In my early-20s I went through a painful breakup. My first great love left me and my world crumbled. I was overcome with depression and sought help through therapy where I was encouraged to dredge up difficult childhood memories. I recalled parental fights and my mom’s affairs. I re-experienced emotions I hadn’t felt in years. They felt like lead anchors pulling me into the abyss. I tried sitting with the feelings but they were overwhelming.
I took up meditation. I learned breathing exercises and visualization techniques to mitigate my feelings and let them go. Given my OCD, this was difficult. I replayed distressing thoughts and emotions and obsessed on associative memories. I was trapped in a repetitive feedback loop, unable to break the visceral chain.
My meditation teacher George asked if I’d be willing to try an emotional regression technique. He explained further.
“We attract people in our life who remind us of unresolved relationships. When we have a painful emotion, we link our current situation to an old relationship that caused pain. This is done unconsciously. For example, you might try to heal a rift with your mother through your girlfriend. At the same time, your girlfriend is trying to heal her father issues through you. Unless these connections are brought into the light, we become prisoners of our childhood. Regression allows us to reverse engineer our emotional footprints. We can return to the original source of the pain and let it go.”
I told George I’d be willing to try the technique. He asked me to lie down on the carpet and close my eyes. He led me through a guided relaxation meditation. After several minutes of breathing exercises, he asked me to visualize the last time I was with my ex-girlfriend. The images came fast and furious. We were in her apartment cooking dinner together. She asked me to take out the trash. I noticed a cocktail napkin with a man’s name and number atop the trash bin. I confronted her. She screamed at me. I screamed back. She blurted out, “You’re always trying to stifle me. I need my freedom.” The words pierced me. I wanted to run out of the room.
George asked how I was feeling.
“Angry, scared, trapped, out of control.”
“Good,” George said. “Now I want you to go back to another time in your life when you felt the same way.”
“What do you mean,” I asked.
“Let your mind drift. Follow the feelings wherever they take you.”
I trusted George implicitly and knew he had my best interests at heart. I did what he said and immersed myself in the feelings. Another memory appeared. I was 18 and a freshman in college. I was on a date with a girl named Robin whom I’d met in a psychology class. We were kissing on her couch when she pulled away from me and said, “You need to go.” “Why,” I asked. “You’re not right for me. I need a man, not a boy.”
I hadn’t thought of Robin in years but all the painful feelings of that experience returned. As with my ex-girlfriend I felt anger, confusion and a sense of claustrophobia. There was also shame. George instructed me to embrace these feelings and go back to another time in my life when I felt the same way.
This time I was 16 and in high school. I asked a girl named Jessica in my biology class if she’d like to go bowling. “You mean like a date,” she asked. “Yes,” I answered summoning every ounce of courage. “Not in this lifetime or any other,” she said. She laughed and walked away. The same emotions arose: anger, confusion, embarrassment, claustrophobia.
We continued the regression exercise backwards through my childhood. In my earliest memory, I was about two years old and my parents were fighting. I was in my crib a few feet away. My dad’s voice was raging like an animal. “You don’t know the pressure I’m under,” he yelled. My mom was crying and her voice was shrill and scared. “You’re never home anymore,” she said. “I’m not just a mother, I’m your wife.” I squirmed in the crib, my legs stuck in a wooden slat. I felt trapped and confused.
The pain was vivid as if the memory had happened recently. I felt a tear roll down my cheek. George counseled me to stay with the feelings and go back to another time in my life when I felt the same way.
“But I’m a baby,” I replied. “How can I go back further?”
“Don’t question it. Let your mind go.”
I exhaled and became dizzy as if the room was spinning. I focused on my breathing. An image appeared in my mind. I was walking through foggy cobblestone streets at night. I was aware of gaslights and the smell of burning coal. It felt like I was in England. I followed a young woman in a red dress. She was laughing. I laughed too. We walked past brick buildings and entered a dark alley. She entered a stone building and closed the door behind her. I turned the doorknob but it was locked. I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back and saw a man in an overcoat and tri-corn hat. He was following me. I ran. Soon he was upon me. I saw our shadows on a wall as he lunged towards me with a knife in his hands. He struck the knife in the back of my head and I fell to the ground. I felt blood trickle down my face. Then all became dark.
I opened my eyes in George’s living room. I was hyperventilating. George counseled me to relax and focus on my breathing. It took me a few minutes to calm myself.
“What did you experience,” George asked.
“I think I died,” I said.
“You’re not dead,” George said. “Touch your face, your arms, your legs. You’re very much alive.”
I related the images to George.
“How are you feeling now,” he asked.
“Scared. And sad. Really sad.”
“Good,” George said. “You’re safe here.”
“What just happened,” I asked.
“I think you had a past-life memory.”
I’d never believed in past lives. It seemed like a bunch of new age hooey. But the scene I experienced was tangible and felt real like a memory. My hands were shaking. My whole body was sore.
“You tracked your emotions to a death experience in another life. In that incarnation, a woman was involved. In this life, you’re behaving as if your girlfriend was that woman and might lead you to your death. You’ve linked your past to the present. They’re not connected. That was then, this is now.”
George counseled me to close my eyes and summon the feelings I’d felt in the cobblestone alley. He asked me to gather those feelings in a ball of energy in my hands and toss them into an open fire. I watched the ball burn away and the resulting smoke rise and disappear into the ether.
I opened my eyes and sat until I was calm again. I was exhausted. I also felt lighter as if a weight had been lifted.
That night I met my best friend Lee (who was George’s brother-in-law) and his girlfriend at the Soup Plantation in West Hollywood. Lee and I had met on a movie when I was 18 and our connection was instantaneous. We did everything together like brothers. I related my experience from earlier in the day. Lee’s eyes grew wide.
“That’s weird,” he said.
“I know it’s crazy, right.”
“It’s more than crazy,” Lee said. He told me that when he was 10, he also tried an emotional regression with George. His memory was identical to mine. There were cobblestone streets, gaslights, a woman in red, a man in a trench coat stabbing him in the head, his face slamming onto the street.
“I’ve never told anyone that story,” Lee said. “I haven’t thought about it in years.”
I thought he was messing with me but he swore he was telling the truth. Lee’s girlfriend Isabel had recently read a book called Many Lives, Many Masters. It was about reincarnation. She speculated that Lee and I had known each other in a past life.
“That would explain why you guys connected so intensely in this life,” Isabel said. “Maybe you were friends in England. Maybe you were both in love with the same woman. Maybe you were killed by the same man.”
We joked about the idea thinking it absurd. But that night while I was lying in bed I considered it further. Did I concoct the scenario in England? Had Lee told me his story and I reconstituted as my own? Did I actually have a past-life memory?
I never went through regression therapy again. I still don’t know what happened that day. Somehow the experience helped me get over my breakup.