In Repose Blog

What is it like to have a Past Life Regression?

Interesting. To say the very least.

I had been waiting on the recorded session to arrive in the mail before writing about it.  I wanted to be accurate in my reporting, and with the cd, it will be easy to do so.

I eagerly tore open the envelope yesterday to find: a cassette tape. Seriously. I have nothing that even PLAYS a cassette tape. Not even my truck! I have been assured that I will get a cd (as will each of the other students in the class) but that will be a longer wait!

So what I will do is recap the highlights of my caveman life on another post, the ones I remember without the recording. This article will describe the session itself and what its like to be hypnotized.

Dolores Cannon has hypnotized more than a thousand people. She started way back in the 1960's and has perfected (and copyrighted!) a special technique to access the deep recesses of the human mind and, literally, beyond the human mind. She is the author of many books and is also considered the world's foremost authority on Nostradamus, having written three large volumes gleaned from the past life recollections of a man currently incarnated.

I have only read a couple of Dolores' books, Keepers of the Garden, and The Convoluted Universe, Book one. One glance at the matronly Mrs. Cannon and one might not imagine that it is likely your brain and entire sense of reality will be challenged if you attempt reading any of her books!

So back to the regression. After an interview session where she gets to know you and a bit about your life and your concerns, and what you might like to learn or heal in your life, she writes down the questions you have. Anyone I know would have a hundred questions but I basically had to keep the list very short, two to three inquiries at the most. She has you visit the restroom and prepare to visit, albeit briefly, another time and another place of the existance of your soul.

This was no small adventure I was about to embark on. I had awoken early and basically prayed to the angels for 4 hours about what was about to happen. I talked about and asked for many things. I asked to be able to heal from my constant chronic pain. I asked to have a clear notion about the purpose of my life. I asked the angels to stay with me while I explored, and I asked them to consider the others in the room who also might need healing.

Soon it was 9am, and class began with much anticipation. Dolores had a bed rolled into the conference room. She wanted her subject to be comfy, and to follow her regular MO in a regression session. Well that bed was the single most horrible, used up, beaten up jangle of springs and batting I have ever laid on in my life. I shudder to think about its history! The floor would easily have been more comfortable than this thing that could have doubled as a torture device to my chronic pain challenged body! But I valiantly attempted to make do. I shoved a couple of pillows under my back and rear end and tried to get comfortable.

Actually at this very moment, a student in the class came up to me and whispered something to me, so amazing and life changing I started to weep. That small moment, and that story is so big, I cannot begin to tell it right now, but by the end of this post I can tell you a tiny bit more about what she said.

So I closed my eyes and in a very very short amount of time, I was taken to "my beautiful place." I was aware of what was happening, but I was relaxing more and more and in her sing-song quiet and soothing voice, Dolores asked me questions. And I answered them. At first my nose itched, and my shoulders ached, but I didn't move at all. Except for crying and a couple of muscle spasms I did not move at all for 90 minutes.

My "beautiful place" is a place I go when I meditate, a place of healing. Its an open pavillion, with running water and flowers and all kinds of animals and angels. This is the place I started out in my mind. Dolores asked if anyone was with me and I said yes, Archangel Raphael was behind me, by my left shoulder. He was going to go with me on my regression.

Dolores suggested we sit on a cloud and head to a "relevant" life. I felt my elbows being supported by angels on either side and we floated down through the clouds and my feet touched the ground. I was standing maybe 20 yards from a large rock face of a hill. I described it as a rock "wall" to Dolores, but I did not mean anything built by humans. I was asked to look around and it took a while to see anything else, but I finally did. Towards the left was a small opening in the wall. Dolores asked if I wanted to explore inside. "I don't like caves" I think I said this more than once. Dolores persisted, and assured me I was safe, and I walked closer. I walked slowly and with every step closer to that dark small opening, I began to remember just exactly who I was, and what my life here was all about.

(To be continued tomorrow.)

(Oh, and what about what the lovely student whispered to me? She told me she saw angels, more angels than she had ever seen in any one place, and at any one time, and they were surrounding me, and reaching high into the heavens. How cool is that?)

Question for my Loyal Readers

July 13, 2008, I had a past life regression with the famous writer and regressionist, Dolores Cannon.

I was regressed in a classroom of 20 people who were there to learn the method to use in their own practice and explorations. I was also a student and I will also receive certification and 24 continuing education credit hours for completing the course. I hope to begin helping others in their quest for healing using this skill myself very soon.

I learned late yesterday that the cd recording of the session is "in the mail" and I should be receiving it any day.

My question for my regular readers is this: Would you all like a play-by-play of the event or a simple overview? The former would be very interesting for me to tackle as I would be examining the experience in depth piece by piece. Of course, this could take many posts and end up being quite the drawn-out experience. Perhaps such detail would bore you?

The latter idea, a simple overview, would likely be the best answer for "the masses" and their very short attention span, but I am not leaning toward that concept at the moment.

I'd love to know your thoughts, please comment, or those of you who shy from public voice, please email me. Inrepose@gmail.com

Quantum Thinking

Metaphysics and Physics are closer than you think. Quantum mechanics is a physical science dealing with the behavior of matter and energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles and waves.

"Let me repeat: Observe a particle as a wave, and it is a wave. Observe it as matter, and it is matter. … Thus it is our point of view, the way we look at reality that makes reality the way it is."—Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Nada Brahma: The World is Sound

The past week has been a series of revelations to me and the underpinning lesson for me so far is best described not religiously or even metaphysically, but scientifically as Berendt does in the quote above. This way of thinking, for me, has moved from an interesting sounding theory to something useful and tangible in my present life.

So many friends and family are curious about what happened in my session with Dolores Cannon on Sunday when we did a past life regression. The event was wonderful, to be sure, but it was only a small part of the gifts and insights that have been bestowed upon me recently.

Dolores provides her clients and she will provide me too, an audio recording of the session, but I don't have that available yet. When I get my recording I plan on transcribing it so that I will better be able to share my adventure with my readers. I spent hours talking to my family about it last night, and I was only able to hit the highlights of all that has happened.

I will say that I was successfully regressed to some ancient past when I was occupying an early human form that we might describe as a caveman. I was a man, and there actually was a cave involved, too.

It was a short and most brutal existence.

Angel Question Explained

So a few weeks ago I had a particularly bad pain day. I had to cancel a very important photo shoot, and I spent five full hours flat on my back unable to move or do anything much more than breathe. I decided to try something quite radical. I decided to pray. Really pray. I decided to pray and ask for guidance from whomever might consider to help me. I memorized the Hail Mary and said it probably 200 times. I was relentless in my prayer. I prayed not for a miracle cure, but simply, the knowledge of what I must do next, to move toward real healing. I named every angel, ascended master and saint that I had names for, and asked each one for help.

It was a non-denominational prayer for sure.

I went to bed that night exhausted from the pain, the immobility and the marathon prayer.

Then I woke up in the morning.

I absolutely had my answer. It came in three parts and it was as if the information was downloaded in my brain directly. The first thing I was to do was volunteer for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. An organization I was aware of, but had no intention of joining until that morning. The second thing was to make an appointment with my family physician, whom until that morning I had basically dismissed because I had felt dismissed by him. Not in a bad way mind you. I love my doctor. He is very kind. He just never found anything he could fix in me, and I had concluded it was pointless for us both for me to return.

The third thing I was supposed to do was have a past life regression.

Hmmm. Yes, this is why  I am here.

Dolores' class this weekend has about 25 people in it. For three days we all learn how to do hypnosis, the Cannon way. On the third day, Dolores regresses one lucky student.

I had overheard several people make their intention known that they would be quite interested in volunteering to be the demonstration client. I did not offer. I just waited and watched.

On the way to lunch today Dolores pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to be regressed. She said she used to pull names out of a hat, but most of the time she lets her connection to the "Super Conscious" or "Collective Unconscious" guide her to the appropriate subject.

Me.

In just a few hours.

With 24 people watching.

You Only have one Life...Right?

Well, maybe not.

Before I begin to tell you a story today, let me back up a little bit and start by telling you a couple of things. First, my life has been filled with experiences that defy logic and are not easily explained.

Second, I am a skeptic at heart. Truly, I am. I turn to logic first to answer any question or solve any problem. I give my left brain and and traditional ways of thinking about things first dibs when faced with a conundrum.

Then... when logic fails me, (as it has so many times)  I am willing to open my mind and my heart up to other possibilities according to the truth in my heart. Below is a story to illustrate this statement. It literally took me years to stop being a skeptic and fully accept the truth of this event I am about to describe to you.

It was about 1992. My children were babies I was living in New
Jersey. My friend Patty told me about a presentation about Past Lives
that would end in a group regression. We got our husbands to watch the
babies and off we went. I wasn't sure about the whole reincarnation concept,
but the idea of an afternoon free from diapers and dishes was most appealing.

Frankly, I don't remember a lot about the presentation, but I remember every
detail about the regression.

The leader had the small group  of people attending, lie on the floor and performed group hypnosis. Our visualization was that of descending down a staircase and seeing a series of doors that represented other lifetimes we have experienced. We were to pick a relevant door to examine a relevent life.

I walked down the stairs. I still remember picking the second door on my left. I opened the door and walked into this scene:

I was at the ceiling viewing remotely the scene where I was the woman
in the room but not in her body. It was a dark room but it was
daylight outside. The building was made of stone or carved out of
stone. The windows were few and covered against the heat of the
scorching sun. Outside people (mostly men) were walking with long
coverings over their bodies to protect them from the heat and sun. The
walls were blinding white and mostly rounded in form.

Inside the room there was more color. There was weavings on the wall,
rugs on the floor and many places to sit or lay. The woman was seated
on the floor, on pillows near a low table. To her left was a toddler
boy, her son. To her right was her father, a man with a beard and
covered head. On the table was food that she had prepared for their
midday meal. It was good food and there was plenty of it.

I knew her internal thoughts. She was thinking that she was so
grateful for the food, that she and her family did not need to worry
very much about being hungry, and that was not the case with many of
the people that were walking just outside her door. There were many
hungry people in their "villiage"?

The father and the son were eating happily and heartily but the woman
was merely picking at her food. She was feeling envious and guilty.
She was envious of her father, who could come and go as he pleased and
could participate in nearly any activity or travel he might wish. She
felt he had a good, full and interesting life. She was burning with
envy over this. She loved her father dearly, he treated her as well or
better than any man in their culture, but in their culture women were
not to create or achieve or experience much of anything but childbirth
and cooking and homekeeping. She was not even often allowed to spend
much time with other women. She felt like a prisoner.

Looking at her son she felt envious of his future life. HE would have
opportunities she could not even fathom. And all because he was male.
She felt like such a bad mother for envying her very own child but she
could not help her strong feelings.

She wanted to experience the world and felt that it was hidden from
her, kept from her. She was young and healthy and thought all she had
to look forward to was a repetition of this same mundane day and
gnawing envy and anger in her belly.

That was pretty much the regression.

I don't know time in history or the culture, but I figure middle
eastern and at least two or more hundred years ago. I did not know my
name or if I was married or how I died.

Now when I left that room that day I had this thought:

"Wow. Wasn't that great that even though I did not *really* get
hypnotized or regressed, that my imagination at least played along and
I was entertained for a part of this afternoon?"

I dismissed the whole thing as a product of my very
active imagination, and a wonderful parlor trick.

But something happened. Over the years I thought about that woman a
lot. I never forgot any of the small details of the experience. The event
became seared in my memory and remains now, as vivid of a personal
memory for my soul as any pivotal or important memory of my current life.

I also could and can EASILY see where some of my own attitudes about women
and their roles  in culture were and ARE affected by this woman's existence.

It took a while but I totally changed my mind and feel I had a genuine experience
and if for only a minute or two, I was transported back into time where my
soul occupied another body in another time.

Arkansas Adventure!

I have taken myself off for an adventure in Arkansas. I am attending a continuing education certification program in a specific type of hypno-therapy developed by the incomparable Dolores Cannon.

Stay tuned!

Our Human Heritage

--Jamie Sue Austin for In Repose

Having been raised in a household dominated by folk lore and superstition I find it very interesting to observe others in their foray into the supernatural or occult.  Concepts so inherent in my upbringing are considered “out of the box” for many others and it is fascinating to watch people slowly come to terms with their “human heritage.”  I say “human heritage” because until recently in human evolution our co-existence with the supernatural was non-debatable.

  Perhaps our newfound reliance on the scientific in opposition to the metaphysical was best described by Edgar Allan Poe in his poem Sonnet to Science:

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

I feel that we are coming full circle.  Growing numbers of individuals are finding that science, the drab colored bird that it is, does not explain all… nor do they want it to. Ask any adult what they miss most about their childhood and their answers will most often correlate to the sense of wonder and amazement that they once felt in response to ordinary events.

Even in my own mind I can remember the disappointment I felt when I realized that the plastic birds that so gracefully skid across the mirrored surface of my mother’s music box did not fly by some magical means, but were operated by ordinary and uninteresting magnets.  Such is the rest of our lives…ordinary and uninteresting… fully explained by the “great minds” of others, leaving us no freedom to interpret our own experiences and create our own explanations.  In the metaphysical we find freedom to explore.  We find the joy of discovery.  We find the unique human experience of creating the myth instead of debunking it.

I congratulate you on your journey and wish for you a unique and thrilling adventure.

Jamie Sue.

The Not-Quite-Ordinary Life

For a long while I have asserted that any ideas concerning death, are really at their core, ideas about life itself.  So discussing all of what life contains, its richness, its riddles, its purpose...all of those things seem fair subjects for me to explore here at In Repose.

For whatever reason I have lived at times, a not quite ordinary life. I have had many odd, scary, and just downright plain strange experiences over the years and for the most part, I have kept them to myself. In doing so, I have for a long time, felt different than most people.

At first, in my childhood, and then into my twenties, i kept most of my odd experiences from my parents and own husband. I really thought, my very logical, sensible, grounded man would either try to have me committed or divorce me if I shared all the wild things that have happened to me. Well, I shouldn't have worried, as I was quite wrong about that. For whatever reason, or perhaps for many reasons, he has only been supportive and I think, believes most if not all of the crazy things I share with him.

But the time seems right to record those things for family, posterity and myself, and so I have started talking to others about these things and even, have begun to share them here on In Repose. Stay tuned for some interesting posts to come.

Next Up, my friend Jamie Sue Austin, and her reaction to my "revelations" of living the "not-quite-ordinary" life.

Deadly Scents

An Article for our Resource Forum at InRepose.com by Allison Whitehead

We often hear of people seeing or hearing a ghostly presence but it’s not often people can smell them.  Ghostly aromas are less common than signs involving the other senses, yet they do occur.  One survey estimated 8% of witnesses remembered some kind of smell.

Unfortunately, this kind of evidence presents us with a problem – aromas cannot be recorded.  We can photograph spirits and record their echoing footsteps but no one has been able to capture their aroma.  We have to rely on corroborative witness statements for any kind of ghostly aromas to be taken seriously at all.

But there are enough instances on record which allow us to examine this unusual phenomenon more closely.  The smells which have been reported can be broadly divided into two groups – nice and nasty.  The latter group seems to be present in hauntings where a violent death was involved or where the spirit is malign.

It is said that at Foxcote Manor the awful smell of a martyred bishop being burnt to death can be experienced each year on the anniversary of his demise.  Is this a genuine haunting or is the horror of such a violent and painful death somehow imprinted on the surroundings?

As unpleasant smells go, none could be worse than that noticed by a woman living in Illinois in 1944.  Awakened during the night by a sickly sweet smell, she soon found herself paralyzed from the waist down.  Other people living close by experienced similar attacks over the next week or so.

Skeptics may point to sleep paralysis as a solution but it seems unlikely that it would affect so many people in one small area.  It would also appear that the smell itself was the cause of the paralysis, rather than occurring as a physiological result of it.  Despite the many theories, no human was ever found to be the culprit and the case remains unsolved.

There have also been many instances where people have reported seeing or feeling some kind of malevolent or demonic spirit and smelling sulfur at the same time.  But as sulfur is commonly equated with the Devil, is this merely an overactive imagination playing tricks?

Fortunately most ghostly presences are usually pleasant.  Flowers and perfume are commonly reported, often with a connection to the ghost the witness sees.  In 1981 a recently widowed man saw his wife’s ghost and reported being able to smell her distinctive perfume as well.

The woman had died by her own hand only a few days before, so it is possible that her perfume would still be in the house anyway.  The visual sighting could have been a crisis apparition or just a vivid and recently bereaved imagination playing tricks on its owner.

Perhaps more interesting are those aromas which recur over a period of many years and are witnessed by many different people.  In these instances, as with the previous example, the aromas almost always present themselves with other evidence such as a visual or auditory experience.

Many years ago a young bride took part in a game of hide and seek which she played rather too well.  The chest she hid in became her coffin, as once shut, it could only be opened from the outside.  She died clutching her bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley and wasn’t found until fifty years later.  People have reported being able to smell lilies-of-the-valley as her distraught and ghostly form floats by.

The aroma of violets accompanies the ghost of Caroline Connelly who is buried in the mausoleum at Blickling Hall in Norfolk, England.  Violets were her favorite perfume and seem to remain so even in death, because a cub mistress reported the strong smell of violets when she and a group of cubs stayed in the mausoleum overnight.

So it seems that ghostly smells, when they do manifest, have a direct connection with a spirit.  Obviously when a family member recognizes a scent associated with a loved one, this could be put down to wishful thinking on his or her part.  The best evidence comes from strangers to the ghost, who wouldn’t know the relevance of such an aroma until after they have related their experience.

The same point can be made about sightings such as the ghostly bride with her bouquet and the martyred bishop.  Where people have no previous knowledge of the haunting and go on to report the familiar aromas, this is much better evidence than that which comes from those who were previously aware of the ghosts.  Our minds can be very suggestive, after all.

So the next time you smell something unusual, it might be worth having a look round to see if you are in the company of someone – or something – unexpected.