Are Past Life Experiences Really Ancestral Memories?

November 20, 2023

At first, faint traces of light pierced the darkness surrounding me, like a tunnel leading from obscurity into a golden shimmer. As I ventured further, I found myself inside a chamber, its secrets in plain sight but unknown to me. A profound sense of intuition whispered that I had journeyed backward through time, that I belonged there. I knew that I was home but everything around me felt new, yet familiar. Finding myself in ancient Egypt, uncertain of the era, I wondered if I was dreaming.

I stepped forward into the golden space before me and was inside of a room. This inner sanctum was adorned with torches strategically positioned, casting an ethereal, earthen gold hue on the entire space. The earth tones surrounding me blended in from the floors to the textured walls. The statues and other objects inside were lined against the walls with a few stone tables and stools in the room. I was not alone; two guards stood vigilantly in the doorway, undisturbed by my movements, hinting at my presence within a realm of royalty or a distinguished high court. I went towards the door to further explore where I was and before I knew it, I was pulled back into the darkness...and back into the present. I was awake.

I pondered the experience in hopes that I could find an explanation other than what felt to be inherently true. I had this deep knowing that I just had a peek into a past life of mine but I also felt that I was in the body of an Ancestor, that I was not just looking at the life of some random person. I knew this was one of my forebearers though I could not distinguish their gender. The only pieces I felt certain of is that I was in Egypt, in a very high position with exposure to a wealth of knowledge in the natural and the esoterics, and that I was descended from this person.

Fast forward to that following evening. I dozed off watching television and woke up thirsty as I normally do. I grabbed my filtered water bottle and headed to the kitchen for a fresh ice water refill. As I walked through the hallway, I caught sight of a dark figure standing in the living room in my periphery. I stopped dead in my tracks, looked to my left and there he was. This tall black figure with this tall dog like head, clad in gold armor with red and blue stones across his breastplate. He did not move. I did not feel fear. I felt a strong sense that I was being protected. I accepted what I was seeing and went on about my way to get my water and back to bed. I've had experiences like this for so long, I didn't bother going down any paths that questioned my sanity. It wasn't until later I understood that who I saw was Anubis after researching a description of what I had seen. I'd seen enough to continue the search into why I saw the things I did and what they meant. Whether they were real or imagined, they all followed a pattern that felt a lot like a message for me to understand.

I was clear that these things were happening for a reason and it was not because I was "crazy". The best I could do at the time was to journal the experience, taking note of the major themes that felt significant. The journaling would be important because more detail would be revealed over time.

Genealogy & History....

I began my journey with genealogy in 2005 as my mother asked me about finding our lost relatives. After about eighteen years in, I find myself deep into the 16th - 18th centuries some family groups yet also back into my ancient past in it's entirety. I've used three of the major DNA testing companies and was given varying results although the general threads were the same. Having encountered so many blocks in my genealogical research as a result of being an "outsider" in the family, I felt that what my Ancestors wanted me to know would still come to me, it just might take more time. I started spending time with my ancient past since I found places I could not explain from the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

I came to understand that the main testing sites sell you pieces of information in your DNA although they are accessing more information what is given to the public. Our DNA contains vast amounts of information so it makes sense in a way. I was able to download my DNA profiles from two of the three sites and upload them into more expansive databases for comparison. These databases contain both modern and ancient DNA samples from the world population. Comparing DNA there tells you what parts of your DNA most identically matches other world populations. This confirms a more accurate perspective of the ancestry of your forebearers. If you are able to date the location of the matches you find, you can create a timeline as I have. This now gives you an idea of their movements and migration patterns. Match that information against known history and you have the framework for your story. This is the path I have taken as I write this book.

There were a few places I found that impressed upon me the most, Kenya and Egypt. As an African-American with Jamaican heritage, I have always known for my ancestry to be West African. How was it possible for these places to be present in my ancestry. I understood there were various migration patterns that many groups had in their African journey, but I knew of none that involved Egypt except for the story of Exodus from the Bible. I had no knowledge or awareness of having any relation to Egypt in that way.

When I examined my DNA story more closely, through MyTrueAncestry.com I found that there were a few components to the Egyptian part of my ancestry. I found that I shared the same Y Haplogroup with Rameses III, E1b1a. It is an extremely common haplogroup, but it is also one of African descent which means that the Pharoah himself was a Black African, not of Arab, or Greek descent. This affirmed for me how I could be part of that population. Next, while searching the site it returned a match to Medieval Era Nubian Kingdom of Makuria. The Nubians were a Nilo-Saharan group who are indigenous to the area now known as Northern Sudan-Southern Egypt (1). My DNA matched that of a sample from Kulubnarti, Sudan, about 100 miles south of the border of Egypt around 750 AD.

Then I found another sample from the Ptolemaic period, 50 BC. The thing that struck me about this particular sample is that it matched a mummy from that era. Currently it is understood those who were mummified to either be of royalty, nobility or an otherwise wealthy background since the process of burial was costly, according to the Smithsonian Insitute (2). I sat looking at the image for a moment. It made sense that DNA from samples taken from all over the globe would be available since these ancient remains have been dug up for centuries. It is also said that the Portuguese did venture the Nile River in Azurara's Chronicle of the Nile as part of the book "Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea" . Moorish Muslims primarily enslaved people from that region as part of their conquest of both Egypt and Sudan. What struck me as even more interesting is that I encountered a match to an Ancestor who was a victim of the Early Colonial Slave Trade in Mexico, Campeche, Yucatan in 1540 AD. He shares much of the same ancestry as I do, including Egypt.

This image shows a red box covering a map of Central and South America. The text in the box says the following: "Sample match #51: Early Colonial Slave Trade Victim Mexico Campeche Yucatan, Age: 1540 AD, Genetic Distance 4.571, Archeaological ID: I10860"

These details bring me back to what I felt was a past life experience. I couldn't explain it so I looked at whether it could be even possible if I had ancestry from that place. The answer is "yes", I do. Further study of epigentics have told us that our bodies remember past events. As of now, we don't have a scientific way of connecting those past event to memories that we process with our minds, but I am suggesting that a past life experience might be just that very thing. What makes this experience make sense to me, is that past life experience I had could have simply been a genetic expression of memory. Is it possible? In the spiritual realm, yes it is. In the natural, I can't quantify it. What I can say, is the experience I had matches up with my genetic data and history. I think at this point, that would be quite the coincidence, don't you?