Healer with past life knowledge

What were we in our past life is a thought with many of us. Some like Dipti Patel are privileged to know this. She shares this with us

My name is Dipal Patel. I am a physical therapist with a clinical specialty in orthopedics, an additional manual therapy certification, and a developing clinical specialty in chronic pain. My native roots are Indian, as both my parents' families originated from the state of Gujarat in India. However, I was the first generation born in the USA and was raised as an American-Indian. From a young age, I always had a passion to go into medicine and help people heal.A deep part of me always felt like I was destined to do more and help more people, but I just didn't know how. Though some individuals surrounding me disagreed with my path, I decided to go into a profession that could help heal those who are suffering from physical body pain, so I pursued my doctorate in physical therapy. It was always a tough decision for me to choose between medical school and physical therapy school, but various life encounters led me to decide that a profession that specializes in treating musculoskeletal disorders is where my true calling was. After I married and moved to Oregon, I began to experience severe wide-spread body pain that had no plausible explanation. Even medical doctors were unsure what was causing my pain, and I was just bundled into a category of people suffering from "chronic pain". As I began to search for countless holistic remedies to heal my pain, I developed an interest in the topic, desperate to heal not just myself, but help others not have to experience what I had been going through. This experience prompted me to pursue a chronic pain specialty, and I continued on my journey to healing people in chronic pain through the use of my western medicine based education. My search for relief eventually led me back to my Indian roots. I was introduced to an Indian monk named Swami Omkarananda, when I was seeking to learn more about meditation and pranayama to assist in my healing journey. Little did I know, this one encounter was going to change my life and spiritual journey in a way I never could have imagined. 

I have not experienced any near death experiences in this life. However, I have experienced my past lives. As I mentioned earlier, I was suffering from chronic muscular pain. The pain became so severe that I was forced to leave work. I struggled to accept my situation and love myself and my body without being able to fulfill my passion to help others heal, and I wondered if I would ever be able to get back to it. But how could I help others heal, if I could not heal myself first?  I tried many different western medicinal therapies, as well as alternative holistic therapies. Everything seemed to help, but nothing seemed to give me complete relief. I was feeling like western medicine was failing me, so I began to explore more eastern medicine based therapies, which seemed to give me more relief. In this quest to explore eastern medicine, I came to know an Indian monk from Rishikesh named Swami Omkarananda, who was visiting our city at the time. I was told by one of my physical therapists that my high stress nature and overall mind-set were affecting my symptoms, and that I needed to learn to manage this if I wanted to heal. So, I decided to make time to meet Swami Omkarananda to learn some meditation, pranayama and yoga therapies to help my symptoms. In the process of my healing with Swami Omakarnanda, I ended up encountering some of my past lives. Two years prior to being born in this life, my prior life ended at a young and tender age in India, after being born into a highly spiritual family. I learned that in my last life, I died from a muscular disorder that I developed after hurting my ankle while playing. It was a simple injury that turned into something greater and confounded the doctors. The disorder became so severe that I ended up passing at about the age of 7, as a result of complications from it. Prior to passing, I told my past life mom that I wanted to become a doctor who helps people with injuries like mine when I grew up, so they would not have to suffer like I did; however, I sadly passed before I could ever accomplish this. After learning this, I was overcome with emotions and tears. Suddenly, my whole life made sense. Not only did I end up carrying the muscular disorder from my past life into my current life, but it shaped my whole life and why I felt like my calling in this life was to become a specialist in musculoskeletal disorders. In the process of  experiencing my past, I realized the continuity of past life and how my past life karma carried over into my next life. This experience changed my life. After recalling my past life experiences, I learned where my past life mother and family were located. I made contact with my past life mother and spent hours over video calls reconnecting with her. Uncontrollable amounts of tears rushed over me every time we spoke, as she shared her struggles to cope with my loss for many years. I even learned the impact I had on her spiritual journey prior to my passing. She read the Bhagavad Gita at my request and even followed my diet recommendations. She never gave up hope that I was still out there somewhere in the world. She ended up fasting for 11 years and had dreams of me at different ashrams. She kept sending people to search for me at these ashrams, until one day 2 monks came to tell her that I was safe and had taken birth in another country, and that she could begin eating once again. Words could not express what I was feeling and the connection that I felt to her. After learning all this from her, I decided to venture to India to meet her and the rest of the family. I was so excited to meet her, but she became ill and passed away just a few hours after I boarded my flight. Karma had repeated itself once again. Just as she was unable to get to me after I called for her before dying, I was unable to get to her before she passed away. When I arrived in India, I took part in her death rituals. Upon seeing her and the rest of the family, I felt a sense of home and everyone I met felt so familiar. It was even astounding to learn of the resemblance between myself in my past life and myself in my current life at a young age. After these experiences, my life completely changed, as well as my perspective of life, my way of thinking, analyzing, and understanding. I realized that this is not our only life.

From a young age, my parents always taught me about karma and reincarnation. These concepts were never foreign to me. I always understood and believed that good karma would bring me reward in my next life and bad karma would result in negative consequences in my next life. As a kid, I would even sometimes joke with my parents and say, "oh I hope this doesn't bring me bad karma and make me a bug in my next life that gets stepped on and dies a painful death". I always believed that the feeling of "deja vu" was a memory of something or someone from my past life that I had some sort of connection with. However, it was not until I uncovered my past life after meeting Swami Omkarananda that this concept really solidified for me. Realizing how my past life ended, and how this shaped who I am and the profession I chose in this life was so enlightening that it brought tears to my eyes. I also learned how I carried the karma of my muscular pain into this life. I chose a profession based on my wishes in my past life to  become a doctor that can help heal people, so they will never suffer from pain like I did in my last life. I even uttered the same words after experiencing severe chronic pain in my present life, and it put me on a path to specialize in helping people who were suffering from chronic pain like me, and whose symptoms were not understood by the traditional medical system. My past life mother even told me about my wishes to visit the Jagannath temple and donate money to an orphanage, which were left unfulfilled due to my early passing. I made sure to fulfill these past life wishes of mine during my time in India to ensure karma did not repeat itself once again. Upon fulfilling these wishes, my body automatically began to feel better. As I realized that I carried my past karma into this life, it felt like my life made sense, like I was awakened. I felt as if all the uncertainties I had over the years aligned into a bigger purpose and picture. I may have a different physical body, but my soul was the same. Like all energy, it never disappeared, it just changed form. It changed form like how water evaporates to gas or solidifies to ice and changes state. Though I never had a doubt about the afterlife, this experience surely reminded me that nothing is a coincidence and it made me more of a believer than I already was. 

I have learnt the following important lessons

• What Goes Around, Comes Around. This is a popular saying that signifies the importance of Karma. It is imperative to remember that your actions affect your fate in past, current, and future lives. Therefore, it is important to live a life without regrets, forgive yourself and others in any situation, treat others the way you want to be treated, do no harm to other living beings, and follow the right path in life, not the one most frequently taken. Only then can you overcome your karmic bondage and break the cycles of your previous life trauma and progress in life. 

• Follow A Sattvic Lifestyle. Aim to live a simple life. Maintain a healthy mind, body and soul through the practice of meditation, pranayama, yoga, and a healthy diet.

• Practice Self Love and Acceptance. Love heals all. It means not passing judgement on yourself, allowing yourself to forgive yourself when you make mistakes, following that path that brings you happiness instead of one that pleases others.. 

• The Problem Is You, The Solution Is You. Spoken by a wise monk named Pujya Swami Dayananda Saraswati, it is important to remember to dig deep and look within to find solutions to your problems, rather than looking outward and blaming others. Only after looking deep within, was I able to realize that mindset, lifestyle, and past-life karmas were an integral part to healing. Instead of looking for others to heal you, you must identify and do the work on the areas needed to heal yourself. 

• There Is Hope. No matter who you are, where you have been, what you have endured in life, or where you are in your spiritual journey, you can heal. We all have a past, and we all have a future, but there is no time like the present to change your life for the better. Follow a holistic lifestyle and you will begin to see positive change that you will carry forward into this life and future lives. Your body is temporary, but your soul remembers and moves on, carrying forward all the karma, good or bad, into the next life and the many to follow. So if you are more conscious of understanding yourself and your environment, then beautiful things in life will start unfolding in front of you. 

By Jamuna Rangachari