Forgiveness through Rewriting One's History
By Billy Hunter
Certified Life Between Lives® Hypnotherapist, USA
Washing away the emotional pains, the afflictions from negative thoughts, and feeling the sweet release that forgiveness brings. What can we do to gain that release? One client said to me, “I cannot forgive my father for always being drunk, and never responsible when we needed him … he made it so hard for my Mom and sisters. How can I possibly forgive him?”
These pains, and even ones from past lives… how do we resolve them? During one client’s past life session, her memories brought up a wave of guilt when she couldn’t forgive herself. How do we forgive ourselves or others from a past life action?
For another client, during womb regression, she remembered the torment her Mother felt when pregnant with my client, and mother/baby abandoned by her partner/father. We all have experiences of pain or regret, where real forgiveness seems difficult to achieve, especially when the one whom we need to forgive is not available.
During Life Between Lives, Past Life, and Transpersonal sessions, my clients have experienced fruitful outcomes by reducing or eliminating the imprint, the impact on awareness. By using the technique of Rewrite to alter the outcome, it can reduce or eliminate the imprint on awareness. Rewriting does not change the actual history. That which happened will still have occurred. But its impact on our awareness can be changed.
My first usage of Rewrite came during a past life regression session:
Case Study #1 – Gretchen
Gretchen remembered during her session when she was a 12-year-old girl named Anna. She woke up in the night when the house where she and her family lived was on fire. Able to scramble out of her bedroom window, she soon witnessed her house engulfed in flames. Her family perished. Mother, father, and siblings gone. Anna felt acute guilt that she alone had escaped, and she had not been able to save her family members.
Therapist (T): Where do you find yourself now, after escaping, where are you in relation to your house?
Client (C): I’m standing out by the large oak tree, about 50-feet away, feeling the blistering heat… it is such an awful fire. I need to help my family… but I cannot get close to do anything… I didn’t get to say goodbye to my Mother! (she begins to sob) I feel so bad… I am so sad!
We soon left the fire scene, and went back to earlier times when Anna was a younger girl. She remembered how she and her mother were quite close, and always in sync with one another. After reviewing a few good memories, the client (as Anna) said she felt guilty for surviving the fire and not being able to say goodbye to her.
T: Would you like to have the opportunity to say goodbye to your Mother?
C: Yes, Yes, I would!
T: Ask her to come and be here with you now… let her come… Tell me when she is here.
C: Oh! Mother is here!
T: As you see her, and feel her presence, what would you like her to feel from you?
C: I am telling her how sad it was that she died, and that I wanted to save her… I tell her I couldn’t tell her goodbye.
T: Why don’t you do that now? Why don’t you go ahead and say goodbye to her now?
The client was able to do this, and felt a rush of relief. In post session conversations, she said how she felt a big burden of guilt removed, and that its effects had beneficially spread through her present life with her family, and with her present mother!
My clients have experienced a range of success in the forgiveness process – from a stepping stone in the right direction to full-on release from allowing forgiveness. During hypnosis, we are more malleable when our deep awareness can experience itself without the filter of the mind and open-eyes. The beneficial chemistry of release from a negative experience, the action that forgiveness brings, occurs more readily during hypnosis.
As Life Between Lives facilitators, we have found that during LBL our soul home (Spirit) readily helps the forgiveness process occur:
Case No. 2 – Elizabeth
Elizabeth’s quote started this story. Her father was frequently drunk and with minimal presence to her family. Elizabeth, her Mother, and sisters coped without him, without the guidance of a loving and present father.
After Elizabeth’s past life session and during her LBL session, she met with a Council of Elders, where the chief elder reminded her how she felt about her father. She was reminded that as soul, she had made a pact with herself to not forgive him after a past life. In that past life, she and her current father were wife and husband. He took their life savings, left on a seafaring journey where he drowned. Elizabeth, in that life, subsequently lost everything – her home, her livelihood, and comforts in life. The destitution killed her. During the life review after death, she swore she would never forgive him!
Council Elder: What about that life? Does the loss serve you anymore?
Client (C): No… No… Not at all. I am ready to let go of that pain. The Elder is showing me how much it weighs me down… It is holding me back from moving ahead, progressing in this life… I need to let this go… I am ready to let go of the resentment to my (current) father too.
Another effective and elegant Rewrite technique I leaned from my mentor, teacher, and friend Paul Aurand, for use during a transpersonal hypnotherapy session. Paul calls it “Gestalt Therapy”. During the session, the client is asked to invite a person into the room, one whom had significant impact on the client’s life.
In conversation with the invited person, an exchange can be suggested – letting the other know how their actions made the client feel, and also asking the invited person to explain why they did what they did. This illustrates the exchange:
Case No. 3 – Alexa
Alexa, a woman and Mother in her mid-thirties, remembered herself in her mother’s womb. She could feel the warmth and love coming from mother, Josephina. But along with it, mother was fretful, worried, and very panicked since her partner (Alexa’s father, named Jose) had abandoned them. Their physical welfare, shelter, income, and a stability were all in grave doubt. Josephina’s anxiety created anxiety in Alexa, who transmuted it into despisement towards her father. Alexa’s memories as a girl were rocky, even after her mother married another and had 3 more children. While the step-father was kind, engaging and loving, a cloud hung over Alexa who felt anger for the built-up anxiety she felt towards her biological father for not being there for her and her mother.
In her transpersonal hypnotherapy session, I suggested that Alexa invite her Jose to be in the room with us, to sit directly across from her:
Therapist (T): Have Jose sit on the chair that you sat on when you came it… the chair with the bird pillow… let me know when he is there…
Cilent (C): He’s there.
T: Good… Let him know how you feel about him… how it made you feel to be born and grow up with so much uncertainty… let him feel your resentment…
C: He’s squirming in the chair… he is feeling very sorry… He couldn’t help it he says, he went back to his life as a professor at the University because he was afraid of the commitment he would have to make to Josephina and me.
T: Let him see and feel how his abandonment effected your Mother… let him see you growing up with anger and resentment towards him… Let him feel your anger.
C: He’s feeling very bad about what he did, he’s crying, he’s asking me to forgive him.
From this Gestalt exchange, Alexa helped herself chip away at her entrenched thoughts and feelings. There was not a full or complete release, but assuredly a stepping stone in the release process. We can rewrite the emotional and mental impact we formed within our awareness. Using Rewrite we can help forgive ourselves and others. ♥
Billy Hunter is an LBL Facilitator in Fairfield, Iowa, USA