Unfortunately much of our personal history is hidden from us. That history is in what is called past lives. Of particular interest from a spiritual progression place is what we held in our consciousness in the moments just prior to our death. This is because an emotional imprint can be held in our permanent energy structure and affect both this life and subsequent lives as well. For example, did we die with the desire for rich food that bloated our body and ruined our liver, kidneys, and heart? Was that desire within our mind or did we carry an obsessive or habitual thought pattern at death for these rich foods? Chances are is that if you have diabetes or heart condition now, you probably have had it in the past, perhaps more than once. The clearing of those associated past lives may make the difference between partial and total total healing of those conditions this life and a prevention of recurrence in future lives. As a person progresses in their spiritual journey, even seemingly minor past lives become significant. This is of specific importance in working with kundalini rising.
Additionally, do you have a phobias? Irrational fears of heights, dogs, water etc. are all probably residual traumatic memories from where those events caused our death in past lives.
Are you very unforgiving and hard on yourself and others? Or perhaps you do not know why you always feel guilty about something. Again perhaps in one or more past lives because of your action or lack of action, others were harmed and you died with tremendous guilt within your consciousness. These are examples of lives not completed. A life is supposed to be completed at death, which is letting go of all earthly things. When this does not happen, each one of those is a barrier to our spiritual growth.
The very surprising situation is that we have all lived many many times before and many of us are cluttered even now with leftover desires and fears that we held onto as we died before. The uncompleted past lives may be visible in the body as birthmarks or the body may lack normal proportional structure. Other ways for a past life to be revealed in the current body is when specific parts our system is prone to injury or illness. Very often these remains of our past are missed or not completely cleared by other healing methods or not even recognized or addressed by many other modalities.
There are different ways that we are affected by these types of events. One of the ways is that the emotional content/charge is stored within the chakras. This can be accessed in the chakra, in the library of past lives, and some of the acupuncture points (specifically on the back as accessed by network chiropractors). These are the most popular points. When accessing this emotional charge and releasing it, sometimes related incidences from the current life are brought forth and the emotions are re-experienced. Significant stored energy is released. The release of this energy allows the chakra to reconfigure itself in a healthier way (chakras are consciousness).
Another way we are affected by these states of consciousness at death is sometimes our guilty consciousness consigns part of us to the lower realms of the Bardo, which is the time between lives and is composed of many different realities. One of the purposes of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is to describe these realities to an indigenous culture, which is very helpful and would be of larger benefit to be described in modern western terminology. Even though we are born here, parts of our consciousness may be held in Bardo. Shamanistic soul retrieval is one method for bringing those fragments of consciousness of that past life back thus allowing the completion of that past life. Actually, our souls are never lost to us, so this is not an accurate term. Another method is past life healing by various therapists who train and practice the necessary skills. For healers, this training is part of the School of the Four Pillars curriculum.
