Trauma from a previous life can manifest in our current lives. After my clients have released the emotional energy carried over from a past life trauma, they often wonder why they had to experience such traumatic events in the first place. What value can we gain from such painful experiences?

One story, detailed in my book, Other Lives, Other Realms, shows how trauma can affect us from earlier lifetimes.

My client, a doctor, faced many life and death incidents in her ER work. Some of these triggered debilitating anxiety.

In the regression, she lived a life as a sixteen-year-old girl named Lesandra, who died many centuries ago. Lesandra shared a dirt-floored hut in rural England with her father and her sister.

One significant day, Lesandra was tired after working daylight to dusk in the fields. Arriving home, she lay down to rest. Her young sister began preparing the evening meal, intending to have it ready when their father returned. Lesandra’s sister was watching over a cooking pot strung over an open fire. The fire was not far from Lesandra’s bed.

Suddenly, the oil flared up. As the fire erupted, her sister panicked, and rushed out of the hut. Lesandra woke to a raging fire. Trapped behind the flames, she couldn’t locate the door and burned to death.

Like many other clients, the doctor wondered why she experienced such a painful death. During regressions, clients are given the opportunity to ask questions. Sometimes their “Council of Elders” give the answer. Sometimes it is the guides. Sometimes it comes spontaneously. However it comes, when they want to know why they suffered, clients are always given the same answer: “You chose it!”

You may wonder how you could choose something before you were born. Most of us don’t realise we are much more than our physical body. Our greater self chose to invest some of its spirit into lives on Earth. Your past lives and your current life are not accidental. Most of the people coming to see me also chose their current life as an opportunity to release past-life wounds. These wounds have served their purpose and are now obsolete. That is why they are guided to see someone like me.

The doctor was one of these souls. Lesandra had not passed over after she burnt. She had lost her body but her spirit remained afraid and lost. I gently helped her grieve all she lost, her life, her sister and her father, before she fully realised she had died and there was somewhere else to go. Then her stuck spirit passed over into the light. 

When we are born, we forget the choices we made at our higher level. The “forgetting” is part of the Earth experience. From our human perspective, some of the decisions made on our behalf may seem inexplicable. Why would we choose to experience a traumatic death? 

Souls with a genuine curiosity, coupled with sufficient inner strength to take in the truth, will receive an answer. We just need to ask. The answer comes in different words and structures but its meaning is always the same. 

 To be whole, to complete your journey as a human on Earth, you need to experience life from all human perspectives. You need to know what it is like to damage and destroy, just as you need to know what it is like to be destroyed and damaged. You need to know what it is like to be fat, crippled and ill, as well as strong, healthy and beautiful.

While this may seem perverse to us, the Council’s reasoning makes perfect sense. Sharing in every aspect of the human experience allows us to develop genuine compassion. Lesandra’s horrible death set her soul on the path of victimisation. We didn’t go to those victim lives, either they were already resolved or the doctor was not ready to release them. But the trauma from the fire, which had remained attached to her soul, was released during the session.

The doctor had great compassion, which is the purpose of suffering traumatic lives, and now she was able to do her work without carrying unnecessary left-over anxiety from the past. Her perspective on suffering changed too. She could see its purpose even as she focussed on alleviating it for her patients.

Going on our path, we eventually reach the point where we know that our only real choice is to love and accept every individual, just as they are. Once we know how painful it is to suffer, to feel disconnected from love and our true self, we transcend the need to judge ourselves and others.

The word “judgment” implies right or wrong, guilty or innocent, condemnation or redemption. That can be a natural human reaction to the worst excesses of human behavior. Making judgements is not right or wrong. On Earth, it is necessary. It helps us learn to choose our behaviours. It helps make us wise, and points us toward the direction of peace and acceptance. This is a state of being where destructive energies are not likely to be attracted to us. If they are, we know in our heart the way to respond for the highest good of all.  

Taking on challenges is part of our journey. Even when we have already implemented what we learned, we may have past life trauma playing out in our lives. Like current life PTSD, we are able to let it go when we understand it from a larger perspective. That greater perspective comes after we have honoured what our earlier self went through, grieved, released any emotional energy tied to the experience, and opened up to the love of our higher self and Spirit. 

Sometimes this process occurs spontaneously. Sometimes a current trauma  reminds us of the past. Sometimes we resist, afraid at what is happening, confused and desperate.

There is no need to be afraid or impatient. When you ask, help will come. Just trust. Trust the timing. Trust the process that unfolds. Know that you are on your way to unravelling the past so you can move forward, unblocked and free.