“the Soul is immortal and the body a boat to ferry us
across to this realization.”
Siddhanath, Yogiraj Satgurunath. Wings to Freedom:
Mystic Revelations From Babaji & The Himalayan Yogis (Page 9). Alight
Publications. Kindle Edition.
Originally I had intended to present my experiences chronologically but I have taken a detour. I hope to fill in some of that missing material at a later date.
When I first started meditating I had some shocking
experiences that caused me to almost give up on meditation completely. During
the first one I heard a woman screaming and saw a black boot kicking someone. I
stopped meditating right away and didn’t want to go back to it. When I finally
picked up the courage to meditate again I suddenly began talking in a language
I didn’t know. I was complaining bitterly to a blond-haired man. I looked down
and saw my meditation shawl in my lap as a dead infant. I went on and on and
really wished I could stop. Even as I was complaining I felt I had said enough
and I should let some of this go. When it was over I had no way of
comprehending what had happened. At that time, I did not believe in
reincarnation. Later I connected the two meditation events and saw that someone
had kicked me in the belly when I was pregnant, and the baby was aborted. I was
slowly coming around to accepting reincarnation.
Then a friend gave me a book
about art therapy at Terezin concentration camp. I hid it away and didn’t look
at it for a year. When I did, I first saw the back cover, which had a picture of
a group of children. I heard myself say “I know him” about one of the little
boys. Finally, I turned the book over and on the cover was a portrait of a
woman. I said, “That looks like me.” I opened the book and began reading about
the woman on the cover. She was Friedl Dicker-Brandeis an artist who pioneered
the use of art therapy with children. In this life I have been an artist my
whole life and had a master’s degree in art therapy. Whether I was actually
Fiedl in another life I do not know but what I am absolutely positive of is
that I lost an infant in another life and the strong desire to have a child
carried me into this life.
When things are left undone, or there has been no
closure or forgiveness of past grievances incarnation follows to address those
specific issues. This is born out by several stories recounted in Michael
Newton’s books. If a life is cut short, as by accident or killing, there is a
good chance of a hasty reincarnation because of strong desires to fulfill
thwarted goals. It is also interesting to note as Rabbi Yonassan Gershom points
out in his book “Beyond the Ashes: cases of reincarnation from the Holocaust”
that some victims of the Holocaust chose to reincarnate in non-Jewish families
because they were terrified of being identified as being Jewish. Some Holocaust
reincarnates feel the urge to visit specific places that turn out to trigger
past life memories. I on the other hand have felt a strong aversion to visiting
certain places such as Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic due to past
associations. Rabbi Gershom also lists several other characteristics of people
he has interviewed that died in the Holocaust. One of these is being a
baby-boomer (which I am), another is recurring nightmares involving Nazis
(which I had as a child), and another is physical symptoms relating to past life
“memories”. Michael Newton also describes several cases where people
reincarnate with birthmarks or congenital physical conditions that are
carryovers from trauma in a past life.