Everyday Woo (Volume 7)
The problem with personality tests. Plus, I try a past life regression technique and get really weirded out...but curious enough to try it again.
Everyday Woo is a place for the woo curious to learn a little more about tarot and spirituality in a not-too-serious way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…
✨ A Non-Standardized Spiritual Journey
I love a Buzzfeed quiz as much as the next millennial. I fall for them every. single. time.
Do I want to know my dream job, solely based on how I cut my grilled cheese sandwich (corner to corner, in case you were wondering)? Duh. I love clicking a few boxes and getting a succinct, straightforward quantification of myself. Why yes, I do want to go to the Netherlands!
I feel seen by Buzzfeed quizzes. I’m joking. Kinda.
Lately, I’ve noticed this penchant to standardize myself trickle into other, more serious areas of my life. It’s quite trendy to collect personality tests: your big 3 in astrology, your Myers-Briggs, your Enneagram type. I imagine them lined up on a sash, Girl Scouts style, announcing exactly who I am to the world.
Here I am. This is me, neatly encapsulated. Easily digestible. Understood.
While sitting in therapy last week, I lamented to my (very patient) therapist about how frustrated I felt with not understanding exactly why my brain works the way it works. Why does it have these irrational thoughts? What’s causing them?
I stopped short of asking what I really wanted to ask: Can I explain this away with a test of some sorts? Can I fill in a few bubbles, click a few boxes and receive an answer for why I am the way I am?
My therapist looked at me and said, “Katie, sometimes, there just isn’t a reason. Can you be okay with that?”
I had to pause at that. Could I? And what did it mean that I was looking literally everywhere else for answers besides the best resource: myself?
The thing is, understanding who we are isn’t easy to achieve. It’s not answering 6 simple questions and receiving your personalized results in your inbox. It’s lifelong, difficult work. It requires time. Patience. And, most importantly, trust.
It’s fun to have a test or reading or method of analysis reflect yourself right back to you. Whether it’s astrology, tarot or human design material, it feels magical to know that you are not alone: there are others who have the same patterns and predispositions. We are all connected, a part of a larger, infinitely complex web.
But.
There are some threads of ourselves that simply cannot be quantified. These are the parts of ourselves that are completely unique to us and our journey. We may never completely understand the why. But that does not mean that we give up and resign ourselves to blindly feeling our way through life.
We do not choose to stay in the shadow side of this unknowable energy. We embrace it and love that it is not easily understood. We seek not to understand it completely but rather, to understand it a little more each time we dive deeply into ourselves and our purpose.
Self knowledge is the work. It has been the work, and it always will be the work. It requires a lifelong commitment. No easy, 10-question quiz for uncovering our why. And I’d venture to say that, at times, clinging too tightly to these quantifiable labels can limit or stifle our growth into the unique, beautiful, highest version of ourselves.
When we decide to pursue enlightenment, each day, we choose to be seekers, wonderers, thinkers and dreamers. And we recognize that the self that we know today will grow. What we knew to be true about ourselves five years ago may no longer be authentic because we have changed. We make peace with that. We continue to uncover the pieces of ourselves that are hidden.
This journey, this human experience is a study in beauty and in pain. I’m thankful to be on the path alongside you.
Here’s to not knowing it all but always, always seeking to understand more each day.
✨ A Skeptic’s Experience With Past Life Regression
I am a library fangirl. I think it’s absolutely wild that I can go to a place and get pretty much any book FOR FREE. In my opinion, it’s one of society’s greatest inventions. Thanks, Ben Franklin.
Because of this undying love, I put approximately 34,000 books on hold every week at the library. They range in topics (and honestly, sometimes I forget what I’ve put on hold and it’s a ~surprise~ when I go to pick them up), but lately, I’ve been checking out titles that deal with spirituality, tarot, spirit guides and other metaphysical topics.
I can’t remember where I first heard about Brian Weiss’s books (maybe the (FULL) Circle Leader group chat?), but I put his book Mirrors of Time: Using Regression for Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Healing on my list. When I picked it up from the library, I immediately noticed two things:
It is a very small book. Like it’s the size of a mousepad and has ~100 pages.
I actively hated the cover. It reminded me of those “inspirational” posters you’d see hung up in school counselor’s offices in the ‘90s.
But I was curious about regression and past life experiences (and also highly skeptical), and since the book was so short, I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a read.
Once I began, I quickly realized that this book was meant to explain his regression meditation technique that was featured on the CD (woah, throwback) that was supposed to be included with the book. Which was, of course, missing.
I didn’t let that deter me! I have GRIT. A quick Google search lead me to this video, which was a recording of Weiss leading a similar session with an audience (side note: I cracked up at the visual included with the video. Reminds me of the fever dream fantasy folders I had in middle school, which always seemed to feature unicorns and mystical lands bathed in moonlight).
The video was 30 minutes long. It was Friday night and I had no plans. So, I lit some candles, turned off my lights per his suggestion, and pressed play.
And y’all? I’m still skeptical. But what I experienced was…something.
The gist of the session was that Weiss, who is a trained psychiatrist, leads his listeners through progressively deeper realms of relaxation in order to access memories that lay buried in our psyches but are usually inaccessible due to the outside chatter we experience in our day-to-day lives. He takes you back to your childhood and the moment of your birth and asks you to access a memory from each stage of your present life.
The session culminates by guiding you to access a memory from a past life. Weiss encourages you to suspend judgement and analysis of what comes up. He says it’s easy to “logic away” what appears in your mind but asks you to stay with it, even if it seems wild or bizarre. He shares that he, too, was super skeptical of this technique, but now that he’s seen its healing powers firsthand (once folks tap into a past life, it often helps them make sense of present hurts), he said the evidence was overwhelming enough to make him focus his entire career and practice around past life regression.
My take? I’m still processing what I experienced, but I will say that I had a tangible, bodily reaction to this step in the meditation. I’m talking physical sensations and temperature shifts. It was WEIRD. And I definitely saw something that brought me understanding around the fear of abandonment that I’ve carried with me for my whole life.
I’m not quite ready to write about it yet (and I want to try the technique a few more times), but suffice it to say: color me curious. Curious enough to do it again.
Have you ever worked with your past lives? What’s your take? Total bullshit or untapped source of understanding? Let me know.
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