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Comparing
India to Past Life Therapy
by Eric Christopher
India, like Past Life Therapy, changes people.
But how can you compare a country with a therapy
method? I’ve
been wrestling with that strange comparison feat ever
since I became aware of the similar insights and
feelings that have overcome me from both experiences.
Extended travel around India feels like therapy.
It challenges and expands belief systems, which
can foster growth whether intended or not.
Once you’ve experienced it, you won’t be the
same person. I
mean more than simply becoming an enthusiastic fan of
eating all meals with only your hands.
India induces great peace at times, inner turmoil
at others. Like
a past life regression experience, the country has a way
of bringing to the surface your biggest issue to work
on, often surprising you as to how that happened without
your noticing. Yet,
like PLT, you also often discover that you had the inner
resources to resolve the conflict all the time.
Conflict isn’t bad, it happens by design and
we’re supposed to have conflict, says Paramahansa
Yogananda, one of India’s many Self-Realized masters
and author of Autobiography of a Yogi.
Earth is designed as an illusion of duality and
opposites for the purpose of growth toward wholeness, he
says, by creating the perfect chance to experience
ourselves as love and light in the midst of darkness.
Thus, conflict translates to “opportunity”
when seen through the eyes of the soul’s broader
perspective, that place of completeness and insight,
whether the conflict lies within oneself, a
relationship, a family, community or internationally.
This grand opportunity to view problems from a
higher perspective usually happens during the life
review portion of a past life therapy session, and
I’ll share how it happened to me in India.
I was one of the lucky ones who traveled to India
to attend the World Congress in Regression Therapy last
March, taking in the workshops, lectures, entertainment,
and the electricity from a community of like-minded
participants gathered together with a common passion of
exploring methods of healing.
But I was even more fortunate than the “lucky
ones,” because I extended my travel around India for
over three months, feeling the open-hearted warmth for
which India is famous.
Strangers quickly transformed into friends, then
hosts. I
received several invitations by Congress participants to
stay in their homes when it was over.
I also accepted an invitation from a stranger I
met on a train to attend the wedding of his niece.
I was with two companions at the time.
We were treated like royal guests, being provided
accommodation, sight seeing tours, and given seats of
honor at two wedding feasts – all because a stranger
wanted to share something of his life with us.
I experienced that these genuine, heart-centered
invitations by strangers desiring to give something to
me were quite common in India.
However, so too were the interactions with
conniving individuals who viewed me only as an
opportunity to get something from me.
The former gave me feelings of appreciation and
value, the latter gave me feelings of resentment, unless
they were honest and open about their intention, like
the beggar with elephantiasis asking for rupees.
Being an even-minded individual, I don’t often
feel resentful and angry in America, but India has a way
of creating this inner conflict, or as I eventually
learned, “opportunity.”
Not only is India good at stirring up emotions,
but it also provides countless environments and teachers
which encourage one to see the world and its challenges
through the higher understanding of one’s soul.
Some of these places and teachers lie inside the
walls of India’s thousands of ashrams.
I stayed at eight ashrams while I was there.
Although ashrams vary widely, they generally are
peaceful places for retreat and spiritual study or
introspection, where travelers can stay, sleep and eat
for a week or a month, usually on a donation basis.
They are typically founded by an enlightened guru
or teacher who is either alive or long passed on, whose
life continues to touch and draw many followers.
Each wants to share, if you’re interested,
their own particular path to lasting happiness, or
God/Source of All.
The paths vary greatly and take an approach that
can be either introspective and intellectual,
service-oriented, devotional, meditative or physical in
method. Some
ashrams I visited had thousands of resident devotees,
while I was among three at another.
Despite the huge variance in their teachings and
approaches toward Self understanding, or yoga (literal
meaning is union with God), they each had basic
underlying premises in common.
These were: (1) We are all individuated
manifestations of the same divine Source energy, under
the illusion of appearing separate.
In other words, we are all One; (2) All the love,
security and joy that we are looking for lies only a
perception shift away within ourselves; (3) There are
many diverse paths to reconnect with the divine Source
of Everything. Most
of the ashrams I stayed at had representative pictures
or symbols of all religions; (4) We are eternal,
indestructible, spiritual beings using these bodies in
order to learn and evolve.
(5) Conflicts are seen as effective tools to
potentially overcome the limitations and illusions of
human ego that keep us bound to the wheel of
reincarnation until we master our minds.
In the ashrams I was at, conflicts were viewed as
opportunities to overcome one’s fears, frustrations
and issues within oneself, and to move toward healing or
wholeness or completeness.
It was taught that anytime we have a
conflict with anyone, even an unwarranted kick from a
stranger, it’s always about us – how are we
going to respond to it? Do we see only the faults in ourselves or another, complain
about them, hold onto anger, or respond in a different
way? One approach to deal with any conflict is to view it as
though it was designed and set up by a wiser part of
ourselves (our soul) for the sheer pleasure of
responding to this challenging person or circumstance
from a place of divine love, not fear.
After all, if we’re all One at the highest
level, it’s really a reflection of myself causing me
this inner anguish.
Author Neile Walsch suggests that all human thought
and actions are based in either fear or love.
He articulates, “Fear is the energy which
contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards,
harms. Love
is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays,
reveals, shares, heals.”
He says, fear judges, is intolerant, lies beneath
anger and holds onto it, whereas love empathizes, is
tolerant and seeks understanding.
Fear feels lack.
Love feels wholeness, completeness, that all
needs are met. Fear
separates, divides, and is based on conditional
acceptance. Love
sees and feels Oneness, unites, and is based on
unconditional acceptance.
The communication of fear is vague, indirect and
withholding of truth.
The communication of love is clear, direct,
honest and specific.
Many teachers say that what we are doing here is to
try to obtain the wisdom that impels us to move towards
love in all thought and action.
Conflicts and unpleasant feelings arise to tell
us that we are presently operating from the fear end of
the continuum. There
is no judgment in that, only a chance to introspect and
respond in a way that yields more beneficial results.
In past life therapy, after a life of blunders
and hurt, we often arrive at a non-judgmental place of
higher understanding where we access the insights that
usually point to how we could have lived or thought
differently. We gain awareness as to how we could have made a choice to
respond to situations from empowerment, strength,
understanding and love, rather than from fear,
limitation and lack.
Consciously transforming fear-based thoughts and
actions into love-based thoughts and actions is healing.
Healing literally means becoming whole.
When we feel whole, we feel that all our needs
are met, and we can in turn respond more easily to
people and circumstances from a place of love.
This process is one reason why the effectiveness
and benefits of past life therapy often extend beyond
what is easily articulated.
Shifts towards healing occur, sometimes overtly
noticeable, at times subtle.
In a way, this is also why India feels like
therapy. Conflicts
and learning opportunities occur in abundance.
For instance, I could share about the time I lost
$180 in a well-organized, almost applause-worthy street
scam, or the time the rickshaw driver refused to stop at
the hotel I intended to go to because he wanted the
commission that he would receive by bringing me to
another place. Rather,
I’ll share the more common experience of getting
charged three times higher than the normal rate at a
phone booth as the clerk ignored the automated
computerized total.
I hung onto resentful feelings of being treated
unfairly for awhile until I tired of it and decided to
let go of these unpleasant emotions.
Then I imagined that I had died and was reviewing
this particular event in my life from the hindsight
wisdom of my soul’s carefree perspective, allowing the
most beneficial response for all involved to settle into
my consciousness. I
reasoned, or rather felt that the highest response
wasn’t to punch him in the nose, but to view him as an
extension of myself, as an eternal soul trying to learn
to not operate from dishonesty and lack.
I imagined looking into his eyes with a kind,
loving, light-hearted firmness, while gently insisting
on being charged what was on the customary computerized
print-out. I
might even give him a tip.
If he flat-out refused to give me the honest
rate, I really wouldn’t care, but would cheerfully
share my perspective with him on the matter, and even
invite his viewpoint. I questioned whether the highest response was to let the
matter slide because I was a comparably wealthy
foreigner, but reasoned that enabling dishonesty and
avoiding conflict was not the most beneficial response
for either of us as souls who had little concern for
money, only the manner in which we respond to one
another while playing out the dream skit of life.
Extended travel around India often reveals the
warmest acts of heart-felt, selfless love.
It also uncovers dishonesty based in the fear of
feeling like something is lacking.
Like the Indian taxis that quickly weave in and
out of traffic, you become intertwined in both
scenarios. It
feels like the ultimate land of duality.
Perhaps not coincidently, it is also the place
where multitudes of masters have taught that this
apparent duality is really an illusive trick, designed
for us, by a higher part of us, for the purpose of
trying to see through it, and then act in thought, word
and deed as though we were really One with each other.
“When one is illumined, he sees himself as the
One Spirit throbbing beneath all minds and bodies,”
said Yogananda. As
we exist in this manner, we begin to live our lives as
though we are already viewing our thoughts and actions
from the insight and clarity of our soul’s
perspective, much like consciously living from this
clear vantage point in a past life therapy session.
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