One could say that I have always been a deep thinker and a dreamer. A dichotomy to be sure. But it has always made sense to me. It may be because I have always been an avid reader so I love stories of all kinds and I have this deep understanding that stories are based on some sort of truth but also that they are embellished and beautified to satisfy our human need for pattern and art. This also means that I am deeply empathetic and intuitive and can understand abstract thoughts and ideas in order to see deeper meanings and lessons that don’t sit at the surface level. I thought everyone thought like me until I became a teacher. Now I know that only about 15% of people can think in this way, most people take everything at face value and don’t understand the value of story, emotion, or the mystery behind the veil of life. And there isn’t anything wrong with that, but it does mean that we all have different perspectives on everything and to explain the magic of life to people who bob on the surface is a challenge. You have to “take what you want and leave what you don’t” with everything.
All this to say that I’ve always been a “wonderer”, that is, someone who is constantly thinking about why things are the way they are and how if one small thing changed, EVERYTHING would be different and how cool that is but also how restricting that is when things don’t change. This is also why mental health, anxiety, stress, etc. bother me so much because those are the things that internally I say “oh I have the power to change those things, I don’t have to be anxious if I just shift this thing internally” and then also internally freaking out saying “but I can’t change that, it’s so much ME.” And when you’re in it, you’re really in it. And it’s been my life’s work, literally, to change that about me and this is the year that it is finally clicking. I’ve been less anxious because I’ve been working really hard on changing my brain and it’s taken 36 years and A LOT of helpful outside influence. But I remember laying on my bed as a kid and wondering, if I don’t want to be like this, then why am I? And then knowing, deeply knowing, that I could change it but I couldn’t quite figure out how. I’ve always known that I could.
And within all this knowing and wondering, I also wondered a lot about death. Not in a strange way (at least in my opinion), but I’ve always had a fascination with death. I wrote poetry about death as a teen, I have some kind of mystical pull to it. I’ve contemplated being an End of Life Doula also. There is just some knowing that I have that death is not the end. It’s more of a “moving on” or “fulfillment” of what was needed to be done. It’s a change in plot in the overall “youness”. It was time for a change. I am acutely aware that I can only say this with such confidence because I have not lost someone close to me abruptly or out of the blue. And I’m acutely aware that is very hard for people who have lost to hear me talk this way about death. But I also hope it is encouraging or helpful in some way, that we all have a story and our story continues long after death and it was happening long before death.
Which brings me to my theory. I’ve had this theory since being a child and it really hasn’t changed much. The strange thing is that as a adult I’ve read information similar to this in my meditation books, so it really isn’t an original idea but it does verify to me that it is probably true because I was under no influence about this whatsoever as a kid and then to find that other people also feel and believe these things is kind of mind blowing. I went to an ELCA Lutheran Church as a kid and I loved it. I loved the songs, the treats, the sermons (my pastor loved space and many of his sermons were based on this, SO COOL). I loved going to church camp and I still have friends that I made those weeks at camp, I even worked at the church camp in high school. But I was always acutely aware that the stories were just stories. Based in some kind of fact, but that people couldn’t live that long and that people just needed these stories as guidelines to live. And I loved the idea of the divine and divinity. And when I watched Hercules and learned about Greek Gods and Goddesses, ohhhhh did I love it. I have always felt myself a goddess. How arrogant (but also not. wWe all are gods and goddesses).
So my theory is this: we are all orbs and these glowing, iridescent orbs contain our souls. Our souls are constantly evolving beings and we all just desire to learn and grow and find the magic everywhere. And within the galaxy we determine the place we want to end up and where. Sometimes that means on earth and sometimes that means in multiple bodies and lifetimes on earth. (It could also be on other planets or spaces in the galaxy). And so we are ancient beings that have total control over where we are and when, but we can also change our minds at any time. And the soul that I am has had multiple lifetimes on earth in different forms but that so far, the life I am in now has been the favorite. It’s just a knowing I have that this life is just so good. I get goosebumps constantly. But I’ve had flashbacks to my past lives, especially to a ship sinking, waves crashing AND once I found out about meditation and that world, it felt like home, like I was supposed to be doing it. And this leads me to the present.
I have the most incredible mother in-law. She’s been the most supportive one in my extended family for my career transition. She sent me little texts of encouragement and celebration, then when I was officially finished teaching she sent me a choice of psychic readings just to peak into this new chapter of life. She loves Helen, Eye of the Serpent who does reading online through video. I decided, however, that instead of a future reading I wanted to do a past life reading. I’ve always been interested in a past life reading because the amount of times I get Deja vu is uncanny. I’ve also done one past life regression just on my own and had intense feelings of a shipwreck and a sense of thrashing in cold water, so I wanted to see if there would be anything is this reading that would line up with that. It did not disappoint.
First, Helen asked if there was anything I wanted to focus on or if I just wanted to see what came up. I didn’t have any specific questions and did just want to see where she would take my reading. She creates the video of the reading within 24 hours and I was so excited when it showed up in my inbox. You download the video and then can watch it as many times as wanted. Helen uses different decks of tarot cards and asks questions of the cards and then clarifies with narration along the way.
She said that three of my many past lives stuck out in particular. I’m not going to go into too much detail since it is personal to me and probably not as interesting to you (dearest gentle reader: IYKYK). But if it is to be believed (which I do because it feels right to me) I was once part of an all-woman spiritual commune in Wales living a spiritual life in sisterhood and I was also once a male Viking, pillaging (shipwreck huh?), and then after this I settled and found a love match and had a family. She also said she had a brief vision of an upper-class, educated, British woman who was a mother and loved her life of child-rearing and reading books/being creative because she had the means. (The one mirrors my life today!) But that from the other two lives I was supposed to perhaps learn the idea of balance between all things (spiritual/material, masculine/feminine, etc.). And to learn my own power. She also briefly mentioned at the end of that I am a “Starseed” which is a being born of stars sent to earth to spread love and light. She said this so nonchalantly and said “but of course, I already knew that card was going to come!”. And the funny this was I felt so nonchalant about that too. There was nothing life changing about this reading because I already knew it. Really. Everything she said I felt like “Oh, yes, of course.” Which is interesting in itself and something I will continue to contemplate.
All this this added up to what I’ve always felt to be true about life, we’re to learn to be the best self we can be. Then we are meant to spread that to everyone else. Never stop learning. Never stop enjoying.
Now when I listen to Taylor Swifts “Down Bad” song lyrics, I can’t help but think of them differently now: Did you really beam me up, in a cloud of sparkling dust, just to do experiments on, tell me I was the chosen one. Showed me that this world was bigger than us, then send me back where I came from. For a moment I knew cosmic love.
We just have to remember where we came from.
There’s something about Orion’s Belt
It’s home for me
I’m drawn in
Since those nights at Alturas Lake
Swirling our toes in the icy water
And feeling infinite
And so small at the same time
I’m drawn back
Every winter
Drawing frozen breath and looking up
On my front steps wanting to go back
To feeling infinite
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite
Perks of Being a Wallflower speaks to me
He got it right I think
There’s a depth there
That we all understand
But don’t
And it keeps us coming back
To the stars
This is amazing. Your final poem speaks volumes and I love your description of how our souls are contained in us ❤️