Light Amidst Darkness: A Real Life Account

In 2017, my partner – he wants to be called “Declan” here – underwent regression hypnotherapy to explore an earlier life that he led, for the purposes of deep healing and learning.  We felt called to openly share his experiences.  His current health challenges means he’s often too exhausted to concentrate on a long and focused task such as writing.  One night during dinner, I received Divine inspiration to conduct an interview with him.  So I did and here’s the conversation transcribed into text.

The truth we wish to bring to light is that reincarnation happens and we can access and learn from these memories.

Me:

So what was your intention for the hypnotherapy session?

Declan:

Well, I was facing a lot of difficulty in my life – health issues that were tied, largely in part to recent and past psychological difficulties. I wanted to try and gain a deeper insight into myself, learn something about myself.  One of the key intentions set by my guide was to go to a life that could provide me with insight and strength into overcoming my present challenges.

Me:

Can you describe how your therapist guided you through the hypnosis?

Declan:

I went into first, a relaxing state, then visualized a pleasant sort of field area at the edge of a forest on a warm spring day, walking into a house. Just taking a look around the house, it was a nice, pleasant rustic summer cabin.  And once the mood of the relaxation had been set, the descent process to go deeper into my mind or even I guess my soul in this case, began.  We went down a few flights of stairs into deeper basement levels.  I think it was an escalator specifically.  And then once we had gotten somewhat deep into these different sub layers of the building, I was then taken to an elevator that was tailored for me. It was fit for royalty, a very plush elevator and it would go even deeper. So layers upon layers of relaxation and then descent at the same time to eventually get me into this other realm where I could see another life.

Me:

So it sounds like you were guided through basically your imagination and a visualization of a relaxing space.

Declan:

Yeah, it was guided meditation illustrated by my imagination.

Me:

What did you first notice when you opened up out of this relaxation, when you started to see in your mind’s eye?

Declan:

The first thing I noticed was that I was on a train and I could feel it coursing along the rail. And it felt old timey, like earlier part of the 20th century. I was guided to look around my environment and I noticed how there was a nice red sort of velvet carpet. On the floor and the wall, the paneling was a nice, dark oak color, so it was felt like an upper class train. And I saw some of the people in the car that I was sharing with, they were reserved, quiet, keeping to themselves. They were stately, like a lot of people looking like folk that you might expect to see on Downton Abbey. Some men wearing top hats.  Then I was guided to look at myself and I was first told to look at my feet where I saw heavy jackboots.  Like these are large boots fit for going through mud that is easily a foot and a half deep. So very heavy military boots. And I could see I was wearing dark grayish greenish trousers and a green military coat. And that’s when my heart started pounding because I had an inclination as to where this was going. And I very slowly turned to my left arm, where I saw the infamous flag of the Nazi Party on my left arm.

Me:

So how did that make you feel?

Declan:

There was some anxiety and apprehension. And my heart was pounding even more at this point because like, okay, so I’m in league with some very controversial characters to say the least.

Me:

What was your name and your age?

Declan:

My name was Hans.  Age felt like early 30s.

Me:

Can you describe what else you saw on this train?

Declan:

Things heated up, to say the least. There was suddenly loud machine gunfire ripping through the train and people were frantically screaming because an Allied Spitfire was strafing the train. And so I immediately stood up with my rifle and started yelling at all the people in the train to get down low on the floor. Some of them listened. Some of them were too panicked to listen and I started to become angry with them and was shouting, very loudly, bellowing “Get down, get down!”  There’s no way we can really do much else other than just hunker down and hope that the bullets that were mostly going through the windows would miss them if they were low on the ground.

That was when one of them grazed my arm, which stung a lot and ripped my sleeve.  My arm was mostly okay but there was a fair bit of blood coursing down my arm because it took maybe the first millimeter off my arm or so.

Me:

You’re in this regression and you can feel the pain of that bullet?

Declan:

I can feel the pain of that bullet.  Yeah, like, I didn’t feel it in my physical body, but I can feel it like a very vivid dream.  Yeah. It’s strange. It’s like you feel it and yet you don’t. It’s the strange duality of being in a physical body that’s undergoing regression. It’s like you’re in two different places at once simultaneously.

Me:

What else happened after that train scene?

Declan:

My therapist wanted to take me back to before the war broke out, to a time when things were a bit calmer. And I noticed as I was skipping back, like going through a sort of rewind, that there were many segments that were just blacked out as if my soul was saying no, you’re not going to see that.

And we then settled in what felt like earlier 30s and I was at a rally.  The predominant colors that I could process mentally were brown and orange. In the large tent that we’re in, its draped walls were a muddy brown.  The orange: just the glow of the optimistic enthusiasm that we could feel. 

We listened to a very charismatic man at the front, yes…with his short mustache like Charlie Chaplin, and his black hair, slicked to the side.  He spoke to us about building the nation, rebuilding it and with it bringing about strong communities and wealth for everyone. A new golden age; a golden era for the German people!  It just felt so warm and optimistic and euphoric. We were thinking yes, we are going forward into a good era. There will be no more humiliation, no more poverty for us. Life will be good. It felt wonderful.

Me:

What was your family life like at this point?

Declan:

I was taken forward to what felt like maybe a few years after that to Christmastime at my house. And again, it felt very warm, a feeling of an orange glow about the place. White was also a predominant color; white, from the snow outside and the icing on a gingerbread house that we had freshly decorated in the family room.  The rich smells of Christmas dinner simmering, wafting in from the kitchen. It was a nice sizable brick kitchen.

Me:

You could smell this?

Declan:

I could smell yeah, I couldn’t put my finger on one thing distinctly but I got the impression of vegetables, beef and probably gravy, and possibly some sort of fruitcake.  A lot of good, nutritious, rich foods and a feeling of gratitude and satisfaction that I had these things for my family because of the new state that was providing for us and giving us good work, good meaningful work that allowed us to provide for our families.

And I was so thrilled with my wonderful wife. 

Me:

What’s her name?

Declan:

She was named Helga.  She looked after the home very well, as being a soldier I was away at work for long stretches at a time.  She kept the home running in good order, not just as a housewife, but as a carpenter as well. She knew carpentry, so she kept the house in good repair. I didn’t need to worry about fixing things when I came home.

Me:

Did you have any kids?

Declan:

Yeah. Helga, Jr., our daughter with sort of orangish blond hair and a son, Peter with more brownish, lightly blonde hair.

And I remember in particular, turning my attention towards my parents who looked quite frail. They had raised me through previous decades of poverty and they had sacrificed a great deal to make sure that I grew up strong and healthy. While I was physically robust, muscular, from a good nutritious diet growing up, they sacrificed their own intake so they were thin. And they had also worked very long hours, I believe in a factory for not the greatest wages back then. I was so happy to say to them, “You don’t need to worry about working or making any more sacrifice. The new order is taking over. Life will be plentiful and bountiful and you can now relax as my generation under our new leadership sees to it that life will be good and prosperous from here on for you and for the children and everyone in our community.”

Me:

Sounds like a very hopeful time.

Declan:

It was great.  The Fuhrer was providing for us. We saw him as this benevolent grandfather who had rescued the nation. 

Me:

Did you get a sense then that war was coming? You’re in the early 1930s?

Declan:

Well, the Christmastime felt later, mid to late 30s.  I didn’t get a feeling of outright warfare.  I knew there was some strong military action being taken, like we were taking back our land. But I didn’t see outright war coming. We didn’t want war with the other strong nations of Europe that we respected. We saw that as counterproductive.

Me:

And then after the view of the family at Christmastime, were you then brought forward to your military role now?

Declan:

We then skipped forward and there were more blacked out stuff; I can only wonder what happened in between. Actually, there were some other scenes from before the war.  Within a year or two after that Christmas scene, there was a scene of traveling to Switzerland with my family, with my wife and the children and just admiring the beauty of the Alps: the crisp air, the crisp water that we could drink from streams, appreciating the beauty of our region of Europe and enjoying some sandwiches that we had packed in a picnic basket and taken with us up into the mountains.  I remember pleasantly being surprised by a park ranger coming by and we invited him to join us so we sat down with a new friend and shared our food with him. And he spoke German as well.  That was very pleasant. 

After that, I was taken forward to a scene where I was, I believe, in Western Europe with my platoon of paratroopers. I stood up in the cockpit with the pilot. And that was an odd moment for me because, as Hans, I was getting this inkling that I was a part of, spiritually speaking, something bigger.  I was just transfixed on the sky with this great feeling of there’s something bigger and greater beyond the sky, the world that I feel tethered to but what is it? And I was just standing there, squinting at the sky blinking, asking “What? What is it that I feel tethered to?”

Military action was happening at that point but it was not overly strenuous. My unit was in good shape. Unfortunately when I went to uh…this part is hard to talk about. 

< Here, Declan broke down sobbing and spoke through tears describing the rest of the scenes.  He wanted to continue talking though.  We discussed afterwards that it felt like the trauma of this past life still haunted him and it needed to be processed.  He said he felt much lighter after the big cry. >

When the war was going much more badly years forward, we were deployed to stop an Allied advance, and at this point my unit was comprised mostly of teenagers.  We dropped into what seemed like a wide but shallow ditch.  There was not much cover.  The British were bearing down on us, their tanks had been modified with .50 caliber machine guns.  They kept coming forward and they tore us apart in minutes. I was yelling at my troops to stay down but they were like scared children. They didn’t have enough training or discipline to hold the line. And they were just panicking.  Every time they got up, they would just get torn to pieces.  I couldn’t keep them under control. 

We were done for at that point.  They were terrified. 

<Heavy sobbing>

Even the SS officer who’d been attached to us – I despised him – even he was losing his mind. He was only in his early 20s.  At that point I think I had been wounded because I remember being on my back and not being able to move well.

British soldiers, demanding we just lay down our arms.  They took us in as prisoners.

Me:

Please take a moment. 

Declan:

During the regression at that point, even I fell out of my chair balling, and my guide had to refocus me and get me centered into the chair.  Even now, I’m lightheaded just from going through that.

I’m not sure what happened to my unit after that. 

Me:

The War took a great toll on all sides.  We take for granted how young the soldiers were.  They were so young.

<Now we’re both crying.>

Declan:

I mean, they were basically pulling recruits from the Hitler Youth and telling them that they were soldiers now. I did my best to inspire them and to keep them in order and say it will be alright. But they just didn’t have enough training and discipline to keep themselves intact.  I think the oldest guy in my unit at that point, aside from that SS guy, was 17.

And even then, when we were taken to a, it felt like an aircraft or vehicle hangar, the British were good about it. I mean, they saw we were traumatized and wounded. So they did the best they could to tend to us; the SS guy was completely beside himself.  At the same time, the British were still trying to pump us questions gently.  He needed information about what they were walking into. 

And that moment was quite strange because it felt like it was crossing over and bleeding in with another past life.  I could feel and hear troops marching outside, but at the same time I could hear the rattling of ship lines from small personal sailing boats that were set up outside which felt like another lifetime, possibly even my own lifetime because I had a hangar, an Old World War II aircraft hangar that had been converted into a sailing center. So it’s like the two worlds were blending over, like two roads had reached an intersection. And the troops marching outside – I was left wondering, are those modern troops? Are they Napoleonic troops because it felt like such a long column of soldiers marching on foot that it seemed awry.

And I went forward from there.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I survived my wounds because I remember finding myself in a calm, late dusk, early nighttime kind of place with an orange horizon at the late stages of a sunset all around the perimeter.  The ground in the distance was black from lack of illumination.  I’m just sitting on a large flat boulder with gravel nearby me with a sort of blue hue over it, as I looked at an orange-singed wound that had gone right through me, possibly from one of the .50 caliber shells.  Those guns are designed to tear people to pieces; they’re designed to take down aircraft. 

I saw the Grim Reaper standing there, looking boredm resting his hands and his jaw on the top of his scythe. As he leaned on it like a large walking stick, it was like he was feeling impatient for us to come in, that it was taking awhile.

Me:

Are you with anyone else?

Declan:

Yeah, there were dozens of other Germans.  Like it was some rallying point for the dead.

I remember being my spirit, taken up as a child.  I think I might have been even wearing lederhosen, being taken up to a spacecraft in orbit. Talking to this being that was made of half energy, half matter. It was here but not here; it phased in and out of existence.  And it was questioning what was going on down there. It was furious.  What humanity was doing to itself! 

I couldn’t help but as a child, cry. I felt very sad, like I had been scolded. The being wasn’t angry at me directly, but it was furious; it was shouting. 

I don’t know what happened to my family after that, unfortunately.

Me:

Why do you think you were shown this lifetime?

Declan:

Well, Hans was a very caring person but he was also very strong.  Very resolute.  His hands were like shovels; he was such a big guy.  And I took inspiration from him in his ability to stand up to seemingly insurmountable odds.  For his ability to stand up to bullshit.  There are a lot of people in my life that I’ve had to contend with that have pulled very inappropriate stunts. They’ve justified it with flat out bullshit arguments with conniving, Machiavellian like ways of being and knowing that in this day and age of peace and plenty, that they can get away with it.  They live in an age of generous law and order. By comparison to what I went through in that other life, we have a generous, spacious and patient legal system, and a lot of people take advantage of that.  They take advantage of our societal tolerance and patience to exploit the various systems that make up our liberal democracy. And I’ve been exploited through that. 

But Hans, if he saw people doing that he would not stand for it. He was not above pushing them into a corner and saying, “How dare you do that?”  He could turn into a Kodiak grizzly of a human being if he needed to.

Me:

Since that regression happened, have you felt more assertive in your relationships and your boundaries with people? 

Declan:

I’ve felt more empowered.  I’ve held better boundaries. Like, I keep thinking of a castle wall when I think of him.  He was like a living fortress and I feel that in me now. I can feel his energy sometimes when dealing with bullshit situations. And I can feel him saying no.  I can feel his angry German energy <chuckles>.

Me:

This is interesting because this lifetime took place in the 30s and 40s, so pretty recent.  If you’re looking at Earth’s timeline – linear timeline – that means roughly 40 years passed before you reincarnated into your current lifetime.

Did you have any childhood memories or even just notions of being attached to things that are German?

Declan:

Yeah, as a child, my mum remarked about how sometimes militant or militaristic my inclinations were.  In early grade school, I remember discussing the first Iraq war, where Bush Sr. invaded Iraq to liberate Kuwait and the teacher sat us down about on an exercise to talk about how we can resolve this with words. And I was almost putting my fist into my open hand saying, “No, we need to invade and restore order. We cannot tolerate this insolence from Saddam Hussein, we will show them because we are mighty and we are strong.” And the teacher’s like, “No, we have to resolve this with words.” And I said, “No, words clearly do not work on people like that. We will bring the power to them and we will show them how and why they were wrong.” Which was very much in line with the politics of the government Hans worked for.

I remember looking at my childhood drawing book and seeing a grand court with a judge raised up on a high platform and guards at the side of the room.

Me:

Nuremberg?

Declan:

No, this was a people’s National Court, I think, because there was a bright spotlight shining down on a single person in a dark room with no jury, just a grand judge and armed guards – a very intimidating fascist looking courtroom.

And in another drawing, I have a massive transport craft carrying hundreds of people to a remote prison facility. And I felt bad when they all had unhappy faces. So as a child, I changed them all to have smiley faces, which didn’t really fix the situation at all; these people were being taken away in a large, massive flying vehicle to a remote prison facility.

Me:

Okay, so let’s go back just for a moment to that regression.  Last question: were you aware of what was happening to the Jewish population in the regression itself?

Declan:

In the regression itself, no.  It’s possible that in some of the blacked out scenes that there were atrocities and I fear the possibility of being involved in that. But at the same time with the blackout, I was told that those were segments that I didn’t need to see because they would do more harm than good.

Me:

Is there anything else that, looking back, makes sense now?  Things are falling into place?

Declan:

I was really good friends in my youth with a group of German kids, and I had one Japanese friend who was my best friend. 

Me:

Interesting.

Declan:

Yeah, I hate to admit it but as a kid I was a little bit racist.

Me:

It’s okay.  It’s good to be honest.

Declan:

I didn’t like being around brown people and I had a friend who wanted me to come over to his house and I kept saying, “No, I just don’t want to hang out with you.”  I was only okay with my Japanese friend at the time in terms of non-whites.  I loved German baked goods, like stollen. I love stollen and I love lyoner meat.  I got into German music too.  I love the guttural feeling of the language; it felt so distinct and concise. And I also had a very black and white sense of justice as a kid and even into my 20s.

The last thing was…being around mentally handicapped people, I would literally get nauseous as a child; like, I felt disgust, unfortunately.

Me: Did you ever tell anybody that?

Declan:

I admitted it to my close friend and he seemed okay with it. Cuz as kids we set boundaries; we stay away from that which is different. I don’t think it impacted him quite the way it impacted me.

Me:

For people who are interested in past life regression, whether for healing, for learning or as a curiosity, is there any advice you have?

Declan:

It can definitely be an eye opener.  You can learn a lot about yourself, your soul’s untapped potential and energy but, it is not to be taken lightly because it can literally be mind-altering.  Doing this regression led to several regression dreams where I would see other parts of my life that I didn’t see during Hans’ regular regression during WWII.  Like, I would sometimes have dreams where I was being confronted by the SS which made me feel sick to my stomach, cuz they were not nice people. My loyalty was questioned.  I don’t know why.

But at the same time, that regression changed how I saw Adolf Hitler.  I still have to remind myself of my history book lessons of the kind of person he was because there’s a voice sometimes that still suggests that he was this kind grandfather of Germany.

Me:

Well, that’s the thing.  When you can be in someone else’s shoes – in this case – your own shoes but just in a different era, it’s difficult to judge people then because now you’re on that other side.  So that’s what these things can teach us – the duality of lifetimes.  We can be on both sides. 

When I feel empathic is when I can sense what the other person is feeling. I’ve felt their feelings before; I’ve been in their situation before, not necessarily in this lifetime, but in other ones.  All of those experiences build up and make you more understanding of the world.

Declan:

You’re more understanding, and sometimes you can even learn things about history. 

When I was looking at this regression, it was a minor point earlier on during the WWII phase, seeing large guns on wheels and the use of trains and horses.  My guide remarked, “Maybe you’re a lot older, maybe you have some parts of WWI.”  I thought, I don’t think so.  I then google searched it and saw how actually the common belief that Germany was, during WWII, this highly mechanized, industrial powerhouse, was the result of their propaganda ministry.  They did have yes, some very powerful modern vehicles but they still heavily relied on horses and wagons to move about large guns, and they used trains heavily.  I didn’t even know that from history class, it wasn’t until I saw this in my dreams that I started digging into it that I found out this stuff that isn’t even popular to bring up in Hollywood movies, cuz I guess it isn’t as good for the drama.

Me:

Well, thank you for sharing your experience.  It was very enlightening.

Declan:

You’re welcome.