Past Lives and Emotional Recognition: My Experience During a Medicine Buddha Puja with a Tibetan Geshe

Can past lives influence the emotions we experience in this lifetime?

In this first episode of The Infinite Life Podcast, host Katische Haberfield introduces the central theme of the show — understanding our present lives through the lens of past incarnations.

During a difficult period in her life while navigating the end of her marriage, Katische attended a Tibetan Buddhist retreat seeking clarity and emotional grounding. While participating in a Medicine Buddha puja led by a Tibetan Buddhist Geshe, she experienced an intense and unexpected emotional reaction that would later lead her to consider how past life connections may influence our present emotional experiences.

This personal story became one of the foundational moments that led Katische to explore past lives more deeply and ultimately to create The Infinite Life Podcast.

In this episode:

• What past lives and reincarnation mean within spiritual traditions
• How emotional responses can sometimes signal deeper karmic connections
• Katische’s experience during a Medicine Buddha puja at a Tibetan Buddhist institute
• Why a Tibetan Buddhist Geshe plays an important role in the story
• How family history, trauma, and possible past life experiences can influence emotional patterns
• Why understanding past lives may help people make sense of their current life journey

This episode is for listeners interested in past lives, reincarnation, karmic connections, spiritual awakening, and understanding how emotional experiences may be connected to previous incarnations.

Season 1 of The Infinite Life Podcast explores the fundamental question: what if life does not end when the body dies?

Through direct insights, real past life memory sessions, and conversations with guests who have experienced expanded states of consciousness, this season introduces a new framework for understanding existence, identity, and the continuation of the soul.

Across these episodes, you’ll begin to see how past lives, emotional patterns, and consciousness itself are all interconnected—and why remembering this changes how you live now.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to the Infinite Life Podcast. I'm your host, Katish Haberfield. I am an intuitive sound healer and an incarnation guide. This podcast is for you if you wish to make sense of your life by understanding your past, present, and future incarnations. For we are all spiritual beings in a human body who have never died, just change costumes from life to life in order to have experiences that help our soul grow and expand. My hope is that this podcast helps you weave together strands from all lifetimes so that you can make peace with your journey and understand that you are a perfect expression of your soul in this moment in this incarnation. Welcome to episode one. Today we're going to be talking about past lives. And what I wanted to specifically talk about today is the fact that past lives are really helpful for understanding who we are, why we are, and help us make peace with the way our lives have turned out so far. In each episode of our podcast, we're going to be learning a little bit about past lives, present lives and future lives, and we'll be listening to a past life story from one of our podcast listeners. They'll let us know how they learned about one of their past lives and what insight it gave them and how it helped them in their lives. I'll also be sharing some intimate details from my past life reveals and letting you know about some of the things that might be of interest to you when trying to get your head around what it is to be a human being who incarnates time after time. So grab yourself a cupper and let's get into episode one. Now I'm not sure about you, but I've always been aware about the concept of past lives. For as far back as I can remember, I've been comfortable with talking about death. And I've also been interested in reading about near death experiences, reincarnation. It hasn't seemed too weird or strange, murky, or against any of my religious beliefs to delve into the concepts of have we lived before? Who have I been? And where am I going to in the next life? So in each episode, I'd like to teach you a little bit about past lives, present lives and future lives, and give you where applicable an insight into my journey, and bring you some people through interviews who would also like to share their stories as well. The whole purpose of this is to help normalize discussions about reincarnation. And so we'd like to encourage all discussions, irrespective of religious and cultural backgrounds, all opinions are unique according to our experiences and are valid. So with that, I would like to share a story today of my first past life reveal. So this is a story about the first time that I realized that my current life was being influenced emotionally by a past life. So I'm going to tell you a little story and I hope you enjoy it. Beside me stands a Tibetan Buddhist nun in her saffron robes. Being early autumn, she's wearing saffron coloured socks with her house slippers to keep her feet warm. She's laughing and smiling and she holds a pair of clippers. Do you want to keep any of your hair as a souvenir? No, thank you. I say I do not. I think to myself that keeping my hair would be the ultimate sign of attachment. The clippers buzz into action and my hair falls on my lap and onto the floor. The volunteer on the cleaning shift comes in and sweeps it up and puts it into a big green plastic bin. I'm not clean shaven or bald, probably a blade three all around, but it's a huge difference from the bob that I sported a few minutes ago. It feels good. It feels significant, and I feel like it's acknowledging the change that I want in my life. But how did I get here? To this moment in time. Let me take you back a few moments. It started with a search for happiness in the pages of a book, or more specifically, a shitload of books. I believe anyone who turns up at the checkout with a book on happiness needs to be given a hug. A book on happiness is like grabbing a polishing rag and an old teapot in the hope of shining a genie. Wishing for happiness won't help one help one bit until you scratch beneath the surface and figure out what's wrong. I was searching for a way to answer the question why am I so unhappy? What is wrong with my marriage and why can't I fix it? If you think that sounds like a line from Eat Pre Love, well then you're right. I found myself curling up in bed watching Eat Pre Love one night wondering if someone had tapped my thoughts and turned them into a movie. However, unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, I have two children, and I can't go searching for answers by leaving the country. The answers to my questions need to be found in my own backyard, which is what has strangely brought me to a Tibetan Buddhist institute. It can be only said that finding the source of my problem and the answers to my questions are not accompanied by inner peace. I am filled with anger and sadness and an overwhelming mixture of anxiety, grief and guilt. I need somewhere to run to, a place to be silent, to weep, and to explode, to process the entire inferno that is raging within. I don't want it to be in the arms of another lover or to be in the depths of a bottle. And so I run towards the Buddha. On a weekend where my FIFO husband is home to look after the kids, I book myself in for a stay at the local Buddhist institute. Reaching the top of the stairway, I enter the reception room, which doubles as a Dharma shop. It is filled with the most beautiful objects prayer flags, Buddhist beads, statues, jewelry, clothing, and a selection of music and literature. The rep receptionist asks me the purpose of my stay. This confuses me. Is it a personal retreat, dear? Or will you be attending the course? I wonder what she means by retreat. Oh, I haven't thought about it. I guess I may as well do the course. What's it about? Everyday kindness in relationships, she replies. I'm not blind to the irony in that. My room contains a single bed and a bedside table with a lamp. There is a communal unisex shower and a toilet block at the end of the building. There's nothing exciting to keep me in my room. So I decide to venture to the garden of enlightenment before it gets dark. Before me is a red building, at the base of which is a verandah containing a number of Buddhist prayer wheels. Above it on the roof are eight stupas, each referring to a specific event in the Buddha's life. I know from my travels in Nepal that you're supposed to spin the prayer wheels. So I do. I follow the prayer wheels and go around the side of the building, and I find a small concrete staircase which leads to the top roof. Turning the bend, I am faced with a sight that takes my breath away. The sun is behind a beautiful stupa, and the prayer flags are fluttering in the wind. I walk up to take a closer look. The largest stupa is in the center, and the others are connected to it by a row of lighter colored prayer flags. Each stupa sits on a terracotta base and is white, decorated with gold leaf and brightly colored images. Some contain spaces for the ashes of the deceased, marked by a memorial plaque. Below are eerily quiet shrine rooms containing large mandala and a countless number of small stupas made in memory of a deceased one or a pet. An incense stick burning in an offering jar is the only sign that someone else has been here today. In the morning, a loud chorus from the resident cookaboros wakes me before dawn. After breakfast I head to the Gompa, and there are fourteen steps that lead down a steep incline to a rectangular building containing a large upstairs room, surrounded by wide verandahs and underneath the toilets and a dormitory. Prayer flags flutter, and either side of the entry door are wooden shoe racks starting to fill up with shoes. The room itself is empty except for coloured meditation cushions, a large statue of the Buddha, and a colourful green and red altar at the front. Taking my shoes off, I follow the lead of others and sit on a cushion on the floor. An attractive, slender woman with a fringed ice grey bob comes into the room and waits to be introduced. Renata is a lay teacher, meaning that she's not an ordained, and therefore she's not a nun. She is introduced to us by a nervous course volunteer who hasn't done this before. She's looking after the administrative aspects of the course that I'm doing. And then she reads out Renata's credentials. Renata is a psychotherapist by trade and a student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who is one of the founders of the Buddhist institute that I'm at. The Lama had unexpectedly honored her by asking her to teach at a time when her knowledge of Buddhism was still forming, and she had taught ever since. She's an unapologetic widow and divorcee, brutally honest, and able to look at the topics of the course with an analytical mind from both a psychotherapist and a Buddhist perspective. She's very clear what hat she has on at any one time when discussing things and lets us know when a clinical training contradicts her Buddhist perspective. She's frank and to the point, and it's just what I need. What we're going to cover is very informal, but it covers a lot of topics which are very important for me at that time anger, forgiveness, compassion, karma, happiness, attachment, emptiness, and mind poisons. I really do find her insights into relationships refreshing. She seems to be innately wise about relationships haven't been married twice. One relationship ever ended in divorce and the other with death. She describes relationships as a dance where you try to dance and step with each other, but you may not always dance together. Sometimes you can be accommodating of change, and other times you simply have to acknowledge the impermanence of relationships. Now the concept of impermanence in relationships is new to me. Naturally when you are young and dating, impermanence is clear and easy to understand. Despite our best wishes, we all know deep down that we'll have a number of relationships from our teenage years to adult. Sometimes the relationships last a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. However, we've all been brought up to expect that one day we will find the one. At that time we'll get married and be faithful and the relationship will become permanent. In Western society we expect relationships to be permanent and take the till death do us part of our marriage vows very seriously. We feel that we have failed if our marriages end in divorce, despite the fact that fifty percent of them do. What I like about Renata is that she challenges us to stop being so romantic and philosophical about our relationships. She tells us wisdom in relationships is not philosophical wisdom, it's about the knowledge of where relationships lie. We are reminded that the very nature of relationships changes over the course of time, and the karmic intensity for a relationship may fade over time. This may bring us great sadness and suffering, however, we need to learn to deal with change. The point about karmic intensity of a relationship. This interests me. She explains that it's she was suffering terrible guilt after leaving her husband, and spoke about it with the Lama. She felt almost embarrassed to admit that the relationship had failed. It didn't bother him though. He quite frankly told her not to worry, and that the karmic intensity of the relationship had ended. The reason that they were brought together had now been achieved and they had learnt the specific life lesson, and now the karmic attachment between the two of them was dissolving. Apparently it's as simple as that. There's no need for guilt or blame in the Buddhist perspective. It just is. All we have to do is to accept it. Renata implores for us to relax in our relationships and be light. To laugh, laugh, laugh. Embrace the messiness of our relationships and try and use humor. She asks us to consider using private jokes for unresolved issues where you see topics going around and around that always seem to be unresolvable and end at the same point. That's easier said than done, I think. She does remind us that conflict in relationships cannot be defeated by hatred. A point I struggle at that time to understand. When you're in a bad spot in a relationship, you tend to become critical of each other. And each time you criticize each other, it ignites a burning hatred inside of you. And it seems to sit and bubble until life provides you with an opportunity for it to reach the surface and explode. Well that's my experience anyway. Walking back from my room to the cafe in the evening, the anger does explode inside me. It explodes as a pain in my leg as I am walking, and I have to grab a tree to hold me, to steady myself so that I don't fall over. My old friend Sayatka has returned. This would be the start of learning about how emotions can become physical illness in the body, and that we need to learn to pay attention to emotions as they arise so they don't manifest as pain and other things when we stuff them down inside ourselves. After the course I go back to home, and in the depths of my despair I have a dream. In the dream I call out for the help from Buddha Shakamani. An image of the Buddha appears in my mind's eye, and I wake sobbing, knowing that he will help me find my way. A few weeks later I head back to the institute for the five day Easter course, the seven point mind training. I have no idea what that means, but I'm up for it. This time I stay at my own house and commute each day to the center. There are over a hundred people at this one. It's completely different in format from the previous course that I did with Renata. This is a much more formal course. It's delivered in Tibetan by the Geshi and then translated. All the nuns and monks sit in front of us at low red wooden tables which contain shelves for the sacred books, which cannot be disrespected by being placed upon the floor. The first time the Geshi walked into the room, I burst into tears. Upon seeing him there is one thought in my mind for which I have no explanation. Oh mother, I am suffering. What? Where did that come from? I quietly pull the nun aside at lunchtime and ask her what that's all about. It seems that every single time the Geshi walks into the room after a break, I'm going to burst into tears. And I don't understand why. I've never met him before. What's the reason that I've suddenly become emotional around him? The nun kindly explains to me that although this reaction is uncommon, it's not unheard of. It happens only to people who have a very strong past life karmic connection with each other. There are a couple of familiar faces from the last course who are also doing this one with me. And one of the volunteers in the Big Love Cafe recognizes me and strikes up a conversation. He's one of those people that are just so friendly and enjoyable to be around. He seems to know a lot more about this Buddhist gig than me and acts a little bit like an interpretive teacher. We swap war stories over chai and become friends. Each evening after dinner, there is a non compulsory meditation on offer. I usually go home and I haven't been attending them, because they're usually one or two hours after the course is finished for the day. During the day though, we do receive the news that Lama Zoppa Rinpoche has manifested the signs of a stroke. I know that all the nuns and Renata from the last course will be very distressed, as most of them have just come back from Bendigo where the Lama was actually holding a retreat. I feel very sad for all of them. They will be very distressed. But the nuns they know what to do. They set about organizing a medicine Buddha puja for the evening. And this will replace the normal meditation session. I've got absolutely no idea what this entails, and to be honest, I'm not really interested in attending. However, as I walk down the stairs to go home by the car park, something compels me to walk in the opposite direction to my car and attend the pooch. As I walk into the room where the pooch is being held, it's already filled with all the resident nuns and monks and the Geshis there and the other course participants. A small square table covered in a purple tablecloth has been set up in the front of the altar. Apparently, the Lama has a great sense of humour, and the nuns want this medicine Buddha puja to have a playful offering at the altar. There are there is a row of eight very large chocolate hearts, which seem to be standing up, because behind them is a row of eight tea light candles in small votives. Behind them is a row of eight Easter Bilby chocolates, and then another row of tea light candles, and then behind that row eight votives filled with sand, and two sticks of incense in each. Behind that yet another row containing votives filled with floating flowers. And above this is the piste de resistance, eight cuddles. New children, just toys in pink, purple, and white. The nuns seem very pleased with themselves. So, what is the medicine Buddha puja? Well, according to the Institute, the four tantras, the fundamental cause of every disease, is to be found in the three delusions of ignorance, attachment, and aversion. Buddhas such as Shakamuni and the seven medicine Buddhas are referred to as great physicians because they have the compassion, wisdom, and skillful means to diagnose and treat the rude delusions underlying all mental and physical malaise. The seven medicine buddhas work to pacify the obstacles to the achievement of temporary happiness, liberation, and the ultimate happiness of full enlightenment. The medicine Buddha practice can also be used to help those who've already died and liberate them from suffering. It's very powerful to be used to bring about success in daily life and spiritual practice. And it's useful when somebody has manifested the signs of a particular illness. So the medicine Buddha Puja is done in English, although we chant mantras, and it's meant to take around 60 minutes. At my seat I have a booklet like everybody else, which outlines the words that we must chant. It's complex and I'm totally lost and over my head.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

So I just do what I'm told and I follow everyone else in chanting the words Namo Indra Indra My eyes well with tears not again.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

And then something quite incomprehensible happens. I begin to cry uncontrollably for the next hour as the nuns and monks perform the medicine puja. Now if you've ever tried to stop from crying and making a noise in the middle of public ceremony, you'll understand how hard this is. If I was just crying it would be alright. But I also had an amazing pain in my chest. I had no idea how I was going to get through it. I knew I could not leave the room even if I wanted to. Physically, actually, it would be impossible because I was having such difficulty concentrating on just getting by. The moment is all consuming and it's overwhelming and sad and painful, and I just wanted somebody to help and somebody to stop the pain. I am aware that everyone in the room is aware of my suffering. When the chanting stops, I am relieved, and I am able to quietly whimper until the suffering subsides, and I am like a drunk who is awakened and aware that they have a hangover, but have no idea where the drink came from. I am exhausted. One of the nuns who have previously discussed this whole crying business with comes over to me and softly and compassionately tells me to go home and have a bath and to sleep. Things will be better in the morning. In the morning I feel a bit idiotic, and as though I need to explain myself and perhaps apologise. Amusingly, when I arrive, the nuns hand out badges and proclaim that it is a day of silence. No one other than the teachers are allowed to talk. On the last afternoon of the course, I sit listening to Geshi when I notice how much my hair is annoying me. It keeps flicking in my eyes. I wanted to tie it up in a headscarf earlier to keep it out of my eyes. But when I walked into the room, I was reminded that it's an offence to cover your head in a Buddhist temple, so I have to remove the headscarf. My hair's not that long, it's just a short blob, but the sides are bothering me. On the way up to the hill to lunch to the cafe, I pass one of the nuns. I smile and make a joke about the fact that she's lucky not to have any hair. She quickly seizes the opportunity. Well, I would be happy to shave it off for you. I cannot believe she's serious. But she is. And so we become full story. Full circle. And this is how I find myself at the end of the afternoon in the bathrooms with venerable Pema and a set of clippers. And that, my friends, is the story of the first head shave of this lifetime and the realization of the past life connection with the Tibetan Buddhist Geshi. I'd love to say that I connected deeply with the Geshi, that we formed a deep relationship on the basis that we realized the past life connection. But it would be a lie, because it did not happen that way. I was not ready for it at the time, and although the nuns urged me to come back and study intently under him, I never made it. Life and the children and my separation and ultimate divorce got in my way. And ultimately, the Geshi moved back home to Tibet. There is nothing lost from the experience, however. It was complete in itself. It would bring me back to the throes of Buddhism for quite a few years until I would move towards spirituality. Over ten years I would describe myself as Buddhist on the official census. Often our past life realizations are here to help us through a particular period in time and to make linkages that will make s much more sense later on. They may even be eventually the logic and reason that Buddhism loves to run the filter of life through, but help us explain why we are the way we are. For me, it helped in hindsight to understand why I ran to Buddhism in my time of crisis. I was born to a family that were Christian. However, since then I have discovered at least two lives that I know of as a Buddhist monk. And so what I have discovered is that our subconscious mind brings to us that which will comfort us in our time of need. Did the Geshi lose out by being deprived of meeting a past life daughter? No, his life is complete as it is in this incarnation. There was no need for his awareness. But perhaps he was aware. And his presence was the only thing that I actually needed. Perhaps his presence was important in helping me release grief from my heart like a mother would comfort a daughter. Look, for me, the mere fact that a Tibetan Buddhist monk Geshi was doing a period of time as a resident Geshi at a Buddhist institute in Australia in a little town on the Sunshine Coast, 30 minutes drive from where I was living at exactly the time that I was going through a complete and utter crisis. That is living proof enough for me. There are no coincidences, after all. Sometimes we've absorbed these fears subconsciously as they've been passed down through our genetics, through our family. You see, what our forebearers, our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, unresolve emotionally passes down onto their children. So anything that you take don't take the time and effort to resolve emotionally in your life will be passed on genetically through to your children. So beliefs and trauma are almost always handed down because the experiences which are stress-inducing and traumatic change us and change our genetic expression at a DNA level. Often this is made worse by the fact that a memorized trauma response is something that is not talked about. For example, we don't talk about rape in families. We've been traditionally taught to keep it hushed. If somebody experiences violence, they might not wish to talk about it with anybody else other than their therapist, and the rest of the family knows not to bring it up. Or perhaps a family member dies in traumatic circumstances, then the fear of the way that that person died may, for example, be passed along genetically. Say, for example, somebody drowns in a river. We might hear people say something like, We prefer swimming in the safety of a public pool without even realizing why they grew up preferring swimming in the safety of a public pool. Because nobody's ever talked about the story of the drowning, but it's just a given. I think there's also that story, the famous story about cooking the ham in a cooking pan in the oven and chopping off the end and realizing that it's had nothing to do with a specific recipe, but the fact that a great-grandmother didn't have a pan that was big enough to fit the whole ham in. So it's really important to be in touch with the stories of your family. The sharing of stories is something that we are losing the art of. We are more connected to our friends on social media than our own families these days. When we connect with our gene pool, we can begin to distinguish what emotions are our own from our current life experiences, which emotions and irrational fears come through our families, and which ones are the ones that have got nothing to do with anything that ever happened in our families. These ones are most likely to be related to an incarnation experience. And so when I talk about irrational fears, I find that the majority of them tend to be past life related. Speaking about irrational fears, it's time to hear from our podcast listener Ruby and her irrational fear of house fires.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Hi, I'm Ruby from the UK. I was in meditation once, it was quite a deep meditation, and um I realised that in the meditation I was a young boy that was a chimney sweep, and there was this fat man that had this gold coin in his hand, and he pointed out the window. I looked out the window, and there was what I knew to be my mother holding my baby sister, and it was snowing, it was really cold. The fat man was really angry, and he was making me go up the chimney and offering me this gold coin, and I didn't want to go up the chimney, I was really scared, but I did anyway. I climbed up the chimney, and when I got halfway up, the fat man lit the chimney underneath me, and I could feel the flames burning at my feet. Um, and it's very interesting because since I've been a small child, I've been really petrified of fire, especially house fire, and there seemed to be no reason for it. I've never been involved in a fire, I've never there's never been a house fire in any of the houses that I've lived. Um, but it was almost like an irrational fear that it was gonna happen or that it's happened to me. So after this meditation and this revelation about um being a chimney sweep, it felt like that this is where it all came from.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Thanks, Ruby, for your story. I appreciate you sharing that with us. Maybe somebody out there also has an issue with fires that this might spark some insight and inspiration for you. Ruby actually she told me via the voice messaging system, because I can chat back with you, that she actually started to use journaling to help her process this insight. And now it's not a problem for her anymore. She's not afraid of fires. She loves having them inside her house and outside a house. The only thing is, she does admit to double checking the cooktop in the kitchen before she leaves the house just to make sure that there's not a fire while she's out. Thanks again, Ruby. My mind did boggle when I realized that connection many, many years ago. The Buddhists think that because we've all had infinite previous lives, we've all been each other's relatives. Therefore, all of you, in the Buddhist view, in some previous life, have been my mother, for which I do apologize for the trouble I caused you. And that my friends is the end of this episode. I look forward to spending more time with you next week. For further information about how you can use sound journeys to access other incarnations, you can visit my website at katish.com where you can read my blogs and also subscribe to my newsletter Incarnation Insights. To send me a story about one of your incarnation insights, head to the voice recording facility at katish.com forward slash the infinite life podcast. Until next time, take care of the