According to the Zohar, the portion of the Bible we read this week, known as Mishpatim (in English, “Laws”); it is actually a code for the laws of reincarnation. Now many of you know that I am currently travelling around the world talking about my new book, To Be Continued: Reincarnation and the Purpose of Our Lives. So far, it’s been an incredible experience, and I’ve had the honor of meeting many of you in person. For those of you whom I haven’t yet met I’d like to share a few short excerpts from my book that, in conjunction with the energy of the week, I hope will help awaken a new perspective on life for you.
When we leave this world, the door closes. When we reincarnate, the door reopens. But sometimes when we reincarnate, the door from a past life is left slightly ajar. This explains how some people can remember details or incidents from their past lives.
When you or I experience such a glimpse, we call this a déjà vu experience. In French, these words mean “already seen.” You may be sitting with a friend drinking tea, for example, when suddenly you have a strong feeling you have done this before. Or you may meet someone new and are certain you know the person, perhaps very well (don’t those hands look incredibly familiar?), but when you consider every conceivable connection, it's clear that no prior meeting could have been possible.
Despite the kabbalistic belief that reincarnation is a certainty, many people still believe it is hocus-pocus. But without an appreciation of this process, most of us sleepwalk through life. We wake up, we go to work, we go to school, we come home, eat, watch TV, and go to sleep…and wake up to do it all over again the next day.
Limiting ourselves to information from our five senses keeps us from seeing the deeper meaning of life at any given moment in time. That is why so many of us feel that life is something that happens to us randomly, bringing joy one day and tragedy the next.
We don’t see how a particular occurrence in this lifetime is connected to the events in an earlier one. But once we understand the workings of reincarnation, these seemingly random events suddenly take on new meaning.
There are many reported cases of people who experience past-life memories. Eleven-year-old James Leiniger’s story was aired on ABC’s newsmagazine TV show Primetime. The boy knew an extraordinary amount about World War II fighter planes without ever having read about them. He told his parents that he had died in a plane crash, giving them the name of the aircraft carrier he had been assigned to, as well as the name of his best friend aboard the ship. How could he possibly know the names of people he had worked with long before he was born in this lifetime?
I would love to hear about your own déjà vu experiences or anything you would like to share about how the knowledge of reincarnation has changed your life.
Love and Light,
Karen Berg
