Trigger warning: this article goes into some of my own traumatic past life memories that might disturb some readers.
I have always been very interested in past lives and I have tried lots of methods to find out more about them: I had a past life reading which covered one lifetime in England during the 1700s, and I had a past life regression session several years ago in the UK (which didn’t work because of noise disturbances in the building while I was being hypnotized).
Last year I booked myself in for some past life regression sessions with the regression therapist Coletta Long who lives in Austin, Texas. Coletta became ill before I was due to go, so that didn’t work out either.
The interest in my past lives was the reason why I was drawn to becoming an intuitive/healer, training as an Akashic record reader initially (which has a focus on past lives.) The fascination in past lives was the springboard that got me into the work I do now. The first person who did a past life reading for me told me that the intense interest in my past lives was because I had something I needed to heal.
However, whenever I tried to find out anything about my past lives I felt blocked and I couldn’t get any information.
Nine or ten months ago, I started having dreams, each one with a particular ‘energetic signature’ that I recognized as a past life, because I have done a lot of past life readings for others…
I have written about these past life dreams before.
In the first one, I was an Asian woman with a new baby and I rowed out to the middle of a lake and dropped the baby in. I was feeling very numb as I did it. I didn’t feel sad.
I realized when I woke up that the baby in that lifetime is one of my parents in this lifetime.
(I have had bad dreams about lakes since I was a child – people drowning in lakes is a recurring dream for me.)
A couple of months after I had the dream about the baby in the lake, I woke up from a dream where I was a religious authority in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. I felt I was either a psychopath or mentally ill (or both.) I was working on eradicating people who were not Catholic.
I was pretty shocked about that. I felt disconnected from this dream and numb about it.
A couple of months later I dreamt that I was in Greece, and kept in a school by German soldiers. I was a young woman. Some of the soldiers were deceiving us and pretending to be nice to us because they wanted us to stay in the school. The other prisoners who were in the school with me were in denial, expecting to be treated well and I remember a sense of desperate frustration around this, because I absolutely knew that I was going to die if I didn’t get away. I was considering hiding in school cupboards and I escaped at one point.
I didn’t feel myself as Jewish, I was just ‘myself’ in the dream. I felt a strong separation of “us” and “them”. And “they” were evil. I sensed it strongly but people around me didn’t. I also feel I was alone – I was either an orphan but I had a husband that I lost. I didn’t have many people around me that I knew.
One of the stand-out memories within that dream: I was running down a dirt track topless. I don’t know where my top went or why I was half naked. A woman I encountered on the track gave me something to wear out of a sense of decency I think, but wouldn’t give me anything else or shelter. I was hungry.
I don’t remember going back or being caught but I do remember a certainty that I was absolutely going to be caught and there was no way out.
(I’ve had dreams of being pursued and “hunted” all my life in this way by evil people, as if there was no way to run or hide, but nothing as specific as this.)
A very specific and astonishing detail of the dream: in the dream I was speaking some kind of Spanish. I studied Spanish at university and lived in Spain so I do occasionally dream in Spanish.
But the Spanish that I was speaking in the dream was not the Castilian Spanish I was taught. It was a kind of Spanish I didn’t recognize – I noticed it resembled some types of Latin American Spanish in a few specific aspects of the phonology – which is not how I speak Spanish. But when I woke up I thought I must have made the sounds and the words up because it wasn’t like anything I’d heard before.
When I woke up I thought the dream made absolutely zero sense because I was speaking Spanish in Greece. (Plus a sort of Spanish that I’d never heard before that I thought I must have made up in my dream.)
But it felt unequivocally like a past life to me.
I couldn’t imagine a scenario where this could have occurred, so feeling skeptical, I started researching on the internet.
I learned that when the Jews were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, they moved to different places in Europe. One of the areas they moved to was Greece. Almost all of the Spanish Jews settled and remained in communities in Thessaloniki and Kastoria and a few other places too. But the vast majority were apparently in Thessaloniki.
I learned that when the Sephardic (Spanish) Jews left Spain they took the language with them, and it had evolved in its own way, and assimilated some Hebrew into the language, and it was called Judeo-Spanish or Ladino. I looked up this language and noticed that the particular similarities in phonology to Latin American Spanish that I noticed waking up from the dream did indeed exist.
I never looked any further than this at the time, but I was surprised that in the dream I was speaking what seemed to be Ladino (a dying and almost extinct language that I had never heard before – I certainly didn’t study it at university nor did I study Greece or any modules to do with the Spanish Inquisition.)
Anyway, that was a few months ago and I forgot about it. Recently I had another dream.
I dreamt that I was in what seemed to be a hospital ward in a concentration camp. First I was shown the other part of the concentration camp which was for men and they were in terrible conditions. I saw them go in strong and muscly and then saw them emaciated and naked, kept like cattle with no clothes.
I was among the women. (This was all from a first person standpoint, as before.)
I saw one woman whose hands had been amputated, and another woman comforting her.
There was one woman on a stretcher who had been paralyzed during an operation but the doctor told her the paralysis would only be temporary and she seemed cheerful and hopeful but I had doubts. There was another woman who was always arguing with everyone, I specifically remember the way she was built and her face. Her skin was all mottled and seemed transparent. They looked Jewish to me.
There wasn’t a sense that the people who were doing this were evil, because they were pretending it was for our own good and they were operating on existing problems. There was a sense of confusion as to what was going on and why.
This is where the dream ended, but the energy of the dream was confusion, denial, numbness, a sort of dissociation which I know is characteristic of trauma. I couldn’t feel any suffering and I was out of my body. I didn’t feel an imminent sense of danger like before that I needed to get away from, as in the school.
I woke up and did some research to find out if this was plausible – did they take Spanish Jews to the concentration camps? By this point, I hadn’t linked it to the dream in the school.
I found out that the population of Sephardic/Spanish Jews was almost entirely decimated in Greece by the Holocaust (98%.)
Most of the Spanish Jews were in Thessaloniki and many of them were gassed or used for medical experiments.
I found this fact in my research:
At Auschwitz, about 37,000 from Thessaloniki were gassed immediately, especially women, children and the elderly. Nearly a quarter of all 400 experiments perpetrated on the Jews were on Greek Jews, especially those from Thessaloniki. These experiments included emasculation and implantation of cervical cancer in women.
I also read that they did amputate and paralyze for experiments.
I had learned Thessaloniki was one of the places where you would have found a lot of Judeo-Spanish speakers.
The other place was Kastoria.
Astonishingly, I read the following about Kastoria:
There were 900 Jews in Kastoria in 1940.
In March 1944, 763 of them were rounded up for deportation, first to Thessaloniki and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Prior to their deportation, they were enclosed in an abandoned school for days, with no food or water, and the young girls were raped by German soldiers. Thirty-five Jews survived the Holocaust in Kastoria.
This was incredible to me because it matched my dream rather well: the abandoned school, the strange ‘Spanish’ dialect (because the Jews waiting in the school would have spoken that), and running along a dirt track with no top on. I wondered how I lost my top and if I got raped. (I was a young woman.)
I also read that the Greek Jews had been very naive when they were rounded up by the Nazis, not believing that they would be on their way to a death camp, because the information hadn’t reached Greece that this was occurring to Jews. This was the strong sense I had in my first dream – I was sensing grave danger but the people around me were not and I felt a sense of desperation around it.
700 odd people also seems about right as does the time period of a few-several days. There weren’t thousands of people in my first dream, as normally associated with concentration camps or people on their way to those camps.
So, from the school, they would have gone to Thessaloniki, then to Auschwitz, and from there 100 of them would have been experimented on medically.
I am astounded that what I felt certain to be past-life information matches up so well with history.
It’s also interesting to me because I was an Inquisitor first, then I became a Jew. So it makes some sense from the karmic perspective.
Interestingly, I have experienced prejudice and abuse because of my beliefs in this lifetime. I believe that all religions have an underlying teaching from the same source, and that all are valid paths.
But I have met with prejudice and people who don’t like or even hate me for my beliefs and the worst situations have been with Spanish people and Catholics.
Another synchronicity I have experienced around the Holocaust: last year I rented the movie ‘La Vida e Bella’. The cover of it was misleading because it had a happy family on it and the back cover did not mention concentration camps at all. Normally I would never rent a movie about the war or concentration camps or violence, death or atrocities. I don’t have the stomach for it and never have.
When I finished it (which was an achievement for me in itself), I sat down to write to a friend who was having a past life regression done that week. I channeled some information which said that many new-agers (i.e. People who are interested in healing the spirit and personal growth) are reincarnated Holocaust victims who are seeking healing and don’t quite know why. I also understood that many spiritual healing modalities developed since World War Two were developed by and for reincarnated Holocaust victims.
I mentioned this to the friend who was in past life regression sessions that week, who wrote back to say that the sessions revealed they had also been in the Holocaust.
I don’t believe I participated in the Holocaust because I needed to be punished for persecuting Jews in the Inquisition lifetime (it didn’t even occur to me until I looked further into the Spanish Inquisition that that was what the Inquisitors were doing specifically to Jews.) I still wonder why karma seems to be set up this way, because it seems like a strange ‘game’ to play sometimes.
My past life dreams are not very heavy on emotion. Instead I am observing a still picture, or I am exploring the scene in the first-person, but I am not being re-traumatized. If I was caught or raped, I haven’t re-experienced that. There is a sense of distance.
I don’t know if I will get the next ‘instalment’ of the dream or if I already received it 4 years ago with this dream that I wrote about which shocked me to the core.
I have felt reticent about blogging about this in case it is considered insensitive to claim you are a reincarnated Holocaust victim who underwent medical experimentation. I have developed my intuition to a point where I know when it is right and when it is wrong. And I wholeheartedly believe in this past life.
When it is the right time I look forward to finding out more in past life regression sessions.
Have you done a past life regression? Please use the comment box to share your thoughts or stories.
Another great read! I dream A LOT too! So this entry was very informing to read. Lately I’ve been listening to podcasts about different types of dreams & how to distinguish them. The podcast did include past lives, souls contracts, & purging daily crap. So I don’t think you’re tuition misguided you at all. I know my gift is sort of along the line of unconsciously locking things when I go into REM. I haven’t yet cultivated the art of knowing how to gain control of my grasping intuitions, but I felt your urgency when I read , “The interest in my past lives was the reason why I was drawn to becoming an intuitive/healer.”
In my dreams though, sometimes they’re SO vivid & strong that I can sense things as well. I became more interested in past lives, when I realized “my soul” is coming out when I do this! haha still new & weird to me, but amazing! Every time my insights become stronger.
It was also nice to read that you didn’t always hit it right when searching for a hypno-therapist. I’ve also been getting the DRILLING urge to see one myself, but my friends all disregard the thought as “too far out”.
It was also extremely enjoyable to see the link with factual information you found surrounding the topic. That what I LOVE, can back up the spiritual with logic! NICE!
Oh my goodness! I re-read that & I have to say, “I WISH THERE WAS AN EDIT BUTTON”, haha
I haven’t had more than a possible glimpse at a past life, but I just wanted to post how astonishingly synchronistic this was for me, in yet a minor way.
I have no meaningful relationship with Germany, Holocaust, or anything like that (that I know of) but the other day I read this on the Golden Age of Gaia, as channelled by Archangel Michael. It echoes what you have just experienced.
—
Steve Beckow: My last question, since we have just a wee bit of time, is I’ve had a letter from a German woman who is tortured by being an inheritor of the legacy of Germany after the Second World War, and wants to know what you have to say to her to give her hope that she and her fellows can emerge from that legacy. And if you could tell her the mission of children born into Germany after the Second World War. Have you some words of solace for her, Lord?
AAM: These are the beings of healing. These are the beings of hope. These are the beings that bring forth the new reality. So it is not to suffer in pain and to relive the trauma, the devastation, the history.
It is to create the new and to heal the old; to embrace and to forgive, with compassion. There has been great devastation perpetrated by various aspects and nations of humanity. You cannot live in that past, even in the eternal now. Let it go.
—
http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/06/archangel-michael-it-is-time-to-awaken-fully-now-part-22/
Great read. Thank you for sharing. I have very specific and vivid dreams. I once did a past life regression session (about 5-6 years ago) but I don’t think I was ready. I am actually interested in doing it again.
Hey!
This was really interesting! I love past life everything! I haven’t had regression done on me (I’m not sure I could be hyponotized) but I did have an Akashic Records reading where we went over my past lives. There weren’t super specific, but I was told that I had had many (it’s been said several times I’m an old soul, which would suggest multiple past lives) and the ones we did go over were all dealing with religion and my being loyal or attached to religion in some capacity.
Which I guess makes sense since I’m really into spirituality and personal growth now. Luckily, I didn’t grow up in a religion so I was free to do what I wanted spirituality wise, which was great! Many other people I’ve met grew up in dysfunctional christian households where they suffered sexual, emotional, mental abuse at the hands of churchgoers and religious leaders.
I am really curious about my past lives because I have a lot of questions about why my Soul picked this specific life and body to come into. I routinely find myself frustrated over the body my Soul chose which isn’t in alignment with what I want *argh* and why I have the family I have *sigh*.
I am quite interested in past lives but I prefer to read other people’s stories. I’m not interested in finding out mine because I feel I may not be able to handle it when it comes.
Wow Anna it’s fantastic that you have been given so many vivid, specific details to be able to research and validate your past life dreams.
A few years back now one of my guides spent a year walking me through a particularly traumatic pivotal life, showing me frame by frame so that I could remember and absorb what was going on. It was as you described – rather matter of fact, with the most traumatic events inferred but not relived. I believe it healed some fairly unhealthy behaviour, especially regarding men, and allowed me to leave these issues behind.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading about shamanism – which have soul retrieval or integration practices as well as power animal and totem animal journeys. Fascinating stuff. In the process this reading has brought up all this stuff about a past life as a witch that I have not looked at. Putting the pieces together for the first time, I’ve realised that this life has affected my current life in too many ways – I have a resistance to using medicine (homeopathics, naturopathic or even Bach flower remedies), I have a lack of smell so donnot use aromatherapies, am blocked from anything even vaguely Wiccan and get cold extremely quickly. It’s irrational. Then there’s a fear of fire and an apathy towards water. Yes, I’m thinking after Anna’s post it might be time to do something about it! Time for release.
Dear Anna,
What an interesting but difficult read. (I’m a very sensitive person, especially about atrocities performed by other human beings).
I too am a firm believer that (almost?) all religions carry the same basic idea, which, according to me, is guidance for a good life for yourself and those around you. It always upsets me greatly when any religion and the name of God/Allah (etc) is abused by people who harm others. I am careful about who I tell what I believe in for just the same reasons you mentioned too –>persecution, prejudice, etc.
I think it is important to talk about religion and to share knowledge and feelings. But I am careful, because it feels like some people won’t want to listen and will just abuse your/my openness.
Thank you for sharing your story. I think it is very brave of you to do so, and I also believe it can help many others.
Personally I don’t know anything about my past lives (I was told I’ve been around a lot), but I do dream a lot!!!! I don’t get it yet though. I am working on your course and tried a dream exercise but I am very stressed out at the moment (not great for concentration and information) and I think I’m asking questions that I may not yet know the answer to, as that would influence my path in life too much. It’s confusing, but I have faith. 😉
p.s.Karma is weird but seems soooo necessary for us to learn, eh?
Holy cow that’s all I have to say! Well done!
Hi Anna, it was amazing to read about your experience. I have not done any past-life regression work but I have had dreams where I also felt that I was a Jewish woman in the Holocaust. I had a young son and we were very poor. I am not Jewish in this life but I have always had a horror of the Holocaust since I was very young, and in elementary school I had a sense that blonde-haired blue-eyed kids were “bad” and that they would hurt me somehow. I am terrified to watch the movie “Schindler’s List” because I fear it will be too triggering, but I did see “La Vita E Bella.” That was an interesting movie in that it was both horrifying and humorous at the same time.
I don’t like to tell others about my past-life dreams (mine are also not very emotional, as you described. It’s more like watching an old movie in which I am the observer). I’m really worried about offending others who are Jewish. It was something of a relief to come across your blog post here today! Thank you for sharing.
I used to live in Israel and I remember sitting in a cafe in Jerusalem with a friend who was a psychic, and some religious settlers came in. My friend said they were Nazi’s in a past life and now getting to play the other side of the power dynamic (not that she was suggesting any equivalence). There’s an interesting book on the whole phenomenon of Holocaust souls reincarnating (as Jews and non-Jews) by an American rabbi called Yonassan Gershom. It’s called Beyond the Ashes.
Just discovered your blog and very impressed – you have a refreshingly well-developed spiritual bullshit detector.
Dear Anna,
Karma is never about punishment as that wouldn’y really fit the love of the divine light that drives us to evolve. Karma helps us understand what we did wrong by giving us a different perspective on things (on intollerance and discrimination in one of the cases that you mentioned), not to mention the chance to learn an important lesson.
The only punishment we can get is self inflicted. Think of what we call “hell” and, in general, of what happens to the entities (of any kind) who walk away from the light. Love and forgiveness are always available to those willing to accept them.
As for my past lives, I once used the Akashic Records to learn about my current life lessons and there was one specific lesson which Asgard, my guide of the Records, deliberately didn’t mention. A day after, when I wasn’t meditating or even thinking about my lessons, I felt the need to rest my eyes for a little while (but I was still completely awake) and, as soon as I closed them, I had a vision of a past life of mine. I was walking down the corridors of a mansion with other people (probably during the Renaissance in Italy) who kept slaughtering the people who crossed their way, including an old peaceful man sitting behind a desk (definitely a nobleman) who was stabbed in the back.
At first I was confused but then I had my explanation when I asked my guide of the Akashic Records. The people I walked with were the rebels that I had let in, thus betraying the noble family I used to work for and causing their horrible end.
This vision was a (not so) kind reminder that I shouldn’t think I’m necessarily better than the people who hurt me in this lifetime since I obviously did much worse in that previous incarnation. The vision proved as effective as it was painful. After the guilt and the pain went away, only the powerful meaning of the lesson remained.
Wow, that is some amazing stuff. I have no doubt that those are real past life memories, with all the detail and correlation.
We should get together and form a club called People Who Remember Jews From Past Lives, because I have some of that going on too. Not quite like yours, but I’m pretty sure mine was Sephardic as well. He looks that way, anyhow.
Hi Anna, I think you are my soul sister. 🙂 And I am certain out paths crossed somewhere in a previous lifetime perhaps in Spain. Hopefully we d meet in this one. Just wanted to say you inspire me through your posts,and you are someone who speaks and understands the language of my heart. Ah so beautiful! The word healing resonates with me but I haven’t yet found the courage, commitment, clarity, determination to see if this is the path my soul needs to walk and how. Sending you love love love. Rashmi
Thank you to everyone for your comments.
Hi Andrew – welcome 🙂
Hi Hope – Yes I agree – karma as a form of punishment doesn’t really fit into my beliefs about the Divine. I still find the whole thing bizarre though. To be on the other side and actively choose to experience the Holocaust. Seems a little crazy but I guess the soul has its reasons.
Anna, thank you so much for going ahead and posting this. The concept of karmic comeuppance does carry some very unfortunate implications for people who suffer without that sort of detachment or perspective, but it’s a conclusion that I can far more easily follow from someone who shares their own personal experience. It’s also very cool that you were able to essentially verify some of those details that didn’t seem to make sense.
I wonder how the Spanish language links these lives that you’ve had. Do you suppose that learning Spanish in this life allowed you to open up to these past life dreams as a Spanish speaker? Or if those past lives allowed learning Spanish in this life to be a more intuitive process for you?
Just a thought. If you believe that past, present and future time can be accessed through our meditations and dreams, then its also just as easy to heal them (actively) in the same way.
I’ve been experimenting with this concept and when something from my past pops up that makes me feel sad I imagine myself reacting differently, usually with more love towards the other present. I’m finding it very healing and cathartic. There’s no reason I can’t do the same for past lives.
Hello,
It is interesting to read your experiences of your past life in your dreams. The kind of past life dreams I have which I called as “astral travels” are more real than life (meaning the emotions or feelings I feel are more intense than real life). I have never had the kind that you experience (like watching a movie and not reliving it). In my astral travels the people might look different but I could recognise their soul energy in my dreams. Subconsciously I feel I was beheaded in one of my past lives. This will be something I really do not want to relive LOL. But I do not know how to control my astral travels nor am I able to do it in my conscious state. I tried retrieving my past life thru meditation but the pictures that appeared dissapeared as soon as they appeared. May be I still do not know how to hold the energy or space long enough to observe a “movie” of my past life.