Pitch black.

No, I am not gone, just busy with other projects. As I am getting used to speak of my darkest side and deepest thoughts everywhere, the bitter and long night watches are becoming less frequent. In the future I will probably save this place for musings (well, it was intended right for that), ramblings, wandering thoughts and ideas, everything that goes through my mind before I can finally put it into fine words... But I love it too much to leave it abandoned.

The other day I was reading Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5, and tears came to my eyes when I read the descriptions of what is like to be aboard a ship and travel long days and nights. Since I went to the Naval Museum of Madrid around two weeks ago, my past life as James has become very present. I have always said that my life in the Royal Navy is one that I would live over and over again. It had its downsides, but it makes me so proud to know how much I learned, how much I fought, how much I enjoyed each and every moment. No wonder I feel so nostalgic when I think about it. All our past personalities are part of who we are today, one way or the other, but probably James is the strongest one, even when it might not seem so. I want more memories, that is for sure, there are so many blanks to fill yet, pieces that I can’t seem to reach, both good and bad. I had a new one the other day and I treasure them like jewels. But, as we reincarnationists know, even the best of memories is just a brief glimpse of the past, blurred and distant, like echoes that whisper in the dark (this reminds me of another past life song I have to post one day).

I entitled this entry “Pitch Black” because I have always loved that English expression. These days it is hard to see a real “pitch black” something. Undoubtedly the only time I could see nothing, that is to say, NOTHING AT ALL, with my eyes opened, of course, was when I visited a cave and at the bottom of it we were told to turn our helmet lights off, only for five minutes. It was impressive. Disturbing. Scary. Even maddening, after a while. Or so they said, because I loved it all the same, and though in these cases people start to talk or make japes, I would have stayed there much longer. Maybe I would have started to see better than ever before, even meditating.

Other “pitch black” place I have known is the beach at night, if there is no moon and you are far enough off the town. But usually you have a light or two at the sea, maybe a ship passing, a beacon... It is also a bit scary, but you are near the land, quite safe, so it is not the same as sleeping in a boat or a ship.

When I was small and my family got up at 4:30 a.m. in the morning to drive to the coast, I would stare at the dark sky and felt so, so happy being a witness of such beauty, of such immensity up there... In moments like this I have always been so grateful of being alive. And now, knowing all I know of my past lives, I wonder if I felt just the same when I was James and breathed the salt air every night, as we were crossing the Atlantic Ocean, after a hard day’s work. I wonder what I thought then, what I feared, what I hoped, what I missed... Or maybe all my concerns disappeared and I would be enchanted beholding the pitch black sky above me or the stars shining, guiding me at night?

While I was reading that book, these words resonated to me as never before:

“On moonless nights the water was as black as maester's ink, from horizon to horizon. Dark and deep and forbidding, beautiful in a chilly sort of way, but he looked at it too long Tyrion found himself musing on how easy it would be to slip over the gunwale and drop down into that darkness”.

And even with all that darkness, they whispered to me: PEACE. Maybe it is because I knew that no one would attack in the middle of the night. Maybe it is because we would stop sailing and rest peacefully for a few hours. Maybe because those were the moments I yearned for when I was inland, attending boring sessions at the Parliament. Maybe because that was my dream come true, all that I had wished for before I became a sailor trained to kill the enemy.
Reading those lines I get clear images in my head, it is one of those instances when you can suspect it is not just your imagination creating a scene from the written words, but something else that comes from deep within you. Tears keep welling in my eyes when I think about it, it is as if my heart still longs for the sea, or maybe just for that long-forgotten peace, where a man like me could just sit and watch, be proud of his crew, and dwell in the illusion that the sea was all mine to sail... if only for a while.

A hairpin and a bathtub.

Day after day I have to bear superficial analyses and preconceived notions from newbies or, even worse, people without past life memories. I’ve talked about the frustration this causes me at great length, so there is no need to rub more salt in the wound. Then, one day comes when, unexpectedly, a new forum member posts something related to his own research that makes me remember an old memory. In this case, a blurred image with deep emotions that left me with some doubts. Well, not real doubts, it’s hard to have doubts at this point of the game, so I’ll just say “memories I left unverified”, but for no special reason, apart from laziness or other things keeping me busy.

I think I’ve talked about that image here before, though I’m not sure of the details I gave. But the scene is clear in my mind: I am in a bathtub, naked. It doesn’t look like a bathtub I’ve ever known in this life. It’s in the middle of the bathroom, it’s white with curves. We don’t have taps, I think we have a jar to fill it. I see the water all around me. I’m holding a sharp hairpin on my right hand, not too long. I use it to inflict some wounds on my left forearm. I see the drops of blood falling down into the water and dissolving, just like my tears. I’m married but my life has become a nightmare. I’m so very young, but I feel so alone and desperate. I feel like dying, with those little bleedings in the white of my eyes and the bruises all over my body.

Back in the waking state, you start to analyze everything with logic and distance. You start to wonder if that was possible or if you are just “fantasizing”, as many of those people who don’t have memories of their own often think. You forget about the emotions, the circumstances you were in, your desires to die. You come convinced that validating a memory is proof of something, if not for you, for everyone else. I’ve never seen a hairpin like that in my whole life, and the ones I have no way could slit anyone’s veins or make deep wounds on the skin. So, you doubt you could have done that in the past, and you doubt your sanity. You don’t give importance to the feel of the instrument in your hand in that memory, the way you gripped it hard with your fingers, with all the tension, pain, rage and hate you were feeling at that moment. It seems the look of it is more important to corroborate that memory and show the world you are not crazy and you really lived that. 

The thing is that months pass, and someone comes and casually talks about hat pins that were used in the Victorian era. You look at them and realize they are really sharp, so much that they were thought to be a good weapon. The truth is it doesn’t matter at all, but you suddenly realize your memory is more likely to be true now: hairpin or hat pin, you did hold that instrument in your hand while you were weeping in a bathtub, feeling like shit, and seriously considering suicide. You were having a quiet day at home, and suddenly such a silly finding, such a small verification, brings tears to your eyes and makes you remember the damned bathtub where you could have lost your life.

I’m not sure which my real intentions were when I hurt myself. Possibly not suicide, even though I did feel I wanted to die. Maybe it was the opposite: I wanted to feel the pain, I wanted to feel alive, as for me living was like being dead. Maybe I thought that’s what I deserved anyway. Probably that’s what my husband had forced me to believe, as I wasn’t the loving wife he wanted me to be.

While I’m thinking about those memories, I also realized a couple of days ago I fell down while I was skating in real life. I could have broken a bone. Luckily, I didn’t, but the following day I was indeed feeling as if someone had beaten me up. Was that the same feeling, the same ache I had when I was in that bathtub, and is that the reason I’m recalling those events?  

If you are unlucky enough, you’ll go to the internet and find some outsiders talking about past life memories, wondering if people just fantasize about it, or discussing the possibility alleged past life memories are just “symbolic stories our mind creates in response to our psychological issues”.

I wonder what kind of symbolism lies on wanting to slit your veins with a hat pin to stop so much suffering and bring oblivion to yourself.

THEN is when you want to cry your heart out.   

Related posts:

Hopeless.

Soul-killing.

  

Pride.

We often talk about bad memories associated to our past lives. Traumas are frequent, also feelings of nostalgia and all kind of unresolved issues we must deal with sooner or later. Does this mean there are no good memories? No, not really, but it seems it happens like in real life: for some reason human beings like to focus in the negative part of everything, and we easily forget the good moments we have lived with friends or relatives.

Lately a curious thing has occurred to me in two different occasions. The situation was almost identical. The emotion attached to the particular situation was more intense the second time. I wouldn’t say it is a real trigger, as I don’t get clear memories. If I wasn’t so aware of my past lives, I would probably let it go or just say I am especially dreamy that given day. In both occasions I was leaving my home to go somewhere else. Flocks of hair partially covered my eyes, and though I am a woman this time around, I had the feeling I was a young man with long, light brown hair. I take a handbag I recently bought, with a strap over the shoulder and of a greenish color. I don’t know why but every time I take it I feel like a soldier who goes to war, not a normal soldier, but one that has to embark in a wooden ship docked in the harbor. I am a sailor and I don’t know when I will return.

I leave. The weather is cloudy, as if it is about to rain. As I walk I see my feet striding fast, but in my mind I don’t see my usual shoes, but black boots. I like to adopt a martial rhythm, as if I am marching along. The ground is wet, and if I am stepping on a cobbled street, the flashback gets even clearer. It brings a feeling of pride and I can’t get enough of it. I am happy of being where I am, of being who I am. I am young and feel strong, and above all, I feel that what I am doing is honorable and worthy. I carry just what I need to survive in my bags, and I am fine with it. I also get a glimpse of a huge ship looming over me as I get closer to the decks, and I am so proud I am part of the crew and I know how to sail. Crossing the ocean doesn’t sound dangerous, and though I will miss my home I am not bothered to be abroad for so long, doing what I most love.

The memory is gone in a few seconds. Past and present seem to become one, but you only need a word or something catching your attention to be back in your current body, in your tedious current life. The emotion lingers a bit longer though. Tears were in my eyes as I typed the above lines, just evoking the scene and feeling it so close, as if it had happened yesterday. I started to remember my Royal Navy life because I felt as disappointed with my job as I felt in 18th century, but that doesn’t mean there is no other kind of feelings. Maybe I am recovering the same enthusiasm I had when I was young and eager to travel the world, and that’s fantastic.

Age and time become so weird when you remember past lives...  

Triggered (2).

So, this is how it goes:

On Sunday I watch a Spanish TV show about the ordeal Captain Zaida Cantera went through when she was sexually abused by her superior. My past lives were almost a distant memory until I sat down in front of the telly and listened to her, especially the things she didn’t say and were implied in her silence but you could read in her eyes. As in other occasions, I felt the shift of energy in my body, and from that moment on I may have looked like my 4-year-old brother hiding behind a cushion when he used to watch the videoclip “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. My heart sank. It does every time I think about it, so I try not to think. I was about to get up and tell my partner I didn’t bear to watch anymore, but I did, until the end.

Though her situation was very similar to mine during WWII, my emotions mainly came from my Black Widow life. Katrina’s life was short, and sexual abuse was only part of the problem. I think the wounds don’t go too deep. The Black Widow is different. It is a longer life, or death in life, where much was destroyed. I felt identified with a lot of things Zaida was saying. One, that you just can’t believe it is happening when it happens. Her case began when her lieutenant-colonel called her “secretary” and tried to caress her thigh, in front of a few witnesses. This brought me memories of Katrina, but the rest was from a wife who suddenly was slapped on the face by her husband for talking with common friends. I once mentioned how much I liked the word “soul-killing” one of my forum companions had used. Well, that single second, unimportant as it may seem (after all, how many slaps on the face we experience when we are kids and we don’t remember?), is soul-killing. And while you are living it, you know your soul is breaking, and that moment is being deeply ingrained in your memory. Another thing I felt very identified with, was the silence of her coworkers. Thankfully, some of them were brave enough to testify at the trial, but most witnesses, fearful of reprisals and their military careers being cut short, chose to turn their backs on her and remain silent. I had to live through it all, and that is what still infuriates me: the silence, the hiding, the isolation... the agony.  

Well, I went to bed and on Monday I was still quite angry so I did some exercise and tried to keep my mind occupied with my daily routines. Then on Tuesday night I meditated. I felt intense emotions and two or three flashes came, nothing important. Still half “in trance” I did some research, I found my first house in Google Street View, I read my last words on the newspaper clip, and while I was going through another piece of information which said I managed to escape a few days before my execution with someone’s help, I saw myself taking someone’s hand and going through a window. I felt that piece of information was right, though I still had no memories of that escape. Then another link did mention I escaped through a window... and I don’t remember to have read it before, so it might have been an instant verification.

I know I am blocking memories though. Sometimes I even doubt I did kill the man that brought me to my death. I would believe my own words if I didn’t know how twisted I had become, how much poison I carried myself in my heart and how dark my soul was at that point, unable to cope with the misery and suffering a man’s hand had inflicted upon me. Perhaps I am blocking those memories because I know it’s better to have someone to blame than acknowledge it was me who didn’t (or couldn’t) find the way out of the hole I had fallen into.

The injustice and impunity that prevail even today in Zaida’s case is the same that prevailed back then, and that is my main issue. However, this morning I was wondering if that only reflects my ongoing desires of vengeance, as I use to say to people who seek justice. Maybe I was sick with desires of vengeance back then? The answer was “No. That may be true or not, but we have to keep something in mind: we all know justice is human, BUT there must be justice while we are here”. While I was trying to sleep these words —pronounced by a male voice, as if I heard someone saying them— slipped into my mind: “She had it coming”. Well, if I had it coming, I wonder: What should these men have coming? What do they deserve? Do they have to go unpunished while innocent women keep living broken lives?

Not even my past reincarnation as a judge can answer these questions...

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.
         

Triggered.

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.