Who or What Were You in Your Past Life?

jason_els

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Jason, do you get an eerie feeling each time you pass the place? How does one realize these things?

No, because it wasn't that inn. It was an inn on the Albany Post Road. That I'm certain of. I don't know if it's still standing or even if I'd recognize it if I did. I do recall a plump wife and two daughters and cats. LOTS of cats. I get the impression I dressed plainly, may have been a Quaker, though I do recall a clay pipe as well.

I've had this impression for a very long time. It's even older than the idea I was Geoffrey Plantagenet which means I had it when a young child. I don't know how I know, I just do. They're like memories from from very long ago where you can not just see them, but recall the feelings associated. The scratchiness of the wool clothes, the gouty knee, yet also as though you're thinking different thoughts, have different concerns. Maybe it's like being in a stranger's head for a split second except it's you.

The eeriest things that I've had happen are actually associated with music. When I first heard (of all things) Safety Dance, I knew I'd heard it before. The theme was very familiar to me and something told me I had heard it in France. Turns out it really is based on a medieval French tune. Now my Baird family lineage is Scottish on the face of it, but the Bairds aren't Scottish. They actually came from France before emigrating to Scotland and the name should actually be Bard.

More bizarre was my reaction to Mummer's Dance when I first heard that. I was driving home from work and popped in the CD and as soon as I heard it I was flooded with the sensation of loss, and I kept repeating over and over again, "I want to go home!" I had to pull over I was so emotionally overwhelmed, feeling that there was a time and place I missed very much. Once again, Mummer's Dance really is based upon a medieval mumming tune and like Safety Dance, I had no idea of this until I researched it.

This sparked my interest in genealogy while Safety Dance and The Lion In Winter sparked my interest in medieval history and art. Through my research, much of it already done by others, I discovered just where and when many of my ancestors lived. My family, as Europeans in America go, is as old as dirt and nobody moved very much so finding everyone was extremely easy. Surprisingly easier were tracing even a few of the lines in Europe because once you hit an aristocrat or royal then all that work is hugely public and exceptionally well researched already. It's not difficult to dige these up. Some 3/4 of all white Americans have some noble or royal ancestor. What I found in my research really surprised me because there's a lot of personal connection to some of them. Someone once said that you live many lives with the same people just in different variations.

I've had just one experience that has absolutely convinced me that there's something going on. In my early teens I had a very vivid dream where I found myself in a large castle ascending a grand stone staircase. The oddest thing was the staircase seemed to partially indoors and partially outdoors! Half of it projected into a garden area, the other half was open to the interior of the castle.

At the top of the staircase was a large wooden door that opened into a beautiful bedchamber. The bed looked out through these large floor-to-ceiling windows which had small balconies that overlooked a garden. Standing on the balcony was a girl and when I saw her I walked over and stood next to her. The morning sun was just lighting the garden which was filled with evergreens and had a crushed marble path wandering among the plantings. It was obviously a winter garden of some sort. The dew was glistening in the sunlight on the deep greenery and I said to her, "My God, isn't it beautiful?" She turned to me and said, "Yes, yes it is."

That was the end of the dream. I remembered it because it was so unusual yet so clear and so odd.

When I was 16 I was pretty much flunking French and my parents decided to send me off to language school at Dartmouth for the summer and that culminated in a two week stay in Blois, France along with other program participants. The very first morning there, we went to see this chateau:

401px-Chateau_de_Blois_escalier_monumental.jpg


You don't see that from the entrance but on the tour I found myself ascending that very staircase. At one of the levels of that staircase was a large wooden door with a bedchamber with a large canopied bed looking through some French door windows with a garden below:

Blois-couverture.jpg


800px-SchlossBloisSchlafzimmerdesKoenigs.jpg


The staircase had me scared shitless but I was aware this was part of the dream I had and wanted to see if it was going to work out as it had in the dream. Entering the bedroom I was just blown away because it looked exactly like what I saw in my dream. What I wondered was how the dream could come true since I was in France and naturally the conversation was in English. BUT! Standing out on the balcony was Felicia Miller whose dad was a Cadillac dealer in upstate New York. So she was the girl. I walked up and looked out over the garden and said my lines, "My God, isn't it beautiful?" And just as scripted she replied, "Yes, yes it is."

Now, twenty some odd years later, I dig-up some interesting family stuff that shows a line of descent from the Valois line via Louis XII. It seems at least one line of my ancestors owned this chateau 500 years ago.

This is all really weird and I can't explain it. It flies in the face of everything I rationally understand yet it happened very clearly and plainly. It's driven my interest in Jungian psychology, theories of subjective reality, and genetic memory.

The best suggestion I can make, if you're wondering about such things, is to follow whatever mystic tendency you have. Since you do yoga and meditation, perhaps meditating upon this point may reveal something to you. For some reason I can see you sitting in meditation at Ryoanji or some similar Zen garden and receiving answers. The more you listen to your intuition, the more it will tell you. Scrying and tarot may help too. I have a great affinity for tarot. Saved my ducats and bought my first pack at the age of 8. Meditating with it is a very unusual and interesting experience.

Like I've said, I was a weird kid.
 

earllogjam

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So she was the girl. I walked up and looked out over the garden and said my lines, "My God, isn't it beautiful?" And just as scripted she replied, "Yes, yes it is."

You know Jason, if you were famous (maybe you are) your story would be one of Paul Harvey's "The rest of the story" stories. It seems you are very in tune with these strange occurances with another time. I have recurring dreams of places I have never been and people I've never met also but I have yet to find them in real life, you have been fortunate to encounter it in real life. Sounds like it was a life changing experience for you. What does it all mean do you suppose?

Sometimes I feel that I wasn't human in my past life, a new soul if you will. But I have an affinity for India, I don't know if I lived there in a past life but I quickly acclimated to the culture, food, and lifestyle after traveling there, it felt like home unlike many of the countries I have visited where I always felt like a stranger in a strange place. It's odd because it is someplace so opposite from anything in the states and I'm a white guy. I also feel at home in Japan for some reason. I've met many expat's from other counties in my travels and they say they have similar experiences - that they just don't feel at home in the US so they decide to live overseas in places that they do.
 

davidjh7

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I like to think that I was a rich, mean, selfish cruel SOB, and this life is my punishment for it...:tongue:
 

Mem

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I have a memory of drowning as a child, I asked me parents and older sister if I almost drowned and they said no.

I love the Egyptian Pyramids (used to feel a connection to it) but I think that may be because they are such an amazing structure.
 

agnslz

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I don't really believe in reincarnation, but I watched this show on Sci Fi a while back that had the story of this man and the person whom he believed he was in a former life. They had old pictures which showed that they bore a striking resemblance to each other. The guy also could remember incredible facts and recall unique occureneces from the dead guy's life under hypnosis that they said he had no way of knowing previously. It was all a bit spooky and made me reconsider my belief (or lack thereof) in reincarnation. As yet, I don't have any memories that don't belong to me, but I do often experience deja vu, so who knows, really.:shrug: :biggrin:
 

jason_els

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You know Jason, if you were famous (maybe you are) your story would be one of Paul Harvey's "The rest of the story" stories. It seems you are very in tune with these strange occurances with another time. I have recurring dreams of places I have never been and people I've never met also but I have yet to find them in real life, you have been fortunate to encounter it in real life. Sounds like it was a life changing experience for you. What does it all mean do you suppose?

Sometimes I feel that I wasn't human in my past life, a new soul if you will. But I have an affinity for India, I don't know if I lived there in a past life but I quickly acclimated to the culture, food, and lifestyle after traveling there, it felt like home unlike many of the countries I have visited where I always felt like a stranger in a strange place. It's odd because it is someplace so opposite from anything in the states and I'm a white guy. I also feel at home in Japan for some reason. I've met many expat's from other counties in my travels and they say they have similar experiences - that they just don't feel at home in the US so they decide to live overseas in places that they do.

No, not famous and not that semi-famous country singer you may have Googled either :tongue:. My father gets the same feelings so maybe I inherited it from him. I do love history and frequently feel I was born in the wrong time but then I was raised on Emily Post etiquette that spoke endearingly of what to wear to white tie functions, how to dress and decorate for mourning, seating arrangements for dignitaries at formal luncheons, the language of calling cards, how to host balls, and what does one do with an understaffed house. Nearly all of it absolutely useless in this day and age. The good thing is that I can set a table, eat asparagus with my fingers, and I'm not intimidated by masses of silverware at a place setting. Whoop dee fucking do. I'd probably make someone an excellent butler if they still had butlers.

If you were an animal in a past life, then be very glad you lived in India:biggrin1:. Follow the clues you're already listing like the dreams. Try and write them down, invite them. As you're a very spatial person, I think your sense of place is heightened as well and that should give you further clues. When I said I see you at Ryoanji, I actually kinda meant it. Meditation is a great way to look beyond yourself. If you practice the calm mind, then you can also ask questions of it while in that state. The more you allow yourself to explore, the more answers I think you get.

Even if these aren't true past lives, then what you have created for yourself says something about who you are and can lead to some interesting self discovery. I actually think there is something going on with this and that, at times, our conciousness becomes aware of eddys in the flow of time. Ghosts may be like that too, time repeating on occasion, replaying like a DVD when conditions are right. Then perhaps, it's something else. There are, apparently, eleven dimensions out there and we can only detect or measure four of them so we are still, for all our advancement, woefully unaware of the true mechanics of the universe.

What it all means is a question for gurus, philosophers, poets, and saints. I tend to think that people get the reality they construct, not just figuratively either. That makes me something of a hack metaphysician though I am in good company when I say that. The meaning you find is bound in your own journey through time. Now, as you've been to India, I'm sure you're aware that their traditional concept of time is radically different from ours and perhaps you're bound in that time reality. You do yoga, meditate, and, I suspect, feel a deep affinity for the Japanese aesthetic. How the hell you got over here I don't know. Answers at Ryoanji just keeps popping into my head. Whether it must be a Ryoanji or not I don't know. A well-constructed, meaning master-landscaped, zen garden could really help. They stimulate the mind to see noumena via phenomena, to transport the meditator into experiencing archetypes of Forms.

Does this make any sense to you? I feel like a pythia on a tripod. You'll be happy to know that I've have never beend diagnosed me as psychotic :wink:. It's just that my ideaphoria is off the charts. So either I'm making sense of some sort or I'm Crispin Glover.
 

Principessa

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]I like to think that I was a rich, mean, selfish cruel SOB, and this life is my punishment for it...[/FONT]:tongue:


It's funny you mention being a not nice person in a past life. I have had such a phenomenal run of bad luck lately,(only the last 10 years) that I have frequently joked to friends that I must have raped and murdered a nun in a past life. :frown1::mad::redface:
 

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B_Lightkeeper

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I believe in reincarnation although I don't know what or who I was in a past life.
I have always had the feeling though that I was at a circus and the tent caught fire .Don't know if I died or not.