Living In The Past

I’m a sceptic and like to judge things based on evidence and not just a belief.

There is one exception to this – and that is God – and the reason for that is fear. I was raised in a Catholic environment with a Catholic priest and teachers who basically told me that if you I dismissed God then I would burn in Hell for eternity with Satan himself using me his demonic plaything.

So let me just say this up front: God exists (I think) and I want to apologise to him (or her) for anything I have done or said against him (or her).

But I digress. For this post, I want to discuss reincarnation.

Believe me, I would absolutely LOVE it if we are incorporeal beings who occupy a human body from the moment of your inception to the moment it gives up, at which point it releases you ready to find another unblemished embryo to occupy.

While I find the idea of reincarnation fascinating, I simply cannot bring myself to take it seriously.

I can imagine that there may be a person reading this who actually believes in reincarnation to the point where they are looking forward to their next life with enthusiasm. If you are such a reader then I welcome your belief and I genuinely hope you are right.

I was reading about a form of hypnotherapy that allows people to regress to past lives, basically accessing the memory of your soul that remembers your previous incarnations. People have, apparently been kings, queens and emperors in past lives and described their lives to such detail that others are convinced of their authenticity.

I tried this.

I was so curious about the idea that I found a past life regression video on You Tube, lay on the bed and followed the instructions.

I fell asleep.

I did have an idea in my head that I was wondering around a village with weird shoes in medieval England and sitting by a blazing fire in a shit-filled hovel.

No fucking throne and palace filled with gold for me. How disappointing!

I woke up and realised that I had actually had a dream. I don’t believe for a second that I was a medieval tramp, living in a flea-ridden squat with only shit and a fire for company.

I then realised that I had been watching an episode of Blackadder II the night before and my dream had cast me in the role of Baldrick, a dumb dolt from Elizabethan times:



If I had watched Braveheart no doubt I would have been William Wallace, a skirt-wearing England-hating vagabond.

A young Plastic Mancunian?

Usually when you hear tales of people somehow tapping into their hidden soul-memory, there is always a something wonderful. They were princesses in Egyptian times or advisors to King Henry VIII. Such people rarely confess to being slaves clearing out the latrines in the middle of a dark-age forest in the pissing rain or native Americans wandering the plains of America or even simple carpenters living in a small town in 18th Century Ireland.

Nevertheless, I live in hope. I am fascinated by the future and I would love to be reborn in fifty years’ time and grow up in a world of technology.

What proof is there that reincarnation is real? Here’s what I found.

(1) 50% of the world’s population believe in reincarnation. The problem I have with this fact is that, really, this means that 50% of the world’s population don’t want to die and, like me, love the idea that we will all be reborn. Belief in something doesn’t make it fact.

(2) People have given names and dates of previous lives, having somehow tapped into their soul-memories, and that evidence has proved to be true. Is this coincidence? Or is it something to do with the fact that the people have somehow “cheated” or, like my hypnotherapy experiment, are really tapping into something they have seen or read? I think the latter. I believe that people are simply remembering something from their past about a person they have encountered in a book or in a movie. As was the case my Baldrick memory above.

(3) One American child, who was two years old, had nightmares about a plane crash, stating that he had been shot down by the Japanese during World War 2. He named the aircraft carrier from which he had taken off and lots more information about the pilot from whom he was reincarnated. When investigated, the two year old boy’s claims were proven to be correct and a person was discovered who fit the description. The boy’s father was an evangelical Christian who simply didn’t believe in reincarnation. Wow! Compelling, eh? But is it just a con or an elaborate hoax?

(4) Still with children – some have been known to speak in languages that they have never learned, supposedly because they spoke that language in a past life.

(5) Children have been born with bullet wounds, supposedly inflicted on the previous human who accommodated their soul.

To be honest, cases (2) to (4) above do make me think that there might be something in it and there are thousands of similar cases. Yet I am still sceptical. If we are all reincarnated, then surely our minds will be full to overflowing with our past lives, including what happened when we died, no matter how horrific that was.

The more I think about this, the more questions I have. For instance, our souls that have travelled through time for centuries, finding a new body every so often, must have been “born” somehow – and by the same token must “die” sometime, unless our souls are immortal.

Presumably, before humans existed we must have lived in the bodies of animals.

Do you think I could have been a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a previous life?

I really hope so. That would have been a fantastic adventure.

However, the thing that has convinced me more than anything that reincarnation is impossible is the belief of one person.

Yes – that’s right. David Icke believes in reincarnation and he is as mad as a bag of badgers. He believes that reincarnation is a slavery program and our souls are transferred from one slave to the next by “gods”. His view is that we are like the batteries in the Matrix with these nameless “gods” feeding off our souls.

Trust Mr Madman to apply his lunacy to reincarnation. Perhaps he took the Matrix too seriously. Perhaps he thinks he is Neo – or “The One”. Who knows?

Over to you, dear reader.

Do you believe in reincarnation?

If you do I would love to hear from you – either in this life or the next.

Mindfulness

At the start of this year, my company tried to inflict a New Year’s resolution on all of us. Some people reacted badly - others embraced it.

I was somewhere in between and I don’t blame them. After all, a healthy and happy work force is a good work force.

The Managing Director tasked HR with encouraging us all to be healthier in 2017 in four ways – diet, physical health, mind and finance (although finance was a little bit weird in my opinion).

For diet, we were encouraged to eat healthily and they even provided fruit every Monday and brought in nutritionists to chat to anybody that was interested about the benefits of eating good stuff. I wasn’t interested in this because I actually eat very healthily, in my opinion (apart from the odd burger, full English and beer or two).

For finance, we were encouraged to look after our cash and assets with a newsletter pointing out the long term benefits of savings, spending wisely and generally not blowing all of your cash on stupid things. Again, I wasn’t interested because I think that myself and Mrs PM are okay at the moment. Besides, if they want to improve my financial well-being they can bloody well give me a massive pay increase for having to endure some of the shit I have to endure.

For health, various people who exercise were asked to give seminars about their chosen discipline, including kayaking, rock climbing, marathon running and even pole-dancing. Groups of people clubbed together and took on a challenge of trying to walk in excess of 10.000 steps a day, competing against each other for fun. I walk two and a quarter miles every lunchtime of every working day and I am proud to say that I think I walk the most during a working day. HR were very interested in this and asked me to take a group of people on my walk at lunchtime.

I politely refused. Why?

Because the whole point of my going for a walk is to escape work. I pound the streets around my office with tiny little jukebox blasting out pop, rock and heavy metal, to allow me to enter the zone of contemplation and drift into my own little world, expunging, temporarily at least, any work related issues that may induce stress. It works for me and the last thing I want is a group of people bitching about work to further ruin my day.

However, the final topic – the mind – intrigued me.

HR arranged a seminar, inviting a woman to tell us all about mindfulness. This was the only seminar I attended. I am fascinated with the power of the mind and the ability and capability of certain people to use their mind to escape and control other physical attributes. Having been a victim of stress many years ago, and having delved recently into things like hypnosis (for fun initially) I was keen to open my mind to new techniques to support my positive outlook this year.

When I started looking at hypnosis, my purpose was to write a mocking blog post about how stupid people were if they thought that listening to somebody appeal to their subconscious mind would in any way help them to escape their vices, or change their behaviour. When I actually tried it, I was amazed that the effect of being hypnotised can actually vaguely work. Not that I do this now, of course, but I no longer mock those who believe in at as an alternative therapy.

The same principle applies to mindfulness, which is a similar concept. Basically, mindfulness is a form of meditation. The woman who presented the seminar gave us an overview of mindfulness and told us that she had actually used it to help her get through a major health scare a few years ago. She had been diagnosed with cancer and thankfully she is now fully fit again. To help support her mind during those trying times, she used meditation techniques and this helped her cope.

Again, I had a healthy scepticism about it but opened my mind to the possibilities. It wasn’t until we actually tried meditating that I was surprised. She asked us to sit up straight, focus on our breathing and allow our minds to wander, quelling any other thoughts and allowing our minds to settle and drift. There were about twelve of us in the room and I suddenly found myself just listening to her as she guided us through thinking about our own bodies. What struck me was the clock in the room. That may sound weird but I have been in that room many times and never sensed the clock. All I could hear was the gentle ticking. After a few minutes, she spoke again and asked us how we felt. It was almost like being hypnotised and I actually felt really good.

Mindfulness had taken me to the same zone that I enter when walking at lunchtime. It was the same as listening to a favourite song and allowing the gentle melody to take you on a journey through your own imagination.

I actually loved it.

And you are reading the words of a man who, in the past, has taken such things with a pinch of salt and only feigned interest when using it as ammunition to mock people on a medium such as this.

Actually, the key thing is that you don’t have to go away and hide to give this a go – and you can achieve a calmer demeanour in as little as two minutes.

There was a little bit of Buddhist nonsense attached to it, which I have dismissed, but the principle is sound and I would recommend giving it a go, particularly when news about Brexit or Donald Trump appears on your telly box.

The Hypnotist

I almost called this post “Hypnotism Is Rubbish”.

Almost!

Many years ago I saw a hypnotist live at a Butlins Holiday Camp in Minehead. I was about 16 years old.

I sat in the audience astounded at the antics of the poor victims of this hypnotist, who invited members of the audience onto the stage and, after a little bit of jiggery pokery (he spoke to each of them in almost silent tones, rendering them all “in a trance”), told each of them what they were going to do when he gave them a signal.

One guy was convinced that everybody else in the room had a very disturbing smell that made him feel sick.

Another guy could only speak utter gibberish. The woman next to him was the only person in the entire world who understood the gibberish he spoke and could translate it for our benefit.

Another guy believed he was Tarzan and, on cue, he would run to the stage wherever he was and bang his chest and scream in the greatest Johnny Weissmuller fashion – just like this:

I laughed at their antics but didn’t believe a word of it.

Many years later in the United States, I saw a show where another hypnotist made a young guy think he was Michael Jackson, and a young woman believe she was Madonna. I believed this even less because the two people concerned were rampant extroverts, keen to show off their singing talents; each managed a fairly good impersonation of the artist they were “forced” to portray.

My cynicism told me that they had planned just to be up on stage and show off to anybody who was willing to watch and believe.

I left that show in America utterly convinced that hypnotism, like the so-called ability to communicate with the dead, was an utter farce, a sham – in other words complete rubbish.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago, and I was having a discussion about hypnotism with Mrs PM, who has a mind that is much more open to this kind of thing than mine. I was a total sceptic and argued that hypnotism was totally fake, based solely on my experience of people using it as entertainment.

My argument was that the kind of people who are willing to volunteer to go on stage to be humiliated by a hypnotist are more likely to be outgoing and gregarious enough to love the attention and the laughs generated by their antics on stage.

Mrs PM agreed – well kind of – but then started talking about the real benefits of using hypnotherapy to persuade people to change their ways; not in an overtly and spontaneous way like the victims of a hypnotic entertainer – but in a gradual way by appealing to your inner self.

Of course, I dismissed this and forgot about it - until recently.

I am fascinated by a British entertainer called Derren Brown who seems to be able to achieve unbelievable feats of mind reading and magic with a fair amount of hypnotism to assist his showmanship.

Some of his amazing feats have involved putting people into trances and convincing them that something is happening, when in fact it isn’t. And while I am not fully convinced, I’ve pushed the cynic within me aside and done a little investigation and this has coincided with another little experiment I have been conducting, an experiment to find ways of helping me relax more.

Since almost being overwhelmed by stress many years ago, I have tried to eliminate as much pressure and stress from my life as I can.  I read somewhere that listening to soothing, mellow or relaxing music can help and I’ve noticed that quite a few work colleagues listen to music while they are working.

It seems that listening to classical music or mellow chillout songs can actually help to combat stress. Purely for research purposes, I created a playlist on my iPod which I call Chillout, which is full of peaceful and calming tunes such as:

Bach – Air on a G String 

Enya – Shepherd Moons  

Steven Wilson – Insurgentes  

I started listening to this playlist at a volume just loud enough to eliminate the noise around me but quiet enough for my conscious mind to still be able to function.

I found myself able to work and effectively shut out the world around me such as the background noise in the office, the constant clatter of keyboards and my work colleagues discussing problems, solutions and generally chatting to one another about all and sundry.

It worked but it seemed to work at a subconscious level and, while I was aware that beautiful and relaxing music was playing in my ears, I found, bizarrely, that I was becoming slightly more productive and definitely more relaxed.

And I have continued listening to music as I work. I find that if I need to really concentrate then I have to do so without music; nevertheless, mundane tasks become much easier to tolerate with soothing music in the background.

Taking this a stage further, I also listen to the same playlist in bed sometimes in order to totally relax and drift off to sleep.

It works.

What has this got to do with hypnosis?

Well I read that hypnosis, like soothing music, works on a subconscious level. Your subconscious mind is the driving force behind most of your behaviour and in order to change that behaviour, somebody needs to appeal to your subconscious mind and persuade it to react differently.

A good example I read about discussed phobias. I am terrified of spiders. It is a stupid irrational fear that is driven by my subconscious mind in order to protect me from these evil eight-legged arachnids.

In theory, hypnotherapy could help me to overcome this fear by persuading my subconscious mind that spiders are mostly harmless creatures that cannot hurt me, ergo there is no need to far them. In order to do this, a hypnotist would strip away the influence of my conscious mind by putting me into a trance and suggesting to my subconscious mind that I should not fear spiders.

In my case, he would have to remind me that I don’t live in Australia, where the spiders could actually harm me.

I have actually pursued this further, dear reader, by downloading a free application on my smartphone that has several free hypnosis mp3 tracks.

And I have listened to them.

I think they work.

The tracks I have tried are simply relaxation techniques. The hypnotist speaks very slowly in a really deep and soothing voice, with a barely perceptible musical soundtrack, telling me to slowly close my eyes, breathe deeply and drift off into a trance.

I lay in bed at the end of a hard day and listened to the Deep Relaxation track. I was aware of what the hypnotist was saying but I genuinely found myself lost in thought, almost dreaming. I could still hear his voice yet it seemed like I was floating away in a sea of calm. I saw myself on a beach watching the sun set as waves lapped at my feet. All thought of work and stress dissipated, as instructed by the calming voice.

I fell asleep.

And every time I have tried it, I have fallen asleep and woken up feeling extremely relaxed.

I have concluded therefore that perhaps there is something in this hypnotism fad. I have yet to try anything that would actually involve a lifestyle change, like eliminating my fear of heights, for example (mainly because I am a cheapskate and don’t want to pay money for a hypnotist to tell my subconscious mind that I will not fall from a great height) but my scepticism is waning.

I can, at least for the moment, tell you that hypnotism is not rubbish – or at least it doesn’t seem to be rubbish – yet!

I plan to continue my research (within the constraints of not actually paying anybody any cash) and keep you posted.

Perhaps one day I will be able to climb to the top of the Burj Khalifa, just like Tom Cruise did, and scream:

“THANK YOU HYPNOTISM! YOU HAVE CURED MY FEAR OF HEIGHTS!”
And then, for some inexplicable reason, I will rip off my shirt, bang my chest and scream “ME TARZAN; YOU JANE; HIM BOY!!!” in my best Johnny Weissmuller voice.