Reincarnation

Before I started researching I never thought about reincarnation. I will say that growing up and going to Sunday school, the idea that we only get one life didn't make sense to me. What...we live for eternity but only get one chance at a life? So what are we doing for the rest of eternity?

When I was reading near death experience accounts, reincarnation seemed to be a consistent truth. Then when I came across books by Dr. Michael Newton and Dr. Brian Weiss, everything came together for me. These books are written by psychologists that tripped upon the discovery that under hypnosis people can remember their past lives and the spirit realm. How is this possible? Under hypnosis you are bypassing the brain. What I've learned is that when humans are able to bypass their brain through meditation, hypnosis, and even psychedelics like psilocybin and ayahuasca interesting things happen.

Let me start out by explaining karma by quoting Robert Schwartz's book, Your Soul's Plan, "We also plan challenges to balance karma. Karma is sometimes conceptualized as cosmic debt, but it may also be described as unbalanced energy with another individual. Typically, we have karma with members of our soul group--others at the same evolutionary stage with whom we have shared many lifetimes." Throughout my own research, I found out that I had a past life with one of my sons. The past life was around 100 BC in the Baltic region. I was a man with mental illness and my son was my mother in that life. I treated my mother badly due to my mental illness and this mother still took care of me. Now in my current life, I am taking care of my son. I'm bringing this up because in some lives we take care of people and then they take care of us.

Per Robert Schwartz, "Naturally, we plan life challenges in part for our own personal growth. As souls we learn a great deal between incarnations, but the lessons become more deeply instilled in us when we concretize them on the physical plane. Learning while in spirit is similar to classroom work; life on Earth is the field study in which we apply, test, and enhance that knowledge--a powerful experience for the soul". Souls work on specific challenges over many lives, the common ones I read about are compassion, abundance, and self love. Interestingly I've read that more evolved or older souls have already conquered compassion so they tend to work on self-love. If you are a very sensitive and compassionate person then your focus in this life would be on loving yourself unconditionally.

In regards to reincarnation, I hear people asking often, if they die and their family member or pet is already incarnated again, will they still see them? The answer is yes because there is a percentage of our energy called the higher self or oversoul that always stays in the higher realms. So when we return back to the spirit realm we are always greeted by loved ones and pets we want to see.

Below are some case examples of reincarnation from the books I've read:

In Memories of the Afterlife by Michael Newton, Howard is a successful businessman in his fifties that scheduled his life-between-lives session. The main reason for the session was his anger and frustration at work as well as stress levels. Howard goes into a deep trance state and finds himself going into his most immediate past life as a German Jew in 1933. He was a man of twenty-five years when he was laid off because of being Jewish, and shortly afterwards, he was killed in the streets for the same reason. He transitions to the spirit world and meets with loved ones and others from his soul group. He finds his current wife in soul form and she says they have incarnated together ever since the stone age. He also finds out that he has had one hundred or more incarnations. His previous life as a Jewish man in Germany was to learn tolerance. For this current life he was told that he needs to learn how to tame his anger and high-strung temperament.

In Dr Brian Weiss's book, Many Lives Many Masters he explains that he was a traditional psychotherapist when his life was thrown upside down by a patient named Catherine. Under hypnosis, Catherine began recalling past-life traumas that seemed to reveal the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. Her symptoms were the fear of water, choking, airplanes, the dark and dying. As the book unravels we find out that Catherine is an old soul that has lived many challenging human lives. Once she is under hypnosis and she reviews the life that is causing the fear, her symptom goes away. She also begins to channel messages which contain revelations about Dr. Weiss’s family and his dead son which makes him a believer. Interesting book to say the least!

In Anita Moorjani's book, Dying To Be Me she dies from an aggressive cancer in a hospital room and finds herself in the spirit realm. She says in her book, "Time felt different in that realm too, and I felt all moments at once. I was aware of everything that pertained to me, past, present, and future simultaneously. I became conscious of what seemed to be simultaneous lives playing out. I seemed to have a younger brother in one incarnation, and I was protective of him. But I knew that this sibling's essence was the same as Anoop's, only in that existence, he was younger instead of older than I was. This life I was now perceiving with Anoop seemed to take place in an underdeveloped rural setting, in a time and location I couldn't identify. We were living in a sparsely furnished mud hut, and I looked after Anoop while our parents went out to work in the fields." When Anita returns to her physical body from her near death experience she miraculously recovers within weeks. Doctors were never able to explain her recovery.

In Amber Cavanagh's book, At the Stroke of Eternity she experiences a stroke and has a near death experience. She leaves her body and goes to the spirit realm. While there she walks into a garden. She says, "I look across the meadow and catch a glimpse of a different group of people standing near the back of the garden. Who the heck are all these people? I wonder. Each is from various times in history, some from the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s, and some from the future. Others have origins in different dimensions and they are all different genders. I stare at them, trying to figure out why they're here, who they are, and then it dawns on me... each of these beings is one of my other lives. I can see a piece of my soul in each one of them and I am grateful they are here. You see, in this place, time and space don't exist. Everything and everyone lives simultaneously."

In Raymond Moody's book Paranormal, he explains that he was never interested in the topic of past lives since he saw himself as a scientist. He visits a psychologist friend of his that uses past-life regression therapy with patients to effectively treat their disorders. She offers to do a regression for him. He finds himself going back through nine lives each in its own distinct incarnation and time period. He explains that this experience was not like a dream, it was like watching a movie. He says, "each life dripped with nostalgia for me, so much so that I thought I was remembering actual experiences." Let's just say that Raymond Moody's past lives were pretty brutal. One of his lives was in ancient Rome, he had been captured by the Romans during a military campaign. He says, "I could feel the energy of the desperately hungry lion that was caged next to me in the pit. I looked up to the crowd for mercy but felt a sickening tightness in my stomach as I realized there was no mercy. The last thing I remember is being pinned against the dirt as the lion goes for my skull." Raymond reviews the experiences and says, "These experiences were so vivid that they seemed to be proof of reincarnation. Or at least possible proof."

In Robert Schwartz's book, Your Soul's Plan, Penelope is a twenty-four year old woman that is deaf. She teaches American Sign Language and English to deaf adults. What is explained to Penelope is that being deaf gives Penelope the opportunity to be more in touch with her inner experience, intuition, thoughts, even the physical symptoms and feedback from her body. She also finds out that in a past life she was a little girl that heard her mother being shot and killed. Penelope and her mother made the soul level agreement to be together again in this lifetime and continue their relationship. This is why she chose to be deaf due to hearing the gunshots in her prior life. Being deaf also allows her to work on compassion in her life since she experiences herself as being different in many ways.

Dr. Linda Backman is a Psychologist that had some interesting spiritual experiences which opened her up to pursuing the field of regression therapy. She worked closely with Dr Michael Newton until she opened her own office. She started to notice that she was attracting clients that had past lives on other planets. Her book, Souls on Earth walks through case examples of clients under hypnosis that describe themselves as advanced beings on other planets. She calls these souls "interplanetary souls". Some people use the term starseed souls. She explains that interplanetary souls incarnate on Earth in order to help humanity advance. They are bringing their wisdom and advanced knowledge to help humanity. She also explains that many of these souls struggle on Earth. They don't understand the conflict, wars, politics and emotions on Earth. This often can cause addiction, anxiety or depression in these souls. She also says that these souls can feel "alien" on Earth like they don't belong here. If you feel like you may be an interplanetary soul I recommend you check out her book or listen to her on podcasts. She's a very educated and interesting person.

I'll share my own experience on this subject. Let me explain that hypnosis is just a relaxed state. If you look at a chart online of the brain wave states, hypnosis occurs when we are in the theta brain wave state which is the state right before we fall asleep. We can actually get into this same state during a deep meditation. There are different types of hypnosis practitioners. I tried the popular QHHT but I wasn't able to be hypnotized. I then tried a past life regression with a Michael Newton trained hypnotherapist and the hypnosis part was much more thorough compared to QHHT. I was definitely in a relaxed meditative state but I don't think I was in a deep enough hypnosis to access past life memories. From talking to hypnotherapists I think most people have success with hypnosis, for some reason I personally had issues relaxing enough. The hypnotherapist did ask me questions about my soul when I was under hypnosis and I did say something very interesting: I said that my soul is a star traveler soul and that I like to travel to different realms. Interestingly, months later when I met with a channeler to channel my higher self, my higher self said below:

"Yes I have been to other zones I’ll call them zones because they aren’t limited to planets or galaxies or particular star systems, it includes everything. I am one that likes to taste and sample a wide variety, not to determine the best but simply for the experience of it, as many experiences as I can pack into a lifetime, journey or adventure because the benefit of that attunes each and every one of my selves to a different frequency."

I've met with quite a few mediums/intuitives to understand my soul and past lives and I've consistently been told that I'm a starseed/interplanetary soul which means I incarnated on other planets before incarnating on Earth. I believe I've had about 20-30 lives on Earth. I was also consistently told that I've incarnated in the Sirius, Pleiades, and Arcturus star systems and on planets in the Andromeda galaxy. At first I was thrown off by this information but when you hear the same information over and over it's not as shocking anymore. Scientists estimate there are 100 billion or more planets and stars in our galaxy alone so I guess it's not that crazy to think I incarnated on other planets. I have also had two deep meditations where I was living lives on other planets. Of course they could have been my imagination but I'm not so sure. Either way I find all of this very fascinating and have really enjoyed this adventure discovering who I am as a soul. See more details about starseeds here: Interplanetary / Starseed Souls

In closing, I'll say that after researching this topic I became a less judgmental person. I realized that we can never fully understand another soul's journey. It's challenging to be a human and humanity has been through a lot. All we can do is treat others with kindness, respect, compassion, and learn to love ourselves. We are all unique, divine souls having experiences for our own learning and evolution.