I believe we all have the ability to tap into our past lives. This is part of cellular memory trapped within us in every level layer and dimension. It is an intrinsic part of who we are. You can see this as part of your soul group inheritance, specifically the ancestral knowledge of your own genetic line. 

You are a treasure trove of experiences, distilled to their essence and stored within your eternal soul. Your soul is imprinted with every event, thought or emotion and life lesson achieved in every life lived over the millennia, and even the time between lifetimes.

For me, my genealogical search to understand my ancestors isn’t just understanding my heritage and why I look the way I do. It’s also a past life thing for me. Despite coming from a gene pool that’s almost exclusively from the UK, I have absolutely no interest in going there. I am intrigued by my American ancestor Frank and this mysterious Spaniard, and feel a closer connection with the land around the Mediterranean.

Picking up your Pieces
Experiences and emotions from a past life can influence a situation or give you a tendency towards a specific reaction. If a particular period in history fascinates you it is most likely you had past lives during this era. It is important to honour these past life connections while ascertains their value in your current life.

Past lives can also give you a preference for a certain place or type of geography. You might prefer the mountains or the ocean. You might feel most at home there. You might prefer small homes to large ones. Often what you are drawn to now held a place in your heart in past lives.

Sometimes the need to see a person or explore a country is a way of completing the circle order to move on; to return to press your toes into the land and fill your lungs with the air of your old stamping ground. I believe many travel for this reason without really knowing why.

In Shamanism, there is an expression “picking up your pieces”, meaning that when you die you leave a piece of yourself in the place that you died. Those places call you to return so that you can be whole again. Returning, you pick up that piece of yourself.

Any extreme reactions to peoples or places can reveal a lot about who you were. The countries you are drawn to hold clues to ethnicity, just as a hatred towards certain cultures and ethnicities may indicate negative experiences with these people or places or an unpleasant past life there.

Often the tables are reversed to explore ourselves and learn the qualities of tolerance and unconditional love for all. Spiritual people often choose to be born into materialistic societies so that their spiritual knowledge can be shared with those in greatest need.

When I was fifteen, my original dream was to go to Italy. This was before the psychic suggested that I was Italian. I studied Classical Studies (Greek and Italian ancient art, architecture, religion and literature) in high school and through to university. It fascinated me. I never got there! The closest I came was the Greek Isles before turning the other way into Turkey and travelling through the Near East.

When I was leaving Turkey, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia and emotion. It was like I was coming home…but I’d never even been to Syria before! It was so powerful and undeniable as I moved closer to Syria just beyond the ancient city of Harran in Turkey. I felt compelled to walk across the border, through no man’s land. I was met by pretty startled border guards. They obviously didn’t have a lot of back packers trudging through on foot very often!

I felt a huge well of emotion wash over me. I cried. It really did feel like a home coming, like a piece of me was reuniting with an old, old past. It was a deeply profound experience for me. It took another few years to discover the past life story attached to this Syrian land on the border with Turkey (but that’s coming in another blog!). All I knew at the time was how the land sang to me and how deeply I connected to the land and its people. I felt like I could live there. I felt like I belonged. I loved Syria and mourn the tragedy that’s befallen such beautiful people since.

Cellular Memories
Our bodies are living libraries – they are repositories of vast stores of information and gifts waiting to be unlocked when the time is right. There’s energy behind everything I learn about my ancestors. It unlocks memories of past lives and expands a sense of connection within.

By understanding my heritage and the bloodlines that have mingled within my I learn more of who I am on a soul level. Language, songs, melodies and words act as powerful triggers for soul remembrance.

You see, it’s not an intellectual exploration for me. It’s not really disconnected from me.

A past life will be especially influential if your life was cut short. Foul play, murder, accident or suicide a soul has no time to prepare and often leaves life lessons unfinished or relationships incomplete. The soul will reincarnate with members of their soul group in order to complete these unfinished loose ends in order to progress on a soul level. This may feel uncomfortable or confusing as if repeating the same lesson over and over again.

Some people are affected by the accumulated lifetimes of our soul more than others. A past life can affect you in so many ways and often only makes sense when you know what the life was. Each person is as different as the cocktail of past lives lived.

When the Body Remembers
When I allow energy to flow through me uninhibited, my body moves in sacred dance postures I’ve never been taught, with my hands assuming precise mudras and prayer-like positions. During my recent trip to India to study Durga and my chosen Goddess, Kali. I immersed myself in the wonderful Yogini traditions for 21 days of share joy and a depth of feeling I’d never experienced before.

I was gobsmacked by how natural it all felt and how easily I picked it all up. It took absolutely no effort to learn the songs and rituals involved. I was remembering. It all felt so familiar! My teacher for the retreat, Chameli also talked about the yogini lineage as being wisdom keepers past, present and future who are with us in our circle. Taking your place in the circle as a yogini for Chameli was remembering all those lives past where you held this same seat. It was a reclaiming and regaining of old forgotten soul lineage.   

A critical factor in unlocking these hidden gifts and abilities is openness and trust. Over time I have learnt to implicitly trust my intuitive guidance – to answer the deepest call of my heart and to act on it. It’s only with time and the benefit of hindsight that I can look back and understand why. This is a vulnerable way to live but it’s also exciting and free!

What’s most interesting for me is how a past life affects this life – your perceptions of yourself and attitudes. There’s a reason why a life has been such a strong fascination and why you’ve needed to explore this particular life. When you’ve understood all you need from this life the synchronicities and the desire to keep exploring it will reduce and the life will not hold any fascination. It will be integrated and just be one of many, many lives!

When a Past Life Memory Arises
Everyone is different. Depending on what your intuitive gifts are you may see, hear or feel – or you may have a rush of all three! For me personally, I tend to have a film reel of events flash in my mind’s eye that is from my perspective, through my eyes. I believe it’s called remote viewing. If I pay attention or ask for more I’ll receive another few seconds of footage. With the Syrian life I’ve mentioned, the past life was so traumatic my beautiful spirit guide only gave it to me a few frames at a time, allowing me time to process and integrate each time so I wasn’t overwhelmed.

If you have a past life flashback, try looking at your feet or hands first. Mirrors are a modern invention so in times past only your eyes saw your world. Look down at your feet or hands and work your way up to see clothing and surroundings. This gives you a context, social status, gender and even a possible geographic location. Then you can tune in to the feelings you feel and the thoughts popping into your head.

Perhaps you’ve experienced past lives too? Do you find yourself drawn to practices or cultures, embracing them with relish as if you are remembering something from your earliest childhood…only there’s no way you’d have been exposed to this and no way you’d have known this. 

Perhaps your body knows exactly what to do, instinctively picking up a ritual or ways of an ancient ceremony.

How do you explain this? How does this make sense!? Where does this all this innate wisdom originate? 

I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Art by Lucy Pierce

2 Comments

  1. Susan Anderson on December 7, 2018 at 3:22 am

    Thank you for sharing, I have travelled extensively and always had a fascination for Egyptian and Roman eras. the fascination is dwindling as have visited and got to know both sides of the equation. Can resonate with you re Syria as had a similar experience at Karnak, it was a real heart chakra experience despite all the tourists around. Certainly treasure these types of moments in time.

    • Debra Reeves on March 15, 2019 at 8:00 am

      Hi Susan, I hope that your time in Egypt was magical! It really is a magical land! Do you feel like these lifetimes are integrated now – you have accessed the learning and put any regrets to bed?

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