Revolving Wombs & Tombs

“Reincarnation is a way for God to improve his earlier works.” – Norman Mailer

At first I had a hard time mentally accepting the idea of past lives. There didn’t seem like any real logic to it. I mean actually, the idea had some coolness about it. How hip could it be that we been revolving in and out of this place for, what? Centuries? Eons? So hey, we’ve probably seen and done all kinds of things, right? It fit right into the sixties thing, so yeah man, it was cool. But coolness and logic were different things, and they were locking horns inside me. I guess the whole thing made me feel eerie.

But hey, I was only in college at this time, and I didn’t need to figure it out right now. It had only come up because I started reading all these books on metaphysics, trying to understand what these experiences I was having were all about. And most of them got into the reincarnation thing. I didn’t care about that; I just wanted to know what the hell was happening to me.

As I read more and more, I realized I needed to find a teacher of some sort, someone to guide me through some of this. I wasn’t interested in the eastern guru paradigm. Somehow paying allegiance, homage or devotion to someone like that just didn’t feel right for me. More like someone who had experience (way?) beyond mine who was more like a teacher at a university who you just took a class from, with a more distant relationship akin to that. I didn’t want someone to hold my hand, just someone who could point at a road that maybe I should try. But the more I looked, the harder it seemed to find someone like that. Most of them were so into their own trips, it all seemed fake to me.

To hurry this along, I did eventually find that teacher, and began trying out his meditation system. (More about that in another post.) As I got into practicing this technique I started developing serious headaches. I later found out that there were several reasons this was happening, three main ones to be precise. However, I am only going into one of them here. The other ones I will write about later, because they may be pertinent for some of you.

Now as this was happening (the headaches) I was periodically getting quick odd flashes in my meditations. They didn’t really mean too much at the time, until I happened to mention them to my meditation teacher one day. He took a look at me, spiritually, meaning he would look at me with his spiritual vision. I took this with a grain of salt at that time, so just went along with it. When he was done, he had a bit of a mischievous grin on his face, as if I had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

“What?” I asked. He then asked me if there were any periods in history that I had an affinity for. I thought about it a bit, and then gave him a couple. And then he asked me if I had seen anything in my meditations that related to any of that. I couldn’t recall any. So, he just told me to keep putting my time in and maybe some of this would be clarified. He also gave me a couple techniques to help with my headaches.

As time went on there was a recurring vision that kept coming up in my meditations – my head hitting the open cockpit of a biplane. And me having a subsequent headache. A picture was starting to emerge, one that I’m not sure I was willing to accept at the time. Now I knew I had never hit my head on a biplane cockpit, or even flown a biplane, or even flown any kind of plane. At least in this lifetime. That proposition was both scary and intriguing. If it had not been for the headaches, I’m not sure I would have been as brave exploring this as I turned out to be. And in all reality, how brave was I really being? I wasn’t exactly leading the Charge of the Light Brigade, was I? So, I decided to move forward and see what was what.

Over the course of the next couple years, the memories flooded in, and after enough pieces floating around, I put together the puzzle. In my previous incarnation I had indeed flown in an open cockpit biplane. As a pilot in World War I, for Germany. And yes I had survived that war, after several harrowing crashes. One that put me in a hospital with a major head injury. Needless to say, this began to change my ideas about reincarnation.

Now I know some of you will be totally unconvinced, but no worries, as that is understandable. It was only after me having memories of a few other lifetimes that I felt this was probably how creation worked. Not that I was an expert in that area. But what would you say to someone who told you that some of those past life memories are as clear as any in this current lifetime, and that many of the personality details of these other lives fit with who he is now? That he was completely nuts, or just a step closer to figuring something out?

You decide for you; I’ll decide for me.

TMC