Freddd,
You've got me absolutely fascinated with your descriptions of helping this lady. But also with your skiing story - you're another great writer on this Forum. I could picture the whole scene. As I used to ski about 25 years ago & have many books on mountaineering, I almost felt your whole experience, especially the sliding unable to stop, with your poles.
I'm not familiar with the term tantric alchemist (although I feel I should be) - please fill me in. It would be much more interesting coming from you - someone who practices, rather than looking it up on the internet.
Many years ago I was very interested in discovering my past lives (I believe in reincarnation) as I seemed to be constantly pulled in different directions in my adult life. I have several books & a couple of cassettes on the subject (as well as several fiction books on that theme). It almost seemed as though every 7 years of so, I would start a new career & new direction. I felt as though I was finishing some unfinished business from the past, each time I changed direction & picked up another interest.
No doubt it was odd to my family who always stuck to the one career.
All I can say is that a Psychic told me I had been a Priest in Egyptian times (which could have accounted for my fascination with the herbs & spices using in embalming), was a Herbalist in Greek times - but as I was born into an aristocratic family in which my Mother strongly disapproved of my lowly peasant pastimes and forbade me to practice herbal medicine.
Once again, when I was studying herbal medicine about 18 years ago, my Mother said how ridiculous I was as I never finished anything (she never forgave me for quitting college half way through the degree), but of course, I did finish the course & the other one on Aromatherapy & Massage.
Before I started my current office job about 16 years ago, I didn't work for about 8 months & spend that time writing a series of lectures on Aromatherapy as the School of Herbal Medicine where I did that course, wanted to open up a course in Aromatherapy (which I had studied at a different school). I stayed with my Parent's as I didn't have the funds to live apart & anyone all our childhood bedrooms were there - empty.
When I mentioned writing on Aromatherapy for this Forum & Cort being keen to put up an article on the subject, do you know what my Mother said. You won't believe this, but she said "What did I know about Aromatherapy & where had I got the knowledge. I was stunned. I had lived in my Parent's house with them for about 8 months & spent many, many hours doing extra research & writing at the dining table (as I'm doing at my dining table in my flat right now) on Aromatherapy.
I had done a course & even set up my massage table & given my Mother a massage. She must have been in denial - she was so adamant in her statement that I knew nothing about the subject. I know she's in her 80's, but she has a mind as sharp (sometimes sharper) than mine. And not only that, but I had gone out with my massage table in my car to give a few client massages!
Then, the phsyic said, apparently I was blind & deaf in another life & had very sensitive powers of touch. I have been incredibly short sighted since the age of 7 and my eyesight is now deteriorating further. I am also now going deaf - although the deafness is probably an age thing and common to many people in their fifties - I wouldn't call the deafness an unusual issue. But losing my sight overnight around the age of 7 (instead of gradually becoming shortsighted) was unusual.
And then I was a young man who drowned at sea in another life. I can't swim & am frightened of going into the sea or any water for that matter. But this could be because I have to take my contact lenses out before going in water & I can't see past the end of my nose (literally). When a small child, I hated going in the water at the beach because when I came out, I couldn't see where my parents were sitting on the beach & was terrified of losing them.
I went to a Denise Linn lecture at the Mind Body Spirit Festival in Melbourne many years ago. Denise Linn (for those who don't know of her) lost many organs in a sniper gunshot & miraculously recovered from a near death experience & now lectures & practices healing. I assume she still does, this was more than 10 years ago I think.
Denise Linn split the 300 or so, people in the lecture hall into groups of roughly about 8 people. In other words the 4 people in the row in front turned their chairs around to face the 4 behind & moved into a sort of circle. She then put the whole lecture hall into a hypnotic trance & led us through a past lives process.
I suppose not everyone in the hall was hypnotised - can't remember about the others. Anyway our group had to relate to each other what we saw/experienced afterwards. And to my amazement, some of the group came out with the same scenario. I seemed to be a doctor or nurse in an Australian aboriginal large bark hut type of shelter. There were people lying on bunk sort of openings in the hut (actually like in the catacombs underground in Rome). They were begging me to heal them (or something) - it seemed to be something like smallpox - I was a white person, not aboriginal. Anyway, before I recounted my "former life", someone else in the group related exactly the same scene, but they were lying on the bed, holding out their arms to be healed. I remember being quite stunned at the time of attending this lecture, (given by Denise Linn). I thought there might have been some sort of mass hypnotic thought that she planted in our minds.
But after the lecture, different people were asked to stand up & recount their "vision" - it really was fascinating stuff, and to this day I can't explain it.
Denise Linn's point was that many of us bump into people from our former lives, or even chose our Parents/families. I might chose to be born to my Mother, because I want to live out the repressed career I desired in ancient Greece, which my aristocratic Mother banned me from practicing (herbal medicine).
And then we come to dreams......
I dreamt for many years of being a nun in Tibet & walking down the side of a steep cliff face until I came to a rock pool to bath & wash my hair. Yes I had long black hair (even though I was a nun who should have been shaved bald, which is rather odd). Some time later, I attended a night class in Melbourne in which an artist who had spent many years painting in Tibet gave lectures & showed us slides of his paintings & the people in the villages he visited. Must have been during the time of the Chinese occupation of course. In one of these lectures, he showed us a slide of a particular hike/climb he had done on the outskirts of a village & lo & behold, the slide showed this same path ending in a rock pool - the same cliff face & the same arrangement of rocks around this pool. It was uncanny.
Of course, now that I have so many books & films on Tibet, you would think it unremarkable, but at that time, I didn't have all these things. And to this day, I have a feeling of going home when I see documentaries or Buddhist films on Tibet. I was telling Koan about one particular film called Blessings which was about the nuns who had been driven into secluded caves to escape the Chinese occupation. But I don't think I mentioned, that when the Buddhist westerners were travelling early on in the film, they came across some Tibetan nomads, and they looked (in feature) so much like someone I sort of knew, some one from the past.
I have never thought of that degree of familiarity in other Tibetan films I own - just this one film I bought earlier this year.
So, along with other dreams which I could recount of subject matter or surroundings of which I have no experience in this life, what does it all mean?
Why do we suddenly feel so comfortable with people we have just met, & start talking as though we had known them all our lives?
Why do we, on meeting other people, immediately feel fear or some cold aura surrounding them? Why do people dash up to you & fling their arms around you because they thought you were someone else - a dear friend. This happened to me when I was 19 walking down an inner Melbourne Street?
Interesting stuff, don't you think?
Victoria
