Regression I feel the need to discuss past life regression a bit more, for any who might want to go there. Besides writing exercises, people have used hypnosis or assisted deep meditation, to delve into their past lives. Astrology has also been used to hint at a soul's full history. I have always been a little skeptical about hypnosis-induced regression because it may be conducted by a person who has a vested interest in proving that hypnosis works and that something will, indeed, be uncovered. Past life regression seems a perfect opportunity to pull out something through hypnosis that cannot be verified independently. I would always wonder if it came from me or the hypnotist. I'm sure that my cynicism is not entirely fair, but, that's how I've always thought of it. I believe that people can be hypnotized and I believe that information can be extracted from the subconscious in this way. I also believe that a mind under such control is very soft clay and could be nudged in most any direction. That's why hypnotic suggestions work. I am NOT saying that hypnosis is bunk nor that it should be avoided. However, for my own personal assurance that my own past life regressions are not influenced from the outside, my skepticism and suspicion would not blend well with the hypnosis method. As I said, we don't have to learn the details of past lives to deal with their effects, but for me this past life concerning the tattoo seemed to hold many clues and it was going to keep cropping up until I gleaned all I needed from it. It could also have been another exercise in my remedial spirit work curriculum. It was a valuable lesson in how to get this kind of information... from myself. After that initial flow of writing, which essentially detailed the scene, I saw the obvious wounding involved. On a second review, I saw the more subtle lessons because it was more than just a description of what happened. So, I'll step back a minute and recount what I experienced. This is difficult to write because this session was not played out in an orderly way. Unlike the first run, being a detailed story-like account, this was something of an interview. I lay comfortably stretched out so I could relax my body and not think about my own physical presence. I focused away from this world and, much like the visit with my great grandfather, I focused on another place and time. I went to the wharf where the incident with the tattooed man occurred. I envisioned the place as detailed in my story account. Use of compassion and emotion seemed to have enhanced that first journey to great grandfather, so I tried to think of my past-self as if she was not me. This seemed fairly easy to separate. Instead of trying to connect with another me, a more difficult concept, I tried to connect with that woman who had been violated by a tattoed man on the wharf. I suppose this separation is what caused the interview nature of the journey. Very shortly, I was there on the wharf, in that moment, and I was deeply affected by the situation. However, I also knew that I was still reclined in my own house, here in this plane and time. I was not asleep, but I suppose this must be how lucid dreaming feels. It was both odd and exciting to be literally in two places at once. In fact, it was almost like three places. I felt that there was a third Me, an overall me, that was supervising this experiment in some way. I knew that if I was frightened or didn't want to continue, I could simply break the connection and it would be this third Me that would do it. Maybe this is how self-hypnosis works. I don't know. Anyway, this time while the act occurred, I felt it, but not so much the physical aspects as the emotion of it. The tears flowed rather freely throughout this 'memory'. While the act proceeded, I realized that the offender had ceased to see me and I was only a body. As a defense mechanism, I adopted the same device. I released my body from myself so that the offender was only victimizing that physical part of me and not my spirit (or that was my intention). While in my semi-trance, I spoke in whispers, telling of this event and the feelings, letting the thoughts flow out. It was a little confusing for me to be asking silent questions within my own mind and hearing whispered answers from my own mouth. I felt I was both speaker and audience. I sort of flowed in and out of my own voice and that of the past. I tried to just let it run its course and not dampen it with logic. Now, to more accurately portray this event, I'm including my initial reporting of it from my spirit diary. This is very much an interview with my past-self and I was very surprised to read it after my fingers finally quit typing. Since the act on the wharf was no longer in progress, this was like sitting more calmly with my past-self afterward and getting impressions. I realized that for my past-self, this incident was also past. Does this makes sense? Even though she could recount the event for me in great detail, she had also put it behind her, in a way. She had taken time to look at the event from a distance and could share what she learned with me. I had to just let go of my judgement. If I stopped to think about how it all worked, and how crazy it was to be referring to my alternate selves, then I'd get tied up in that and never get this event recorded. So I started typing up what the meditation was like and what occurred during, thus the interview began. I attempted to spell everything the way I was hearing it in my mind. Try to read it as I wrote it. It seems that my conscious self kept prompting my past-self for answers. Sometimes I would speculate and then the past-self would expound or make corrections. You can sort of tell which voice is speaking by how thick the accent is. Realize that my family has been in America for several generations. There was a huge difference between my vaguely southern accent and the thick brogue I was hearing from my past-self. "At some point in the agonized whispers, I developed an accent and my speech pattern shifted a bit. My vocabulary was simpler and my grammar slipped. I let this come through here, even in the retelling. Twas much a scot or irish brogue. I cannae tell for certain which. Anyway, that part o' me knew the trouble. Twas nae what the vile man did but that I clung to it after. I let it stay with me. I let it define me. I felt that me body was no longer mine own nor good, for certain. Twas a used and soiled thing and no good for any purpose, mine or others. The injury was not in what he done, it was in lettin' me keep myself split in that way, separated from my own flesh and despisin' it. "[I think] this occurred in 1817. [I think] this was Kilkenny and o' course on the river. [I had no idea where Kilkenny was except in Ireland. Later I saw on a map that it's on the River Nore.] I think I was put out of me misery a few years later when the Typhus came and took so many, even them that was left were set ta starve. In truth, I was glad to go. I'd tried to make my way through life on my own. It was workin late that night in the filin' room what had me on the wharf to begin with at such an hour. If I hadn't been so desperate to be an independent woman, maybe I'd have not been there on that night for that fella to have his way. But even so, it was not his fault that I let it ruin me. It was mine. [I think] my name was Lilly, actually Lillian McPherson. I feel for the man who needed such a thing to make him feel righteous for a wee bit. I reckon he had his own ghosts to battle. I think he nae intended to become one of mine, but again, twas not his doin' to make him so. I made a spectre out of him meself." There's more but it's awfully difficult to read with the accent. Lilly McPherson was an old maid for the time. She was a file clerk at a law office or perhaps with a tax collector's office. She was dark haired and pale skinned. Her father had been very strict in every manner possible. Her mother died when she was very young or possibly during childbirth. Lilly's father impressed his bitterness and rigid standards upon her. To fight back, Lillian set out to make her own way and leave him. She never found a way to do that. She had to live in his house and carry the shame from the wharf in secret. She was sure he'd blame her, even more than she was blaming herself for the rest of her life. Lilly McPherson was one other thing. She was me. Shades of her lot have been with me in this life. She has now helped me see them and thus I can change and heal them. With her father, Lilly was trying to somehow either earn his love or escape her need for it. She had no idea how to go about that because they both held all their emotions locked up tightly. On the wharf, she found the greatest offense not to be the act, but the impersonalization. This has carried over into my current life. I have felt impersonalized, especially concerning sex. I have treated others the same way in turn. It's so much easier to keep my emotional self contained if there are no personalities involved. I had locked my emotions up too. Going through life without emotions engaged is like playing chess. I can move pieces around the board and knock them off at will. I'm not concerned for how the pawn feels when I take him out of the game. But, people are not inanimate chess pieces. The players on the board are souls. They have a purpose, pawn or king. They have feelings and strongly identify with their role to play in the grand game. Every single one of them is important. You cannot play a game otherwise. I have understood this on an intellectual level. I've been very intuitive and careful not to stomp on other players if I can help it. I haven't always seen my own value in the game. I haven't allowed myself to be emotionally connected or functional while in the game. I was trying to be only the strategist or such. Perhaps I thought I could get by with being a Rook, a seemingly impartial structure, requiring no feelings to execute my tasks. This is not true. Even a Rook must be proud of its position and feel for those whom it conquers. So whether my body is a building structure or a pawn in battle garb or a queen in regalia... I must be emotionally involved, engaged, aware, and connected... to the game and all others in it. Yes, of course I might have discovered these things in other ways, either through psychology or a series of life events, however, this exercise in past life regression was a very powerful way to get the information to me. If I had been able to read myself better or maybe stuck with the psychotherapy, maybe I'd have gleaned the info without any mystical channels. Yet, who can see the trees in their own forest so clearly? And, how would I have recounted such a thing to possibly help you, if I had not experienced it myself? (Regression)

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