One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round of Life
Companion music: Me More Cowboy Than You by The Brudi Brothers
Naturally, one can do all kinds of other things with life—make a dutuy of it, or a battleground, or a prison—but that doesn’t make it any prettier. Jut what life is, when it is beautiful and happy—it’s a game. — Leo in Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East
Murders, death in all it’s shapes, the capture and sacking of towns—all must be considered as so much stage-show, so many shiftings of scenes, the horror and outcry of a play. For here, too, in all the changing doom of life, it is not the true man, the inner soul, that grieves or laments, but mearly the phantasm of the man, the outer man, playing his part on the boards of the world. — Plotinus
I have been born many times, Arjuna, and many times hast thou been born. But I remember my past lives, and though hast forgotten thine. — Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita
Chest tight. Breathing shallow. Gasping a little...
Gili had told me a moment before that that past lives may be horrible nightmares. I was rather hoping I’d be a Caesar (historic, good looking, successful until a quick albeit untimely death).
Instead (I was told) I might be a murderer the son of a murderer or murdered. I might be an unlucky victim a thousand lifetimes over, or worse a brutal perpetrator. If I was a devil, I’d be stuck with the knowledge that my karma is permanently marked, doomed next time around to suffer in lower realms of the Hungry Ghosts, or animals — to be a nose-breathing pug on reincarnation - AWFUL.
With the image of a potential rupture in my sanity loitering loosely in my mind, I walked over the house where I’d been told I might meet my past lives.
The white wooden bungalow was taken straight from a Stephen King novel. A tree stooped over the little slatted house, covering the roof and the paved pathway with a dense shade that almost hid the front door. I stood in the road, arms crossed, looking up at the tree, thinking about whether this Regression Therapy was a good idea. The tree appeared to shiver, and, like catching a yawn, I also shivered. Was it colder in this north western suburb of Austin? - it chilled me.
I stepped backwards, and once again looked up at the tree stretching high into the sky, keeping the bungalow in an almost Norwegian-winter darkness.
The front door swung open, it creaked a little, and Barbara - my guide - appeared from the glowing interior. We hugged. She was tiny. I de-velcro’d my sandals (rather loudly in the silence of the house) and sat down on her therapists sofa, opposite Barbara’s wooden chair.
She explained she'd bought the chair quite recently from Ohio: it was made from an assortment of thin branches, glued or screwed together in a piggledy way. She’d hung some wind chimes to the back, so when she lent forward to brief me as to how important it was that I trust her, the chimes chimed, and added to the mystical aura of the moment.
Barbara explained that I was safe. I was to trust her process, and pause the ‘rational’ left brain’s kicking and screaming at the absurdity to the experience.
Throughout the trip, I was to talk aloud about what I was seeing and feeling. She would record the whole thing. I was firmly told to stay open and receptive.
Barbara kicked a cable, and the bed I was to lay on began to vibrate. Its vibrations, she said, would help further the trance I was heading into. I settled down, put on my eye mask and imagined myself (at Barbara’s direction) as a stone sinking, falling, drifting through deep water.
And off I went! I landed at the bottom of the sea. Ah, so still, with the ripples of the water going outwards as I settled deeper... deeper... longer... further...
She began: Imagine yourself in a garden, it’s the most beautiful garden you’ve ever been to.
Now wander through it. (I wandered. It was divine! Lavender and long grasses, a wild meadow, with apple trees scattered about.)
You arrive at a gate. (I arrived at a heavy stone gate.)
Pause. (I paused.)
Feel the gate. (I felt it, it was cold against my hands. Strange!)
Now, Hector, step through the gate: step through!
I hesitated, and then stepped beyond.
What do you find on the other side?
It was dark (must be night time?) and on the horizon the sun was rising. The ground was black like peat. I knelt down to feel the soil, but it was warm. I felt the earth between my fingers.
Peat?
No, burned soil. All cindered. I looked up at the horizon (this was all in first person), and the sunrise was actually a village aflame. My village. It was still the middle of the night. My feet were bare; I walked towards the houses. This was my home. I was in a gown or cloak type of thing. It might have been hundreds of years ago. The place was deserted. The house (yes, my house, I was becoming sure of it), was destroyed, the beams of the roof collapsed in; I climbed over them.
My family (I intuitively felt I had a family; wife and children) were not there. They hadn’t survived, but their bodies were also not here. I was felt a deep feeling of loss.
I began to cry as I navigated the ruined buildings.
This was all very strange, but I went with it. The left, rational, side of my brain was fussing; I ignored it. How much time had passed? A lifetime? An hour? A minute.
And before my left brain began to get too agitated, Barbara suggested I jump forward to the next most significant moment of my life. She accompanied me the whole time, the chimes on her chair giving her movements away. Was she crying too? Her dog — a little ratty thing — scratched itself under the desk on the periphery of my consciousness. But Barbara and her dog were very distant compared to the visceral feelings of this cosmic experience of navigating what appeared to be my past lives.
Barbara prompted nothing beyond asking me what I see or how I feel, and suggesting I skip forward to the next significant moment.
I found myself in a field, with a woman I apparently loved, looking down into a gently valley with a river. I didn’t say anything, but the woman — dressed in blue robes — spoke at length (I couldn’t understand her). Barbara ushered me on and I experienced my death.
Now, my death was quite interesting. I later died of old age, and my friend, who I think waw a priest, accompanied me. We held hands while I felt my grip loosen as my spirit left my body and floated up (“up, up, up” I murmured) towards the light, into a numinous space that sat outside of our dimension.
I recognised this space, funnily enough. I’d been here before, after extremely high doses of psychedelics, where I had, owing to the dose, left my body and forgotten that I had ever had a body to begin with, and just hung out in the pure consciousness, in the ‘pre-manifestation’.
Up there (I say up as if it’s above us, but it permeates everything), I could communicate with the ‘Guides’ or ‘Masters’ as Barbara introduced them to me. But just as I began to ask questions (I had a ton of questions, as you might imagine!), I could feel my rebirth, my manifestation; I was going through the forgetting process — my Self was being wiped clean — and I was a baby.
I was being born! To die, and to be reborn, all in an Austin suburb on a Wednesday morning, and sober too! This was a trip.
Now a baby: Out I came, into the light of the world, as fat little boy.
Birth was painless, yet surely a significant moment. This life, too, was pretty tragic, although I did later inherit land and power. My father was a murder, and I watched him kill somebody (when I was ~six) before he ran off. I know it sounds farfetched, but I’m simply reporting what I saw and felt.
In this life I felt emotionally shut off (I guess, this is what they call trauma). My mother was absent (dead, maybe? I never worked it out). I grew up cold and aloof, and I only found connection much later on (to my second wife, my first wife died). I skipped on into the tail-end of this wretched life, and found myself dying, and “up, up, up” towards the white light of the guides.
I looked about and found myself in the numinous space I had visited lifetimes (and minutes) before, among the Masters.
Now, I had an opportunity to ask some questions.
What’s the point of it all? I asked.
To Enjoy It! They answered in unison, in a deep, operatic, manner. Enjoy it!!!
Even the bad bits? This was not a very well put question; I mean, I was talking to god here.
“How can I enjoy the bad bits?”, I said.
Especially the bad bits!! (There was almost an orchestra of voices, it was operatic!)
And how do I do that? I followed..
Stay open. Stay open to everything that arrises.
After a little more back and forth with the opera, I returned to my physical body in this world.
I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the vibrating bed, and felt my face. It was wet with tears! But thank god it was my face alright, a little bearded, quite rough.
I had experience the losses and joys of lifetimes; I had chatted with the numinous un-manifested energy of of the before-and-after-life. And I had been sober through it all. I was led by the vibrating bed, the dog, the wind chimes, and gentle Barbara. Together we drifted from one lifetime to the next.
My ego jumped in — I must have been naturally good at skipping between past lives! Perhaps I was gifted? - no way (my Ego said) could everyone have had similar, dramatic and vivid, access to their past lives...
And yet Barbara assured me that more than nine out of ten of the people she guides have experiences exactly like mine: dropping into a deep trance and almost unprompted experiencing the profound significance of prior lives.
What the hell!
Barbara then pointed me to a drawing on the windowsill.
It was tiny, I hadn't noticed it before. The drawing was a sketch by her young daughter, of a spirit or a Guide. There was a tiny speech bubble coming from a cloud-like creature.
I looked closer: "Enjoy it!" it read.
I was stunned.
It’s been three months since I took this regression therapy.
Barbara recorded the audio from the session but I have not had the courage to listen yet. It’s a little raw right now. Two hours felt like two minutes. I fell easily into the liminal space, as if it was always right there for us to access. And in what felt like moments I fell right back out of it again, into the physical realm.
It sounds wacky, but it’s the trip I experienced. We live in a wacky world, and to fall from one past life into another, learning things along the way (how to be open, how to enjoy life as it presents itself). This is just one element of this otherworldly experience.
I left Barbara's house shaken but otherwise renewed. Life is not heavy if we’re going to be back again and again.
Until now, I've always nodded agreeably with the Buddha’s teachings right up until reincarnation. At reincarnation I would pause for a moment, think 'pah!" and say “that’s little far fetched", and move on.
But now I have a more open mind.
Heck, -I felt the rough ground of some incinerated village beneath my bare feet. -I watched death take me away into a place I half-recognised. -I communed with the Guides! And they told me to enjoy life.
What a cosmic adventure!