Past Life Regression and Child abuse

Few of us get out of childhood without some trauma, no matter how loving our caretakers were. It may have been an accident, an animal attack, or witnessing a trauma like war or abuse. It could, as we know, be a trusted adult who acts incredibly selfish and irresponsibly towards a vulnerable child.

When a trauma occurs the young child makes a decision that, at the time may be a useful survival strategy, and later becomes a part of his or her unconscious operating system. The trauma event is long over but the early decision still operates in the adult's life creating difficulty.

All childhood abuse leaves emotional scars in the mind and these play out through ones life in a multitude of ways. Low confidence, aggression, relationship troubles, sexual problems, self-sabotage, guilt, anxiety, depression… all are common symptoms one may experience as a result of abuse as a child.

When the child experiences the abuse, it is like an “emotion overload”, and when the subconscious mind just cannot cope at that moment, it uses a process called “repression” to protect the child from being emotionally overwhelmed. The downside of this process is that emotions become “trapped” back there, and cause problems and symptoms in ones present day life.

Memories of abuse as a child are often repressed through the very mechanism, which enables the child to survive the horror - dissociation. He or she gets through the betrayal, the physical assault, the pain and the helplessness by mentally separating from the body. It seems as though the abuse is happening to someone else.

Sometimes this dissociation can be so effective that all conscious memory of the abuse is lost. Sometimes memories surface later, in adulthood. Often as flashbacks or nightmares.

All childhood abuse leaves deep scars, affecting your beliefs about yourself for the rest of your life. And even though the abuse may have happened a long time ago, it may still be affecting your life today. Many abuse victims admit to having low confidence, exhibiting higher than normal levels of aggression, having relationship difficulties, experiencing sexual problems, indulging in self-sabotage or even self-harm, harboring guilty feelings, and feeling generally anxious.

Individuals are imprisoned on the ‘evidence’ provided by memories that come back in dreams and flashbacks. What type of impact can repressed memories have on someone's overall life? 

"Unconscious behavior and unexpressed emotion from repressed memories can create uncomfortable patterns in ones life. These patterns tend to keep reappearing and create difficulties, like addictions and their consequences. It may also show up as a strong reaction to a situation, a sudden eruption of anger, or obsessive thinking. As in the case of young children who have been subjected to sexual abuse will exhibit symptoms of increased autonomic arousal in their later life which can be recognized when they:

·         experiences sleep disturbances which can magnify symptoms and can encourage psychoactive substance abuse

·         becomes irritable or prone to explosive outbursts of fear, panic or anger particularly when the original trauma is recollected or re-enacted

·         experiences difficulty in concentrating or remembering

·         is continually hyper vigilant and employs survivalist tactics or victimization mechanisms of relevance to the original trauma

·         exhibits an exaggerated startle response and increased hypersensitivity.

Past Life Regression Therapy addresses these problems by going to the root cause which either occurred in a previous life or in an earlier part of this life memory of which has since been repressed.

Reincarnation

The word "reincarnation" derives from Latin, literally meaning, "entering the flesh again". The Greek equivalent metempsychosis (μετεμψύχωσις) roughly corresponds to the common English phrase "transmigration of the soul" and also usually connotes reincarnation after death. Reincarnation may be said to be a repertoire of states of consciousness which guides our behaviour in productive adaptive ways.

Some southern European Christians believed in reincarnation until the Council of Nice banned such beliefs in 553 A.D. In The Republic, Plato described souls about to be reborn as choosing their future lives. Schopenhauer took it seriously, and Voltaire's observation that it is no more surprising to be born twice than once is well known. In Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Carl Jung wrote that as a boy he remembered in great detail being a very old man in the eighteenth century. Yet most scientists nowadays do not believe in survival after death. Presumably Darwinian ideas contributed to a sort of dethroning of the soul.

However, more than half the world’s people believe in reincarnation. What is the basis of this belief? Is it rooted in delusions or wishful thinking? Or, is there a tangible basis for such ideas?

The philosopher David Hume said, in his essay ‘Of the immortality of the soul’  – Metempsychosis is …. The only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to. Some philosophers, psychologists and thinkers admit that reincarnation is a very sensible idea, because it would answer so many questions and problems about human existence.

Charles Darwin had concluded that that human facilities are a result of their evolutionary history. Neurotheologists have further expanded on this, saying - If reincarnation is true and Darwin right, then isn’t reincarnation evolutionary adaptation that contributed to the survival of our species.

A human being has a bio-plasma body, which the evidence tells us must contain a structure of consciousness - the soul. The soul has structured the bio-plasma by recording the essence of a person’s life experience. Because bio-plasma is a property of living matter an unborn child would also have a bio-plasma, but would not yet have had any concrete experiences that would form a soul structure in the bio-plasma. At a certain stage the unborn human child, in short, does not yet have a soul. Therefore, when a person dies, their soul must be transmitted to an unborn child, which then structures the bio-plasma of the child with the bio-plasmic pattern of the dying person’s soul. The death and transfer are part of the method of the evolution of consciousness.

If child psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as paediatricians, family doctors, and parents, would listen to children and observe them with reincarnation in mind, they would make valuable discoveries. Children often seem to express memories of previous lives in their play and sometimes in their drawings.

Dr. Ian Stevenson, an academic psychiatrist, led the study of reincarnation in the United States until his death in 2007. The lab, which later became known as the Division of Perceptual Studies, focuses on examining children who remember former lives, near-death experiences, apparitions and after-death communications, out-of-body experiences and deathbed visions.

Dr. Stevenson, who often called reincarnation the "survival of personality after death," saw the existence of past lives as a potential explanation for the differences in human condition. He believed past experiences plus genetics and the environment could help elucidate gender dysphoria, phobias and other unexplained personality traits.

To sum it up, the question often asked is, if rebirth is possible, is there any scientific basis for believing in rebirth? Since time immemorial, man has been struggling to find a solution to this mystery but conclusive evidence has thus far eluded him. Can science uphold the belief in rebirth? It is beyond the current tools of science to definitively prove the general theory of reincarnation to a sceptical public. Likewise, it is also beyond the tools of modern science to disprove it.

Karma cont....

When people are happy and contented, they tend to take life for granted. It is when they suffer, when they find life difficult, that they begin to search for a reason and a way out of their difficulty. They may ask why some are born in poverty and suffering, while others are born in fortunate circumstances. Some people believe that it is due to fate, chance, or an invisible power beyond their control - Karma. In this world nothing happens to a person that he does not for some reason or other deserve. Usually, men of ordinary intellect cannot comprehend the actual reason or reasons. The definite invisible cause or causes of the visible effect is not necessarily confined to the present life, they may be traced to a proximate or remote past birth.

The Pali term Karma literally means action or doing. Any kind of intentional action whether mental, verbal, or physical, is regarded as Karma. It covers all that is included in the phrase "thought, word and deed". Buddhism teaches that one's present condition, whether of happiness or suffering, is the result of the accumulated force of all past actions or karma.

Karma is the law of moral causation. It is action and reaction in the ethical realm. It is natural law that every action produces a certain effect. So if one performs wholesome actions such as donating money to charitable organizations, happiness will ensue. On the other hand, if one performs unwholesome actions, such as killing a living being, the result will be suffering. This is the law of cause and effect at work. In this way, the effect of past karma determines the nature of one's present situation in life.

It is a concept in Hinduism which explains causality through a system where beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions, creating a system of actions and reactions throughout a soul's reincarnated lives forming a cycle of rebirth. The causality is said to be applicable not only to the material world but also to our thoughts, words, actions and actions that others do under our instructions. When the cycle of rebirth comes to an end, a person is said to have attained moksha, or salvation.

 

The theory of karma harps on the Newtonian principle that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Every time we think or do something, we create a cause, which in time will bear its corresponding effects. And this cyclical cause and effect generates the concepts of samsara, birth and reincarnation. It is the personality of a human being - with its positive and negative actions - that causes karma.

According to Buddhism, rebirth takes place at the end of this life. Rebirth is regarded as a fact. There is evidence that each person has lived many lives in the past and will continue to live more in the future. Rebirth therefore for the Buddhist is a reality although one may not be aware of it. Those who have developed their minds through meditation have confirmed the existence of past lives. Meditators who have attained powers of concentration have been able to recall their previous lives in great detail. In the same trend, Buddhism teaches that birth, death and rebirth are part of the continuing process of change. This is similar to the continuous process of growth, decay and replacement of cells in one's body. According to medical experts, every seven years, all body cells are replaced.

At the moment of death, when this life is over, and the body can no longer survive, the mind is separated from the body. At that time, the craving for life causes one to seek a new existence, and the previous karma determines the place of one's rebirth.

Every person is responsible for his or her acts and thoughts, so each person's karma is entirely his or her own. Occidentals see the operation of karma as fatalistic. But that is far from true since it is in the hands of an individual to shape his own future by schooling his present. Hindu philosophy, which believes in the doctrine that if the life after death, holds karma of an individual is good enough, the next birth will be rewarding, and if not, the person may actually devolve and degenerate into a lower life form. Therefore in order to achieve good karma it is important to live life according to dharma or what is right.

We create our own Heaven. We create our own Hell. We are the architects of our own fate.

Past Life Recall

At birth, you had the gift of two types of memory, current life and past life. You also had the gift of having a veil dropped over the past. That veil can be lifted, should you choose to do so.

 

Perhaps it is easy for children to recall past lives because their minds are not cluttered by confronting the lessons and challenges of their current lives. By the time children reach adulthood, they will have experienced many things that might cloud past-life memories, including admonishment by some adults that those memories are only creative imagination. A wise parent who realizes that a child is recalling past life memories can provide encouragement by asking the child to make up a bedtime story. Your child's reaction can be surprisingly straightforward. Your child might ask, "Do you remember when I was the mommy (or daddy) and you were little like me?" In a playful way, s/he might describe a past-life event as a personal story. By talking with your child just before sleep, you can learn much about the past-life experiences that went into the making of that soul's character--your little child.

 

Parents who punish their child for play-acting what the child believes to be real could damage or stunt the emotional and spiritual life of that child who is simply remembering the past. Such an unwise approach on the part of the parents could cause serious problems to develop later as the child develops and must deal with issues rooted in a past life. The freedom to remember is essential.