Visions During Meditation - Deja Vu

I thought this might be interesting to share, also...it's just a brief story.

So, I was "meditating" a bit earlier and almost went into a trance. I was staring off into nothing and my vision cut out for a moment and I saw an old Victorian mansion. Saw a field of grains and a relatively nice day. The most striking feature of the vision was the fact that I felt as thought I'd been there before. I mean, I genuinely felt almost like I lived there. I am not too sure what it was, I mean, it could have just been my mind thinking I saw that place before...But on the other hand, I feel like it might have been a vision from maybe a past life? I don't know. Any ideas?

i think it had to have been.

i've had those kinds of experiences, too.

in the distant past, i always chalked it up to imagination - random pictures my mind was conjuring up. funny that i never went any farther with it and asked my mind why it was conjuring up vivid images spontaneously, voluntarily, for no apparent reason. especially when nothing was ever forthcoming in that area when it was called upon out of necessity or desire, such as in creative writing class in college!

many things have happened in the 20 or so years that have now passed and it has led me to understand that most, if not all, of what we might consider to be imagination or daydreams or some such thing, due to their random vividness that somehow isn't strange or foreign to the mind although by rights it should be....is actually memory!

we tend to associate memories with emotions, both positive and negative. we think that if we don't feel something in response to the thought that seems to be a memory, that it can't be. if it feels non-personal we often sweep it aside with the idea that it is not really ours because our emotions don't recognize it.

that is a fundamentally faulty thought process because emotions are tied to the physical and to relationships. so when the body dies and the soul crosses over to wait for the return trip to the physical realm, those ties are severed when the soul leaves that body behind for good. the memories remain and some sort of self-awareness but not the emotions.

which is, to me, an obvious and profound blessing in regard to karma and our personal evolutionary progress! if we held on to these things, we'd never get past the hurt and fear that holds us back within a lifetime.
we'd be doomed to failure!

so instead we are hampered not by an inability to remember but an inability to recognize "remember."

i think we all remember a great deal about ourselves, not only in mediation as you have (or at least i'd bet money that you have) and i have, too and countless others, i'm sure, but also in just regular waking everyday life.

unexplained phobias, aversions, and other sorts of issues like that can be memory, too, because they are too strong to be random and often we can't really pinpoint WHY we feel a certain way and yet cannot overcome it, either.
the emotions are no longer there so the reaction we still have, mentally, is very puzzling.

Wow! Thanks a bunch for that! That was interesting and informative. It's odd though when it happens. I don't get them very often but it still is amazing. Like yesterday...it was amazingly vivid like you mentioned.

Gah. Wish we all had the exact answers to all these things. It's always uber interesting. Maybe someday someone will have factual answers...but it's doubtful.

Again, thanks for the post queenannie