Capítulo 3. PERPETRADOR

 

SECTION 2:

INTO THE DEPTHS

CHAPTER 3

AGREEING TO BE THE PERPETRATOR

Souls have free will. We agree to incarnate on earth with all that entails. We may become lost, confused, victimized, or villainous. But we make our decision without realizing how deeply immersive our experiences on earth shall be. This ignorance is a major attraction of this dense planet. Coming here is an adventure. Just as some of us want to try all the games and rides at a theme park, including the scary ones, some souls want to try all the experiences earth offers.

We do not play perpetrator roles without our agreement. We might be chosen rather than volunteering, but our agreement is still needed. To fully experience the earth, we need to know what it is like to be cut off from Source and go it alone. We plan experiences that lure us down this track of isolation. Anyone venturing into unknown territory all alone will build courage and inner strength. This is a process of individuation and part of the earth curriculum.

Ultimately, at the highest levels of understanding, no actions are good or bad. They are seen just as experiences. But that doesn’t feel true to us here on earth. Although a few people glorify war and cruelty, most of us do not. We abhor it, desiring peace, love, acceptance, and respect. But have you noticed the dilemma in the previous statement? Hating the actions of the haters puts us all in the same negative category. How can we reconcile this contradiction?

We need boundaries on earth. We want our freedom, but we also want to be protected. We have laws, rules, and customs. When we break the law, we are rightly punished. When we disrespect others, we are chastised. The consequences we reap are important teachers.

We can censure those who cross boundaries while understanding why and how they transgressed. Understanding is not the same as excusing.

I was challenged to make this distinction with Casilda, a lovely client I knew from my psychology practice. She was the first of my clients who relived a past life as a cruel perpetrator. You might remember Casilda, whose case I mentioned in the introduction. In this chapter we follow her story, exploring the preamble to the slave trader’s life, how the slave trader turned around, and the struggle back to reconnecting to Source.

The Slave Trader

Casilda found she was repeatedly attracted to narcissists. She wanted to know why she had this unwitting attraction and how she could avoid this trap.

What is a narcissist? The mythological Narcissus could not love others. He spurned them. Instead, he fell in love with the superficial vision of himself. People with narcissistic personality disorder are characterized as being arrogant, lacking in empathy, needing excessive admiration, oppressing others, and carrying a sense of entitlement.

In Casilda’s regression, we discovered she had been a narcissistic slave trader in a past life. Now we return to Casilda’s regression to understand how she came to be a cold-hearted slave trader—and how this past life had been influencing her choices in her current life.

The slave trader lived a long time ago in a town on the Arabian Peninsula. He sold a young slave girl to a lascivious old man. At first, the slave trader enjoyed the thought of her suffering at the hands of this man, but his enjoyment didn’t last. The girl stared at him, not with despair but with disgust. Casilda, as the slave trader, describes what happens next.

I start having nightmares about the slave girl, and this is the beginning of me going mad.

I have a wife and children, including a little girl of three. My daughter loves me so much. She adores me and looks up to me. I wonder what she would think about the work I do.

I cannot stop selling people because of the money. Life is hard without money. You are in the good class or the bad class and I want to stay in the good class. So I keep doing it and suffering the nightmares. I continually see the eyes of the young slave girl burning into me. Even though she was frightened, she looked at me with pity as if she was saying, “How can you do this?” In my dreams, her eyes go right through me and her face transforms horribly, haunting me.

I am not coping well in the market. I argue about the price of a slave with a man who loses his temper. He stabs me with a knife. His eyes are the same as the girl’s, looking at me with pity.

I am dying. I feel sad to leave my family but also relieved it is over. I was in turmoil.

Freeing the Slave Trader

As the slave trader passes over, I notice Casilda is quiet. I assume she is processing the information that is coming through. Eventually, she breaks the silence.

I feel warmth and love. Someone is coming to greet me, saying, “We have been waiting for you.” Oh! I see the same eyes of the young slave girl I sold on earth. She is one of my soulmates. She is looking at me with such love.

How crazy! Does this normally happen? I cannot believe that these words are coming out of my mouth. I just know she was that girl and I was that man who sold people.

Casilda is embraced by the former slave. I pause to allow her to absorb the love, but she is struggling. The heart of the slave trader had been closed for a long time. Casilda feels a lot of pain in her heart, and I encourage her to embrace and breathe through the pain to soften the hardness.

Fifteen minutes later, the pain subsides. We discover that slave trading was an occupation passed down from previous generations. The slave trader’s father taught him to be ruthless by beating him brutally, just as he had been beaten by his own father. Slave traders have to be cold and hard. The young boy learns his lessons well, passing on his pain to others, including animals and his little brother.

I become hard. Why would I care about the slaves? I have never been happy. When I see them suffer, I feel something inside, a sort of pleasure that fills a void. The only thing I treasure is my daughter. She is my only joy, the only real feeling I have.

The slave trader disconnects from his true self, from others, and from Source. Feeling isolated, he is numb and empty inside, focusing on survival and material wealth. His daughter and the slave girl are the only ones who can crack his shell of isolation.

The slave trader’s life began the process of breaking the pattern of disconnection, which his soul had been playing out. Two soulmates volunteered to help: his daughter and the slave girl. Although this life was a turning point, this soul was not clear after the slave trader’s death. There was a long way back to reconnect to the greater self.

Sympathy for Narcissists

The conflict and confusion of the slave trader experienced at his death was triggered in Casilda’s current life. It may have been present in other lives too. She felt sympathy for narcissists, especially those who felt alone and lost. This accounted for her attraction to these unsuitable men whom she tried to help. She was too clouded to assess them accurately. As we will see, she only obtained full clarity when she accessed her life between lives during the regression, when the full story of her dark night of the soul was revealed.

The Pact: Never Again

After Casilda recounts the slave trader’s death, I wonder why she experienced this life as a perpetrator. Was the slave trader’s contempt just the result of his childhood? Or was there more to the story? I ask for more information.

Casilda is taken to a past life that occurred two thousand years before the slave trader was born.

I am in South America, living as part of a native group in the Amazonian forest. I am a young girl playing with other children. We feel free and wear very little. We are all having fun, dancing around the fire. We live in harmony and are happy.

Another group, with people who look like us, is coming. They have more clothes and more weapons than we do. They are using wooden spears and axes to kill all the old people. They take us away. We walk and walk and walk. They are ritually sacrificing the men, and I am being sold because I am a girl.

I am sold to a wealthy family. I am a servant and sexual object for the father and his son. Every time they sexually assault me, I kill a part of my soul. I don’t want to feel the pain anymore, so I surrender to the darkness. I am empty. I make a survival pact. I will never let anyone hurt me again. I die from sickness, aged fifteen.

The pact means I will hurt others rather than be hurt. When I go up, I am lost. I can see someone waiting for me, but I am so angry I push them away, saying, “How can you let this happen to me?”

As we have seen in the previous chapter, making a pact to never allow herself to be hurt will take Casilda down a perilous path.

Lost In Between Heaven and Earth

After this life of forced servitude, the young girl’s soul refuses to go home with her guide because of her anger and bitterness. She describes where she is.

I am in between—in between earth and heaven. I feel alone, but there are other people around who are like me. It is such a weird place. All this lost energy. Everybody seems lost. Some know they need to go up, but they don’t understand why they cannot. Others don’t even realize that they are supposed to go up. For me, I just don’t care. Because they [the higher beings] let me suffer so terribly, why would they help anybody? If we are love, why would they let some of us suffer so much? Why do we have to come back to earth and have this physical experience that is so painful? It is safer in the darkness because you already know what to expect. It is less painful because it is empty.

As we have seen in the previous chapter, Casilda’s explanation of preferring emptiness to being on earth is not new. We encountered spirits who found themselves in a cold place of emptiness and darkness.

Perpetrator and Victim Lives

I ask Casilda how she got out of this dark, empty state.

Someone comes to me in that place, saying, “You start to see, Little One. Remember the Source when you were first born as a soul?”

I remembered, and it felt beautiful, better than being lost. I just get a taste of it. I have to go back to have earthly lives and work on opening up. I am not ready to get it yet. I have to keep working on it. I agree to play the perpetrator. The guides say to me, “If that is what you want, Little One, you can go back to earth and do that. Be a perpetrator.”

I had three or four lifetimes as a perpetrator. The first one was the worst, the most violent. I can see I am torturing people.

After those perpetrator lives, which included the slave trader life, Casilda had many other lives, some as a victim. She describes one of these lives, which she experienced during the regression.

I am walking along the corridor of a castle with portraits on the walls in medieval times. I am fifteen, wearing a blue dress, beautiful but simple, made of natural fabric. My blonde hair is braided and wrapped around my head. Looking at the portraits, I feel a lot of anger, frustration, and jealousy. I want to belong, but the people here are mean to me. In my heart I am supposed to belong, but I don’t.

It hurts. I am confused because I don’t understand why people are so cruel and mean to me.

I am in an old kitchen with a big oven cut in the stone walls. People are working there, and one of the cooks is telling me the nobleman and his family will never love me. I am not accepted as one of his family because even though I am his daughter, the cook is my mother. I have his eyes. The others are mean and jealous because the nobleman is kind to me. I think he really loves my mother, but they are not from the same world.

The young girl is distraught. She feels the rejection of her father and the family deeply. She suddenly jumps out of a high castle opening, dying.

I can see my father is very sad, crying over my body. Soon after I died, my mother sickened and died too.

My heart hurts. I couldn’t help this girl. I recognize the pain of this life, the feeling of not belonging and the self-loathing. She was fifteen.

In my current life, I tried to kill myself at fifteen. It was when my mother cut me off, punishing me because I wanted to live with my father.

A familiar pattern has played out in many of Casilda’s feminine lives—trauma, followed by death at the age of fifteen. As a young girl forced into domestic and sexual slavery, she became ill and died at fifteen. After that experience, she chose to incarnate as a perpetrator. In this medieval life, she commits suicide at fifteen. In her current life, she tried to kill herself at fifteen but failed. This failure began to break the pattern.

I have had other clients who have similar patterns run through their past lives. One client relived two lives where she died at sixteen and nearly did the same again in her current life. According to her guide, she was naïve and reckless, and he successfully helped her avoid the same fate.

Reaching Home

Casilda’s medieval past life is one of the many lives she undertakes on her way back to love. After throwing herself from the window, she arrives at her life between lives. She is surrounded by her soul group.

They are saying, “You are now ready to start the next chapter.” Wow!

There are other souls here who I know. We are together, and there is no judgment. We don’t even need to speak. We communicate so easily and understand each other so well. I have a strong sense of belonging and connection.

I am part of a soul group, and we are only as strong as all of us. Soulmates cannot turn their back on the lost one. Love conquers all. Light conquers all. They love me unconditionally.

Part of my soul journey is the betterment of the whole soul group. They tell me that one day I will be ready to come back as love. I am not to be afraid anymore. Now they are asking me what I am going to do now that I know all of this.

I am a leader, and I am not to doubt what I feel. I can see the impact of my current life’s childhood. I was lost. I had a pull to do something about it. Because I had not dealt with it, I wasn’t grounded in my body. Because of all the therapy I have undertaken during my life, I am better grounded now and done with the past.

Casilda has been carrying the guilt of the slave trader over many incarnations. This helped her stay on the path of reaching for the light. Now, that guilt has been released. She has developed a deep, firsthand understanding of perpetrators and victims, how they fall down, and how they ascend. This gives her a depth of compassion that can be used to help others.

What I have been feeling is the right path for me. My mission is to help traumatized children become grounded, especially those in their teenage years who have struggled like I did. Even though each one has a different, specific struggle, all follow a similar pattern and direction. I am to help these teens connect with their real self.

If you can do all these awful things and recover, you can help others. Love is always within you, not outside of you. It never left you. I am to help these teens understand that love is always within.

Casilda shared earlier in her session with me that she senses spirits visiting her at night, alarming her. Now she is beginning to understand what has been going on.

My soulmates are telling me not to be afraid of the lost ones who come to see me at night. I am to help them too. These are people who have died and are stuck. They don’t remember who they are. But I know who they are. I was like them. I know what it is like to be lost. The guides are saying, “Thank you for helping out, Little One.”

Casilda returns from her life between lives feeling light and energized. She is amazed to learn how lost she was, but now all her guilt and pity has dissipated.

Eighteen months later, she writes to tell me how her life has changed. After the regression, she was never attracted to a narcissist again.

Everything has been going very fast, actually. I guess this is what happens when you remember who you are. I have embraced myself fully and discovered a self-love that I never knew could exist. I feel so grateful for it and have been on this amazing life journey full of love and experience. My third eye and connection to spirits has been stronger than ever. I have met and connected with wonderful people along the way, and it is not over. This fills me with so much joy. The challenges of life don’t feel so hard anymore, just a question of perspective.

Casilda’s soul chose to take the perpetrator path long ago after a brief life filled with extreme suffering. By default, her iron-clad decision to never suffer again sent her into a state of suspended darkness for hundreds of years. After she emerged from her protective cocoon, she decided to undertake lives as perpetrators. She wasn’t ready to trust again. She still felt bruised and unwilling to open up her heart, which would involve being vulnerable and hurt. By default, a soul’s decision to never be hurt is a choice of separation. Playing perpetrator roles kept her heart closed. That felt safer.

After four lives as a perpetrator, her soul was ready for the change. The slave trader life was a turning point. It began the reversal of her earlier decision to never suffer again. The guilt from the slave trader’s life carried over into her subsequent lives. Carried-over guilt is useful, reminding her to avoid perpetrating against others. At this stage, she had not fully opened up her heart, being still afraid and self-protective. But her fear of being hurt creates what she dreads most: terrible emotional pain, like the rejection she experienced as the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman. But her lives of suffering are useful. She learns what it is like to be victimized, the flip side of perpetration. This crystalizes her desire to never willingly make anyone suffer in the future.

Remnants of guilt were left over from the slave trader life and the medieval life, but they had a purpose. These energies bled into her current life, causing her problems and giving her an opportunity to awaken. She set out on the path of discovering who she really was. She succeeded, healing the past life remnants while gaining a deeper understanding of her true self.

Casilda’s soul has experienced many heavy lives as a perpetrator and a victim, but these no longer define her. She is connected to her true self and sees ahead a path of service, utilizing the knowledge and wisdom she has developed. She is proceeding down this path with much joy and a new partner who is kind, loving, and committed to spending his life with her.

Conclusion

We might wonder why we are attracted to someone, especially when the person turns out to be unsuitable. When the same unwanted pattern of attraction keeps happening, we may be compelled to go searching for the reasons, as Casilda did. This is wise. 

We can be confused when our choice of partner or friends do not work out as we expected. Our choices are not random or accidental. There are reasons for our emotional responses and actions, but our deeper motivations are not always apparent.

We need to dig deep to discover why we are falling into the same patterns. Probably, it involves some unique past experience that remains unresolved. Humans are complex, and our experiences are unique and many. What we find is not likely to be as disturbing or unexpected as what Casilda discovered. But whatever lies beneath, spending our time and energy in the quest to bring it to the light is worthwhile. Once we gain a full understanding of what has happened, we are liberated from our unhealthy attractions and compulsions.

Capítulo 2. PERDIÉNDOSE.

 

Esta foto que subo me da pie para poner un trozo de la película "Alma (Soul)" que habla de lo que  los  guionistas interpretan como alma perdida. Por supuesto no es artículo de fe y, por lo que sabemos, esto no deja de ser una visión corta de lo que se explica desde el mundo newtoniano, pero como broma vale. Aquí se iguala el concepto de estar perdido con el de estar obsesionado. En una interpretación simplista: los personajes que van en un barco del tipo de carabela española se dedican a rescatar almas "perdidas", es decir, obsesionadas. Bonito cuento

CHAPTER 2

GETTING LOST

For many years, I worried about earthbound spirits. When we die, our spirit is released from our body. It contains the energy and nature of our soul, as well as a lifetime’s worth of experience. Usually, our spirit passes over to our life between lives—but not always. Sometimes, we become stuck in the earth plane—usually when we’re tangled up in the trauma or confusion of our death.

Early in my career, one of my clients became fearful during our session. She recounted the terror of being mortally stabbed. This occurred in a previous life when she had been incarnated as male. He refused to accept his death. Instead of ascending to his life between lives, his spirit found itself trapped in an ongoing fight for survival.

Later, many of my clients reported similar traumas, which they relived with an emotional intensity, making the death seem vividly real. Once the pain and terror were released, they felt light, peaceful, and liberated. When I investigated further, I realised they had released aspects of themselves who had become stuck at the end of their previous lives.

I wondered why so many spirits became trapped at death in some sort of suspended state that seemed like purgatory. Could there be a flaw in the makeup of the earth system? Eventually, I encountered clients whose regressions helped me make sense of this confusion.

We come to earth having forgotten the details of our previous incarnations, which is commonly called “the amnesia.” But not everything is forgotten. How could we evolve if that was the case? Something must be retained. In this chapter, we explore how this works.

We become lost by cutting ourselves off from Source and others to varying degrees. In fact, we are always connected to these higher energies, just as our phone connects us to the outside world. We decide who we call, how often, and whether to take a call or not. We can ask for help or go it alone. In this analogy, regardless of our choice, the connection is still there. It is the same in the nonphysical world. Lost spirits can forget or refuse their connection to Source. Focused on survival, some are still fighting for their lives and others are lost and confused, unaware that their body has died.

The cases in this chapter are about people who have been lost. People coming to see me have been lost and are now in the process of re-establishing healthy relationships with themselves, others, and Source rather than descending further into darkness. However, their stories can show us how souls become lost and stay lost. We learn how their choices affected their subsequent lives. We also gain a glimpse of how souls emerge, although this is addressed in more detail in later chapters.

Lost from Shock

Our personality, our beliefs, and our focus shape our experience of dying. For example, people who cling tightly to the material world will intensely resist their death. This tension can bind the spirit to the earth plane even after the body has long since turned to dust.

During past life and life between lives regressions, we relive at least one death. Our reaction to dying becomes clear to us. Some of us accept death, while others fight back. Some don’t want to die, and others feel shocked and confused. When we resist death we leave a residue of energy—an earthbound spirit—which can influence the trajectory of our subsequent lives.

In her regression, Freda was taken back to a past life specifically to release an energetic remnant left over from her death in that life. Previously, she had harboured a pervasive sense of feeling lost, which had worsened over time.

In the early twentieth century past life, Freda was a teenager living in a Quaker community in the Midwest of the US. When a vicious storm came, she and her mother huddled together under a table. Freda reports what happened after a tornado suddenly struck.

Why am I here? I can’t work out where I am. I feel lost. I don’t know what is going on. Where is my mother? I cannot find her. I am confused.

Holding her mother tightly as they cowered underneath the kitchen table, Freda felt the terror rising in her chest when the house began to shake. She was so focused on riding out the storm, she did not even realize she had died. Her guides explain how this happens.

When the death is quick, we can go into a limbo state. It gives us an opportunity to calm down. The guides are watching. They know you are confused, and they want you to calm down on your own before you are aware of anything else.

I ask if there was a part of the young girl’s energy still stuck in the illusion of the Midwest until we did the regression.

Yes. That is why I asked, “Why am I here?” I was still stuck there. That is why we were taken to that life, to free me. It is like a memory, and now we are bringing in a new perspective.

When our spirit is lost, we can feel lost in our current life. Some people have trouble navigating, worrying about getting lost in their hometown or city. For example, some don’t know which direction is north. These clients usually tell me they have lost their way in life. I am not surprised when we discover one or more past lives where they died without knowing where to go, finding themselves stuck.

Fear Carried Over

Some beliefs humans hold are fundamentally faulty. For example, many people believe they are nothing more than their physical body, meaning they expect to experience nothing after they die. Even those with a concept of a creator can be trapped in an illusion, fearing they will be punished or sent to hell at the end of their life. Either view can create a substantial block to moving on after death, which then impacts their subsequent lives.

Because we create our reality, if we believe there is nothing after death, that is what we shall find: nothingness. Unfortunately, this is common. I have encountered hundreds of spirits caught in this state.

Linda never married and lives alone. Through her interest in past lives, she has established contact with her spirit guide. She knows some of her past lives have been traumatic. Before we begin her regression, she shares how she feels.

I am anxious, afraid of death. I am ruled by fear. I fear I have done something bad. There is a feeling in me that I have dabbled in the dark forces and done terrible things.

I suddenly died in a fire in one past life. In WWII, I was in the Resistance in France, and I was shot. I was the chief of an American Indigenous clan in another [life] when I was overpowered and killed by my current brother. I decided I would never want to be subjected to that again. That decision has affected me ever since. I am judgmental and shut down. My guide told me, “That decision has closed your heart.” I don’t want to stay closed. 

Making such an emphatic decision—“I shall never be overpowered by anyone again”—can imprint our soul and close our hearts. Once the soul is imprinted, the impact of that decision can carry over into subsequent lives. Being constantly vigilant for any hint of aggression creates a mindset of distrust—the opposite of an open heart. When we draw our boundaries so tight, we end up feeling anxious in many situations. While we may fend off aggressive people, we can also feel threatened by those who are simply self-confident, assertive, or decisive, not to mention those who hold views that contradict our beliefs. The intensity of our reaction toward others reflects the severity of our original trauma.

Linda has been affected in her current life by this decision to never be overpowered. Now she is taken to a past life where that decision also played out. In this life, Linda’s soul is a miner called Roberto.

To transition clients into a past life, I often suggest they move through a beautiful tunnel. When I suggest this to Linda at the beginning of her regression, she immediately feels afraid. I have inadvertently triggered her fear of being overwhelmed.

It’s like a railway tunnel. It is big enough for me to go through, but I feel like I am confined and trapped. Now it is too small to fit through, too enclosed to move. I don’t want to be in a narrow space where it feels like all is tumbling down on me. I feel like I am under the earth, underground, like in a coal mine. The earth is shaking with dirt and stones falling. The tunnel is collapsing. There is dust, and I am gasping for breath. I don’t think I am getting out of it.

After expressing words of support and safety, I ask Roberto if he died.

I don’t feel any different. But I am scared, scared of the nothingness. The nothingness is claustrophobic, awful. I feel panic wondering how to get out of here. It is like a hell, this overwhelming nothingness. I feel alone. I can’t imagine anyone being here. There is nothing but nothingness here.

Souls’ intentions play out. The power behind the past life decision to never be overpowered is fueled by fear. Roberto is focusing on what he does not want, on his fear of being crushed. We create what we fear. After his death, Roberto is experiencing his deepest fear.

When clients experience a sense of nothingness and isolation, I usually ask if they find anything positive about that state. When I ask this of Roberto, he gives me the answer I have heard so many times before. He says he feels safe here. He doesn’t like being used by others, and here he is alone. When I ask if there is anyone he can trust, he names another miner called Xuan. Xuan used to take him for a drink in the pub at the end of their shift.

I realize Xuan must have died many years ago and his spirit might have moved on, but I also know that Linda’s spirit guides have taken us to this past life to resolve the past trauma. I am confident that somehow Xuan will appear, so I ask Roberto if he would accept an invitation from Xuan.

I just got a sense of someone with red hair. It’s Xuan! It’s vague but I sense he is smiling. I am numb. Shocked. The change in circumstances was so unexpected. Xuan is taking me somewhere. I see green fields and a stream. I am happy here. [Crying.] I am glad to be out of the darkness. I feel relieved. I am washing all the dirt off me in the stream. Now I am sitting in the sun. Oh! I see a group of miners who died in the mine too. They are saying “It is okay now. We are out of that mine.” I am happy to be out of it.

Although Roberto wasn’t close to people, he was generous and respected by the community. People who need to feel in control of their relationships are often generous. Giving rather than receiving provides a sense of control and safety. Reciprocity is a common pattern, deeply held in the human psyche. When we accept a gift or help from others, we feel an underlying tension that remains until we reciprocate in some way. Generosity helps us feel safe because we sense the other owes us and is less likely to do us harm.

Linda’s soul became lost after she decided to never be overpowered again. This decision imprinted the soul and played out in subsequent lifetimes in various ways. Roberto wasn’t overpowered by people in his life, but he was overwhelmed by the mine collapsing and becoming lost in nothingness after his death. His spirit remained trapped until he was freed by Linda during the regression.

Overreacting: A Clue to the Past

Accessing a past life means bringing forgotten experiences into the present. During a regression, there is a rich interplay between the person we are now—our personality, the beliefs we hold, our current emotional state—and the person we were in that past life. We are different people, but unresolved experiences from our past lives still influence our current lives. Once our past life traumas are resolved, they no longer have a hold over us. If we are still haunted by traumatic lives, we can be negative, closed down, guilt ridden, or full of blame. If we have resolved some past life trauma while other traumas still remain, we may vacillate between joy and negativity depending on our current circumstances. When we live in the shadow of past life trauma, seemingly innocuous experiences can trigger us, bringing our past into the present.

Manuel, a teacher, was under the care of a doctor, psychiatrist, and psychologist, each greatly concerned with his state of mind and his suicide attempts. Over a span of three years, Manuel came to see me three times. After reviewing the notes of these sessions, I realized his suffering was a culmination of pain accumulated over several lifetimes. This was also evident from a statement he made in his first session.

I am fulfilling a purpose that goes over a number of lifetimes. It is a big project, and I won’t finish it this lifetime.

Manuel is gradually releasing his underlying sense of being flawed. In spite of his innocence in a past life and his current life, he has been unable to free himself of this sense of inadequacy that plagues him.

Two years before our first session, a disengaged, hostile student had falsely accused Manuel of hitting him. Manuel’s reaction to this libel was disproportionate. His headmaster referred the matter to the police, and even though the investigation that followed cleared him of any wrongdoing, Manuel remained angry, devastated, depressed, and suicidal. In desperation, he resigned from his teaching position. Before he came for his first session, he still suffered from depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

During the regression, Manuel accessed a past life as a very young girl falsely charged with witchcraft. Although she protests her innocence, the elders of the village decide to conduct a trial by water. She is bound and thrown into a river. If she sinks, she will be deemed innocent and pulled out. If she floats, she will be condemned as guilty. Manuel reports what happens.

My hands are tied. I am up on the surface. [Pause.] Now I am going down, deeper and deeper. I don’t want them to kill me and believe I was guilty. I am determined to prove my innocence.

In reality, the young girl dies, but from her perspective she is still fighting to prove her innocence. Thus, she never accepts her death. Instead, her sense of injustice and her vow to survive trap her spirit in a timeless struggle for survival and absolution.

Being falsely accused at the school triggered Manuel’s unresolved trauma from this past life. I ask him if he can see any link between the past life and the present.

The headmaster had me trapped, and I had no way to escape. I can see I was resonating with this past injustice. I can feel how determined the drowning girl was to prove them wrong. She desperately wanted to survive.

So desperate to be proven innocent, the young girl failed to realize that proof is not really required when you know, in the depths of your soul, that you have done nothing wrong. As she sank down into the water, she sensed her guilt, shame, and worthlessness, accumulated from previous past lives. These feelings had surfaced in Manuel again when the student bore false witness against him. He, too, was desperate to clear his name.

Manuel values being strong-willed but wants to know how to let go of his old fears. I tell Manuel that even though the young girl yearned to survive, she drowned in front of the villagers. Now is the time to come to terms with her loss. Manuel takes one slow, deep breath, then finds himself back in the water.

Manuel’s body is shaking all over. I encourage him to keep breathing, slow and steady. He faces the harsh truth that the young girl died unfairly, drawing her feelings of disappointment into his heart. Only when he has fully embraced those feelings can he gradually let go of her life.

Now I am in a field of flowers. My guides are here, telling me they are proud of me. It feels good.

Rescuing the young girl from her watery grave gave Manuel some relief, and his medical professionals were surprised by his sudden improvement. But three years later he returned to see me, still struggling with suicidal ideation.

Sadly, his medical practitioners could only offer him limited help. He told me they panic when he shares his desperation and suicidal thoughts, which only isolates him more. They do not understand that he is suffering an existential crisis that will take several lifetimes to resolve.

As we have seen, profound experiences in one life can impact our later lives. When an event occurs in our current life that is similar to the trauma in the past life, it triggers the original reaction.

Post-traumatic stress, or PTSD, is the same. A serious event like a car accident, a sudden loss, or anything that causes a deep shock can shake us to the core. The emotional charge and imprinted memories of the trauma can stay with us and later trigger a reaction. If you ever find yourself overreacting to something another person says or does, perhaps you are still carrying some PTSD from old wounds. Being triggered tells you this trauma remains unresolved. The emotion that fuels your overreaction may come from trauma you experienced earlier in your current life, in a past life, or both.

Slipping Down

Avoiding the pain of trauma is a strategy with limited efficacy. By getting angry and isolating, we can evade our present suffering, but our wounds are not healed, and our past will continue to stalk us.

Nora came for a regression with a number of issues, including relationship problems, claustrophobia, and back pain. During the regression, she visited several past lives. In one she is an aunt looking after her deceased brother’s children. She loves the children but doesn’t care for their mother, whom she describes as unstable.

I can see some children who are sick and dying. I try to help them with some medicine. I feel completely desperate. I give them medicine, herbs I have picked. There is nothing more I can do to save them.

The priest comes. He is with the children when they are dying. Everyone is confused about what happened. Someone says they were poisoned. Now I am not sure if they were sick or poisoned. The widow and the rest of the family are pointing the finger at me.

I have to turn around and run. I try to hide at a friend’s place. I can feel the panic. I am in agony, despair, and misery. I am stuck right now. I am hiding. There is nowhere else to go. I know I will hang. I feel very scared.

They are going to hang me. I am angry. Very angry. I want revenge. I am making a curse. I will get her [the widow] in another life.

Nora was hanged for something she believes she didn’t do. She turned away from Source and invoked a diabolical power to avenge her death.

A curse is the opposite of atonement (at-one-ment). Hating someone and seeking revenge separates us from Source. It affects the soul. As we saw in the previous chapter, we are all ultimately “one.” At a fundamental level, a curse on others is a curse on ourselves. If we believe our curses have the power to hurt others, it follows that we believe others’ curses have the power to harm us. We find ourselves living in a menacing occult world.

Nora’s subsequent life shows how her act of separation plays out. In this life, she is a strongly built fisherman, who loves nothing more than being out on the sea fishing. Although he has a wife and two children, he likes being alone.

I am not at home often, and I can’t think of where I live because it is not important. I am not a good family man. It all feels a bit pointless.

I look at the children and I am scared. I am afraid something will happen to them. I feel anxiety, no control. I want to run away from the feeling. When I am away, I don’t feel that so much. I am terrified of my own children. I wasn’t prepared for those feelings when I had those children.

It is my job to be a fisherman, and I use it as my excuse to be out at sea. It is so peaceful. I don’t want to go home. I stay out late. I feel like I ended up never going home. I stayed out on the boat and abandoned my family. I let them drift away. I live on my boat and go into other ports.

The fisherman cannot emotionally connect with his family. He is now living in the menacing world inadvertently created by soul choices made in previous lives. The aunt whose nephews and nieces died felt powerless. She couldn’t save the children, nor could she save herself. She felt victimized by the rest of her family and couldn’t accept what happened. She resorted to anger, disconnecting from Source and seeking revenge.

Her lack of trust passed on to the fisherman. He avoids responsibility and caring for his family, believing that distance will protect him from the pain of losing them. This is a strategy many souls use after experiencing a deep hurt in a life where they felt overly responsible.

Nora receives some insight into these two past lives.

I ignored how my actions affected others, and that can be selfish. I think short-term rather than long-term, especially in relationships. I ignore those relationships with people I don’t care about or who are difficult. I dismiss the ones who are difficult to deal with.

As the fisherman, I was scared of caring for the children, of damaging them in some way and of being hurt. I didn’t trust myself. I wanted to love but I didn’t know how to do it safely.

In my current life, I have chosen not to have children. The fisherman had an opportunity to do it right and he didn’t. I haven’t forgiven him. I feel like I can only live my lives with minimum responsibility.

I need to pay more attention to people, realize their needs are important, and look at what they need. All the problems I have with my back are from that life. I have the feeling that no one has my back. I run away because I don’t trust myself.

My widowed sister-in-law is my mother in my current life. I felt so angry with my mother and I never understood why. I would think about pushing her down the stairs. I am hitting “cancel, clear, delete” to the curse I put on her when I was on the scaffold.

Nora blamed the fisherman for her decision not to have a family in her current life. She didn’t understand why the fisherman chose to isolate and hadn’t taken full responsibility for her decision to remain childless.

Her back pain is one issue she wishes to address. I suggest she go to the origin of the problem. Nora finds herself in an enclosed space. We discover she is experiencing a past life as a reckless man. He was engaged to marry but got tangled up with another woman, sabotaging his marriage plans and shortening his life.

I feel like I am in a box, a punishment box. There are two holes, and I am looking outside. I can see some trees.

Someone in authority didn’t like me and left me there. I feel like I am there forever. I cannot stand up, but I cannot sit down either. I feel very uncomfortable, and my back is feeling very bad. I feel so hopeless and sad.

I make suggestions to help Nora free this trapped spirit. Gradually, he realizes he died in the box and doesn’t need to be trapped there anymore. He goes to the light. Now Nora gains more information about that life.

That life ended much earlier than expected. From that experience, I lost trust and my soul got damaged. The life feels like a waste. But it is not a waste if I use it to remind me to not rush. That life and death made me a very determined person, more focused and serious about things. I was better at seeing what is important.

Decisions made in Nora’s previous lives did not solve her problems. In seeking to avoid more pain, she ended up taking a wrong turn. She drew no long-term comfort from calling on diabolical powers to damn her sister-in-law. With this curse, she abandoned her true self, those close to her, and her connection to Source. The fisherman couldn’t settle and spent his life alone, troubled by the guilt of failing his family. The reckless man was afraid to commit to his fiancée, and his infidelity cost him dearly. Being trapped in the box after death had a purpose. Nora’s soul carried a subconscious memory of the consequences of being reckless and impulsive, which manifested as physical pain in her back. Now that she knows how she created her back pain, she can use it as a signal to correct her actions, take responsibility in her relationships, and be more aware of the needs of others.

Nora’s lives demonstrate how our decisions have consequences that reverberate in subsequent lifetimes. Trying to avoid pain just takes us deeper into distress. We need to face, acknowledge, and work through our heartache and loss if we don’t want to slide into a path of more misery and turmoil.

Imprints Are Created During Incarnations

Some people wonder why we don’t make changes when we are in between our lives. Behavioral patterns and beliefs formed during our physical lives are imprinted at the earth level of vibration. When we want to change our views, we need to do so consciously in a physical body rather than just doing so energetically. Healing these patterns while we are incarnated imprints the change more robustly because we are connected to both physical and nonphysical worlds. Making positive changes while in the body deeply imprints the soul memory.

Some clients find that their current lives have been created specifically to change patterns that were imprinted during previous lives. Eva is one of these people. 

Eva experienced a life thousands of years ago when a catastrophic explosion occurred, destroying much of the earth and inundating what remained with devastating floods.

I just keep seeing the explosion over and over again. I get the same feeling I get when I visualize the future environment of our current world. This feeling has come from this [past life] explosion. I foresaw this coming, and it was a serious, huge devastation. I tried to warn the hierarchy, but they didn’t listen. It set up a chain reaction on the planet. Some did survive but not many. I didn’t survive.

Spirit guides take Eva through a process that heals her trauma from this past life, which includes beautiful visions and peaceful feelings. She receives the message to focus on her inner serenity and not worry about the bigger picture of the planet.

Before she came for the regression, Eva wanted to know her purpose in this life. She learns that her only purpose for her current life is to heal certain patterns of behavior, which were imprinted during numerous previous lives. In fact, her current life had been created specifically to heal these patterns.

The Benefit of Being Lost

We have seen how becoming lost can impact our future lives in a way that takes us deeper down a path of struggle and suffering. We can also carry over memories that are useful.

Nedina, a public servant, is a self-confident, pleasant lady who lives alone and loves animals. After I have instructed her to go through a tunnel into a past life, she reports what she sees.

It is daytime, and I am outside looking at the front of a house. It is bigger than a cottage and the walls are made of stone, sealed with mortar. It has a grey roof and a path leading to an ordinary timber door. I have no strong feelings about this place. I am an outsider.

I am an older woman with old legs, wearing comfortable black leather shoes and a knee-length skirt. I am eighty-three years old, and it is the early twentieth century.

I am walking along the path to the door, which has blue trimming. I feel I am entitled to open the door. It is cold inside. I see lace curtains, linoleum floors, a heavy round table, and old horsehair couches. There is nothing expensive here. The house is empty. People lived here once, but no one lives here now. There is an old parlor, but it is not inviting.

I ask if she has lived in this house. Her answer is instant and unexpected.

I died in a bed upstairs. Oh! I only just realized. I must be dead. I hadn’t known that before. I died without realizing I was dead. I am downstairs looking up the stairs to the room where my body was. I am detached from any emotions.

She says her name in this life had been Cari and, looking back, describes what Cari was like.

When I was alive, I was a quiet person with no strong emotions and not many friends. It was not an exciting life. I lived within the conventions of the time. I didn’t need to be strongly expressive and I accepted that. Now I realize there was some emptiness in my life. It was the era. I was a spinster living here, as it was the family home. I didn’t change it. It was a bland life.

I am hanging around. I had religious beliefs, but not to any depth. I just accepted things as they were.

I ask her what she is going to do now that she knows she died.

I feel a need to go out onto the road and walk on. I need to let go of the house, to let go of the life. That is a funny experience. It makes me see how much one can attach to walls, beds, stairs, and tables. That was all that I knew.

I am going out the door and closing it, walking down the cement path, out the gate, and heading off down the road. I feel that was the right thing to do. It feels good. Sunlight is coming through the trees. I don’t feel old anymore. There is energy in my step, and I feel younger and happy.

I am walking along pleasantly and enjoying the freedom. I see there is light up ahead, a strong light. I am very drawn to it. Someone is there with light all around them.

I suggest she open herself up so she can connect to this light and receive any forthcoming information.

I am in an expanding aura of light and it feels very warm. I need to stand and let it infuse me so I can go on. It has made me feel free. It is like it has dusted out the corners, cleared out anything unwanted from that life, realigned me, and retuned my vibration so I can now transition.

After walking along another path, she comes to a building made of marble.

There are people in there, older men. I am going in. They are very quiet, sitting around in chairs. They have been waiting for me.

They tell me that past life was about loving others, but Cari was unable to step outside of the social structure. She was restricted. The plan was to have courage and break through.

I chose to stay in that house and restrict my life. It was about feeling safe. There was no depth to relationships or anything. Everything was a bit superficial and I was able to hide behind the social norms. I was afraid.

The church, the fire and brimstone. I believed it. One had to do one’s duty. The church triggered my fear and insecurity, then fed it.

I was a young child, about three, and something scared me. I see a minister from the church. He was very harsh with me. Oh my God! They were my parents. My father was the minister, and he was yelling at me. I lived in that house all my life, and the way I lived my life was related to the way he frightened me at age three. It was an obstacle put in my way, but I didn’t overcome it and I didn’t expand my heart.

I ask if Cari’s life has influenced her current life as Nedina. Nedina was bullied terribly in her current life as a child, but in adulthood would not stand for any bullying at all. Nedina moves her focus to her current life.

That is why I was so determined not to let the bullies keep me down. I have a sense of it now. Even when I was being bullied as a child, I knew I was going to stop that as soon as I could. I had that determination even then.

Nedina continues but describes Cari’s experiences in the third person when I ask if Cari was lost until now.

Yes. Even in life, Cari was not functioning fully, just going through the motions—detached, but not in a good way.

For Cari, being stuck after she died emphasized the hollowness of her life. Now I don’t need it anymore. Going through that purification with the light-being means it is finished.

Isn’t that amazing! That life gave me the understanding that if you let fear govern you, there is emptiness, narrowness, and no expansion. A hollow life. That understanding evolved from that past life. It was just there. After eighty years of that, I knew how empty your life would be if you did not address it. Cari’s life was meant to be. Such a dull life but such a useful life. It wasn’t a waste.

In my current life, when a bully has tried to manipulate me, I will not buy into it. Others do, but not me. I attack bullies full on. As I have matured, I can look at a bully and see that they came from a place of imbalance.

Nedina’s case demonstrates how being lost can accelerate our growth. Cari was lost during her life and after her death, feeling that her father’s bullying had driven her to live a small, confined life. This feeling was made available to Nedina in her current life, and she used it to develop an inner strength, refusing to put up with bullies.

Conclusion

Being lost can take us deeper into strife and suffering. But if we stay connected, we can decide to utilize a troubled past life to make us stronger.

We start our lives as innocent babies, but we do not stay that way. In our current lives, we face challenges that surface subconscious memories of the past. Because we carry the energy of lost spirits, our reaction to some situations can be much more intense than is normally warranted. Our most vigorous and extreme reactions are worth noting. Some trauma from the past may have been triggered, manifesting in our current life. When a human spirit doesn’t go home after death, the energy of that life remains unresolved and still accessible.

The emotional trauma we carry into subsequent lives demands our attention. This is why many of my clients remember lives in which they died suddenly—because such lives have so much to teach us. If we refuse to listen when past life traumas flare up in our current life, we condemn ourselves to keep playing out our adopted patterns of behavior until we finally wake up.

In the next three chapters, we explore the journeys of four souls who did decide to step bravely into their dark night of the soul.

Capítulo 1. COMENZANDO EL VIAJE

 

CHAPTER 1

BEGINNING THE JOURNEY

Imagine waking up in a strange bed. You can’t remember what happened the night before. Your arm is numb, too heavy to lift. Gradually, you become aware of the people around you. You sense that they’re trying to help, but when you open your mouth to speak, your tongue feels thick, and you can’t find the words you need. Your vision blurs, and you begin to lapse in and out of consciousness. Perhaps it would be easier to just fall back to sleep.

Amnesia is terrifying. It doesn’t matter why you’re in the hospital—a medical incident or physical trauma. Gradually, you’ll begin to knit the pieces of your life back together. But there may be some memories that are lost forever.

You’ve experienced this before. Do you remember when you first became aware of yourself as a small child? Our earliest memories are often elusive. Perhaps you felt confused, wondering if you really belonged here. Perhaps you asked your caretakers, “Who am I?” or “Where did I come from?” Over time, their answers sank in. They gave you a name; they told you where you were born. But wisps of suspicion remained. They couldn’t answer all your questions. What were they avoiding? Where did you really come from? And is there something you have lost forever?

As an infant, you may not have realized that you are a soul incarnating in a human body. You might still doubt this. But in all probability, you have been on earth in a physical body before.

Even though some souls feel excited and curious when coming back to earth, others can find it unsettling. For a baby, unable to fend for itself, the world can be utterly bewildering. There are peculiar beings who make weird noises and unfamiliar places filled with strange comings and goings. Newly incarnated souls have largely forgotten who they are and don’t know what they might encounter this time around.

If this is challenging for souls returning after many lifetimes on earth, imagine the experience of those souls who have never incarnated here before. They find themselves encased in physical bodies that limit their movement. They are surrounded by a cacophony of intrusive sounds. Strange entities flit in and out of their vision, and every contact seems charged with intense emotions. Everything is new and potentially threatening. One can assume they find their early incarnations both confusing and confronting.

Although you have taken this journey yourself, you have probably forgotten what it was like.

Before we begin exploring the soul’s journey through many lifetimes, we need answers to some pertinent questions. What is a soul? What do we mean by nonphysical? Who were we before we came to earth? Where did we come from? Why did we decide to come here? Were we prepared for this journey, and how did we begin? What was it like when we arrived here, and how did we cope?

Feeling breathless? Good—let’s plunge right in!

Nature of Souls

What is a soul? Pretty much whatever you want it to be—and there’s the problem. Many people imagine souls to be light and free-spirited. Above all, they believe souls to be essentially virtuous. But as I have discovered, souls can become lost over the course of many lifetimes. They may return to earth time and time again, creating havoc and wreaking destruction.

If you want to understand what it really means to be a soul, look around at the people you know. Each one is a soul inhabiting a human body. And all the varied qualities you see in others—whether wholesome, devilish, or indifferent—reflect the state of their souls.

Before their first incarnation, souls are neither good nor bad. They are simply possibilities—aspects of Source that have chosen to experience life on our planet. Because souls are nonphysical, incarnation presents a challenge. They need to step down in vibration until they resonate with the earth system. Before they meld with a human body, they have already begun to change. They have opened themselves up to living in a system with many choices—all with consequences.

We refer to souls as nonphysical because we cannot perceive them with our physical senses. Humans have limitations that souls do not. When a soul incarnates as a human, it takes on these limitations. For example, the human eye can only see 0.0035 percent of the electromagnetic spectrum. We know our hearing range is limited—dogs and bats can hear frequencies we cannot. There are chemicals and gases that we cannot taste and smell. Our feelings and emotions are like an unexplored continent that we don’t know how to navigate.

It is possible that souls and the nonphysical world exist at a subtle level of physicality that is too ethereal for us to detect. Data collected over years of research suggests that the universe is largely composed of dark energy (68 percent) and dark matter (27 percent).3 Physics tells us that without dark matter the universe would fly apart, while dark energy drives its accelerating expansion. The visible cosmos only accounts for 5 percent of the universe. But scientists cannot see, touch, or identify either dark matter or dark energy. So far, no instruments have been able to detect them.

Accessing the Nonphysical Universe

When people enter a hypnotic trance during regressions, they can access elements of this invisible cosmos. They visit the afterlife and other realms. They interact with friends, relatives, and celestial beings. Being in trance allows them to bypass the five senses and access their sixth sense, or third eye. I call it an intuitive sense.

The invisible cosmos includes a dimension close to the earth, which is the place the soul calls home. Michael Newton called it our “life between lives.”4 This is a little misleading because Newton eventually discovered that the soul remains in this dimension even while incarnated. Let’s pause for a moment and take that in. What actually inhabits and animates our physical body is only an investment of energy from our larger soul. While we are living here on earth, another aspect of our greater self remains in another dimension.

This means there is a powerful relationship between the nonphysical realm and the physical earth. In combination, these form the earth system. A soul incarnating on earth has come from the nonphysical realms of the earth system, also known as the afterlife, the soul’s home, or our life between lives.

Duality

To our senses, the physical world seems dense and solid. While it is often beautiful, it is also potentially dangerous. To survive, we must remain aware of the world around us. Because we rely so much on others, we need to know if they will help us or harm us. Are they sick or healthy, happy or miserable, kind or mean? Because our bodies are vulnerable, we need to check the weather before we step outside. Will it be hot or cold, calm or windy, wet or sunny? When we cross the street, we know to watch for cars—are they moving or stationary? If they’re moving, are they travelling fast or slow, forward or backward? There is so much to notice, and it demands our full attention.

We come to realize that our world is full of opposites. Up and down, hard and soft. The most important distinction we draw is between ourselves and everything else, between I and not I. We experience reality as a set of relationships between ourselves and the rest of the world, and as another highly complex set of relationships between all the different elements we perceive in the external world: people, nature, events, and things. Each element exists relative to every other element. This is where the concept of contrast or duality comes in. It implies our separation as individuals as well as our interdependence with the rest of the world.

The whole is the combination of all these contrasts—me and you, dark and light, hot and cold. But our consciousness cannot easily hold everything together and only focus on one thing at a time. You can see the two faces, or you can see the vase. As much as you try to see them both together, all you can do is quickly flick your focus from one impression to the other.

Of course, we need to perceive all the elements of this image before we can visualize the vase or the two faces. We are whole even though our consciousness is playing a game of separation. For a few moments, some clients transcend this game.

Juana found herself in a state of oneness after reliving a challenging past life.

There is just so much love. If we could just live in that love. They [spirit beings] are always around. I am feeling the love and it is not just them. There is a greater love, and they are part of that. It is like a big space of nothing and everything. After that initial overwhelming high of love, this feels like space, evenness, nothingness, empty and full at the same time, like good and bad, whole and separate.

I ask if that means there is no duality.

Yes. That’s right. It is everything—all that is. You cannot stay here forever. There is nothing attached to it—no space, no pattern, no emotion. And yet I sense a lot of humor in this space and in the duality. The whole concept is funny, almost like it is a cosmic joke.

The whole, as well as our sense of separation, are opposites. Perhaps that is the joke. We are whole, but to play and to experience life, we need to be separate. There are two lessons to be drawn from Juana’s experience. First, she retains her identity while being immersed in those feelings of love. She is whole and separate at the same time. However, because Juana was immersed in that sense of connection, she was not fully aware of her individual identity. It’s just lingering in the background. Secondly, this experience came after she had relived a traumatic past life. Perhaps her ecstatic sense of wholeness was the culmination of all the challenges she had endured.

Other clients who have glimpsed the celestial struggled to describe the experience. They used words such as oneness, expansion, peace, connection, completeness, and timelessness. Boundaries disappeared and, for a moment, the “I” disappeared. I had thought this was probably as close as we could get to understanding wholeness until one client, Ámbar, had an unusual experience.

In her regression, Ámbar became an eagle, flying over a valley of volcanos and lava that had destroyed her nest and fledglings. Pierced by a deep sense of loss, she felt that her life lacked all purpose—until she saw the valley open to the sea and she came into a bright white light.

I feel my third eye is opening up. I have been guided to the white light, and I feel peace. I am able to see the sum of all parts and more than the dualistic nature of things.

I am seeing through the two eyes of the bird on each side of my head, which is both sides of everything and the sum of all parts as well. Each eye moves independently on each side of my head, and I see the whole with my third eye. The bright light is a place where it can all exist together rather than feeling torn about the details. That is really expansive. At the base of everything, there is no separation, and that is an expanded feeling. It is very reassuring.

Ámbar later described this experience as life changing. While Juana felt consumed by love, Ámbar remained aware of the movement

of the eagle’s individual eyes as well as its intuitive ability to see all. She was simultaneously aware of her duality and the wholeness.

This is the paradox of spirituality. If our consciousness were to be fully absorbed in the oneness, we would lose any concept of our separate identity. But as soon as we develop a concept of self, we experience everything else as separate. By definition, any awareness of our personal existence seems to require the experience, or perhaps the illusion, of separation from the whole.

We may imagine souls as being spiritual and ethereal in composition. Nevertheless, they, like humans, are playing this separation game too, as one client explained.

A soul is a point of consciousness, a point of understanding, independent, with a separate consciousness. It has its own thoughts, is able to communicate with others, and does.

One of my clients, Jazmín, was worried about returning to her life between lives. Who would she be, she wondered, once she entered the nonphysical realm?

Recently, I feared that being on the other side was all lovely and light. They are reassuring me that my wicked sense of humor has a place, and personality and individuality still exist there. There is dark and there is light, and both are accepted.

Another client, Eduardo, wanted to know what it was like being in spirit and if there were contrasts as there are on earth. He was told that, “When we are all one, there is no fun.” Eduardo understood this to mean that separation exists in the life between lives and beyond. Without contrast, existence is boring. Souls make decisions without knowing how their choice will turn out. Risk does not disappear when we return to our life between lives after death. Contrast and some level of risk remain, even after we re-emerge with our higher self.

Why Incarnate on Planet Earth?

Our universe offers an experience of separation that makes life interesting. But there is something different about incarnating on earth. The experience of separation and contrast is so extreme, we forget who we are. Earth has a heavier vibration than other places.5 Indeed, most humans remain unaware of the nonphysical dimensions. In any case, while in trance, many of my clients marvel at the unusual nature of our planet—its solidity and the deeper contrasts that exist here as opposed to other places or dimensions.

All my clients are experienced souls. They may have come to earth as young souls thousands of years ago, experiencing many incarnations since they first arrived. Others came here after incarnating on other planets or in other dimensions. For both groups, their early incarnations on earth can come as a shock. While souls choose to come to earth, none of them know what they’ll discover until they actually live here.

Rosalía elucidates her larger soul’s reasons for coming to earth to incarnate.

There is something very distracting about the solidity of the earth environment. It makes it harder to remember the game. The energy is so dense and solid. I knew about the amnesia, but I didn’t really understand. It was a nonphysical knowing, and that is not the same. Earth has been a bit of a shock.

Another client, Pepy, explains how she and two close soulmates came into the earth system to incarnate.

We have stepped down in frequency to be souls in the earth plane, and then we have stepped down in frequency again to be physical.

Pepy and her soulmates have accepted having limitations at the soul level, and then have accepted even greater limitations as humans.

Valencia had experience in other places. She describes her attraction to earth.

Earth has a level of energy that you don’t get on other planets. You can go into levels that are deeper and darker. There is something special about this planet because of its level of lower frequency and the freedom of choice. It is a huge step down for us who come from places that are less physical. I came in spite of that because I felt the need to experience the heavier levels.

The “I” Valencia refers to is her larger self, which gained a wealth of experience in other dimensions before first incarnating on earth. 

Many clients during their regressions seem to attain a higher perspective and speak as their larger, more knowledgeable self.

Almudena asks her guides why she feels she doesn’t belong on earth.

My guide is laughing. “You wanted to evolve quickly, didn’t you? Planet earth is the toughest school, the best university. The curriculum is tough.”

Almudena wonders where she came from.

I am getting that I am a very old soul. I haven’t been on this planet a lot. I have evolved on other planets in other universes that are beyond our human imagination. I have only had five incarnations on this planet. I chose the best university for continuing my learning.

Many eternal beings, like Almudena’s greater self, choose to incarnate here because it is a challenging and rewarding school. In many regressions, the guides emphasize that humans do not need to justify their presence on the planet. Just choosing to incarnate here is a courageous decision no matter how you live your life.

Beginning Souls

In Michael Newton’s book Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, his clients describe newly created souls as “hatchlings.”6 One of my clients, Sofía, refers to them as “baby souls.”

Baby souls, when born, are just as cute as human babies. Everyone gets fussy about little adorable baby souls, just like they do with human babies on earth. A new little soul is a lovely, cute, playful being, like a baby kitten—so sweet and vulnerable.

Like babies on earth, new souls are nurtured and protected as they adjust to the energies and begin their schooling. The soul needs to learn first before incarnating as a human baby.

We can’t go to earth at that stage; we are too small. I can feel myself as that little energy. We have a lot to learn first. We have to grow up, like being in school. We are too vulnerable to be put in a body. We are in a fog, and we need the fog to protect us while we learn to get stronger and grow into a more capable soul.

The little soul’s foggy confusion is protective. No one can know everything at once. Each soul is exposed to new experiences, information, and semi-physical places before incarnating on earth. This includes simulated practice, which is not the same as actual incarnation.

Another client, Isa, learns that her soul is a teacher of young souls. In the place her soul calls home, she sits on an orb surrounded by circles of many young souls. Some of the classes are for souls who have yet to incarnate, and some are for those in between their early incarnations.

All are meditating and absorbing the light. They are eager to learn. I am their teacher and mentor, and they depend on me and trust me. I feel the energy from the orb travelling outward in a frequency that makes us one. We go through sensations and observe them and let them go. It is like waves on a beach coming and going. It is so familiar.

We practice this and eventually the group progresses to something else, and I have another new group of souls. Some returning from earth have dimmed light and are happy to be back home. They are learning to be calm and balance their emotions. With the energy of the orb and practice, they are recharged and brighter.

Isa notes that there are other souls who are more of a challenge to work with.

They are not stable; they change very quickly, like being indecisive. It is in their nature. They have a lot of energy. They like to experiment. They are willful and changeable. They trust me because I don’t tell them what to do.

From Isa’s description, we learn that new souls have different characters and qualities that can affect their behavior.

As pointed out earlier, new souls seem to be very delicate. They need to become accustomed to being in a physical body. During her regressions, Raquel recalls her first incarnations.

In the beginning, I had three lives to become familiar with being physical. I had to get used to having a heartbeat and a solid form and moving in a body with gravity and weight. I see a strange landscape of curved rocks. I was some sort of unusual animal. In the same place, I am now an alien in a humanoid form but not a Homo sapiens. Now, I have a smaller body, a being like a bird, but I feel a heaviness in the heart. Flying is hard. I am not used to the wings. When I am older and bigger, it is not so hard, but gravity is still challenging. My guides are asking me if I want to do this because I am going to be put into a Homo sapiens life. I say yes. It is experience. I feel determined and resolved.

The adjustment needed to begin incarnating on earth is a big step, even for those souls who have had previous experiences on other planets or in other dimensions.

Entry into Earth Life

As humans, we first incarnate on planet earth as innocent beings, dropped into unfamiliar territory without a map or a manual. Before we were born, we agreed to one specific condition: that once incarnated, we must forget our larger soul-self. Our soul wanted to experience human form so strongly that it accepted this restriction. This is why we can sometimes lack purpose in our lives—because we have forgotten the depths of our soul’s desire.

We arrive open and curious. Even though we retain some sense of our divine nature, we are here on the planet to integrate with our dense physical body. As a newborn, we don’t even know we have a physical body, and many months pass before we realize that our body is separate from everything and everyone else. Gradually, we become aware of our physical nature, developing our ability to use our bodies.

Physical bodies need food, water, and shelter. We must learn how to provide these essentials for ourselves. Also, the physical world is dangerous. We are naïve, and many difficult lessons await us.

It is not surprising that in early lives many souls choose to be born into tight-knit communities with established customs, prescribed laws, and strict standards of behavior. The group teaches us how to survive in a threatening environment. It also fosters close connection to others and gives protection to members. Usually, these groups have a strong spiritual connection expressed through religion, sacred songs and dances, and a close connection to the natural world. This resonates with souls new to the earth because group rituals and worship connect them back to Source energy. Because they thrive on connection to others, nature, and spirit, the lack of individual freedom does not worry them. Three cases illustrate the attraction to life in these protective communities.

During his regression, Cosmen is taken back to an early life as an Indigenous Australian.

I am male, a provider who hunts and gathers. Food is monotonous but abundant. We don’t have a lot of ups and downs in life. We live connected to the land. We have traditions but not rules. We don’t need rules. The traditions are the way we do things, the way we celebrate and honor our ancestors.

I ask what happens if someone doesn’t follow the traditions.

We might have to cast them out for the sake of the rest of us. We don’t survive as much as we exist. We don’t have the fear of survival. We have our challenges—lightning, storms, and fire—but we have our songs, our medicines, and our families.

Disruption does not serve the group. There is an understanding that any disrupters are not welcome, and they leave. We call them the lonely ones. It is not an active casting out. It is a natural process. We exclude them, and they choose to leave. They are still family, and we celebrate their choice. We honor them in our songs, in the earth, and in the stars. We grieve and we let go.

Some members will manage better than others, but it is a lesson in acceptance—accepting the grief, the choice, and the loss. The lonely ones leave because their energy doesn’t fit with the community. They are with us in word but not in spirit. We know that if they stay, in the long-term, their actions will not serve us. We are one, tuned in together, and harmonious.

During our early incarnations living in a tight-knit community, we accept our mutual reliance on others. Our interdependence also extends to our thinking. Generally, we concur with the collective mind of the group and quite naturally adopt its rules and practices.

In our second case, Caterina shows how comfortable and natural interdependence is for her in an early incarnation. She lives happily in a large, close-knit community made up of smaller nomadic groups.

I see a bright blue sky and the sun, in the middle of the day, shining down on barren, old mountains worn down over time. The ground is dry and sandy, like a desert, but there are patches of thin grass.

I am a young female of twelve attending to a rabble of goats. I am seeing a few skin shelters of nomadic families. I am happy tending the twenty or thirty goats, and it is an important job because the goats signify wealth and give milk.

We go to another scene.

I am inside and there is a gathering of many people, more than I have ever seen before, probably about fifty in a communal tent. Now I am about fifteen, sitting in amongst the crowd at the back. There are fire pits, and we are eating food that has been cooked in them.

We are here to pay allegiance to our leader. We admire him because he looks after us. He is the head, and each group has a leader who is underneath him. This gathering doesn’t happen very often, only once every several years. The timing is based on the stars and the seasons. We then go off on the nomadic routes that each group follows. We are somewhere in the Middle East.

I am getting an understanding of the importance of group cohesion. If you are not part of it, you cannot survive because life is already a hand-to-mouth struggle. I have been lectured about the rules, and this is deeply instilled, especially the emphasis on expulsion if you don’t fit in. The gathering is to reinforce the rules for the survival of all as well as sharing information.

I accept fitting in as a given. I am getting that these people are part of my extended soul group, and we have been incarnating together for a long time. I feel connected again. I can physically feel the connection of my heart chakra to Source, and now it is expanding. Particles of gold are washing over me, gently, like a mist. A path is opening up in front of me and I am floating along it. I feel I am suspended, and I received a message: “Welcome.”

The guides are saying that this is a significant life because it is telling me the importance of being connected to others but also recognizing that fear is not a state of integrity. I didn’t need to feel any fear because I was comfortable being a part of the group. I wasn’t resistant while others were. If they left, they lost the safety of belonging. It is important to know when you are surrendering and that surrendering is a joyful feeling.

You might note that both Cosmen and Caterina had little fear in these early lives. They didn’t feel like they were submitting because adherence to the rules of the group was so inherent and natural. Being connected to their community and its members, they felt safe and protected.

Group affinity is also evident in the members’ relationships with their elders and departed ancestors. In this life, Caterina has complete respect for the leader, who is responsible for the group’s welfare. And Cosmen, too, is respectful, expressing how he feels about those who die—not just his ancestors, but the lonely ones who had to leave.

We honor those who die. Our dead are always with us. We are connected to our ancestors, and we honor them directly. The ones who walk away we honor in spirit. We are connected by our stories. They provide us with perspective of their journeys as we learn through our dreams.

Interdependence is essential for survival when you have little experience of being physical and facing harsh conditions on earth.

Religious conclaves also provide a safe place for the newly incarnated soul. These communities are well-established, tightly structured, and allow members to engage in spiritual practices. In our third case, Alegría retains a strong connection to God in her life as a monk named Brother Martín.

I am in a monk’s outfit with peaked shoes, like slippers. I am around forty, with a tonsure hairstyle. I am standing here looking at this room, which is like a cellar with solid arches of red brick. I feel lightness. Something important happened here. I am calm and smiling, sensing something majestic but not knowing what it could be. I am picking up energy that is happy and joyful; actually, it is a calm joy.

I am curious, wondering why I feel so much peace in this place. It is a sacred place. I had a glimpse of someone dying here. [Cries.] I have a sense of quiet joy.

Even though no outside light comes into this room, there is a lightness here.

Now I see the past when I was here with a dying man. The man is my master, dressed in white, a beautiful being who has been a guiding light for me. He is a teacher in the monastery and has been a loving presence. I am there remembering the beauty of my master’s passing with much love. Not sad but happy.

As a monk, I have been with many people as they died. I remember one man with his grieving wife beside him. I am holding his hand, expressing love, nothing more, just love. I feel happy for his passing. It is his time. I keep getting a sense of the beauty of leaving. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the afterlife is a beautiful place and dying is a beautiful experience.

In a scene later in this life, Brother Martín is dying in the same room where his master passed.

I am lying in the red brick vault and my protégé is there. He is thin with a long nose. He feels a lot of love and respect toward me, and I am feeling love for him. He is ready but unsure. He feels my energy and joy, much the same as I did when I was in his position. He is feeling the human sadness of us parting but the beauty of me leaving.

I am anointing him. An anointing is just putting the hands on the anointed one’s shoulders. We know a transference is taking place. The energy is passed with the thought: “This is your path now.”

After passing, Alegría as her soul-self realizes why Brother Martín was so peaceful, loving, and accepting.

In that life as Brother Martín, I wondered why people [on earth] were angry and unhappy. I could be loving with these people because I saw dying as beautiful. I wasn’t afraid like others were. I didn’t have complete amnesia. I was deeply connected to God and didn’t feel violent or passionate. I was feeling too much love. 

Because Brother Martín had not completely forgotten his soul origins, he retained a strong connection to Source energy. His attention was still largely focused on heaven, his soul’s home. This is not surprising, for he was a young soul and a devoted monk. However, his ethereal presence meant that he could not relate to human emotions such as fear, grief, and anger. This limited his ability to help those who were lost in grief. After this life, Brother Martín’s soul decided to experience these emotions in depth so he could relate more closely with others. For many centuries, he planned and experienced some extremely challenging lives.

Masculine and Feminine Energies

Another focus of souls in their early lives is expressing feminine and masculine qualities in a pure form. Often, we choose to take on the same gender in a series of lifetimes in order to develop the essential elements of masculinity or femininity. As we progress through our many lives on earth, we eventually learn how to integrate and balance both male and female energies.

Jacobo, who you will meet in later chapters, mentions his development of protective male attributes in one of his sessions.

I just got a glimpse of my first life on earth. It was 25,000 BCE. I see a small settlement where I lived until I was two years old, when I died of the cold. But that life was useful, just a little taste of earth. The majority of my lives after that were peaceful, rural lives. I only fought when I needed to protect my family or community.

Fighting helped these men develop their physical skills and their sense of courage, which they needed to maximize their chance of survival. Strength and courage, used as a protective force, is important to souls wishing to engender healthy masculine energy.

Valentina experienced a life as a male in a matriarchy. In this life, the women were graceful, loving, and the source of sacred teachings. The men were strong, masculine, and protective. The men greatly respected the wisdom of the women and took their role as protectors very seriously. Valentina learned the difference between male and female energies and discovered the source of violence.

Female energy is like a peaceful stream, while male energy is like big waves and excitement. Male energy can be explosive. But heartless killing doesn’t come from male energy. It comes from emptiness.

Melisa had an early life in a community where pure feminine energy could be expressed.

It was a very exciting life, a feminine life of Picts and Celts worshipping Mother Earth and the goddess. It was a powerful time for females. Women were priestesses and medicine women, highly respected and a little feared. Men would ask for their wisdom. I liked that life and that form.

In our early lives, we often focus on expressing one gender in its raw, instinctive form to develop familiarity with that particular energy. Our long-term aim is to integrate the qualities of both male and female energy so that whatever gender we express in a life, we know how to balance it with its opposite.

Conclusion

As souls new to the earth, we arrive filled with hope and excitement. We are keen to experience this place of beauty and extreme contrast. We have been nurtured and lovingly schooled. Our preparation has included practice in simulations and on gentle planets. But the nonphysical lacks the heavy vibrations of earth. We come here as naïve souls inhabiting sensitive bodies, not knowing how to live in a place of such rich contrasts. Being too ignorant to make wise decisions, we choose life experiences that will help us adjust to the earth energies.

Close-knit, tightly regulated communities provide certainty, safety, and opportunities for young souls. We develop physical and emotional skills while surviving in a potentially hostile environment. The community fosters connection to each other and to the group. Its rituals and customs reflect a shared belief in an unseen world, populated by spirits or gods. We learn the ways of our gender and submit to the wisdom of the elders, respecting their care and guidance.

Yes, we face difficulties in our early incarnations, but they are relatively mild. As we adjust to the earth system, the challenges become greater, our lessons harder and more disorienting. In our next chapter, we see how some souls have faced these challenges.