Chapter One
From Childhood to Childhood
"Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles,
and everything tries to be round ... The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and
so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the
same religion as ours. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.
The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves."
Black Elk (1863-1950): Oglala Sioux holy man
***********My son was once my sister *************
In the fall of 1985 I had an experience that is difficult to explain. It was the kind of experience that awakens the soul, lights the spirit, and deepens awareness beyond anything perceived as normal. My son Daniel was eight months old and I was twenty-six. I was laying in bed cradling him in my arms. My daughters Jennifer and Shannon were already sleeping. Daniel had been fussing for some time. I was so relieved when he finally went to sleep, exhausted, I closed my eyes eager to join him. But instead of sleeping, I found myself viewing the most beautiful pulsating blue light. I watched in amazement as the swirling light moved in and out of my inner vision. The light seemed to be the heartbeat of my soul. Not the actual beating of my heart, but the ebb and flow of my consciousness, my essence; the spiritual me. Then came the movie. I don't know what else to call it. It was as if I was in an audience, looking at a movie screen, only suddenly I was in the movie.
My sense of time and space changed -- my consciousness, my soul was no longer in my home, in my bed with my son. Disoriented, I looked around trying to get my bearings. I was inside a covered wagon. I could hear the rain hitting hard against the tarp and the pots and pans hitting the side of the railing. I could hear the hoof beats of horses, and I could both hear and feel the wheels of the wagon as they bumped and rolled over the rough terrain.
My sense of age and sex had also changed -- I was viewing my surroundings from a body that did not feel like mine. When I looked down at myself, I saw that I was a boy, about ten years old. When I looked up, I saw a little girl laying on a makeshift bed in the back of the wagon. I instantly recognized her as being my little sister. She was five years old, had beautiful blond hair and soft blue eyes. She was very petite, and so frail. I felt helpless and alone, and I began to cry. The pain and the sorrow that I felt in my heart could not be described. But this was not happening to me in 1985. This was another me, a me that lived in the time and place in the early 19th century. I don’t know how I knew what century, but I did. I cannot explain how suddenly I had emotions, thoughts and feelings that were also mine, but from another time. The awareness was so clear, precise and detailed; it could not be my imagination. I knew things I had no way of knowing, except that I had ‘lived them’ once before. I knew our mother had died, my father was in the front of the wagon driving the horses, and we could not stop. I knew that stopping meant we would be left behind and the danger of Indian attacks was imminent.
My sister was very sick; they said pneumonia. I could do nothing to help her or to stop the sickness. In my despair, I heard myself say to her, “if only you were a boy like me, you would be stronger. If only I was Mom, I could stop the sickness.” Through my tears, I looked deeply into her eyes. She closed her eyes and I watched as she slowly slipped away. My little sister was gone.
My consciousness slipped back to my home in California, in my bedroom, with my son. I came out of the experience with tears still streaming down my face. I was in my room again, holding my baby. I held my son in my arms as he slept, cradling him close to me. In that moment, I knew I was holding my little sister. There was no doubt in my mind. I had come back as her mother, and she had come back as my little boy.
***A private history****
Reincarnation was never something we talked about in my family. In the 60’s and 70’s there were very few books available on the subject. My parents rarely took us to church, my childhood was never structured around dogma, or religion. It was my experience with Daniel in 1985 that challenged my perceptions and beliefs about myself. I looked at my relationships with family and friends differently. I began to study ancient religions from around the world to see if I could find a common thread that runs through them. I chose not to follow New Age theories or the musings of popular psychic‘s, but instead researched Quantum physics hoping to better understand our reality as we know it. What I found amazed me. From the ashes of the past, ancient mystics and seers tried to show us what Quantum physics is now beginning to discover.
Soon after that first past life experience, others followed. Over the years I questioned the validity of my experiences on many levels, trying to see them objectively and subjectively, all the while being careful not to fall into the trap of acceptance without critical examination. It isn’t an easy task and requires not only personal reflection but a lot of research. My research regarding ancient spiritual texts and Quantum physics was just part of the equation. Finding historical facts and information regarding specific individuals proved to be the most difficult task.
Historical documentation is sometimes very generalized, not always specific and even non-existent in some cases. This can be a disappointment when trying to locate a past life persona. Not everyone was famous or important; most of us fall into the category of the masses. In our society we want proof, hard evidence and facts, yet we are lacking pertinent information regarding our history because it is a selective history recorded by those in charge, and those that have the power and means to do so. Textbooks cover only what the publisher deems important for educational purposes. The encyclopedia only covers the facts, data and important information pertaining to a culture, time period or event. Even more confusing is the fact that texts between cultures differ. For example, if you read a Russian history book regarding the Cold War, they record a different history than an American text regarding the same subject, (this applies to any records of war for that matter).
The most compelling information I found came from personal letters and diaries filed away in historical archives. They were glimpses into the daily life of individuals who expressed their struggles, their joys and their pain. This type of information taught me more about the people, the living situations, and the events of the time than I ever learned in our education system or from a history book. This is because diaries and letters were written for personal reasons. Within them is a record of the person’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions regarding the circumstances of the time. My past life experience reflected this type of private history; a history filled with little things; everyday thoughts, feelings of joy and sadness, and the raw emotions of the child I once was.
**********Sharing Memories*********
I never talked to my children about my past life memories; at the time I was just trying to understand them. The only place I could share my experiences was on the Internet and with my parents. But in 1990 when Daniel was just five years old, he volunteered some incredible validation for me. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner while he was being a typical obnoxious five-year-old boy. I had just gotten after him to behave when he turned around and said, "Well, you used to lock me in the tool shed." I wheeled around suddenly and said, "Well, you used to get me in trouble." I stopped dead in my tracks. I had to think about what I had just said. It was not a conscious statement. We didn't have a tool shed. I never locked my son in any room, not even his. And how in the world could he get me in trouble?
So I asked him, "When was this Daniel?" He replied, "When you were my brother." His answer was incredible. I couldn’t believe it. As calmly as I could, I asked him, "Did I do that?" He said, "Yeah, when I was a girl." My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t believe what he had just said. Daniel would never admit to being a girl; he was all boy. I decided to see if possibly he was talking about a past life, so I asked him my name. Daniel smiled and replied, "You were Butch." Then he said, "My name was Alishia." A sense of joy rushed through my body. A thrill that can only be described as a soul moment; an awareness, a recognition that went way beyond words. A few years earlier, I had done a meditation and remembered that my name was Alexander and my sister’s name was Alishia. Even more incredible, I had also remembered that my family called me Butch. I couldn’t believe it! Daniel remembered being my sister, he even remembered both of our names.
As quickly as he had offered up the information, and as children will often do, he ended the conversation. He turned and ran out the back door to go play. He seemed to move in and out of an altered state with ease. I admire that in children. Daniel seemed to remember what I knew from meditations, dreams and visions. But it was his innocence that spoke volumes to me. It was a ‘jewel’ -- a shining light that in that moment enabled me to see that my experiences and his were from another life time, another place. It was just so incredible -- the feelings, the thoughts, the knowing that we actually shared a past life together and we both remembered it.
So I gathered my memories from my journals and reconstructed the story of Alexander and Alishia. I had carefully dated and recorded each memory as I experienced them over the past five years. Each entry was my attempt to hold on to my soul moments, so I would never forget. What I found was that they were so deeply engrained in my soul, into my being, that they were easily brought to the surface.
At this point I began to question the importance of these memories and the implications. It had been five years since that first experience and I had already accepted reincarnation as a reality; but what had brought Daniel and I together again? Was it love? This seemed obvious and is implied in many books by professional regressionists and healers. But it felt like there was more to it than that. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I could not get past the feeling that there was something I was missing. Something that was very important for me and for Daniel.
***************Alexander and Alishia***************
As I looked back over my journals and organized my memories, I realized that they did not contain fantastic information. I was not a person of wealth or fame. I was an ordinary boy living during very difficult times, and it was this ordinariness, that suggested to me the memories were real. Beyond that, I realized that each time I remembered, I was feeling the emotions of Alexander who was a little boy, yet the emotions and feelings belonged to me. Each time, I could see his surroundings and his life as it played out around him. I was experiencing this past life not as an adult, but through the eyes of a child. The realization that I was remembering as a child, that I was that child, held staggering implications for me personally. As an artist and an activist for children’s issues, the reason for my work as a professional and the purpose for my research into past lives were coming together. I gathered my journal notes and put together the story of Alexander and his little sister Alishia. The following is based on my meditations, visions and dreams over the past twenty years.
There is almost always an inner Light in the beginning of my past life journeys. That same beautiful, pulsating blue or violet light I experienced on that first night in 1985. Then there is the realization that I am me, but I am not me. I feel different; I am smaller, and in this instance I am the opposite sex. When I look down I see that I am a boy and I am wearing clothing from a completely different century. I am maybe nine or ten years old. I know my name is Alexander, but my family calls me Butch; I have a little sister named Alishia.
We are in a small town loading our supplies. I am busy helping my father load the wagon, I know we are moving West. My heart is pounding, I am so excited! My little sister is excited too. She is helping and hands me things to load into the back of the wagon. Small things, because she’s not so big. I am looking at the store front made of wooden planks. The wood isn’t painted yet, just raw wood and I get the feeling the town hasn’t been here for very long. The building has a sign that hangs out over the porch. The letters are painted in the colors green and red. I know the first letter is an “R.” There is only a dirt road, and a few small buildings in town, but I can see other families along the roadside. Everyone is excited and I know we are going West together.
Time shifts during meditations easily and quickly, sometimes without notice. My consciousness moves forward in time, and I find myself in the back of a wagon. I am curled up with my sister leaning against the headboard. I have my arm around her, but she is sleeping. The excitement is all gone. I feel scared and unsure now. We have been traveling for a long time and it is so very hot. I am tired and hungry. I can feel the hunger pangs in my stomach during the meditation. It is the strangest feeling. I am living these pains all over again.
My consciousness shifts and I am in different place. I can see a big fire in the center of camp. The men are gathered around it, arguing. There is a lot of fear because we are approaching Indian Territory and some of the wagons are not keeping up. We are one of those wagons; we are always behind. Alishia and I can hear what they are saying because we are hiding under our wagon and the wagons are near the fire in a circle. I see the glow of the campfire in the dark of night, I stare into it as it crackles and spits. I look up and see the pots and pans hanging above my head alongside our wagon; I can smell the horses and hear the women whispering around the corner.
Another shift -- something‘s wrong. My father is yelling at Alishia and me. He is angry and saying we should not be complaining. He says we have nothing to complain about. But I am hungry and it is so hot. I look into his eyes..... as I look deeper into his being, I see who he is to me now. Alexander’s father is my second husband and Daniel’s father in our current life. I recognize his eyes; I recognize his soul.
Again we are moving, this time at a fairly rapid pace. Each day seems so long and becomes more and more treacherous. It seems our journey will never end. As a child, I do not have any say in what we do; I must follow my parents and do as I am told.
……..I am sensing trouble........ I am standing on a hillside........... my sister is there next to me. I can see our wagon going down steep and rocky terrain. My father is trying to take a shortcut to catch up with the others, but the wagon is tipping. My mother is in the wagon and my father is leading the oxen. He can’t control it, and I watch helplessly as the wagon tips up and over. I see my mother thrown from the front seat, the wagon overturns and comes crashing down on her.
She is pinned under the edge of the wagon bed. I run up to help, but a woman grabs me by the shoulders, and stops me. Another woman reaches for my sister shoving her face in her skirt. I can hear screaming and yelling. Everyone is in a state of panic. The oxen are all tangled and yanking the harnesses, but unable to move the wagon. It is very heavy. Eventually they succeed but they are too late. My mother is gasping for air, her ribs are broken, her lungs are punctured and within minutes, she dies. I am standing a short distance from my mother, watching. I feel as if I’m submerged under water; I am numb. I can no longer hear people talking. I am going into shock. I cannot cry, I can not move, I just stand there for what seemed an eternity.
The experience fades from one scene into another. I am moving forward in time. I am back to where my first memory began: I am with my sister, who is now my son Daniel, she is very sick. Again, I feel my heart breaking and the tears rolling endlessly down my face. Feelings surface, feelings of anger. I am very angry with my father. I feel he should have done something, he could have done something. I feel helpless.
I am washing Alishia’s face and talking to her. I know she is dying. I hear my words to her again. It feels as if I have spoken them a thousand times before, "... if only you were a boy like me you would be stronger. If only I was mom, I could stop the sickness." Through my tears, I relived the pain of watching as my sister passed away. My whole body shook tremendously from the inside out. I was sobbing in despair as I relived the thoughts, emotions and feelings of another time. It was as if I was living in that moment, in that anguish all over again. I sat in the back of the wagon crying for a long time. I looked down at my hands. I am fiddling with something, something delicate and fragile. I am holding a pink ribbon, stroking it and petting it. It was a ribbon Alishia wore in her hair.
As I looked over my journal notes, I noticed that they implied something beyond the everyday life of a child from the past. Those last words to my little sister held great significance. My mind raced. Could Daniel and I be currently living out our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions from another lifetime? Alishia had come back as a boy, and I had come back as his mother. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Or was it?
*********WHAT WE HOLD IN CONSCIOUSNESS *********
"What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the soul from becoming to being?" Socrates
Book VII of The Republic by Plato -- end line of Chapter 7 - Socrates & Glaucon.
Reincarnation is more than a phenomenon. It is a mysterious truth that the early Christian Gnostics, the Ancient Egyptians, Tibetans, Buddhist and American Indian traditions taught. They taught that the act of reincarnation is a part of life. To reincarnate is to act, it is an action made manifest. Embracing the fact that we reincarnate requires serious personal reflection, as well as a fair amount of formal research. Ultimately, it is a quest to find ‘self,’ and is unique to each individual. There is one basic question that each of us asks if we look at reincarnation in a serious manner: “What does it mean to me personally and how does it apply to me NOW?”
I found some extraordinary clarity in ancient texts. The Tibetan Book of the Dead concerns itself with the possibility of dying consciously. These ancient Buddhist masters observed that there is a heightened intensity of consciousness when a soul moves from life to death and from death to life. By preparing the soul they were able to heal negative thoughts and were able to empower the soul at death to not be pulled into a repetitive negative life cycle; enabling the soul to consciously create positive life times in the future. Although I have read numerous accounts of children and adults who remember the time, between lifetimes where they are “choosing” their parents, and planning their “destinies,” I think more often than not, the majority of us do not know how, me included.
In one of India’s ancient Buddhist texts, the Bhagavad-gita I found the statement: yam yam vapi smaran bhavan - tyajanty ante kalevaram - tam tam evaiti kaunteya -sada tad-bhava-bhavitah (8.6). When translated the verse simply reads: “Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.” I found that Socrates is quoted to have said; "What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the soul from becoming to being?" The two statements, although separated by centuries and cultures, seem to be suggesting the same premise. Thepower of our thoughts is again repeated in the Tibetan seminal text called the Dhammapada, which means ‘The Way of Truth’:
“All that we are is a result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.”
The Bhagavad-gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead contain eloquent passages of wisdom. When I thought about the wisdom contained within these ancient texts, I realized that thoughts contained emotions and feelings and when combined contained a certain kind of knowledge. A knowledge that surpasses linear understanding and reflects the Greek philosophers’ advice to “know thy self.” The ancient Greeks considered all learning to be remembering. To them, life was but the act of recollecting knowledge the soul had forgotten at the moment of birth into the physical body. Reincarnation and the idea of past lives were an integral part of their way of life. Perhaps this explains why the wordeducation originally meant ‘to draw from that which was already known.’ My spiritual journey was becoming more than an exploration about past lives, and who I once was. It was expanding far beyond the memories of another time and place. I was learning to know myself.
Could it be that in ancient Tibet and India, and in the many forms of ancient Buddhism, (as in so many ancient religions), we have lost the original intention behind the ‘belief?’ Could it be, that what was intended within the rites and rituals of ancient religions, was to stop the process of creating suffering and imperfection? Was the original intention to help ensure the future of the soul, enabling them to live in peace, in harmony, in good health and happiness in each lifetime?
What the ancients were implying is that consciousness creates. If our thoughts, what we hold in consciousness, determines our next ‘life experience’ then maybe this is why there are no set rules. Maybe this is why some souls are born into the same families, and some are not. Maybe this is why some souls do not reincarnate for decades, or even centuries, while others are born into another life almost immediately. Each individual is unique, each individual sets his own way, by way of his/her thoughts, feelings and emotions. In other words, his or her consciousness creates.
Why then have we created such suffering? History is filled with endless accounts of war, rape, murder, and harm imposed upon others. The most horrible things we do, we do to each other. But why? One discussion regarding this is that we have created suffering and imperfection in order to learn the deepest essence of Love, Compassion, and Empathy. I am sure there is merit in this. I know I have learned over and over again the importance of these through difficult life times. But this seems to be a slow and endless process. Mankind is currently in crisis and if we are learning, we are not learning fast enough.
It seems to me that we keep creating suffering and imperfection because we are not conscious of how to create change within. When I looked back over my memories as Alexander, I realized that I did not know how. When I looked to the history of religion, dogma it seems has gotten in the way of original intention. Beneath the structured beliefs of church and state, before Christianity, the ancients were pointing the way.
So I dug deep into my journals, combing through pages of memories which contained glimpses of Alexander’s life. I was looking for more clues, more pieces to the puzzle. What surfaced was that I never let go of my sister. She was in my thoughts and in my heart throughout my entire past life. Like threads in a tapestry, the memories of her were woven deep into my consciousness.
What I found was much more than I ever anticipated. When I looked back over Alexander’s life, I realized that I knew his losses, his imperfections and his suffering. They were not outside of myself; they were my own.
*******