by Bryan Jameison

Inasmuch as most of my clients are female, the majority of my work has naturally been focused on working with issues affecting their lives. A common problem many women have is finding themselves enmeshed in dysfunctional relationships, yet not being able to extricate themselves from them. Despite the ability of many women to care for themselves in today’s society, many, nonetheless, are plagued by obviously inappropriate feelings of guilt. When contemplating terminating a chronically abusive or dissatisfying relationship, I’ve found several past-life reasons, which often cause them to stay, even though their good sense said get out of it.

In their past lives, most women seldom could read or write and most certainly knew nothing about the outside world. Most had very little to offer in exchange for their keep, aside from sex, cooking, etc. Without a father or husband to protect and provide for her, the average female literally was at the mercy of the male populace. She was very lucky if she could find employment as a scullery maid, barmaid, or housekeeper. Her other options were to become a whore, a beggar, a thief or a nun. What most unmarried women could expect to look forward to without a man was a life of humiliation; begging on the streets, prostitution or scavenging for food in alleys.

Most societies of the past, and even a few today, had/have no honorable role for these women to play. Not only that, it generally was assumed they must have done something wrong or else they wouldn’t be in such dire straits. As a woman in a past incarnation, she may have been thrown out by her husband or widowed only then to find herself an outcast. Such women were the objects of scorn and often, sexual abuse.

At soul level, old memories often bleed into current lives. The very thought of going through these dreadful experiences triggers their repressed fears. After having experienced such treatment in the past, or knowing of women who had these experiences, it is little wonder modern women, because of this fear, find themselves seized by terror at the very thought of being without a man, even a abusive one. They often remain in a relationship even though they receive constant verbal, emotional and/or physical abuse. In some cases, the only thing these women know is abuse. Because of being continually mistreated, many come to believe that they must have done something to deserve it.

Staying in an abusive relationship also may be traceable to past-life situations when these women were in the role of the abuser. In a reversed role, these women now have the opportunity to know firsthand how their former mates must have felt. I usually have found these people have a deep-seated sense of unworthiness, which, for some reason, makes them feel they deserve nothing better than what they’re getting. It is beyond their comprehension to believe any relationship other than an abusive one is possible. Sadly, most of them would not even know how to handle a healthy relationship even if they were in one. That’s why they often sabotage such relationships when they come along.

Another reason for bad things to happen to good women can be found in the following scenario, which is enacted in a thousand variations every day. Once upon a time, a young girl became pregnant out-of-wedlock and was forced to leave the shelter and support of her family. She survived long enough to give birth to her bastard babe in some squalid hovel or back alley, after which she either abandoned her child to the fates, or, as many preferred, killed it rather than leave it to the dogs.

The guilt associated with such actions often is brought forward to the present, where it can be triggered by the pathetic look in a husband’s or lover’s eyes as he pleads with her to stay. What does dumping an unwanted baby have to do with ending a relationship? Coincidentally, the abandoned baby of the past may well be her present-day mate. At soul level, her guilt says, “I can’t get rid of him again.” The same goes for some men.

Probably more common than is realized, the reason a person cannot leave a bad relationship is because, in a past life he/she had to leave an aged or sick parent, friend, spouse, or child behind when the tribe relocated. Perhaps in the past, one escapes from a burning building, a sinking ship, an enemy attack, and in the process leaves behind someone he/she loved or for whom he/she felt responsible. Here, again, the person abandoned in the past now often is the mate he/she is attempting to leave. The ancient feelings of guilt are as alive today in soul consciousness as they were a thousand years ago. The same unconscious feelings of guilt may apply to those noble souls who tenaciously remain for years in a position of dedicated servitude to a partner or parent who is completely mentally or physically incapacitated. These people usually see themselves as loyal, devoted and honorable mates, and never recognize that the real motivation could be unrequited feelings of guilt from long ago.

In all these cases, the objective of regression is to discover what happened in the past to cause the person to feel unworthy, inadequate, helpless and/or guilty. Once the causes of these feelings are explored and neutralized, the regressee can feel free to take whatever future action is truly appropriate as it pertains to his present-life situation. The best after-effect, of course, is when the need to sacrifice himself ceases. Interestingly, the person, who has been benefiting from a mate’s or friend’s feelings of guilt is gone. As a result, he/she is no longer has the power to manipulate or control the once-guilty person. When this occurs, I frequently will get an angry phone call from the former manipulator demanding to know what I’ve done to ruin his/her mate and their relationship. My response has always been to ask if they would rather have a partner who desires them, or one who felt obligated to them.

One of my clients, Sarah, had dutifully worn her “choke chain” for nearly forty years when I saw her. Her case is the perfect example of two things: 1) how the past affects the future, and 2) it is a very good illustration of, what we condemn, we become. Her guilt feelings began to surface right after having an illegitimate daughter in this life. Although she later had other, legitimate, children, she spent most of her time and energy trying to “make it up” to her daughter for having her out-of-wedlock. In addition, Sarah blamed her daughter for “ruining” her life, which also increased her guilt feelings. She felt mothers were supposed to love their children no matter what. The consequences of these conflicting feelings only made her feel more unworthy.

Being quite psychic, Sarah’s daughter, though she never knew why, always felt something was wrong between her and her mother, and said so many times. Intuitively, she recognized and used her mother’s guilt to manipulate her. Because Sarah was wondering why she had to experience going through having to bear an illegitimate child in this life, she came to me in search of an answer. She discovered in several past lives, as well as in the present one, she self-righteously had condemned women who had children without the benefit of marriage. She always had referred to them a sluts and whores. Consequently, before she incarnated into this life, all parties concerned agreed at soul level, that she would experience the same humiliation and shame as those she had damned in the past. After discovering this, she no longer blamed her daughter for her unhappiness and was able to release both her past and present-life guilt.

Several months after her regression, she called and told me her relationship with her daughter definitely had improved because she no longer felt guilty. Her daughter, of course, no longer was able to control her. Much later, she told me she felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders as a result of her regression. She said she was happier than she ever had been in her entire life.

************

Another client, Dori, began to tell me her reason for wanting to be regressed, when her eyes filled with tears and she began to sob. At eighteen, while on her way home from a friend’s house, she was dragged into an alley and brutally raped by two drunks. A virgin up until that time, she had vowed to “save herself” for her husband. She blamed herself for what had happened. She believed her value as a woman was forever ruined. She felt like a zero.

After graduating from college, she continued her education and eventually earned a master’s degree in counseling. As might be expected, because she felt she could empathize with them, her specialty was working with women who had been sexually assaulted. In the process of helping other women heal, she felt she, too, was being healed. Then one night when she was thirty-three, she again was brutally raped by two assailants who, this time, broke into her home. Because it took place in her home, this second rape was even more devastating than the first. After this attack, she began to believe that God was punishing her for something. She felt that something like this just doesn’t happen to someone without a reason.

As she attempted to recover from its effects, everything she ever believed was put to the test. No matter how hard she attempted to put the emotional pain aside, one thought continually played through her mind. “What did I do to deserve this?” After five years of trying to find the answer and failing, she decided to be regressed in desperate attempt to make sense out of what had happened to her.

Almost immediately after beginning the regression, she tracked into a life, which took place in Germany a little over 300 years ago. In it, she found herself to be a five-year old boy who lived with his parents on the edge of the Black Forest. He loved to accompany his father, a woodcutter, into the forest. Once-in-awhile, his father allowed him to go off by himself to hunt for berries and mushrooms which grew wild in the forest. As time passed, he became attuned to all the sounds and smells of the forest.

Then one day while picking berries, he heard strange noises he had never before heard. Upon investigating their source, he saw two men holding a young girl down on the ground and apparently hurting her. From the concealment of the underbrush, he watched as one man then the other had sex with her over and over again. At one point, her face turned toward him, and he could see her eyes pleading for him to help her. Just then one of the assailants followed her gaze and also saw him, and began to move menacingly toward him.

Instantly realizing he had been discovered, he ran terrified from the scene, with the man close behind, yelling at him to stop. His knowledge of the forest enabled him to eventually elude his pursuer and make his way home. When his mother noticed how winded and upset he was, she asked him what happened. Afraid she might investigate and thereby endanger herself, he told her he had been chased by a bear, whereupon she quickly bolted the door.

That evening during supper, his mother shared the boy’s harrowing experience with his father; after which, his father praised him for being able to outrun a bear. Before long, the boy put the whole matter behind him. It didn’t cross his mind again until he was a teenager, at which time his father took him aside and told him about “the birds and the bees”. It only was then he realized what those two men were doing to the young woman in the woods. He immediately was filled with shame and guilt as he thought, “I should have done something to help her”.

Over the years, he had many opportunities to marry, but couldn’t bear to think of becoming sexually involved with a woman; thus, he remained single and alone. Unfortunately, he equated sex with rape. Because of what he had seen as a child, he wanted nothing to do with hurting anybody. At about age forty-nine, as he lay dying alone in his cabin, his thoughts once again traveled back to that time in the woods when he was five years old. He still was overcome by feelings of guilt, shame and remorse for not doing something to help that poor girl. Before he drew his last breath and left his body, his final thought was about the girl in the woods. He begged God to forgive him.

Once out-of-body, he expressed relief over no longer feeling guilty or ashamed. However, what he didn’t know was that his old feelings went into a state of suspended animation, therefore, he brought them with him into this life where they caused him, now as a female, to set herself up to go through exactly the same experience he presumed the girl in the woods had endured. Remember, he blamed himself for not saving her. Obviously, as a five-year-old, he surely would have been killed. The tragedy of this story is that he failed to realize the action he could take as a man would have been impossible to do as a child.

Now as a trained rape counselor, Dori could understand why as a five-year-old boy, she was unable to rescue that girl in the woods. She further recognized how her unconscious guilt had caused her to put herself in the same situation as the young girl in the forest. After gaining this insight, she was able to release her inappropriate feelings of guilt into the Light. While still in session, she also wondered if she knew her rapists in some other lifetime, so we checked and she hadn’t. Her rapists, were in effect, nothing but instruments of her own self-imposed punishment. This, however doesn’t let them off the hook. I’m sure someday they will have the opportunity to feel the same way as did Dori when she was raped.

************

Misplaced guilt also was running Nancy’s life. As far back as she could remember, she had always felt guilty about being alive. Although she had been raised in a happy home, was a good student, attaining a degree in business and had a fulfilling career, as well as good marriage, her feelings of guilt had always plagued her. Her loving husband and two adorable children made her feel even more guilty about being alive.

To escape having these feelings, she had attempted suicide on three separate occasions, and now was contemplating it again. Aside from the fading scars on her wrists, there was nothing about her demeanor to indicate she ever had a problem. She had no idea why she felt as she did and was determined to find the cause before it was too late.

After exploring two or three inconsequential past lives, we tapped into one which occurred someplace in Europe during WW II. We joined this life in progress, when she was just sixteen. The scene opened as she and her family were about to sit down for the evening meal. The food just had been served when the Gestapo broke into her apartment and rudely demanded she and her family come with them. Her father protested and was shot dead on the spot. Then she, her mother, and younger brother were dragged roughly down three flights of stairs, and outside onto the street. They were then harshly loaded into a waiting truck in which there already were many of their friends and neighbors. Her younger brother was the last to be thrown into the truck, but he somehow managed to squirm out of the Nazi soldier’s grip and began running. He was about fifteen or twenty yards away when a Nazi officer removed his Lugar from its holster, took deliberate aim and shot the boy in the back. He fell face-down on the street. As she watched the dreadful scene, everything began to spin around, and she fainted.

When she became conscious again, the truck already was moving, and the others inside the truck, either were weeping silently or staring blankly into space. Her mother repeatedly reassured her this was all a mistake, and somehow everything would be all right. After what seemed to be forever, the truck came to an abrupt halt at the train station. There she and the other occupants of the truck were briskly unloaded and brutally shoved into a boxcar which was standing on the side tracks. The soldiers used their rifle butts to hurry the slower people along. They were packed inside the boxcar like sardines in a can. This allowed no one to either sit or lie down.

For the next day and a half, the hot, humid box car bumped noisily along the tracks. No one had any food or water. Besides this, there only was a single bucket in the corner for those who had to relieve themselves. It soon overflowed, and the stench permeated the clothing and hair of the prisoners. Because of the heat and the smell of human excrement, many became nauseated and vomited. This only added to everyone’s misery. Even animals were treated better than this. After the train reached its destination, the people were forced to line up and again were herded like cattle into the large courtyard of what they were told was a relocation camp. It had high fences topped with barbed wire. Although the “prisoners” didn’t know it at the time, it was a “death camp”.

For the first few days, she and her mother were together in a barracks with other women. After having their hair chopped off and being deloused, they all were given striped, scratchy “uniforms” to wear. At least they were much more comfortable than the pungent smelling clothes they had been wearing. The bunk beds were extremely uncomfortable, but appreciated after having no bed or sleep while traveling to the camp. During the day, the women were herded out of the compound and forced to work in the garden. They had no protection from the elements; hot or cold, rain or shine, they worked. After several days passed, a Nazi matron took her and another young girl to a large house near the camp. There, they were forced into a tub of hot water, and told to scrub themselves with a stiff brush and strong soap. Then they were given ill fitting dresses to wear, which were more comfortable than the ugly uniforms. She and the other inmate were told to make themselves pretty. They also were told they were to be available to entertain the Nazi officers. Although she didn’t know what that meant, she soon found out. She was forced to have sex with three Nazi officers the first night. The first one took her virginity as well as her honor.

Being an accomplished pianist, she also was “encouraged” to play for the officers in the evening. Although she had to sexually service many officers, she soon became the favorite of one young captain. One time, he even brought her flowers. Despite what the Nazis had done to her family, she somehow was able to dissociate herself from the terrible realities of the camp. She and her young officer often spent hours together talking, laughing, and lovemaking, although she hated herself for doing it. She couldn’t help but fantasize being with him someday after the war ended.

Then one day, he took her into the courtyard of the main part of the camp. There she saw a long line of inmates waiting to go into the “showers”. Noticing her interest, her lover took this opportunity to inform her how lucky it was for her that he cared about her. “Those people,” he said, “believe they are going to the showers, but, in fact, they are really lining up to be gassed.”

Just then a woman in line turned and looked straight at her with tear-filled, pleading eyes. It was her mother. In that fleeting moment as their eyes met, she was totally overwhelmed with feelings of indescribable grief and guilt over what was going to happen to her. She felt her head spin and her legs weaken, but her lover grabbed her before she could fall. Then he took her back to her room.

Her poor mother had been waiting to die in the gas chamber all the while she had been eating good food, wearing clean clothing, playing happy tunes on the piano and sleeping every night in a comfortable bed, usually with a German officer beside her. All she could think about was the sorrowful look in her mother’s eyes before she turned away and walked to her death. The guilt over what she had done was more than she could bear. She still was alive while everyone near and dear to her had been murdered. She felt she too deserved to die, and prayed God to take her life.

Soon her prayers were seemingly answered. Protruding from one of the walls in her room, she found a barely visible point of a nail. After raking both her wrists over it several times, she was able to sever a couple of main veins. Death, however, didn’t come quickly. As she lay slowly bleeding to death on her bed, she had plenty of time to think about her behavior and to beg God’s forgiveness for all that she had done as well as the unforgivable sin of taking her own life. It was the guilt of her living when everyone else died that she brought with her into this life. She now knew why she always felt she didn’t deserve to be alive. Without any resistance, she chose to release those feelings into the Light and relax.

Since she had been suicidal, before the session ended, I persuaded her to find a good psychotherapist for some follow-up. Several days later, I called her to see how she was doing. She said she never felt better or more alive. She also told me, when she had played her tapes of the regression, she realized her younger brother, who had been murdered in her German life, is now her son and her mother is now her daughter. Fortunately, she had no other connections with anyone else from that incarnation. As far as other therapy was concerned, she felt it was unnecessary.

Excerpt from Exploring Our Forgotten Lives