Wednesday is Question and Answer Day on the blog…a time for exploring many of the questions that people have recently asked about the nine Conversations with God books and the New Spirituality. Here’s this week’s entry…
Topic: Past lives and this life
Question asked by: rory gallagher
Question: You’re talking a lot about FEAR in your present blogs, and how you’re adept to living mostly without it. However, I live mostly the opposite way, and I’ve been told by a trusted mind-body healer (and feel it in my gut) that I went through a horribly traumatic experience in a past life (23 lifetimes ago, to be exact!) and am still deeply affected by it, but, so it seems, I’m finally truly facing it.

Also, it seems as though you came into this life “rearing, and ready to go” from the outset, and it looks to me as if you’re coming from a relatively un-traumatized and enlightened spiritual path. I was wondering what your thoughts are on past-life experiences and how they affect us in this present lifetime.
This is coming from a person who wasn’t abused in this life and has tried all the anti-depressants in the book, and can still feel a monumental amount of FEAR and GUILT, apparently unexplainable by occurrences in this (short) lifetime (I’m 22 years old).
I think this would also be a good topic to bring into discussion, where it aligns with evolution and might be able to clarify some people’s current situations, and bring understanding regarding some people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in this lifetime. I feel as though this is a field that will burst open as we all move along (and, now, exponentially so!) on the Path together here on Earth.
Neale’s Response: Dear Rory….The CwG material says that there is no such thing as karma, but that there is such a thing as a Cosmic Wheel…a cycle through which we all move, taking us, ultimately, to our full experience of Divinity. My understanding of the material is that…

…there is no reason for a past life to have any negative impact on the incarnation you are now experiencing.
If you have been given an awareness of a past-life trauma, all the more reason for you to be able to now let go of the previously inexplicable fear and guilt you have felt in this lifetime. Having been given the insight of a past-life experience, use that insight as a gift, and now move into Creation, rather than Reaction, in the living of your present lifetime.
There is only one question that you need to answer in this golden moment of Now, Rory, and that is not “What has happened, in this life or a past life, to make me feel this way?”, but, rather, “What do I now choose to create as my present experience?”
The question before the soul is always the same: “Who am I?” The question is never, “Who was I?” That question is irrelevant to this present moment. What you chose to understand more deeply as a result of a past-life experience you already understand. You came to that understanding between lifetimes. Indeed, that is what the time between lives is for.
Do not use this lifetime to ruminate over a past one. You already did that. Now, use the wisdom that your between-lives ruminations and explorations has produced.
…and don’t say that you don’t know what that is. You do know. Just ask your Self, and your Self will tell you.
(Ask Neale may be accessed on a daily basis in the Messengers’ Circle at Neale’s personal website: www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Each week Neale selects a question from those posted there and publishes it in this blog.)