First, I should say happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I had my Thanksgiving on Tuesday because my family works in retail, so we are all victims of unpredictable work schedules.

Last night, Ryan Buell did an impromptu call-in question and answer session to keep himself awake while he drove overnight to South Carolina. Everybody jumped on it except me. I find it very difficult to speak to him when a bunch of other people are listening, especially because my one lengthy conversation with him involved being probed, examined and he somehow pried very personal feelings out of me. I like to be in control of what I share and what I do not. I don’t have that control when Ryan starts asking questions, so I am very shy around him to somehow keep some semblance of control. It’s not him that I don’t want to share experiences with – it’s the strangers listening in on the conversation. I would much rather talk to the guy without an audience. I also think I get so shy around him because men in general very rarely impress me. They typically strike me as lacking depth of feeling and philosophy. They almost never understand what I’m talking about, don’t have interest in deeper discussions, and I usually just end up smiling and nodding like other “normal” women. He impressed me though and I didn’t have to dumb myself down for him at all. The conversation we had in Gettysburg was like seeing my equal in someone else, which I did not expect, and made me recoil like, “Wait a minute – this isn’t what I usually get.” His respect is something I would be honored to have and the fear of saying the wrong thing makes me very quiet. In a nutshell, that is why I’m not so keen on approaching conversations with him when other people are listening. I know what to expect out of him – probing and examination – but I don’t know what to expect out of other people, whether they will get me or bully me as has happened in the past. He’s a safety bubble. The other strangers are not.

So a few people were trying to get me to call in last night but I couldn’t do it. One lady, Valerie, offered to ask him a question for me though. I told her to ask him if he’s ever learned anything about his past lives, as in whether he’s aware of ever having any, but I think my wording got mistranslated somewhere because there was a little confusion when she asked it. He seemed to pick up on my meaning though because he started talking about a dream involving World War II and the Holocaust. Since he is a very vivid dreamer anyway, he wasn’t prepared to say that it was a past life memory for sure, and rightly so. Past lives are so difficult to prove that it’s never advisable to go by dreams alone. Then he went into whether he would really want to know about his past lives at all, which in itself is a common thought process of most men I encounter. Men in general are less willing to explore their pasts, instead thinking more about the future, which Ryan also discussed. He has very vivid dreams about the future. I didn’t find that surprising either. In my experience with hundreds of cases collected since 2007, the male mind is programmed toward the future and the female mind is programmed toward the past and present. Even arguments between couples usually follow these guidelines. Female minds will bring up the most random stuff from the past in the midst of an argument while male minds will argue issues that haven’t even happened yet. I was not at all surprised to find out that Ryan is a future dreamer rather than a past dreamer.

Getting back to his other point, though, whether he would really want to know – this is a valid point that a lot of people echo as well. There are several things at play in these cases. The people who don’t know if they should look into it are often afraid of what they will find. The common response I get is, “What if I was a murderer or did something else really bad?” Another typical reaction is the belief that being aware of your past lives won’t help you in the present or future. A third common issue is people do have memories, whether they are emotional, mental or physical, but they don’t recognize them or pass them off as some other type of paranormal phenomenon. These three beliefs come from a place of not really understanding the process and purpose of reincarnation.

Before diehard Buell fangirls jump on me for saying he doesn’t understand something, I’m not saying those are his reasons. I’m using his response as a way to illustrate the most common reasons for those beliefs. Retract your claws. Sniff my hand. I’m safe.

When someone comes to me saying they’re not sure if they want to know about their past lives, I remind them of a few things. Firstly, every single soul has done something despicable at least once in their past life history. It’s part of the learning process. A very, very long time ago, my husband at the time was killed in a war and left me to raise five small children by myself with nothing. I couldn’t take the pressure and I hanged myself, leaving the five children without any parents at all. That, to me, is as despicable as killing someone else, yet I have not come back with some inherent evil in me. I learned from it. Usually when I tell people about that, they are not so afraid anymore that they might have done wrong in their past lives because they realize we have all done wrong. Everything we have done in the past has led us to where we are now and that is why it matters. Each life is like a connection on a spiderweb. The webbing may go in different directions but they all lead to the same places, the same obstacles and challenges. Some people are not prepared to accept the self-responsibility that comes with being aware of past lives because the awareness means they know about the mistakes they’ve made and they know it’s up to them to break harmful cycles. A harmful cycle does not break on its own. A soul has to do the work to change. Many people I encounter are not willing to do the work because it means taking responsibility for mistakes and damaged relationships. We reincarnate within a group of familiar souls, switching roles from life to life, and if you’re not able to forgive, love or accept any soul, then you will repeat very similar situations in different lives until you grow enough for forgiveness, love and acceptance. In other words, the concept of reincarnation does not allow a person to run away from their frailties or failures in life, and a lot of people find that idea threatening. If you don’t take care of unfinished lessons now, they will follow you into the next life. Human beings are masters of procrastination.

Look at it this way:

If the afterlife is like home and the physical world is like school, how can you advance to higher grade levels if you’re not retaining knowledge from earlier grade levels? Each life is a new grade. Young souls are like elementary school; middle-aged souls are like middle school and high school; and old souls are like being in college.

Make sense? That’s why it matters to be willing to learn about your past lives. They can help you make better decisions here in the present and setting yourself up for the future.

I can talk endlessly about this subject but people accuse Ryan of being long-winded, so I will learn from that and keep this as short as I can. I would like for people to please consider reading my book – Unveiled: Fanny Chamberlain Reincarnated – for a better understanding of my reluctant journey toward understanding the importance of reincarnation. No, I’m not just trying to sell a book. It just explains in great detail better than I can here about how the past absolutely affects the present and future, using my past life as Fanny Chamberlain to illustrate the points.

I really think RYAN needs to read the book too since we talked about it. I’m just sayin’. 🙂

Unveiled: Fanny Chamberlain Reincarnated
by Jessica Jewett (my pen name)

Available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

Throughout her childhood, Jessica is involuntarily thrust into shadowy subconscious memories of faces, events, emotions and voices from a Maine family in a century past. Feelings of being haunted by a woman from the 19th century plague Jessica until she comes face-to-face in a Georgia bookstore with what she realizes is her past life of Fanny Chamberlain, wife of Civil War general and Maine governor, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Twenty years of dreams, visions, photographic evidence, eye-witness accounts and historical documentation culminate until Jessica can no longer deny the truth of who she was, despite her initial vehement refusal to accept it. As Jessica interweaves the events of her present life with her past, she pieces together the lessons, unresolved relationships and questions of self-acceptance to reach a higher understanding of herself, the power of love, the purpose of her life’s journey and how to use her experiences to help others.