Everything is energy.  This fact is now being confirmed by scientists in the field of quantum physics.  When we break everything down to the sub-atomic level, we find pure energy, not matter.  This energy is always vibrating.  Look around you.  Everything you can see is vibrating; you are just not aware of it.  Everything vibrates at a slightly different rate.  The rate of vibration, or frequency, dictates how we perceive matter, as a solid, a liquid, or a gas.  We know that solids vibrate the most slowly.  Liquids vibrate faster than solids, and gases vibrate the fastest.  But then there are things that vibrate even faster than that – electricity, for example.  When scientists increase the vibration of an atom, at some point it disappears.  That’s the upper limit of the “physical universe.”  When the atom’s vibrational frequency slows down, it re-appears.  Where did it go?  It went somewhere, but science has no way of knowing.  Let’s just say it went to a place where the vibrations are faster.

Now think about God.  If you think of God as the fastest, highest vibration that you can imagine, then you can see why we can’t actually “see” God in person while here in the physical universe.  We can only “see” God by thee evidence of ITS creation.

You and I are Soul.  We are energy beings, and we vibrate, too.  Each and every Soul is totally unique, unlike any other, even though we have some commonalities with certain others.  We vibrate at different frequencies, but we all vibrate faster than the limit for the physical universe, so in order to live in the physical world and interact with it, we have to put on bodies that vibrate at the rate of the physical universe.   You can’t “see” Soul with your physical eyes, but believe it or not, you can recognize familiar Souls whom you’ve met in previous lifetimes.  Naturally, they are not wearing the same body they were in when you met them last, so you can’t recognize them by their physical appearance.  Instead you – Soul that you are – recognize them by their unique energy signature, their vibration, even though they may have changed since you knew them last.

How is this possible?  Well, think about a person that you first met when they were a small child.  How old is that person now?  Does the person look anything like he or she looked when you first met?  Chances are, the answer is no.  How do you know it’s the same person?  The person’s body shape and size have changed.  Hair color or voice register have changed.  If the person is a woman and she is married, her last name may have been changed.  The person is older now, and perhaps dresses differently.   You know by their energy signature.  It’s not something you can explain; you just know.

Since you’re not using any of the five senses to recognize them, how can you – the human you – figure out that you’re meeting someone you’ve met before?  Generally, you get a feeling, often one of familiarity (“Oh, it’s you!  Where have you been?), but also, you find that you really like or dislike the person right away, sometimes before they ever interact with you.  Sometimes you get a feeling of fear or anger.  Other times, you might get a strong feeling of infatuation or lust.  You may feel that you “love” the person even though you haven’t had the chance to forge any kind of relationship with them in this lifetime.

When you meet one of these familiar Souls, does this mean you have found your “soul mate”?  Not necessarily!

The one thing you can bet the farm on is that you probably agreed, as Soul, to interact with this person in the current lifetime.  You may or may not have actually known them in a previous lifetime (although chances are, you have), but for one reason or another, you have agreed to interact here and now in order to resolve a karmic issue or learn something important.

You might have been mates in the past, but you might also have been best friends, parent and child, siblings, cousins, business partners, buddies in the military, or teacher and student.   In this lifetime, you can, again, be anything with respect to one another.  The relationship may be long-term or very temporary.  Nowadays, with the Internet and social media, there is a good chance that the relationship may be forged over a great distance.  Whatever works.  The main thing is that you are working out some issue or serving together to achieve some shared goal.

Have you felt “love at first sight” with someone (whether or not your feelings were returned)?  Have you ever felt that you hated a person on sight?  Or that a person you have just met is very, very dangerous?  It’s important to realize that just because you “love” or “hate” or “fear” the person right away, that doesn’t mean you should necessarily feel that way about them once you get to know who they are in this lifetime.  However, you shouldn’t necessarily dismiss the feeling out of hand, either.  Take a wait-and-see approach.  Keep your own counsel.   Don’t go blurting out that you know you’ve known them in another lifetime.  They may not be as sensitive as you are to the inner clues that guide us to find those Souls with whom we have made Soul agreements.  The main thing to ask yourself is this: What can I learn from my interaction with this person?

One couple I know who happen to be married in this lifetime were once master and servant in another life.  Occasionally, they say, they unconsciously revert to that dynamic in their current marriage, but their lesson is that they are equals in this lifetime.   The husband has to learn not to be overbearing, and the wife must learn not to allow herself to be dominated.

Some parents that I know have three children.  The parents are here in this lifetime to explore the idea of domination and control, while their kids are here to learn about various aspects of freedom.  It’s a perfect fit for lessons all around.

Two business partners are working together in this lifetime to resolve a karmic issue from the last time they knew each other.  One cheated the other in the previous life.  Now he is the one being cheated on.  Soul goes back and forth in successive lifetimes, sometimes the perpetrator and sometimes the victim, until all the lessons are learned.

If you agreed to meet, and you have done so, is it really important to know that the person is someone you knew from a past life?   It’s not required, no, but the danger of not recognizing a person you agreed to meet is that you do have strong feelings with respect to them.  One danger is that you could react to them the same way you did last time.  Since you agreed to work something out this time, the situation will probably be a variation on your situation in the previous life, except that the roles may be reversed.  Chances are, whatever happened last time did not work out well, so if you do the same thing once again, it won’t work out this time, either.

Another danger presents itself when the feelings are negative: anger, fear, jealousy, or guilt.  Since the feelings tend to be so strong, the danger is that you might act on those feelings without even realizing why you are feeling this way.  Let’s say you hate a person on sight.  You could simply decide to avoid the person, since you don’t like him or her, but perhaps you agreed to meet the person because he or she did something to you in the last lifetime for which you need to extend forgiveness.  To complicate matters, the other person may not even realize that it is his or her right to ask for forgiveness!  The person may be totally shocked that you dislike  him/her and may be very confused about your feelings.  In that case, you need to figure out a way to forgive the person, anyway, whether they even realize what they did or not.  You may not remember, yourself, exactly what happened in the past life, other than that it made you angry.  Fortunately, it doesn’t matter a great deal whether you remember the actual past-life event.  The act of forgiveness is what’s important, and your willingness to try to get along with the person, even if you never become best buddies in this life.

There are ways to piece together past life information about a person, but to do so, you will have to pay attention to your dreams, and take stock of things that attract you in this lifetime.  Do you love to be near the ocean?   Are you more comfortable in a place that is mountainous?  Do you prefer wide open spaces, or the city life?   What foreign countries strike your fancy?   What cultures do you take an interest in?  What kind of music do you like?   Do you enjoy reading stories with a Western theme, or do you like to read about Victorian England?  If you are interested in historical fiction, what eras and places do you love reading about?   Perhaps you enjoy attending renaissance festivals in the summertime, or you are interested in American Civil War re-enactments.  All of these can be clues to a past life in which you acquired some negative karma that needs to be examined and balanced.   This information, coupled with information from the dream state, can help you recall the most significant parts of a lifetime that you need to remember.  If you get the sense of a past life with the other person, ask yourself, “What can I learn from my interaction with this person now?”

Sometimes the person you have agreed to meet has no particular “karmic issue” with you in the past life sense, but you have simply agreed to come and interact for your mutual benefit.  Perhaps you are here to learn patience, and the other person has agreed to learn to be more assertive or spontaneous.   Perhaps you have come to learn to be more frugal with resources, while the other person needs to learn not to be a miser.  Some of these people might not have made an agreement with you, per se, but they have agreed to learn a lesson that is mutually compatible with a lesson that you have agreed to learn.  You might just as well learn the same lesson with anyone else.  In fact sometimes, people do attract more than one person into their lives to learn the same thing.   Have you known of people who seem to attract the same kind of person as a mate or sexual partner time after time?   For example, they always seem to get involved with a heavy drinker, or they seem to attract people who will cheat on them again and again.  Patterns like these indicate missed chances.  Life often gives us multiple chances to learn something that we have agreed to learn.  Of course, we do have free will, and we can renege on our promises.  Some people do this willfully and mindfully, while others (the vast majority of us) are simply unaware that the opportunity to learn has presented itself.

This is why Souls spend so many lifetimes in the physical plane: they are mostly unaware of who they really are, and unaware of the agreements that they have made before coming into this lifetime.  The point is to wake up and figure out what’s going on.  Once we do that, we stop missing opportunities, and our lessons can be learned in fairly short order.   Once the requisite number of lessons has been learned, the Soul can move on to the Inner Worlds (Heaven, if you will), to continue learning and maturing as Soul in non-physical environments.