It is 23:14 when I start writing
this and tomorrow I have to get up early for a five hours drive. It is not the
best moment to be doing this, but I don’t want these past life emotions to fade
and get lost in my mind while I enjoy my second holiday season.
Every time Katrina calls for my
attention, I want to think there is a reason. The same scenes often repeat themselves,
sometimes exactly as they were, other times expanded. The hurting keeps being
there, and I feel compelled to do something, but what?
I ask her what she wants, and the
answer is: “I want to find his grave, I want to have a place to mourn, I want
to know he’s remembered, I just want to cry”. Some of these things I can do,
like crying. But others, I just don’t seem to find my way. I have some specific
data that came with my memories, but either they are wrong, or I am not looking
in the right places, because they never match the records.
And in the meanwhile I keep reliving
these memories as if they were reoccurring nightmares. The day my worst fear
became real is one of them: losing Johann to the war. The day he died, I died with him. My
soul died. My body kept living for a while, but I wasn’t there anymore. As I
have said so many times before, I was paralyzed. I still can see everything: how
I heard his name and dropped whatever I had in my hands, how I ran and fought
to get to him, how I found him already dead on the stretcher, how I was grabbed
and pulled away. I did shout then, and cried. So much that they had to restrain
me and put me a catheter on my jugular vein to administer a sedative.
Everything went black.
And when I woke up, I was dead. The
first thing I did was taking my Virgin medal off and leaving it on the bedside
table, forgotten. I had lost my faith. I realized I was wearing a clear blue
gown and a teardrop fell and wet the cloth. Someone asked me if I wanted
something to eat, I said no. When I regained some of my strength I went to see
the doctor, to ask him if he’d let me see Johann one last time. He did, but I
couldn’t move. Johann’s body was there wrapped in one of those hideous cases to
keep corpses, but I barely could do something, with a nurse at my left and the
doctor at my right, watching that I didn’t go mad again. And I couldn’t touch him, not even hold his hand, not
even whisper some words in his ears.
I couldn’t accept it. It still feels
like a dream today. Only, dreams are not so damn real.
Maybe I can’t find his grave (yet),
but I was getting clear visual impressions of his face. So I used an online
identikit program to try and draw him. The result was impressive. Not
completely accurate, I’d say, but impressive nonetheless.
I died the day he died, with no time
to mourn. Maybe this is the first step to do so.
I have noticed July is a weird month
for me in regards to reincarnation. I have commented on this before, probably
somewhere in this blog. Maybe this year the feeling is even stronger. Things
are going great for me at the moment. Three months ago, right after my accident
skating, I decided to start physical training six days a week, alternating
yoga and fitness routines. My main objective was to fully recover my left knee
and shoulder, but then I found I was absolutely loving it and I couldn’t stop.
I have lost three kilograms in three months and I am feeling stronger. I also
found some inspiring guys like Frank Medrano or Elena Malova who also follow a
vegan diet and so I have started to focus even more in the positive things in
life. In a way I feel like in my most recent past life during the Cold War,
when I decided to leave drugs behind and work for the American Army (now I
really hope I won’t die in some kind of crash). But at the same time... there
is this uneasiness deep inside, a restlessness whose origin is not clear.
My life as an active reincarnationist
is not fulfilling at all, that is no secret. As I have repeatedly said in
several places, remembering past lives is a lonely path. The forum and various
blogs I administer are running non-stop, growing each day. They keep me quite
busy and that is fine, but I miss the old times, especially the old times when
I first arrived to Military Past Lives and found my people. People who had gone through similar experiences to mine, people who at last could understand, who knew how to listen, people who
could teach me lots of things. It is quite funny to hear certain forum users (trolls)
say I am an egotistic person, when I am always searching for people who can
teach me new things. I am no leader. I was a warship captain in one of my past
lives and I still don’t know how I could do the job. Even when I created my
forum, my thought always was: “I don’t want this to be my forum, it is a forum for its members”. Circumstances, such as my
insatiable curiosity or my thirst for knowledge, have made me an expert in my
field. The Spanish-speaking countries are full of reincarnation beginners
who want answers, and yes, I am there to help and answer those questions. But I am
not a guru, I am just a reincarnationist who wants to find other
reincarnationists to talk in deep about past lives. Not the theory, not the
superficial talk that is all around the internet, but those things that really
matter to people who remember past lives: how to deal with them. I always like
to go beyond, and you just can’t do this with beginners.
So, here I stand, feeling restless,
feeling this inner turmoil that was already there when I started to remember
past lives, perhaps because we wouldn’t move if there were no inner turmoil
inside, something to drive you on in search of answers. But years go by, and
after all I have come to know, this inner turmoil is still here, only I don’t
know where it is going to take me now. I keep feeling this strong need to
express myself, to put into words all those past life emotions left abandoned
in some corner of my soul. But when it is time to write, I am blocked. I can
ramble for hours, but the important words will remain unsaid.
I am weary. Weary of hearing always
the same doubts, of having the same discussions with scientists who don’t even
bother to talk to us, of being added against my will to stupid Facebook groups about the
afterlife where only inaccurate and frivolous articles are posted. Weary of
finding (sometimes) great accounts, but being unable to shout it out loud, due
to the witness’s completely understandable fear of being ridiculed. Weary of
having to keep it all inside, as if remembering past lives were a dirty secret
that might get you institutionalized. Weary of a world where money is all that
matters. And to avoid more weariness, while I wait for more memories to arrive,
I spend my days doing things that make me feel good, like exercise... or listening
to music.
One of those precious gifts of life
came to me unexpectedly the other day, when I listened to a special radio
broadcast in which my elder brother participated. It was about the progressive
rock band Arena. I know almost all their discography, but this jewel had gone
unnoticed until now: it is called “Sirens”. And quite eerily (as always happens
with Arena), it perfectly describes my actual mood in relation to past lives. I
think it sums it all quite well: from the first whispers of your intuition, calling
you to start the journey, to the last moments when you are about to get smashed
into the rocks and you wonder why you paid any heed to those voices. Of course,
the storm in the middle is when you are dealing with the past life memories themselves,
engulfed in those strong emotions, fearing you will get drowned. It even
mentions the one I miss the most, the one I can’t stop calling but only rarely
comes: my spiritual guide and soulmate, the real culprit of all this inner
turmoil... or is he my siren... or, better said, my merman? His song is so tantalizing, and at the same time,
so deadly. Right now I am just drifting on the sea, wondering where the tide
will take me.
I love those moments when you just
have discovered a song and you just can’t stop hearing it, but you still don’t
know the melody and all the verses by heart, so it keeps surprising you and taking you higher and higher. It is pure magic.
A few days
ago I returned home after my usual holiday season (the first of this year) at
the beach. I have been quite hectic: exercise in the morning, preparing part of
the lunch in advance, a couple of hours lying in the sun, walking along the
shore or swimming in the water, a short break, and then more time out, relaxing
both mind and body. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Lately I
have been enjoying these holiday seasons more than ever before. When I was
young I used to feel melancholic when I was near the beach, too many past life
memories in the back of my mind, struggling to go out: my long-gone days as a
British Navy officer, my days waiting for my Norwegian sailor almost in despair,
the feelings of being already dead in a very different beach... No wonder
holidays always depressed me.
Now those
memories are not hidden, they are clear and very present, and they don’t
depress me so much. Now I still love the sound of the wooden planks beneath my
feet as I step on them, when I walk down the sea wall. It feels as if I am
aboard a ship... a real ship manned by real men. I love to wear hats that
resemble cowboy hats, because that makes me think of Colorado and the sun
hurting my eyes. I also wear a beach dress with Native American people drawn on
it, in memory of my family who was massacred by white men, and if I have a
chance, I will gladly buy a pair of earrings with the shape of dreamcatchers
for the same reason. I pretend to watch a ghostly Norwegian merchant ship on
the horizon, getting near, bringing my love home again. I do all this hoping I
will get more memories, something new I don’t know, or maybe some happy scene I
had forgotten.
But, who
knows why, this year it was the turn of the widow, so she turned up
unexpectedly in the middle of my holidays, maybe reminding me I can’t escape,
not yet. I have a slight idea of what could have triggered these new memories. Nothing
I saw, heard, wore or watched... but just a weird feeling related to a
decision: should I stay or should I go? The feeling of knowing you have to go,
but not being sure what is best for you. The feeling of having no past, no
option to come back to what is familiar to you, because you screwed it up and
no one wants to have you near, ashamed of what they say you did, no matter if
it is true or not, no matter you were declared not guilty by a judge. Being so
scared of the future ahead of you, wondering if it can get any worse, as it
eventually did.
So, I am
suddenly in this filthy inn where a charitable couple agreed to give me a job
and a bed, making clear to me that “This is no brothel”. But the meager pay
they give me for serving the tables and cleaning the living room is not enough for
my goals (just having a home and money to raise the daughter I had to leave
behind, for God’s sake!) and I have to ignore their warning. Of course clients
whisper and the charitable couple found out in the end. This is when they came
to visit me in my room and told me I must go. My crying wasn’t enough to
convince them otherwise, though at least it served me to buy me a week or two,
so that I can think what to do next and look for another place. The worst part
is I seemed to decide I’d better look for another man to give me the money and
house I would never be able to have as a poor widowed woman who could barely
read. Did I really think I would find a decent man in such a filthy inn,
soldier and all? And would I be able to feign love for him? Well, why not, when
I had been forced to fake that same love for my late husband in public for so
long?
He is dead
but I still hate him so much. He is the one to blame for my current situation. He
is the one who turned my life into a living hell. It could have been fine: such
a beautiful house, those gardens and the mare, those beautiful dresses and
social meetings. But then came the slapping, the harsh words, locking me up
in a bedroom, the black eye, the bathtub and the hairpin, the broken rib, the
silence, the white powder. “I should be happy and this is where I am”, are my
last thoughts.
When my
current self had a thought about how many lies I was forced to tell, the widow almost
shouted inside of me, saying that I shouldn’t judge. She won’t show me anymore
if I judge, as that is what everyone does. And I know. And I do want her to
bring me deep into that hell, as I feel there is so much rage and sadness and
suffering down there, beyond the coldness and the falseness. Unlike Katrina,
the widow is made up of so many layers, it is hard to get to the bottom. Still
today it is so hard to know where the victim ends and where the murderess begins.
Coincidence
or not, right after these bitter memories, I read one of the best chapters of Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3. Jamie was
telling Brienne everyone is quick to judge him for slaying the mad king without
even knowing what really happened. I think I must have felt like that for so
long in my past life.
Death and reincarnationists. It is
not the first time I write about this, as death is always in my mind. Lately,
it has become more present. Maybe the reason is I am getting old, and those I
love even older. In this life I have been fortunate enough to lose only a young
kitty, event that was quite painful to me and showed me what I was capable of
doing for “just an animal”, but the mourning was short. When my grandparents died
I was too small to know what all the fuss was about. And now, at 40, I have
known closed deaths of relatives, but not close enough to make me cry. Or maybe
all those defenses I built are being helpful now? “Don’t love anyone too much,
because one day they will be gone, and you will die with them”. At least, that
is what happened to me in WWII, though before that I had already lived other
losses that broke my heart in a way I only can imagine today. But time keeps
passing, inexorable. And death is getting closer.
One thing I have come to realize
through remembering past lives. You become used to talk about death, you lose
some of the fear of it, as you are certain death is not the end. But anyway
death keeps being an annoyance. Like I said in an conversation not long ago,
death is like a visit to the dentist: necessary, but always fearful because you
don’t know what to expect, what it will be like this time, if you will be able
to accept it and carry on with no unresolved issues. You can be more or less brave
when facing your own or others’ death, but you eventually have to yield. There
is no other way. And yielding is never easy. Our survival instincts make us
fight, make us afraid of the end, of the dissolution of our ego, of forgetfulness.
Whether we want it or not, death always brings some kind of suffering to
ourselves or the ones we love. It makes us angry, sad, weak, we feel helpless
and naked in front of death. The worst of it all is most of us are not prepared
to face it. This is one of the reasons I am most thankful for being a
reincarnationist: I know how I died in a few past lives, I know it is not that bad... at least when it is finally
over.
And this is why I love so much this
song by Arena called “Ascension”. I want it to sound (LOUDLY) in my cremation. There
are so many past life feelings behind this song. However, it is not related to
specific past life events, as it depicts the moment right after death. My memories
of that kind are in no way similar to what the song says. I have never seen
myself “ascending”. But I have felt the liberation, the end of the suffering,
the departure. One chapter is over, let’s write the next. For a while, no more
fear, no more judgment, no more rage, no more sadness. It is hard to leave
behind your body, your being, your life, but once it’s done, it’s done (unless
you want to become a ghost). And though I have felt that same detachment in some
of my OBE’s, when you’re back in your body you seem to forget this physical
life is what it is: not even a chapter, just a short line in the nearly eternal
book of your spiritual life, the real one. But you forget and then death looks terrible again. I guess that's part of being human, and no one said being human is easy.
Rising up: you thought it was the end, and it is just a new beginning.
One of the prefabricated notions
I’ve had to hear over and over again since I started my reincarnation journey
is:
Time is an illusion.
During that journey I’ve come to the
conclusion this isn’t true. Time will always exist wherever we are, because
there will always be a present and a future, even when time might elapse
differently in the spiritual world. When I was developing my Ultimate Theory I
realized that time is not the real problem, it’s space.
Space is the illusion.
I know this is much harder to grasp,
as time is intangible per se. It’s
more a philosophical concept than an objective reality, no matter how many
clocks we have invented to measure something that changes depending on our
situation and the speed at which we are moving. On the contrary, “space” is
something solid. We can touch the ground, the walls, we’re sitting on a chair
and thanks to it we don’t fall into the abyss. We have to walk, run or ride a
vehicle to move from point A to point B. It’s hard to imagine space is an
illusion too, and we tend to believe only what we can see. However, at the same
time, we keep going to more subtle “spaces” when we go to sleep. Yes, I mean physically, not in our minds or in our
dreams. This is a reality, but surprisingly 99% of the world population lives completely
ignorant to it.
Well, I was watching a Spanish TV series
called El Ministerio del Tiempo,
where public servants from all eras work to prevent history from changing. They
move from one era to another through secret time doors. If something changes
in the past, the future will also change, sometimes in quite a drastic way.
Obviously,
a reincarnationist like me feels very identified with the characters’ feelings.
The longing for your era, the things you miss when you’re in the future, the
ideals for which you fought that are no longer there... At the same time I was
thinking of a distant friend with whom I once shared a few past lives. This
time we share the time period but we are too faraway. I thought of all those
things I miss due to this situation. Space keeps us separated, but when I can
perceive certain things that then turn out to be true, I wonder once again if
space is just an illusion. Both of us are reincarnationists and know pretty
well what remembering past lives means. We think so much about time... we can
feel the past so present, so close at hand. We can feel so strongly that we are
just the same we were all those years ago... You might not recognize them
physically but you recognize the energy, the emotions, the tough memories, the
beloved vision of a father, the love. It’s all there as if you can peek through
a window and watch the past scene... as if you go through one of those time
doors and you’re back with them. It doesn’t seem so, but it happens the same with
space. I’m beginning to realize we underestimate so much the connections we
have with others. I’m also find it harder to bear than a longing for the past,
but there’s not much of a difference between time and space. It’s just the
distance. It’s not so much time or space, it’s believing we are far apart from
what you were, what you had, or your loved ones (old and new), when in reality
we are joined forever. And the link is love. Pure love.
Separateness is the illusion.
But hardest
of all is knowing. Knowing that
separateness is an illusion, and also knowing that while you know, everyone
will keep being victims of the illusion. And there’s nothing you can do about
it. Reincarnationists often complain about how lonely we feel, about how so few
people remember past lives. We think it’s natural. Time makes us forget. But I
guess space is even worse. It’s solid so it’s impossible to go through it. We tend to think it’s
no use to worry for the ones that are in distant places. They can’t see us,
they can’t hear our thoughts, they can’t feel what we feel. But what if all
those barriers were only in our minds?
I can’t
forget about my past. It’s here because time is nothing. That, I know now. But there’s more to it than that, it would seem.
Space is nothing as well. Here and there are the same, my physical senses keep deceiving me, but I know now, so I can only act accordingly.
And like
one of those characters in El Ministerio
del Tiempo, I only have a possible course of action:
“It is a
point of honor. I am a soldier, and I never, ever, leave a brother in arms
behind.”
Only, the battle is life. And death. And everything that is in-between.
For many people, the best evidence of reincarnation are children who remember past lives. In the scientific reincarnation literature cases of this type have been compiled since the 1960's. If it is the first time you approach this phenomenon, here you will find readable descriptions of the most significant and striking cases, including the most recent ones aired by the media and several new accounts found by the author.
James Huston Jr. and James Leininger.
When I began to remember past lives, I also set off to investigate everything related to reincarnation, and I read all I could get my hands on, from all viewpoints. In Spain it is very easy to find books on regression therapy, and recently some other books on children who remember past lives have been published in Spanish, as Life Before Life, by Dr. Jim B. Tucker. However, it is much more difficult to access scientific papers and the most academic works by Dr. Ian Stevenson, most of which are not even translated into Spanish. The general public usually learns about these cases from some reference in the internet, but it is not really aware of the enormous amount of information there is in regards to children who apparently remember past lives, from the most thorough and scientific perspective.
This book intends to provide a light introduction to the phenomenon for readers that want to know more about children who remember past lives. In it I describe in an appealing way the most significant cases, from the classic ones such as Swarnlata Mishra or Shanti Devi's, to the most recent ones, such as James Leininger or Cameron Macaulay's. Despite skeptics persist in looking for other explanations, each one as contrived as the next, to how a child can give such specific details of the life of another person who lived before him, including their death, the truth is it is difficult to dismiss reincarnation as the most likely cause. We don't know what the soul exactly is, nor do we know the mechanism of reincarnation, but there are lots of signs that suggest consciousness survives death and returns to the physical world in a new body.
I don’t
have many, probably because every time I get anything remotely similar to a
memory of the afterlife, I have enormous doubts. I think I lose concentration
thinking it must be a mere fantasy, my logical mind starts to interfere, and at
the end I haven’t gained much new. Clearly I’m not like all those enlightened
people who find out all their lessons, all their soulmates in their current life and
their spiritual purpose in a single regression.
Nonetheless,
I do have brief scenes in my mind and
a couple of insights that seem to come from a “higher” part of me that I barely
understand. In that state, in the few occasions I feel I’ve been there, I see
things in a completely different way, it’s like you really are a different
being... yes, not even a different “person”, as now you are not human. It’s
hard to describe, and at least for me, hard to comprehend.
Since it’s
hard for me to believe and it usually sounds too “spiritual”, I do not usually
talk about these memories, but earlier today I said to myself, “Well, why not?”
To do it, I’ve chosen the term “afterlife” because I think it’s better than “the
time between lives” as I usually say, and of course much better than the
“academic” term invented by certain researchers: “the intermission”. This, in
my opinion, doesn’t say anything different to an interval of time, no matter if
you’re waiting for the bus or going to the bathroom for a piss before the second part of your favorite series begins. It sounds like the only thing you can do during that time is hovering in the sky looking for a body to
reincarnate. It sounds so superficial.
Michael Newton had already coined the expression
“life-between-lives” (with LBL being the abbreviation) but these researchers
have completely ignored him, as they may think they’re the wisest among
reincarnation researchers and they’re great putting names to things that
already existed. For my part, I’ve decided to use “afterlife” because it’s a
wider term. It doesn’t imply you have to reincarnate, you may choose this
option or not. Through my experience I’ve
also come to differentiate several states of consciousness in the afterlife,
a point that inexplicably most researchers miss (not Michael Newton, by the way).
I just can’t see why it is so difficult to understand that ghosts are one thing
and spirits in the “spiritual world” (for lack of a better term) are another.
If you call all these different states of consciousness by the same general
definition of “intermission”, the only thing you’re doing, as usual for
“academic” researchers, is to mess up things and bring confusion.
[Note: the reason I put the word
“academic” between quotation marks is because I feel that’s intended to mean
they are the “serious” researchers,
that is, the only ones that can be trusted. I’ve found that’s very far from the
truth, so I’ve decided I’ll never use that word without quotation marks,
implying they don’t deserve the respect they want for themselves].
Well, I’ll
stop rambling now and tell what I meant to tell from the beginning.
Tow nights ago something strange happened to me. As I mentioned in my latest entry, I suffered
a severe fall while I was skating on Maundy Thursday. I am still recovering and I
need to do rehabilitation exercises to regain the mobility of my left shoulder.
It aches... a lot. And though this is not something new in my life, I’ve been reflecting about how we miss things only after we’ve lost them. Those words from
a Marillion song always come back to me: “You never miss it till it’s gone”.
I don’t know if this was the reason, but when I was left in the sofa quiet and
in the dark, I breathed deeply and all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by deep
feelings of sadness and depression. It was Katrina again. It was as if a past
life review passed before my eyes. I saw the main scenes like quick flashbacks:
the fear in the field hospital, the German officer who scared me, the church
and the sound of the airplanes above, the loss of my boyfriend, the pistol in
my hand, the desperation, the flash from the machine gun in the darkest of
nights, the blood staining my clothes. I
wanted it so much to be over. I know how much I’m fighting now, despite the
physical pain, because I want to swim again in the summer. I know how much I
want to live. I knew I didn’t want any of that when I forced the soldier to
kill me. I had no more hope nor strength to survive.
But then it
seemed the scene went on. I was curious because I’ve never had memories of what
happened right after I died as Katrina. I only knew my life ended there in the
blink of an eye, as I was lying in the middle of the dark street. I had the
impression I was looking from the outside now. I saw the soldier lifting me in
his arms like a broken doll, so tiny and shrunken, in fetal position. And then
everything started to fade. Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I was
doubting as always. “I want to go further, but aren’t I imagining it all?”
What
happened next? Did the depression state I was in send me to a temporary hell
with other depressive souls in the lower astral planes? Who knows, but
certainly that’s not what I saw. I tried to forget about my negative thoughts
and just go deeper into the trance. Then I felt as if I was waking up. I was also
in a fetal position, but everything was
light around me, a bright and dark yellow light. I was also light, it
seems. I was “bigger” now, but lighter, ethereal, almost transparent... I was going to say immaterial, but I don't think this is exact, as I was somehow corporeal. I still felt "feminine", something I consider strange, as I think I have more masculine traits. I still could feel some of Katrina’s
sadness and depression, but it was as if
those emotions were just impregnating me, adhering to my being like some kind of dirtiness I
hadn’t washed away yet. I no longer felt I
was Katrina. Katrina was just a thin layer of skin I had left behind, like
snakes do when they molt.
I’m not
sure if there was someone else there helping me reflect and understand, but I
do know I was wondering what Katrina’s life had meant. I’ve had the same
thought in other occasions, and here it came back again: “To experience the absence of love”. There wasn’t love in Katrina’s
life. There was no one who cared, except her boyfriend, taken away by war. I
wasn’t surprised of the outcome: suicide was one of the likeliest options, and
probably not the worst. I wasn’t concerned about that in the slightest. It was
as if I was just evaluating my decisions and thinking: “Well, that was to be
expected, given the circumstances”.
Basically,
that was all. I went to bed still feeling emotional, but not giving too much
weight to those memories that probably are imagination. But the truth is that
at the following morning they were still clear and strong in my mind. They
indeed have the “texture” typical of past life memories. They’re weird,
different, hard to describe, as it’s not a physical world as we know it, you’re
not even “you”. But they feel just as real. I just can’t know if they’re fantasy as I don’t have a way to
verify it. I only have my intuition to judge. And it’s long since my intuition
tells me we are so much more than flesh and bone, so much more than we can't even
imagine.
