My experience of past life regression

Background

I had been meditating more regularly than before and had finally gotten over the struggling phase of meditations. Once the initial struggle with mind is over, meditation from being just a moral obligation that one knows is good for oneself and should do and should find time to do, it becomes a moment one looks forward to and craves to be in. It offers a space most comfortable and closest to the self where all the problems and turmoils find acknowledgements and solutions. I was so happy to have found that ease with it and eagerly looked forward to exploring new territories with this newly found wings and freedom.

Also, I had read the book “Autobiography of a yogi” a few months back which helped me break all the chains I had built in my mind that kept me tied down to belief and disbelief with my little ability of logical explanations. I had migrated into a new zone which is beyond belief and disbelief. It was a zone of ease with not having everything sorted into any of the 2 classifications. It could just be placed outside the 2 boxes into an area called “I neither believe nor disbelieve”. I am just open to any possibility because this Universe is far more mysterious and my tools to judge are not yet capable to measure the wholeness of it. Yet, I am working on making my tool capable enough to understand the wholeness one day. But as of now I am not ready.

This new approach opened up a much bigger world for me to explore. And with that openness I wanted to explore past lives too.

The skeptic and the believer

When I analyzed the experience later, I was not sure whether the visuals and stories that I experienced were something that really were from past life or just a trick by my brain playing out imaginations by weaving bits and pieces from everywhere. But even if it was imagination, it provided me a wonderful scope to see what my subconscious mind had picked and presented and especially why that was particularly presented in that particular manner. It gave me a window to look into all the hidden desires and fears that very much affected me in my present life.

And if you look at it that way, it hardly matters where the visuals came from because the purpose it solves remains the same: To know why you do and what you do the way you do now.

My past life 1

31st May, 2018
I took help of an online guide and it actually worked very well into guiding me to a very relaxed space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKM2i3pi5b8

It was a dreamlike state with visuals floating by, filled with emotions and informations. I have added the images which resembled the most with my visuals.

Spirit Animal

Image link: http://www.playbuzz.com/pringlepeaches10/which-christmas-spirit-animal-are-you

As I continued with the guided meditation, I followed the instructions easily and it kept taking me deeper. When the instructor asked me to call upon my spirit animal, I immediately found a deer coming towards me and stood beside.

To my surprise, I felt that I had already known the spirit of that deer and I knew that it was my dearest friend I missed for long. I hugged in the reunion and kept kissing the deer. This feeling of being accustomed was particularly very strange. I was aware that it was a very wise spirit and knew much more than I did and was my well wisher. When it guided me to take the path that I had to take to recall my past life, I wanted the deer to come along too. But it did not. I felt a feeling of missing it when I took the path alone. But it led me to a certain distance and did not come further.

The past me

I found myself walking down a mountain path, through a narrow staircase curved out of rock. There were trees and mountains and hardly any human. I was a woman with shaven head and maroon cloth. My feet were bare and strong. I walked till I came across a man who was cutting the rocks. Suddenly a fear from this life arose in my heart. I was alone, middle of nowhere. Very soon I realized I was still safe. He smiled at me and continued with his work. He was a villager who had come to take some pieces of rocks. I understood I was safer in that life. The fear I have cultivated to be immediately alert in the presence of men especially when I am alone was something of this life. In that life, I was a free woman. I roamed around alone and nobody had harmed. The villagers were simple and nice people and had a lot of respect for monks.

Image link: http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/The-Position-of-Women-in-Buddhism-128286.html

I kept going down till I reached my monastery. It was a small monastery with very few monks and some children. I did not know my parents and never felt the urge to know either. I had grown up in that monastery since I was a child. The mountain was my only friend and relation.

Image link: https://worldexpeditions.com/Bhutan/Adventure-Touring/Bhutan-Explorer-Paro-Tshechu-Festival

I never spoke and never felt the need to either. I cleaned the meditation hall and alter. I sat by the door and read the holy texts. I helped in the kitchen sometimes. The work happened spontaneously without anyone having to order or organize. There was a silent understanding of duty that came out of no external pressure and everyone did what was needed to be done. And yet I was never held responsible and was free to walk the mountains anytime.

I was a free individual. I realized my inner space was very much influenced by the external space I had grown up in. My mind resembled the free wind of the mountains and the emptiness between the 2 peaks that was present outside was also present within my heart. Human habitation not being so abundant, the few people who lived there had picked up mostly the language of nature than of mankind. There was silence and no verbal communication and yet an understanding and communication existed between living beings which was obvious. I did not have many thoughts. Not many emotions occurred in my mind. It was just a vast empty space filled with delight like the fog that filled the empty spaces in that high land.

When I tried to remember my happiest time in that life, I remembered very ordinary everyday moments of looking at the different landscapes during my walks that gave me so much pleasure. When I remembered my saddest time, I remembered an old wrinkled face of a man who was crying and I placed my palm on his head to pacify. I did not need to know the reason for his sadness. He did not need to tell me either. The fact that he was sad made me empathize and want to ease the sorrows through my presence and transfer my happiness there. It was very natural and something that gave me a sense of fulfillment and offering of service in that life.

I used to look at the villages from the mountain sometimes but never really went there. I had never seen the world outside that mountain and never had the curiosity either. My small world easily taught me to accept the way I was and find my own delightful space within that.

One day, during my walk, I took bath in a clear blue lake and sat under a rock to dry. Warm sunlight fell on my body and I felt very weak and tired. I felt a sense of hunger and realized I must have not eaten my food and since when I did not remember. I closed my eyes and dozed off. I was 40-45. Everything in that life happened with ease. The life graph was never too low, never too high and even the feeling of death did not raise or lower the graph in any drastic manner.

Image link: https://www.himalayanwonders.com/nepal/phoksundo-lake-trek.html

A village woman with few children and a donkey passed that way. They picked me up on their donkey. When they realized I was dead, they dug the ground and covered me with pieces of rocks. They raised the pile of rocks into a heap above the ground especially to honour me knowing that I was a monk. This sweet act made me smile even as I left my body into the spirit form.

Image link: https://biblewalks.com/sites/psagot.html

Accomplishments

-Having no attachment with any person or object in that life, death felt much simpler.
-I was very accepting and grateful of the life I had and the place and circumstance I was born in and grew up. It did not occur to me to want more or regret on anything. This ease with life made me evolve into the next one.

Reasons for re-birth

-Though I never really craved to have family or friends, I had curiosity as to what that must be like. My present life was about experiencing that warmth, yet having the challenge of not losing the delight I had found at everything when my life was simpler.
-Though I was born into a perfect circumstance to spiritually aspire as a monk, I was actually very static in my quest, accepting and appreciating the creation without much desire to look for the creator. My present life was about going beyond the beauty of creation to look for the creator.

The skeptical analysis

-I studied in a boarding school in Darjeeling and so grew up in the hills in my present life. The images could have been inspired by the memory of my childhood mixed with imaginations (Or could it be the other way round, that my strong relation with the Himalaya from my past life brought me closer to it in this life too).

-Though I did not walk the mountain so much in my present life, I did love to walk alone during the few outings which gave me a lot of pleasure. This could have remained amongst my deepest desires which came up when the past life memories were being sought after.

-I had visited monasteries in Darjeeling and Nepal and had watched the documentary “Yogis of Tibet” few weeks back. It could be possible that many images I saw during this regression were borrowed by my mind and neatly woven together as images from past.

-I do not wish to be a Buddhist monk particularly but I always had a desire to be a “sanyasi” or a full time spiritual seeker. When I was a child, I had seen a photography book of Himalayan saints which had left a deep impression in my mind. It could be possible that this hidden desire during the regression found an opportunity to fulfill itself through imagination.

-I had always craved to be free. Being born as a woman in this life, I had to again and again curb that freedom. To be a free woman without feeling unsafe anywhere could have been my dream which found its fulfillment through the subconscious.

-My inner state was much more peaceful in that life than in my present one. I remember having that similar state of mind during my childhood. I was dreamy and lost in my own world, delighted in little things without much ups and downs in the curve. It is only when I grew up my emotions and thoughts became varied, inconsistent and coloured. Through regular meditations I am intending to simplify it back again. Probably that desired state of mind was actualized through my imagination of past.

My past life 2

1st June, 2018
I was fascinated by the experience I had. Whether I considered it real memories or imaginations, were still unclear but I had read more about it to get a better understanding and found another video where Dr. Brian Weiss had guided a past life regression session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTnAqDPBsoY
I wanted to experience that too having read his book “Many lives, many masters”. 

This time unlike the previous experience, I was not excited and delighted to enter through the gate of my past life. As I neared it, I was full of fear and kept expecting something bad. I was a little girl with her father. My father somewhat looked like my music teacher in this life. The scenes and costumes resembled the old Western movies I watched sometimes.

I saw a house which was not very rich. It was a small house with open balcony in the front and courtyard.

Moving ahead in time, I saw a beautiful girl with curly brown hair, a young Western woman around 22-25. She was wearing a victorian gown. Her face looked very innocent and naive. She had a loving father and grew up in a small house being loved and protected and was unaware of the complexities of the world.

Image link: http://www.leendertvanderpool.com/NLeasterneurope37.htm

It was difficult for me to believe it was my story and that woman was I because my present self is completely different from that in terms of preference of lifestyle. As I looked at her face I felt sad for her because she looked too innocent to survive in this world. She was in love with a man and her heart felt like a balloon. She had absolute trust and over-simplified outlook towards life. The man she loved on the contrary looked a bit cruel in his facial feature. I could see that she was not safe with him but she could not realize. She was too innocent and floating in love to notice anything at all.

Image link: http://www.vintagevictorian.com/Events.html

Next, I saw her lying in her bed when her lover (perhaps fience) stabbed her in her stomach. Her mind was too simple to grasp any reason for that. As she died, tears filled her eyes to know that she was not really loved.

I could feel the pain in her heart with which she died. A warm refreshing light entered her heart as she was taken by death and cleansed of the pain she had gathered. Tears flowed down my eyes too while I sat recalling the memories of that past. As I evoked the memory of the light cleansing her heart, it once again cleaned mine that was filled with pain that had not yet gone. I told myself, “Forgive. Don’t hold grudges. Let go. Release.” And yet there was something still held back. I asked the divine light to clean me completely so that the traces of it were gone.

I realized it was a life before the life of monk. In fact, the life of monk happened as a reaction to that life wanting to be free from any kind of emotional attachments and relations.

Accomplishments

-Though I was murdered and my last memory was full of sorrow and feeling of betrayal, I did not hold anger. The emotions that were expressed were that of pain and sadness and not of frustration. If it was anger, next life could have been worse looking for revenge and satisfaction. Because it ended in sadness and regret over relation, the next life of monk explored a better option of living and dying with a clean slate of no complications.

-Though the over-simplicity was a problem for that young girl, yet not living a life complicated with ill thoughts led to a better and evolved life in the next one.

Reasons for re-birth

-Her life was very materialistic without any higher aspiration, circling around people and relations, love and acceptance and social bonds.

-Being her, I could experience what life feels like with lower sense of perception. Her perception of anything was less evolved making her life and world less awakened and bright.

-Her state of being in love was very immature. It was a senseless love that dimmed the consciousness instead of brightening it further.

-Just being a good, innocent person was not enough which remained at the mercy of others. Good-ness had to be explored with strength and not pity because it was a quality of God.

The skeptical analysis

-Unlike the first story with which I easily associated my present life, this filled me with surprise. I could not understand why I was seeing visual of this woman in victorian gown. But it could be another trick played by my mind bringing unexpected images from old English movies I might have watched. It reminds me of “Gone with the wind” though I did not even watch the movie to its completion being bored with the characters.

-During my teenage and my youth in this present life, I always wanted to stay away from being in any emotional relation. I always knew I was heading a danger. As I neared it, my heart felt like a balloon and my mind was filled with fear. While many of my friends so naturally dealt with this phenomenon, I struggled to overcome the mess my inner state would be in if I neared any love-affair. As a result, I wanted to avoid being married and just focus on my work.

It could be that my subconscious mind pulled out that fear over relations and played out as past life. (Or it could be the other way round, that the fear I had in this present life over relations was an effect of that past.)

Learnings about present life from the past

Whether it is truly a past life regression or just my subconscious showing me my different states of being hidden inside, it was interesting to see what I have evolved through and what part of me remained constant.

-I could see that the 3 states or lives were constantly evolving from the past, this life being the most evolved. I could see that I worked through it and my present life was a work of other lives and if I work well in this one I would advance to be a much evolved one.

-In this life, almost inherently since my childhood I was aware that I had to make something meaningful out of my life. Just being an aimless tourist was not the purpose of my being here. Intensity and aspiration were gifts I acquired which were not strong in my past lives.

-Having experienced a consciousness of low perception through the 2nd life (that of the young girl), I value my present state of consciousness which is very perceptive, comparatively. I realized one has to evolve into that. And life is so much more meaningful when perception is strong. This was present even in the 1st past life as a monk. But she used it mostly for delight. In my present life I have learnt to use that to decode messages from the outside world to enrich my inner world and guide me in my aspiration. This makes my life so much more meaningful and I felt even more grateful to have that.

-Since my childhood I felt an urge to grow spiritually. It came very naturally to me to seek God. This urge could be as a result of the evolving consciousness through past lives which did not find fulfillment in any of its paths.

As I sit typing this lengthy narration and analysis, I still am split into 2 minds, one mocking me for being so gullible being convinced at something so ridiculous and the other keeping an open mind till more knowledge of the “whole” arrives to assure me of what is true and what is not.