Among the many religions, cultures and thought systems that uphold a belief in reincarnation, the burning question for many people is, do we reincarnate into the same family? In other words, do we repeatedly reincarnate within the same family groupings, lifetime after lifetime for some specific purpose, and if so, what is that purpose?
As with many of these spiritual questions, there are some channels, mediums, and mystics who struggle to give a definitive, sweeping response, and it can be tempting to oversimplify. Being a spiritual teacher is a huge responsibility. Holding certain sacred truths within our consciousness can be challenging. When answering questions of this nature, we’re often being asked to offer a theoretical response, based on what, though? Scientific study? Channelled guidance? Study of various Buddhist and Hindu texts, many of which the modern intellectual will view as pleasant allegorical tales at best.
When answering such questions, I choose to speak from my personal experience of working with clients in regression sessions, and from the answers I receive from my guides during my personal meditations and inner explorations.
As I’ve progressed along my path of personal and spiritual development, my intuitive awareness has increased dramatically. Insights about past lives will often surface during meditations, in response to questions I might have about my own personal development or current life issues. They also often arise during long chanting sessions when images emerge unexpectedly to reveal the next level of karmic cleansing.
I don’t go looking for these hidden histories out of curiosity. They will usually emerge in response to a puzzle or dilemma that’s been churning away in my psyche, revealing to me a past life reason for something that’s currently a sticking point.
At these times, I’m sometimes given complete past life memories of where I’ve encountered these dynamics before, often with the same person or people who are at the centre of the current challenge. The information usually appears somewhere in my third eye, and resonates within my heart chakra, just as it would during a session with a client. On many occasions, these stories have softened my bewildered or frustrated heart and allowed me to understand why I need to show greater compassion and understanding towards family members or close friends.
There have been many times when the same old souls have appeared repeatedly, disguised as different faces, bodies, races, roles and in a variety of motivations, character traits, dramas, and era-specific costumes, their familiar soul signatures wrapped up in all the beauty and ugliness of their earth motivations and personas.
At times I’ve even been given glimpses of the role I’ve played in shaping their ugliness or, thankfully, their beauty, in some ancient past when the world was young, and we were younger and more foolish. At other times, I’ve even seen glimpses of the part they have played in shaping mine. In these moments, there have been times when I’ve wanted to cry at the sadness of it all, and others where I’ve laughed out loud in the middle of my chanting or meditation session. In fact, I often do both within the course of one session.
Throughout all these past life regressions - both mine and those of my clients – a constant theme tends to reoccur repeatedly. People I recognise from my current family (or those who, I’m told by my guides, belong to a client’s current family) will appear without fail, every, single, time. Yep, there’s usually a small group of souls who will reappear for every single one of us, for better or worse, time, after time.
…after time.
The real beauty is in having a bird’s eye view of the entire tapestry of our collaborative existence. The way we’ve mellowed together over the centuries, the immense capacity we have developed for love, compassion, and forgiveness. Always moving forward, always understanding more.
I have seen many times that those who do us the greatest harm are often our greatest teachers throughout the more troubled incarnations. Even those whose actions enrage us the most or whose very presence fills us with frustration are often members of a collective group that we have travelled with through time, space, and incarnations for aeons. In some cases, our reunions with them are joyful and filled with instant, unexplained familiarity.
In other cases, we just can’t understand why this person always rubs us up the wrong way. Until we look deeper.
In the end, as we progress spiritually (which we all do, eventually) what becomes more important to us is what our response to others can teach us about how much we’ve progressed, rather than how to figure out why the heck they’re so damn annoying. Or, to quote the late Wayne Dyer, “How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours”.
As tempting as it is, holding on to our anger serves no purpose whatsoever. In fact, if we peer back through the fabric of time, we may even see our own dear faces, firmly entrenched within the drama that helped to shape a family member into this great symbol of irritation and messiness, in some earlier lifetime.
We choose to incarnate together repeatedly because we know each other. We share similar vibrations, our issues and karma are entangled, and we mirror each other’s insecurities as well as each other’s potential for greatness. We not only hold up a mirror for each other, we also often embody and uphold a standard of what’s possible.
Before we arrive in our bodies, we agree to help each other. Even those who are the most treacherous in their actions towards us while playing out their human lives are often expressing a treacherous character flaw that will ultimately empower us. They may ultimately, even by default, force us to love ourselves, love others, evolve spiritually, become more compassionate, learn to relish the game of life, find a strength we didn’t know we had, learn how to manifest, or reach fearlessly for our highest creative expression.
At this point, let me add that nothing. I repeat NOTHING. NO. THING that’s immoral, violent, abusive, murderous, reckless, diminishing, destructive, or shaming, that’s done to a person in any incarnation is ever okay. Accepting that we often reincarnate into the same family groupings to work our stuff out is not the same as saying it’s okay to do bad things to each other. Keeping someone abusive in your life and allowing them to continually abuse you is not doing anything to help either of you in your journey along your evolutionary path.
But somehow, somewhere along that path, we learn how to become kinder, more loving, and increasingly more evolved as a result of learning to respond to the members of this soul group in a more evolved way.
And, after all, to quote yet another great spiritual teacher, I think it was Ram Dass who once famously said,
“We are all just walking each other home”.
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