I had an amazing past life regression with Carol in 2007. As the regression started, I was looking into a Japanese room from the outside, from a garden. I could see people mourning in an elegant space in deep brown reds and gold. The images were clear, but I had little sense of my physical self. Carol asked me to look at myself: my feet, my clothes. I then realized that I had no body; I was a bodiless orb, floating. I knew I was watching my own funeral.
I knew that I had been a popular samurai. As a samurai, killing another man was elevated to a spiritual art. In that life, I found my core, a place of clarity that enabled me to remove another’s life and retain my own, and in that, know a deep inner purity. After realizing that state of clarity, and repeatedly reaching it, I no longer felt a need to kill. Others wanted me to continue, but I had to abandon the killing.
In 2011, soon after the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, I volunteered to do clean-up work in Otsuchi. I had never been drawn to doing disaster work before.
One day, when the rains were too heavy to continue working, the group I was with decided to go to Chuson Ji, a temple not far out of our way. It had just been registered as a World Heritage Site that week. I really did not want to go to yet another temple or shrine. I was cold, wet, and tired. The earth was still shaking every now and then. And things were so muddy. But, I had little to say about the choice. I politely went along.
When we arrived, we walked around and saw gift shops, big trees, beautiful walks, and small buildings. We went into a museum building. The displays were interesting. Then one of the display cases caught my attention. There was a picture of the room I had seen in my regression! I stood staring at it. There was a description of the room in Japanese, so I couldn’t read it. I walked up a hill and arrived at the room I had seen in the photo in the museum. It was the same room I had seen in my regression. I got some headphones with an English translation which described the room. I learned that the space contained the remains of some of the samurai leaders. I started shaking intensely. I felt that the present me was in the same space as a mummified body of my former self! I suddenly felt confirmation and connection to the life I had seen in the regression. Being in that place, and seeing the room, made my story feel real. Had I not been in the room, and felt what I did, the images and feelings from the regression would have been more like an unlikely dream. I realized that the man I saw in the regression was part of me, and that I can connect with his strength.