When my son was little, sitting on his bed, he began a conversation with, “In my other life …”

I waited, but he stopped.

“In your other life, what?” I asked him.

“What?” he said.

“What about your other life?”

It confused him, and he didn’t remember saying what he said. 😕

Life seems to be full of “strange” incidents of that nature.

Many people relate to feeling homesick for a place they can only vaguely remember, and sometimes they can’t even remember it exactly, but they’re aware of it. Either way, they feel an aching, a longing they don’t quite understand.

Some people believe their partner is someone they’ve fallen in love with many times throughout the centuries, and they always manage to find each other. Others think they’ve continually searched for their twin flames and soulmates through one life after another. Or that they are born into this life with unfinished business. Then, of course, there are those déjà vu moments that don’t make any sense.

In my experience, the twin flames and soulmates seem about right, as does the unfinished business and weird déjà vu. So, I can’t discount any of the other stuff. 

I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse when I was in my early twenties. You may know the book presents reincarnation as a necessary part of life. Over time, I’d also read a few suspenseful books that dealt with the same subject—Max Ehrlich’s The Reincarnation of Peter Proud and Frank De Felitta’s Audrey Rose. Both books have film versions, and Audrey Rose was supposedly a true story.

A friend of mine recently recommended Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss, M.D., which gives a therapist’s account of his sessions with a patient who eerily recalled past lives. Evidently, Dr. Weiss was pretty skeptical about the whole subject and ultimately became convinced by what he’d heard, so I look forward to reading that.

It’s fascinating stuff. The idea that we continually evolve has always made sense to me, and I could embrace the fact that it takes place over many lifetimes. Is the goal to get it right finally? And then what? Those are things I like to explore.

In making sense of the “continual evolving” theory, here’s what I’ve noticed.

We have people who can throw another human being in front of a train without conscience. We have people who can be oppressive and hateful. In the first instance, some will say that’s just someone who is mentally ill. But you can say that about many serial killers, too. Most people with mental illness don’t do things like that and wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. In fact, I believe people have to reach a level of depth before they even suspect there’s a mental problem or disorder they need to confront. They already know how life is supposed to be and are trying to cope. The others don’t seem to know or care how they should treat each other and behave.

Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who can’t even begin to comprehend that everyone deserves rights, dignity, and respect? Yeah.

Once I half-jokingly said to my son, “Maybe those people are here for the first time. You know, like when somebody is incredibly incompetent, and you think, first day?” It’s also similar to when we consider that a person who is so very young has a brain that’s still developing. (My son doesn’t like this theory for those I described above because he thinks it provides an excuse for people whose actions should never be justified.)

It may be an explanation, never a justification.

But I can’t say whether these people are in their first lives or not. Nor can I proclaim with certainty that I’ve had more than one life, but I can say that, in this particular life, I’ve learned so much, and I’m still learning.

The little jolts I’ve had, the moments of wondering if I’d been here before—well, I saved them for last because I’m still not sure it amounts to much.

There’s the fire thing. As a kid, I sprang into action to put out a fire that started in my sister’s room. Everyone had been asleep, but I was on it before others could fully awaken and realize what was happening. It happened two other times when I was a decade or so older. Once, someone had left candles unattended, and I, practically naked, leaped out of bed like Superman with the tall buildings and all, and it was actually quite funny. My boyfriend at the time laughed heartily, but I snuffed those flames out in a heartbeat.

Yes, I know, people put out fires all the time, especially firefighters. Many act quickly in a crisis. What strikes me is the feeling I’d get whenever faced with that situation. I had a fear of fire. It was an instant threat to me, signaling a violent urgency, but there was no fear or panic when I confronted it, only action.

Another time, while still a kid, I realized, during a crisis, that a person would not survive if I took one action instead of another. I had no way of knowing that, but I turned out to be right, and someone lived to see another day.

Many people would say, in both instances, it was God. Okay. I lack the evidence to dispute that, but obviously, there’s a lot of food for thought, as they say.

In childhood, I had a cousin about six years older than me. We hardly saw each other, but whenever we did, we couldn’t help feeling we’d always known each other. He was always incredibly familiar to me, and we talked as if we’d been friends forever. Again, it was about the feelings, not so much the idea, where you can say, so you just connected, okay, no big deal.

My conclusion is that I lean toward believing in reincarnation and will continue to look for more evidence of that.

In her memoir, Finding Me, the outstanding actress, Viola Davis, revealed her conversation with actor Will Smith. He’d asked her who she was (down deep) and admitted that he himself had been stuck in a place of childhood trauma. It helped her to realize where she was stuck, and, in reading that, I instantly knew what that place was for me. I’m not there anymore, but I was for many years. 

Viola and Will were talking about this lifetime, but isn’t it possible that people can get stuck in a place that has nothing to do with this life? Hmm …

If there is truth to these theories, we have more power than we realize, and hopefully, the end game is to promote an agenda of love over hate. 

Yes, maybe it’s that simple: love wins. 

Feature image at the top by Karin Henseler from Pixabay