When I was little, I had flashbacks to the time before this life. It was a profound sense of belonging and love. All was consciousness. I was disembodied. I saw it all as a kind of golden light. It was mostly timeless, with time seeming very faint and distant. And so on.
I didn’t think about it or try to make sense of it. Probably because I was little, and also because I didn’t have any mental frameworks to put it into. It just happened, and I was briefly transported back to how it was. I also didn’t connect it with anything relating to religion or spirituality, because I was little, because what I heard about religion seemed to have no connection with it, and because I grew up in a family and culture where religion and spirituality didn’t play much of a role.
FLASHBACKS, LONGING, SIMPLE DUALITY, ONENESS
This all happened before school age. Later in childhood, I had a deep sense of longing with me. This was a longing I couldn’t satisfy with anything, and I didn’t consciously connect it with the flashbacks.
When the oneness shift happened in my mid-teens, I realized that this is what the longing had been about, and it was also closely related to the flashbacks.
In my memory from before this life, there was a kind of oneness. It was a oneness that wasn’t aware of itself, locally through and as me, as oneness.
THE ONENESS I AM EXPERIENCING ITSELF IN DIFFERENT WAYS
Looking back, this is all somewhat interesting.
It does seem that the time between lives was a time in and as oneness, but without being conscious of it as that. Then, it became a memory and longing.
Then, there was a simple duality of observer and observed. (This happened at age 15. The world and any and all content of experience seemed very distant and I thought something was profoundly wrong.)
At age 16, there was a oneness shift with the oneness I am consciously aware of itself as that.
And since then, an exploration from within and as that oneness.
MEMORIES
Of course, I know that memories are unreliable. Memories are here and now. They are the mind’s way to construct an apparent past. They are constructed and accurate and inaccurate to varying degrees. We may even have images about a past that never happened, even if our mind tells us it’s a memory.
At the same time, there are things that suggests that this was a real memory. It happened spontaneously in early childhood. I later learned that it mirrors what some describe from a near-death experience (NDE). And it does also fit what some religious and spiritual traditions describe.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter so much. What matters is the oneness.
TWO FORMS OF ONENESS
Since I write about oneness here, it may be worth mentioning that there are two kinds of oneness.
One is the oneness inherent in all of existence. It’s all a seamless whole. We and everything are expressions of this oneness. To us, that oneness happens within the story level.
The other oneness is the oneness I am, and I assume we all are to ourselves. To myself, I am fundamentally consciousness, and as consciousness, I am one. To me, the world happens within and as the consciousness I am. It appears like a dream to me since it happens within and as consciousness, just like night dreams and any experience.
In this sense, all conscious beings are a oneness. We are all, to ourselves, consciousness, even if the bodies and psychology we operate through are unique in each case. In this sense, there are multiple onenesses in the world.
INITIAL NOTES
Memory before this life
- all is consciousness
- Oneness without being consciosly aware of it as that