PAST LIVES REGRESSION: THE SANDS OF TIME FROM THE FOREST TO THE SEA

 

For each client in a PAST LIVES REGRESSION hypnotherapy session, I have the client create a sensorium type of experience, an oral description of the incarnation that employs all the five senses, which could include even the sixth sense. I do this by having the clients clarify certain aspects of their experiences through my soliciting details and rather thick descriptions of most things seen, heard, felt, smelled and tasted by the client throughout the past life scenario. Following are three thumbnail sketches of the visions from my last three PAST LIVES REGRESSION clients, Karl, Reva, and Molly. Note, dear reader, that these word-for-word citations are drawn from my memory, not from recordings. (And note too, that I never record or transcribe any of my sessions.) My use of quotation marks for the following descriptions is meant to signal that they are my clients’ words, as best as I could recall them after each session, and after the client had gone from my office.

KARL:

“It is scorching hot and the sun is burning my face and my eyes. Sand everywhere. Wind too. The wind is strong and hot and not at all cooling. My head is wrapped with a white cloth. I’ve a very long and pointed beard and I’ve got a ton of jewelry around my neck. Sandals. My sandals are leather and are wrapped around my ankles.

I am walking over a sandhill and am pulling on rein of an unusually tall horse that is glistening from the heat, a golden palomino, that is kind of walking both behind and beside me.

I stop to quench my thirst, and I am sipping water from a pink Yeti! A woman jumps down from the horse. I didn’t notice her until now! She jumps down and comes close really fast, embraces me, smiles at me, and grabs my Yeti and laughs and takes a drink. We are dressed the same way. We are both wearing long white robes, and leather sandals that are laced rather high. Also, both of us are wearing big silver medallions around our necks. We are couple, that’s for sure.

I cannot see where exactly we are headed, but neither of us seems to care about that. I guess we know where we are going. When I breathe the desert air burns my nostrils. It’s that hot!

Looking up there is not a cloud in that bright, blue sky. But I do see a bird in the distance, flying toward us. I can see it’s a blackbird, a blackbird that is now swooping down at us … “

REVA:

“I am standing beside a very big tree looking through hanging leaves at a hut made of mud and thatch. I cannot see the doorway. It’s dark, nighttime I guess, and there is a bonfire right beside me. It’s big and it’s very hot. And through the flames across from me I can see this other person. She’s wrinkly and old and it seems we are dressed the same. I am barefoot but I cannot see whether she is. But I can see her beaded leather top, that is exactly like mine. But hers is a dark brown, almost black, and mine is much lighter, almost blonde color. And hers has lots of creases, mine doesn’t. She is smiling at me, and I am smiling back at her.

We are cooking something, I’m not sure what. Whatever it is, it has a very strong odor. Not unpleasant but a kind of burnt smell. Ah. She is lifting it up from a huge pot or vat (I guess) of boiling water. It’s meat hanging on a big bone, a really big bone. And she is smiling still and now nodding her head, I think in approval.

I have to back up, stand back because the flames of the fire are just really, really hot. Too hot for me. Piercing hot actually. The trees are thick here, very close together, and with wide and very thick trunks. And tall. When I look at for the treetops I cannot see them. They form a covered canopy, but I can see some stars through the peepholes in canopy. And now I’m stepping back even farther because of the heat.

A couple more people are coming toward the fire. Two males talking and laughing. I cannot make out what they are saying yet, because of the loud crackling of the fire. As they get closer the old lady across the fire begins to laugh. Me too. I cannot help but laugh, but mine I think is a nervous laugh. They are males. They are wearing the same beaded tops as the old lady and me. Now I know what they’re talking about. They are talking about the fire, and how big it is.

And now there is another couple coming toward the fire. They are carrying a carcass. It looks like a deer. And now they are dropping the carcass into the vat. The carcass is huge. But they’ve left the head of the deer or whatever it is, hanging over the outside of the vat. Like I said, it looks like a deer, a giant deer but black and white in color. Not black and white like a zebra, but a blotchy black and white.

That burnt odor is overtaking all my senses. I can’t help but think of anything except that sharp, burnt smell. It’s so strong.

Here come a bunch of people with sticks. Men and women and some kids, all carrying sticks! They are circling us and banging these sticks together. Bundles of sticks. Each having a bundle in each hand and they are banging them together. They are all dressed the same.

No, they are not dancing. Or maybe they are. They’re just jumping straight up and down and banging their sticks and laughing. Now it’s noisy. The crackling fire, the laughter, the banging of the sticks … “

MOLLY:

“I am running through a forest. Someone may be chasing me but I’m not sure. I’m not nervous so likely not. I am running though, as fast as I can. I’m barefoot and running in the daylight. I’m not dodging trees. I am on a path, a well-worn path. The trees are thinning out as I’m leaving the forest and now running on a beach along the water.

The beach is white and the sea (or whatever it is, a big lake maybe, or maybe an ocean) is a deep, dark, frothy and green. A sparkly green. It’s warm and windy. I can feel the warm air blowing heavily on my skin and through my hair. I’m sweating from the run.

I can smell salt, from my sweat but mostly from the water. So, it must be a sea or an ocean. The smell of salt in the warm air and I’m inhaling lots of it, probably because I’m also short of breath from the running. My mouth is wide open to catch more air, and I can taste the salt!

There are people up ahead, pulling nets from the water. Four people, three men and one child. The child looks to be ten years of age. The men are bald. I am bald! And I’m a man! (I can feel my package swinging when I run.) And that kid is bald, though I can’t tell if the kid is a guy or a girl.

Fish. They are pulling nets of fish onto the shore. I think I am running there to help them. They notice me and wave. One is shouting something toward me, but I can’t hear because I’m seaside and the roar of the waves is all I can hear.

Seagulls. Lots of seagulls are flying and dipping and squawking above those people I’m approaching. I’m there. The kid runs at me and gives me a hug. It’s a girl. Those three guys with her, I notice, are considerably younger than me. And they each take turns giving me a hug and a smile.

I am their dad. And I am a fisherman!”

Three different clients. Three different experiences. And now my rather Jungian synopsis, the collected-agreement-on-themes in literature for these three scenarios, beginning with Karl.

Karl’s scenario involves just two people and a horse in a desert. In my office the clean-shaven Karl is telling me, in his scenario, that he has a long and pointed beard. He is escorting his female mate (he said they were a couple) across some desert dune. He seems very confident in this desert trek. Is he a Bedouin? A Bedouin that drinks from a Yeti cup?

And what of that blackbird swooping down on them?  A mix of ancient times and modern times? What is the story here?  In Herbert’s Dune, the desert represents a very extreme environment for survival, whereas Moses spent 40 years in the biblical desert on a cleansing of the spirit quest.

And now for Reva. The setting is nighttime. Reva is standing beside a very big tree which stands among other big trees, which indicates she is in a forest. It seems she is a member of a group of hunters and gatherers, and it seems whatever game is presented, it is being cooked by females, the older woman across the pot and herself. The crowd she presents suggests a collectivistic society all dressed in similar costume, all dancing to the drumbeat of hand-held sticks. Such hand-held sticks could very well be Cuban claves, and if so then the dance could that of a Latin salsa rhythm.

Whatever Reva’s forest presents, to me seemed eerie at the start, at least until the woman across the pot smiled at her. And I did not sense a sardonic smile, but rather a smile of comfort and belonging. Such forest settings are popular in literature. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, for example, the forests are either enchanted or perilous, but in Thoreau’s Waldon, the forest is a place of introspection and self-discovery. Whatever Reva’s forest represents, the symbolism of it will not be apparent until sometime after the session, in many cases, long after the session.

Molly’s vision, too, took place a forest, at least at the very start. And at that start she seemed to me to be running scared, but very soon presented to be just in a hurry, without fear. Reva’s scenario stayed in a forest setting, whereas Molly runs out of the forest and onto a beach. My female client, Molly, is a male in her past life vision.

Unlike Reva’s social situation, I cannot determine if Molly’s family is part of a bigger collective, or just an independent fishing family. Also, unlike Reva’s situation, Molly’s setting is not presented in a tribal nature, though it is rather interesting that all Molly’s family members are bald.

Like the forest, the sea is prevalent in ancient and modern literature. The sea in Homer’s Odyssey represented the long journey home. Could it be that Molly and crew have been lost at sea? In Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the sea represents the eternal struggle with humans and nature and survival. In Molly’s vision, she is a male fisher. Why was she in the forest? Why was she running from the forest? Maybe she lives in the forest, and the family has come home? But what of the little girl? Why would she be out at sea and not in the forest?

All three time-travelers seemed already acculturated as soon as their verbal descriptions began. Also, not any of the three seemed surprised with regard to their raiment but rather seemed eager to describe in detail when prompted.

And all three time-travelers were definitely acting in a settings clearly remote from their present realities. As I have attempted to hypothecate on the symbolism of their locales, any epiphanies relating to these locales would, of course, be best expressed from the clients’ own introspections. Of course, after the fact as I was texting back and forth with Karl, Reva, and Molly, all of whom had flashes of insight of what these past life experiences might have meant to them. Karl had been to the desert before on a vacation and so, not-so-strangely, decided that this past life was the discovery that prompted his future self to the Sahara many years or even decades later. Reva later revealed that that older lady across from her quite looked like her mother, not exactly but close to. So, then she decided she was among her own kind, and that her mother lookalike might have been an aunt or grandmother, some blood relative for sure.  Molly, even weeks later, was still alarmed that experienced fatherhood. Molly, in her present life was the mother of three children and has no revelation of what that might have signaled

Ostensibly, from a client point of view, these three time-travelers believed they had experienced some real moments from a past life. From my hypnotherapy point of view, my counsel for such meant mission accomplished!