I never thought about him as a mentor, more of a protector and someone who was there in my time of need. I was 18 in this life and had to move to Germany again, a place I hated since I went to school there for a while and let's just say it was a replay of my life during WWII. I hated that place and felt threatened and then met this guy who became one of my closest friends, though that took a while. Like I said, I was 18, he was 23 and thus to me a very wise human being. He had a girlfriend and the one thing that pained me, was that I didn't belong to his group of friends, I *had* to be a part of it. I ended up in his home country some years later and he decided that I was his little sister. I'd always wanted an older brother and that pain of not having one, only went away when I met my friend and he adopted me as his little sister, something he told everyone.
He taught me everything that I needed to know when I was trying to make it on my own and then some. And he did feel like my brother, he did everything that an older brother should do. Most importantly of all, he was always there. I didn't realize it then but looking back on it now, he imparted life lessons that I couldn't have learned in college, even beyond the clichés. Through him, I learned to suss out different types of people and to deal with them. And as he also believed in reincarnation, it was possible for me to develop in that field as well, look into my past, knowing he would be there to catch me if need be.
Turns out we were brother and sister in a concentration camp, he was older back then as well and I'm sure he protected me or tried to because he died before me and I witnessed my entire family die before they got to me. When we met, even though I was a child when I died, he continued where we'd left off, he mentored me, gave me guidance and was basically there for me, imparting his wisdom and being there. We told everyone we were half brother and sister and even his childhood friends believed him when he said that we had only recently found out, such was the energy between us.
I have a sneaking suspicion that two people in my life have been designated as mentors / guides. Perhaps that's not extraordinary but they seem to be the ones that hurt me the most. Or rather, they come into my life via a song (it's always music for some reason), I meet them, the recall from the past is to intense it threatens to kill me and then, they disappear, leaving me hurt and unable to deal with it. This has happened twice and with two different people and I bounce back but it's an interesting pattern. A fortune teller told me that my mission in this life is forgiveness, which I achieved with the first person but not with the second, who reminds me of that life in the camp.