Note: This is one of those posts that’s probably more for me than for you. Consider it “Advanced LOA”. Some of you will adore it, while many others will find it hard to read. You’ll notice that I answered Awesome Dudette’s question and then took the whole thing to a WHOLE OTHER LEVEL. Why? Because I was inspired to. Because this is the stuff that goes through my mind. Because I find it so damn interesting and I think some of you will, too. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. It’s not meant for everyone. We’ll resume our regularly scheduled programming on Monday. Promise. 🙂

Awesome Dudette’s Burning Question: “Melody what is your take on the concept of parallel lives? I heard that the soul wants every experience possible, which is the reason for parallel lives of an incarnation. I have always wondered that after I die, I would love to reincarnate into this same life again and see what it’s like had I made some different choices. What do you think?”

Dear Awesome Dudette,

You’re absolutely right. Our Soul, or Who We Really Are wants to experience every possibility, every nuance, every facet of every possible decision that it could ever make. That’s essentially what we’re here for – to experience ourselves from every angle.

What’s a little bit screwy (no offense) about your question is the assumption that all of this has to happen linearly, i.e. one life after another.

The Multiverse theory

Even though you, as you currently know yourself, are only aware of this one life right now, that doesn’t mean that that’s all there is. As quantum physicists are figuring out (ok, right now it’s just a theory, but they’re on the right track), there’s more than one Universe. There are many, many (alright, it’s an infinite number) parallel Universes out there. In fact, every time you make even the tiniest decision, you create two new Universes – one in which you made decision A, and one in which you made decision B. In that moment, a new version of you is also created, one that made the decision you didn’t, and the outcome of which you’re not aware of. The Big YOU, your soul, if you will, is aware of both versions. But, in order for you to fully experience your reality, you can only be aware of your own.

Given the number of decisions you’ve made, both conscious and unconscious, it stands to reason that there are quite a few versions of you bopping about in the Multiverse. And you don’t have to go back and relive any one version after you “die” (put in sarcastic quotes, because there is no real death). You are living all these lives simultaneously. Once you transition, you have full access to these lives. In other words, you get a much larger perspective.

Your parallel lives

But it doesn’t stop there. You’re not just experiencing every possible iteration of your current life. You can be (and are) living completely different lives, in different countries, cultures and yes, timelines. So, there could be a version of you in ancient Egypt, or the middle ages, or 100 years ago, with all the possible iterations of THAT life. And even though to you, in your limited (by design) perspective, think that those lives happened ages ago, they didn’t. It’s all happening NOW, at the same time.  So, when you tap into a “past” life, you’re really just tapping into another one of your avatars, another one of your Soul’s versions.

You see, your soul has different levels of awareness. Consider you, Awesome Dudette, to be at Level 0. You have a very limited and therefore specific focus. You can only see one perspective at a time, but can therefore experience and explore it fully. When you go up a level (what most people consider their soul, or who they become when they die), you have your non-physical self, Level 1. You do not become this person when you transition, you already are her. She doesn’t cease to exist when you’re “born”, any less than the player of a video game ceases to exist when they start a new game and create a new character. You exist simultaneously.

Your Level 1 self has the ability to perceive multiple perspectives at one time, but will focus on them in less detail than a Level 0 character. Whereas you (Level 0) might freak out about being late for work, your Level 1 persona knows that ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because you’re going to be quitting your job and moving towards your passion soon anyways. The stress you feel is just another indicator that you’re not doing what you want to be doing, and is actually serving you. Your Level 1 self therefore doesn’t worry about the lateness and doesn’t join you in your stress. In other words, your Level 1 self is much more Zen and chilled out than you are.

So, let’s say that your Level 1 self can see and experience all the iterations of your current life, all the possible decisions you’ve made and how they played out.

But, your Level 1 self is simply just another avatar. Go up a rung and you’ll find Level 2. Your Level 2 self has the ability to perceive and experience not just all your Level 0 lives, but also all of your Level 1 lives. This is where I may begin to lose a few of you, so let me offer…

…One of my super-duper analogies:

Let’s say that your current Level 0 life is Barbara, who lives in New York City, in 2013. Barbara is 40, has 2 kids, a wonderful husband and a blah job as an attorney. Barbara’s Level 1 self would be able to see not only this iteration of Barbara, but every iteration – the one that didn’t go to law school, the one that ran off with some dreamy musician when she was 18, the one that chose to go to dance classes and pursue her passion, the one whose parents are still alive, the one never had kids, the one who didn’t battle anorexia in her teens, the one who had the courage to kiss the high school quarterback that time under the bleachers in High School, etc. Every version of Barbara starts in the same place – 40 years ago, in New York, born to the same parents, in the same house. But from that point on, each decision that was made created a new version of Barbara, a new Universe in which that decision played out. Barbara’s Level 1 self can see all of these versions.

But then, there’s more than one Level 1 version of Barbara. Others might include a woman in the 1800’s, who worked on a farm. Again, there will be different versions of this woman, all starting at the same point, and then diverging based on all the different decisions made.

Barbara’s Level 2 self will be aware of all of these versions or lives. From HER perspective, all of these iterations are happening at the same time, and she has the capacity and ability to absorb, understand and enjoy all that information. She will stress even less about the details than her Level 1 selves, and will have an even larger perspective of the universe and how it works.

Follow me down the rabbit hole…

Do you think it stops there? Nope, it keeps going up and up and up, until eventually, you get to the highest level, where ALL is known, seen, experienced and understood. This is what most people will want to call God. But really, it’s just Barbara. Or Bob. Or YOU. Or ME. It’s all of us. You see, it’s like we’re all connected to this giant family tree, all related to each other in real time, all feeding into the same consciousness. And it’s all happening at the same time.

But, if we didn’t split off our awareness and delve into each Level 0 experience fully, reveling in the details and being much less aware of our simultaneous lives, we wouldn’t have nearly as much fun. It comes down to the degree to which you can be engaged.

Another analogy:

Let’s say you’re watching a football (soccer) game. You can watch the whole field, seeing the entire game unfold. You’ll see every goal, and every big play. But, you’ll miss a lot of the details. You might become aware of a penalty or injury only after it happened. You’ll have to wait for the replay to see the details. You won’t be aware of what every single player is doing in every single moment.

Now, let’s say that you decide to focus on just one player for the entire game. You see him running, faking left and going right, blocking, hawking a loogie (spitting) on the field, and feigning an injury or two. When the ref calls a foul, you know that your player was at fault. You watched him kick the other player. You don’t miss a single detail of what this one player does. But you do miss what every other player is doing, including any goals not scored by “your” player, unless he was directly involved or very close to the action. You miss all the other fouls, all the other maneuvers and when someone asks you about the game the next day, you’ll have a lot of details about this one player, but may not even know the score of the game. You were focused very narrowly, and therefore couldn’t perceive the big picture at the same time.

Your Level 0 experience is like watching that one player run around the field. Your Level 1 self watches and experiences the whole game. Your Level 2 self is flipping through channels and is aware of all the scores of all the games, and so on. A Level 1 avatar isn’t aware of as many details as the Level 0 one, but CAN delve into them at will. So, if you want to know how a particular player got injured, you just watch the replay. You temporarily dip into a more limited perspective (one or two players), and then dip out again.

Sidebar: How does awareness of past lives figure into all of this?

Well, considering that there are not “past” lives, only many, many concurrent lives, your awareness of another life is really just another way for the Universe to bring you information. It’s a manifestation, like any other. Whether you receive a memory from your current iteration, or from one that happened 100 years ago, it still has to match whatever is going on in your vibration NOW.

So, if you’ve “discovered” that you were murdered in a past life, ask yourself why you would remember that NOW. What’s going on in your current vibration that would make you a match to this feeling? What’s being mirrored back to you? The experience of the past life cannot affect your current life (this is a very limiting belief; that you’re condemned to continue the struggle of your past lives, or that some trauma from your past lives could cause you to have fears in your current one), but it can certainly mirror back what’s going on in your energy today.  If you’re feeling unsafe, for example, you may have the horrific memory of being stabbed to death in a former life. This manifestation would then alert you to the fact that your current fears are not serving you, without you necessarily needing to manifest a stabbing right now.

Back to the main point: How can you use this information today?

Alright, alright, so up until this point, we’ve been talking mostly philosophy. This Multiverse and Multiple You theory is all fine and good, but how can we use it practically in order to enhance our lives?

Here’s how:

#1 – Access and make use of the higher perspective of the next level up

If you’re at Level 0, Level 1 isn’t like some bureaucrat that you don’t have access to. You don’t have to live cut off from that knowledge and wisdom. You can access it any time you like. When you access your “guides” or channel, you’re really just talking to a bunch of Level 1 folks – your higher self, and anyone else interested in what’s going on, including other people’s Level 1’s. If you go high enough, you can even talk to some Level 2’s (just for the record, it’s not really this clearly demarcated. I’m attempting to give structure to something that’s actually quite fluid, wrapping my little Level 0 consciousness around something our brains aren’t designed to completely comprehend, and this is the closest I can come at this time).

The wisdom and knowledge and yes, information that’s being fed to the Level 1 and up avatars is available for us to download anytime we like. All we have to do is give ourselves permission, by truly believing that we can. We give ourselves such permission when we study something (“I have studied it, therefore I know it and can recall it”), but that’s not actually necessary. We’ve simply been taught to believe that it is. There have been many examples of people accessing information they had no way of knowing throughout history. THIS is how they gained that knowledge.

#2 – Change your NOW by shifting to a new version of yourself. Completely.

Ok, this one’s going to be a little more complicated (I know… but I did warn you), and it’s really the whole point of this post.

If you know that:

• you, as you know yourself, are not the only version of you that exists
• new realities with new iterations of you are being created constantly
• you can shift into a different reality anytime you like by changing your point of focus and therefore your vibration

you can begin to understand that when you shift realities, you are actually shifting into a different version of yourself. You are actually becoming a different person. You do not just have the power to shift into a reality that’s brand new to the Universe (by making Decision A or Decision B), but into ANY reality and version of yourself that you like (and which you can believe).

However, in order to do so, and in order to make any kind of significant shift, you have to be willing to completely let go of the old identity. You have to be willing to tell completely different stories. You have to be willing to think and feel and react as that new version of yourself. And you have to be willing to let go of that old version’s past, because the new person you’re becoming didn’t have that past. That woman without commitment issues didn’t have the experiences that caused her to be afraid of love. She didn’t overcome her pain, she never had it.

When you change who you ARE now, you actually, literally change who you WERE.

This, I’ve come to understand, is SUCH a huge key to making significant shifts in your current reality. If you’re willing to let go of your past completely, if you can stop needing to punish anyone, if you can stop needing to be the victim, to be validated, to be approved of, or to be healed, then you can actually let go of who those stories and needs caused you to become. And if you can completely let go of all the limiting definitions of self that you’re currently carrying around, you can actually leapfrog into not just a version of you that’s only slightly different from the one you came from, but someone significantly different. This is how you accelerate change exponentially. This is how you make quantum leaps (which I don’t generally recommend, but if you’ve read this far and understand this post, then you’re probably the kind of person that won’t let me stop you anyway…). I, for one, find that freaking awesome. But then, that’s just the version of Melody that I choose to be.