Past Lives, Health and Relationships

When people start opening their minds to the possibility of past lives influencing current preferences, compulsions, and patterns, they tend to ask a lot of questions! Suddenly, they want to know details about all the major relationships in their current life, as well as any "failed" romances they've tucked away for later processing. I've decided to answer some of the most commonly asked questions here.

1. How can I tell if I've had a past life relationship with someone?

Very rarely can you actually prove to the rational mind that you have known someone before. More often, synchronicities, dreams and nudges just keep adding up until the rational mind cries, "Arggh, OK, I surrender! The simplest explanation really does involve multiple lifetimes with this same soul."

On your own, here's the biggest tip-off: if you meet someone and you have an extreme, practically irresistible attraction or aversion to them, which defies logic, then odds are very high that you've encountered them before. Those whirlwind romances where you feel like you've "known each other forever" only to question your own sanity a few months later? Usually past life related. That parent or step-parent you just could not get along with? Often past life related.

We can feel strong emotions in any lifetime. The high-probability-past-life-indicator should flash when a feeling of compulsion or inevitability enters a relationship. Releasing that compulsion may require additional insights into the history of that soul connection, but knowing one exists can help begin the necessary shifts.

2. Have I had past lives with my pet(s)?

If you feel a deeper bond with your animal friend than you've ever felt with a human, chances are very high you've spent time together before. This happens most often with cats and dogs of people involved in the healing arts; frequently the animal friend served as a familiar during a shamanic or witch lifetime.

Occasionally, animal souls were human spouses or lovers of a now-human client. People have an assumption that we move up some kind of hierarchy with humans on top and animals somewhere down below, but this hierarchy is not so one-way. I prefer not even to call it a hierarchy because the idea creates so much judgment over which form's superior. At times souls can prefer animal form, as if affords freedoms or flexibility not always available to humans.

No, not every loved pet is some evolved being or long lost love come back to enlighten you on your path. Sometimes animals just want to provide love without a lot of thought or analysis. If you have this kind of pet, count your blessings, too! Which one of us couldn't use some unconditional love?

3. How can I tell if my dreams are past life memories or just symbols about my current life?

Try to approach dream interpretation with a "both and" attitude, rather than an "either or" perspective, at least in the beginning. Dreams come from the grab bag of your subconscious, which literally retains everything you've ever seen, known, tasted, touched, smelled, felt or otherwise experienced. In any lifetime.

If you find yourself dreaming repeatedly of costumes from a certain era, or you keep seeing the same scene again and again with you feeling distinctly embodied inside someone else's body, then past lives are more likely involved in the dream. Still, your subconscious has chosen this moment in this life to explore those moments, memories or symbols, so I always suggest an interpretation from this life first. What questions are currently nagging at you? What if everyone in the dream was a part of you? How do you feel about the particular time period revealed - what might it symbolize for you as some kind of shorthand?

Once you've explored these avenues, then see if you still have a burning past life suspicion. If so, great, you might have more to explore and learn. If the past life questions have simmered down, though, it probably means you have received the message(s) you needed at this time.

4. How can I tell if I'm just projecting my own fears, hopes or other issues and calling it a past life?

Great question! In general, if you've thought to ask the question, then you're probably not projecting that much. If, on the other hand, you have never once, even for a second doubted your "history" as a glamorous, totally virtuous and powerful ruler/princess/shaman/sorcerer, then chances are strong that you might be projecting at least a little bit.

5. Does my health issue have a past life cause?

Very often, yes, but that does not eliminate a "this life" cause. We are complex beings! Make sure you do check physical symptoms because past life causes don't mean you have simply imagined this life's pain. "Both and" frequently applies!

(That said many people release physical and emotional symptoms quite fast once they recognize the past life origin.)

If a subconscious past life memory has been influencing your health, you have likely tried (unsuccessfully) to resolve it many times before. Our bodies stake their claim on our attention in ways that few things besides money do. I get more calls about money and health than all other topics combined. Many of these health or financial problems relate to soul issues and patterns strewn across centuries or millennia rather than decades.

As a species, we tend to overcompensate. If something goes wrong, we will go to the far opposite extreme in our attempts not to repeat the same mistake. Imagine yourself doing this not just in reaction to events you can consciously remember, but as entire lifetimes lived in reaction to past life arcs:

Incarnating as an abused wife in Ancient Greece didn't work for you last time? OK, this time try being a male warrior who kills anyone who threatens him. Eww, killed too many people in that lifetime? OK, this time, stay male, but become a monk, and renounce all violence. Hang out as a monk for three hundred years' worth of lifetimes until you find God. What? You didn't find God in all that time? Bullocks! Come back as a nature loving woman who talks to faeries. Oops! Bad time for that, you just got burned at the stake as a witch. Spend the next four hundred years hiding your gifts from society so no one will mistake you as a witch again. Tired of hiding? OK, let it all out this time. Wait!!! Oh, no, every time you try to embrace your healing gifts you get really sick or something stomps on your power and light. How can this be?

... and on and on ...

Eventually, some people come here to integrate. Tired of all the yo-yo-ing, their souls realize that they can't keep bouncing around in reaction to everything around them. They want freedom. They ask for freedom. But embracing the freedom means releasing all those attachments to old wounds and ideas.

The body serves the soul like a chivalrous knight of Middle Ages. It is utterly devoted to this damsel in distress (the soul), which cries out for rescue and a happily ever after. Like the legendary knights, the body will risk dragons, demons, swords and any kind of physical or emotional torment in order to free the soul. Thus, the body will "conveniently" develop major health issues, which "free" the soul to deal with repressed issues. Financial pinches will sometimes function in the exact same way.

As a general rule, if you suffer from what I call a "Medical Mystery" - bizarre, shifting symptoms that either morph to evade treatment or completely baffle your doctors, therapists or priest, then you're probably here on an integration path. Examples include: people who have had multiple head injuries, suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Lyme Disease, MS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Kundalini Syndrome, EMF Sensitivity or other debilitating and seemingly psychsomatic issues.

An integration lifetime does not manifest the same way as a learning or reacting lifetime! In a learning or reacting lifetime, you can ignore some unresolved parts of your past. You can just tuck them into a closet or outhouse that you never intend to use this time around.

But in an integration lifetime, guess what? You will not allow yourself to be rewarded until you integrate. Integration is a primary reason you incarnated. Your soul wants to use its gifts without hindrance or hiding. Therefore any time you shove an issue underground it will flare up like a giant boil demanding your attention. It will ruin relationships, ruin your finances and/or ruin your health - whatever it takes to get the attention you intended to give it this time around.

If you're in an integration lifetime, or suspect you might be, take heart, there are a lot of us on Earth at this time. In fact, Earth itself is going through an integrative phase. It helps to remember that even in poor health or stripped of your usual resources, you are a tremendously powerful and influential being. I would encourage you to ponder the possibility of a bigger picture ... and to take hope that a better lifetime than you have ever known wants to reveal itself to you this time around.

In an integration lifetime, you have already acquired all the ingredients you need. Rather than searching for ingredients or grabbing the nearest processed food, you're in a recipe development phase. You're an elite chef. What will you create with all these wild, precious ingredients? When you take a bite out of life, how would you love it to taste? This time you really can have your cake and eat it, too!

Laura Bruno is a Life Coach, Medical Intuitive, Past Life Reader and Reiki Master Teacher from Sonoma County, CA. In addition to private coaching and intuitive sessions, she teaches Intuition workshops and Reiki Certification classes around the country and in beautiful Sonoma County. For more information on classes, raw food coaching, transitional coaching, animal communication, and letting your gifts shine through your career, please see: http://www.internationalrenaissancecoaching.com or call 775-750-9140.

You might also enjoy Laura's metaphysical novel, "Schizandra and the Gates of Mu": http://schizandraseries.com