EXAMPLES
In order for us to really understand how all of this occurs in life and relates to our own lives, let's look at some real-life examples.
Like most young girls, Linda Mills wanted to fall in love with a wonderful man, have a family and live a rich, full life. When she met her future husband, she was genuinely attracted to him, though she knew he wasn't everything she had dreamed about. She especially didn't like his tendency to make decisions for her. Nevertheless, their love for each other was strong and they felt a deep mutual attraction. An added joy was that they were quite comfortable with each other around their friends and family.
They married and had two daughters. For Linda, the first daughter was a joy. Throughout the pregnancy and after the birth she and her new baby were very comfortable and happy with each other. They spent many wonderful hours together nursing and rocking while Linda softly hummed lullabies. But life with her second daughter was quite a different story. The pregnancy was uncomfortable, filled with sickness and stress, and after the birth she and the baby just never seemed to get into sync with each other. The baby didn't seem to enjoy being held or rocked like the first child and breastfeeding was a battle. In fact, the baby developed an allergy from the breast milk, and formula had to be substituted. Only the father's touch was comforting to this little one, and as she grew up her preference for him became even more evident. She was clearly "Daddy's little girl," while the first child was certainly Mommy's.
When this family received a past-life reading from Edgar Cayce, the cause of many of their present feelings and actions quickly surfaced. Apparently, Linda and her husband had been husband and wife before, but in the incarnation just prior to this one, they had been father and daughter, respectively. His tendency to make decisions for her and control her life was a carry over from being the father. In that past life Linda had been a rather wild and rebellious child. This was due in part to her resentment that the man who had been her equal in many lifetimes was now her father. It was a difficult life for him, too. Raising her was very hard, especially after the death of his wife in that lifetime. Naturally, all of these feelings carried over into their present life and marriage.
As for the children, the first daughter had been Linda's close friend through many lifetimes, bringing this love and friendship into the present life. In their most recent past life, the first daughter had helped Linda deal with the problems Linda had had with her father (Linda's present husband), and now as their daughter she would do so again. Now the second daughter had been the father's lover in many past lives, so you can just imagine the mutual enmity this created between the mother and daughter in the present. Linda's milk wasn't all the baby was allergic to! Neither did she want Linda's love and comfort as much as she did her father's. The father and his second daughter would have to learn to love each other in a much different way or break one of the strictest taboos, incest. All of these feelings were occurring subconsciously, of course, subtly affecting the conscious life.
As we can see, the deep currents of past experiences were playing a significant role in their present relationships. According to the Cayce readings, their goal now, from their souls' point of view, was to live together again and make an effort to accentuate the love and virtues, and minimize the resentments and bad habits they carried with them as a result of their past.
In another case, despite all his efforts to ignore or resist it, Michael Parks was afraid of the dark. His fear of the dark was not like most children's; he was deathly afraid, to the point of suffocating if left in the dark too long. As far as he and his parents could recall, his childhood was rather normal and nothing had occurred that might have caused this fear. Yet, during all of his childhood life in his parents' home, anyone in charge of him had to be aware of his fear and take precautions to insure that he was never inadvertently left alone in a dark room or house. His parents were very tolerant of his fear, caring for him in every way and were unusually understanding and sympathetic. And later, when he married and started a home and family of his own, his wife assumed the burden of his fear. She too proved to be very patient with him. Together they worked out an elaborate scheme whereby he could go to bed with the lights on and she would come to bed after he had fallen asleep. Only then would she turn the lights off so she could fall asleep. Even so, if he awoke during the night, he would become extremely anxious and uncomfortable. He would have to fight to keep himself from panicking before turning on his bedside light. But once the light was on, the only way he could get back to sleep was to go into the living room, turn on all the lights and sleep on the couch, knowing the lights would be on while he slept.
One night Michael awoke from a terrifying dream, a dream that was to be the beginning of his conquering the fear. He dreamt he was in a dark dungeon surrounded by wet stone walls that went up so high he couldn't see where they ended. There was absolutely no way out and no one was coming to help him. As he stood there he began to cry. He cried so long and hard that the cell began to fill with his tears. When he noticed the tear-water was up to his chest, he tried to stop crying but couldn't get hold of himself - it all seemed too horribly fixed, so unchangeable that he felt completely trapped without hope of ever seeing light or life again. Eventually, the pool of tears reached his nose and he had to stand on his tiptoes to breathe, yet he continued to cry. Slowly he allowed himself to ease under the water, drifting into a sorrowful, lonely dream of letting go, surrendering his will to the reality of his predicament. At this point he awoke from the dream. The sheets were soaked and his body was covered with chilly sweat. When he told his wife and parents the dream they cried and were very upset by it. However, underneath, Michael was beginning to feel pretty good. In fact, he noticed his fear of the dark had actually diminished since the dream. It was as though something in that dream had healed and changed him.
About a year later Michael happened to take part in a series of exercises for recalling past-life experiences. From the information he received during these exercises and several more dreams over the next two years, he began to understand why he was afraid of the dark.
In a previous incarnation he had been a renegade from the courts and causes of Louis XIV. So violent and disruptive were his counter-attacks against the king that he became one of the most wanted men in France. His raids destroyed many of the king's storehouses, and his ability to elude capture created a great deal of hatred among the king's soldiers charged with capturing him. One day they did capture him and in retaliation for his actions and also as a result of their frustration with trying to stop him, they threw him into the bottom of a well-like dungeon, covered it and left him there to die a slow death. In this terrible place of complete darkness, he managed to survive for several days. In the beginning he was sure his friends and his wife would come to his rescue. But as time went by he realized that no one was coming and he lost hope and died. In the latter days of his ordeal he lost all sense of time and his mind began to fall apart. He could no longer be sure of what was real and what was illusion. But the worst part was the unrelenting darkness and confinement. This was what his soul remembered and most feared.
Just as we might expect, his current parents and wife, who helped him deal with his fear in the present life, had been the very people he had counted on to rescue him from the dungeon. His father and his wife had been his close friends and colleagues-in-arms, while his present mother had been his wife in the French incarnation. They didn't go to his rescue because he had become so notorious that it would have been too risky to attempt to save him without being captured and thrown into the dungeon with him. To a great degree, his own actions had brought him to this end, yet his parents and wife regretted that they had not at least tried to rescue him. His present-life dream was too much for his parents and wife to hear without deeply reacting to his ordeal. However, Michael's reliving the experience in his dream somehow released him from his life-long fear of the dark.
In yet another less dramatic case, a man who had fallen in love with a divorcee found himself struggling with his feelings. He eventually married her and tried to be the best stepfather to her child he possibly could, but when he discovered that he could not father children himself, he felt cheated and fought feelings of resentment toward the special relationship between his wife and her child. When he received a past-life reading from Edgar Cayce, he was told that in a previous incarnation in ancient Greece he had been married to the same woman. In that life she was the one unable to conceive a child. Though aware of her sadness and heightened sensitivity because of the added implications of being barren in those days, he chose a second wife to bear him a child. He further shamed and humiliated her by bringing the second wife and child to live in the same house, forcing her to witness the open joy and affection expressed in the little family. In his present-life circumstances, according to Cayce, he was merely meeting himself: though he deeply desired his own offspring, he was impotent; and though living in his own home, he felt like an outsider to the love shared within it.
Taking advantage of the present situation and making life as miserable as possible for her husband would simply be setting herself up for a future destiny of sadness. The law of karma is very impersonal: What one does, one experiences, without exception. If this woman now chose to help her husband meet his fate as best she could, she would heal many wounds and free herself at the same time.
In still another case, a beautiful woman from the modern cosmopolitan life of a big city came to Cayce and described her tragic predicament, asking for a remedy. Her present husband was impotent and she was a beautiful woman in the prime of her life. Why? Why was she in such a tragic situation? she lamented. She went on to say that there was another man she knew at work, and she wondered if she could have an affair with him yet remain with her husband...because she did love her husband; she simply wanted to fulfill all of her womanhood. Cayce responded by showing her why she was faced with such a dilemma.
In a past incarnation during the Crusades, she and her present husband were also married to each other. He was then one of the greatest of the Crusaders, often going off to war. However, every time he left, he saw to it that she wore a chastity belt, literally putting her under lock and key! Then and there she swore deep in her heart she would get even with him, and now, Cayce said, she had him right where she'd always wanted him - in a position where she could make him pay dearly.
What a triangle! I wouldn't be surprised if the other man had also been hanging around the castle while the rest of the men were off to war. At any rate, here they were again, set up perfectly to play out resolution or revenge for past actions with each other. The husband had used his free will to squash his wife's, forcing her to submit to his sexual restraints without any choice on her part. Now he found himself sexually restricted and frustrated, and completely subject to her will and her choices. She now had the power to make him pay.
But this was a loving as well as lovely woman. She found herself torn by her marriage vow and her desire to simply enjoy her physical beauty and youth. Paradoxically, she also found herself wanting to make a success of her marriage and her home, and despite his past wrong, she loved her husband and he returned that love in so many ways. If only he were able to sexually fulfill her. What a tangled web. The choice was completely hers; nothing was standing in her way.
Cayce advised her to do whatever she would want done to her if she were in her husband's shoes, and she did. She withdrew from the other man's affections and built a loving home with her husband. We might well feel that she suffered twice in the relationship, but if she had only not wanted revenge on him, she wouldn't have had to be with him again. The true karma was within him. She got involved again by her desire to get even with him. No doubt she will eventually incarnate into a life filled with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual happiness and the rest of the world will probably look at her and think she is lucky rather than deserving.
One example of how past lives can affect non-family relationships is that of a businessman who happened to receive many readings from Edgar Cayce. In fact, these readings are just phenomenal in what they reveal "behind the scenes," so to speak, in illustrating what profound effects past-life experiences and emotions have on present relationships, and a "typical" business meeting, in this case.
When Walter Morrison walked into a board meeting, he was walking into a history that reached far beyond his present life. Amid the members of this board were souls who had been his conquerors, his servants, his concubines, his cohorts and his bitter enemies! Imagine what the underlying motivations were when Walter made a proposal which the group had to vote on, or when Walter had to cast his vote concerning a proposal by one of the other members of this band of souls. Who among the group would tend to support him? Who would tend to thwart his efforts and ideas? And who would he tend to support and resist? Many of these answers are predictable based on their past-life experiences with each other, experiences that they would innately respond to on a soul level because of their past affinities and antipathies for one another.
Walter himself was curiously amazed at how well the past-life readings predicted his present feelings for various members of the board. Only in a few cases did he find he really didn't have any particular innate reaction to a member. And in most cases, the members that consistently rubbed him the wrong way were those who had been on his bad side in past lives, and those that seemed to agree and support him consistently were those who had done so in the past.
When relationships are viewed with a past-life perspective, the dynamics of the behavior, including the attitudes and emotions in a relationship, become more than just current moodiness or general personality traits. There are undercurrents of memory that simply cannot easily be ignored. Before we look into how we can discover our past lives, let's look in the next chapter at another example from the Cayce material, an example that gives us an overview of soul-life and soul-history over many lifetimes.
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