You plan your next life - some details, some big stuff. And a lot more.

Someone suggested to me years ago that I chose my parents. When I heard that, an f-bomb went off in my head. Fortunately, it stayed there. Even with that reaction - or perhaps prompted by it - I felt undeniable truth in that statement. But if I really did make a choice to come into this family, why? Why me, why here, why now, why them, why this? After reading Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls in 2014 I knew I had to make the journey to the realm between incarnations for myself.

Step One was a past life regression. I’ve written about that experience (“There’s a past life you should visit,” published June 2024). A month later I did Step Two: the journey of Life Between Lives, a.k.a. the Realm of Souls.

From Soldier to Soul

One detail from my first regression, the journey to a “significant past life,” turned out to be prescient for the journey to the Realm of Souls. As I approached the transition into that past life, I had a sudden feeling of dread, accompanied briefly by an image of the leggings and boots of an old military uniform. The image and the feeling faded quickly. I was relieved and didn’t mention it to the hypnotherapist.

Four weeks later, I’m beginning the Life Between Lives session. That image comes back with its full meaning: I relive my death experience as a soldier in World War I. The journey begins with an easy shift to the most immediate past life. I emerge into that life and look down.

What follows is the edited transcript of the recording of that session. Indented comments like this one indicate observations added later.

I see what strikes me as ridiculously shiny black boots, then the uniform and leggings of a soldier in World War I. There’s a weight in my hands. It’s a rifle. There’s a bayonet on the end of the rifle. On my head is a Canadian Army helmet.

I’m going into my first battle. There are men on my right and left. One of them is my Sergeant, and two others are my friends. There’s barbed wire somewhere nearby but it’s not stopping us. We’ve come out of a line of trees onto a muddy open field and are walking toward enemies I can’t see who are shooting at us from the forest across the field. I’m carrying the rifle pointed forward, but we haven’t been given the order to fire.

We don’t know what the hell is going on except that we’ve been ordered to move forward, and that’s what we’re doing. Breathe, walk. We’re doing it. There are heavy noises ahead. The forest is still a good distance away, maybe half a mile, and we’re moving up under an artillery barrage from guns behind us.

There’s adrenaline. There’s also excitement. Even with that, I feel calm. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s an adventure.

This is this is my first taste of the real thing and I’m exhilarated by it. I’m pleased that I don’t feel any desire to run. I’m keenly aware of my buddies around me. I would never let any of them down and I have the same faith in them.

Then one of them goes down. He goes to his knees and flops forward. We keep moving. We’re trained not to stop.

We have been walking more or less as a straight line, and now the line gets uneven as some of us move forward and some back so that the guys who are shooting at us won’t be able to just use the same range and get all of us.
I hear a machine gun. They can see us. I feel absolutely neutral about the people who are shooting at us. They’re trying to kill me and I’m going to try and kill them and I hope I do.

The soul doesn’t want to kill. But there’s the human body, and there’s the soul. The soul steps back. It knows that this is the journey. It doesn’t try to take control. The soul understands that this experience is one of the major aspects of why it’s in this body.

Ooohh!

I just took a bullet in the stomach and I’m on my face. My helmet is the only thing that’s keeping my face out of the mud.

It was a hit pretty high up. I’m aware that the body is dying quickly. I’m alone now. The other guys are still moving. They’ve left me behind, and there’s nobody around. I haven’t even fired my rifle.

I’m moving up and out of my body now. Five feet above it, I leave behind the physical pain, along with all other human sensations and emotions. I look toward my body and express gratitude for the life I am leaving.

I think of my mother. She didn’t want me to go but she didn’t try to stop me. I find myself with her in the farmhouse where I grew up. She’s sitting at the kitchen table. I see her face and I know that she knows. She puts her face in her hands.

I offer her my love, of a purity I have never expressed before. Then again I am pulled quickly up and away, leaving behind the farm, the rolling countryside, the distant cities, and the planet.

In a later journey to the Realm of Souls, I learned that this life had been pretty idyllic. I had a good life with my younger brother and my mother. We worked hard, and we were rewarded for our work. We lived on a small farm on rocky land in Ontario. We managed to meet our own needs, not wealthy, but with a sense of well-being.

My name was Les, maybe Dickson or Erickson, and I volunteered in a Canadian rifle regiment. I don’t know the year or location of the battle I died in beyond that it was early in WWI, in France or Belgium.

Les was a skinny, self-indulgent, dissatisfied, somewhat spoiled romantic who had no idea what he was getting into. When the war broke out, it was an opportunity for adventure. And his friends were going. He joined up to get away from farming and to prove himself a man. He was 22 years old.

A Brief Encounter with My Discarnate Soul

Now I’m moving, rising far above my body to where the battlefield is not even visible. I’m far above the field, then far above the Earth, and I am expanding. I know that I have been through this experience before.

One of the first entities we encounter after leaving a body may be the part of our soul that remained in the soul realm while some of our soul energy entered the body of a human being. Sometimes this meeting is a very sweet experience of merging, but in my case this time, the newly discarnate aspect of my soul needed some repair work done before I was ready to merge with the holographic aspect of my soul that had remained in the Realm of Souls.

H (hypnotherapist): What happens next, now that you’ve cleared the physical incarnation?

W (Wes): A light seems to be condensing in front of me . There is a being inside that light …. What I’m getting is just love. And a welcoming.

The fundamental quality of the Realm of Souls is love. The nature and purity of this love is far beyond what can be experienced during an incarnation. Perhaps the closest humans can come to experiencing the love that is present always and everywhere in the Realm of Souls would be the pure love between a mother and a new baby in the magic moments just after birth.

If that is the case, why do we not all just want to go home to that realm? The answer is twofold: we know this love will be there for us when we eventually do go back home, and we know that in the meantime, we have work to do here both as a contribution to our human world and to learn from the lessons that our soul has chosen for itself as a human.

W: Time in solitude is what I need right now.

H: Let’s go there now, to the next stop on your way home. Let me know when you get there.

W: I’m in a space of solitude, except for a sense that that one being is still there. There’s an enabling energy, an empowering energy that is helping me to be cleansed in some fashion. It’s restorative. I didn’t realize how damaged I was.

H: Is there a particular area within your energy field that’s being restored?

W: It’s as though I was torn somehow, in a traumatic experience. I need to be given time and energy to fill in the holes. It’s like an energetic sphere with tears in it.

Now those gaps are being filled in. Some of them I’m doing myself and for some of them I’m receiving energy from another source.

I’m in what feels like a healing chamber, a clear globe. I feel energies like gentle hands caressing me, healing the shock of the way I died. After a time - it could be minutes on Earth, it could be months - I feel whole.

Two limitations which are fundamental to the human world that do not exist in the Realm of Souls are time and space. In that realm we can move to any point in time or space simply by having the intention. One of the ways this freedom is most noticeable is that time has no meaning, and it didn’t matter whether the healing of my soul took minutes or months on Earth.

Meeting My Soul Group

One of the most beautiful parts of this journey is the first meeting with other members of your soul group. You will probably recognize some of them as the souls of people you know in your earthly existence!

How is this possible? All of us, when we leave the soul realm to incarnate, bring with us some of our energy, but not all of it. What remains in the soul realm is a holographic piece of ourselves. It contains all of our essence, but not all of our energy. That part of the soul whispers to us in dreams and fleeting thoughts, or in physical sensations of rightness or wrongness, providing us with guidance for our earthly life. It is the part of your soul that remained in that realm that you will meet when you return there, on a journey like this one or after death. Many of the other souls you find there are also holographic parts of the souls that are incarnated on Earth as your friends, family, or others.

W: I’m standing in a garden area now.

H: Are you alone? Do you sense or see any presences?

W: Yes. They’re ahead of me. Five or six.

H: Is there one that seems more particularly bright or are they all about the same?

W: About the same. They don’t even seem to know I’m there.

H: How does that make you feel right now?

W: A bit disappointed, but it’s OK.

H: What happens next?

W: I see the face of [a friend from my life as Wes]. She’s greeting me: “Hi, you’re here. Welcome home.” Not strongly emotional.

H: Are you surprised with this kind of greeting?

W: It feels OK. When she says “Welcome home” it feels good, appropriate. We’ve done this many times before.

H: Do you see her as her current form or is she taking on some other kind of presence?

W: Current form.

H: What about the others? Where are they?

W: In the background.

Later in the journey I meet several other members of my soul group. There are eleven of us altogether. These meetings confirm that the affinity I feel with several people in my physical life has deeper meaning: we have been together in many lifetimes. We have helped each other learn lessons that have been important in our growth and development as souls; we have also worked together during many incarnations to enhance our contributions to this planet and its people. We may have been mates, family members, friends, teachers or students. Most of us have had many lives and have lived a huge range of possible experiences.

H: It sounds like your group has taken on a fair number of tough assignments. Is there a particular kind of character that would describe your group?

W: Yeah: bring on the shit, man. This is a tough bunch. We’re moving fast. We want… No, that’s not true. It flashed through my mind to say we want to get this Earth stuff over with quickly, but it’s not that. It’s a strong interest in learning, in both places.
There’s another quality we all have, except when one of us chooses a really rough incarnation: a sense of humor. Teasing, lots of gentle teasing. A love of good jokes. And sometimes just laughing because.

H: Does that show up in this life currently?

W: Yes, it does. There are times when some of my incarnated soul group and I have laughed until we’re giddy [before I learned that we were in the same soul group]. Some of us laugh because just being together is a joyous thing. Some of us are punsters. That serves our learning as well as helping us get through difficult incarnations.
We know not to take ourselves too seriously. We’re here for a long time, we immortal souls, so let’s have fun.
There’s just the simple joy of existence too. That’s something all of us have learned to celebrate, even in the hard times. Existence is a pretty amazing thing.

H: How does the group feel about the opportunity to incarnate on Earth?

W: We all like it here. We know that it’s a dense place and that some incarnations are going to be tough. But we like it here, yeah.

Meeting with the Council of Elders

Another common feature of a visit to the realm of Life Between Lives is a meeting with what many people call their Council of Elders. In this meeting the love that fills that realm manifests as wisdom, patience, acceptance, and gentleness. There is no judgment. There is no right or wrong. There is no failure or condemnation.
Sometimes the soul will tell the Council that it has not succeeded in learning its lessons or contributing. The response from the Council, and from other guides, is often to point out areas where the soul did demonstrate love or compassion, and to remind the soul that this is only one incarnation; there will be many other opportunities.

W: I feel loving respect from them, which seems strange. I wasn’t expecting this.

H: Councils have much respect for us because they too know the difficult journey that we face coming to Earth.

W: Sometimes they’re wearing something that’s from the shoulders down and I can see faces, then that changes into a hood with a peak on it and I can’t see their faces.

Energetically, they’re all androgynous, although the one in the centre appears male. Now it’s female. It is oscillating. They have a sense of humor too. I’m getting a little chuckle from them.

They are assembled for me. It would be unusual to have the same group of people in a Council for another person. Who is there depends on the needs of the person coming before them. For me, some change from one meeting to another, others have been with me for a long time.

H: Do they have a teaching or reflections for you from the life you just left?

W: Yeah, they share my guide’s opinion. “You’ve done well. You’re doing well.” They are less excited about that than my guide, but they’ve seen immense numbers of souls, many more than my guide.

One wearing saffron is very bright. She says, “Remember your lessons. Remember compassion. The lesson is not of, but from, pain. You have more to learn about that.”

Designing My Next Life

The greatest gift of this Life Between Lives journey may be that we come to understand the choices our soul made for our current life. In collaboration with many other souls and my guide, we choose our initial circumstances for the next life: body, family, social environment, location, and major events that will provide opportunities to the soul to learn as well as opportunities to be of service as a human.

W: It feels like there are some important things that I need to address. The word “compassion” popped up. What am I going in there to do? I want to enjoy this next body.

I’m looking for something that is a good body and a good mind. And circumstances that are not physically demanding. That would require being born into a society that has a lot of privileges. I also want to be male.

H: What does your guide have to say?

W: He reminds me that “You have also asked to experience some deep human pain, to know loneliness.”

Now there’s a discussion between the two of us: “How can I have all these nice things that I want and pain?” He doesn’t answer, he just smiles, and I get this little twinge of “I don’t wanna know this pain.” It will be emotional and spiritual pain. Now I realize that I have chosen the strong body and mind so the human will not be overwhelmed by the pain I have requested for my learning and growth as a soul.

H: What’s the spiritual pain about? Does he give you any sense?

W: He doesn’t tell me, just gives me a little look that says “You’ll get it.”

As I was preparing to go to the Place of Life Selection to choose my current life, two other souls who are in my family were discussing the lessons that each of them wished to learn in their next lives. I have incarnated with both of them many times before. Among the three of us, we decide that one of them will incarnate at about the same time as I do, and the other will be born some years later and come into my life as an adult. The one who will be the same age as me has chosen lessons that are complementary to mine, making us a good match for each other. The other will incarnate at a time when those early lessons have been offered and bring to me (and receive from me) new lessons, when I will be older and more mature.

The plan has unfolded well. Both of those souls, now that all of us are incarnated as humans, have assisted me immensely both in progressing with the learning my soul sought for this incarnation and in contributing to our planet and to humanity.

I go to the Place of Life Selection. It’s a huge room filled with television screens, and there are souls around every screen. I’m at a screen that is about four feet square, maybe a little wider than high. There’s one life being presented. I’m shown some of what that life will offer - not the whole story, but primarily what is important to my soul’s intentions. After observing for a time I say yes, I’ll take this one. (Some months later, in another journey to this place, I learned that there were three possible lives, and they decided to show me this one first. I don’t know who “they” are, other than a group of souls working with my guide. This is their job.)

I now know what body I will inhabit in my next incarnation, what my location and social/economic circumstances will be, who my family will be, and what major life events I will encounter. I know what challenges I will face and why I have chosen them.

I also know that when I am born into human form again, I will pass through the Veil of Forgetting. I won’t remember any of what has just been decided; If I’m fortunate, I may discover it as time goes on. I may have a sense that I’m on Earth for a reason, and realize why I find deep satisfaction in certain kinds of activities while finding others uninteresting or disagreeable. I may have spiritual experiences or awakenings that guide or affirm my understandings and choices.

None of this next life is certain to progress as planned, because I will also be born with free will. As a combination of soul and human, I may make choices that are aligned with my soul’s purposes, or not. But as the saying goes, that discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

The Journey Continues

After these journeys, first to the significant past life and then to the Realm of Souls, I realized that the techniques the hypnotherapist used were very similar to the process for entering a deep meditation that is part of my shamanic path. I decided to try a self-guided journey to that realm. It worked. I easily revisited the Realm of Souls, where I learned more about that domain and found answers to questions that had arisen after the first journey.

Since that time I have visited many other lives, one of them more than twenty times. I’ve explored much farther into the realms beyond the physical. I have become a channel for entities who watch over us with love from other realms and dimensions. I will write more about these adventures.

Your Own Journey

For the past eight years I have been privileged to guide these journeys for many others as part of my service. If you feel called to explore the journey of your soul, I invite you to look at this page in my website, and contact me if you’re interested in knowing more.

Be blessed. Travel well.

August 2024