I can’t stop thinking about a news story that’s been circulating about the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday celebrations. But it’s not the festivities that have captured my attention as much as a detail buried in the coverage that made me sit up and remember. 

You probably know the story. When the current Dalai Lama was just two years old, a senior monk visited his family’s home. The child correctly identified objects that had belonged to his predecessor, the previous Dalai Lama, who had died and was believed to have reincarnated into this small boy.

Two years old. Before he could tie his shoes or speak in full sentences. this child recognized items from what Tibetan Buddhism considers his previous lifetime.

Now, some of you might be thinking. “That’s a beautiful spiritual tradition, but what does it have to do with me?”

Everything, actually.

When meeting someone feels like remembering them

After all these years of guiding people through past-life regressions, I witnessed this kind of recognition countless times. Not the formal ceremony of identifying a reincarnated spiritual leader, but the quiet, undeniable moments when souls recognize each other across the veil of supposed forgetting.

Like the client who met her husband and immediately felt like she was “coming home to someone I’d been searching for my whole life.” I remember the mother who looked into her newborn’s eyes and had the distinct sense that an old soul was looking back at her. And the woman who walked into a cathedral in Prague and burst into tears for reasons she couldn’t explain until we uncovered the lifetime she’d spent as a monk in that very place.

It’s that moment when something in you goes, “I know you. I’ve always known you,” even though your rational mind insists it’s impossible.

What your grief might be trying to tell you

Here’s why I’m sharing this with you today. So many people come to me carrying grief that feels bigger than the current loss. Ancient. Cosmic. Like they’re mourning something that goes deeper than this lifetime.

Like the woman devastated by her father’s death, who discovered they’d been spiritual teacher and student across multiple lifetimes, and suddenly her overwhelming sense of loss made sense. It wasn’t just losing a parent; it was losing a soul companion who’d guided her for centuries.

And then there was the client whose grief over his best friend’s sudden death contained an inexplicable quality of abandonment, until we found the lifetime where that same soul had been his brother who died young, leaving him to face the world alone.

I’m also remembering the mother whose child’s illness created a terror that seemed to come from somewhere beyond her current experience, because in another lifetime, she’d lost this same soul to a plague and spent years blaming herself. 

Sometimes grief is big because love is bigger than one lifetime. (I could write a book about this!)

The objects we recognize

But it’s not just people we recognize across lifetimes. It’s places, things, even situations that trigger something in us that feels like remembering rather than learning.

I remember the client who collected vintage fountain pens compulsively until we discovered the lifetime she’d spent as a scribe, copying manuscripts by hand. Or the woman who felt inexplicably at peace in hospitals until we found her incarnation as a healer in ancient Egypt.

For you, maybe it’s the antique jewelry that calls to you from across a shop. The cottage that feels like home the moment you see it. The skill that comes unnaturally easy. Or the fear that seems to have no origin in your current life.

Your soul is constantly recognizing what your mind has forgotten.

When meeting feels like reunion

To me, though, the most startling recognitions happen between people in that instant connection with someone that feels more like resuming a conversation than starting one. Sometimes it’s an inexplicable trust. Or the sense that you’ve been waiting for each other.

I remember working with a woman who described meeting her best friend: “We talked for eight hours straight the first time we met. It wasn’t getting to know each other. More like we were catching up.”

During her regressions, I remember she saw lifetime after lifetime where they’d been sisters, colleagues, companions. Different bodies, different circumstances, but the same souls finding each other again and again.

No wonder she felt like she’d been incomplete before she met her. She had been.

The grief of soul separation

This is why some losses hit us so differently than others. Why certain deaths feel like the universe itself is tearing apart. And why some grief contains not just sadness but a bone-deep recognition of separation that feels existential.

You’re not just grieving the person as they were in this lifetime. You’re grieving the soul connection that likely spans centuries, and the recognition that this particular form of your relationship has ended, even if the soul bond continues.

It’s the difference between losing someone you love and losing someone your soul has loved across dimensions of time.

What recognition changes

When you recognize the eternal nature of your deepest connections, grief transforms. I’m not saying it becomes easier. But in some ways, it becomes more because it gains context. Meaning. It actually becomes a container big enough to hold the magnitude of what you’re feeling.

You start to understand that your overwhelming love for someone might be based on more than the years you’ve shared in this lifetime. That your inexplicable bond with a child, a friend, a partner might have roots that go deeper than your current memory can reach.

That means that the two-year-old Dalai Lama didn’t just randomly point to objects in a room. His soul recognized what it had known before. And somewhere in you, your soul recognizes the people, places, and experiences that have shaped you across lifetimes, too.

The questions worth asking

So, if you’re curious, think about who in your life feels like recognition rather than introduction? What places make you feel like you’re returning rather than visiting? What losses have felt bigger than what you could explain?

Want more questions to prompt your memories?

What if that grief that feels too big IS too big, for just this lifetime? What if your soul has been trying to tell you something your mind hasn’t been ready to hear?

Trust what you know before you know it

If you think about it, that Tibetan child trusted his recognition over logic. He pointed to objects that his two-year-old mind had no reason to identify. But his soul knew.

Your soul knows, too. It recognizes what it has loved before, what it has learned before, and what it has lost before. And when you honour that recognition, you find peace with grief that otherwise feels impossible to bear.

Because it finally makes sense.

P.S. If reading this stirred a sense of recognition, a question about your own soul’s path, or a need to understand grief or love that feels ancient, that’s exactly the kind of exploration I’m all about. In my experience, understanding the eternal nature of our connections is what finally allows us to heal.