Most of us are curious about reincarnation and whether we have come to this planet “before.”
“Who was I in my past life?” is a common question asked these days and there’s no shortage of answers available. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find a handful of fun pop quizzes that narrow down what gender you were, what country you came from, what you did, and how you died.
While these are fun ways to explore the topic, they are limited and shallow in their ability to really help us understand who we were in our past lives, and how we can use this knowledge to become more healed and whole people.
If you’re not that serious about answering the question, “Who was I in my past life?” I recommend taking the Past Life Regression Test I created instead of reading this article. But if you’re serious about becoming a happier and more balanced person, keep reading.
First we’ll explore what reincarnation really is.
Reincarnation Is Not What You Think It Is … Here’s Why
A few years ago I came to conclude that we are all divine fragments of God, Divinity, the Tao, Consciousness, or whatever you would like to call it. I came to this life-changing realization via these 6 questions. This is what Jesus, Buddha, Eckhart Tolle, Mooji, Adyashanti, Gangaji, Ramana Maharshi, and every wise “enlightened” man and woman through the ages has pointed to and spoken about: The mind is limited. The self is an illusion. We are all One and the same at our very core.
Therefore, if our identity is an illusion, how is it possible to reincarnate? As Sol wrote in a previous article, “Reincarnation of an ‘individual self’ is only as possible to the extent of believing that your sense of ‘self’ – your ego – is real.”
If you believe that you are your personality and are separate from everything and everyone else, you will believe what people traditionally say about reincarnation: that your identity will be reborn into a new body and circumstance.
Personally I don’t at all believe that this is the case. How is it possible for “you” to reincarnate, if there is no you (other than in your mind) in the first place? This is yet another illusion perpetuated by an ego that is obsessed with its survival. After all, why is reincarnation so appealing to many of us? Because it reassures us that our egos will live on after we die. But if you’ve come to realize that the self is a dreamlike fantasy, you will realize that this isn’t the case.
So what exactly is reincarnation?
In my understanding, reincarnation is the process of recycling energy. The Buddhist’s represented this in the Wheel of Dharma which reflected the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (called “Samsara”). From what I have learned, the conscious essence that animates us leaves the physical body after death and is “reborn” or remade into a new creation. All of the memories, experiences, lessons and wounds we develop during our lives are then left in a non-physical layer which Carl Jung referred to as the “Collective Unconscious” and others refer to as the “Akashic Records.”
Although this new being starts off with a “fresh slate” when it is born, as it matures its job is to heal the inherited core wounds of its predecessors.
Who Was I in My Past Life?
I’ve asked and searched for the answers to this question before too, but somehow always intuitively felt that I wasn’t asking the “right” question or looking in the right place. Have you felt this before?
While I don’t believe that our identities reincarnate, I do believe that we can discover who we were in past lives (because we are all One and share the same underlying consciousness). More precisely, we have been every person that has ever existed, but for practical reasons we each carry a unique imprint of inherited strengths and weaknesses.
Similar to transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (big words that describe the process of inheriting physical, mental and emotional information from your ancestors that doesn’t influence your DNA), it is also possible for us to inherit spiritual maladies of many kinds. As life itself is about evolving, advancing and maturing, it can also be said that our emotional and spiritual lives are maturing as well.
Collectively, we are all evolving, and discovering what inherited core wounds we have is vital in order to become happier and more fulfilled people. In discovering our transgenerational wounds, we also work to “raise the vibrations” of the world for this generation and the future generations.
What is it that your ancestors suffered from in the past that you can heal in the present? You may find that in the process of discovering who you were in your past life, you are linked to one specific person in a single era. On the other hand, you may have many flashbacks from many lives that all possess the same theme. Finally, you may not have any flashbacks at all, but instead have an overwhelming sensation that you must learn to “resolve” a certain issue.
Here are some recommendations that will help you to discover who you were in your past life:
1. Examine what attracts, interests, or creates a sense of nostalgia in you
For example, you may carry a long-time interest in South American shamanism, you may be intensely attracted to ancient Asian culture, or you may feel a deep sense of longing and inexplicable nostalgia towards the English countryside.
2. Pay attention to repetition in your dreams
Also, learn to distinguish between dreams that feel dreamlike, and dreams that feel distinctly life-like – these dreams may present doorways into the collective unconscious. Repetitive dreams, in particular, carry important messages for they reveal what our minds on a subconscious level are fixated with. For instance, if you frequently dream about being abandoned for no particular reason (i.e. no childhood abandonment issues), you may be carrying the inherited core wound of betrayal or the fear of aloneness.
3. Set an intention – repeat
You may like to set an intention before attempting to revisit your past life. You can do this either before going to sleep, meditating, or practicing self-hypnosis. For instance, your intention may be “Who was I in my past life? Please be revealed” or simply, “I want to know who I was.” Finally, it helps to repeat your intention several times before you settle into a sleep, meditation or hypnosis state.
4. Reflect on the people you have attracted into your life
What harsh, but powerful lessons have your friends, family members and/or partner/s taught you? Can you sense any particular theme running through your life that has seemed to be there from the very start? It is said that we all enter this life with a soul group which is a group of beings that collectively work to resolve accumulated karma.
5. Stare into a mirror or body of water
Use your reflection as a focal point to enter into an altered state of consciousness. Get into a comfortable position, and if possible, dim the lights. Keep your intention in mind, relax your eyes and gaze at your reflection. Hold gentle but solid eye contact. You can do this for up to ten minutes to half an hour or more. As the minutes pass by, you will find that your face begins to morph and subtly change its appearance. What can you see?
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6. Connect the dots
Use a combination of all the practices above to explore your past life and inherited core wounds. Please keep in mind that there are many other techniques out there, but these five are basic and easy for anyone to try out.
This Is What I Discovered …
As a result of putting into practice the above recommendations, I discovered that I have memories from Medieval Ireland, Persia/Middle East, Rome, and Greece. My most vivid and recurring memories appear to be of a great gothic castle, a home near the cliffs and ocean, grassy paddocks and a ragged tent in a desert. The main core wound I seem to struggle with involves a loss of control which has helped me to resolve an immense number of issues in my life.
What about you? Have you discovered what your transgenerational wound is? Finally, what are your thoughts on reincarnation?
What is with is everday? I need to know why I am here.
I tried this and it turns out I was a dung farmer in Austria 1700s! This made me sad :(
I’m from Kolkata, India. While meditating with a self-hypnotic trance audio, a year back, I saw in a brief flash myself in a castle, the sea wind stroking my face, and myself as a little kid running playfully. Suddenly I felt a blow from my right and woke up palpitating. Taking clues from the texture and design of the walls , pathway, and surroundings, I later discovered stunning similarity with a medieval european castle. Today, browsing through the internet, I came accross your article and I am taken aback by the similarity with your description on trans-generation memory. Besides following the above steps, can I connect to you in this regard ? It would be a great help.
Interesting article! Personally, I believe past lives are not to be believedin—they’re pretty logical enough, I think. I feel relieved that we don’t die with just one life, but that just makes our existences all the more serious in a karmic sense. Unless you don’t have any bad karma, then life’s an easy bed of flowers for you!
Anyway, I feel an affinity with Europe, England especially—even in my clothing I gravitate toward dated, stiff things. Yes, the land feels nostalgic and I feel at ease with the culture. France also feels familiar, but not as much—I like it; also Russia, maybe Mexico, and possibly South Asia.
I’m an artist, and I think I’ve been one for quite a few lifetimes before this one, considering how I could draw relatively well as a child (I think talent in anything is what’s been developed/practiced in past lives—how else would it be fair?). When I was young, I considered old master paintings very boring, as if I had already seen the life out of them before—maybe! The Italian painters, such as Raphael in particular, seem very familiar to me.
I know someone who is extremely into indigenous and especially Native Amerian history, I know where they lived then!
Also I’ve seen an interesting documentary on past lives, with the birthmark stuff and all. Some of the people reincarnated VERY quickly—as in a year or so (someplace in Asia, they marked the back of someone’s neck and a baby was born from the dead girl’s friend, I think, with the mark)—I’m interested in why times vary wildly for people. Also, Emanuel Swedenborg has written some interesting things about the world people go to after death. He didn’t awknowledge reincarnation though because he was Christian, I think.
Oh, just came across this article because I wondered about it for some time, too. So far I found out that in my last life (maybe 50s or 60s) I died because of a pregnancy problem. I think that caused my fear of pregnancy in this life (something I didn’t acknowledge for a long time).
Another life must have been as Native American where I also met my twin flame. I found this out while meditating and I got the feeling that we are dancing around each other for a while now.
I think the core wound of my soul group involves being abandoned / being unworthy of love. This also reflects a lot of people in my life and a dream I had not so long ago. In it I was abandoned by my parents though I was never truely abandoned by them.
But I will check more closely about what I’m drawn to and will try to meditate about those things.
Hi,
I stumbled upon this article while finding ways to know about my past life. I was just curious about who I was in hopes of maybe my past life has solutions to my present problems.
So… I tried to remember some past dreams and most of them are about me being trapped in situations (probably refers to how strict my family is), being in darkness (since often my dreams can be just plain blackness or black and white), sometimes there are dreams where I see the grim reaper, where he doesn’t do anything, he just passes by, and dreams of being with a guy I love (often is a muscular guy who would give me hugs and cook for me). Those are often the themes of my dreams that I can remember for a long period of time. Other dreams just end up forgotten after waking up (but after waking up I know I had a dream. There’s just a feeling that I don’t understand.).
Next is, I am very attracted to spring season sceneries in photos. Like they trigger nostalgia for me. Examples can be a field of flowers or a shot of a cherry blossom tree in spring. Also, seeing red roses trigger an unexplainable feeling. I don’t know, but that’s how I explain it. In our country there are only 2 seasons (wet and dry), so I only feel nostalgia when I see very nice photos of spring. Another thing that triggers nostalgia in me is the lights of the city.
Other stuff that I take interest in is Victorian style of clothing. Especially the frilly dresses and fine suits of men. Hence why I have some gothic fashion in some of my arts, probably.
There are times in my dreams that I see myself as a red haired girl. She looks exactly like an original character I made. That character was just made out of a whim. I really don’t know how I came up with her design. As for the setting, I don’t know. Like, I don’t know what era it was. All I know is I was always wearing something gothic(?). It wasn’t a dress, more like an overall coat, turtleneck shirt (sometimes a white blouse), black shorts, thigh high stockings/socks, and boots.
As of now, I am having difficulty in connecting the dots. I probably need a bit of help figuring it out?
Anyways, this article is very amazing and helpful.
About reincarnation, our soul is who we genuinely are, not the physical body that it chose to be in. The majority of current day humans pay far less attention to the soul than say, animals. The proof of this. Which of the two live in accordance with nature ?
I can furnish more proof if needed but for now I will stay on topic. Our soul receives vibrations, sends vibrations and stores vibrations. It goes without saying that vibrations contain information. Every experience we have, or create is memory for the soul and once imprinted upon the soul, it takes far longer for the imprint to degrade from the soul than the mind. Once the soul is released from, let’s say a person that did nothing to help humanity but, did things to harm humanity. If you were to put yourself in the place of that soul, would you not want to forget all that you endured while in such a person ? Would you rather spend time living and experiencing the lives of animals, or plants, even rock ?
Keep in mind that it takes a very long time for those horrific impressions to dissolve.
Or being a soul longing for love and light, would you dare take a chance on the human form right away, knowing full well that the darkness absorbed in the previous life could come bubbling back up, causing the new form you inhabit to harm humanity a little further ?
Maybe the scales of universal justice dictate that the soul not be allowed to be in human form again until such time has past, that dark impressions have left the soul so it could be pure light as it was before the previous life.
Maybe you would briefly live as a drop water to regain understanding of how important nature is. Think of all the places you could go as a simple drop of water, from Earth through sky and everything in between. Everything holds consciousness thus everything is living, even that which the mind deems as not alive contains life. Just because we do not see it, does not mean life is not there. Consciousness is life. The soul is consciousness , of which without, the human body and other things would not live.
Keep in mind, consciousness and time have one thing in common, neither have a beginning or end just as the circle.
Ask the circle, how can this be ?
Hint;
The answer is literally with us every day of our life.
What is with is everday?
Please tell me who I was. I have crazy things happening to me in my life that are in the physical and I have went back and forth to where I have come to the conclusion that I am NOT crazy as the things I experience can be witnessed and are WAY too OUTRIGHTLY PHYSICAL on a daily basis. Please help, I am a Psychology person and I have looked through everything and I am NOT meeting the criteria for what I may now believe to not always be mental illnesses. Anyway, if you think you might be able to help, cool, if not, thanks for reading this.
Jessica
After trying a couple past life regression meditations, I discovered that I have memories of lives in 18th Century Scotland or Wales and 19th Century American colonies. In both lives I am considered an outsider and am in a relationship with a male-presenting person of color. In one life I live to an old age and we have two children together; in the other I die, caught cross-fire of battle between his tribe and the colonists.
In each of these lives I am a light skinned or Caucasian female-presenting person while my love is a person of color. In both cases we love each other deeply… and after all this, a twin flame connection meditation led me to a male person of color in Scotland. Perhaps my purpose of reincarnation is to love unconditionally, and my core wound is the belief that I’m unloveable?
As an aside… Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairytale. Now I understand that it’s probably because it’s helped me resolve my light and dark sides to truly love myself. Oh, and prove that nobody is truly unloved. They just have to figure it out for themselves.
Any thoughts you might have as to next steps would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks for your work- it always enables me to reflect and dig deep.
INSPIRING
MIND – BOGGLING
very good
Desert. Man.
War. Boy in a house.
War. Soldier in a dying platoon.
So far all I’ve learned is that I was always a man xD
English countrysides huh?
Can we talk?