Remember when you were young, imagining that you could disappear and reappear where you wanted to be at will? Or maybe shape shifting into a horrifying beast to scare away the bullies on the playground, so that they would never bother you again? Or shape shifting into something so hideous that your abusive parent would stop abusing you and realize what they had done to you? Remember when you imagined? Maybe you were a child who could actually feel in your bones the sensation of flying, or becoming a fish or dolphin, sliding effortlessly through the air or water. Maybe the image you shape shifted into was a powerful Warrior Princess, or a Masked Hero on a horse.

When I was young, I remembered many of the powers from my past lifetimes. I recalled many of the people, heros and heroines alike, that I had once been. At the time I was not aware of remembering past lifetimes because, like everyone who was like me when they were young, I was told I had an overactive imagination. Fortunately, both my mother and my grandmother engaged that imagination in themselves, and encouraged me to use it.

When I got out of college and moved away on my own, I began to really research and expand that imagination. I had been encouraged to believe in past lives, and in the same breath to believe that Jesus was my Savior. But none of the answers that people from my childhood gave me were enough. I sought to know more. And if that was a sin, so be it. I couldn't find enough material to read in order to find out who I really was.

Reading only activated more memories. Memories of being a witch in the burning times. Memories of being Aztec, and Mayan. Dreams started filling my nights full with lifetime memories: of being a Japanese woman during World War II, of being a pregnant woman back when there were Vikings pillaging villages. I found that many of the lifetimes I had were as victims. And the question I began to ask myself was, "How do I heal this pain?".

One thing I noticed was how all that I was remembering connected in with my present life. As more lifetimes came to me, and I learned to heal them, I began to see a repetitive pattern forming. What I taught myself to do was to unravel that pattern, and stop it from repeating itself.

I learned that every lifetime that I was recalling had to do with some aspect of myself that was presently in the process of healing. The part of me that was a victim cleared out as I allowed each and every memory to emotionally release through me -- that is, I relived every incident in that lifetime and released the horror I experienced.

Once the victim lifetimes released, I started to understand how I was not a victim. How what I judged and feared was what had manifested in those lifetimes and in this life, too. I realized that those characters in those lifetimes were not all of me. They were only a part of me. And I saw that I had many other parts. Some of them had played the role of perpetrator.

The way I have come to understand it is that God seeks to know Itself. We are all a part of God. It's like a family tree. We are the Source broken down into many fragments so that God can learn to understand what It (is. (added by H.R.)) Some of us are larger chunks than others. Some of us have many pieces of ourselves living simultaneous lifetimes. Those who are bigger chunks are healing our souls at this time. We're calling home our fragments in order to be whole. We have experienced what we needed, and now we need to integrate so that we can become closer to the One which is God. That is not to say that smaller "chunks" of God are not healing also. As the larger chunks heal, the smaller ones have no choice but to feel the waves affecting them. We are ALL healing.

There are two kinds of fragments that I know of. There are the fragments that our larger Selves have sent out from themselves in order to experience what is God. These are Experiential fragments. Then there are the fragments that our larger Selves judged and literally "cut off" from Themselves. Those are our Lost Fragments. There are also parts of us that need healing that are presently with us, and have not as yet left, or been cut off by us. This is what we need to integrate first.

I have discovered that not everyone who does this work likes to go through the whole experience again of reliving a past lifetime. And I'm not sure that it is necessary for everyone to go through the pain again. There are some methods of healing that are being presented now that seem to help people to release these lifetimes without having to reexperience the drama.

I believe that no one thing is the ultimate thing that works. Some parts of me release faster than others. Sometimes I need to go through the whole drama, and sometimes a part of me coming home just wants to be heard, recognized, and released, and quickly reintegrated back into my whole being. I feel for me that it is/was necessary to relive my experiences because for some unknown reason I am supposed to ground the energy of Emotion here on the planet. I am still figuring out what it means for me to be doing this work in the way that I do it. I feel that this goes for every individual. There are no easy answers or ways around doing "the work" that needs to get done here on the planet. I feel we must honor our Emotions and give them proper expression when needed.

Good Books: RIGHT USE OF WILL, by Ceanne DeRohan and SOUL RETRIEVAL by Sandra Ingerman.