My own personal experiences of reincarnation have come from working as a Past Life Regression Therapist. Through listening to hundreds of personal past life accounts I've been able to put together some of the pieces of a fascinating and humbling process that is happening in the background for all of us right now.

Reincarnation itself not a belief tied to India or any particular religion or culture. It's been an enduring spiritual belief for billions of people for thousands of years all over the world. It was a global idea that sprang up independently amongst people from every continent from the Celts and Teutons of Northern Europe to the indigenous peoples of Africa, Australia and the Americas. Hundreds of millions of Hindus, Buddhists and the Sufis sect of Islam make it the cornerstone of their faith. Some Christian sects and writers accept reincarnation, however written reference of reincarnation was removed from the Christian religion in AD 325 by the Roman emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. This was in the interests of uniting the empire from feuding Christian factions by having a common belief.

I good point to start looking at reincarnation is with the experience of a client I'll call Claire. Claire was a 35 year old single woman who had re-occurring thoughts and dreams of stealing, which made her anxious because she was an accountant responsible for managing her companies accounts. Worst of all she had re-occurring thoughts that "they are taking my children" and would get so angry that tears would rolled down her cheeks. This had been going on for about 15 years, and she had tried everything to stop it. The strange thing is that she was not married and had never had children.

Claire quickly regressed into a past life story of being a woman living with her two children in the woods and healing people with herbs. She had been living in harmony with the local villagers for a number of years. One day however, a group of stern looking Quaker men came to her house. Some held her children and others dragged her away and accused her of being a witch. She was taken to a river by the village and tied to the end of a wooden plank face down. As the plank was positioned over the water of the river she was unable to look at it, and the fear of the water was vividly remembered as she told the story. As she drowned still tied to the plank all her energy was focused on her dying thoughts "My children have been taken away, who's going to look after them".

In her second past life she found herself a poor man in England in the Middle Ages not able to find the money to buy food for his family. The poor man broke into a big country house, stole a painting and rode off on a horse. The noise he had made alerted members of the household who chased him on foot. One of them fired a pistol and shot him in the shoulder. He fell off the horse and was caught by the crowd and hung. The poor man's dying thought was about the mistake of stealing. Claire was amazed at experiencing the pain in her shoulder at the point of being shot, and the difficulty breathing as she experienced the hanging.

With both these past life stories there was unfinished business at the point of death. Thoughts, emotions and physical pain associated with a trauma appear to be imprinted on the soul. When the person is reincarnated again these memories are acted out again in the new body and new situation. It's as if the pattern needs to be recreated until the person's soul has resolved the problem.

With Claire she was able to resolve the unfinished business by clearing the blocked energy from the past life. She reported afterwards that the reoccurring thoughts of stealing and having her children taken away had stopped. She also noticed other things in her life had changed. She used to have a phobia about water. When she was a child she used to scream when her mum tried to bath her or put her hair in a basin with water. At that time she had thought her mum was trying to drown her. After resolving the past life conflict she was no longer scared about water. A few weeks later an aggressive businessman accused her of bumping her car into another car. Previously her legs would have turned to jelly but she was able to hold her ground and tell him he was just as much at fault.

An example of physical pain being carried from one life to another can be illustrate with a client I'll call Joan who was a single mother with four children on income support. She been in a series of abusive relationships for most of her life and suffered from unexplainable pains in her joints and different parts of her body. She also had migraines and mild depression, which on some days was so bad all she wanted to do was cry.

Joan regressed into the past life of a girl abandoned in Victorian times and brought up by nuns. She left the nuns at an early age and found work in a laundry. Her job was washing other peoples' clothes and it involved spending most of the day stirring the clothes in a large caldron of hot water. She caught the eye of a wealthy older gent who eventually married her. Although he was well respected in the community as a successful businessman, he didn't want a sexual relationship and took his frustrations of life out on her. As a poor woman with no family she found no one would listen to her. She was regularly beaten and left on the floor covered in blood. Unable to leave she felt powerless and had to just take the beatings. The final beating was more severe than normal. She was thrown down the long stairs of the house and half unconscious dragged into a dark cellar. As she died she was able to recall the memory of leaving the intensity of the physical pain behind and experiencing the peace of going to the afterlife. The blocked energy of her feelings of powerlessness and the physical symptoms where carried with her consciousness. As she experienced the abusive relationships in this life the physical symptoms where triggered from the past life. When the blocked energy from the past life was released she was able to stand up to the man in her current relationship and tell him "Be good to me or leave" which was something she had never before been able to do before. The unexplainable physical pains have not bothered her since.

Reincarnation is a process governed by a spiritual law that the ancient wisdom calls karma. Every thought or action we take has a consequence. If we hate others then hate will eventually come into our lives too, if we give out love we fill our lives with love. The bible calls it 'we reap what we sow'. It's not about right and wrong but about balancing energies. If we are at harmony with our fellow humans and our environment at our death the energy is balanced and no karma will be carried from our present life to the next. When the unfinished business from past lives has been resolved, no matter how dramatic or tense it may have been, the client is left with profound peace and spiritual understanding.