Will You Wait for Me in Heaven? How to Know if Your Loved One Will Reincarnate Before You Arrive
Ever worry that your deceased loved one will move on to another lifetime and won’t be there to greet you when you return home? If so, this article is for you.
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Many people worry that their deceased spouse, child, or parent might reincarnate before they, themselves, die. Said another way, when we learn about past lives, what often follows is a concern that our deceased loved one will move on to another lifetime and, therefore, not be there when we die; that is, they won’t be there to greet us when we arrive home in the spirit world. This article addresses this concern.
This common cause for worry is rooted in a mainstream misunderstanding between two words: soul and spirit. What you’re about to read will bring clarity to this confusion.
Most people tend to use the words “soul” and “spirit” interchangeably. Even dictionaries offer the word soul as a synonym for the word spirit. Yet, these terms are as different as father and son. Additionally, understanding the distinction between these two words is like finding a missing puzzle piece that clouded your understanding of life after death. Suddenly, certain mysteries of the afterlife become clearer and easier to decipher.
While there are few original thoughts within the framework of afterlife research, this eye-opening distinction may be my most useful contribution to originality. When I first introduced this explanation in my 2014 book, Answers About the Afterlife, several authors and experts in the field applauded the discovery. I had already appreciated how this explanation cleared the fog for myself, but it was a bonus to learn that others found it invaluable as well. I’m now adding to my book’s explanation in order to expand your understanding of this subject even further.
I mention this to add emphasis to what you’re about to read because it would be difficult to understand some of my articles here on Bob Olson Connect without an initial understanding of my definitions for the words soul and spirit. Based on the evidence I’ve seen, this is how I perceive the relationship between these two distinct concepts.
You don’t have to fully accept my definitions at this point, and you can interchange your own words for soul and spirit, but this will absolutely help you to make sense of afterlife teachings that may otherwise appear confusing by using these words synonymously.
Soul Versus Spirit
The soul is our whole self (higher self), the eternal and spiritual aspect of who we are. Since I’ve seen evidence that we experience many human lives, the soul is what is experiencing all those lifetimes. So if my soul has had a lifetime as Bob, another lifetime as George, and another lifetime as Sarah, then Bob, George, and Sarah all come from the same soul.
I like to explain the soul and spirit relationship by using the analogy of the ocean and its waves. First, there is the ocean, and from that ocean come the waves. The ocean is the soul, and the waves are the spirits. In the case of Bob, George, and Sarah, their spirits are like waves and their soul is like the ocean.
Just as the ocean wishes to experience the shore, the soul wishes to experience a physical life. To fulfill these desires, the ocean creates a wave and the soul creates a spirit. The wave rushes upon the shore to experience the beach. The spirit enters a human body to experience a physical life. Following these experiences, the wave rushes back to rejoin the ocean the same way the spirit rejoins the soul after death.
Characteristics of the Soul and Spirit
Each spirit has its own individual characteristics (what we refer to as personality), but each will also have some common characteristics of its soul. Because of this, another soul will always be able to recognize a spirit’s soul identity because of those signature characteristics.
In other words, my wife’s soul will always be able to recognize my soul regardless of what life it is experiencing. Said another way, if we could watch videos of Bob, George, and Sarah, we would be able to recognize similarities among them, which would be these signature characteristics of their soul. We might recognize their soul in their eyes, their voice, or their mannerisms, but we’d recognize it for sure.
I’ve had several past-life regressions where I could recognize people in that past life who are also in my life today. These people didn’t look the same in the past life. Sometimes they were even a different gender. But there was something about them that allowed me to recognize that the person from my past life is the same person I know from my current life. This is because these people share the same soul, which has certain identifiable characteristics.
Taking this a step further, spirits also have identifiable characteristics. As I mentioned earlier, we often refer to these as one’s personality. For example, when I die, my spirit as Bob will leave my physical body and return home to the spirit world. In essence, my spirit will rejoin my soul and remain an eternal aspect of my soul. Yet, the Bob you know will not be gobbled up by my soul and disappear. It will forever become an aspect of my soul that continues to exist. In the same way that my human personality as a teenager is always present within me as an adult, my spirit as Bob will always be present in my soul.
To keep this new comparison going, Bob as a young boy, Bob as a teenager, Bob as a young adult, Bob as a middle-aged adult, and—if I live that long—Bob as an older adult, are all different human aspects of my life as Bob, just as the spirit of Bob, the spirit of George, and the spirit of Sarah are all different aspects of my soul.
You’ve probably heard people talk about their inner child. Well, there’s also an inner teenager, inner young adult, and inner middle-aged adult as well. These are parts of me that never disappear even though I age and my appearance and personality change a little.
The equivalent to any of these inner aspects of my life as Bob would be my soul’s inner Bob, inner George, or inner Sarah. While the spirits of Bob, George, and Sarah returned to the spirit world, thereby rejoining their soul (whole self), their individual essences always remain as part of that soul.
Taking Our Soul Connection to the Next Level
Saying that we “rejoin” our souls is more symbolic than literal. I’ve used this word for analogy, so it now requires clarification. It’s important that we not mistakenly think that the spirit and soul are ever separate, just as the ocean and the wave are never separate. They may feel to us as separate while experiencing a human lifetime; but even as we live and breathe, we are always connected to our souls.
With a bird’s-eye view, we’re able to observe that the wave never really disconnects from the ocean, but the wave might not have this awareness while it’s experiencing the sandy shore. Like the wave, we may feel as though we’re living separately from our souls, as if we are here and the soul is somewhere else. That’s an unfortunate fallacy built into the human condition, yet it can be overcome with meditation, remote viewing, working with our intuition, and even having experiences such as past-life regressions.
The Most Important Takeaway
When my soul chooses to experience a new life—let’s say, as Julie—it will create a new spirit from itself. And that spirit will inhabit a physical human body that will be Julie. Therefore, when we discuss reincarnation in future articles, this article about soul versus spirit will help you understand that it’s not really Bob who is reincarnating; it’s Bob’s soul, who is creating a new spirit (a new aspect of itself) that will be known as Julie.
Because Julie shares the same soul as Bob, George, and Sarah, if she ever experiences a past-life regression, she might have memories of one of those lifetimes. But to describe it more accurately, it’s her soul’s lifetimes that Julie is experiencing in the past-life regression. Since she is the wave to her ocean, just as Bob, George, and Sarah are waves to the same ocean (same soul), Julie can recall her soul’s lifetimes as Bob, George, and Sarah.
Most important to understand is that the wave doesn’t reincarnate as another wave. The ocean creates a new wave, which is connected both to the ocean and all the other waves that came before it.
This is important for one profound reason. As mentioned, many people worry that their loved one might reincarnate before they, themselves, die and return to the afterlife. This soul versus spirit distinction helps you understand that your loved one’s spirit isn’t actually who is reincarnating—it’s your loved one’s soul that has created a new spirit to experience another lifetime.
Consequently, no matter how long you live, your loved one will always be there in the spirit world to greet you when you die. If you’ve ever reunited with a friend after twenty or thirty years, you recognize that the person you once knew is still there, even if the overall package looks different. So often I have heard people say, “It was as if we had seen one another yesterday. We simply picked up where we left off all those years prior. It was truly amazing.”
In Summary
There once was an ocean (soul) that sought to experience the shore. To do so, it reached out as a gentle wave (spirit), touching the sand, viewing the sunset, and flowing over the shells and seaweed until it retreated into itself (soul), forever savoring the memory of that transcendent experience. The journey was such a profound adventure, the ocean (soul) created new waves (spirits) to do it again and again. Every wave (spirit) had its own personality. Some were swift, others thunderous, and many gentle and silent. Each time a wave (spirit) returned, the former waves (spirits) celebrated and supported it’s journey. And the ocean (soul) expanded its knowing of the shore with every new experience.
Thank you for reading my article. I’d love to hear your comments.
With mad wicked love,
Bob
Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His newest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books. Click here to subscribe.
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The audio for this article is in the podcast area.
Bob, thank you for this clarification. I had some idea about it, but you cleared it up so much! My elder son, Jim, my first-born of four children, made his transition last October. I had a Zoom session with a medium in March of this year to make contact with him. She was right-on with almost everything. When she said that Jim said his father, Tom, who transitioned in 2010, has already reincarnated and he didn't get to see his father when he arrived in the afterlife, I felt that she was missing something. Perhaps he was telling her about another aspect of Tom who has incarnated and she wasn't able to get the entire message???
Beautiful explanation.