Tag Archive: past lives


What’s the Benefit of Past Life Knowledge?

Filed Under: Healing, Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on What’s the Benefit of Past Life Knowledge?

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have not talked to one person who said that they remembered a previous life and benefited from that knowledge. I have known two supposed Cleopatras, and I am sure there are a million more of them, but the one’s I have known were not a full bowl of soup, if you know what I mean. I’m writing to ask what the point of exploring past lives might be. How can this supposed knowledge and awareness help us in these fast changing times we live in?
Michael

Dear Michael:

We have all heard stories about past life seminars boasting not just one but several Cleopatras, Mark Anthonys, Abraham Lincolns, etc. While I applaud your discernment, I would no more allow these individuals to taint my entire outlook on reincarnation than I would allow a few rapists to taint my view of all mankind.

I feel there are really two issues here. First, as you seem to be questioning the validity of remembering past lives at all, if not questioning the very fact of reincarnation, I encourage you to explore some of the astounding evidence researchers have uncovered for yourself. You might begin with well-respected author Dr. Ian Stevenson, who wrote Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and more recently, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Beyond this, allow your intuition and interest to guide your research. A search for books on reincarnation at amazon.com yielded me nearly 8,000 hits.

I think simply believing in reincarnation itself is healing. Knowing that we can’t run truly avoid life’s lessons (for they will be presented to us over and over again until we master them) generally motivates us to face our issues promptly and honestly. Similarly, knowing that suicide is not an escape would certainly motivate us to find some way to endure and to heal. In the words of theosophist Annie Besant:

All life changes its aspect when reincarnation becomes a settled conviction, beyond all argument, raised above all dispute. Each day of life but one page in the great drama of existence; each sorrow but a fleeting shadow cast by a passing cloud; each joy but a gleam of sunshine reflected from a swinging mirror; each death but the moving from a worn-out house. The strength of an eternal youth begins slowly to pass into the awakening life; the calmness of a vast serenity broods over the tossing waves of human thought. The radiant glory of the immortal Intelligence pierces the thick dusky clouds of matter, and the imperishable Peace that nought can ruffle sheds its pure whiteness over the triumphant spirit.

Believing in reincarnation not only shifts one’s entire perspective on life; it opens one up to the transformational power of past life therapy, which can be helpful in the same ways that “normal” therapy is. When we bring our unconscious fears and motivations to the surface, we can consciously work on changing them in order to create greater health and happiness. When conventional medical or psychological therapy fails time and time again, past life therapy has often shown amazing effectiveness. Some people spend many years trying to resolve lifelong chronic problems such as phobias, addictions, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, chronic unexplainable pain or illness, self-destructive habits, unhealthy relationships, etc. and never see results. While researchers may not be able to explain exactly why or how, past life therapy often leads to rapid improvement in these patients’ lives. To me, this suggests that the cause must have been in a past life as well.

For example, I have heard of people who experienced chronic headaches, who had sought all kinds of medical help to no avail, and upon “recalling” a traumatic death due to a head injury in a past life, were cured. Now you can call this the placebo effect or brainwashing or whatever you want – I’m sure the person who is no longer suffering doesn’t really care, so long as it works. There are many other problems that frequently stem from past lives, from physical ailments like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia to eating disorders and addictions. Many people who are overweight this lifetime have starved to death in a past life, and are unconsciously eating all they can to avoid that fate again. When they recognize what is subconsciously driving their behavior, they’re empowered to change. Many phobias stem from past life experiences. A fear of fire may signal a prior death by fire, or a fear of snakes may stem from a deadly snake bite. By consciously recognizing that our fear is out of place in the present, we begin to put things in a sane perspective and reclaim our personal power to create what we want in our lives.

In my own reading work, I have seen many relationships transformed via past life awareness. For example, I recently read for a woman whose husband was her father in a past life. All I knew going into the reading was that the relationship was troubled because her husband was very possessive and controlling, and she was tired of it. I relayed information about a past life in which she was his son, and he was her father. As his son, she worked in the family business (making things like saddles, bags, belts, etc. out of leather) and as she grew into a young man, she wanted to go to a big city nearby, but her father wanted her to stay and work with him. He became very controlling at that point in an attempt to hold on to her. In response to the reading, she wrote that she was amazed by this information, for she is working in the family business again THIS lifetime, and wants to leave it to do something more fulfilling, but she feels pressure from both her father and her husband (who is also in the business) to remain.

Learning of this past life connection helped her to realize why she seems to naturally succumb to her husband’s wishes. Her friends have often told her she should just tell him no, but she has found that very difficult to do, for it is more “natural” to her to obey him as a child obeys her father. She then realized that she could spend another whole lifetime doing what others wish of her, or she could learn the lesson and find the courage to stand up for herself and make her own decisions. In simply understanding her unconscious feelings and responses, she was freed to consciously choose something else.

It often happens as well that two people will meet and “fall in love,” and yet have a hard time fully entering the relationship. Sometimes this stems from past life betrayals, which lead to an unwarranted sense of mistrust in this life. More often, such guardedness is born of fear of loss. When someone we love deeply dies unexpectedly in a past life, it can be very hard to let ourselves love them all out again in a future life. We may live on edge, both wanting to enter in fully and afraid that at any moment, they could be taken from us. When we uncover the past life memories that may be generating this fear of loss, we can stop unconsciously holding back.

Past life memories help us put death in perspective: when we realize that in a past life we “lost someone” and now that person is right back in our experience, it helps us to make peace with the inevitable separation of death, for we know that we’ll be with them again in the future, so it’s “safe” to go ahead and love with all our hearts and souls.

A wonderful internet resource for information on past life healing can be found at healpastlives.com. There you’ll find lots of information, exercises you can do yourself and more. As your question reveals that your inner being is guiding you to explore reincarnation and past life therapy, I encourage you to explore the subject with an open mind and heart!

– Soul Arcanum

Tags: ,
Permalink

Historical Portrait Sparks Strange Feelings

Filed Under: Past Lives, Reincarnation, Relationships, Strange Phenomena by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Historical Portrait Sparks Strange Feelings


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I hope you can help me understand this strange occurance. While visiting a city in northern Europe a few months ago, I felt instantly drawn to a man I saw on a painting. I did some research, and it appears that this man was a statesman who died in the mid 17th century. While I was visiting the city, I felt this strange sense of familiarity. I am not saying that I was experiencing deja vu or recognizing specific places, but now and then, for a few seconds everything felt familiar to me. It was as if I had been there before but all in a very blurred sort of way. Since then, I have been looking for information about that man, getting to know more about him, and even drawing his portrait. I feel stupid to feel this attraction because this is so unreal! He looks exactly like the kind of men I was attracted to as a younger girl. I really don’t know what to think of all this. Is it just my imagination? Is it just because I am very sensitive to the arts and historical places, or is my unconscious trying to tell me something?

S.

Dear S.:

While this is almost certainly past life related, before I go into that, I do want to mention one other possibility. Thinking of a particular person in spirit tends to draw that spirit close, so it’s possible for spirits to become attached to any item that makes people here think about them. I can think of no item better suited for this than a portrait. If the spirit of this man is attached to his portrait, then when people gaze at it and wonder about him, he may try to influence them. This would be especially true if someone who is particularly psychically sensitive were involved. If this spirit was stuck between planes, the spirit could then attach to such an individual and try hard to communicate with them. I don’t feel this is what is happening here, but I wanted to mention it so that people know it’s a possibility.

To me, it is clear that you knew this man in a past life, and that you had a loving, positive relationship with him. I actually hear such stories all the time. When someone is famous in some way, it makes it easy for anyone who knew them in a past life to find and recognize them on a soul level.

I often hear from individuals who are certain that they have a soul connection to some figure in the media. Like you, they tend to feel kind of crazy about this, but I think it makes perfect sense. It’s not like they feel this way about all sorts of different celebrities – there is just one figure to whom they feel strangely connected. Imagine that you knew and loved someone in a past life, and then you saw their picture on a billboard or saw them on the evening news. Most likely, you would have the classic symptoms of a past life encounter: time would seem to stop for a moment, your attention would be completely grabbed by that person, and you would have this strange feeling that you either know them, will know them, or simply have some profound connection to them.

On a logical level these connections may seem unlikely, but they happen more than common logic would explain because we are naturally drawn toward people we’ve known in past lives. It’s a bit like gravity; what goes up must come down, and what is pulled apart must come back together. So, for example, if you have a strong past life connection to the mayor of some town in Idaho, then the one time that mayor makes national news, synchronicity would make sure you saw it.

This brings us to your experience. I encourage you to review how you came to visit that particular city in northern Europe and how you came to view that portrait in particular. People often have inexplicable feelings of affinity, curiosity, and familiarity with places and cultures from past lives, so someone who has always longed to go to Japan or Ireland probably does so for past life reasons.

As for how you came to view that particular portrait, I’m betting that you either felt strongly drawn toward that experience or that synchronicity played a role. For example, you may have seen a brochure about a tour that included that portrait and felt a very strong desire to take that tour. Sometimes the way we make such connections is more unconscious; it’s like we find ourselves sort of sleep walking along like puppets being guided by some outside force. It’s a difficult thing to describe, but if you’ve had such an experience, you know what I’m talking about.

Often these connections come about through interesting and unlikely twists in the course of our experience. For example, we may have a conscious plan to do one thing, but then our alarm clock malfunctions, we miss the bus, it suddenly starts to pour, and so we duck into the nearest doorway. There, we run into someone we’re meant to meet or we discover something like your portrait – a strong tie to a past life or our future destiny.

How this happens for the individual largely depends on how consciously psychic they are. If you’re the sort of person who listens within and acts on your intuitions, then you will naturally flow toward the answers to your questions, destined connections, and the fulfillment of your desires. If you tend to be more physically focused and rational, these strange experiences tend to be rarer and to come about in stranger ways, for the Universe has to work much harder when we’re not working with it; when we are constantly asking for direction and acting on the inner prompts we receive, we make it easy for the Universe to guide us.

I love that you mentioned that this man in the portrait looks just like the sort of men you were attracted to when you were younger, for I believe that both past and future loves play a strong role in the “types” we are attracted to. One of my earliest experiences of “destiny” began when I was around 12 years old and saw Mikhail Baryshnikov on the cover of People magazine. Like you with your portrait, time seemed to stop and I was gripped by his image. I remember thinking that he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Fast forward seven years to when I met my future husband for the first time. My first thought was: He looks exactly like Baryshnikov! I am convinced that, instead of being drawn to my husband because he looked like a famous dancer, I was drawn to the image on the magazine cover because he looked like my future husband!

It’s possible that you’re about to meet this man from the past again – in his new form of course. As these destined junctures approach, all sorts of interesting things tend to happen. It’s possible that your soul knows that you’re about to reconnect, and in searching for him, it led you back to the last place you saw this man. (How romantic!) The good news is that if you keep following your impulses and instincts like this, if you’re destined to reconnect, you will naturally be drawn together again.

To get more information about your potential history with this man, you might pursue past life regression therapy. Through a psychic reading, you could find out if you’re going to meet him again and what your subconscious may be trying to tell you through these unusual feelings.

– Soul Arcanum

 

Tags: , , , ,
Permalink

Idiosyncracies and Past Lives

Filed Under: Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Idiosyncracies and Past Lives


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve been watching a show called Taboo on the National Geographic Channel, which is about people who are strange in ways that society finds unacceptable. While there are experts on the show who explain the sociological and psychological issues involved, every time I watch it, I think there must be some past life stuff going on. Are you familiar with this show? If so, do you agree with me?

Tammy

Dear Tammy:

While I wasn’t familiar with this show, it was easy enough to look it up and record an episode. When watching it, I had the exact same reaction you did. In fact, every case on the program could easily be explained by past life issues. I’ll go through three of the cases featured on the episode I watched to explain how past lives could be involved.

The most shocking case involved a woman who is for the most part able-bodied who has a desire to become a paraplegic. This desire is so strong that her biggest dream in life is to have surgery to sever her spinal cord. When she is around other people, she confines herself to a wheelchair, so all of her coworkers apparently assume that she is actually a paraplegic. When she is by herself, however, one of her favorite activities is hiking in the woods.

How can we possibly explain someone who can walk wishing that they could lose that ability? Given all the disabled people in the world who wish with all of their hearts that they were able-bodied, I was shocked to discover that there are many able-bodied people who wish they were paralyzed, had limbs amputated, were blind or otherwise suffered from some disability. Most explain that this is not so much a desire as an intrinsic part of who they are and how they feel about themselves. In other words, it’s not that they wish they were disabled – they already feel disabled. They are conflicted because part of them knows they are able-bodied, yet part of them feels this is wrong – that they really are disabled or “should” be, for that is what feels right and natural to them.

This has been labeled Body Integrity Identity Disorder, or BIID, by scientists who are exploring biological problems in the brain to explain it. To me, however, it makes far more sense to at least begin by looking to past lives for an explanation. For example, as I watched the section of the show about the woman who wants to be a paraplegic, I kept seeing her in a past life in India. She was a little girl who had suffered a birth defect and had to pull herself along by her arms.

I can only imagine how it would be to be unable to walk, how much time such an individual may spend thinking about their disability, and the deep mark this would make on one’s self-image. It is possible for our past life self-image to leak through into future lives just like other issues do. This would certainly explain someone who can walk who feels like this is somehow wrong or untrue.

Some people suffering from BIID state that they would do anything to be free of it. I strongly urge anyone who feels this way to find a competent hypnotherapist and give regression therapy a try, for if the cause of such torment really is a past life, the problem could easily be healed and released.

It is important to avoid assuming that whatever is going on must go back to a past life, however, for it could just as easily be rooted in earlier experiences in this lifetime. It is also possible for both to be involved. For example, the woman who wants to be a paraplegic did explain that when she was a child, she was fascinated by her aunt’s wheelchair, and remembers wishing she could have one herself. It is possible that there was something about her aunt’s situation that appealed to her, and that this gave birth to her strange desire to be a paraplegic herself. She may have deeply loved or admired this aunt or been envious of the aunt because she was receiving an abundance of love and attention due to her condition.

To complicate matters further, it often happens that the first conscious memory we have of an issue is actually a memory of a trigger. In this case, if the woman had been disabled in a past life, then being around her aunt could have brought the energies and memories of that past life experience back to life for her. If she did indeed have to drag herself along the ground in a past life, her desire for a wheel chair of her own would make sense. Once past life energy is triggered in some way, it comes back to life instead of remaining dormant, which can cause all sorts of problems until it is healed and released.

The episode I watched also featured a millionaire who has a secret life as a hobo. Though he has a successful business and a beautiful home and family, twice a year, he hits the road with no money in his pockets and wanders the countryside, stealing rides on trains just like hobos did in America’s past.

To me, this case had past lives written all over it. Though he explained that he fell in love with the freedom of the hobo lifestyle many years ago when his first wife broke his heart and he struck out to leave his former life behind, we must keep in mind that many people suffer broken hearts but almost none of them abandon their lives and society by becoming hobos.

As I was watching this man, I could see him in a past life as a hobo around the 1930s. While most of us may think this would be a terrible way to live, it was clear that there were some unparalleled highs he regularly experienced in that lifetime, and that he tasted a level of freedom that few of us ever know. It was clear to me that in his past life as a hobo, he both relished his freedom and developed a strong desire to be rich and successful. He has found a way to fulfill both of those desires in this lifetime.

The last taboo featured on the episode I watched involved “Furries” – people who like to dress up and act like animals. This naturally made me wonder if these individuals were animals in past lives. While this is a matter of some controversy, there are some spiritual traditions that believe we can reincarnate as plants or animals, or that we all evolve through a series of life forms, from mineral to plant to animal to human.

Personally, I do believe that we can incarnate in non-human form, for I have had vivid, visceral memories and dreams of being a dolphin. If someone had been an animal in past lives and this was their first human life, it would make sense that they may feel more comfortable in animal than human form.

I think it would be powerful to study the effects of regression therapy on individuals who have extremely unusual desires and habits, for it could lead to much greater understanding of various “disorders” and true healing for many who have been unable to find relief via conventional therapies. In closing, please keep in mind that the above ideas are mere speculation; as every case is unique, it is important to assume nothing and allow the subconscious mind to reveal the true cause of an issue as well as what is needed in order to affect healing.

– Soul Arcanum

Tags: ,
Permalink

Idiosyncrasies and Past Lives

Filed Under: Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Idiosyncrasies and Past Lives


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve been watching a show called Taboo on the National Geographic Channel, which is about people who are strange in ways that society finds unacceptable. While there are experts on the show who explain the sociological and psychological issues involved, every time I watch it, I think there must be some past life stuff going on. Are you familiar with this show? If so, do you agree with me?

Tammy

Dear Tammy:

While I wasn’t familiar with this show, it was easy enough to look it up and record an episode. When watching it, I had the exact same reaction you did. In fact, every case on the program could easily be explained by past life issues. I’ll go through three of the cases featured on the episode I watched to explain how past lives could be involved.

The most shocking case involved a woman who is for the most part able-bodied who has a desire to become a paraplegic. This desire is so strong that her biggest dream in life is to have surgery to sever her spinal cord. When she is around other people, she confines herself to a wheelchair, so all of her coworkers apparently assume that she is actually a paraplegic. When she is by herself, however, one of her favorite activities is hiking in the woods.

How can we possibly explain someone who can walk wishing that they could lose that ability? Given all the disabled people in the world who wish with all of their hearts that they were able-bodied, I was shocked to discover that there are many able-bodied people who wish they were paralyzed, had limbs amputated, were blind or otherwise suffered from some disability. Most explain that this is not so much a desire as an intrinsic part of who they are and how they feel about themselves. In other words, it’s not that they wish they were disabled – they already feel disabled. They are conflicted because part of them knows they are able-bodied, yet part of them feels this is wrong – that they really are disabled or “should” be, for that is what feels right and natural to them.

This has been labeled Body Integrity Identity Disorder, or BIID, by scientists who are exploring biological problems in the brain to explain it. To me, however, it makes far more sense to at least begin by looking to past lives for an explanation. For example, as I watched the section of the show about the woman who wants to be a paraplegic, I kept seeing her in a past life in India. She was a little girl who had suffered a birth defect and had to pull herself along by her arms.

I can only imagine how it would be to be unable to walk, how much time such an individual may spend thinking about their disability, and the deep mark this would make on one’s self-image. It is possible for our past life self-image to leak through into future lives just like other issues do. This would certainly explain someone who can walk who feels like this is somehow wrong or untrue.

Some people suffering from BIID state that they would do anything to be free of it. I strongly urge anyone who feels this way to find a competent hypnotherapist and give regression therapy a try, for if the cause of such torment really is a past life, the problem could easily be healed and released.

It is important to avoid assuming that whatever is going on must go back to a past life, however, for it could just as easily be rooted in earlier experiences in this lifetime. It is also possible for both to be involved. For example, the woman who wants to be a paraplegic did explain that when she was a child, she was fascinated by her aunt’s wheelchair, and remembers wishing she could have one herself. It is possible that there was something about her aunt’s situation that appealed to her, and that this gave birth to her strange desire to be a paraplegic herself. She may have deeply loved or admired this aunt or been envious of the aunt because she was receiving an abundance of love and attention due to her condition.

To complicate matters further, it often happens that the first conscious memory we have of an issue is actually a memory of a trigger. In this case, if the woman had been disabled in a past life, then being around her aunt could have brought the energies and memories of that past life experience back to life for her. If she did indeed have to drag herself along the ground in a past life, her desire for a wheel chair of her own would make sense. Once past life energy is triggered in some way, it comes back to life instead of remaining dormant, which can cause all sorts of problems until it is healed and released.

The episode I watched also featured a millionaire who has a secret life as a hobo. Though he has a successful business and a beautiful home and family, twice a year, he hits the road with no money in his pockets and wanders the countryside, stealing rides on trains just like hobos did in America’s past.

To me, this case had past lives written all over it. Though he explained that he fell in love with the freedom of the hobo lifestyle many years ago when his first wife broke his heart and he struck out to leave his former life behind, we must keep in mind that many people suffer broken hearts but almost none of them abandon their lives and society by becoming hobos.

As I was watching this man, I could see him in a past life as a hobo around the 1930s. While most of us may think this would be a terrible way to live, it was clear that there were some unparalleled highs he regularly experienced in that lifetime, and that he tasted a level of freedom that few of us ever know. It was clear to me that in his past life as a hobo, he both relished his freedom and developed a strong desire to be rich and successful. He has found a way to fulfill both of those desires in this lifetime.

The last taboo featured on the episode I watched involved “Furries” – people who like to dress up and act like animals. This naturally made me wonder if these individuals were animals in past lives. While this is a matter of some controversy, there are some spiritual traditions that believe we can reincarnate as plants or animals, or that we all evolve through a series of life forms, from mineral to plant to animal to human.

Personally, I do believe that we can incarnate in non-human form, for I have had vivid, visceral memories and dreams of being a dolphin. If someone had been an animal in past lives and this was their first human life, it would make sense that they may feel more comfortable in animal than human form.

I think it would be powerful to study the effects of regression therapy on individuals who have extremely unusual desires and habits, for it could lead to much greater understanding of various “disorders” and true healing for many who have been unable to find relief via conventional therapies. In closing, please keep in mind that the above ideas are mere speculation; as every case is unique, it is important to assume nothing and allow the subconscious mind to reveal the true cause of an issue as well as what is needed in order to affect healing.

– Soul Arcanum


Tags: , , ,
Permalink

She’s Afraid of Her Past Lives

Filed Under: Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on She’s Afraid of Her Past Lives


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Over the past week, I have for some reason begun to remember and re-experience some of my past lives. This was triggered by the sudden recognition of my current boyfriend as my lover in my most recent past life. (We were a lesbian couple and I died suddenly in a car accident and never got to say goodbye.) I also remember us in another past life as a happily married couple in ancient Israel. I remember the sad existence I lived as a captive cheetah in Victorian England, along with the sorrow I felt as my coat thinned and the humiliation I felt when humans jeered at me. As these memories came back to me, I sobbed and shook and cradled my right hand as I remembered my paw getting slammed in my cage door. In that life, my boyfriend was a boy who cleaned my cage and was kind to me. I remember being a Jewish woman in the Holocaust, and my boyfriend was a young Nazi soldier in the concentration camp who used to bring me gifts of canned food. The past life that I am currently processing seems to have taken place in Puritan New England. I am starting to have memories of flames licking my feet; I think I was burned at the stake. Can you help me? I am really afraid to meditate or do anything that causes my mind to loosen because of how painful it has been to remember my past lives. This particular life I am describing seems to be related to many of the problems and irrational fears both my boyfriend and I have in this life. It seems like we have been linked in many different lives. Thank you very much.

Heather

Dear Heather:

There are a number of reasons we may begin to spontaneously remember past life experiences. When we begin to awaken psychically, it’s like we open a window between our conscious minds and our eternal selves. This allows us access to the wisdom of our souls, which can flood us with all sorts of insights. For example, we may suddenly feel called to take our lives in a new direction, begin to recognize people we’ve known in other lifetimes, and receive amazing intuitions on a regular basis.

As you describe, sometimes our past life memories begin to flood to the surface when we reconnect with someone we have a very strong karmic connection to. My first past life memory came up when my son was a baby and I was rocking him to sleep. Suddenly I realized that night after night, I kept seeing the same mental image of a meadow. Also, church hymns I never learned in this lifetime were running through my mind, and I began to wonder how in the world I knew the words and melodies. I believe this memory came up suddenly for the reasons I mentioned above: this was a time of great psychic awakening for me, and my son had just returned to my experience as my baby. I also believe that rocking him to sleep put me into a trance, which allowed me greater access to this sort of information.

Many people have spontaneous psychic flashes upon meeting someone who feels familiar; these may be past life memories or symbolic messages from their subconscious minds. It’s also common to have visions of the future when meeting someone for the first time; these visions let us know that that person is going to be around in our lives for a while or will somehow prove important. Often people dismiss these images as random and meaningless because they don’t seem to have anything to do with what is happening in the moment.

While there are other reasons we may spontaneously begin to remember our past lives, the important thing for you to realize is that your conscious awareness of all of these memories is a great gift and blessing, for the more conscious we are of the deeper nature of our relationship to someone, the more power we have to work on resolving old issues in order to create something better this time around.

Your anxiety is rooted in fear that you won’t be able to handle the pain of remembering or that remembering will somehow harm you all over again. Your reaction is a bit unusual because obviously, everything did work out in the end. Despite all you suffered in past lives, you are here today, have found your boyfriend again, and are free to create new love and happiness with him.

My sense is that your anxiety stems from all of this arising so suddenly for you. It’s important to recognize that when we are uncomfortable with a new emotional experience, instead of avoiding it, we are wise to strive to get more comfortable with it. With this in mind, I recommend you work on building a stronger spiritual foundation. It may be particularly comforting to study past life material and especially life between life research, for this material offers reassuring information about why we undertake certain lifetimes and how our souls benefit from all of our experiences. (For a starting off point, check out the books of Michael Newton, Ph.D.)

The goal is to learn to trust that these memories are coming to you for a good and beneficial reason. Also, you must trust that were you not ready for this level of psychic experience, you wouldn’t be having it. This doesn’t mean you have to undergo pain and suffering, however. There are hard ways and easy ways to do pretty much everything in life. For example, let’s say you want to lose 20 pounds. You could starve yourself and force yourself to run 10 miles a day, which would be painful and so difficult that you would probably give up. You could also take a wiser, more moderate approach: you could hire a personal trainer and consult a dietician and come up with the moderate approach that would would work best for you personally.

There are professionals who can help you gently extract the wisdom from these past life memories and then release them so you can move on to new experiences. I recommend you consult a hypnotherapist for help with all of this, for a good therapist will know when to engage the power of catharsis by taking you through intense emotions, and when to help you step outside of intense feelings so that you are aware of what happened but you don’t relive the emotions or physical pain involved. A therapist should also be able to help you pinpoint the wisdom in these experiences, after which you’ll be free to let go of them. If a memory is too intense to process all at once, it can be released slowly, much like my weight loss analogy above. It may take a little longer but it will be a much gentler, more comfortable way to go.

In addition to building a stronger spiritual foundation and seeking help from a hypnotherapist, you might work on developing a conscious relationship with your Spirit guides. This can help you in endless ways. In your current situation, when a memory upsets you, you could ask for your guides to step down the emotional charge and help you find a higher perspective on the situation.

Since these memories are coming up unbidden for you anyway, it’s pointless to try to avoid them. Instead of pushing them back down, try to relax and reach for a higher perspective on these experiences with trust that whatever comes up will prove helpful to you in some way. While the above remedies all require courage and effort, the more you dig in and work with the psychic experiences that come up for you, the more personal power, freedom, peace and healing you will enjoy.

 

 

Tags: ,
Permalink

Why We Feel a Magnetic Pull Toward Certain Individuals

Filed Under: Past Lives, Reincarnation, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Why We Feel a Magnetic Pull Toward Certain Individuals


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I am acquainted with a gentleman who evokes a strange reaction in me. Every time I see him, I feel a strong pull towards him but also a profound sense of grief. I know his energy is different from anyone else’s I have met; it’s very strong and magnetic. I don’t particularly like the way he looks, the way he dresses or even the sound of his voice. Since I don’t find him attractive, I’m baffled as to why I feel so drawn to him. After seeing him, I always end up in tears. I don’t really know what I am crying about but my soul seems to know something I don’t. I’m hoping you can explain why we feel magnetically drawn toward certain individuals and what we’re supposed to do with those feelings.

K.

Dear K.:

I know the feeling you describe well and am sure we have many readers who have had similar experiences. Though we tend to associate karmic reunions with the soul mate experience of “love at first sight,” in truth we may experience any number of different feelings upon meeting someone we’ve known in a past life.

I have experienced love at first sight a few times, and each time this happened, I wound up in a very powerful romantic relationship. I have also, however, met individuals and instantly felt inexplicable terror, unease, or simply a strange sense of familiarity. Experience has taught me to trust these feelings as meaningful. For example, the instant I first met a man who would one day end up stalking and attacking me, I felt inexplicably terrified. I am convinced that we had very intense karma between us, and that this is why he became obsessed with me. On a more positive note, when I interviewed for a job one summer in Chicago, I knew that I would both get a job offer and accept it because the woman who was to be my boss felt like someone I was going to be seeing a lot of.

It is possible to feel both drawn toward someone and unnerved by them. The relationships these connections foster usually prove to be powerful spiritual teachers. For example, when I was in college, I got involved with a <q>mean drunk</q> and went through a very painful time. When I first met this young man, I felt strongly drawn to him and at the same time profoundly uneasy around him. I believe I was intuitively sensing both the karma already between us and the challenges ahead.

The more psychically awake you are, the more you’ll tend to notice such feelings and be able to sense what they’re all about. However, even people who are psychically asleep may have such experiences when the karmic bond involved is very strong or important to their destined life plans. I believe these feelings arise from an inner spiritual compass; they help us to recognize the members of our soul family from one lifetime to the next, and they compel us to interact with the people we need to resolve karma with in order to fulfill our destined plans for each particular lifetime.

If before incarnating, two souls plan to meet and marry, they will carry this plan like a seed in their subconscious until the time comes for it to be set in motion. When they do meet, the seed comes to life and begins to grow. Their reunion awakens this memory on a more or less conscious level, which creates a sense of familiarity. The energy (karma) between them stirs up feelings that belie the nature of their existing connection. While karmic reunions tend to involve key relationships like romantic partnerships, they can involve all sorts of other bonds. Parents and children would experience strong feelings of familiarity if they were to meet for the first time as adult strangers do. In fact, adoptive parents often have strong feelings of connection when they first meet the children they are going to adopt. People who are highly psychic may recognize people they’ve known in past lives whether those people are going to be important characters in their futures or not.

It is always wise to trust our intuitive feelings and instincts. The first thing to do when these feelings arise is pay attention, for they are signs that something important is happening. When we feel frightened by someone for no apparent reason, we should take it as a sign that we should tread very carefully. When we feel drawn to someone, we should take it as a sign that we are meant to interact with them.

My feeling is that you loved this man deeply in a past life. This may have been a romantic relationship but it could just have easily been a different sort of relationship altogether. He could have been your son, your brother, your mother, your sister, your aunt, your friend or your teacher. Since you feel both strongly drawn toward him and at the same time experience profound feelings of grief whenever you see him, it is likely that when you loved him in a past life, he died before you did and you never fully healed from that loss. Just as we carry our strength and wisdom forward from past lives, we also carry old wounds that still need healing. When you see this man again, it reawakens the energy of the grief you have carried with you from the past. This grief is coming up in order to be healed and released. This will happen naturally if you simply allow those feelings to flow. Allow yourself to cry even if you don’t know why you’re crying. Allow yourself to feel what you really feel even if it seems crazy to care for someone you don’t really know well – this lifetime.

When you judge your feelings as nonsensical, you stop the flow of this energy. If instead, you surrender to your feelings with trust that they make sense on some level, you will allow those old feelings to flow through you, which will enable you to find peace in the present. You could also engage in past life therapy with a hypnotherapist to bring whatever is happening on a soul level up into your conscious awareness. This can lead to instant insights, healing and transformation.

I don’t know if it’s practical for you (my feeling is that it is not), but sometimes confessing our feelings is enough to initiate a profound shift. When we tell people we feel a strange sense of connection to them, the experience moves from an internal level to an external one, which relieves psychic tension. This makes sense because we feel strongly drawn toward someone because we are supposed to interact with them. Of course, the other person may not share our sense of connection, for they may not be as psychically awake and aware as we are. Someone who is psychically turned off may not feel anything, while someone keenly awake may both feel a sense of connection and know or intuit the reason behind it by remembering the past life experiences involved or the future destiny they are being drawn into.

It sounds like you are somewhere in the middle in that you are aware of feeling drawn toward him without knowing why. If you trust your feelings and allow them to come to the surface either of your awareness or your outer experience, you will naturally resolve any karmic tension involved and begin to fulfill your destiny as concerns this individual. Please do keep in mind that feeling strongly drawn toward someone does not mean that we are supposed to be in relationship to them forever, but rather that they are one important stop along an infinitely larger journey.

Soul Arcanum

Tags: , , ,
Permalink

The Reincarnation of Plants and Animals

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on The Reincarnation of Plants and Animals


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve read articles that suggest that where we end up in the afterlife is based on our thoughts and feelings. This led me to wonder if plants and animals in heaven are simply self-created thought forms or if they have independent existences. Is there a separate afterlife for plants and animals? I’m also aware of the idea that through reincarnation, plants can evolve into animals, and animals into humans, and that this is a natural process of spiritual development. Do other life forms like plants and animals immediately reincarnate after death, or is there another realm they stay in before they incarnate again? How does all of this work?

S.

Dear S.:

No one can answer these sorts of questions with any certainty. The best we can do is study what mystics have taught for ages and compare it to the information gathered by channelers and researchers who work with near-death experiencers and converse with souls via life between life regression. Of course, it also makes sense to study nature and ponder what resonates with us as true on a deep, soulful level.

First let’s address your question about the possibility that all the plants and animals perceived in other realms could be “self-created.” By this, I assume you are asking if it is possible that they only exist in our minds or if we create them in these realms via our imaginations. This is a strangely selective solipsism, for why would one believe that other people are real but all other creatures mere fantasies?

Since it’s impossible to prove that anyone or anything exists outside of ourselves, we have to rely on our gut feelings and intuition when deciding whether to believe that we are the creator of everything we experience or are part of an existence inhabited by other beings like ourselves. I have had some subjective experiences of being someone else that have led me to assume that other people exist, think and feel just like I do. For example, now and then I have dreams that I am someone else – someone who looks, lives, thinks and feels very differently than I do. I have also had very vivid dreams of an entirely different existence as a dolphin, which strengthen my view that we are living subjective lives in an objective world. Of course, according to quantum physicists, at some point it is impossible to distinguish between subjective and objective because the act of observation affects what is observed.

Besides these admittedly shaky reasons, it seems foolishly arrogant to assume that everything that exists was created by me and for me, and that none of the other individuals who appear to be doing the exact same thing are “real.” Nearly all esoteric teachings suggest that we are all part of something greater than ourselves and thus connected to All That Is – not that we are all there is. I would thus assume that the people, plants and animals encountered in the afterlife are not figments of one’s imagination.

Regarding what happens to plants and animals when they die, and if what happens is different from what happens to humans, I suppose the real question is if plants and animals have “souls” – some part of them that transcends their physical existence – and if they do, if those souls are fundamentally different somehow from human souls.

I believe both plants and animals have some aspect that transcends physical existence based on what I (and many others) have observed of their auras. Living plants and animals have auras like human beings do. When a plant is dying, its aura begins to fade, and when all the life force has drained from the plant, its aura disappears. The same is true of animals and human beings. While I don’t know of any research into the spirits of plants, it makes sense to me to assume that all living beings share the same cycles of life, death, and reincarnation.

There is a lot of evidence that animals have souls. If this wasn’t true, the spirits of animals would not be able to become earthbound like human spirits can. There have been stories about animal spirits and ghosts throughout the centuries and around the world. Most of these ghosts involve species that human beings tend to form personal relationships with such as cats, dogs, horses and birds. Just as a violent or sudden death can cause humans to become confused as to whether or not they are still incarnate in a particular body, the same can happen with animals. There is also a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that animals that form strong emotional bonds to human beings may remain close to people who are grieving for them for some time after they have died, just as the spirits of human beings sometimes do.

I’ve also heard many stories of pet owners who believe their departed pets returned to them reincarnated as a new pet. Some of these stories are very striking in terms of how these animals are similar to the former pet and how the owners were led to find them in their new forms.

There seems to be a continuum of consciousness with perhaps rocks and minerals at the bottom, followed by plants, then animals, then humans. Further, within the animal kingdom, one sees a great range of development, with dogs, cats, horses, primates and dolphins being some of the animals at the higher end of the spectrum. (My feeling is that dolphins may be even more evolved than humans, but more on dolphins below.)  It seems the more evolved an animal species is, the more natural it is for that species to develop an emotional relationship with human beings. This could easily be explained by vibration, for as a species moves closer to the human spectrum, it would naturally be drawn toward other creatures of a similar vibration.

Much past life, life between life, and near-death research suggests that as we evolve spiritually, we gain more and more free will. With more freedom comes a greater chance of getting lost, going astray, or refusing the guidance sent to us, which could affect how, when and where we reincarnate. This would explain why human beings and the more evolved animals can become ghosts, while other less evolved creatures may unconsciously flow with natural spiritual law.

There are some people who say that human beings are special and could never incarnate as a plant or animal, but I had a personal experience that leads me to believe otherwise. It began with a trip to Sea World in which I had some amazing telepathic experiences with dolphins, after which I began to have the most amazing, vivid “dreams” of being a dolphin myself. These were not normal dreams, for they felt entirely real: I had a dolphin body that I felt totally at home in, and personal relationships with other dolphins. It felt more joyful and free to be a dolphin than I’ve ever felt as a human being.

Given all of the above, my general concept of “how it all works” is thus: all life is constantly coming into being, dying, and being reborn again. Through these experiences, souls naturally evolve into higher states of consciousness and vibration. This occurs in an unconscious manner until a soul starts to develop self-awareness and free will, at which point it may begin to choose to veer in a consciously chosen direction or refuse to move forward for a time (as with earthbound spirits). Since all life begins in the spirit world and returns to the spirit world, all varieties of life found in the physical can be found on higher planes.

Soul Arcanum

Tags: , , , ,
Permalink

Reincarnation, Personality and the Soul

Filed Under: Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Reincarnation, Personality and the Soul


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

How much of our personality carries over across lifetimes? Is it possible for a totally introverted person to decide to be very extroverted in his/her next life? Or is there a certain essence of us that is constant, something that’s like the nature of our energy? If that’s true, how can we tell which personality trait stems from our higher self, and which part is learned from this current life experience?

Sherry

Dear Sherry:

This is one of those questions that are very hard to address in the amount of space I have for this column, but I’ll do my best. It’s also such a profoundly deep question that no one can answer it with any certainty, so what I offer you here is simply my own concept of how things work, as incomplete and imperfect as it must be.

You may be familiar with the notion that we are all composed of various bodies: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. In this scheme of things, the soul would be the spiritual body. We adopt new physical, emotional and mental bodies each time we incarnate on Earth, and shed those bodies when we leave this life. The spiritual body or soul is the <q>lowest</q> or densest body we retain between lifetimes.

There are bodies beyond the soul, but these are less individuated than the soul. Actually, all the bodies grow less individuated the “higher up” we go. Thus the physical body is the most separate/individuated, the emotional a little less so, the mental less even yet, with the spiritual body merging toward greater oneness with All That Is. Beyond the soul/spiritual body, there are finer bodies that have been given all sorts of esoteric labels. At these levels, we are far more than we conceptualize ourselves to be. As these levels of existence are beyond the scope of incarnation on the Earth plane, for now, let’s use the four-body model of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

When we leave this life, the personality and all it has learned and experienced is reabsorbed and integrated by the soul. (This is probably happening throughout our lives, but when we die, the personality dies with the physical body, so what remains is what the soul has absorbed.) All the “good stuff” we gain throughout a lifetime – the qualities we work on developing – are added to the soul. The soul is that part of us that is the driving force behind the incarnation process, the highest part of us that remains individuated from Source. Some people call this aspect the Higher Self, as it contains all the wisdom we’ve ever gained as well as awareness of our plans and goals for each lifetime. Each personality we become throughout our various lifetimes is thus both individual and part of the whole, much like the cells in our bodies are individuated and yet part of a greater whole.

Our personality exists for one lifetime only. Its qualities are driven by many different influences, such as the place and time of our births (which we can study via astrology), our DNA/heredity, our parents, societies, teachers and other formative influences. Of course, the experiences we encounter also shape our personalities. This is especially true of early experiences, which is why we tend to view the personality as being formed in the first few years of life.

When we first begin incarnating on Earth, we are most individuated; as we spiritually evolve, we identify less and less with the temporal personality and more and more with the soul. When we reach a stage where we are so identified with the soul that our vibration is too high for the physical plane (and we won’t learn much by being here), we stop incarnating on Earth and begin to incarnate on higher planes of existence.

This is sort of like flying to the farthest point on the globe in order to go exploring, and then slowly making our way back home. The more we travel, the closer we get to our starting point. By the time we make it back, we’ll have had all sorts of fascinating experiences and hopefully be profoundly transformed by our quest. Then we do it all over again, only this time, we choose a different destination and a very different type of adventure so that we can broaden our horizons. Choosing a personality and type of life experience is thus very much like choosing a certain type of adventure. One time we may choose to be bold explorers, scaling huge mountains; another time, we may choose to be quiet seekers, secluded in an ashram; another time we may choose to be generous servers, helping people build better lives for themselves.

When we admire someone, our souls are saying, I’d like to be like that person and experience what they are experiencing. In order to do this, we may choose a setting with certain parents and other influences that will encourage us to grow in this direction. It may be something of a struggle for us if these qualities are very new to us, but the more we accomplish our aim, the more we grow to embody those qualities. We are therefore wise to pay a lot of attention to the people and experiences we admire and feel strongly drawn to, for these feelings are signs from our souls regarding what we are in the process of developing in ourselves.

We are all in the process of embodying more of our souls/higher selves. This requires learning to question what we’ve been taught, to think for ourselves, and above all, to listen within to our “hearts.” The more we do this, the less we tend to change from one lifetime to another, for instead of becoming whatever we are taught or learn to be based on our physical experiences, we come from the soul within, which is ever evolving but relatively constant.

Determining which aspects are of the personality versus which are of the soul is fairly simple. It is the soul that asks deep questions and ponders the meaning of life and our experiences. It is the soul that is able to observe life with calm detachment. This is why meditation, which helps us develop the inner observer, brings the soul forward. It is the soul that whispers to us as the voice of our conscience and the voice of our intuition. It is the soul that recognizes soul mates and kindred spirits, and the soul that makes us feel drawn toward certain people, places and experiences.

When we just know in our hearts what the “right” thing to do would be, that is the soul speaking. This can be tricky, of course, because one of our tasks is to question what we’ve been taught we <q>should</q> do by outside influences in order to hear the wisdom of the soul. When we realize that the right thing for one person in a certain situation may be one thing, while the right thing for a different person in the same situation may be something else entirely, we begin to align with the wisdom of the soul versus the learned views of the personality.

The part of us that loves and feels compassion is of the soul. I love the term “soul-stirring,” for it illustrates how experiences that are particularly meaningful or moving will touch us “deep down” and naturally bring the soul forward. Some of the qualities that are hallmarks of the soul include peacefulness, inspiration, compassion, love, altruism, integrity and faith. The more we evolve, the more our personalities grow to reflect these qualities of the higher self/soul.

Soul Arcanum

Tags: , ,
Permalink

The Influence of Past Lives on Current Relationships

Filed Under: Past Lives, Reincarnation, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on The Influence of Past Lives on Current Relationships


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I started dating my new boyfriend two months ago, and we have a very harmonious, happy relationship. After a month, I began to receive pictures in my mind of us together but in Victorian dress. The scenario I get is that he was courting me and I was starting to fall in love with him, but something went wrong on my part; I’m not sure what it was. As a result, he broke off the relationship and I never saw him again in that life.  Now I sometimes get the feeling that we have a second chance, or feel anxious that I will make a horrible mistake which will end the relationship. Of course, this is also a product of my own insecurities. I have asked him if he has any fears or insecurities about me or our relationship, but he has none. I haven’t told him about these past life memories, but we both found it strange that we remember seeing each other growing up on two separate occasions (we grew up in the same area), but never met officially and felt an immediate kinship when we did meet. In any event, I am curious if these mental pictures are from another time, or if they are just a product of my subconscious working out my fears. I’d appreciate your feedback.

Elle

Dear Elle:

These definitely sound like past life memories to me, especially given the Victorian style of dress. However, before we look for metaphysical explanations, it’s prudent to rule out some conventional psychological reasons why you may be thinking and feeling as you have been.

It’s possible that despite the fact that on a conscious level you are sure of what you want in this relationship, deep down you may fear commitment for some reason. It’s normal to fear the loss of any great blessing, and when it comes to relationships, this fear can lead to commitment issues if you want to avoid potential pain in the future even more than you want to enjoy great love now.

It’s also possible that you dread all the work and sacrifices that intimate relationships require, and are repressing awareness of this fear because it’s threatening to your self-image. Of course, it may also be that deep down, you don’t feel worthy of great love, and these feelings of unworthiness seem so threatening that you are manufacturing potential problems in this relationship in order to avoid having to work through your insecurities.

Some people will actually work themselves into a state where they believe all sorts of unfounded things in order to give themselves a reason to sabotage a relationship that feels too close or threatens to unearth some overwhelming issues. I’m not saying that this is what is happening in this relationship – in fact, none of these explanations feel right to me at all – but they are certainly worth considering.

To sort out what is going on, I recommend hypnotherapy with a therapist who has experience in working with past lives. Once you become conscious of the roots of your uneasiness, you can learn whatever you need to learn from these feelings, which will empower you to create something better this time around. It will also quickly lead you to new peace regarding all of this.

Hypnotherapy designed to communicate directly with your higher self in order to reach for the true cause of these feelings is sure to reveal their source, and can also empower you to leap into a higher level of experience in this area of your life. Often, the cause for inexplicable problems could never be predicted or discerned from a conscious level of awareness. We can try to reason our way to them without ever accessing the true insights that produce quick and lasting healing.

This is what is so fascinating and powerful about hypnotherapy: you just never know what is going to come up, but whatever does come up is always just right given your healing focus or intention. What comes up also always makes sense in retrospect – it just can’t be foreseen from a conscious state of awareness.

Some people are hesitant to explore memories that may be unpleasant, but this very resistance suggests that fear is running the show and is thus preventing them from attaining the peace, happiness and fulfillment they long for. Instead of causing new distress, past life work is always therapeutic and cathartic; by making peace with the past, we are empowered to shed old problems and manifest a higher level of experience.

There are endless ways we may resist facing some scary truth about ourselves. In a fear-driven attempt to understand and gain control over the course of our experience, often we make up stories about the way things are that are distorted or skewed. I don’t feel that this is what you’re doing, however. I feel that you’re in the process of getting conscious about some old issues and lessons so that you can consciously choose differently this time around, and thus manifest a better outcome for yourself. In fact, I can see you in the past life you describe, feeling heart-broken over the way things went and vowing to yourself that would learn from that experience and never make that same “mistake” again.

It is the powerful energy of that vow that is bringing these past life memories back to you now. It’s like you are reaching through time to remind yourself that you have made this journey before, and would be wise to make different choices this time around.

To shed your worries, it’s wise to trust that all we need to do is listen to our hearts and give the best of ourselves to whatever we’re trying to create in our lives and everything will work out just fine. There is really nothing to be anxious about. Everything happens for a higher reason: either to lead us to something we need to learn or to lead us to the fulfillment of some desire. Your experience here is a bit extraordinary in that you are gaining conscious awareness of the lesson you are currently working on and the karma you’re in the process of resolving. We do this sort of thing all the time, but where most people are feeling our way in the dark, you’ve had a light switched on!

When we have faith that everything happens for a higher reason, it’s easy to lighten up, which leads us into a higher vibration and empowers us to consciously influence the course of our experience. It’s a bit ironic, but when we can relax about whether a certain relationship will go the way we want it to because we have faith that one way or another, we can manifest what we want in love, we either find the power to draw from that relationship what we desire, or we slip away from it to embrace greater potentials.

When we can get into this calm, faithful frame of mind, our anxieties naturally fall away, and this is when we can begin to truly enjoy all the blessings in our lives. (It’s hard to truly enjoy anything if we’re constantly anxious that we’ll lose it, and in losing it, lose all hope of finding the happiness and fulfillment we long for.)

You would therefore be wise to trust that there is nothing to get anxious about here. Be grateful for the love and other blessings in your life, and give the best of yourself to them. Give thanks for this gift of awareness, and use it to make the wisest choices you can. By devoting your mind and heart to the cultivation of faith, love, and all that you desire, you will bless yourself and align with deep fulfillment.

– Soul Arcanum

Tags: , , ,
Permalink

Why Do We Feel So Attracted to Some People?

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Karma, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Why Do We Feel So Attracted to Some People?


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Why do we fall in love with someone we hardly know? Why does this sort of thing happen? If we don’t really know them, how can we love them? I find myself in this situation and it’s just not right because it breaks all social rules and conventions. I feel a very strong, happy pull towards a particular gentleman. It’s like my heart recognizes him and is so happy to hear his name and see him, but my head is telling me to stop being silly. I think he has a soft spot for me as well. Is this just some fleeting fantasy, or is his energy pulling me toward him? Are there spiritual reasons for why we feel so drawn to some people from the moment we meet them?
K.R.

Dear K.R.:

The first thing that struck me about your question is your assumption that if something breaks social rules and conventions, it’s just ‘not right.’ I believe the only way to know what is truly right is to listen to our hearts, for there are all sorts of social conventions that are pretty crazy.

There is always a reason why we feel a certain way, but that doesn’t mean we should act on all our feelings. For example, we may feel like punching someone who makes us angry or like eating a huge bag of candy, but that doesn’t mean we’re wise to act on those impulses.

Often we distract ourselves with momentary obsessions in order to avoid facing feelings or issues that are overwhelming. Many people in unhappy marriages try to distract themselves by projecting their unfulfilled desires on a third party. This allows them to focus on something that feels good while avoiding upsetting or disturbing thoughts and feelings.

Repressed desires can also spark inexplicable attractions. Many crushes are simply the result of boredom. We all crave excitement and romance, and if we are repressing our desires by not pursuing our dreams, the passion burning within us will seek release in some other way.

I’m not suggesting that all strange attractions are somehow misguided or unfounded – far from it – but in order to determine if there are good soulful reasons behind a strange attraction, it’s important to eliminate some of the more mundane possibilities. This is sort of like ghost hunting: before we attribute phenomena to something otherworldly, we’re wise to rule out common explanations.

There are many spiritual reasons we may feel strangely attracted to someone. Usually this strong pull is karmic in nature, and suggests a positive past life relationship. Since there are many reasons we may feel as we do, however, we’re wise to consider other possibilities. For example, we may fall in love with someone we didn’t know in a past life simply because they remind us of someone we once loved deeply. In these cases, we may have that familiar feeling of recognizing someone from a past life, and old feelings of love and passion may be stirred up even though the person before us is not the soul we are “remembering.”

This can also happen with people we’ve known in the past in this life. Often we are attracted to someone because they remind us of someone else. This doesn’t have to be romantic: if we meet someone who reminds us of a beloved grandfather, we may feel strongly drawn to him, especially if we haven’t fully grieved Grandpa yet. Our subconscious is forever guiding us to finish old business and resolve personal issues, so if we meet someone who stirs up something in us that needs more attention, it’s normal to feel a sense of attraction.

Our souls are also guiding us to what we need to experience in order to learn whatever we need to learn next. I often counsel women who are looking for true love, and as I peek into the future, I may see a man coming in who is not going to be a life long partner, but who will prove to be essential to her journey to fulfillment. Somehow, this relationship will help her to learn whatever she needs to learn or heal whatever she needs to heal in order to move to a higher level of experience.

The forces behind attraction are like the force of gravity: like naturally attracts like, and holes in our beings are naturally the first things to be filled as the river of time and experience washes over us. We all have deep issues that we’re not conscious of as well as desires and questions burning in our hearts, and we naturally draw into our lives the people and experiences that can help us move toward peace and fulfillment.

Further, we often mistake the soulful things we need for the people who represent them. A good example of this is the experience of transference, when someone who is seeking something profound like inner peace, happiness or healing falls in love with his therapist. The therapist represents feeling better, but in essence is just one channel through which what is needed can flow.

Something similar happens when a person symbolizes or embodies some trait or aspect we are being called to develop further ourselves. If we are drawn to someone deeply spiritual, our own inner being may be trying to get us to lean in a more spiritual direction. If we’re out of balance, we may feel strongly drawn to someone who represents the other end of the spectrum – hence the saying that opposites attract.

Attraction is energetic. When someone’s energy harmonizes well with our own, we feel like we “click.” If someone has a higher vibration than we do, it’s natural to feel drawn to them, and if someone has a lower vibration, it’s natural to feel repelled. So if being in this man’s energy field makes you feel uplifted, it’s natural for you to want to be near him.

Often we feel deeply drawn to someone because they are a soul mate � someone we’ve loved deeply in another place and time. In such cases, it’s important to remember that what we do with our loving feelings is up to us. If acting on romantic attractions would compromise our own values somehow, we can still love that person without going in a romantic direction.

Romance is a human experience: there is never a soul reason to have physical sex with someone, except for when we are destined to have a child together in order to bring a particular soul into the world. At the same time, however, there is never a soul reason NOT to have sex with someone. As long as we don’t go against our own truths and values, we are free to follow our hearts. Of course, depending on our circumstances, we are only as free as we are brave enough to break with convention.

Often this sort of situation arises as a spiritual test: Will we find the courage to honor the truth in our own hearts? Sometimes doing the right thing means one course of action, and at other times, it means something totally different. Here social rules and conventions prove to be great spiritual tools, for what we’re really doing is learning to trust our own judgment so much that we don’t need social convention to tell us what’s right anymore.

To figure out what this attraction means for you, you must first trust that there is a good reason for it. Then ask yourself what this person represents or symbolizes to you, and how he makes you feel. If this attraction was not about this individual, what might it be about for you on a deeper soul level?

I believe we’re placed in situations where we feel drawn to people and experiences that are somehow forbidden because we’re supposed to learn how to listen to and trust our own hearts. Choosing love is always the answer, but since what that means is unique to each situation, we must ask within and trust our inner knowing to guide us.

– Soul Arcanum

Tags: , , , , ,
Permalink