After posting about my soul retrieval of a past life in China I took the opportunity to have a follow up conversation with Li Chen, my personality in that life. Here is a brief excerpt from that conversation. A much extended version follows if you click through to follow the story.

"The most you can do is to live and speak your truth and be an example that other may choose to follow. But you must do so because you are motivated to live your own truth joyously and purposefully and not because of how you think you will be perceived by others. It is the same “sin” to alter your thinking and behavior to set a positive example for others as it is to alter your behavior so that others will think better of you. Both are acts of giving away your own power. Don’t do it. Just live your life as authentically as you can. Live for fun and joy and trust your skills to navigate life’s events. As you do that, others may be attracted to your lifestyle and may choose to listen to you. Or they may not. Once you detach yourself from their reactions you detach yourself from a desire for their energy. Thus free, you can devote even more attention to drawing power from your own Source within."

The more complete message from Li Chen was as follows.

Your love of astral travel and things spiritual has spanned many lifetimes, but in mine we mastered the skills to be able to do so at will. Mine was the first lifetime in which it was possible to consciously return to Source in waking life, rather than needing to do so during sleep. I learned many techniques for modifying my consciousness which you are drawing upon in this lifetime, even though you think that you learned them at the Monroe Institute or on your own. I have been supplying that wisdom to you because our life paths are so similar.

In my lifetime I learned much about spiritual discipline, something that you do not really appreciate from your loose practices and there-are-no-limits-to-what-you-can-do beliefs in this lifetime. To you my practices appear to have been unnecessary restraints and limitations. To me they were a means of staying on the true path. They gave me comfort in familiar practice and ritual. And I always found meaning in them. For you the benefits might be similar to recognizing the value of eating healthy and exercising regularly. That requires discipline and consistency but it yields great rewards for doing so. Is such a practice, a straightjacket? I think not.

Still I admit to you that the practices we learned and followed were peculiar and austere, as you put it, in the minds of those we tried to share them with. They were quite interested in our tales of spiritual adventure but they did not respect the discipline with which we gained the ability to have them. To use a modern analogy it was like appreciating a fine concert pianist and even aspiring to play like one, but never sitting down to touch the keys of a piano, let alone considering taking lessons. We were seen as entertainers and storytellers with strange new stories unlike those of the folk storytellers of the day. People welcome variety since it adds interest. But in the end, they no more believed us than they believed the old folk stories. This is what eventually began to depress me. I wanted so much to change the world.

I saw the suffering caused by the perception that we are separate from Source. I knew that it was not true and wanted desperately to help others to find their connection with Source. You hold a similar life mission today. However, you have the advantage of my perspective. From me, and from the wisdom of your own life experiences to date, you have a few guiding thoughts to help you in your mission this time. First you recognize that you are not responsible for how people react to your message. Second you recognize that since people are responsible for their own choices and not you that you cannot change their choices and therefore you cannot “save the world.”

The most you can do is to live and speak your truth and be an example that other may choose to follow. But you must do so because you are motivated to live your own truth joyously and purposefully and not because of how you think you will be perceived by others. It is the same “sin” to alter your thinking and behavior to set a positive example for others as it is to alter your behavior so that others will think better of you. Both are acts of giving away your own power. Don’t do it. Just live your life as authentically as you can. Live for fun and joy and trust your skills to navigate life’s events. As you do that, others may be attracted to your lifestyle and may choose to listen to you. Or they may not. Once you detach yourself from their reactions you detach yourself from a desire for their energy. Thus free, you can devote even more attention to drawing power from your own Source within.

I gathered some wisdom in that lifetime. I see now that I did not fail in my mission with my brothers. I lived my truth. That was my mission, not proselytizing to others. So when my truth changed I needed to change with it. I became disheartened with our work. That was true for me. Therefore to remain true to myself I needed to change my life. My pain was caused by being afraid to change myself and my circumstances to match my new truth. My father in his wisdom saw this and he pushed me to make a decision that would honor my higher truth. I lived with the pain of that decision for the remainder of that lifetime, but I also lived my truth. I married and fell in love and had a child and shared my love of spirit with them. That was my truth.

So my advice to you is to do the same. Honor yourself by paying attention to what feels good and doing more of that in your life. But also work to establish discipline in your practices because sometimes it is only through disciplined effort that you can come to enjoy the rewards that make you feel good. It is a self-reinforcing cycle, but it is not a closed loop. To close yourself off to change and growth also cuts you off from your truth.