Integration: France.

We have been talking a lot about this in my favourite place online, while in real life I was hectic attending family reunions, trying to write something serious in any of my books, assembling bathroom furniture and sometimes… feeling connected to my last days in France.

It is hard to say you have completely integrated a past life, especially when you have been a short time dealing with past life memories. Three years is not too much, and I have the peculiarity I remember many more lives than the average in reincarnation forums. I don’t know if that is good or bad, I wouldn’t change it for anything, but sometimes I do wonder how I manage not to get crazy with so many past life memories interfering with my current life.

France (royalist life, 18th century) is not a new life, but it is not as old as others. Only a few weeks ago I started to publicly share detailed memories of this life, though I was shy with part of them, and I have the feeling there is still a lot that need to be integrated. I have been too distracted with real life to meditate, now maybe it is three weeks since the last time, but I can feel some emotions brewing in my inside. One clear sign of this is going to watch The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and feeling so identified with Bard, among other things for being called “the town defender”, and wanting to avoid a war. I also felt jealous to see him encouraging his son to fight, and of course, I got emotional thinking my end was quite worse than theirs. Then, only this morning I heard of the shootings in France, and though I try not to put too much attention to the news, finally my partner made me see how the killers finished a man off when he was dying on the floor… which obviously brought me some similar memories.

And though undoubtedly death doesn’t mean the same to reincarnationists than to other people, that doesn’t make us insensitive to this kind of events… quite the contrary, at least in my case. And every time I turn on my laptop and contemplate the painting of one of those massacres in La Vendeé (the same I posted in this entry), it feels quite familiar and I wonder how I could have ended up involved in that. I wonder how it felt to be shot to death, watching women and children falling, dying around me, and the military men showing no mercy for all of us who gathered and tried to defend our rights. I know… of course I know. Through remembering I have been able to make those memories conscious, but only partially. I have some emotions stored in my brain, but I feel there are more still hidden. They have tried to come out, but I was too busy or maybe I unconsciously put a barrier between them and me, as I can’t deny my eyes fill with tears if I think too much about those final terrible minutes.

My son is also a sensitive part, he has always been, since the first short story I wrote inspired by Chris de Burgh and this past life of mine. I hardly remember a son or daughter I could raise until adulthood in all my past lives, and I am even wondering if there is a reason for that. I don’t think so, but it makes me sad anyway. It hurts not knowing about his fate, whether he made it or not, what he would think of his father’s decisions, what would have happened if only we had resolved to act a different way. I have also been wondering a lot lately about priorities: all human beings have to make choices according to what is important for them, and we all have our own scale. Is it your own family more important than anything else? Or must we fight for the collective well-being? I said I consider myself an individualist, and I am quite sure about that. But, on the other hand, analyzing my past lives as a whole, I see I am always up to die for a cause that at least theoretically it is good for the group of people I belong and I am loyal to, and I don’t mind to stay in the shadow. Maybe it is not I am an individualist, but rather an idealist who always ends up as a loner because I am the last one to give up. A fool, in a word. A fool who always want to get to the end of things, no matter what is lost on the way.

It is like one of the favourite quotes of one of my dearest friends (from the movie Big Fish):

“There's a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost... the ship has sailed and only a fool would continue. Truth is... I've always been a fool”.

If I was a fool, there were a few of us in that square, dreaming we could change the world and make it a better place to live. Yes, I think I keep being a fool. Death changed nothing after all.

EASTERN WIND

Well my furrows are filled with corn,
I have my woman to keep me warm,
But there's one thing that I do fear,
That eastern wind is getting near;

There's a shotgun beside my bed,
This is my country, where I was born and bred,
But I am sure, as the willow will grow,
That eastern wind is going to blow,

Blowing a hole in my life, eastern wind,
Running away with my life, eastern wind;

There's a woman who reads the stars,
She sees warlords on the planet Mars,
And she said, "Boy, you'd better beware,
That restless wind is getting near,

Blowing a hole in your life, eastern wind,
Running away with your life, eastern wind..."

They are coming, they are coming, they are coming, look out!

In my dream, I saw a crowd,
They were burning the palace down,
I saw a mad old man, and I ran to the door,
And then that wind began to roar,

And when they come, they'll find me here,
I will not run, they will not see my fear,
And I will fight to the very end,
Before that wind I will never bend,

If they're blowing a hole in my life, eastern wind,
Oh running away with my life, eastern wind,
Taking the plough from my hands, eastern wind,
Taking every bit of my land, eastern wind...