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Do you trust your past life memories?

fiziwig

fiziwig

moderator emeritus
Do you trust your past life memories?

Research shows that if you do you might be making a big mistake!

Even present life memories can't be trusted, so why would anyone trust past life memories that are not backed up by independant confirmation? I trust Dr. Stevenson's cases because the memories came at an early age and were backed up by concrete evidence that supported them. However, new research is showing just how easy it is to deliberately implant false memories, and how easy it is to have false memories implanted accidently.

Take a look at this paper for example.

For example, one set of studies asked people to evaluate advertising copy. They were shown a fake print advertisement that described a visit to Disneyland and how they met and shook hands with Bugs Bunny. In follow-up research carried out by Grinley in my laboratory, several presentations of fake advertisements involving Bugs Bunny at Disneyland resulted in 25-35% of subjects claiming to have met Bugs Bunny. Moreover, when these subjects were subsequently asked to report precisely what they remembered about their encounter with Bugs Bunny, 62% remembered shaking his hand and 46% remembered hugging him. A few people remembered touching his ears or tail. One person remembered that he was holding a carrot. The scenes described in the advertisement never occured because Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. cartoon character and would not be featured at a Disney property.
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Considering how easy it is to trick ourselves into believing we have a memory of something that never really happened in this life how much easier must it be to trick ourselves into believing we have a memory of a past life.

Each person needs to set their own standards, or course, but I for one put very little faith in unsupported past life memories. I know what you're thinking. "Gosh, I really, really believe I was Napolean, or King Arthur, or whatever." Fine. Believe it if believing it makes you happy. Just don't fool yourself into believing you're any closer to the truth for trusting something that has been repeatedly shown to be untrustworthy.

I think I may have been a Buddhist monk in a past life. I once had a regression that dredged up all sorts of details about my life as a Buddhist monk. I've tried sitting down and drawing out more details. In fact I can "remember" several different, contradictory versions of that life. My conclusion is that maybe I was a monk, maybe not. Maybe I only wanted to be a monk. Maybe I was an actor who played a monk in a play. As for the details, I have to assume they are all pure fantasy.

Why do I bring this up? Because there's a lot of important stuff we need to learn about how reincarnation works, and what the deeper meanings are behind all these mysteries. Every time we fool ourselves into believing something that is not real we move further and further away from the truth, further and further away from the light. And everytime you convince someone else that your questionable memory is real you lead that person further and further away from the truth. So maybe you don't worry about the karmic consequences of leading yourself astray, but what about the karmic consequences of leading others astray? If you're going to be serious about learning and growing in this lifetime, someday you will need to choose between fantasy and reality, and set aside fantasy in the pursuit of truth.

The first lesson, and a very difficult one, is to accept the truth of
the fallibility of human memory. You can't get your feet on the path to truth until you accept that every past-life memory you have must be taken with a grain of salt, and is very probably not true. Sorry to break it to you, but you were not Napolean, or King Arthur either.
 
Yes, fiziwig, I trust them to a degree.

I think it needs to be said from time to time that many more people think they were a famous person in their past lives than the odds will allow. My hypothesis is that these people may have been a contemporary of the famous person and may have known them or maybe read about them a lot in a previous life, and all of this kind of got jumbled up together in their memories.

Who knows? Maybe some of the persons who think they were a certain famous person at one time actually were!

Unfortunately, it is not easy to prove this and often times it ends up just frustrating everyone. How much better it would be for that person if they placed the most emphasis on the life they are now living and use some of the lessons learned during the real or imagined famous past life.

Let's face it, most of our past life memories seem fragmentary.

I seldom discuss the subject of reincarnation with anyone and if I do, I find myself clamming up if anyone in my circle of friends, business associates or relatives asks me for details about my past lives. I feel that no matter what I say, it will not be believed. Only two relatives accept reincarnation and it is only with them that I can feel open and free in discussing it.

I don't know my names in any past lives, and I don't want to delude myself. One thing is for sure, I don't recall being famous. I do have a pretty good idea of what I did for a living and where I lived in the most recent one, and at least one past life from the 1800s. They were good lives and they involved science and art. I derive this from vivid repeated dreams, from "flashes" I get from time to time of visual images, and from affinities I have had throughout this present life. A recent trip to the place where for years I believe I once lived and worked really made me feel good. I know now that I did live and work in that city. I realized then that there is good and bad in knowing a lot. It is possible to think about the past lives too much. It is a worthwhile task to find the right balance.
 
No, I don't trust them.

There are things I like about myself, and I just enjoy them.

I had read the Bugs article, and was already familiar with the fact that THE MIND CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOMETHING THAT IS VIVIDLY IMAGINED AND SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

I used this fact once - well, in fact I have used it often - to make myself a better golfer without ever playing golf. I imagined myself playing well, felt the club strike the ball, etc., and when time came to play, the guys I had to play with remarked about how much I had improved!

Sadly, I can also point to 'Viet Nam Veterans' who were never there, 'abused children' who were never abused, and so forth - these are examples personally known to me, now.

And the 'memories' of these non-exsistent atrocities created the same chaos, the same nightmares, the same depression, as the memories of actual victims. Maybe it's even worse for the pretenders.

For the pretenders, I believe it's just something that they wanted, or maybe even needed, to experience.

And I believe we all, within limits, we experience the life that we wish to experience. Perhaps the temptation to experience a past life is simply too great a temptation to resist, so we invent something that appeals to us.

Al:cool
 
Aligator,

Interesting story about the golf. The ssame thing happened to me with bowling. I was bowling regularly with some friends many years ago but couldn't get above the 130 to 140 level for anything. Then one evening I imagined myself to be a master bowler. I pictured myself throwing strike after strike. That evening I bowled 1 pin short of a perfect 300 game. After that I went back to my usual score. But that one experience showed me how powerful imagination can be in affecting reality.

As for past life memories I trust the general outline of those memories but without corroborating evidence I don't trust the details at all. After all, I can't even be sure about my childhood memories from this lifetime.
 
Yes, I too trust the memories "to a degree". I can't imagine a better starting point. I have a very strong recollection of one of my lives ever since I was a little girl. I remember being able to "see" the events of that life play out before me, like a movie. I wrote down my memories as soon as I could formulate the correct words. But ... to my horror, a few years ago I was reading some "ghost sitings" website and there was a story on there frighteningly close to some of my own memories. Did I hear this story as a child/baby? Most of the elements of the story were the same - down to the approximate year, the breed of horse I was riding and even the location. My memories are of Georgia. The ghost story takes place in North Carolina on the Georgia border! The only difference was what I was wearing and the purpose for my horseback ride.

We must be wary of our memories, but we have to put some faith into them to at least lead us in the right direction.

~~Winter
 
You've raised an extremely interesting and important topic Fizzywig. And to answer the question, no I don't trust my pastlife, even this life memories. With all the information we're fed on a daily basis, a lot of that being sent through the TV it's hard to keep track of what's ours and what's not.

Even when going to a physical place more than once, or having seen it before on TV I feel like I've "been" there before. Huh!

Really good point, and I feel it's really important scientifically (and possibly even mentally/emotionally) to clear things up.

Kuka;)
 
For myself, the question is how can I NOT trust my past life memories? (After all, I don't have THAT many). :D :D :D Whatever I recall, or what might seem like imagination, is there for a reason and in direct relation to my life right now. I think it's important to trust whatever iformation comes to you and to stay open to the possibilities.

THE MIND CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOMETHING THAT IS VIVIDLY IMAGINED AND SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
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Maybe in extreme cases...but one's intuition can tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Trust in oneself is the key to ascertaining what may be made up for our benefit or real (for our benefit too! :))

Also, Aligator, your story about the golf is great- don't you think that's different than having false past life memories, though? What you are talking about is positive visualization- imaginging the outcome of a situation and creating the outcome for yourself. Sure, one can do that in past life memories, but it seems there would always be that knowing that you made it up- that's no fun!

With all the information we're fed on a daily basis, a lot of that being sent through the TV it's hard to keep track of what's ours and what's not.
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With the vivid past life memories you have shared, I am surprised at this statement from you. :) Yours are so vivid...passionate...they cannot come from TV....please trust your memories...share more.

Have to go to work...will check in on this thread later-- very interesting!!!
 
It occured to me that while we might not be able to completely trust the details of past life memories, we should just the same trust what they mean.

I have a past life memory of being a Buddhist monk in Tibet but what if it turns out that in reality I had a past life as a Christian monk is France. The details might be all twisted and distorted by fantasy and by things I've seen and heard in this life, but I think I can trust the deeper meaning of the memory and what it stands for.

So when we look for the meaning of a past life experience we have to remember that the same lessons can be learned in a lot of different classrooms. One person might learn compassion by being born rich and handsome and another might learn compassion by being born poor and handicapped. Maybe the details we so lovingly cling to are not what's important.
 
Yes Fiziwig, I do beleive in my memories. I pride myself in being honest with others as well as myself. I must admit, your comments put a wrinkle in my brow. It made me feel a bit as if your were questioning my personal honor, but you put this question out to everyone and perhaps you are just trying to stir up some lively conversation.

I do beleive that people should be critical of what they remember and I am somewhat wary of regression and dreams as past life memories. Although I do know of a person who has had memories in dream format that match memory flashes of my own. So I don't discount them just because I rarely have past life memory dreams. That was something I did as a child.

If I were to say to any of the people that I know to be friends of mine from past lives that I don't think they were who they were, I would be putting them further and further and further away from the truth and the light.

As for the Bugs Bunny concept.....Advertisement is not going to make me think that events happened differently than they did. The movies and books about me as Manfred von Richthofen make me grit my teeth more often than brain wash me into beleiving all the non-sense that is portrayed. I am sure many other "famous folk" feel the same way about materials written about them. Plus the fact that we all tend to remember events from our own point of view. The person who was Oswald Boelcke rememebers the same events that I do, but often with a different twist. Does that make her wrong? or me wrong? No. We just remember from our personal point of view. We remember what was important to us, and depending upon our own self image we may see events geared to endear our memories of ourselves too.

As I reread what I have written here, I would like to ask if you, Fiziwig, have ever remembered any past life experiences without the use of regression? Your doubts may be steeped in the regression process. What prompted you to seek regression?


Just some things to think about.
Rittmeister
 
Just wanted to say that research and reports are just as flawed as memories.

Depending on how the questions are asked, researchers can flaw any result. Before the fake advertisement was shown, were the participants asked to list what amusement parks they have visited in thier lifetime? Those who remember meeting Bugs Bunny may very well have done so, just not at Disneyland. Did the researchers ask "Did you meet Bugs Bunny at Disney land?" or did the researchers ask " Did you ever go to Disneyland?" and then "Did you ever meet Bugs Bunny?". It is not hard to cause people to imply something they don't mean, or simply take what they say out of context.

For every report like this, there is almost always another report stating the exact opposite, so which one do you believe? And how can the result of a controlled study give results like "25 to 30 %". If it is a controlled study they would know exactly how many people participated so shouldn't the percentage be fixed? And how about the 70 to 75 % that didn't fall for the fake advertisement.

And finally who paid for the research? One thing I learned from talking to people who conducted NIH research back in the mid '90s is that research money is often tied to a contract stating that findings contrary to or detrimental to the contributers' objective(s) will be suppressed. In other words, often the funding is tied to finding results acceptable to the funder.

Finally, do I trust my memories? Once upon a time I had almost total recall of everything I read and heard, and of my memories (in this lifetime, I don't remember any others, and I remembered maybe 50 % everything that's happend to me in this ). My accuracy when friends (and family on the memories) would test me was about 93%. If I were answering this question then my answer would be a resounding "yes". Now between medecines to treat health problems and a lot more hectic a life than I used to have, I have to say that yes I trust my memories, but I no longer trust myself quite so completely on the details, and it takes me a longer. For example: then if I read something in a magazine, I would have been able to give you not only the details of the information read, but the source, page numbers and author, now I remember the sum of the article and maybe a few details but I'm lucky if I remember any more than that. Many of my memories have suffered the same fate.
 
Hi everyone!

You all have brought up very valid points and extremely good arguments. And I guess, in my case, what does it matter whether the facts are "textbook" true or not, if it's real for me then it's real and that's all that matters.

And I think that the most important point is if you learn from these pastlife memories. And if you do then what does it matter where it comes from. I think reality is made up with each thought anyway, we're all living separate and very real realities, that are never the same from one person to the other.

Thanks for a great conversation!:D

Kuka
 
Rittmeister,

What makes this whole subject tricky is that a lot of the past life memories that people have are certainly true and completely trustworthy, just as I'm sure most of the memories I have of my own childhood are reasonably reliable. I certainly didn't mean to imply that all past life memories are untrustworthy, only that one should excercise a certain amount of caution and objectivity in exploring such memories. There is always the possibility that they may contain a large portion of fantasy.

As for famous past lives I believe that the majority of people who claim to remember famous past lives are deluding themselves with fantasy. On the other hand, famous people from the past certainly have reincarnated and may be here right now, so there is no reason why one could not discover a famous past life.

If one excercises due caution and examines the memories objectively and has good reason to suspect that the claimed past life was real then I don't have any problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the person who sees a picture of King Tut that looks vaguely familiar and out of the blue decides that they must have been King Tut in a past life. Such fantasies can be built up over the years into a richly detailed story that sounds plausible, but has no basis in fact.

Yes, I have remember a few past life experiences without regression. These recollections are from a very early age and by the time I was 6 or 7 years old they were mostly faded away. I regret that I didn't document them while they were fresh. Now all I have is a couple of fragments and the stories my mom tells of what I used to say about my past lives.

Chelle,

Excellent point. Loftus has her own axe to grind and it doesn't surprise me that she finds the results that she finds. Those are the results she is looking for. I'm also wondering how many of the so-called false memories are really just people making up a story just to please the interviewer or to get attention. The subject might say "Yeah, I remember meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland" when in fact he has no such memory, but is just telling a "little white lie" to get a little bit of attention from the interviewer. Since there is no way to tell the difference between an actual false memory and a lie there's know way to know if any false memory actually got implanted at all.
 
Who knows?

I’ve considered that past life memories may be the result of anything from confabulation to a collective consciousness, and the fallibility of memory is well documented. In fact, there are a few cases where confabulation has significantly contributed to childhood memories of PRESENT lives, including that of Benjimin Wilkomirski. Wilkomirski, who wrote the (once) critically acclaimed book “Fragments: Memoirs of a Wartime Childhood,” was exposed as a fraud first by a journalist working in Switzerland, then by respected news program 60 Minutes, a few years after he published.

Turns out his childhood memories of being a Holocaust survivor had been dredged up under hypnosis, but when researchers started digging through his past, his early days began to look a lot more prosaic. Rather than having been interned in a concentration camp, he was instead born Bruno Grosjean, in Switzerland, where he had spent the first few years of life in relative peace.

Now some people claim that Wilkomirski is a liar who allied himself with other liars in a bid to give credence to his claim of victimhood, but it seems more likely to me that he believed every word of his tale. After all, a little scholarly digging and media fact checking easily unearthed the truth, and it isn’t as if Wilkomirski wouldn’t have seen this coming if he had intentionally perpetrated a fraud. In my opinion, his is just one more disturbing case of where memory failed to reveal the truth.

As to whether I trust my memories, which to me are more like a whole other life that piggybacked this one (like Shanti Devi), what can I say? On the one hand, those memories, along with practically every other memory I have, could easily have been corrupted through the passage of time and through media exposure. Yet, these “memories” are more than mere curiosities to me – they have shaped every decision I have made since earliest childhood. They play as important a part in what I do now as the memories of five years ago.

I’ve been told I have a good head for facts and figures – a double-edged sword since this could mean either that I more easily confabulated a historically plausible story, OR that I may have an easier time of remembering things that actually occurred.

So, ultimately, I treat my memories like religious experiences; as matters of faith that can do naught but benefit from a lot of searching and a dollop of scepticism. After all, the ability to trust the validity of any memory is, stripped naked, a matter of belief. Am I what I think I am? In one very important sense, I certainly hope not. I hope that when I die, some great being will let me in on the secret that I have been unintentionally fooling myself for all these years – that I owe the world nothing. I even toy with the idea that there may be no god, no reincarnation, and no reason at all for existence.

So, do I trust my memories? I trust that I have hands and can feel the world around me with them, though I could be wrong. I trust that my faculty of reason will usually lead me to a true conclusion that follows from true premises, but I could be wrong. And I trust that I am what I believe myself to be, though I recognize on an intellectual level that I could be even more wrong about that than about anything else.
 
Do I trust my memories, SOME of them. I tend to skew names a little, like last name first, or the town where Constance was born that I haven't found yet, Mittenburg, could be Miltenburg, could be Wittenburg....when I find it, I'll know.

What I really want is to find out where I can get financial backing to do a ludicrous study about Bugs Bunny and Disneyland.
what people won't waste money on.

As far as people remembering things wrong. I don't need a study for that I have an aunt and a brother who have re written history many times. Which annoys me so much that I take every piece of info that I get from regression, dreams, and sudden images with a grain of salt, and I document it so that I can go back months and years later and it is exactly as I experienced it.

So, yeah I do trust many of my memories.

catseye
 
My brother and I spent our childhood together with the exact same parents, in exactly the same places. We both have *very* different memories of our youth. It's all in the eyes of the beholder, I say. Who am I to say whether his truth is true or not, just because it doesn't correspond with my truth? Who am I to say what information he needed out of the experiences we shared? We *all* see through our own coloured glasses, however "scientific" and "objectively" we say we are. So who cares really if I really experienced what I feel I experienced. I don't need it to be written in stone. I feel strongly that I will get those memories that will help me be a better person right now, this life time, by assisting me in making sense of my current fears, behaviours and other restricting feelings. So my memories are exactly that, *my* memories. They don't have to correspond with an actual event or place, if they do, that is fine, if they don't that is fine too. They are mine, and I trust them to be useful *to me*.
 
I trust the core memories, but not the extrapolations and guesswork I've built around them. I trust most those glimpses I've had which were clear, emotionally powerful, visual on a couple of occasions, and which haven't faded with time. I also trust to some degree the "educated guesses" that fit in with my overall karmic pattern, which I've pretty-well ferretted out by now. I have a pretty clear sense of my "themes" running in sets of dichotomies through a number of past lives, and I trust most those feelings and intuitions which fit in with those themes.

But most of my past-life knowledge is very general. So, I trust the general conclusions--and I trust the very few direct experiences I had that were powerful. I take the rest with a grain of salt.

For example, I am pretty sure I was a Celtic priest of some kind, within the first few centuries AD. I know I was very sensitive, and that an appreciation of nature was involved. I got a name once in a self-hypnosis attempt--the only thing I ever got through that method--and I saw it clearly, but I don't trust it. It could be cryptoamnesia (the name was "Anuin", a name one can commonly run across on the internet, etc.) I can put together a few more clues from the life-lessons I've had to learn in this life. I do understand that in any given life, certain of your past lives are more relevant than others for the lessons to be learned this time around. I appear to have learned a lot of lessons in this life that were relevant to what I lacked in that Celtic life or lives. For example I have learned in this life that it's good to be sensitive--but not to overdo it. It's also important to be practical, especially when one is responsible for someone else. And I could list about 10 more which I won't go into... So in short, I think the issue of what to trust is partly a matter of seeing how it fits with one's overall pattern.
Steve S.
 
I come firmly down on the side of "yes"... and "no"! Many of my PL memories go back as far as I can remember. They are so consistant, vivid & detailed that I know with certainty that they are true.

Others are based on feelings, impressions and the like. Until they can be verified, I'd have to classify them as interesting but "uncertain".
 
Yes and no, but increasingly yes

Fiziwig wrote:

As for famous past lives I believe that the majority of people who claim to remember famous past lives are deluding themselves with fantasy.
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I agree that some proportion of famous past-life claimants are most definitely fantasizing... the only thing we might disagree on, Fiziwig, is the percentage, and maybe not even that. In my travels in the reincarnation world, online and off, I've specifically sought out people with famous past-life memories, and so I've found very many, and I have to say with some it's immediately obvious that they're out to lunch. Others, you figure it out only after a while. Still others convince you their past lives are for real, especially if they've done their homework and have lots of confirmation. With still others, the jury seems to stay out forever. The most confusing are the few who seem to have good convincing evidence, but show signs of fantasizing at the same time. I've never actually counted up how many I think fall into each category, since my own subjective judgment is only one person's subjective judgment.

What I do have a problem with is the person who sees a picture of King Tut that looks vaguely familiar and out of the blue decides that they must have been King Tut in a past life.
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Not to indict any particularly person, I've seen flimsy evidence turn into firm conviction right here on this forum, and it bothers me. Perhaps because it seems like a mockery, a perversion, of the hard work that I (and other people) have done to settle the veracity of our past lives. I also know that it throws up smoke and mirrors, casting doubt on those who are not fantasizing.

To answer the thread's original question, yes and no, but I trust them more as time goes on. When I look back on the first adulthood emergence, which was two and a half years ago, it seems that I trusted my memories rather easily, based on my actions; at the same time, in my thoughts I have doubted every step of the way, and it's that that spurs me to find the evidence that has made me gradually come to trust my memories more and more. (By evidence, I mean such things as other people's past-life memories corroborating my own, historical sources corroborating mine (and theirs), similarities between me and past incarnations and other past incarnations, reflections of past incarnations I wasn't consciously aware of in my childhood and adulthood creative work, and reflections of one past incarnation found in the creative work of a later past incarnation.)

For me this already difficult question is made much more so by the fact that I was taught very early and brutally in this life to doubt and reject past-life memories. I've been doing a lot of work on early-this-life in the past couple of months, regressed several times, and some awful things have come out. When I was still pretty much a baby, age two, I think, we had a children's picture book on world history, and I happened to find the page about Alexander the Great. I pointed at the picture and told my mother, "I was him." She laughed and said that couldn't be. I insisted it was true. She sent me to my room. I yelled through the door that I had been that man. She picked me up, thrust me out through the front door and slammed it, and left me outside -- in fairly cold weather -- until I stopped crying.

To a child that young, this is basically a death-threat, and the message was that I'd better never claim such a thing again, or else. I think it was a desperate measure on her part, to control what seemed like insipient insanity in her child -- and I think there were unconscious, past-life-related reasons she was so harsh also -- but it was utterly traumatic for me. Because I constantly drew pre-firearms battle scenes, she went on to convince everyone close including me that I was subtly insane, defective on some level, setting me up for abuse from my father and brother as well.

The short version is, I was punished so badly for remembering a past life that it messed up this life fairly severely. So that now that I have re-remembered, the question of whether to trust the memories or not is fraught with emotion arising from that time, in fact thoroughly enmeshed with my sense of self-worth. I have to struggle through fear and shame to remember at all, and whenever doubts rise, I have to sort out whether they are reasonable doubts, or doubts arising from that early indoctrination. I am trying to exorcise the emotion not only to heal, but to simplify and ease the memory retrieval process, to unravel it from self-worth and all other emotional issues, so that I can decide what to trust without these clouding the picture.

Love & peace,
Karen
 
That was my answer, this is my rant

...re Elizabeth Loftus. Was the quote re the advertising study from her book The Myth of Repressed Memory? Because as an incest survivor (that was the abuse from my father) I have a bone to pick with that book.

Why is it that no one, in the psychiatric field or out, argued that repressed memory was a myth, but rather took its existence as a tenet of the profession, until incest survivors began suing perpetrators for large sums of money? All of a sudden, after that, there was a chorus of people, Loftus included, casting doubt on re-emerged memories, and it didn't seem to matter how crappy their research and flimsy their arguments, they could get books published.

I dug up dirt on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (whose very name is a falsehood, since there is no such identified syndrome recognized by psychiatry)... turns out it was started by a couple after their daughter remembered the father sexually abusing her. They did other sweet things, like slander her to her colleagues in an attempt to destroy her academic career, that were at least to me as good as proof of the father's guilt, because they were all the things I've learned from all my research are typical of perpetrators. (At the same time, I'm absolutely sure that some adults have been falsely accused of child abuse, not because of false memory, but because of past life memory that therapists refuse to recognize as such!)

Thanks for letting me get on my soapbox...

Love & peace,
Karen
 
(At the same time, I'm absolutely sure that some adults have been falsely accused of child abuse, not because of false memory, but because of past life memory that therapists refuse to recognize as such!)
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That thought has often occured to me, too. I know of a case where the psychiatrist literally shattered a family because of this. After years of heartache the patient went to another psychiatrist and found through regression that no abuse had occured in his whole lifetime. That family still hasn't healed, and they aren't open to the idea of past lives, they just assume the first therapist planted ideas in the patient's head, which makes them doubt themselves and each other and blocks healing.
 
My thoughts about fantasy "past lives"

Hi all:

In a previous post on this thread I alluded to "signs of fantasizing." In case anyone is curious as to what I think those are, here is an excerpt from an article I wrote about whether to trust one's own past lives.

Love & peace,
Karen

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Fantastical past-life claims [caused by emotional disturbance] tend to have the following characteristics, which are facets of the typical markers of emotional disturbance, extremes and inflexibility:

- uniform pleasantness or satisfaction of some sort, and an absence of unpleasantness; fantasies are designed to fulfill wishes, and to fulfill them perfectly, not to pose challenges or raise questions.

- predictability, lack of unexpected revelations: this provides for a sense of safety within the fantasy. There might be claims of multiple lives following precisely the same pattern every time. While people often relive similar events, there is generally some variation.

- implausible drama: the past life memories are invariably fraught with drama, never ordinary or dull. Note, however, that traumatic events do tend to be remembered more often than everyday ones, due to the intense emotional residue that they leave.

- excess of innocence or guilt: the past incarnation claimed either has no faults that the claimant will admit, or else no redeeming features, portrayed as entirely evil.

- obsessiveness: the claimant “lives in the past,” spending excessive time and energy revisiting, recreating or re-enacting the past life, at the expense of current-life activities.

- justification for special treatment: the claimant will demand some sort of exceptional treatment by others, due to having the past life. It can range from reverence to punishment.

- unwillingness to question, or allow others to question, the veracity of the past life, or even to do research, in case the results contradict the “memory.” This form of denial maintains the fantasy.


Delusional past-life claims that are designed to elicit a certain response from others tend to be accompanied by other behaviours designed to elicit the same response, e.g. boasting and claims of authority in the case of a claimant trying to impress, or attempts to provoke disgust or disapproval in a claimant manifesting a guilt complex. Falsehoods and attempts at emotional manipulation rather than direct, open, honest communication are a sign of disturbance and hence delusional claims.
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This ISN'T helping my situation!!!!!! (LOL- see my post in the reincarnation and adult past lives thread if you don't know what I am talking about :))

But I have one argument. There is all this talk about how past life memories may not be true (which is a BIG problem for me!). But what about children who speak spontaneously of past lives (and being with God before they came here) who have aetheist parents, have never been to church, ect. Could this be a result of a collective conciousness or something they heard as well?
 
To believe or not to believe

Hi Sensitive Soul:

I don't present the above as an argument against the veracity of past lives, not at all! I believe in them firmly, based both on personal experience and the fact that as far as after-death theories go, reincarnation is the one with the most scientific evidence for it -- or dare I say, the only one with any scientific evidence for it?

And yet there are people who fantasize about what their past lives were -- the idea here is to distinguish a genuine past life memory from a fantasy. An analogy: fame in this life. There are people who deludedly imagine they are famous or important -- but that doesn't mean that people who really are famous or important don't exist.

I wanted to answer your other post, re what to believe, by suggesting that you seek out personal experiences of the spiritual. If you do that, and are patient, it will all come clear. We all already know the truth in ourselves; it's just a matter of reconnecting with that knowledge.

Love & peace,
Karen
 
I do trust my past life memories to a degree - it's not like there's that many of them, just fragments, images, moments captured from time. There's not enough to build a new reality from, however!

What my PL memories have done is help me through a difficult time - seeing I'd been there, done that (literally) and this time I could choose a healthier response - that was powerful. The first PL memory I had was a huge deja vu moment where suddenly I SAW that I'd been in exactly this emotional quandry before, and what I'd chosen. Whether the PL memory was TRUE or not... well, I suppose it doesn't really matter... but it did help me to be healthier and more whole. That is the important thing for me. The "memory" healed me and enlightened me.

It also made me a believer in PL experiences - I wasn't really a believer before, just dabbled and thought it all was rather interresting, blah blah blah. Now I believe in karma and try to take more responsibility for my life.

It also solidified my belief in eternal life - ie. that we never die, we continue to exist in one form or another always.

So, whether the memories are TRUE or not (ie actually happened) doesn't really matter to me - the CONSEQUENCES of believing have changed my life.
 
Hi,
I believe strongly in my past-life memories. I guess it's like Astral Projection (for people who know about it). Once you do it, you know it wasn't a dream or image. That's how I feel with my past lives; I won't say in a single degree that they might not be true. I carried these memories since birth and some images were non-understandable and couldn't have been mind influence at a young age. One image from two lives ago of dying in a bed. I was a female, wore female clothing of circa 1899, the furniture was Edwardian and I can picture every aspect of the room, from where the two other woman were standing to the night stand and the burning lantern and other things. All material objects that couldn't be influence at a young age (Edwardian clothes, furniture, ect) since they are no long existint in homes nor did I come across these objects during my early years.
I have various past life memories from my last life. It's like I purposely choose to bring them with me into this life, as if I had to remember, but now at an older age in this life I understand why I took them with me.
I guess you have to believe what you feel is true, but yes we can sidetracked and I read, and observed some figures on research of advertisements like Bugs Bunny. It's possible the bunny could have spawn a past life memory mixed in with this false image set by advertisements. Like seeing a Bunny figure at Coney Island or Palisades Park in the 1940s if that was your last life. It could be an image of seeing another bunny figure in this life, but unclear and faded, that it looked like the one from Disneyland; but it was really a bunny from the state fair you attended when you were four. Research and experiments like that one shouldn't be taken as 100 percent accurate in results. Like many other investigations, it's impossible to find a divine answer or side to reason with. Just have to decide for yourself what you feel is real or false and leave it at that.
Regards,
Anthony
 
Yes, I trust mine :) What I am in doubt of is the order they come in. For example, I believe in my Pl I was born around 1887. My memories all seem to span over the years from 1906 to 1916.
I guess what I am trying to say is I don't think they come in sequence , at one point I know it is 1916, at another point I know the most tragic event in my Pl is between the years of 1910 & 1912, the tragic thing has been a really big block. Buttt the 1916 is the happiest event in my pl, it always flashes before the tragic event! Not necessarily follow a time sequence :) I think when we are ready we get glimpses, but at random, I believe it is trying to tell us something, but it is up to us to try to put into perspective.
Sondra
 
Sondra,
As far as your memories of that other life not being in sequence, that's perfectly normal. In fact, if you think about it, when you look back over this lifetime I imagine things occassionally get forgotten and then brought up out of sequence, dependent on the emotional link to the previous memory.
It's similar with past lives as well, only sometimes those memories can be triggered by things happening in THIS life.
catseye
 
I trust my past life memories, for many reasons. One reason is that one specific past life still makes me so emotional, I can't believe it is just fantasy. Second reason, from another past life I met a person that was also connected to me in that life, and allthough he has no real pl memories of his own, he feels my memories about our life together make sense. Third reason, I also had a memory where my son in this life was my grandfather in the past, and because we were very poor, he was worried because he couldn't take care of our family. And not so long ago, when I was talking to my son about what he would like to become, he said he would like to have a job with good earnings, and suddenly he said : 'And then I can take care of you'....:)
All those things were confirmations for me, so I trust the other memories I have are also true.


Eevee
 
I trust my memories, especially in the lives that I've had the most emotional clarity with. They are the ones that I've documented and explored as thoroughly as possible. Like Eevee, I also have people in my current life who were with me before, and they offer a wonderful form of validation through shared memories.As for the lives I haven't fully explored yet, I can't wait to find out more :D

Ailish
 
fiziwig- nice topic :thumbsup:
I think that certain people do have enough evidence to prove a past life to be correct, to be their past life. but there are just sooo many people swearing that they are cleopatra the 7th (the famous one) and john lennon, obviously many of them would have to be wrong. i mean how many lennons can there be. just an example. i dont think that we can ever fully be 100% sure about who we were, famous or not. People should be careful before making assumptions though, because it might not be right and they might be led to believe facts that never happened to them. for example, if a person has a passion for the titanic maybe they were around during that time and the story touched close to home, not necessarily meaning that they were on the ship. ok, now i feel like im rambling, sorry. just be careful with making mistakes and assumptions too soon. :)
 
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