I have memories of past lives.

At this point, I figure my readers are already polarized into different camps. There’s the “That’s cool. Tell us more,” camp; probably a handful of the “We’re with you, sister. We suffer/enjoy this mixed blessing too;” and last but not least the skeptical raised eyebrow, “Yeah, right,” group.

For that small group who shares the experience, you probably already know that it can be confusing and painful … like watching bits and snippets of random parts of a movie in full emotional Technicolor. Sometimes, you see enough to tie the pieces together and actually make some sense of what happened. Sometimes you don’t.

Please, let me prevent this from becoming a debate on the realities of past life memories. Frankly, I can’t swear that this isn’t just a highly visual and detailed means of my subconscious leading me to new wisdom. Past life memories … subconscious processing … whatever it is, it helps me see and understand what I could not grasp otherwise. My latest epiphany screams to be shared to, perhaps, help others on a tricky path.

It was 1930s Germany, and I was a male university student … Heidelberg University, I believe. My best friend (more like a brother, really) and I were “golden boys,” on the path to becoming part of Germany’s respected intelligencia. I watched as the Nazi party rose to power, myself recruited and, for a time tempted by their message of superiority and privilege. My best friend took the bait, and I have an intense memory of him standing handsome and proud in his SS black uniform.

My moment of truth came when I was forewarned that the Nazis were to arrest a beloved professor, a Jew. As a young and idealistic fool I tried to save him and bought my own ticket into a cattle car headed for a concentration camp. The clearest memory of all is of my death, the smell of damp wood and my own blood … a bullet in my back when I refused to be herded from the train platform to the camp. I walked away and died with the freshness of recent rain still surrounding me.

That’s background. The epiphany I must share involves what I watched in the good people of Germany during that process … from the buxom and smiling wife of the baker where I bought my favorite pastries to my fellow students and professors at the university. I saw their seduction and knew my own temptation to follow the herd down a misguided path. Once started … once a whole population became willing players in an evil process, there was no going back.

This is the piece that matters today. I see many good Americans … including some I know and love … following a “party line” that persuades good people to do bad things. People who believe themselves to be compassionate may carry signs and yell hateful things at frightened children along our southern borders. I believe these actions may, in part, be tied to past lives.

You see, when people of good conscience are seduced into doing horrible things, they hang on tenaciously to the lies and fallacies that justified those actions. My own mother, a good hearted woman, clung to the belief that black skin was the “mark of Cane.” How hard it must be for those who owned slaves to embrace the guilt of knowing how very wrong that was.

I don’t have the full answer yet, but my personal epiphany this week involved the importance of providing acceptance and healing rather than vilification of those good people seduced into evil practices. If someone follows a false path, they must be encouraged to open their eyes to the reality and embraced as they change direction.

Of course then there are those who intentionally create those false paths and weave the web of deception to seduce the good hearted but misguided. We tend to wait too long to name who they are and what they’re doing.

I guess if there were to be any call to action from this epiphany … it would be to name the monsters and embrace the minions. Those minions can change if they’re given a chance and not backed into a corner. Oh yeah, one more thing, perhaps greater than the rest. Never ever believe what someone says instead of listening to your own eyes and heart. That’s the slippery slope to minionhood.

That’s the lesson latest learned from memories from early Nazi Germany. Perhaps it’s because I knew and loved many led to the Nazi path through lies, manipulation and fear. If I could, I would offer them healing instead of punishment.