Have you ever had an experience that changed your mind about Reincarnation??

I must admit that I never gave much thought to the idea of Reincarnation before. You are born into this world with nothing and you will leave it with nothing. You live , you die. End of story. Most people seem to go through this life pretending that they will never die. That death is something that happens to everyone else. Something happened to me a few years ago that made me change my mind and want to learn more about the topic though. And I am wondering if anybody else has had something similar happen to them.

I live in a rural part of central Louisiana. Every May there is a re-enactment of the Battle of Pleasant Hill which was fought in 1864 between Union forces trying to invade Shreveport and Confederate forces trying to halt their advance. Ever since being a little kid I was always fascinated by Military history. I was always working or had something going on whenever they were re-enacting the battle. A few years ago it just so happened to fall on a weekend that I had off from work. So we drove the 30 minutes or so to get to the battleground. Every year there is quite a crowd so we left a little early and got a good spot on a hill just over the battlefield where you could see everything. The first thing that the guys acting out the battle did was start firing a mock artillery barrage that looked pretty realistic. Smoke belched out of the end of the cannons when they fired and explosive charges placed around the battlefield really looked like a dozen or so cannons were laying down a pretty good barrage.

It was about this time that I got one of the weirdest surreal feelings in my life as well as instant anxiety. I've never had Deja Vu before, but after hearing people talk about it, I think this feeling was half Deja Vu and half fear. I wish I could do a better job of describing what I felt because it has never happened to me before or since. My heart started pounding, I started shaking and turned white as a sheet. And I was scared to death but of what I had no idea. Before anyone says that it was just loud noise anxiety let me give a little background on me first. I was a Tank Crewman in the US Army for 8 years. I have been deployed to two different wars. I have also been hunting/shooting with firearms since I was seven years old. I have been around all manner of booms and explosions and never once had this feeling happen to me. I guess it is possible that loud booms like that were making me anxious like a gunshy dog or something, but this felt totally different than that kind of fear. It was an irrational fear.

After a few minutes of the artillery is when the Yanks and the Rebs started advancing out onto the field and this weirdness I was feeling became more intense. What struck me the most about watching all of this is how "wrong" everyone looked. Particularly the Confederates. Everyone was so clean. Their uniforms were pristine and their faces were all clean shaven and there was alot of fat people. I remember thinking (not thinking, knowing.) how you would have never seen an actual fighting army like this in the Confederate forces. None of them could march, or hold the formation as they advanced. They all just looked wrong and I knew deep down that it was all wrong, even though I really was no expert on civil war uniforms or soldiers or military drill and ceremony. I was sick to my stomach and nervous and scared as hell. About that time my wife turned to me and asked what was wrong. Apparently I had tears streaming down my face and did not realize it. We did not even finish watching the battle. I had to get to the car and leave. I don't want to go to another Civil War reenactment ever.

This experience changed what I think about Reincarnation. The Deja vu feeling and just "knowing" what all was wrong makes me believe that I have been a Confederate soldier in a past life. I honestly think that I have been a soldier in alot of lives. I once had a card reader tell me that I am basically repeating the past. And while I take all that with a grain of salt, it honestly makes sense when I look back at my life and the lessons that I seem to insist on learning the hard way. So after I had a chance to think about what happened I started digging around on the internet and the library. Turns out there are alot of people that have had something similar happen to them and I want to know if anybody else on ATS has had something like this happen to them. If so I would love to hear your story. Nobody has to believe mine at all, take it for what you will. I know it is true though because I experienced it. Thanks for reading.

Originally posted by Cancerwarrior
Have you ever had an experience that changed your mind about Reincarnation??

No.

Originally posted by alfa1

Originally posted by Cancerwarrior
Have you ever had an experience that changed your mind about Reincarnation??

No.

Well thank you for contributing that information.

Yes, I have. Several times.

Just the other day, I was 'meditating' (spacing out while gazing outside), and had a view/experience of myself as a shepherd girl, in a high mountain meadow; long skirts, boots, and I was alone. Like my family had died. I wound up falling off a cliff, and the last thing I saw was a group of Native Americans looking down at me as I lay there dying....

thanks for the post.
s/f
!!


EDIT: You just made coffee come out my nose, OP, with your response to the first reply.
Thanks for the laugh...I needed it.

I'm not sure. I feel like I did bad in my last life, so god is punishing me in this life

Would remembering past lives count? I've heard it called a quickening ...self awareness or just total recall. Lots of Hollywoody phrases for it...but remembering seems to be the basic theme here. I'd say memory started around age 18 in anything specific and that's a relative term in this area, to be sure. Specific, that is.

I've been able to locate two of my memories for location on maps with Topo detail and the wonder that is now Google Earth. It's quite a tool when you have a place in the mind's eye, perfect to the last ridge line in the distance .....and then, for the first time in this life, SEE the place in photographs. It's a moment hard to describe to anyone who hasn't experienced one of their own.

reply to post by wildtimes


Interesting. I've never tried actual meditation, but I guess what you describe is just a different form of meditating. I think the way I meditate is sitting in a deer stand alone in the woods for hours on end. I always feel surprisingly relaxed and focused afterwards. Anyways I am wondering if you just have these experiences while meditating? Or have you actually experienced something physical about weird things or places that you just kinda knew without having ever learned about it?

Have you ever had an experience that changed your mind about Reincarnation??,

Nope. I've pretty much always believed it can, and probably does, happen.
Personal experience .. recurring dreams since I was a child ...
Seems I died in a World War II air raid in London as a child.
I was on a playground .. the sirens went off .. my mother (in WWII)
- who was dressed in 1940's style clothing -
looked at me and said to ignore the sirens because they always
go off and nothing happens. Then ... KABOOM! I'm blown up.
And fire sirens from the fire house .. and tornado sirens ..
give me the creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeps ..
(and forget about watching the ol' War of the Worlds ..
with those sirens !!)

double post ... strange.

Originally posted by Casualboy100
I'm not sure. I feel like I did bad in my last life, so god is punishing me in this life

I don't think God punishes us at all. I think we do quite enough of that ourselves without needing any help from God with it. And honestly when you think about it, how can anybody except you decide whether or not you have done good or bad in a life that only you have lived?

reply to post by Cancerwarrior

Have you ever had an experience that changed your mind about Reincarnation?

It was back sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s.

I was browsing a reprint of the Sears catalog for Fall of 1900 that I had picked up in a consignment shop. As I was flipping through the pages, I came to the cameras and all of a sudden, I was awash in memories of being a child and recalling a specific camera listed, being delivered to a country home. This memory said that I had an uncle who had ordered it and that I was just big enough to look over the top edge of the table to see it. It was a very exciting time and the whole family was involved.

Along with the memories came all sorts of emotions and recollections of feelings and... it was all very clear but it was also really fleeting. I wrote down as much as I could of the experience for record... and while some of the imagery from those memories remained, a lot of the feeling and emotion of who I was, faded pretty quickly.

There were a few other items in that old catalog reprint (which I still have) that dredged up other impossible feelings of familiarity. From time to time, I get it out again and flip the pages in search of another experience but... there hasn't been anything like the first one.

It was an amazing feeling.

reply to post by Cancerwarrior

Yes, here are a couple of experiences similar to yours, from years ago.
I was born in Chicago, raised in Kansas, and never quite felt at home here. That's enough for starters.

When I was in my early 20s, bailed after earning my Bachelor's degree, and moved to the Rocky Mountains. Summit County, in Colorado, to be precise. I always felt like that's where I was at home. "My" mountains - a fierce, indescribable yearning to be there, and for the years I lived there, no matter what daily grind was going on - fun or trouble - I was always just grateful to be there.

There is a lookout point above Lake Dillon that I discovered at Swan Mountain - and I used to go there and just look out over the lake and mountains. It brought me a profound peace like nothing I'd ever felt. I knew I was "home."

A few years later, after I'd moved back to Kansas City, I had the opportunity to go to Norway to meet some friends I'd made on the internet. One of them lived near Bergen, and he had an ancient family farm high up on a cliff above a fjord. He took me there to see it, and we walked through the property. On it was a stream with a hazel grove along the banks...we walked under the trees, with a sort of "lattice work" of hazel branches over us, like a lacy tunnel. I had this OVERWHELMING feeling that I'd been there before...chilling, like hair standing on end. Like you said, hard to describe. But I knew, I knew in a flash, that I'd been there, lived there.

After a few more years, back in Kansas City, I was digging for a garden, and unearthed a stone-age tool, like a scraper or knife. It felt powerful to me...I took it to our local Natural History museum, and they told me it was 20,000 years old. So, I knew my property had been occupied by Native Americans (probably Hopewell), at least as a gathering place, if not a "village location". It was a long, narrow bit of land, with a steep slope in back that lowered down to a dry creekbed and some unimproved, ancient forest. I've always been interested in Native American culture as well.

This is along the Missouri river, and for many years I had horses there. I would often ride on the trails near the river. I've always loved horses....and rugged terrain. One day while riding, I had a vision, or a "visitation" by a Native American Shaman woman, or Medicine Woman, who hovered over me, and said that I had been put there, in this life, to merge the Celtic and Native American spiritualities......

I was in a sacred place - that property - and often felt energy fields, power-points, especially around this one huge, moss-covered tree stump. It was spooky, surreal, like you said.

Anyway, recounting this has just helped me link the "shepherd girl" vision back to the Norway episode!! A HA!!
And, btw, I also visited a Viking burial ground while there in Oslo, and knew I'd been there before, too.

My heritage is Finnish, Scottish, Irish, English, and German. I'm an amalgamation of several lifetimes in those areas, I guess. Cool stuff, isn't it?
Scary sometimes, too. I also have nightmares with experiences that have never "happened" to me in this life, like drowning, being mauled by a bear, plunging off of cliffs, and being in a plane that hits power lines.....
Weirdness.
But yeah, I'm a firm believer.

Originally posted by FlyersFan

Have you ever had an experience that changed your mind about Reincarnation??,

Nope. I've pretty much always believed it can, and probably does, happen.
Personal experience .. recurring dreams since I was a child ...
Seems I died in a World War II air raid in London as a child.
I was on a playground .. the sirens went off .. my mother (in WWII)
- who was dressed in 1940's style clothing -
looked at me and said to ignore the sirens because they always
go off and nothing happens. Then ... KABOOM! I'm blown up.
And fire sirens from the fire house .. and tornado sirens ..
give me the creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeps ..
(and forget about watching the ol' War of the Worlds ..
with those sirens !!)

Very interesting. I have never had actual memories. Even in this life I have so much trouble remembering things I'm sure remembering a past life at all is only for a very few people. And this was my one and only experience with anything of this nature but it was powerful enough to make me a believer. Thank you for your reply.

Yes I have. Even though I still struggle to understand what is going on in many ways.

I dont care how stupid or silly the following will sound.

I started to consider the possibility of reincarnation due to a dog that seems to come back into my life repeatedly, as my own pet.

Some of the traits are.. just not normal. I have dealt with literally thousands of dogs, and have never seen it in any of them in totality.

Everything from hand-holding (he will hold me hand in his mouth while we walk), to abnormal heat output when together, to many, many other things. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is either that a greater power sends me dogs with these specific traits to show me.. something. Or, the same driving force is manifesting in different ways.

Quite interesting, either way.

reply to post by wildtimes


That's a pretty awesome story. My wife and my birth mother are Scandinavian and I wish I could have went and visited when I was stationed in Europe but I was always deployed. I think its interesting that you say you have always been interested in Native american culture since being young. I have always been fascinated by military history. Other kids would be reading BoBo the clown or whatever and I would be checking out books on the Punic wars or something.

what a nice place for a video....

reply to post by Serdgiam


I don't think it seems silly or stupid at all. I have three dogs. I have always loved Labs the most of any other breed that I have met. They are so smart and energetic and crazy and loyal they have a special place in my heart. I live kinda close to a rural highway and one bad trait of labs is they chase cars. I have had three labs (chocolate, yellow and black) that I've had to bury from getting hit by cars out there. Even me fencing in the backyard did not work because they can easily jump over a 5ft. fence or dig under it. Anyways, last February my Yellow lab boomer did the same thing that my other two did. Went chasing cars on the highway and got hit. I cried and boohoo'd like a baby for weeks. I had almost died of cancer and was going through horrible rounds of radiation and chemo that was killing me too and Boomer had my heart. He knew I felt bad, and he would follow me everywhere, always checked on me. Always put his head in my lap when I was too sick to my stomach to move. He would even walk right next to my right leg and help steady my gait while walking back when I was too weak to walk without getting dizzy. So after Boomer died. I swore I was never getting another lab. it was just too much for me to loose another one. So I adopted a stray birddog (which I think I got because they are kinda chilled out dogs. Opposite of labs.) that somebody had dropped off around my dads house and named her tootie. 3 months after I got Tootie she had puppies from the neighbors dog (which was a cur). One of the puppies was alot more energetic and crazy and smart and athletic than the rest. I decided to keep him because he reminded me so much of Boomer. And because he is also blind and I did not want to give him away to someone that would think he is stupid and be mean to him. I wouldnt find it hard to believe at all if it was him.

It sounds like you have a very loyal friend that want to be with you no matter where you are and what life you are living.

reply to post by rival


Ugh, can't stand Kenny Wayne. He is from Shreveport so that's all they played on the radio over and over when he got big.

Originally posted by redoubt
reply to post by Cancerwarrior

 

Have you ever had an experience that changed your mind about Reincarnation?

It was back sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s.

I was browsing a reprint of the Sears catalog for Fall of 1900 that I had picked up in a consignment shop. As I was flipping through the pages, I came to the cameras and all of a sudden, I was awash in memories of being a child and recalling a specific camera listed, being delivered to a country home. This memory said that I had an uncle who had ordered it and that I was just big enough to look over the top edge of the table to see it. It was a very exciting time and the whole family was involved.

Along with the memories came all sorts of emotions and recollections of feelings and... it was all very clear but it was also really fleeting. I wrote down as much as I could of the experience for record... and while some of the imagery from those memories remained, a lot of the feeling and emotion of who I was, faded pretty quickly.

It is funny that you say this. I was just thinking of how at the time it happened to me how clear everything seemed. And now just a few years later i can't remember as much about it as I once did. It's like I remember remembering it I guess? I don't know, but thank you for your reply.