Dear Soul Arcanum:
I had a dream about my mother-in-law. It was set in the 1800’s; I could tell by the clothes we were wearing. It was very vivid, in full color. My mother-in-law was my mother, and she was trying to kill me because I had lost my virginity before marriage. As it turns out, I killed her in self-defense. I’m wondering if this is truly a past life experience – a message from spirit that my mother-in-law was indeed my mother in a past life. Are we together in this life to make up for my karma in the past? Do I tell her about my dream or will she think I’m crazy? What do I do with this dream? My birth date is 8/5/1970.
Katrina
Dear Katrina:
Your dream certainly sounds like the memory of a past life experience, since it’s set in another time period and involved people from your current life who were different people in the dream. Even more important, however, is your intuitive feeling about it. Of course, to access confirmation, more information, and/or healing of the issues involved, you could always pursue past life regression with a hypnotherapist.
Let’s work under the assumption that this is indeed a dream about a past life experience. Since souls tend to reincarnate in the same groups over and over again, it makes perfect sense that your mother in a past life would have a close relationship with you in this one.
Both our best and our worst relationships tend to be deeply karmic in nature. Since we learn the most from big challenges, when relationships are really difficult, we are wise to ask ourselves what we are learning as a result of that person being in our life.
I’d like to share with you a similar situation of my own. I knew the first time I laid eyes on my husband that he was part of my soul family and was destined to be important in my future. Months later, I also immediately recognized his ex-wife upon first meeting her. (She seemed to recognize me on some level too, as she was markedly unfriendly.)
My husband and his ex used to have a very antagonistic relationship, but I was determined to turn all of that around. Sadly, she didn’t seem to have any interest in having a harmonious relationship with either one of us, and no matter what I did, things always seemed to fall apart.
When I meditated on the situation, to my surprise, I remembered a past life in which his ex and I had been sisters. In that lifetime, he had begun to court her, which thrilled her because he was a really good catch. The first time he came to our house, however, I opened the door and the sparks flew. (We already had a soul mate bond when we met in that lifetime.) To make a long story short, he switched his attentions from my older sister to me, and my sister never forgave me.
After remembering this, it was easy to see why I wanted so badly for things to be good between us, and why she may have had animosity from the start. We’ve finally made peace, but this relationship still seems more important to me than it is to her. This may be because spiritual growth is more important to me in general, or it may be that in remembering that past life, I reawakened all the guilt and angst from that time for myself, so I’m highly motivated to resolve the karma and feelings involved.
Since we forget our past lives so that we can test ourselves to see if we have really learned the lessons involved, we often remember them when we finally master those lessons. I’m betting that close to the time of this dream, you achieved some sort of epiphany or spiritual breakthrough that relates to this lesson. With a bit of contemplation, I bet you can determine the dynamic or event in your relationship with your mother-in-law that triggered this memory.
As you contemplate this, you might ask yourself what you’ve learned or are learning as a result of having her in your life. For example, from the tumultuous relationship I described above, I’ve learned that we can only do our own best to create love and harmony: No matter how badly we may want to create greater love with someone, if the other person doesn’t want it, we have to respect that.
I’ve also learned that we don’t need the other person’s cooperation to heal our own souls and set ourselves free from karma. In fact, it’s normal for one person to be more motivated to work things out than the other person is, so we must focus on our own personal issues in relationships.
If you get hung up on the quality of the relationship itself, it can be very frustrating to try to create peace with old enemies since most people try to avoid those connections as much as possible. This is essentially the difference between one who is on a conscious spiritual path and everyone else: people who are motivated by fear tend to bury big issues and avoid emotional pain, while people who are motivated by love are eager to bring to light anything standing in the way of greater harmony.
Everyone comes to healing in their own time and way, and it’s not for us to decide what others should do or desire. For this reason, we must listen to our inner guidance and honor it. Then if we do feel called to make some effort, we’re wise to do so without attachment to receiving a particular outcome or response. If you can get into a vibration where you can remain kind and peaceful whether your efforts to create love and forgiveness are well-received or rejected, you will free yourself no matter what anyone else chooses to do.
You don’t have to do anything overt to heal yourself from the past; what’s important is what happens inside of you. Can you have compassion for yourself and all that you were up against? Can you also find compassion for her and recognize how stressed she must have been to act as she did? When you fully integrate the lessons this relationship is teaching you, and you forgive yourself and everyone else involved, you will be free.
Finally, our point of power is right now, so resolving past karma isn’t as important as creating good karma today. Instead of getting hung up on the past, I recommend you focus on making your current relationship as good as it can be. If she remains antagonistic, you can always send love to her in your heart and mind without needing any particular response in return.
In summary, ask your own inner guidance how to best make peace with the past, and act on the intuitions you receive. At the same time, strive to create loving relationships with everyone in your life right now. This will not only lift you above old karma, it will empower you to soar to new heights of health, happiness, personal power and prosperity in this lifetime, and align you with wonderful spirit family reunions in all your lives to come.
– Soul Arcanum