I am delighted to introduce to you Bryn Blankinship. Her talent as a specialist in the area of previous life exploration led her to develop her pioneering technique: SESR, for resolving current life issues with a deeper understanding of one’s true self. As Bryn clearly demonstrates in this classic book, once the positive lesson of a recovered memory has been understood and resolved, it can be released. Enjoy her compelling exploration into previous life case histories, with practical exercises at the end of every chapter to open to your own unique abilities. She is the master teacher and master healer who will bring you home to yourself; the shining light that you are.
The first time I met lovely Bryn, more than sixteen years ago on a Master’s Hypnosis training in Virginia, it was one of those rare moments of instant recognition, when two kindred souls were reunited. Of course, we realized during the training that we had originally met in other lifetimes; one in particular in London, England a couple of centuries ago, where, as a widow, I had a respectable job teaching opera to an up-and-coming singer and politician’s wife (Bryn!). The Master’s training revealed to us that we were both already on our path of personal transformation and self-awareness; our mutual higher purpose was to inspire and transform people’s lives in as simple and easy a way as possible. We discovered that both hypnosis and past life work are wonderful and practical techniques for mind, body, and soul metamorphosis.
I had already been teaching past life regression for over twenty years, having discovered Buddhism in my endless search for answers for “What happens next?” after my sister (then eleven) died of cancer when I was thirteen. In Toronto, in my thirties, I worked for more than ten years with the Learning Annex, teaching upwards of twenty-five people in past life groups monthly, as well as facilitating individual private sessions. I found it easy to take people back, utilizing archetypal imagery and breathing techniques that led to strong memories and emotions surfacing from their hiding places in the body. Spontaneous memories would emerge from before conception, to in utero, to previous lives and between lives. My clients always had profoundly moving and sometimes cathartic sessions, which resulted in positive therapeutic changes, both physically and emotionally.
It quickly became apparent to me that memories retrieved during past life journeys were simple messages from the unconscious mind to clear old beliefs or memories that were still active and unresolved this lifetime. The mind uses past life experiences to show what needs to be changed in the present life experience. No matter how much we tried to direct it, the retrieved memory would be simply, “And let me give you yet another previous life example of the same thing you need to change right now!” Bryn independently discovered the same thing and invented her SESR technique to bring her clients to self-knowledge on what to do to clear old beliefs from THIS lifetime, using previous lives and between lives experiences as examples of what not to repeat this time around, or perhaps remembering successful lifetimes worth repeating.
Regression is an amazingly effective way to open up self-awareness and free past beliefs. Bryn studied with Roger Woolger (Other Lives, Other Selves), an Oxford University graduate and Jungian Analyst, very early in her career. An articulate, kind, and brilliant teacher, Roger’s ancestral work revealed how our physical and subtle bodies carry stored memory patterns which can be transformed for resolution of longstanding issues. He also taught how as a person develops, guides or guardians pace the progression of an individual’s growth appropriately for that individual. Carl Jung believed that, like the body, the psyche is a self-regulating system. And that a message given by the unconscious mind is always given to you in an easily understandable way, whether through dreams or newly surfacing memories from before birth.
Later, Bryn studied and worked with Michael Newton, PhD (Journey of Souls), a pioneer in the field of spiritual regression, who provided insight into the preplanning that occurs for souls with the assistance of spiritual guides prior to incarnating. She continued her studies with Brian Weiss, M.D. (Many Lives, Many Masters), well-respected for his past life therapeutic work.
Are past lives real or imagined? The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant. This law means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. So, life and death would appear to be simply new chapters in a much longer story.
The Great Memory
This vantage point states that there exists a vast universal storehouse of both memories and imaginings that anyone can access freely. The memories can be determined by communication with the unconscious mind though dreams, meditation, hypnosis, or even daydreaming. Carl Jung called this the collective unconscious and the spiritualists and Edgar Cayce refer to it as the Akashic record. Joan Grant simply called it “far memory.” The concept does not necessarily require a belief in reincarnation — it’s as though there is a vast DVD library of all of humanity’s experiences that the unconscious mind can access as an example of what needs to be changed. So, for instance, someone trapped in an unhappy relationship may “remember” a lifetime when they were in prison and would be led to ask themselves, “How am I imprisoning myself today?” This goes along with Rupert Sheldrake’s discovery that self-
organizing living things (from molecules to entire galaxies) are shaped by morphic fields. They have morphic resonance; i.e., every time we learn something it is passed on to the rest of humanity, rather like a cumulative and collective memory.
Another explanation of past life memory is that each individual is a microcosm of the macrocosm and that we are evolving as a part of a unit of universal intelligence, so memories of past lives are simply a way of helping humanity to evolve on a group level, with the information being passed on to benefit the collective via morphic resonance.
Reincarnation
This belief is that we are born many times over in different bodies to learn new lessons, choosing parents with the genetic makeup that can help us on our journey while experiencing karma, Sanskrit for “action,” in which negative action results in a negative reaction and positive action in a positive one. Avoidance does not work. You can choose to walk away from a person with whom you are in conflict, but unless you truly let go, you are guaranteeing that you will meet them again under similar circumstances. In the Kabbalah, meaning is given as to why we do not remember previous lives at birth. The angel of forgetfulness touches the lip of the person being conceived so that they are not encumbered with previous memories of lifetimes or confused with the weight of too much information!
One of the most compelling and convincing recent examples of proof for reincarnation is the plethora of surfacing memories from children born after 9/11, who, at around four or five years old, had clear recollections of the towers falling and remembered their original names, which were then found on the memorial plaques in New York. There are some fascinating 9/11 reincarnation stories like these on YouTube.
Whether you believe in previous lives or not, your unconscious mind is like a “quantum internet” with access to all there is to know about you and your existence. The common thread in all previous life interpretations is that the memories produced are not arbitrary; they are directly related to specific patterns that remain unresolved and need addressing by you to clear them so that you can live your life freely and happily.
Go right ahead and enjoy exploring Bryn’s interesting, educational, and compelling book!