Friday, December 4, 2009

how to discern the truth

After weeks of intention I finally made time to hand-scribe the directions for How to Remember Your Past Lives. I'm reading a book titled Many Lives, Many Masters which chronicles a psychologist's professional experience with treating a patient who regressed to previous lives through hypnosis, written by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.. The book was suggested to me by several past-life regression therapists over the phone but it wasn't until it came up in conversation with visiting artist Stephanie Diamond during a studio visit back in October that I finally bit the bullet and got a used copy.

The book is strange-- I go back and forth between believing it and being completely non-plussed. The format of the book is narrative from the first-person of the author/psychotherapist as he linearly reveal a case study of one of his patients and their shared experience of learning about her past lives during their sessions. The story is told with a lot of conviction and having watched videos online of this guys telling his story I've got to admit that there is not a bone in my body that doesn't WANT to believe. But then silly things will happen... like the patients regression to a life in 1483 where she talks about eating corn in Europe-- and that, my friends, is just historically implausible. It's interesting of course because I'm holding this woman responsible for the truth of her memories of past lives hundreds of years ago while I simultaneously forgive the fallacy of my own memory. I have just few more chapters to go and am excited to see where the last page leaves me.

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