And So It Begins…

Last night was one of the worst in recent memory. I couldn’t sleep for my stomach was tied in a knot, which was caused by something that happened earlier in the evening. Sometimes being on a spiritual path knocks you upside the head, and this was a big knock. Things are not over yet, and I expect that it will be some time before the full meaning of this, comes clear.

I held my MeetUp last night, at a local coffee shop. Only one other person showed up, a recent friend of mine that also happens to be a retired English professor. I had mentioned earlier that may guides had told me that I was going to write a book. I had also said that I had no idea when or what it was to be about. When I became clear that no one else was going to show up, she proposed to help me write that book, in exchange for help I had given her in handling a spirit in her house.

We discussed the idea and she outlined how I would get started. For my part, I was resisting, but I’m not sure exactly what I was resisting. I don’t mind writing, (obviously!) But something about the situation was bringing up something, something I couldn’t put a name on, but I have felt before.

This something first popped up when I did my first QHHT session as a client. I never really got much detail, but an enormous about of guilt and grief came to the surface. It seems that I had been someone who was responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not millions of people, and wholesale destruction as well. Despite the powerful feelings and the physical symptoms from that session, I have never been 100% convinced that I didn’t just make the whole thing up, well, to be important, and all that. Once the session was over the emotions slid back beneath the surface again, only occasionally reappearing, in brief flashes.

Last night, I’m still not sure what I felt, but it seemed like I was feeling the huge swells caused by some powerful force below my awareness. Something so large that it only needed to roll over in it’s sleep to cause tidal waves on the surface of my mind. I can never leave well enough alone, so, like most boys do when they see something they don’t understand, I kept poking at it with a mental “stick.” Unfortunately that left me stuck inside it most of the night, with my stomach knotted, thoughts swirling in my head and unable to sleep.

Let me try and explain what was going on in my head. First there was a buzzing, and anxiety, and a set of memories that kept playing, over and over. The first memory was of a “dream” or past life, take your pick, were I was a priestess, traveling on a ship. Though I was technically a priestess, I was for all practical purposes, a mid- to high-level bureaucrat. One of those faceless people who do the grunt work of managing all the details of keeping a temple complex running smoothly. I was on the ship, with a single, armed, escort, because I smuggling holy artifacts to a trading outpost to protect them from the coming disaster. I really didn’t want to be there, but I was ordered to by my superiors, and there was nothing I could do about it. Apparently politics were such that we were not allowed to admit that we knew what was coming, so we had to make what preparations we could in secret. I kept getting more and more details about this, as the scenes played over and over in my mind.

The next memory was something that happened when I was about five, and playing with a neighbor girl. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, in an area that was pretty undeveloped at that time. The street we were on had houses on just one side and we were surrounded by undeveloped forest and fields. The girl and I were playing in some area away from the houses and she needed to pee, which she did, in front of me. I remember watching with mild interest. After that, we went…somewhere, and the next thing I remember is “I don’t want to feel any more.” Where about that time I disassociated so strongly from my body that it took decades of self work and a therapist to get back in, sometime in my 50’s.

Now for the last memory, the one that turned out to be the key. This is about a girl I had a crush on, starting in the first grade, and on through the last time I saw her in school, junior collage. Despite the fact that we were in the same grade all that time, I don’t remember noticing her very often. The first memory I have of her is in the first grade. We walked to her house after school and playing “horses” in a neighbors yard. Later, as I remember it, I was attacked and bitten by a dog on the way home. After that, I never spoke to her again. I would see her at school, but I was deathly afraid to ever go near her.

I ran into her at our twentieth high school reunion and her story of that time is quite different than mine. Apparently, she followed me around a lot, and hung out at my house enough that she knew my mother. I have no recollection of any of this.

Back to last night. I got up, at some point, very late, to walk a bit, in the hope the my stomach pain was caused by gas and standing up would allow me to burp and release it. No such luck, but, while I was pacing, thinking about my grammar school crush, a strong need to cry came over me, and the words “I am so sorry!” Once I had let that run it’s course, I felt a feeling of release, and then went back to bed. Soon I realized that everything in my head and body had subsided enough that I could finally get to sleep.

Today, my stomach still hurts, and it still feels a bit weird inside my head, but it feel…different, something has shifted. Something has begun and we’ll see what happens next.

WWI Past Life

Tonight I went to a past life regression MeetUp. I went as a participant, because I really felt the need to find out a few things.

Lately I have been realizing that I had no direction. At least I didn't *feel like I had a direction. For quite some time now, I have doing simply what had to be done, or running entirely on instinct. I had no real feeling about what I should be doing or where I was headed, I just knew what needed to get done and did it, without really caring, one way or the other. But in the past week I have reached the end of that road and was staring into the face of…nothing. Make no mistake, I have a path forward and, objectively, everything looks on track. But I just didn't see any particular reason to keep going, all the passion and drive and any reason to get up in the morning, were gone. So I got that it was time to reach out to others for help.

As an aside that show how completely I am not the person I was a few years ago, hear this: A few days ago I was having a really bad morning. I was having problems that I just couldn't make any headway with, problems with my phone and dentist and health care, all at once. I went into work feeling really, you know, ARRG! But, the real funny thing is, that by the time I finished lunch, I was feeling much better. Talking to customers actually got me out of my funk and lighted my day considerably. This was so not me a few years ago, when hiding in a book, by myself, was the only cure for a funk.

I went to something last night, that I thought was a psychic class, but turned out to be readings from a psychic. Surprise! My reading turned out to be helpful, because she told me to let go of the idea that the decisions I make now have to be my best and final ones, for good. I hadn't realized that I was putting so much weight on my choice of where to live and what I do next, that is was just overwhelming me. I got that I can just put my money into a house for investment purposes, and sell it in a few years, if I want, and move somewhere else. There's really no "long run" to worry about. The decision just needs to be "good enough" for now.

In that frame of mind, I went to the past life regression with the intension of getting an answer to the question of "What do I do now, what is my goal?" I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I didn't an answer to that question.

The leader started us with a few warm-up exercises, and I couldn't get my head out of my daily concerns and I was worried that the whole session would be a bust. No worries. It turned out to be the best session I've had so far.

My past life opened with me flying a WWI airplane. I don't know which kind, but I noticed that there was one machine gun in front of me. It was dark, which is odd since they generally didn't fly at night in those days. There were clouds below, and flashes in the clouds that I first took to be lightning, but then supposed to be artillery fire. I was old, for a pilot, maybe 23-24, and tall enough to be awkward in the tiny plane. I think I had just finished some kind of action, because I seemed wounded and the plane had bits of lose canvas flapping in the wind. I was numb, and tired, and I think I had been in the war too long and just didn't care anymore. The next thing I remember was nosing over into a dive. Perhaps I passed out.

The next thing I saw was of two shinny boots, and then green uniform pants. It took me a bit to figure out that I was lying on the ground, on my left side, in the mud staring at a pair of boots of someone standing next to me. I raised my head slightly and then dropped it back as I passed out again. The next thing I was was a young girl looking at me sideways. She was wearing a dress and had long, light brown hair that hung down as she turned her head sideways to look into my face.

In the next scene, I was lying in a bed in, what I took to be, a farmhouse with white plaster walls. There was an older man there and the girl, and they were taking care of me. This part was blurry and indistinct, and seemed to go on for a while. Skipping ahead, the death scene of that life started with a picture of a single candle. I was still in the same room, I don't know how much time had passed. It seemed like a long time but the girl looked unchanged. I found out why later. As I was lying in bed, the girl seemed to move in a blur from one place to another, or just, magically, pop from one place to another. At times she seemed transparent.

The girl seemed to know when it was time for me to die, for she held my face in her hands as I left my body. I looked down at her holding my face for a short while, then she rose up with me and we both ascended into the light. On the way, she transformed from a girl to a being of light, and then left me, for parts unknown, as soon as we reached our destination. I got that she was a helper and a guide, but her job was now done and she was off to a new assignment.

Next, I met with a fellow that was a counselor, of some sort. I couldn't hear what I was trying to tell me, and then got that I didn't want to hear what anyone told me. That was what I took away from that life: Don't listen to anyone! They will convince you to commit yourself to some stupid cause and throw away your reason and your life in a war on the other side of the world. When I realized that, the fellow smiled and nodded vigorously. That was the answer I wasn't looking for. I have been going through my life, not committing to anything, not joining anything, ever, because I was afraid of what that commitment might "trick" me into. Now, if I want a future, I have to "join" and commit to the community I want to be a part of. You can't commit to being a "sort-of" healer. Either you are or are not. I need to make a decision and then, once I've decided, go for it and stop hedging my bets and being halfhearted about it. Ouch! I get that, but it still scares me. But, it's time to take some concrete steps. We'll see how that goes.

During the part with the counselor, I noticed that the left side of my face seemed "heavy." I'm thinking that had something to do with the plane crash. interestingly, for the past year or so, I have noticed issues with the left side of my body, especially my left leg, but my left shoulder and arm as well. Most of the issues seem to be "spiritual" since, physically, there's nothing wrong. My own investigations pointed to something from an earlier life, especially something mangling my left leg, but I was never able to pin it down, perhaps, this was it.

Opps, I almost forgot, but there's one more thing: Tonight I got that the reason I've had so much trouble getting results for myself in sessions is because I don't trust other healers. It's like, if they help me, they'er better than me and that makes me look bad. I don't trust them with my information, so I keep it hidden, even from myself. Time to do some healing around that.

These two sessions have lightened my mood considerably. For that I'm thankful. I seem to have been avoiding meditating for the past weeks, with all the moving and all. The new place and circumstances just seem to make it difficult. I am now committing to getting myself back on a regular schedule, or at least making time for it when I'm not otherwise busy. Things are looking up, so getting out of myself and seeking help and input from others was definitely the right thing to do. There is also something about picking the right people to go to, but that, I think, will be the subject of another post.

A Cautionary Tale

Today I finished transcribing my own QHHT session with a fellow practitioner. It took place several months ago. I had done up the past life portion a while back, but I've been strongly resisting doing the subconscious part. Part of me still thinks that I was screwing around and faking it. Now that I've listened to it, I still feel that a lot of it is crap, but some parts give me chills, and one part invokes a very powerful feeling that I have no name for. The advice for the other practitioner was interesting and just sweet. I have no idea where that came from and I'm almost embarrassed by it, but there you are.

I won't post the full transcript, it's nearly two hours, and I believe I've already posted the past lives portion anyway.

What was most significant to me about this was how hard it was to get information from the subconscious. Lots of stuttering and thrashing around. It was like something was doing it's best to prevent certain information from coming out. I could think the words without trouble, but as soon as I tried to say them, the muscles in my face would lock up. It was exhausting. The practitioner noticed this and tried to find out what was going on (I have paraphrased the questions and condensed this section for length):

Why is it hard to speak?

We don't want him to speak. We don't want you to know. He's not supposed to find out.

Why are you there, in his body?

We are not in the body. We are everywhere.

Why?

He's not supposed to know. He doesn't want do know. He doesn't want to know what he's done.

What is your purpose?

To help him. He doesn't know how to handle it.

Who are you working for? Who are you serving?

Him. He asked us to do this.

Who?

He did. To protect him. What he knows, what he's done. We have an agreement.

Who are you?

His friends. From long ago. From before life, from before time.

We keep him alive. Time is running out, for everyone.

Who are you?

I. don't. know. you. You don't need to know! It's not your time yet.

Where are you?

We exist all around. Where all things come together. We help when we can. To keep things together, things aligned.

What things?

Life, spirit, balance, energy. Some things need to be done. Balance needs to be restored before it's too late. …ending or need to understand. More need to understand, there's more than what they see. It's beyond their gods and fears and demons. Those are all made up. Their morals are killing the planet. Those that don't understand.

What kind of morals?

Use it up. Use up whatever you have. Use up everything till there's nothing left. Us versus them, there is no them.

Who is 'us'?

All entities.

Versus?

There is nothing else. That is the illusion. And that is why people fight.

What is your purpose, here on this planet?

No, no, no no…! <sobbing>

I find this very interesting, but also frustrating, because at this point the practitioner worked to make me feel better rather than find out what was going on. This happened a couple of times in the session, and whenever we got close to whatever it was I don't want to know, we veered off into trying to fix it.

This section is the most significant for me. It points out that I need to understand, not hide from, whatever it was that happened:

Can the subconscious help?

Fear and hate and darkness. It's darkness. So much dark, so much hate, so much death. It happened. He did it, he did. He needs to understand. Darkness. Darkness to come. Darkness of the soul. Out is through. Face or deny.

What is he hiding?

So much pain. We will help. He doesn't want to know. He needs to know. Stop fighting.

Any Advice?

There is nothing to do but give in. Get used to it, you are not what you think you are.

Who is he?

Someone much more powerful and dangerous. Very dangerous. <sobbing> He is still there. They are still there. Still remain. Death is not the end. All is forgiven. Forgive yourself. It was a lesson to learn. And freedom to know the dark from the light. Can't know the light without the dark. Accept what is. Be what he is. You are they, they are you. They understand. You have suffered enough. It's time.

It's time to take the first steps. to light fear fear keeping him where he is. Trust. Can't be as bad as it was.


This still gives me serous chills when I read it. The practitioner asked for advice and got this bit. (It really doesn't feel like me, even at the time I remember that it felt odd.) (The odd grammar is on the recording. LOL):

Keep trying your route. You have much to go. Color, white light behind you. You have many behind you. You are not the first. There's a line of people behind you. The first one's a male, there's many more behind you. They are you, and you are growing. You are on the right path. You need to open. Fear. You need to open. Cocoon, tightly closed. You must transform, to be a beautiful self. You are larger than you seem.

So what I take from this session is a note to self: while it's always good to strive to healing, feeling good in the moment is not necessarily the best path to healing. Sometimes we need to struggle to reach that place of healing. As a practitioner, I will always need to use my instincts and experience to know when best to push the client and when to back off. But we practitioners can to a disservice to clients by rushing to "take care" of them, at the expense of having them experience what they need to in order to heal.

P.S. On proofreading this, I noticed that "they" were also protecting the practitioner. So, perhaps, trying to find out more would have been completely pointless.

A dirigible death

This morning I had a dream right when I woke up, or while I was lying there, half awake. It intruded, suddenly, on my thoughts. I expect it’s an image of a “past life,” real or imagined, here to teach me a lesson.

At first there was a feeling of watching a black and white movie. Suddenly, a brightly colored scene superimposed itself on top of what I was watching, I could still see bits of the other movie around the edges. The new scene was like an old-time serial. The setting was the control cabin of an airship, a dirigible. Around me was of lots of lightweight, spidery aluminum girders. There were some people in a cabin. One, that I took to be the captain, was speaking loudly to me. I was being held by two others, both to restrain me and to hold me up because I had been severely beaten. We were all dressed like wealthy “homeless” people. What I mean is they looked like homeless people dressed for cold weather, with lots of layers of seemingly random mismatched clothes. However the clothes were clean and in good repair, so I guess that was a style. In a lot of ways the scene was like the clothes, mismatched and jumbled.

The captain, may or may not, have been human. It was hard to tell. The image might have been jumbled, or the face wasn’t human. Don’t know which. Either way, the features are impossible to make out, but I’m sure he was angry. I can not remember what he was saying, but it was some kind of warning or threat. Then the there was a cut to a view outside of the airship and I can see a body drop from the bottom into the empty air. I’m pretty sure I was the body falling. I found it easy to flip back and forth between these two scenes and examine them in detail.

While I’m studying these scenes, my stomach pain turns on and there is discomfort in the front of my lower jaw. Like I’d hit it on something, or been hit. My instinct says that this is the origin of my stomach issues, my fear of falling, and the source of my falling nightmares when I was young. (While I was able to conquer the falling dreams while I was still a child, it took me decades to lose my fear of falling in real life.)

I was some kind of spy. Where was a strong feeling of “good guys” verses “bad guys.” That all motives are simple, black and white, there’s no question of what’s right and what’s wrong. Who’s right and who’s wrong. I was very sure that I was a “good guy.”

This seems to be the origin of the reason my teeth are kind of a mess. Up until I was a teenager, my teeth were pretty much perfect, as I can see from old pictures, but when my wisdom teeth came in, they pushed the other teeth forward and now they are jammed together and a bit twisted in the front. I have the idea that the reason that was allowed to occur came from this incident. At some point, I was hit on the chin, maybe more than once, and my jaw was shoved back into my head. This left an imprint of “too small.” So, in this life, my wisdom teeth grew in sideways, facing forward, pushing all my teeth forward. I allowed that because, at that point in my life, my parents were dead and I was on my own with little money and no insurance. I finally did have them taken out, incurring a bill that it took me years to pay off, but the damage was done.

Another interesting thing is that the holes in my jaw, where the wisdom teeth were, has never healed properly. My dentist comments on it, from time to time, saying that I should have an operation to fill them in. But, since they’ve never given me any problem, I don’t see any reason why I should.

Also, lately I’ve been having my attention drawn to those holes during meditation. I’ve been feeling a lot of energy around them and it came to me that, in order for these the heal and rebuild the bone, the thing, the energy, the intension(?) that caused the holes in the first place, first must be removed.

The reason that I experienced that life was to open my mind and lose my naiveté. Human motivations are not simple good vs bad affairs and I needed to understand that there are nuances, and that “good” doesn’t always triumph.

The image is fading fast. I will always probably remember the facts of this “dream,” but in intensity and immediacy has already faded.

Outside of the funhouse

Every time I think my life couldn't get any stranger, it does. Maybe, at some point, down the road, none of what I'm going to say will be particularly unusual, but for now it's taking a little getting used to.

Tonight I re-aquainted myself with some people I hadn't seen in a while, and I noticed some connections which were beyond my reach the last time I saw them. (My, how much rings have changed.) One, who I've know for, maybe, eight years, and have always had some affection for, was clearly my sister in a previous life. We were both sisters, and she was the youngest. Although she's older than me, this time around, and I've always thought her a bit, well, odd, I've always felt a noticeable affection and a bit of protectiveness towards her.

Ok, no big deal at this point. I've been seeing connections a lot lately, so what's one more? Well, one thing I forgot to mention when I wrote up my life as a shaman, was that my "father" in that life was also someone knew from before. He's not here, in this life, but we've worked together before and probably will again, just not this time. So, now I have connections from other lives to this life, and other lives to other lives, what else is there? I'm getting to that.

The other person I reconnected with also had some kind of connection with me, but it manifested in a different way: It seemed to me that something about her that didn't seem right. I don't mean that there was something wrong, but that something just didn't seem to the way is should be.

She's considerably younger than I am and pretty and nice enough, but I alway had that nagging sense.  I could never put my finger on what was out of place. Today it clicked: she had the wrong face. Ah, so we've lived together before? No, we haven't. But that didn't make any sense, how could I know her if I've never known her? What gives? There was definitely a strong connection here but where could it have come from if we've never known each other? Things got more puzzling when I realized that she was connected to two other people who I had shared lives with. Just a friend of a friend? I don't know, maybe. But there seemed more to it than that.

It took me a while to draw the obvious conclusion, and once I saw it, I don't see how I could have missed it. All four of us were buddies in, what? the afterlife? A higher plane? Wherever is is that you want to call the place were we hang out before we are born and return to when we die, that's where all four of us hang between lives out and, apparently, have some long-standing partnership or working relationship.

I never occurred to me before to consider relationships on that level, relationships that span, perhaps, thousands of years? More? If that doesn't stretch your mind, I don't know what will. Now, I suppose, I'll be looking more deeply onto all the connections I sense in people I meet, for the universe is a lot richer than I'd realized. I have read about stuff like this, but it all just seemed, you know, kind of abstract, and it didn't really have anything to do with my life. On the other hand, I'm constantly asking to be shown more stuff and be given more understanding, so I really shouldn't be surprised at how odd things are getting. Now that I get this, I better brace myself, for something still odder is probably coming down the pike pretty soon.

And you know what? Bring it on! It seems reasonable that at some point I'll reach my limit, but, until then, Show me more, I dare you! I've never been more unsatisfied with this limited existence than I am now, even though I'm probably happier than I've ever been. I'm living a life that's pretty damm cool. It has it's ups and downs, and I don't know where I'm going, but I'm discovering mind-blowing stuff first hand, and that's as amazing as it gets.

The most significant down is dealing with the blindness and negativity that permeates my culture. But I'm beginning to think that it's not a pervasive as I've always believed. because I've lived my entire life inside the funhouse mirrors of denial, I don't really have any idea how far it actually goes. The reflections seem to go on forever, but I know they don't, so it's clearly time to find my way out of the funhouse and see what the world is really like.

Autistic Shaman

This life memory was almost forced upon me. I had woken up in the middle of the night, then, after I went to the bathroom, let the cat out, noticed that it must be late, because the full moon was far into the west, I went back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I had no idea why I couldn’t sleep, I was just awake and that was that. I started thinking about an autistic person I sing with, and gradually, flashes of evergreens and bark-covered beehives crept into my awareness. Finally I gave up, rolled over and decided to find out what this was all about. I didn’t knowingly put myself into a trance of any kind, but it was the middle of the night, who knows?

My first impression was a bark-covered beehive in the trees. After some digging, a scene emerged. I was a native American, in bare feet, wearing the kind of shirt that left my arms and shoulders uncovered, and a kind of loincloth. I don’t think there was any decoration on either. I had long black hair, tied back. I was standing, quite still, in a redwood forest on a gently rolling, upland, landscape. Behind me was a view, down-slope and through the trees, of a sunny valley, some miles distant. I was standing outside of, and facing, a beehive-shaped hut covered with bark.

In the next scene, I was inside the hut. There was a small fire in the center, a small amount of belongings, tucked against the sides and my wife. There were also two children, a boy, about 2 years old, and baby in her mother’s arms. My wife was also pregnant. My wife had been chosen for me by the tribe.

I had no feelings for my wife or children, I saw them, quite literally, as blurs. The children were little more than transparent ghosts. My wife was more solid, but was still a blur, none the less. It’s like I physically could not see them. I didn’t love them or hate them. They were just part of my world and I took care of them because that’s what I did. I didn’t really think about it. In a way, I don’t think I “thought” about anything, I just “was,” living in the present.

There was only one person in this life that seemed solid. That was the old man. I have only one image of him, where I am looking up at him from the side, from below, like I am a small child. He is facing away from me, is wearing a shirt like mine that leaves his arms a shoulders bare, and lose pants, both with decorations and beadwork. He has a special band around his upper arm and another around his head, holding his hair. Although his hair is heavily streaked with gray, he is still tall and strong.

New scene. I am again outside in the forest, this time watching some kind of ceremony where people are dancing by a fire. The place was an area of flat ground at the base of some very large rocks, sticking out of the hillside. Again, I can’t see any people, all I perceive are shadows and silhouettes against the firelight. This is during the day.

I wasn’t really paying attention to the dance. Instead I was thinking about how cool it was to have the fire up against the rocks. That way the heat is reflected back and that is so much warmer, and, not only that, but the rocks retained the heat after the fire died down at night and would keep you warm as you sleep. Next I started thinking about having a fire in a cave, and I started to wonder why no one had ever seen cases of people living in caves who built low walls of rocks to block the wind and keep them warm at night.

I moved ahead again. Now the scene looked exactly the same, and I was standing in the same position, except that now I was older, much older. I was stooped with age and had grey hair. Now I was dressed just like the old man I had seen in my first vision. I realized that, now, I was the shaman, taking over from my “father” when he died. I was not his blood kin, but was taken in by him after being abandoned by my parents. They were from another group and had left me far out in the forest when they had realized that I was “different.” I was about four at that time. The shaman found me, took me in and trained me to be his replacement.

It seems that I had “talents.” Today I might be called “functional autistic,” but in those times I was a holy man. I had ideas. For instance, my hut had a roof that was somewhat pointed, not flat like the others, so the rain would run off better. I covered my hut with bark because I shed rain better, and wouldn’t catch fire from sparks, the way leaves and branches would. I think I also had a habit of standing or sitting on one place for long periods of time, without moving, lost in my own inner world.

My death was confusing. I had chest pains, some kind of heart condition, but that didn’t kill me. I’d been stabbed in the back with a stone-tipped spear, but that didn’t kill me. It seems that I’d fallen and broken my neck. That didn’t kill me either, but left me a quadriplegic. I was assigned a young girl to take care of me, but someone in that condition doesn’t last long in that day and age. I have no idea how long I lasted, time didn’t mean much to me in that life. One I died, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I couldn’t see past the death.

My purpose in that life was to understand what it was like to live that life, be that kind of person, and to have compassion, not pity. To experience what it was like to be in the tribe, but on of it. In thinking about it, I am struck by some parallels between that live and this current life. I have, at times, found myself just “being,” aware of the people around me, but not giving them any acknowledgment or significance. Not thinking, just being.