Journal Date: March 30, 2021
I went to see Angelic again yesterday for another reiki healing. It was probably the most emotionally intense of all the sessions I’ve had with her so far.
At first, the images I saw in my vision were very general.
A drop of dew on a blooming flower. And then various scenes of nature, starting with a nighttime field of snow over which aurora borealis played.
Scenes of life underwater, in deep ocean. I imagined what it was like to be a fish in a stream, a snake slithering across the desert floor.
I understood this to be guidance.
I observed how natural it all was. No “trying” to be or do anything.
Just life expressing herself in all of her varied forms.
And then once again, the flowers appeared, caught in the act of blooming.
I heard a voice ask, “Does the rose try to stop itself from blooming?
Does the rose keep its petals pressed tightly in the bud for fear another flower will be upset by its beauty?
No!
So go ahead. Be like the rose. Bloom.”
Suddenly, a woman appeared before me, the same woman I’d seen before in a previous session. It was my past self, the woman I knew that I had been before in a previous incarnation.
She was dressed beautifully, in an embroidered dress of gold and ivory. She called to me to join her.
And so I did.
She then led me through the rooms of an old castle or mansion, one which seemed to be in Europe around the 15th or 16th century.
Here she shared with me what she loved, what inspired her, and the contents of her dreams and her visions.
I knew she was here because she had a message for me.
I had asked about how to heal my patterns of sabotage and self-destruction, and she was here to help bring me closer to an answer.
It became clear that this woman had unfinished business that needed attending to, and that it belonged to me, as well.
Although this woman was clearly not the same “I” that lay on the table in Angelic’s office, I also knew that we were one and the same.
I had once been her. I had lived through her existence once, and when “Eleanor” was born, she simply continued it.
I was the living, breathing extension of all that this woman had seen and experienced.
I knew that I must pay attention to her.
I knew that she had a message for me.
After showing me her life, the woman revealed to me her death.
I had already sensed some of the details surrounding this in previous visions. But this time, she demanded that I go deeper.
She wanted to show me the truth, in all of its horror, all of its humiliation, terror and misery.
As before, I saw where the woman was kept prisoner in an underground cave or cellar.
She pushed me further.
“Look. Open your eyes. This is the truth of what I lived, and how I died.”
It was hard to watch. The woman (and others like her) were kept trapped in darkness, tortured, mutilated, and repeatedly raped and beaten.
And they were convinced by their captors that it was only right that it should be so.
That in fact they were the guilty party.
If they had not dared to stand in their power, reveal their beauty, believe in the magic of their existence, they might have been spared.
If they had not attracted the wrong kind of attention–if they had not bloomed–no hand would have reached out to cut them down.
The logic of it all was never questioned. There was no room for that.
Trapped and tortured, the woman took their guilt upon herself.
In circumstances so brutal and traumatic, she vowed she would do whatever it took to make sure she never ended up here again.
I continued to watch her. I saw how, in a state of panic, the woman’s mind raced from thought to thought, and regretted anything and everything she had ever done which had led her there.
She only felt remorse for her beauty, regret for intelligence, for drawing any kind of attention to herself; it had only brought about her destruction.
I saw her desperation, and I understood. I saw the vow that woman made to never allow her light to shine again. I witnessed her commitment to staying safe by staying small.
I had brought these vows along with me when I was once again born into this new lifetime.
I had chosen the circumstances and conditions that would set me up to repress, hide and deny all that was good in me, that would “protect” me from being a target for jealousy, envy or suspicion in any way.
I also saw that these attempts to avoid a similar fate again were actually the very thing that doomed me to repeat it.
Maybe I wasn’t trapped in a cavern underneath the earth, but I was still very much trapped, a prisoner of my own fears and self-imposed limitations.
I found that denying my worth was no protection. Instead of jealousy, I faced open disrespect, with equal humiliation.
I knew that I didn’t want to live that way anymore.
I was tired of being trapped. I wanted to be free.
My past self resisted, and she told me she wasn’t ready yet to let go.
I listened, then asked her why.
She replied that she hadn’t lived through all of that for nothing. The only relief she found in all of her abject misery here was the idea that at least she had learned something from all of this suffering.
“Now I know, and I will never allow myself to experience this again.”
There was also the suspicion I had that she felt releasing this pain and the patterns of self-abuse would be a dishonor to her memory.
If she hadn’t “learned,” if she didn’t stay small, then what meaning did it all have? What meaning was there in her death, what was her sacrifice worth, if nothing was to come of it?
I told her, “You are not your end. You are not what they did to you. Your death does not define you. The way that you lived, the light that you shined, the way that you once bloomed–that is you. That is what has value.”
And I promised her, “I want to honor you.” And I asked,”Show me what I can do. Show me the way you want your life to be honored.”
And with that she conceded: “By living it. Live for me now the life that was taken from me. Fulfill the dreams I had which could never be realized.”
She admitted that her insistence on holding tightly to these traumas was keeping me trapped in them. Once her life had been claimed by events out of her control, but now her attempts at control were claiming me for a living death.
Again, I promised I would honor her.
I swore that letting go of this pain did not mean letting go of her. I would never forget her, I would keep the memory and the meaning of her life and her death both live within me.
She seemed satisfied with this so far.
So I asked her, “Are you willing to let me go? Will you release me from this?”
She hesitated for a very long while. It was hard for her, I could tell that she didn’t want to.
I asked again, and waited.
I waited so long I began to fear her answer would be a definitive “No.”
But I didn’t push or pressure her more. I waited expectantly, hopefully.
And then she said yes: “I release you.”
“I release you now! You are free! Go, so that you may live!”
And with this, I grabbed her hand, and together we ran out and into the brilliant, shining sun outside.
We ran towards the sun, we skipped in joy over the soft green grass, we wandered together arm in arm through the gardens and felt so, so alive.
In releasing me, she had released herself.
In letting me go, she had given us both life, as I lived beyond, and for, her.
After all, I was her. In a sense, I am still her now.
I vowed again to always honor her.
Only this time, I would not pay tribute to her death with my own dying, but through my own living, my own surrendering to the dreams which she always deserved to live.
I could feel the end of our time together drawing near. My vision began to recede further away from me.
Before I left for good, there was one more thing I had to see here.
My vision again returned, for only a moment, but I saw that I was now in the cathedral I had walked through with Beso in my last session with Angelic.
I was now in what appeared to be a new wing of my temple.
I entered the bright, airy chamber which I saw was filled with hundreds and hundreds of white roses and candles keeping vigil here.
In the center of this chamber, I saw my past self, the woman I once was, dressed again in a beautiful and intricately detailed funeral gown of ivory and gold.
I walked up and approached my self, so beautiful in this death as soft as sleep.
There were no tears to be shed here.
She was now at peace.
She could now rest.
Now it was time for me to step up and continue living, for me and for her and for all the women I’ve ever been before and will ever be after.
I stepped up and placed one hand on hers, which held a gorgeous bouquet of brilliantly blooming white roses.
I leaned over, giving the woman a kiss on the forehead, as if to say goodnight.
“Thank you. I love you. I will honor you.”
With that, the vision began to fade.
The cathedral grew smaller and smaller as my inner sight opened up to include the universe, expanding and fading away from me with each passing second.
And that was it.
I opened my eyes, and I was back in my body, back in my regular physical reality.
But not back to “normal.”
Back to life.
This song by PJ Harvey has always reminded me of the woman I met during this past life regression.
Questions for Reflection
Here are some questions for reflection that you may choose to journal on. Please feel free to share your experience in the comments if you feel called to.
- Do you believe in reincarnation or past lives?
- Do you have any experience with past life regression? What was it like?
- Have you ever experienced visions or very powerful dreams? What were they like?
- Are there any songs or works of art that remind you of these types of experiences? How do they make you feel?