Synopsis of a Life


As a teen, I had what seemed to be a past life experience. My teenage cousin and I sat on the couch talking girl talk when we became silent for a few moments. The living room gave way to a large tree upon which my cousin and I, now boys, were resting in after climbing many thick branches high into the tree. We silently looked out over the landscape. I spent just a few seconds in this memory and then I was back out again! It was not disorienting but rather peaceful.

Around the same time someone in my extended family gave me a book about past lives. After I became deeply absorbed in these ideas someone else in the family flatly stated that those ideas were crazy and could not possibly happen. Being in the middle of the usual teenage challenges, I put these ideas aside. At various times later on I seemed to be involuntarily remembering particularly difficult memories that did not seem to relate to my present life. Again I had to set these memories (and the possibility that they were past life memories) aside because they were overwhelmingly traumatic.

At about age thirty I revisited the concept in a new way when my personal therapy unintentionally took me back through childhood into the womb! For a few sessions my therapist and I worked with the womb space preparing to be born. In one of these sessions I seemed to float into an "in between" place and then to what seemed to be a past life. Again it was overwhelming but more manageable with therapeutic support. What I experienced in the past life memory had similarities to some of the challenges in my present life. Those challenges had always seemed more than I could comfortably manage. After recalling and integrating the memories I felt more accepting and less fearful in my life. The challenges did not have as much of a hold on me as they had before. At that point I accepted past life theory as plausible. I also began to understand how past life work could benefit me.

About ten years later at a conference I attended a past life workshop. The attendees were inducted into a group past life regression and I was surprised that I so easily connected to "a story". It was the same memory I had initially found so traumatic but later on in the life. We were told to go to the time of death and to see ourselves leaving that body. Surprisingly, I was able to clearly see the death without any pain. As I left my body I was aware of very intense thoughts and feelings about that life ending before I was able to fully accomplish my mission. After I left my body I floated upward. I seemed to have gained the ability to see my life, and death, with tremendous perspective. I also seemed to be able to view the difficult culture of that life with a larger perspective of many difficult earlier cultures.

After we were brought out of the regression I had better perspective on the similarity of the challenges from the past and the present lives. It was as if I was presently, in this life, still working on the challenges of the last life. As if one lifetime had not been enough time to complete the work the challenges required.

Another five years later I attended a past life workshop and before the presenter could finish his initial presentation I involuntarily began moving into a past life rich with details, emotions and a drama that resembled part of my present life. This was a different life than I had seen before. Different time period, different geographical location, different challenges. The presenter decided to attend to my emerging memory. He helped me see details of the house I lived in, what my job was and the challenges and lessons of that life. Again, the material from this memory had important similarities to my current life albeit very different from the life I had initially remembered years back. I was surprised to see how much space past life work was taking up in my life. A new realm gently opening up, revealing information that seemed increasingly relevant.

Some past life practitioners suggest that unresolved past life issues may show up in the present life and where conventional therapy does not resolve them, past life work may. They go on to suggest that unresolved issues from previous lives are brought forward into future lives where they once more, present the opportunity for resolution.

It seems to be a stretch for many of us to think of life as a series of lives lived over the large course of life on this planet. It's important to remember that large portions of the earth's current population believe exactly this: Hindus and Buddhists to name two. Even tucked away in the esoteric writings of Jewish Kabbalah are references to many lives.

When I was developing my healing skills I read a number of books on past lives. One book was by a PhD in clinical psychology with a full practice of patients, adults as well as children. Completely by accident (are there any accidents?) she stumbled on the possibility of past life regression when she hypnotized a patient while looking for the roots of her patient's traumatic symptoms. This raised a many questions that she sought to answer by offering group hypnotic regressions complete with questions structured to resemble a research study. Among the post recall reports were descriptions of gender, race, clothing, age, food, shelter, vocation, marriage, family, and death. Some subjects added a descriptive comment on the life they had just experienced. Comments like "I thought I had done well in that lifetime" or "the life seemed rather ordinary" and in a particularly primitive life "Life was hard. I was very glad to die and leave it".

The question this raises for me is how, upon death, or in past life regression, might I describe my life? Could I declare the synopsis in one sentence? "I had done well" Or "Ordinary" or "Glad to be done"...How could I possibly reduce the impact of an entire fully lived life down to one sentence?

When the past life concept is examined, is the importance we place on one's present life reduced? When we start to add up the many past lives we might have had and start coming up with numbers like twelve or fifty or a hundred or a thousand, isn't the importance one places on this present life deeply diminished? Is a life merely one miniscule piece of a thousand piece puzzle? Does each life carry karmic lessons that combine into a mosaic of previous karmic life lessons, ultimately assembling towards something so large our human brains can barely comprehend?

In light of this ever expanding perspective my present life seems to grow smaller. Even insignificant...

Just this minute I calculated how many days I have lived in my present life time. 18,250 days. Coupling that with 270 days in utero and another half year or so into my 50th year brings the total to 18,600 days. Nearly 19,000 days that I have gotten up every morning to do full days of playing, learning, working, struggling, hurting, socializing, breathing deeply, contributing, pondering, sharing, creating, dancing, child raising, comforting, receiving comfort, loving, eating, walking, healing...A full and satisfying life at just 19,000 days! How could I possibly reduce this already full life down to one sentence or one word?

Maybe this is where the teachings around nonattachment and the illusory nature of life come in. I don't claim to have deep understanding of these teachings. If anything, I practice Attachment!! I'm deeply attached to my life and I hope it is long and rewarding. I've worked through long illnesses and daunting challenges and have gotten to the place of 19,000 days where I can honestly say "I love my life!!!"

These are powerful words and it took me a long time to be able to say them. I wouldn't want to reduce them to a word or a sentence if, in the future, I traveled back to this life and briefly tried to describe it.

I imagine my self many years in the future perhaps wearing thin thermal protective outerwear, communicating telepathically with everyone near and far, and traveling easily between planets without ships. I see myself going to the local past life practitioner on the corner who has hung out her karmic shingle outside her pod. I undergo past life regression and recall this present life I have now as Sharon. The practitioner asks how I would sum up this life. What would I say? What would I want to be able to say?

"It was good"?
"I did well"?
"It was ordinary"?
"Glad to leave it?"

I would say that I deeply loved the Earth.
I would say that I deeply loved my family and friends.
I would say that I knew great happiness after working hard to bring it into my life.
I would say that I discovered my life lessons.
I would say that I had obstacles to those lessons.
I would say that I successfully addressed these obstacles.
I would say that I had the opportunity to realize my healing mission.
I would say that I chose to redirect the path of my life to study healing when most people are planning for retirement.
I would say that, as a healer, I had the privilege to enter the state where the walls between earth, human and divine vanish.
I would say...that I loved my work.
I would say...I did well.




© Sharon A. Kane