Reincarnation. Not part of Western culture but a long-time belief in spiritual traditions coming out of India.
I don’t have any explicit, conscious memories of previous lives. So there’s room for doubt.
But what if I had implicit memories? Those are the kinds of memories that become so imbedded — wired in, you might say — that you don’t have to consciously recall them to do certain activities, like driving, reading, conversing in your native language. Or, really, anything you do often enough that you don’t have to think about it.
By the way, you can always improve the activities you do on autopilot by becoming present as you do them. Maybe you always miss a spot when brushing your teeth, and you have dental issues. Or you need to look up words in whatever you’re reading for better comprehension. Or your fancy car beeps when you cross the center line, and you learn to pay better attention.
There’s always room for learning.
Anyway, what if a relationship in this lifetime was with someone you knew in a past life, or perhaps several lives?
How would you know?
I’ve been puzzling about a certain relationship for awhile now. Sometimes I feel like I know this person well, and yet, in this lifetime, I know that I don’t. It’s a mystery.
You know how your mind can make up a story to fit your experience? We like for things to make sense. Narratives are important.
My mind did just that! An idea formed in my consciousness that we had been very close in a previous life or lives, and that I loved them very, very much. I don’t know what the relationship(s) were: life partners, parent/child, siblings, best friends, close collaborators, colleagues…maybe all of the above.
That thought felt really good. It changed my perspective, from feeling unsettled about it to appreciating so much that I get to witness some of their current life and can see some of their evolution.
They have created a beautiful life.
Wow, that might be a good perspective to take with everyone! We’re all evolving.
Also, our species has been settling on farms and in communities for 10,000 years and were nomadic hunter-gathers for many millennia before that.
If reincarnation is for real, then we’ve probably had at least 1,000 lives. Maybe twice that many. Who knows? We could have experienced almost everything.
It’s known now that we can inherit memories. Maybe the idea of reincarnation helped explain that in the eons before we knew about epigenetics.
We all have had at least 2,000 ancestors, and through them have probably experienced almost everything.
Either theory could explain the felt sense of having known and loved someone that you know you have never met before in this lifetime.
How about you?
Do you have explicit memories of past lives?
How about implicit memories?
Have you experienced anything similar?
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 