CAROL BOWMAN ON CHOOSING ONE'S PARENTS IN THE PRE-EARTHLY EXISTANCE

The options are plentiful but not unlimited. 

Frankly, I myself have wondered how or why anyone would choose a parent or partner who is abusive to them as the soul plans the next incarnation. So though I'm partial to the idea that we do have many life experiences so that we can learn and improve ourselves, I feel that there is a risk in experiencing a life that makes us a worse person. I feel careful about having a "tit for tat" notion about spiritual experiences and using reincarnation theories as an excuse for bad behavior.

But let's see what Carol Bowman had to say in her book, which I highly recommend.

Page 144 : Not all souls participate equally in the planning process. Some are actively involved and choose carefully; others are passive, drifting into their next lives without much preparation.  Some apparently never leave the earth vibration and wander aimlessly until they fall into a convenient womb.  It's not a tidy process, not uniform or predictable, follows no formulas, and is definitely not the same for every soul.

Page 145 : It seems that in choosing a life the difference in the degree of planning is dependent on the soul's maturity and awareness. Studies agree that advanced souls spend more time in the afterlife learning and weighing plans for their next incarnation than less mature souls do. Since the advanced souls have mastered a higher level of lessons and skills on Earth, they have the understanding to create more ambitious and finely tuned plans.  On the other hand, less advanced "beginner" souls rush through the afterlife without giving much thought to what they are doing and jump back into the first body that seems good enough. These lives have a smaller chance of being productive compared with those that are carefully planned. The unplanned lives are more likely to end up being drab and meaningless or chaotic, or the individual may be overwhelmed by challenges it is not equipped to handle.

Carol Bowman's book was published in 2001 and so about twenty-five years ago.  I'm sure much more has been learned about reincarnation in the Western, Christian world, since then.  I'm aware that some Christian's believe that any belief in reincarnation is wrong, even demonic. I personally do not agree this is so. 

As a genealogist I encounter many family stories, many family secrets, many family scandals, and vow to show respect for those I work with and for by not revealing these to others. There is a lot of pain and shame in some cases. I realize that genealogy is most often promoted as a way to reunite a family, but sometimes the notion of "family" is one that needs to be redefined.

C 2025  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

CAROL BOWMAN ON REINCARNATION : U TURN IN THE WOMB : MISCARRIAGE and STILL BIRTHS

Perhaps this may give some comfort to those of you who've had a miscarriage...

Excerpts page 159 - 160 :

From our ordinary, earth-bound perspective these changes of plan are called by the medical terms miscarriage and stillbirth.  Most people, if they have never been through the experience, can't understand how deeply the parents feel a miscarriage or a stillbirth as a death, an inexplicable loss that leaves them bereft and grieving for a child they never knew.  Their beautiful hopes and dreams for loving companionship with the new baby evaporate.  Adding to the pain, no matter what medical explanation is they inevitable blame themselves at some point, wondering what they did wrong.

Yet looking at miscarriage and stillbirths from the perspective of the incoming soul turns our thinking inside out.  From the soul's perspective, a decision not to be born at that particular time and to a particular mother is simply a detour, a zigzag in the continuing journey through eons of lifetimes.  Souls decide to switch course for any number of reasons; to change sex or birth order, to wait for a more appropriate body for the soul's purposes, to wait until the parent's circumstances improve or to readjust the timing of a predestined rendezvous with another soul already on Earth or yet to incarnate.  Or it may be due to the biological fact that the fetus was defective.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that in some cases souls wait for another opportunity to return to the same family. How do we know? Because some children remember the whole process.  Then one day, in the middle of a causal conversation, they tell their parents about it. They innocently describe earlier attempts to be born to the mother or through another woman in the extended family. The parents are always shocked at first if the child's claim corresponds exactly to a pregnancy loss that had been kept hushed up, a personal secret too painful to talk about, and something beyond the comprehension of such a very young child. But after absorbing the truth of what their child is telling them, their shock turns to joy and relief when they realize the baby who died in the womb years ago was not lost to them forever. 

I've been reading the death records of a town in Europe that experienced waves of Plague - Cholera to be specific. So very many who had a few months or years to live... So rare to find someone who lived to be 70 or 80.

C 2025 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

REINCARNATION SYMPOSIUM WITH CAROL BOWMAN and HER SON CHASE BOWMAN

REVISITING CAROL BOWMAN'S RETURN FROM HEAVEN : RETURNING TO LIFE WITH UNFINISHED BUSINESS

I've posted on Carol Bowman and her work with children who remember past lives, as well as same family reincarnation, before.

Excerpt page 9 : If we die leaving with any kind of unfinished business - ding as a child in an accident or from a disease, as an adult filled with anger over an unsettled dispute, as a mother leaving young children behind, or simply with concern and ongoing for loved ones left behind --- the unfinished business travels with us when we return to Earth in another body, along with the impetus to complete or settle these issues.  If we return to the same family within a relatively short period of time, we practically pickup where we left off before we died.

Excerpt page 48-49 : I've collected hundreds of cases since 1988 when I began investigating children's past life memories. (Note the book was published 2001.) They come to me from people from all walks of life, from all parts of the United States and Canada, and some from Europe.  They come from people who have always believed in reincarnation, and also from people who clearly did not believe in reincarnation before it happened to them.  The cases are everywhere Once people discover that I know something about children's past lives, they open up and confess their "family secret."  I'm continually amazed at how often this happens, and how common these cases seem to be.  And since so many of them are same-family cases, their sheer number convinces me that same-family reincarnation is a much more common phenomenon than anyone suspects.

Bowman discusses the influential work of psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson and questions of the mind-body connection, and the discovery that birthmarks in this life often appear where an injury occurred in another life.

C 2025 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

9/11 REINCARNATION STORY : CALEB REMEMBERS and COMMENTARY

The Ghost Inside My Child:  I recall that I may have reviewed this series some time ago, because I recall thinking that the title The Ghost Inside My Child was all wrong - inaccurate.  The title indicates that ghosts are possessing the body of the child....  I think it's attempt to suggest spookiness - creepiness. Reincarnation is not the same as possession or the same as a ghost.  It's a natural cycle of awareness.

The mother of Caleb says that other children's parents don't want their children to play with him.  Well, if it's a matter of not wanting their child to pay with another child because they don't share the same religious or spiritual beliefs, I'd say that's rather intolerant. 

Caleb is a child who is burdened with nightmares, phobias, memories of horror. And he's not the only one. Some children who are experiencing abuse in this life have no one to trust.  At least Caleb's parents love and support him.  If Caleb lived in my neighborhood he'd be welcome in my yard.

So what can we learn from children who remember a past life?

I think it's vital to listen to children who tell of their dreams, their beliefs.  If it seems that there is a past life possibility and the child is upset and this seem not to have an end to it, I would suggest you read Carol Bowman's books as a start.  There are a number of interviews and speeches she has given available on YouTube and the Internet as well.  I think she is in semi-retirement. Taking the child to a hypnotherapist is probably the next step.  I think it may be possible also for parents and children with this experience to network so that they all know they are not alone in this experience.

CAROL BOWMAN's NEW ESSAY SUBMITTED to BIGELOW INSTITUTE FOR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

CAROL BOWMAN NEW ESSAY  This will take you to her site and the page where you link to the essay that you can download as a PDF file or read on line.

Always impressed with her work!

CHILDREN's PAST LIVES by CAROL BOWMAN on NIGHTMARES

CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES
How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child
by Carol Bowman
C 1997 by Carol and Steve Bowman
A Bantam Book

page 257 by Carol Bowman

Some Children have NIGHT TERRORS... a series of sleep disturbance that is not in the same category as regular nightmares. "In a typical night terror episode, the child screams, thrashes about, and may even walk or run around and get violent, all while appearing to be awake. But afterwards, unlike a nightmare, the child has absolutely no memory of the incident and no dream story that might explain the bizarre behavior. This alone makes night terrors extremely difficult to treat. Scientists have no satisfactory explanation for what causes night terrors and no reliable remedy. But they do know that they occur during the deepest sleep cycle, and that they commonly begin between the ages of three and four, and fade by thee ages of five or six.

Since we know know that some nightmares have a past life cause, it makes sense that some night terrors would too. Perhaps during deepest sleep, a state furthest from waking consciousness, these children are being terrorized by vivid memories of a past life trauma. I think it's significant that night terrors occur at the same ages when children are most likely to have spontaneous past life memories...

C 2020  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

REVISITING CAROL BOWMAN and CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES

After starting the rerun of Louis Henry Gates, I decided to check on YouTube for fairly recent talks that CAROL BOWMAN, perhaps the most respected researcher in Children and their Past Lives in America, might have given. 

As of December 2024 there are several videos featuring Carol.

Now I have to convince a friend of mine to consider past life experience as the reason for her grand-daughters overly dramatic fear of the loving family dogs. Her two year old sister shows no such fear but this one seems unable to get over being afraid of them.

LINK TO https://www.carolbowman.com/reincarnation-forum  December 2024

An appearance on Oprah got her a book contract.

Innocent children have no reason to recreate their last life traumas through spontaneous memory, through the art they make, and the way they indulge in play.

I admire Carol for all she's done to open our minds to this natural phenomena.

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REVISITING CAROL BOWMAN PAST LIVES FORUM (REINCARNATION AS YOUR OWN ANCESTOR?)

New link as of Dec 2024 https://www.carolbowman.com/cpl-book

I spent a couple hours the other night reading posts from the forum. https://www.carolbowman.com/reincarnation-forum

Carol Bowman is one of the most respected researchers into past lives and reincarnation in the Western World.  I find the subject fascinating.  Especially when children remember their state before life on earth, or what happened between lives, or how it is that they came back.   The focus on children is, in part, because children before the age of five tend not be very exposed to history and tend not to have reason to lie.

I've asked myself if I'm the reincarnation of one of my own ancestors, since I'm one of those people who has felt that I got born into the wrong family.  To my knowledge I have not a single relative who thinks like me or is as open as I've been to learning about so many other cultures and spiritual beliefs.  I can't even locate a relative whose much interested in family history or genealogy.

However, there are a number of people in my heritage who were very religious in more conservative, traditional ways, including a few who qualify as Bible addicts.

I discovered one ancestor who may have been, in the middle 1800's to early 1920's a bit of a spiritual tinkerer, and I'm trying to find out more about this Catholic immigrant who was a Mason.

C 2016 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES by CAROL BOWMAN - CHILDREN WHO SPEAK FOREIGN LANGUAGES FROM ANOTHER LIFE

CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES
How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child
by Carol Bowman
C 1997 by Carol and Steve Bowman
A Bantam Book

page 184

"Another form of knowledge beyond experience is the ability of small children to speak in an unknown language that they could not possibly have learned through ordinary means. This phenomenon is called xenoglossy. Since language requires months and years of repetition and practice to learn, science is at a loss to explain how anyone, especially a young child, could speak a language that he has never been exposed to. In the context of past lives, however, xenoglossy is simply another example of something learned in the past that carries over to the present life.


Quoting a case in "Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery," Bowman says that a prominent New York physician and his wife found their twin baby boys conversing between themselves in an unknown vernacular. The children were eventually taken to the foreign language department of Columbia University where none of the professors could identify their speech...until a professor of ancient languages happened to pass by and was amazed to discover that they were speaking ARAMAIC, a language current at the time of Jesus Christ....

"The boys weren't just mimicking a few words: they were conversing with enough proper Aramaic syntax and vocabulary for the expert to be able to recognize the language.

In one case as two year old boy remembering the life of a 19th century sailor, used terms like "spanker" sail. and when he knocked over a jelly jar, asked his mother if he would have to do "haze," the correct term for punishment in vintage sailor slang..."

C 2009 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

CAROL BOWMAN's CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES : THE STORY OF JENNY COCKRELL

CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES
How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child
by Carol Bowman
C 1997 by Carol and Steve Bowman
A Bantam Book

Carol Bowman says that children can remember past lives spontaneously, through hypnotherapy-past life regression, or through dreams. On pages 250-251 of her book she tells the story of Jenny Cockrell who had childhood dreams and past life memories while a child in England in the 1950's. She saw herself as a grown woman, named Mary, who lay dying, sobbing with grief and tormented by guilt because she was leaving behind eight children.

"By the time she was an adult, Jenny had enough information from her dream and from her waking visions to trace her former identity to Mary Sutton, a woman who had lived in a small town north of Dublin, and who had died of fever, leaving behind eight small children. Jenny's long quest to discover her past life identity culminated in an emotional reunion with Mary Sutton's grown children in Ireland. Almost every detail that Jenny remembered was confirmed, including some things Jenny knew about Mary that no one outside the family could have known. Most importantly, after this contact with her children from a former life, Jenny was healed of the guilt and sadness that had tormented her since she was a small child...

"Across Time and Death" is the book...

SAME FAMILY REINCARNATION From RETURN FROM HEAVEN by CAROL BOWMAN

RETURN FROM HEAVEN by Carol Bowman C 2001 EDIT Beloved Relatives Reincarnated Within Your Family HarperCollins Publishers

Page 140-141, hardback about how a soul selects its next life...

"All the regression studies agree that the planning process is done in collaboration with the spiritual guides. The guides present the soul with options for the next life. The soul's previous actions, or karma, determine the parameters and limits of its options. based on its past performance, the soul is offered a menu of lives that will teach it what it needs to learn next. It does not have unlimited choice. If that were the case, why would anyone choose a life of hardship or tragedy.'

"Even with karma limiting the options, the soul still has a mind-boggling number of lives to choose from. The coordination it requires to choose the right one is complex, a matter of balancing multidimensional factors in intricate ways. The decision must consider not only the needs of the soul, but must also coordinate its choice with the needs and plans of other souls it expects to join - particularly the parents... Relationships are vital to our learning and spiritual growth. So, arranging to reunite with certain souls in the coming life is a central element of the reincarnation plan. All the studies agree that we often reincarnate with souls we have been close to in other lifetimes. We may choose to return to those who nurtured and supported our growth in the past... To learn forgiveness, we may elect to return to someone who hurt us or did us wrong. ....Because relationships are so important, and because family relationships are so intense, it makes sense that a soul would have many, many reasons to return to the family it just left. This is why, I believe, same-family reincarnation is so common."

Note: December 2024.  Just got this book from my library and reread it! 

C 2009-2025 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot

From CHILDREN'S PAST LIFE by CAROL BOWMAN

CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES
How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child
by Carol Bowman
C 1997 by Carol and Steve Bowman
A Bantam Book

Carol Bowman's son Chase reacted to the sounds of fireworks or a car backfiring with dramatic upheavals that took him hours to tearfully recover from. As a result, she sought the advice of a child psychologist and eventually had the boy regressed. Chase remembered dying in the Civil War, a life in which he was Black. Bowman did her research, collected stories from other parents of their children's memories of past lives, and eventually learned hypnotherapy herself... She is the author of two books on the subject, this one, circa 1997, is to my mind a classic.



Page 129 contains the story of Nicola, who had recently asked her mother why she wasn't a boy like before. This was a case of spontaneous memory.

"She said her family had lived in a gray stone house that was in the 'middle of four houses joined together in a row" and next to railway tracks; her mother wore long skirts, the same Victorian -style clothing her dolly wore now, and the town they lived in was Haworth; she and her dogs roamed the fields around her house and her "other Mummy" always warned her not to play near the railway tracks, but one day she was always warned her not to play near the railway tracks,. but one day she was playing on the railway tracks when a train "came up fast and knocked me over." Men took her to a hospital where "I went to sleep and died and I saw God in Heaven before I was born. But I didn't really die. I came to you instead and you got to be my other Mummy."

"This flood of detail could not be ignored. Little Nicola's story was so convincing that Kathleen (her present-day Mummy) took her to Haworth, a short drive away, to see if her daughter would recognize anything. Neither Kathleen or Nicola had never been to Haworth, but as soon as they got there, Nicola skipped down streets and unmarked lanes leading to the outskirts of town. She took her mother directly to the house she'd described: one in the middle of four graystone townhouses. Everything matched Nicola's description perfectly, including the surrounding fields and the railway tracks.'

"Kathleen pursued her daughter's past life memory. Since she had a name and an address as leads, she decided to check the records of the parish church to see if she could verify the accuracy of Nicola's recollection. She opened the yellowed pages of the old census book and her heart "skipped a beat." She found the Benson family listed (an unusual name for that parish.) They had one son, who was born in 1875. But the next census, taken six years later, listed the same Benson family with two young girls, aged three and six months - but no son! Since the census required that each family member always be listed, Kathleen concluded that the little boy Nicola remembered must have died when he was between five and six years old.

C 2009  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot