Okay, this is where many of my friends think I make a wrong turn off the freeway and drive off into sketchy neighborhoods. This is where my family rolls their eyes at the restaurant table and my father sighs in dismay. This is where the cute boy whose flirting with me at the tailgate party gets a look on his face like "what the hell have I gotten myself into." This is where I start talking about Past Lives.
Imagine your single life is the trunk of a tree. Imagine all the roots that extend down into the soil, starting thick but branching again and again to form millions of little fibers, touch millions of lives that come before you. Imagine that your tree is in a forest and that all the trees around you are joined at these roots. Every single grain of soil deep beneath the ground - and by analogy every single soul in the past - nourishes not one root, but dozens, and since all the roots are connected, it nourishes not just dozens in a single grove, but millions throughout thousands of acres of forest.
No, no. Stay with me here people.
Do you every wonder why everyone who remembers a past life is a Queen or a General or a famous figure from history? That past soul is a single grain of soil that nourishes the life of millions of people. Just as your ancestral family tree gets wider and wider the farther back you go, and just as there are thousands of people who are direct decedents of Benjamin Franklin, and just as there are millions of people who are descendants of Kubla Khan, there are perhaps a billion people whose soul-root touches the the grain-of-soil-soul of Cleopatra, and who can remember her life, her life as it might have been, and her dreams.
Can you blame people who, if they can remember either the life of Cleopatra or the life of a 17th century shepherd, find the memory of the Egyptian queen more vivid?
Scientists say that we all share a common ancestor, the so called Mitochondrial Eve, and I believe that each one of us - in dreams, in sensations, in visions - could have access to her memories. Each of our souls shares her "past life" experience.
So, when my friends blog about the so-called "Multiple Self," what they are really talking about, in my opinion, is this nutrient rich soil of past lives, lives in which we were warriors and witchdoctors, harlots and queens. Perhaps each of them finds their lives influenced by the memories and dreams of Cleopatra.
Okay, I'm turning back on the freeway now...
