“”In this blog, I would like to share the reflections of a client, Barbara, with whom I did a regression recently. Barbara is a lawyer who lives in Eastern USA. The regression was conducted over zoom and her insightful reflections and follow up questions, were sent to me by email.  I am also including, in red text, the answers I gave to her questions.

Hi Karen,

Thank you for your emails and the notes. I had to return to work promptly yesterday after the session. Not until last night, did I have some time to reflect on my experience.

Many thanks for the impressive 3 hours and 45 minutes of yesterday’s session. I have been reflecting on the past life, images, people, events, and possible meaning behind them since last night.

I was surprised how time passed so quickly. I guess that the hypnosis was about three hours, but I felt like it was about 1 hour. I have never had such an experience where I am awake, but my body is somewhat distant, particularly when you brought me back. I did not feel that I was doing anything except answering your questions and conversing with you. When you asked me to move my body and remove the eye mask, I felt that I had been away somehow.

My further reflections are:

My unconscious mind was active as many of the deeply concerned or unresolved issues in my life surfaced.

I am happy to get so many answers from this experience, but somehow, I think I already knew many of the answers.

Knowing the answers is good news and quite common. It happens when previously you have not been fully trusting yourself or your intuitive guidance. In other words, you have had doubts blocking your trust in what you receive. I think, doing the regression, you were looking for confirmation. Now you have it. From now on, you can relax and trust what you immediately receive when you ask a question. Wise knowledge is always available to you. You just need to learn to trust.

I reflected on my guide’s name, Joy, which is similar to yours. I felt that the name was familiar, but I first thought that joy was something that I really needed to add to my life; thus, perhaps there is a meaning behind it. Yesterday, I suddenly remembered that you may have the word “joy” in your name. I looked at your email and noticed that it is your last name.

I use my two given birth names in my business, Karen Joy, which has the meaning: “pure joy.” Gaining a joyful state of mind is often one of our purposes in life.

The love my guide gave me was the love that I had never experienced before, namely, such unconditional and genuine love that embraced all my needs. I felt that all my suffering had been seen, all my wounds had been healed, all my shortcomings had been accepted, and all my needs had been satisfied. It is not easy to put this feeling into words. No one has ever loved me in this way in my current life on earth. I am so touched, grateful and felt safe.

My guide, Joy, has bright, yellowish, short, curly hair.

I am so glad you had this experience of unconditional love. Many, during their regression, connect to this sense of being embraced with expansive indescribable love.

In relation to returning to the spirit world and the death before that, I cannot help but wonder whether my knowledge of Dr Newton’s book and research has had any impact on that. I read his first book a year ago and do not remember the details of Dr Newton’s clients’ descriptions of the spirit world. But somehow, I cannot be sure whether my descriptions are accurate. At the same time, I learned yesterday that I should trust my guide, who has always been taking care of me.

You wonder if your descriptions of the spirit world are accurate. There is no objective spirit world. What you experience on the other side is always subjective. It is not like Earth which we experience as solid and unchanging. Instead, the afterlife is variable and what you perceive is informed by all your individual past experiences and insights. And in that way, there is still a deep truth in what you receive.

 Also, Michael Newton gathered information from many regressions and found his clients had some common experiences on the other side. He called them “places’, as do I and others who are doing this work. A more accurate description would be experiences or adventures. For example, clients may find they are being healed or be surrounded by passed loved ones. Space and time are dimensions of Earth, not the other side. In the trance, we often carry the idea of “place” with us and may report any healing as a “place of healing” or visiting loved ones as the “place where our soul group gathers.” Our descriptions of these places will have personal meaning for us as well, reflecting personal past experiences and knowledge.

It is not possible for you to be inaccurate in what you receive or describe. Your experience in the afterlife is unique and designed by you, and for you. By “you” I mean by your intentions, your higher self, your spiritual guides and high-level beings who watch over you.

In my last past life, I was a young man in 1919 and moved to Hong Kong with my family in 1937 (wife and two children 4 – 5 years old), which means that I was about 36 – 38 years old in 1937 and died about 15 years later in Hong Kong because my children were around 20 years old at the time of death. So, the year of death would be about 1952.

Dr Newton reported that time has no meaning in the spirit world. Nevertheless, being back to earth for another life only after 16 years sounds a bit short, given my knowledge of Dr Newton’s research that many souls need to rejuvenate and recover. I would like to have your thoughts on this point, if possible.

Michael’s purpose was writing books that opened people up to the reality of an afterlife. He was focussed on consistent experiences of his clients so he could report what usually happened. Translating esoteric experiences for human understanding is not easy. He had to use words and concepts that humans could relate to.

Also, it is now nearly forty years since Michael regressed the clients in his books and the earth energies and human understanding has expanded since then.

I personally only had 8 years between my last life and my current life even though my previous life was extremely challenging (a German soldier in both WWI and WWII as well as witnessing the rape of Nanking by the Japanese in 1937).

A few years ago, I regressed a client who had 200 years in the afterlife between his previous life (born 1710) and his current life (born 1987). He was a clockmaker in his past life, skilled in finely tuned mechanics. No doubt this helped him adjust to modern technology because his guides congratulated him on managing so well with the long period between his lives.

In earlier times, when time between lives could be as long as 400 years, progress on Earth was slow. Now our lives are changing so rapidly that even during one life we can find it difficult to keep up with all the changes, technological, population and infrastructure. Also, in the 20th century there were many opportunities to return to Earth quickly because the population was growing so fast.

Micheal’s books give you a good initial understanding of our life between lives from the hugh number of people he regressed. Now we are adding to that useful bank of information. There have been two books published that were written for the Michael Newton Institute by three of my colleagues and me, Llewellyn’s Little Book of Life Between Lives and Wisdom of Souls.

My latest book, Lost Soul, Wise Soul, is focussed on explaining, by using many cases, how the system works as we undertake our soul journey on Earth. It includes the steps we need to take to advance, why we have challenging lives, how we resolve the baggage we carry from one life to another and how we celebrate our successes and navigate the pitfalls.

I also researched on the World Wide Web about the timing and duration of the Chinese Civil War fought between the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party. I found that the conflict continued intermittently from 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 (Wikipedia), which confirms my report that the war happened around 1937.

I think the reason for me to check this was that I had read some criticism from the psychology community about the reliability of the recalled memories under hypnosis, and some think that the memories were made up by the person under hypnosis. I do have certain knowledge about that historical event; however, I am not sure about the exact period of that event.

Recent research of repressed memories of sexual abuse reports that false memories are rare. I believe the same is true of repressed memories of past lives. The research of Dr Ian Stevenson into two thousand cases of children remembering past lives confirms this.

Just the same, getting positive evidence of our past lives is reassuring. When I recalled witnessing the rape of Nanking, I knew I’d been a German soldier in both wars. At the time, being in China in 1937 didn’t make sense to me. But I learned later that German soldiers were in China training Chinese National soldiers from 1926 until early 1938. Other evidence I received, I reported in my first book, Other Lives, Other Realms, in the chapter, Proof.

In summary, Karen, thank you again for guiding me through this journey, which is profoundly unique and rewarding.

My learning is that:

(a) I will focus on the learning outcomes, which are my goals, rather than the efforts I made to reach those goals;

(b) I will trust that my guide is present at all times and that I can communicate with her more often;

(c) I will intervene less about life events that give me negative emotions and tell myself that other people have their own journeys and battles, and I need to love myself more;

(d) I will not surrender to my fears as my guide is there to protect and guide me through whatever is coming; and

(e) I will be fine and have fun.

I want to thank Barbara for giving me permission to share her reflections. What we receive during our regression is unique and personal. That is the power of undertaking regressions. You never know what you will receive, and yet, you can be assured that it will be what you need, what is best for your highest good, and what is best for the highest good of all.