interesting article...

The Soul Never Forgets
(by: Jaime Licauco)

WHEN she was only 5 years old, Shanti Devi of India told her mother she had another name, that she had several children, that she died giving birth to her baby in a town some 50 miles from their own and that her husband was still alive.

Her mother dismissed her daughter's claims to be mere products of a child's fertile imagination. When Shanti was 9 years old, a man from that town where she said she lived in a previous life visited her family. The mother asked if he knew the woman Shanti mentioned who died during childbirth.

The visitor said there was such a woman and he knew the family very well. A subsequent trip to that town, together with scientific investigators, like Dr. Ian Stevenson, confirmed every detail of what the child told her mother, details no one could have known except somebody who experienced them.

Ghandi was reported to have sought an audience with the woman who remembered completely her past life. The story of Shanti Devi has filled many books on reincarnation because of the richness of her memory of details of her past life that have been verified.

Glimpses of the past

But everyone of us has, to a certain extent, glimpses of our past life. For example, how many of us have had dreams of being in a foreign country, wearing a certain costume and talking in a strange language? How many of us visited a place for the first time and got a distinct feeling that we had been there before? We can even give details of what we will find inside that place.
And how many of us, though seeing a person for the very first time, have the feeling we knew that person before? Sometimes the feeling is instant attraction, at other times instant repulsion. What accounts for that seemingly irrational reaction on our part? We have often heard cases of "instant love" or "love at first sight." What accounts for these emotions?

These can be explained by the fact that the soul never forgets. Our subconscious mind holds the memory of all our past incarnations on earth, and even of those lifetimes we may have spent in some other galaxies or planetary systems. But because we are so focused on the earth plane, we seldom pay attention to inner voices from the very depths of our souls.

Past connections

The reason two people get attracted to each other in this lifetime is because they have had similar encounters in their past incarnations on earth. Your spouse or lover may have been your sister, or mother or child in the past. Your child may have been your lover in the past, and your enemy may have been somebody who betrayed you in the past, etc. You meet each other again now because you have to work out your karma with that person. Until that karma is fulfilled or exhausted, until you have learned to forgive and let go, you will meet that person again and again in future lifetimes.

Remember that both great love and great hatred will bind you to another person. So if you don't want to meet your enemy again in a future life, you have to learn to forgive and release that person.

It is the same with selfish or possessive love. You have to learn to let go and allow your loved one to grow by interacting with other people. Love must be unconditional or unselfish so as not to have karmic repercussions.

Each encounter we may have with people from our past lives affords us the golden opportunity to work out our karma with them, pay our debts, or learn a lesson in love or forgiveness, patience or selflessness.

Sometimes the lessons we get are difficult and painful but they have to be regarded as opportunities for growth in spirituality and understanding.

So, in this month of love, let us learn to go deeper and discover what binds you to another. Usually it is a past life experience you had with that person. Without an understanding of past life connections we have with others, we will not be able to work out our karma with that person and will be condemned to live life over and over again with that person in a vicious cycle until both of us learn what we are supposed to learn in this lifetime.