Reincarnation
demands of us all that one time we have been
all things: famous and insignificant, rich and poor, victim and
perpetrator, man and woman, all races, religions, and creeds.
This
teaches us respect and reverence for all ways of life… and yet, as we
evolve as Soul, we still retain our own preferences for certain
ways of being.
"So Who Really Is The ' I '
That is ' Me '?"
When we come into greater awareness of our
past lives, we understand that we are more than our current personality.
We see that we are infinite beings and we connect with the truth about
the totality of our existence.
We ask ourselves
"who really is the I that is me?"
Often the answer to this question leads us to
"revert to type". In other words, we return or revert to our core
preferences developed over many lives... past life reversion.
Recent Cases and Evidence of
Past Life Reversion
#1: TOTAL "SUDDEN" LIFESTYLE READJUSTMENT
Sometimes the forces from past lives are so powerful
that they cause an individual to radically uproot and transform their
lives.
Take the case of Cat Stevens. Born in England and making
his way into rock super-stardom, he "inexplicably" abandoned his thriving
musical career to pursue the path of Islam and the "simpler life of a
Moslem". Looking at the trail of incarnations for this Soul over many
past lifetimes, the radical change was really incarnating in England
and becoming a rock musician. When Stevens "converted" to Islam, he
was returning to a way of life that he had come to prefer over many
incarnations. Significantly, Stevens recognized this when he said all
one had to do was look at the lyrics to his songs to discern his yearning
for his "new" Islamic life.
There are many other instances of
this in recorded history. Mother Katherine Drexel left a life as a
Philadelphia debutante to found a religious order. Mother Elizabeth
Seton was a widow with children who converted to Catholicism and
founded religious schools around the world. The most famous reversion
was Gautama Buddha who was a prince and renounced everything for his
spirituality.
#2: REVERSION TO "NEW" RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
Conversion to "new" religious beliefs is most
common type of past life reversion.
Take the case of John Henry
Cardinal Newman. Born in England, he was raised as a member of the
Anglican faith and in his youth developed "a hatred of the Roman
Catholic Church and a personal conviction that the pope was the
anti-Christ." Scholarly and brilliant, Newman was ordained as a
deacon in the Anglican Church and gravitated toward academic pursuits
becoming a tutor at Oriel College.
There he became a prominent
figure in the "Oxford Movement" which was seeking to tie the Anglican
(English) religion more closely to Roman Catholicism. Unable to
accomplish this, Newman "decided to become a priest" and was ordained
by Pope Pius IX. Later he wrote "Apologia Pro Vita Sua" - Apology for
My Life - which documented his conversion. It was a case of past life
reversion for this Soul had a love for the Catholic Church deeply
ingrained in him through many lifetimes.
#3: REVERSION & GENDER IDENTIFICATION CONFLICTS
More common - but more hidden - are the gender
identification conflicts in the present life which originate in past
lives. For as we reincarnate through many lifetimes, most of us become
more comfortable with being one gender than the other. Gender identification
conflicts arise when we incarnate against our type. In other words, if we
have been predominantly female or male through many lives, we will feel very
uncomfortable when we incarnate into a life of the opposite gender.
Take the case of Renee Richards, formerly Dr. Richard Raskind. Renee
underwent hormonal therapy and then full genital surgery (a "sex change
operation") to have her outer physical appearance as a man correspond with
her inner emotional reality as a woman. This Soul had developed "her" preference
over many predominantly female lifetimes. Determined to continue her life
in all aspects, she won the right to play professional tennis as a woman
(he was formerly a tennis pro as a man).
Imagine the costs involved
with a sex change - physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and financially
- and you will understand how strong past life pulls can be.
#4: REVERSION & THE "SUDDEN" CAREER CHANGE
Careers usually carry on uninterrupted from life to
life. This is particularly true of those in the religious and healing
professions. Most people when they connect with their past life
awareness are often astonished by the "career coincidence".
Take the
case of Martin Luther who started out his career being a lawyer but
soon found that it did not suit him. "All of a sudden" he abandoned
the law to become a monk (his apocryphal story of promising his life
to God if he was spared from being killed by a thunderstorm being a
cover story). This Soul had been on the path of religion through most
of their incarnations (and was once Pope!). And so Luther returned to
the path he had walked in many lives... reverting to his past life
type.
#5: REVERSION & THE "SHOOTING STAR"
An uncommon type of career reversion is the "shooting
star" phenomenon. You know the story: a child, with an unusual talent,
born into circumstances seemingly designed to crush that talent into the
dust, overcomes all odds. Their talent takes them - like a shooting star
- from the depths of obscurity to the heights of fame.
For example,
Emlyn Williams ("The Corn is Green") born into an impoverished Welsh
mining town rises to become an internationally known play and screen
writer. Not surprising since he had been an acclaimed poet in many
previous lives.
Hollywood is full of shooting stars like Elvis
Presley, Jackie Gleason, Oprah Winfrey, and so on. Each of these
individuals had many past incarnations in related disciplines which
laid the groundwork for their success as "shooting stars".
#6: REVERSION & BIZARRE LIFESTYLE CHOICES
Another uncommon form of past life reversion concerns
bizarre lifestyle choices that are generally inexplicable to others around
the individual making them.
Take the case of Greta Garbo whose most
famous line "I want to be alone" became her life. Even after spending the
bulk of her life alone, there was still astonishment over her lifestyle choice
as shown in this article written after her death. "Turns out that Greta
Garbo did want to be alone. And that she said so not only publicly, on
screen, but privately to her obsessive admirer, Mercedes de Acosta."
This
is less astonishing when you consider that in many past lives Garbo had
been an anchorite, living alone in a single cell worshipping God and
glorying in her solitary lifestyle. So when Garbo had enough money
she was able to revert to type!
#7: REVERSION & OBSSESIVE HOARDING
Hoarding is not uncommon but obsessive hoarding
is. Take the most famous recorded case: the Collier brothers who "lived in
terror that they would be poor (after effect of the Great Depression),
that people would steal their possessions, and so they hoarded everything"
throwing nothing away.
"One brother booby-trapped the house with
stacks of newspapers and trip wires. Eventually, one brother became ill
and was an invalid who stayed on the second floor… One day the mobile
brother tripped a booby trap wire and was killed in the crush of newspapers.
Bereft of his caretaker, the other brother died of starvation."
Their problem started in a past life they shared, they were servants of
an Egyptian Pharoah who had them both gruesomely tortured over several
weeks for losing one scroll (later found) among thousands. This ingrained
in them a deep fear of letting anything go which was then intensified to
extremes by the Great Depression.
#8: REVERSION & THE INESCAPABLE OCD PATTERN
Hoarding is one of the many seemingly inescapable
obsessive compulsive patterns (OCD) that can be inherited from past lives.
Usually the patterns are very specific and relate very closely to a
specific past life incident.
For example, a man who is currently
compelled to straighten the fringe on his carpets was a servant who
had been regularly and severely beaten (eventually to death) for
failing to do so by his cruel master in a past life. Luckily, there is
present day help available (see "The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing:
Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder" by Judith Rapoport).
#9: REVERSION & THE MUNCHAUSEN SYNDROME
You have probably seen them on TV: the "Munchausen"
mothers who are addicted to the attention that their sick children bring
them and so secretly and deliberately work to keep their illnesses going.
Before you judge them too harshly, consider that their condition may be
an occupational hazard that is inherited from past lives.
Many of
them were former "court fools" whose job it was to attract attention of
their kings anyway they could. Failure was often fatal: lots of kings loved
to see the fools tossed out of castle windows to their death. When these
people reincarnate, they bring with them the craving for large scale and
continuous attention that can tragically lead to the torture and even
death of their own children.
Anorexia nervosa (people who starve themselves)
and self mutilation (people who inflict wounds on themselves) can also be
occupational hazards inherited from past lives. In medieval times, those
in religious orders expressed devoted to Christ through an ascetic lifestyle
that included starvation ("fasting"), self-inflicted torture ("mortification
of the flesh"), and sensory deprivation ("self-denial").
These
behaviors were applauded and those "successful" in taming their flesh
to death were revered as holy martyrs. That is why these behaviors are
so hard to break because of deep seated unconscious beliefs that this
self destruction is "good for the soul" (see "Holy Anorexia" by Rudolph
Bell). That is what contributed to depriving us all of the gentle
voice and amazing talent of Karen Carpenter.
#11: REVERSION: BULIMIA (BINGE-PURGE EATERS)
Past lives can also be the source of another
eating disorder: bulimia (people who binge eat and then purge the food
so that they will not gain weight). Take the most famous bulimic: Diana,
Princess of Wales. Certainly her life in the media spotlight was cause
enough for her bulimia but it also had past life origins.
In Roman
times, she was married to a very strict, unloving husband who looked upon
her as a trophy wife. Whenever she would gain any weight, he would
demand that she go on a program of purging until she "came back into
line" which was a socially acceptable custom in that era. So it was
not surprising that Diana would unconsciously revert to the past life
pattern of bingeing and purging when once again finding herself as
a trophy wife in an unloving marriage.
#12: RARE "DEVOLUTION" TO AN UNHEALED STATE
In rare cases, past life reversion can take a
devastating and fatal turn. Take the case of Howard Hughes Jr. He
created a billion dollar empire from his relatively modest inheritance
of the Hughes Tool Company. For many years, Hughes enjoyed a life of
amazing accomplishment. He was a famous aviator, breaking the record
for an around-the-world flight and designing unusual airplanes. He
dabbled in the movies and meddled in politics: the prototype of the
modern entrepreneur.
After being injured in an airplane crash,
Hughes began the descent into reversion and madness that would find
him dying in filthy rags with his body ravaged by scars and infection.
This was considered odd because Hughes' problems started with an
obsession with cleanliness, a compulsive need to protect himself,
and a horror of germs. The contradiction is easily explainable in the
context of past lives.
In an extremely painful incarnation,
Hughes had been a leper who was repeatedly stoned as he made his way
to the leper colony. People were free to hurt him because lepers
(called the "unclean") were not under the protection of the law. This
left him with strong past life charges: one to be clean (unlike a germ
ridden leper) and two to provide his own security (protecting himself
and not relying on others).
Hughes reacted to the symptoms of
the pain without healing the causes of it. It was so deep that it
overtook him in the end. He died as dirty and ravaged as a leper.
Fortunately, such cases of fatal past life reversion are very rare.
Most are led to the help they need to resolve their past life problems
before they reach such extremes.
"Remember When You Died..."
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