“We are souls in a continuous life. Energy does not die. It can only change its state.”

—Audrey Hope

The concepts of reincarnation and past lives have existed for thousands of years, and are part of numerous religions and belief systems. Have you ever felt like maybe you were someone else in another life, or perhaps you’re curious as to whether you have past lives?

“To begin to explore the concept of past lives, we have to start at the beginning with the vital spiritual questions,” says Audrey Hope, spiritual therapist and healer at Seasons Rehab in Malibu. “Who are we and why are we here on Earth? What is the purpose of it all? What happens to us when we die? Is there karma and destiny? What does it all mean? There is no manual, so it has been my life’s work as a spiritual healer to help create one—about the game of life and how to play it. With a higher perspective, you can know the rules and what to expect and then navigate the world with ease and grace. The journey is the road to self—mastery and the endgame is the evolution of the soul. Especially now in a prophesied time of collective awakening and transformation into the New Earth.”

Here, Hope answers commonly asked questions about past lives and discusses their meaning and importance, how to access them, and more.

What are past lives and why are they important?

Past lives are about the soul circling on its voyage to discover the powerful truth of who we are, intending to become our best self and grow in the light. We manifest our issues and what we need to learn.

From lifetime to lifetime, soul memories and experiences are stored within our cells and DNA (like liggage), and we carry our lessons into our next train stop. Think of it this way: we decide to make another trip to Earth’s “school.” It’s a free will world so we set up the classes and curriculum of what we want to study and work on, and challenges we want to conquer. But then the angel of forgetfulness kisses us at around age 5, and we get sucked into the illusions of life and we cannot remember our real home. We forget our divine heritage, the issues, and fears we want to transform and our desires to ascend. Three-dimensional reality gets us once again.

You only get a glimpse that you are in a past life theme when you begin to experience familiar pain and suffering. Your inner soul gets a flash that you have met these issues, problems, patterns, and characters before in your divine play and it hurts and you want to run. But this is the time to pause, take note, be brave, and face the challenge.

You know you are in past life territory when you have tried for years and years to heal and find answers from a psychological perspective and the suffering remains or if you have a fixation or a phobia that cannot be explained by a therapist. Maybe you have a nightmare that haunts or a strange illness or weird feelings that cannot be explained. Perhaps you have a spectacular talent that came out of nowhere? Maybe you are in a relationship that has a Shakespearean melodrama and intensity, and you can’t get away from it. When things don’t make sense, you have tried everything and it is all so strange—this is when you need the deeper radar of past life wisdom—to explain the unexplainable. Because sometimes you will not heal unless you get past life recognition and answers on a deeper level.

Exploring past lives helps us to solve the “riddle of the soul” and what I coin “soul wounds,” the long-ago ancient wounds, the deep core issues that you brought with you and were reinforced in early childhood at around age 5. Unless the loss of the soul is retrieved, one will spin in a never-ending circle and meet the same characters and themes again and again. What matters in this healing modality is not that you were a king, queen, or famous person, but the karmic transition point in the story that comes around again to highlight what you can heal, change, or make a new choice. Turning on the lights through soul diagnosis is the way to transformation.

Has everyone had past lives? Does the amount of past lives vary according to each person?

The age of a soul is not measured in years. The “soul age” of a person is about their light and depth, and how high they are on the “tree of life” in their evolution. As one ascends and advances, the soul rises in its volume of light, frequency, and vibration. You can see the brilliance in their eyes and the energy of love they emanate. You can know by the values they embrace. How deep are they? Are they superficial? Are they selfish, egotistical, care for money, fame and material things, or do they care about others and the world?

Old souls, who have had many past lives, advance in their spirituality and care about higher things and less about ego and possessions. An evolved soul naturally wants to help others and the planet. Ask someone what they care about most and you can begin to guess if they had many past lives.

What’s interesting to note is that now is a special time on Earth known as The Golden Age, The Age of Aquarius, the time of Resurrection, and the birthing of the New Earth. It’s a wake-up time where everyone is invited to the part of transformation and collective consciousness. The great teachers have all gone and left it up to us to do the “great work.” Many of us light workers know in the depth of our DNA and cells that we clamored to be here to help bring in the new timeline, but that it was going to be a hard battle and we had to become masters. It’s as if time has sped up now. Long ago you could take years to grow and evolve, but today there is no time to waste. The time is now.

How can I access my past lives?

You don’t have to believe in anything to begin to channel your past lives. “Life is your guru” and will show you everything you need to know. You can be practical, real, and investigate your life for themes, characters, and patterns that repeat again and again. Your circumstances and issues contain clues. You can track things that feel dramatic and intense. You can look for what is weird, strange, and not normal. You can watch your language for things like, “I don’t know why, or I feel like I know them or maybe we even met somewhere before?” What does not make sense? This is all past life territory and you can take a quick past life quiz to help you along.

Quick Past Life Test

• What (in your life) feels like Shakespearean drama?

• What relationships have had heaviness from day one?

• Have you ever felt an instant connection to someone you never met before?

• Have you ever felt strangely drawn to someone and don’t know why?

• Do you feel like you’ve met this person before?

• What fears, phobias, or obsessions do you have?

• Where did the fears come from?

• Did something happen in childhood to cause it?

• What special talents do you have that require no study?

• Where do your talents come from? Did you inherit them from your parents?

• What places in the world do you feel drawn to?

• Do you have cities you want to visit and some you never want to visit? Why?

• Have you ever traveled to a place that felt weirdly familiar?

• Do you feel at home in a certain country?

• What time frame haunts you?

• What movie eras do you gravitate to?

• What style of costumes do you like?

• What issues keep repeating and where are you stuck?

• What are you resisting again and again?

• What are the same themes that get to you in business, family, and personal matters?

• What do you regret?

• Do you have a feeling that you are being punished for something?

• What strange dreams keep reoccurring?

• What are you suffering?

• What does not make sense?

• What seems weird and irrational?

• What do you know deep in your heart to be true about your mission, life purpose, and destiny?

What are some other ways to access past lives?

Dreams. Dreams are sacred messages and agents that you can trust. When we sleep, we leave the distractions of the third-dimensional world and access higher realms. Dreams carry symbols and divine information that lead to real answers and clues about past lives, blocks, and issues that must be faced in your soul work.

• Begin a dream journal. Set an intention, make a request, ask a question before you go to sleep, and ask that answers be gently given about your past lives and what you might need to know. When you wake, lie quietly and stay in the realm. Jot down words, symbols, and images. Tell someone the dream. Give the dream a title and theme.

Meditate. Get into a relaxed alpha and theta state. Allow the body and mind to relax, and let the sream of consciousness drift you to another time and place. What images flow into your consciousness? What clothes and shoes are you wearing? Record these experiences in your journal.

Face Reading. Dim the lights, sit across from someone and look into that person’s face. Or sit alone and use a mirror and observe what changes you see in your face. Let the images come.

Past Life Regression Exercise. Relax and call in your angels and guides. Call up a bridge into your energy field and meet a loved one of other-dimensional being to travel with you beyond time and space. Or go down a flight of stairs and enter a room where you meet your past life.

What evidence is there for past lives?

Science and scientists have advanced space and technologically beyond the beyond, but have not yet conquered the idea of how consciousness arises in the brain. There are thousands of cases where life went on after the brain stopped. So perhaps consciousness can exist beyond the working brain! There is so much evidence to support our past lives and the truth that life goes on after death and we reincarnate again and again. The following are some examples of proof:

Near Death Experiences (NDE). People who have died and come back to life. People who have NDE all claim the same thing about what happens when we die.

• We shed the body like a butterfly sheds its cocoon.

• We pass through a tunnel of light, a beautiful forcefield that is the greatest love ever felt.

• We are greeted by loved ones.

• We are celebrated with a big party.

• There is rest and time to acclimate.

• During your life review you see and feel all actions and decisions.

• You decide what to do next and what you want to work on and learn.

Birthmarks and Strange Body Marks.

Facial Recognition. Physical resemblances, especially faces that look the same.

What are the benefits of channeling past lives?

Healing must take place beyond the rational mind into the deeper level of the soul. If we stay in psychology, we will be able to write a thesis on our issues but we won’t transform energetically. Past life exploration and soul work invite alchemy—an opportunity to change humanness into divinity—the goal of our journey here on Earth.

Do you always use past life healing in your work?

Sometimes you need to access past lives and sometimes you don’t. The idea is to get to the soul wound, the root theme that haunts and needs light and recognition. It is about the soul lesson and theme that is the crux of the matter. Here are some cases where life healing was necessary:

• A young woman was obsessed with getting sick and dying. She took every test under the sun and still feared that she would get cancer. With past life investigation, it was discovered that she had lived during the time of the plague and many of her relatives did not make it, but she did. She came back in this life with the fear of dying from an illness and residue guilt about not dying. When she came to understand the root of her obsession, she felt great relief.

• A young woman came to me and felt she was cursed. Every man she was with would eventually ignore her and turn cold and unfeeling. In our past life work, she saw that she played around with black magic and put love spells on people. One spell involved turning off the feelings of a lover so he could be with someone else. This curse and misuse of power backfired onto her in this lifetime and upon recognition and forgiveness, we were able to heal the curse.

• A man was always getting in trouble with the law. It did not make sense because he was such a good person and always tried to do the right thing. In our work, we discovered a past life where he misused his gifts in his apothecary in England and a child died with the wrong potion. He was distraught and cursed himself, and asked God to hold him accountable for every detail of his life. We had to go back to that lifetime and retrieve the soul contract and burn it so that he could forgive himself, and change his luck and destiny.

• A beautiful woman married a man who had a former wife. The ex-wife was obsessed, unattractive, and lived very far away. This woman was fixated on the ex even though it made no sense—her husband loved her. With past life therapy, it turned out these two women were sisters and fought over a man, and these feelings carried over into this life. When she felt this truth, she got over her fixation and fears.

For more information, visit audreyhope.com and check out her YouTube channel here. Follow her on Instagram: @theaudreyhope

Audrey Hope is known as The Ultimate Problem Solver and Intuitive Spiritual Counselor. For over two decades, she has worked with celebrities and people from all walks of life as an expert on relationships, addiction, and the paranormal, and she heals emotional, personal and spiritual issues at the deepest level of the soul. Hope is presently the Spiritual Counselor at Seasons Rehab in Malibu and has her private practice in Brentwood, California. She has received the prestigious Governor’s Award for her work in media and several Telly Awards for her YouTube show, “Hope For Relationships,” healing issues from the deep level of the soul.

Kamala Kirk is a University of Southern California graduate and has been an editor/writer for more than a decade. She has written for E! Online, Total Beauty, TravelAge West, Malibu Times Magazine, and many more. She resides in Los Angeles and is a proud pug mom. Follow her on Instagram: @kamalakirk