SATURDAY SESSIONS

SATURDAY SESSIONS kicks off this year with a new book about a guy who tries to cure his cancer through past life regression therapy. He finds himself caught up in a fascinating and exotic period of unrecorded history and emerges with startling revelations about our contemporary world.

I call it The Compromise.  A decision Jordan makes in the remote past threatens his life in the present. It was inspired by my friend, the mystic and spiritual teacher, Lilla Bek.

We'll post a little chunk of it every week! 📖

     

                                                          I


It's all very well to talk about past lives, says Cathy, but what about the present? What are you going to do about the present, Jordan?                              
I'd been trying to explain to Cathy that I'd found something on the internet relating to past lives, past life regression they call it. I told her I might do some therapy, that it would help me find my way. I'd just lost my job. Cathy knows I hated the job anyway, so it was all for the best they let me go. And a week ago they told me I'd six months to live. Obviously, I had to tell Cathy about the job;  but there's no way I was going to mention the death-sentence.                                                                                                                                               
I'm 44. Midway in life's journey. Maria left me for another man when I was thirty.  I loved her. I still do. We were in our late teens when Jason arrived.  He's in Australia now, working on some beach or other. We're not on speaking terms.                                                                                                                 
But forgive me, Dear Reader! It was never my intention to offload my miserable life on your unexpectant shoulders. You have troubles of your own. So enough about me for now, me and my life. Me and my current life, that is.                                                                                                                                                                                      
The theory about past life regression is that if you become conscious of some unresolved issue in one of your past lives, you may be able to correct it in this one, simply by becoming aware of it. The same pattern emerges in every one of your lives until you recognize it and correct it in your present life. If you don't correct it, you may become ill and die. And then it's back on the merry-go-round again, where the pattern remains until you finally address it.  If you ever do.                                                                                                         
Cathy is a nurse. She would never even want to understand any of this.  If I don't tell her about the illness, I don't have to tell her what I'm really up to, I can say I'm trying to find my way in life, not a way to stay alive, any other way in the wide world to stay alive except the slash, burn and poison way, our state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, twenty-first century approach to treating  a symptom called cancer.


                      II


Not that cancer, or any disease for that matter, is a pattern. It's just a symptom. The pattern is the cause. If you can recognize the pattern, you can deal with the symptom. At least, that's the theory.                                                                                      
Cells mutate at random and from time to time will make a mistake. They say we can produce up to ten million cancer cells every day that are zapped by the immune system. The main response of the immune system to tumours is to destroy them, using killer T-cells, millions and millions of cells, like clouds of bees swarming around a hive and passing information back and forth in response to the intrusion.  If your immune system is doing its job, none of those cancer cells will survive.                                                                                                                                                                  
I was in good health up to last week. I hadn't seen a doctor for years and as far as I could tell, my immune system was fine. I mean, I had none of the obvious tell-tale signs, you know, weight loss, yellowy eyes, dark pee, belly-ache, nausea.   But the CT scan, the MRI scan, the EUS and the awful ERC tests they did all the way down my throat ended up with a guy in a suit advising me to start getting my affairs in order.                                                                                                                                             
So, if cancer is a symptom, what is the cause?  Something that happened in my past. I feel it in my bones. I had a pretty normal upbringing, as far as I can remember. Of course, we never really know, do we? Until we start probing. Even birth itself is a trauma. But a feeling in my bones tells me that the cause lay somewhere in the past, the remote past, in another life. And there, too, lay the cure.                                                                                                                                                                        
Anyway, it may be completely irrelevant, but I'd just like to fill you in on what happens while I am at the bus-stop, all set for my appointment with the past-life regression therapist.  I have my storm umbrella with me because of the wind and the rain. On the other side of the street, a man is struggling in his battery-powered wheelchair. People rush past him to get out of the rain, even though he seems to be pleading for help. I raise my umbrella and try to cross the busy street. At last, I find a gap in the traffic and dash across to help him. From what I can gather, he is trying to get onto the adjoining footpath but is unable to do so because there's no dishing on the kerb. I ask him what the problem is but I can't understand a single word from the garbled sounds he is trying to articulate. He must have cerebral palsy or something, I don't know. I simply assume that he needs to get onto the path, so I fold my umbrella first, wheel him to the edge of the kerb and with all my strength, heave him in his heavy wheelchair up and onto the adjoining footpath.  As I catch my breath in the rain, he thumbs the little lever on the panel of the wheelchair. It lunges forward a little and then stops.  He tries the lever again but nothing happens. "The auld battery must be flat!" I say, with a forced smile, trying to lighten the situation. He's getting very wet so I raise the umbrella again over both of us and stand there with him, stuck on the footpath, the two of us motionless under the pounding rain. I ask him if there's anything else I can do. He looks up at me like a child. Then his head flops back again. A bus is approaching and about to pull in at the bus-stop across the street. I tell him it's my bus and that I have catch it and so I run, splashed by the speeding cars, dodging the beeping traffic until  I reach the bus-shelter.  As I board the bus to pay the driver, I manage to catch one last glimpse of him on the other side of the street through the window. He hasn't moved an inch in the pouring rain. Inside the bus, the windows are too wet and fogged up to look out, so I see a seat, the only seat free at the back of the bus and I sit, and as the tears flow down my cheeks, I'm thinking to myself that nobody will notice because of the rain on my face. You see, it was the way he looked, the man in the wheelchair, the spitting image of the Caravaggio in the National Art Gallery, Jesus in the garden being arrested in the moonlight, his face, that poignant expression of calm, unquestioning, child-like acceptance of what is, what was, and what must be. 
                                                                  

 (Continued next Saturday!)

P.S. Lazarus is the extraordinary tale of a man who raises his son from the dead - but at a cost. It's published as an e-book by Smashwords. If you'd like a free copy, just pop me an e-mail and I'll be happy to send it to you!

Greg

www.gregoryrosenstock.com