Living in the Past - Reincarnation
LIVING IN THE PAST - REINCARNATION
glimpsing a solitary life
It struck me like lightning. Instantly dropping into a memory. It was like plopping an ice cube into water and you hear the sudden cracking of the ice as it meets the warm water. The scenes came shooting in rapidly like that, kind of flickering like an old black and white movie - but in color.
I was immediately aware of a farm hand walking down a dirt lane. He was an older man, thin and gaunt-featured with worn, leathery hands.
He had stopped in his tracks. I realized he was me, and in an instant I went from ‘looking down’ at him, to being inside his body and looking at my own hands. And just like that, I remember that he was stopping to look at his hands, pausing in his tracks because an odd feeling had come over him. Which was me. His hands were my hands. They were large, strong and calloused. And I was aware of looking at my hands and that some odd feeling had just come over me.
This was the second time I realized that we can affect the past. The first time was a ‘this’ life recollection of being an infant. I was in my crib and the room was dark. At the foot of the crib stood my parents. My father was on the left and my mother on the right, next to the wall. She was scolding him for a comment he’d made about having kids.
“I never really wanted children,” he said. I don’t know if it was the ‘me then’ or the ‘me in the now’ that comprehended what he said, but I understood every word. Because of that experience, I tend to think babies comprehend far more than we give them credit for.
Anyway, the strangest thought came flying into my baby mind. “Good!” I exclaimed. “That’s exactly what he’s supposed to say. It sets the whole thing in motion.”
Which, of course, was when I gained my first realization that not only does the past affect the present, but that the present can affect the past.
But back to the old guy
Looking at those hands revealed this to me: the idea that past and present are somehow connected or merged. Because I was seeing through my eyes then, with today’s eyes now.
It felt, well, ‘normal’ was obviously not a good word for it. But it didn’t feel disjointed in any way. ‘We’ were seamlessly integrated, compatible, yet each his own man. During this experience our thoughts were the same except when the ‘now’ me occasionally went into a brief observational mode.
Running along each side of the dirt lane were horizontal wood plank fences, bordering pastures. Up ahead, the lane I was walking down dead-ended into another lane, running perpendicular. Fences ran there, too. Back where I had come from, a ways back and over my right shoulder, was a white house. But up ahead, to the right of the tee in the road and just across the intersecting lane, there stood a lean-to tool shed housing farm implements. Shovels, picks, axes and so on. They were a bunch of tools both hanging and leaning.
I was the kind of man who was solitary. I worked quietly and alone. I’d go into town in horse and wagon to get supplies, but I didn’t go there often. So people scarcely knew me. They recognized me, but that’s about all. I had a sense that whenever I was noticed it was as “old man Parker” (or whatever my name was). The road to town followed a quiet, shaded river. His memories were my memories. Even now.
The scene changed
In an instant, I was standing on the front porch of that two-story white wood house. I recall the shape of the home vividly. In the doorway was a woman in her fifties or sixties. Her eyes were a striking blue, with flawless white surrounding the pupils. Her husband was long dead, and I cared for her land.
The front porch door wasn’t facing the front yard. If you were standing on the front porch facing the house, you had to turn to the left to face the door. It was an unusual orientation.
I was a farmhand and all-round handyman. It was clear that she was fond of me, I could see it in her eyes. But I was reserved and would never intrude.
The scene changed
It was the middle of the night, startlingly loud with banging thunder and flashes of bright lightning. I was outside in the driving rain, calming the frightened horses. It was icy cold, and pitch black. I think maybe i caught pneumonia because of what I saw next.
The scene changed
I was looking down on a tiny two-room cottage. The second room had barely enough room for a single bed. There was a gaunt old man in it, laying on his back, arms at his side. His eyes were closed, and a blanket was pulled up to his neck. The blanket was pulled taut and neatly arranged. It was me. I was dead.
The scene shifted slightly
I was above the bed, looking down. I remember thinking that a solitary life like this didn’t really change or improve things. Not that it was a bad life. But living like this was too isolated to really make a difference. But it had nothing to do with wanting to be famous or something. It was just an observation. Simply that my life, while it had a small impact, had not really changed or improved anything.
It was around 1880. I think I was in a place called Leesburg or Leesville. Lee-something, in Virginia. Leesville is unincorporated and in Bedford County. This was my first past life recollection.
NOTE: In my opinion, if you want to study and journey deeper into consciousness, it’s important to just take things as they come. Not to judge or try to read anything into it other than what you observe and experience.