The last category of soul retrieval work I do involves past life reintegration. That is, revisiting, reliving, and reintegrating experiences from other lifetimes that I (or a client) have experienced. This work combines aspects of splintered self recovery and soul rescue, which makes sense if you consider previous lives as splintered aspects from your Higher Self or Over Soul.

Just as an aspect of your personality can splinter and remain stuck at a point of trauma in your current life, so too can aspects of personalities from previous lives. As unintegrated parts of your Higher Self they can cause fears, challenges, or difficulties in your present life. This forms the basis for the Hindu belief of karma – an energetic imbalance from one lifetime that is balanced in another lifetime.

Sometimes karmic imbalances are minor and sometimes they are extremely challenging. As I write this, I am personally working to integrate a past life issue from China in the 16^th century in which I tried and generally failed to teach people about alternate realities and humanity’s capacity for direct contact with the Divine. As you can imagine, the ideas were ahead of their time. At best people regarded them with amusement. At worst they dismissed them or countered them with confrontation and anger.

I struggled for years in this lifetime to understand my reluctance to share my spiritual experiences in public. The experiences were remarkable and the feedback I received from the small circle of people that I dared to share them with was largely positive. In other areas of my life—such as the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the articles I write—I didn’t particularly care what people thought. But sharing my experiences about spirituality, which I feel to be a life calling, scared the heck out me.

I finally found the key to unlocking this reluctance when I connected with a particular past life in China in the 1500s. For me, connecting with a past life is a bit like walking around in a virtual reality video game or the holodeck on the USS Enterprise, the spaceship in the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation.

If you don’t know either of those references think of it like a dream in which you are both the observer and the participant at the same time. You can watch the action from a detached point of view or you can interact with your surroundings and accept that reality as your own. When I access a past life I often do both.

In this case I meditated on this particular fear for some time before I realized that its origins were not in this lifetime. I always look to this lifetime first since it is the easiest to identify and work with, but years of dealing with it off and on didn’t yield results. Finally, a conversation that I had with Rabbi Nadya Gross prompted a soul memory of the previous lifetime in China. And I mean a literal memory.

I began to recall events, people and feelings from that lifetime like I recall events from my childhood in this lifetime. They were vague at first but they were enough for me to go on. So I then set about revisiting that life and exploring the issues I’d experienced in it.

To do this I settled into my favorite meditation chair and relaxed my mind. Then I sent my awareness to a mental state I refer to as Focus 15 (F15). This is a state in which time doesn’t exist and it’s particularly conducive to past life work. Once in F15 I sent my awareness into my lifetime in China.

Entering that lifetime was like walking into a waking dream. I found myself standing on a gravel-strewn dirt path amidst a small flower and vegetable garden. Just ahead of me an old Chinese man sat in the warmth of the sun on a stoop in front of a small house made of stone and earth. I recognized him immediately. He was me. I knew it as surely as I know what my reflection looks like in the mirror.

With this recognition a portion of my awareness poured into him. In other words, just like in a dream I became both the observer and the participant. (Just to keep the storytelling clear, I’m going to refer to my perspective as the Chinese man from the third person point of view, even though I actually experienced myself as “I” in both bodies.)

He was feeling a bit drowsy in the late morning sun. He’d been drinking tea and watching the bees pollinate the vegetable flowers, but his mind was now relaxed and wandering.

I took the opportunity to approach him and introduce myself. I stepped forward into his field of view and he looked up. He wasn’t startled or surprised to see me as he’d had lots of visions in his lifetime.

I introduced myself as an incarnation of his from the future and asked if we might talk for a while. He smiled at this, clearly appreciating the opportunity. He had done many astral explorations in his lifetime and had interacted with previous incarnations before, but he’d never considered exploring future lifetimes, let alone expected one to literally show up on his doorstep.

I stood in the sun and felt it warming my back as the bees buzzed and flitted about the flowers beside my ankles. “I’m having some problems in my life when it comes to explaining spiritual issues to others,” I began. “I’ve got a hunch you’ve had that issue too.”

He nodded knowingly but didn’t say anything. So I went on. “I worry how other people will respond to my words. I know I can’t control their reactions. But I get caught up in worrying about them anyway. I worry if they’ll believe me or call me crazy or lash out at me since my ideas are different from theirs.”

He nodded slowly and then spoke for the first time. “I know of what you speak. But for me it has not been a fear of disbelief or even anger. For me it has been indifference. There is so much I would like to share, but those I’ve tried to tell it to will not listen. They are looking for more in their lives and yet they reject assistance when it is offered.”

“Yes. That’s it,” I said. “I’d just never put it that way before.” I felt very excited to have a new perspective on the problem, but he was now feeling depressed.

My appearance in his garden had reminded him of his failure to share his experiences in his lifetime. It was a gut wrenching agony for him, but like the gnawing pangs of hunger, after a while he had grown accustomed to the ache as he did to the cold each winter. It was simply there and not much could be done about it. The choices were made. The lifetime had been lived. Through loss and bitterness and pain his regrets had been gradually transmuted into resignation. At this point in his life he looked to simple pleasures like tea and sun and bees to fill his day. It was far from the culmination of his dreams, but it was the reality of his world.

I knew something needed to be done to help both of us. His resignation had left our collective soul with an energy imbalance waiting to be corrected. I knew we needed to go back into his life and explore the root of the problem.

“Maybe we can both find some healing,” I said. “Can we go back to the point in your life where the pain started?”

“If you lead the way.”

“Actually, you’ll need to since it’s your memories. You think of the time and I’ll follow you back to it.”

He nodded and then sat up a bit straighter and closed his eyes. Next he started a rhythmic breathing pattern he used to alter his consciousness. I stood patiently in the garden beside him for a minute or two and then a new scene burst into my awareness.

He was sitting in a tea house with stone benches and wooden tables. A thin haze of smoke hung about the room, drifting slowly from a fire in the corner and eventually wafting out an open doorway. Around the table with him sat half a dozen men in their early 30’s. These were his closest friends in the world, but the tension between them was untenable.

He looked from face to face around the table and then turned toward the window to avoid their gaze as he searched for the courage to say the fateful words he’d been dreading for days. He swallowed hard and took a breath. Then he turned back to them and in halting words said, “I have to break the circle. I have to quit the brotherhood.”

Stunned silence was the only reply from his friends. He fidgeted awkwardly knowing it would take a moment for the import of his words to really reach them. How could it not? It was about to shatter a world they had known since they were 15 years old. A brotherhood formed when a traveling holy man had taught this close-knit band of friends the secrets to altering their consciousness through breathing, meditation, sleep deprivation, celibacy, and prayer.

In the few months this holy man had instructed them they had learned mental and spiritual discipline, they had explored realms of consciousness far beyond the physical, they had matured far beyond their few teenage years, they had founded a brotherhood set on sharing these mysteries and their amazing benefits with anyone who would listen.

It was truly an amazing gift from the itinerant teacher. But upon his departure he left them with a binding charge. “Keep these practices as you’ve learned them. Keep this brotherhood as you’ve formed it. As long as you stay true to these you shall know and spread the truth.”

And so they had followed his guidance with unfailing orthodoxy for more than 17 years, speaking in towns and on farms and on the roadways, sharing their spiritual experiences and seeking converts to their way of spiritual practice. But their ideas were peculiar and their practices austere. And few people were interested in pursuing this path, despite their professed desire for the skills and benefits claimed by the band of wandering spiritualists.

In time the fervor of the group waned but still they kept their daily practices and their charge to spread the word. But with few people willing to listen and fewer converts still, they grew demoralized. None more so than my former self in that lifetime.

In fact, he grew so disconsolate that he contemplated suicide for it was the only way to honorably break his vows to his teacher and to his band of friends. His friends knew this, as did his father. But only his father saw a way to spare his life.

His father saw that his son’s sense of duty to his family was even greater than his duty to his friends, and thus it was the means for saving his life. To do this, his father arranged his marriage to a friend’s daughter, as was the custom at the time. With the marriage contract bound he told the son of his obligation to marry his friend’s daughter. And thus he placed his son in an awkward bind. If he did not honor the marriage contract he would dishonor his family. But to do so would force him to break his vows to his friends and teacher.

Suicide was no longer the easy way out. He pondered the decision for days, meditating and praying and seeking guidance. In the end, he knew he must place his family honor above all else. And this is what he’d come to explain to his closest friends.

Still his friends sat in stunned silence. They looked at him and then at one another. To deny that their circle was breaking was folly. Everyone had known that for some time. But no one had the courage to say anything, let alone do something about it. And now it was before them. The truth laid bare by the one amongst them who was once the most fervent of all.

“I’m going to marry her. I must honor my family,” he whispered into the stillness.

His heart-ached as he looked upon his friends. His gut twisted as he watched them coming to terms with his decision and its implications. He had abandoned them and their mission. The shame cut him to the core of his being. He rose from the table, nodded his head in a small deferential bow, and strode from the tea house. Reactions and repercussions would wait for later. He needed to be alone in his pain.

I felt every moment of this experience as if I had lived it in the present moment. The emotional torment was agonizing. To get anything done I needed to pull back to an emotionally safe distance. We retreated to the sun-filled garden.

For a long moment neither of us said anything. To say “how painful for you” or something similarly obvious would have been as crass as saying it to a double amputee who’d just lost both his legs. There was nothing to say and yet something had to be done.

So I started the soul retrieval process. I invited him to join me in a place of consciousness beyond pain and separateness. I invited him to join me in returning to the Source from which we both spring. He was only too happy to do so.

And so he stood up and held my hand and I raised the frequency of my being. Brilliant white light radiated from within me and around us. The garden faded from sight. As we rose toward our Higher Self I promised him that we’d resolve those issues in my lifetime. And he in turn promised to lend me his wisdom and support in doing so.

Those exchanges made, we dissolved into the Light entirely and all sense of separateness between us disappeared. When I emerged from that Light sometime later I understood the source of pain and fear that had been holding me back, and I felt his strength within me as I began to move forward with my life. This article and this blog are a direct result of that soul retrieval of one of my past lives.