Japanese past life?

[Thilve]

Hello everybody,

I chose to sign up to this very interesting forum the moment I bumped into it while surfing the web, by chance. Maybe it wasn't just mere chance, maybe I was scheduled to found you guys, who knows. Anyway, I thought I could easily post here about my current situation, which is not properly mine, rather my boyfriend's recurring status who got him to the boiling point. I'll try to make it as brief and crystal clear as possible.

He's 30 y.o., he's never been a Jappo fanatic, never been into anime nor mangas; he's not addicted to videogames, nor sushi nor to anything Japanese. He's never been to Japan, he doesn't speak Japanese either. Basically, he and Japan are literally on two opposite sides of the universe. Yet ever since he was 15, he's been often dreaming about a Japanese woman, young and beautiful, who usually came to him floating on the seaside, on a lonely beach located in his dream. She used to move her mouth like saying something very unclear to him, and he later on found out that the word was the Japanese one for "mother". The music playing in the background, he never heard of it yet he later on found out it was a tune from a Japanese band he never listened to, called "Au revoir". After being haunted by this dream for years and years (we've been together for nearly 9 years and this was already a recurring "dream" for him), his usual reaction to this was to feel extremely sad and depressed for a few days after it. A couple of years later (it was 2011 and just a few days before the terrible earthquake and following tsunami which stroke the country) he had another dream, which looked more like a memory (and that, in fact, never occured again): he told me he had just seen a tiny village on the mountains, with a lonely road going up the steep mountain, and a few little shops and houses on the left. He told me the village was called Achi Nagano and it was totally unknown to me: I googled it and found out a few pictures very similar to the dream he described to me. We thought it could have been only autosuggestion (if it makes sense) and that he might have seen a similar village on a Japanese horror movie, or something. We dropped it and let it go. Then he suddenly stopped feeling like that, the dreams stopped recurring to him in his sleep, he just started feeling "normally" interested in Japan when someone else showed up talking about it. For years, none of these things ever happened to him again, and we both thought it was only something belonging to the past.

Last week we've met a Brazilian girl with Japanese ancestors, currently living in Japan and on a trip to Italy (where we're from and we currently reside in): we've spent two days with her and my boyfriend has had the weird feeling he knew her all along, he listened to her stories and to her unhappiness when it came to describing her lifestyle in Japan. She basically told us her life was made of just work and sleep and no social life, she called herself sad and depressed and she also told us she's always been struggling with depression, even before moving to Japan. Then she left and continued her trip to another Italian city, and my boyfriend has been acting weird ever since. He says he feels sad and depressed, he gets moody and nervous, he feels haunted by Japan once again. Last night he has had another memory-looking dream: he saw in first person, he saw himself dropping a few shopping bags on a kitchen table and he said everything around him looked Japanese. Then he woke up abruptly, shocked and trying to find a meaning to it all. He still feels like that.

Does anyone know how could we deal with this? We thought that going to Japan on a trip could be a solution, at least he could see how he feels once there and deal with it all, whatever it is. I must say I'm a little scared about this, but I'll do whatever I can to help him and release him from this status. Any idea on what this all could mean?

I thank you all very much in advance and hope I didn't make it too long or unclear to you. Feel free to ask more questions, should you need more info to decipher this riddle. Thanks again!

Thilve

 

[Mere Dreamer]

Some people do find resolution when they visit the location of their memories. Others merely need to remember and then analyse their memories for how relevant they are to their current life.

Often what connects memories to the present is a specific emotional state. Sometimes this is triggered by cultural phenomena. Sometimes by individuals. But that isn't always the case.

A memory can be simply tied to a fabric of emotions and related experiences. So let's say he's lonely and feels like he's lost contact with his family, and then he starts dreaming of a life in which he was lonely and lost contact with someone who was as close to him then as his family is now. Or maybe he's in a time of transition between two strong interests and starts having vivid memories of a time when he felt like he was losing his old life and pushed forward into something new. Does that make sense?

It's possible that the memories of Japan are relevant because there are a lot of similarities in experience between that life and this one. He may be resolving problems this time around that he never had a chance to finish up the last time. Maybe he's taking the chance to do things differently and find a different ending to a similar story.

When I meet people from other lives and trigger those connections it isn't always about reconnecting with who the person is today (as people often assume past life connections must be). They may only be passing through my life to wake me up to something I need to work through on my own.

You know how when someone plays a note on a guitar, say, a string tuned to the same note in another guitar will vibrate even though it's not being played. That is what people from past lives often do to us, even if we only meet in passing. They move on and now we have this uncomfortable resonance left to deal with. We may no longer play the same song as they do. We have both moved on to new lives and goals. Yet now I feel the key of a string I may not have played in this life up till now, or the resonance forces me to finally face it. Once I realize I have that note available I can add it to the music I play now or, if it is out of key, tune the string until it plays true to who I have become.

The true goal here is to integrate that resonance he feels into this life somehow or tune that element of himself to match who he has become. What has he learned about himself? What truth can he now carry into the future? What does he need to let go of because it's no longer part of him? These are good questions to apply to these feelings, because they'll help him resolve this uncomfortable resonance and find a clearer path forward from here.