How I Finally Awakened from My Past Lives

The first time I was guided into a past life regression was in Thailand, in 2005. The theme of the regression was to understand what black energy, or the color black, meant to me. After my teacher instructed me to visualize black in my mind’s eye, I was guided to move the black into my lungs and then to focus my breathing in and out through the blackness in my lungs. After a short time, I fell into a dream in which I had just run out of a burning house. As I stood by myself outside the burning house, a man came to me and said he would take care of me. I let him take me away, but instead of taking care of me, he took me away to be his slave. For years he abused me and finally I died, alone, believing I had been abandoned by my mother, who had never come looking for me.

This was the first of many past life regressions I had with my teacher, who said they were real lives. Due to the high level of visual and emotional detail I experienced in each one, I accepted her explanation.

At the time, I was working with my teacher to investigate the origins of many hurts I was holding in my body. Her approach to healing was to go into the energy of a hurt held in your body until the origin, or story, of the hurt reveals itself. What I found was that after a few guided past life regressions, my body learned the pattern and I began to spontaneously regress into past lives during meditations.

One such spontaneous past life regression happened in 2006, when I fell into a past life in which I was sitting in a courtroom having been accused of raping a girl. The courtroom was fully represented: the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, the public gallery, and the girl herself. I was found guilty, and the sentence was banishment from my village. I then spent years in solitude wandering through the forest until one day I came across a monastery. Joining the monastery, I spent the rest of my life devoted to God.

I woke from the past life, once again amazed at the levels of detail and emotional experience. But this time something bugged me. I was there for the whole courtroom experience and subsequent solitude, but I had no memory of actually raping the girl. Nor did I defend myself in court.

I had learned from from my teacher that sometimes the same past life experience can visit you a second time to give you a missing piece of information, so I asked for this past life to be sent to me again. I had to wait a year before the dream returned. Everything was the same, but this time I learned that I did not defend myself because I had accepted my fate: Even though I did not do what I was accused of, I allowed myself to be found guilty. I awoke from the past life again unhappy. I wanted to know why.

Another year went by before I learned the reason why I accepted my fate: my unkempt appearance! I simply looked guilty. When I awoke, I wanted the past life again. I wanted to defend myself.

In my final four spontaneous visits to this past life during 2009, I began to defend myself against the prosecutor, the jury, and the witness until finally I stood down the prosecutor. I demanded he present the book of evidence against me and to show it to me in front of the judge. He brought forth the book of evidence and opened it, but its pages were blank.

I realized then that nothing in the past life had actually happened. The rape. The case. The verdict. The banishment. The years of solitude in the forest. Nothing about it was true. Yet I had accepted it at face value.

Unraveling this past life proved hugely insightful. What it taught me was that past lives are symbolic. Guilt, fear, and punishment are strong themes in my life, and I was able to set myself free of them by revisiting past lives and asking for the proof of their existence.