Yesterday's Interesting Shadows

Well, I had my past life regression today. It was also my first experience with hypnosis. I got interested in that in my teens, and discovered that I could hypnotize people pretty easily. Never was on the receiving end. Hannah, who is doing these as training, settled me in a comfy chair and I certainly relaxed deeply as she spoke softly, directing my attention to eyes, arm, getting more relaxed. She took me down steps into a 'hall of records' took me to a door, had me open it to a past life, and asked me questions about what I was seeing, then prompted me to move on to the next significant scene. I had no conscious thought about 'what should my character do next'. I just sort of 'looked' and waited to see things --which did take shape -- but how much this was the part of me that creates 'lives' every day and how much might have been a real memory of a past life I could not tell you. But it was very cool. :-) I ended up with a servant girl in northern England somewhere, took her to some city or other in the early industrial revolution to earn money spinning, steerage to New York and a lover named Samuel, his death, and her suicide in a river, probably the East River. This is an improbable story I could easily make up with all the details, but I have to say that when I reported Samuel's death, I really wept and the feeling of grief was really intense. So...I don't know. Reality is an infinitely large and intricate puzzle. :-) I'm glad I went. Whether it was my muse speaking or a real past life, it was vivid. But that's what it is to be a writer, yes? Living other lives? Yours or someone else's.