A Reincarnation Story

I’d been working at the international headquarters of a spiritual organization in Menlo Park, California. As most of the employees were members of this particular organization, lunch table conversations naturally centered on subjects inherent to the teaching, subjects such as dreams, past lives, and the shortest path home to God.

One day, as she nibbled on a carrot stick, a co-worker I had nicknamed Zeta told me of a recent past life recall she’d had. She remembered flying in a one person aircraft, seeing herself as both the pilot and a bombardier. A white cloth was tied around her head. She was horrified as she watched herself dropping bombs on people who were going about their lives in an open plaza in Atlantis.

At the time, some of my managerial duties included providing oversight to a department that was editing video recordings from a recent conference. We had hired an outside company to help record the event and to assist our own folks with assembling the material for eventual distribution to the membership.

One day in casual conversation, one of the production assistants from the outside company confided in me that she had an unusual dream awhile back that still troubled her. Before going any further, however, she made it perfectly clear that she did not believe in any of the things we believed in—things like prophetic dreams, reincarnation or karma. Slightly red-faced from knowingly being in contradiction to her own belief system, she told me her dream.

It seems that she had been walking across a plaza where there were lots of people milling about doing what people do on pleasant days. A deafening sound descended, quite literally, out of the blue. The crowd began to run in all directions as dozens of low-flying planes roared into sight and began dropping bombs, creating small, but effective explosions. The production assistant recalled that the pilots wore (drum roll here) white headbands.

If your logical mind is asking how someone on the ground could tell what the pilots were wearing I can only say that dreams do not play out like our lives in the physical universe. In dreams, you can be present in your all-knowing, 360-degree soul body as an observer.

I imagine my mouth must have hung open as I listened to her story. Two people I knew who didn’t know one another had the same dream from different perspectives: a bomber and the bombed. As they say, something was afoot in all of this.

Hesitantly, I asked the production assistant if she would like to meet to someone who had told me about a similar dream. She nodded. “Stay right here,” I said as I spun on my heel and started off in the direction of Zeta’s cubicle.

Zeta and the production assistant exchanged stories as they stood in the back hallway. Hardly able to breathe, I watched in silence and astonishment. This was one of those momentous moments in time and space that somehow get orchestrated to resolve a longstanding karmic debt. The disturbing memory of that day in Atlantis, lodged deeply within both their hearts, was about to be removed with the precision of a surgeon’s knife.

How simply the karma played itself out. Zeta looked at the production assistant, tears swimming in her eyes, and said, “I’m sorry.” The production assistant nodded her acceptance and a debt was paid.

The world began to spin again.

Not all karma gets to be worked out in such a simple and straightforward manner. And who knows, perhaps the two of them have been meeting and working toward this moment for centuries. The moral of the story, however, is to stay awake. Watch for those moments when you can consciously finish unfinished business and make further spiritual progression possible for all. If you miss a moment, it might be a long time coming before all the circumstances and conditions for resolution get so perfectly lined up once again.

Most recalls are not so dramatic as the story above so you have to truly pay attention. You might start by looking closely at the people, places and things that you are deeply attracted to or inexplicably repelled by in this lifetime. I had a sister-in-law, for example, who brought the Druids up in every other conversation. I suspect that something of significance might have happened to her in a past life among these priests, healers and arbitrators who first appeared in Britain around 600 B.C.

Think about it. Have you found yourself collecting books on Spanish folklore, avoiding the Mayan exhibit at your local museum, or intuitively knowing what it feels like to be an indentured servant? Our lives today are filled with hints of our past. Pay attention. Start making a few notes on possible past life connections and see where it leads.

The bottom line: Live consciously, resolve, grow.

-Excerpt from The Would Be Saint available in paperback mid April at Amazon.com