Spiritually Healing The Emotional After-Effects Of Abortion

Susan, a woman in her fifties, came to one of my workshops and asked to work with the process called Healing Relations with the Unborn. She related the following story of an abortion she had undergone as a young woman, with lingering painful after-effects.

I had been out of MBA school for about a year and was enjoying my first job. At a party I attended with my roommate Cindy I met a darling guy named Chuck. We connected immediately and started dating. He was the first person I had ever fallen in love with; so much so, that I fully opened myself to him. Although I was very responsible about birth control and had the most cutting-edge IUD in place, within a couple of months I was pregnant.

During the same week that I found out I was pregnant, I was also promoted to a position that would require monthly travel to New York City. My first trip was to be in two weeks. There was no question in my mind what I had to do. First, my parents would totally freak out if they knew I was pregnant. And second, it would really impact my ability to step up to the responsibilities of my new job. So without considering any other options, I scheduled an abortion.

Abortion had only been legal in the US for a couple of years and I was a huge proponent of a woman’s right to make this choice if she felt this was best for her. I let Chuck know about the pregnancy and what I was going to do. After recovering from the shock, he was supportive.

The day before Thanksgiving in 1976, my roommate Cindy took me to get the abortion. It was a horrible experience! It felt like the life force was being sucked out of me. Afterwards, I started having a lot of emotional issues that went untreated. I innately knew that the child had been a boy and I kept talking about him. Chuck couldn’t handle it and about five months later broke up with me. That made it even worse.

It wasn’t until I got with the man I married that I began to start processing the pain of this experience out of my system. But even after thirty years, there was still lingering pain, grief, and guilt surrounding this choice I had made. When Ralph said we were going to work with healing the after-effects of abortion, all my systems went on high alert.


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New Insights And Understandings

In preparation for the healing process, we first did a light-fire meditation focused in the heart-center and invoked the ancestors and guiding spirits of all the people involved. When circumstances permitted, small amounts of entheogenic substance would also be used during this process to amplify perception and bring about new insights and understandings. We invoked the triad consisting of the connected souls of mother, father, and unborn (aborted) child. All three members of this sacred triad, along with myself as the guide, formed a cross of light that connects all participants with enlightened awareness and empathy.

I then suggested that Susan ask the aborted child’s gender--which she had already intuited was a boy. I suggested that, once the contact is made, the parent soul ask the aborted child soul if it is holding any negativity or judgment about the abortion.

I have guided and assisted such a process many times and without exception I have found that the unborn souls do not hold a grudge--they seem to come from a place that recognizes life in a human body as a temporary embodied phase in the infinite existence of an immortal soul. Recognizing this truth in the oneness of the three immortal souls, allows the person to forgive themselves at the personality level--a process that the souls involved, in their beingness beyond time, have long completed.

Statements Of Empowerment

In our divination process, I then asked Susan to say, either inwardly or out loud, repeating after me, the following statements, addressing the soul of the child that was not born. I accept you now as my child, and you may have me as your mother (or father). I am sorry that it didn’t work out. I am giving you now and holding for you always a place in my heart. Bert Hellinger, from whose work in family constellation therapy I adapted these statements, calls them “statements of empowerment.” They affirm the reality of the soul connection while acknowledging the grief and guilt at the personal level.

Susan wrote me in a letter afterwards that

I was about half way through internally saying these things, weeping all the while, when a young man’s voice stopped me. He said, ‘Hello, my name is Rob. It is OK, Susan. My contract was not with you. I am with Dad.’

I was overjoyed to have finally connected directly to this being that I had carried inside of me and to know that he was OK. It was very healing and meaningful to me. But I was somewhat confused over his statement. Chuck had kept in touch periodically over the years and I knew he did not have a child named Rob. So what could this mean?

It wasn’t until several years later, when he and I were talking, that the truth was revealed. Chuck was sharing with me aspects of his life, telling me about his third wife, Patty, and he mentioned that he was very close to one of her sons. He then said ‘his name is Rob.’ I was floored but had the sense to ask about Rob’s age and date of birth. Rob had been conceived by Patty and her first husband two months after I had had my abortion. It wouldn’t be until years later that Chuck and Rob would come together to fulfill their father-son contract--whatever that was.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Park Street Press,
an imprint of Inner Traditions Inc. www.innertraditions.com
©2017 by Ralph Metzner. All Rights Reserved.

Article Source

Overtones and Undercurrents: Spirituality, Reincarnation, and Ancestor Influence in Entheogenic Psychotherapy
by Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.

Overtones and Undercurrents: Spirituality, Reincarnation, and Ancestor Influence in Entheogenic Psychotherapy By Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.Drawing on more than 50 years’ experience as a transpersonal psychotherapist, Ralph Metzner explores the spiritual overtones, karmic undercurrents, and ancestral connections that shape our individual psychologies. Through the healing experiences he describes, Metzner reveals how attending to karmic undercurrents and spiritual overtones can often bring about a peaceful resolution to long-standing distress and spiritual alienation.

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About the Author

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.Ralph Metzner obtained his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Harvard University, where he collaborated with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert on psychedelic research. He is the author of more than 100 articles as well as several books, including The Unfolding Self and Green Psychology. He is a psychotherapist in private practice and Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, as well as President and co-founder of the Green Earth Foundation.

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