Do u believe in ancestral memory?

..meaning that someone vividly remembers a past life, or has so many characteristics, tastes and likes from a possible past life?

My 5-year old cousin is talking about how he used to have 3 brothers and one sister, but they all died of the flu. He talks about a farm and all sorts of other things. His born-again parents are FURIOUS whenever I ask him to talk more about this, because they do not believe in past lives.

What do you think?

 

Thats fascinating, and it makes a lot of sense.

 

I have a reoccuring dream in which I live in a farm house. I have a big mutt of a dog outside. My husband (who i can't see in the dream) works in a different town, so it is often times just me and our two daughters home. All of us girls are wearing old-style cotton nightgowns.

The dog's barking wakes me up. The house is on fire. I grab the girls, one is 4 the other around 2.5, and run downstairs. We have a "harry potter" style staircase... the type with the room under the stairs. I leave the girls with the dog, a ways away from the house. I know the dog will stay with them and protect them.

I run back into the house because I have to get some family jewlery... a ring from my dead mother, and some other jewels like that. Its really smoky now, and I start to cough a lot. I find the jewelery box though, and start back down the stairs, but they give out and I fall into the pantry under the stairs. I know that I die in this fire.

When I wake up I can smell both smoke, and broken jars of preserves... and I can still hear the dog barking.

Don't know if this is a past life memory/dream, or if its just something I've come up with, but I've been having this dream since I was about 10.

 

there is a problem with ancestral po past lives. it is simply this. our bodies may have ancestral cellular memories, but our spirits are not limited to one tangable world or the life forms of that world only.

the world of my most immediate past life had computers like, not like, exactly, but as or more powerful, and anyone could have them, we have now, BEFORE i was born into this world in 1948 when it did not. it also had a number of things this world does not have yet and is not likely to forseeably in this lifetime.

and it was VERY different socialy and 'politicly'.
disturbing the peace was a more serious crime then rape, though like here, not as serious as murder. depending though on circomstances. killing, or even attacking, someone in a way that robbed them of their calmness, was a far more serious crime then killing them in some way that did not do so.

creativity and immagination were romantacized and rewarded while aggressiveness was ostracized. i don't mean by arbitrary laws. i mean this is how an overwhelming majority of people thought and lived.

and while some things were, appearently, somehow mass produced, there was nothing like the corporate economics of this earth today, nor did people live in houses that were duplicates of each other built by the hundreds or thousands by the same contractor. i don't think there were contractors. people would design what they wanted and something like robots would turn their designs into what they could then live in.

people used something like our internet instead of voice phones, and i do mean instead of voice at all, not like voice over internet either. i mean like the equivelant of the internet was like the equivelant of our physical phone companies. that was the core communication infrastructure. there was no physical voice phone infrastructure.

transportation was all sorts of things that either ran on some sort of track, or floated in the air. nothing at all like roads and highways. well in cities, but no cars there either, not like owning a car anyway.

well i could go on but it's pointless to do so, other then as a means of illustration. but i think you can see what i'm getting at.

=^^=
.../\...

 

I believe in it in a sense. Myself, I often walk on the nearby hills where one side of my family originated, having lived up there as sheperds and miners for at least two centuries. I often feel a kind of sense of connectedness with them - it's very subtle, imposssible really to put into words, but there's something there.
It seems in some way to be intimately connected to the landscape of the south shropshire hills too - which are a unique kind of natural environment. Maybe it's because some of my ancestors are buried up there. Their bodies have literally become part of the earth.

But also, it works on another level. My family are a mix of english, Irish and French. Sometimes, I feel almost an alien to 'pure blooded' anglo-saxon brits - I find I tend to have a kind of empathy with the french and the irish.

Reincarnation memories, memories of past lives, are something quite different.

 

Interesting. Yesterday I was trying to come up with a way of conveying what I believe is important. I thought that "disturbing the peace" (which is what I called it) is worse than the other "crimes" you mention in a society of immortal individuals (for no death is permanent- it is simply a displacement to another realm or body). Anyway, those are the words I used to describe high crime in my thoughts yesterday.


** Of course, there are times that "disturbing the peace" brings greater peace...

 

It's said that if we just analyze our present life very carefully we can get a lot of clues to past lives, without any other telling experiences such as dreams, visions, etc.

Personally, I've never had any subjective experience that pointed to a past existence.

My wife told me about the repeated dream she had at around ages five to seven...she was a knight in the middle of a furious battle and the participants were yelling in a language which she now thinks was German. She was always killed by a sword blow in the dream and would wake up terrified. The interesting thing is that at her age she had no frame of reference for this kind of dream...she hadn't seen any movies or TV with medieval battles, etc., and wasn't in any way familiar with this type of history.

MollyB...I've had a similar experience. My severely born-again cousin and I were talking about a mutual friend who had died early and tragically, and he said "I wonder why God allows such misfortune to happen to some people" and I replied that I could point out some scriptural reading other than the Bible that would address his question...he abruptly said No and changed the subject.

Bill...my parents' family trees verify ancestry in America since the late 1700's, then it gets murky. Earliest known ancestors on my father's side were French-descent, Scottish and Irish on mother's. Would you call that Gaelo-Celtic, maybe?

 

I geuss I could see that.

 

Yes - or Franco-Celtic, either one I suppose. Like in America, the English are a mixture of different races. My french blood comes from my Grandma who met my Grandfather, an Irish immigrant to England, when he was a soldier during WW I.

 

I had a very realistic and disturbing "past life dream" because I see myself from the outside in a village, I am in this group, we are waiting for some signal, then all of a sudden there is a rush, everyone gets killed(we are fighting with swords), but then from what I remember, we go throw the bodies before a village and burn everything down, we don't leave anything alone, this is really disturbing, when I did have this dream, I vomited couldn't sleep , I scream sometimes in my sleep, scare my family... nightscares and what not. but whatever, I think the past is past, any actions I may have done then I have no control over them now.

 

Anyway it could just be crytomnesia, I was fascinated with swords, war movies and what not when i was young, probably thats where i saw it and imagined it was me or whatnot and probably it stuck with me in my subconscious mind to haunt me later, anyway... it doesnot matter.

 

Perhaps. Or maybe you really had a past life.

 

i've had past lives. hundreds of them. it's strange how i remember them too. they are memories of memories. if that makes any sense. when i was about 6 months old, literally, i remembered all these different things. then i sorta forgot them. but then i remembered how i use to remember these things. i know, it sounds weird. but, here i am, a 3 year old child, remembering how i was once a roman centurion, and i was ordering my men to enter the town and to kill everyone. i then led the charge, and i cut through women and children. i also remember being a samurii, and commiting ritualistic suicide. i've been men and women, of all different races.

 

( Quote) his born again parents are FURIOUS because they do not believe in past lives ......so how come they say they are born again? " sorry molly but that just sounds a bit hypocritical on his parents behalf . i was reading about birth marks and phobias ie= scared of heights - feeling clostephobic- scared of sailing - etc etc ........and how they could be associated with past lives ......hmm great post molly .

 

Well, they are born-again Christians, which means the idea of a past life must be thrown out the window. Think about it: as a Christian, you are born with one life, and you are either saved or not. You die and have eternal life in heaven or hell. The linear time of Christian thought doesn't allow for Eastern concepts like karma, dharma and reincarnation, which need several lifetimes.

 

I think it's necessary to see the big difference between 'ancestral' memory and 'reincarnation' memory.

They are quite different concepts.
One applies to the physical body.
The other applies to the soul.

We could dispense with belief in reincarnation and still believe in ancestral memory, as presumably, it would be in some sense encoded in the cells of the body.
Ancesrtal memory seems to be a more generalized type of thing- feeling a connection with one's ancestors etc in a general way.
Reincarnation memories are more specific, and usually deal with one or several particular lives apparently recalled. But there need be no connection between this and one's present set of physical ancestors.
EG. - a person who is an American of european origin might feel connected to say the celts. On another level, in a past life they may have been Chinese.

 

I've never felt any intuitive connection to my ancestry or geographic heritage. My parents didn't focus on these at all, and any connection I've felt has been on the basis of self-observation or the observations of others...when I went 1500 miles away to college, new friends commented on my "southern" accent and ways; same when I married, my wife is from a different area of the US and we've always liked comparing regional differences in ourselves and our families.


Past life scenarios can be inferred from what one is automatically drawn to or repelled by; by abilities that manifest without separate effort; by sexual orientation; by occupational interest; by the presence or absence of tendencies toward addictive habits; by interest or lack of interest in religion or spiritual subjects....the list is endless.

Yes, the Christian concept of history can be compared to a line, with a definite beginning, interim period, and ending; the Eastern concept of material existence is called samsara, or the wheel of birth and death...beginningless and never-ending.

In Eastern thought, each jiva or individual soul has lived countless lives in material bodies, in a state of more-or-less spiritual forgetfuness.

In Eastern philosophy, there is no neat consensus of opinion on exactly how we got into this mess, but, as in Christianity, free will plays the pivotal role. The big difference is that in Christian thought humanity at large is pre-condemned by the actions of Adam and Eve; in Vedic or Indian philosophy, the initial decision to dissociate from the Divine comes from the individual. And, as in Christianity, the decision to reestablish the relationship is usually an individual one, though there are also examples of God dramatically intervening in the life of an extreme sinner, similar to the case of St. Paul.

 

so christians are supposed to go straight to heaven or hell ? .

 

According to Christian doctrine, yes. Otherwise, the need to repent of your sins prior to death wouldn't be so great. There's a huge difference between getting one shot at salvation, and ending up in hell rather than messing up in this life and dropping down one rung in the caste system. It seems to me that if you believe in reincarnation, then past lives are possible. But in the Bible, you are only created once, as a unique individual, and then your soul goes on to one afterlife: not returning to humanity again.

 

We all have past lives... Mine is complicated it involves a sacred symbol...