Deja Vu, Past Lives, and the Stories We Carry

*This blog post was made with AI using the transcript from our recording podcast episode.Listen to the full 30 min conversation with my partner Vitaly on Youtube or Spotify. After a walk in the forest with our children, Vitaly and I sat in the car while the kids played Minecraft in the backseat and began talking about déjà vu.

He told me about a moment he had as a child during a school trip to Mono Cliffs. Standing on a scenic overlook, looking out over the trees and rock formations, he had suddenly felt with complete certainty: I’ve been here before.

It was the kind of experience many people have at some point in their lives and then quickly dismiss. But for us, it opened into a much larger conversation — one that moved through past lives, QHHT, Buddhism, Vipassana meditation, Dolores Cannon, karma, gurus, and the strange psychological territory that opens when people begin exploring consciousness seriously.

What interested me most in the conversation was not whether past lives are objectively “real.” I remain open to the mystery of these experiences while also recognizing how complex the human psyche is.

What interests me more is what happens after the experience.

How do we integrate it?

How do we remain grounded?

How do we avoid becoming consumed by spiritual narratives?

I think this is one of the least discussed dangers within modern spirituality: attachment to the story.

A profound meditation, a regression session, a synchronistic event, an energetic opening — these experiences can feel more emotionally convincing than ordinary reality itself. They can rearrange someone’s sense of identity overnight. And because many spiritual communities reward certainty and intensity, there is often very little encouragement toward restraint, ambiguity, or critical thinking.

Earlier this year, I had a QHHT session that affected me deeply. It stirred emotional material and symbolic imagery that could easily have pulled me into fantasy and destabilization if I had not remained very careful afterward. What mattered was not deciding whether every image was literally true. What mattered was staying connected to present reality while allowing the experience to reveal something meaningful psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

That distinction feels incredibly important to me now.

There is a difference between being open and being untethered.

I increasingly think genuine spiritual maturity requires the ability to tolerate uncertainty. Not collapsing into blind belief, but also not retreating into cynicism. Remaining curious without needing immediate conclusions.

This is partly why I find myself becoming more cautious about putting spiritual teachers on pedestals.

During our conversation, Vitaly and I spoke about the tendency people have to imagine enlightened teachers as psychologically flawless beings. I no longer believe that is true. Not because wisdom does not exist, but because incarnation itself appears to involve contradiction, limitation, personality, and interpretation.

Even deeply insightful people remain human.

In some ways, I trust teachers more when they acknowledge this openly.

One thing I still appreciate deeply about Dolores Cannon is her curiosity. Even when I question aspects of her work, I admire that she remained willing to explore without pretending to possess final answers. There is something healthy in that posture toward mystery.

Curiosity may actually be safer than certainty.

This became even clearer to me after Vipassana. One of the central ideas in that tradition is equanimity — the ability to remain internally balanced while observing both pleasure and suffering. I am still trying to understand what true equanimity actually means in practice, but I increasingly feel it may matter more than collecting spiritual experiences.

Because awareness alone is not enough.

In fact, awareness without grounding can become destabilizing.

The more deeply someone perceives suffering — whether personal suffering, ancestral suffering, or collective suffering — the greater their capacity for steadiness must become. Otherwise insight simply overwhelms the nervous system.

And perhaps this is where meditation becomes essential. Not as an escape from reality, but as a way of learning how to remain present within it.

What I have noticed through both meditation and QHHT work is that the content of the stories eventually matters less than the patterns beneath them. Whether someone sees themselves as a priestess, a soldier, a mother, a healer, or a king, the emotional themes repeat endlessly: grief, longing, fear, love, guilt, power, abandonment, devotion.

The costumes change.

The human experience does not.

And maybe that realization is part of what softens attachment to the stories themselves. Blessings to you,

Emilie 𓋹