Book excerpt: The first book to approach reincarnation from the perspective of dreams • Identifies soul bloodlines, the key to past life therapies • Combines the author’s own experiences with case studies and dreamwork with empirical research • Reveals how the analyst and client are often karmically linked In Past Life Dreamwork, Sabine Lucas examines “soul bloodlines”--character traits, talents, and life issues that are the common elements and circumstances of successive past lives. Found threaded through our dreams, these bloodlines reveal the forces manifesting in this life, and, taken together, they shape individuality as well as destiny within the reincarnation cycle. Though a wealth of past life related material regularly surfaces in dreams, until now dreamwork has been largely ignored as a therapy for successfully integrating past life experiences. Using the results of 27 years of personal and professional work, Lucas explains that past life memories help us work out karma on the macro level and trauma on a micro level. She distinguishes three types of past life dreams--classic, informatory, and hybrid--and demonstrates how to distinguish these from other dreams. Her dramatic case studies illustrate the effectiveness of dream therapy in recognizing and integrating the resonant and recurrent circumstances and ethical dilemmas that are played out in the subconscious mind. These psychologically revealing stories bear witness to how individuals are made whole through the integration of common strands of forgotten or repressed past lives. Lucas shows that the integration of past lives enriches the conscious self and also promotes universal tolerance through an understanding of the patterns of our psychic soul inheritance.