Welcome to SATURDAY SESSIONS # 3, featuring The Compromise. A patient undergoes hypnosis, returns to a past life and gets more than he bargained for! If you missed the first two pieces, it's about a guy whose life just keeps getting worse; he now attempts self-healing through past-life regression therapy.
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# 3
I stop suddenly to listen to the strains of the melancholic song. In a flash, I break into an uncontrollable fit of howling as I fall to my knees on the rug. In a vain effort to compose myself and behave like an adult, I apologise profusely to Lucy who is now clasping both of my trembling fists and trying to ease me gently back into the armchair. I try to rationalise it and tell her that I'm suffering from exhaustion, deciding in my own mind that it isn't an appropriate moment to start talking about my broken life and my cancer; I'm sure she hears more than enough of the misery of people's lives in her line of work. No, better not mention the death-sentence.
But the track, I ask her, the song, what was it? What is it? How could a song have such an overwhelming effect on me?
She fetches the CD jacket and shows it to me. Track seven, she says. It's a collection of songs, meditations and tunes from India. This one is in English, Long Time Sun, sung by Snatam Kaur, a love song, lullaby, even.
Lucy invites me to take my shoes off and lie down on the sofa. She briefly massages my aching shoulders. So much better now. You can rest here, she whispers, like a mother. You can listen to the song once again, if you like, before you're ready to leave. I thank her and ask her if she wouldn't mind continuing with the session another little bit, the hypnosis, the regression, just for a few minutes, just one last time, while the song is playing.
She selects track seven on the CD and plays it. I try to focus on the words of the lyrics, May the long time sun shine upon you while Lucy tells me to breathe deeply through my nose, up through the back of my lungs, holding for a while, and then out again, a long, long outbreath out... all love surround you...
I'm thinking of the man in the wheelchair, I'm thinking of Cathy, of Jason, of Maria. I feel so responsible for them all, responsible for whatever it is they are suffering in their lives. Why do I feel sorry for the man in the wheelchair? May the pure light... within you...guide you on your way...
Lucy's hypnotherapy has got to the bit about the stream of light, the golden stream of warm light which now spills down into my body, a warm shower of light, cascading downwards in slow motion, down through my head, my neck, and down, all the way down through my torso, my limbs and my toes, lifting me, suspending me...
Look around you, she is saying, what do you see?
I'm as light as a leaf.
What are you wearing? Look at your feet.
I'm falling.
Drifting.
(Continued next Saturday! You'll never believe where he ends up!)
Here's that song, by the way...
P.S. One of my other books, LAZARUS, is the extraordinary tale of a man who raises his son from the dead - but at a cost. It's published by Smashwords as an e-book. If you'd like a free copy, just pop me an e-mail and I'll be happy to send it to you!
Greg
Beautiful song, deep thougths
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