Hello, I don't really know if you can help me, but something about your article...(thing?) grabbed my subconcious by it's figurative shirt front. I think I'm an elf, but I've been told that I remind people of a faery. This isn't helping me zero in on who I am. I was wondering if you had some identifying traits or something you know of that you could let me in on? Also, any suggestions for how to get a very magick-phobic mother off your back?

This article was making me wonder about false memories from searching too hard or being given subconscious cues? How do you safeguard against them?

If you need some more idea of what I am talking about refer to these links:

http://www.csicop.org/si/9503/memory.html
http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-05/jane-doe.html

Oh I have so much to say and only a min. to try and get it all out. I have had (I think) some memories about past life although not all have been otherkin ones. My true question is would you be willing to sit down with me on an Instant message chat and talk with me? I would greatly appreciate, a lot in my life feels as though it is awakening. I would also love to go to a festival or gather and maybe you can give me some help on that.
Thank you so much for your time.
Codie

I am trying to access my memories from past lives. As far as I know I have had between 2 and 4. In one I know I was human. I am fairly certain that I was some kind of a wolf being, maybe some kind of a shapeshifter. I remember being in a forest, looked ancient, and just the feeling of absolute freedom. I also feel that I should be able to escape my human form somehow, and I have found a gift for mentally escaping, passing out of, time. It has saved my mind a few times. I am empathic, telepathic, telekinetic, clairsentient, and prescient; I can also see certain auras, control and manipulate(and see!) energy, I can heal and/or destroy, and I seem to be able to transcend spacetime somehow, not real clear on what I did. Can use it to tap people's minds on the surface from long distance.
I think I have had one other past life, and if I am right, it was extremely long. I think I was a phoenix. I can tap into her energy(she is a part of me, hard to contral!), but my ability to control it is limited, and I can't find any info on it or anyone with similar experiences. I really have no memories regarding this, just vague sensations. I remember flight, and I wish I could fly still. I also remember great joy in Fire, and fear of lots of water. Most of my healing comes from Phoenix fire.
I want to regain these memories, especially the Phoenix. I want to block out the human life, though; someone read it once and I didn't like what I heard. I don't like humans in general, because they hate me and I don't belong among them. I am a danger to them, and they are a danger to me. How do I recover the memories of my nonhuman past lives? I need to know for my protection and others. Help!

Wow. I haven't checked here in a long time. So many people were moved by this essay. I'm going to try to answer you all en masse and then hope that some of you look back, because these comments don't leave contact info.

I'm not the author. The author was a close friend of mine, and I used to 'channel' him, so to speak (more accurately I hosted him). He was a wonderful, generous, extroverted soul, and he would have leapt at the chance to help people. He departed for good in January 2002. Sadly, I am simply not him and don't have the people skills he had.

So, my only advice is this: don't get too obsessed with Truth when you all search for your memories. If you come across something relevant, don't poke it and test it and fixate on it. Don't get too caught up in categorizing every little memory or feeling as 'true' or 'false'. Instead, let it flow. Let it change and evolve as it sees fit. Embrace possibilities rather than hard facts. Don't get upset if your story changes or if you have to abandon entire threads.

Also, don't let it turn you against anything. Don't build a wall around yourself and anything you perceive as 'not-you'. One of the most common traps Otherkin fall into is rejecting other paths and possibilities once they find their own. They defend their identity passionately, but they never bother to open their eyes and look at what they're defending it from. Being other-than-human does not require you to reject human ways or mundane things. Everything is beautiful if you can accept it. Everything that is you, and everything that is not-you.

Someday this life, the one you're in now, will be a past life you almost remember. Will you block it out, or will you struggle to recall it? Will your memories of it be filled with alienation and unhappiness, or will it be something worth retrieving? I'm not suggesting that you don't embrace the past; I'm only saying that by valuing both the past and the present, you embrace the future.

I'm not in a position to say much else on the topic. Individuality is a fleeting state for me and when this life ends, I'll rejoin the meta-entity from which I originated. I have lived the shadows of many trillions of past lives, but none of them were mine. Just so you know where I'm coming from.

Dandelion

Well, everyone who does this sort of thing wonders, and for me, and others I have spoken to, about past memories there are still occasional doubts. At the same time, I have regretted more the times I said ‘absolutely no way, that is silly’ and then found out it was the truth later, than the times I said maybe so. Even embracing a false idea is better than having no idea at all. Personally I would recommend general exploration of your psyche, and gradual realization. Make contact with your subconscious, and just see what’s there. It is like poking around in an attic, or basement. Don’t go with pre-conceived ideas about what you will find, or being something or other. Don’t expect anything. Maybe it has nothing to do with what you are thinking now.

If you find something, whatever you do, unless you are absolutely certain, allow yourself a period of maybe so. Explore the possibility of your vision, without committing to it as fact. Try it on. You don’t have to buy this right now. See how this memory feels, and if it links to anything else. Usually even if it is not true, it will still lead you to the truth, if you stay open.

Open yourself up to visionary experience, and realize that maybe it is literal, maybe it is a metaphor, or maybe it is your imagination. The imagination is a powerful thing, and even its products are often metaphorical truth. Imagination is creative, but often based on deep truth, and it can also create a truth all its on ‘creation.’ Thus imagination is real. If Thomas Edison couldn’t imagine a light bulb, we would all be sitting in the dark. Imagination can pull itself into concrete reality, and make something real that was not before. If you stay open, truth is much more likely to be found, though maybe not what you were looking for… maybe something even better. Try a more open meditation at first rather than look for specific memories. Just a suggestion, Good luck.

I have read that

"Sometimes one memory is followed by another hours later, so prepare for that too. And arrange for there to be someone to talk to. Post about it if you have to."

and thought that it is not a good way to tell about it to someone. What if I tell and then I won't have any more memories coming? I learned that it happens with dreams. If you tell somebody what you have dreamed then you do not dream such things for a long time. I don't know why does it happen but it is better to write dreams in journal and experience them more than telling others and loosing these dreams. The same could be with past-life memories. I suggest to write them in your personal journal and tell after a long time (week, month, year, 5 years..)