Past Life Recall

Spontaneous past life recall isn’t that rare, especially in children.  Researchers who document such events find that most occur during the toddler through middle childhood years.

To an “experiencer,” such recalls can be confusing and disorienting–at least at first. I can attest to this since I was one of these from the ages of around 4 to 10.

The first of these spontaneous recalls is still a much more vivid memory than those experienced later. I can remember nothing unusual happening to bring it about; except, perhaps, that I was away from home visiting my grandparents in Southern California.

My grandfather was pushing me on a swing and I was admiring my new red sandals as my feet reached for the sky. All at once, my shoes changed from red leather to something that looked like thin, tightly braided rope. My skin changed from white to brown and I felt myself simply step out of my “Karen body” and into “another me” who was living in a desert community in Egypt during the time the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was being built.

Others that occurred did seem to be brought on by specific occurrences.  One, of a life in China, happened while reading about a child’s life in that country during an elementary school World Cultures class. While the teacher’s words droned on, I felt the familiar sensation of  stepping into “another me.”  I was wearing a kimona, funny looking sandals on stilts, and was walking through a muddy field, just enjoying the beauty of the day while examining a silkworm cocoon.  Along with this very tactile experience came an infusion of information about China and something like a fast-forward movie which showed snippets of various lives I lived in that country.  A much later life reading expanded and filled-in the details of one of these lives–the one most relevant to my current incarnation.

Another occurred when meeting a friend of my father’s for the first time.  I immediately “saw” him in an American Indian body and “remembered” him as being my father at a different time in American history. We enjoyed an immediate rapport and, though childless in this life, he later confessed to feeling deep fatherly feelings toward me since our first meeting.

These “flashbacks” provided a major impetus for exploring the theory of reincarnation at a young age. They also gave me the extraordinary gift of knowing–without a doubt–that the human soul is immortal.  Such knowledge colored and influenced my self-perception, world view, and life direction in positive and meaningful ways. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have experienced such transcendental knowledge–especially at a young age– or, who have a child with such a gift, are blessed, indeed.

There are, of course, other ways by which to gain knowledge of your soul’s history on earth and reawaken past life memories, such as those discussed in earlier blogs.  But, if spontaneous past life recall in children interests you, a few reliable resources you might wish to use when beginning your research are:  Anything written by Dr. Ian Stevenson; research and books by Carol Bowman (www.childpastlives.org ), and Thomas Shroder’s work, Old Souls:Compelling Evidence From Children Who Remember Past Lives (Fireside, 2001).

If you’ve had past life recalls yourself, I’d love to hear about them!