A brief history of lives

Begin usual disclaimer-- Whether the following is "true" or my imagination, some aspect of empathy, or if I'm just plain nuts, I can not say. I'm a skeptical mystic with a sense of humor. I know I could be full of it. That said, my belief in reincarnation is not revolutionary or anything. I'm not the first person, nor will I be the last, to believe this. My beliefs don't hurt anyone, and I'm not interested in trying to convince others they should agree with me. OK? --end disclaimer

I have a lot of past lives, and by the way, so do you! The idea of "young" souls has never made any sense to me. One of my friends believes that all of us are stars; in other words, ancient, shining and huge. We are currently incarnated in order to work through issues that are not accessible when we're in other forms. I kind of like that idea.

According to the cosmology of Reya, we are meant to work. On the spiritual side, we work through all kinds of issues in order to evolve. In some way, the work of the soul is a key component of The Big Plan, or it benefits God in some way. Part of how we do that is through the wheel of incarnation. My cosmology includes sets of lifetimes during which we focus on very specific issues and challenges. A "young" soul might be someone who has just entered a new set of lifetimes. Maybe. Who knows?

I've known my sister Hannah for frickin' ever. I "remember" the Ice Age, a set of hundreds or thousands of lifetimes that were pretty much identical: hunting, mating, walking, stars at night, short summers, long winters. I remember the smell of our clothes, fires at night, always being hungry, always feeling cold. My sister Hannah was mate, sibling, child, parent, cohort during all those lives. We trudged together through the Ice Age.

In another set of lifetimes, much more recent, I was a nun, monk or hermit. I lived those lives in the cloisters, among others living the same life. We prayed a lot, and broke the rules a lot. Interesting set of lives.

Just recently I was able to recover a set of very old lives in which I was a warrior - never a great warrior, should say. I was just a plain old foot soldier, not very skilled and never terribly brave.

I have a lot of memories of my past lives of service, the set of lifetimes I'm still engaged with. I've been a maid, cook, gardener, footman, and nurse so many times. Most of the nurse lifetimes revolved around caring for wounded soldiers. When I was in grade school (in this lifetime) I read a biography of a Belgian nurse in WWI who was executed for protecting injured prisoners of war. I read and re-read that book - I was such a morbid child. I believe I was relating to my job as a nurse during WWI, a terrible calling that involved watching young men die of infection, the flu, and from terrible injuries. That was not a pleasant life, nor was my life during the Civil War during which I did pretty much the same thing.

No wonder that when WWII rolled around, I rejected my calling to be a healer. I refused to be of any help to anyone. I must have been so demoralized, I couldn't help it, or at least, that's my excuse. I shut down as a healer, and I believe I died a fairly horrible death.

Reuniting with my soul purpose as a healer is something I didn't pick up on again in this lifetime until middle age, even though I always had the knack ever since I was a child. My mother told me that even as a toddler, I knew when she had a headache (for instance). I would come to her and place my hand on her forehead. Somehow I knew.

Eventually, this time around, I re-entered my soul's current purpose: to serve as healer. It's so much easier than in past lives because I have access to Reiki, I trained in therapeutic massage, and too I've been taught so many shamanic techniques with which to move energy. Also I am not treating wounded soldiers this time around. I work with all kinds of people who are dealing with a variety of issues. I don't have to sit there, waiting for young men to die, in this life. I'm so lucky!

I'm thinking about this today because I have, in the past few days, at last found a way to prepare for the trip to Krakow later this year. I've just now found my way into a method for retrieving the piece of my soul I left swirling in the Holocaust. It's going to be a big journey, but I have a strategy, I have a plan. You can't imagine how jazzed I am. Can you?