Folk from your past?

For those of you who remember your previous lives or some of them, have you met people from your past lives in this life? How did it feel?

I met my "maker" if that counts?

And that's fucking scary is what.

I've met several... and it was traumatic. Brought back memories I could have probably done just fine without. I know that sounds crass, but there are some things you just don't want to remember. That said---and none of the relationships have gone very well---I wouldn't take it back. I wouldn't NOT meet them. They all had something to teach me about people in general and about my own past.

Now the folks from home and the ones who "visit" that are already dead? Meeting them again and getting my memories back was a good thing. Like seeing relatives you haven't seen since you were a toddler or something. Vague warm fuzzies and they look like people you love so it's good.

One. It was uneventful. Some people can't grasp the concept of current lives not being a re-do.

I've met a few. There's always this sense of recognition - as if I know them already, even though I've never met them before. It's unsettling, not too unlike déjà vu (though where déjà vu is the sense of having been in a situation before / done the same thing before without having done it, this is more just... recognizing someone, knowing them already without having ever met them). Sometimes it's just a twinge that sneaks up on me. Other times, with the really strong pre-existing connections, it hits like a speeding truck.

I have learned that it's better to not date people I have that past-life recognition with. Too much baggage.

My best friend, the person I call brother (though he isn't), is probably the closest past-life connection I have; he's my only Family (in the ... long-forged recurring deep connections sense of Family) that I've encountered thus far. Some of the clearest joint memories we have are not pleasant ones, though. Fortunately there's been plenty of lifetimes since then that have been more... positive? Healthier relationships? Less traumatic? Take your pick.

Okay, I'm gonna do the long version.

I'm the sort of person who doesn't form much if any "first impression".
I don't register people that way. I form my impression slowly, over time.
People have often introduced me to someone and then asked me after an hour's interaction what I think of them, and I look back at them blankly and go "I don't know, I haven't talked to them enough yet to think anything of 'em".
And yet...

I met a man on the internet, over the IRC at first, and the moment he entered the chat it felt, to me, as if he were an authority figure, capable of booting me from the chat and then some.
It made me uneasy, as if I were really very small by comparison.
Talking to him seemed difficult, but not because he was difficult to talk to, but because I felt intensely uncomfortable.
Examining my emotional reaction made me realize I was afraid of him. Very afraid.
I'm rarely "afraid". I get nervous, or startled, or "paranoid", but not so much nor often "afraid", so this was a highly unusual experience for me for a number of reasons.
I decided/realized that this emotional reaction had no logical basis and thus bit it back, attempted to control it, base my opinion/reaction on what I "know" not on some stupid, first thought upon his log-in.
It was extremely slow going.

We talked a fair bit though, about lots of things, often exchanging small tidbits of surrounding information, things that go "around" the kintype as we understood it.
It was a dance-around-the-topic way of conversing sometimes, or so it seems in hindsight anyway.
Eventually we exchanged larger pieces of information in a controlled sort of setting, avoiding cross contamination.

When I read his version of the story of my "birth", my head swam.
At the time I made some vague excuse as all my fear and nervousness fought to take over again (iirc, something about it being late and needing sleep) and went to the washroom and threw up a couple times.

In memory, past life memory that is, I was both intensely terrified and intensely hateful of my maker. I blamed him for my existence and everything negative that came of it, consciously and/or subconsciously, throughout a number of lifetimes. I've had a hostile view of both father figures and authority figures in every live I can remember.
To reconcile that with the highly intelligent and quite likable person I spoke to was at that moment entirely impossible.

It's been a while since and I've been to meet him in person already.
The first lifetime he towered over me. I was maybe 2/3's of his then height, but now he's significantly shorter than me, and yet, even in person, it is as if I'm the small one.

It's as if I somehow still know, against all information, logic or reason, that he still could choose to change his mind on the topic of my existence. That I could be "disassembled" easily.
It's a difficult sensation to work with or around as it exists without "reasonable cause" and persists even if I throw logic and reason at it.

Still, I do consider him my friend and wouldn't want to lose that over unverifiable ancient history.

How about the reverse? i met this girl, online..., years back who insisted she knew me from a past life in some other place. Actually, she insisted that she knew TWO of my past incarnations. now, i don't recall any of it. I don't even buy into past lives.

However, and this is weird (also it was spoken of in another thread a while back) she gave a description of me. What was weird was that the description she gave was EXACTLY that of my first ever D&D character that I made while SOI in the Marines. Exact right down to the chunk of malachite in the silver hawk brooch..

W.......T.........F

I've encountered several, various different reactions.

In general, I get a mild "panic" from some people actually. Not panic because I'm afraid of them, or the past, or whatever. As folks have probably picked up, I try to be methodical and as scientific as I can with a lot of the occult stuff. So when I meet someone I recognize, I tend to freeze up, part of me wants to just grab them and say "Do you remember being in X during YTimeframe?" but I know that if they said yes, I'd never be able to trust it against a created memory, so I hold back. I take time so I can work out my side as much as I can without their interference. If I think I know someone, I take the time to try to narrow down where/when, then to isolate whatever memories of them as I can. As always, these have to get written down, because no matter how good your memory is, your brain is out to deceive you. With info written down and sorted out, then I can interact with the person, without fear of being coloured, then it is just a matter of withholding information from them until I have reason to do otherwise. The panic, is also in part because I can't root out the sceptic in me who would want nothing more than to be able to disprove my mythology so I could live without it. Don't get me wrong, I love who I am, and the memories of what I've been through, but my life would be easier if it was all a dream.

One of my best friends and I go a ways back, when I first met him, and got a glimpse of it, I distanced myself from him for eight months, no emails, no contact, nothing. Then when we did start talking again it still took another two years for anything to come out.

How stuff works out varies from person to person. Some people drive home the idea that people change, one of my best friends (called my best frienemy) and I had such a troubled past, that we joke really we just took alternating turns murdering each other, and I'm now close with other people who had my worst interest at heart for various lives. Then again, I'm also now not talking to some people who were closest to me in the past because who we are now is too much at odds to be peaceful with each other. Some people don't change, not always a bad thing, but can be a problem if not handled right.

I agree with Meirya, don't date people you've been with in the past* too much baggage. You can drag up old issues, fall into the wrong patterns, or old patterns. With the only person from my past that I dated, the problem was one of us kept the old pattern of relationship, the other one was trying to build something new. Didn't match.

*I won't say it never works, but it's a tricky thing to manoeuvre.

I've met a few... Dated three (more on that), best friends/sometimes lovers with one. And sometimes I see people and I'm like "guhbuhduhgah." and I just want to hug/smack/talk to them.
The first guy I dated was the whole reason I was here. Somehow I was involved in jeopardizing his soul in my last life, and I was sent to restore it. I failed. Immediately after, I went into a deep depression and tried to commit suicide. I felt my life was forfeit, and that I needed to live no longer.
The second guy wa someone from a great many years ago. Our relationship ended sloppily, but not as sloppy as our one from that earlier life when he had killed our children and sent me to a nunnery. (:
This last one is who I am currently with. We've only been with each other once before, and we ended up arguing about something and splitting up. That was the only other life that I've known about my kinship, and he knew about his, too. He actually specifically came into this life (he's a walk-in angel) to try and make ammends (in addition to some other things.)

lillightfoot Wrote:For those of you who remember your previous lives or some of them, have you met people from your past lives in this life? How did it feel?

Life-changing.

Sometimes because of the sense of connection and where that lead.
Sometimes because it triggered a series of memories that caused me to rethink who and what and how I am.
Sometimes because it made me aware of things that I hadn't known.
Sometimes because it made me aware of things that I should have already known, but had somehow been ignoring.