An onion, that's it.
All those layers.
Just when you think you can name yourself,
you discover new layers, you’re forming a new skin,
a new ring. But there's a core.
And where does that core start?
I've been reading Beyond Reincarnation by Joe Slate Ph.D. I'm a fan of the work of Dr. Slate, a psychologist, teacher, and researcher into the paranormal and spiritual, who developed group as well as self-hypnotic methodologies to explore consciousness that are highly effective.
In the 80's I was fascinated with reincarnation, underwent some life regressions through both group and individual process, and I continue to be fascinated, although I no longer pursue regression experiences. I suspect because, at 71, I'm close enough to having to summarize and wrap up this incarnation to worry much about previous ones!
I do believe that the research, and better, experience of "life regression" is so important, because it can experientially as well as conceptually free people from the fear of death. My experiences of past life regression, along with my many encounters with spirit communication and friendships shared with mediums I have known, as well as listening to those who have had near death experiences, has done so for me. Negative religious propaganda, like "eternal punishment in hell", or "suffering because you have bad karma", etc. has created so very much personal and social trauma. "Carne" is Latin for "flesh" or "meat". "Re-incarnate" - to become physical, carnal. How extraordinary the hypnotic experience was, to discover there are "other people" within "you". As the Buddhists say, in light of such visionary experience, "where is the 'I'?"
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| "Old Masks" (2018) |
I think that the deepest, most timeless moments I remember (outside of the intimacies and conflicts and discourses of relationships that "grow a soul")....are those visionary moments I have been privileged to experience, some spontaneous, most voluntary. In the realms of visioning many-layered possibilities and truths reveal themselves in ways that cannot always be understood in a concrete, "in-carnated" sort of way. Or even in a temporal way.......one cannot think of visioning as structured in a time progressive way, any more than one can understand a dream as occuring in "time". There is no time in dreams.
In the 80's I belonged to a group that met weekly to explore spiritual exercises, meditation, and past lives. I also worked with a counselor who did past life regression. Our group used tapes from Robert Monroe (the Monroe Institute) tapes. I read anything I could get my hands on, from Edgar Cayce to Roger Woolger*** and others. The most meaningful discoveries I made on that subject I have continued to learn from, again as one learns from dreams - they return throughout one's life. Dreams exist outside of time or space as we understand it in our waking lives, and I believe the structured experience of time is much of what the "in-carnate" experience is about. Time is different in dis-embodied experience (a medium told me this is one of the reasons "earthbound spirits" hang around houses - they have no sense of time as we do).
I find that my visioning experiences remain for me as vivid and lucid in memory now as they were 30 years ago or longer. They are footnotes on the unfolding story of my experience. Their meaning unravels to reveal patterns as the story unwinds, the story being my life.
What made reincarnation work striking for me was how very mundane what surfaced usually was. I have an excellent imagination as a trained artist, but alas, I never turned up a lifetime as Cleopatra, or a priestess of lost Atlantis, or a great Renaissance artist. I would have enjoyed that! What came up were scenes of impoverished lifetimes, short lifetimes, and lifetimes in which I was a servant, slave, or otherwise indentured to a group or individuals. As well as a more primitive tribal lifetime, in which I had more status, possibly as a kind of shaman or a herbal healer.
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| untitled drawing (1975) |
Which, when you think about it, is basically what most human lives are and have been. Only a few elite have ever had the freedom to define their own lives and/or the lives of others in powerful or creative ways, and if you were a woman or a minority of some kind, your chances were even less so. Perhaps, I might add, consensus and egalitarianism was more so in tribal societies, or pre-patriarchal societies. But certainly, for what little we know of history and the advance of civilizations, for the commoner, life was pretty constrained, and it was always framed by hunger.
I remember very clearly, for example, a regression to a lifetime as, apparently, a young foot soldier. By the way, the regression process, for me, was always like having little glimpses into particular segments of a life, segments that had particular meaning. In this case, the regressionist asked that I look at my legs, and I saw that I wore some kind of knee length tunic, had sandals and brown skinned, hairy legs.
When I was asked to go to an important event, I found myself at a rough table in some kind of smoky, dark room. I was with a group of young men, all dark eyed and black haired. We were drinking some kind of beer, and were joined by an older man with a beard (he actually could have only been about 30 or so, but I was in awe of him). I was completely delighted that this person of authority would join us.
Later in the regression, I saw myself killed by a spear at about the age of 17. I hadn't done anything in that short life really, and it says something that apparently the most exciting, treasured thing that ever happened was I got to drink beer with a Captain. Now that is a lot more convincing than had I seen myself on a throne surrounded with gold. And there were other regressions along those lines with very little self-determination, and much hunger.
I sound grim, I suppose, remembering this subject. But actually I think the lives that surfaced in doing that work, and at a time when I was getting my Master's Degree, were important to the empowerment and sense of self I sought as I struggled to become a professional artist and teacher. It was as if Divine Wisdom needed me to look at those particular lifetimes to heal them in this lifetime of so much more freedom, wealth and privilege. Which brings one to the idea that we need to balance or heal traumas not only from this life, but from others as well, that there are patterns that persist within the integral "story" of our souls.
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| "Form Is Empty" (2008) |
There was a very intense regressive process that occurred with a psychic we worked with as a group in Sedona. She took each of us into a trance state separately, and in my case, I found myself a young girl of about 16 in what seemed to be 17th century France (it's interesting that I've always been in love with the French language, and pronunciation comes easily to me). Essentially, the girl was a peasant in a country estate, and was taken to the manor house by a youngish aristocrat to become his servant and occasional mistress, of whom he quickly tired. She didn't have many choices about the situation, and was placid and resigned. He was married, and the girl (me) became a nanny to his children. There was a fire on the estate, the wife was killed, and the aristocrat and family, along with servants, apparently were moved to a city, where I continued my life as a servant in his home.
Eventually he found another wife, a young woman I felt great affection and sympathy for, as he was both negligent and abusive to her. When carried to the time of death, I was apparently in my 50's, alone and exhausted in a grey room. I felt "grey". And interestingly, that sense of being "grey" is my first conscious memory from childhood, until one day I looked down and saw that I was wearing a dress, had little feet, and came to the rather adult realization that I was a little girl! After that, the "grey" went away, and I became involved with the experience of growing up. I do not know if that "grey" pertained to that lifetime in France, I just remember it as a sadness or resignation that I identified as a color somehow.
I remember that the therapist called that an "unclaimed life", that I had cared for other people's husband, other people's children, lived in a house that was not mine, and had no value to much of anyone other than as a servant. She said it came up because I needed to understand what it would be like to have "my own" life now, to claim "my own" power, to make my own choices. This was a theme in these sessions, and now, with the perspective of a long life, I see that it has been a theme running through the life of Lauren Raine. And the lives of many others, of course.
There were some surprising regressions that I still ponder over. In 1987 I began working with crystals, and making crystal jewelry. One regression that I did with our group (we would share our experiences after trancing) was entirely inexplicable, and yet, still strikes me as lovely. I seemed to be an old person who was a kind of village shaman or herbalist. I was so old, or perhaps so on the periphery of the tribe I lived with, that my sex didn't even matter, I couldn't tell if I was male or female in the visioning. I seemed to live alone in a hut of some kind that had lots of herbs and bones and rocks I had gathered.
There was a woman who came to us, a teacher. She was so different from us, racially and in other ways. She was from a much more sophisticated culture. She had fair skin, was tall with dark hair, and wore black, and I was completely in awe of her. She taught me that everything I believed was wrong, was naive. One of the things I saw her do was to sit before a big crystal, and placing her hands on it. As she concentrated, she "dematerialized" - she and the crystal just disappeared. And then she came back!
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| "The Heart Sutra" (2008) |
I still have that vision clearly in my mind, and the deep reverence "I" felt for this person. The last part of that regression concerned me watching her die. I was with a lot of people, and we were gathered around her, and strangely, I could hear what she was thinking. Which must mean that I was not incarnate myself! She was very frustrated to be dying! She keep thinking that her work wasn't finished, while a multitude of souls were gathered around her in love and in respect.
I still think on this priestess or whatever she was, and wonder. Was she from Atlantis? Was there an Atlantis? Did people know how to "dematerialize" with crystals? Was it all just from my imagination, since I was working with crystals at the time? One of those elegant mysteries.
I do feel that when we seek "vision" through various practices, such as my own experiences of working with healers, psychics, or through guided meditations, or we have significant dreams, or have a spontaneous visionary experience (often brought on by trauma) they are providing information needed for the particular time they occur. I had my "tribal shaman" meditation while being fascinated with crystals in the 80's, and at that time I was making amulets with crystals.
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"Skin Shedder Mandala" (1987)
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I accessed my lifetime as an ignored and exploited servant in France while I was in a short but very abusive relationship with a man that took me a while to heal from. Ironically, I entered into that relationship just as I was completing my MFA, and receiving attention and praise for my artwork, and preparing to go into the field of teaching as a professional artist. I grew up in a family with a father who was both neglectful and abusive to my mother, and as is common in such households, I proceeded in my 20's to have a number of abusive relationships. I look back at that time, and cannot help but feel that I made myself a "victim" immediately after achieving success and acclaim because success and acclaim was either something I felt unworthy of, or a responsibility I could not endure. Being a victim, being ignored and neglected (I call this my "cleaning lady persona") can, in a way, be a miserable yet comfortable place to be, devoid of personal responsibility, familiar and predictable. In fairness to myself, I was also, in this lifetime as well as perhaps others, taught that my work was not important or worthy - thus I have often found myself denigating or dismissing what was really the best of my talents and efforts.Throughout my life this has been an issue I have had to deal with, as women especially have to deal with this externalized as well as internalized reality. I think my experience of seeing a lifetime as a French servant was showing me a deep pattern, with feminist significance as well as personal, I was working on shifting in this lifetime. It may well be that the abusive and arrogant man I had that brief but miserable relationship with was the same "aristocrat" I glimpsed in that past lifetime. If so, as a "realist of a larger reality", he was my benefactor by playing that role so that I could perceive the pattern. To grow and learn, and also, to perhaps aid others with that understanding.
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| "Open" (2010) |
***Roger Woolger was a psychologist, therapist, and researcher into Past Lives Therapy, Buddhism, and metaphysics. His many articles and books are well worth reading. He also collaborated with his former wife, Jennifer Barker Woolger, in one of my favorite books about the Goddess and Goddess Archetypes, a book that had deep significance for me and which I used in my workshops. And there is a story I could tell about Jennifer Barker Woolger that concerns synchronicity and the Goddess.
But I'll tell that later.
