Lessons for Life
By Sylvia Brown

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How to Unlock the Memories of Past Lives and Utilize Them
to Make You Spiritually Well

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There are many phobias, everyday fears, and incessant worries that don’t relate to this lifetime. Many times I’ve worked with people who were baffled by anxieties that seemed to have no basis—in other words, they couldn’t be tracked through therapy or by their own investigation into their past. In these types of situations, we’ve had to go back even further and do what I call a “deep search” into a person’s overall chart, because the cause of the uneasiness resides somewhere in the cells of his or her mind and body.

Uncovering Past-Life Traumas

I once had a client who drove under the same overpass every day for twenty years on her way to work. One day as she was approaching the overpass, she broke out in a sweat and felt as if she couldn’t breathe—she was sure that she was having a heart attack. She turned around and headed for the emergency room, where she was told she was “just having an anxiety attack.” (Those words, “just . . . an anxiety attack,” just make me crazy. If you’ve ever had one—and very few people haven’t had a form of this at one time or another—then you know that it can be the most frightening and debilitating experience you’ll ever go through. Usually it comes out of the blue, unbidden and without warning. You can’t “cause” one, it just happens. But back to my client ... )

When this woman came to see me, I directed her in a meditation to return to another time. When she did, she remembered being trapped under an old bridge in Pennsylvania back in the early 1800s. She was buried under heavy beams and rubble, and she died there. The amazing thing was that in her previous life, she passed away at the same age she’d now reached in this life—which explained why the phobia hit when it did. After we did the guided meditation, she lost her fear and could go under the overpass again.

Another time, I got a visit from the frantic mother of a three-year-old. She came to see me because every time she turned on the shower, her little daughter would scream, “No, Mama! Don’t!” The mother resorted to taking baths, but still needed help because whenever anyone else in the family took a shower, or her daughter even heard a shower, the young child would panic. Through my psychic sense, I immediately knew what the problem was, without even questioning the little girl: She’d been in Nazi Germany, and had been one of the women who was killed after being herded into what seemed like a shower, but was really a gas chamber. I instructed the mom to go into the girl’s room after the child went to sleep and tell her that the time of being afraid of showers was over, and that whatever she remembered happened in a past time, and that she was safe now. Within a week, the daughter was free of her fear of showers.

Life is like a record with different grooves, and sometimes the needle slips. What we have to do to keep the soul safe from a negative fear that’s no longer relevant is release it. This is called “pulling the plug” on a negative past-life implant. When my own children had night terrors, I did the same thing I instructed the woman with the three-year-old to do: I just went in and told them that they were in this time, and what they were afraid of was in the past, long ago. When you do this, it isn’t necessary to go through gruesome details. The soul mind knows exactly what you’re talking about, and it will surrender the offending fear that blocks it from being free.

This was the case with a four-year-old boy I worked with who was just fine until the day his dad bought a telescope and set it up in the living room of the house. The little boy wandered into the room, saw the telescope, fell to the floor, and had some kind of seizure. Of course his mother and father took him to countless doctors, none of whom could find anything physically wrong with the child. Finally, they visited one of the M.D.’s I happen to work with, and he told the mother to take her son to see me. She apprehensively made an appointment, and as soon as I saw her son, I psychically realized that he’d experienced a recent death. He’d been in a submarine, and when a torpedo hit, he’d been pinned beneath a periscope (which looked a lot like a telescope to the little boy).

I put the child in a relaxed state and told him not to be afraid. I reassured him that whatever he was afraid of had happened before, and that now he was in this time, where nothing would harm him. This was the end of the seizures for the little boy—he’s never had another.

Releasing the Past, Healing the Present

You can and should explore your memories—both from this life and any past lives—and be investigative enough to see what you learn from them. But analyzing isn’t enough—you also have to neutralize any challenge by asking for release. By doing so, you may even discover how you can turn negative events into opportunities for positive growth. (Let me also say here that I’m the first one to recommend that you seek therapy if needed.)

Let’s say that you’re dealing with physical or mental abuse. In fact, I’ll use my own life as an example. It’s no secret that my mother was a master at insidious emotional battery. I had a choice: I could have adopted her behavior, but instead I went 180 degrees so I’d be different from her. I often thank her—and I even did so when she was alive—because without this negative example, I might have not been the caring mother I am today. I never told my mother why I was thankful for her, because it was enough that God and I knew.

The hurts we carry in life can’t be covered up with Band-Aids. Like physical wounds, these sore spots can only heal when the air hits them. Yet while it’s important to acknowledge and let out the pain so that it doesn’t fester, it’s equally imperative that we adjust our behavior to release the past and move on.

I had a friend who talked incessantly about abandonment issues. In almost every experience she had, she felt left behind. The irony is that by obsessively discussing this matter, she seemed to draw more of it to her, and after hearing her go on about it so much, I also wanted to run away! Her story really reinforces the age-old truth that thoughts and words become realities. We can all definitely set ourselves up to fulfill our own prophecies.

I see this all the time with my clients. The very thing that haunts them from this life (as well as in their past lives) is what they continue to run right into time and again. Don’t feel bad if this happens to you, because we get stuck in this rut from time to time, but to keep embracing it does stop the soul from growing. For example, a male friend of mine whose wife left him was determined to hang on to the relationship—even though she went back and forth from her lover to him. His excuse for not getting on with his life was, in his own words, “The fear of rejection.” What he didn’t realize was that he was already living a life of total rejection, and he was the one keeping himself in that place.

I recently heard a comforting story about a woman who had a very real near-death experience. She went through a beautiful bright light and felt completely elated, and then she was met by a gorgeous, radiant being. She exclaimed, “I don’t know if I’m good enough to be here!” The being responded, “We expect you to spill the milk, but it’s really how you clean it up that matters.” How simple, yet how true. That statement really brings home the words of Jesus, that if we become more like little children, the kingdom of heaven will be ours.

Don’t get me wrong—there isn’t anything easy about mulling over the painful parts of your life, but you have to ask yourself: Do you want to be enslaved by your memories, or do you want to simply see them as episodes that, painful as they are, helped you gain strength and become who you are today? If you do the latter, you’ll be able to gaze into the mirror and know that you’ve survived the good and the bad, and you’ll be freer and even stronger for it.

Creating Joyful Memories

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing negative memories, so how about taking some time to address all the good memories we have? For me, those are the times I’ve shared with my psychic grandmother, my friends, my children, my teachers, and my clients. Even holding my grandchildren’s hands—these are life’s precious moments. When we make love happen, we allow our soul to grow beyond all the weeds of bad memories.

Unlike replacing harmful habits with healthy patterns, you can’t just swap a hurtful memory with a pleasant one. But when you take a balanced look at the positive and the negative in your life, then you can take pride in not only what you’ve overcome, but what you’ve become because of the sum of all your experiences. Learn, for example, to say, “I’ve been abused, but there was a time when life was happy. I can and will recapture that feeling without remorse or pain. I refuse to substitute a false sense of security for happiness, and I won’t be afraid to be alone, because I know that I’m always surrounded by God, my guide, the angels, and all my loved ones who have passed over to the Other Side. I will replace any negativity that’s attached to bad memories, and realize and repeat to myself: It was only a learning process. I have been loved and I can love.”

Exercise

Divide a sheet of paper in two. Put all your “Painful Memories” on the left side of the page and all your “Positive Memories” on the right. This time, at the bottom of the page on the left side, draw conclusions—in other words, what did you learn from these experiences? Don’t worry if an answer doesn’t come right away; it will if you’re persistent. It doesn’t matter how many pages you use, just ask your soul and God to give you insight into why you suffered. You’ll get the answers. Here’s an example:

Painful Memories:

When my third grade a teacher called me stupid
The time I felt everyone was talking about me at the office
My parents’ divorce

I learned that adults don’t always have the right answers, and that I need to base my self-worth on what I think of me, not what others say.

Positive Memories:

When I got an A on a term paper
Last week when a stranger smiled at me at the grocery store
My last family vacation

Affirmation

Each day, say to yourself: “When life gives me pits, I’ll plant them and grow cherry trees.”

Meditation

Lie or sit in a comfortable position and surround yourself with a golden light. Again, start relaxing your body, beginning with your feet and going all the way up your legs, trunk, shoulders, arms, neck, and head. Keep breathing in and out. Now say: “I am unstressing every part of my body. I can address every cell and tell each of them to work in harmony.” You are the guardian of your own mind, body, and soul, and you can instruct your mind to release any and all negativity attached to a horrifying or unpleasant memory—whether it’s from this life or any past time. Let yourself relax even more deeply so that you feel as if you are floating

All of a sudden, you are aware that you are floating through a beautiful white tunnel. You feel no pain, only a sense of peace and well-being. All your worries and hurtful memories evaporate now, like smoke. As you progress through this tunnel, you feel an even stronger connection to your real soul than ever before, and you realize that you are the sum total of all your experiences. The layers of self-doubt, envy, inadequacy, worry, depression, and vengeance all become nothing more than a part of a play you saw, but left behind.

As you reach the end of the tunnel, you are bathed in a purple light of spirituality. Now you find yourself facing a beautiful Romanesque building with marble pillars and stairs going up. You ascend these steps and go through the marble archway. Everything is gleaming and white, and in the middle of a room at the top of the stairs, there is a beautiful orblike glass. You approach it and look into it. At first it seems opaque, but then images begin to take shape, and you realize that you are scanning your life. You see how you chose your chart and what lessons you wanted to learn. Then more images come very quickly, but sequentially ... your birth, your early childhood, your puberty. Stop at any place you wish to linger. See the painful as well as the joyful.

When you reach a sad or very upsetting period, realize that it was a learning process. You can even refer to your chart, and you’ll be surprised by how much you decided to learn. Notice that as you watch, you feel disconnected. It is you, but you are past that now. Even if you cry at the sad times, this is a release.

You can even look into this glass orb to view past lives, and let go of any phobias or illness that you might have brought over. Stay as long as you want—believe me, it will go faster than you imagine. Hold on to the pleasant memories you view, for they make you smile. When you have had enough of the scanning, you can always go back through the archway, the steps, and even the tunnel, but with the realization that you have pulled out the negative memories that were stalling your soul, and brought forth joyful recollections into your reality.

Bring yourself back, all the way back, feeling free, released, and in full control of your true self. You are on track and very loved by God.

Excerpted from the new book, Sylvia Browne’s Lessons for Life, by Sylvia Browne. It is published by Hay House and available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com.

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