A couple of years ago I wrote about my past life regression experience. It was the first time I had explored a past life with a professional, and it was also my first experience with hypnosis. At the time, I remember thinking it was like watching a movie where I was the star but the storyline was entirely different from the storyline in my current life. Since then, I’ve realized that there were past life connections to my current life that I was not aware of at the time. I also wonder if that past life experience was preparing me somehow for the challenging couple of years that would lie ahead.
Who was I in a past life?
First let me say I have read — and I believe — that most of us have had many past lives. I’ve heard it said that when we have a past life regression, the lifetime that comes to mind is a lifetime that has something to do with the current life we are leading.
The lifetime that we regress to is there to teach us something that we can use in our lives today. On the flip side, there are many other lifetimes that we may not remember because they have no relevance to our current life, or at least this period in our current lifetime.
When I had my past life regression, I was regressed to the life of a woman named Grady who I believe lived in Ireland. She and her husband had financial challenges; they had a lot of land and made their living working the land. However, they had to get rid of all of the workers who helped them to keep the land up because of their money problems.
So I lived through two pandemics?
Grady didn’t seem to be a happy woman. She had a lot of regrets. For one thing, she felt guilty because one of her children had died of an illness. She felt like the family couldn’t afford to get him the best medical care so she was partly responsible for his death. I also got the sense during the regression that Grady and her family had lived through some type of plague because she describes how everyone was getting sick at the time that her son got sick and died.
Little did I know when I had that past life regression that the world I lived in would experience a pandemic. I remember reading about plagues in school and thinking they were just horrible experiences people in the past lived through. I never thought I would live through one. Then in 2020 the Covid 19 pandemic hit and suddenly I, like Grady, was living in a world where everyone was getting sick.
This was the first of the past life connections to my current life that I was able to see.
I remember wondering in the fearful early days of the pandemic if this was how Grady had felt. Having had that past life regression, I felt some semblance of peace during the pandemic because I knew Grady had survived. Sure, I could have picked up a history book and seen that there were plenty of survivors of the 1918 flu and other plagues. But having that connection to Grady and knowing that my soul had already survived that experience helped me to believe that I would get through it again.
However, I was worried about my family members and loved ones getting Covid and becoming very sick. I thought about Grady’s son and wondered if I was destined to live that experience over again. Sickness seemed to be such a dominating force in Grady’s life. Was sickness meant to be a major part of my current life too?
Past life memories repeat themselves
I was lucky that none of my loved ones died of Covid. I thank God every day. Some of my family members and friends did get Covid in the early days, but everyone was ok. However, I was not immune to serious illness. At the end of 2020, I began having digestive problems that led me to see a doctor and I was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Now I was fighting a life-threatening disease. I couldn’t help but wonder if the guilt I had experienced in the lifetime in which I was Grady had contributed to the illness in my body in this lifetime.
I have read that we can carry our burdens from one lifetime to the next. For example, a painful love experience in one lifetime can lead us to date unavailable partners in the next lifetime. We may not understand why we keep picking the wrong men because the answer lies not in this lifetime but in a past one. In this case, our past life connections are keeping us from flourishing in our current lives.
I wondered if I had felt so guilty about not being able to save my son in that lifetime that I punished myself by going through a major illness myself.
Connecting with my past life counterpart: A ritual
As I went through traditional medical treatments I also practiced some alternative healing practices as well. (I’m not a doctor and am in no way offering medical advice; if you have an illness please make sure you see your doctor. I credit my doctors at the Mayo Clinic for surgery that saved my life.)
One thing I did was I went into meditation to try to connect with Grady.
I closed my eyes and visualized myself in a forest. During the illness, I often saw myself lost in a forest and the sky would typically be overcast showing that there was a storm ahead. During this visualization, the sky was dark and I saw Grady walking toward me. She sat down next to me but didn’t speak.
I asked her if she believed we deserved this illness. I said ‘we’ because I believed I was she and she was I. She continued to say nothing, and she looked down toward the ground. I explained to her that we had done everything we could during her lifetime. I explained to her that our son’s death was not our fault. And I told her I wanted to live. I told her I had a lot of things left that I wanted to complete in this lifetime. While we sat there, I could see her in my mind’s eye starting to cry and that’s when I started to cry. We hugged in my vision and she told me to heal and live.
That was a powerful visualization that I had — just one of the many metaphysical experiences I had during the illness. One day I will write a book about them and share them. I believe these experiences played a role in my healing.
Past life lessons abound
I write all this to say that we can learn so much about our current lives by exploring our past lives and past life connections. While I plan to have another past life regression to see if I can learn about another one of my lifetimes, not everyone has to have a past life regression. Some people just have memories of past lives that flash through their minds. Others can pick up on past lives through dreams or meditations. If a past life is calling you, there is a reason for that. It has something to tell you. The past life connections to your current life can be the beacon that shows you the next steps on your path.
