Once embarked on a path of research into the essential nature of ourselves, it quickly becomes evident that we are much more than we seem to be. Access to our intuition opens us to the vast dimensions of our inner worlds. Reconciliation with our deepest selves, with our souls, delivers us to the experience of our capacity to perceive and understand the timeless realms of the universe existing beyond the concrete world of daily life. Going beyond the sense of ourselves as beings defined solely through reference to a body and personality, we find our place in a larger framework of existence.
The inner work of meditation and contemplation in which we engage brings a dimension of sharpened lucidity and heightened sensitivity into our fundamental way of perceiving reality. Exploration into the nature of our intuitive selves reveals to us the many faces of our personalities, at the same time leading us to the eventual discovery of our original face. Within our souls we find evidence of the long path of evolution we have already traveled and we can trace the path with our consciousness, reliving past lives, remembering past deaths, and recalling the process of rebirth we have experienced many, many times.
As we purify the body/mind and raise our consciousness with the regular practice of inner contemplation, we release ourselves from the stories of the past, a liberation that touches both our current lives and the lives of our previous incarnations. As we become more and more familiar with the function of our energetic bodies, we discover that we can have ready access to past life memories which are recorded and stored in the chakra system of our subtle energy body.
Healing ourselves with light in a certain chakra during sessions of meditation, we can find ourselves confronted with the scenario of an unresolved past life problem that has certain relevance to the actual state of being of the chakra we are in the process of healing. Accepting, exploring, and releasing the feelings evoked by the material that has been evoked in the session, we effectively liberate ourselves from old unfinished business that has a karmic weight attached to it. Freeing ourselves from the past, we are more available to the present moment and more able to assume our current responsibilities with a light heart and clear consciousness.
In the same way that we can access information about past lives within ourselves, we can use our intuition to give past-life readings to others. Once we have learned how to gain access to the deepness of others and enter into communication with their deepness, we can explore past incarnations, researching the relationship between current life difficulties and unresolved trauma from previous lives.
Once we have identified the precise nature of the problem being experienced in this life, we invite our intuitive awareness to reveal the past incarnation that has relevance to the current problem. We are able to perceive the life scenario in which the other was “entangled” and the elements which have remained unresolved. Very often, we find scenarios in which complex relational problems were difficult to clarify and solve, thus remaining unresolved during a period of several lifetimes. Eventually, the wheel of evolutionary movement brings the beings involved in the unresolved problem back into a personal relationship in their current lives. A similar type of problem establishes itself in the relationship and all parties are faced with the possibility of resolving and going beyond their habitual manner of relating and interacting.
Guided by the wisdom and perspective of the intuition, it is possible to help others perceive and understand the difficult dynamics they are facing in relationships with others. From a perspective of evolution, it becomes possible to consider problems as necessary challenges for the development of the soul. Accepting the problem as an occasion for personal growth, it is easier to accept the other with whom we are experiencing difficulties in this life and to whom we were attached in another.
Healing a relationship problem with another allows us to continue to heal our relationship with ourselves. Freeing ourselves from the tangled web of the unfinished business of past lives assists us to come to relationships in our current life with greater availability. When we are weighed down in the deepness of our being with unresolved past-life problems, we have a tendency to react unconsciously because of the unfinished business from the past resting between ourselves and the other. Unknown to ourselves, we react in a habitual manner to the other, even though we have no logical reason for doing so in this life. Behavior is expressed that cannot be explained and is often quite baffling. Strong emotions are evoked that have no concrete bearing on the actual present-life situation.
• Case Study •
I receive a client who has recently met and fallen in love with a man. This couple have decided to build their lives together. It is a period of pleasure and joy for them both—a new beginning full of promise, plans, and a rich and unfolding affair of the heart. However, my client is possessed by a terrible foreboding fear that she will lose her man. Her fear is inconsistent with the atmosphere of the actual situation. Every time they part, even if the parting will only be for a short period of time, she becomes possessed by the certainty that her lover is disappearing forever. She finds herself clinging to him, afraid to let him go, terrified that he will abandon her and never return. Her fear is illogical. Her lover wants nothing more than to spend as much time as possible with her. The situation is difficult to manage, creating drama and conflict within the relationship and evoking a terrible suffering in my client, who is facing the problem of her fear of abandonment without much success.
When we explore the problem in an individual session and I give her an intuitive past-life reading, I find her living in medieval England in a small village. She is a young woman and has known her current love in this past life as a beloved with whom she would like to live her life. However, before they can establish a life together, her boyfriend is conscripted and must leave to help defend the people of the region from invaders.
He never returns. Brokenhearted she awaits him, but she is never to see him again. Even though his death in battle is eventually confirmed, she cannot accept his death. She continues to await his return, mourning his absence, but never his death. With the passing of time she resumes her life, but she never frees herself from the sorrow of his absence and the sense of having been abandoned.
In the session, we work with this information and the correspondence it has to the feelings she is experiencing in this life. The paradox of deep joy and fear she is living in relationship to her boyfriend takes on a deeper sense. She recognizes her fear of abandonment as having been a common thread throughout several meaningful relationships in her life. By being able to grieve for her lost love of another life, she is at last able to let go of this old trauma and become available to live the pleasure of the reunion she is experiencing through their renewed meeting.
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Awareness of past lives and the capacity to engage in a transformational work about them, can also assist us to heal ourselves of irrational fears and phobias which we cannot explain.
I have always been afraid of the water. When I was a youngster, we often went to the beach on the weekends and for extended holidays. My brothers and sisters would plunge into the water with total abandon, while I stayed at the edge watching them play among themselves. I was anxious, worried for their safety, and incapable of abandoning myself to the water. The sight of the waves rolling into the shore filled me with a terrible trepidation that I could not even talk about with my parents. Even the sight of a flowing river frightened me if I imagined I must go and bathe in it. Eventually, with great resistance and after much emotional drama on my part, I learned to swim. With time, I developed an appreciation of the sea and learned to enjoy the benefits of swimming and playing in water. However, fear of the water has always stayed with me. I do not swim at night and I am rarely comfortable in deep water where I cannot see the bottom. Determined not to be controlled by my fear, I have spent a large amount of time in the water, even learning to scuba dive in order to master this irrational terror.
Once I began to investigate my past lives, I discovered several different occasions when I have died by drowning. I have drowned in rivers, ponds, oceans, and small streams. The water has captured and kept me on many occasions. Understanding my capacity as a soul to lose my life in water, I can better understand the enormous respect I have for the power of water to take life. Knowing my relationship with water, I can better understand the young girl I was, hesitating at the shoreline, observing my family playing so freely in the water as I worried about the waves claiming them. Reexperiencing the various deaths by drowning that I have experienced as a soul, has allowed me to develop a quality of trust and certainty about my desire to live in this life.
At the same time, I have recontacted the feeling of letting go into death, the surrender of physical life into immortality. The experience of death, rebirth, and death has shown me an aspect of myself that is beyond physical death. This experience helps me in daily life to let go of the past and to let old experiences and ideas I have about myself and others die.
Understanding that the relationship I have with water is unique to me and that I have a certain tendency to meet death in this way, I can better accept the timidity I feel about abandoning myself to the ocean. Using my fear of water as a catalyst for transformation, I have been able to recall my experiences of life after death—of the passage spent between lives, when I returned to light to integrate the experiences of life and prepare for my next incarnation.
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Our past lives form part of the mysterious mosaic of who we are now in this current life. Access to past-life memories helps us to reassemble our sense of ourselves as diverse and multifaceted beings. Knowing where we come from and the path we have already traveled helps us to understand our true origins in light. The capacity to explore deaths we have already lived and in fact “survived,” convinces us of our essentially immortal nature. The large perspective of ourselves that we gain from an exploration of past lives assists us in developing wisdom and tolerance, toward ourselves and toward others.
Finding the way to relive death, birth, and rebirth consciously opens our awareness to other planes of consciousness. The cycles of death and rebirth that we encounter in the deepness of our soul, lead us to a growing awareness of the existence of light as a healing, welcoming intelligence that accompanies us through both life and so-called death. We begin to perceive the operation of a guidance that follows our evolutionary path and to which we can refer for help, comfort and insight. The study of past lives and reincarnation leads us to the discovery of our spiritual guides, beings who assist us in our passages from life to death and back to life again, and who accompany us throughout all the adventures of our lives.