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Ok so last Friday the 13th when I was working with my assistant manager we got on the topic of superstitions and it ended up leading to a discussion about past lives. It wasn't a discussion about trying to learn about them. Just that maybe past lives can influence our present tendencies. Her examples were like if a person's past life had drowned that the present person would have an "unexplained" fear of water. Or that a gay male's past lives were all female.

So I got curious as to what you guys think. Do you think that past lives could subconsciously effect our present life?

Note: I don't know if that seemed to come off like she's anti-gay or not. So I will add that no she is not anti-LGBT. The gay male example came from an experience she had a couple years ago.

Like if someone lost their entire family from just one cause then committed suicide? Kinda like that?


Its just interesting. But makes me wonder, if the negative can effect us, like giving us the fears, anxiety, or depression, what kind of positives can also effect us? Or is it only biology and the negative that do?

I don't have enough belief in reincarnation one way or another, to say I really believe anything about past lives. But...if they are there, I'm of the opinion that they're irrelevant to who and what we are now. My spirituality isn't dharmic, nor does it involve any concepts of carrying things forward, whether those are lessons or things to remedy. Maybe retaining some memories of past lives seem useful to some people, but for me it's not a lot more than a curiosity.

Some of my experiences some people would call past lives. I instead believe that they may be my ancestors' memories, shared with me for their own purposes.

I also believe time moves in a spiral. Past and future are relative, places may overlap and touch, and what we perceive is equally relative. We may get images from the past - or from the future - and have no way of gauging how far behind or in front they actually may be.

I couldn't say for certain one way or the other. It makes more sense to me as ancestral memory rather than lives I've personally lived, but it could be anything.



It's quantum physics, as I understand it. We tend to perceive time in a linear fashion, because we're only aware initially of our own time - a fixed point where we see behind us and in front of us. Then, as we age, we become aware of the cyclical nature of time - that we are part of cycles, whether those are natural cycles such as aging or the seasons, or social cycles, such as our calendars and the holidays and events therein. If you take the point of view that quantum physics puts out that everything stems from one single point in the Universe, and eventually will recede to that point - well, you add more than one revolution to cyclical time - in essence, time moves in a spiral.

It can be complicated by the fact that there may be more than one universe out there, with their own cycles, that might in places touch or overlap our own. In our own spiral of time, points or places may be close enough to touch or overlap - giving you the sense of seeing the future, or experiencing the past.

It is also how I perceive that some Gods who are dead, or who are fated to die in certain ways, are also still alive - they are alive at some point in the spiral, as well as dead in another. The Gods may have a better sense of time than us, and can thus work around certain things this way. It's also, I believe, why events like Ragnarok can happen (or have happened, or will be to happen) - they may repeat themselves over and over as the spiral of time winds around itself. Humans don't have such a developed sense of time, so we're limited in our capacity to perceive the ways that time interacts with space.

Well, maybe something would bring you great comfort but you don't know why - or perhaps you find something makes you smile and laugh but is not intrinsically funny. Just some possibilities. Then there's the "sehnsucht"-type nostalgia, like the longing for a place you've never been.

Just ideas. It's hard to know. Humans are funny things.

Huh. Didn't think about that. But I do agree that humans are funny things. But boy do I wish I wasn't one when the stupid piles up.


But what if you're stuck with those lessons? That you have learned what you're supposed to but life won't toss you the next one?


Ok. I saw that going down an elitist line of thought. That's why I asked.

I'm just posing a large "What if...?"

I think we might, yes, have some "rollover minutes" haha life to life.
I know I remember things that could not have happened in this life as though they did, and distinctly know it was not a dream, but on the subject of dreams I do have repeated dreams from what I believe are from past lives.