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    Thread: Meditating yesterday morning; saw a memory of my past life.

    1. #1
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      Meditating yesterday morning; saw a memory of my past life.

      I would normally say "may have seen," as opposed to "saw," but I was explicitly told by one of my gods that it was a past-life event/memory. I really don't think it'd be polite to doubt his word.

      For background/context: A couple months ago, a male spirit started showing up in my meditations. He's a sweet and adorable blonde teenager, but he kept saying I should know him already and was very hurt/confused when I didn't. He... also turns into a bear if he loses control of his emotions. I thought he was a grizzly-bear spirit, but I know several other animal-spirits and he's the only one who actually needs to shape-shift like in a Hollywood movie, actively DISLIKES shape-shifting because he hates losing control, and doesn't "match" his animal in personality at all.

      He got my attention by sending me visions of us cast as Moritz and Ilse in the musical Spring Awakening. I've been calling him "Moritz" for lack of another name, but I've been trying to find out his real name, why I should know him, and what exactly he is if he's not QUITE a bear or a human. Unfortunately, his memory is really fragmented and he can't give me answers because he just doesn't HAVE them.

      Recently, one of my gods (Ogma, of the Irish pantheon) came because I really needed help sorting this out. He told me that we'd known each other in our previous incarnations, and then sent me this vision (quoted from my Livejournal with minor edits).

      Moritz and I were standing by a hill. He was naked or close to it, and I was kneeling to paint designs on his chest and arms with this gorgeous sky-blue paint. (OH HI, SKY-BLUE STOCKINGS THAT MORITZ FANTASIZES ABOUT IN SPRING AWAKENING, WHICH I BOUGHT BECAUSE I AM THAT MUCH OF A FAN.)

      I couldn't see anyone else around, but there was this feeling that he was the last one I was painting because he was not only "the bear's son" (a clan leader/heir? There's an Irish clan called McMahon, the "sons of the bear"), I was stalling his departure as long as I could. And people knew what I was doing, but they'd let me paint every fucking man anyway because 1) it was a very high honor to be painted by me as opposed to doing it themselves, and 2) they felt really bad for me.

      I was NOT dressed for painting, especially not with my hands. I was wearing a long-sleeved, pale-green dress and delicate slippers under a feather-cloak, and half my hair was in a crown of braids. Here's an approximation. The style should be four half-inch side-braids wound around my head (I had to make two larger braids so they'd be visible on-camera), with a larger center-braid resting on top of them to keep them in place (it's about the right size, but not tight enough). The rest of it was loose, wavy, and VERY long and thick; it practically covered me and was only a few inches off the ground.

      The fact that I was painting in such blatantly ceremonial clothes was both a mark of my skill and a sign of how deeply I felt about this, because I'd CHOSEN not to wear normal clothes or keep my hair out of the way.

      [...] [O]ne physical trait my past and present selves shared was black hair; there was an explicit contrast of my dark hair against the light dress.

      We couldn't make a noise because this place was sacred, but we were as close as the wet paint would let us be. He'd been holding my shoulders since I'd started because we knew once the paint dried, we wouldn't be able to touch each other--once he was dressed for war and had weapons, he wouldn't be able to be near me. When I was close to finishing, my eyes started burning but I couldn't actually cry because of the paint, my "stay immaculate while doing a very messy job" boast, and the "be silent in the sacred area" rule. So he let me wipe my hands off and started running his hands through my hair.

      Knowing the Celts and their penchant for tragedy, I really don't think Moritz came back.
      Since I was painting him and wearing a feather-cloak, that would make the time-period VERY early Antiquity, and the place would be either present-day Ireland or Scotland. However, current historians have no idea whether the Picts (and Celts) actually DID paint themselves for war because the only records we have of that are from the Romans, who are a PERFECTLY reliable source of information.[/ sarcasm]

      There's also the problem that they would most likely paint themselves RED as opposed to blue, and that woad, the dye frequently stated as what the Picts painted themselves with (and the most likely candidate for my vision's gorgeous sky-blue shade), is stated to be REALLY bad for your skin.

      However, as an artist, I know perfectly well that there are different ways to make paint. Especially paint that won't scar you.

      And the rest of the vision's details do match up--many hills/mounds in the Celtic countries are sacred to some extent; ancient Celtic poets wore feather-cloaks as a symbol of their status; the implicit taboo against wearing weapons in my presence would be logical since a bard's status was second only to a king's, and they could even permanently overthrow one by satirizing them.

      Sorry for the length, but this is REALLY context-heavy.

    2. #2
      Gear Trembler ThisWitheredMan's Avatar
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      What exactly are you doing when you meditate that enables you to access this kind of psychic content? I meditate regularly and the closest I come to anything like this is brief flashes of imagery, but never anything resembling a direct contact or consistent alternate identities/higher selves/past lives/whatever. I'm quite interested in understanding how you're doing this so I can do it myself.

      EDIT: Also, what is the experience of these things LIKE? Can you run down exactly what a given meditation is like, what feelings and such build up towards these visions or intuitions?
      TheGritz likes this.
      "Less of a young professional, more of an ancient amateur."

    3. #3
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      This request is going to be a bit skeptical, but I shall ask anyways. Me and my gods aren't perfectly acquainted yet so do ask your gods why if there is reincarnation that human population then is able to increase and decrease.

      Yes, I'm serious. Ask them.
      “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”

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      Gear Trembler ThisWitheredMan's Avatar
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      ^^ If reincarnation were occurring outside of time, as it probably would be if it is indeed happening, then it stands to reason that the population of people on Earth at any given time has nothing to do with the pool of available souls or whatever it is that is being incarnated. In other words, two people alive at the same time could be the same soul at different points in its own timeline, and the newly dead don't necessarily have to reincarnate as a new life that begins, chronologically, immediately after the death of their old form.
      "Less of a young professional, more of an ancient amateur."

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      ThisWitheredMan: I'm really sorry to say this, but I have only a vague idea how I'm doing it myself. Everyone kept telling me that various things I did were coming too easily--all I had to do was lie in a dark room and listen/sense for spirits right off the bat. Spirit-work takes most people YEARS to practice, and my ease of working with spirits is a combination of general openness, an intuitive application of my theatrical training (which I ALSO took weeks to realize), and the aforementioned "lifetimes of accumulated skills."

      And after months of running on instinctive/unconscious use, I started getting REALLY confused because I had no idea what was happening or whether I was going crazy, because most pagan experiences ALREADY have an unfortunate overlap with mental illness. Then while I was looking for a therapist, Ogma showed up and went "You also need a teacher. You have lifetimes of skills and a twenty-two-year-old's experience. Not being born in the right culture/time-period DOES NOT HELP."

      So... "I don't know how it happens, it just happens."

      And there is an AWFUL lot of subtext in my visions that most people wouldn't notice right away, but I do because I've been trained as an actor to notice EVERYTHING.

      Right now Ogma is just working on telling me what I'm doing, and why it happens in a certain way.

      TheGritz: Generally, the Celts believed that not everyone would reincarnate. The souls that do return to the physical plane in mythology are usually persons of note (warriors, druids, nobility). Most people upon death would usually go to Tir na nOg (in my case, being an Irish practitioner) or the culture's equivalent.

      As poets/bards were one of the three highest stations besides royalty, a bard choosing to reincarnate would be very logical. Especially since Ogma specifically said I come back "whenever something new happens."

      EDIT: And here's a rundown of my actual process. It took me WAY too long to actually process the steps. *sigh*

      1A. Lie on the floor/bed in a dark room (if possible). I was wondering why I could never meditate "properly"--like, sitting down and chanting/focusing on a certain thought. I needed as dark a room as possible, and blindfolds were NOT an acceptable substitute because I still knew/sensed that the room was lit. It turns out that sensory-deprivation is a VERY old technique--shamanic religions and certain Irish rituals specifically call for shutting yourself in a dark and silent room/cave/area to make spirit contact easier. And lying down tends to cut down on potential for accidents, since you don't need to constantly be aware of where you're standing or sitting. I often use a blanket because the reactions you get from spirit-work or contact with the gods (crying, shaking, cold/hot sensations, intense emotion) can get really intense. Sometimes I need the blanket to not-freeze, sometimes I need to cry into it, and occasionally just feeling the blanket wrapped around me helps keep me emotionally anchored. Like a kid's security blanket.

      1B. "Call" whoever I need to talk to. Since spirits aren't tied to the physical plane, I have on occasion "talked" with spirits/deities at lunch or while driving to work/school if I had concerns that I felt were too urgent to wait for home. I just call them by name, and then feel around for their arrival.

      2. Talk to them. Literally, just talking to them. If I'm in my room, it's out loud but at a hushed/moderate tone; if I'm somewhere public, it's in my mind. And sometimes we don't use words, but emotions and "vibes" to talk.

      3. Thank them after I'm done. If I can't thank them RIGHT after I'm done, I usually thank them as soon as I've processed everything. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I literally can't process the experience until I go to sleep and "cool down." (Which is why my full spirit-work tends to be right before bedtime.) They accept that because they know I have limitations as a physical, mortal being. Hell, I feel worse about a delayed thank-you than they do.
      Last edited by Sharysa; 09-11-2012 at 08:42 PM. Reason: left out a word; elaborating

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      For whatever its worth....

      Its like this for me too, in that 'past life' type experiences come by grace, there isn't anything I'm doing that causes it, other than being interested in relevant questions and following up on the experiences by thinking about them.

      In my case I don't interpret them as past lives though. I think of identity as being more like a hologram, and the events shown aren't 'mine' in exclusion of being someone else's. Also, I think that all experiences are a projection of a higher dimensional experience, so to speak, and while the exact imagery in the 'past life' is a valid projection, it doesn't necessarily literally correspond to a past event. Regarding it as a past event might still give generally the right idea about how to interpret it though, which is what the personal muse is most concerned about.

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      Interesting note: Around last week, I was trying to consciously remember key events for this particular past life. It... wasn't very good.

      I kind of got "stuck" in some sort of PTSD mode, couldn't stop the flashbacks/memories, and then had visions of what it would look like in this life. I went to Ogma about it as soon as I could, and he told me, "This is why you never TRY to remember!"

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