A Knight's Tale
A Spiritual Exercise Opens the Doorway to a Past-Life Recall
RW
One autumn, I attended an Eckankar seminar. One of the features of that seminar was a Past Lives, Dreams, and Soul Travel fair.
In the past-life portion of the fair, the facilitator shared different spiritual exercises we could use to help us remember past-life experiences. One of the techniques was adapted from an exercise given by Sri Harold Klemp called the Radio Announcer technique.
The facilitator had several magazine pictures in the center of the table, depicting people from various cultures and historical time periods. We were asked to pick a picture that most interested us.
The pictures went fast, and I was left with an image that didn't have any meaning to me. I don't feel any connection to this picture, I thought to myself.
I looked at the young woman next to me. She was holding a picture of a medieval knight in full armor.
I recalled how I loved movies about chivalry and knighthood. Many times I played with my brothers and friends wielding makeshift swords. My fascination with medieval weaponry and armor has continued to this day.
The young woman next to me sensed my interest in her image. She held it out to me and said, "Do you want this one?"
"Sure," I said, and we exchanged pictures.
Then the spiritual exercise began. We were to close our eyes and imagine we were listening to an inner radio broadcast about our pictures. We'd hear the announcer's voice as he gave a summary of how the image related to a past life.
I had my doubts the exercise would work for me.
But it was easy to guess what an announcer might say about the life of this knight. Skilled with the weaponry of the day, a knight was respected by many and held a special place in medieval society.
I imagined the announcer talking about the brotherly camaraderie that existed among fellow knights who were bound together by the laws of chivalry.
Then, just as a real radio broadcaster would do, we stopped for a commercial break before returning for the second half of the story. After a few moments, I tuned back in.
Suddenly, my imagined broadcast shifted from what it was before. The inner announcer became more somber.
In living a warrior's life, you were trained and paid to kill other people. To survive, you had to adopt an emotional distance from those who fell under your sword. This attitude extended to other areas of your life.
You lived many times as a warrior. These lives are the root cause of your difficulties with having close personal relationships in your present life.
I was surprised. This was not something I would have imagined as the other half of my story.
Yet for most of my adult life, I'd had difficulties forming relationships, and I had wondered why. More than once I'd asked the Mahanta for insights into this problem. Was this the answer?
The exercise ended, and we were asked if we would like to share our experiences. I started to relate the first part of my inner broadcast. Then I began the second half.
Suddenly I became so filled with emotion I could barely speak. As I struggled to find the words, I realized the second half of my inner broadcast was true. My many lifetimes as a warrior had affected my relationships with other people in this life.
Here was the answer I had waited for. The root cause of my difficulties with relationships came from the past. But I also knew that now I could let go of those old lifetimes and learn how to open my heart to love.
This was not the first time the spiritual exercises helped me unravel a mystery in my life. As I thought about this experience, I was reminded once again how valuable the spiritual exercises are in helping us discover more about ourselves as Soul.
Excerpted from the 2008 Eckankar Journal, copyright © 2007 ECKANKAR. All rights reserved. Illustration by Rick Welsh.
