Assuming we reincarnate, who/what/where were you in a previous life?

[Modem Butterfly]

I'm an atheist, but if reincarnation were true, I would have been a nightclub singer in 1930's Berlin.

Who/what/where would you have been in a previous life?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

1. i was a cat

[DS1]

2. A Freakin'

[Hillaryin08]

42. I have a need to stockpile food and water

Its borderline compulsive. I keep a ton of food in our cabinets at all times. I must of died of starvation or lived through some sort of concentration camp scenario. I also have dreams where I have to nurse my children to keep them alive and they are like three or four. Just a side note. I have never not had plenty of food in this life.

[mopinko]

3. i have often said

that i hope that, if a past life got me the one i have now, i hope i enjoyed the evil that i did then. i would hate to think that i am paying now for evil done in misery and compulsion. i hope i was snidley whiplash, gleefully tying nell to the train tracks.

[Modem Butterfly]

4. That's a good one!

:)

[Kire]

5. I was a bad Buddha.

so they made me what I am now

[BigMcLargehuge]

6. I was a young Frenchman gassed to death at Verdun probably

Or a British lad cut down at the Somme, or drowned in the mud at Ypres, or a spritely German peasant soldier killed at Tannenbourg...

Or I was one of the guys in that Too Much Joy Song, My Past Lives

I was Genghis Kahn
I was Aristophenes
I was a guy named Urgh in 50,000 B.C.

I was Rasputin and all the chicks he had
I was Catherine the Great
I was my mom and dad

I've been a butcher I've been a baker I have been a bookmaker
I have skippered Clipper ships and dug for undertakers
I've lived to be 98 and I have died when I was four
I've lived through war and peace and war and war and war and war

I could write a book about my past lives
I should write a book about my past lives
I died three times at Waterloo
This life's not the best but at least I'm not you

I was Abe Lincoln I was all the slaves he freed
This life's not the best but at least you're not me
I've been French noblemen and I've been Russian peasants
I've been somebodies, nobodies, once I was a pheasant

I was there when Ceasar bled and I followed where Moses led
I wrote the words Mohammed said, I kissed the ground where St. Paul tread
I was best man when Henry wed, I put the crown on George's head
I slept in Washington's bed, I shot John F. Kennedy dead

I watched Atlantis sink below, hung out with Bowie at the Alamo
I didn't like being Edgar Allen Poe, I was sick a lot whe I was Rimbaud
I helped the druids build Stonehenge, me and Buddha invented Zen
Once I borrowed Shakespeare's pen, Joan of Arc was my best friend

[Zuni]

9. If I was reincarnated, I think I was a WWI soldier too

I have had weird dreams that have a decidely WWI-esque feel, with trenches, mud, and a feeling of being totally trapped under gunfire.

I could not tell you what battle it was or what uniform I wore, or if it was just a dream brought on by reading too many books on the subject.

[Eloriel]

12. WWII for me

In fact, I had a flasback about it. I was a young countryboy soldier in Germany -- terribly naive, having lived a very sheltered life in Kansas or somewhere. I was terrified. Too terrified to continue living and I couldn't desert because I would have to be on the run AND totally terrified, day and night. So I engineered my own death. The most vivid part was the heartache about not being able to say goodbye to my mother, and how she would miss me and mourn. But I just couldn't take it. At least she wouldn't have to know I was what people thought of as a "coward." Except *I* knew I wasn't -- I was out there every day being just as brave and doing as much as anyone else, the difference was living with the constant terror which I couldn't shake, and could NOT continue to live with.

[hyphenate]

7. Well

we've done some regressions and come up with interesting past lives. Like slaves in Egypt and Rome, country bumpkins, mountain climbers, smugglers in Florida, and more. Kind of interesting if you don't take it too seriously.

[Modem Butterfly]

8. My mother believes she was a tomb painter in ancient Egypt

When I was a kid, we went to see the King Tut exhibit in Seattle. I remember the look in my mother's eye as she stared at the delicate hyroglyphics. It was as though a light had turned on. She has a deep and abiding interest in ancient Egypt and when she created a mummy exhibit for a haunted house her women's group put together she spent hours researching and reproducing actual funerial texts. Mom's a strange woman, but her belief in reincarnation and this previous life she believes she had are unshakeable.

[jackelope72]

10. I have reason to think that I was killed in action in Vietnam.

I was born in 1972, just as the war was winding down, so I have no way of having actual memories of it. But every time I try to watch a movie or t.v. show about the war, or one that takes place in Vietname during the war, I become very jittery and upset, many times to the point of nausea. I am very much a pacifist, but I don't have the same problems watching movies or t.v. shows dealing with other wars.

In college, our theater department performed a show about women serving in Vietnam; one of the scenes took place during the Tet offensive, and I could barely make it through that scene every night (I was running the lights for the show). I remember just sobbing during that scene, and saying, "God, that was so horrible. So awful." The soundboard operator thought I was talking about the performances, but I wasn't. Somehow or other, I was connecting very viscerally to the events the play was talking about.

[Eloriel]

15. Sounds like it to me too

It's said that a lot of people born right after wars were those who died IN the wars. The baby boomers after WWII, and I think also a lot of those born after VIetnam.

My own son was born in 1971 and while I'm not at all sure he is in that group, his "appreciation" and even knowledge of some of the music of that era -- esp. but not limited to the Beatles -- has always been a clue to me.

My stepson, OTOH, actually had a flashback, altho he later denied it was anything but "imagination." He remembered walking thru the jungle, being frightened, and carrying a bazooka-like weapon, a shoulder-fired grenade launcher or something?

If these "memories" are bothersome, I'd encourage you to pursue either Rapid Eye therapy (with a trained therapist), or Emotional Freedom Technique (which you can learn yourself www.emofree.com or find someone trained) or even a hypnotherapist who deals with both past lives and ameliorating trauma. No need to suffer with it in this life too.

[jackelope72]

34. I wouldn't exactly say I suffer with it...

I do find it a bit discomforting, and I have to make sure I avoid Vietnam-themed movies unless I'm with someone I trust to be able to deal with it if I start freaking out. But it's not like I have dreams about it or flashbacks. Nevertheless, I am going to check out that site; I also have a friend who does past-life regression therapy, and I may work up the courage to have her do a session with me. She doesn't know about my "Vietnam thing", so it'll be interesting to see if that comes up in my session.

[Touchdown]

11. Nero's Imperial dog washer.

At least that's what Penn & Teller said we should all aspire to be.

[Phillycat]

13. I like the way people are always like, "I was Cleopatra!" or

somebody else famous. There had to be just some regular people, right?

[Eloriel]

17. No, that's mostly a misconception

Most of us who actually DO remember past lives were typically just average people.

[Modem Butterfly]

22. God I've heard so many people say just that

Someone once told me they were Catherine the Great in a previous life. I couldn't stop myself, I just had to ask if she was still into horses. That person stopped talking to me after that.

[1monster]

14. According to a dream I had (and I rarely remember dreams) I was a

clerical worker in a huge office building during WWII. I was going up on an elevator when a bomb hit the building and the elevator went down.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Very, very fast, it went down and I died.

The dream was extraordinarily detailed. My dreams are usually extremely vague.

[bleedingheart]

16. do you know that a bomber plane hit the Empire state building?

there is this chilling photo of a woman who fell to her death from that accident onto the roof of a car...

perhaps you were her??? but then you said you were in an elevator...

[1monster]

18. I knew about the plane hitting the Empire State Building, but not about

the falling woman... I don't think I'll check into it too deeply... Somethings are better not known. }(

[Modem Butterfly]

25. There was an elevator crash resulting from that accident

But the women in the elevator survived.

[TN al]

26. Because of a dream that can be similarly described as your dream...

...I may have died with Cook in Hawaii. Note: I was NOT Cook but with him. By the way when I read your post I had a clear impression of you as a German clerical worker and was surprised when I re-read your post and found no mention of which side you were on. I have no known new age powers so don't read too much into my impression.

[1monster]

43. In truth, I don't know what country I was in. Which is why

I didn't state it. It very well could have been Germany and I think it might have been. Or England during the blitz.

[FarLeftRage]

19. I have always felt that I was a sailor

aboard the U.S.S. Arizona that was attacked and sank at Pearl Harbor.

Some of my earliest memories as an infant, in my mind was of being on board a fiery ship...

I know this sounds hard to believe, but that is what I remember.

[SheilaT]

20. I have dreams every so often

in which I seem to be in a concentration camp in WWII and I'm trying to protect/save my (this life) younger brother, and apparently can't do so. I've become convinced over the years that these dreams actually represent a real earlier life, and since I was born shortly after WWII, the timing fits.

I know a young man who believes he was a crewman who went down on the Titanic. He absolutely cannot bear to read or see anything about it, and understandably has never watched the movie of that name.

Notice how no one here reports having been a famous person, but rather some relatively anonymous ordinary one whose life would leave little or no record behind.

[Modem Butterfly]

24. Perhaps it's "Media Memories"

For instance, a college friend believed that she was the reincarnation of someone who died at Jonestown. She had a recurring dream about bodies in the jungle and a deep fear and revulsion of Kool-Aid. Yet she was two years old during the Jonestown massacre. What's more, at the time she had been living in the Bay Area, where many of the Jonestown people were from, and where images from Jonestown were played on local television nearly constantly (I know, because I was slightly older and living near enough to the Bay Area that we got our TV from there). Those images were seared into her earliest memories and she got confused about them. I believe that many past-life memories are nothing more than a crossing of wires in our brains- after all, human memory is very maleable.

[SheilaT]

28. You do have a point.

For a very long time I dismissed my dreams as being made up precisely because I did know enough about the Holocaust and concentration camps to account for them.

But the way my connection to my brother has played out in this life feels like proof. He now lives with me, in the basement, working as a night shift stocker at Target. He's an alcoholic, and has essentially put himself in a prison. He came to live with me about five years ago when he was on the verge of becoming homeless.

For someone who simply does not believe in reincarnation, most of these stories do not offer any kind of proof, and mine is especially tenuous. In my case I have long since come to believe in reincarnation, and so it's the best explanation for me.

I also have a couple of other what I have to call misplaced memories, because they don't seem to belong in this lifetime, although again, it's possible they're "media memories", although they date from a time before I could have learned those things any other way.

[Modem Butterfly]

33. Humans, particularly young children, absorb more than we're aware of

The other day I caught myself reciting part of the poem "The Creation of Sam McGee," I've read the poem a few times, and knew that my grandfather, who died when I was four, loved that poem and recited it often. I realized that I knew the first couple of stanzas by heart and mentioned it to my mother. She said that Papa had taught me those stanzas before he died. I barely remember this man, but somehow, I remember this poem word for word 30 years later.

The human mind is a marvel and a mystery.

[catmandu57]

21. I don't know, but,

I must have been a mean mother fucker that's repaying past evil.

[Blue-Jay]

23. I was a pretty, pretty pony.

And maybe Hitler as well.

[AlienGirl]

27. Someones unremarkable...

A girl doing her best to survive. A teenage boy who mishandled explosives. A kid who lived near a river in India. A deposed female shaman's rebellious daughter. And so on all the way back to amoebas.

Tucker

[chelsea0011]

29. Sumo wrestler

[SmokingJacket]

30. A journalist on a roof in London during the Blitz.

A textile factory worker in the North of England.

A wife/housekeeper in the Middle east.

A cabin boy on a ship, viking era (drowned).

Not saying I believe any of it!! But I did regression once and was startled at the detail of the stuff I came up with.

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

31. a zealous dominikan Inquisitor

burning heathens, heretics and witches

[mwdem]

32. I'm sure I was someone now famous...wasn't everyone?

:shrug:

[AlienGirl]

37. No

I was never famous, as far as I know. I remember being very frustrated when I was little because I didn't remember what my name "used to be."

One of my goals from a very early age has been to get my writing into an anthology that I'll read in school in my next life, so I can read about my life this time and, with luck, not lose too many of my memories...things like my name and my birthday and stuff.

Tucker

[mwdem]

38. Actually I remember being in a prairie, with hills in the background,

no father to my children, I had three, and an Indian riding towards me. I truly believe there's something to reincarnation.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

35. A Roman Praetor...........................

I have always been very interested in ancient Rome.

[mitchum]

36. Incitatus (Caligula's horse)

[mvd]

39. I know it's naughty as a Catholic to think that..

there's some possibility of reincarnation, but I think there is. I was probably a musician in an early rock band in the 50s.

[fortyfeetunder]

40. Dreams of being buried alive

I was a young person and buried alive...not sure when that was!!!

[bleedingheart]

41. I was a voluptuous peasant girl in Eastern Europe

and the Lord of the Manor house was in lust with me and would chase me through the fields...

:evilgrin:

[Catchawave]

44. Mary Todd Lincoln

Dunno why, but she shoulda married a Democrat too !

[HEyHEY]

45. Probably a working class guy somewherre

[vixengrl]

46. I had a total bender experience while messed up on SoCO

and orange juice where I did this past life regression thing (or I think it was like a past life regression thing) and recalled being a mixed race southern woman who wanted to be an actress but drank too damn much and had an awfully bitter life. And further back, I recalled being a woman somewhere in Ireland whose eight kids were all gone, most from disease or just not being hearty, but on boy went off with the Navy (it think he was impressed into it--or that was her suspicion). Because I was heavily drunk, I don't know what to make of it. The people I was drinking with were into Crowley and some New Age stuff, so they just let me ramble. I recall just a little bit, but it felt creepy, and the sorrow felt quite real (but some drunks do get maudlin--but over stuff that's...made up? Creative, my pick elephants were.)

[Robeson]

47. Julius Caesar...

...Hey, might as well shoot for the top!