Every soul has its unique path of expansion and growth. Human concepts, such as time, do not apply to the Soul. The Soul is eternal and always exists in the eternal Now. So for anyone to determine how long it takes for a Soul to reincarnate is an exercise in absurdity. Time does not apply in this situation.

Each reincarnation depends on so many things. And if a Soul has finally reached the end of their karmic path it may not choose to reincarnate at all. It may choose to remain in pure cosmic consciousness or pure positive energy. Or it may be completely karmically clean and decide to reincarnate anyway to help others on their journeys. These are known as bodhisattvas.

Dr. Helen Wambach, Ph.D., was one of the earliest scientific researchers into past lives and reincarnation. She was the author of Reliving Past Lives and Life Before Life.

In Life Before Life Dr. Wambach described the results of hypnotizing 750 people and taking them to the time between their past and current lives. One of her findings was that the disembodied consciousness, or soul does, not enter the body until near birth. "The soul usually enters the body near birth, and has a choice of which fetus to enter. If one fetus is aborted, it is possible to choose another. In some cases, the soul who will occupy the fetus, is in contact with the soul of the mother, and can influence her decision regarding abortion."
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Dr. Wambach found that 89% of those hypnotized said they did not become part of the fetus until after six months of gestation. A large group said they did not join the fetus, or experience inside it, until just before or during the birth process. They existed fully conscious as an entity apart from the fetus and even after six months many reported being 'in' and 'out' of the fetal body.

"Many subjects reported that the onrush of physical sensations on emerging from the birth canal was disturbing and unpleasant. The soul exists in a quite different environment in the between-life state. The physical senses bring so much vivid input that the soul feels almost 'drowned' in light, cold air, sounds.She reported that the new-born baby feels cut off, diminished, alone compared to the between-life state. To be alive in a body is to be alone and unconnected. Perhaps we are alive to learn to break through the screen of the senses, to experience while in a body the transcendent self we truly are."

Young souls exist in every walk of life. It’s fun to pick out cartoon characters and film stars that embody the qualities of the young soul. Young souls have not experienced as many incarnations as old souls and therefore they express a lighter quality than the older souls who have been knocking around on the physical plane for many lifetimes.

Mickey Mouse is a young soul, while Donald Duck is an old soul. Mickey has the optimism that is characteristic of a soul that has not been witness to many adversities in other lives. Donald Duck, on the other hand, has that curmudgeonly character that can be an expression of an old soul who has seen and done it all.

Brad Pitt is a young soul, with that look in his eye of many beautiful empty rooms that have yet to be populated by experience. Angelina Joli, on the other hand, is an old soul, who looks right through you and bores into the core of your being with one glance of her penetrating eyes. She is not lightweight and you feel that, regardless of your personal opinions about her life choices.

Kim Kardashian is young soul, looking to complete herself and create a perfect image within the context of this culture. Her marriages and weddings portray the light touch of the younger souls who do not feel or think deeply. Her sister Kourtney is an old soul, whose observations about life have a wider outlook, often including global suffering and the bigger picture. And also, characteristic of the older soul, she can have a sadly realistic outlook because of past life experiences and knowledge.

Many examples exist in music too. Adele is an old soul. Often there is a tinge of suffering detectable when we meet an old soul that they convey through their words and sounds. Michael Jackson was a young soul. Perhaps that is why he felt most comfortable around children. Elton John is an old soul, John Lennon, and Janis Joplin. All of them had the qualities of old souls. Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, and Madonna are all young souls. Can you tell why?

Karma is about our actions in this and in other lifetimes. Most people don’t remember past lives because it is enough that we focus on this life. Many times we can’t even remember our actions in this lifetime. So memory and karma do not necessarily connect.

But there are times when we remember our actions in this life that make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves. We know those actions accrued karma that needs to be cleaned up. For example, I remember when I was about four years old. I was cruel to another child on the playground. That has stayed with me my entire life. It was unnecessarily mean and even to this day I regret it. So now I go out of my way to not make that mistake again.
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I can also remember times when I was charitable and forgiving as a little child. Those were actions that generated good karma. I was kind to a child who felt she was an outcast. I comforted a crying child. So even though those actions were more than a half a century ago, I still feel good about them.
The only connection between karma and memory would be that memories help us to refrain from repeating actions that bring bad karma. And memories can also remind us of how good it feels to do kind things for others and ourselves.

Gypsy souls are the wandering spirits of the earth. While many people have spent their past lives, or even this present life, in one general area of the globe, gypsy souls don’t settle in one place. They only feel comfortable moving around, with very few possessions. This is why most people don’t understand gypsy souls.

Gypsy souls do not care about the comforts of life. Freedom has always been the most important value in their lives. Living permanently anywhere, settling down, getting a regular job, getting married, all the things that most cultures see as good—gypsy souls find oppressive. They don’t care whether people accept them or not. They know they are just passing through.
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They are difficult to pin down but full of adventure, courage, and independence. They would rather be out in the cold than comfortable in a warm house if it means they have to conform to what other people want of them. Slippery and elusive, they are hard to get to know, but they are colorful, resourceful, and inspiring to be around, even if you can’t ever get them to stay.

We filter out so many things in our environment just so we can navigate through life. We don’t hear sounds that birds and animals can hear. We don’t see infrared or ultraviolet light that other creatures see. If we took in everything around us at the time, we would be dazzled by it all, and so we perceive the world as humans do—in a very narrow perspective—compared to what is “out there.”

So it is with our conscious and subconscious minds. We simply could not function if every memory of this life and past lives flooded our brains. But everything that happened to us, especially trauma, is stored in the subconscious mind. This is where all the messages of our particular culture are resting. It is where everything our caretakers taught us about who we are, what we are, and how “good” we are resides.
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Our conscious minds are our survival mechanisms but the subconscious mind is behind so many of the decisions we make. We usually cannot access our subconscious mind and yet it is doing a lot of work in the background. The subconscious was formed when we were too young to have discriminating intelligence or the ability to form our own opinions. And it sits there, unseen and undetected, like the huge hidden mass of an iceberg.

Your mind is already connected to your subconscious mind, you just don’t know it. That is why it is called the sub-conscious. It is underneath your awareness and your ability to express it through words.

You can only talk about what is on your conscious mind. Techniques such as hypnosis, and certain drugs such as sodium pentathol, allow you to delve down into what has been long forgotten or repressed. There are problems with sodium pentothal, though. It’s a case of TMI (Too Much Information). It gives information in endless streams that are impossible to determine if they are fact or fiction.

Your conscious mind keeps things sorted and straight and it can actually influence the subconscious mind. This part of you is full of past lives memories and motivations, received knowledge from whatever culture you were born into, and repressed memories from this lifetime.
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The subconscious is what motivates our actions even if we think we are making rational decisions. Yet it is possible to use our conscious mind to restructure the subconscious and correct some of the patterns that don’t serve us. Techniques such as mantras and affirmations have been successful as a way of reprogramming old subconscious mental habits that run our lives forever if they are not addressed.

Twin flame consciousness is shared consciousness. It it like the morphological fields of birds, fish and insects. A whole flock of birds will turn in an instant in the sky and fly another way. Bees communicate with each others from many miles away and converge at their hive at the same moment. Thousands of fish will all turn and swim away from a predator in a split second.

They are not talking to each other with physical language. They don’t have time or space for that. They are communicating in a place that is beyond time and space. That is the same kind of consciousness we find in twin flames. They share the same space of awareness and are acutely aware of each other. They share thoughts, feelings, destinies, and past lives.

How this is done is beyond our ability to describe. It just is. Look at a flock of starlings, turning all at once in the sky. The silvery schools of fish as they tune into each other’s wavelengths and maneuver through the sea as one organism. The thousands of bees that all return to their swarm at the end of the day. These are all miracles that point to an unseen world beyond our ability to comprehend. And so it is with soul mates as well.

Our past and all the moments we have lived are philosophically important because they teach us so much about who we really are. We are constantly changing beings and our pasts attest to that. Yet, on another level much of our past memories have no real importance at all.

We are the same person we were when we were eleven years old. Yet all our cells have completely changed, grown, and renewed themselves to take us from childhood into adulthood and old age. Actually, nothing is left from when we were eleven except our Eternal Souls.

We can gain wisdom from our past. Wisdom is one of the goals of Philosophy. But this is wisdom from just this lifetime. It doesn’t take past life patterns into account. So which life are we talking about when we talk about our past?

On an even deeper level, the past really does not exist. Can you put your hands on it? So many of our memories may be colored by what other people have told us. The present moment is, literally all we have to live in. Obviously we cannot live in the future, which has not arrived yet.
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Furthermore, our minds are fallible and easily forget things. We forget the majority of the moments we have lived. How many people remember the name of their Kindergarten teachers? Do you remember what you had for lunch three years ago on Thursday? Therefore, apart from practical wisdom so we can avoid mistake we already made, and a few delightful memories that are fun to revisit, our pasts are not important.

Nothing is a coincidence. It all happens because something happened before it and is happening with it. So many things are operating at the same time when we think something is just a coincidence.

But I wouldn’t say it happens on purpose. I would rather say, “It is inevitable that anything happens and everything is dependent on everything else.”

Some people would like to impute meaning to why things happen to them. They personalize the Universe. They were bad in a past life and that is why they slammed their hand in the car door today. The human mind feels better when it can make a story out of what happens. But in doing so, it is limiting its view of what is really going on.

What is really going on is far more than our limited minds can grasp. Forces that we cannot see that are operating all around us. Physical forces such as gravity, laws of motion, and magnetism as well as spiritual forces combined with our own choice. Who put you there when you slammed your hand in the car door? If you don’t move your hand fast enough many laws of physics come into play. And it hurts.
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When we look at life with the eyes of the Soul, there are no coincidences and there is no specific purpose for every little thing that happens to us. But there is an overarching purpose for why we are here. It is a soul-chosen purpose to grow and expand in our ever deepening love of the Universe and all its complexity.

Spirit guides do not lead us to anything horrible. They are there to offer unconditional love and comfort. They have been with us for eternity before this birth and will be with us after we leave our physical existence.

If we have karma to resolve, they can help us choose the right path. But they will never lead us into anything frightful or disturbing. Their whole raison d’etre is to be of peaceful assistance to us as we navigate through our lives. They await our call upon them and stand ever ready to be of service.

We do not plan what we are going to do before we incarnate. It is determined by many variables that are way beyond our individual control. We are part of a huge dance of the Universe in which are souls are never destroyed but continue to grow and evolve in accordance with the laws of the Cosmos. Spirit guides are part of this, though most people ignore them until their backs are up against the wall.
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Then they call on their guides and angels. But the guides have always been there. We just need to open our consciousness to them. They are there to be consulted any time of the day or night. I use them all the time and greatly appreciate their loving assistance.