What do you DO with past life knowledge ?

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 06 Jan 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

samantha	06 Jan 2003
So , once you have an idea of where/what you were previously , what exactly is the next step ? I feel that this may be like asking how long is a piece of string , or even "string?", but anyway...... I went to see a hypnotist a couple of years ago. At the time I neither believed nor disbelieved in past lives , merely curious. On the whole the experience made me more of a believer than not . This had less to do with the images that I saw (after all they could have come from stored memory , or a vivid imagination !) but the mental processing of the girl who I believe I was previously. This is difficult to describe , but basically it goes something like this: As this girl I had no associated knowledge, and no internal monologue nami ng the items that I was looking at. Thus , although I was beside a river at the time I did not "hear" the word river in my head , although I drank the water I did not think "cloudy water....bacteria.....will I be ok ?" . Everything was honed right down to sensation and what I can only describe (tho' I couldn't at the time !) to animal instinct. It only lasted seconds , but was sufficiently of a shock to my C20th self to a) stay with me , and b) jolt me out of my hypnosis. I would be really interested to know what other peoples past life experiences have been , and what they have done , if anything , with what they learnt.

warabi	06 Jan 2003
Hello samantha ^_^. When you ask the question, "what is the next step?" the answer would probably be what do you believe in? For instance, one who believes in karma would look at their past life and see how their karmic relationship was, then try to either purify their past karma or, in the case that one's past life was dedicted to such an activity, to continue to live a similar life as their past one. However, one who believes that each life is a journey and we are ment to learn something new each time would probably take that knowledge of their past life, but still try to find a path of their own. As for my past lives and what I learned I must say that I have only experienced small parts of my other exsistances, so what I learned is only based on those short experiences. Once I was a young man seemingly brought up in a rich family, but I ended up dying by choking to death on a meal I was eating too fast. I learned to take things slowly and not for granted. Once I was some sort of animal, I could not see myself but I believe that I was some sort of short four legged creature, possably a goat or something. I seemed deathly afraid of something and was running in a dry plain. I never did see what I was so afraid of. I learned that animals fear as much as we do. Once I was a man who was lying in some muddy dirt. Their were people all around me, but they didn't care about me. I watched flies dance on my hand as I lay in the mud. I am not sure what I learned from that experience, maybe that even things such as flies are beautiful if we really stop to pay attention, no matter what your situation is. There is more, but I wouldn't want to bore you ^_^. Have fun discovering and pondering your past lives ^_^.

wavebreaker	06 Jan 2003
I haven't really done anything with the knowledge I have of my past lives. It did explain certain things in this life though, and that was interesting to know. I don't think you necessarily have to do anything with that knowledge, but it can sometimes help you solving unsolved issues in this life resulting from problems in previous lives.

Diana	06 Jan 2003
I think what is important when it comes to past lives, is not whether they are real or not, but why do we have these past life experiences. They could be our past lives, but they could also be part of the collective consciousness that we are tapping into. There is no scientific way to verify this. However, the experiences are very real and valid, and often reveal such historical detail that it would be silly to discount them. Like you, and also like warabi, one of my past lives (I make a distinction, because I have also gone through experiences where it was obviously more of the collective consciousness kind) was when I was more animal than human. It was way before even the iron age - I was a real "savage". I experienced it when I was working with my transpersonal therapist on a feeling of guilt that didn't seem to make sense, and in the dream-like state I was in, I was thrown back to this time. Like you, there were no words - words did not yet exist - and I was hungry and hunting for food. All my senses of survival were razor-sharp - constantly looking out for danger. I climbed a tree (very agile like a monkey almost) and there was a nest with eggs. I stole the eggs, clambered down the tree and in my greed, forgot my survival instincts. Before I could even eat an egg, I realised with horror that a feline had been hunting me - a kind of a tiger - but I didn't have time to see it properly. It pounced on me and killed me. It was a fascinating thing to see the world and feel the world through the eyes of this "savage". Now, to me it is not the actual past life that is really important. But what I had brought over all these thousands of years into my present life. I was still feeling guilty and cursing myself for not having respected my life and for having put my greed over my survival instincts! And this was causing problems still today. Now my therapist and I had something solid to work on, and we could work on forgiveness, on instinct, on reason. And that was I needed in order to heal the pain in my soul. To get back to my first paragraph, "Why do we have these past life experiences?" Because they teach us something we need to know now, something we need to grow away from, in order to become more perfect beings. And they teach us empathy and forgiveness. And if we have empathy and forgiveness for ourselves, we also have it for other human beings. And to me, that is important. Why is it important to me? Perhaps I'll find out through another past life experience - lol - .

The What do you DO with past life knowledge ? thread was originally posted on 06 Jan 2003 in the Spirituality board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Spirituality, or read more archived threads.