While I'm on the topic of spirituality, I might as well talk about past lives, and the ego...

This has been a rant of mine now for almost 30 years, so brace yourselves...

The first thing you learn when you get into "alternative spirituality" is transcendental meditation. That's pretty much the bedrock of any "magical" practice - the meditative state is where you work with energy and communicate with the divine. And one of the easiest meditations to do is a past life regression, plus it's "spiffy," so a lot of people start right off with viewing snippets of lives they've lived before.

Look, other meditation teachers can do what they want, but if I'm teaching meditation? We're not starting out with past life regressions. And I am happy to tell you exactly why!

"Spiritual psychosis" is a fairly new term for me, but I've been watching it happen for decades, and it's that too early past life regression that tends to do it. And it's obvious why it happens, it's the people who are dissatisfied with their current life, and think that the life they saw in the regression they did was so much more interesting. Whether they saw themselves as ancient royalty, or just as a common person living a meaningful life, they become obsessed with that life as a way to not have to live their current, boring life.

I saw the danger of that as a teenager, and told my spirit team that my past lives were on a need-to-know basis. When you spend a lot of time in meditation, sometimes past life memories kind of pop up. I re-affirmed for decades that I wanted as little as possible to come through. I didn't want to know about my past lives at all, because I knew I had to be myself, now. That I'm living this life right now for a reason, and I need to put all my focus on it.

It's only been recently, in midlife, as I'm feeling solid in who I am right now, that I've told my spirit team that I'm okay with knowing a little bit more about my soul's past. And, you know... I kinda don't care that much. I keep getting a lot of readings recently about how "you were really important in a past life!" and I'm like "cool, dude" and that's about it. I figure, if I was someone important, that would explain my natural leadership skills, and I know I have at least one lifetime of leadership experience to tap into for my work in this life but... I don't need to know the details to do that.

Knowing who you were in past lives should be a tool, having the knowledge that you have done it before successfully, and therefore can do it again in this life. Or having the knowledge of how you fucked it up in the last life, so you don't fuck it up the same way again this time. If you're doing past life regressions without this framework, and using them as an escape from this life, it's like giving a circular saw to a kid in woodworking class and not giving them the safety training - they may split some wood, sure, but they'll probably lose a hand in the process.

This is also why "ego death" is such an important goal of magical practitioners. Spiritual psychosis tends to happen when people approach their true selves from a place of ego. The truth is, every human being, when they've been taught how to access their divine abilities, is powerful beyond measure. But if you're encountering that power from a place of ego, the power becomes corrupted. You need to learn how to access your magic from a place beyond ego, and that place is generally "what was I given these gifts to do in the world? How can I benefit my community and humanity as a whole?" Those are the kinds of questions you were asking yourself in those past lives you found so intriguing, because you found them so meaningful. And that takes approaching your practice from a place where your ego is not present. If you're here to be magical, you're here to serve others. And if you're given these gifts and use them from a place of ego... that's why we reincarnate, boo. You have to do it until you get it right.

Basically, do you want to be Gandalf, or do you want to be Saruman? Gandalf the Grey, everyone's favorite unassuming weed grandpa wizard, had the strength and the power and the selflessness that comes from practicing from a lack of ego to sacrifice himself to the Balrog to save Middle Earth, and come back as Gandalf the White. Saruman, however, was so in his ego he was able to be drawn in by Sauron to actively try to destroy Middle Earth. Be like Gandalf.

And while we're on the subject of ego death, let's get it straight that it's not convincing yourself that you're "nobody" or "a worm" or "an empty vessel" or any crap like that. If you want to transcend your ego, you need to know exactly who you are, and that means knowing, understanding, and acknowledging your full power, and also knowing, understanding, and acknowledging your limitations. It means doing your healing and your shadow work, so you are bringing your full, incorporated, authentic self to the table at all times; body, mind, and spirit. And it means understanding your power fully and thinking "I can use this to better humanity," not "I am so special." Because when you're at that level in your spiritual comprehension, you're aware of how interconnected we all are, on the energetic/soul level. When we all understand who we truly are, and then we start to come together in community, that's when real, positive change will happen.