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Chapter Thirty: A Knight in Armor

I called Eva.  I wanted to tell her about my dream of the former life and my conviction that I’d committed suicide.  After I finished, Eva became was very quiet for a long moment.

“Yes, I already knew that,” she said finally.

“How?”

“When Lama Sing did the reading for you, years ago, the last time you’d almost…”

“Almost killed myself.”

“Yes.  Well, there was other information he gave.  We held it back from you.”

“What!”

“Al Miner’s wife called me right after that,” Eva said.  “Al told her Lama Sing came through to him, saying this was one of the primary issues you were dealing with in this life.  He said that you had committed suicide in your immediate past life.  The emotions at the moment of death are, apparently, some sort of pattern overlay on the subsequent life.”

This was a surprise.  “What context was this information presented in, Eva?” I wanted to know.

“Al’s wife didn’t know very much.  She just thought it would be best if we kept this information away from you then.”

It had either not been recorded on the tape, or had been erased, Eva said, and now there was no way of knowing if any specifics had been given.

I don’t know if it would have helped or made things more difficult to know at the time.  It’s hard to gauge something like that.  But I had confirmation of a sort that the information coming through in my dreams was accurate – or at least close.  Eva thought I would benefit from some “guided meditation” tapes”.  I was agreeable to try it, but I knew that her purpose was to divert me from any further thinking about the possibility that an “Evil Magician” ruled the world.

I wrote to Eva:  “December, 1987 – About the ‘Journey Into the Light’ tape you sent – it was very interesting and not unfamiliar or dissimilar to previous personal experiences of my own.  But, I want to comment that, years ago, I interviewed a number of people who had taken mescaline.  It seems they had all experienced fantastic “inner voyages”.  It is, it seems, a total alteration of perception; they ‘see’ sounds and ‘hear’ colors and movement.  Most of them described, laying over the whole experience, ‘waves of reality.’  They traveled into ‘other realms’ and perceived other beings – even very frightening areas of darkness and despair.  They describe a disintegration of reality that includes the self.  For most of them, this ‘loss of identity’ is terrifying.

“In my own experiences with meditation, I have experienced ‘transfer of information,’ most of which is kept buried and which I have never shared with anyone.  Until I can find confirmation of it in some other source, I will continue to hold it inside.

“The point is: the mescaline experience – including other hallucinogens – is purely chemical – or, at least, chemically induced.  Since the brain is capable of such incredible ‘voyages’ as a result of chemicals, how can we assert with absolute certainty that similar self-induced ‘flights’ or even acts of ‘channeling’ are not also merely chemical reactions within the physical brain?  How do we know we are not merely manifestations of the imagination of some slumbering Cosmic Being?  Or the toys or whatever of a group of celestial adversaries?  (For I cannot doubt some foundation for our existence other than mere accident).

“Now, I suppose that what has happened to me is that my faith – once so strong and impervious to external assault – has succumbed to a sort of ‘devil’s advocate’ mode of thinking.  For so long I maintained the ‘proper’ attitudes – performed the proper acts – to ‘create’ a reality more in line with what I felt would provide the environment for creative productivity and simple happiness…

“Well, hope springs eternal, as they say.  I will continue to do those things which should lead to ‘enlightenment.’  I will water the shriveled plant of my faith and withhold judgment.  But I cannot lie and pretend all is at peace in me or that I find my life, up to this point, at all what I would have hoped.

“I am now at the age you were when I met you.  You are now past 50 – and so little time has passed!    I thought we would be young and adventurous and carefree forever, or at least until we died.  As Rose said: I expect to be dead someday, but I don’t plan to spend any time dying.  Yet, my mortality has never weighed so heavily upon me as now.  Maybe I’m going through “the change”.  I feel crazy as hell sometimes…”

Eva wrote back: “Try to keep a positive mind  – you sounded a bit pessimistic – and send a note to the Lama Sing prayer group.  I am using my crystal to pray for you also & holding positive, healing images, light etc”.

Of course I was putting into practice every known and possible “remedy” for my situation – most especially the conditions of my mind.  Perhaps it is a flaw to always seek the solution to problems in one’s own attitude and thinking, but it is certainly a greater difficulty for those who never, ever consider that they could be wrong about anything.

Even in my state of doubt, I continued to meditate.  I had the idea that if I could produce the required changes in myself – even if it was only acceptance – that would enable me to pass through this rough period.  Most particularly, I wanted a change in my marriage.  I needed Larry’s acceptance of me as a questioning, intelligent human being – not merely a cook, housekeeper, sex object, baby-sitter and doormat.  I knew that he had been wounded, that he had insecurities, that perhaps his behavior was simply designed to drive me away, to manifest some self-fulfilling prophecy he had about himself that no woman could love him or stand by him.  I knew that, if anybody could do it, I could.  And the goal was, of course, to heal myself so that Larry would be healed.  Then, if we were both “en rapport,” our children would benefit, and all would be right with the world!

My meditation practice rapidly progressed.  After only a few months of practice, I found myself “zoning out” for up to three hours at a time, coming to myself feeling as though no time at all had passed.  The only problem was: I never seemed to bring anything back with me.  I had no idea what had been going on, where my mind had been.  I did note that I was far more peaceful and able to cope with the difficulties of my life, but it was still frustrating not to obtain something a bit more “concrete” from all of this endeavor.

These complete black-outs were explained partly by Gurdjief, as recorded by Ouspensky in “In Search of the Miraculous.”

“Man number one means man in whom the center of gravity of his psychic life lies in the moving center. This is the man of the physical body, the man with whom the moving and the instinctive functions constantly outweigh the emotional and the thinking functions.

“Man number two means man on the same level of development, but man in whom the center of gravity of his psychic life lies in the emotional center, that is, man with whom the emotional functions outweigh all others; the man of feeling, the emotional man.

“Man number three means man on the same level of development but man in whom the center of gravity of his psychic life lies in the intellectual center, that is, man with whom the thinking functions gain the upper hand over the moving, instinctive, and emotional functions; the man of reason, who goes into everything from theories, from mental considerations.

“Every man is born number one, number two, or number three. {…}

“In order to understand the work of the human machine and its possibilities, one must know that, apart from these three centers and those connected with them, we have two more centers, fully developed and properly functioning, but they are not connected with our usual life nor with the three centers in which we are aware of ourselves.

“The existence of these higher centers in us is a greater riddle than the hidden treasure which men who believe in the existence of the mysterious and the miraculous have sought since the remotest times.

“All mystical and occult systems recognize the existence of higher forces and capacities in man although, in many cases, they admit the existence of these forces and capacities only in the form of possibilities, and speak of the necessity for developing the hidden forces in man. This present teaching differs from many others by the fact that it affirms that the higher centers exist in man and are fully developed.

“It is the lower centers that are undeveloped. And it is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower centers that prevents us from making use of the work of the higher centers. {…}

“As has been said earlier, there are two higher centers: “The higher emotional center, working with hydrogen 12, and “The higher thinking center, working with hydrogen 6.

“If we consider the work of the human machine from the point of view of the ‘hydrogens’ which work the centers, we shall see why the higher centers cannot be connected with the lower ones.

“The intellectual center works with hydrogen 48; the moving center with hydrogen 24.

“If the emotional center were to work with hydrogen 12, its work would be connected with the work of the higher emotional center. In those cases where the work of the emotional center reaches the intensity and speed of existence which is given by hydrogen 12, a temporary connection with the higher emotional center takes place and man experiences new emotions, new impressions hitherto entirely unknown to him, for the description of which he has neither words nor expressions. But in ordinary conditions the difference between the speed of our usual emotions and the speed of the higher emotional center is so great that no connection can take place and we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional center.

“The higher thinking center, working with hydrogen 6, is still further removed from us, still less accessible. Connection with it is possible only through the higher emotional center. It is only from descriptions of mystical experiences, ecstatic states, and so on, that we know cases of such connections. These states can occur on the basis of religious emotions, or, for short moments, through particular narcotics; or in certain pathological states such as epileptic fits or accidental traumatic injuries to the brain, in which cases it is difficult to say which is the cause and which is the effect, that is, whether the pathological state results from this connection or is its cause.

“If we could connect the centers of our ordinary consciousness with the higher thinking center deliberately and at will, it would be of no use to us whatever in our present general state. In most cases where accidental contact with the higher thinking center takes place a man becomes unconscious. The mind refuses to take in the flood of thoughts, emotions, images, and ideas which suddenly burst into it. And instead of a vivid thought, or a vivid emotion, there results, on the contrary, a complete blank, a state of unconsciousness. The memory retains only the first moment when the flood rushed in on the mind and the last moment when the flood was receding and consciousness returned. But even these moments are so full of unusual shades and colors that there is nothing with which to compare them among the ordinary sensations of life. This is usually all that remains from so-called ‘mystical’ and ‘ecstatic’ experiences, which represent a temporary connection with a higher center. Only very seldom does it happen that a mind which has been better prepared succeeds in grasping and remembering something of what was felt and understood at the moment of ecstasy. But even in these cases the thinking, the moving, and the emotional centers remember and transmit everything in their own way, translate absolutely new and never previously experienced sensations into the language of usual everyday sensations, transmit in worldly three-dimensional forms things which pass completely beyond the limits of worldly measurements; in this way, of course, they entirely distort every trace of what remains in the memory of these unusual experiences. Our ordinary centers, in transmitting the impressions of the higher centers, may be compared to a blind man speaking of colors, or to a deaf man speaking of music.

“In order to obtain a correct and permanent connection between the lower and the higher centers, it is necessary to regulate and quicken the work of the lower centers. {ISOTM, excerpts}

The only thing I can say is that I was doing this “zoning out” regularly and, as Gurdjieff described, brought nothing back with me. As a matter of practicality I generally meditated lying on the bed.  Some people cannot do this because they tend to fall asleep, but that was never a problem for me.  I could “zone out” in meditation, “come to” some time later, and then go to sleep easily at night.  I was generally so uncomfortable in any position, that getting to sleep was problematical if I didn’t meditate first.

So, I went to bed and waited for Larry to go to sleep.  If he thought I wanted quiet for meditation, he would manage to just “have” to make some sort of noise or disruption, apologize, and then do it again.

After he was asleep, I began my breathing exercises.  This part of the process I had borrowed from my hypnotherapy training and was extremely useful.  Of course, I later learned that it had been “borrowed” for hypnotherapy from certain meditation systems. {The practices I used at this time are now being made available and taught in the Éiriú Eolas program.  You will be able to read here about the amazing experiences I had with this practice!}

At this point, I don’t know what happened.  All I remember is starting the breathing phase, which came before the contemplative phase of the exercise.  But then I made some kind of big “skip”.

The next thing I knew, I was jerked back into consciousness by a sensation that can only be described as a “boiling turbulence” in my abdomen.  It was so powerful that, at first, it felt actually physical – like there was a boiling agitation in my organs that was going to erupt upward in some way.

I was frantically holding my throat, because I could feel a tightening of the muscles in the throat area, as wave after wave of energy blew upward like the precursors of steam blasts from a volcano before it erupts.  I struggled out of the bed, holding the wall with one hand and my throat with the other, clenching my teeth so whatever it was would not come gushing out of me and disturb Larry or the children.  For all I knew, I was just going to be violently sick!

I rushed outside to the porch Larry had recently built onto our little house, where there was a lawn sofa, and collapsed onto it just as the outpouring began.

I wish I could describe this in better words, but there are simply none that apply other than to use ordinary descriptions that don’t come close to the essence and intensity of the event.  What erupted from me was a shattering series of sobs and cries that were utterly primeval and coming from some soul-deep place that defies explanation.  Accompanying these cries, or actually, embedded in them, were images – visions – complete scenes with all attendant emotional content and implied context conveyed in an instant.  Again, it was like the idea of “your life passing before your eyes”.

But, in this case, it was not scenes from this life.  It was lifetime after lifetime.  I knew that I was there in every scene, in these vignettes of other lives.  I was experiencing myself as all these people.

And the tears!  My god!  The tears that flowed.  I had no idea that the human physiology was capable of producing such copious amounts of liquid so rapidly!

Now, if this had been just an hour-long crying jag or something like that, it would have to pass into history as “just one of those things,” maybe like PMS.  But, this activity had a life of its own!  It went on, without slowing or stopping, for more than five hours!  If I attempted to slow it down, stop it, or “switch” my mind in another direction, the inner sensation of explosive eruption rapidly took over, all the muscles in my body would begin to clench up and I was no longer in control.  I could only sit there as a sort of “instrument of grief and lamentation,” and literally sob my heart out for every horror of history in which I had seemingly participated or to which I had possibly been a witness.  I think that there were even some that I was simply aware of without my direct participation.  And some were truly horrible scenes.

Plague and pestilence and death and destruction.  Scene after scene.  Loved ones standing one moment, crushed or lying in bloody heaps the next.  Rapaciousness, pillaging, plundering; rivers of blood and gore; slaughter, carnage and butchery in all its many manifestations passed before my eyes; holocaust and hell.  Rage and hot anger, bloodlust and fury, murder and mayhem, all around me, everywhere I looked.  Evil heaped on evil like twisted, dismembered bodies.  And the grief of centuries, the unshed tears of millennia, the guilt, remorse and penitence, flooded through me; melting, thawing and dissolving the burdensome shell of stone that encased my petrified heart; washing away the pain with my tears.  An ocean of tears.

As this release of the worlds of accumulated guilt and grief of many lifetimes went on, the “voice-that-was-not-a-voice” in the background, ever soothing, ever calming, repeated:

“It’s not your fault.  There is no blame.  It’s not your fault.  You didn’t know.”

And I came to understand something very deep:  I understood that there is no “original sin”.  I understood that the terrors and suffering mankind experiences here in life on earth is not caused by some sort of “flaw” or “error” or aberration from “within”.  It is not punishment.  It is not something that one can be “saved” from.

I understood that every scene of terrible suffering and heart-rending cruelty was the result of IGNORANCE.  And each experience was the gaining of knowledge.

It is easier to see this idea when you consider the Crusades or the Inquisition.  You can trace the path of twisted reason, leading from the idea of the Love of God to imposing that view on others “for their own good, ” ending in torture and mass murder.  Forget for a moment about those who just viciously used such philosophies for their own gain and political maneuvers.  Think for a moment about the sincerity of the philosophies behind such events.  But it is based on IGNORANCE.

Those who were seemingly out for gain and self-aggrandizement were operating out of ignorance – fear and hunger of the soul that cannot be satisfied.  It is only a matter of degrees, but in the end, it is only ignorance.

When the flow of energy, images and tears finally began to subside, I felt a sensation of warm, balmy liquid, almost airy in its lightness, and so sweet that to this day, I can still remember the piercing quickening of the fire of love for all of creation.  It was ecstatic, rapturous and exultant all at the same time.  I was lost in wonder, amazed and at the same time bewildered at this vision of the world.

Well, the result of this event was a state of prolonged “elevation,” or “loving peace” that persisted for a very long time.  You could even say that the effects reverberate to the present.  Never again was I able to condemn (act against with intent to destroy what they choose to believe) another, no matter how wicked their deeds.  I could see that all so-called “evil” and “wickedness” was a manifestation of ignorance.  No person, no matter how holy and elevated they may think they are in this life, has not reveled in the shedding of another’s blood in some other time and place.  And no person who chooses ignorance and wickedness and destruction in this life is “wrong”.  Yes, I had the right to avoid them, to defend myself against them, to understand what they were doing.  But it was not my place to go on a campaign to “change their mind”.

The significant point is: Ignorance is a choice, and one made for a reason: to learn and to grow.

And that realization led to another: to learn how to truly choose.  To be able to learn, at this level of reality, what is and isn’t of ignorance, what is of truth and beauty and love and cleanliness.  I understood the saying of Jesus that some things are bright and shining on the outside, but inside they are filthy and full of decay.  And I don’t mean that I was seeing this negativity as something to be judged.  I clearly understood its reason and place as modes of learning, but I was deeply inspired to seek out all I could learn about this world to best manifest what was of light.

I was so excited by this “revelation” that I wanted to tell everybody.

At that point, members of the church we had attended were still coming by occasionally to find out why we had sort of dropped out.  These visits gave me the opportunity to talk about my spiritual experiences.  In every single case, I was literally rebuked as having been duped by Satan.

I thought about that a lot.  I wondered if it could be so, if the whole drama of the visions, the actions of the minister who had been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, could have been set up and dramatized just to deceive me.  Perhaps my soul was in peril.  But, if they were wrong, what did that make of the whole basis of Christianity?  How could anything they had built on this basic error be right?

This distressed me.  I was most definitely “adjusting” my Christian position, but I was not quite prepared to toss the whole thing out the window.  I mean, after all, through all the years of study and investigation, Christianity had been my background.  When, as a child, I began questioning the existence of a god at all, that was altogether different.  But, now, making the decision to believe that Christianity was foundationally wrong – if there was no original sin from which to be saved, there was no necessity for a savior – this amounted to making a choice.

It was a matter that took a number of years to resolve.  What is important is that, from this experience forward, I was never again able to see sin in quite the same light.  When I read about murderers and deeds of mayhem, I knew these were things that I had done also in times past, in my ignorance.  When anyone did something that hurt me, I knew that I had done such things as well.  I could no longer feel any judgment or criticism because I knew, at some place and time, it was myself I was judging.  All my lifetimes had been for learning.  I grew from each experience.  I learned what not to do by doing it.  And, in a very real sense, this is the reason for pain and suffering.  It is like an automatic guidance system that keeps a person on the path of learning.  But the trick is to be able to discern the difference between choosing a path that gives immediate physical comfort, and then leads to great psychic or soul pain, and a path that may be physically uncomfortable temporarily, that leads to peace of the heart.

Of course, this principle was not automatically perfectly enacted in my life.  I had the idea, now it was just a matter of learning how to apply it.  And I made mistakes, and still make mistakes.  And most of these mistakes relate to the fact that this world is run by an “evil magician” who seeks to control everything and everybody with truly devious manipulations.  And it seems that anyone who seeks to escape this control becomes a target of even greater and more subtly devious manipulations through “agents” of the Control System.

What is more, if a person seeks to share this information by merely putting it “out there” for others to consider, the levels of attack and attempts to destroy increase exponentially.  And always, they come in the guise of “love and light,” and claims that “I’m only doing this for your own good; I really want only to help you”.

Had I not had the need to care for my children, I might have simply withdrawn from the world to spend the rest of my life in studious contemplation and repetition of ecstatic exercises.  What actually happened in the “real world” can be looked at in a more “miraculous” light.  We might even say they were a direct reflection of the shift in my perspective as a result of direct contact with the higher centers as described by Gurdjieff and, being able to bring something back.

Larry found a job that paid better wages and began working days, so our schedule was more normal.

Eva’s husband, who owned a fleet of trucks, decided to get new ones, and offered to sell us one (with very low mileage) for less than a fifth of its market value.

With more income, were able to add onto the “cabin,” more than tripling our living space, install electricity and plumbing, and basically return to the “real world”.  Of course, by this time I had already had to sell my piano, and I mourned its absence for a very long time.  I resumed doing hypnotherapy, which had been abandoned during the “faith trip,” and began to do past-life therapy.

I didn’t do this by going out and opening an office and hanging out a shingle.  It actually came about in a strange way.

When my second daughter was born, I went to great lengths to make sure that my first child didn’t have any experiences that would lead to so-called “sibling rivalry”.  I made sure my older child did not suffer from any lessening of attention, allowing her to hold and help with the new baby, and so forth.  I thought I had accomplished this fairly well until an incident occurred that took the wind right out of my sails.

Not long after we had moved out to Larry’s property in the woods, he had just finished building the septic tank a short distance from the little house.  There was a mound of clean, white sand I decided we ought to just keep for the children to play in rather than rake it out and disperse it.

The girls were outside in the sand pile, and I was resting on the bed and listening to them play, checking on them every few minutes through the window.  They weren’t aware that I was watching them.

Since I was just listening to their voices and not the specific words, I can’t say how the discussion between them was progressing, but suddenly I was shocked to hear my oldest say: “I hate you!    I wish you were dead!”

I looked out the window and there they were, my little angels, the older one holding a cement trowel against the stomach of her little sister, pressing the point of it into the flesh dangerously, and saying: “Ever since you came, I’ve hated you!    If I could get away with it, I’d kill you!”

Well!    Talk about shattering of illusions!    From my point of view, both of them were absolutely perfect and gorgeous and smart and talented and ANGELIC!    I had worked so very hard to ensure that they would have no reason for jealousy or rivalry between them, and here, clearly, I had missed something!    I couldn’t be angry with either of them because I realized there was an issue here that was clearly deeper than anything I had ever heard of or read about.  The immediate situation had to be handled cleverly because, if my oldest daughter felt this way, most of all I needed to know why.  Shaming her or berating her would not open communications between us.

I made some “stirring about” noises and went to the door and called the girls, acting as though I had seen and heard nothing.  I began to watch them closely, to try to take corrective actions so that both of them felt equally loved and cherished.

It didn’t help.  As time went by, my older daughter became more morose and resentful and often came running to me to demand that I order her sister not to follow her around, to go away and let her play alone, or to otherwise “disappear” from her world in some way.

Everything her sister did annoyed and irritated her to the point of wanting to explode.  She hated it when her little sister, who absolutely worshipped her, would try to dress the same way, or wear her hair the same, or use the same expressions, or any of the other imitative things that little children do when they admire someone.

I pointed out that this imitation was a form of love and showed how much her little sister respected her.  It didn’t help.  She admitted that she knew this was true, she knew her feelings had no cause, no rhyme or reason.  In the end, she just knew that she deeply hated her sister and wanted to see her dead.

Well, we had a problem.  I was glad that she felt that she could share her feelings with me, that she was able to look at it logically and see that it wasn’t rational (she was nine by this time), but when she burst into tears and began shaking, saying that she really wanted me to help her because she was afraid she would do something really bad, I knew I had to find a solution.

I hadn’t done any hypnosis for a number of years, and the girls had been mostly shielded from my “spiritual quest” activities.  Until I was certain of which way things would fall, I saw no point in upsetting their belief system formed by Larry and the church.  It was okay for me to ask questions and experiment, but I didn’t feel I had the right to upset them by just saying one day: “Oops!    Well, you know all that stuff we told you about God all your life?  Well, it’s wrong!    Sorry!”

They knew nothing about ideas of reincarnation, metaphysics, and other philosophies.  They had also spent nearly their entire lives without television or movies or other “forbidden” activities.  They had been protected from exposure to anyone who drank alcohol (even just a beer!) or swearing, or dancing and so on.  They were, in effect, totally “pure” according to the church teachings, but also totally ignorant of the “real world”.  (That’s another thing that was going to come back and bite me later.) I knew for certain that nothing obvious in their lives or experience up to that point could have generated such a problem.  I also knew that sometimes, seemingly minor events of life, as seen from the perspective of an adult, could be very influential in the mind of the child. This had come up repeatedly in many hypnotherapy sessions I had conducted.

Had one of us said or done something inadvertently that she perceived as a reason to hate her sister?

My daughter was just barely old enough for hypnosis, and this was most assuredly the type of issue that hypnotherapy was touted to cure.  When she cried and asked me to help her, I responded that yes, I might know a way.  Did she want to try it?

“Yes,” she pleaded.  “I’m going to go crazy if I can’t stop feeling this way!”

As always, I didn’t want to “contaminate” my work by “leading questions”.  After I had put her under, I simply asked: “Go to the place and time where this feeling of hatred toward your sister first began”.  That was it.  No suggestion that it might be “another life,” or that her sister might be a “different person”.  And, with her complete lack of knowledge of such things, I really expected to have some minor incident revealed that I would then help her to process and gain a broader understanding so that the issue would be resolved easily.

No such luck!

In a voice that was stronger and more adult than that of a nine-year-old little girl, my daughter began to describe a mad ride on horseback through a forest.  She was a soldier, a volunteer for a dangerous journey to deliver a message that would bring reinforcements to a besieged fortress full of family, friends and comrades at arms.  The lives of hundreds of people depended on her achieving her mission.

Suddenly an enemy soldier appeared in her path and her horse shied and she was knocked to the ground by an overhanging limb.  The blow nearly knocked her senseless, and as she was finally able to gather her wits, she saw the enemy standing over her, contemptuously lifting his visor to show his face before driving the sword into the “weak place in the armor”.  The last thought of the dying soldier was the knowledge that she had failed in her mission and now, all she loved was lost.  Hatred for the one who was, in effect, the cause of so much death and destruction was frozen in her heart at the instant of death.

Well.  It’s not a good idea to do this kind of therapy with people you are close to: the bonds of love make you vulnerable to their experiences in an almost direct way.  I was stunned, to say the least.  Of course, it could also be true that such “dramas” were created by the mind as a means of symbolically expressing a conflict that the conscious mind did not want to acknowledge.  I was inclined to think that it may have been a “real” experience, but it could have been a “psycho-drama” presented by the subconscious mind.  It was also possible that she had read stories about knights in armor and chose this one to dramatize her emotions.

It didn’t really matter, however.  I knew that the objective was to work with what was given.  I guided her to the “between-life” state where she could look back on the incident with a greater perspective and, hopefully, forgive the enemy she realized had become her sister in this present life.

No dice.  She wasn’t EVER going to forgive her!    She had killed her in other lives already and it had brought no peace, and even though she knew she couldn’t kill her in this life, she would certainly never forgive her!

I suggested that, perhaps, this event might have been an interaction that was predicated upon an even “earlier” dynamic, and perhaps we should look for that?

“Yes,” she admitted.  “I already killed her a long time ago.”

“Before this time?”

“Yes.”

She had killed her sister in an even earlier period and this event between the soldiers was merely a reversal of the former event.  But still, the condition existed that so many other people she loved had been killed as a result of her failure to obtain reinforcements.  The two acts were not equal.  She still couldn’t forgive because of that.

We went around and around with no resolution.

“Well, your former enemy, who is now your sister, must have resolved this situation in her heart,” I told my daughter.

“Why do you say that?”

“She loves and admires you so much now,” I said.  “This is her way of seeking your forgiveness.”

Grudgingly my daughter admitted this might be so.

Finally, I moved to direct suggestions for forgiveness, understanding, love and peace in her heart toward her sister.  It was all I could do, and I could only pray that it would do the job.  There did seem to be an improvement.  After several months of anxious observation, I relaxed and began to breathe a bit easier.

***

My friend Sandra was excited to get me back into working with hypnosis.  She promoted, scheduled, and provided the environment for me to resume a small hypnotherapy “practice,” though it could hardly be called that.  After such a long break, I found that my skills had not diminished, and my experiences had brought new depth to my understanding of the problems people faced.  I studied Past Life Therapy and began to employ it experimentally.

In the beginning, I had some idea that I ought to collect “facts” that could be checked, but as often as not, the subject just simply was not able to provide them in a consistent way, and I was not really in a position to check them.  There were some “maybes” on a few situations, but no solid “hits”.  In the end, I decided that it didn’t really matter if I was going to be able to “prove” reincarnation.  Others had tried and what proof they had obtained did not convince those who didn’t want to be convinced, and those who “believed” already didn’t need to be convinced.  The only thing that mattered was that the therapy worked.

Naturally, just doing it at all was problematical.  Larry was gradually moving into the position that all I did in such directions smacked faintly of “Satanic” pursuits.  He was ready to give up the specific church, but unwilling or unable to give up his beliefs.  Larry’s own beliefs were becoming quite fanatical and had embraced all kinds of government conspiracy ideas that Christians were soon to be objects of dire persecution.  I ended up having a lot of “lunches” with Sandra.  While he could complain about this, he didn’t say too much because Sandra always “gave me extra money” during these lunches and Larry had no problem with what he thought was “charity” from my friend.  That I was working for this money never occurred to him.  That anyone would pay for hypnotherapy also never occurred to him.

Thus it was that a knight in armor armed a different “Knight” and sent her off on a mission.  But, as we will see, the price was high.

Continue to Chapter 31: The Cleft In The Rock