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Chapter One
of my
Past Life Recollections
from the
"I've been everywhere, man" Series
"In all I have lived, taught, and written, I have striven to share a vision of what I believe to be our Divine origins and destinies, our struggles to integrate a kind of natural wholeness, and then launch into realms of Spirit, where we are all each other, and one with God."
Douglas Gillette, 'Shaman's Secret:
The Lost Resurrection Teachings of the Ancient Maya'
Life as a Mayan Priest;
then Life
as a Mayan Sacrifice
"Toda la sangre los dioses nunica olividan –
All the blood the gods never forget."
- Toda La Sangre
RECALL COMES IN MYSTERIOUS and unexpected ways. I'll never forget one particular very painful love affair, doomed from the start. Incredible synchronicities were there from go, the energy between us akin to some powerful drug keeping you mesmerised and stoned. I've never experienced anything like it before or since. And we both definitely felt it.
Initially I interpreted it as that euphoric early limerence of 'being in love,' but later came to see it differently. I still can't name it though. Was pure prana flowing between us? Probably.
But things turned sour very early on, despite it lasting three years. The emotional pain was intense for both of us. She initially said she was a closeted dyke in a straight marriage that had been utterly sexless for over seventeen years of its twenty-five year duration, and looked to end very soon. Or so she said.
Too late I learned that's a common line many married people use to hook a lover, particularly gay lovers. Never again, my friends, would I make that same mistake.
***
Her husband was fully aware of our relationship because we all had integrity, and being upfront and honest was the only way we could all go from the very start. But ultimately he became an added complication in our already conflicted and tempestuous relationship.
I'd been informed they were about to call their marriage a day, but after meeting me he had other plans. He fell in love with me and wanted a happy threesome, a fantasy I wasn't ever likely to fulfil for him.
To be honest, a live-in threesome would have been a dream come true for me, but I'd have to love each person equally and sexually, and that scenario just wasn't happening in this particular love triangle. I loved him but only as a friend, and felt no sexual desire for him whatsoever.
All mature progressive adults and professionals in our respective fields, we discussed it like grownups, yet reached no consensus ever. He dug his heels in and wanted what he wanted, which just became a dead-end for us all. The writing was on the wall.
***
The thing I really want to discuss here is the past life memories the situation triggered.
I won't go into the minutiae of the death throes of the relationship, nor its shattering impact on my own little family whilst it lasted...
One late afternoon we both sat talking over coffee at the dining table of their home.
She suddenly went dead quiet and withdrew deep into herself. I felt it coming, but wasn't sure what. The air went still with dread, at the same time as the gorgeously overpowering scent of Night Jasmine wafted thru the window on a cool breeze, soothing my soul.
***
She turned to me in that loaded moment and whispered, sotto voce, "You ripped my heart out!" With heartfelt emotion I acknowledged feeling she'd done the same to me, but she shook her head.
"No - I mean you literally ripped my heart out, " her voice heavy with angst and anger. "I remember. You were a Mayan Priest and I was your victim. I can still feel the stone altar, how cold it is!"
She was back there again shivering in terror in the gathering gloom of the temple. The pungent smoke of Copal incense filled her nostrils as flickering flames in heavy ceramic bowls placed around the stone floor licked and lit the ominous painted carvings on the walls.
They'd covered her in sky-blue and green paint, and now she lay stretched out and bound, almost wholly naked and utterly vulnerable on the massive flat rocks of the altar. Taking me with her as she sank into the painful memory.
***
"I can feel the actual sensation of you stabbing your huge knife into me and pulling it down my torso, then ripping my heart out!"
I turned and grasped her shaking hands in mine, as tears coursed down both our faces. I was cold with shock. For wasn't she describing the exact same thing I'd been experiencing?
"I'd never do that to you!" I cried, "You're wrong! It was the other way 'round! You did it to me!"
Her face was tight, the skin stretched into a snarl, and her grey eyes cold as the stone altar she'd laid on. Love wasn't here today. Her words were scathing as she insisted I'd killed her.
***
My first thought was that she was way more empathic than I'd guessed, somehow feeling my past life memories as her own. Because for months I'd been having the identical recollection, but hadn't felt able to discuss it with her 'til now, in this moment of absolute truth.
My thoughts raced. 'How could she know?' I'd never once mentioned it, yet here she was describing the event in detail. Death by sacrificial murder, no less. Playing out over and over like a broken record, 'til one of us broke the ice and at last spoke of it.
But looking at her suddenly mask-like face and the way her muscles were visibly tightening, I realized there was no empathy whatsoever going down. She was dead serious and fully believed I'd killed her.
My blood ran cold as my face blanched and my skin prickled with foreboding.
***
At the same time, I was stunned by her unexpectedly strong recall of a past life. I'd underestimated her psychic vision, but could have expected it, given the many supernatural occurrences going down 'round us constantly, and the strangely magical places we went into whenever together.
The fact that we both recalled the event without knowing who was the actual victim spoke of the veracity of the memory. It had happened, that much I knew. This conversation completely confirmed it. Yet I was sure I was the victim.
I reflected briefly on the intensely visceral experience of my heart being torn from the gaping wound she'd carved excruciatingly into my chest. As veins were ripped out along with my heart I felt very real agonising pain all the way down my arms to both wrists. I'd been experiencing this over and over during our relationship.
No normal heartbreak, this was something else. She was utterly convinced I'd sacrificed her and I was convinced of the opposite. There was no possible resolution between us in this place. We gave up trying.
***
As her front door closed behind me and I walked to my car I felt shocked to my very core, knowing it was irreconcilably over between us. Then time froze and I stopped dead with my hand still clasping the door handle, suddenly realizing the truth.
We were both correct. We had both done it. But in different, consecutive lifetimes. Karma - immediate. One did it to the other, then in the next life it was done unto her.
But in this lifetime, I never got the chance to explain or sort it out. I didn't want to anymore, anyway. Our day was done.
***
As I slowly drove away, crunching the car gears in my distress, I reflected on her bullish attitude. For her the event was as immediate as yesterday, despite it being thousands of years ago.
Much had happened for both of us since then, many many more lives.
'Why hate me for something from so long ago?' I wondered.
The very air in the room had darkened with her barely repressed hostility.
Her clenched jaw, shaking fists and intense fevered stare had placed me on red alert. She'd transformed into a creature of the night, baring her sharp teeth and snarling like a rabid dog, ready to lunge at me and rip my throat out at the slightest provocation.
'So much anger!' I was still shocked at all that unfolded minutes ago.
I fully understood holding a grudge, but for this long? I almost laughed out loud at the outrageous dramatics. Yes we'd each sacrificed the other, who knows who'd done who first, but so, so long ago. I remembered her doing the same, yet felt no hatred or anger, only compassionate understanding of the tense dynamic between us.
We were lovers not enemies, yet she was acting as tho' we were.
***
My mind raced, then settled into a deep knowing. It was a way out for her. Leaving her deeply unhappy marriage was too much for the poor soul, so instead she'd pushed me away. Using an ancient past life memory to make me look bad! Good grief! The memory was real enough, but her reaction completely over the top.
"She was more than a little crazy today, now I think about it.' The further away I drove through the deepening dusk of suburban Sydney, the calmer I felt. "Reacting with such theatrics to such ancient events!"
I now felt only pity.
***
The Reluctant Catalyst
“After all, the three of us were young. It wasn’t just about the pleasure of the flesh. No, it wasn’t that simple. The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire…That was what we wanted. To burn, to be consumed, to devour our days
just as fire devours the forest.”
― Irene Nemirovsky, 'Fire in the Blood'
In retrospect, now that I can be (almost ) purely objective about it all, it's fascinating how a past life can so savagely ravage a current one.
And it explained so much of the inexplicable pain between us.
At the very least I'd been a powerful catalyst of healing for their almost dead relationship in the end, as though my presence injected rocket fuel and made it go again. I don't really resent being that catalyst for them anymore, although I had, very much so, at the time.
It's now relegated to a karmic soul contract - over, finished with, done and dusted.
Jaguar Warrior and Angel
My spirit loved the Mayan world, hanging 'round the Mayan communities, then incarnating into the Aztecs for many hundreds of years. I'd been priest and priestess, servant and queen, king and beggar. All these memories still live within my soul. Farmer and artisan, dancer and carpenter. Angel and alien, believe me, it's all true.
And there were the times when I walked as a fierce warrior priestess with the Jaguar pacing on heavy velvet-black paws beside me.
Painted with camouflaging turquoise shades of green and blue, and artfully placed jewellery strung 'round my near-naked body, I stalked silently on bare brown feet beside my powerful jet-black companion, both of us invisible to the world.
My Tecpatl, a small obsidian dagger with double-edged blade was tucked securely into my bejeweled leather belt, and in one strong hand I always grasped my deadly throwing spear.
Slipping silent and unseen through dense foliage and the steaming heat of the lush jungle was where I felt most at home. Next to my temple, that is. Far from the complexities of politics and the constant warfare waged on our people by outsiders greedy for our gold, the mysterious beauty of the jungle was a temporary respite.
Here, we were drenched by teeming tropical rainstorms amid the deafening song of the insects.
The dangerous Jaguar leaned against me now and then as we walked close together along tangled jungle paths, I never knew if it was out of affection or for reassurance. I knew Jaguar's life to be a lonely one.
The weight of the heavily muscled body sleekly coated in deceptive black velvet pushing against me almost knocked me off my feet each time, yet my heart leapt as I was left a little breathless from the contact.
We were gently caressed by hanging liana, tropical ginger blossoms and rubbery-leaved foliage on our way through, and I was utterly happy and completely at peace.
Copyright © 2023 by Julie Von Nonveiller Cairnes. All rights reserved.
Other writings on my past lifetime memories:
If you're enjoying this series, stay tuned for more!