Past Lives and Karmic Connections

This is the third article in a series of posts about past lives. You can read the first article in the series here and the second here.

Have you ever had a connection with someone that aroused unexplained strong emotions in you – such as anger, fear, longing, shame or guilt? Or a relationship in which every emotion is amplified tenfold?

The Soul’s Unfinished Business

The type of emotion that relationships bring up is often indicative of what happened between us in the past:

  • A relationship with an undercurrent of unexplained anger in this lifetime could be indicative of someone whom you wronged/who wronged you in a previous life
  • Feeling guilty within a relationship can indicate a past experience where you were responsible for something bad that happened to another person
  • Feeling sadness or longing can indicate an unresolved past life separation or abandonment
  • Shame can have its origins in a perpetrator lifetime (when we have done something heinous to another person/group of people.)

Skeletons in the Closet

I used to have a recurring dream where I would discover human bones hidden in various places in my home, and realize in horror, that I was the one that had killed the person whose bones I kept finding. Later, I became aware of a past life memory in which I had drowned my new-born baby as a young woman in a Far-Eastern country and the shame I felt in the dream was the same ‘flavour’ of shame that I experienced in the bone finding dream.

The relationship I had in this lifetime with the person who was the drowned baby from that life has been filled with anger and guilt.

Unraveling Past Life Guilt

Another of my past lives that I came across during a regression involved being a woman in Norway during the Middle Ages. (I wrote about this lifetime in my previous article.)

In that life, I lived with my husband on the outskirts of a forest. We were poor but lived in a house owned by his parents.

One day, a powerful man came with some soldiers and said the land we were living on was owned by him, and that we would have to pay taxes to him. We had nothing of value that he wanted so he left empty handed.

He came back a couple of years later to request payment once again and this time we had a cherished baby boy. The powerful man took my baby away with him and although I searched for a long time, I had no way of knowing what happened to him or even where the man came from.

In this lifetime, when I met and became friends with the baby I had lost from that lifetime, I had an overwhelming sense of guilt, and a need to protect the person from misfortunes. That feeling didn’t lift until I did a past life regression to let go of my past life guilt and grief.

Note that our past life patterns will often go back even further than we think: I shared another lifetime with the baby that was taken from me in Norway, and that lifetime also involved me blaming myself for his misfortunes. In that life, my friend was my hot-headed, easy to provoke brother and I was continually provoking and teasing him throughout our childhood. Later, he became a soldier and was killed in a fight because of his passionate, easy to provoke nature. I blamed myself for having turned him into who he was.

Past life work is a beautiful way to take these connections right back to their source.

The benefits of exploring past life connections:

  • It validates and explains the way you feel about someone, even when how you feel seems to make no sense in the context of your relationship
  • It can help you to let go of relationships that have run their course
  • Clearing the patterns also means you won’t have to repeat the same relationships lifetime after lifetime in order to resolve them.

Now I want to hear from you – have you ever had a chance encounter which left you feeling like you’d met the other person before? Do you have unexplained dynamics or irrational feelings in your relationships that you haven’t been able to shift?

Meet Anna

Hi, I’m Anna Sayce! My purpose here on this website is to provide practical techniques and information to help empaths to understand, and fix the root of their energetic overwhelm & also to help sensitives to embrace and develop their intuitive gifts. I believe that developing our spiritual & intuitive side is very powerful and allows us to improve our own lives, and if we wish, even make the world a better place for others. Discover more >

33 Comments

  1. Merry

    After reading this post, I feel like I have these kind of relationships with some people…online. It’s odd,too, because you just ‘run into them’ from a forum or a blog or something, start emailing, and things go on from there into weirdness.

    I remember you saying(at least I think you did) something about how people we don’t like are our mirrors of ourselves. Have had a lot of those online too. It’s odd to be reading about yourself from someone else. Ha! But really, it used to happen often. I’m trying to understand what all they were mirroring other than I talk about religion/spirituality too much. 😛 Hey, that’s a start!

    -Merry

  2. A

    Recently I had a past life regression with Jay, based on your recommendation. ( I should get back to her but instead, more than a week later I’m still feeling amazed and confused, doubting myself, despite the absolute certainty I had felt in describing what I had seen and felt during the session to her.) We went through a couple of lives; what stuck with me right now is a crush I have on someone far away. It turned out we had strong, unresolved feelings for each other in that life, we held onto that love even though we both moved on.

    Jay helped me to clear it, and it’s incredible what change I felt in myself. I could never understand the intense yearning and obsession I had over her, after all, we’ve never met (online), but after, I could see just what we were, a couple of friends in different continents who liked each other, that’s all. More recently though, and I only let myself face the “truth” tonight, were these inexplicable… levels of feelings: I love her and yet, on the surface, I know and I do only like her. I can’t explain it, and I fear it. I know love, and this one is a deep, settled… It. It’s a good thing that I learned from my previous relationship, another soulmate, that I don’t – we don’t – have to stay in a romantic relationship together. So, there’s that, that’s my story, and when I’ve done processing this, I’ll be sure to have another regression, because let’s face it, the changes are profound in what short time the healing took.

  3. PS

    I saw a psychic medium recently, she runs other programs such as yoga and reiki healing. I asked her if I shared a past life with a man I used to work with. He was older than me and married but we developed a romantic friendship and affection for each other that almost escalated to a physical relationship. He backed out and blamed me for trying to seduce him and accused me of violating boundaries. He didn’t want to see me anymore. I was hurt and confused by this, and spent months in anguish over his words but at the same time I truly missed him.

    The medium told me that the past life which was directly affecting me was this: In a previous life I had kept this man in a dungeon for my every whim, disregarding his feelings. What I had done to him was so terrible he would have gladly seen me suffer for many lifetimes. In this life he felt the scales imbalanced, that I always had more power in the relationship. At first I didn’t believe it, I wasn’t that type of person. Anna, your article on perpetrator lifetimes dispelled my confusion but I also feel like I’ve possibly shared another lifetime with him. I feel like a weight has been lifted though, that there is a reason for all of this and I can finally let go of my pain. When we first met, I felt unusually comfortable around him and an odd thought popped into my head – that I didn’t want him to forget me.

    Even now, I revisit the idea of contacting him and renewing our friendship despite everything that has happened and setting things right.

  4. Davidya

    I’ve run into a number of past relationships over the years. And long term ones that were a lot about resolving those past “repeaters”, reconnecting again and again in different roles but never quite resolving it. Doing a little better this time. Though I’ve tired a little of relationships showing up just to resolve karma. (laughs)

  5. Dean

    During one visit with a psychic medium I was told of a lifetime in Central America as a “healer.” One couple had trouble conceiving and came to see me. I (somehow) enabled the couple to conceive, only to have the husband kill me by stabbing me in the side with a spear, assuming I had impregnated his wife, which I hadn’t. I have a birth mark in the very place I was told I was stabbed. But there wasn’t a connection to anyone present in this lifetime made to the reading.

    I encounter people with regularity that I am instantly “drawn” to. Early on it always bothered me, wondering why. Now I accept that there might be a connection from another time. I’ve never had a past life regression done but do find it fascinating and someday hope to work through that process.

  6. Kat

    I am utterly amazed by your site. I have, for years, complained (on deaf ears) that there is no one like me in the world, and always wondered why I was so different. Then I read all your blogs, and comments from your readers and have finally found my ‘birds of a feather’. I feel I have come home. A massive thank you for coming into my life…..I am eternally grateful.
    I do find that strong personalities affect my emotional well being for good and bad…….I’ve always ‘known’ that such strong reactions are from previous lifes and usually deal with them accordingly hoping to resolve further issues in a future life(s). However, I met someone online……we arranged to meet, but I cancelled……mostly through fear. Ever since for some reason I cannot stop thinking about him, he pops into my mind often even after many months. I know its not regret of not meeting up, that passed after a couple of weeks. This is a ‘knowing’ we should be together; scenarios of future events randomly enter my mind. I tried to text him, he’s clearly not interested.
    My question is: after asking my spirit guide to remove him from my mind, and wanting to truly move on……..I can’t………why?
    Love and light to all xxx

  7. Amanda

    It’s so strange that I received the email about this today. So, is it only negative emotions that carry over through lifetimes? I have a soul friend who I’ve more and more been thinking we must’ve been connected before, I tend to think numerous times. But it’s nothing but intense wonderful emotions. And I tend to have generally positive interactions with people anyway, but with her it’s like times a million.

  8. Valerie May

    I had a coleague who I felt I shouldn’t trust, , even though he was friendly and I taught him healing.
    I had a spontaneous past life memory in which I had taught him healing and things in a previous life and he had denounced me as a witch and as a result I was drowned. Once I had remembered this and let all the emotions out about it I could move on and we are still good friends today.

    Love & light
    Valerie may

  9. Krysta

    Thank you for sharing your past lives. Thank you for explaining how your current life has been affected by these past ‘unresolved emotional issues’ … it’s very interesting.

    It has given me motivation to resolve my current emotional issues because I wouldn’t want to deal with them in my future lives 🙂 I want a clean slate! hehe

    Thanks for your articles and your kindness.

  10. Stacie

    I have always wanted to find out about my past lives. I have found that some people in my life make me react very strongly. For example, I have felt extreme hatred for some people after having met them. For no apparent reason. I am not, by nature, a hateful person. So, I don’t know what to do with those kind of feelings.
    I also know in my heart that I have connections with certain time periods.
    While I have always wanted to explore past lives, I don’t know where to begin. Where does one look for a reputable person to do these things?

  11. Davidya

    Hi Amanda
    I’d think about it more in terms of strong impressions. Impressions make a memory. So yes, both positive and negative.

    On the other hand, we’re more likely to have unresolved negative baggage that draws relationships back for resolution. But there can certainly be unrequited love kinds of things that do too.

  12. Lella

    I’m not sure why this happens to me all the time but whenever I meet a new person, they say they feel like they know me from somewhere but can’t explain where. They often go through a list of where they’ve worked, lived, the family they married into etc, all to no avail. I’m at the point where I get that familiar look from a person and just know what they’re going to ask me next LOL!! Maybe I was a famous person in one of my past lives!!

  13. smitha

    Hey anna,yeah, i do feel like it..
    and i mailed you about last,week !!
    co incidence huh!!

  14. Anat

    Hi Anna,

    Thank you for your article!
    I have a question on healing previous lives relationships that affect this lifetime:
    How would you describe the differences between a past lives regression regarding a certain relationship in current life and an akashic records reading which also explains the history of relationships from other lifetimes, in terms of healing old wounds?

    Thanks

  15. Rutvi Nandani

    I have a connection one of my teachers who served to be the most inspirational person in my life. I saw in him passion for his career which no one could sense in him. In fact, I did my first successful healing on him even though I did not know much about his personal life. Even today, I feel a very strong connection with him. Maybe,he was connected to me in my past life.

  16. Tahni

    It happens to me all the time. I’ve never thought very seriously about past life regression…maybe I’m just worried about what I’ll learn, or maybe something else, but since I was a small child it’s happened. I’ll meet someone and feel an instant strong (even passionate) connection to them. I suddenly love them with my whole heart and being and I cannot understand it! I have a little place in my heart for every person I’ve felt this way about through my life. It’s even happening more often as I get older. I’m rarely left with regret, even if I never strike up a true friendship. It’s just something I carry around with me…little buckets of great love that I’ve decided I won’t know the answer to. Sometimes it makes me cry. Bitterly. But most often I am grateful to have felt something so deeply.

  17. Alyssa

    I was in Ireland last week on a trip and booked a Shamanic healing session. One intention I set for the healing was of finding some clarity about why I have been having such a terrible time letting go of one particular ex of mine. I am sure we still have some unresolved soul connection.

    When the shaman had me scan my body for places where pieces of my soul were broken or missing I found I had a gaping wound in my left shoulder. I gasped in surprise because a few months ago I had a vivid dream that felt more like a memory. I was a woman living in a house out in the wilderness. Two men came and ransacked my home looking for my husband. While one searched my house the other held me down on the ground outside. Eventually they realized I was alone so the man on top of me pulled a blade from his belt and held it my shoulder. He was convinced I knew where my husband was and threaten to cut me until I ‘talked’. I was hysterical and kept screaming over and over that I didn’t know where my husband was, that he has left me ages ago. The men didn’t believe me and so started slashing into me starting at my left shoulder. I realized pretty quickly I was going to die but woke up before the end occurred.

    All this flashed up again during the shaman healing and I knew it was a past life. I recalled having a moment of clarity during my murder that my husband had not left me like I thought he had. I realized he left because those two men who had cut me up were after him. My husband never thought they would bother with me if he fled but he was wrong. I had another flash of clarity that my husband from that lifetime was the ex who I cant let go of now. He loves me so much, but he can’t get over a self-admitted irrational fear that he calls his “blockage”. I think that blockage is a fear of failure because he failed me in a previous life.

    I know I can only heal myself and forgive the abandonment from both lifetimes but I soooo wish he could understand too, because his fear is making his life miserable.

  18. Jennifer Lynne Flint

    Well, you know I have these kinds of issues. My regression with you was very helpful, though, including the clearing work we did afterwards.

    I do recommend that others give it a try, if they’re even vaguely interested. It can be quite illuminating!

  19. Anna

    A – That’s awesome – I’m so glad you got a lot out of your session with Jay!

  20. Anna

    Kat – that is such a nice thing to hear! I’m really pleased you relate to my site.

    Perhaps you could cut a cord or do some past life work around it.

  21. Anna

    Amanda – it is not just negative experiences which can carry through from other lives – our positive bonds can, too. I usually focus on the negative experiences because those can benefit most from healing and clearing.

  22. Anna

    Stacie – there are plenty of past life regressionists out there, if you live in a city you should have your pick of them. If you don’t have a local regressionist, you might want to do a session with someone who works via Skype. I will be offering sessions later this year by Skype.

  23. Anna

    Lella – how funny! Maybe you were someone famous.

  24. Anna

    Anat – The Akashic Record readings, as I teach and practise them, can give information that might help to resolve or understand something about a relationship on the psychological level, whereas the past life regression is better for creating a spiritual shift, if that makes sense.

  25. Anna

    Tahni – maybe you just have a lot of love and compassion in your heart to give to others? It could be a soul gift of yours.

  26. Anna

    Alyssa – wow that’s an interesting experience you had.

  27. Joey

    Some pretty interesting stories, it’s amazing how this past life concept explains how we just feel a certain way about a person without even knowing why or the full details!

    As for my own karmic or meeting a person that I felt like I met before, I did have that twice and it was all positive. Those two people are a married couple and I was first friends with the husband and it was an instant friendship; it never felt awkward or forced at all. Ditto for his wife, we’d spend time hanging out and it felt comfortable like we had been friends forever.

    And what’s really interesting is where they lived and how it seems like we both wanted to live there as well. Maybe we just knew we were going to meet up someday and subconsciously decided where to go. They both used to live in Charleston and I thought about moving there over 10 years ago but ended up staying where I’m at now. And those 2 friends moved near me about 7 years ago and we met through the guy’s brother who happened to live next door to me.

    I don’t think it was some random coincidence that I thought about moving to charleston when those two friends lived there as well. I even went to a psychic asking about those people and she said they are part of my soul group which does make sense because even though I didn’t know them for a long time it felt like we had been friends forever.

  28. Jenniffer

    Funnily enough it seems my whole life has been riddled with these experiences and with no end in sight either, unfortunately. I just turned thirty this past August and it took me till now to realize this was true of my spirit and that I have unconsciously made seemingly all of my, or at least a majority of, my past life errors a priority in this life time. I haven’t had an awesome run of things in this life. I thought I was cursed. I thought I was insane. You name it, but I get it now and see the connections. When I was thirteen years old my adopted mother told me she was sick, and that what she had there was no cure for. Now I didn’t really understand then what she meant but as the months and then years went by and she became more and more ill, had multiple surgeries which left her incapable of working and eventually caring for me or my father (Who is another of my negative past life partners) and the responsibility then was my own. But more importantly there was always this pull to her for her, this Emotion of feeling compelled to her I had to be there all the time, to care for her and I felt as though leaving were the biggest crime I could commit and never knew why. But I was torn because she refused to communicate to me that she “needed” me to stay the way that pull compelled me too, she never communicated she would die, she always said she wanted me to live my life to the fullest. So it was this back and forth between her and I, my own guilt about even something as simple as going to school or going to a movie with a friend and leaving her alone or staying home and being so sad and chronically severely depressed because I knew, even though she would protect me and deny it, that she wasn’t going to make it. My mom passed away when I was nineteen to make a longer story short and I am not only still dealing with the grief and guilt of her passing but now my father is also ill and in a nursing home far too soon and I know that not only am I emotionally dealing with a great struggle in and with him but everything I couldn’t figure out spiritually about mom too has come back round full circle. I havn’t had the money for a regression yet but I am deffinately saving my pennies because I am more than certain this is the life time I HAVE TO figure this out in. Its like an urgency within myself to know how and why and its been there since i was a little girl.

  29. Esther

    Hi Anna, any Regressionist you can recommend is South Africa pls.
    I used the online recordings and got some memories, implications of the soul site, great breathing exercise then 10 minutes regression, bits and pieces recalled. Great subject, even kids can do it

  30. Anna

    Hi Esther,

    I’m sorry I don’t know of any regressionists in South Africa, but if you Google the International Association of Past Life Regressionists you should be able to find someone on their website.

    Good luck!

  31. Patrina

    Hi Anna

    I’m an intuitive empath and soul connections with karmic relationships drive me crazy especially when they’re useless.

    Honestly, my past life connections have driven me insane. My love life seems to be haunted by karmic past life connections. My connection with my twin flame was useless and all it was doing was having my soul consumed in sorrow and greif from whatever happened in our past life between us. I finally got that karma cleared up and before I completed my healing another soul came into my life and we had explosive chemistry with all these synchronicities that even his logical mind had to admit was crazy. A psychic told me that our souls are very familiar with each other and the soul connection was very strong, reminiscent of a twin flame connection but not as strong. The only problem was I was 3 years older than this person and his ego and materialistic self was bothered by the age difference. He chose to end the chemistry because he couldn’t decide between his head and his soul. Except now I’m left with this useless soul connection again =( I just can’t seem to live my life separated from another soul. These connections make me think about the person, i’m connected to their thoughts, their feelings towwards me. I feel how they truly feel about me, and I feel their resistance and denial. it’s insane.

    Is it necessary to live like this as an intuitive empath? It’s greatly annoying to me =( Especially when I know the truth and they deny it to my face.

  32. Patrina

    I just wanted to add that thank god, you have your blog up, because it’s a bit reassuring to know that someone else on this planet experiences these crazy soul connections and karma from a past life. My time with my twin flame was only 4 months long in this life time but I was connected to this thoughts, feelings for the next 10 years on top of the sorrow, grief and pain that made no logical sense for a 4 months relationship and for it to last 10 years. I had to get some intense karma clearing that lasted the past two years.

    And also your experiences with your soul sounds very much like mine. My soul is very strong and stubborn and has it’s own thoughts and feelings. Othertimes it’s like a child I just reprimanded. It’s like I’m my own person with my own consciousness and then there’s my soul that has it’s own consciousness.

    When I went through my awakening, it was insane, especially since my chakras were shut down except for my third eye and crown, I lived my life through the eyes of my soul. I was here but not here. And I knew that I wasn’t insane but it felt insane. lol I totally resonate with your website title. Again i’m really glad that you’re out there and I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.

    I thought it was over with, but now another soul connection has come up and again it’s unrequited love. what gives? It’s frustrating that people reject their souls. It boggles my mind to no end and it’s so not fair for me and my soul. =(

  33. Kayla

    I have read all three articles in this series. It is very interesting to me the connections I can make with my past lives and how I feel around certain people and why I feel that way. I’ve found that the more I analyze these feelings, the more pieces of these past lives come together. For example, my husband was my brother in one of my lives. And feelings from that past life have crossed over to this relationship. I used to feel very defensive with my husband, always feeling like he was trying to control me and what I did, even when that wasn’t really happening. I would feel an intense need to defy him, even when he really was approaching me from a helpful place rather than a controlling one. Over some digging into my past lives, I have figured out that in my life where my husband was my brother, he was very possessive and meddled into my life frequently to have the outcomes that best suited him and what he thought was good for me. Getting in between me and my lovers, friends, etc. It has helped me understand where our souls need healing together. In recent light, I have found another piece to this story that is surprising and not at the same time. My stepdad and I have always butted heads, even when I was very little when there was no cause for tension between us. I always “hated” him for no reason. As I got older he got to be controlling, and really had no care for what I wanted with my life. My stepdad often tried to push his ideas of success and what path I need to take to be his definition of successful. Well, what I wanted to do with my life was far different. The more I resisted his wishes for me, the more our relationship strained. Well my soul has recently revealed to me that in the same past life where my husband was my brother, my stepdad was my husband and I’s biological father. My stepdad in this life was also very controlling and abusive and manipulative. Which also explains the strained relationship between my husband and my stepdad. The more connection with these feeling that I make, the more pieces of my past life story I get. It’s very interesting and revealing.

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