Reincarnation: How Do We Learn Spiritually if We Don’t Remember Past-Lives?
Note: this explanation doesn’t mean I think this is “how things are supposed to be”. I’m simply discussing how our reality metaphysically works, at this time. As always, text contains links to terms in the glossary.
The Metaphysical Veil Obscures The Spiritual Nature of Reality, and of Ourselves
When the spiritual self plunges into incarnation the metaphysical veil descends upon their consciousness. Its passively active effect is of blocking and keeping away from perception any evident signs of memories and perceptions from what was before, as well as of one’s spiritual nature.
Note these are technically still accessible. All human beings have the ability, active or potential, to access the Divine and their own Light. Still and largely speaking, it may take the human self a degree of effort and learning to acknowledge and tap into that connection. Otherwise, by and large human beings conduct their everyday lives without any remembrance of their past-lives or anything else beyond their current lifetime.
In incarnation/reincarnation, the only true break in awareness that ever occurs is in the instant of birth, which is when one’s spiritual sight suddenly comes under the effect of the Veil and all that is not part of the new, ongoing life becomes “hidden”. Whereas the instant of death is, or is intended to be, a release of that veiling effect and a gradual transition back to the original perception of the self.
So, since our perception of anything beyond the current life is blocked or blurred, a question that’s often asked is: how do we learn and grow spiritually and from reincarnation if we can’t remember our past-lives?
Memories and Their Processing Aren’t Exclusively Conscious
As a human life unfolds, we may have the impression we’re navigating it majorly from conscious understanding. And maybe we’d like to think we’re basing at least a good part of our decisions and actions on logical reasoning. But that’s not completely true, of course. There’s a great deal that goes into human agency that’s not conscious/logical, but rather of an emotional and even unconscious/spiritual nature.
First, many choices and intentions, major and overarching as well as the minor moment-by-moment ones, are to an extent guided by the seeking of sources of pleasure, happiness, and fulfillment — or at least that the mind thinks it might bring these things.
Conversely, sources of distress and trauma, both conscious and unconscious, create ongoing needs designed around the management, avoidance, or damage control of those things that are perceived as being sources of more trauma, or at least unwanted outcomes.
So to an extent the driving impulse for behaviors can have an emotional, sensorial, fear-based, pleasure-seeking, curiosity-related etc. quality, perhaps with such factors being justified afterward in a rational manner. And while some of these won’t be realized consciously or fully, they’ll still be able influence behavior just as strongly.
Some of these factors will have originated from events that happened during the ongoing life. But others originate from previous ones, kept in a type of subconscious — but still real and “active” — memory called the Akashic Records.
In short, the substrate human beings operate from as they live isn’t exclusively mental or rational, rather it entails a complex tapestry of emotional and spiritual items, with some of them being unconscious, and some of those predating the current life. This is how some of the situations and memories from past-lives can still “reach” you and affect the current ongoing one, which is not an exception but rather the norm.
Growth Is Often Occurring Aside From The Mind
Likewise, personal growth isn’t something that’s occurring in the mind alone.
It’s true you’ll have times of realization and insight; there will be “ah-ah moments” and other instances where you’re crossing thresholds with a translation on a rational level. And you’ll make certain key decisions that can change things greatly and have great impact. These are still important since spiritual evolution involves the participation of all of the self, including those on the level of human awareness.
That said, growth itself is a thing that has its own timings and is not created by the mind: by and large you won’t be able to think your way through growth even if you want to. Rather, a lot to personal and spiritual development takes place apart from the mind, sometimes entirely beyond it.
Your “understanding” of an experience includes but is not limited to the mind; there’s a lot spiritual processing that takes place as emotions are lived, which in turn involves feeling as opposed to thinking. In fact, experiences are felt and processed throughout all layers of the self, and can be engaged by those layers through feeling rather than by being understood logically.
Thus a significant portion of growth and development revolve around emotions, and perhaps you can call it, energy. Around the act of feeling things as well as going through what brought them about. This is an overall process the shorthand term of which could very well be called spiritual, and in which the mind can play an important role but is not its main element. And it’s another way by which transformation can occur even if the conscious mind isn’t necessarily involved.
There’s Continuity From One Life to the Next: You’re Largely the Same Being, Conscious Awareness Aside
The reason we can learn and progress as spiritual beings even not remembering past-lives, is because there’s an uninterrupted continuity in a spiritual and emotional sense from one life to the next – even though there’s a break/interruption in terms of conscious awareness for a new incarnation.
In other words, the spiritual self going through experiences is exactly the same as the one who had just left the previous life, and had all the other lives before it. While for a new incarnation there’s a break with the awareness of the previous self, that interruption occurs only on that level; whereas the spiritual entity is otherwise entirely the same, carrying from before as if death/birth and anything in-between them never happened.
As you face situations in this lifetime, and perhaps dealing with their points of challenge and distress, you’re consciously addressing them as if they’ve occurred anew (in this life). Which is normal and expected; but on emotional and spiritual levels you’re feeling and navigating those situations with the substrate from your past, i.e. the layers of yourself you might not be fully aware of but that continue, virtually uninterrupted, from before this life.
Further, many of those situations will have been co-created from or influenced by that substrate also, since one’s personal reality is at all times a reflection of their inner world (in what’s known as law of attraction, which includes the aforementioned layers that go beyond the mind.
This is, in fact, how with karma certain situations from the past end up finding your way into your present reality. These situations again may look like things that simply happened in this lifetime, when in reality they will be, or match with, experiences that did not receive closure or healing and thus need to be processed and offered so today.
Furthermore, when you draw new insights, conclusions, understanding, when you make decisions and commitments, or whatever else you take away from your experiences, such things won’t be lost in a vacuum. In other words, they aren’t limited to the scope of this life. Rather, when powerful or impactful enough they’re being added at all times to that same broader continuum or substrate by which they are felt and navigated.
So this is how you can learn from experiences, and engage with them in a transformative manner, even if you might not consciously recall what happened to you in the past. It’s because you’re dealing with them with a spiritual continuity, even if that continuity might not appear to exist from a conscious standpoint.
You’re Shaped by Experiences Even When You Don’t Recall Them — This Applies to Those Lived in Past-Lives as Well
As a spiritual entity you’re capable of being affected by things, and learning from them, even when you have no recollection of them.
Even if you don’t recall everything about what you lived in this life, you can still be shaped by what it just the same. Memories don’t need to be present in your conscious mind for them to be “active” in your energy, so to speak.
To illustrate, and speaking only of the current life for a moment, imagine you’re now in its latter stages, perhaps your seventies or beyond, and from that vantage point you’re assessing what you became as a person, where your life took you and what came of it as a result.
No matter what you assess, it will be valid to say who you became was strewn together from all the strokes and twists and turns your life took – even if you don’t consciously keep in mind every single detail. Not recalling things isn’t speaking of losing faculties, but rather the passing of time: it’s only human for certain things to slip under the hood. Some things you’ll recall perfectly, others more in broad strokes, and critical moments may still be present. But there’s also going to be a great deal that you’ve filtered out, don’t recall exactly, or maybe even allowed to slip out of your mind.
But even if you don’t necessarily recall everything (maybe including meaningful and impactful moments) who you are as a person is nonetheless still a cumulative result of those experiences and the transformations they brought, or that at least affected by them along the way.
It’s a similar thing with how past-life experiences work regarding your learning: as a spiritual entity you’re able to learn across multiple/many lifetimes even if you don’t remember them. The only different being you may be able to recall things that happened during this lifetime, whereas you typically need different tools (Akashic Records readings, past-life regression, etc.) to access data beyond it.
Going Over Past-Live Memories and the Soul’s Background in General Can Be Spiritually Productive Nonetheless
Now, if you ask whether your learning can be helped, augmented, galvanized, inspired by – or even warrant – gaining awareness from what took place in past-lives, as well as any other insight pertaining to your existence beyond human reality, undoubtedly yes.
Typically, if and when your learning and/or healing can benefit from accessing such information, you’ll be “directed” – experienced as curiosity, will, etc – to seek and ask for such services. The conscious will follow the unconscious/spiritual in seeking what it wants and needs.
As stated before, it is part of our never-ending spiritual seeking to aim to explore ourselves and Creation and expand our awareness. This is something I strive to potentiate with my readings. As far as I’m concerned, the more we spiritually connect and expand our understanding of ourselves the better; and no harm and only good can be drawn from such endeavor, provided it is sought in spiritual integrity.
Still, you don’t need to consciously remember your past to be able to engage with your spiritual evolution in the present moment. The totality of who you are is a continuum that, apart from your conscious awareness, is neither interrupted by birth nor death. It’s from that continuum you’re able to engage with life’s experiences and draw progress from them, allowing you to continually evolve even if you don’t remember what took place in the past.
