It's always interesting to relive one of my "walks to death", especially when it's the first time for this past life... but wow, since then (a day ago more or less) I seem lost in memories and emotions. It wasn't fun. Not at all.
And though I'm trying to behave like a grown-up woman and accept what I did to reach such end, I can't resist to try and deny everything (like that old episode of The X Files).
No wonder denying is one of the stages of mourning, according to Dr. Kübler-Ross. No wonder that must have been my attitude in the last year of that life, while I stayed in prison claiming I was an innocent woman, hoping they would be as blind as they were the last time...
Among the lawyers, I remember a young man who believed in me. I also remember an older one who always had that look in his eyes, the one that said "You're an evil monster and you're going to burn in Hell". The first time I could talk about mistreatment, even when I wouldn't be believed. Husbands are always more reliable than hysterical women. But now that young woman was also dead, I would deny any relation with her, I went into hiding and anyway I managed to kill all the innocence that was left in her along the way. So my only excuse to behave like I did was also gone. It sounds a bit ironic while I write.
I can't stop wondering when exactly I became that monster... if I ever was, of course. I'll also deny that. I'll deny everything. I'll deny I ever killed someone just out of scorn, or only because someone told me he was like my first husband. I'm not sure about the reasons, anyway. But I'll deny all those reasons just because I'll always deny I ever killed someone. Let them prove it if they can. Surely the poison got there by accident.
I know I destroyed myself. But right now I don't want to say that. I prefer to say he destroyed me. My guide reminds me the truth, but I tell him "fuck off" (no worries, we get along overall). He's not the one who got unjustly hanged. For now I'll deny that was a fair trial. And I'll keep denying what I did was wrong.
I described it like a hole in my soul. Someone else said it was soul-killing, and I liked that word. Certain past life experiences leave such deep wounds on your being that you almost feel a part of your soul is missing. And though you try to get it back with all your might, it seems impossible.
It feels great when you are given new pieces of the puzzle to keep building the picture of a past life. It feels like recovering something that was long lost, something that maybe you willingly left behind, ready to start a new chapter, but now you want it back, with all the emotions, all the people you loved, the good and bad things. However, in many cases, you realize there is something you can’t recover, it got destroyed along the way, because some experiences change you and you are no longer the same. It’s like wanting to recover the innocence of childhood.
Yesterday night I meditated. Painful prison scenes turned up. This morning, in a state between wake and sleep, I got plenty of emotions and scenes of one of my hangings, from the moment they took me out of the cell until the very end. Right now I’m still between the past and the present, those images still hanging around in the back of my mind. So much fear and rage, so much shame, so much injustice. I didn’t want to die, I didn’t deserve to die, at least no more than those men. But no one seems to care about what they did. They think I’m a monster. But certainly, I’m not the only monstrous thing to walk on Earth.
Suddenly I realized how different I was then, compared to the way I was only a few years before, when I could hold my baby girl for the first time and caress her tiny fingers with mine. That was after the nightmare of my first marriage, but still there was some love in me. I thought “He destroyed me”. I think I heard my guide whisper: “Not exactly”. I know, though it’s hard to admit. There’s a dark period of time still too blurred, when more awful things must have happened, when I completely lost it. I destroyed myself. It seems I do it quite often in my past lives. Maybe once you’ve got that hole in your soul it’s all a matter of going with the flow. They wronged you, now let’s wrong the world. You started the soul-killing, let’s finish off what you started. Who cares? It’s easier to find excuses and wallow in misery than fight. Maybe I should have taken my baby and run, run faraway, where no one would follow. Abandoning her (even in my sister’s arms) really broke my heart. Another hole in my soul that keeps bleeding, but this time self-inflicted.
And people were so blind.
They only saw a monster, where there was a mistreated woman, beaten and humiliated. A woman who almost killed herself in a bathtub. A mother without a father for her baby, a baby that grew up alone. A woman who had no place in the world anymore. But the time for me to speak was over, as I killed that young, innocent and dreamy lady as well. Now I was just a vengeful woman who knew of other women like her, and thought some crimes shouldn’t go unpunished.
Sometimes strange things happen. Strange regressions too. I have been feeling the presence of my guide lately (same soul than Johann). How do I feel him? Well, the same way I feel someone who was very close to me in past lives and now dwells faraway is thinking about me or lost in her daily routine, with her mind focused in other matters. When my guide is around usually my past life regressions are harder, and also more meaningful, as if he gives me some clarity of ideas or tries to answer my questions through images, preventing my mind from wandering too much.
When I started to meditate yesterday night, the first thing I saw was a patch of dark wooden floor near a staircase, highly detailed. At first I didn’t know who or where I was... then I realized I was back in the house of Norway, the place where I died in my life as a sailor’s wife in the second half of 18th century. Then Jan turned up, as I was anticipating. Jan was also Johann. He was a Norwegian sailor I met in Cardiff (Wales), my home. I don’t know why, but his features as Jan have always been much, much clearer than Johann’s, at least it was so at the beginning, probably because the amount of time I spent with Jan was much longer. I immediately started to cry... these are tears of joy and it’s been so since I first saw him, I just can’t help it, I’ve missed him so much through my entire life that just seeing him so “solid” and “real” makes me emotional. But I tried to hold them back, as I know Jan always says “Don’t cry, enjoy”. I looked around the bedroom, the bed in the corner, near the window, I had the idea we had a place to keep a lot of firewood, as here winters are very long and dark. I asked if we were to sleep together in that narrow bed... he answered we’d do when we had our own house (that moment never arrived as I died before), but I remembered a rocking chair where he used to sit down and hold me in his arms, just as we did in Cardiff.
Then I was downstairs with all his family, mainly sisters and their husbands, and some nieces. One of them was the same age than our daughter Eli would have been if she hadn't died back in Cardiff, and I’m always so sad she’s not with us. I had a sudden flash I’m sitting at this long wooden table, sewing a thick brown fabric, I think I’m helping the women with a quilt or maybe a tablecloth. They don’t speak my language and it’s a bit hard to communicate with them, so I’m always glad when Jan comes back home, he’s like a ray of sunshine coming through the window, I love him so much, he approaches and puts a hand on my shoulder, and I touch him. In the regression I almost can feel it.
One day he took me to sail. Not in a big ship, just a boat to have some fun. He has the oars and rows while I sit frightened and insecure in front of him, it seems in this life I didn’t like the sea too much... then he starts to move so that the boat starts to swing and I have to grasp the edges of the boat and finally he starts laughing out loud, and at the end he infects me too. This is one of his personality traits, he was always joking, he was always happy, he had this incredible energy that irradiated all around. I ask him why and he answers: “Why, I was with the woman I loved, I had a job I enjoyed... I had everything”. His eyes always remind me of this Marillion song that says:
Forgive me if I stare
But I can see the island behind your tired, troubled eyes
It’s pure love what is there in his eyes, in his soul. I tell him “You are always the light, and I’m always the darkness”. He says that isn’t true, he’s been darkness too, and he reminds me of the life where he was my father and killed me out of grief.
Suddenly the environment changed and I was outside, the sky was clear blue and there was a pale light in the air. I heard an explosion and the sound of airplanes flying above, and people shouting and running, stones falling, buildings destroyed, panic, chaos... I was Katrina now, and though I have doubts (I always have doubts), May came strongly to my mind. France, of course. I tried to find shelter, and then find my way to the headquarters. I don’t know how I made it, as suddenly another flash came to me: the distinct image of a porcelain dish with a golden edge, there’s some kind of stew in it, and it’s on a white clothed table. I feel I’m back in Prague, having lunch with my mother, my boss and his mum. Everything started to get blurred, I only know the feeling wasn’t good, they were arguing about something and I just stared down at my plate, feeling so out of place. A thought came to me: absence of love. But still, I didn’t understand why those images were being shown to me. What does all this mean, guide? Silence.
Well, I had been talking with someone else about love and hate, light and darkness, good and bad... the eternal opposites we all encounter through our mortal lives. I wondered if the love I was feeling in my heart these last couple of days had triggered me to one of the past lives where I had so much love coming from my soulmate, not always we have to be triggered to feel bad, similar present emotions always bring similar past emotions. But then I was caught in the contrast of my WWII life, where the absence of love was prominent since the day I was born (my first memories of this life are from the womb, somehow I knew my mum was very young and couldn’t take care of me, and she only gave birth because she had no other option). Maybe, as I was saying in that conversation, everything we live happens with a single purpose: to make us realize the power of love. As another Marillion song says, “You only miss it when it’s gone”. Only when you are blind you start to really appreciate the marvel of your eyes. Only in the deepest of darkness you yearn for light. Only when you’re imprisoned you know what freedom means.
Only when you live in a world without love you realize why we have to work for peace and love.
I hate to be triggered when I am with my partner. But sometimes it happens. And I don’t know the reason but I feel as if it’s getting easier and easier for me to be triggered or to have spontaneous flashes.
It’s hard to describe these past life memories. They come unexpectedly: I had spent all the afternoon in quite a light-hearted mood and I suddenly felt the weight of all those past life emotions in my heart. I also feel kind of an energy shift, my body feels different and when I think of myself I no longer think of the person I am now, but the person I was back then. No matter if my eyes are open or closed, the image I have in my mind is no longer the place I am now, but the room I was when something broke in my soul. Images are usually blurred, they feel like a scene in a TV screen that starts to flicker and you can’t see it with all the definition, though sometimes it’s impressive how they become so real and fixed, as if you could take a photograph of a moment in time.
Emotions are a different thing altogether. Emotions are not blurred, they are not an echo, not a distant memory of childhood that makes you smile. They come from the past, but they are not past. They are fresh, raw, tough, and have no mercy, they tear you apart like a dozen stabs from the hand of an enemy who caught you unawares in the dark.
It’s not so much what he did, but how what he did made me feel. I highly suspect reincarnation is all about feelings, and how you react to them, how you control them and how you use them. When you are dead you don’t feel much. But our physical lives are made of feelings. We call them good or bad, positive or negative, but the truth is feelings are just feelings, and we all can choose to make something good or something bad out of them.
For me, WWII is mostly fear. Also, helplessness. Being alone. And mistaking weakness for strength. We all are so wrong.
When we hear the word “strong” we imagine a big man with tree trunk biceps lifting a stone of three hundred kilograms.
When we hear the word “weak” we imagine a little girl crying in a corner.
When we hear the word “brave” we imagine Rambo saving the world with a machine gun.
When we hear the word “coward” we imagine someone who didn't want to fight, pointing the gun to his head and pulling the trigger.
The truth is exactly the opposite. People like to think you are weak because that makes them feel they are stronger. They will kill you and they will think they are powerful. But they are only showing their weakness.
My soul may be broken and bleeding, but at least I know this time... the blood is mine. Only mine.
Today it’s morning when I write, but it feels like a dark and cold night anyway. I meditated last night and unexpected emotions began to surface. Well, I was perfectly aware November is a tough month, but it had been alright so far. However, as soon as I started to concentrate, I felt my heart sinking, I felt the sadness coming out of nowhere... nowhere in my present life. Soon I started to see the church I used to visit in France, an impressive church, could have been a cathedral. The environment is grey, gloomy, cold. I am standing in front of a white statue, I don’t see it clearly but it looks like a Virgin holding a baby Jesus in her arms. I know I’m not wearing my medal with the Virgin anymore, I’m looking at her wondering why she didn’t answer my prayers, wondering how many more candles I should have lighted up for her to listen to me, wondering why my grandmother taught me to put my faith in someone who wouldn’t do anything for me, for Johann.
I feel so empty. I got some glimpses of a funeral (new memories here). I’m getting ready for it, I’m putting on my brown nurse uniform, including a tie. I still have a plaster on my neck, where the IV for the sedation was, I don’t know if I remove it or if I leave it there, half-covered by my shirt collar. I know when I last saw his corpse, I asked for them to let me see him one last time after I woke up, and they did. Now I know there is only a poor coffin and it looks like I’m not up to show my grief anymore, or maybe it’s only I have no strength left, not even to cry. So I feel rigid, tense, serious as another statue. I’m not sure where the funeral takes place, but I wouldn’t say it’s in the church, it looks more like an improvised military ceremony somewhere in our headquarters.
I’ve always doubted what came first, the sexual abuse or Johann’s death. Now I think I know. First came the sexual abuse. My intention was to tell him. He was the only person I could trust after all. But when we talked on the phone my words always got stuck in my throat and I could only say I was doing fine. What else could I say? He was doing his duty, in the border, in the front or wherever, he had something to fight for (not like me), so how could I be the one to worry him? And of course I was also terrified I could be overheard. And I didn’t want to get him into trouble either. So I wrote some letters to him, hidden in a corner when there was no one around, not with the intention of sending them out (what if someone opens and reads them?), but to show them to him when we were together again. I was a bit afraid of what his reaction would be, and least of all I hoped he could do something about it, no more than holding me and comfort me. That would have been enough. Only, that moment never arrived.
So, I gathered up the little strength I had left and told the doctor, though it seems this was more an impulse to explain my problems at work than wanting to accuse a superior of anything. Whatever the case, it was a big, big mistake. I don’t blame him for not helping me. I blame myself for being so, so foolish, believing he could or would risk his life doing it. Then the officer found out, and he threatened me in a way I prefer not to describe.
At this point these words from a Marillion song always come to me: “You’d starve before you’d let him get his hands on you again”.
I think that was the main reason I decided to kill myself.
I have noticed that I tend to be quite intolerant when it comes down to talk about things I have seen with my own eyes in previous lives. I mean... especially when my interlocutor is someone who doesn’t remember past lives and therefore they don’t know how past life memories feel, how real and present past life emotions are, how talking about them hurts more than anyone can say. You think they will understand better if you choose a real example of your own past life memories, and then you expose yourself, showing the world how evil you were in the past, or how much you went through. Long ago I learned it isn’t worth doing it... at least not if they don’t have memories of their own. They seem to think it’s all an invention, maybe they think you are mistaken or a liar, but the funniest thing is they will believe much easier someone who claims to have done a thousand regressions to his patients and he is sure karma is a universal law. Of course, it sounds more “spiritual” to say you have learned your lessons than saying you were a murderer and you don’t understand yet why you had to die for your crimes. And hey, my life is not perfect but it’s not bad, I’ve had a lot of fun!
So, you thought maybe it would do good to them, but at the end you gain nothing, so you come to the conclusion it’s better not to talk. Let them talk, let them chatter, let them be blind to the truth, let them tell everyone you’re a really close-minded person... Let them think reincarnation is just a game.
Well, the day after a second argument about karma, this time in Spanish and in my own forum (proving there’s not much of a difference really between continents, here we’re talking of human behavior), I had some new memories coming to me. I guess this is because karma deals with justice, and I know that justice is an important topic for me, though I don’t have a lot of details. I do know I once was an Arabian judge and I studied a lot about Laws, but I can’t say much more. The other life where I was closely related to justice was as a praetorian guard somewhere in the Roman Empire. It’s still quite dark too, but coincidence or not, I got clearer memories after that argument. Maybe is that the reason I’m so opposed to any “universal” system of punishment and reward? Because I do know it’s anything but just, and I also know good and evil are only human concepts, so the idea of a “Universe” stalking you to make you pay or bring you beautiful presents depending on how good or bad you are, is plainly absurd. But go on and tell people just that... I feel that most of them are not ready to hear anything like this, so I’d better keep quiet and only whisper in this discrete blog, or I might get hanged... again.
I was an executor of the Law. And probably this is also the reason why I loved so much Eddard Stark's attitude in the book Song of Ice and Fire. Men making laws should be also the ones executing the sentence. I was not so lucky to do both. In my case the rules were written on a parchment and my only duty was to make sure people got what they supposedly deserved, that is: to receive a number of whips, to lose their tongues, fingers, hands or any other part of their bodies the Law determined, according to the size of their crimes, to be sent to a work camp, to be publicly humiliated, or, in the best of cases —some would say it would be the worst, from my perspective it was the best— to die. I’ll spare you the different methods of execution.
I was taught to do it from a very young age. But due to my position at the time, in these memories I only had to make sure others did a good job. That didn’t mean I could choose not to be there and witness how these men and women (and children) were punished. A punishment I often considered disproportionate, but my position was not high enough to disobey orders or tell anyone the Law was unjust and should be changed. After all, I had my own house and family to provide for.
People love to trivialize about everything, and that includes justice. Somehow I’ve always known that being a judge is one of the most complicated professions in the world... well, maybe only if you want to be a good judge and be fair. A wrong decision can make you a murderer... alright, call it homicide if you prefer, but you are killing someone anyway for whatever reason, which too often is not too clear. I also know this because I’ve been unfairly judged (obviously this is a biased opinion) in at least a couple of occasions. Justice is like trying to stand on a tight rope, it is a delicate balance too easy to break, and when you do you irremediably fall into the abyss, becoming a criminal just like those you sent to the gallows time and time again, just because a paper said so. Only, people rarely see this. They assume a judge is honest and fair just because he is wearing a black robe and a white wig. People assume all kind of things, and they get angry if you say they’re blind.
So, yes. Tell me again someone who died in the Holocaust is because they did something wrong in the past and they deserve it or they need to learn a lesson. Tell me about how the Universe plans this kind of things so that we all get what we deserve. Tell me who decides what you deserve saying that. I was a judge and I don’t know, that’s for sure. Probably not a tongue being cut off. But surely you deserve something like this:
