Past life vows can impact dramatically on your life. Maybe you took a vow of chastity, poverty or perhaps promised to love someone else for eternity. Here I share a personal experience of releasing vows.

Recently I have been doing some deep inner work. A friend channelled that I had to dissolve vows from lifetimes I’d spent as a nun. In those lives I made pledges of Chastity, Poverty, Silence, Obedience and Penitence. I realise now that the vows I took in those lives have been operating in the background of this life, self-sabotaging my goals. They’ve made me feel uncomfortable in the areas where I’ve broken them and have held me back.

The method I used for the first lifetime was a shamanic journey. I dowsed that this would be appropriate. Waiting for my usual power animals to lead me I was surprised by the arrival of a beautiful white dove. When I followed it I arrived in a monastery garden and heard the word Carmelite. I saw myself as the nun, dressed much like modern nuns, feeding doves from her hands at the dovecote. She showed me her simple cell, which was clean, but bare and the plain food she ate. She felt like a lovely lady and was very serene. When I explained that her vows were still binding on me in this lifetime four white doves lifted the words from her shoulders and took them away on ethereal banners into the heavens.

Working on releasing these vows has brought me unexpected gifts. Going into my life as a Carmelite nun I saw she lived a life of deep inner peace and contentment with no distractions from her communion with God. That was a beautiful, simple life and I can feel the peace wrapping around me by linking back into it. I expect my experience of meditation, prayer and contemplation will deepen by linking into her serene energy, however as a mother, therapist and spiritual teacher her vows of Silence, Chastity, Poverty and Obedience no longer serve me and had to be released.

In my journey to a second nun’s life I found myself as an Abbess. It seemed to be a Medieval life. I was sitting writing with fine white fingers. Looking down I had a beautiful azure blue habit with a white head covering. This time things were more hazy and scenes came in glimpses. I could see she was used to the choicest cuts of meat and lived a life of riches. She wore a lovely gold ring on her finger.

Next I saw very briefly that she’d committed a carnal sin, with a man. From there she cast herself down as the lowest of the low. I saw she could have left the Abbey, but instead she became a penitent and lived on the floor of the kitchen, scrubbing and doing the most menial jobs. I saw her eat scraps and stale crusts from the floor. Her knees were raw and she was filthy, wearing sackcloth and ashes. This time I couldn’t persuade her to release all her vows. She felt deeply ashamed of herself. In her mind Chastity and Obedience had already gone, she’d broken them by sinning, but she was punishing herself through Penitence and Poverty.

I came out of this journey and asked for support from my partner. I knew that even with my experience I wasn’t going to be able to release these vows by myself. We set up a variation on the tie cutting work I do, which is based on Phyllis Krystal’s methods in Cutting the Ties That Bind: Growing Up and Moving on. We used three golden circles of light which just touched each other. I stood in the centre of one, she stood in the centre of another and in the third we placed a heavy wooden casket. One by one we looked for items that symbolised the vows and when we found them we threw them into the casket together. Heavy iron chains went in to symbolise penitence, they linked us together. I cut them into short lengths and in they went.

For poverty she held out the stale crusts and I found I held a plate heaped with food- maybe I’ve been eating larger than necessary portions this time round to compensate! She threw her crusts in and I then passed her half of my food. It was interesting to see it included meat, despite the fact that I’ve been a vegetarian for 25 years!

Her filthy, rough, sackcloth garb had to go and then the box was closed and locked. I asked angels to come and take the chest away, letting them know I don’t ever want to see the contents again. I saw them fly it into the heart of the Sun. My penitent Abbess was gently bathed and dressed back in her fine clothes. Jesus came in to reassure her that she was forgiven as she still felt undeserving and didn‘t want to accept her former comforts. That done we hugged each other and I found I was sobbing with relief. The vows and shame were released.

Whenever you shift something that has been in your energy field for a long time there can be a residue left in your auric field. Think of it as putting a stick in the bottom of a pool to hook out debris. The silt stirred up muddies the water for a while. My healer friend warned me I would need cleansing and gave me a specific routine. I could see and sense a grey smog around me on the mornings after these two healings, I looked and felt awful! My partner scrubbed down my whole body with a mixture of Epsom salts and sea salt and finished with a rinse of sage water- it did sting a bit! This cleanse was very effective. I felt better straight away and was visibly radiant, so much so it drew comments!

At time of writing the original article I had one more nun’s life to look at. My guidance was that I was given the easiest ones first. In preparation I am used the Australian Bush Flower Essences Woman Essence, a wonderful combination essence which includes Billy Goat Plum, alleviating feelings of shame in the body. This life turned out to be far and away the most shocking and difficult for me to deal with. You can read about it in Light behind the Angels.

How do you know if you’ve got some past life vows to release? Ask! Sit quietly and contemplate. Listen for an intuitive answer, or ask for a message through your dreams. Perhaps just reading this article has struck a chord deep within? If so it may be time to look deeper.

Ask that you are shown only those lives that you can safely handle yourself. If you sense heavy duty lives please find a healer who is experienced in past life work rather than attempt this alone.