Have you known things about your life and its path for as long as you can remember?

Had a certain talent or skill that doesn’t necessarily link up with your gene pool? Experienced déjà vu, a sense of “been there, done that,” even when you haven’t?

These may be signs of past lives.

From the time that I was young, I knew that I was destined to be two things: a teacher and a healer. Okay, you say, it’s not uncommon for a young woman to want to be a teacher, only for me that went much further back, playing “teacher” well before I knew what a teacher was.

Same for healer (in this life) and psychologist—a knowing that my family wasn’t one in which this was necessarily a valued profession. I had interests that were not an outgrowth of the growing up in suburbia and fears that did not link up with anything in my own history.

So much made sense the first time I picked up Brian Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters. Weiss, also in the mental health field, discovered that his patient Catherine had many prior lives that helped explain the source of lifelong anxieties and phobias that could not be cured through conventional psychotherapy.

Weiss, who was working with Catherine using hypnotic regression, provided the direction to go back to the start of a phobia. While some childhood traumas appeared connected, Catherine was cured when she went back to a lifetime in which she, and an infant child, drowned.

Recalling this event was an important curative factor for Catherine who went on to remember 85 other lifetimes with enough detail and catharsis that Weiss, a Harvard trained scientist, was convinced of the reality of past lives. Catherine was also able to access wisdom of spiritual beings called “The Masters” who educated Weiss about past life phenomena.

“Everything comes when it must come…we just pass through different phases. There is no end. Time is not as we see time, but rather in lessons that are learned. During each of our lifetimes, we learn lessons about charity, hope, faith and love. The things that we learn allow us to grow and mature in a spiritual sense, and we return again and again to master such lessons.”

For myself, this resonates through patterns that seem to repeat. I can’t say I’ve always made different choices—it’s a work in progress.

Many people I’ve spoken with describe similar experiences as mine, and some even more profound—unusual talents, recurring dreams, passions. Some of these people are empaths or “old souls.”

You can learn about your own past lives just as Catherine did by doing a past life regression. I’ve had a number of regressions and all have given me insight into facets of my life, helping me to gain insight and knowledge. It has explained many of my life choices and talents and has also reduced my fear of death and dying. After all, I now know that I’ll be back.

You, too, have had past lives. You need only look to these five signs:

Talents and Passions. Most of us have things in life that we are passionate about and which might not jive with our upbringing. Are you avidly interested in gardening, even if you’ve grown up in a city, or a passionate activist who grew up in a family without any social justice leanings?

If these talents or passions exceed the passing interest test, it may be one indication you’ve had these talents before. Child prodigies, such as gifted musicians or artists, may have actually had these talents before.

Déjà Vu. Déjà vu is a sense that something has happened before. When my daughter visited Japan, a place she has always been interested in, she felt like this was not the first time she’d visited. She also had a strong affinity for Japanese culture, picking up the difficult language with relative ease.

While I have not had that sense of visiting a place, I had a related experience in which I felt a strong sense of knowing someone with whom I had a passing acquaintance, only to see myself in a past life regression and appearing physically similar to the person I “knew.”

Nightmares or Recurrent Dreams. Our dreams are powerful lenses into our subconscious, the place where past life memories reside. While we all have dreams related to themes that reflect present day worries (think I’m back in college and have not attended class all semester), past life dreams are different.

Many people I work with in my therapy practice describe recurring dreams often of a disturbing or upsetting quality. Such dreams may involve events that you have not lived in this physical body.

Phobias or Deep Anxieties. Are you terrified about something? Have an illness that cannot be explained through conventional medicine? These are other signs of past lives. My husband has gone to extraordinary measures to put out fires since I’ve known him, soaking used matches so they don’t re-spark and dousing bonfires with enough water to literally drown them.

During a past life regression, he went back to a lifetime where he died in a fire, along with his then family. After reliving this event, he is much less obsessive about fire safety.

You Are an Old Soul. Have you always felt old for your age? More mature than peers? Such old souls often have extraordinary insight or intelligence and may feel like they are outsiders who don’t quite belong. This may be a sign that you have evolved or awakened from a previous lifetime.

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