Your birth.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Frans

Markus74 keeps these forums running, so maybe he's just an alter ego of Steve Pavlina...

Yeah, it's just Steve trying to get more hits to his new forums. Ok Steve, we caught you, you can stop pretending now.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by impaul99

I have never tried regression hypnosis so I don't know if it works, or it doesn't, but I wouldn't discount anything or everything in life simply because you read somewhere that it's not terribly reliable.

Basically it's the same as any other kind of hypnosis. It's just a fancy name for those cases where the psychiatrist decides to ask the hypnotised patient to recall events that happened ..... a very, very, very long time ago. The patient will just pop straight back into memories of a past life.

Here's a common example. Suppose the patient has a phobia of deep water. He may not know why. The psychiatrist may suspect that there was some traumatic early childhood experience (now forgotten) which led to this phobia (eg the young child was left alone to struggle in a swimming pool or something like that).

Under hypnosis, the patient is led to explore his early childhood memories. For example, the psychiatrist may say: "Now you are four years old. Do you remember going swimming? Or to the sea? How do you feel now? What do you see?" This is a very conventional treatment - once the patient consciously identifies the specific event that caused the phobia, the phobia often spontaneously resolves.

Sometimes it turns out that the specific event causing the phobia didn't occur in this lifetime. The psychiatrist may just ask a question: "Go back even further. What happened to make you so afraid of water?" There doesn't seem to be anything relevant that happened when the patient was a young child. Suddenly the patient may "pop" back into a past life, and recall, for example, drowning in that past life.

Under hypnosis, your memory becomes very sharp (I know - I've been there). You can for example recall very long-ago things that you had forgotten about, and you can recall them in sharp detail. Basically you are accessing your unconscious with your conscious mind.

Under hypnosis, for example, I recalled having a brown-&-black dog with floppy ears when I was about two years old and the dog being given away. In my non-hypnotic state, I cannot actually recall ever having such a dog. However, I've checked with my mum who verifies that when I was a young kid, we did have such a dog (and it was given away).

The reason why you're then able to remember past lives is that your memory simply becomes very sharp. In case I've given you a misleading example above, you do not simply recall how you died in your past life. You can explore your past life in extensive detail - where you lived, what you did, who you met, what you ate, where you went etc etc.

You can even explore multiple past lives.

I did pastlife regression for certain reasons, but I won't be doing it again. Basically I wouldn't recommend it unless you have very specific reasons for doing it.

The main reason is that if you don't have a specific reason, I think you'd just be traipsing through lots of past lives and not necessarily learning anything that useful. For me, my present life is beautiful and interesting and sufficiently challenging as it is.

There is a lot more to say about past life regression hypnosis, but since it isn't really the topic of this thread, I'll stop here.

[DoAnyOfYouExist]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

I should mention that you can attract what you don't want, if you keep thinking about what you don't want. For example, thoughts like:

"I hope I'm not sick. I really hope I don't fall ill. I'm so unhealthy, but I don't want to be unhealthy. I really hope I don't get cancer anytime soon. Boy, surely I can't be that unlucky? The last thing I need now is a major illness."

Etc etc.

Does my reading what you have quoted there affect my manifestations? If so I would like you to STOP using these negative examples and screwing up my ************

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Basically it's the same as any other kind of hypnosis. It's just a fancy name for those cases where the psychiatrist decides to ask the hypnotised patient to recall events that happened ..... a very, very, very long time ago. The patient will just pop straight back into memories of a past life.

Here's a common example. Suppose the patient has a phobia of deep water. He may not know why. The psychiatrist may suspect that there was some traumatic early childhood experience (now forgotten) which led to this phobia (eg the young child was left alone to struggle in a swimming pool or something like that).

There are two examples I can think of that would lead me to believe exactly what you're talking about here.

When I was a young kid I was terrified of deep water right from the start. Later on my dad started taking us swimming in a shallow pool and I was able to learn the basics of swimming, but to this day I am not a strong swimmer and stay out of water, especially oceans, if I can. Whenever I go near the ocean my fear instantly kicks in and I am able to manifest some crazy stuff. For example I was in Hawaii just a few months ago and was sitting on a beach chair reading a book with my wife. She was bugging me because I was afraid to go in the water for a swim. I normally don't go in past my waist but this time I didn't even want to go in that far. While sitting there I was looking at all the people in the water and all of a sudden I saw a fin. I looked at my wife and she looked at me as she saw it too. She said it must have been a dolphin, I said it must have been a shark. She told me to shut up and we went back to reading our books. The few people in the water saw it too but they just kept doing what they were doing. This was in Kihei Beach in Maui. When we got back from the vacation, we were telling the story and once again I was telling people I saw a shark and she was telling them it must have been a dolphin.

Two weeks later there was a news story that there was a shark attack in Kihei beach, right in the spot we were in just a few meters in from the beach. The experts were baffled how a shark attacked so close to the beach during the day, as apperently they don't feed until the evening.

Also, while we were in Maui, my wife wanted to take one of those boats to a reef and go snorkling but I told her I didn't want to go on a boat snorkling as I am terrified of those sting-rays. I've been terrified of them way before the crocodile hunter got stung. My wife told me if I wanted to I could stay on the boat but I told her no way am I getting on a boat to do that. That same night we were watching the news and up comes a news story "MAN ON BOAT STUNG IN HEART BY STINGRAY". My wife just looked at me and hit me in the arm saying "Quit creating this ************!".

Anyway, I have some wacked fear of deep water and I'm convinced that I have drowned in the ocean in a previous life time.

Secondly, the other example is when I meet certain people in life and right away I absolutely want to get away from them. It's like a very deep dislike, almost a hate of them, even though they have done nothing to me. It's like I just want to stay away from them and have nothing to do with them. I'm convinced I'm recognizing them from a previous life time. Maybe I was a victim of theirs in some way.

Would a hyponsis session going back to previous life times be scary? Like, wouldn't it be pretty horrific to go back and go through your death in a previous life time?

[Jez]

I agree with Markus on many points-- particularly in my respect for the scientific method and in my distaste for any belief that seems to assign blame to people for their own misfortunes. At the same time I've been experimenting with LoA for several years now to quite good effect. (This despite the fact that I have another system-- also quite effective-- which is more or less the opposite of LoA...)

I came to the basic idea of the LoA before I'd read anything about it. It simply struck me rather hard one day that there was something wrong with the fact that I-- with everything I need and a good deal more, having been provided with a good education, wonderful family and friends, plenty of travel and other experiences of the kind I love-- was spending a great deal of time feeling badly on behalf of all of those in pain or misery in the world. It suddenly seemed to me that I was simply making myself unhappy and thereby adding to the total sum of misery in the world. To the extent my sympathy pushes me to take action on someone's behalf, then perhaps it's useful-- but if I'm not going to act, then surely I should be adding to the sum of happiness in the world, by enjoying what and who I have in my life and the pleasure of excercising my talents and focusing on my interests.

At some point I found some materials on the Law of Attraction and started using it. I have gotten a lot of the things that I was trying to 'attract' -- which is not to say I necessarily 'believe' in it. It simply, as Steve Pavlina says, improves the quality of my life to act as if it were true.

And as far as what I 'attract' -- frankly, I've generally gotten what I wanted most, regardless of whether I believed I could or would. For many years my chief 'method' -- and the one that seemed to work best for me-- was to try and imagine all the things that could go wrong. It seemed to me that nothing I worried about ever happened-- while all too frequently things that I'd never even realized could go wrong would smack me upside the head!

So to 'ward off' the bad stuff, I'd try to think of every possible weird, freakish thing that could, by the wildest stretch of my imagination, happen to mess up my plans. For me this worked beautifully-- and the only time I ever had any problem was when I 'forgot' to imagine something! I still do this occasionally, but I've found that reminding myself of all the cool, unexpected 'bonuses' that have often come out of my unexpected 'disasters' seems to work almost as well, so I'm much less obsessive about this than I used to be.

Another area where I find it helpful to 'act as if' I believe is reincarnation. I suspend judgment on the question of whether it is real or not, but I've had a couple of 'visions' of myself in other lifetimes that I found helped explain some of my otherwise inexplicable attitudes and feelings-- and also helped me deal with some unpleasant behavior on the part of others. Whether these are really other lifetimes, or just allegorical stories I tell myself to explain ingrained responses that I've unconsciously adopted doesn't seem important.

This is all a rather long-winded way of getting around to saying that I don't think it makes a lot of sense to worry about whether intention-manifestation/Law of Attraction is real or not. Perhaps it's real but works for entirely different reasons and by a different mechanism than we imagine. Perhaps it's not real, but helps many people deal with anxiety and increase their overall sense of well-being and happiness. If you find it useful, use it. If you don't, don't.

[ReallyGoodIdeas]

Interesting post Jez.

It's also interesting that your method DOES seem the opposite. Curious!

I've always had a horror for hot dry conditions, hot windy days we have here sometimes, and beaches with no shade, freak me out slightly. One hot windy day I did EFT on it for hours, and hardly budged it. Went to a psychihc counsellor friend of mine, and she told me that in a past life I'd died in a desert, as something like a french foreign legionnaire! I did EFT on that, and hot windy days no longer bother me. (EFT being MY method of doing anything!). So once I'd realised what it was I could deal with it quite easily.

Maybe I had to come back to learn EFT to get over that nasty experience! ;-)

Joy to you
Hazel

[Acting Like Godot]

Well, I will share with you two things about me in my present lifetime:

(1) I like being alone.
(2) I love the ocean and the beach.

These two traits are so dominant in me that when my wife and I go on beach resort holidays (which are the most frequent kind of holidays we go for), I have a habit of waiting for her to fall asleep in the hotel room, and then I sneak off to the beach by myself. It used to irritate her to wake up later and find me missing, but now she is used to it.

Anyway, during my pastlife regression hypnosis, I found out why I am like that. In one of my past lives, I lived quite alone on a very deserted island. I was some kind of fisherman. And I was quite happy there.

Anyway, just to give you an idea of how real past-life regression hypnosis is, I will relate to you, as accurately as I can remember it, the exact words I spoke to the hypnotherapist, when I was regressing to this past life as a fisherman:

Hypnotherapist: "Now you are going back ... Back, back ... Gently. Hold on to that emotion."

Me: "Yes."

Hypnotherapist: "Now look downwards. Slowly. What do you see?"

Me: "I see .... sand. And ....... HEY! What happened to my feet!!"

In my mind's eye, I had "looked down". And I saw two bare feet standing on sand, but they were not like mine, in this lifetime. They were bigger, rougher, broader - the shape of the toenails were different, coarser etc etc. Definitely not my feet! Because I wasn't expecting this, I was really quite startled.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by impaul99

Would a hyponsis session going back to previous life times be scary? Like, wouldn't it be pretty horrific to go back and go through your death in a previous life time?

Will write more about this later. Need to run now.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Anyway, during my pastlife regression hypnosis, I found out why I am like that. In one of my past lives, I lived quite alone on a very deserted island. I was some kind of fisherman. And I was quite happy there.

I want to point out that you're failing to ask why the you in your past life is like that, too.

[Markus74]

Originally Posted by impaul99

Also, while we were in Maui, my wife wanted to take one of those boats to a reef and go snorkling but I told her I didn't want to go on a boat snorkling as I am terrified of those sting-rays. I've been terrified of them way before the crocodile hunter got stung. My wife told me if I wanted to I could stay on the boat but I told her no way am I getting on a boat to do that. That same night we were watching the news and up comes a news story "MAN ON BOAT STUNG IN HEART BY STINGRAY". My wife just looked at me and hit me in the arm saying "Quit creating this ************!".

Oh man! So you manifested the crocodile hunter getting killed by a stingray just to illustrate your point? Naughty you.

Or did the crocodile hunter have a death wish and manifested the stingray killing him? Or was it bad luck? How would the LoA be applied in this case? I'm really curious.

[Markus74]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Well, I will share with you two things about me in my present lifetime:

(1) I like being alone.
(2) I love the ocean and the beach.

Hey, we actually share some things!

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Markus74

Oh man! So you manifested the crocodile hunter getting killed by a stingray just to illustrate your point? Naughty you.

Or did the crocodile hunter have a death wish and manifested the stingray killing him? Or was it bad luck? How would the LoA be applied in this case? I'm really curious.

No, I'm not saying I had anything to do with the crocodile hunter stingray attack. I just mentioned it as a time reference to point out the fact that I've been afraid of stingrays before the crocodile hunter attack, otherwise someone might say "Oh, you're just afraid of stingrays because of what happened to the Crocodile hunter guy." and that's not true.

I really like how you twist what I say though and ignore the second part of the post where I describe how my wife asks me to go on a boat to go snorkling and I tell her I don't want to because I don't feel safe, and she tells me my fear is irrational because I don't need to go in the water, I can just stay on the boat where it's safe, and I still don't want to go, and then that same night there is a news story "STINGRAY JUMPS ON BOAT AND STINGS MAN IN HEART". Like cmon, what are the chances of that? Stingray's aren't even considered dangerous. THe Maui acquarium does $200 dives in their tank where you can swim with the rays because they are considered safe. Crocodile hunter's attack was a freak accident as was the one with the man on the boat. Statistically, what are the chances of that event happening like that?

It doesn't even matter actually. It's not like that one event, that co-incidence is what I base my belief in LoA on. I base my belief on the ability of me to manifest such events continuously, non stop, to varying degrees of probability whenever I wish to. My wife, and close friends are totally used to this by now as they see me doing it all the time. That is why my wife always tells me "Quit creating this ************!" She's a skeptical and logical person like you, but she can't deny what she sees with her eyes.

Anyways, I realize it doesn't really matter what I say in here. You will never believe me, because you have not manifested proof for yourself yet.

One thing you might want to ask yourself is what exactly would have to happen in these forums to make you believe? What kind of story or post, or proof would you have to see to believe? What could a person post that would make you trust it? If I posted "I just wrote out a manifestation for $10,000 to come from a scratch and win ticket, drove to the store and bought a scratch and win and won $10,000." would you believe that as proof? Or would you just say "Co-incidence! Nothing magical here."

[Markus74]

Originally Posted by impaul99

I really like how you twist what I say though and ignore the second part of the post where I describe how my wife asks me to go on a boat to go snorkling and I tell her I don't want to because I don't feel safe, and she tells me my fear is irrational because I don't need to go in the water, I can just stay on the boat where it's safe, and I still don't want to go, and then that same night there is a news story "STINGRAY JUMPS ON BOAT AND STINGS MAN IN HEART". Like cmon, what are the chances of that? Stingray's aren't even considered dangerous. THe Maui acquarium does $200 dives in their tank where you can swim with the rays because they are considered safe. Crocodile hunter's attack was a freak accident as was the one with the man on the boat. Statistically, what are the chances of that event happening like that?

The chances aren't that big, true. But they aren't impossible either. There are a lot of people on boats and there are a lot of stingrays. And if some dudes anger the rays it's not that surprising that they react (both the crocodile hunter and the old guy didn't just swim around them without bothering them). Or maybe the second one only got world-wide attention because of the crocodile hunter's a few day earlier.

But I don't really get your point of view: Did both of these accidents happen because they were a manifestation of your fears or were they random? If they happened to confirm your belief that being on the water is dangerous then you have indirectly killed two people! What's your connection to these events? If there is one. I'd really like to understand this.

One thing you might want to ask yourself is what exactly would have to happen in these forums to make you believe? What kind of story or post, or proof would you have to see to believe? What could a person post that would make you trust it? If I posted "I just wrote out a manifestation for $10,000 to come from a scratch and win ticket, drove to the store and bought a scratch and win and won $10,000." would you believe that as proof? Or would you just say "Co-incidence! Nothing magical here."

That wouldn't be enough. But if you'd write in here on Monday that you'll buy the ticket on Friday that will make you win $10,000 and then this really happens on Friday then I would be really impressed and feeling weird. Of course I'd need to see both a scan of your lottery ticket on Monday and the winning ticket on Friday (with exact dates etc). Then I'd say that it was extraordinary. Though not yet totally impossible. But it would be a good starting point and if a lot of other, very improbable things like that would happen as well then I would have to change my point of view. And agree that I was wrong all along.

But we're not there yet

[Jez]

Originally Posted by ReallyGoodIdeas

Interesting post Jez.

It's also interesting that your method DOES seem the opposite. Curious!

Thanks, Hazel--

I've thought ever since I read the first NLP books in the early '80's that I'm probably pretty 'counter suggestible' -- if you tell me something is true my first reaction is skepticism. Affirmations don't work for me at all-- the more positive they sound the more impossible I find to believe. (It works better for me to use phrases like, 'maybe this would work' or 'I wonder what would happen if I tried that').

I found out a few years ago that my mother has also always used my 'anti-LoA' method. Her father died unexpectedly when she was small and she spent her whole childhood worrying that her mother would die too. So she also developed the habit of worrying about things so that they wouldn't happen. I had no idea she did this, so if I picked it up from her it was completely unconsciously. I don't think anyone else in our family does it.

I tried it again just last night-- I discovered that one of my headlights was out and I was just about to leave for a party, which meant driving a stretch of road that always seems to be crawling with police cars. On top of that I haven't got my new residence sticker-- and I don't think I had proof of insurance with me, either, so if they stopped me I'd probably get quite a stiff fine. So I thought about all the violations I could possibly be charged with, and threw in a couple of bizarre other scenarios for good measure (mistaken identity where officer pulls me over with guns drawn, I freak out, make a wrong move and get shot... that sort of thing)-- and of course, for the very first time I didn't see a single police car. And I even gave a friend a lift home-- about doubling the length of my trip back home.

On the other hand, I like LoA because it's just plain fun to imagine doing all the things I love-- having plenty of time and money for all the places I'd like to go and courses I'd like to take. And there are probably some health benefits to the kind of relaxed, happy feeling that imagining those things brings, purely apart from whether it 'works' or not.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by ReallyGoodIdeas

Interesting post Jez.

It's also interesting that your method DOES seem the opposite. Curious!

It's interesting, but not that curious.

Compare it to our "usual" kind of IM -
(1)we think of the positive outcome,
(2) we refuse to dictate the "how", and leave it to the universe, and
(3) we try to avoid sending out conflicting / contradictory thoughts.

In Jez's case, what he does is that:

(1) he thinks of the negative outcome,
(2) he immediately tries to dictate the "how" - in fact, he sends out thoughts of multiple different freakish and far-fetched ways that the negative outcome could occur -
(3) thus he ultimately prevents the negative outcome from occuring, due to his conflicting / contradictory thoughts on the "how".

You can think of Jez's method as "preventing a negative outcome", whereas normal IM'ers seek to "create a positive outcome".

Having said that, I would urge caution with his method because if it goes wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong. Instead of cancelling each other out, ALL the bad thoughts could simultaneously manifest and hit Jez at the same time.

Jez, have you had any spectacularly unlucky days?

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Markus74

But if you'd write in here on Monday that you'll buy the ticket on Friday that will make you win $10,000 and then this really happens on Friday then I would be really impressed and feeling weird. Of course I'd need to see both a scan of your lottery ticket on Monday and the winning ticket on Friday (with exact dates etc). Then I'd say that it was extraordinary. Though not yet totally impossible.

Basically it will be a repeat of Matthew Manning and Nina Kulagina, won't it. They repeatedly display their psychic powers under observation by scientists etc etc, and the scientists are convinced.

But you say that the scientists are fruitcakes, or poorly trained, spreading political propaganda, or have been deceived.

Now if Paul strikes the lotter, you will say that you yourself are a fruitcake, or poorly trained, or Paul is spreading political propanganda, or is trying to deceive you with an elaborate hoax.

[Jez]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

You can think of Jez's method as "preventing a negative outcome", whereas normal IM'ers seek to "create a positive outcome".

Having said that, I would urge caution with his method because if it goes wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong. Instead of cancelling each other out, ALL the bad thoughts could simultaneously manifest and hit Jez at the same time.

Jez, have you had any spectacularly unlucky days?

Well, it's 'she', actually, but no, the only spectactular 'bad luck' I've had was, as I said before, with things coming completely out of the blue-- often when I was feeling particularly good. I started with what you call the 'negative outcome' prevention because I hate being blind sided like that.

As for different 'hows' cancelling each other out, though, I'm not sure that's what's happening. Because I also do a lot of single contingency planning. When I lived in a very dangerous neighborhood, for instance, where rapes and murders were happening all around me, I would make very specific plans for what I would do if, for instance, someone broke in, or if I was mugged. We were, in fact, robbed a couple of times just after we moved in, but after I started thinking about contingencies we didn't have any more problems.

I also found, starting when I was a teenager, that thinking very specific and ugly thoughts about what I'd do to anyone who bothered me- a kind of 'don't mess with me' attitude whenever I was out on the streets seemed to have a dramatic effect on the amount of hasseling I got. It stopped it cold, whereas if I went out unprepared, thinking in my usual dreamy way about all the things I'd like to do, I was in for trouble.

As I say, I use LoA, too, and find it works very well for certain things. But the world is an odd place. I'm not convinced that any of us really knows how it works.

[Markus74]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Basically it will be a repeat of Matthew Manning and Nina Kulagina, won't it. They repeatedly display their psychic powers under observation by scientists etc etc, and the scientists are convinced.

But you say that the scientists are fruitcakes, or poorly trained, spreading political propaganda, or have been deceived.

Now if Paul strikes the lotter, you will say that you yourself are a fruitcake, or poorly trained, or Paul is spreading political propanganda, or is trying to deceive you with an elaborate hoax.

Paul asked me what I would consider a proof. I said it. And I don't think it's asked too much. It's simple: Predict how much you will win. Buy a ticket. And then let's see what you've won.

If you're creating Reality or if the Universe manifests your intentions then this should be no problem. What do you have to fear?

Let's do the experiment. If your theory is right then you won't fail. So why not do it? Are you in?