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Uncovering Karma from a Past Life

Experience submitted by Julian Kingman
Experience submitted by Julian Kingman

Several years ago, I suddenly came down with an extremely strong and unusual cold, and my symptoms lingered for well over two weeks. What was very hard was that there was an event that my friends were attending at the time that I really wanted to be a part of, but I obviously couldn’t until I was well again.

Consequently I was pretty miserable, both for feeling left out, and for feeling sick.

I had learned through Belsebuub’s courses that we can communicate with various types of divine beings who exists in higher dimensions, who can be called upon for help. I decided to pray to these divine beings, to ask for understanding on why I was being afflicted in a way that seemed so unjust.

I wasn’t angry but genuinely wanted to understand my situation, and I prayed earnestly for understanding. That night I had an interesting experience..

Painting of a Shah, circa 1670. Source.
Painting of a Shah, circa 1670. Wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

I was in a hot desert climate, possibly somewhere in the middle east. I must have been quite wealthy, which I surmised by my ornate golden robe, which looked similar to that of the Shah pictured above. The deference and respect from those around me suggested that I was in an important position. I was generally a good man, but could feel that with power came the temptation to abuse it.

One of my servants (or ‘courtiers’, as I believe they’re called) brought me an opportunity to do something that would harm others for my own benefit.

In that situation, with the power I had and the respect and desire to please me that my courtiers had, no one would think badly of it, and in fact everyone would be pleased if I accepted graciously, even the ones that would be harmed.

Looking objectively at the action itself however, it was not good.

Upon waking up and recalling this dream experience, I intuitively recognized that the wealthy man was me in a past life, and what I had just seen in my dream was the reason for my karmic suffering that I was going through now.

More astonishing still, however, is that just before I got sick, I had opportunities to observe the same thoughts and emotions that had lead me to that darker path in that past life I had seen in my dream; I had been given the opportunity to change and choose a different outcome but didn’t.

It feels to me that if I had used that opportunity to change that set of egos I had seen in this present life, I wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place, and could have avoided this karmic payment.

26 comments
  • I did past life regression. I was a wealthy man in 1800s. I had a wife that I cherished. There was a huge fore and my wife perished. I never recovered and died old and alone. He told me the lesson was that money means nothing with out love.

    In my current life my parents were poor and I’m married to a very Scrooge like frugal man. I will now break this karma and eventually leave my husband. He’s negative like my former self.

  • Thanks for the story Julian. Karma is something I consider quite a bit, knowing more about it these days.

    Karma is such a huge topic (of discussion) but considered insignificant by many. I always smile when I see a tipping cup in a shop, which reads “Karma Tips”.

  • Thank you for sharing this Julian. It makes me wonder about all the things happening in our lives, that could be due to karma. It also makes me wonder about certain things that have happened, and why they had to happen.

  • What an amazing teaching and experience, Julian!

    Although the past life recollection and learning about the original cause of your karma was profound, what struck me most was how the Divine seemed to give you a chance to correct your behaviour before you became ill. That is so merciful and compassionate.

    It really makes me wonder how many minor inconveniences and situations are there to test us on whether we have overcome an ego responsible for different karmic debts…

    • Yeah, that surprised me, and the situation was so precisely laid out that it couldn’t have been an accident. It’s all too easy to forget that our life is laid out the way it is for our internal learning, and that odd or frustrating situations may be designed especially for us to overcome them and right a wrong from our past.

  • That must have been a really insightful experience Julian.

    I often find that there’s many situations where I just presume it’s down to karma, something I’ll need to go through and might learn from, but I don’t really understand what brought it about in the first place.

    I think it’s really interesting you were able to see those same egos coming up in this life that had come up before. It really makes me feel life is for learning – that we have to keep going through the same lessons until we ‘ get it’ so to speak.

    Thanks for sharing!

  • It sounds as the divine wanted you to see this connection, Julian. I guess you got to a point where you can understand the consequences and you were ready for the change. I often see how my present life relates to the past experiences in this life and beyond. Somehow it seems there is a certain logic to it but more often than not there is this feeling of someone “telling me” why a certain situation appeared in my life. It is very useful to tune into this connection so that we can see a clear relationship between the cause and effect and maybe only then we will be able to perceive a bigger picture of this life.

  • Julian, very interesting your experience.
    It’s also interesting that you had a good idea to search it internally although it was only a bit more than a simple cold.
    Your right internal situation also helped you to receive the answer.

  • wow, Julian!
    Your experience sounds profound and I’m amazed by the way things happen in the astral and physical for you to receive that message.

    I’m also wondering sometimes what karma am I paying while passing from a difficult situation. At astral plane looks like there are a lot of answers and your experience inspires to look there more focused.

    Thanks!

  • Julian,
    Very cool experience. Besides getting a glimpse of a past life, it was very interesting that you found the connection between the inner state that existed then and still persisted in this life.

    I’ve found past lives to be so helpful to learn about when it comes to studying the egos.

    I could totally see you as a ‘shah’ ;-D

  • What an incredible experience! You must have had a lot of faith to be able to genuinely ask that question. This faith is such an amazing thing – to be able to wonder and ask profound questions in a way that they can be answered.

  • Very interesting Julian. It really is incredible to get a glimpse of what profound and powerful laws are behind even the most seemingly arbitrary and common place event, like getting a cold and missing out on something we want to do. Goes to show just how much learning is available to just beyond the ‘illusion of Maya’ and the myopic view we have of our existence.

    I can only relate one similar experience that happened when I was really curious about my past lives. I was practising the mantra A a lot to awaken remembrance and got gifted a little scene in a dream of myself in another country and another time. The choice I made in the dream I could see was related to a choice I was being faced with in my life. Basically I saw what feelings I had that made me stray from choosing the spiritual work, and I knew I had to overcome this to better devote myself to it in this life. But I didn’t see it in quite a subtle way as you’ve described here – that must have been a great moment for you.

    Other than that, I’ve always experienced feeling the effects of karma through the relationships in my life. One experience in particular brought me into a close working and living relationship with someone with whom I had such strong feelings of responsibility and debt towards, that really didn’t fit the outward form of our relationship as it was (in this life). The whole situation made me feel totally ‘snookered’ and trapped, and I knew at some level that I was in a kind of ‘karmic jail’ and that there was a huge amount between us that effected our emotions way beyond our reason. (This person seemed to have intense feelings of dislike towards me – and vice versa!) I went through nearly 9 months of suffering staying in that live-in job (I could have walked away at any point) before it just seemed to unravel and I was released from it as quickly as it had arisen.

    It’s always amazed me how these big laws, like Karma, can come down to changing simple things in every day life – your experience shows that through self observation and learning how to follow our conscience and overcome the egos that tempt us into bad actions we can pay back these debts that otherwise we have to suffer for.

    Thanks for sharing!

  • This is awesome – Shah Julianus the first! 🙂 But joking aside, it is really amazing that you have been shown this detailed event and could feel all the nuances of being in that past-life position and to identify the personal trait that caused you the suffering in this life.

    While reading it, I thought you were very inquisitive, as it probably would not come to my mind to inquire about the reasons for a 2-week sickness. Actually, I didn’t even inquire when I was ill for months! I thought it may be some sort of karma, but was more focused on healing than finding out the exact reasons for it. So well done for deciphering the causes and effect!

    Your story also brought to the fore how everything is very mathematical, when even these “smaller crimes” need to be paid, not talking about the bigger ones! I have also heard that by doing spiritual work, getting rid of the causes of our bad past actions and helping others spiritually, we can change the course of our current life and the karma that was waiting for us may not necessarily be applied. So it is great that you were even able to spot the situation in this life, where you had a chance to defeat the personal trait that put you into this suffering, but didn’t on that occasion. Hope you did on the following ones though!

    Speaking about illness as karma, I did have one experience, where after working hard for years to help people spiritually I had a clear dream, where I was shown by a spiritual being what was waiting for me if I didn’t pay it off with all that work, and it was not nice. What struck me in this particular experience was how I was only told AFTER I did all that work, and after I paid it off. I had no idea about it before, and had I decided to do something else in my life, I would have fallen very ill…

    Thank you for sharing this again, it must have been quite a revelation for you to find out about your past life.

    • The experience you mentioned must have been eye-opening Lucia. I can imagine you must have been very thankful that you managed to avoid that strong karma, before it occurred.

      It’s easy to drift along in life when things are going OK, as unless we are shown directly, most of us have little idea of what may be awaiting us later on if we continue on the same track.

      • Yes exactly Michael. I feel like its really like with money (in this case karmic money). You better have some savings in case an unexpected expense comes up, otherwise you will either have to borrow (if you have that opportunity, but eventually that needs to be paid as well), or you will have to pay by some sort of suffering.

    • Very interesting Lucia, and that you were shown only after you made the choice and did the work. Sometimes there can almost be this intuitive feeling to make sure to act on certain things, even though the current physical situation at that time (and thus the rational mind) might not see its need. And then after some time when things fall into place and it all comes together it’s wonderful to have followed that intuition or guidance.

  • Thanks for sharing the insight you gained from this experience Julian. Although illness can be extremely unpleasant, there’s so much we can learn about ourselves by going through it, particularly in the case of long-term illnesses. The feeling of being isolated from our friends or family can be very difficult to deal with and I have found that in these times, reaching out to the divine for help and guidance can bring new understanding, as you mentioned.

    Having experienced debilitating illnesses for a number of years, I have also reflected a lot on the karmic causes of ill health and have seen how easy it is to take things for granted when we have them. Not appreciating what we have can lead us to make choices that harm not only ourselves, but also others around us, and your dream of a past life is a good example of this kind of abuse of privilege.

    I don’t remember having any dreams connected to past lives, but just by looking back on my current life, I can see many incidents that I feel contributed towards significant suffering later on. In relation to health, one example is the disregard I had for my health as a young adult, which led me to indulge in habits that caused harm to my physical body.

    Aside from the obvious bad habits that caused harm to my body, I feel I can trace back so many other karmic causes, as I’ve found that long-term illness can bring up a multitude of inner states that we might otherwise miss. I could list many of these, but one that stands out in particular is the negligent attitude I once had, where I thought that there will always be time to do things tomorrow, so there’s no harm in indulging pleasures today.

    But having experienced what’s it’s like to be unable to do many of the simple things that were once part of my everyday life, I feel I have gained a much greater understanding of how vital it is to use my time wisely, as I may not always have the opportunity to do the things that are most urgent at a later date.

  • What a wonderful scene you received there Julian!

    Similarly to Laura, I find it so nice to read that you got to see the whole of it, or a bigger perspective of the situation that allowed you to take an understanding and learning from it. Especially this insight seems so nice “…I had the opportunities to observe the same thoughts and emotions that lead me to that darker path…” recognising the same thing occurring to you in this life. It makes life (or should I say lives 😉 ) emerge as this big school of inner learning.

  • Thanks for sharing that Julian, it’s really amazing. I have always wondered what kind of learning you could get from knowing about your past lives that could be applied to this one, so this is a great example of that. It must have felt pretty incredible when you woke up and realized all of that. That’s really cool..Thanks again for sharing that.

  • Wow, such an amazing experience Julian. Thanks a lot for sharing.

    How remarkable you were able to connect all those dots, even down to observing how you had had the same thoughts and emotions that led to the shah making the wrong decision in the past, before yourself in this life coming down with the illness. Even that intricate understanding that no one would have blamed you for choosing that action that harmed others. Probably it is something that would easily lead to self-deceit, thinking you are doing the right thing? Then it is amazing you had such a clear and accurate dream in the first place – Divine mercy is so powerful. It is nice to read you didn’t act like a spoiled child towards the Divine, as unfair as your circumstance seemed, but prayed with the sincere yearning to understand.

    Reading this gives me that same sense of reverence towards and the willpower to want to be watchful to what’s going on in my own life, treating the opportunities to change that I have with more seriousness. It actually helped my understanding as to how we can actually change events in our lives, by changing internally. Thank you very much for that!

    • I like your comment about resisting acting like a spoilt child! I think this is a reaaally common way to respond (thinking of myself mainly here!) when things don’t go your way – to moan, sulk, even throw a tantrum. How awful when you see this mode of behviour just entrenching egos, rather than being able to overcome them through that contact with the divine. I know so many people who don’t ‘believe’ in karma as it’s ‘not fair’ – simply by not being able to see the action that’s caused the result means they rule it out – along with so much in the unseen world.

      • It feels as though this is a testament to how much trust, faith and love we have towards the divine – the ‘why are you doing this to me???’ vs. ‘please forgive me, help me to see the error of my ways, help me to understand’. The first one is from pride, feeling entitled… the second realising I’m the one who’s messing up my life and the divine are there to help me, not to punish me unreasonably or take things away from me just because they can.

        Lately it’s been coming up for me how the way we unconsciously relate to the divine is the way we used to relate to our parents as kids. If we had punishing parents, or angry, or absent, or loving and just. Maybe this is the default idea we have of the divine to begin with, until we start to build that real connection with them and experience something real of them. That’s how it’s been for me.

        Yes it’s quite sad to see this attitude everywhere in the world, like how could there be a divine when there is so much suffering here, like it’s all too unfair. But if there is free will, then all this is a result of our own actions, not the result of what the divine has or has not done. Then there’s that if there were a divine, they should make the suffering in the world stop and save humanity. If only we knew how much they are probably trying to help us do just that! How it is our own choice to change and repair what we broke.

        • Hi Laura,

          I just wanted to say that I had similar thoughts about our relationship to our physical parents maybe being a symbolic indicative of some deeper things. I was even thinking about how “mother” is a symbol of certain forces of nature, which, if we misuse them, we may then have a bad relationship to this figure. The same about “father” who, on the spiritual level as our Divine Father, lays the spiritual Path before us, so likewise, having bad or missing relationship with him in the physical world, it may mean different things related to that.
          I don’t think I have penetrated these connections deep enough yet, but I definitely saw some aspects of it making sense in my own life.

        • Yes, finding the right approach to working with our divine parents does seem crucial – and it’s something the egos can easily hijack and then as you say, the ways of relating that were imprinted on us through our earthly parents becomes a model of behaviour we apply to them. It can be a huge relief to finally find a connection with our divine parents, especially I think for people who didn’t have a great relationship with their physical ones. I remember a friend of mine breaking down in tears when they first ‘met’ their divine mother in a meditation/vizualisation.

    • This makes me think of all those times I’ve complained to my Divine Parents and protested what was happening. Lately, I went through something small, but that was still hard for me. I kept telling my Divine Mother that “I know this is a small thing, but please help me.” I was still complaining, but then I asked why this was happening, and I get a message inside of me. And it made me see the value of what was going on, even though it was still difficult because I wanted to know that everything would work out.

Belsebuub

Belsebuub is a British-born author who writes about out-of-body and other types of mystical experiences. He withdrew from public life in 2010. Read more here.

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