How many lifetimes have you lived?

So I'm already three-fourths of the way through my next book called "Many Lives, Many Masters." Now, I've never been a believer in reincarnation -- my religion doesn't accept it and I've never really accepted it myself. However, both Mark and Drew encouraged me to read this book. It's a short non-fiction by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.

Weiss is a psychiatrist who is trying to treat Catherine, one of his patients who has a ton of fears, phobias and anxiety issues. Catherine fears water, death, darkness, being enclosed in a room/claustrophobia, constant nightmares, hours of insomnia, etc. First, Weiss tries normal therapy techniques that usually cure these types of fears. But unfortunately, Catherine still suffers and is not making any progress, and some of her symptoms begin to get worse.

Weiss knows he needs to try something else, something out of the box because conventional techniques aren't working. He then tries hypnosis. What he finds when Catherine is in a trance, is that she goes back to previous lifetimes that she's lived. In all, she's had 86 lifetimes. Even when she's in a trance, she goes to a different realm in-between lifetimes... kind of like Limbo. In each lifetime, she's a different person, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes a child. Each lifetime brings a different set of challenges. She takes away knowledge from each lifetime that will help her in future lifetimes. After Weiss goes through multiple hypnosis sessions with her, he finds that Catherine makes rapid progress and many of her fears disappear.

Catherine also finds that some of the people who are in her present lifetime have also been in previous lifetimes with her. But, like Catherine, these people have different names and characteristics in the past.

It's really very interesting. It almost makes me want to go into a hypnotic trance and see how many lifetimes I've supposedly lived, what I've learned, if some of the people I'm with have been with me in the past, etc.

Like I said, I've never really accepted the theory of reincarnation. But this book really makes you think. It's weird, unique and puts life in a different perspective. I still have another 30 pages or so to read, but I find this whole idea of living multiple lifetimes and taking different learnings from each lifetime intriguing.

I feel like if I accepted this theory, I would be more at ease with my fear of death. The cliché has always been "You only have one life to live." But if you believe in reincarnation, this isn't your only lifetime. You'll have another. You'll be able to live another life and have a "second chance," if you will. How nice would that be? You could have the chance to go through life again as a different individual, meeting different people and growing in a different way.

I find that these thoughts tend to dissipate and scatter. I'm still not entirely convinced, but when it's all said and done, the facts are all out there. They are hard to ignore.