Past lives and memories
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I think I have discovered a memory from a past life…
From my teenage years on when I first encountered mention of this place, I’ve had both a dislike for and a kind of fascination for Gallipoli. This is the peninsula along the Turkish coast south of Istanbul. Now a couple of months ago when waking up I found this in my thoughts and I asked myself “why do I feel this?” And to my great surprise I got the answer “because I died there.” So I did a little research and I found out about the Allied campaign to take the peninsula during the First World War, which led to some bloody battles with the Turks, and I seemed to recognise a few things.
What’s been interesting is that just witnessing the memory coming to the surface, from the point of view of a man who has not led a violent life but who has achieved a measure of inner peace, seemed to calm the urgency and pain associated with that memory. It no longer feels the same as it did.
Now in one of his books Osho talks about how the mind is built up out of layers of impressions from past lives, and it seems to me that this experience could well be something like that. I wonder what other likes and dislikes of my early life have their roots in past lives, there are a few things that I recall that are difficult to explain.
Comments
This is a subject that I have wondered about for many years. There are certain things that put me in a state where recall of certain events seems inches away but I Never get there.
About 4/5 years ago I met someone trained in hypnotic regression. I was keen to give it a try. It seemed to be a failure, I did not feel hypnotised in any way but I did feel very uncomfortable an tried to rise several times. Her questions seemed irrelevant and I just felt that I was giving any answer.
A little later she gave me a written report of the event. Nothing in it seemed remotely familiar and I had no recollection of saying these things.
A couple of years later I found the report and at first did not recognize it. When I did I felt vaguely threatened and destroyed it. I still cannot recall a single word of it.
I have no idea what to make of this experience and have never mentioned it prior to now.
At times I can be a little hypersensitive to "feelings in the air". Sometimes like a "gut feeling" and sometimes from noticing a series of similarly themed things in the surroundings. This is where my story of the polar bear comes from. Sort of like a blank puzzle of a past which discovers answers and pieces to itself as the present unfolds. A sort of "No one asked a question but here's part of the answer" which then begs the question and fuels further inquiry into the other parts of the answer.
It's a little Chicken-or-the-egg to me but still follows me around for some unresolved reason or another. On some occasions an experience in my life will reveal a little more of the answer to that question which was never really asked to begin with. But discovering each additional piece has always felt like it just fits.
The struggle is in whether I'm convinced it's actually some past life experience or just the mind building a story out of likes and dislikes. At one point it held some significance but these days it's more a fun memory that surfaces from time to time.
Clearly this post is a non-starter for people here. I would like to ask why it is so off putting for people.
Who someone was is not who someone currently is. Though who they currently are did in part dependently originate from who they were. When a current self reflects on their past it draws upon comparisons which can be liked or disliked. Those likings or dislikings when attended to can proliferate feelings one way or another into actions. The danger is in assuming there is a self that has changed from then to now rather than the reality which is there is just this present moment as taken in by the six senses in which to live a life and the choices which this moment presents.
For all the thinking on potential past lives, creating of stories, analyzing of reoccurring dreams, I'm not sure I'm any better off than before I started. So I guess my question is what sort of benefits does it provide?
Can you speak more on what this is like? Sometimes while recalling some event, it changes from the remembered facts to a sort of generated day dream that feels more truthful than pure daydream imaginings. Kind of silly but reminds me of looking at one of those 3D puzzles that just has some camouflage looking page but if you cross your eyes then an indentation of a dinosaur shows up.
Most Westerners (including myself) struggle with this idea as it is so foreign to how we've been raised.
I definitely remain open minded but my faith in rebirth ebbs and wains.
It’s something that interests me, and particularly I’d want to ask what effects past lives still have on us today, and what we should do about it. My initial stab at this is to say these things want to be heard and understood. So if you have a past life memory you should look at what it means to you logically, emotionally, and especially from the viewpoint of how does it make you act in your day-to-day life?
In a way these fragments of past lives that we have contribute to forming our individuality, they are your history and so they also contain the patterns of your lives. For me, it is a lasting fascination with military strategy and also with guns and gun violence. I’m sure that has to do with a past life, that I was a strategist or a general. I remember reading when I was about ten years old about Hannibal’s invasion of Italy and crossing the Alps with his war elephants.
This life for me is about looking deeply into my own tendencies, to see where these things come from and how they connect to my spirituality in this life.
Past lives are memories. They are no less 'real' than what happened last year, yesterday or even a moment ago.
Why so?
Because that is what they are. A collection of memories that you have identified as belonging to you.
Memories arise and pass away. However, that which is aware of this is not a mere memory.
Well this was one hell of a surprise. I would like to make it clear that I did not make this post.
Time for a password change. I am just thankful that it was nothing offensive.
Moment by moment experiences are constantly impacting upon the psycho-physical phenomenon (PPP) we call the self...
From what I gather, past life is just that 'past' can not be re-lived...but the PPP's karmic accumulations still make their presence felt, for example habitual patterns, likes dislikes, where one may have an instant dislike to something or someone, but not quite sure as to why this is the case...perhaps the PPP had a negative experience with it in the distant or not so distant past...
I know for me (this present sense of self), at times I may have an instant liking for a thing, person or place without ever visited or interacted with them or it before... and vice versa...
But I'm also aware that the mind can play games of make believe...
Scary! Maybe it was Mara?
Who knows?
I did a CCleaner scan which revealed some registry damage with my firewall. I have never seen that before. I then did a full virus scan which normally takes about an hour. It took a very worrying six and a half hours but found nothing.
So far no further problems.