. . . Comes Around (Part 2)
A week after my first healing session I was back on the massage table ready for my next experience. Of course I had the customary internal battle raging in my wee little head. My inner skeptic was certain that my first rather unusual experience (please see my last article "What Goes Around") was a fluke and was most likely the result of an overactive imagination, while the more receptive part of me was completely fascinated and secretly hoped for another vision. Of course, I was rooting for the receptive part of me to win. Skeptics are a buzz kill.
Deb, the shaman’s apprentice, began her ritual of burning sage, rattling and placing crystals on my energy centers. This time, instead of smelling burning hair, I smelled the heavy sweet scent of incense. I knew the scent was frankincense but I don’t know how I knew this since I had never smelled frankincense before.
Not in this lifetime anyway . . .
The moment I shifted my focus inward the vision began.
It was nighttime and the air was thick with humidity. I was inside the body of a man who was crouched behind a tall rectangular boulder. He was sweating and out of breath. Torches on the far side of the boulder created flickering patterns of fire light on either side of the rock where he hid in the shadows.
Like the last vision, this man was familiar. I knew immediately that he was another one of my identities from a previous lifetime. He lived many thousands of years ago in what we now refer to as Egyptian society. His body was dark skinned and scrawny. He was physically unattractive and emotionally and spiritually immature. This was someone who most certainly did not make his mother proud. It was difficult to admit any connection to this guy, but when it came down to it I had to accept the fact that, as this man, I had lived a pretty unsavory life.
Crouched behind the boulder I could hear voices in the distance. I quickly realized that my compadre was being hunted by a group of royal guards or soldiers. The language they spoke wasn’t familiar, but somehow I understood what they were saying. I felt fear rise in the man’s body as our hiding spot was discovered and he/I was surrounded.
One of the uniformed men grabbed me and slung me over his shoulder with ease. My body was deposited into a large linen sack and carried away. They carried me into the desert far from civilization. After the long walk my body was dropped on the ground with a thud and I heard them start digging.
The guards joked with each other as they dug, “If our friend here believes he’s royalty then let’s give him a royal burial.” I started to hyperventilate. They all laughed and another man added, “Yes, a burial fit for an immortal king.”
What had I done? The memory came in a rush. In an attempt to obtain physical immortality I had captured and killed a cat and then drank its blood. A million thoughts raced through my contemporary mind as I struggled to understand the significance of this crime. At the time of the vision I had no idea that cats were considered sacred in ancient Egypt.
When the digging stopped, one of the guards opened the sack and said with a smile, “Your royal tomb awaits.” He pried my mouth open and another guard shoved an oval object inside. It was a hand carved scarab. They told me to swallow and I started to gag. The linen sack was closed back up and my body was thrown into the shallow grave. The panic was intense as I struggled to breathe. I felt the dirt hit my body as the guards buried me alive.
Back in physical reality, Deb recognized that I was having difficulty breathing and helped me to focus on relaxing my breath. Once I gathered my wits I shifted focus back to the vision and accompanied my former identity through the death experience. I came to understand how during that lifetime I struggled to feel powerful and important in a world where bloodlines dictated status.
After the session ended, I thought about the previous week’s experience with the young slave girl and intuitively felt that the two visions were connected. The common denominator was the cat. In my life as the Egyptian man I was driven by a desire for power and status. I concluded that my decision to kill the cat in order to meet my ego’s shallow needs showed the inexperience of my soul. The spirit of the cat, in essence, gave my soul the opportunity to evolve by allowing me to directly experience the law of karma. However, as the young slave girl I was unaware that my death was a consequence of actions taken in another lifetime. It took me having these two consecutive visions in my current life to start putting the pieces together.
Aside from gaining an understanding of karma, I was also being given the opportunity to heal old wounds. In these former lifetimes I believe the traumatic nature of both death experiences left an energetic imprint on the landscape of my soul, specifically in the area of my throat and neck, which needed to be healed. This imprint prevented my throat chakra from functioning as it should. Hence my recurring dreams of choking and life-long dealings with throat-related illnesses and neck injuries. The energy of my throat was trying to get my attention all along. The healing wasn’t instantaneous, but gradually over the next year my recurring choking dreams and throat infections went away.
As wacky as this stuff sounds, these two shamanic healing sessions facilitated by a compassionate, open-minded healer allowed me to directly access, in a very real way, ancient injuries that were begging to be addressed. Until then I never would have guessed that we can unknowingly carry wounds with us for tens of thousands of years.
Until next time, may the gods smile down upon you . . .