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In her open letter to Barak Obama, Alice Walker points out that personal happiness is a primary responsibility for Obama. She says:

A primary responsibility that you do have, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate.

One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

This is a point for us all to remember. It’s very easy to get caught up in the problems and stresses of life and lose sight that it’s only when we have a well-balanced and happy frame of mind that we can effect change. Or this is a selfish point of view?

What do you think?
Is Alice Walker right or not?

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Do you sometimes yearn for a simple life? A life where time seems to flow slower. A life that is spacious where you have time to think, or even to dream?

I did. Until I realized that my life is how I create it. And that I can change my life if I want to.

I can live a simple life. Or I can live a busy life that includes spacious times. Here are five changes that worked for me. I now enjoy life more, am less stressed, and sleep better. I’m a more relaxed companion and friend and more fun to be with. Read the rest of this entry »

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Dr. Michael Newton was a traditional psychotherapist opposed to past life regression work when a client spontaneously entered what seemed like a past life regression.

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The man had complained about a persistent pain in his side that doctors couldn’t diagnose or treat. In the regression, the man found himself in the battle of Somme of World War I  on the British side. He was dying of a bajonet wound. Newton, a keen scholar of martial history immediately asked him to look at the division patch on his arm. The client could describe it correctly. That was the clincher for Newton. But was it proof a past life?

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I’m in two minds about past life regression because on one hand I have reservations about the validity of so-called past life experiences. On the other hand, I’m happen to be one of the people who may have had a past life experience. (I’ll tell you about it further down).
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Past life regression

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This is a form of therapy where people allegedly access previous lives in the course of hypnosis. It’s a controversial form of treatment and there are two main questions one could ask. One is: are these really previous lives? The other: is this therapeutic intervention useful?

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Are past life regression memories real?

They certainly feel real to the person experiencing them and seem convincing to therapists who evoke them. Whilst I have some reservations about the validity of this therapy, it’s fair to say that there are respected psychotherapists and psychiatrists amongst the PLR (Past Life Regression) therapists, as well as people whos qualifications are more doubtful.

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One of the leading developers of PLR therapy was Brian L. Weiss, M.D., the Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. The well-known psychotherapist Dr. Michael Newton explains why he became a PLR therapist in this video.

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I’m not sure whether past life regression is a useful tool for well-being and mental health. I would hate to see people whose psyche is already fragile burdened with more life-times of trauma. To heal the wounds of this life seems to be more than enough for many people.
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Prof. Ian Stevenson’s work, whom I introduced in my article on reincarnation, is often quoted by therapists as supporting evidence for the validity of Past Life Regression. Actually, he was dead set against it. In an article he voiced strong concerns: Read the rest of this entry »