Like good health, enjoying a comfortable standard of living is our natural state. We take these things for granted when we have them because they are our birthright. When people have money problems it’s often because of past-life issues. Understanding how that works gives us the key to free ourselves from those difficulties.
The first step is to realize that although it may seem so, it’s not really the past-life experiences that affect us. It’s the attitudes that we adopt as a result of our experiences. Those beliefs become a semi-permanent part of our psyche. From then on they operate from the subconscious to create our lives and experiences – for better or for worse. For example, poverty often comes from a deep-seated belief that having money is not spiritual. But is this really true? It’s like saying that air is bad because bad people breathe it. Money is just a resource. It really is possible to be spiritual and well off at the same time.
When it’s in the right hands money can do a lot of good in the world. Unfortunately most of the people who’d use money in constructive, benevolent ways are busy keeping themselves poor because they believe this is the best way to be spiritual.
The three main past-life reasons that cause people to block the flow of abundance into their lives are: disillusion, religious beliefs and fears.
A wealthy past life can be a two-edged sword. It’s like having power – the test is learning how to handle it. For those who’ve never experienced a wealthy life before, some of the first pitfalls are the temptations to be selfish, greedy or obsessive about it.
At the end of every life we look back and review how we did. Although there are kindly guides to help us, the harshest judgements we’ll ever experience come from ourselves.
People who are ashamed of the way they handled wealth often decide that they don’t deserve to have it again. Disillusioned about themselves, they feel that they must now have lives of poverty and struggle. However, that solution also has its pitfalls.
This is because when we’ve condemned ourselves, we are quick to condemn others. When we can forgive ourselves, we can also forgive others. Judgement and punishment is not the best path to take – even if we think we deserve it.
It helps to see past-life mistakes as a natural part of the soul journey on this plane. We have all come here to learn and grow. It’s a tough school, and everyone stumbles and falls sometimes. The best way to get up and move forward again is to understand the real point of the lesson. Money issues are often about learning how to accept the natural abundance of life with grace, gratitude and good will.
Forgiving ourselves for past mistakes and taking a positive view about money will clear old blockages and allow our natural abundance to flow freely again.
This is with money itself – usually because it didn’t solve the problems we thought it would. At the end of that kind of life, people often decide that money isn’t worth having because it wasn’t the magic wand they expected it to be.
Then the next time they incarnate, they wonder why they live on the poor side of town and have problems paying their bills. At that point it becomes clear that poverty doesn’t solve any problems either – and may create even more. The best ladder out of that pit is a new, more positive way of thinking about money.
Dennis came for a regression to see if he could find out why he never had any money, however hard he worked. He went back to a past life in an English manor house. It had leaded windows, with medieval-looking banners and tapestries on the walls.
He was a boy of about 14 – and feeling very alone. His parents had gone. He never found out exactly why. He thought they’d displeased the king, and had been taken away because of that.
As the oldest boy, he inherited the mansion. But he felt cut off from everyone around him. It seemed to him that wealth had brought him nothing but misery and loneliness. He grew to hate it because of that.
Dennis had been carrying this dark experience unhealed within him ever since. In the second part of the session, I suggested that he visualize a place of healing where he could receive spiritual help about this. He said there were beings of light there. They swirled around him, murmuring soft words.
He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but knew it was healing in some way. As they did that, he began to realize that he’d decided to cut himself off from having money because he feared a repeat of that lonely medieval life.
When it was time to leave the place of healing, one of the light beings gave him a beautiful carved box. It had a large gold coin inside. This was a symbol of the abundance that he’d been denying himself – and which was now being restored.
For the last two thousand years and more, people who wanted to follow a serious spiritual path usually joined a dedicated community. Once there, they had few personal possessions, but their basic needs were covered.
At the beginning of the Piscean Age, over 2,000 years ago, the Judeo-Christian ascetic sect the Essenes emerged as one of the most influential of the spiritual groups. Their whole way of life was defined by the belief that poverty is spiritual.
Ever since then, that way has been central to Christianity. It applied not only to official monasteries and nunneries, but also to heretical groups like the Gnostics and the Cathars. Compared to the challenges and responsibilities of the world outside – especially in the darker times – a cloistered life had its attractions. It may have been spartan, but it offered security, protection, fellowship and a sense of higher purpose.
Many people on a spiritual path today have spent at least one life in this kind of community. They may have decided to go a more individual way this time. But the old ways of the cloister can still run deep within them.
Until they understand the syndrome, they may unconsciously replicate the conditions of those past lives in a kind of monastery-for-one. As a result, their basic needs will always be covered, but they won’t be able to afford luxuries.
Charlie came for a regression because he was curious about past-life people who might be in his life now. He went back to a life in a medieval monastery.
During that life the Abbot had treated him quite badly, but Charlie had suppressed his feelings about this. He thought he had to put up with unfair ways out of religious duty. Apart from that, he also had nowhere else to go.
As soon as he’d remembered that life, Charlie wanted to come out of the regression. He said he needed to talk about something.
Over a cup of coffee, he told me he’d suddenly realized that history was repeating itself. He was currently working as a gardener for a widower at a big country house. This man was the reincarnation of the unpleasant Abbot of his earlier life.
Charlie said that working there wasn’t as bad as it had been in the monastery, but he was still putting up with all kinds of extra, unpaid demands on his time.
‘I’ve been ignoring my negative feelings’, he said. ‘I thought I should be grateful that I have a nice place to work. But I can see now that I’ve been replaying the old story from the monastery. And I don’t have to do that any more.’
A couple of months later he told me that he’d successfully moved on to a better job, with more money and fairer conditions. He said that doing so felt weirdly frightening at first. But before long, his fear subsided and he started feeling happier than he’d been for a long time.
Life had put him back into a similar situation for a good reason. It was so that he could finally give that story a happy ending. At the same time, he was also able to release other monastic restrictions that had been holding him back – especially the belief that it’s unspiritual to earn money.
‘My inner monk finally realized it was OK to make money,’ he said. ‘And it feels great!’
Because money can be such an emotionally charged issue, it can give fear all kinds of excuses to move into our psyche. Those fears will then steer us onto paths that seem safe, but may not be the best paths to take. For example, we may decide that being well off is just too dangerous. In past lives, it may have attracted jealousy and resentment. It might even have sparked off personal attacks ranging from whispered spite to outright murder.
After a life like that, it seems safer to avoid having money altogether. But as Beverly found in her regression, this is not the answer.
‘I’m a young woman. I’ve got a big white wig on. I’m wearing a beautiful dress. It’s got pearls on it. I have a diamond necklace and bracelets.
‘I seem to be preparing for a party. I’m lighting candles and feeling happy and excited. Life is full of fun.’
After a long pause, Beverly described a very different scene. She was running somewhere. Her clothes were dirty. She’d lost everything. She knew her pursuers were about to catch her. She stumbled and fell face down on the ground. After that the memory ended.
We moved on to the next part of the session. She was able to access her inner guidance, and learned that this life had taken place during the French Revolution. In that life she was guillotined for having been wealthy. As a result, she became afraid ever to have money again. On top of that, she was always careful not to look well-off in any way.
When we discussed her next steps, she decided to start by wearing things that she’d never dared to before. She used to worry that they would attract the wrong kind of attention – but realized now that this was a needless fear.
I knew exactly what she meant, because as I mentioned in the main Introduction, my past life in the French Revolution had affected me in a similar way.
As Beverley and I discussed those experiences, it was strange to think that here were two people who’d been guillotined – now chatting about it in safety and comfort.
We never die. And we can recover from anything that life may throw at us. Most of the long-term damage comes from the negative beliefs that we have formed because of those experiences.
The best way to a happy life is to become aware of those effects – and then let them go. This is why knowing about past lives is so beneficial. Understanding where our blockages come from makes it easy to clear them away. We can then benefit from positive attitudes about everything – including money, wealth and abundance in all its forms.
There are other things you can do that will move the process along. The following 12 techniques will all help to increase your abundance and transform your life.
The ideal way of life is to have whatever material resources we need to be happy and comfortable, without sacrificing our inner values. Some of the main blocks that stop us achieving this are the negative conclusions we’ve come to because of past-life experiences.
Abundance issues can affect us in three main ways: