9/17/18
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| The Hanging Tree |
"The Thirteen Year Old Witch"
Many of my stories sound tragic, but truly none of my lives--nor any one's lives--no matter how tragic-- are useless. Our Inner Being has a way of composting all of the unhappiness from each life and turning it into something new, beautiful and helpful to our spiritual expansion.
In this "Other Life Time" I sent myself down into a deep hypnotic state looking for a past life I had shared with the man I was living with at the time--back in 1979. We were "lovers" but there was not a whole lot of love there really. We were both in very difficult places in our lives. But eventually I connected with 2 lifetimes with him--if not 3--the last being a maybe.
But back to this particular recall: while in trance (or meditation, or self hypnosis--whatever you like to call it) I found myself in a cradle--being a very new baby. It was wooden with a hood to it keep off the drafts and it had rockers on the bottom so I could be lulled to sleep by my mother--whom I did not see in this recall. She might have died in giving birth to me.
In this recall the first thing I saw was a tallish rather nice looking man who was dressed in what appeared to be 17th century clothing. He did not look poor, yet his clothes were well made and kept , seeming to be those of perhaps a skilled workman, but not a "gentleman." I could see a large fireplace behind him and what I could see of the room suggested the comfortable cottage of what might be then called a middle class skilled laborer. His face bore an expression that looked very familiar to me--familiar in this lifetime--for he was also my first husband in this lifetime.
The expression is difficult to describe, but I will try. I saw that he was looking not at me, but at someone else to the right of my cradle, whom I could not see. My father's expression showed a sort of dumb respect for or fear of the person. His eyes were a bit wide and staring, his mouth slack, his face a mute blank. I sensed that he was frightened of the other, and did not want to cross him.
In this current lifetime I often saw that look on my husband's face. It was an almost catatonic look, meaning that emotions were coming up for him that he did not have the courage or skill to face. These emotions often seemed to have to do with external power or authority. He often seemed to give up personal power to external authorities. Other people were much more important to him than those close to him and he often sacrificed the comfort and well-being of those closest to him, in deference to another person--even to strangers. He was very outer-directed. They were important to him, his family was not. What others--outsiders-- thought of him was very important to him; what we thought or felt in relation to him was not.
That might sound bitter, but truly it is not. It is just an observation without judgment. I am at a place in my spiritual development where I can understand anyone and why they might do something "off." Once I am out of their purview of influence it is easy for me to forgive and forget--to "freegive"--which means to understand that we co-created the situations equally, each, ultimately, for their own best benefit and the benefit of each other. There is opportunity in every event--no matter how awful it feels.
I have to admit though that while in the midst of conflict with another, I still often have difficulty recalling the above. I still often get angry, blame and feel victimized. And in this Other Life Recall, I did fear and blame not only my father, but the doctor as well. But on with the story:
Suddenly, the other person in the room leaned over my cot. -His face was weird looking--long lean and oddly twisted into some mask he thought would be amusing to a baby. It filled the opening to my little world and I suddenly felt trapped. He leered in at me, doing the false cooing and blathering that so many ignorant people do to infants. His face looked hideous to me. I shrank back. He was so repulsive! I must have wailed.
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Here's an aside that is relevant:
Yesterday I ran into a woman who used to be my landlady. We chatted and she talked of her daughter, whom I had met once 20 years ago. I recall that, one time, we all had stood in the her kitchen and the young woman--her daughter--who was visiting, held her new baby in her arms. He was only a few months old. A neighbor and his wife had stopped in to say hello and meet the new child. The husband leaned into the child's face and twisted his own face into bizarre contortions that he assumed would be attractive or amusing to the child; at the same time the man babbled foolish baby talk in a falsetto voice at the child. The child shrank back and screamed loud and long. The man jumped back and his wife admonished him sternly but softly. However, the child's mother, still holding the child, brought him forward towards the scary man with his fakey expressions and sounds. I was appalled. The mother thought it right to contradict the child's expert instinct to move away from such false people. I wonder how the child is doingtoday.
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In any case, I must have bawled like this baby did. Infants are geniuses for reading people and their own instincts, feelings and intuitions. Their emotions are raw, honest and extremely valuable. They should be utterly respected by everyone around them. Older children and adults have been brainwashed out of trusting their emotions and instincts. Our emotions are direct messages from our Inner Being and they TELL THE TRUTH. I totally agreed with Hale Dwoskin of The Sedona Method when he said, "adults are meant to learn from children--not vice-versa."
Similarly, in that past life I knew that this man who was shoving his face into mine was dangerous. And in my recall I knew he was the village doctor. It was a small village in Wales and very likely the physician had been trained in Edinburgh Scotland and was doctor to several small villages in Wales.
History says that physicians colleges first came about in Europe in the 9th century. Before then, I will make an educated guess that midwives were also healers. Many knew about helpful herbs. However, their real strong suit was that they understood people and had great compassion for them. They knew that illness began inside with beliefs, emotions and choices. Mistaken beliefs (out of alignment with their Inner Being) and the precipitate emotions, produced choices that led them away from happiness. That spiritual "offness" would lead eventually to physical "offness"--illness. By helping people to get in touch with their unhappiness, and what was needed to make them happy, they assisted the person to heal--oftentimes what appeared to be "miraculously." A miracle is just a natural thing that is not yet understood by the "rational mind."
Back to the story again. Oddly enough--both this doctor and my father in that past life looked very much the same as they do in this life--the same faces and figures. Also, my father and husband in those lives was also my husband in the Other Life, "A European Queen." He looked quite simlar to my father/husband in the other two lives. This is unusual in my experience. Most often I and those around me look different in each life, but in the two past lives, plus this one, my ex-husband look quite similar. Also, the doctor looked the same in my current life, this past life and another past life. Odd!
The image of myself in the cradle and one final image--of my being carted up a grassy hill to a tree where I knew I was to be hung were the only two images I got related to that life, but as mentioned earlier, there is often embedded understandings of much more about the life.
In this case, I knew that the doctor, like my father, was very concerned about his public image. His reputation was very important to him. Also, like most people who have adopted the world view that became popular about 6000 years ago in the West and 20,000 years ago in the East, they do a great deal of comparing of themselves to others and between others. They look for separations and distinctions, and points at which to discriminate self from other. They feel threatened by "other" and will try and attack it. There is a great deal of "againstness and force. Force is used against others to make them comply with the most dominant world view or person. And force is used against the natural self to make it comply with the "good ideas" [Shakti Gawain] that the dominant world view espouses.
This world view is what I call "the patriarchal paradigm." New Age teacher, Shakti Gawain calls it "the old masculine." Others call it "ego-mind." Sometimes I call it "exclusively rational," left-brained," or "ultra intellectual." In all of these, the right-brained Feminine aspect of Self is denigrated, ignored, made fun of, diminished, attacked, blamed and oftentimes killed. "
The Feminine means Inner Directed (towards the Divine Center Within). It carries the emotions, Ultimate Spiritual Truth, love, creativity, compassion, expansiveness, inclusiveness, Oneness, beingness, process-orientedness, believing that the end will look/feel like the means, egalitarianism, subjective truth, situational ethics, timing, cooperation, communication... etc.
The old male is all about outer-directedness, separation, discrimination, competition, domination, againstness, force, manifest destiny, goal orientation, the end justifies the means, using lies, manipulation, hierarchy, rules and regulations, laws, obedience to outer authority, rigid ethics, belief in an objective-carved-in-stone-external reality, chronological time, etc.
There is a new spiritual androgyny coming.
Females, over the millenia, despite being the losers in the patriarchal paradigm have contributed to it equally with males. It has been co-created by both genders. Truly, as hard a pill as it is to swallow, there are no victims. Seeming victims give up personal power to others. They, like the perpetrators, believe in external power more than internal personal power. But internal, personal power is the only real power. External power over others is simply manipulation at best. At worst it is delusional and self destructive. One cannot control others. And personal power cannot be given away--it can only be delusionally projected onto another. Then one feels like a victim--but is not.
Women, somewhere back in time, began to lose their awareness of their own Inner Being--their Inner Divinity--and to project it outward onto men. Men love to be worshipped like gods and women accommodated--using their great powers of love to see the best in men--to project the best in themselves out onto the males in their lives. They slipped into using only their left brain, which externalizes everything. It believes in an outer objective reality that simply does not exist. Outer reality is shaped from within--from consciousness, and what we have chosen to put into our own consciousness shapes our own life. The beliefs we choose are extremely powerful in creating our reality and affecting that of others. However, the individual can always over-ride any external influence with powerful positive inner aligned thought and feeling. However, one must start with emotional honesty. What I try to do is to mark the point that I am at emotionally, allow it, and then look for some belief or thought that is a slight improvement. One that feels better. I continue with that improved, belief/feeling until I feel really aligned with my Inner Being.
I am currently reading a novel called Rhett Butlers People, by Donald McCaig. In it he compares the young aristocratic military men of the South to lions and how Southern women adore them. One woman quips astutely, "I suppose a lion is magnificent--until he eats you!"
And they did. Several thousand years of the subjugation of women proves it. The subjugation was created by women in their projection of adoration outward and by men accepting it as their due.
However, if the card-carrying patriarchalist (which I was for a long time, and still have not yet burned my seldom used card) feels that the other is a high enough authority they will do what that person/institution (e.g. doctors, lawyers, the government) tells them to do. They will not try to tear them down. They have a belief in external power and authority--and seeming self preservation-- that says "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." So they will align themselves to whatever person or idea is pulling their energy the hardest and the most convincingly. They will take orders and accept beliefs from those seemingly powerful institutions and persons who look like the best bet winning-wise. They will project their own personal power and esteem outward onto whoever talks the best line the loudest.
In this Other Lifetime of mine, in Wales, my father gave up a lot of personal power to the doctor. However, I believe I came into that lifetime as a gifted psychic and healer. I somehow managed to keep many of the powers of consciousness that all children are born with, but most give up--even today. In that lifetime I sensed that I had naively displayed many of the extrasensory abilities which are normal, but suppressed under this patriarchal paradigm. I probably predicted accurately some future events, and found things others had lost, and perhaps talked to people that were unseen by others--and, as in this lifetime, I likely had the ability to occasionally see and talk with people from other realities that share this Earth Plane. In the British Isles they are known as The Wee Folk, Leprechauns, Dryads, Nyads, Pixies, Faeries, Brownies, Elves etc.
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I only encountered one in this lifetime:
I was living in Whitefield, Maine on 30 beautiful, wild acres of woods and fields bordering the Sheepscot River. It was a magical place and time. I was going through menopause--which often opens a veil between the worlds for women. If they fight the call to the right brain and the Inner World and try to push themselves onward and upward in the outer directed patriarchal world they will have many problems, such as hot flashes and anger-flashes etc.
As I traversed this transition I encountered heavy bleeding for a week or so, but healed it by throwing myself into art-making and other right brain activities. Other than the week of bleeding I had none of the commonly reported symptoms of the change of life. And ever since I have continued on a slowly rising right brain curve.
But back to my meeting with a Wee Folk. One of my favorite walks was out the back door of the house--which had been the main door in the 1700's before the road was moved to the other side. There was an old set of granite steps that led from the upper lawn, down across the original road, and on down hill the to a farm pond in the midst of a 3 acre hay field. At the lovely little pond with its granite ledge showing glacial striations, I would turn north and walk to the edge of the woods. This was mostly new growth that had once been cleared grazing fields as well.
However, a short way into that part of the treeland I'd climb over the stone wall and follow a dim path into the old growth forest. That part of the woodland had what I could only describe as a "Magical Feeling." It felt sacred and bless'ed and populated by very magical mystical beings--whom I could not see. On the far end of this enchanted glade was a rise in the ground and enthroned on it were two enormous old oak tress--The Sisters I called them. They felt like guardians or Queens of the sacred playground before them. Nearby was a mystical pond that was home to a friendly intelligent beaver family... and to thousands of peepers in the springtime. They made the loudest most joyful sound I have ever encountered--with the possible exception of Beethovens 9th symphony--the "Ode To Joy."
It was between these two regal trees that I would often sit in meditation. One day I chose to lean my back against one of The Sisters while I slipped into meditation. Oftentimes I have had the experience of opening my eyes at the end of a meditation session out doors and of seeing a small circle of wild creatures sitting around me contemplating me. As I would go back into everyday left-brained consciousness though, they would run away.
This day, however, when I opened my eyes I saw, not animals, but a small wrinkled brown man who had something very tree-like about him. I assume he was a dryad, which is a tree spirit. He was studying me quietly--just as the animals had other times. But when he realized I could see him he said --in telepathy--"I thought you humans couldn't see us." I replied, "We usually cannot." And then we went on to have a bit more conversation. However, as I slipped back into a left brained state--he faded from view. I never did "see" him again, but I always felt his presence near the tree, and always asked permission to sit there and meditate after that. I usually sensed a "yes."
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In my Welsh Other Life I believe I was probably very right-brain oriented and likely often visited with and conversed with various other beings from other realities. I have sensed fairy presences in other places I have lived in this lifetime. There are definitely Wee Folk "races," as it were. Also I was likely something of a medium--just as I am in this life. There is life after death and it's part of normal human abilities to converse with those who have passed over to the other reality sometimes called heaven. I am almost always given proof of their continuing existence to share with loved ones left behind.
I imagine that somehow or other the word got out that this child--me--was odd. Truly the only difference between me and the others of my village and time was that I retained the powers that every child enters this life with. Most lose them from non-support or antipathy from those around them.
Anyone different back then was suspected of being a witch. It was the height of the inquisition I believe--roughly late 1600's. It was also the beginning of left-brained healing and "medicine." The new intellectual, patriarchal world view was on the rise. And the old ways were fading. The old ways were ways of using both parts of consciousness--outer-directed and inner directed--together. Inner directed was literally becoming taboo. It was feared and shunned and since women naturally had a bit more access to the right hemisphere, they were the major object of men's fears and hatred.
Hestia--originally the prime creator, then The Mother God of The Universe. So much of the ancient purview of The Great Mother, the Divine Within, fertility, creativity, growth, spirituality and bliss, hearth, home family, clan, nurturing, genrosity etc. had ended. She was dethroned in Greece some centuries before this Past Life of mine. She had been slowly demoted and then finally replaced by the God Dionysus--patron of agriculture, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, theatre, grape-harvest, wine making and wine, and of fertility. devolved into a worship of a drunken, womanizer. In Ireland the Christian saint, Patrick zealously drove "the snakes" out of that country. The snakes were one of The Divine Feminines symbols.
"Snake Goddess"
When we can no longer reach The Great Mother in our consciousness--because we have pinched ourselves off from her, we turn to addictions, wine and other spirits being the first, very likely. She is ALWAYS with us and available to help to do or have something good. But we must petition Her, then watch for the expected results. They WILL appear!
Hestia was The God of Hearth and Home (I don't like the word "goddess"--as it sounds like a diminutive of a larger more real, more masculine word and being-- "God." ) Before the water bodies of Europe became polluted by patriarchal industry, people drank water. And there were sacred springs where Feminine Spirits lived--sometimes known as Nyads, but also by larger Feminine Deities--aspects of The Great Mother. Many of the ancient wells of The Great Mother can still be found here and there around Europe. They often have a Vesica Piscis symbol on them, the meaning of which is "All is Within."
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| The Chalice Well |
I am sure I was in touch with many of these places and beings in that past life in Wales. And when the word got out about me--I became a threat to the village doctor--the man of science and reason and college degrees. The degrees, diplomas and certificates of then and now only mean that one has received a patriarchal stamp of approval--one has accepted the beliefs that those who had adopted the crown of authority they placed on their own heads. Even though I was less than thirteen, apparently I was still a threat to him and those of his ilk.
It seems unlikely that I would have been healing by then--but it was possible. A simple laying on of hands accompanied by intense prayer and belief in health and healing would be enough to shift disease out of another and shift them into their own healing mode. In this lifetime I used to do laying on of hands--my own form of Reike. But I no longer do that as it can take away a person's sacred healing process. It's too goal oriented for me these days. If someone comes to me for healing now I listen inward and try to speak only words that will lead the person to their own self healing and self empowerment.
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Albert Schweitzer the famous physician who did missionary work in Africa once said, "All healing is self-healing." And now I know he was absolutely right. We might do or say a few small things that support another in gaining health. But no-one has ever healed anyone else in the whole history of humanity--in my opinion. Ill health comes from a person's consciousness, and only their changing their own consciousness can heal them. Oftentimes ill health arises out of long-standing resentment and blame. First understanding the other, then forgiving is the road to healing.
Many people heal themselves without consciously realizing what they did--and they usually ascribe the healing to some doctor or Allopathic treatment. Such a shame! They truly healed themselves.
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So this doctor in my village found me to be a threat--even at just thirteen years old. And he convinced the town fathers I was a dangerous witch and that I should be hung by the neck until dead. And so the last scene in this lifetime that I saw showed me myself in a cart headed up a grassy hill that was topped by a very large spreading lone tree. It was "The Hanging Tree". Very likely I was terrified. My father--being a great respecter of external authority--had handed me over to the doctor and the town fathers without a fight. I was all alone.
However, if I was apparently so right-brained it's also very likely that I had a good connection/awareness of my Inner Being and The Great Mother. Her beauty, compassion and love would have been with me in those last days, hours, and minutes. I am sure She took my soul before I ever felt the snap of the rope around my neck. But I must have left with unfinished business, for I was to reincarnate with that doctor again in this life in America. Also, I already had one other lifetime with him in Italy in the 1400's.
And my father in that lifetime in Wales was my husband in America in the 20th century. He was also my husband in the 1700's in France. The spiritual issues were the same for him in all three lifetimes. I still have yet to see, fully, what mine were/are as relates to these three lives with him. It is hoped that my continued writing about these lives will reveal my limiting beliefs as well as a better mental path to follow. As a an utterly "flawsome" human being (love that word--flawsome--flawed-awesomeness) I know that the blossoming of my consciousness is an eternal process--a sacred drama with many "scenes" and "acts."
By the way, I do not believe that spiritual development follows chronological time. One could have a more spiritually advanced life in the stone age and then a less advanced one in the 20th century. All that is learned comes together outside of time in what Seth calls Psy-Time and others call The Eternal Moment. But all of the experiences and conscious conclusions seem to pile up together inside of our Inner Being--our vaster Self--there to be spun into spiritual gold.
I will tell the story of my present life encounter with this Welsh doctor on the Blog Page entitled "Addendum to Thirteen Year Old Witch."
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