Time Traveling from a Couch (Part 1)

A lot of you have asked me how my past-life regression went. I think this is because I went around the week before it telling everyone I could corner, "I'm going to have a past-life regression! I'm going to have a past-life regression!!!"

Think I'll break this into two parts so it doesn't go on forever. This first part will discuss the past life I explored, and the second will be the part after that past life, when I met with my guardian angels/guides.

FYI: Years and years ago I attended a past-life workshop in which participants learned how to take people back in their memories to experience, well, past lives. We split into smaller groups and did each other several times. There I met a few of my former selves, and I've always wanted to know more.

Scientific investigation into past lives comes up well in their favor. Reincarnation was the one thing in psi that noted skeptic Carl Sagan said "deserves serious study." Want to read more about the subject? My favorite books are Reliving Past Lives and Life Before Life, by Dr. Helen Wambach. Not sure if they're still in print or not. If not, there are a lot of other well-researched books out there. Mr. Google is your friend.

I think reincarnation makes sense, so I was looking forward to having a professional hypnotherapist do what she could to get me to remember my other lives.

She darkened a quiet office, turned on soft new age music, and had me lie on a massage bed and relax. She asked me if it was okay to touch me on the shoulder when needed and to refer to angels. I have nothing against angels; they're swell folks. It's religion I can't stand.

She took me through the usual hypnotic soothing routines and then had me remember a happy scene (I warned her there wasn't much happy from my childhood) from when I was in high school, then one from when I was about five years old. The high school one was fuzzy, with only my dog and comic books really in focus, and the 5 YO one was one of the few memories I consciously have from childhood. This time, though, I recalled that I had a toy fishing pole. (And I thought at the time that it was really cheesy, because it was.)

Then came something that confused me. When we talked about it afterward, she kept the same phrasing. After having taken some time to make sure that I was letting loose of my logical mind so it wouldn't interfere with things, she asked me to tell her, on a scale of 1 to 100 (and citing percentages), with 1 being wide awake and 100 being asleep, where I thought I was in the process. My first thought was: arithmetic? I thought I was supposed to turn off that side of my brain!

After awkwardly shifting gears, I thought I was at about 30 but I wanted to be kind and said 40. Yeah, mea culpa. But afterward, she explained that if someone gave her a number over 50 she'd try to take them down deeper. To me that was the opposite of what she'd instructed. If she'd just said, "Tell me how deep you think you're under. Lightly? Medium? About to fall asleep?" it would have been a lot clearer and less distracting.

So I believe I was in a very light trance, if you can even apply that term to the situation. However after a while I just told myself to consider it a prolonged psychic session -- it had been too long since I'd had one with myself -- and enjoy whatever I could see. In the future I'll let the therapist know that I need more work to go deeper and not be so literal or complaisant.

Anywayz, she turned on her recorder and had me recall being in the womb. Hey, I actually got a picture of it! It was like being in a dark, spherical room where one side is draped but you can tell there's light behind it. It was a very warm light (in color) and I could hear booma boom, booma boom. Hey, that's Mom's heart, I thought just before the therapist asked if I could hear my mother's heart.

I was lying there, a big, fat lump I thought (in fact I groaned, "I'm fat!"), and I could see a reddish glow from above and to my left that I knew was Mom's heart. I was comfortable but low in energy. I was firmly in the body, not passing in and out, because this was toward the end of the pregnancy. (Souls don't enter the body until the third trimester, unless they wait until after birth. Some even wait a LONG time after the birth.) (Even so, I think I blinked out during the actual birth. I mean, who wants to experience that?)

I could feel Mom's emotions: fear, worry, anxiety over lack of money. My dad had been working at a podunk job after he left the Air Force, and the family had moved in with my mom's parents. That couldn't have been too fun, and now they had another kid on the way?

The therapist (think I'll just call her TH to shorten that) asked what my mother thought of having a child. I could tell her: It was her duty, a part of being married. There was no excitement or loving emotions involved. TH asked if these negative emotions were affecting me and I said, "Heck, yes!" so she suggested I put some kind of curtain between me and her. I put a vibrating, golden Star Trek forcefield there to protect me! Shields up!

From there we went farther back, immediately into a past life. I'd been trained to have past-life subjects walk down a staircase with doors (often labelled) leading off it, enter a beautiful garden with archways, etc. etc., but here we were without all that, boom. I recognized it as being the life just before this one. The year was 1939, and I was a lanky, buck-toothed teen boy in rolled-up pants, a brown and red plaid shirt, belt with a metal buckle, straw hat with a frayed edge, and bare feet. I was standing in the family corn (looked like wheat, actually) field, smoking. I was in Illinois. I could see the barn, a tractor, a 1940s-era car, a farmhouse, chickens. Later on I added a horse and for-sure cornfield to that picture.

My name was Willy or Billy Monroe. There might be a "Mason" in there somewhere, and someone whispered "Webster" to me, but I've been doing some family history lately and the Websters are there on my mother's side. (They are from Illinois/Indiana. I was born in IL.) William might be a cousin; I don't know. Past lives don't need to be relatives.

I had a definite picture of William in my mind, and later that night it came to me: it was the kid from Hee Haw! When I got home I Googled and discovered that the logo has a donkey on it, not a kid. But I kept seeing this guy, except he had straw-like hair, cut straight across in bangs. He also resembled the country hick from Hey, Arnold! Try to imagine him via these pictures. (I changed the hair for the donkey. You're welcome.)

I kept referring to William as "not the brightest bulb in the bunch," and between that and the Hee Haw hillbilly hick, I felt guilty to diss him. But that was the impression I had. William didn't have any hobbies or skills to speak of. He didn't have a girlfriend at any point. And no, he wasn't gay. I think.

Let me try to combine some things, as TH had me checking back on William at different times in his life, though I really only saw three distinct ages.

When he was 10 I got a picture of him and his extended family in their home. There was some kind of party going on with music, and William was clog-dancing (or the 10 YO equivalent) up a storm, having the time of his life. Woo hoo! He was precocious and described himself as "an obedient son." There was a brother or friend there about his age, along with a very young sister who had a doll. His parents were there along with some other folks. None of them were very focused in my mind. None of them rang a bell for my current life.

When I went to look closer at the little sister, I thought there was a bit of karma there. (TH was guiding me to ask about karmic connections.) I think she'd been my wife in a previous life, and I hadn't treated her well. Not beaten her up or anything that bad; just not treated her well.

The father was interesting in that when I looked at him I saw him rushing forward (frozen in the moment like a statue), dressed in complete military gear for WWII. I thought, "Can't be WWII," and though the rifle looked very modern, the father now wore one of those metal hats the WWI people wore when they were in the trenches. Looking back now, I think he might have been wearing a gas mask.

At this point TH was still talking karmic debts, and I was trying to figure out a birthdate for William to see if he could have been in WWI in a previous life and still made it into his life, and so had some kind of karmic something going on with his dad. (I forgot that there are cases on record of TWO lives being lived at once, that your lives can actually overlap in time.) (Yeah, you just think about that one for a while.) But anyway, from here a week-plus later, I think that his dad was in WWI. (Hope I'm not being influenced by that lengthy WWI chapter in the British history book I just read.)

But there was no Big Dramatic Karmic Debt to be paid here. The next spot in William's life I saw was him in the fields again in his later teens, smoking his cigarettes (ew!) and then stomping them out. He was really frustrated. Often he'd just sit on piles of hay and stare off in the distance, thinking about how he wanted to get out into the world. Instead he was cooped up on this boring farm.

One day he got some kind of letter or draft notice in the mail and he joined the Navy. Not sure where he trained. I knew he'd serve in the Pacific and was trying to find someplace in California for him. I was attracted to San Francisco, but that might be due to Star Trek and the fact that I've been there. I asked, "San Diego?" because it was another oceanside city and got "San Marina." Actually, there was a Navy training center in San Diego. Whatevs. For all I know he trained on the east coast and then transferred.

Anyway, we next see him at age 24 in the Navy in the Pacific on a submarine. He'd joined the Navy because everyone was expecting him to go into the military, and it got him off the farm -- and to see the world. And then he got stuck on a tiny submarine. Inside a tiny submarine. He didn't even get to do interesting stuff, since he wasn't the brightest bulb. He was left to clean and swab decks and such. Blech.

Just a shot of a sub I got off the Internet. Not necessarily William's sub.

We got to the part I'd seen before and I zoomed upward to get a birds eye view because I didn't want to be down there with William for this. He said he'd been in the Navy for 3+ years. Now his sub was surrendering to the Japanese. (Both ships were a lot smaller than I'd expect them to be.) I think the other sailors, with whom William had made moderate friendships (especially over cards), had been fear-mongering. (Who could blame them?) Who knew what would happen now? To them, the Japanese were savages. And now the enemy had boarded their surfaced boat.

With the American flag flying overhead, William grabbed the railing and hurled himself overboard rather than be taken to the Japanese ship. I could hear other "plunks" as others jumped in too. TH asked what his final thoughts were, and all I could come up with was, "Oh well." He was ready to go.

All his life he had had a horrible fear of the unknown.

TH had the archangel Michael cut the cord on the concept of "fear of the unknown" from this and all other lives. Instead of his usual sword, I imagined Michael using a blue lightsabre, and he got a kick out of that. (Michael's cool.) TH said she heard him say, "It's about time," about the cutting the concept thing. Michael cleaned up the mess and archangel Raphael spread a deep green light that filled me up and healed me, making sure that all problem cords from various lives were broken.

After that I met with our spirit guides. The main one was a light blue (higher self?), and there was one other one, perhaps two: orange and green. They seemed joined together. We floated around a table with a large half-sphere viewing tank set in its center to study William's life.

"He didn't accomplish much," someone said. William was a drifter through his life, but he was okay with that. He spent much of his time being frustrated, and thus didn't do anything. He thought he was in the wrong place.

He learned how to be alone. When William came out of that life, he was told, "You have one more lonely life to live." That's the current one. But none of our other lives seem to be particularly crowded that I've seen. There've been spouses and kids, but none really close except for the Egyptian general, who lost his dear boys when they were still quite young.

"[William] could handle what life threw at him," yet there was that fear of the unknown. And he didn't do it with any joy.  "He's got to learn to handle what life throws at him with joy, and that way he can face the unknown without fear. Rather, he'll face it with joyous expectation." He needs to change his attitude!

Someone whispered, "Money," but William wasn't poor. He had enough to get along, and so did his family. At least out there on the farm, if they were poor, he didn't realize it. They'd had a good farm, though they'd just been through the Depression. I'd like to say that people on farms weathered the Depression better than others, but my mother's family lost their farm during that event, and it was pretty traumatic for all.

What could William have done better? Paid attention and focused. He let life go on around him. He should have focused on people and what he was doing. He should have taken advantage of the opportunity of being alive.

What would William tell me? "What are you going to do with your life? Focus. Colors. [This would come up again. ??] Take charge." He showed me a picture of holding the reins on a horse-drawn wagon that was really charging down the road of life. It was TH who laughed at my ?? on this bit and said, "He's telling you to take the reins." Oh! That made sense.

"Try to laugh and enjoy more." William gave up joyful craziness as he grew up. He was emotionless because it was all so boring!

I wonder if my penchant for traveling comes from William's being cooped up.

So that was my visit with William Monroe. When I got home I tried to find a free site to search for him (ha!), but the closest I got was this, a possible:

If you can't read that, here's the interesting part:

Estaline, aged 6 in 1930, would have been the right age to be that karma-connected sister we saw when William was 10.

This winter I'll buy membership in a couple family-search sites, since I'll be working on the family tree. Let's see if I can find William then, and maybe confirm the above entry. Wouldn't that be a time-saver if this were him!

Next time: A Wonder Woman review! But that'll be later this week. Next week I'll have part 2 of this, which deals with me and a roomful of spirit guides. See you then!