My friend Rachel’s granddaughter turned one recently, and I was at the birthday party. (I have talked about Rachel before—she owns one of my favorite restaurants in Boonton, New Jersey, an Italian place called Top of the Park.) At the party, I was introduced to one of her brothers-in-law, Vincent, and, when he was told what I did for a living, he asked, “Can I ask you a question?”
I said, “Sure.”
“What do you think,” he said, “of the fact that when I was four years old, I met my wife, and I knew she was mine and I was going to marry her? What do you think of that?” (And, by the way, these two have been married now fifty years.)
I said, “I believe you 100 percent.”
This is not the first time I’ve heard something like that. I was recalling specifically a man who came to me who told me about meeting his wife when she was only seven years old, and he was only ten. He said he knew that he’d known her before. He’d felt an electrical charge, like static electricity, when the two of them stood side by side as children. Years later, they met again, when she was twenty and he was twenty-four. He told me it was like he knew he was supposed to wait for her until the time was right. When they met again as young adults, they married and had children. Yet in spite of all this, when she died, he came to see me as a non-believer! However, when his wife showed up in my reading, she soon put him right! The first thing she said was, “I’ve loved you many lifetimes, and there are more to come.”
Thinking about this story, I asked Vincent to tell me his.
He told me that, when he was four, the neighbors, with whom his family was friendly, had a new baby. He remembered walking into the house as a very young boy and looking at this new baby girl. He said, “Concetta, when I looked at her, I knew she was mine. I knew we’d be together for the rest of our lives. I was only four, but as we grew up, I remembered this, I knew it.” They got married when she was nineteen and he was twenty-three. He gestured to his wife and said, “There she is, over there. And I love her more than anything. I loved her from the first moment I saw her, when she was a baby.” These kinds of stories always make me feel so wonderful because they are proof that there is so much more going on here than we understand.
Many, many people have had the experience of meeting someone and feeling that strong connection or zing! of energy that we tend to call love at first sight. In the case of this man, when he felt that even as a child, he knew it signified an important connection.
When my husband John and I were traveling in Austria a couple of years ago, one of our favorite stops was Salzburg. This town was simply intoxicating with the energy of its history. Everything is beautifully preserved. It’s just absolutely gorgeous, and there seems to be music everywhere, which makes sense since Mozart was born there.
We took a tram ride up to the top of a high hill to see Hohensalzburg Fortress. This “white castle” (not to be confused with the hamburger chain) is actually where the town gets its name, as “Salzburg” means “salt fortress.” As we walked to the tram, we passed very old cemeteries that were just incredible. I love old European cemeteries, and in these the graves were decorated with lovely figures and statues; some had fancy iron gates with elaborate writing on them. I wished I could read the different languages, but as I stood in front of different graves, I could feel the stories of the lives the individuals had lived. I had the feeling I had known many of them sometime, somewhere in the past.
As we wandered the cobblestone streets, taking in all the quaint little shops, I was drawn to one that had a table with an array of handmade Jewish treasures, mostly jewelry, some beaded bracelets, with the Star of David and other Jewish motifs, but also some beautiful scarves. Everything else in the store was made in Austria, but the items on this table were made in Israel. As I got to talking with the shop owner, I expressed my curiosity about these things, asking her why she was featuring these Jewish pieces from Israel. “Oh,” she said with a sweet smile, “I know it might seem strange, but all my life I’ve had memories of seeing Jewish people in camps. I see German uniforms. Sometimes I’m frightened, and sometimes I feel very angry. I’m not sure what role I may have played in a past life, but I know I took part in this. I’m not Jewish, but it’s become my passion to love the Jewish faith and people.”
I completely understood, as I, too, believe I was Jewish in a past life, and have written in a previous book about my experience visiting Dachau, feeling the powerful negativity that still exists there.
Frequently when I’m doing a reading for one of my Jewish clients, the subject of a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah will come up, and I always feel a tickle of love picturing the community gathering for these special events. The first time I heard a Jewish person go “Poo poo poo” after talking about something they hoped for, I just “knew” exactly what it meant. (For the uninitiated, it’s basically meant to be spitting three times to ward off the evil eye that might jinx a good outcome.) If these felt connections were not enough, there’s also the time my friend John Cornick invited me to his mother’s house for Seder. Now I’m Italian and we love our food—at an Italian dinner, the bread basket hits the table before anyone’s butt hits their chair! So imagine my surprise at seeing a handful of herbs, a hard-boiled egg, and some dry crackers (matzo)—the only thing that looked a little promising was the kugel! But once the prayers were being said and one of the guests was retelling the story of the Jewish exodus out Egypt where they had been slaves, I could feel the tears streaming down my face, like this was the story of my own people.
More recently, I had a dream where I looked down at my arms and they were totally emaciated. Somehow I knew it was 1942 and I was struggling with whether or not I could actually make it to the end of the war. It was so vivid and definitely from a past life.
If we are paying attention, we all have had instances where we become aware that we have “been here before” on the earth plane. There may be a particular historical period that we feel a connection to—a passion for learning about ancient Egypt or Greece, or feeling drawn to Civil War sites or reenactments. There may be certain music that is from well before our time that we just love hearing, or we love paintings or novels from a particular period. Someone who grew up in the Midwest may feel drawn to New York City’s deep skyscraper canyons, or yearn to hear waves crashing on a beach, never knowing where these inclinations come from. Our past lives can also show themselves in irrational fears we have in this life, like a fear of heights or of water, when we have never had an experience in this lifetime that would suggest that either of these posed a particular danger to us.
When I was about eighteen or nineteen years old, I knew a girl about my age who was gorgeous and popular, very feet-on-the-ground and normal in every way, except that she was completely petrified of blood. Her aversion was so strong that it definitely seemed irrational. If she saw blood, she had a very strong reaction, as if she was having a panic attack, but even if she just heard about an accident or someone getting cut, she reacted with terror, like she was watching a horror movie. I remember knowing there was something else going on. I wasn’t as up to speed then as I am now, but I sensed even then that it had something to do with the other side, a past life. This poor girl was experiencing violent “memories” from deep in her subconscious; something happening to her or someone she cared about in a life she’d lived before this one. I knew her family and who was around her—there was nothing in this life that would be a cause of such an extreme reaction. But what I can tell you is that I also used to see spirits around her—a grandfather in particular—asking me to help her. I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t yet up to the task. I was still trying to understand my ability and what I could and could not do. But it gives me a lot of hope that I know she had guardians who cared about her and were looking for any means they could find to comfort her.
Sometimes knowing we have been here before is just a feeling of, “I fit perfectly here.” One of my friends grew up on a farm
in Pennsylvania—it wasn’t even “small-town,” it was rural, and her family kept horses. But she always had an attraction to New York City and always felt she needed to go there. Nobody in her family lived there, or had lived there, at least no family member she was aware of. She went to New York when she was twenty and she never left. For her it was home, very possibly because she had lived there before.
The ex-husband of a good friend of mine moved to Thailand and found happiness again with a Thai woman. He said that is where he feels at home and the best he’s ever felt; he’s at peace. It’s something that he never felt living in the United States, even though he was born here. After visiting Thailand once, he sold everything he had here and moved. He said he is the happiest he’s ever been. He believes that he lived there before, in a past life.
We can get a lot of information about our past lives through recurring dreams. Not every dream we have more than once will point to a past life—there are definitely those that have more to do with our worries in this lifetime or may be set off by something that happened to us in our childhood and so forth. But, very frequently, the dreams that come back to us over and over and show us in places that we may vaguely remember, or stir strong emotions in us, or for which we just have no reasonable explanation, can be hints at a past life. I’ve had many clients share these kinds of dreams with me.
I recall one client, a woman in her sixties who was Italian through and through, both sides of the family. She told me she could relate to everything Italian. The black hair, the black Italian grandmother shoes, she spoke Italian, she probably carried garlic around in her pocket. As far as she knew, there was not a drop of anything else in her blood. But for some reason she had recurring dreams with bagpipe music, green mountainsides, and people wearing clothes that she felt were from the 1700s. She vaguely associated these things with Ireland, where she had never gone and had not even much interest in. She’d had these dreams for years, being only mildly curious about them. Recently, however, her niece had gotten interested in genealogy and had researched the family tree. She came to find out that a couple centuries ago, they’d had a number of family members who had come from Scotland! Now, of course, she can’t help wondering if her dreams are actually half-formed memories from a past life she once lived.
Another client that comes to mind was a new one I’ll call “Laura.” I did not know her at all, but she appeared to be a wealthy woman and told me she was married to a municipal bond dealer. As I did her reading, I kept hearing what sounded like American Indian chanting. I saw what I recognized as the canyons of the West. Laura said she never had gone west; however, she did admit to a dream she’d had many times in her life. She said in her dream she was walking on the dry desert floor, carrying a basket and looking for vegetation. And she’d had other dreams with similar images. She’d never thought much about the dreams until her daughter was born. As her daughter started to talk, she said things that made no sense to Laura. Her daughter was attracted to Indian dolls, and, when she was five, she asked to dress as an Indian princess for Halloween. As a young child, Laura’s daughter asked questions like, “Why do we live here now?” The home they were in was the only one she had known in her five years, so Laura was confused by the question. When she asked what her daughter meant, her daughter told her that she’d liked “the other house” better. (One room of their home where her daughter did seem very comfortable was the family room, which Laura had decorated in the colors and motifs of the Southwest, just because she’d always liked them even though she’d never lived there.) Laura said she offered to get her daughter a puppy, but her daughter insisted she wanted a horse. She would talk about missing people by name, none of whom Laura knew and some whose names she couldn’t pronounce or remember. One her daughter mentioned numerous times was “Yellow Flower.” Laura and her husband did get a dog for their daughter (unfortunately, they didn’t live in an area where they could have a horse) and they named the dog “Flower.” Laura asked me if she and her daughter might have had another life together as Native Americans. I had the sense that Laura was looking for confirmation of what she already believed—that her dreams and her daughter’s vivid memories really were from a past life. She wanted permission to accept the truth of this. I encouraged Laura to trust her own feelings and her daughter’s and to nurture her daughter’s affinity for horses and Native American history, maybe take her to places where she can learn more about it. Whatever role each of them played in that lifetime, to give it consideration now is worthwhile. Never forget that we are all one, and our multiple lives are intended to show us the full range of human experiences and let us deal with any karma we have accumulated. Having an awareness of a past life is a blessing. It can support your spiritual growth in this lifetime, because just knowing these lives are something you personally experienced can increase your empathy.
Another client I recall, a sweet older woman, told me about her beloved five-year-old grandson, with whom she was very close. It was clear that the boy favored her over his other grandparents, and the family always teased her about spoiling him. This all sounds very normal and sweet. However, she was coming to me for a particular reason that she wouldn’t tell her family because she feared their reaction. She wasn’t looking to hear from her husband who had passed; rather, she wanted to know if I believed in past lives. Her grandson had confided to her that he had known her before.
One day, the little grandson asked my client where Sarah was. She was puzzled because she didn’t know any Sarah. But, because she had such a special relationship with the boy, she played along.
She said, “Honey, I don’t know where she is.”
And the boy continued with information. He asked, “Is she at Moffy’s house?”
Moffy is a strange name, so that made the woman even more curious. She asked the boy more questions. She asked, “Do you love Sarah?” I thought this was brilliant. Instead of asking, “Who’s Sarah?”
The boy said, “Oh yes, Grandma, she’s my wife!” You can imagine my client’s amazement at that point. Finally, she asked who Moffy was. Her grandson looked confused and said, “Sarah’s mommy!” The icing on the cake was when he said, “Grandma, you were there too. You lived in the stone house.” After that, she talked with the boy a number of times about this life he apparently remembered before coming here this time. He would never talk about it in front of others, and she noticed that, as he got older and she’d ask him questions, he’d begin to just say that he didn’t remember.
For some reason, the age of five seems a little magical for children having these kinds of memories, whether of who and where they were before, or sometimes in remembering details of their transition back to this plane. I think this is possibly because, by the age of five, kids have enough vocabulary and insight to be able to communicate these things verbally, but still have at least some connection to those lives, which tend to disappear the older we get.
For example, one morning, my stepdaughter Jessica was combing her daughter Isabella’s hair when Isabella was around five years old. Out of the blue, Isabella said, “I’m glad I picked you to be my mommy.”
Jessica thought this was so cute, so she played along, saying, “Why is that?”
Isabella said, “I saw you first. You were in a restaurant with Daddy and you looked so pretty and so nice. I saw another lady, and they asked me if I wanted to go with her, but I said no. I picked you.”
Jessica said, “Is that right? Well, what restaurant did you see us in? Do you remember?”
Isabella said, “I don’t know what restaurant it was. But it had a lot of fish swimming around near where you were sitting.”
With that, Jessica went from having an amusing conversation with her daughter to being really shocked. There was a restaurant she and her husband used to go to very frequently in the town they lived in before Isabella was born, and it did have a large fish tank, like a wall of glass, that separated areas of the dining room. A
fter she was born, they moved, so they had not been back to that restaurant since Isabella was a tiny baby.
As I told my client, I know reincarnation is real. We all move back and forth, from spiritual to physical, and back again. It’s clear that her grandson did indeed know her before. I told her that the boy was just beginning to put his focus where it should be now—on this lifetime. As soon as we grow from childhood we begin to adhere to this side of the veil, to our present lives on the physical plane, and become more preoccupied with material things. With everything that ordinary life demands of us, it’s no wonder we choose to focus here, now. This is normal. It would be really confusing if we had awareness of all our lifetimes simultaneously and had to consciously work out all of them at the same time. But we still have those connections, faint memories, feelings, unexplainable connections, likes or dislikes, or simply interests that we can’t explain. Why are we interested?
One thing that a lot of people seem to be confused about is that they think reincarnation is a punishment. We’ve done something wrong, so we have to come back and fix it. There is certainly an element of “correction” to our multiple lives, a balancing of our karma, but I think of it more as an opportunity to learn and grow spiritually. Nobody is “born bad,” we are born with karmic situations that we need to try to work our way through. Sometimes we come back in relationship to a soul we’ve had dealings with before, where one or the other (or both) has the chance to do better than the last time. Having an awareness that this is not the only life we’ve lived gives us an opportunity to do some reflecting. Like the woman in Austria who was uncertain about her role during the Holocaust, but whose memories made her uneasy, we might want to look for ways we can be proactive about healing our past actions. Even if we were not “evil” in a past life, none of us was perfect either. And frankly, none of us has been perfect in this current life we’re living. We all have things we regret and would like to make amends for. As long as we are still living, there is time to wake up and smell the coffee (and the donuts, too, if we are lucky).
I Kissed a Ghost (and I Liked It) Page 3
