Just how old is your soul, and how many lives has it experienced before this one? The idea that the spirit lives indefinitely is intriguing enough. It’s comforting to know that there is more to our existence than the physical life we now live, however much we enjoy it. But to think of living multiple physical lives … that’s fascinated humans for centuries.

What happens when a spirit enters a new “life”? Is it possible to contact spirits that have “passed on” in this way, that is, reincarnated? For example, if your father has reincarnated, can you still contact him as your father in the spirit world? Do you, in your present life, remember your past lives? Do the experiences of those past lives extend in some way into this life—can you contact one of your own past (or future) selves? Do certain souls travel together? This chapter examines the concepts of past lives and reincarnation, and relates them to communicating with the dead and to past life therapy.

Cycles are the natural order of existence—day and night, planting and harvest, birth and death. As early cultures observed these cycles, they noticed that they repeat. Spring follows winter, autumn follows summer, light follows darkness. Over and over again, the pattern repeats. Why, then, would this not be the pattern or cycle of human life?

The concept of reincarnation dates back to earliest recorded history, and extends across various cultures. The Greek philosopher Plato believed—and taught—that the soul was separate from the body. While the body clearly was mortal—it lived and died—the soul was not. The soul, according to Plato, was immortal and continually reincarnated.

Reincarnation is a fundamental tenet of many Eastern religions. Hinduism believes that the soul returns to physical existence in various forms, depending on the lessons it still needs to learn. Such forms might be animal, plant, or human. A key element of reincarnation in many Eastern belief systems is karma. The principle of karma is simple: What you give is what you get!

In its religious context, karma shapes reincarnation and defines the lessons of the next incarnation. In a broader context, karma is energy. Your thoughts as well as your actions are patterns of energy. Everything you think, everything you do, affects the universe in infinitesimal ways. Karma, as energy, has a ripple effect that extends far beyond logical comprehension.

Your spirit has a divine mission, a way it fits in the grand scheme of the universe. To fulfill its mission, your spirit chooses paths and journeys. It chooses its time of entry into this life, and the circumstances into which it will make its entrance. Your soul chose your parents to be the physical entities responsible for giving you physical life. These are choices and decisions that take place well beyond the realm of your conscious mind. In fact, they often take place before what you identify as your conscious mind actually exists! In a way, it’s like your spirit sits with God, co-creates your path with God, and plans the next phase of your existence. Continued existence on the higher side? Life on the earth plane? It depends on what lessons your spirit needs to learn. These determinations take place not only before you enter your current physical life, but throughout your existence as a physical being even though you have no conscious awareness of them.

Past life regression, which we talk about later in this chapter, is one way that you can gain a sense for the travels of your spirit. Experiences that you chalk up to déjà vu (the sense that you’ve been to a particular place or met a certain person before) could well be connections that you had in previous lives.

You come to this lifetime to learn, and you decide on the lessons of this lifetime before you arrive. This doesn’t mean these lessons happen automatically. Every choice you make, every decision you make, determines the next path you take along your journey. This is free will: You choose the direction of your life. Even if it doesn’t seem that your life is one of choice at all, your spirit has made decisions about how it will learn the lessons of this lifetime.

The really great thing is that you don’t have to go it alone! Each morning when you get up, say out loud, “God, show me the pebbles I need to step over, show me the boulders I need to walk around.” You don’t have to bang your head against the wall to “get” it! When we ask for help and guidance, we can more easily learn the lessons that we came here to learn.

Are there people in your life that you feel you’re just destined to be with? Friends, lovers, even your siblings and your children, might feel like they are intended to be a part of your life. You know each other at a level of intimacy that seems to transcend your relationship. You have intuitive and even psychic connections. You finish each other’s sentences, you call or stop by when one is thinking about the other. You are connected to each other in ways that even other people notice. You are likely members of the same soul group—a cosmic family of sorts, spirits that travel together through existence.

Even if you don’t consciously know your connections to the physical lives of others in your soul group, you eventually encounter them during your life. This might be a stranger you meet in a coffee shop who seems so familiar that you begin talking as though you’ve known each other forever—which might indeed be the case! It’s usually a great delight to connect with the members of your soul group. You’re all traveling together on your spirit journeys for a reason—you have lessons to share with each other or a shared mission.

Relationships are not always the same. The characteristics of physical life that we consider important—such as gender and family lines—are just outer trappings. You are man or woman in this life, and you likely were woman and man in other lives. You and a soul partner might have been husband and wife in one life, and brother and sister in another. As awkward as this might feel when you think about it, remember that spirit existence doesn’t have the constraints of our physical world. Details like gender and relationship have little bearing, in the context of spirit growth and evolution, beyond their roles in bringing together the spirits who need to learn together.

What are these lessons your spirit needs to learn? Each of us has different lessons; each soul has a unique mission. The more highly evolved your spirit, the more likely it is that your mission involves helping others with the lessons of their missions. Those who leave their legacies in history as great people—from religious leaders like Gandhi, Jesus, and Buddha to political leaders who direct the lives of millions of people—are highly evolved. Their spirits choose to return to physical lives to help direct the lives of others toward the highest and the best.

Highly evolved spirits are not just the famous and the powerful in their earthly lives, however. Who do you know in your life who seems to have wisdom and insight beyond his or her years? We sometimes say of such a person, “she has an old soul.” Intuitively we understand that, on a spirit level, this person has traveled many lives.

We believe that the ultimate goal of spirit evolution—and by extension, the lessons our spirits learn—is to work toward becoming one with the divine. A lofty ideal, to be sure! But if existence is about the spirit’s evolution, it is the only ideal that is possible. All lessons move toward increasing understanding and compassion—for ourselves and for others.

It’s hard for us to conceptualize timelessness. Yet this is the paradox of the continuity of time: When time is endless, it isn’t time. Time, by definition, is a limitation. We ascribe characteristics to it that make it seem finite, but these are artificial. Minutes, days, months, years—methods of measuring time were made for the linear human mind.

Even as we think of the cycles of life, we think of time as a linear element. We speak of past lives and future lives, lives that exist along a linear continuum. This implies that time has a beginning and an end. Again, this reflects the limitations of our physical existence, as spirits tell us there is no time on the higher side! Only in the physical world does time frame existence.

The connections of your past continue in the present. They also link you to your future, even though as yet you have no perception of it. The experiences and lessons of the past shape both the present and the future.

The idea of connecting with future lives is quite intriguing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know the future? The problem is, because it hasn’t happened yet, you can’t verify it. With past life experiences, there’s often a way to affirm what you sense were your experiences. Through spirit contact, you might receive information that validates perceptions that you have about a past life. You can connect this information and your perceptions to events and circumstances in your current life.

With future lives, this validation process is not in place. You can’t verify what you haven’t yet experienced. Further, these are glimpses of possible futures. Remember, free will determines the paths of your life. You choose the directions you take … in this life and in other lives. This makes your future lives moving targets. Each decision you make (consciously or on the spirit level) influences the path of this life and subsequently the paths of future lives.

Sometimes in your current life you find yourself in a situation with someone that is difficult. When Rita worked with troubled youth, she found one young man particularly difficult. Tony seemed to seek her out, yet continually challenged whatever she told him. For reasons Rita didn’t understand, she was especially tolerant of Tony—which she found frustrating because he took far more of her time and effort than it seemed she should give him.

Asking her spirit guides, “Why is this kid in my life?” Rita did a meditation to explore a possible past life relationship with Tony. The connection came to her quickly: In a past life, he had saved her life.

In this past life that took place in the mid 1800s, Rita’s father was a wealthy plantation owner. Rita had married an apparently gracious Southern gentleman, only to discover too late that a wicked temper dispelled any qualities of grace. In this life, Tony was a slave on the plantation, and he happened by the house one day when Rita’s abusive husband was beating her. Tony hid until Rita was alone, and then helped her to flee from the house.

After this meditation, Rita knew that in her current lifetime, no matter how difficult Tony was she would never send him away. The images from the meditation played on Rita’s mind, however, and she decided to paint them. When the painting was finished, she hung it in her studio. The next time Tony came in, he walked over and stood in front of it.

“I’ve been there,” he said. “Where is it? It’s not around here, but I know I’ve been there.” The painting he recognized was of the vision of himself in a past life, helping Rita in a past life escape from an abusive husband!

Exploring your past lives can have great therapeutic value. Often, we carry around much guilt, anxiousness, and fear that we can’t pin to specific causes. Sometimes these feelings link back to past life experiences. Finding the connection can help you understand and resolve the issues responsible for the feelings.

Past life therapy, or past life regression, is a recognized form of therapeutic counseling. Many professionals of diverse backgrounds—physicians, psychologists, psychoanalysts, hypnotherapists, among others—offer past life regression as part of an overall counseling approach.

In past life therapy, the therapist puts you into a light hypnotic state. The therapist talks to you. Although you are deeply relaxed, you are not beyond consciousness. You are just at the level where your conscious mind is not intruding into the process.

During the session, you might see yourself in a different time and place with people who look similar to, but are not the same as, people in your current life. The therapist might ask you questions about what you see. When the therapist brings you out of the hypnotic state, you usually still remember the past life information that surfaced.

Past life therapy is often very profound. You might be amazed by how quickly you understand the connections between things that happened in past lives and things that are happening in your present life. You gain understanding and insight into why you behave in certain ways, even when your behavior doesn’t seem to make “logical” sense.

Past life therapy is only one way to connect with your past. You can call on your spirit guide to help you explore this dimension of your soul’s existence. This guided meditation can get you started. It is similar to the guided meditations in Chapter 7.

After you are fully aware, pull out your journal and write about your meditation and the past life experiences it showed to you. Some people prefer to think about the experience for a while before writing in their journal about it; do what’s comfortable for you. Here are some questions to help you understand your experience.

Often it takes time to fully understand the connections between your current life and your past lives. Recalling past life details doesn’t always paint a complete picture; you might have to wait for some of the pieces to settle into place for you.

After you’ve connected with a past life, you can do additional meditations that focus on the connections you’ve discovered. With each exploration, you’ll learn more about your spirit’s travels and you’ll understand more about your journey through this life.

Each physical life that your spirit inhabits has a purpose and a role in your soul’s mission. Exploring past lives gives you additional pieces to add to the picture. Eventually patterns will emerge that will help you to get a better sense for what your spirit’s mission is, in this life as well as beyond.

In this life, as in at least one previous life, Rita is an artist. Through exploring her past life connections, Rita has come to understand that part of her spirit’s mission—and her mission in this life—is to prove, through art, the continuity of life. Her spirit drawings have touched countless lives, affirming her sense that this is the reason for this life’s journey. What’s your soul’s mission?

The Least You Need to Know