it or not.  These unconscious recordings or memories affect one's self esteem, motivations, career choices, life choices, and the way one processes conflicts or challenges...

There are many ways to define memory and how it is retained.  Most clinical hypnotherapists, however, believe forgetting or suppressing a traumatic or emotionally charged memory does not mean it is gone; rather the specific incident is not consciously available.  Memory can be compared to the hard drive of a computer.  Hypnosis, or a self-guided, "focused-state" of dehypnosis, accesses the important files that are stored on one's computer (i.e. mind).  Hypnotherapy, especially when performed by a clinical hypnotherapist specializing in The Netherton-Paul Method, can reveal the most important files, or memories, that need to be brought to the forefront and reprocessed in a healing way.

Dr. Morris Netherton, author of Past Lives Therapy (William Morrow, 1978) (Claimed by the author to be “the first published book in the field of Past Life Therapy.”)

Later that day, when in a bookstore, I picked up "The Abduction Enigma" by Randle, Estes and Cone, opened it, and found this paragraph -

“We have been told countless time by various “authorities” that memory is the storehouse of everything we have ever seen, felt, experienced, or done. We are told that memory is like a giant videotape on which everything we have ever seen, done, or participated in is recorded with the accuracy of videotape. And while that point has been strongly contested by psychologists and scientific evidence, we learn the real purpose of memory is not to store data but to allow us to function on a day-to-day basis. Memory is not meant to be an accurate record of our past or even a storehouse of our experience but rather an inner representation of who we are and what we feel. More important, it does not have to be very accurate to carry out these everyday functions.” 

(italics mine)

Pg. 286.

The Randle, et. al. book is very critical of hypnosis as a method of accessing hidden memories; in fact, that paragraph is in a chapter titled “Recovered Memories”. Netherton is the co-originator of the Netherton/Paul “Past Life Therapy Center De-hypnosis Method”, practiced at their clinic in Los Angeles, CA, USA. (Regular session- 90 minutes -$280, Intensive- 3.5 hours- $680, Intake interview - 75-90 minutes-$180, in person or skype, same prices)

There are no citations to back up either argument, so I can't offer any rebuttal either way.

But I was intrigued by the pastlifetherapycenter.com blog and spent a lot of time reading their material, until they lost me with this dismissal -

"Between lives therapy or space between lives is consulting with spirit guides and masters that likely do not exist. " 

With my experiences with this work over the last 35+ years, I respectfully disagree. I heard a great quote by author Joshua Cutcheon on a podcast that I have to paraphrase, but the gist was once you start doing this para-normal work, then the ways of the old scientific method seem not just 20th century, but 19th century. Netherton uses his technique to access experiences during the birthing process and interestingly, during surgeries when under anesthesia. Does he think we remain asleep for years or even decades between lives, and that information is not accessible? 

The reason this is so important to me is that I am finding the most interesting part of the past life exploration is occurring after the transition out of the body and in the between lives stage. That is where the healing takes place, where situations that seemed unbearably difficult in a life time can be re-framed, and where the experiences of a life can be put into the longer term perspective of series of incarnations. And as far as "spirit guides and masters that likely do not exist", I extend an invitation to experience this work and encounter some "smokey ghosts" and decide for yourself who or what they are. 

 

*"Shelf Help" is the art of picking a random book off a shelf with an open mind and finding the information you are looking for. Or sometimes finding a counter argument to what you just read. 

 

 

 

"Look down at your feet and tell me what you're wearing"

That is the first instruction I give in a session after we have completed the preliminary exercise, and they have accessed a past life. "Look down at your feet, and tell me what you're wearing" is a brilliant and easy way to get acquainted with the' physical' body we'll be exploring in the incarnation we have connected with. Seeing the footwear, or lack of footwear is very grounding, and once completed, it enables us to see the rest of the clothing and hairstyle which gives us input into the sex, ethnicity, social standing and the era that we are accessing. So I got a giggle when I was doing a search for some information on other forms of past life regression and saw that wikihow.com has a page for HOW TO REMEMBER YOUR PAST LIVES.

<http://www.wikihow.com/Remember-Your-Past-Lives>

Like almost every other form of past life regression, they use walking down a long hallway (or sometimes a staircase) leading to a doorway, on the other side of which is a previous life. I enjoyed that some part of William Swygard's Awareness Techniques might possibly have been used when I saw this-

"...try the shoe method: look down at your feet, and go with the first pair of shoes you see yourself wearing, and work from there. You might see sandals, and then realize you’re wearing a tunic. You might see little pointy shoes, and realize you’re wearing a big silk gown."

That's the only part in common with what we are doing, and for a self-directed exercise its OK, but what Swygard published in 1971 is still, in my humble opinion, the most effective way to access past lives. 

More great quotes from sessions

Every time I work with someone, I come away with a great quote that arises from doing this work. Last week, it was with B., who experienced coming to the end of a life as a woman who's husband had passed away, and who'd lost a child. There was some sadness, and the feeling that her life hadn't mattered. We were able to move on through her death and into the between lives experience that is becoming the most important part of this work. B. described "the feeling of oneness" and of being "the thread in the pattern, connecting all the other threads." In the between lives state of a non-physical experience, B. described how "it doesn't matter that it didn't matter," a beautiful reframe of her previous sadness. Now the sessions are progressing from "running" a past life and going through that life's ending, into the non-physical experience between lives, and then back into another life. Its amazing what we are able to accomplish in 90 minutes to 2 hours. 

 

1/7/17

From an email with GS, who I worked with on a physical issue -

<The prevailing wisdom is that we accept or agree to certain physical and emotional ailments, whether it's to work out karma from past lives or for reasons beyond our comprehension. Both for myself and the people I work with, I am asking the same questions- how do we "heal" something that we agreed to experience?>

This is phase 2 of the work, the between lives, non-physical experience leading into what goes into the planning of the next life. How do we "heal" from something if we agreed to experience it as a part of our growth process, and does removing it interfere with that process? I just read a story about a woman who had a near death experience while battling stage 4 cancer. She said outside of the physical body, while in the NDE, she understood completely why she had cancer. No word on whether her condition changed after this realization. 

I recently did some 'running' (Swygard's term for this past life work) on a person with whom I have had a difficult working relationship. After spending some time looking at this relationship from a past life perspective, i was able to to arrive at a 'reframe', an NLP term for seeing the relationship in a totally different way. I was able to get to a point where I could be grateful to him for "participating in my schooling", even though that lesson was painful and expensive. I wonder if we can ever get to a place where we can accept and be grateful for an illness for participating in our schooling? Will that emotional shift lead to healing in the physical body? 

1/2/2017 update

i had an insightful session with G.S. who lives here in Asheville. We set the intention of learning about a physical condition that was troubling her, and got a past life perspective on it right from the start. It was a short life that ended with violence, and we very carefully moved through the traumatic ending into the between lives stage, the Non Physical Experience. She had the most beautiful description of the non-physical energy beings she met here; she described them as 'Smokey Ghosts". I asked her permission to post this, because I had to share it. That is the most elegant way to put into words something so elusive. And a great start to this work in a new year. 

Quotes from Journey of Souls

From Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls" -

"In a remarkable underlying message, particularly from advanced subjects, the possibility is held out that the God-oversoul of our universe is on a less-than-perfect level. Thus, complete infallibility is deferred to an even higher source. … The concept that our immediate God is still evolving as we are takes away nothing from an ultimate source of perfection who spawned our God. To my mind, a supreme, perfect God would not lose omnipotence or total control over all creation by allowing for the maturation of less-than-perfect superior offspring. These lesser gods could be allowed to create their own imperfect worlds as a final means of edification so they might join with the ultimate God."

_+_+_+_+

Pg. 275

(Fascinating that Newton comes up with that from his reports. It is worthy of an entire book in itself. But it resonates perfectly with Swygard's idea that the Creator released parts of itself with the admonition, "Go, know my creation, and return it to me." Our experiences are returned to the Creator who then 'learns' from them, so of course our immediate God is "still evolving." And I absolutely love the concept of "our immediate God." It opens us to the idea that our God has a God, and on and on until we reach "the ultimate God". )

_+_+_+_+_+

"...my belief (is) that souls are attracted to geographical settings they have known during earlier incarnations."

pg. 117

(Here's an idea I have not yet experienced in my personal work, but will be paying attention to it now that it has been brought to my attention.)

_+_+_+_+_+

"... past life memories often spill over into contemporary problems in whatever spiritual setting is selected."

Pg. 64

(The idea that "we may be done with the past, but the past is not done with us." I don't know who said that first, but it is the basis for this work. )

 

 

 

Review of Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls"

 

    Back after a hard drive failure and replacement. I used the time to read a book suggested by someone at the first MeetUp, “Journey of Souls”, by Michael Newton, PhD. (1994). Subtitled “case Studies of Lives Between Lives”, this is what the book jacket calls the “travel log” of the accounts of 29 people utilizing Newton’s own hypnotic technique. Now I am presenting my work as an alternative to the standard method of hypnotic regression for past life exploration, so I had to overcome my skepticism of the whole practice but this book was a perfect introduction. (I will be digging deeper into the differences between hypnotic and guided meditation as a means of accessing past lives with a planned interview with a leading hypnotist.) Newton has assembled an overview of the between lives experience from a 10-year collection of clients’ experiences, providing a fascinating road map of the between lives journey, some of which I have experienced and others I have not. Newton’s unique hypnosis technique places the client in what he refers to as a state of superconsciousness, and this allows him to take a conversational tone with his clients that took me by surprise. I prefer to ask questions and the most common question is merely “What happens next?”, allowing the experiencers consciousness to show the most relevant material to their inquiry. Newton is fearless to the point of being confrontational, interrupting and using hypnotic techniques to get the information he wants, when he wants it. This causes me great discomfort, especially with the delicacy of the (literally) ethereal nature of the work.

    This brings me to the main issue with Newton’s work. I don’t know if his doctoral status as a hypnotherapist required that he maintain clinical detachment, but he does not address his direct experience with his own technique. It is only the common elements in his numerous client’s journeys that enabled him to construct the scenario he is describing. By the end of the book, I had the sense of someone writing a travel guide to Europe without having ever visited, and using the reviews from TripAdvisor as his source material. But I will never take anyone into an area that I have not extensively explored myself.

 

The past life piece of the puzzle

"Every soul has existed from the beginning. It has therefore passed through some worlds already, and it will pass through others before it reaches the final consummation. It comes into the world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life."

Origen, an early Christian scholar

I found this quote, or it found me, just as I was starting this website, and thought it was a perfect distillation of the concepts involved in past lives exploration. I am using the work of William Swygard as a jumping off point, and he had a beautiful and unique description of the origin of the soul. In Swygard's cosmology, souls came into existence when Source/Spirit/"God"/choose your favorite deity released pieces of itself with the admonition, "Go know my Creation, and return it to Me." I love that description of Creation; it resonates with me and I refer to it as "the spiritual Big Bang Theory." If it is true, and I am open to believing that it is, then as Origen pointed out, "every soul has existed from the beginning." In this framework, we are all old souls. This work is based on the idea that we can know where we were "strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life." Or as someone put it more recently, "You may think you're done with the past, but is the past done with you?"

Past life explorations are just the start of the journey, I call it Phase 1 of the Past Lives Project. If we have had even one past life in a different body, then that life had a beginning, middle and and end, and after it ended, the soul continued its journey between lives. I like to call it an NPE, the non-physical experience that we are able to explore any time we leave a past life behind, (in contrast to the NDE which requires almost dying). This is Phase 2. 

The 3rd phase is hinted at in Origen's quote. The idea that we have "passed through some worlds already, and ... will pass through others" is intriguing. I have not even explored this on my own, but when I do, I will be sharing my experiences here on this blog. This is an ongoing project, I have a few answers and a thousand questions, and I welcome you to join me on this journey.