Your Messenger message:

"Tony, may i ask you about a dream which had much impact on me? It was so 'alive' and it elicited from me what may be deep, unrecognised feelings for this person i know was a significant part of my past life.n

"Your posting it on your wall is alright with me. Here's my dream. It involves a 100% _______ man who was born and raised in the Philippines but who took his university studies abroad, including his Ph.D., with whom i exchanged letters daily for 10 years and who visited me and brought me gifts each time he came home to the Philippines. We would always talk of philosophy and music.

"One past life reader who knew nothing about him told me that he was my concubine in one of my past lives in China as an empress. I had a child by him whom i abandoned along with him.

" After he got married to someone at the end of our 10- year regular correspondence, we stopped communicating. I avoided him during socials and started to speak to him only last year.

"I have not been thinking of him at all. Neither am i intersted in having a boyfriend, so it surprised me to have enjoyed his advances in my dream. We were then in the building where he lived with his wife , but only in this dream.

"The good feeling from knowing he liked me enough to make me feel his longing made me happy. I awoke with the feeling of not caring if indeed it happened in real life but only for a few minutes. Then, back to reality.

"Why did i dream of him? Does he think of me until now? Even if we didnt have any romantic relationship, he made me feel special in many ways. It is possible that his having a family now could have caused in him a change of heart. But why did he appear so vividly in my dream?"

My reply:

Hello _______!

The karmic connection between you, so to speak, is still there--and will always be until both of you bring it to a good resolution. His wife was your child, whom you abandoned along with your male concubine, in your past life. Thus are the three of you brought together once again across time and space.

You dreamt of this man because he will always be a part of your life, at least in this lifetime. Your decision to live a life of solitude, contemplation, and enlightenment is noble, but you need to give closure to your past relationships; a "relationship", to me, does not imply any kind of sexual connotation.

In your present situation, one of the best possible acts is to include the man and his wife in your meditations, to give them the love you deprived them of, in your mind, and to pray that they, too, will seek and find spiritual bliss in their current lifetimes. I say that it is one of the best possible acts because it will not entail any confrontations or explanations about reincarnation and karma to people who may not understand or even believe in them.