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Will We Retain What We've Learned About Our PL's?

Lady2

Lady2

Senior Registered
Some of us on this forum (myself included) have spent so much time researching/personally documenting our past lives. Thinking about this made me wonder...

Do you think:

In our next life will we have to start back at square one with our research & remembering?

Or will we retain what we have learned about our past lives?

Do you think because we have made our PL's we remember so important to us this time, we won't remember the same PL's again?

Or instead will we only remember different PL's that we have not yet remembered?
 
I think perhaps we remember what we are supposed to remember to help us to obtain the goals we have set for ourselves before we come here.
 
That's what I think and also why I hold so tightly to what I know now.
 
I would offer my opinion regarding this question with a resounding no. It would be encouraging to think that our hard work and frustration of learning could be maintained in the next life; but if such were the case, we would all have been born with clear memories of everything we have learned in all our previous incarnations.


This is not to suggest that all is forgotten, however, because it is evident that many people retain some of the skills, wisdom, and even some of the negative habits and inclinations they acquired somewhere before they were born. Any observant mother can attest to this. By the same token, however, mothers will also attest that no child in the crib is able to design a house, invest funds, write philosophy or cooper a barrel.


Of course there are many different types of memories and different levels of consciousness. It is clear that we maintain the vague essence of what we have learned in past lifetimes. And, with some work, meditation, courage and more work we are sometimes able to remember some of it. However, I think it is practically an iron-clad guarantee that whatever we have learned about our past lives and whatever skills we have acquired in this life will all be lost to our consciousness in the next life.
 
The only time we don't remember is when we are in our physical form.


I honestly believe that we are not supposed to remember. We are meant to live our lives without the overwhelming burden of remembering everything our soul has experienced. Each life is a unique and precious experience and should be unimpeded. When a memory does creep through it is only because it is relevant to the circumstances of the current life.


If you were compelled to discover past lives in this life there's a good chance that compulsion could hit you in the next life as well. Who knows, it might be easier for you the next time around.


Of course this is just my 2 cents. : angel
 
Would it be such a bad thing??


I also believe that every new life brings with it the "blessing" of non-rememberance! A pure and clean slate, new hopes, new dreams, new chances! Many, many people have no memories of PL and are still happily on their way! Sometimes I wish for myself that I was one of them! Remembering is often painful. I do believe though, that all that we have learned (if you remember or not ) does not get lost...it makes us the whole of who we are!
 
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While I don't think we will have total recall in the next life, it seems to me that spiritual abilities acquired may carry over from past lives. My brother has incredibly strong auric sight and has had it since he was a young child, yet he has no understanding of what auras are and is actually an atheist and does not believe in life after death. While he has no memory or understanding of how he got this ability he clearly was born with it. I think any cultivation of the energy body or psychic abilities may carry over but probably not the memories of doing this.
 
Thanks for your thoughtful replies everyone.

Nightrain said:
This is not to suggest that all is forgotten, however, because it is evident that many people retain some of the skills, wisdom, and even some of the negative habits and inclinations they acquired somewhere before they were born. Any observant mother can attest to this.
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Very true Nightrain. I agree, it is a good thing we don't remember everything - that would not allow us to live in the present for this life. But some things are remembered or carried over.

When a memory does creep through it is only because it is relevant to the circumstances of the current life.
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A good point Truthseeker. And those things that do creep through can bring so much healing, allow one to move on/correct old habits, bring understanding, etc.
Seems to me like there is a fine line of how much can be - or needs to be - remembered that differs person to person...
 
It would be nice to think that we remember the big things, such as life lessons, without remembering the little things, such as how to build a house or why we might hate another person for some wrong (real or imagined). Perhaps what happens is that we allow our current life's events to overshadow those lessons.
 
I think we do remember the small stuff, were just not aware of it.


I think that if you were born into the same or similar culture, many things you take for granted could actually be a pre-loaded understanding; like knowing how a gas pump or atm works.


When I was a child, i was clueless about payphones, checks, money.. just about anything we consider modern. My son on the other hand already has a strong working knowledge of computers, finances, advanced mathematics etc and he's only 9!
 
In our next life will we have to start back at square one with our research & remembering?





We start back at square one in every life. As Nightrain said, we would have clear memories of who we really are if we didn't. Remember that in our next life all of us on this forum may end up having different beliefs, we may not believe in reincarnation at all. If we didn't all start back a square one then I think that would basically defeat the purpose of reincarnating.
 
In the context of that one life time, yes. But perhaps as your soul ages and you mature, you settle into a pattern of "who" you are and you're here more to experience something in particular or learn something else.


I think there's a certain duality there and much like how teenagers try on roles and identities, I think so do our souls. And they too, also settle into something more mature and stable.


Quite obviously, personality traits carry over as well, as that's one of the things we use to look for to find connections.
 
I think one of the main reasons we don't naturally remember past lives in becuase we are here to focus on our current. I believe that if we spend too much time trying to uncover past lives, it'll have an impact on what we are supposed to learn in this one. IMO, when people have dreams of past lives they happen because they may need to know something from a previous life that may help them in the life they're living.
 
That's what I think too, that it's there to call attention to it because it's something that needs to be fixed.
 
Kristopher said:
I think one of the main reasons we don't naturally remember past lives in becuase we are here to focus on our current. I believe that if we spend too much time trying to uncover past lives, it'll have an impact on what we are supposed to learn in this one. IMO, when people have dreams of past lives they happen because they may need to know something from a previous life that may help them in the life they're living.
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I completely agree with this.


I heard it said before that part of the joy of each life is the discovery process. If we come in already knowing everything then there is nothing new to discover. Each life is a fresh start, a new beginning.


All that being said, I do feel like I've made a lot of progress in this life and I definitely don't want it to be a wasted effort. I'm very interested in knowing what my next life is going to be like.
 
Lady2 said:
Some of us on this forum (myself included) have spent so much time researching/personally documenting our past lives. Thinking about this made me wonder...
Do you think:


In our next life will we have to start back at square one with our research & remembering?


Or will we retain what we have learned about our past lives?


Do you think because we have made our PL's we remember so important to us this time, we won't remember the same PL's again?


Or instead will we only remember different PL's that we have not yet remembered?
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LINK: My response regarding memories our future incarnations may experience:


http://www.reincarnationforum.com/threads/holiday-memories.3219/page-3#post-55150
 
But if you cant remember......


Please help this newbie. I want to believe this is all true but if you can't remember your past lives, aren't you destined to repeat the same mistakes? How do you grow? This is a major sticking point for me.
 
Hi Jarn,


Welcome to the forum.


We all retain past life memories, but it's not always at a very detailed conscious level. You'd be surprised if you really knew how much of what goes on in your mind, your dreams and your heart is related to previous lives and is not 'just your imagination'.


Even so, a lot of what we learn from one life to the next is retained in the form that we describe as 'instinct' or 'intuition' and 'conscience' and 'that little voice in my head that tells me the difference between right and wrong' and so on. Just because a baby doesn't remember learning how to walk, doesn't mean she has to learn all over again every day from scratch, right?


Many people talk about feeling a strong familiarity and friendliness with someone they have just met. They can sometimes also will feel a sense of fear and mistrust of someone they don't even know. This can be all kinds of other senses involved, but it is often related to past life experiences with that person. Even if they don't remember all the details of what happened, the 'vibe' still remains. People have likes and dislikes, fears, phobias and seeming 'natural talents' for doing all kinds of things. A lot of this can be put down to experiences gained from previous lives.


Other cultures don't have a problem with reincarnation, and so they tend to bring their children up to be more aware of past life memories than most westerners do. It is a bit of a shame in my view that we suppress this innate human ability, as I think it blocks us off from a lot of potentially very useful wisdom.
 
Hi Tang,


I just read this thread for the first time. I like your post and comments. It seems we retain the essence of our past life experiences in a variety of ways.


However, I'm not sure that everything that has been said on the thread about the virtues of forgetting PLs from life to life is true in all cases or in more advanced stages of soul development--where PL memory may become more normative than not. For another thing, the comments about the virtues of remembering only things useful to our current lifetime could probably use some elaboration.


I'm sure this last point is true for many people (in its usual sense). However, for myself and for many I have read on this board, PL memories or inklings are not "useful" in terms of our current life in the way one would normally use that term. More often, for many of us, they seem to invade and turn our lives upside down.


Now, in terms of "soul" growth, maybe that was what we "needed"--but PL memories are definitely not guaranteed to be "useful" in the way most people use that term. I.e., they sure aren't guaranteed to help you in accomplishing life goals, peace, etc., and doing the things you've set for yourself along your current life path. To me they seem more like something that has come in from the side, blindsided me, and are in the process of knocking me into a very different life path. A life path that will lead to a good many more problems before it, hopefully, leads to something more positive.


So it goes I suppose.


Cordially,


S&S
 
Yes, it's true that sometimes remembering incidents from past lives can upset people, but it is usually temporary. In many, many cases I have read, people will usually work through it and come out feeling a whole lot better about things than they did before. It happens on the forum quite often.


We have had several instances of people with phobias in this life related to past life memories. Once people work through it, they usually lose the phobia or it gets a lot milder. There are also all kinds of emotional upsets, bad habits or mindsets that people can move on from once they work out where it comes from.


I don't think past life memories are not 'meant' to be recovered personally, or that remembering things is necessarily a sign of 'soul growth'. I don't think it's all that difficult with a few basic techniques and some practice. I think our culture suppresses this important source of knowledge. We are taught from a young age that it is not possible, that it's imagination, that there might be something 'wrong' with you if you have past life memories or dreams. So people ignore them or don't talk about them or repress them.


To compound this, when people do have past life memories, in our culture there is not a lot of information on what do to with it, how to handle it and so on. There are past life therapists, but they are few and far between. Thank goodness for the likes of Carol Bowman and others who are prepared to risk talking about this stuff openly, even if a lot of people think it's ridiculous and fantastical.


I think if it was more accepted and understood, vast stores of knowledge and wisdom could be accessed that would be enormously beneficial to people and society in general. Just imagine if people realised there was no such thing as death and nothing to fear? Imagine if they realised they would be coming back again, so their bad deeds would catch up with them. Imagine if they began to understand there is a lot more to life than amassing treasure? The world would be a very different place.
 
Do you think: In our next life will we have to start back at square one with our research & remembering?
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Its my understanding that each life we have has its own goals and parameters. We decide before each life what we will know and what traits we will have, etc. Thats not to say we won't be born knowing or have or not have a desire to search out answer about our lives. Do you feel your knowledge today is a product of what you have learnt before about past lives?

Or will we retain what we have learned about our past lives?
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If we do it will probably be something we know instinctively, but do not know why. Sort of like how people know how to play the violin at an early age, or have the ability to pick up the violin quite easily.

Do you think because we have made our PL's we remember so important to us this time, we won't remember the same PL's again?
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According to Brian L. Weiss, certain lifetimes stick out because of unresolved issues. Once resolved, these lifetime will simply fade from memory, at least, from the conscious state; never from the subconscious. I believe we also remember lifetimes that were important, happy times, etc., not necessarily traumatic. I have many memories, starting from when I was a child, but I never found any traumatic. None caused nightmares. Many are quite pleasant, although a few were unsettling.

Or instead will we only remember different PL's that we have not yet remembered?
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I suspect most of us have had hundreds of lifetimes. I do believe, that "other" lifetimes will emerge if they are events that have unresolved issues, regrets, pain suffering, etc. You may have only decided to work on a few lifetimes in your present life. This could be for several reasons such as paying off karma to a certain other soul who is not available for a lifetime with you at this time. So instead, you decided to workout something else from your past.


--


Past life memories can serve all sorts of purposes in a person's life from helping to understand how our universe (and dimension) works, to paying off karma, to serve as a warning, or as a reminder about something you need to focus or work upon.


In the end, I wonder what the purpose is too. If we start over again, from scratch, so to speak, why go through all the trouble. However, I think its because each and every lifetime is significant and serves a purpose. But with that said, I have read in many books over the years stating that older souls have a problem with the constant repetition of relearning and redoing things from one life to the next. Going back to school, from grade 1 to 12 is a pain (that is how it felt to me... it felt like I had done this already a few times; I am sure that may pose a problem for some students, especially those who died young in several lifetimes). Still... we soldier onward.
 
PastPilot said:
... Going back to school, from grade 1 to 12 is a pain (that is how it felt to me... it felt like I had done this already a few times; I am sure that may pose a problem for some students...
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I can just imagine little Johnny in school:


'Sorry Miss. I don't have to study algebra. I'm an old soul and I know it is completely pointless to me on my life journey. Can I be excused!'


:)
 
Ha! A new excuse for avoiding math.


I have the experience of remembering a past life who remembered a past life I can't remember. (... yes, indeed.)


She was seen as a "goddess" incarnate because of her remembered past life, and became a spiritual leader or shaman of some sort.


There were elements of Hinduism (or Buddhism) in the memories, especially a ritual involving smoke and a rattle, and another experience as a young girl standing in front of a very large statue of Shiva (a 1/4 moon on the head seems to indicate this) near a beam of light shining down into a cave temple. This probably explains why the concept of reincarnation felt so normal to her.


I remember her life, but nothing at all about the life that gave her that reputation. It doesn't feel important to me, either, though I'll admit to some curiosity as to who it was.
 
At my age I can probably be expected to be a little foggy in terms of memory. However, I seem to recall that one of the factors in terms of PL memory was just that it was generally enhanced by the fact that the person remembering simply had, overall, a "good" memory. I'm not sure, but there may even have been a mention of this on the board somewhere (once again I'm cursed by my own lousy memory).


So, someone help this foggy old guy out on this one. It makes sense to me, and it may be that one of the reasons some remember better or more than others is that they are simply "good rememberers". Maybe this is the result of past life memory cultivation, a talent innate in their "soul", or long ages of growth to become a more advanced "soul". It could also relate to the type of memory cultivated. I have an excellent memory in some areas, but only a very average memory in terms of autobiographical details. In my case this seems to lead to an almost non-existent PL memory. OTOH, someone with a very good autobiographical memory might have enhanced PL memory as a result . . . or maybe not.


Anyhow, just a theory. How would you folks with very good PL memory (like, e.g., Tang and PastPilot) rate your memory and particularly your autobiographical memory overall?


Cordially,


S&S
 
Yes. There was a thread about that a while ago. Lots of people who remember multiple past lives also say that they have a good memory for numbers, names, and just in general. They usually remember their own childhood a lot better than average too.
 
SeaAndSky said:
So, someone help this foggy old guy out on this one. It makes sense to me, and it may be that one of the reasons some remember better or more than others is that they are simply "good rememberers". Maybe this is the result of past life memory cultivation, a talent innate in their "soul", or long ages of growth to become a more advanced "soul". It could also relate to the type of memory cultivated. I have an excellent memory in some areas, but only a very average memory in terms of autobiographical details. In my case this seems to lead to an almost non-existent PL memory. OTOH, someone with a very good autobiographical memory might have enhanced PL memory as a result . . . or maybe not
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One thing I've learnt since starting on this journey is that the process itself can improve memory. Growing up I never had a particularly good memory, I could remember places but not where they were for example, but I could remember random obscure plot points from films. My family always found it kinda funny! Since starting meditating my memory has vastly improved, not just for remembering past lives but also for my current life. Memories from my current life are now not only stronger, but richer and more textured. For example, last weekend I went through Clapham Junction on the train and not only remembered the last time I was there (around 8 years ago), but also where I was going then, how I felt and what I was listening to (it was a radio sketch show, could even recall the exact sketch! :D ) The thought of being able to recall something that strongly just a few years ago would have seemed ridiculous to me!


I've come to the conclusion that although an innate good memory will help with recalling past lives, we all have the ability, with a little mental practice, to improve our memory generally through meditation. The brain is also very good at creating highly textured memories, but it possibly works best at both creating and recovering them when it isn't too stressed, which can be difficult in our busy modern world.


Which brings me onto the thread topic. Maybe, our busy modern world does make it more difficult to remember more generally. It certainly makes remembering our present lives more difficult, and past lives even more so. So, maybe we are 'meant' to remember past lives, at least in a small way, but that the vast majority don't because the memories are 'drowned out' by everything else?
 
Hi Helz Belz,


Can you let me know more about the type or types of meditation you are engaging in, links, info sources, etc.?


I'm very curious.


Thanks,


S&S
 
This subject has continued to be on my mind from time-to-time, along with a couple of thoughts on myself personally. One of the areas we definitely isolated as being of importance is simply having a good memory. And, I have a good memory for a lot of things. As a matter of fact, in some respects my memory is much better than average. However, more to the point of this post, I am also a very good "forgetter" or perhaps I should say I am very good at suppressing painful or worrisome distractions and memories.


So, the two issues that have come to mind have to do with (1) the importance of a temperament that is not easily disturbed by PL trauma, and (2) the ability to intentionally forget or impose memory blocks.


On the first, I will cite Tanguerra as an example. Tang, who IMO has a phenomenal PL memory, seems to be only minimally bothered by pretty terrible memories from the past, or at least able to cope with them without outside help. I also get a general sense of calm from, e.g., PastPilot (another person with a VG past life memory). OTOH, I have had some pretty strong indications, in terms of both dreams and occasional emotional inundations that there is danger for me in that direction. So, there may be temperamental factors at work. Alternatively, perhaps this should be called an emotional stability issue. In either case, there seem to be some whose ability to remember is facilitated by a fairly calm approach to what they find.


If, however, this were the only factor, we would not also see a lot of people who can't help but remember and are torn inside out and upside down by what they remember. Looking at myself, I realize that I can be serene in life only by virtue of my ability to be deliberately inattentive to certain matters or worries--which in my case is a cultivated ability. I come from a long line of worriers (i.e., an anxiety prone family--sometimes to such a degree that hospitalization and/or medication has been required by some of my immediate family), and I can easily collapse into a pile of mush unable to work effectively or accomplish much of anything if I let my worries get the upper hand.


Consequently, though I can't always accomplish this, I have cultivated the ability to put (and generally keep) things out of my mind so that I can work on what I need to accomplish on a daily basis. Its not always 100% and it is not always a positive attribute, but it is something I do regularly.


So, hypothesis: Good memory definitely helps. The ability to calmly assimilate probably also helps, but its lack cannot necessarily block past life memory. OTOH, a highly developed propensity and/or ability to block worrisome and/or problematic information from consciousness is also a factor and possibly a very important one. I think psychologists would say that this ability and propensity exists to some degree in all people, but some of us definitely have more of it than others.


Cordially,


S&S
 
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