By Daniel J. Benor, MD

Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say, “Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.
                    – Linda Hogan

Eastern religions, traditional cultures and healers around the world maintain that the spirit of man survives to an afterlife and returns to live again. Billions of people believe in reincarnation. While for some this is a part of their general religious beliefs – that is, a matter of faith as taught within their religion – for many others it is a matter of experienced reality.

Judao-Christian traditions included awareness of reincarnation through the fifth century, CE, as suggested by John 3:3, “Except as a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The Alexandrian school included proponents of reincarnation such as Clement, Justin Martyr, St. Gregory of Nyasa and Origen.

To many in Western society, this is an odd, if not alien, concept. I, myself, used to believe this was a fantasy, a wishful thinking born out of fears of the finality of death – which I perceived as an absolute and total termination of consciousness with the death of the physical body.

My survey of research in spiritual dimensions convinced me otherwise:

I review the reincarnation research in more detail:

Research on all of the above and more is carefully annotated and discussed in Volume III of Healing Research, Personal Spirituality .

TWR and past life traumas

There are times when the SUDS does not go down, despite collarbone tapping, revisions of the focusing statement, exploring for reasons to hold onto the problems, and searches for meta-anxieties. In such cases, it may be helpful to muscle test for the question, “Are there residual memories of feelings or experiences from past lives that are contributing to this problem?”

George was known all his life for his irritability and temper outbursts. He came for help when he lost his second job as a result of losing his temper at work. George made modest progress at first, clearing traumatic memories of suffering from his father’s verbal and physical abuses until George was eight years old and his mother left after being beaten severely herself by his father.

While he made modest gains using TWR, and had some increase in his abilities to control his anger, the intensity of both his angers in the present and his residuals from childhood angers never went lower than a 2-3. None of the usual approaches to tweaking the TWR process succeeded in budging these resistances.

When asked about past life memories, George mentioned several recurrent dreams and fantasies about having been falsely accused, incarcerated, and tortured to death. After he used TWR to clear his feelings around these apparent past life memories, his angers in his current life and childhood memories cleared completely.

Many people are surprised at how readily they can access past life memories. It used to be thought that this could be experienced spontaneously only in rare, exceptional cases – most often in young children or in adults, with the aid of hypnosis. My clinical experience and that of many other therapists suggests otherwise.

Believers will see George’s experiences as confirmation of reincarnation memories. Skeptics will suggest that these are purely fantasies. There is no way to prove either theory objectively.

What impresses me to believe the validity of these sorts of stories are the subjective and behavioral changes that occur, often with surprising rapidity, when the traumas of reported past life memories are cleared with TWR.

Subjectively, I can personally confirm what is commonly reported by others as well: These memories have a strong inner feeling of reality to them.

The wheel of life

With current life traumas, I find that when the emotional pains, angers, fears and other hurts are not cleared, the unconscious mind appears to invite people to clear them in a variety of ways:

All of these suggest buried traumas from earlier in one’s current lifetime that are asking to be cleared.

If someone betrays you once, it is his fault; If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

The same is true of past life traumas. In fact, past life traumas appear also to lead us to choose to be born into families where unresolved issues can be processed. A person who has unresolved abandonment, abuse or grief issues may be born into a family where they experience re-enactments of situations that stimulate the unresolved emotions and issues.

TWR users report that TWR has helped them to clear the underlying emotions and stop the recurring patterns – both with current-life and past-life issues.

More on TWR and these recurring patterns in Seven Minutes to Natural Pain Release and in Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul .

Resources

More on TWR and Vipassana meditation

More on Wholistic Healing: Click on the round icons at the top of this page for an overview of Wholistic Healing
You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2008 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM   All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.