Very often, people get dreams that are so vivid they know they are more than dreams – they are remembrances. They can indeed be glimpses into a past life that are important for us to recognize, in order to bring lessons into the life we live now. This month, I work with two people who have been given a glimpse of something they know is important, but who need more detail to get things to make sense. Question:
I have had this vision for a very long time. I am a very old man, living alone in a desert. I am content walking to a humble shack that is my home. I calmly realize that I am dying and I just want to get indoors before I die. Mainly, I just don’t want to upset whoever finds my body which I believe would happen if the animals get to me after I’m gone. As the door closes I fall to the ground. Is it a past life?
Sonny
Sonny, you are on target; I zeroed in on this life right away. This is during the “Dust Bowl” era in the 1930s, when there was a catastrophic multi-year drought in the United States. You are First Nations – Apache, perhaps – who has given everything you had to get your people across the wastelands. There were many migrant workers in those days – John Steinbeck’s GRAPES OF WRATH has a fair picture of it. But the First Nations tribes were hit by a double blow, as their reservations were also hard hit. My sense is that you have passed on your last food, your last water, and your last clothing and fuel, knowing that the family you gave it to, with young children, were the future, and as an elder it was your duty to give them life and hope. You specifically did not want another family with children to see your half-consumed corpse, as any pack of animals that was also starving would attack your body immediately.
SONNY’S REPLY: That was really cool. After I talked to you I looked up “1930’s dustbowl shack.” I couldn’t find anything that looked like the shack in my memory. It was more of a hobbit hole in appearance than a tool shed. Then I found some that looked more like it. They were called “soddies.” So I updated my search to 1930s dustbowl soddies and found a picture. The house in my memory looked just like this, with the door on the same side and everything!
Question:
For the past 30 years, I keep dreaming of being inside a house that I am buying or have purchased. It’s always inside, old home, painted white with many doors that I keep being shown to go in. This house makes me feel elated, a warm fuzzy feeling. Often times, there seems to be a second story on this house with plenty more empty rooms that I didn’t know were there. I once was able to open a door leading to a sterile, white old kitchen. Otherwise, the rooms seem to always be empty. Actually, I don’t know if it has anything to do with my two-year obsession with buying a home in Sharon Springs, NY. I am a city girl, having lived my youth in New York City, then 25 years in Miami and now back in NYC. To me, Sharon Springs, although I have not been there, reminds me of that home. It’s the old and tranquility of the pictures I see of the village that, often times, makes me feel like crying. Don’t even know if I should relate dream with village and actually make the move. It’s a beautiful dream and only wish to know if it’s my past life. I get so emotional just thinking of this dream.
Adele
Adele, it’s not Sharon Springs that I see, but southeastern Georgia in the first quarter of the 20th century. The vision I get is that you have married well to a Northerner – your family had connections on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line before the Civil War. You’ve come back to salvage the family home that had belonged to your relations – not a plantation, but a well to do house that, while spared by the Union forces during the war, fell into disrepair afterwards because the family had fled. Purchasing it for pennies on the dollar, you lavished time, love and money on the repair and renovation, and this is the first time your family has come back to it since it was finished. It would make sense that the rooms are empty and the kitchen is “sterile” if no one has yet moved in. Also, if you had just been a visitor but hadn’t lived there, many of the upstairs rooms would not have been familiar to you.
While I do not see a return to the South in your future, Sharon Springs NY has many houses that are 19th century in vintage, and would welcome a loving and happy touch in bringing them back to their former splendor! Remember that we are not necessarily supposed to repeat a past life, but can take important parts of it and re-root them, if you will, in the life we have now. I would not be surprised if the house you purchase in upstate New York becomes renowned for the accuracy of its renovation and the “welcome home” feeling from the spirits who are grateful that you see its beauty as they did.
Question:
Whenever I go to a museum and look at furniture from the 1700s, I want to touch it, and turn it over to look at how it was made. My hands get almost itchy, I want it so bad! And usually then I get at least one night of a recurring dream where I am in a big barn and sawing wood but my hands are old and gnarled and when I drop my hammer I see shoes on my feet like a Pilgrim. It’s very cold and I can see my breath. Can you explain this?
Roy
Roy, when I tune in I can see you in a house in rural Maine – somewhat better than rough-hewn, but certainly not the elegant places you’d find in a city like Boston. Around you are several pieces of broken furniture that you are repairing. You had a huge respect for the art of woodcarving, as well as the typical New England frugality. You did anything legal and moral to bring food into the house and clothe your wife and children – farming, woodworking, or well-digging. When you were able to get a piece of furniture that a more well-to-do family would have gotten rid of, you took it home, took it apart the way a modern person would tinker with a car, and did your best to both match its style and “build it better.” Your feeling was “if my great-grandchildren cannot receive it from me with another good life or two in it, I have not done my work aright.” The shoes you are looking at are typical shoes of the period – low heeled leather shoes with buckles. The well-to-do had boots for riding, but you were a tradesman and farmer, and you had one pair of shoes at a time.
I would encourage you to try your hand at woodworking today. If you still feel the call of oak and maple, then you might just surprise yourself with how quickly these old skills return to a new set of hands!
Want to find out about your own past lives? Drop me a line at Corbie@bellesprit.com! Remember, rather than just ask me to fish something out of the Akashic Library, focus on something that you’ve noticed about this life – a phobia, an obsession, a place that captures your imagination when there is no logical reason, or a person in your life that pushes buttons (either good or bad)! We look forward to working with you in our columns in the future.
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