Reincarnation and memories

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lefty22

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I have no clue if I’m posting this in the right place… apologies if I’m not.

When I was younger – 2 or 3, I think – I had distinct memories of living in another place. I could see the house I used to live in; it was built out of some natural material – wood, I think – and it was dimly lit. I had a “different mommy” as I would tell my mom, and my family all had to take our shoes off and leave them by a mat at the door. I remember associating positive feelings with these “memories,” too – a kind of sense of love and being at home. I still can picture the place vaguely in my head, though not nearly as clearly as I could when I was younger.

As I got older (4 or 5, probably) and my mom started reading to me about different cultures, I would know things that I couldn’t possibly have known before. For example, if my mom was reading something about tools used by Indians (not Native Americans – and I’m not positive about the culture, I can’t remember for sure), I would say “oh yeah, my other mom and I used to use that to do this…” and then I would talk about something about it that my mom hadn’t read to me or say how we used this tool or that tool, too. The things I said, though, were accurate.

I don’t exactly believe in reincarnation and I don’t think the Church supports it either. So how do you explain these memories and knowledge of things I shouldn’t have known at that age?

Thank you!

~Lefty
 
Could it be they are somebody else’s memories and you are somehow in touch with them because of some inborn intuitive ability?

It’s probably impossible to explain this for sure but, since we know we only live once, we know that reincarnation isn’t the right explanation.
 
In my psychology class, we learned about constructed memories… even the memory of you remembering these things might not be accurate. It is actually very easy to construct a memory and the person is completely 100% sure that it is accurate, but it is not.

Maybe it also has to do with dreams? when I was a little kid, I had a dream about Jesus in Jerusalem and the way the city was shown was pretty accurate, and I knew nothing about Christianity or the ancient world and I wasn’t raised in a Christian family.
 
Monica4316 said:
In my psychology class, we learned about constructed memories… even the memory of you remembering these things might not be accurate. It is actually very easy to construct a memory and the person is completely 100% sure that it is accurate, but it is not.

Maybe it also has to do with dreams? when I was a little kid, I had a dream about Jesus in Jerusalem and the way the city was shown was pretty accurate, and I knew nothing about Christianity or the ancient world and I wasn’t raised in a Christian family.
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I think this is at least a good part of a possible explanation. Also, OP, you mention your mom reading to you about other cultures, so it sounds likely that the study of other cultures was a common pursuit in your family. The original set of happy memories seem like perhaps a Japanese culture, so maybe you were exposed to that at an earlier stage of development and internalized these memories in a less verbal part of your mind. 🤷

Memories do seem to have a retroactive quality, like you might have the time of learning something and the time of it feeling like an experience, because you’ve internalized it, reversed in time.

When I was little there are things that happened to me - like once when we were visiting some of my Dad’s friends from work, and I was playing hide-and-seek with their kids and hid in what I thought was a closet but according to my Mom it was the basement stairs! :eek: And my Mom panicked (luckily I was just standing on the top step and didn’t fall!).

But I can see that house and have even tried to find where it was in town, but those memories are too vague. And I can sort of remember the possible location of the stairwell but I don’t recall anything about my Mom panicking or any of that. I just have memories of feeling intrigued and I don’t even remember much about those kids, just that I was playing with some kids and having fun. So memories are rather selective and it’s iffy when trying to put a meaning or narrative to them whether it’s accurate or colored by wishful thinking. There are other examples I could give. Hope this helps! 🙂
 
lefty22 said:
How do we know that for sure?
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I’m sure there are many biblical references about the truth that we only live once; we don’t get ‘do over’ successive lives in which we hope we will get better and better until we’re good enough to go to our eternal reward. No, we trust in Jesus’ sacrifice that reconciles us to God and we live our one life in cooperation with the grace He gives us.

It’s quite obvious in the epistles of St. Paul that he was striving to ‘run the good race’ and he trusted that He would be rewarded at the end of his life.

The church teaches that when we die we have three immediate possible destinations: heaven, a temporary state of purification on our way to heaven (called purgatory), and hell.

The church states this plainly in Paragraph 1013 of the CCC: …When “the single course of our earthly life” is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives. 'It appointed for men to die once."(Heb 9:27) There is no “reincarnation” after death.
 
lefty22 said:
How do we know that for sure?
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There is NO reincarnation and that is a Church teaching which you must accept.

CCC 1013 Death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny. When “the single course of our earthly life” is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives: “It is appointed for men to die once.”** There is no “reincarnation” after death.**
 
Sorry for the slow reply – thanks for your responses. That helps, though I’m still unconvinced that it was a dream or I’m not remembering accurately, because my mom remembers it exactly as I do.

Thanks! 🙂

~Lefty22
 
lefty22 said:
Sorry for the slow reply – thanks for your responses. That helps, though I’m still unconvinced that it was a dream or I’m not remembering accurately, because my mom remembers it exactly as I do.

Thanks! 🙂

~Lefty22
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Well, if your mom was there with you and conversing with you about these things, your memories and hers would generally coincide. My Mom, were she still alive, could probably tell you quite a bit about the ages, personalities, favorite hobbies, etc. of my imaginary siblings and friends! I was an only child with a non-stop imagination and I told her about them in such detail - and I guess she got a kick out of it because she listened and probably felt she knew them too! 😃
 
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