Have we lived before?
July 25th 2010 11:37
The concept of reincarnation causes many different reactions in people. For many, it is the corner stone of their spiritual beliefs and it is an everyday fact of life. For some, it is a complete anathema, a psychic idea that is just a load of nonsense. Some say they have had actual experiences of past lives in all sorts of ways, dreams, insights, memories, recognition of other people, skills and abilities they were not trained in. There are those whose religious beliefs deny reincarnation completely. A lot are ambivalent towards the idea, not wanting to explore it too deeply. And there are the very few who believe so strongly that they were someone famous in history, that this belief can take away their ability to live in the everyday world of their normal existence.
There are a number of world religions that have reincarnation as part of their teachings such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Eckankar. It is not a novel concept and has been gaining ground in mainstream thinking over the years.
Dr Ian Stevenson is a Professor of Psychiatry who has researched and written about numerous cases of children between 3 and 5 years old who have told about people they once were. His aim was to get empirical proof of reincarnation through researching children’s claims. Some recognised former places they lived and their relatives. Some remembered how they died in their previous lives. You can google The Reluctant Messenger.com and find out more about Dr Stevenson.
I got this information from Really Long Link
"Some of the children who have memories of a past life have strange birthmarks or physical deformities, which seem to come from the way the person died in the previous life. In a few cases Dr. Stevenson has been able to look up the autopsy records of the previous person, and match up the photographs showing how they died, with the child's birthmarks."
Another psychiatrist, Dr Michael Newton, has written 3 books about lives between incarnations: 'Journey of Souls', 'Destiny of Souls' and 'Life Between Lives'. He founded The Newton Institute where hypnotherapy is used to regress people to the stage before they were born into their current physical body. The books are very interesting and worth a read. Wikepedia gives this explanation of what Dr Newton did when he was still working with clients.
"Michael Newton's private practice in Los Angeles includes behavior modification and helping people get in touch with their spiritual selves. He has developed his own technique of Age regression through which he has managed to regress his clients beyond their past-life experiences. He is considered a pioneer in uncovering the afterlife (or the spiritual world), the outcomes of which have been compiled from his many years of clinical research of the soul memory of his clients."
There are authors who challenge thinking in religions which preach reincarnation is false, such as Christianity which preaches resurrection after physical death into the spirit body. One such writer is Elizabeth Clare who wrote "The Missing Link in Christianity". There are other authors writing in a similar vein. I am not here to challenge anyone’s beliefs. It’s a big world with many spiritual paths for people to follow. However, I am now writing from the perspective that reincarnation is a fact of life and death.
One reason I find Dr Stevenson’s research very interesting is because I heard my granddaughter talk about a past life experience in a very matter of fact way when she was nearly 3 that astounded her parents and delighted me. We were walking along a beach in Sydney, enjoying the warmth and getting the sand between our toes. She said: "Do you remember when I rescued you and Daddy from the rocks, Mummy?" She then proceeded to tell a story of a past life, when she was not a little girl and had saved the 2 souls who were now her parents from drowning, off the very coastline along which we were walking.
So what happens past the age of 5? Children go to playschool, kindergarten, primary school. Innocent trust in self gets challenged. We are made to conform to society’s codes of behaviour and beliefs. We simply forget to think like we did as children and that gentle connection with what we were before we came into this current existence is for the most part lost. But this is not totally a bad thing. Consider what could happen if every soul, brought into every life, everything that had gone before.
When the conscience is awakened and the subconscious is put into its dozing place, the ego and conscious are working on surviving every day. The spirit often takes a back seat and watches what happens. Remember, Soul is basically a happy entity, detached but aware. Soul is here for experience, to live, find out and learn. As the mind gains more and more control over the body, past life memories recede into the far distance. We are here in this lifetime to complete whatever we had decided to do before taking up residence in the current body. And as we all know, this can be pretty hard work much of the time.
Is there any point in knowing any past life experiences? Most definitely, yes. First of all, isn’t it just a relief to know that you are not confined to one lifetime to get things right? If you do make mistakes, there is the opportunity to fix it and do better in the next life. That may sound a bit simplistic and that explanation is, but it does offer the most basic reason for reincarnation. Everything we are today comes from who we were before, including behaviour, attitudes, thought patterns, habits. Each life we wanted to learn something else and more often than not, picked up some negative traits along the way. This keeps on going until the lifetime when we waken up to our true self.
You will have heard that phrase before: waken up to yourself. Until a person really does waken up to themself as being Soul, they’ll keep on returning, having experiences, fixing some things, undoing others, and so it goes. God gives all Souls free will to choose, and this includes the decision to stay where they are, keep coming back, have better lives and worse lives, until Soul wakens up. In every life, we are always given the opportunity and sometimes we wake up for a while and fall back again. A human life experience is just that, until Soul wakens up and does not allow the mind to remain in control. This demands conscious and deliberate spiritual effort. And you know what, it can be the greatest adventure and take a person places they never imagined possible.
How does reincarnation fit into all of this? Finding out who you were in previous lives can help you deal with situations you are in now. You can find out why you have pain and discomfort in certain parts of your body and begin a healing process. Knowledge of interactions with people in past lives can explain why they react to you in certain ways. With this knowledge, you can begin looking at the relationship in a new light, decide to work towards clearing up any outstanding issues, resolve something that you need not bring back to the next life.
Here is an exercise that you can try for yourself to investigate the possibility of a past life situation having an impact on this one. It requires you to calm the ever busy mind and use your imagination.
Get yourself into a quiet and calm space where you won’t be disturbed for about 30-40 minutes. Have something to write on and write with as you may want to write the experience down for future consideration. Get physically comfortable as suits you and let the physical body relax, maybe by doing some deep breathing and gradually let all the tension melt away. Some people hold a current problem in their minds before doing this exercise but that isn’t necessary.
Sing HU about 4-5 times to spiritualize your thoughts and take them away from the daily grind. Imagine you are in an amazing art gallery with corridors and corridors of floor to ceiling paintings. As you walk through looking at this wonderful art, you can feel yourself drawn in a certain direction, to a specific painting. You know exactly where to stop. There is a seat right in front of this painting which you sit on as you look at the people and events in the painting. You may find yourself sliding into the painting and becoming one of the characters. You may find yourself as an observer of events. You may even find yourself as both. As this experience runs its course, you will find yourself returning to full consciousness in your physical body.
I recommend writing everything down as soon as possible. Don’t try to analyse any of it as you do this. You can do dot points of what happened, what you felt, who you were, what you were wearing, people who were there, everything that you can remember. Later, you may find other insights come to you about this experience, connections with your current life situation.
Be open to all and any experiences. I have had past life experiences of being a murderer, of being killed, of being male and being female, of begin wealthy, of being poor, of being a soldier, of living long and sometimes very short lives. I have an understanding of situations in previous lives that caused me to behave in certain ways in this lifetime, ways that caused me to suffer. I learned that I was responsible for what had happened to me by making certain decisions. I understand why there are certain connections with members of my family, with friends and work colleagues. But most important of all for me has been the realisation that whatever happens to me in this lifetime, at some point I caused it, if not in this lifetime, then in another.
I wish you well in experimenting with this technique.
There are a number of world religions that have reincarnation as part of their teachings such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Eckankar. It is not a novel concept and has been gaining ground in mainstream thinking over the years.
Dr Ian Stevenson is a Professor of Psychiatry who has researched and written about numerous cases of children between 3 and 5 years old who have told about people they once were. His aim was to get empirical proof of reincarnation through researching children’s claims. Some recognised former places they lived and their relatives. Some remembered how they died in their previous lives. You can google The Reluctant Messenger.com and find out more about Dr Stevenson.
I got this information from Really Long Link
"Some of the children who have memories of a past life have strange birthmarks or physical deformities, which seem to come from the way the person died in the previous life. In a few cases Dr. Stevenson has been able to look up the autopsy records of the previous person, and match up the photographs showing how they died, with the child's birthmarks."
Another psychiatrist, Dr Michael Newton, has written 3 books about lives between incarnations: 'Journey of Souls', 'Destiny of Souls' and 'Life Between Lives'. He founded The Newton Institute where hypnotherapy is used to regress people to the stage before they were born into their current physical body. The books are very interesting and worth a read. Wikepedia gives this explanation of what Dr Newton did when he was still working with clients.
"Michael Newton's private practice in Los Angeles includes behavior modification and helping people get in touch with their spiritual selves. He has developed his own technique of Age regression through which he has managed to regress his clients beyond their past-life experiences. He is considered a pioneer in uncovering the afterlife (or the spiritual world), the outcomes of which have been compiled from his many years of clinical research of the soul memory of his clients."
There are authors who challenge thinking in religions which preach reincarnation is false, such as Christianity which preaches resurrection after physical death into the spirit body. One such writer is Elizabeth Clare who wrote "The Missing Link in Christianity". There are other authors writing in a similar vein. I am not here to challenge anyone’s beliefs. It’s a big world with many spiritual paths for people to follow. However, I am now writing from the perspective that reincarnation is a fact of life and death.
One reason I find Dr Stevenson’s research very interesting is because I heard my granddaughter talk about a past life experience in a very matter of fact way when she was nearly 3 that astounded her parents and delighted me. We were walking along a beach in Sydney, enjoying the warmth and getting the sand between our toes. She said: "Do you remember when I rescued you and Daddy from the rocks, Mummy?" She then proceeded to tell a story of a past life, when she was not a little girl and had saved the 2 souls who were now her parents from drowning, off the very coastline along which we were walking.
So what happens past the age of 5? Children go to playschool, kindergarten, primary school. Innocent trust in self gets challenged. We are made to conform to society’s codes of behaviour and beliefs. We simply forget to think like we did as children and that gentle connection with what we were before we came into this current existence is for the most part lost. But this is not totally a bad thing. Consider what could happen if every soul, brought into every life, everything that had gone before.
When the conscience is awakened and the subconscious is put into its dozing place, the ego and conscious are working on surviving every day. The spirit often takes a back seat and watches what happens. Remember, Soul is basically a happy entity, detached but aware. Soul is here for experience, to live, find out and learn. As the mind gains more and more control over the body, past life memories recede into the far distance. We are here in this lifetime to complete whatever we had decided to do before taking up residence in the current body. And as we all know, this can be pretty hard work much of the time.
Is there any point in knowing any past life experiences? Most definitely, yes. First of all, isn’t it just a relief to know that you are not confined to one lifetime to get things right? If you do make mistakes, there is the opportunity to fix it and do better in the next life. That may sound a bit simplistic and that explanation is, but it does offer the most basic reason for reincarnation. Everything we are today comes from who we were before, including behaviour, attitudes, thought patterns, habits. Each life we wanted to learn something else and more often than not, picked up some negative traits along the way. This keeps on going until the lifetime when we waken up to our true self.
You will have heard that phrase before: waken up to yourself. Until a person really does waken up to themself as being Soul, they’ll keep on returning, having experiences, fixing some things, undoing others, and so it goes. God gives all Souls free will to choose, and this includes the decision to stay where they are, keep coming back, have better lives and worse lives, until Soul wakens up. In every life, we are always given the opportunity and sometimes we wake up for a while and fall back again. A human life experience is just that, until Soul wakens up and does not allow the mind to remain in control. This demands conscious and deliberate spiritual effort. And you know what, it can be the greatest adventure and take a person places they never imagined possible.
How does reincarnation fit into all of this? Finding out who you were in previous lives can help you deal with situations you are in now. You can find out why you have pain and discomfort in certain parts of your body and begin a healing process. Knowledge of interactions with people in past lives can explain why they react to you in certain ways. With this knowledge, you can begin looking at the relationship in a new light, decide to work towards clearing up any outstanding issues, resolve something that you need not bring back to the next life.
Here is an exercise that you can try for yourself to investigate the possibility of a past life situation having an impact on this one. It requires you to calm the ever busy mind and use your imagination.
Get yourself into a quiet and calm space where you won’t be disturbed for about 30-40 minutes. Have something to write on and write with as you may want to write the experience down for future consideration. Get physically comfortable as suits you and let the physical body relax, maybe by doing some deep breathing and gradually let all the tension melt away. Some people hold a current problem in their minds before doing this exercise but that isn’t necessary.
Sing HU about 4-5 times to spiritualize your thoughts and take them away from the daily grind. Imagine you are in an amazing art gallery with corridors and corridors of floor to ceiling paintings. As you walk through looking at this wonderful art, you can feel yourself drawn in a certain direction, to a specific painting. You know exactly where to stop. There is a seat right in front of this painting which you sit on as you look at the people and events in the painting. You may find yourself sliding into the painting and becoming one of the characters. You may find yourself as an observer of events. You may even find yourself as both. As this experience runs its course, you will find yourself returning to full consciousness in your physical body.
I recommend writing everything down as soon as possible. Don’t try to analyse any of it as you do this. You can do dot points of what happened, what you felt, who you were, what you were wearing, people who were there, everything that you can remember. Later, you may find other insights come to you about this experience, connections with your current life situation.
Be open to all and any experiences. I have had past life experiences of being a murderer, of being killed, of being male and being female, of begin wealthy, of being poor, of being a soldier, of living long and sometimes very short lives. I have an understanding of situations in previous lives that caused me to behave in certain ways in this lifetime, ways that caused me to suffer. I learned that I was responsible for what had happened to me by making certain decisions. I understand why there are certain connections with members of my family, with friends and work colleagues. But most important of all for me has been the realisation that whatever happens to me in this lifetime, at some point I caused it, if not in this lifetime, then in another.
I wish you well in experimenting with this technique.
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