40. Reincarnation Part 2: How To See A Bigger Picture

In this episode of Spiritually Hungry, Monica and Michael continue their discourse on reincarnation and its practical applications in our daily reality. Tune in to discover Kabbalah’s insights on the five levels of the soul, why we have difficult people in our lives, why bad things happen to good people, and more.

Transcript

You and I and all those who are listening to us and all those who came before us and all those who are now and all those who will be are really part of an eternal soul that never goes away.

We're just coming in and out of physical form to move all of us forward.

If I don't choose to grow,

If I don't choose to learn,

If I don't choose to view my interactions with everybody in my life as the perfect opportunities being created for me,

Both to repay previous debts and to grow,

Then it won't happen.

That's the thing.

That's what we have free will and that's why we forget our past lives because you need to be presented with an obstacle,

A challenge,

And then choose hopefully more wisely than you did perhaps in the previous incarnation.

And I guess that is how the soul elevates.

Exactly.

You need to live life.

You need to live it.

And the reincarnation lessons are coming to you.

What you want to do is be open to that reality,

To learn from it,

To grow from it.

Welcome to Spiritually Hungry Podcast,

Episode 40.

I feel like we've done this before.

That was funny,

Honey.

So we are going to continue our conversation about reincarnation and the wheels of the soul.

Yes,

A very important topic.

A very interesting one as well.

So I want to give you another interesting story of a child who had recollection of a past life that I thought was really interesting.

So ready to hear it?

I am ready.

Ryan Hammonds was four years old and he began directing imaginary movies.

Shouts of action often echoed from his room.

I think that's adorable by the way.

But the play became a concern for Ryan's parents when he began waking up in the middle of the night,

Screaming and clutching his chest saying he dreamed his heart exploded when he was in Hollywood.

His mother Cindy asked his doctor about the episodes.

Night terrors,

The doctor said.

He'll outgrow them.

Then one night as Cindy tucked Ryan into bed,

Ryan suddenly took hold of Cindy's hand.

Mama,

He said,

I think I used to be someone else.

He said he remembered a big white house in a swimming pool.

It was in Hollywood many miles from his Oklahoma home.

He said he had three sons,

But that he couldn't remember their names.

And he began crying,

Asking Cindy over and over why he couldn't remember their names.

I know.

I really didn't know what to do,

Cindy said.

I was more in shock than anything.

He was so insistent about it.

After that night,

He kept talking about it,

Kept getting upset about not being able to remember those names.

I started researching the internet about reincarnation.

And what I love about this too,

Right,

That never even gave thought to what is our purpose,

Past lives or not,

Right?

But because her son was really stressed out about this information that kept coming to him,

So she went to research.

She said,

I even got some books from the library on Hollywood thinking their pictures might help them.

I didn't tell anyone for months.

One day as Ryan and Cindy paged through one of Hollywood's books,

Ryan stopped at a black and white still taken from a 1930s movie,

Night after night.

Two men in the center of the picture were confronting one another.

Four other men surrounded them.

Cindy didn't recognize any of the faces,

But Ryan pointed to one of the men in the middle.

Hey,

Mama,

He said.

That's George.

We did a picture together.

His finger then shot over to a man on the right wearing an overcoat and a scowl.

That guy's me.

I found me,

Ryan exclaimed.

And Ryan's claims,

While rare,

Are not unique among the more than 2,

500 case filings sitting inside of the office of Jim B.

Tucker.

Now,

Tucker actually was the predecessor of Ian Stevenson,

Who we talked about last episode.

He worked with him for many years and then he continued on after Stevenson's death.

Some facts here by numbers,

Reincarnation by numbers.

Sixty percent of children who claim past slave memories are male.

I thought that was really interesting.

Only 70% of the children claim they died of violent or unnatural death.

90% of the children say they were the same sex in a previous life as they are now,

Which made me happy because I want to be a woman again.

I want you to be a woman again too.

I'm all woman.

And the median time between claimed death and birth is 16 months.

I thought that was really interesting,

But there's more.

And he goes into quantum physics a little bit because of course,

There are naysayers and who try to debunk his work.

In his latest book,

Return to Life,

He said that quantum physics indicates that our physical world may grow out of our consciousness.

That's a view held not just by me,

But by a number of physicists as well.

So he's saying that with quantum physics,

Right,

Mind bending science of how nature's smallest particles behave provide clues to reincarnation's existence.

So we'll go into that a little bit more as I look into it.

But it is interesting because they're saying that they see protons and neutrons act differently when activated by light,

For instance.

And he gives different examples that scientists are supporting in this way.

But I want to just continue with Ryan's past life.

So Cindy Hammond wasn't considering any of this when her preschool son was pointing himself out in a photo from more than 80 years ago.

She wanted to know who that man was.

The book didn't provide any names of the actors' pictures,

But Cindy quickly confirmed that the man Ryan said was George and the photo was indeed George.

Oh,

Wow.

George Raft,

An all but forgotten film star from the 1930s and 1940s.

Still she couldn't identify the man Ryan said had been him.

Cindy wrote Tucker,

Whom she found through her online research and included the photo.

Eventually it ended up in the hands of a film archivist who after weeks of research confirmed the scally man's name,

Martin Martin,

And an uncredited extra in the film.

Tucker hadn't shared that discovery with the Hammond family when he traveled to their home a few weeks later.

Instead,

He laid out a black and white photo of four women on the kitchen table.

Three of them were random.

Tucker asked Ryan,

Do any of these mean anything to you?

Remember he's four,

Right?

Ryan studied the pictures.

He pointed to one.

She looks familiar,

He said.

It was Martin Martin's wife.

Not long afterward,

Tucker and Hammond's traveled to California to meet Martin's daughter,

Who had been tracked down by researchers working with Tucker on a documentary.

So now imagine,

Right?

These are lives now from past and present intersecting.

I think that's so crazy.

Tucker sat down with the woman before her meeting with Ryan.

She'd been reluctant to help,

But during her talk with Tucker,

She confirmed dozens of facts Ryan had given about her father.

Ryan said he danced in New York.

Martin was a Broadway dancer.

Ryan said he was also an agent and that people he worked with had changed their names.

Martin worked for years at a well-known talent agency in Hollywood where stage names are often created after his dancing career ended.

Ryan said his old address had rock in its name.

Martin lived at 825 North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills.

We know what that is.

Yes,

We do.

Ryan said he knew a man named Senator Five.

Martin's daughter said she had a picture of her father with Senator Ives,

Irving Ives of New York who served in the US Senate.

And yes,

Martin Martin had three sons and the daughter of course knew their names.

The meeting later between Ryan- I must have been happy to find out the name.

Yeah,

Right?

But this is what I thought was really interesting.

The meeting later between Ryan and Martin's daughter didn't go well.

Ryan shook her hand and then hid behind Cindy for the rest of the time.

Later he told his mother the woman's energy had changed.

Cindy explained that people change when they grow up.

And then he said,

I don't want to go back to Hollywood.

I always want to keep this family.

In the weeks that followed,

Ryan spoke less about Hollywood.

Tucker says that often happens when children meet the family of someone they claim to have been.

It seems to validate their memories,

Making them less intense.

I think they see that no one is waiting for them in the past,

Tucker says.

Some of them get sad about it,

But ultimately they accept it and they turn their attention more fully to the present.

They get more involved in experiencing this life,

Which is of course what they should do.

That's interesting.

It reminded me of actually two things which I'd like to share.

One,

About now probably seven or eight years ago,

Maybe even more,

Maybe even 10 years ago,

It was an afternoon and we're lying in bed with our older daughter who at the time was probably eight years old or so.

And with our son who at the time was probably around 10 or 11.

Our older son?

Our older son,

Yeah.

Two boys and two girls.

Oh,

I remember their names.

Does that mean I'm in reincarnation?

So anyway,

So that's made this too complicated for our listeners.

We were talking about our other son,

Josh,

And we were talking about things that my father had told me about his soul and who he was in a previous lifetime.

So this was a new concept for our daughter Miriam.

And she's starting to think about the idea of reincarnation and what it means that her brother would have been somebody else in a previous lifetime and I can see the wheels turning in her mind.

And then she starts crying and she's like,

And they say,

Why are you crying?

We're just talking about who our brother was in a previous lifetime.

And she said,

That means that we come back again.

I said,

Yes,

We can come back again.

And he says,

And that means that I might have a different father and he would call it Abba.

I could have a different Abba.

I said,

It's possible.

And then she starts crying like really,

Really badly.

And she says,

I don't ever want to have a different Abba than you.

Which is very sweet.

And that was sort of our first conversation about reincarnation.

Do you remember also when David,

Our eldest,

It was before I was even pregnant with Josh,

Our second,

And he kept saying,

When is my brother coming?

When is my brother coming?

I mean the pressure,

My God.

But then one day he said,

When is Joshua coming?

And we hadn't even thought of it.

We didn't know,

Everything was,

We don't think like that.

And in fact.

Absolutely.

And the second thing you remind me of is I think most people,

If you haven't heard of this person or this book,

I strongly recommend you both learning about him and the book.

Dr.

Brian Weiss,

Who wrote one of the more seminal works in our time on reincarnation,

Many lives,

Many masters.

And he relates the story of how,

Again,

He was a Columbia University,

Yale University educated doctor.

And he was not really spiritual in any way.

And he tells the story,

He was working with this patient.

Her name was Catherine.

And he was working with her for about a year.

And in that year,

She starts recalling,

Because she came to him,

She had different types of phobias.

She had a phobia of drowning,

If I'm not mistaken.

And she,

In a state of hypnosis,

Came to realize that she had died and drowning in a previous lifetime.

And what he found interesting is that that realization started lifting her anxiety and phobias.

And in his mind,

He's thinking,

It doesn't make sense that imaginations,

Because this is what he was assuming they were,

Would help cure or alleviate symptoms of anxiety and fear.

And he was going with it.

So she was saying that she was realizing previous incarnations,

And those realizations helped her work through her fears.

But the moment he said that he became a believer,

This is about a year into his working with Catherine.

And while she's in the state of hypnosis,

She says,

Your father's here to Dr.

Brian Weiss.

And she starts telling him details about his father that nobody knows.

Now,

This is 1981 before there's Google.

There was both no way for her to know this and no way for her to find out this information.

He said,

You named your daughter after your father.

His father's.

.

.

And it was true.

And then she tells him his father's Hebrew name,

Which was Avraham.

And nobody,

Even their family didn't know their father's Hebrew name.

And then she tells him that he died with his heart,

Which was true.

So he's already starting to see that there's something more real here.

And then she said,

And your son is here.

Now,

He had a young child son who was born,

I think lived 23 days.

And none of his family,

Like this is not a story they told.

And she tells him the heart deformity that he had.

Again,

None of their family members knew,

None of their friends knew.

And he says,

This is the point where he realized there's something much more here than an imagination of past lives.

And again,

So for our listeners who have never heard of Many Lives,

Many Masters,

Certainly read it.

I read it in a book.

I read that it's just spiritual.

Even just to open my mind to something beyond physical world or physical realm.

And so there's so much out there.

There's so much out there that validates,

That gives at least the opening to believe.

But I think it's also important that we talk about,

Because for me,

It's nice to have wisdom and information and interesting facts.

But I think the question always needs to be,

What is the practical application of this?

How does this practically change my life?

And I'd like to share a teaching from Ravashlak as it relates to reincarnation,

Which I think is a foundation from which I'll share how I think it should practically impact how we view life and how we view challenges.

But I think it gives a really strong foundation to understand how this concept and wisdom of reincarnation should and can help influence our lives.

So he says,

In reality,

We were at one point,

We,

Meaning all of humanity,

All the souls that have ever lived,

All the souls that live and all the souls that will ever live.

We were one soul.

We were one spiritual being.

And then we fell.

And from that moment onward,

All of us together are in this world,

And this world is simply a place for correction and elevation,

Correction and elevation.

And that is true for the thousands of years of known history of humanity and all the history of our world.

He says,

If you understand that,

That really what we are,

You and I,

Our listeners and all the people alive today and all the people who have died who lived before and all the people who will be born,

We're all really one whole that lives in essence from the beginning of time till the end of time.

And our job always is to grow,

To correct,

And to elevate.

By whole,

You mean sparks of light?

So you and I are sparks of that original whole complete one soul or source of humanity,

Right?

So,

And in reality,

Because we understand that you and I and all those who are listening to us and all those who came before us and all those who are now and all those who will be,

Are really part of an eternal soul that never goes away.

We're just coming in and out of physical form to move all of us forward,

Right?

Yes.

But let me ask you,

There are also levels of soul,

Right?

There's five levels of soul specifically.

So how does that work in relation to that idea?

Let's just go through the five quickly for those that don't,

I mean,

I don't think many of you are aware of this at all,

Right?

There's five levels.

The first is nefesh,

Right?

Which is connected to action,

Right?

And this is a conscious aspect of action.

There's ruach.

So nefesh means life force,

Right?

Ruach is spirit.

That is the conscious aspect of our soul connected to our emotions.

Okay.

There's neshamah's soul,

Which is connected to our intellect.

And then there's chaya,

Which is living,

Which is connected to wisdom.

And then yechida,

Which is root of soul,

Right?

So when you speak of soul,

Are you speaking about that level or what are these aspects,

These five?

Okay.

So let's take a step back,

Right?

I like that.

Yes.

Let's do that.

There's another teaching which is related to this and I think hopefully we'll have answer your question.

So Rabashic uses a parable.

He says there was a king who wanted to send money and things of importance to his son who lived far away.

And he needed to send it through messengers.

He knew that if he sent one person with $10 million,

The chances are somebody might steal it from him.

He might steal it from him,

Might never get to his son.

So in order to make sure that eventually everything he wants to give to his son gets there,

He takes let's say a million dollars and he divides it into pennies.

He takes,

You know,

However,

Tens of millions of messengers and he says,

Give this penny to my son.

And chances are over time,

Eventually his son will get to that million dollars,

But it will come to him by many,

Many different messengers,

Even though the purpose of the king was one.

I have something that I,

This great wealth I want to give to my son,

But he was afraid again of thieves and it's not getting there.

So he divides it into little,

Little pieces so that eventually his son will get it.

Or perhaps if he had it all at one time,

It would be misused maybe.

Also possible.

Also possible.

So Rabashic said that that is how we view humanity.

We are unified,

One unified whole of humanity.

But in order to make sure that elevation and correction occurs,

That's one soul was divided into trillions and trillions and trillions of parts.

And you have one of those pieces and I have one of those pieces and every one of our listeners is one of those pieces.

Call them sparse,

Call them the sparks of soul.

So and so your job is to fix a tiny part.

My job is to fix a tiny part.

I don't fix it.

I can come back again.

So But then why are some sparks more connected to each other than other sparks if we're all one?

Okay.

You're asking a third question,

Which is important.

I'm going to ask many,

Many questions.

Yes,

Yes.

But I want to make sure we don't because each one of those two.

.

.

Okay.

To answer your question about The five levels.

Well,

No,

The new one.

The one you just asked.

What was the question?

So if we all are sparks of one soul,

Right?

Then the idea of soulmates or that two people feel more connected to one another than the guy across the street,

Right?

So there's a concept called.

.

.

Imagine a tree,

Right?

Imagine that unified soul that we spoke about in the form of a tree.

Imagine a huge tree.

The tree has many branches.

Each branch has many leaves.

When a group of souls are of the same branch,

For example,

They're closer in temperament,

They're closer in desire,

They're just closer.

So the people that you and I interact with,

That we feel close to,

It means that we are from in that tree of souls from the same branch,

Maybe of the same leaf and so on and so forth.

The people.

.

.

Imagine the trillions of the souls that have lived.

There are many souls that we will have no connection to,

Even though we are originally all of the same tree,

But they're so distant,

A distant part of the tree,

I don't feel that connection to.

So that answers the question of.

.

.

And now,

Every person I interact with,

Every person I interact with is somebody that I am interacting with,

And certainly the more long-term interactions that I have.

People that are in my life,

Not just for a moment,

But for weeks,

Months,

Years,

There is a relationship that needs fixing.

And when you think about it in this way,

And we spoke,

We touched upon this whole thing a little bit in the previous podcast,

The way we judge others and how we should act with them becomes different.

Because when you realize,

Yeah,

This person just upset me now,

But maybe in a previous incarnation I really wronged them,

And I need this payback to take care of my,

Call it karma,

Call my correction- Your cosmic debt.

My cosmic debt,

Exactly.

And when you start looking at your relationships in this way,

That my judgment of them can only be incomplete if I take into account only my current interactions of this lifetime.

And there's so much more that has gone between us.

And hopefully,

And this is what I'm hoping for,

Listen,

I'm hoping for myself and for you,

That we live our lives and judge our interactions with others based on our huge blind spot that comes from our previous reincarnations with them.

As you said,

The Kabbalists teach that the soul is basically divided into five parts.

But the reality is that every spark of those five parts is also divided into five parts.

So whatever spark I have,

Because in ultimate terms,

We're all really only one soul.

We're sparks of one soul.

That spark that I have within me right now also has five parts.

And my job in this incarnation,

Previous incarnations,

If I have to come back for another incarnation,

Is to correct and elevate throughout those five.

So imagine you have to graduate from one to the next,

To the next,

To the next.

From action to thought to critical thought as we went through.

And there's much more depth to that.

And on a simple level,

If you are learning in life,

Which means that when you are having a negative interaction with somebody and you're really aware of the fact,

First of all,

I have no idea what debt that I have to them.

I can't be judging this interaction.

And second,

I know that my soul needs to be learning from this.

If you're learning in life,

Which means you really view both the challenges and the people and the good and the bad as ways to help you grow and elevate,

Then your soul is elevating through those five levels.

And that writ large is what our souls have been doing for thousands of years.

And it takes time.

It takes time,

Especially again,

Understanding that each one of us has been given a small part to correct,

But that small part in the history of humanity is a very important and significant part.

It has,

And it itself has levels to it.

So all that I have been doing and all that you've been doing and all that our listeners have been doing for the past thousands and thousands of years has been two steps forward,

One step back,

Hopefully.

Been growing within my five levels of soul.

That's a lot of work.

It is a lot of work.

And that's the point.

But the- And this is where I think time comes in and the illusion of time,

Because if we think about it as we understand time to be this,

It's not achievable in fact.

It doesn't seem achievable for each person to work in their corner on their five levels of soul,

Then to come together and then change all of humanity because of our elevation.

I mean,

It's a big- But the beauty of it is that our soul's experience in this physical world is perfectly set up to help us grow in conscious and unconscious ways.

And I think that's a very important point that you touched upon that we are,

And I think I find this inspiring.

It's not just,

I think maybe some of our listeners may say,

Oh,

I'll realize when I'm growing.

I'll realize when a life lesson is coming to me or a reincarnation debt is being paid.

No,

You're not going to realize.

And the beauty of the system of our life is that we are always growing and learning.

Sometimes we resist it,

Sometimes we're open to it.

And I think what the inspiration should be from fully embracing the concept of reincarnation and the concept that we have to be growing is I need to embrace life,

Its lessons,

Its challenges,

Because I am not just here to live okay,

I'm here to grow.

And if I don't grab the opportunity,

Because again,

This is a beautiful concept and inspiring concept,

But there is also the,

I don't want to say negative,

But the other side to that.

If I don't choose to grow,

If I don't choose to learn,

If I don't choose to view my interactions with everybody in my life as the perfect opportunity is being created for me,

Both to repay previous debts and to grow,

Then it won't happen.

That's the thing.

That's what we have free will.

And that's why we forget our past lives because you need to be presented with an obstacle,

A challenge,

And then choose hopefully more wisely than you did perhaps in a previous incarnation.

And I guess that is how the soul elevates.

Exactly.

In all five levels,

But just also in totality.

For instance,

Maimonides speaks about correction and he says,

The ultimate state of correction is when you're in the same situation with the same person.

And you choose different.

And the question is different.

What are you going to do?

Exactly.

And the question of course is asked,

How can you be in the same situation with the same person?

Don't worry.

The system is greater.

Well,

Exactly.

Exactly.

But when you view it like that,

Right?

So imagine,

Just imagine,

Everybody has different people in their lives,

Their family,

Their friends who really,

Especially if it's family that you can't divorce yourself from.

Imagine there's that person.

Why?

And how many times have you sat with people and I haven't,

How many times have we experienced this one person like,

Why is this person doing this to me?

Right?

Why is this person in my life?

Exactly.

But if you accept,

I might not have clarity.

Brian Wise was able to get his through,

Get his patients to really come.

I might not be clear,

But exactly what I did to deserve this person,

Why I need to be in the situation,

But I accept that I do.

And by the way,

I know that every time I've personally done that in my life,

I get to such a level of clarity and also eventually appreciation for the person because I feel changed through it.

That is how you.

.

.

And that's why people come.

.

.

Actually,

After our last podcast,

Somebody asked,

What's the name of the psychic you went to?

And I'm all for that,

But I don't think we necessarily need to know the story or the narrative to be able.

.

.

In fact,

I don't believe that in order to create the change that we so need on a soul level,

You just have to be willing to see through to the other end of a process.

And that's,

I think,

Such an important point.

I study reincarnation.

You study reincarnation.

Some of our listeners might or might not.

You don't really need to study too much.

You need to live life.

You need to live it.

Your reincarnation lessons are coming to you.

They came to you yesterday.

They're coming today.

They're coming tomorrow.

And what you want to do is be open to that reality,

To learn from it,

To grow from it.

And really,

To the degree that we can,

Remove the victim consciousness from it.

Because I look at this guy.

I only did good for him.

Why does he hate me so much now?

Ah,

Maybe in my previous incarnation,

I really wronged them.

And- That actually reminds me of a story by the Kabbalist,

The Baal Shem Tov.

I really liked the story.

He said,

One day a student came to him and asked if he could provide some illustration demonstrating the existence of reincarnation.

The student was told to go to a particular park,

Take a seat and observe.

By the way,

I love doing that.

After settling down on a bench,

He noticed a man approached an adjoining bench with a small satchel in his hand.

After a while,

The man got up and left,

Leaving the small satchel behind.

A few moments later,

Another man sat down on the same bench.

As he seated himself,

He noticed the satchel.

He opened it and he found a large sum of money.

He hurriedly closed the satchel and ran off like a thief.

A moment later,

A third man,

Who was apparently very tired,

Sat down on that very bench.

Soon afterwards,

The first man returned to the same bench looking for a satchel.

Assuming that since only a few moments had elapsed since he left the bench,

He confronted the present occupant of the bench and demanded he return the satchel filled with money.

The bewildered man responded with a blank expression,

Exclaimed,

What are you talking about?

I just got here.

Taking the answer by the assumed thief to mean that he was refusing to return the satchel with the money,

The victim then proceeded to beat up the supposed thief.

The student in the bell shum was totally confused and immediately returned to his teacher's home and asked him.

The student exclaimed that what we had observed led him to think that indeed this world is nothing more than chaos.

Right?

How does this make any sense?

And how many times,

By the way- One guy lost something he shouldn't have lost,

One guy took something he shouldn't have taken,

And one guy got beaten for something he didn't do.

Right.

It's all wrong.

It's all wrong.

Not one of them is treated right in this story.

But I think those are the questions we have in life,

Right?

Why does somebody,

A good person and bad things happen to them?

Why is somebody really bad and evil and negative- Or us,

Right?

Why did I lose this,

Right?

Why does this person think I took it from them?

Why is this person doing me?

Exactly.

And we just stand there saying,

Oh,

You know,

God is punishing or life is unfair.

So the concept of reincarnation,

Which tends to create some semblance of order in the universe,

Is nothing more than illusionary.

The student then related what he saw.

A man is grieved by the loss of his satchel.

Another person benefits from the misfortune of someone else.

And finally,

The picture of total chaos,

An innocent man is beaten up for no good reason.

The Baal Shem Tov replied that the student had not grasped the full implication of the scene,

Which actually reflected an incident between these individuals in a past lifetime.

The first person to whom the satchel belonged had stolen some money from the second individual.

And now in this lifetime,

The second man was recovering what had been stolen by the first in a previous lifetime.

So you might wonder,

What does the poor third guy have to do with this story?

That guy was the judge who had not recognized nor had been thorough in the facts of the case under his review.

And therefore,

Because of his false judgment,

He was now judged in this way.

So basically the natural laws and principles of the universe actually do govern exactly as they should,

But we just don't have access to the full picture.

And that's exactly the point.

What I hope our listeners take from this episode is broaden your view of your life.

And that life is happening and all,

And this is every single person who's coming into your life is necessary for you.

Either because you need to repay something,

You need to cleanse something,

Or you need to help.

And this is the other part which I want to talk about that,

I think I'm not sure,

I don't think I showed this last time,

But recalling that conversation that I had with Miriam,

With our oldest daughter about reincarnation when she was crying,

I always like to think,

Who do we choose to help?

We help people we care for.

We help our family,

We help our spouse,

We help our children.

Hopefully,

I don't want to say every,

But because there are some parents who aren't so caring,

But many parents,

Most parents will do almost anything- I wouldn't say they're not caring,

Maybe they're not able to show care.

Yeah,

There's some pretty bad parents out there.

I know,

But I'm assuming our listeners are good parents.

Our listeners are good parents.

There's nothing that we wouldn't do for our kids.

When they're in need,

No matter what type of need,

We will go to the ends of the earth to help them.

So we have a clear hierarchy in our mind of who are the people that are really,

Really important for me to help,

And then there's friends who are- Well,

I don't know,

There's nothing we'd do for our kids.

I went totally on a different place in my mind.

We just watched Your Honor recently,

Right?

And as we're watching it,

We're like,

Why would this guy do this for the son?

It's his greatest goal in life.

You were upset by it,

So why should this.

.

.

Okay,

But anyway,

I'm not- No,

You're not sure it's right that we should do anything,

But the reality is most parents will do almost anything.

Correct.

Right.

That's a good show,

By the way.

Yeah,

To our listeners who haven't watched- Brian Kranzen,

Your Honor,

Yeah.

So we have a hierarchy of people we want to help,

But when you realize that,

That is also coming from a blind place,

Because I only know the people that I know in this lifetime,

But what about the people who are my children in my previous lifetime,

Who come to me?

And when you realize this,

The people who are coming to us,

They're not coming to us by coincidence in our lives.

This might be one incarnation ago,

Five incarnations ago,

Or 10 incarnations in a row.

And I always think whenever I doubt or question whether I should push myself this much to help or to do a favor or to assist in any way,

Maybe he was your son in a previous lifetime.

Is there anything you wouldn't do for your son?

In addition to the fact that,

As we said before,

The people who are finding their way into my life today are from my branch of souls.

He wasn't my brother,

He wasn't my father,

Maybe,

He wasn't my son,

But he was a very good friend.

Well,

Let me ask you- There are no coincidences.

Yeah.

Because when you were talking about branch of soul before,

I had this thought and now you brought it up again.

So let's say you have a sibling you don't really jive with.

And you recognize,

Though,

That they were part of your life.

In previous incarnations,

It feels familiar,

But you're so different and you see the world differently.

Are you still part of the same branch?

Yes.

Or are you part of the same tree?

Because the way I understand is like a branch,

When you're part of the same branch as people that you feel good with,

That you have an affinity of soul and spirit,

A connection,

But not a negative connection per se.

So are you saying even the negative connections we have?

To be clear,

When you accept that what person you're- I'm not saying they're not.

.

.

I'm not challenging that they're not from a past life and that they're not part of our tikkun.

They are.

I recognize that.

But when you say branch of soul,

It's like your people is how I see it.

But again,

We're only viewing them.

.

.

We all have bad days,

Right?

We all have moments where like,

Oh my God,

If anybody saw me doing this,

Right?

Masks are so handy these days.

So you're seeing that moment.

Yes,

You might be seeing this for 60 years,

But it's a sliver of time.

So you're saying even the way that soul is behaving in this life,

Time is not the totality of their soul and you're getting a window into maybe perhaps one that you're not connected to.

That's a hard one to really- The part that you need to be experiencing.

That's not so good.

The part that you need to be experiencing.

That's pretty profound.

I think you need to unpack that for a sec.

That's pretty profound because we know that everybody has good and evil in them.

But what you're saying right now is that their expression of just negative in your life is because that's what you need to see and not because that is who they are.

It's definitely not who they are in their totality of soul.

That's pretty profound.

And I think what it does,

It allows for much more grace and compassion.

Forgiveness,

Yes.

Yeah.

It doesn't,

Not just to be clear and we've spoken about this,

But it doesn't mean you take it,

Right?

It doesn't mean you allow them to abuse or be nasty and so on and so forth.

You are,

I think,

Healthily creating boundaries and not allowing for negative behavior.

But then when you're home at night and you're thinking about that person- It allows you to have empathy.

Exactly.

And compassion.

It allows you to actually become the better version of yourself because you're not going to go to places that you shouldn't go to.

And in fact,

That's why they're there,

Right?

Exactly.

It reminds me of another story of a person who was having challenges in their lives.

And he comes to a great Kabbalist and he says,

You know,

It doesn't make sense to me.

I'm a good person.

I do good things.

Why are things so difficult for me?

And the Kabbalist says,

Do me a favor.

I want to help you understand the answer to your question.

Travel to this town.

It gives them the name of a town,

Which about in those days,

Three days travel away.

And I want you to find this person that gives him a name.

And that will answer your question.

Finding that person.

Travels for three days.

He comes to this town.

He starts asking around for the name that he was given.

Nobody knows.

He's looking,

Going from house to house,

Person to person.

Nobody knows this guy.

He's getting a little bit demoralized.

He was hoping to have the solution to all of his problems.

And finally somebody says,

You know,

There's an old guy who's been living in our house,

In our village for years.

Go to his house.

If this person has ever lived here in the past 150 years,

He'll know.

He goes to the guy's house.

He knocks on his door.

The guy welcomes him in.

And he says,

I know you've been living here for so many years.

You know the history of this town.

I'm looking for this person who gives the name.

And as he says the name of the guy,

The old man spits.

There's a concept.

We say the name of an evil person should rot.

Like I don't ever want to hear that name ever spoken.

He has a very strong visceral reaction.

And the guy that,

You know,

The student who was sent there said,

What's going on?

He said,

This person passed away about,

You know,

65 years ago.

He was the most evil person ever.

He hurt every person in this town.

He did terrible,

Terrible things to everybody he ever came across.

And that's why I don't ever want his name mentioned in my house.

So the student is now surprised.

This didn't answer his question,

Right?

He was hoping that he was going to find some great sage who would give him a blessing or something where somebody would lend him money.

Who knows?

And he was upset now,

Disappointed.

He travels three days back to his teacher and he says,

You know,

I can't deal with the problem.

I know why I'm doing so many things right and I'm having so many challenges in my life.

And you send me to find this guy and the guy is dead,

So he can't help me.

Not only is he dead,

He was a terrible,

Terrible person.

So the cabless turns to him.

He says,

You have to know that was you.

That was you in a previous life.

He says,

You should be so thankful that the way you're paying for it,

You have a beautiful family.

You're able to support them.

Yes,

You have challenges and things are ongoing,

Right?

It's all going to repay that debt.

And when you view yourself in that way and you view others in that way,

It really changes the perspective on life,

Much less judgment towards other people and much greater acceptance of the process of your life.

I want to quote your father,

The Rav,

In his book,

Wheels of a Soul.

I think that it really supports what we're saying.

The Rav said that,

Actions of man are indeed controlled by the cosmos,

But only to the extent that they were manifested in a prior lifetime.

In other words,

If an individual committed crimes against humanity in a previous incarnation,

His incarnated soul returns and is faced with the same type of situation with which he was challenged in a past lifetime.

The person is being given an opportunity to exercise free will and thwart the scenario of the cassette of prior lifetimes or succumb to its influence.

In essence,

The cosmos presents the opportunity and framework for dealing rationally with our incarnation cassette.

The cosmic strings of activity are not the cause of the life cassettes predetermined structure.

This has already been predetermined by former lifetimes.

And then he goes on to say,

The soul of a man is no more dependent upon the existence of the brain than a musician is dependent upon the existence of his violin,

Though both instruments are necessary for musical expression in the physical world.

Because this lends itself to what quantum physics is saying also.

Only when we fully grasp this viewpoint can we begin to approach the study of reincarnation.

Human consciousness existed before birth and by human consciousness,

I mean the soul.

This is the first fundamental fact of reincarnation.

So,

One of the scientists were talking about how this consciousness will go into different bodies,

But also inhabit different brains.

Everything else is just physical,

But this matter,

Protons,

Neutrons,

They go from body to body and that energy never dies.

This experience,

Right,

I think part of the understanding of reincarnation is that this physical experience is a tiny part of our process.

Which we take only into account by the way.

We take so seriously.

Yeah,

This is all we see right now.

This is all we think about and so on and so forth.

But it is to a very larger extent,

And it's probably something we should speak about in another podcast,

An illusion.

The essence of our soul,

Our souls collectively have been in other realities,

Will be in other realities.

And how we experience this life in this body is a very small part of the reality of our existence.

So,

Related to that before actually we get to a story,

To actually a beautiful email from one of our listeners.

There is a famous scientist,

His name is Sir Oliver Lodge,

And he talks about that.

I think it really ties into what you said and I said now about really coming to terms with a limited view that we have.

It is a great mistake that we too often make to think this is it.

This is nothing.

This is a tiny percent of it.

It being our soul's experience,

Both before we came into this physical form,

After we leave this physical form,

And as we really go throughout human history.

So it's a relatively lengthy quote,

But it's really beautiful one.

And really for me,

And I hope for our listeners,

It opens up our consciousness to break down some of the false views that we have about our time and our time in this body.

A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding things.

We progress through phenomenas at a certain definitive pace and this subjective advance we interpret in an objective manner,

As if events move necessarily in this order and at this precise rate.

But that may be only our mode of regarding them and our way of perceiving them now.

The events may be in some sense in existence always,

Both past and future.

And it may be we who are arriving at them,

Not they who are happening.

The analogy of a traveler in a railway train is useful.

If he could never leave the train nor alter its pace,

He would probably consider the landscapes as necessary,

Successive,

And be unable to conceive their coexistence.

So he sees a tree and then he sees a mountain,

But that was his whole existence.

He would think,

Okay,

The tree lived for a few seconds and then there was a mountain that was there for a few seconds.

So his view is silly as we understand it,

His silly view.

But that's how we view ourselves.

That's where we view other souls.

Like we just said before,

I just saw that the train is going at whatever speed.

I just saw that mountain.

I thought the mountain must have been there for three seconds.

It's no longer there.

It was there.

It's not there.

Not understanding that we are- And by the way,

He only saw a part of the mountain.

He didn't see the whole mountain.

We never see our whole self.

We never see the whole self of the other person.

We're seeing slivers of time.

We perceive therefore a possible fourth dimensional aspect about time,

The inexorableness of whose flow may be a natural part of our present limitations.

I think it's so beautiful to understand that,

And this is specifically as it relates to reincarnation,

We're seeing slivers in time.

We're like that guy in the train who just sees a mountain for a second.

That's all that.

.

.

No,

No,

Idiot.

Again,

Right?

Respectfully idiot.

That mountain is huge and you can walk on it for days and it's beautiful on the other side too.

You're seeing- One dimensional.

One dimensional sliver of time.

So scary in fact.

Well,

I'm very inspiring.

That's how we live our lives.

Yeah.

But I think,

Even thinking about myself,

Even when I know and experience about my soul in this incarnation right now in this moment,

Is a tiny fraction of reality.

And I should never,

We should never fall into the false belief that I'm seeing the totality of me,

The totality of you,

Or the totality of any soul that we come in contact with.

I think it's both inspiring and beautiful concept.

Yeah,

That's hit me hard the last couple of weeks.

I've thought about that in relation to people that I've only seen in this lover.

Yeah.

That's all you see.

That's all you ever see.

So not coincidentally,

One of our listeners wrote a really beautiful letter and I both want to thank her for being so open and sharing.

There's no doubt in my mind that our listeners will be both very inspired and filled with light by listening to her painful but beautiful story.

Dear Monica and Michael,

Deeply touched by your podcast on reincarnation and thought we should let you guys know our appreciation by writing.

Looking back,

It was not a coincidence we received the book To Be Continued by Karen Bird from a friend around three years ago,

Around the time our only child had died of cancer.

He was 11.

This led us to the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah,

Truly grateful that to this day,

Lessons from Michael's books and lectures we watch on kabbalah.

Com have helped me and my husband in the process of moving forward.

So today on Spiritually Hungry podcast,

Monica talks about the memory of a past life where she lost a son.

I felt every emotion in her words,

For these are emotions I wasn't brave enough to allow myself to verbalize.

And it was truly a liberating experience.

Thank you so much,

Monica,

For being brave for us and walking me through my grief with your words.

Thank you,

Michael,

For the concepts you continue to share.

Your teachings help us realize the truth in the Rav Berg saying that death is an illusion.

We now consider things like hearing our son's name,

Seeing things that remind me of him,

Or stumbling upon lessons from spiritual teachers like you guys to help accept our situation as little gifts that proves that love,

That the love we share with our dear son is eternal.

That love,

Just like light,

Never dies.

Again,

Thank you so much for doing the podcast and please continue inspiring the world on the topic of reincarnation and more with love and appreciation,

Grace.

Wow.

I didn't read that before.

Thank you so much.

That's- Really,

There are no words.

You're the brave one.

Thank you,

Really,

For being open and raw.

Yeah.

I really feel that this letter,

And Grace,

Thank you for sharing,

Probably will inspire our listeners much more than anything we said until now.

And I really both appreciate your sharing it with us and really beautiful.

Really no words.

So thank you for sharing with us.

And we ask all of our listeners,

Please share with us your stories,

Your inspirations,

Any questions you have to Monica and Michael at kamal.

Com,

As we always say,

But it's certainly true that hearing from our listeners and certainly beautiful,

Powerful,

Raw stories like this and all the stories that our listeners share with us really inspire us to continue.

And so thank you very much and please continue,

As I said,

Continue sending them to monicaandmichaelatkamal.

Com.

I am sure that they will continue to inspire our listeners more and more.

Thank you.

Okay.

Reviews

Another great episode and I loved hearing how the episode before this helped someone who wrote in.

Love it! Thank you for this.

One of the most intriguing episode yet. Love listening to the both of you. Thank you for sharing.