@ana I have had another past life memory but in the form of a dream like yours. It was felt very real and vivid. The timeline I place my experience in would have been during the 80s during the Sri Lankan civil war based on the experience of what I saw and information I have from that dream, but it would seem to be actually impossible for me to have been alive then, since i was born during the 1980s - and this is one of many reasons why I question past memories being *our* past lives. In fact, this is one of the things the book I recommended examines.
If we all reincarnate again after each life after a little time in the Spirit world, then why are people still communicating to ancestors and old souls on the other side? Would they not have reincarnated on by now?
Here was my dream that I was referring to:
https://www.jeannemayell.com/community/postid/49626/
Anyway, I seriously need to go to bed now as it is 2am in the UK lol.
Night all.
I’ve done one past life regression: I was a woman on my deathbed, in a house in a Central European capital like Vienna or Prague in the early 19th century. My husband was a military officer and I had 6-8 grown or teenaged children. I had led a comfortable life, but it had been in entire service to others at the expense of my own life force. I felt acutely (me in my present life) how little space I/the dying woman had given myself/herself to exist as an individual human being.
These are themes I still struggle with in this lifetime.
Your question about time and reincarnation is really interesting to explain because first of all time is not linear and there is no such thing as time on the other side. So, thousands of years can pass on earth but no time passes in the Ultimate Reality. On other planets that have sentient life, time may not be counted or even recognized. Souls can choose to reincarnate into any “time” and it can be the future or past as we know it. Think of time as stacks of paper and each piece of paper is a moment in time. The soul can choose to reincarnate in any specific moment. We can also choose to return to other universes, planets or dimensions
@lenor I am open minded about that. That is one possible explanation for why it occurs, but there are others and some of them are quite dark - perhaps too dark for open discussion.
Like I said, I don't want to invalidate anyone's beleifs. I just like to investigate things and look at other possible meanings and interpretations because sometimes that can help give more understanding. But I also accept and understand that for some things we are not meant to fully understand everything either.
If we all reincarnate again after each life after a little time in the Spirit world, then why are people still communicating to ancestors and old souls on the other side? Would they not have reincarnated on by now?
I have heard the soul described as a pizza, or a pie. When we enter a life, the entire soul does not incarnate -- just a "slice" of it. The rest remains in the Place Between Lives, or the 5th (or 6th, or 7th, whatever) dimension, or wherever we are "really" from.
Thus, when we connect with our "higher self" we are quite literally connecting with the rest of our soul, the part that stays behind in the spiritual realm. And when a loved one reincarnates, a part of their soul is still "there" to be communicated with.
At least that's how I've heard it described, and it resonates with me.
One of the understandings I have come to, is that people have memories from past lives because some inherit memories or past residual energies from their ancestors and the generational line in their families that they incarnate into. Sort of like inherited DNA.
One issue I have with this understanding is that there have been case studies of children recalling past lives in great detail that were NOT from their family line.
For example here's this one of a boy that was a WW2 pilot: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1209795/Reincarnated-Our-son-World-War-II-pilot-come-life.html
The past life he recalled was NOT from his immediate family line.
But feel free to do some more research, you'll probably notice that the past lives people recalled are not related to their family line at all.
@practicalnihilist I am not saying every past life memory is definitely connected to their family, and equally a counter point to your argument is there are also many that are. Unless we investigate every single case, we cannot know for definite.
I have made some claims in this thread, which is just a sample of my own research and investigation. It is not for me to disprove or prove otherwise. I have given my views. Everything and more about the sample of arguments I have shared is in the book by Geoff Cutler. I would look there if you are curious about what I've said.
I am open minded, I don't definitively rule out past lives. But I am sceptical more than I once was. That is my stance.
@thebeast I have considered the possibility that Ellwood Babbitt, the man who gave me the past life reading, wasn’t seeing the past at all, but rather my future. It was fun to imagine that I had done all those things for 2000 years because I felt validated for doing what I do now.
But given how consciousness works in the mind when we are giving readings to people, he might have sensed my future and blended it with his own predisposition to seeing his clients living in older civilizations.
I'd spent a summer in London, a town that felt so intensely like home to me, and Babbit had seen me in London in a past life. Maybe it happened. Maybe not. I love that he saw me there and it fit how I felt about that place, and my special connection with English antiques.
I'm not a naysayer or hard line skeptic. I am very open to all these possibilities. When I personally have a vision about something that is powerful, I will stick by it as my truth. But I can't make Ellwood Babbit's vision my truth, only the experience and love of the work he said I did for millennia.
Or, as you suggested, perhaps we return to the past which is another dimension. There is no way to know. I don’t mind not knowing. I love that he got the essence of my life, whether past, present or future.
Nassim Taleb, an uncertainty specialist, postulated that we only know about 2 percent of what is true. I resonate with that thought. When I was a little girl of 9 or 10, I remember sitting on the front hall stairs and asking my parents existential questions that they couldn't answer. Who made us? And who made the maker? I am happy living with the metaphors, the stories, and the wonder of it all. I love reading these past life posts too, even if I don't feel as certain as others.
Yes, sounds similar to the Oversoul idea. Jane Roberts channeled an entity who called himself Seth in a series of books called the Seth Material, also the name of the first or second book. There are lots of interesting ideas and premises in those books the original transcripts of which are housed in the Sterling Library at Yale.
Based on my readings and personal experiences, I do believe we live other lives but perhaps concurrently, as lenor references since physicists tell us that linear time is an illusion.
I tend to agree with Taleb, so much is unknown. I believe that much of what happens great beyond is extremely complex and beyond the full grasp of our human minds, especially when one ventures into the idea of an infinite number of universes that coincide simultaneously and not in physical space as we understand it.
Like Jeanne, I started talking about these topics when I was a child (alarming my parents) and I so appreciate this forum as a place to discuss them.