Past Lives Present Learning Opportunities Today

 
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This business of recalling past lives sure confuses me, but I'm learning.

For starters, I'm not sure whose past life I'm recalling. I mean, maybe we can remember anyone's life from the past and take it as our own. There could be a gigantic memory pool we can draw upon for added experience. This memory pool could even exert a subliminal influence on our current lives. I don't know if my own life is all my own creation.

What I mean is, there is, believe it or not, a series of "Henry Reed" books. There's Henry Reed, Inc., Henry Reed's Babysitting Service, Henry Reed's Journey, and Henry Reed's Big Show. I haven't met any other Henry Reeds in my life, but this supposedly fictional character and I have a lot in common, much more than I have with anyone else I've ever met. I was so intrigued by these "coincidences," I once sought out the author, Keith Robertson, who lived in Hopewell, New Jersey, to find out who was copying whom. He was clearly puzzled, even disturbed, by the resemblance. Maybe his books and my life are both the result of the same story floating in the etheric memory pool.

How do you separate fiction from fact? I've had my share of past life regressions. It's usually impossible, however, for me to tell the difference between a real memory and a story that I've created. The feeling in these "memories," I've noted though, usually has a haunting mood. I can feel there's truth somewhere in these stories even if I doubt the facts. The've gradually grown in importance for me simply because their feelings have proven to have so much meaning. The question of meaning for me, then, moves away from concerns for the reality of reincarnation, or the reliability of past life memory, and turns toward making a connection with a story and learning from it.

I have settled on the term, "soul memories" for these supposedly past lives. Like myths, their emotional truth value is much greater to me than their historical factual value.

There's an excellent new book on soul memory that has helped me gain perspective. It is Life Patterns: Soul Lessons and Forgiveness (Into Time Publishers). The author is Henry Bolduc, winner of the International Hypnosis Hall of Fame 1994 award for best writer. Bolduc states emphatically, "You don't have to take a stand on past lives in order to benefit from information the unconscious provides."

Rather than emphasizing any single past life, which puts the focus on your identity status in that life, Bolduc recommends examining many past life memories as a whole for their life patterns. It is probably because he has been researching regression experiences for over thirty years that he takes this broad perspective.

His approach is akin to Edgar Cayce's dream interpretation method. Look for themes, correlate patterns, and find your lessons in the truths thus revealed. It's an effective approach and more gratifying than speculating about the the reality of past lives. There has been a similar shift, by the way, in the history of dream interpretation, moving from a focus on the origin or cause of the dream experience to a search for ways people may connect with their dream stories. Past life experiences, then, are like stories from my soul, presented to me as memories, asking for my understanding.

Bolduc presents a clear approach on how to gain understanding from soul memories. He reviews Edgar Cayce's own series of past life memories and Cayce's discussions on how souls lose and gain during a lifetime. The idea, basically, is that we are all learning, and our lessons come in the form of the consequences of our choices. Just like an automobile teaches us how to drive it by how it responds how we steer and press pedals, so life teaches us about the relative merits of anger, patience, self-aggrandizement and love by the experiences we have. When we recognize our patterns, we can change them if we choose.

We must choose forgiveness first, Bolduc explains, or else the patterns can become addictive. Forgiveness dissolves the epoxy bond that clings reaction tightly to action. Forgiveness restores the possibility of fresh choices. Although spiritual teachers all advocate forgiveness, they usually forget, including Edgar Cayce, to explain HOW TO forgive. Bolduc spells it out, step by step, including eye contact, a heart connection, and all the other details of the process of letting go. The approach elevates past life research to a growth process and makes reading Bolduc's book a healing experience.

I'm beginning to learn, finally, about how to use past life experiences constructively. One thing I've learned is to look at the positive patterns for clues for overcoming the negative ones. As my focus shifts from "past lives" to "repeating patterns," I become aware of "my way," accepting both its strengths and weakness. With stories from both regression experiences and children's books to illustrate my pattern, I can begin to make clearer choices about how I would ideally live this life, the one I have in hand. That seems to be the best light to receive from the past, wherever, or whoever, it may be.

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This page was last updated 04/28/02