Past Lives and Repeating Life Lessons

Sometimes we repeat relationships with more than one person, switching roles in order to learn important life lessons. Just looking at one life doesn’t show the complicated relationships, and a series needs to be examined. Let’s look at one such example. Not all past lives I get are as detailed as the main one here, but the “key” life when looking at a prebirth challenge often comes through with this much information!

My husband and I got along very well. I always felt, however, that he was afraid to fully love and embrace me, as if it made him uncomfortable to be too close or affectionate. Years of dedicating myself to self-improvement, hoping that if I improved, he would love me the way I wanted, were to no avail. So we divorced.

I still have a constant nagging that it was a mistake. I can’t sleep well, I’ve gained over 30 pounds, and I’m still depressed. My ex husband has never told me he misses me or that he wanted me to come home. In fact, when I first told him I was leaving he didn’t even try to get me to stay. Everything was seemingly going very well at the time I left. It’s hard for me to understand how he has not missed me.

I met a new guy three years ago. He is everything I wanted my ex to be in terms of affection, sweet to me and his #1 desire is to make sure I’m happy and loved. What past lives involved both my ex and the new guy? Victoria

Victoria, you too often care about people who don’t care about you, but as long as you don’t need to look at the situation, it rides along pleasantly. But when it crashes, it crashes hard.

That lack of love and affection and hands-off from your ex? It’s one of his specific challenges, and you agreed to be in a marriage relationship with him to help him overcome this hurdle. He wants to study the world from a distance, yet he can’t work out his Karma without learning how to interact with people. You offered him this chance, but he fell back into old ways from a previous life, and because the “caste system” of Imperial England no longer operates today, he keeps missing the mark, and lacks the ability to inspire trust and to get people to follow his lead.

YOU came in with leadership ability yourself, and a fierce desire for independence, change, freedom and experience. However, balance that against your oversensitivity to other people and life becomes a challenge.

There have been lives where you had the chance to make a difference, whether at home or in the public sector. You tend to only make it 80%, based on your concern about how people perceive you, and what they’d think was “appropriate” to your station in life. Time and again, you were given abilities to go further, but kept “looking over your shoulder” so to speak, which pulled you from the path.

ENGLAND 1800s: This was the key life with your ex. You were an older person responsible for your ex-husband. You were a governess to a family in Shropshire, in the west of England. Your ex husband was the son that came after four miscarriages of female babies. He was doted on and spoiled, yet his father was very harsh and very clear that the child “must be the best of men” when he grew up and take over the family lands and businesses.

You, in turn, were the eldest of seven girls and three boys. Your family was “shabby genteel” (lower middle class) and it was drummed into you that your job as a governess would be to “instill in your betters the morals and character befitting their station.” The fact that you were not of their station didn’t seem to occur to anyone — how would you know, other than from bad novels, what was appropriate?

You lavished your affection on the boy. He was by nature pleasure-loving but very smart; he knew that in order to get his way he had to appear to behave, but was able to “play” people with no difficulty. He was also very self-assured as he grew older. He easily understood what people wanted from him, and gave just enough to make them think he was concerned with their wellbeing. He kept most of his private thoughts and desires to himself

You kept reminding him through the years that he was “born into that life which would make him responsible for the welfare of those beneath him.” You thought that “welfare” was the important word. He, instead, focused inwardly on the idea that such people were “beneath” him and, therefore, their feelings were in the main unimportant, only useful for exploitation in a given situation.

Because you had made the boy your whole life, you would not hear ill spoken of him. When there was a question of appropriateness of behavior, you would bring it to him, trading on your longstanding relationship to allow you to speak to him in a way that some might deem inappropriate, given the difference in your station. But he would always listen to you and thank you for your counsel. The fact that he immediately dismissed it from his mind finally began to sink in when he was an adult, but you still chose to believe he might change if you could just find the right words to spark his conscience.

You ended up as governess to his children when he was married. The boy’s family chose for him a dull but fertile girl who kept popping out babies as if it was an “annual event” until they had six, at which point she conveniently died, leaving the boy a wealthy widower who was the target of most of the eligible girls of Shropshire. He thoroughly enjoyed the attention, and played one against the other.

Yet this time, when you brought up his behavior, he said “it was not for you to judge the behavior of your betters.” When you spluttered that you “could not in good conscience support such wanton usage,” he then shrugged and left the room, saying “as you wish. But do not fault me if I take you at your word.” A few days later, you saw a carriage arrive, and watched a woman come out with boxes and bags. She was clearly not one of the “gentry,” but you had no idea who she was.

Within the hour, you were called to the housekeeper’s office, and told that your services were no longer required. You were given your year’s wages of 50 pounds, and a 20 pound bonus per child “in appreciation” and then were asked to have your things packed and ready to be moved by the end of the day. The Master “was also generous enough to pay your lodgings for a fortnight” at the local boarding house.

Thus, after thirty years of service, you were taken at your word about leaving, and dismissed with nothing more than what would be calculated today as less than $40,000.

You were stunned. But there was nothing you could do.

You eventually did find work in a household far less grand but much more kind — interestingly, the master of that house was this life’s new guy. Yet you never could understand what you had done to be treated so cavalierly by your ex, and were ever after somewhat suspicious of people’s kindness, resulting in a very lonely life. You were pensioned off some fifteen years later, and died in a small cottage not far from your ex’s estate.