As a child I remembered being born, being in the womb, and the death that preceeded this birth.
I recalled the time between the death and the womb.
I recalled the act I dying.
I recalled the act of taking a blade to my own throat and the process of dying.
I still recall many of the things I did which caused suffering in my previous life, but I do not recall those whom I helped, or loved.
It is a heavy load to bear. Is there a purpose to this ? Am I meant to work to relieve the same suffering I caused in others ?
"Danuka Shewantha asked (2018-03-07): If you don’t mind can you explain your experience with us. Are you recalling past life memory?"
Being born: Very young I had a recurring nightmare, and it would follow me when I woke up. It was a dream of being huge in a small space and suddenly extremely small in an infinite space. The size of the space I came to realize was being defined by being squeezed from all sides and then the contact disappearing. When all the surface of my skin was in contact with the "squeezing" it felt like I was a giant and the space around me was too small for me, it panicked me, and then when the surface in contact with my skin withdrew I felt myself floating without any sense of being touched -therefore I had no size, it felt like being infinitely small in an infinitely large space. This felt like relief.
This is what I later came to understand (perhaps wrongly, but it felt correct), as the memory of being born. The squeezing of the uterus against me, and then, when the contraction subsided, the feeling of the liquid around and no contact. When I was young I asked other children if they had the same nightmare and several told me they had it too. The memory of it seems to fade, like all nightmares.
My suicide: One day a friend of one of my aunts, in a (very successful) effort to endear himself gave me a present for Easter (I was raised in a Catholic home). It was a huge rabbit standing like a person. It was wearing clothes like a person (a blazer and short pants). He was taller than I was. I would have been maybe 6 (?), not much older (we moved from that house when I was 7), but maybe younger. The rabbit was upstairs, there was a downstairs play area in this house. There was a moment when everything went black (no sight memory, just missing time). Then I felt like I was in a different place. I ran to the kitchen and in the utensil drawer I dug through the knives. I looked at them and kept touching them to find the one my hand remembered. I chose a short knife with a wooden handle. The knife had been washed so much the wood was rough, but it had once been smooth, the wood felt weathered, like the outside wood of an unpainted house. The surface changed by the rain. The blade of the knife had been sharpened many times on a stone. It was a knife my mother used in the vegetable garden, so my father sharpened it regularly because it was often made dull by the labour. I recall the blade shape, but I don't know how to describe it. I recall the knife as clearly as if it were before me now. I can see the lines from the sharpening reflecting light, the colour of the handle. The small rivets that held the wood to the blade were blackened. I held the knife in my hand, the butt of the handle against the middle of my palm.
I knew the knife as familiar in that moment because of the place the handle fit into my palm, the length of it. It was "correct". I ran downstairs with the knife. I leaned the rabbit against a door frame to hold it vertical. Standing in front of it I looked for the place in its neck, and I sliced into it with the knife. At that moment everything went black. I felt myself different. I felt my right arm, pressed against my body, reaching for my neck on the left side, and the knife in my hand. I felt the tip of the blade against my skin. I felt the moment before the blade cut into my flesh as the blade pushed, and then the moment the skin broke. The flood of heat of my blood flowing from the wound. I felt the heat of the blood as it poured over my skin. I felt the pushing, pulsing of my heart, beating loud, and the increasing heat of the blood as my skin became cold. It (felt as though) it burned my skin. I felt everything. My eardrums hurt as though there was such a huge silence my heartbeat was crushingly loud. The memory continues from that, but I don't know if you really want to know what happened afterwards. It was quite horrible. Before birth: I recalled from that event forward and being sent into the womb. I recalled that someone/something sent me, like being pushed by a voice. As though the voice were wind and I was dust. There were many voices, not all agreed with my birth. Someone advocated for me. I did not have voice. I did not speak, I listened, involved, but not desirous (not against either) the outcome.
when the vision broke I awakened on the ground, next to the now 'dead' rabbit, the small styrofoam pellets all over the floor. I could not explain to my mother why I had destroyed such a lovely gift which I loved so much. She thought it ungrateful of me. Which it was, in many ways.
There are many other such moments. I recall being widowed (that pain is still searing now). I recalled my attachment to wealth and what I did to amass it. I recall the pain I brought to others through my actions, and I recall their blaming me for their suffering. I have met many of them in my life now, and I see them act on the experiences we shared. I see them continue to struggle with the experiences, but they don't seem to recall them. They are just blindly acting on the pain. Some I have helped, but many are living in a fog. It is very like watching a person you knew as a child and knowing the reasons for their current actions is their past experience.
"Sankha Kulathantille asked (2018-03-08): Do you remember the names of your parents in the past life or at least the place they stayed?
That is an interesting question, I never wondered about the names of parents. I chastised myself severly for not recalling the names of my children, but parents never occured to me.
I recall young being very upset to be called by the name which I was given. I could not understand why they called me that and it upset me greatly. I knew it wasn't my name and I concentrated very hard to recall my real name. The name I have now is Michele, and when I focused I could recall my name as something very different that I had never heard before. It was something like Mishcoot. I tried to reason with myself that the first part of the name sounded like the first part of this name and it should not be so important. I cried myself to sleep and each time my name bothered me I reminded myself it was not so different. I am still uncomfortable with my name and I avoid its use as much as I can. I try not to think about what I lost. "My name" now is not mine, it is just what people call me. I know when I hear it that I am being addressed, but I feel no attachment to it. It could just as easily be a sound like a whistle or a grunt.
Where: (very young) I cried inconsolably at the sight of Jewish cemeteries and when asked I explained I could not be buried on sacred ground. I was raised Roman Catholic in a homogenous area, and had never met anyone Jewish at that time.
When I was first in school and learning letters I kept insisting that they also had a numeric value and words could be added. Frustrated teachers insisted I was wrong and to stop insisting. It would be decades before I learned that Hebrew does this.
The first time I traveled to NYC (New York city USA) I knew where things were without maps or street names. I ran down a street and closed my eyes as I reached a street corner. With eyes closed I (gleefully) lifted my left arm and pointed. With eyes still closed I said "Grand Central Station" and when I opened my eyes it was there. It wasn't a surprise, it just was where I knew it would be. I continued this game that first day, and then I just settled into the familiarity. It was very pleasant, and it felt safer there than anywhere else. Like a well loved child in their familial space.
