Connections.

I was going to keep on reading Children’s Past Lives by Carol Bowman last night, but I was a bit tired. So I looked around the nearby bookshelves in one of my new flat’s rooms, and a WWII encyclopedia caught my eye. It was a two volume book with a lot of pictures, so I decided to flick through. I instantly knew why it is something I avoided my entire childhood. Though I haven’t been especially “past life moody” in the last couple of weeks, I felt a strong emotion just seeing the complete outfit of a Wehrmacht soldier, just like the one my boyfriend wore in the 30’s. But the worst came when I saw a collection of military medals used to decorate soldiers and I felt pure rage. I am always surprised how past life emotions are always there, hidden, but ready to come out again if you only let them. Another thing that surprises me is I have always seemed to be more affected by Johann’s death than my own. Maybe this is because that is what killed me, not the bullets. 

Rage. No medals were awarded to him, but he died anyway, just one more of the many victims in a senseless war, like all wars. I still wonder where he is buried, whether his family knew or not, I wonder whether he is remembered by someone else than me. I always tell myself it doesn’t matter anymore. He died as Johann, but he is still alive. I died as Katrina, and she is still living inside of me. Death means nothing. And though this is good, perhaps it is the real problem: she still lives, so her pain is real. Maybe he is mourning too, somewhere. If he is incarnated, maybe he remembers too.  

When the letters were beginning to get blurred I went to bed. I don’t take this as a real memory, as I was half asleep, half awake, but dark images of my flat in Cologne, during the 60’s, appeared in my mind. I wondered about my thoughts about Nazi soldiers back then, when I was a young man in Germany and I also felt so angry about things happening in my country: the denial of our past, the attempts to make us forget about Nazism and the war we had lost. My grandfather getting old and being forgotten even with all the medals he did win (not sure if this was during WWI or WWII). He deserved so much better for being a war veteran. A word stood out so clearly in my head: shame. We were so ashamed of our past, but how could we be? I was smoking in the dark, as always. I saw the drugs again. I saw a paper in my hands. But what made me so anxious? I thought maybe I got to read news about the last Nazis who escaped and made it to other countries, I wondered what I used to think of them... I don’t know. But I do know there was already so much anger brewing inside of me, probably a consequence of my German soldier’s death (whom I might have felt as a coworker then, if I had remembered) and my suicide. What would have happened if we had survived the war? Johann would have ended up dead anyway, possibly in France too. And I don’t think my fate would have been much better, maybe I would have died in a bombing, or even raped, or sent as a prisoner for collaborating with Nazi soldiers. Instead, there I was, now one of them (the German people), but in an invaded city, where I had to be faithful to Americans, my pride trodden down over and over again, and an infinite darkness still in my heart.

And so we are connected in the great Circle of Life.

Then I was back in the present and the words “Life’s a circle, I recall” were in my mind. They are from one of my all time favourite rock bands, called Barclay James Harvest. A beautiful song that now seems to be clearly related to reincarnation. Or, at least, to the way things are: no matter the events, no matter how you feel, but you always have to carry on. And so, I find myself here, watching pictures in books and thinking “Life is so strange: I know all these people are reincarnated now and with some of them I have had so close connections... It seems I already had them in my latest life, who knows if I stared at their pictures the same way I stared at their avatars on the Internet a couple of years ago, feeling an unexplained attraction, still half aware of what it all really meant. The world keeps spinning on and on, and we have changed bodies, but nothing else changed”.

Awareness makes things a bit easier, but sometimes distance still feels insurmountable.

THE WORLD GOES ON

See the gambler make a stand

Holds a lifetime in his hand

Win the game or lose control

But the world goes on forever 

Life's a circle, I recall

Shadows played upon the wall

You pay the piper to call the tune

And the song goes on forever 

And when all the words have gone

There's the thought to carry on

Just like a bird that sings

Leave it all behind and spread your wings

You can leave it all behind - spread your wings 

Lay me down

Saw the road move on before me

Times when I was tired and lost my way

Looking at life and strangely for the first time

Thinking that I could stay here

But the world moves on forever

And when all the words have gone

There's the thought to carry on

Just like a bird that sings

Leave it all behind and spread your wings

You can leave it all behind - spread your wings 

At peace (2).

It is strange, once you have been remembering past lives for a few years, to observe how you deal with memories in a different way. Then you realize how wise your subconscious mind is, letting you see only snippets of those past lives until you are ready to see more. I wonder how I would have dealt with the details that were revealed to me in my latest regressions at the beginning, when there were already a deep longing and a deep depression caused by the death of people I loved. It is clear it is no good for your own mental health to be flooded with so many emotions. It took me a few months to understand my Norwegian sailor hadn't abandoned me, had never hurt me, he didn't even die before me. I missed him so much during that life, and it hurt so much to leave him behind. Now, losing all my Indian tribe was terribly painful. I have seen so much death in my regressions, I have remembered so many things, sometimes you think there can't be more waiting. But there always is. I was quite surprised when I remembered I had seen dead people in other lives: old relatives, compatriots fighting in a revolution, my German soldier, right before my eyes... I just can't begin to imagine how a little girl must have felt seeing all those corpses, the bloody remains of the slaughter, the pregnant woman killed in the teepee where the white men broke into, the body of her close friend. Well, that isn't true: I can. Enough pain has reached me, more than two hundred years later, for me to imagine. But probably not all. Even so, I felt the weight in my heart for two days, only when I regressed, not during daytime. In the second regression, where I remembered a bit more what happened to me the years following the massacre, I felt a lot of relief. I felt a lot lighter. I felt like I have finally reached the end of my journey, the final pieces of the puzzle fitting together, as I even realized this life is probably the reason why I have always felt like a stranger and never could fit in a group. Coincidence doesn't exist, I always say.

Feeling lighter doesn't mean I don't feel pain anymore. As I write and see in my mind the fresh memories, tears well in my eyes again. I don't believe in complete "healing", if that means you turn cold towards your own past and forget everything about it. That hasn't happened to me yet, in any of my past lives, and no, I don't think it is because I am still stuck in my past or I need a hypnotherapist doing something with my brain. I think human beings are emotional beings, and memories are always linked to emotions, you just can't get rid of them completely. I feel the Indian girl I was had a good life after all, though a bit short. The pain I carried in my inside throughout all that lifetime is just indescribable, but I accepted my fate. I would have preferred to part and go with my kin to those green lands, but maybe the gods decided I had to live, and I obeyed. People would stare curiously and sometimes mockingly at me, but I didn't care. White men have always been very ridiculous, and I still think so nowadays. Whatever happened, it is amazing how it is all part of me today, the good and the bad. And though I know the journey doesn't end here, I feel like a new sun is rising and I have hopes for the future.

I have always said being here is a real gift. I love being alive, as much as I probably love being dead. I have left so many questions, doubts, and so much suffering behind, I only can be so grateful of being here, of being the way I am, and of having met so many wonderful fellow travellers on the path.

Mourning (2).

It turns out I talk a lot about mourning in this blog, but I am not sure about the reason. It is true I was in a difficult situation in my current relationship when I started to write here, and it is also true I had a lot of mourning to do in regards to my Black Widow life. Both lives were merging into one, as I knew a great part of my behavior had an origin in the XIX century, when my husband cruelly mistreated me.

But now it is a different mourning, the real mourning that takes place after you lose a loved one. I was born missing someone, and recalling past lives and finding out death is not the end helped me understand space is an illusion. Distance is an illusion. No one goes “to the other side”, though the illusion is so strong you really feel a profound emptiness that breaks your heart. Now that I have finally overcome all those feelings and I can’t say I don’t miss anyone anymore... all right, only occasionally, it seems the Universe sends me the final test to see if I can graduate. The majority of my past life memories include loss in one way or the other. I don’t think this is uncommon, but in my case it is a repetitive pattern I don’t know how to interpret: 

• In XIX century I died and I left my sailor behind. In this life he was the main person to blame of this past life journey.
• In XX century my German soldier died (same soul than before) and I killed myself.
• Long before that, he was my father and he was caught and killed by invaders. My mother and I were enslaved. I suspect I killed myself or died violently.
• Not sure when, all my Native American family was slaughtered by white men and I was the only one left.

Mourning for a loved one and accepting their loss, is already hard. Mourning for an entire family, including old people and children, a whole tribe, the only people you knew and grew up with, is awaking new emotions I had never felt through my past life journey, and I can say it hasn’t been an easy journey.

I wonder why I am remembering this now. Is there a point? Do I need something else to heal? I thought it was over, I wasn’t even interested on finding out more about that little Native American girl I once saw in one of my flashes, ages ago, when I was a newbie and tried my first regressions. If I were a believer in karma, I would have to say I spent the rest of my lives killing and breaking up families to deserve so many separations from my loved ones. Or... maybe I could think I keep doing something wrong and I don’t learn, so the same events keep repeating again and again. What is there to learn from the loss of a loved one? Is there really a way to make it “right”? No, I don’t believe that. Last time I asked my spirit guide he said I already knew. And my theory, as I said in my last entry, is I am doing kind of a master course on losing people you love and mourning, with the only purpose of understanding and be able to help when I am ready. There are a number of reactions to that event. As in any other event, some of those reactions can be disastrous and lead you to your own death. I guess losing people and things is one of the main causes for pain in this world. Pain is on the root of many other feelings that can destroy your soul. It takes great courage and wisdom to live a life carrying the burden of that loss on your shoulders. Usually people don’t understand the toughness of these trials. I think we have still so much to learn from death and beyond. I am beginning to wonder if part of my fascination about death comes from the fact it is always an invaluable opportunity to grow stronger. It is a tough lesson, of course. Maybe that is the reason we must live through it so many times.

I haven’t seen yet the end of my Native American life. But while I was recalling the beginning of my mourning phase yesterday, after the initial shock, I was feeling like a seventy-year-old more than like a little kid. Another thing that surprises me is the absence of any kind of desire to avenge their deaths, as opposed to other past lives of mine. Maybe I was too innocent to feel like that, maybe I was so devastated there was only room for darkness in my heart, the darkness of my own sorrow. I wasn’t looking for answers, there were no whys. It happened, that is all. The sun goes up, the sun goes down. People live, people die. I believed they were somewhere faraway, but still alive. I was sad they had gone to a place where I couldn’t follow, just like Sam when he thinks he has lost Frodo (scene that always made me so emotional). Only, my kin were really dead, and they were not coming back.

In the zone.

Some people use this expression to describe that “state of mind” where you can easily access past life memories, like many children do when they are riding in a car, having a bath or getting ready to go to sleep. But adults can experience it too. It can happen when you are doing a task that requires a bit of mental concentration but not a lot of effort, like ironing for example, so that your mind can wander. Other times you just get triggered by something you saw or a slight emotion, and if it strikes hard, it can send you straight to past life mood. I would say this is a step further than being “in the zone”, as past life mood is also a deep emotional “state of mind” where past and present seem to merge into one. You feel as if you are living in two worlds (or more) at the same time, and you don’t know how long it will last. Sometimes it is really difficult to shake it off.

Last week the death of a Spanish soldier on duty bothered me a lot, but it stayed in the background as there were other things occupying my mind. But when last Friday I watched his funeral on the news, I found out his wife was pregnant and due to give birth, and while I saw her there, completely devastated, I felt like I was being stabbed in my heart. I felt the wound, the shift of energy in my whole body, like a bolt of lightning. I had just had lunch and I was getting ready to go out, but I couldn’t. Even before remembering past lives I always knew I was very sensitive to this kind of events. I knew it was strange as I had never had any relation with the military, but back then reincarnation was very far from my mind. Now, that I do know I was involved in the military, but in other lives, the intensity of the reaction still felt strange. “How many more?”, I thought. That is my question now, and that was my question then, when I was a British Navy officer, tired of fighting in wars and watching young men falling one after the other. I have stopped wondering if this means there are still past life emotions that need to be “healed”. I don’t think there is anything to be healed. The only thing that remains is the same soul that lived through war and the loss of so many fellow soldiers, the same disappointed captain who witnessed how powerful, well-dressed men, safe in their offices, gave orders and sent young, innocent people, to fight and die for them, never caring how many families would be broken or how many fatherless boys would have to grow up alone. Feeling sad and angry, I had to sit down on the floor of my bedroom for a while, with tears in my eyes, suddenly remembering my own death in a war ship, my last thoughts about my wife and child I was leaving behind. It is long since I suspect I haven’t remembered everything. From the historical data I have, I know I was quite aware my end could be a bitter end, my job was quite dangerous after all, and I had even written my will a few years before. But I am sure my death wasn’t as peaceful as it seems. It wasn’t just my family, there must have been a lot of bitterness towards my superiors and the way things went those last days of battle. My actions may have been labeled as heroic, but the truth is a lot of those men dying with me were my men. My dear men.

Wars keep happening, and stupid deaths too. I don’t know who is to blame, I don’t even know there has to be someone to blame. We are all human beings, and we are here to live as human beings. We are killed today. But tomorrow we will kill. And no, nothing guarantees we won’t. The thing is that funeral sparked a flame on me and I couldn’t shake off the past life mood in a few hours. I grabbed my bags (heavy with stuff for my new home) and while I was walking to catch the bus I was feeling like the young sailor filled with dreams I was over two centuries ago. I could almost see the wet, cobblestoned ground under my feet as I was heading for the harbor, to get aboard a ship, not knowing what kind of adventures were waiting for me or when I would be back home again. The lock of hair falling over my eye felt like my old blonde curls caressing my cheeks when I was a young English man longing to be at sea and feel the breeze on my skin. I almost could hear the sound of the wooden planks my shoes would make as soon as I walked up to the deck.

Then past life memories from my last life, during the Cold War in West Germany, came to my mind too, as I had been wondering about my strong feelings about the Wall and my family’s past for days. It is weird, overwhelming, but at the same time so incredible, and wonderful, to feel nothing is past, to feel you are still the same person, the same soul, but living in a different country and in different circumstances. Nothing is lost. Not me, nor the other souls you met. There is continuity in life, there is always hope. You write to people who live in the other side of the Atlantic, but you still feel them so close, so close in your heart. Even people you don’t know like that Spanish soldier who lost his life, his wife and baby in a foreign country, you also feel them in your heart, as they are all brothers and sisters.

Sometimes I wish I could be always “in the zone”. It makes me feel so alive, it makes me feel I am so much more than what I apparently am now, much more than the rest of people can see. And it reminds me: separateness is an illusion. If it is true I am doing kind of a course on attachment/detachment, that would be my conclusion in my final thesis.