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Rules #31a: "Untangling the Web": Qualities of Past Life Memories

"As Fragile as Gossamer"

Memories are much like spider webs: sturdy but fragile, interconnected but reduced to bare essentials, full of actual materials but woven by our own hand.

As any reputable historian will tell you, sorting "fact" from "fiction" is not as easy as it appears. For example, ask all the people in a car accident to describe it to you and you will have as many stories as you will people. Investigate it closer and you will uncover even more theories on "how it really happened" from onlookers. Now imagine that instead of a car accident, it is an important historical event you wish to discern the "truth" about, and the "truths" will multiply at an alarming rate.

What Are We to Ourselves But Our Memories?

So for those having dreams about past lives or for those consciously connecting with past life memories, the question becomes "how do I know if these are real?" In other words, "what is the difference between past life memories and dreams, imagination, and other 'intangible mental' processes?"

The good news is that there are several clear signs indicating that memories originate from past lives. The bad news is that, unless are you totally and brutally honest with yourself about your experience, these signs may not help you. They are:

#1: PAST LIFE MEMORIES HAVE DEPTH & DETAIL

Critics of past life work are quick to point numerous documented cases of where hypnotists have been able to "induce past life memories" in their subjects by "suggesting" that the subject lived a past life in a certain place or time. The mind will then oblige the hypnotist by obediently constructing a "story" of a past life based on what the subject "knows" about the particular time and place suggested.

These researchers then often conclude that past life memories are just the activity of a hyper-active and/or deluded mind that randomly selects events and calls them past lives. Looking closer, these "induced" or "suggested" memories all have one thing in common: they lack the depth and detail common to true past life memories.

Those experiencing true past life memories are able to recall details about their past lives that are as "wide and deep" as details they would be able to recall about their life today. These would include such things as: the names of loved ones, family, friends, neighbors, and employers; who they loved or hated and why; who owed them money; their health problems; where they lived, hid things, and so on.

Especially when those details can be verified by researchers and when there was no way the person involved could have gotten the information from another source, the truth of past lives becomes hard to deny. Past life researcher Ian Stevenson has spent a lifetime in amassing scientific evidence of reincarnation (see "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" for "in depth" documented case histories).

#2: PAST LIFE MEMORIES HAVE CLARITY & CERTAINTY

Another common failing of "induced" or "suggested" memories is that they lack clarity and certainty. Since they are based on "nothing", it becomes easy for a researcher to lead a subject "by the nose" and get them to contradict previous statements made about the "suggested" past life.

Not so with real past life memories because they are based on "something" that has already happened in the sequence of "linear time". Usually in channeled readings, the most significant single event of the individual's past life is shown first and then past life unfolds in sequence beginning with childhood. Even when it seems like there is no way the "significant" event could happen to the person given their beginnings, it always unfolds with great certainty to that ultimate moment.

Many times as the life is unfolding the individual will begin to "remember" these past events. Often they will start to fill in some details about the past life or they will point out parallels between the past and their life now. Invariably, this leaves the person clearer about what they need to do now to avoid the mistakes of the past. Almost always, a significant personal detail - known only to the client - will emerge to satisfy them the past life being channeled is most certainly theirs.

#3: PAST LIFE MEMORIES HAVE INTERNAL CONSISTENCY

Those getting past life information through their dreams or by doing self guided regression work will probably find that their memories will come out of sequence. In other words, memories of events later in a past life may be revealed before memories of earlier events in that life. This happens because our unconscious mind presents us with information in the order of importance to our evolution as Soul.

Often that is not in the order in which the events actually happened to us. If these are true past life memories, then the memories will automatically have internal consistency. In other words, the memories will be like pieces in a puzzle. When all the puzzle pieces are neatly fit together, a clear, consistent picture will appear.

That only works if each piece of the puzzle was "good" in the first place. It can only be good, if it comes from a slice of that was actually lived. If the pieces do not fit, then it cannot be a memory and is more likely a dream or an imagination.

#4: PAST LIFE MEMORIES CONTAIN UNLEARNED KNOWLEDGE

There is so much in the universe to learn that it is impossible to master everything in the space of a single lifetime. And so we come into each life to take on a certain set of series and challenges. Yet what we have learned in past lives is always available to us. When we need to use this knowledge, it will always come back to us. Often this surfacing of past life wisdom is so natural and subtle that most do not recognize it. Or if they do, they are likely to attribute it to a "God given gift".

All knowledge must be earned. Anything you "know" that you have "not learned" in this life, you have mastered in previous incarnations. Often, unlearned knowledge manifests itself in the sudden emergence of "core survival skills" to cope with life threatening situations. There have been many news stories of people who saved their own lives because "somehow they knew just what to do".

#5: PAST LIFE MEMORIES CONTAIN UNLEARNED WISDOM

"Unlearned knowledge" relates to the "remembering" of specific skills and abilities while "unlearned wisdom" relates to the "connection" to the understanding that comes only with time and experience and only after a base of knowledge is amassed. Those who possess such "wisdom beyond their years" - child prodigies, savants, and geniuses - have carried it with them from past lives.

The phenomena of "unlearned wisdom" is most readily observed in the case of children's past lives. When children can relate stories of "the time before when I was big", which are full of details that are clearly beyond their experience, they are most likely reconnecting with their past lives. Since children have come from the inner worlds more recently, they are better able to connect with the greater totality of themselves which includes past life awareness. For how children are able to demonstrate "unlearned wisdom", see Carol Bowman's "Children's Past Lives".

#6: PAST LIFE MEMORIES EXPLAIN UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS

Many psychologists will tell you that "from the inside, all attitudes and behaviors make sense." This flows from the idea that, at some point in the past, mostly in childhood, specific incidents created all of the behaviors and/or attitudes a person possesses. Where a specific incident cannot be found, it is generally attributed to repressed memory. Often, it should be attributed to past lives, especially if the behavior or attitude is "unusual" given the context of the person's life now.

Most obsessive compulsive behaviors are carryovers from past lives that are crying out to be healed. As in those who must obsessively hoard everything now - no matter how trivial - generally suffered and died horribly for having let food or money slip through their fingers. Or as in those who are now compulsive control freaks are now "making up" for past lives when they were powerless.

#7: PAST LIFE MEMORIES CORRESPOND TO STRANGE HABITS

Like unusual behaviors/attitudes and strange habits/manners often originate in past lives. This is especially true of "fear based" habits that cannot be explained by present life events. For example, those who fear heights often have past lives where they fell to their death from a great height. Or those who fear confined spaces may be "reacting" to having been buried alive in past lives.

As Johannes Kepler asked, "why are things as they are and not otherwise?" In the case of "strange habits", the answer to this question is almost always "past lives".

#8: PAST LIFE MEMORIES CORRESPOND TO SKILLS & TALENTS

Skills and talents developed in past lives carry over into your present life just like your issues and problems do. Everyone has something that they do especially well, something that comes easily and naturally to them. Past life memories often reveal that what work you are doing now you have done before in many, many past lives.

Many doctors and nurses had past incarnations as healers. Many psychiatrists and counselors have had past lives as priests, ministers, or monks/nuns. Many writers, musicians, and artists have perfected their respective crafts over numerous lifetimes.

#9: PAST LIFE MEMORIES HAVE PHYSICAL TRACES

Traces of past life memories often lie just on the surface… of your skin. The marks - moles, warts, discolorations, and other "imperfections" - you were born with on your skin are often the roadmap to your past lives. These "birthmarks" are the cellular memory of past life wounds imprinted on your present day body.

They are carried forward because the past life "trauma" associated with them (mostly from violent death) has not been resolved. Until it is resolved, the body will continue to carry the birthmark and it's resonance to future lives (for painstaking details, see "Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect" by Ian Stevenson).

#10: PAST LIFE MEMORIES HAVE EMOTIONAL TRACES

Emotional traces from past lives are usually the most recognizable to others… because they are on the receiving end of our emotional responses. Paying close attention to those comments consistently made by a wide variety of others about one's emotional behavior will give important clues to the nature of past lives.

This is especially true if the emotions "make no sense" in the context of the present life. Those who are naturally dictatorial may have had many lifetimes in command. Those who are naturally jealous may have been betrayed by lovers in past lives.

#11: PAST LIFE MEMORIES HAVE MENTAL TRACES

Mental traces from past lives are usually the most recognizable to ourselves…. because only we are totally familiar with the inner workings of our own minds. Such mental traces usually manifest as our own internal questions such as "why do I think this way when my… thinks so much differently?" Or "why does this… stay 'stuck' in my mind?" Or "why can't I get over…?"

All these are mental traces from past lives. As in "you think differently because you are more like yourself as you grow over many past lives then you are like…" Or "you are stuck/can't get over…" due to unhealed past life issues.

#12: PAST LIFE MEMORIES HAVE SPIRITUAL TRACES

Spiritual traces of past lives are generally the most recognizable to others who have already been to the same place on the spiritual path where you are. Yet you can discern them for yourself by looking at what primarily interests you and how this corresponds to your chakras (for more on chakras, click here).

If you are totally into the "sex, money, and power" bag, then you are operating from your Root Chakra and have lots of rich life experience before you. Yet if you are primarily into the "spirituality and God" bag, then you are operating from your Crown Chakra and have a rich tapestry of past life experience behind you.

The next step is first contact with past life awareness in the waking state.

Credits: inspired by Carol Bowman's "Children's Past Lives" and from channeled information.