Remembering. Past Lives, Magical Experiences and So Forth

We put so much effort into forgetting

We put so much effort into forgetting. Now it is time to start to remember. It describes a real habit, and a real choice. In ordinary life, forgetting is often useful. We forget details that would clutter the day, we forget embarrassments that would sting if we carried them always, and we forget, sometimes deliberately, experiences that were too strange, too intense, or too unlike ordinary life to fit easily into the story we tell about ourselves.

Remembering, in the sense of this teaching, is the opposite habit, practised deliberately. It does not mean believing every vivid image that arises, and it does not mean building an identity out of a single past-life story. It means remembering well, with a record, with discernment, and with a willingness to let remembering inform the present, rather than replace it.

This article explores that practice in general terms: what remembering can mean, how it can go muddled, and how to keep it grounded, without claiming any particular past life, or any particular experience, for any particular reader.

What remembering can include

Remembering, here, is a broad word, and that breadth is part of its value. It can include memories from this life that were set aside: a childhood experience of the uncanny, a moment of intuition that proved accurate, a ritual or a dream that stayed with you, even if you could not explain it at the time. It can include experiences from magical practice that were never properly recorded, and therefore never properly understood, because they were lived through and then left behind. And, for practitioners who work with that framework, it can include impressions, images, or a sense of familiarity that seem to point beyond this life, towards past lives, in the broad sense of lives lived before this one.

The teaching does not require you to decide, beforehand, which category any particular impression belongs to. That decision, if it is made at all, is better made slowly, after recording, reflection, and checking, rather than in the first excitement of a vivid image. What matters at the start is simpler: to pay attention, to write down what arises, in plain language, and to notice what recurs, what fades, and what, over time, seems to carry weight in your present life.

That breadth also means that remembering is not only about the past. A remembered experience, whether from this life or, in your framework, from a past life, is useful in this work insofar as it illuminates the present: a pattern you repeat, a strength you have neglected, a fear you have carried, a skill that comes unusually easily, or a relationship that feels familiar beyond its present history. Remembering that does not touch the present is, at best, interesting. Remembering that touches the present, and changes how you live, is the work itself.

Why we forget magical experiences

Magical experiences are often forgotten for understandable reasons. Some are forgotten because they were not recorded, and ordinary life, with its demands, crowded them out within days. Some are forgotten because they did not fit the practitioner's expectations, and were therefore dismissed, at the time, as imagination, coincidence, or a trick of mood. Some are forgotten because they were intense, and the mind, sensibly, set them aside until there was time and steadiness to look at them. And some are forgotten because they were never fully experienced in the first place, only glimpsed, in a dream, in meditation, or in a moment of heightened attention, and a glimpse, unrecorded, fades quickly.

Remembering, then, often begins not with a dramatic recovery, but with a quiet return to notes, journals, dreams, and memories that were left half-finished. Look back through old journals, if you keep them, for entries that puzzled you at the time, or that you skipped over. Ask yourself what experiences from your practice you have never properly written down, and write them down now, as you remember them, noting honestly what you remember clearly, what you remember vaguely, and what you are reconstructing. That honesty about the state of a memory is part of remembering well, not a failure of it.

It also helps to create conditions for remembering, in the present, that you may not have had before: a quiet time, set aside regularly, for reflection, a journal kept for this purpose alone, and a willingness to sit with an image or a feeling without immediately deciding what it means. Remembering, like dream recall, often improves when it is invited regularly, and when the invitation is kept, week after week, rather than demanded once, dramatically, and then abandoned.

Past lives: holding the idea lightly, and seriously

Past lives are a subject on which practitioners hold different views, and this article does not ask you to adopt a particular view before you begin. What it does ask is that you hold any past-life impression with both lightness and seriousness: lightness, in the sense that a single vivid image does not prove a whole biography, and should not become a new identity overnight; seriousness, in the sense that an impression that recurs, that carries emotional weight, and that illuminates a present pattern, deserves attention, reflection, and checking, rather than dismissal.

Several habits help here. Record an impression as an impression, in plain language, separating what was actually seen, felt, or sensed from what you think it meant. Note when it arose, in what state, and what you were working on at the time. Note what, if anything, in your present life it seems to relate to, and what, if anything, you could check, in ordinary terms, such as a historical detail, a place, or a pattern in your own behaviour. Return to the record after time has passed, and see what still holds, and what now looks like a wish, a fear, or a story borrowed from a book, a film, or another person's account.

Be cautious, too, about past-life stories that flatter. A story in which you were always important, always powerful, or always a victim of great injustice, deserves the same scrutiny as any other story, and perhaps more, because flattery and grievance are both powerful motives for believing. A past life, if it is to be useful in magical practice, should teach you something about the present that you did not already know, or help you change a present pattern, not merely give you a more interesting biography to tell.

Magical experiences, remembered properly

Magical experiences from this life deserve the same careful remembering as any other material. A ritual that felt powerful, a spirit communication that felt clear, a synchronicity that felt meaningful, a dream that felt like a working, all of these, if they are not recorded, will be remembered later in a smoothed, simplified form, in which the puzzling parts are forgotten and the impressive parts are enlarged. That smoothed memory is less useful, for practice, than a contemporary record, however brief, however uncertain.

When you return to a magical experience, ask the same questions you would ask of any record. What actually happened, in plain language? What did you do, what did you notice, and what did you feel, at the time? What did you think it meant then, and what do you think it means now, with more distance? What changed afterwards, in your practice or in your life, and what did not change, despite the experience? Those questions, answered honestly, turn an experience from a story you tell into material you can learn from.

It is also worth remembering experiences that were dull, confusing, or disappointing, not only the dramatic ones. A working that felt flat, a meditation that went nowhere, a communication that was unclear, all of these are part of a real practice, and remembering them, alongside the dramatic experiences, gives you a truer picture of your path, and a better basis for deciding what to do next, than a collection of highlights alone.

Where remembering can go muddled

Remembering can go muddled in familiar ways, and naming them helps you notice them. One muddle is confusion between memory and imagination, in which a vivid reconstruction, built up over several retellings, is taken for a literal memory, and then used to justify present decisions that should be made on present evidence. The counter is to keep the record, to note what is remembered and what is reconstructed, and to check, where checking is possible, before acting on a remembered claim.

Another muddle is identification with a remembered self, whether from this life or, in your framework, from a past life, to the point where the present self is neglected. If remembering leaves you living in the past, or longing for a past life that seems more vivid than this one, the work has become unbalanced, and the remedy is to return to present practice, to ordinary responsibilities, and to the question of what remembering changes now, in this life, in concrete terms.

A third muddle is using remembering to avoid present work. A past-life explanation for a present difficulty can feel satisfying, and it can also be a way of avoiding the ordinary action, conversation, or decision that the difficulty actually requires. If a remembered explanation does not lead to a present step, however small, it is worth asking whether it is illumination, or evasion dressed as depth.

Remembering as a practice, for the present

A sustainable remembering practice, like a sustainable dream practice, does not need to be elaborate. It needs a journal, a regular time for reflection, a willingness to record fragments as well as full experiences, and a discipline of returning to the record, over months, to see what recurs, what fades, and what changes how you live. From that foundation, deeper work, whether with past lives, with magical experiences, or with other material, can grow, gradually, without forcing, and without the disappointment that comes from expecting a complete biography, or a complete explanation, at once.

Review your remembering record as a whole, not only entry by entry. What patterns emerge? What strengths recur, across different experiences? What difficulties recur, in different forms? Those recurrences are often the real teaching of remembering, more reliable than any single vivid impression, because they show you what your life, and your practice, are actually working on, over time.

In the end, remembering is not about the past for its own sake. It is about the present, seen more clearly, because you have taken the time to remember what you lived, what you experienced, and what you learned, and to bring that remembering back into the life you actually live, where it can do real work.

Remembering. Past lives, magical experiences and so forth

If you want to work on remembering, including past lives, magical experiences, and so forth, beginning with the effort we put into forgetting, and the choice to start to remember, this teaching is offered for that work.

This is teaching, not a promise about any magical result, and not a claim about any particular past life or experience for you. What follows from any practice is yours to observe, not mine to guarantee, and that wording is about magical result, not about delivery dates for physical items.

If that is the teaching you need, this is the one offered here: Remembering. Past lives, magical experiences and so forth, $216 CAD. View the product

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