Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Past Lives in Present Time

Do you believe in past lives? Have you ever sensed that you lived before, felt a deep connection to a place or a person without having known either in this lifetime? If so, what do you feel it all means?

When I was a little girl, I had a deep awareness of my past lifetimes and their connection to the present. I also had a soul knowing of people and places before learning any details about either. But I did not have anyone with whom I could comfortably share these impressions.

As a child I felt profoundly connected to India, remembering my former life as a male devotee to God. I had other memories of living as a male slave in the deep southern United States who had a meaningful connection to God and worked hard to inspire those around me through song and praise. I also remembered living as an indigenous medicine woman, a midwife and healer in other lifetimes.

When I was eleven, I began to have visceral memories of having lived when Jesus walked the Earth. I felt as though I knew him intimately though I had been raised Jewish and knew very little about him. He often appeared in my dreams as a teaching friend who inspired me to share my soul's truth and live my life awake. In one dream, he was crying about what "religion had done to his message" and asked for my willingness to help him shift this.

I often tried to share my memories and intuitive sense about life within Sunday school or other venues, but never found these perceptions to be welcomed. My Sunday school teacher often told me to keep my ideas to my self and I wondered why anyone would feel threatened by my intuitive insights about reality. Over time, I learned early to keep my mouth shut about my intuitive experiences.

As a teenager I had a physical response when I entered a small cathedral in France. Electric currents ran throughout my body, my heart opened and my knees buckled. I remembering feeling as though I had returned 'home'. As I stood in the cathedral, with 15 other teenagers, flashes of my life as a cloistered nun appeared in my clairvoyant sight. I said "this place feels familiar". I wanted to kneel before God and kiss the floor! Don't worry - I didn't do it!

I have to confess that I find it presumptuous to say anything about the world of spirit or energy as "fact". Instead, it feels more authentic to describe my experience as an Intuitive Medium and invite others to do the same. Thus far, my intuitive encounters with spirit reveal that we exist as immutable souls living in a continuum of life experiences. Our souls are like the cells within the Body of God or a Higher Spiritual Source that is expanding through all life, including the human experience. We are souls and not the physical identities we come to perceive and believe in as "us". As a soul, we participate in this expansion by choosing to evolve through the human experience. We then select paths that serve the evolution of the whole and do so with a team of spiritual helpers. Yes, we are given extraordinary support for this creative endeavor. And we are not ever judged for how we respond to the physical world and subsequently create. We are continually supported in learning, growing and loving through this process.

When we remember past lives, it is because those memories are relevant to this life's journey. We are not meant to romanticize the past lives we have experienced, but to use the information to serve our understanding for this lifetime. What we remember is being worked on in this life.

When I reflect upon my past life in India, I see that I had been a strong male figure in a fairly affluent family. I was highly educated and greatly influenced by the English culture in which I had been raised. I became a lawyer and then grew increasingly dissatisfied with my materialistic life. I chose to release all of my worldly possessions and move into a temple to study and eventually teach. I also had a wife who honored my choices and devoted her life to our religious path. As I lay dying in bed, my wife sat in meditation over my body. After taking my last breath, my spirit rose from my body and I was greeted by several benevolent helping spirits. Just before leaving the room, I turned back and observed my beloved wife sitting in the quiet of meditation, noticing that her devotion to me was unshakable. In that moment before I departed, I realized that I had spent my entire adult life in search of God and in service to Him; but I had not valued my wife with the same love and devotion.

In college I met the person who was my wife in that Indian lifetime. The moment we met, I knew exactly who she was to me (though I never spoke of that knowing). She and I have been the best of friends for decades and from the moment we met, I knew my soul had created the opportunity to express what I had been unable to create in the past lifetime. My soul is healing through our friendship and continues to heal and evolve as I choose to express my devotion to God through compassion, caring and kindness to friends, family and others.

Whatever you may feel about your past lives, the messages these memories provide are relevant to how we apply their meaning in present time. Your power exists in the here and now. Whether you know of your past lives or simply experience this life as significant, what you choose to do with this moment is precisely how you evolve and expand your soul and the whole of creation.

When we recognize that we are eternal souls - we no longer identify with past lives. And we nor longer identify with our current or future lives. Instead, we experience our true essence as eternally evolving and expanding through every physical creation. We gain an understanding that our personality and current life serve as vehicle for an expansion. Our core essence is pure potential that is shaped by our intention and allowing. When we gain this insight, we recognize that our soul selected this body, time and place through which to grow, contribute and have fun! So how does view of yourself as a soul living in a continuum shift your present time concerns?