"We manufacture whatever immortal souls we have out of the bits of difference we make by living in this world."  - Sue Hubbell, The Sweet Bees           

Running past life regressions is a good way to introduce yourself to the practice of magic.  It's so simple to learn that you can easily master the basic method in less than an hour's time; yet it is so far-reaching in its ramifications that a few months of playing around with it for an hour or so every night can completely transform your life.             

Most of us New Agers believe in the reality of past lives, even though we can't actually remember them.  We embrace this doctrine because it seems logical:  it explains the vicissitudes of our present existence as the patterns and choices we ourselves made in other lives.  The ability to actually remember past lives seems to be the possession of a fortunate few, like Edgar Cayce, who are born with mysterious psychic powers far beyond our reach.  But in fact, the ability to recall past lives can be easily learned by anybody – all that is required is an open mind.  And there are incalculable insights (and surprises!) that await the adventurer willing to explore these byways of his or her own subconscious.  

The entry technique here is adapted from William Swygard's excellent booklets on Awareness Techniques.   There's no need to memorize the following instructions:  either have someone read them to you (you indicate to the reader when you have accomplished each task by saying "okay"); or else tape record the instructions for your own use, leaving a little time for yourself to complete each task.Choose a time when you are calm, alert, and will not be disturbed.  If you are an astrologer, you can use a lunar planetary hour; however this is merely a help, not a necessity.  Have a notebook and pen (or tape recorder) at hand.  Remove your shoes, loosen any restrictive clothing, and lie down on your bed.  Take some deep breaths, and then put your attention on your toes and relax them with a deep breath.  Move up to your feet and relax them with a breath; then relax your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, arms, hands, fingers and so on up to your head.           

Take a deep breath and imagine that you are extending your height by stretching your legs until you are about a yard longer than your usual height.  Then return to normal size.  Take another deep breath and imagine that you are extending your height by stretching your neck until you are a yard taller than your usual height.  Then return.  With another breath imagine that you are extending your height by stretching your legs until they touch the wall.  Then return.  Take another breath and imagine you are stretching your neck until your head touches the wall behind you.  Then return.             

Then take a deep breath and imagine yourself swelling up like a balloon to twice your volume; then release the breath and imagine returning to normal size.  After you've succeeded at this, take a breath and imagine yourself inflating and filling the entire room; then return.  When you can do this, take a deep breath and imagine inflating yourself until you engulf the entire house; then return.  Next, take a breath and swell up until you are bigger than the house and float upwards into the sky.  Look down as you rise and imagine you are seeing the house, the neighborhood, the surrounding countryside, as if from an ascending balloon.  Allow yourself to float freely up, up, until you are in the clouds far above the earth.           

Then command yourself to descend lightly back to earth in another lifetime.  Look down at your feet;  how are you shod?  Look at your clothes; what are you wearing?  Look around you; what kind of place are you in?  Inside, outside?  If inside, what is the building like?  If outside, what are the surroundings like?  Are there any other people around you?  Who are they?  What are they doing?  What time or country does it seem to be?  What are you doing in the scene?  Why are you there?  You concern yourself with these sorts of questions until you feel you're plugged into the past life; then you just let the thing flow and take you where it will.  If someone has been helping you, you can describe the scene to them as it unfolds; if you are alone you can take notes (dividing your attention between the scene and the note-taking).             

When you first come down the scene will be fuzzy at first.  You look at your feet, then your clothing, then your environment, to put the pieces of the picture into place.  You ask questions of the regression to connect yourself to it – to make that life vivid and bring it into focus.  For me (who is not especially psychic) regressions are rather murky; I can't usually make out faces clearly, nor colors unless they're very bright.  You see the regression with your mind's eye, but it's more felt than seen – more like a series of emotional tableaux than a movie.  You usually only hit the high points of a given life; you don't see all the day-to-day routine.  It's not unlike a daydream or fantasy, except you soon realize that something other than your conscious mind is running it, and that something is your feelings.  The experience will be more or less vivid depending on how much you block it.  Don't judge the experience (by thinking, for example, "This isn't real – this is just my imagination!").  Just let it happen; if you want to evaluate it, wait until it's over.  This is not an exercise for your conscious mind, so tell your conscious mind to butt out and keep its judgments to itself.           

When you first start to use this sort of technique you don't know how it's supposed to feel (you can't believe it could be this easy!), so you may have doubts about whether you are doing it correctly.  Don't worry – if anything at all is unfolding before your mind's eye, you're doing it right.  If there is no flow or direction (you're stopped in one scene), it means you are purposely blocking it.  You'll know quite well if you're doing this.  To unblock yourself at any point, just ask more questions:  What time of day or season is it?  What kind of building / vegetation is around you?  And so on.           

In running past life regressions it is useful to have a notebook or tape recorder in hand to jot down the past life as it occurs.  Since the content of a regression is largely emotional, it tends to fade quickly from conscious memory, and it's often useful to have a record of it for future reference.  It's a simple matter to divide your attention between the past life and the notebook.  Once you get the hang of the entry technique, you can dispense with the going up in the sky and coming down each time.           

You might want to experiment with running past lives involving people you know from this life.  Try this: when you're up in the clouds ask to see a past life involving someone you love in this life.  Then ask to see a past life with someone you dislike in this life.  Simply give the command:  "I'd like to see a past life with so-and-so" at the time you command to view a past life.  The powers that be will steer you to the right place.           

Also, you can ask questions during the regression, such as:  "Do I know that past-life person in this lifetime?"  and you'll usually get an answer, which will come as either a conscious thought or a feeling.  The theory is that you have an infinite number of lives with every being on earth, not to mention other places, but some are closer to your present life than others – more connected to it in terms of lessons to be learned in this life – and these are the lives that usually pop up in regressions."We all to some extent meet again and again the same people and certainly in some cases form a kind of family of two or three or more persons who come together life after life until all passionate relations are exhausted, the child of one life the husband, wife, brother, sister of the next.  Sometimes, however, a single relationship will repeat itself, turning its revolving wheel again and again."  – W.B. Yeats, A Vision           

The question naturally arises as to whether these past life regressions actually are past lives, or whether the whole thing is just an exercise in imagination.  These regressions are not always factually accurate portrayals of other times and places (unless you're very psychic).  You can certainly interpolate anachronisms into them if you want to.  Moreover a life supposedly taking place in ancient Rome often looks suspiciously like something out of Cecil B. DeMille.  In other words, we obviously filter these regressions through our present-day concepts.           

Also it is often difficult to relate to the "you" in a regression.  He or she doesn't act or react the way you would, and so it's hard to accept or understand in what sense that person is you; much less that you are personally responsible for all the mischief that person is doing.             

Nonetheless there is an emotional truth in regressions that argues for their being taken seriously, no matter whether they are "real" (whatever that means) or merely figments.  The real touch in a past life regression is with the feelings that the "you" in the regression is experiencing.  There are emotional echoes – little pings of recognition – that you will know mean something to you personally, even if you are at a loss to put them into words.  For example, you often recognize the people you know from this lifetime when you encounter them in regressions by the feeling you have for them.  I first learned to feel the people around me (instead of merely react to them on a thought form level) by doing past life regressions:  understanding how I felt about them in past lives helped me to get a grip on how I really feel about them in this life.           

It is the emotional content of these regressions which is of primary importance, not whether they are conceptually real (although my spirit guides assure me that they are no more nor less real than the life we are living now).  Nor is it important that you intellectually resolve the "meaning" of this or that life.  You just try to be aware that such-and-such a person is hurting you in this lifetime because you asked him to, to atone for what you did to him in another life; or that your stirrings towards music, say, or agriculture reflect a valid part of your being – another life in which you were a musician or a farmer; or that your irrational anger, joy, fears, and hopes are often quite rational and logical after all.             

The emotional recognition in a regression is due to an actual line which connects you to the "you" in the regression. Clairvoyants see these connections as fibers of living light, but most people sense them as feelings, emotional connections.  The theory is that these fibers from other lives bind us to neurotic patterns of behavior in this one – we feel a need to keep reliving our mistakes until we get them right.  By running past lives it becomes possible to recognize these patterns, which immediately releases a lot of the energy that's tied up in them;  i.e., it loosens the fibers between that life and this one, allowing the conscious mind to decide if it wants to do something about the patterns (instead of being dominated by them unawares).  After running a life, it often helps to jot down the impressions you have of it.  What was the main thrust or purpose of that life?  What lessons did you learn?  How did you feel about it after you died?  There's no need to become morbid or obsessed about past lives – just draw your conclusions and move on.   After you have run a great many past lives, you will begin to notice certain trends or feelings that keep recurring over and over.  For example, during a difficult time in my marriage my guides directed my wife and I to run scores of past lives that we had together, so that we would understand how it was that we were at the place we had gotten to.  It turned out that in most of our past lives together one of us had murdered the other one.   Beyond that there were many other recurrent themes throughout our lives together that were repeated in this present life.  

"The victim must, in the Shiftings, live the act of cruelty, not as victim but as tyrant; whereas the tyrant must by a necessity of his or her nature become the victim. …The souls of victim and tyrant are bound together and, unless there is a redemption through the intercommunication of the living and the dead, that bond may continue life after life."   – W.B. Yeats, A Vision

Because our viewpoint is necessarily couched in linear time it is inconceivable to us that everyone we have met in our lives – even strangers passing on the street whom we don't even nod to – get together on some level and agree to people each other's lives.  It's very much like actors in a play getting together, rehearsing, having a performance, and disbanding at the end.              

For most people the vast majority of past lives consist either of unremitting hardship and suffering, or else of selfishness and chicanery.  I, personally, have had lots of lives as a scoundrel, and it's interesting how many bells these ring for me in my present life.  It can humble you a little, or at least make you realize that in your own heart there is a killer, a drunkard, or a psychopath, no matter how pious and privileged you think you are; and they're not that far beneath the surface, either.             

On the other hand, you'll find lives in which you were quite admirable – courageous, loving, and wise.  These lives will also directly connect to your better side in this life, and confirm your sense of purpose and direction.    It's this emotional recognition which is the gist of the thing.  This is your own heart speaking to you, giving you messages of truth which you usually ignore or take for granted until they're somehow pointed out to you.  Past life regressions bring a lot of subconscious flotsam and jetsam up to the conscious mind, which is necessary because everything originates in the conscious mind, and can only be controlled or dispelled by the conscious mind; but first the conscious mind has to be made aware of it.  Running past life regressions loosens our light fibers by tuning us into other moods ("life purposes") from other lives and realities.  By running past life regressions we have a safe and powerful technique for bringing useful information up from the subconscious, to help us get to our true purpose in incarnating, and to understand and accept who we really are.  This is what W.B. Yeats termed being "in-phase" as opposed to being "out-of-phase" – i.e. being in tune with one's true purpose in incarnating in this lifetime, as opposed to surrendering one's free choice in life in order to conform to societal fiat (socially-approved images and expectations).

A true life purpose is to feel certain feelings.  That's all.  Not to accomplish anything in particular in the world:  not to be successful, or a failure, or mediocre and just get by; not to become enlightened, or to be saved and go to heaven; but just to feel.   To feel triumphant, or defeated; or impoverished, or affluent; or cruel, or victimized; or helpless, or powerful; or fearful, or brave; or lustful, or repressed; etc. etc.  Each life has a feeling of its own, which is like the sum total of all the feelings felt during that life.  In different probable realities and lifetimes different facets of life purpose are felt.  In lives in which we take the easy way out and follow socially-approved images and expectations without asking too many questions or reflecting upon meanings, we tend to get hung up on a low level of life purpose (which W.B. Yeats termed "Will"); whereas in lives and probable realities where we make great personal sacrifices for other people's sake with no thought of reward, we get a little bit higher (the three higher Faculties).  And in the lives in which we open our hearts completely, we get a whole lot higher.

 Life purpose can and does change in a twinkling during any given lifetime or probable reality.  For example consider Viktor Frankl's life purpose at Auschwitz, described in his book Man's Search for Meaning, which he understood very well meant to stop dwelling upon his own suffering and serve his patients as best he could.  That was Frankl's life purpose only from the point when he was sent to Auschwitz.  Prior to that his life purpose might have entailed escaping from Europe and avoiding all the pain and suffering he subsequently went through.   He surely had probable realities of successful escape from the particular destiny which later unfolded; and in those realities his life purpose would have been very different in terms of the amount of suffering he had to undergo to learn his lesson (to serve his true purpose in that lifetime).Just as true life's purpose can change in a twinkling, so too can it be blown in a twinkling.  I apparently blew my life purpose for this lifetime by making a decision which seemed rather innocent – even virtuous and noble – when I made it; but which led in the fullness of time to my eventual divorce.  My spirit guides' comments on this are: "Your purpose in this lifetime was to unite with (your wife).  THAT'S what you incarnated for.  And the pressure that drove you two apart was the pressure of all your previous lives of conflict and making war on each other bearing upon this lifetime.  And now that pressure has increased because of you guys' failure in this lifetime.  This doesn't mean that your life is a total failure – you always start from right where you are.  But in terms of what you set out to do in this lifetime, yes, you have failed and there's nothing you can do to undo the damage now."  Every time I reread these words it bums me out a bit, to say the least.  But regret is cheap.  All that really matters is taking note of the error and soldiering on.              

The extent to which people don't let themselves feel feelings is the extent to which they are obstructing their life purpose (what Yeats termed being "out-of-phase" rather than "in-phase").  Yet this can also be called their life purpose:  they also serve who only stand and wait.   The Willy Loman's and Warren Schmidt's of the world – those who feel timid and defeated – also have a life purpose; and that purpose is no less noble or ennobling than the life purpose of a Jesus or Buddha.   Sometimes it is people's life purpose to suffer unspeakable pain, or boredom and "meaninglessness".   When we run past life regressions we see that most of our own lives have been like that.  It's all the same – there's no such thing as a wasted life or a wasted lesson, although certainly there are wasted opportunities.  In my role as a Mayan priest I've been privileged to witness many other people's life lessons, which consist mainly of blown opportunities; and needless to say I've blown many, many opportunities myself. 

It is sometimes asked, what is the true purpose of a life of unremitting pain and suffering?  What is the purpose of a life of being caught up innocently in war, massacres, genocide, disease, grinding poverty, starvation?  What is the purpose of suffering catastrophic fear and pain which one has done nothing to merit?   The answer is that sometimes it is just a person's purpose to suffer.  As Viktor Frankl put it:

"Dostoevski said once, 'There is only one thing that I dread:  not to be worthy of my sufferings.'  These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.  It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.  It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

"... It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.  We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly.  Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.  

"... When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task.  He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe.  No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place.  His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden."  

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excerpted from Magical Almanac ezine, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac  

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at:  http://www.dearbrutus.com.  To subscribe to Bob’s free monthly Astro-Magical e-zine, send an e-mail to:  MagicalAlmanac-subscribe@yahoogroups.com