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Remembering Past Lives for Your Best Life Now
- Dena Merriam
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In today’s episode of Healing From Within your host Sheryl Glick author of The Living Spirit Answers for Healing and Infinite Love which shares stories of spiritual awakenings, communication with the Divine, healing miracles and ways to connect to your intuition and Higher Self and am delighted to welcome Dena Merriam author of My Journey Through Time the story of how the events and people she has encountered have served to awaken memories of past births and help her understand this life providing spiritual direction and guidance.
As listeners of “Healing From Within” are aware Sheryl and her guests share intimate stories and insights into the world of Universal Energy for perhaps a clearer understanding of our energetic and physical worlds so we may proceed to conquer the fears beliefs and limitations that hold us back from the truth of our human and divine connections.
In today’s episode of “Healing From Within” we will discover how Dena remembered past teachers and loved ones in past lives and realized the most important message is the continuation of relationships through time….through death and rebirth. Dena will recount memories of at least seven previous births in many countries with their different cultures and religions. Themes emerge that shape her life and will shape lives to come. Dena is a managing partner at Finn Partners and her work involves cultural marketing and creative services She is indeed a multi- dimensional being of great experience and personal power and like the Vitruvian Man is a Vitruvian Woman who represents the merging of all aspects of beauty science spirituality and knowledge in the world. She is the recipient of the 2014 Niwano Peace Prize in Japan for her commitment to interfaith dialogue.
Dena shares with us when asked to think back to her childhood and remember a person place or event that may have shown her or others the life she would pursue and the values she would hold dear in their adult lifestyle.
Dena writes, “I was born with the door to my past only half-closed…memories haunted me. I remember my birth and my father’s arms cradling me and there was comfort in that physical closeness that eased the tremendous discomfort in finding myself confined once again in a physical form. I was born into a Jewish family to parents who clung to Jewish culture and identity more from an historical than spiritual perspective. I developed a passion for ballet and found myself dancing in my dreams performing way beyond the physical capacities I had in this life. From childhood I loved Mother Mary and would pray to her at night. In elementary school I studied French and was soon dreaming in French. It became the language of my interior life… I became an avid reader and was fascinated by 19th century Russia. My political interests were soon replaced by a driving quest for the spiritual. My husband and I read a book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda and both recognized Yoganda as our guru. After our divorce I developed both my business and spiritual pursuits in a new way.
At first Dena questioned if her past-life experiences she was beginning to remember were real but actually traveling to a place that she remembered in her Russian life proved to her that she had been there before. To understand how past-life experiences are real we must begin with this life and discover the triggers that awaken our past memories. It could be a person or place dream or visit from Spirit. Most of the time it is a combination of events that open the heart and soul to the truth of our true nature.
Dena Says…A few years after she moved into her big house and was separated from my husband she began to have dreams of a different grand house. She realized there are different types of dreams. Most dreams are of a subconscious nature, a melding of thoughts and fears about our daily lives. Some dreams are of a symbolic nature and convey a message. And then there are dreams that are really visions lifting us to a place where we can see reality often the past present and future merging in a oneness of our soul life experiences. She had this dream of a grand house for over ten years.
At work one day she met Jay who was African American who had just been hired by her father as a consultant to work closely with her. It was at this time that Dena had a more detailed dream and saw a child not more than four years old dressed in a long dress and exposed lace up boots. It looked like a dress from the early years of the 20th century. Dena heard a voice say, “You wanted to know who you were in your previous birth. This is you. The voice was without gender and came from deep inside me. She asked, “Where is it?” and in response I heard Russia. Shortly after that Dena knocked on the door to the new consultant Jay and heard a low voice in Russian say “Come In.” Jay who was African American addressed me in Russian and my heart fluttered. Funny just as I had left Judaism for Hinduism, Jay had come from a Christian background yet felt keenly drawn to Judaism. As Jay spoke to me often in Russian something shifted and as a result of this trigger I soon began to see as clearly as if she was standing in front of me a woman with violet eyes and black hair and a bond between us was re-ignited. This was my mother from another time and place. This was the beginning of learning to be simultaneously in two worlds, two time periods. I knew this was my Russian mother who I had loved so much. My name was Sonja in that life and my father was an aristocrat who had married a French woman Marie much to the dismay of his mother who we called Grandmama. My sister was Anna and my brother Andrei My mother had an interest in the occult and spiritual matters and went on occasion to mediums. I had a great interest in ballet in that life and sometimes in this life I feel my body respond in a way that is more advanced and developed than it actually is in this life and realized it was from that past life experience..
The Russian Revolution arrived and there was danger for my people which caused my parents to send us to an aunt in Bucharest. Sonja’s parents never got out of Russia and Sonja was married off to a Count against her will while her sister Anna died in a horse riding accident. Her brother was sent to Germany where he studied and married. Eventually Sonja visited her brother and while in Germany met a Jewish Russian professor Yuri Abramovich whom she developed a loving relationship with. Her brother told her not to be close with him as things were changing in Germany and it was a bad time for Jews. At that time Sonja who had just read The Bhagavad Gita went to a spiritual event where she met Swami Yogananda felt the energy and connection without even exchanging a word. Sonja returned to her unhappy home with the count and decided to sell the jewels that her mother had hidden in her clothes when she left Russia to buy passage to America for her and Yuri to escape the Nazis. When she returned he was gone . Sonja was interrogated by the Nazis and soon after that while staying in her brother’s apartment in Prague fell sick and passed. In that life Sonja had been forced into a marriage lost her parents and had a love that was unfulfilled due to history and circumstances. Abandonment and sorrow filled her young life.
Dena began to feel her connection to Jay at work was that he was Yuri from that past time. Following this discovery Dena travelled to Vienna where she wanted to see Prague and see if she could find the site that she remembered from her previous birth where she watched the Nazi army march into Prague from the window of her brother’s apartment…She wandered the streets and did find the boulevard that matched her recollection. This for Dena was one of the clearest confirmations that her memories were real.
Sheryl says to Dena that as a medium who has her feet in two worlds she often has many connecting coincidences with her wonderfully gifted guests. Dena begin her book with the story of love for Mother Mary and then finding her Guru Paramahansa Yoganda and Sheryl has also found herself connected to both. Sheryl recently was a guest on a radio show discussing Mother Mary’s Loving Messages for Peace and to hear the messages Mother Mary shared in a reading with her in that place between time and space, between worlds where we glimpse the reality of our soul lives as past present and future happening simultaneously you can go the Events Link on my website www.sherylglick.com and hear the love expressed by Mother Mary.
The synchronicity to Dena’s past lives are many… In her life as Sonja Sheryl remembers that her first hospice encounter was with a Sonja who told her most Sonja’s liked to be called Sue. After that Sheryl had many encounters with Sonja’s that she writes about in the new book she is working on New Life Awaits Create Your Best Afterlife by Living Consciously Now. Dena mentions that as Sonja your father’s mother was addressed as Grandmama. When my daughter was pregnant she asked me for months what I wanted to be called by the child and from somewhere within I finally said “Grandmama.” Shortly after my granddaughter was born a client handed me a book called Anna Woman of Miracles and I learned of Jesus’ grandmother Anne who was the mother of Mary. Anne was a healer. In that book Julian the soldier who helped Anne and Mary escape and take Jesus as a infant out of Jerusalem looking for Anne. Jesus is now 17 years old and tells Julian to wait in the garden as his “Grandmama” will soon be home. Like Dena when you heard Russian being spoken and your heart fluttered Sheryl’s heart actually moved in her chest. I have felt a time and connection to that place and many other people places and loves. Sheryl is also from Russian Jewish immigrant grandparents and as a medium and healer think there were those in my family from many past lives who had those gifts so that gift is continued in this life.
Sheryl tells Dena another important event that validated that these past life visions dreams and memories are real. Years ago Sheryl was asked by her yoga teacher to practice a meditation. One day while quietly doing just that Sheryl saw in her inner vision a tall woman with dark curly hair covered by a brown cape and hood and when she asked who this soul was heard from deep within, “ Helen ..Troy.” Was she a guide or a person from a past life. Sheryl was unsure but soon after that everywhere she went she met Greek teachers, her dress for her daughter’s wedding was made by a Greek seamstress and her hair done by a Greek stylist. Sheryl planned a trip to Greece following her daughter’s wedding and arrived at the island of Rhodes where she immediately felt a familiar pulse. Sheryl went on a tour and on the bus the tour guide George began talking about how Helen of Troy had visited this island on her way home to Greece when rescued from Troy by King Menelaus. We then stopped at a cobblestone courtyard with a well in the center which Sheryl had seen in a previous dream and then climbed stairs overlooking the ocean. Sheryl then remembered seeing this exact place in a painting purchased long ago that hung in her dinning room that shows a woman standing over the ocean dressed in ancient clothing and sandals which resembled the place she now found in Rhodes. It seems we are drawn to and are guided to find these coincidental treasures or miracles from Spirit.
Living in two worlds is often a way for us to know the truth of our eternal and beautiful soul life.
When Dena is asked if any past life recall surprised her and she responds that indeed they all do but perhaps it is Dena’s remembrance of being a young woman beautifully dressed in a flowing white gown with curly black hair tied up in an elegant style…a dress from the early 19th century living in the American Deep South when she sees an African American boy Joseph hanging by the neck limp and dead. It was a boy from her father’s plantation who had run away and whom she was extremely fond of. You are surprised by this because growing up in New York in this life you almost had an antipathy toward the South and a great resistance to even visiting there. That would make sense for your soul was wounded in that time and place and you had no desire to even focus on it.
Also In that lifetime your father wanted you to marry someone from a neighboring plantation but you resist. In this life as in your Russian story you also lost your mother when you are very young and weren’t able to make a loving marital arrangement. On a trip to Paris you did meet a Russian aristocrat Pavel and feel in love with him but were unable to make the commitment to marry him and move to Russia so far away from your home in America.
Dena’s many remembrances of past life experiences has taught her much about the Law of Cause and Effect or Karma.
Dena writes, “When we are born, we begin anew with all possibilities open to us. We come released from the memories of the past, temporarily freed of the hurts and sorrows, the attachments and clinging, the pain of separation. All of these are left behind, the curtain closed. We do not remember who we were before… Surely our birth is not the beginning and our death is not the ending. There are however, exceptions to this routine forgetting. There are those memories that filter through, that refuse to be put to rest. Most people have some experience of this especially in childhood when past inclinations are strongest. In time whatever is needed to be known will reveal itself.”
Dena goes on to say, “So much of life is playing out of the thoughts, desires and actions that were initiated in times past: the people we meet, the loves that tug at us, the wealth or poverty that comes, betrayal, broken ties. All of these are the results of thoughts or actions that began long ago regardless of whether or not we are aware of their origin.
The workings of Karma the universal law that bears the fruit of what we have sown lead us to understand many of the events that happen in our life. Karma is action and reaction, the law of gravity applied to thought and deed, the seemingly unbending law of cause and effect. What goes up, comes down: the energies we send out return in some manner at some time.
There is a pattern, a consistency, that weaves together one’s various lives and it doesn’t appear to be arbitrary. There seem to be many patterns that are present in the lives Dena describes in Russia and Germany and in the life lived in the Deep South.. Common themes include early loss of a mother and fathers who were educated and distinguished, beloved siblings, interesting African American men who were mentors and represented that equal status for all people is desirable, attempts to marry you off at a young age and resistance to that.
Dena writes, “For the first time in that Southern life where you established a school for girls you encountered Africans who were free men and women who spoke their minds publically and led independent lives. Education was of a wholly different order. Girls were being taught to think for themselves, not merely to be showpieces for their husbands. Another trending thread throughout lives was a difficulty in finding love perhaps even abandonment by those you hoped to love and perhaps a look at the difficulties men and women face in a patriarchal society.
The important search in all Dena’s lives was the continued awakening to her soul state which allowed her to know We are more than our bodies and physical life: a way of transcending this time and place, to be everywhere in the vast cosmos and still exist beyond time and space, and beyond the physical world.
When asked by Sheryl if she knows other people who have had similar experiences Dena says “Not really,” so Sheryl tells her she has had many similar experiences and is thrilled to share the synchronicity with our listeners. Sheryl reveals that she has discovered past life times that are connected to this present life. At a workshop with “Brian Weiss” author of Many Lives in deep meditation sensed herself wearing open golden sandals and sensed horses and soldiers getting ready to leave. Her son Gregg in this life was there also. The man riding off to war was my husband and It seemed to be a Roman or Greek environment. I am sure that man is someone I have met in this life and the issue of abandonment or loss of trust began then for he never returned. It has been a theme that runs throughout this life also. Sheryl also met a gifted intuitive years ago who asked if I wanted to know about the past life connected to this one. Of course I did. She told me I was a young woman in Portugal run down by a drunken man in a horse driven cart and didn’t live long enough to raise my young son. She told me that son was my mother in this life and it made perfect sense to me for from the time I was young, I was always delighted by the amusing childlike ways of my mother and her laughter. At the end of her life this time, I was there to help her.
Dena remembers her life as Elizabeth Beauvais on a southern plantation in Louisiana and in a visit up North was invited to a lecture by Mr. Emerson a Transcendentalist and while listening to him had an other- worldly experience which although she didn’t consider herself religious seemed to be a religious experience. Dena described what happened while listening to Mr. Emerson speak, “ I lost consciousness of the outer world. It was as if my body dissolved, as if someone had cut me free. I was conscious of existing everywhere. I was far more than only this body. It was as if I existed nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It was as if the whole universe was contained in me, or rather as if I was contained in an ever-expanding space. It was a very joyful experience and I wonder if that was the soul I was experiencing; the soul that religion speaks of.”
Dena says her multiple experiences and awareness that life is a continuing book of new chapters and ongoing encounters with those people we love have affected he attitude toward death She gives a quote from the Bhagavad Gita…”
“Just as the embodied soul continually passes from childhood to old age, similarly, at the time of death, the soul passes into another body. The wise are not deluded by this.”
Another quote by Count Leo Tolstoy is equally accurate
As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life….and then return after death.
Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real life of God.
Sheryl observes that as a medium she has felt souls leaving their physical body and known the message of love they express for those that stay behind to complete their life journey as they experience the joy that the ascending soul experiences in transition from life to new life.
In her book The Living Spirit Sheryl is asked by a client to do a reading for a young man who has just passed in a motorcycle accident that very day. Her daughter is devastated . They are only 19 years old.
Sheryl wrote, “The messages I receive in meditation assure me of his easy departure and safe journey ahead. As soon as I got off the phone with Karen I immediately went to my office and began a meditation hoping to connect to Michael’s energy. For the next hour, I received images and sensory perceptions from the young man beginning with the sensation of extreme heat pulsating throughout my entire body. It felt like an embrace, accompanied by a tingling at my root and sacral chakra. What I was feeling was an almost overwhelmingly wave of love Michael had for his life, his parents and for Jessica. His feelings for Jessica had all the beauty and purity of first love…..
Soon I received an image of Michael showing me his memory of the accident. I sensed that he was catapulted over the handlebars of his motorcycle, much like an athlete in the pole vault even, who lifts himself high in the air, twisting and turning up over the bar. But while the athlete falls into a pit of soft foam mats, Michael’s plunge was met by hard pavement. He hit headfirst and died quickly, without any sense of physical pain. I then sensed the concern of passerby, followed by the professionals who responded to the 911 calls. They were carefully cushioning Michael’s head with tenderness and respect……Michael had so wanted to stay and live out his physical life. After leaving his physical body he had looked over his shoulder, deeply aware that his mother, father, and Jessica would be devastated by this loss. But the souls above and ahead were calling him, and their irresistible beauty lifted him up. Despite his sadness for those he was leaving behind he knew it was his time to go.”
Sheryl personally has learned through many readings ”There is no death, nothing to fear, only a time to come and a time to go and begin again the search of the soul through many lifetimes to learn greater love and compassion, and share these life experiences over and over again in that energy beyond this physical life with many well loved souls who journey with us often as we are afforded opportunities to refine our soul energy and move closer to the Divine Source of Eternal life and Wisdom.”
We can overcome our fear of death by becoming more aware of energy and the universal laws of life, death, reincarnation, karma, cause and effect. Meditation prayer silence are excellent ways to enter the world of the “Unseen” where higher consciousness is fostered and is indeed a way to find your energetic soul presence.
Dena beautifully wrote of her experience in that Divine Consciousness, “ As he began to speak I listened with great attention, but then slowly, his words trailed off. They became a background hum, a vibration with no discerning meaning. I was feeling quiet and peaceful and so closed my eyes: my attention turned inward, drawn deeper and deeper as if pulled inside. It felt like I was falling into a great abyss, but it was a very pleasant feeling. I allowed myself to drift, no longer aware of my body, but very aware of myself. I couldn’t tell where my point of being was. My body no longer seemed to contain me. I felt myself everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I was conscious, very conscious, but not of my outer surroundings, of another world inside, an internal reality that was vibrant and beautiful. I was aware of a mellow light unlike sunlight. I rested in the light for I do not know how long and then gradually the outer sounds returned and I could distinguish words being spoken.”
Dena would address people who don’t believe in reincarnation by sharing a central principle of her guru’s teachings which was the unity of all religions—one truth, one divine reality expressed through many streams, many narratives—We also never die but move from one life to the next sharing experiences and creating new ways to know ourselves and other souls more intimately and with greater love for self and life. There is no death for the soul.
Another main idea or teaching is to understand that our work in this life is really about awakening consciousness We could perhaps do little to alter the political or economic causes of war, but we could awaken people to the reality of interdependence and help others realize that we all suffer together. We can take responsibility for our negative emotions which play a role in perpetuating conflict.
In summarizing today’s episode of “Healing From Within” we have shared a very personal journey with Dena Merriam as she navigates this world in this time sharing her many spiritual gifts for art communication and developing cultural programs for corporations and governments, providing strategic counsel to museums foundations and other cultural institutions. In support of the goals of the United Nations she works with the Interfaith Center of New York City and engages religious leaders from around the world in efforts to resolve conflict throughout the world. She also advocates for a greater awareness of the need for coexistence training as an essential component of the educational system. She has written extensively about the arts and is a bridge between her many soul lives and the evolution of humanity to become the light and wisdom of eons of great love and intellect. Her work as that of all Light workers healers Innovators visionaries as representatives of Spirit is to help awaken those who have the greatest gift of love to connect to the Truth of All and be the energy to make Life shine with extraordinary Love and Compassion.
We have discovered today through these thoughts written long ago in the Bhagavad Gita a reminder of life in all its wonderment.
The soul is never born nor does it die;
Nor does it exist on coming into being,
For it is unborn, eternal everlasting and primeval:
Even though the body is slain, the soul is not.
Dena and Sheryl would have you explore your own memories and begin to think about what brings joy to you and to your heart or inner being. Sometimes joy is what we have learned from our parents family and friends. At other times, it is a deep remembered longing of love and a desire to know life in all its forms. But, joy is still the goal of all souls whether in this life past or future lives, and we must be joyful for it is not the outside world that creates our happiness but life itself born out of the magic and beauty of experiences finding freedom in realms and realities beyond dreams beyond this time and place.
