Remember Your Past Life as a Rock?

It always bothers me when people start thinking about their past lives with an assumption that they were human. Yes, we have probably had human past lives, but the number of lives we’ve had as humans must surely be dwarfed by our nonhuman lives — the many many incarnations we’ve had as insects, worms, trees, rocks, dirt.

Don’t you, when you walk through a forest, experience a feeling of nostalgia? Don’t you find that memories of having been a tree, of having been moss, of having been a rock lying in the path, come rushing in at you?

Spending time in the mountains, don’t you remember having been a mountain? Holding a rock, don’t you remember having been a rock?

Here is my theory: that trees and rocks and dirt are far more highly realized that we are. That they have taken the long view. That we experience peace in nature in part because we are surrounded by beings who have made a place holy by being in an extended period of meditation for longer than we can even imagine living. These beings create their own cathedral, out of deep compassion, and it calls to something deep in us, something that recognizes a kindred spirit.

When we meditate as humans, can’t we then benefit immensely from visualizing our own past lives as trees and rocks? As beings that take the long view?