Past lives - a subject that can attract both intrigue and derision.
The idea of the very existence of an actual soul! That doesn’t die along with the temporal body upends some proscriptions of religion and Western science.
It means the often projected kingdom of heaven and hell may have no rigorous claim on you. It means there’s more to life than the five senses of physical reality.
And it can lead to an inevitable and sometimes uncomfortable reflection on the question of karma, an often debated and misrepresented concept but one that I view in its simplest form as trapped core emotions in the energy field, often leading to and underpinning unskillful and unkind words, thoughts and deeds.
For me personally I came to an awareness of past lives not through any belief in reincarnation per se but as a memory experience I encountered.
During an intense and fruitful period of my healing journey I began to heal through fully accepting my sensitivity and receptive side. Using the Emotion Code method of divine muscle testing I began sensing imagery that held resonance of an older time…an inner-sense of a deeper cause to an emotion I was able to finally fully feel in own my body.
This for me was a major first step into past life work and it was very instinctive. Dr Bradley Nelson’s Emotion Code work (with its muscle testing techniques for releasing them) has been used around the world to great success but his key book doesn’t mention past lives or ancestral memories.
I encountered these memories after thoroughly releasing trapped emotions from this lifetime, a deeper soul sediment layer revealing itself beneath another.
And from that point I began to draw the dots of how connected each lifetime and the core relationships often are, that energy and frequency when left unattended accrues in the soul and that a loving non judgemental approach is essential.
(I would also add that exploring past live traumas in all their gory details may not serve you and could anchor in those highly addictive negative emotions - which the work of Dr Joe Dispenza has highlighted - further into your emotional-physiology).
The second way I experienced past life emotions and the notion of inherited karmic gifts was through psychic work, specifically receiving a reading from a gifted psychic (who was uncannily accurate on other areas of my life) who channelled I had abilities for symbolic palm reading and deeper energy healing skills.
Bear in mind at this point in my life having just left a social care background and very rational life as an environmental activist I had abs no practical interest in palm reading!
But somehow the air in the room changed as she said it.
And as time went on during massage therapy sessions I began to sense stories and emotional ‘imprints’ held in people’s bodies. During reiki energy healing I started noticing a hunch to open people’s palms, intuitively allowing my eyes to shift to a softer more peripheral focus and seeing symbols that I somehow knew how to interpret.
This was an old time ability I was re-remembering and feels so familiar now as if I had put down a task from long ago and simply returned to it.
The perception that past live awareness is all regression and karmic clearing doesn’t fully reveal the magical potential that awaits when we sense the deeper thread of our soul’s journey.
Go forth and explore!
Image on Unsplash by Jeremy Bishop