Practical Spirituality

Reincarnation

Gareth Michael & Kim Jewell Season 3 Episode 13

In this episode of the Practical Spirituality Podcast, hosts Gareth and Kim explore the concept of past lives and its influence on present-day experiences. They share personal stories, including how beliefs in reincarnation have guided their spiritual paths. Although concrete proof is elusive, they argue that intuitive faith in reincarnation can offer valuable insights into personal growth and everyday struggles.

Gareth and Kim also delve into past life regression, discussing how it can potentially reshape one’s understanding of current life issues. They emphasize the importance of finding balance: using insights from reincarnation for healing without neglecting present-day challenges. Drawing on their own experiences, they encourage listeners to remain grounded, adopting an open but discerning approach to spiritual exploration that prioritizes personal development over escapism.

Throughout their spiritual journeys, Gareth and Kim have transitioned from restrictive religious beliefs to an expansive view of spirituality, highlighting the liberating possibilities it offers. By consistently refocusing on the present, the hosts advocate a spirituality that encourages growth and self-awareness, ensuring that beliefs enhance rather than limit one’s journey.

Become a Community Member at https://community.garethmichael.com/ to join our community and get early access to new episodes, answers to your personal questions and so much more.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Practical Spirituality Podcast. We are so excited to have you on this journey with us, where we explore all elements of mind, body, emotions and soul through the lens of everyday life.

Speaker 2:

Hello Kim.

Speaker 1:

Hello Gareth.

Speaker 2:

How are you doing this morning?

Speaker 1:

I am doing well this morning.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think it's about time we actually cover a real spiritual topic on Practical Spirituality.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know that's debatable, whether that's a real spiritual topic or not, but it's a topic that usually raises a lot of controversy.

Speaker 2:

So for this week's episode, we're going to be talking about reincarnation, and the crowd goes wild.

Speaker 1:

The crowd does go wild because they're like, finally, they're going to verify what I thought and we're going to go.

Speaker 2:

Maybe, not Okay, we're going to bring practicality to reincarnation. How exciting is that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's do that. Nothing like pulling your head back out of the clouds, right?

Speaker 2:

Oh, no comment.

Speaker 1:

So when you hear the term reincarnation for Kim in present day, what gets sparked up in Kim? Theory that we have, our spirits, are ageless and that we live in this body for a certain period of time and that we transition and then we come back and do it again for some insane reason.

Speaker 1:

Um I hear it's apparently for growth I I hear apparently it's for growth too. I think I've done enough. No, but you know, I find it a very funny topic today because I would have told you years ago, as you know, that I firmly believe in it and for certain reasons why I get mad about it. But I personally think, like we just said, it's unverifiable, like I think we have an innate knowing and I'm talking about me, I have an innate knowing that I believe this to be true. Can I prove it?

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

And to what point am I going to focus all my energy on this Today? Not very often, okay, and there's a reason for that, and as we go in I'm sure I'll get to delve in more what I thought back then. But standing here today talking to you, I think yes, I believe it's true there are definitely a lot of aspects that I see of it. How much do I need to focus on it for my spiritual growth, my day-to-day life today? Not much. What about you?

Speaker 2:

I know a few minutes. Even before we started recording, we had a quick debrief on it. I was honest in saying that on my spiritual journey, even long before I met michael. It was never a route my journey took me on exploring in great detail or depth but, like yourself, I never doubted that that was a part of the spiritual journey of us.

Speaker 2:

Being here is reincarnation is that we come here and we leave, we come back and then we leave again. I never had, uh, this belief in it. It was like that deep down knowing that, yes, that sounds true to me, that sounds like it makes sense. But at the same time, I think, especially since, especially since I've had Michael in my life and I've been working with a lot of people naturally people have asked a lot of questions about that when it comes to their spiritual journeys, because a lot of people do go down that route in their spiritual path and really read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts based on it and actually try to link a lot of their current experiences in this life with past lives to make sense of why they're going through what they're going through in this life.

Speaker 2:

The angle that you and I come from maybe differs from how other people approach this topic.

Speaker 1:

That's probably very true and for me, you know, it entered my spiritual growth at a very young age and I think I've had in my past, at least in comparison to my family, a very different spiritual journey. Like, I was, as everybody knows, raised extremely Irish Catholic, pretty fanatical family, and I remember sitting in the church thinking a lot of this is a load of you know what and I can't quite agree with it. But when I started to drink in my teens and I started noticing different things that were happening to me, I couldn't help but wonder about reincarnation. And so let me clarify that From the moment I ever picked up a drink, I was a blackout drinker.

Speaker 1:

Now a lot of people think that means I drank and I passed out, but that's not what it means. What it means is I would consume alcohol and while to everyone else on the planet I looked fine, I seemed fine, I carried on conversations, I did lots of crazy things and I had absolutely no memory of it. So in trying to understand that, I was trying to figure out why in the world is my behavior the way it is? It's so different than when I'm not drinking, but it allowed me, who was extremely shy, scared, introverted, couldn't speak to people. I'd come out and I'd dance on tables and I would be the life of the party and everybody thought it was so much fun and I would hear stories about what I did and I couldn't understand it, having my own spiritual journey at that point and find because I was searching for meaning at that point in my teens, even though it was kind of haphazardly Reincarnation came up and I thought that that's got to be it.

Speaker 1:

First and foremost, I believed I entered this world, or this particular lifetime, as an alcoholic, because I have never, ever picked up one drink, and it be social or okay. So that made logical sense to me back then. But that's where it kind of veered off course very quickly, because I started to blame everything that I was doing in my life on the fact that, well, I must have had some pretty horrific past lives or I must have done horrific things. And what I found for me, especially through that early part of my journey, was it was just another bat that I beat myself with, and when I finally started to make some headway in my own growth, I started going. Well, that can't possibly be the purpose of knowing whether you've lived another lifetime or not. I don't think it's here to beat us up or, as we have spoke about so many times, as an escape, but I certainly was an avoidant maybe a little bit and so it was a great way to avoid taking responsibility for some of my own actions.

Speaker 2:

It's a mouthful.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it is it's mouthful.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it is but I think in what you're saying I don't disagree with anything you're saying, because I think it is a tale as old as time. Why does it captivate us so much? It's been in history books, it's been religions, it's been in stories. It's even a service nowadays to even go and do a past life regression and to see what comes up from your subconscious mind conscious mind and what that might tell you about yourself. For the people who have been listening to this podcast for a long time, they know at this stage, when we talk about exploring the person, we explore it in mind, body, emotions, the end, soul, and we've talked about that so many times and how it can be such a distraction.

Speaker 2:

Because everyone likes the idea of a different version of themselves that lives in a different time, that takes them away from present day and the little understanding or control they have within themselves or around themselves in the lives they're currently living. So, of course, if I'd love to hear, 300 years ago I was a prince in Timbuktu and blah, blah, blah and these were my problems and a different, it's like yeah, great, that's why I have these problems today in this life. It just never quite added up for me, by the way. That was not my past life regression. I've never done that before, just to be clear. But I'm just saying how there's elements of that.

Speaker 2:

That. I was like, if that's real, if that really happened, cool, but that doesn't actually help solve the things that are going on in your life today. You know, if you're coming back to a sense of I don't want to say reality, but if you're coming back to a sense of present day, of that, it's very easy to get caught up in it, as you were saying, without actually really learning anything, understanding anything or being able to grow with any of this. And so, like a lot of things in the spiritual world, the things that we read or enjoy, it can become an escapism and it's very hard in that realm to understand the difference between of what's fiction and what's nonfiction.

Speaker 1:

Well, true, and it's not verifiable. I mean, there's lots you have to understand. I've've studied this subject and I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1:

I can remember being about eight or nine years of age when the concept first came to me and also I'm going to get really controversial here also astrology, and so of course I'm a Pisces, which is the 12th sign in the sign of all the astrologies, and so at that very young age, how I interpreted that is okay, if there's reincarnation and I'm in the 12th house, that means I've done the whole gamut and this better be the last time. And so, hopefully, maybe the reason I have all this stuff being piled on me, hopefully, maybe the reason I have all this stuff being piled on me, is because it is the last time. This is my make it or break it time. I'm eight or nine years of age and that's the logic that I came with, and whether that's true or not, I don't know, I have to say I do believe in it. There's lots of aspects. I have had past life regressions, you know I've had many of them in the past.

Speaker 1:

Some of them rang very true to me but, like you said, at the time when that was happening for me, I used it as a justification tool for what I couldn't look at in the moment, and so I would justify my actions through this reincarnation because, well, this happened to me in another lifetime, so naturally that's why I'm at, but it also helped keep me in victim for a long time and I was fascinated with it, along with I'm sure this will be another topic that we'll do at some point near-death experiences and people's reactions to that experiences and people's reactions to that. But what was important for me is, along the way, as I started to grow and mature and actually grow in my own spiritual growth, I haven't said no, this isn't real, but I have started to go. That's an interesting fact. If it were real about me, and it's safe for me to assume some of what I've found out might be true, but it's not relevant for here.

Speaker 2:

Even when it comes to this topic of reincarnation or exploring past lives, there's not one bone in my body, as I said earlier, that is disagreeing with it or think it's a load of anything. Is disagreeing with it or think it's a load of anything? I'm saying, like most of the spiritual things that we explore or have ever talked about in this podcast, I love it all, but to me, it has to be explored in a certain order in order to get the most out of it, for any of us to really understand the role that it plays in any of our lives and, like a lot of good things in this world that once started off pure, it can easily turn into be an abusive thing onto another person if not understood correctly, or if we're, and a lot of us end up exploring these things because, let's be honest, we're in a vulnerable space in our lives. We don't know any better and there's no way of verifying it, as you were saying, and therefore there's a lot of opportunity for people to take advantage, especially when money's involved and it's a service. So it's those elements of it that I feel has made it way more complicated and taken away from some of the messaging of what it actually can give us because, as you mentioned, you've had those past type of questions and it has applied at times and made sense, and then other occasions not so much. So it really does depend on experiences, exposure, who you're doing it with and also where you are in that time in your life.

Speaker 2:

But if we're getting into some of the practicalities of it, is that when you see people say I've done a past life regression all of these things happened in the past. I must have hurt someone in different life, I must have been bankrupt, I must have all these money problems or relationship problems, and a part of me me is actually. I've always said to them I was like okay, if we look at this life alone and all the years you've been on this planet and all the experiences in this life, you still don't understand in what world does it make sense for you to pile on every single previous life you have had into this one? We don't even understand this one you've been in, never mind any previous one. So where does that end if you keep coming back?

Speaker 1:

Well, to be fair, for a lot of people on the journey, they think that the past life, regression or finding out about a past life, is going to help them understand this life a whole lot more. I can say that because I've studied it so deeply and I thought it would help me understand, and some of it did. But I can be really honest with you In terms of the alcoholism you know, with that theory that I had at a very young age. Perhaps that's very true, but really the main thing it would give me, like if I really came into this world because I had never worked through my alcoholism in another lifetime. The difference that makes is perhaps maybe I could have some more compassion, alcoholism in another lifetime. The difference that makes is perhaps maybe I could have some more compassion for me in this lifetime and perhaps some awareness that all right if that were true, which we can't prove, but I believed it to be true and I still believe it to be true. If I'm very honest with you, it means okay, didn't get it then might be a good idea to get a handle on it now, and so that is a positive, beneficial use of having that belief, and there's quite a few examples of that in my life. But then there's some other examples in my life where I say I had this past life regression and something came up in that past life regression and I grabbed hold of it because it fit the belief I wanted to have about another person and I hung on to that for dear life.

Speaker 1:

Okay, did any of that come to fruition? No, no, was it meant to? Probably not. But it hit an ideal for me at that time in my life that I really wanted to believe and it took me down that path. So I have had both experiences and all that did and not just singular ones quite a few of that in that time frame when I was really exploring it, that I started to go okay, I still believe in reincarnation and if people do have memories of a past life when they come into this life and I can say that with my daughter, some of the things she said to me at a very young age were way beyond what was going on in this world for her in this age. But as I said to her, you know what, right here, right now, I'm the mom and you're the daughter, and so we must deal with it in this timeframe.

Speaker 2:

Because I don't disagree when people have those experiences or say that that happened or they went back that far. But I keep coming back to the practical and practical spirituality. Yes, I'm happy you have those experiences and you have those memories and that's great. But if we can't explore this life and make sense of it in this life, that in order to help you understand what's going on, why it's happening, the journey, it can be a catalyst to hide, as we were both talking about. And that's where, when we talk about weaponizing even this idea of reincarnation, it can be a beautiful thing. It can have a lot of purpose, it can have a lot of reasoning if you are pulled towards exploring it as part of your spiritual journey.

Speaker 2:

Because, as we often talk about, not everyone is. I personally wasn't and not I wasn't meant to, whereas for you it was the opposite over the years. But doesn't mean you would explore it the same way today as you did before. So that's where it's fascinating, and you and I will never come on here and say that anyone is wrong in having the age they have and what they have or haven't explored, new age, any version of spirituality or any religion.

Speaker 2:

it's very easy to hide behind it and to avoid the stuff going on present day or the stuff's going on in the inside world or in the external world. And that's the parts of spirituality that I love to challenge because I'm like in what ways are we actually hiding?

Speaker 1:

Well, exactly, exactly. And it's hard because it is a fascinating subject, and especially if you've just walked into this realm and you're just learning about it, and you it was like for me, and so, of course, I was searching for meaning as to why all of these things were happening to me.

Speaker 2:

But what we're also not taught is that there's a very fine line between healing and hiding. Yes, that's very true, and I'm not saying that's any of our fault, but it's like you could say the same about getting involved into a good fiction book.

Speaker 1:

I love that too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it has its place in the world, and it can be very healing to get sucked into that world and get lost in the characters, but then if there's 10 days of work or stuff that we're avoiding in our lives or a bad breakup or trauma, then it's hiding. There can be elements of healing because we both we both know it's not black and white and what we're saying it's that we're never taught and it's very easy to convince ourselves that it's healing when it's actually hiding true.

Speaker 1:

It's very easy to convince ourself of that when you're at that stage of searching for meaning. If there's something that is going, you can latch on to. And just because I'm saying latch on to doesn't mean I'm saying it's right or wrong, because I did latch on to it for a long time and there was parts of it that were very healing for me. But, as I said at the very beginning, there were a lot of parts that I used to hide from. I used it as a weapon, which is not helpful either to use it as a weapon. And then we haven't even begun to to cover that karma fact of well, I I'm living this life because, you know, I must have done something really bad in another lifetime and please don't pull me into karma conversation I'm not gonna pull you into the the conversation, but that's part of the reincarnation conversation because that is what I

Speaker 1:

said for a long time man, I don't know what I did in the last few lives, but it must have been pretty damn bad for me to be doing what I'm dealing with now. Yeah, having said that, having said that, and I really want to go into how I used it to stay in victim I didn't know I was doing that, as anyone does when they're going through it, having that thought process and exploring reincarnation, and exploring, doing the different past life regressions. I never came out of a past life regression with a man. I had a freaking fantastic life.

Speaker 1:

Because what I'm starting to understand now and not well, I guess, starting to understand, because understanding it all is you know, we talk about perception, and perception is based on all of our beliefs and experiences that have already happened to us. So even when we go back to do a past life regression, we are still holding those beliefs. So if I had a belief from early childhood that I had been persecuted, what do you want to bet? That almost every past life regression I did, in some form or another, I was persecuted. That's just what happened for me, and I'm not saying that's what happens for everybody, but that it's based on my perception, because I'm here trying to understand what's happening in this lifetime, so it's going to show up wherever I'm looking.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's take a step back from this week's episode and share with everyone what we've been up to behind the scenes.

Speaker 1:

We're really excited to be able to finally offer the Gareth Michael community to each of you. The community offers a range of benefits, including access to our live events, weekly podcast episodes, articles, self-checking questions, as well as a community of individuals you can connect with and interact with along the way. It's designed to offer you support, guidance and a safe space on a day-to-day basis. We'd love to have you join our global community of like-minded individuals. That website address, again, is wwwgarethmichaelcom. Now let's get back to that episode, shall we?

Speaker 2:

And again, I think that's where it's interesting, because it's such a fine line, as we've been talking about. People dip their toe in and out of it on the journey, as they're meant to be exposed to, and that brings you on your own unique spiritual path. But, as I said, it's very easy to get caught up into it and completely sometimes lose track of the importance of this life and the stuff you've been through in this life. And that's where I find that it's a gray area and can be a very confusing thing to navigate.

Speaker 1:

You know, if you do get caught up in it and I quite honestly own I did get caught up in it and I don't see that as a bad thing. Obviously that was part of my spiritual contract, because I wasn't ready to move forward and so therefore I got distracted into this form of exploration, which I learned a whole lot about a bunch of different religions and a bunch of different philosophies, and I learned even though I was calling it past life a lot about myself. Real growth came when I stopped trying to use it as well. This is the reason I am the way that I am, or this is why I can't get ahead, or this is why I keep attracting these men into my life. No, that's not why that's happening.

Speaker 1:

When I sit here today and I'm willing to look at what's going on for me today and look at the patterns and look at the belief systems and understand what I haven't explored and learned about myself in those moments, that's when those things start to shift, not because I understand what happened one lifetime, 10 lifetimes, 50 lifetimes ago. I'm not going to lie. I'm hoping with what I've learned in this lifetime. I am in the 12th house. I'm not going to lie about that. That hope is still there and as when people ask me about it not going to lie about that that hope is still there. And as, when people ask me about it, they go. What do you believe? And I go. Honestly, I think it's so personal for every single person. Can I verify anything that happened for me? I can only verify what it felt like for me in those moments. Have I ever literally consciously died and came back and am able to give you proof? No, I don't have proof of that.

Speaker 2:

We have an exclusive on the podcast for Kim and Jill from Michael. She has another few lives to go.

Speaker 1:

Oh no, say it isn't true. I'm hanging on to the 12th house, yeah.

Speaker 2:

As you were saying, it is part of the journey of being here, especially when you've grown up potentially in religious households and you start exploring New Age and different versions of spirituality and even different religions. It really opens up your entire world of possibility and you can see how it gives so much hope from past lives to life is infinite, of many lives to come and you know it even takes less pressure off this life of having get everything right infectionism like I can see the pros and cons and everything in between of why it can be such a healthy thing to explore and I think it's very hard to say otherwise. I do think, especially when you come from a religious background that was so restrictive and limiting and then you get exposed to this, of how infinite it is, as I mentioned, and I think it can have a positive effect in our day-to-day lives of not taking ourselves so seriously.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and, like you said, such a fine line, because when you are immature or you have not worked through a lot of your stuff, you're going to take it for the same reasons that I took it. And now, as I have started to grow and I do say started to grow because I know it's a continuous journey of growth I would love to say I'm there, I know I'm not. As you mature and you go, okay, there is some really great qualities. There is that hope of you know, for so long I was so driven that I had to figure it all out. I had to get it right Because of the 12th house theory. From a young age, I'm like I really need to get it all right in this lifetime so I don't have to do this again. I'm sure a few people out there can relate to that. However, instead of viewing it as a punishment of coming back if that's how you're viewing it, how I did- instead of viewing it as that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I still do, if I'm honest.

Speaker 2:

Let's be honest. Okay, I'll be honest.

Speaker 1:

I do think if I have to come back it's a punishment, but it does start to help me take the pressure off getting it right. You know like it's like if I'm really honest it goes oh okay, I can't possibly get it all 100% in this lifetime and I'm not going to probably remember it if I have to come back anyway. So there's a bit of relief right there. It does give you hope and it can be very beneficial because if you have been driven by that idea that you must get it all right, then knowing that you don't have to, that we're just here, all exploring and growing regardless. There is no right or wrong, it's just the growth is what it is.

Speaker 2:

You can also see how someone could take it that. So all this life is about is about continuously filling up past lives. That doesn't sound fun.

Speaker 2:

No, yeah, no, it's kind of like what about everything in this life? And then am I going to be weighed down by that for the rest of my life? So that's where, course, having the right influence by the right teachers, the right material and finding that fine line becomes so important. And that comes with the maturity, as you're saying, life experience, the material. There's a lot of things that have to click into place, but that can only be done through exploring it yourself. So that's why, as we talked about earlier, we can't say what's right and what's wrong, but you do know what, what sits with yourself.

Speaker 2:

But there is that I want to say, spiritual reality, that throughout this life, if we want to put our hands up and be honest, we've all used spirituality in some way to run from reality. And I think that's what's really interesting. Just to ask that self-reflection question In what ways am I aware of today? In my past, we use spirituality as a way to hide from reality, and sometimes, when we're exploring it, we actually need to do that at times in order to find that line between healing and hiding, because I think that's a part of growing and exploring as well, as we are on this journey, and that is why we have to be open-minded about any of these kind of topics or areas to explore in spirituality because, at the end of the day, any of them do redirect you back to yourself.

Speaker 1:

Yes, absolutely, when we have that idea, that that is what some of the awarenesses are, when you look at it without weaponizing it, that it does lead you back to yourself, and so we don't have to continue to avoid self, because there's so many things that are happening in this lifetime as we are growing. I call it the shiny bobble syndrome. A shiny bobble comes and goes. Oh well, that might be the whole reason I'm going through all of this, so I'm going to go explore all of this, which I wholeheartedly support. I do support us exploring all of these concepts that we bring up, because it brought a richness to my life. You know like, okay, so one of the ways when I was exploring it, we talked about in one of the theories they talk about, you have a soul family, and that soul family is a group of souls that agree to come together in various lifetimes and show up in different ways.

Speaker 1:

Well, that brought me a lot of comfort. It was like, oh, these people that I love to hate so much in my lifetime are really good friends of mine on a different level that have agreed to show up to help me, and so there's a level of comfort in that, and so I think there's so much that out there to explore about it. It's just not letting it distract you from coming back to. But what does this mean for me? What does this mean about my own personal growth in this moment? And if some of it has brought you comfort or insight, and so for me, it has given me a lot of connection. Do I have to know who these people were in other lifetimes? No, I don't. But it does bring me comfort that the people that have joined me on this journey are people that on some level I've been familiar with before, and that's okay but I think that's where it's interesting say how, when we talk about reincarnation versus, say, in previous episodes, we talked about spiritual contracts, right?

Speaker 2:

is there any way that you and I can verify that we all have a spiritual contract?

Speaker 2:

nope, no but is that what's made the most sense for us on this journey, when we've talked about a lot over the years and we've explored it and brought us the most peace and etc. Etc. Yeah, that's what currently works for us and where we are in this time in our lives, right? So you're going to times that out, though, about how many different spiritual understandings around the globe? Yes, but this is why it's that when we any of us are sat with our own spiritual understandings and beliefs, I want them that we can continue to grow from those beliefs and that they're not limiting us, that we continue to grow with them and challenge us for the right reasons.

Speaker 2:

And, as I said earlier, we've all been through those experiences and probably still are, in some ways of weaponizing our spiritual beliefs, to hide from our fears, because we talked about in previous episodes, a part of our journey on this planet is to have these fears, and when fears are presented, what's our go-to is to want to hide, but we're not always that familiar of how we're hiding and when we're hiding because we want to get creative and how we do that. So, but life will always have us challenge these different spiritual beliefs. It'll have us bring in new ones, but it always allows us to question our lives in our own unique ways, in a new way every single time.

Speaker 2:

But as you said earlier and as we often talk about, it's all growth and it brings it back to ourselves. So reincarnation is just another stepping stone in that process, and whether you dip your toe in or you dive your whole body in, yeah neither is right or wrong.

Speaker 1:

It's just part of the experience of understanding self yes it is, and my concept of it now, as opposed to what it was before. When I first started learning about reincarnation and started exploring it for me, I was dead set on writing the wrongs of the past. And then it was like, well, wait a minute, I don't even know for sure what those are, so how can I write the wrongs? But I can start to turn that in. So what are the wrongs in this lifetime for me, which then will influence what happens as I'm growing and going through life? But that took quite a while for me to get to that. So I thought it was like, oh, this is my script that I have to correct so that I can have the happy life. But as I explored it more and more and more, I'm like, oh, no, that has nothing to do with this life.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting. And you know I'm going to be really honest. I still believe that, yes, I possibly was an alcoholic in another lifetime and when I came into this lifetime, my body had a huge reaction to alcohol. Can I prove that? No, has it helped me? Yeah, it has helped me, because every time people go oh, surely it's been 40 years now you can have a drink. Well, actually no, I can't, no, I can't, and I'm okay with that.

Speaker 1:

I don't feel like I'm missing anything, because there's been growth and a lesson, and it's not something I need in my life anymore. So from that aspect, it can be very helpful, but, like we said, we don't want to get caught up in it so that we're actually avoiding today and who we are and the people who are here today whether they're related to other lifetimes or not they're the ones you're on the journey with now, and some people get so caught up in it that they exclude the people that are in their life now, and so that's when it becomes a bad thing. If you're into exploring it, there's a lot of fascinating books out there on the subject.

Speaker 2:

Life is very complex. There's lots of layers. There's mind, body, emotion, soul. There's past, present, future. There's a lot to talk about and explore, and within any of those departments within us, each of these parts of spirituality exists for a reason because I think they ask you to explore yourself, each in a very different way.

Speaker 1:

I agree.

Speaker 2:

We're never going to be against any of these topics, especially when they ask you to ask more questions about yourself. What's not to love about that?

Speaker 1:

Exactly, exactly. My final note on this subject is you know, in some ways it did bring me it has brought me a lot of comfort in different areas. Even after I weaponized it, even after I used it to hide, even after I used it as an excuse, I went through all those phases, exactly like I did with addiction, to get to that point of, oh okay, that's what I was meant to get from that. It was just something else that I was using not to be here. And where my real growth is here is in this moment, because I'm living in this moment and so, as I'm here exploring that, sure, these things are interesting and fine and have brought me comfort and growth. So what's happening now? You know, where do I want to go with it now?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because I know this isn't our usual topic that we explore when it comes to a spiritual podcast. Yeah, because I know this isn't our usual topic that we explore when it comes to a spiritual podcast. I think it's still very important to you because it's a lot of people's reality. As you said, with your experience in the areas of your life and past lives that you explored, you can see present day how it all played a part in Kim understanding herself and me understanding myself. So, as we talked about many times in this episode, we're never going to argue with someone exploring it, especially if it allows them to question more about themselves and even find peace within themselves in the most unique ways. So just continue to question, continue to explore, continue to inform yourself and just please do it safely. I agree.

Speaker 1:

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