My previous Hub titled, Reincarnation: Is It Real? led to this one. On THIS page I'll present a number of ways to learn about past lives. Sometimes we simply get "slapped in the face" with an event that shakes us up before such a possibility ever occurred to us. In the vast majority of cases, though, we believe first...and then go "past life hunting".

One cautionary note: It is possible to latch onto the thought of having been a historical figure "just because". For example, there are hundreds if not thousands of people who believe they were famous in earlier lives. The likelihood that there were so many individuals who were Jesus, or the Mother Mary, or George Washington, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, whoever...is not terribly logical.

Does that mean anyone who feels strongly about that is "nuts"? Plenty of conservative folks would say "yes". I suspect there is another explanation, something (for lack of a better word) I call a "harmonic".

Eh?

Think about it this way, using, oh, George Armstrong Custer as an example. There are plenty of people who hate Custer's guts with a purple passion--and not without some reason--but let's say you did live in Custer's time during the Civil War and after, not as Custer himself but as one of his cavalrymen who looked up to Custer as a personal hero despite following him to your own death at the Little Big Horn.

Now you have come to believe you were him in a past life...simply because in admiration you came into this life resembling him in appearance and personality. What you fail to realize is that you picked those features in this go-round because of your admiration, trying to "harmonize" with your hero.

Of course, there's plenty to influence us in this life alone. For example, my preoccupation with cartoons/comics as a kid may well have influenced my later decision to draw the CLUCKERS anti-drug cartoon strip.

But enough about the "harmonic". I may or may not be right about that; it is only one dude's theory, after all. Let's move on to the main topic, namely how to know your own backtrail. There are many methods, and each has its own value.

The following techniques are actually a composite, but for purposes of clarity, let's "pretend" they were all experienced by a man named Jake. Each one has worked at one time or another.

1. Ask a psychic. This can be a little tricky, especially since not every psychic is capable, accurate, and honest. Even so, Jake knew one he could trust and asked her (one time only) for a few specific answers. He got them. He and his father in this lifetime had been soldier buddies during the English Crusades. Jake died in battle because his friend (now his father) had been passed out drunk when the enemy jumped them.

Which explained Jake's long term tendency toward resentment ("You weren't there to cover my back, dude!") and the equally long term guilt felt by Jake's father--guilt Jake had known nothing about until that moment.

2. Watch your dreams.

3. Keep an eye out for the written word. Number two and number three worked together for Jake one year, allowing him to identify a past life with great detail and accuracy. He'd known his maternal grandfather had died before he was born. It seemed possible he'd been that grandfather. But when university archives containing some of that man's writings were read through carefully, they did not quite "feel" right.

But a brief couple of references to the great grandfather did feel right. Jake went home that night deep in thought and, after going to sleep, had a powerful dream in which he heard a stated reference to "the lawyer". When he woke, he knew, yup, he'd not been his own grampaw (remember the comedy song by Ray Stevens?), but had been his own great grandfather--who had been a lawyer, which the grandfather had not.

4. Fear and Nervousness to the rescue. In 1974, Jake and his wife moved to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Both had employment lined up, but money was still terribly short, the U-Haul truck would soon need to be turned in, and they had as yet found no place to live. Their jobs were in Rapid City, and they were intently, perhaps even desperately, searching for a house to rent somewhere within a thirty mile radius of that town.

Nothing good was happening.

Noon arrived as they were checking out possibilities near the tiny tourist mecca of Keystone. Edgy and hungry, Jake led the way to the Ruby House, a local restaurant, where they placed orders for buffalo burgers. As soon as that was done, he excused himself to go to the restroom. While standing at the urinal, it suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks: He'd been killed in that area in a past life. He just knew. Probably an arrow, it "felt" like, and quite possibly before white men were even in that part of the country.

Upon returning to their table, he noticed he'd done something automatically that had not been a habit for years: Placed his back to the wall, so no enemy could sneak up on him without being seen. They ate their lunch and drove back to Rapid City, where lodgings were found at shortly after seven p.m...in an Indian (now called Native American) neighborhood.

Jake just raised an eyebrow at me when I asked about past life regression. Not that he was skeptical, simply that he's never felt the need to seek out a hypnotist because he does not care to put himself under a hypnotist's influence in any way. A warrior, our Jake, but not a super-trusting Soul.

6. Watch the written word, Part II: Our friend is something of a writer in this lifetime, but more than anything, he is a reader. Even when meeting for lunch at a local restaurant (not the Ruby House!), he always arrives with a book under one arm. Several decades back, again during a time when money was shorter than short, he ran out of reading material.

Disaster!

That day, his area library happened to be holding a book sale, 25 cents for a big hardback. He found a 750 page volume that appealed to him. By page 50, it had his full attention. By page 100, he knew: He was reading his own autobigraphy, written about a very hard lifetime prior to and during World War II. It taught him a lot, although the second time he tried reading it, there was no way he could get through it. In the end, he burned the thing....but he never forgot.

7. Watch the movies and your body. It is, apparently, possible that sometimes a past life as an historical figure really will turn up. Jake once had this happen after reading a book about a soldier who really did live many centuries ago. He is not usually subject to boils, but at that time a huge boil surfaced on the outside of his upper right thigh. When it finally burst, it left a terrible crater for weeks...just as Jake was reading about that soldier...who limped rather badly because of a combat wound that had gouged out a large chunk of the muscling in the man's upper right thigh.

Bingo. Equally impressively, a made for TV movie about that early warrior aired at just about that time. Watching the show, stunned, Jake called his ex-wife who was and still is a dear friend of his. When he advised her to watch the same show, she stopped him by saying,

"I'm already watching it. And when ------- ----- comes on the screen (even though an actor, not the orginal dude), I see you!"

SUMMARY: There are probably many more ways to "uncover" past life memories; the above are simply intended as a few triggers, a bit of food for thought. It is also well to remember that the motivation for uncovering these gems hidden deep within us should always be to help us live this life just a little bit better. At least, that's our recommendation!

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32