July 9. 2022
I know you’re going to think I’ve truly gone over the edge when I report that I’ve been uncovering another past life. I haven’t wanted to believe–and I’m still skeptical–but the evidence is pretty clear. It started a couple of week ago when I became aware of certain impressions that were first-person. In other words, unlike my usual experiences in the Imaginal, the impressions felt like my own memories, although they clearly happened to another person. The impressions of this other person are deeply buried and defended. I can feel tension in my left side, especially my left arm and the left side of my chest all the way up the left side of my neck and my head. The inner view is very tight. It’s an obscure, greyed-out blockage and it feels heavy. There is a strong feeling of superego judgment. Even more, this other ‘me’ believes the judgment is justified. He has the feeling of being wrapped in harsh self-judgment. There’s so much self-judgment that it’s like a deep depression.
I get the feeling that this other me has been lurking inside of me all of my life. He’s deep in my unconsciousness but still makes his presence known by aligning with my superego’s harsh criticisms. I have often mistaken his cloud of depression to be my own depression. He is hard, driven, macho and cut off from his heart. There is an air of militarism about him that, along with some of the memories, suggests he was a soldier. I suspect he lived a long time ago and that he wasn’t white. He may have been Asian, Indian or Arabic; I can’t really tell.
He carries the weight of ‘sin’ with him. It stains everything about his aura. It feels like he did something horrible, something unspeakable, and has never forgiven himself for it. He is so wrapped up in self-recrimination that it’s become a shroud. He literally feels like a dead person, a corpse.
If you look back at these entries, there have been a number where I was sitting beside a tomb or crypt. Now I wonder if he’s the body contained in the crypt, a part of me buried and thought long dead that isn’t really dead but just extremely depressed and shrouded in self-hatred. This ‘me’ is ambivalent to the extreme about a second chance at redemption through another life. He believes he deserves punishment and doesn’t want a lifeline, doesn’t believe he can be redeemed.
I feel his presence inside along mine (the personality from my current lifetime), Lucas (the name I have given to my previous incarnation, the one who is Griffin’s soulmate, and Griffin who is bonded with Lucas to the point our souls are essentially one. Unlike Lucas, this ‘new’ me is not forthcoming. Lucas was comparatively easy to liberate because he is so fresh and pure and innocent. Lucas doesn’t carry around a lot of heavy regret or self-hatred; his trauma was around his demise at Griffin’s hands. Because that demise happened so quickly and then he died, Lucas carried the shock of it but wasn’t very weighed down. Recovering and freeing Lucas was easy compared to this new me.
It’s interesting how when I uncover a past life personality, it helps to explain certain things about my current life. In hindsight, I can see Lucas’ (and Griffin’s) impact in all manner of way on my current life. The same is true of this new me: My harsh superego, the depression that hides inside me and isn’t related to anything that happen in my current life and is not absorbed from my mother. My love of exercise–it can be almost militant. The way I carry my body with shoulders back and chest thrust forward and my obsession with physical prowess–maybe these are not just the qualities of being an Enneatype Three but point to something deeper? The way this new me aligns with authority and rejects the current me as being weak or contemptible.
Teasing out this new me is challenging. He’s so aligned with my superego that he’s basically buried inside it. The two are very joined and discriminating the boundary between them is difficult; in fact, he is very entwined with my superego. I’ve always wondered about my superego - why is it so strong, so pervasive even after all of these years of spiritual practice? It appears that it’s been aided and abetted by a whole side of me that I was unaware of.
Given how entrenched and depressed and aligned with my superego this new me is, it’s not surprising that he is resistant to my attempts to draw him out. He’s not completely immune but his heart is very sealed off and doesn’t respond willingly to love or compassion. He’s too convinced of his own guilt and doesn’t want to be forgiven.
What his crime was, I don’t know. I mean, I feel like I can forgive anything and probably wouldn’t be shocked by anything he might have done. If he was a soldier, ‘I’ must have committed war crimes and other atrocities, perhaps with enthusiasm. I get the sense this particular crime was committed against someone ‘I’ loved dearly but could not admit this love to myself. I get the sense it involved betrayal and was pretty violent and horrific.
I catch glimpses of the victim, a teenage boy with black hair and black eyes. I can feel my heart clench at the sight of him. Sometimes, he comes for me - he’s already forgiven me and can’t understand why I won’t let go of the past. This other me, though, cannot forgive and cannot let go. ‘I’ am tightly wound up in self-recrimination and believe I deserve punishment. You can see why it’s challenging to get in touch with and work through.
One image that keeps reappearing is of a hillside at sunset. The sunset is bright pink and the hillside is covered in trees with pink blossoms. It’s beautiful but also macabre because graves cover the hillside. They are barely visible beneath the blossoming trees but it’s clear the whole hill is a huge cemetery. There is a cart on a track running up the hillside and inside the cart is both a gateway to the Absolute–an opening into the deepest, darkest, blackest black–and a dead body. Is the body mine? Is the body the boy’s? Are these two bodies in that cart? I can’t tell. I don’t know why but this scene keeps reappearing in my mind when I meditate.
The cemetery doesn’t feel Christian but there are grave markers. Are the bodies cremated and then buried beneath the cherry trees? Or are they buried whole? It’s hard to tell and I’m not sure which religion or culture built this cemetery. Maybe it will become clearer as time goes on? I get the strong sense that recovering the memories and dealing with the karma of this past life is going to take some time and work. He is what is showing up for me right now, though, and I just have to trust there is a reason for this and that guidance will illuminate the path as it has done so far.
I’ve definitely stepped beyond the realm of the Diamond Approach teaching here and am exploring new territory. I’ve been Googling past life karma and past life trauma and there are a number of therapists out there but most seem kooky. Also, I don’t feel like they can offer anything that I can’t already provide for myself. I may just be deluded but I don’t feel like I need another teacher right now; I just need time.
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