The Healing Power of Reconciliation
by Jan Erik Sigdell[*]
Handout to a workshop at the Summer School of the European Association of Regression Therapists
in İstanbul, August 23, 2007
(slightly improved and corrected)
Contents:
A light-circle ritual for reconciliation
If the other person is no more alive
What else can we do for the other person?
Cases of sexual abuse in the childhood
Reconciliation with “toxic parents”
Background
The concept of karma is inseparable from the idea of reincarnation. The traditional Eastern view is rather that karma is usually bad and an unavoidable punishment. From Western experiences in regression therapy, a more moderate empirical concept evolves. Bad karma – there is also good karma – isn’t a punishment, but a lesson. What most causes bad karma is when we fail in love and cause harm and pain to another human being, and infringe with his[**] freedom of will in order to enforce our own freedom of will, since the right use of our freedom of will is to seek the best for all involved and not (only) for ourselves. When we ourselves have to suffer the pain we caused others, we on a soul level begin to understand how wrong our action was and that we will never do such a thing again. That is one of the ways how a soul develops.
Karma isn’t unavoidable. Who before he dies reaches insight and regret and knows that he did wrong doesn’t need such a lesson, since he already begins to understand. But most of us seek excuses and justifications for what we did, even unto the moment of death. Those of us are the ones who will need a lesson – as a German saying goes: “Who doesn’t want to understand will have to feel.”
If we deal in depth with this question in regressions, that is, with the question of cause and effect and why we had to suffer the trauma, which in turn became the cause of a problem we have to day, we will normally also arrive at a perpetrator situation. The client once was a perpetrator and consequently later became a victim in a similar situation. Karma also involves that perpetrators and victims meet again. Usually, a few of the people around us once were our victims or perpetrators. It seems to be like this: “The one you love you are allowed to meet again, the one you hate you have to meet again.” This can, in certain cases, even lead to a chain of conflicts with another soul that may too easily manifest in a kind of vendetta, the one taking revenge on the other in a new incarnation. It is remarkable that we can waste so much time on such useless games instead of seeking to live in peace and happiness… Nevertheless, it isn’t rare. A colossal mistake. The end of such a karmic relation is reconciliation. The only way to become free from such negative fetters is to forgive and seek forgiveness. That is why reconciliation plays an important therapeutic role in regression therapy.
But how can you forgive? Once you realize that the pain you suffered from the action of another was only mirroring a similar situation further back in your past, in which you yourself did such a thing to others, and that it, therefore, was a lesson your soul had chosen to seek, you will be able to forgive. As the law of karma has it, it is safe to assume that your own suffering results from own perpetratorship. Buddha once said: “Regard everyone who hurts you as your teacher.” That isn’t easy, but it will be a proper way to see it.
A proper and complete regression therapy session would in my view involve the following steps:
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Find the cause, the “original trauma”, in the past of a present-day problem. This situation commonly has the character of a victim experience.
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Reexperience that situation, not only to again become aware of what happened, but also reliving your feelings and emotions. (Watching it like a movie without feeling it gives an explanation of your problem rather than a solution.)
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Dissolve all negative emotional energies resulting from that experience. This is the essential part of the catharsis!
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Find the cause of that traumatic situation. Probably a perpetratorship further back in time.
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Relive that situation, too, to realize the connection between it and the other situation (point 1).
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Realize that the lesson, therefore, had a reason, and if the person understands and accepts it, he will need no more lessons in this matter.
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Uncover feelings of guilt that may still be in the soul of the person, resulting from the perpetrator situation. If he understands the connection, it is time to release also this emotional energy.
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Replace all dissolved emotional energies with light energy.
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Recognize persons who were involved in any of the two situations and are to day again incarnated in the client’s environment.
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Seek reconciliation with their souls, forgive and become forgiven (in most cases both!).
The last point is what we are dealing with here. Of
course, the overview above is a bit simplified. The connections are not rarely
more complex and involve more past lives, as well as situations in to-day’s
childhood (or experiences in the mother’s womb) and actual relations to
day with other persons.
A light-circle ritual for reconciliation
This “ritual” is derived from a technique by Phyllis Krystal [1]. Her original technique is done in two sessions, usually two weeks apart, and finalized in the second session. She does no regressions. Here, however, we have clarified the past relations between the client and the other soul; we know what the soul conflict involves and has involved (since we are dealing with reconciliation, it will have to do with a conflict or a series of conflicts). We have uncovered cause and effect, how one situation led to another. We have also released negative emotional energies from such situations. Therefore, we can complete the ritual in one session, which we may do at the end of the regression.
In my way of doing regressions I use a “counselor” or “guide” (in German I call him “Helfer”), who has a very important role. I regard him as a kind of a manifestation of the client’s own unconscious self. The client sees him in front of himself, maybe like a human being (male or female), maybe as a being of light (sometimes only light without much of a shape), or even as something more abstract or symbolical. This way, the client can talk with his unconscious self (not necessarily loudly, but like telepathically), ask questions and get answers. Of course, I cannot exclude the possibility that this “guide” is more than the unconscious self of the client, maybe a spiritual being, but I do think that in most cases it is no or little more than the unconscious self (or in a way the client’s soul). This guide answers questions like why the client had to experience, for example, a victim experience (usually leading back to a perpetrator situation), what he should learn from it, tells the client if he again knows persons to day who were involved then, who they were then and who they are to day, helps him to release negative emotional energies (for example, to burn them in a fire as a symbolical way to do it), and many other things.
How do we find that guide? What I mostly do to day is to tell the client to weightlessly float up to the sky, until he is floating above the clouds. I then tell him: “Now ask your Higher Self to take you to the place where your guide is.” Since we are above the clouds, he may meet the guide on a cloud, or just floating in the air. But it can be anywhere, for example, sinking down to land on a mountain or a meadow.
After we have clarified past and present relations
to a person, we proceed as follows. I will explain it in relation to an
example. Let us assume that the client is a woman who divorced because her
ex-husband was cheating on her with other women. In a past life in
“Ask the angel to make a fire there.” Soon the client sees a fire on the cloud. “Now ask him to make a circle of light on the cloud so that you are standing in the middle of it.” … “And now ask him to make a second circle of light, so that the two circles form like a figure 8.” … “Ask him to put your ex-husband in the second circle.”
If the client is not standing on something, but floating in the air, we have the guide make circles that float at the height of the client’s feet.
Why these light circles? Phyllis Krystal explains in a personal communication: “The Figure Eight is designed to withdraw the projections of each person onto the other, to prepare for a clean cut to be made, with no further overlay from either one on the other” (letter dated September 1, 1993).
The first thing we want to do now is to find symbolical ties which connect the two. These can mainly be of two kinds: material ties (ropes, strings, threads, sticks, chains, an umbilical cord…) and immaterial connections like light rays or a piece of a rainbow. Material ties can be assumed to be negative, representing resentments the one soul feels for the other for being hurt in the past. They are fetters. Therefore, they should be removed. An immaterial tie like a light ray is assumed to be positive and should be kept. It represents a positive feeling, maybe even love (now or in the past).
“Look to see if there are any ties between you and your ex-husband.” Most probably: “Yes.”
“What do they look like?” … “I see some ropes.”
“Ask the angel to give you a tool to cut them with. What do you get?” …”A knife.”
“Then cut all the ropes at both ends, at your body and his body, and throw them in the fire.”
“It is done.” … “Do you see still more ties?” … “Yes, there is a chain.”
“Then you will need another tool. What does the angel give you?” … “A laser gun.”
“Then cut the chain with the laser ray at both ends and put it in the fire to melt away.”
“Are there still more ties?” … “No.”
“Now look if there are wounds on your body where you cut.” … “A few.”
“Heal them with your hands.” … “It is done.”
“And your ex-husband, does he have wounds?” … “Yes.” … “Then heal his wounds, too, with your hands.”
“Do you now see an immaterial tie, maybe a light ray?” … “Yes.” … “That is a positive tie to keep.”
Now let us look at obstacles which could so far occur. The ex-husband wants to leave. “Ask the angel to make him stay there.” The client sees no ties, but we would expect that they are there. In such a case she unconsciously just doesn’t want to see them, because she doesn’t want to have ties with the ex-husband. But this is a way to cheat yourself, because if you don’t want to see them, you cannot take them away… “Ask the angel if there are invisible ties.” … “He says ‘Yes’.” … “Then ask him to make them visible. What do you see?”
If a tie cannot be cut, the client needs a better tool. After cutting it, there can be little rests or residues of the tie left on the skin where it was cut. We remove these rests, too. In rare cases the tie reappears after it is cut: “Ask the angel to get it out with the roots at both ends, so that it will not come back.” Or the ex-husband doesn’t want to let her cut a tie. “Tell him that you have the freedom to decide if you want that tie or not, and that he cannot force you to have it against your will, and then cut it.” In very rare but more severe cases we ask the angel to remove the tie.
It happens that it is not clear if a tie is
immaterial, or not. “Ask the angel if you should cut it or keep it.” A material
tie, such as a string, may be between the hearts, and the client thinks that it
shouldn’t be cut because of that. “A material tie will not be true love, but
maybe possessive love. Ask the angel if you should cut it.” Most probably she
should. A light ray between the hearts is another thing.
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The actual reconciliation
Now we come to the mutual forgiving. “In
“Then in
“Can you forgive him for kicking you so that the child died?” … “Yes, I understand now and can forgive.”
“Now that you see how all this is connected: Can you forgive him for being unfaithful to day.” … “Yes, I can.” … “Ask him if he can forgive you for the divorce.” … “Yes.”
“Then tell him that you forgive him and embrace him. What do you feel when you do it?” … “Peace, friendship.” … “And what does he seem to feel?” … “I think the same.”
Embracing is not only a sign of reconciliation but also a test. If it feels good to both of them, we can assume that the reconciliation is reached.
“Now let him leave and tell me when he is gone.”
Again, there can be obstacles. Maybe the client “cannot” (= doesn’t want to) forgive for being kicked and loosing the child. We then remind her of the connections with the Roman life. Probably she can then forgive.
If she still “cannot” forgive, we can assume that there is more to the sad story. “Ask the angel if there is still another past life you had which is connected with these experiences.” … “He says ‘Yes’.” … “Then ask him to show you a scene in that life.” She now enters a past life in which she as a man slaughtered children in a war in front of their mothers (we, of course, also here release negative emotions and feelings of guilt). After reliving that: “Now that you see a more complete picture of this karmic complex, can you now forgive?” Now she says “Yes.”
I cannot remember a case in which the client could not forgive, after all, after seeing the full picture. But it rarely happens that the person in the second circle remains stubborn and refuses to forgive. If he doesn’t want to forgive, we first try in a similar way: “Ask the angel if he had another past life, which has contributed to this karma.” … “Yes.” … “Were you in that life, too?” … “Yes.” Then we proceed as above. If the client was not in that life, too: “Ask the angel to show him what happened in that life.” … “Now that he will better understand the karmic connections here, ask him if he can now forgive.” Hopefully he can.
But if he still insists in being stubborn and doesn’t forgive, however we try to make him understand (which is rare), I say to the client: “Now you have done all you can. Therefore it isn’t your problem, anymore, but only his problem. Do you feel that?” … “Yes.” Then we let him leave.
As mentioned, the embrace is also a test. If she says “No, I cannot [= don’t want to] embrace him”, we can assume that she forgave more from her head than from her heart, more for “forgiving’s sake”. It was a half measure and not the real thing. “Ask the angel if you really forgave him out of your heart, or rather said so because you think you should.” … “Well, I rather said so…” … “Then ask the angel to explain the whole karmic context here, so that you will understand it better.” Now she will most probably truly forgive and then embrace him and feel good doing it.
If the ex-husband tries to avoid being embraced or doesn’t seem to feel well when he is, it is the same thing on his side: “Ask the angel to explain the whole karmic context to him…” Then hopefully he will truly forgive and embrace.
It is confirmed over again that we in this ritual really establish a soul contact between the client and the other person. The other person doesn’t know in his head what has been done, but he does know in his soul. I often hear that next time they met, the other person behaved remarkably differently and was friendlier, or things like: “My mother never used to call me, but insisted that I should call her, but the day after the regression she called me for the first time in years.” Phyllis Krystal tells a very remarkable case. A client of hers had had a quarrel with her son eight years earlier. He left and she didn’t hear from him all these years. When the process was finished, the son called from abroad the same evening and said: “Hello! I just want to know how you are doing.”
The fact that obviously a soul-level contact is
established is the reason why it will by sufficient to achieve the mutual
forgiving in this manner. It isn’t necessary to fulfill it “physically”, to go
to the other person and tell about it and confirm the reconciliation. This will
not always be possible and if we talk about past lives, we may be taken
anything else but seriously. Yet in cases where it is possible. this is, of
course, a good thing to do.
Forgiving oneself
It
is not rarely more difficult to forgive oneself
than to forgive others. If the client was a perpetrator in a past life,
say a
road robber in the forest, who robbed and killed many travelers, we ask
the
guide to put that road robber in the second circle. Again we cut ties,
burn
them and heal wounds. “Ask the man how he feels about what he
did.” … “He feels
terrible.” … “Can you then forgive him?”
… “Yes I can.” … “Tell him that and
embrace him.” … “Now let him go back to his time and
tell me when he is gone.”
… “Now you have forgiven yourself, since you were that
man. Do you feel that?” … “Yes.”
If the other person is no more alive
If the client knew a person again to day, who was
involved in the experience in the past but has died in the meantime, we do the
same thing. But when all is done, I say: “Ask the guide where that person’s
soul is to day. Is it gone to the light world, is it again reincarnated [if the
person died long ago] or is it somewhere else?” If it went to the light world
already, we let it go back there. If it is reincarnated: “Is that soul to day a
person who you know?” (then
probably a child). Of course this is not always the
case. It could now be a child in
But if the soul is neither gone to the light nor
again reincarnated, we have the client accompany it to the light. Maybe the
soul until now was more or less straying around on the earth level, maybe it
even attached to the client or to someone else. What we then do was described
in a quite detailed manner in my workshop during the Summer School 2006 in
What else can we do for the other person?
If the person in the other circle has negative emotional energies, such as sadness, anger or feelings of guilt, we can say to the client: “Ask the guide if we are allowed to free him from these feelings.” If “Yes”, we ask the guide to take these emotional energies out of that other person, dissolve them, replace them with light energy and close (if the body of that person is open where the energies came out) and heal.
If we discover that the other person has an
attaching soul or entity, we ask the angel if we are allowed to intervene. If
we are, we do as described in the handout to my workshop in the Summer School 2006 [2].
The wall
It is not rare that we discover that the client has an invisible wall around himself. However, in this context I will briefly describe what we can do if the person in the other circle has such a wall (we do correspondingly with a wall around the client). If we assume it to be the case: “Ask the guide if that person has an invisible wall around himself.” If “Yes”: “Ask the guide to make it visible to both of you. What does it look like?” For example, a stone wall. “Ask that person if he wants to keep this wall”. Usually “No.” ... “Then ask the guide to give him a tool to break it down with. What does he get?” … “A sledgehammer.” … “Does he break it down?” … “Yes.” … “Then ask the guide what we shall do with the pieces of the wall.” Probably throw them somewhere.
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“Ask him how he feels without that wall.” … “Free.” … “Tell him that that wall has decided over him that no one shall come really close to him. Therefore, other people could not really reach him with good feelings like love, friendship and appreciation. Now it is gone and now he decides himself, who is allowed to come close and who not. Who is allowed to, can now really reach him with such good feelings. How does he feel about that?” … “Good.” … “That also means that he can now himself reach out to others with such feelings.”
It happens that the person says that he wants to keep the wall. “Why?” … “He says it protects him.” … “Against what?” … “Being hurt.” … “Ask him, if he never got hurt since he has that wall.” … “He did.” ... “So then the wall isn’t of much use, after all. But it ‘protects’ much more against love, so that most of the love others could give him stays outside of the wall and doesn’t reach him. Is that what he wants?” … “No!” … “Then does he still want to have that wall? … “No.” …
Such a wall in most cases arises due to one of two reasons. The person felt strongly hurt in some past experience and unconsciously built the wall up around himself, thinking that it would protect him. Or the person doesn’t really love himself. In that case he unconsciously doesn’t allow others to love him more than he loves himself, because that would seem contradictory, and therefore puts this wall around himself. A person with a wall is likely to attract a partner who also has a wall, and then two walls hit each other… with corresponding consequences for the relationship…
This issue of the wall was only briefly mentioned
here. It is discussed, like many other things, in more detail in my
German text
book [3].
Adding a third circle
It can sometimes be suitable to add a third circle,
which touches the two others, in order to put another person there. Continuing
the example from above, let’s say that the client’s ex-mother-in-law has much
influence over her son, so that her possessiveness poisoned their marriage. She
didn’t like her son’s wife and made him think quite negatively about her. The
wife wasn’t “good enough for him”, which in a subtle way suggested to him to
find another woman. It turns out that his mother was the child the client took
away from the female slave in
We have that mother put in the third circle, in order to cut ties and seek reconciliation between her and the client. For that we may (asking the angel) have to find out how she got her karma, so that she can understand and forgive. Then we turn to the connections between the ex-husband and his mother: “Give your cutting tool to your ex-husband and tell him to cut the ties at both ends and throw them in the fire.” If he hesitates: “Ask the angel to make him understand the negative influence on both him and his mother that these ties have, since they are really fetters.” Now he most probably does it. (In the really rare case that he persists in keeping them, we make clear that that is his problem alone and not the client’s.) We seek to help both mother and son to find reconciliation, which usually works. Again we may need to ask the guide to show them the sources of their own respective karmas, so that they understand and forgive each other. We also seek to have the mother understand, with the help of the angel, how destructive and selfish her possessiveness is. It isn’t really love, but subtle revenge, which it is now long overdue to terminate. Unconsciously seeking such revenge, she renounced and lost opportunities to instead live in peace and love, and she added to her karma rather than reducing it. Was it really worth that?
In very special cases one may even consider adding a
fourth circle, for example for the ex-father-in-law.
Cases of sexual abuse in the childhood
It seems that some therapist don’t want to get involved with such cases, which is understandable. The reason will be the few cases, which several years ago ended up in court. A client experienced in a therapy session how the father had abused her. She then took the father to court, and the father took the therapist to court, who lost the case since nothing could be proven. In these cases no reconciliation was reached! Instead the trauma of the client was reinforced! If, however, the session is terminated with a reconciliation process, it will not end like that.
But how can you forgive such a thing? The client will discover the karmic reason for that childhood experience. She will herself have done similar things in a past life, or she may have been a mother who knew what was going on but didn’t do anything to stop it (act of omission). She can now release feelings of guilt from that life. Furthermore, it could happen that the person who did it to her in this life was her victim (or one of her victims) in the past life. The perpetrator in this life is put in the second circle and faced with what he did. He may first deny it and claim that it isn’t true. We can then ask the guide to remove his mask and show how his real self is under it. He will stand there full of feelings of guilt, which he thinks he must hide carefully, since no one must know has happened (if possible not even he himself any more).
Having seen all this, the client can forgive! In all the many cases I
had, I had no one who couldn’t. Forgiving is the end of the trauma and becoming
definitely free from it.
Reconciliation with “toxic parents”
Very many clients had traumata in their childhood in the relation to parents who were unable to show love, were strict, demanding, punishing, controlling, knowing everything better etc. and/or really didn’t love (want) the child. Susan Forward [4] has written a book well worth reading about such cases. I want to discuss her remarks about reconciliation. Chapter 9 has the title “You don’t have to forgive”. She writes: “In fact it is not necessary to forgive your parents in order to feel better about yourself and to change your life!” Why does she state that? And why don’t I agree?
She writes about two facets of forgiving: 1. giving up the need for revenge (which she accepts as important), and 2. “unquestioningly absolving someone from his rightful responsibility”, and it is the latter she feels we can not do just like that. The latter is, however, not really what we do here! Not “just like that”! In our case we have released soul-injuring negative emotions resulting from the past trauma with the parent or the parents. We have clarified the karmic background and gained understanding about why the client had that experience. The client understands that there was a reason for the experience, that it involved a lesson for the soul – typically because the client himself in a past life treated children just like that. We have also released feelings of guilt from that past life. All the “groundwork” is done and then there is no “forgiveness trap”, as Susan Forward puts it. But she doesn’t do what we do (and probably doesn’t believe in reincarnation and karma, anyway…). It isn’t a simple matter of “All I have to do is forgive and then I will be healed”… There is a lot more to it.
Instead it is a matter of clearly understanding why
and that it was a lesson for the soul, to which the soul actually has agreed
before it entered the new body. It can be accepted as a lesson. Forgiving then
isn’t “unquestioningly absolving someone from his rightful responsibility”, but
freeing oneself from the past trauma.
Forgiving is the bottom line under it all. and then we become definitely free.
It doesn’t mean that the person who hurt us is “absolved” just like that.
Instead that person will in the second circle realize who wrong he acted and
how he hurt the client, and most probably show clear signs of regret – i.e., on
his soul level. It is much more a matter of saying to him and to oneself: “It doesn’t matter to me any more. I now understand
and now I am free from it. It is over!” That is the crucial point!
References:
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Phyllis Krystal: Cutting
the Ties that Bind, Aura Books,
- In English under: http://www.christian-reincarnation.com/AttSouls.htm, in German under http://www.christian-reincarnation.com/AttSoulsD.htm.
- Jan Erik Sigdell: Reinkarnationstherapie, Heyne Taschenbuch, München, 2005.
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Susan Forward: Toxic
Parents, Overcoming their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming your Life, Bantam,
[*]
Dr. Jan Erik Sigdell, Dutovlje 105, SI-6221 DUTOVLJE,
[**] Instead of repeating “his or her” (or he like) over and over again, I for reason of simplicity stick to a formulation in male terms.