Toward Ecosophy

1) In my experience, the way this happens is that regular practice of discursive meditation primes the mind to begin recalling past lives, but the recollections don't surface during the meditations -- just as with other memories, some casual encounter stirs a recollection, and up comes the memory. My first past life memory happened long ago when I worked in a nursing home and had the job of taking a patient out onto the porch so he could smoke his daily pipe. I've never smoked and I loathe tobacco, but as I was sitting there making sure he didn't set himself on fire, I suddenly remembered exactly what it felt like to draw the smoke into the mouth and hold it there, without letting it go any further down. I already knew that the thing to do with such a glimpse is to sit with it and let details surface if they want to, and over the next hour or so that unfolded into a fairly clear set of memories of an old and rather fat man in a residential hotel in New York City right after the First World War.

2) You needn't practice that exercise any further as you already have the skills it teaches.