Exploring the Mystery of Parallel Lives

How many of you have seen the new TV drama “Awake” starring British Actor Jason Isaac? It’s a story about a homicide detective who lives in parallel realities. The story begins with a car accident involving himself, his wife, and his teenage son. In one reality, his wife survives but his son does not. In the other reality, his son survives and his wife does not. He sees a therapist in both realities, who assure him that their reality is the only reality, and that the other is a dream.

I’m thrilled to see one more mainstream drama explore more aspects of our multi-dimensional “reality.” I can’t say I’ve ever known or read about a soul who is aware on a daily basis of the two realities, but it’s a fascinating premise, and I look forward to see what the writers of the show bring us.

Or better yet, do you have a story of parallel realities to tell?

• Have you ever had a vivid dream that revealed an ongoing thread of your life that was discontinued in your waking reality? Perhaps it was about a relationship that ended either by choice or by death. Is that person still in your life when dreaming, as if nothing had changed to end it?
• Do you have a career that shifted from one path to another in your distant past, yet in your dream the path not taken is the reality?
• In your dreams, do you live in another country or city with friends or family unknown to you in this waking life?
• Do you connect with other realities in meditation, or other ways?
• Have you had a hypnosis session that took you to a parallel life?

According to many who work in or study the metaphysical realm and the nature of a soul’s journey, parallel realities, and parallel lives occur for all of us. Seth (as channeled by Jane Roberts), Dr. Michael Newton, Dick Sutphen, and others describe the Universe and our activity within it, in such terms.

Were you a LOST fan? That drama also wove these concepts of multiple realities into the storyline, but didn’t ultimately provide very much explanation around the conclusion—so it was something of a learning opportunity LOST on us, so to speak.  No, life is not a TV drama, but the value of these programs is that they create an awareness of the possibility. They get people thinking, guessing, wondering about the metaphysics of our universe and their place in it. And wondering is the first step to exploring the possibilities—and that openness to a new understanding of our reality is important during this “age of enlightenment.”

Why? Because when we haven’t been introduced to a subject in a way that draws us in (like a TV drama or a movie), we dismiss windows to our other lives as “crazy dreams” and don’t think through what it might actually mean to us. So, let me share a few of my experiences, and perhaps one of them will jar an “aha” moment for you—a new way to understand what your soul is telling you or experiencing in parallel.

Can we really take both forks in the road? During most of my undergraduate years at the University of Minnesota, I was preparing for a career as an orthodontist. I completed the entire pre-med/pre-dent curriculum and took the Dental Admission Test (DAT) just before heading to Germany to study for a year (against my advisor’s advice—he must have known something I didn’t at the time). I knew that a study year abroad would not be possible once dental school started, so away I went, planning to apply when I got back. However…I had an epiphany of sorts while in Germany, and decided that I really wanted an international career. Poking around in people’s mouths my whole life suddenly sounded terribly uninviting to me. So, I returned to the U of MN, finished up my BA, and pursued an international career and graduate study in other fields.

Window to my parallel life? Twenty five years later, I had a very vivid dream, in which I sat for a reading with a psychic. She closed her eyes for a moment, holding my palm. She wasn’t really reading my palm, but rather seemed to be reading my energy, my aura. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes wide and said, “Oh, you have such a lovely life in London!”

“What? London? I don’t live in London,” I said.

“Why of course you do, dear. I see you’re a dentist, and quite well to do at that.” She sounded congratulatory.

“No, I was going to be a dentist, but –“

“Oh, and I see you have quite a handsome husband working in the finance world, and such pretty little girls. Oh, my. You’ve been quite blessed in this lifetime,” she said, as she patted my palm.

“No, really…I am not married. I have no children. I have never lived in London.” I objected.

“Oh yes, dear. It’s all very clear. You just don’t remember,” she smiled indulgently, as though speaking to a child. I don’t remember? As I was taking in this information, I woke up.  So, I never actually saw or experienced the alternate life I was apparently living in my dream, as the character in “Awake” does, and yet here was a “seer” in my dream describing my other reality—the potential reality, the probable life, I had rejected at the age of 23.

It was shortly after this dream that I read Seth Speaks, and learned about the potential for our souls to take both paths in the road, creating a new dimension of experience, so that we might learn from them both. Hmm….so was my dream just a dream, or a brief opening in the veil to another dimension in which I lived another life, or both? What do you think?

And what about Merle? In the fall of 2007, shortly after my mother passed into Spirit, I had a vivid dream in which she and my two siblings in Spirit, Susie and Merle, played a part. It was one of those dreams in which everything looks and feels very normal, nothing oddly out-of-place, no sense of the surreal—like watching a movie of one’s life. The dream begins with my front doorbell ringing. It was late afternoon in the dream, and as I came down the main staircase from the second floor, the sun was shining in the bay window of staircase landing and flowing into the front foyer.

I opened the door and there stood a tall, slender, attractive man about my age with sandy brown curly hair. He was wearing dress pants, a turtleneck sweater, and a brown tweed jacket with a leather collar and elbows. Behind him, I saw the car that dropped him off, and my sister Susie looked up at the house from the passenger seat. I ducked down to see the driver, and it was my mother. When they saw I had answered the door, they pulled the car into the driveway to park.

I looked back at the man before me, mystified.

“Nene,” he said softly, using my family nickname. “It’s me, Merle.”

“What? Merle? But you died years ago…”

“Well, yes and no,” he said. “I’ve been living in Sweden. I’m a professor there, in engineering research.”

“Really? You’re really Merle? Wha–?”

“Yeah, really. It’s really me,” he said and smiled. I knew that smile.

I pulled him by the arm into the foyer and we hugged each other tightly, the tears flowing. I pulled back and looked at him, “You got so tall. I always figured you’d be a tall man—and an engineer!” He laughed. I knew that laugh, and my heart felt full.

At that moment, my mother and my sister, Susie came up the porch stairs to the open front door. “Mom, it’s really Merle!” I said, only partly registering that both she and Susie had been dead and were also quite alive there on my doorstep. I hugged and kissed them both, and ushered them into my living room to catch up.

We began swapping stories of our lives…and then, I woke up.  It was one of those dreams you don’t want to end, and you try to get it back, for just a few minutes more, but there was no more.

I think of the dream often as I read more about parallel lives, and I wonder if Merle wanted to share his other reality with me, the “what if he’d lived ” story of Merle that I always wondered about, and sometimes talk about with my sister, Connie. Could he be living another reality in which he did not die at 14, but rather went on to pursue his love of mechanical and electrical systems? Did he become one more teacher in a family full of teachers? Could it be that I had become a married, London-based dentist with children in that reality? And were Mom and Susie still alive in that reality? If so, were they just visiting me in this reality? And why? Was it to help me understand the concepts that I was struggling to embrace as I read about parallel lives and probable lives? And if so, why is it important that I understand it? So that I can teach it to others—once I make sense of it?  Maybe.

Or maybe…it was just a dream, another opportunity for me to be with my Loved Ones in Spirit. It could be as simple as that. I won’t know for sure until I pass into Spirit, but it had all the qualities of a Spirit visit dream. Hmm…this does add a new meaning to the term, Spirit, doesn’t it? Maybe we don’t just die and go to The Other Side. Maybe we live out another reality elsewhere and still have a portion of our soul’s energy on The Other Side.

So the above discussion was about souls taking both forks in the road. Next, we’ll discuss another kind of parallel life, in which each life is separate and whole unto itself.

Parallel Lives Hypnosis:  Last summer, I attended the Annual Conference of the National Guild of Hypnotists. Dick Sutphen was presenting and is a fascinating lecturer. Dick has been researching and practicing mediumship, meditation and hypnotherapy in a variety of metaphysical areas for decades. I was looking forward to seeing what he would share with us on the topic of parallel lives. But the session was short, so he didn’t really tell us much. Rather, he took us into a deep hypnotic state which allowed us to briefly explore various parallel lives that our soul was living right now on Earth—lives completely separate from the current life. As I understand it, if our current life is not so emotionally and spiritually draining as to require all of our soul’s energy, we can learn more by dividing that energy into multiple parallel lives.

So here’s what I experienced in hypnosis.

Parallel life No. 1: I found myself in the body of a ten-year old girl in what felt like the Midwest. I was slender, yet nimble and athletic. It was summer and my skin was tanned. I wore shorts, a sleeveless plaid cotton top and sneakers. My hair was white blond and cut Cleopatra style. As I came into my body, I was crawling through a wooden ranch-style fence, and then continued walking through a field on some type of path—it might have been a cow or tractor path. It was a rural area. I didn’t see my house, but it was nearby. I was happy; I felt safe, and I loved being out in the sunshine, exploring on my own. Unfortunately, that was as much as I could discover before Dick pulled us back to our present life and then out again to another parallel life.

Parallel Life No. 2: In this lifetime, I found myself in the rather stout body of a 55-year-old French man, with thinning black hair and olive skin. I was a “man-servant” to the Lord of a wealthy country estate in France.  As I came into my body, I was looking out the window of my master’s bedroom. It was morning and the sun was shining. The mansion was in a rural setting, but with grand, spacious, well-tended gardens surrounding the home. I heard my master calling from the bathroom. I turned around to gather the clothing I’d selected for him for the day, thinking to myself, that I was glad that the only decisions I needed to make on a daily basis were around another person’s needs. I had been alone my entire life and it suited me. Major responsibilities were things I avoided at all costs, and so I was very good at being indispensable to my master.

Now, it’s very strange for me to think that at this very moment in time, I’m a woman, a child, and a man in three areas of the world, with very different outlooks on life. If we are to believe this is possible, then what is my soul, my higher self, seeking from this tri-part experience? Is the little girl my insurance policy? Will she carry through on things I chose not to in my life as Renee? Is the French man-servant the antidote to taking on too much work-related responsibility in this life? What roles do they play for each other? Or is there no real relevance one to the other, that we in our limited awareness would be able to ascertain? It is a little weird that my name derives from the French male name, Rene (which means “reborn”), and that crawling through someone else’s fence isn’t something I’d think twice about as a kid, but I diverge…

So many mind-expanding questions to explore… But I want to hear about you! Please, share your experiences and let’s get this conversation going.  What books or literature would you recommend for me and other readers to explore on this topic?

With love and light ~ Renee Buck