On karma, prisons and other stories.

It’s sad to say, but in the reincarnation world most times it’s better to shut up and let people talk nonsense, or you may end up in trouble, tired of talking to a wall and sometimes even accused of wanting to force your beliefs on someone. I just wonder, how can you force a non-belief on someone?

I’m not going to explain here (at least for the moment) why I don’t believe in karma, as it’s a subject that, honestly, only has made me waste my time since I started to hang around in reincarnation forums. But I’ll say... and it’s one of those things that need to be repeated again and again: one thing is speculating about reincarnation, and a different thing is experiencing reincarnation, that is, remembering past lives. Karma is one of those beliefs usually linked to reincarnation, and many people think that if you believe in reincarnation, you irremediably have to believe in karma as well. It seems there are also certain people who want to make a religion out of reincarnation, and they think they have the right to tell you what you must believe, claiming there are “Laws” in the Universe to which everyone is subject to. They are dazzled by all kind of gurus who write some words in a book and they accept what they have read without giving it a second thought. It is curious how human mind works...

Well, that’s what recently has happened to me. I love to be challenged, I love talking to people who make me think, I love to feel like they’re telling me something new that hadn’t occurred to me before... this is rarer and rarer these days, but still, once in a while, I give it a try. After all, if someone posts such wise words and is so convinced of the existence of karma, they must have good reasons, and if I’m wrong, I want to know. But when you inquire, you just find these people usually are only talking of beliefs... and I need facts. Or at least, beliefs based on facts, not in faith. The first mistake in these “wise” words was to claim there are a Law of Reincarnation and a Law of Karma, and the two have to go together. What, who says this? Who says it’s illogical to believe in reincarnation and not believe in karma at the same time? Who says all reincarnationists have to be identical copies? The most curious thing is this is what says someone who suspects to have a past life as a certain person because someone told him... no verifications, no meditation, self-regression or any other method to remember past lives (dreams, flashes...), no internal knowledge, no nothing. But of course he’s a firm believer in Buddhists and their teachings about karma.

I’ve learned to let it pass and ignore their accusations of wanting to force my beliefs, when it’s them who are trying to force me to believe in something I have neither proof nor circumstantial evidence nor any example they could give me... and yes, I asked for one. Just one valid example which could point to the existence of karma and the way it works. But all I got were silly responses, vague spiritual notions like the definition of karma as something governed by “the Universe”, the universal purpose of all creatures of finding happiness and achieve perfection, or the nonsense that karma is like Newton’s Law of Action and Reaction, a natural law which, as such, works in all the universe. And it doesn’t matter if you tell them that doesn’t match the experiences of people all over the world, not only remembering past lives, but also through NDE’s, OBE’s and other paranormal phenomena, they will keep trying to tell me karma is true, and even hinting I’m not intelligent enough to grasp the concept, and that maybe I’ll do in a few lifetimes. Seeing is believing... 

Well, maybe it was synchronicity, but the same night I was enjoying such discussion, someone in my own reincarnation forum posted something that helped me understand the attitude of this kind of persons. I thought they would appreciate it, as it’s a quote written by a spiritual leader called Jiddu Khrisnamurti and they seem to be fond of ancient/spiritual teachings, but the truth is they soon decided to quit, maybe because they couldn't find right arguments to convince me karma exists... or maybe because they are afraid what I say could make their beliefs totter, being this latter an attitude I’ve witnessed a lot of times in and out of the internet.

This is what the quote said:

"From the moment you are born and begin to receive impressions, your parents are telling you constantly what you must do and you must not do, what you must believe and what you must not believe; they tell you there is a God, or there is no God but a State and certain dictator is its prophet. Since childhood they pour these things inside of you, which means your minds —which are very young, impressible, inquisitive, with curiosity to know, desire to discover— become gradually boxed, conditioned, shaped so that you adjust to a particular society and not become revolutionaries. As thinking following a pattern has been already established on you, when some time you become "repulsed" you do it inside a pattern. Like the prisoners who rebel to get better food, more material comforts —but always inside the prison. When you seek God, or try to find out which government is the proper one, you always do it inside the society's pattern, which says: "This is true and this is false, this is good and that is bad, this is the just leader and these are the saints". Therefore, your rebellion —like the so called "revolution" carried out by very ambitious or very clever persons— is always limited by the past. That is not a rebellion, that is not a revolution; it is merely a more intense activity, a braver fight inside the pattern. The real rebellion, the real revolution, consists of breaking the pattern and investigate out of it. [...]

Society influences all of us, it shapes constantly our thinking, and this pressure society makes from the outside, gradually becomes our inner side, as long as we don't get through that conditioning. You have to know what you think, and if you are thinking as Hindus, muslims or Christians, that is, if you think on the terms of the religion you belong to, you must be conscious of what you believe or not. All this is the society's pattern, and unless you break up with it, you keep being prisoners even when you may think you are free".   

Reincarnation or not, I think this is the attitude which prevents us human beings to find our true spirituality and advance in our self-knowledge and development as a species. We’ve been controlled by religions for millennia, but we are to blame for keeping searching for a religion to answer our questions. We recite like parrots words we have heard somewhere, such as “Karma is like a boomerang, if you did right, you will receive good things; if you do evil, you will receive bad things", and at the same time we are not aware we are only creating new beliefs that make us comfortable, new walls that will imprison us just like old religions did, thinking we have found freedom, when the only thing we’ve done is changing our prison. We have to think by ourselves and find our own Truth, but never forgetting we as human beings will never be able to attain the complete Truth, and of course keeping in mind that we no longer need old dogmas and doctrines telling us how we have to behave. I think it’s time to base our knowledge on real facts and an interpretation of those facts as objective and rational as possible. When we die, we’ll reach that transcendence and we’ll know where we were wrong. Until then, let’s not speculate without direct experience, as that only leads to more confusion, fruitless conversations, and so called “new beliefs” which are just a mixture of ancient teachings and empty “new agey” stuff. In brief, just words, words, words.

Anyway, it’s hard to be clear in this type of situations, not in all places I feel the same confidence to talk about my past lives, that’s why sometimes I need to go on with my own musings and bitter watches here. Because... how can you explain someone you barely know you were judged and hanged, and then you had a brief memory of the life between lives where no one scolded you for what you did and never threatened you with a quick return to Earth to atone for your sins or pay your karmic debts? Well, just telling it, the way I did. But words like these never describe the whole situation, much more complicated. People tend to think it’s all black and white, but it never is, and in this particular life I’m talking about, I killed but I also suffered a great deal. So, who is the one keeping count of all your right and evil doings, do we have to expect a reward for all the right things we did and a punishment for all the evil things? The idea is just childish and senseless, but it’s amazing how many people really believe in this.

Sometimes I feel so frustrated I can’t change the world... but I know, patience might be another one of the “lessons” —if those exist at all— I’ve yet to learn.

The last dawn.

That dawn was not like any other dawn. The Sun barely could be seen far away in the horizon as an orange-coloured ball partially covered by the clouds, some sponge clouds of a grey cotton which didn’t let the blue of the sky be seen. The wind was blowing as never before in the mist of times, and pushed the clouds until they disappeared in the distance, being replaced for others as grey as them. The sea waves, boisterous like they had not been from years ago, brutally charged against the rocks.

There were no seagulls soaring through the air in search of food. Nor swam fish in the rough sea waters, nor there were crabs buried in the sand. There was not a living being to be seen anywhere. That morning the beach sand had appeared totally clean and pure. No shells, no seaweeds... only sand.

The scream of the waves crashing against the rocks was the only sound in that silence, and the wind was now the master of Nature, making the sea angry and dragging the clouds after him. Only the Earth was left.

But then in the immensity of the beach a point that moved getting close to the seashore turned up. Who or what could still be alive? It soon reached the water, and went on walking along the shore. She barely could stand. Her body, almost naked, was covered by the tatters of what had been a simple but beautiful dress. Her long and dark hair was battered by that horrible wind which was becoming more and more violent with each passing minute. She had her shoes hanging from her shoulder, tied up to walk comfortably on the sand. Her legs failed her with each step, and she fell to the sand, nearly fainting, fearing she wouldn’t be able to get up ever again. But the last thing she would lose would be her hope.

Her green eyes gazed at infinity, and now and then they let a tear, half courage, half sadness, run down. She wouldn’t stop until her last drop of strength fell down and broke in a thousand pieces. She had to reach that place... only a few metres were left. She had waited for that encounter since she was a child, and finally the day they would meet had arrived.

A spark shone in her eyes, and her rosy lips let out a sad smile. Then she stopped, and stared at the line where sky and sea joined together.

Suddenly the clouds calmed down and disappeared abandoning their grey color in the sky. The sea became still and the waves transformed themselves in a layer of smooth and uniform water. Silence filled everything. Her heart beat slower. The Sun disappeared, and with it the light. From afar a thunder boomed and from the depth of the sea a muffled murmur started to surge, like a cascade falling into the space.

She fainted due to the fear, the joy and the exhaustion. The murmur grew... grew even more, and then the sea waters were pierced by a huge blinding moon that illuminated a hundred times more than the Sun. That light filled everything: the beach, the sky, the sun... She disappeared first. Then the light swept everything else. And afterwards the void carried the light away. Silence and darkness reigned for evermore.  

  

I wrote this when I was 13 or 14, according to my notes, though I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now. I’ve translated it for this blog and I’m amazed at how past life memories get unconsciously reflected on all we do... More than thirty years have passed for me to realize where this short story was coming from. Now I’m trying to work through the emotions and to remember in detail the events that led me to that day in the beach where darkness threatened to take away my life... and eventually did. When I started to write this blog I said I wanted to go inside, there where it really hurts... well, this hurts more than I can say, but if I force it I feel it slips through my fingers and I can’t do anything. I mean, emotions don’t come out when I want them to come out. I wish I could sit down, do some self-reiki like the other day, and let all the stuck emotions flood and get me like a tsunami, but it looks like it doesn’t work that way. They come just when they want: when I’m listening to a certain song with certain lyrics, when I’m with my boyfriend and something triggers something, when I’m typing on my laptop and suddenly I can see the same images in my mind, playing over and over again, making me feel sad and wretched.

Yesterday I listened to some binaural recordings again but it didn’t feel as right as before, I could gather some fragments together because I wanted to relive it all again, to the very second of what happened, but I wonder... do the details matter so much? When do emotional wounds exactly occur? What makes the deepest wound? The fear, the helplessness, the realization you just can’t fight and you have to let the man do with you whatever he wants, the nausea, the weakness, is it all at the same time? Is it the stab in itself, or the bleeding through days and weeks, piercing your soul like a sword through your heart that stays there making a zombie out of you? The only thing I’m sure of is that I killed myself while I was still paralyzed, I chose death to get rid of all that suffering, never knowing the pain follows you to the next lives, until you learn to deal with it, until you learn to get over it.... if you ever do.

For some minutes rage wanted to go out as well, but then it subdued and went into hiding again. I was going to write some words about it and then I just couldn’t, but I know it keeps being there somewhere in the inside... Sometimes I am told I have a lot of accumulated anger, but they don’t know to which extent... My theory is that anger comes from pain that goes beyond words, but once again, what can you do with that anger? I could have killed whoever was around me back then, they surely believed me nuts anyway, and I wouldn’t have been the first one to go mad during a war, but once I had the gun in my hand I only killed myself... And now the only way to get that anger out is through music, tears and... once more, writing. But honestly, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get somewhere...

1942: Rage.

The scene where I’m standing on an empty beach, a cloudy and windy day, though not too cold, comes back over and over again. I’m quite sure it was the day I woke up from the sedation and went out to take some fresh air. Johann was dead. And I was paralyzed. I just couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry, couldn’t shout. We had dreams. We often talked about our future, “when the war is over”. I was utterly alone, hopeless, scared to death. Didn’t want to live in a world where I could get killed any moment, and not only by the enemies, but also by the hand of people who had invaded my dear Prague. I was nothing to them. They had forced me to join the Army. But I didn’t want to be there, shouldn’t be there, in a strange country where they looked at me the same way I had looked at the Germans in their tanks, with their rifles and their threats.  

I was just a shadow, a ghost. I was already dead, long before I was shot in the belly.

I feel I’m back in 1942. August, to be more exact. Anniversary of Johann’s death, as I mentioned in my last entry. When I had no specific memories, the only thing I could say was “I am depressed and I don’t know why. Probably it’s only the end of the summer”. Well, no, the end of the summer is not reason enough to be depressed. Today, I not only know the cause of this depression, I also have constant flashbacks in my mind of fragmented scenes of things that should never have happened. They come and go, they almost disappear while I’m reading something on the Internet or someone takes me out for a bit of exercise... but those memories keep being there. It’s like these plastic small televisions we had when we were kids: you look through the hole and you find the slides there, pushing a button, one after the other, pieces of a life that once were. Now it’s gone, all the people are gone, but the emotions linger and hurt, just like the first day.

Sadness. A hole in my soul. But deep inside there’s a lot of rage as well, very similar to the widow’s rage, only Katrina lacked the will to take it out. Rage is pain. A reaction to pain. But it’s no good to use violence to express your pain, violence doesn’t free you of pain, maybe it soothes pain for a while, but it has no any healing effect. I wish I knew how you get rid of pain and rage though, the secret of emotions’ alchemy. It’s a process, they say, like those stages of mourning. But it looks like it’s a damn long process, to keep affecting me eighty years later. I am still standing in that beach, staring at the sea, paralyzed, watching the darkness grow in my heart, stealing away my will to live. I let the darkness win, I didn’t fight the pain and I ignored the rage, and they never went away. And now I only have words to get it all out... words and tears that more oft than not pile in my throat just like Katrina did back then. How can I get over it? Like I once said, I’m afraid the only way to do it is to let the wounds bleed... bleed until the last drop of my blood is shed, until there’s no more pus inside... there is no other way.

Suicide (The Great Escape).

(As I promised in my latest blog entry, here is the piece I have translated regarding sexual abuse and suicide. It contains the Marillion song in full).

Sometimes I get surprised of the superficiality some talk about suicide and how some judge people who have committed suicide or have been about to do it. “Everyone gets what they deserve” or “Killing yourself is cowardice” are phrases I’ve had to hear more than once and I hope they are only a consequence of not reflecting or not knowing how to put oneself in the others’ shoes. And there are people who still think that killing yourself is equivalent to being an undefined number of years lost in the astral or facing some kind of trial in the other side for having committed an unforgivable sin.

It is likely that 90% of these people think I am insane, but I use to reply to them: “Do you remember having killed yourselves? Have you ever considered it some time? Have you fallen into such a deep depression you couldn’t see another way out? Because I do remember to have committed suicide. And I know many people who also did it. And not all of us remember what happened afterwards, between one life and the next, but obviously we came back and we didn’t burn in Hell, nor we were condemned to wander in the astral”.

Others think it is a matter of mental illness. Perhaps it is, or at least, there are electrochemical changes in the brain, that’s true. But I think circumstances are the most influential. No one can know in which circumstances a person was to decide to kill themselves. And therefore, no one, save ourselves, can judge.

The circumstances for which I decided to kill myself have to do with war, the death of a loved one, and also sexual abuse. No, it is not easy to say it. But it is much worse to live it. In a society where we are used to violence in distant countries, and bombs, shrapnel or executions of people guilty of rape accompany us while we’re having lunch, we don’t know what this really means. It is as unreal as the latest Disney animation movie. And however, it exists, it existed, and it will keep existing. And it is very likely many of us have been in similar situations and have made exactly the same decision which we are quick to judge now.

I always say it and I’ll never get tired of saying it: if we all recalled our past, the world would be very different. Because when we are talking of yourself or your relatives, then it is not so easy to speak lightly. And we’d be talking first-hand, not for what we are told by the different religions, philosophies or belief systems. 

Now I’ve got over it a bit more and it’s not so hard to talk about it, but when the feelings were burning in my inside and flooded in until they exploded, it was very useful for me to listen to a Marillion song called “The Great Escape”. This song is the culmination of a full album entitled “Brave”. This album begins with a scene which is based on a real piece of news published in the British press: a young woman standing on a bridge, about to throw herself into the space. When a police agent asked her name, the girl couldn’t even answer. Once I told a friend sometimes I had the same face that is displayed in the album cover.

A movie was filmed too, in case someone is interested.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Heading for the great escape
Heading for the rave
Heading for the permanent holiday

Heading for the winter trip
Heading for the slide
Heading for the dignified walk away

Heading for the open road
Goodbye to all that
Heading for the automatic overload

Standing in the open boat
Standing in the swing
Waiting for the ringing and the bright light

Waiting to be recognized
Quiet applause will do
They shower you with flowers when they bury you

You're holding on, you're holding on ...

(i) the last of you
Just when I thought I'd seen the last of you
You come here scratchin' at my door
Your pain and anger's in the howling dark
Of every corridor I walk

So tell me more about the love that you rejected
Tell me more about the trust you disrespected
I still don't know, why did you hurt the very one
Why did you hurt the very one that you should have protected?

(ii) fallin' from the moon
Don't ask me why I'm doing this
You wouldn't understand
You're asking the wrong questions
You couldn't understand

A bridge is not a high place
The fifty-second floor
Icarus would know
A mountain isn't far to fall

When you've fallen from the moon

There's murder on the street
I'm ashes on the water now, somewhere far away

I have fallen, fallen from the moon

The lyrics seem to reveal the one who should protect her betrayed her trust and abused her. And the music and especially Steve Hogarth’s voice keep helping me get rid of the pain and the rage accumulated by something that should have never happened. Although, maybe, if it happens, it is down to some reason I haven’t got to understand yet.

The consequences, who knows how often, no doubt can affect you in the following lives, due to the deep emotional trauma that implies.

ADDITIONAL WORDS.

I believe three months passed since I decided to put an end to my life until I actually did it. The scene where I’m standing on an empty beach, a cloudy and windy day, though not too cold, comes back over and over again. I’m quite sure it was the day I woke up from the sedation and went out to take some fresh air. Johann was dead. And I was paralyzed. I just couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry, couldn’t shout. We had dreams. We often talked about our future together, “when the war is over”. Now I was utterly alone, hopeless, scared to death. Didn’t want to live in a world where I could get killed any moment, and not only by the enemies, but also by the hand of people who had invaded my dear Prague. I was nothing to them. They had forced me to join the Army. But I didn’t want to be there, shouldn’t be there, in a strange country where they looked at me the same way I had looked at the Germans in their tanks, with their rifles and their threats.  

I was just a shadow, a ghost. I was already dead, long before I was shot in the belly.

Music and resonance.

I say this very often: nothing is accidental. Or... coincidence doesn’t exist. We still can go a bit further, and say “We are a product of our experiences”. We reincarnationists know this very well, but sometimes it is astounding when you really corroborate this is absolutely true.

Music is one example. It is just one more resonance, but for me it is very strong. If some words in a song move me, or stay with me, get ingrained in my brain even when it is not one of my favourite bands... there is a reason. And if I don’t know that reason, it is not because there is no reason, but because I haven’t found it yet.

Months ago I used a Marillion song to illustrate some thoughts about sexual abuse and suicide in another blog (maybe I should translate it and bring it here too). A certain part of that song always meant a lot to me, it says:

So tell me more

about the love that you rejected

Tell me more about the trust you disrespected

I still don’t know

why did you hurt the very one

why did you hurt the very one

that you should have protected

Actually, when I used that song, I was thinking more about a friend who in a past life suffered sexual abuse in childhood, and not so much about my own life in World War II, as my own sexual abuses took place when I was already an adult. Not that there is a lot of difference, but I guess it’s much more heartbreaking when you are just a kid or a teenager and it is your own dad who abuses you. I always take it as the greatest betrayal you can face, and that’s what the song is about.

But there’s another song in the same album that also means a lot to me, and I didn’t know why. It says:

Runaway girl

Too bad, too bad

Runaway girl

A real wild child

So you cower in the town’s forgotten places

and you make your bed with unfamiliar faces

and at last you’ve got your freedom

but that’s all you’ve got

You’re trying to make your mind up

if you’re better off

You pretend to wait for washing in some laundromat

but you’re damned if you’ll give them

the satisfaction of you going back

You’d freeze to death before you’d share a room with them

and you’d starve before you let him

get his hands on you again

Innocent of me, I used to wonder: “Why is it that I keep being so attracted to this word “runaway”?” I also love another song by Bon Jovi that is called like that as well. As far as I can remember, I’ve never had to run away and hide. Yep, as far as I remember... I have the pleasure to remember more than the majority of people, so it’s fun to think how for others memory is really so, so short... that almost leaves them with a fish brain (the same I had before knowing about my past lives). And so, one day, I found out that I did run away, and I had to hide in dark places as the ones depicted in the song. I had to leave behind a life where I had it all... except the love of my husband, the one who should have protected me back then. And now I’ve realized why those words make tears well in my eyes every time I listen to that song... especially in the latest weeks or months when this past life of mine has been so present.

Only yesterday night, after a session of self-reiki, more memories of this past life came to me, but nothing new... just the same pain, the same anger, the same hatred, the same feeling of walls closing in around me, just like Eowyn felt in Edoras. When I asked myself how I was feeling, my answer was “Like a prisoner.” When I do self-reiki I always have this lump in my throat, but not as if you are holding back your tears, it is more as if you are being strangled... which I guess is logical as I’ve been hanged at least twice in my past lives (as far as I remember). But I guess that if I feel it it’s because there’s something else affecting me, and I think it’s not only for the pressure of the ropes or my neck breaking... I think it has to do more with the fact that in a few of my past lives I was unable to express all that pain and anger I had inside. I always remember Katrina and her strong desires of CRY, CRY, CRY, but looking back at my Black Widow life, I see her situation was not too different: I was just a prisoner in my husband’s house, I couldn’t talk to anyone about the hell I was living, the few that knew counseled me not to speak, so I found myself isolated, alone, scared, feeling more and more worthless as I couldn’t love that hideous man and I couldn’t even bear children for him... I never was a submissive woman, maybe that was the only problem I had, that I never accepted the way he treated me or the way society expected me to be. So, I often went to the backyard and sat in that wooden bench looking at the woods, with my heart filled with pain, wondering what to do to end all that suffering... something which wouldn’t mean my own death, of course, I was not up to give up my life for that hideous man my parents chose for me. And I made up my mind...

But this ultimately led me to a path of self-destruction I should have been able to avoid. I had to leave my own daughter and run away from ignorance and gossip in my town, my family’s reputation was ruined even when I was declared innocent, and I only wanted a new life. All secret, all dark, more hideous men and trying to make money far from my comfortable and rich house that could have been mine, if only there had been a little love inside. I don’t wholly understand why I ended up getting married again, probably I had no choice... or maybe I had some dark plans in my head, I wanted so much to raise my daughter and have her close. All went wrong. Terribly wrong.

Broken.

Lately I feel like I don’t need more regressions to remember or to get in past life mood, it feels weird because this way I don’t get new memories, only flashes of old places, old situations, maybe new thoughts I’m not sure of because I’m not “deep” enough... but above all, I get raw emotions, too raw, too tough, too... wild. I’m not feeling like this trying to meditate, only through self-reiki or whatever it is called, sometimes you feel nothing, sometimes it’s just… wow! Like now, like this evening… all unexpected, no, not unwanted, I guess, but I’m not impatient to know more, to feel more, it just… comes.

And it feels good, so good… no idea how it works but the best way to explain is like having an infected, rotten wound, swollen, with only a tiny hole to get inside. You take water with a syringe and you flush it all inside, and then the water comes out through the hole, cleansing the inside, draining all the pus and the worms and the black, stinking material… only, water is energy, white and shiny energy, and emotions are all the rest. They are intense emotions, but they don’t hurt anymore, you cry but you’re not crying of pain, you cry of relief, it’s like a soft summer rain pouring on you.

While seeing myself in these past situations, I was thinking something like this:

BROKEN. I love this word. I loved it when Bran (character of Game of thrones) said he had now a broken body. It sounds tough, it sounds true, you say it when something can’t be repaired, and there are moments in your life when you feel it, when you feel your soul is being broken, when you know there’s no turning back, no chance to regain hope, love or trust. When did you feel like this? Well, the first time he slapped me, the first time he raped me… and when you’re in prison and they tell you to confess. To confess what? I will never confess something I did, not being guilty. They don’t even know what happened, crimes are being ignored here while I’m the only one who is going to pay for it. Guilty of what? Of living a broken life? And for what? To change death for a life in prison? That sounds ironic, as that's what I was trying to escape from. Time takes me back to where it all started…

BROKEN.Like those words from the song by Marillion, long before Bran, the verse that says “Breaking someone up inside (is your only source of pride)". Words that resonate with you but you never know why… until now, because that’s what they did to you, that’s what the verse means, a harm that can’t be repaired, not through a whole lifetime, not even through a few lifetimes, you just broke and you started bleeding, and you’re still bleeding to death, because that’s how it feels… a sweet death, almost like a drug going through your veins and making you forever asleep, only death never comes, and you keep bleeding, ever since it all started.

A BROKEN RIB, A BROKEN EYE, A BROKEN LIFE, A BROKEN NECK, EVERYTHING BROKEN, just because he wasn’t ready to love. You didn’t love me? Ok, but you could have at least respected me. Love and respect, aren’t those the marriage vows, those we made on the altar, before God? Now I pray to God to save me but I know nothing will do, too late for that, maybe I should have put an end to it back then, that time in the bathtub… but no, it’s not me who must die. It wasn’t me who was going to die…

How much pain, how much hate, how much rage can you carry with you? All boiling inside, through a whole life and beyond. It seems no one noticed, but it was all there, beneath the sweet appearance of an innocent woman. I still hear the wound cracking, like a log that cracks in the fire, breaking. But it will stop. It has to stop.

Death (and beyond) (2).

The blog has been silent for a while, but not because I didn’t have things to tell… in fact, it’s been quite the opposite. Around two weeks ago a close relative died, and it was the first time in this life that I had this scary companion following me anywhere: death. Scary for some people… for a reincarnationist, or at least a great number of us, death is —feels— different. That’s pretty good in itself… the bad thing is we just have to play our parts and we can’t say anything to the people around us, sometimes because we have to respect others’ beliefs and —only in the closest relatives or friends of the dead person— their grief; other times because the situation is already quite weird and no one dares say anything that goes beyond the social boundaries… and other times because we just don’t want to get into trouble, into endless religious/spiritual discussions that ultimately lead nowhere.

But I’ve been wondering: if we don’t speak about death when someone dies, when do we speak about death? Does anyone speak about death? What’s the point attending the funeral services to hear the priest preaching about eternal life in Heaven if none of the attendants really believe in it? It is already too late to bring some comfort for the soul leaving… who is likely confused in the astral realm by now, wondering how it is that their body broke but they are still alive.

I had never seen a corpse before (a human corpse I mean)… not in this life. The feeling was not too different to see my own body for the first time in an OBE, I thought: “So, this is it, our physical body is really so… insignificant. We are… nothing.” In my OBE I didn’t stop more than two seconds, I had more interesting things to do than looking down at such a small bunch of bones and skin and blood (I have to clarify this is NOT the way it looked like then, as from the astral we perceive the “energetic” side of everything). And there, in the hospital room, though it was hard for me to take my eyes off of the dead body, I also lost interest quite easily. I was there only to give comfort to my partner and help him through the toughest parts of it all, and I certainly was surprised I remained so calm and peaceful… even knowing we might have been watched.

It was later that day when I started to feel quite weird. If waiting patiently for my partner to say goodbye and mourning for both of them felt like a quite natural and private moment, it wasn’t so when we arrived to the funeral parlour a few hours later. The makeup and the arrangements in the coffin, placed behind a crystal and a pair of curtains, with a huge crucifix behind and two lamps, one at each side of the coffin, made it all more similar to a terror movie. But besides that, I was so shocked to see how other people behaved in the other parlours… many were dressed in elegant and bright-coloured suits as if they were attending a wedding instead of a wake, they would chat in loud voices and laugh as if we didn’t have dead persons so near, just at the other side of the walls… Reflecting about this, I came to the conclusion that maybe I was expecting a dark and gloomy room, with the coffin in the centre and a lot of chairs around, with sad and crying people sitting on them, all wearing black, and whispering to each other. At least that’s how I remembered my past life mother's wake in the Old West. I was only a kid and I know I had to tiptoe to see her lying there… The atmosphere was so, so different.

My partner said he had been in other wakes and things were different only two decades ago. He said it was more serious back then, and there was more sadness, sometimes to the point it was a bit hypocritical in the case of these persons who turn up and don't care, but we seem to have gone to the opposite end. Now it seems that funeral services have become kind of an entertainment business, where you go to an impressive —and quite luxurious— building, where even a coffee costs you half a kidney, where everything is perfectly scheduled and standardized so that you don’t even have to think, and where guests are provided with everything they need. The deceased person is there, but it looks so artificial that I don’t think anyone feels death is there, close at hand… I can even imagine children betting with their cousins if they’ll be brave enough to sneak and take a look to the grandpa, just having so much fun as no one seems to take it seriously. For a brief moment I nearly believed people had no more fear of death, I think that is good. But pausing a while, I realized I'd have been so wrong assuming that, and I suspect this has more to do with the superficiality we've grown, and this notion of "Let's ignore death, make it look like something without importance, someone that has died is just one more occasion to have a drink with friends and we don't even need to worry about what comes next". What I saw were people turning their backs on death, faking they had lost all respect for it, but I knew that inside most of them were still paralyzed, horrified to think one day they will be the ones in the coffin, wishing life was eternal, wonderful, perfect, not full of suffering and disgraces such as death.

But none would say nothing. Most of them were there only because a funeral is a social gathering and you would be criticized if you don’t attend, they were doing it just for obligation… and I think these people shouldn’t be there. I don’t want to be exposed like that when I die. I don’t want people I haven’t seen in decades come and sit at my funeral, look at my corpse and go when they never cared for me. If I could choose, I would be cremated immediately after death, I want neither shows, nor useless ceremonies, nor meaningless prayers I don’t give a damn for. I want it to be a private moment, for my soul and the ones who loved me, that’s all. My experience tells me when you’re dead you just don’t care about your body and what you leave behind, unless you are still too attached to the material world… but anyway, I think we must not lose the respect for the dead. I think dying is a sacred moment, and as such it shouldn’t lose its transcendental meaning. But in this Western World we’re losing respect for everything. And I think that’s so, so sad.