In Another Life

The incomprehensible event that happened after my past-life regression hypnotherapy session that rocked my world

Mar 19, 2025

This article is part of an ongoing series of stories leading up to my experience with witches, reincarnation, past-lives, mediumship, psychics, and the paranormal. All of these have been beautiful, life-changing spiritual experiences that I’ve had after I left a lifetime of Evangelical Christianity, where any participation in these things was prohibited because they are considered “evil” and “demonic.” If you’re interested in following along, please consider subscribing.

This article is an immediate continuation of this post, What It Felt Like To Die.

To listen to me read this article, click play below.

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I’m glad I had the foresight to book a hotel room after the laborious emotional triathlon that was my past-life regression hypnotherapy session. Home was a four-hour drive away and talking to anyone about anything felt like a gargantuan task, much less talking about what I had just experienced. I needed some time in solitude and quiet to process what I just went through before I could talk to anyone. I couldn’t get to my room fast enough. When I finally did, I dropped everything on the floor and immediately got in the shower. The warm water pouring over my head and down my back helped regulate my racing mind and exhausted body. I was grateful for what I had just experienced, but its contents were heavy and the labor was immense.

After a long while, I emerged from the shower and laid comatose on the bed wrapped in a towel, too exhausted to be bothered to grab my clothes from my suitcase. I don’t know how long passed as I laid there in a daze, but my empty stomach begging for food finally snapped me into action. With my hair still wet, I threw on clothes and headed out the door to grab a pizza from a local restaurant to bring back to my room. For the rest of the evening, I nibbled on pizza and sat in silence without even music or entertainment. Just me, my pizza, and my thoughts before I finally passed out from exhaustion.

The drive home the next morning was no different. I drove in silence amongst my own thoughts. Only now, my thoughts about the experience had shifted. In the moment of hypnosis, everything feels real and visceral, like you’re reliving a real-life event in your mind’s eye, experiencing it as though you are still living in the moment. But as soon as the next day, I began gaslighting myself to believe I made the entire thing up like a child playing pretend. I felt like I was crazy, having made up the entire story in my head as if I were sitting at a computer writing a piece of fiction. And by the time the four hours had passed and I made it home, I felt like a complete fool. I spent years in charismatic evangelical church spaces that manipulated your emotions to get you to drink the Kool Aid, and I worked so diligently to make sure I didn’t fall for that kind of heightened emotional spirituality again in my deconstruction. But I convinced myself that’s what I had done — that I got swept up in the emotions of hypnotherapy.

When I got home, Aaron wanted to hear about what I experienced. “I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Maybe later.” I told him. And like I usually do when I feel overwhelmed, dysregulated, or sad — I took a bath.

I could feel myself falling into a depression as I laid there in the tub for a few hours. I tried to keep my head above the figurative water by looking back at the past several years that led me to the moment of booking this hypnotherapy session. I knew that everything on my path the few years prior led me to this experience. So why the hell was I depressed about it? I knew going into the experience that the important thing to take away from past-life regression hypnosis is that it’s not about whether the details are true and provable; it’s about the experience serving you toward your highest good in this life.

I was willing to experience whatever I needed to during my session. I surrendered my expectations. So why was I feeling so shitty and depressed about it afterward?

“Ok, Bob.” I said directly to my spirit guide.1 “I’m going to need some hard evidence to help me know I wasn’t making it up and just caught up in the emotions of it all.” I begged in all earnest, “You’ve got to give me something.” In asking him for this, I held on to a glimpse of hope that it wasn’t all for nothing — that there must have been some element of what I experienced that was true.

There was a knock on the bathroom door.

“I’d love to hear about what happened if you have bandwidth now.” said Aaron.

I was close to giving him a quick outline: I was a witch, they burned me at the stake, I met Bob. But before I had a chance to pull those words to the front of my mouth, I felt a pause vibrate through my whole being. I didn’t hear these words audibly, but I felt them deep in my spirit; “Do not give him any details about it. It’s not his time to hear about it.”

I had nothing to hide from him, and I felt a twinge of guilt for not giving him anything, especially since he had been so supportive leading up to the experience. But between my exhaustion and this strong nudge to keep it to myself, I stayed quiet.

“I would love to tell you,” I replied to Aaron. “But it was so much, I’m still processing it, and I am so damn tired that I can barely speak.” I assured him, “I’ll come back soon to tell you about it. I promise.”

His response was empathetic and patient. “I understand. I’m looking forward to it whenever you have space.” he said.

I planned to come back the next day to fill him in. But a day turned into a week. Life fell back into routine and trying to articulate such a profound experience felt harder the more time passed. I felt guilty, as though I was lying to him. But I also held space for myself that it felt like a monumental task trying to articulate something that was such a deeply profound experience. The experience crossed my daily thoughts, but besides the few facts and feelings I journaled, it still felt too big to try to articulate to Aaron.

One night a week later, I was reading in the lounge chair in the corner of our room while Aaron was sitting in the bed across from me. I was present with my book but I could feel Aaron’s gaze on me. I looked up at him to catch his eyes when he suddenly got up and walked over to me with urgency. He sat by my feet on the ottoman. “I have something I need to say to you.” he says, incredibly somber, tears beginning to pool in his eyes. I close my book and give him my full attention.

“I’m…” he stammers. “I’m sorry I let you die.”

My heart races in my chest. The top of my head begins to tingle. I shiver. I know exactly what he’s talking about.

“What did you just say?” I ask him.

Without hesitation he says again, “I said, I’m sorry that I let you die.”

Not wanting to ask any leading questions, I simply respond with, “What do you mean when you say that?”

He elaborates. “I was sitting there staring at you while you were reading and saw…I don’t know…a vision? And I felt this profound sadness and guilt.” He continues. “I felt like you were a witch in your past life and that you were burned and that I could have done something about it but I didn’t. I’m so sorry I let you die.” he says with sincerity.

I lean forward, grab his hands, and stare into his eyes. I feel deeply grounded.

“What else to you see? What else do you feel?” I ask. “Close your eyes, take several deep breaths, and describe to me exactly what you see and feel.” I direct him.

He follows my instruction without question. At the moment he closes his eyes, the tears that had been pooling fall down his cheeks. He takes a deep breath and pauses for a moment before he begins.

“There’s a crowd gathered in the middle of a small village. You’re being burned at the stake. I’m in the crowd, but I’m at the back. I want to save you, but I don’t want to get caught and I feel so guilty about not doing anything.” He responds.

I’m astonished. He is seeing and feeling exactly what I saw and felt from him in my hypnotherapy session.

“Where are you in relation to me?” I ask him to confirm for my own sake.

He takes a moment. “I’m in the back of the crowd toward your right.”

It’s the exact spot he was standing in my experience. I’m stunned. I feel as though I’m having an out-of-body experience in that moment, witnessing what’s happening between us from outside of myself. Yet, I’m deeply grounded and present in the moment with him.

“Who are you to me?” I ask.

“We’re friends. It’s not romantic but we have a deep, deep love for each other.” He cries. “You’re a free-spirited woman and you’re being punished for it. And I’m sorry I’m letting this happen to you.”

“Keep going.” I urge him.

“You’re speaking to me in your last moments. You’re telling me that it’s okay.” He lets out a sob. “You’re telling me that we’ll try again in another life.”

In another life.

It’s the exact words I said to him in my last moments.

“You asked for a sign that you didn’t make it all up,” I feel Bob say. This sign couldn’t have been more clear. I feel a deep sense of rest in the reassurance that I was given exactly what I needed to alleviate my doubts about my own experience.

I hold Aaron’s tear-stained face in my hands. He opens his eyes and I see the sorrow deep in his spirit. I’m overwhelmed with tenderness and love for him.

“You just saw what I saw during my session.” I tell him. “That was that life and it’s time to let that guilt go.” I continue. “This is this life. And this, my love, is another life.”

We both sit flabbergasted for a moment.

“Are you serious?!” Aaron asks.

“I have my session recorded.” I tell him. I hadn’t had the emotional and mental capacity to listen to it. But with urgency, we immediately listen to the entire recording of my session that confirms everything Aaron just said. We could barely speak, our awe was overwhelming.

I have never experienced anything like this in my waking life. I’ve had weird phenomena happen to me in other states and scenarios; When I was a young kid, I was dying from kidney failure and have memories of being outside of my body with an ethereal being. Then, when I had brain surgery at 30, I had an out of body experience while I was being operated on. But of those were while I was unconscious. While they were very real, they’re silhouetted through the lens of a dreamy, other-worldly state.

In this moment between me and Aaron I was awake, in my body, and fully grounded in the present moment, alert to what was happening and its significance. I couldn’t deny the profundity of this experience; Aaron had zero information about what happened in my session. And what gobsmacked me was that he experienced the same emotions I witnessed in him, he knew where he was standing in the crowd, and he said the exact phrase I said to him — “We’ll try again in another life.”

I asked for a sign and I got it. Loud and clear. However, I’ll acknowledge that having this experience together with Aaron still doesn’t prove that the events that happened in my past-life regression actually happened in that past life. That doesn’t matter. To focus on gathering data to prove my past life’s validity would be a meaningless endeavor. It’s focusing on the wrong thing. The point is to understand how what you encounter can serve its purpose in your present life.

What this experience with Aaron does prove, is that how I experienced my past-life regression session was real. That’s what matters. It’s not about whether or not the facts are true; It’s about how I can take what I experienced and use it to help me grow in my present life today.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned from this past-life regression experience:

My past-life regression helped remind me that strength lies in the face of rejection and adversity; Even if I’m standing all alone, I can be proud of myself as long as I know that I am standing in love, with my integrity intact.

It reinforced a theme of my deconstruction journey which is, it doesn’t matter if what we believe is “correct.” What matters is, does what we believe help us grow in love toward our fellow humans, ourselves, and every living thing on earth?

In the interactions I had with my dad in the past life, it helped me redefine my idea of safety. Safety at the expense of conformity is sentencing your soul to a slow, life-long death at the hands of a society that doesn’t care about you, your autonomy, or your well-being. So be your full, authentic, unmasked self, never sacrificing for a false sense of safety. Safety is always conditional based on your willingness to conform to societal rules that can change on a whim.

It grounded me in my strength as a woman. Even though patriarchy and misogyny have their boot on the throat of women even today, when we women show up unashamed, in all our power, we have the ability to create ripples of change in our immediate circles that will last for generations and will benefit the good of all women, now and in the future.

It reminds me that there is potential for people to change, despite immediate circumstances. As I looked into the faces of the mob that was murdering me in my past life, I spent most of my energy searching for the goodness in each of their souls, to try and reach the part of them that could be guided by that goodness. In the moment, I couldn’t find it, but I believed in it with every cell of my body. I knew it was in there, somewhere. I want to have that same intensity of hope today. I’m not naive, though; I’ve studied history with vigor. I pay attention to politics and world events. I know there are people who seem like their morals and integrity are so far gone, who continually cause harm through their evil actions because it benefits them. (In this moment I’m thinking of the current leadership in the U.S.) I’m not going to spend my energy running myself into the ground to change those minds and their systems that have been built over centuries and have no interest in reform. This level of change needed takes collective resistance.

What I can do, is show up in my immediate world, my community, and in my connections to be a person in my circle of influence who motivates others to evolve into a more loving, higher versions of themselves. Then those folks affect their circles, and then those circles affect their circles…and so on and so on.

This isn’t all sparkles and light; that would be spiritual bypassing. I’m talking about the spiritual practice of alchemy — using our experiences and emotions for soul-deep growth and transformation, both individually and collectively. By each of us showing up in our circles with integrity, grounded in our strengths, and partnered with love, we harness the power to change the energy of the collective to bring hope and joy among systems — and participants of those systems — intent on decimating the outliers.

And I’m grateful I listened to every nudge on my faith deconstruction path that led me to this experience. Past-life regression hypnotherapy and the event that happened with Aaron a week later, has been one of the most profound experiences I have had in my life.

It changed me on a cellular level.

The next year, our family took a trip to Greece and had the delight of touring Athens and the mountainous countryside of southern Greece. I had never traveled overseas before this trip. Aaron and I decided it would be a fun experience to get a tattoo as a souvenir when we go on big (to us) vacations like this. To commemorate our trip to Greece, we decided to get the phrase, “In another life” tattooed on our arms in Greek.2

h.b.makes