Capítulo 3. No es Cleopatra

 CAPÍTULO 3. NO ES CLEOPATRA

Not Cleopatra

 I wish everyone could get rich and famous and have everything they ever dreamed of so they would know that’s not the answer. JIM CARREY, ACTOR

‘Why do so many people think they were Cleopatra in a past life?’

 I have heard many skeptics express this view, or something similar. In some cases, they might be right. Some people probably do believe they were someone famous in a past life. General Jorge Patton, for example, was convinced that he had previously lived as Hannibal, the great Carthaginian military leader.

 Interestingly, none of the clients I have regressed has been taken back to a famous past life. But none have felt short-changed as a result. The past lives they experienced during regression, although seemingly ordinary, included moments of high drama.

 All my clients have gained something profound from their regressions. The past lives they recalled helped them make sense of their current dilemmas, and offered them guidance for the next phase of their lives. Their past lives were as valuable to them as anything Cleopatra or Hannibal may have experienced.

The following cases reveal how unique and unexpected a past life regression can be.

  Paula

 During a past life regression, most people experience just one life. Usually, this life is rich with challenges and learning. Paula was different. Her guides took her to three lives, one after the other. Each life was unique. Despite the differences between these lives, Paula, aged 55, found that each one provided her with some powerful insights.

 Generally, I guide my clients to transition into their past lives by going through a tunnel. Paula had some difficulty entering the tunnel. She found she could only pass through the tunnel on her hands and knees. The reason for this became evident when she emerged from the tunnel. She had been given the body of a lion.

 I am outside and it is dark. I see moonlight and stars. When I come out of the tunnel I wake up inside a lion. I am a mature male with a big mane.

It is night and I am looking out, over the savannah, surveying my kingdom. I am protecting two lionesses and three cubs. They are sleeping. I feel a strong sense of peace and contentment. There is nothing to fear; no predators to threaten me. I am watching the sky and making sure all is well before I lie down to sleep. I am happy being a lion. I have a deep, inner serenity.

 Paula moved on to another life, this time as an Irish girl called Elisa. Born in 1809, the poverty she endured eventually drove her to steal some food. At sixteen years of age she found herself imprisoned on a ship sailing to Australia.

  I have no shoes and my feet are dirty. I am wearing a raggedy, grey skirt. I am with other women sitting down in the bottom of this boat. It is wet and dirty. We are all wet and dirty, re ally dirty. We are all sad. It is terrible in this boat. Others are sick and I cannot help them.

 We progress to another scene in this life as Elisa.

 I am sitting in a corner on the floor of a jail. That is where they sent us. Now I am seventeen. I am going to be whipped. They are so cruel. I tried to get some help for another lady. She is so old. Still they won’t help her. I can see she is going to die. I am not allowed to even talk to comfort her.

 We move on to another scene when Elisa is twenty-three.

 I have a little house with my husband. We haven’t got much but I can see lots of little yellow wildflowers. My husband is tall and wears his hair in a ponytail. He is about thirty. We are now both free but he still carries the scars on his back from when he was a convict. He is kind to me and taught me how to write. We have some land, just enough to make some money and live. We have gardens and I can see lettuce. My husband is very clever and makes things with wood. We married just a few weeks ago.

 I asked Elisa how she met her husband.

 He saw me in the big house. It is the biggest house in the town in New South Wales. Someone important had it. I think he was the Governor because he would get all dressed up. He had lots of convicts working for him and I worked in the house. People were nice to him but they said things behind his back. He was a mean man.

Research shows that Elisa was right. Governor Darling arrived in 1825 and assigned hundreds of convicts to chain gangs. He was hard on the convicts and he made many enemies in the developing colony.

 We then proceed to the end of Elisa’s life at the age of thirty.

  It is daytime and I am sick in bed. We have a daughter aged three. My husband is very worried. My chest is not good and it is hard to breathe. I am going to die. I know my husband will look after our little girl. I did have a boy but he died two days after birth.

I know I have been kind in my life and I am not fighting it. I am letting go. I know it is time. I feel peace and no more pain. I die calmly. My husband is strong but he will cry later when no one sees him. My little girl doesn’t understand but she will be okay.

I am floating. My spirit is free. It is swirling like it is dancing. I feel wonderful just being free, flowing in the breeze. I am part of the energy. It‘s good. I am dancing wild and free.

 Paula elegantly transitions straight into another life, her life as Rosa, a gypsy.

 There is a campfire and I am dancing around it. My skirt is whirling out. I don’t have a partner and it doesn’t matter. I am free and happy.

I live in a gypsy van and it is fun. We travel from place to place. Sometimes the men trick the town people and take their money. They do it through gambling. Gypsy men are very tricky but they are not thieves. The men of the town think gypsy girls are easy but we are not. We are good girls. I am fifteen but I look older. I live with my family and I have a brother who would kill anyone who tried to hurt me. We travel all over but now I think we are in Spain.

 We move to another scene in Rosa’s life. Now she is thirty-nine and it is 1901.

 It is evening, twilight. I have my own crystal ball and I can see the future. Some say they can do this but they cannot. But I actually can see the future and people pay me to do that. I am single. I didn’t want to marry. I like being free. We still travel. All gypsies are one family. There are silly old gypsy men who fight sometimes. We laugh at them. Everyone else has children and the children come to me. I teach them and have fun with them and then I can tell them, ‘Go back to your mother.’ I am never lonely. I like being Rosa.

 Another scene. Now Rosa is in her early sixties.

 I am outside doing the vegetables with the other women. We chat while we do our chores. Women have a better life than men. Men think they are the bosses but they are not really. We privately laugh at them as we let them walk around with their chests puffed up like peacocks.

 There have been wars so we travel a lot now. Some people don’t like us anymore. We stay away from the cities. I am growing old but I still dance. Gypsy women always dance. I am happy.

 Now we proceed to a time when Rosa is in her seventies.

 I am walking in a little village in the south of France. The inhabitants are doing their usual rounds of the village. I am going to sell preserves, fruit made into jam. I am going into the shop that buys these preserves from me. I work on a farm and I am still fit even though I am old. The farmer likes us because we pick his fruit for him. We come here every year. He doesn’t pay us much but we don’t need much. He is a nice man.

 We come to the end of Rosa’s life. She is in her late seventies.

I am really old now. I have left the van. The farmer and his wife are looking after me. I feel tired. I am enjoying the sunshine of the day and I see that the flowers are out. This is my last day. I am alone, but I don’t feel alone. I have had a full and happy life. Time to go. My spirit is whirling and becoming part of the energy.

 Paula meets her guide, who helps her assess those three lives.

 The lion surprised me. There was a lot of strength in that lion but also a lot of peace. The stronger I get the more peaceful I become. It is an inner strength that comes from knowing who you are.

There was a lot of sadness in Elisa’s life. I am being told that all life has purpose. Everyone is here for some reason. Elisa helped other people. In fact, she did too much for others and didn’t look after herself. Because she never put herself first, she suffered. Even though she was a good soul, she was very much out of balance.

 Rosa was a free spirit with a spiritual side to her life. Rosa trusted herself. She was strong enough not to follow convention. She was always true to herself, and true to others. She was wise because she was an old soul. She lived many lives before she was even born.

 Three months after this regression, I asked Paula how she had been affected by reliving these lives.

I keep recalling the serenity and the peace that surrounded me when I lived as a lion. That life confirmed the inner strength that serves me so well in my current life. I can easily get that sense again. It is a sense of life being safe and non-threatening. The lion lived in a time before man. He had no predators.

 The sad life as Elisa reminds me of my previous marriage in my current life. I was like Elisa in that marriage. I did everything for others and I fell out of balance. I know the cost of putting myself behind everyone else. I hadn’t learnt that fully until this life. We can have good intentions to help others but we need to look after ourselves as well.

Rosa had a wonderful life. She was a very emotionally independent woman who was extremely happy. She didn’t conform. She was herself. She found the right balance, being a good soul who looked after herself.

It is funny but I used to say, when referring to my previous marriage, ‘My gypsy soul had been squashed.’

 Paula summed up the changes she experienced.

This has been a strong confirmation for me that what I am doing in my current life is right. I am on track. At this stage in my life, I am the happiest I have ever been. Like Rosa I feel I have the freedom to express myself openly and honestly.

 Yago

 Yago came to see me because he sometimes felt like ‘dropping out’. He said he had ‘perfectionistic tendencies’ and was a bit of a dreamer. Whenever he failed to live up to his own standards, he felt like leaving this life. He wondered if this problem had come from a past life.

In the regression, Yago was taken to two past lives. In neither did he live for long.

In the first life, Yago is a young girl living during a time of turmoil between the local people of Europe and the Romans. The local villagers are rebellious and resist Roman rule. The Romans want peace so they can administer and exploit the land.

 This young girl is different to most. She doesn’t care about the Romans. She doesn’t mix with the other children and makes no effort to appease the villagers. Her one love is nature. She takes pleasure in roaming the woods and being at one with the trees, plants and animals.

Her parents are locals but her father works for the Romans.

As she grows, the villagers became more suspicious of her. They gossip about her and call her ‘a strange one’. Yago recounts her experience in a scene when she is thirteen.

It is night and I feel worried. I am with my mother in the cottage. She wants to keep me safe but the people of village don’t like me. My beliefs are different. I love nature and I spend time in the forest. I am not interested in the boys or what the others want to do. The villagers think I am a witch.

 Her father talks to the villagers and tries to explain that she is harmless. Her mother also does her best to protect her. But her parents’ support doesn’t help much in an age where difference is feared.

By the time she turns seventeen, the villagers are restless and angry at being dominated by the Romans. They take out their anger on anyone they feel is an outsider. The young girl is condemned as a witch, along with others who do not fit in. Her father is away and cannot save her. Her mother weeps, and pleads for her life. Nevertheless, the young girl is beheaded, along with the others, by an executioner with an axe.

 Her soul leaves her body. She is quite content to leave this life at a young age. There was no plan for a longer life.

In the second life, Yago is an accountant in New Jersey at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is only aged in his thirties but describes himself as old, ugly and unhappy.

He does not have a strong personality and tends to feel like a victim of circumstances. He is also idealistic and a perfectionist. He lashes out viciously at the only female close to him, his sister.

 She is a floosie, an escort. She uses her feminine energy to make money. I am angry with her. I yell at her and push her down in the street. She falls on the wet cobblestones. She doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore.

 Now I am alone. I didn’t approve of her but I miss her. I liked her femininity but I didn’t like her using it that way.

 His sister might have been a woman who sold her body for money, but she was also a loving, accepting human being who knew how to have fun. He misses her more as time goes on.

 The accountant cannot take this imperfect life and kills himself before he reaches forty.

 Yago has experienced two lives with sad endings. However, he and his guide are satisfied with these lives. The young female outcast remained true to herself by exploring her pleasure and connection with nature. She was far from perfect, as defined by the society in which she lived, and yet she was completely self-accepting. She achieved the goals set for that life, despite the abrupt ending.

 The accountant found himself bound up in self-loathing and self-judgment. He was far too idealistic. He idealised female sexuality and judged his sister harshly for what he saw as her loss of purity.

 In this life, he learned that judgment and perfectionism lead to deep dissatisfaction and unhappiness. The clear message was to learn to be more accepting.

 Carlos

 arlos came to see me during the Global Financial Crisis. His work had dropped off and he wondered if there were any past life issues blocking him from succeeding. He was in danger of losing heart and he didn’t want to become negative about winning more work.

I regress him back through some neutral childhood memories to his time in his mother’s womb. He describes the womb as dark and comfortable. He cannot see much, but feels safe and warm. He is in the third trimester.

I ask him how he feels about being born into a physical body again.

 I feel excited. There are things I can do in a physical body that I can’t do as a spirit. I know it is not as comfortable with a body but there are things I want to experience.

 When I ask about his mother, he says she is worried about having a baby. He will be her firstborn. But she is also excited and looking forward to it. She worries about the birth and whether it will hurt and whether she can feed him and bathe him. She is missing her own mother who lives a long way away.

 I also ask him about his purpose for this life as Carlos.

 My purpose is to experience. I am not a big planner. I like being spontaneous and letting life unfold.

 We progress into a past life.

 All is dark and the sun is just coming up. I am a man, alone, wearing brown boots. I am in the country. There are horses and a farm. Earning a living is difficult. It is the 1800s in the American west. I am waiting for something...rain. I am waiting for rain. I see dead trees and grey, hard ground. No crops. I am a settler, a lone settler. I have some flour, tea and sugar, and a well. I have some seed and some horses but not much more. I feel it will rain but it is going to be rough until it does.

 Carlos’s name in this life is Jeremías Fierro. We proceed to a significant event in his life as Jeremías.

  I have come to town. I am wearing new clothes and I have money in the bank. All is going well. The rains came and I worked hard. I had three years of good crops. I am talking to the bank manager. He is very friendly but I am here for business. Someone has made a good offer on the farm and I am seriously thinking about selling it. I know the rains are unreliable.

 We move onto the next significant scene in Jeremías’s life.

 I am back east, somewhere in Connecticut. I have bought an apple orchard that has a cider press. I am married. The woman I married was a widow and she has two healthy sons. The boys are good hard workers and very helpful in the orchard. We all work the property together. The weather is more reliable here. I am not passionate about my wife but she is a good woman. I decided to marry her because I knew she would look after me. I am not as thin as I was out west. She cares about me and cooks good food. We get along well with each other. I am happy.

 We move to the last day of Jeremías’s life.

 I am ill. I know I am going to die. I am not good at saying fancy things but I tell my wife and the boys that they have been good to me. I was very lonely before they came into my life. They figure out that I love them even though I don’t actually say it. I am okay to go. My life was hard when I was a kid but it has turned out well. I have had a happy life.

 Jeremías passes over gently into his soul state. Carlos is directly informed about Jeremías’s life and the lessons learned.

 Jeremías had it tough when he was a kid. He had to trust himself. It was hard being alone. With a partner and the boys it got easier. He could have walked off the farm out west but he trusted it would rain and it did. He got out while it was good. He waited until the right time to get out. He didn’t panic.

Jeremías learnt patience. He trusted his judgment and he had wisdom. He achieved everything he set out to do. His only regret is that he didn’t get closer to people.

 I remind Carlos that he wants help in his current life. I ask what he needs to know in this regard.

 I have this vision of a green field like a meadow. It is lush, a place of opportunity and safety. I am being told that there are opportunities to be realised. I need to offer what I have to the world and see who accepts my offers. I know what to do. I need to be patient and trusting.

 Carlos got exactly what he needed. The story of Jeremías was extremely reassuring. Carlos experienced a lot of powerful feelings during the session that taught him more than he could have learned at a purely intellectual level. He received a very clear message to remain confident within himself, and to trust that opportunities would arise.

Two months later, Carlos reported that he had a lot more work and he was confident that even more would come.

Carlos’s life as Jeremías was not complicated, although it had its challenges. He was an ordinary man living an ordinary life, and yet the experience of this simple life proved profoundly reassuring to Carlos.

Conclusion

 Paula, Yago and Carlos all left my office feeling positive about their regressions. They all gained something precious from reliving their seemingly ordinary past lives.

One can understand Paula being happy with her experience. The lives she revisited were not highly dramatic. Even her life as the lion was relatively uneventful. Nevertheless, each life provided her with important information. She knew she was on track with her current life. There is perhaps nothing more satisfying than carrying within you a sense of being exactly where you need to be, and doing exactly what you need to be doing. Paula received the reassurance she was seeking, and treated it like gold. Would she have gained anything more from discovering that she had lived as Cleopatra in a past life? Of course not. The three lives she experienced reaffirmed her sense of self-belief.

 Yago was content with his past lives, too. His first, as a young woman who never fitted in, gave him the confidence and courage he needed to be himself. In the second, he committed suicide. Still, this experience encouraged him to value life and not take it for granted. It also showed him that he needed to be more flexible, and less focused on perfection.

 Carlos also got what he needed from his past life. He was reassured that the rains will come, the work will find him and his skills will be valued. He felt positive and reassured and remained so until the work arrived as promised.

 Each client received the support they needed to take the next step in their lives. They didn’t need to know they were someone famous in a past life. A past life regression is not a frivolous matter. Our journey into a past life is sacred. We are opening up our spiritual connections and our spirit guides respond appropriately. They give us what we really need.

 As we progress through life, many of us reach a point when we want to know more about who we are, and what has shaped us. When we regress back to a past life and to our life between lives, we are given a deep understanding of the themes playing out in our different lives, and the goals we have set in our current life. This knowledge allows us to move on with our lives with renewed energy and purpose.

 It is possible that Paula, Yago and Carlos have experienced a life as someone famous or heroic. Perhaps you have too. Even if you have, it will probably remain unexplored if you undertake a regression unless it is specifically and currently relevant.

 So far, no one I have regressed has needed to revisit a past life as a famous person. All my clients received exactly what they needed from their ordinary past lives.