past lives – Leslie Sheridan

Empty Nest

I felt alternately clingy and self-composed that I was letting him go. On the way home the tears were non-stop. I did not think I would feel this way when we dropped off our second and youngest child at college just over a year ago. I had not felt this way when our eldest went to college three years earlier. He was very ready to fly away and I was ready for it, too. I had helped my son with his college application and we drove the four hours for his freshman orientation. It had to be empty nest syndrome because I could not come up with another answer for my feelings.

My son had been ready since high school graduation. He’d made purchases for his dorm room from bedding and cleaning supplies to a cache of snacks and his PlayStation. He had all the necessary supplies. It may be innate and it may be Boy Scout preparedness but he’s always been organized and ready. He knows what he wants and takes action. As a Bear cub in Cub Scouts he told me that he was going to go all the way and pursue his Eagle Scout, the highest rank in Scouting, and he did.

I have wondered why the empty nest syndrome affected me more with my son than my daughter. Was it simply that there were no more children at home? Or was it something else? I do not play favorites with my children but I have felt more protective of my son for reasons I can’t describe. Looking back, though, I saw the clues that may have been there all along.

When he was younger my son loved playing war battles with his small plastic army men, like a lot of boys. He always won. He was and is still very interested in war history, particularly World War II. His scout troop once had a sleepover on the destroyer USS Slater in Albany, N.Y. where his dad accompanied him. When his dad showed me the pictures of our son on the ship with his fellow scouts wearing a WWII – era helmet, I froze. Something in that photo triggered a flashback to the night when my husband and I were watching “Saving Private Ryan” on DVD. We stayed in a lot then. We had a two year old daughter and I was about five months pregnant with our son. I did not know then the sex of the baby. I like good surprises.

So watching that movie was another clue. By the end of the movie I was in hysterics and I did not understand why. What came to me as I was writing this was, “Was I afraid of losing him again?” This was a past life event unfolding.

After my son obtained his Eagle Scout at 18, he did what all young men in the United States must do: register with the Selective Service. I was anxious and blurted out ‘What if you get selected?’ His reply was: “What’s wrong with wanting to serve your country?” My feelings were completely brushed aside by my pride in this young man that I helped raise.

I recently read something by a spiritual teacher who reminded me that our children come through us not of us. My children chose me to be their mom for a reason. Human mothers carry their children for nine months and rear for about 18 years unlike baby birds who hatch out of egg shells and are nurtured for a short time until they are nudged out of the nest when it is time for them to leave. Unless that bird knows when it is his time to fly.

A Past Life

During a past life regression therapy session I saw myself in at least a few lifetimes. There were men in each of those lifetimes: a dark haired man with a mustache who was a landlord of a rundown building; a farm hand of my family’s farm and property in the 1800’s; a man in a white tee shirt and a red plaid kilt who was my father in that lifetime.
Past life regression therapy is therapy. To get to the root of my issue in this lifetime, I had to go back through as many lifetimes as it took to find where the karma began. My higher self and spirit guides, guided me and protected me during this soul journey back in time where I saw, not the entire lifetime with the aforementioned individuals ( it’s only a 2 hour session), but scenes from those lives showing me and reminding my subconscious of a situation in that lifetime, kind of like a movie trailer. In spiritual truth, I did not forget. The memory was there all along in my cells. During and after those scenes I knew who the man was in all of those lifetimes and certain traits of those men were familiar to me in this life.
I was raped by the farm hand in the 1800’s and became pregnant. In another scene from that life I saw myself on a horse drawn wagon with my parents – unknown to me in this life – being sent away until the baby was born. The farm hand in that lifetime was my husband in this life. In this lifetime I learned that the karma with my husband was to give him children.
The man with the red kilt, who was my father in that lifetime, was also my husband in this life. I was about twelve and was enslaved, meaning I performed nearly every chore there was to be done and I did not want to do it anymore. I wanted my own life. I wrapped a red plaid shawl around me and began to walk away. He ran after me with a spear and plunged it into my chest and twisted it around. The wound was fatal. During the therapy session the practitioner asked me where my soul was leaving my body. I lifted my hand to put it on my chest a couple of inches above my sternum.
I felt myself floating toward the sky and turned myself around and saw my body lying there on the ground. It did not hurt. I was not scared. I turned back around and saw the blue tunnel and went through it to the ‘Other Side’. And it was beautiful there. My guides and angels were with me throughout this transition. When I got home that night, I washed up before bed and my eyes saw the red stained birthmark on my chest. I had seen it my whole life and never knew what it was or how it got there.
Having read quite a few books about reincarnation and past lives, this was my first experience with my own past life memory. Not only was it therapeutic, but it was absolute proof for me that our souls do go on after this life.

Hey, Jealousy

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One of my first visits to a psychic about 25 years ago revealed a past life situation. She told me that I had difficulties making friends with women because in another life – she didn’t say which one – a young woman that I knew then (and was in my current life at the time of the reading) was jealous of me because she liked my brother – in that life – and she wanted to be with him. So, she cursed me that I would never again make lasting friends. I wish that I had known then to ask the psychic for more details. It sounded bizarre and hard to believe, but I was having difficulties with a former roommate around that time. Could she be the young woman this psychic was referring to?
Curiosity got the better of me. Different scenarios played out in my head. My first guess was that this young woman – in that former lifetime – practiced witchcraft. Or this went back centuries before the religious persecutions in the medieval era when, before Christianity forced many people to give up their religious beliefs, all kinds of pagan ceremonies and rituals were the norm. Or perhaps it was after this time, where she clandestinely performed a type of ritual to keep me friendless for all eternity. It really did sound like a story straight from the Merlin era.

In the event that medieval curses are not real, jealousy, a fear -based emotion, is the act of being resentful of a rival or being envious, and acting hostile over someone else – is defined as a curse.
I am not a jealous person although my humble beginnings may have given me many good reasons to be envious or covetous of others’ lives. I grew up poor, had hand me down clothes and I did not think myself a pretty girl. I had wavy hair when all the other girls had straight hair; my teeth weren’t straight. I couldn’t do all the things or go to the places that the other kids did or went. Occasionally, I did when it was affordable to do so. I never finished college; I never dated the cute boy in school; never went to the prom.
Why would anyone be jealous of me? It’s okay if you don’t like me. I can live with that.
Jealousy is debilitating to friendships and relationships. It comes from a feeling of being insecure and being envious of someone else’s accomplishments and advantages, because they have something you want. And, it’s poisonous to the body. Yes, jealousy is toxic. And not just for the friendship or relationship, but for the sender’s body. Jealousy is a low vibrational energy. It’s dense energy that can be felt in many places in the body including the heart and solar plexus.
Planet Earth is hard enough to live on sometimes, so let’s be compassionate to one another – let’s open up our hearts! Also, wish lists and positive affirmations are great for manifesting what it is we do want. It works!

Taking Back My Power

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The following is one of my past life recalls; names purposely omitted.

I see a man and a woman in a wooden alcove – is it passion or violence? Violence. The person I see is a man in that life – who is a woman in my current life. The man is above me. We’re almost hidden but no one thinks anything of it. ‘She’ is speaking low telling me how to behave – to not scream. I’m fearful but listening. This person has power over me. It’s something I have to give in to. He does it to every woman.

I try to find out what country and era I’m in. The Mediterranean area comes to me, possibly during the Renaissance era. He resembles a monk with a brown robe that falls down to his mid-calf, I can see his trousers – or whatever they’re called in that time. He has a bald spot on his head and carries a stick. I think he’s a shepherd, although, I see him using the stick to push through the water as he walks away.

I ask my spirit guide who is with me why this is happening. I get “He has no power and he wants it.” Women are powerless in this time and it’s easy for him to take advantage of them. He has hiding spots and a lot of time.

For nearly five years a woman that I had worked with, who abused her power over and over, was abusive to me, as well as to many other women that I worked with. I would wake up in the morning and my first thought was of her and how I dreaded seeing her. It was toxic. I have felt fear and anger, even when I was no longer working with her, that I couldn’t place and could not let go of. I knew there was something that I had to overcome. I had thought it was realizing that I was not a victim and on a full moon I released that I was no longer a victim. It helped for a time. But the fear and anger persisted. I knew that I needed to forgive and forget. So I did that. Eventually, the fear dissipated, but the anger was still ever present. I thought about professional therapy; therapy, I thought, would take too long to rid the anger that was swirling inside of me. I wanted to release it with a magic wand. Instead, I prayed for a solution.

That solution came during this past life recall at a group meditation. That night I thoughtfully chose a question, an intention to understand my situation. I wrote it down and slipped into meditation. As I have shared in previous essays, our souls choose all of our relationships, lessons, and experiences before we reincarnate into another life here on earth. We choose who we want to learn our lessons with; we choose our family and other life lessons that we want to work on in this human journey. We also can choose to work out a karmic contract which is what I had with this woman.

That night in meditation I healed myself. There were no tears, only joy, as my metal shackles unlocked, freeing me from my contract. Finally, the karma was balanced.

No one has power over us. We only think they do. It is an illusion if we could only see it that way. But fear, which is also an illusion, is something that we’ve all learned to allow to control us, to have power over us, life after life after life. Until we learn to break that cycle. And we all have the power to do that.

….to forgive, divine.

Forgiveness; The act of forgiving or being forgiven. 2017-01-23-13.49.27.jpg.jpg

Forgiveness is for us – to forgive someone who has hurt us . To forgive is “for giving” to ourselves. We don’t have to forget what was done to us. We are not responsible for the burden. Forgiveness is getting rid of that burden so that we can move forward. Without forgiveness we remain right where we are.

A few years ago I went to see James Van Praagh at the local civic center, getting tickets as close to the stage as possible – as soon as they went on sale. I didn’t get the meet and greet passes, just the tickets to see and hear what the famed medium had to say up close and not miss any wisdom he could share. He talked about the other side, his experiences, how he got started- his whole bio – pretty much everything I had already read about him.

Toward the middle of his appearance he was going to deliver messages from loved ones on the other side for a lucky few in the audience. Before ending his monologue he wanted to preface the readings by stressing to everyone in attendance in the auditorium the importance of being non-judgmental. He talked about why we should not judge people who have hurt us or wronged us and the reason for that is because of the Life Review.

When souls cross over to the other side they go through a life review. Every soul sees their life in review: the good, the bad and the ugly. Every soul that chooses to have a human experience has a lesson or lessons to learn on planet earth. So, the purpose of the life review is to review our souls experience in that life. Did the soul accomplish the lesson or lessons? If not, the soul can choose to learn it in it’s next incarnation. I can say I have finally learned one of my soul’s lessons after several life times. (My guides and I will be high-fiving in my booth!)

Sylvia Browne, Shirley Maclaine and others have written about the Life Review. There is a scene depicted in the 1991 movie “Defending Your Life” starring Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks. Both of their characters have crossed over and they and others enter their respective Life Review booths. Shirley Maclaine has a cameo in the movie to explain to those who have just crossed over how to operate the Life Review machine.

James explained to everyone that when each of us transforms – from the physical world to the spirit world – what the soul sees from this review is much harder to watch than having someone judge them harshly or any regret they have for what they should or should not have done during this lifetime.

Being judgmental is what humans do. I believe it is a habit that is learned in childhood and through peer pressure and before you know it, it’s become an unhealthy, negative, and hurtful habit.

And the thing about being judgy is that it doesn’t only hurt the person we’re judging, but like a boomerang it comes back to us. So, in effect we are hurting ourselves when we judge others. It’s one of those universal laws that what we put out comes back to us.

I have forgiven a lot of people in my life, including myself – it is a good feeling. Sometimes I still judge (my human-ness) but I try to be mindful of the importance of not being judgmental. I really don’t want my Life Review to hurt too much. Life as it is here on earth hurts enough.

Past Lives: Dreams and Memories

I am walking next to a little girl with blonde curly hair, underneath a black straw boater hat adorned with a few flowers. She is wearing a black coat down to her knees, white stockings and black ankle boots. She is walking on top of a rock wall as I walk alongside, her small hand in mine. I cannot see myself or what I am wearing; I feel that I am not her mother, but someone like a mother. I believe that I am her governess.

That is where the dream ends. As soon as I wake up, I know that the baby growing inside of me is going to be a girl and that I have known her in another life. Since my daughter was born, I have been a mother and a teacher to her as well. I introduced her to story time and parks; books and Opera and classical music; daytrips and Broadway shows; art museums and painting and drawing since she could hold a crayon.

We get glimpses of other lives we have lived in this life via dreams or memories during our waking life. Déjà vu moments; things that come easy to us; a feeling that we’ve known someone we just met a long time; an uncanny longing to visit a place we’ve never been before. We dream about events that may happen in the future. In dreams we may find answers to questions, problems or clues about ourselves. We can also get clues to whom or what we were in another life. A past life dream will come to us just like any other dream. It may look and feel different than a typical dream. Instead of a dream that seems weird or may jump around from one scene to another, past life dreams, in my experience give us glimpses of another life that happened millennia, centuries or decades ago. In that snapshot of a former life, the subconscious gives us – our conscious self – the details. We know the rest on a soul level.

Past lives, for anyone who may not understand what exactly a past life is or how it is even possible – you may not believe in past lives or reincarnation and that’s okay – can be explained like this. Reincarnation is when a soul chooses to live in a certain time or place; the soul chooses the people it will live a life with and other people who will help it along its journey in every life time. Many of our souls have lived several lifetimes. A soul chooses to reincarnate on earth or anywhere else. The universe is vast; we are not the only solar system out there – it may be very possible to live in another solar system. We, that is, our souls, our guardian angels and spirit guides begin the process of putting together our life plan or blue print for the soul’s (our) next journey.

Past life dreams can be in color, black and white – as most dreams are, or in sepia – which for me is indicative of a past life in ancient times. I have had a glimpse of a past life that was in sepia – an antique type of color – that may have been in ancient Egypt. In one single flash of a past life you will know when and where it was; who the person or persons are in your current life; when this past life occurred; and feelings attached to those memories.

Occasionally, we will get a flash of a past life memory while we’re awake. Sometimes it comes to us when we suddenly experience a déjà vu. It could happen while we’re at our computer at work; driving somewhere in our car; even visiting an historic site – there’s a reason you’re there. Something will trigger a past life memory and it will resonate with you.

Past Life Regression Therapy is another way to discover a past life. Regression therapy is conducted by a regression therapist who specializes in past life therapy and is generally conducted to help heal a mental, physical or spiritual issue which may have originated in a previous life or multiple lives and is coming to the surface during this incarnation to be addressed.

Through dreams, memories and past life regression I know that a few of my past lives have involved moving west in a covered wagon; being part of an aristocratic family; and religious persecution. The purpose of reincarnating is to learn lessons, such as compassion or perseverance, until our soul has reached enlightenment. It may take several lifetimes.

AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT

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AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT

Ferncliff Forest in Rhinebeck, New York, is a beautiful 200 acre privately owned Preserve with hiking trails and a modest camping and picnic area that surrounds a serene lake. It is a nature lover’s respite. The area begs to be photographed. I gave in to it. I took a few photographs as we climbed up large hills winding through bare trees. I could imagine how the trees would look in a month when the leaves filled in the bare spaces. My destination – the reason that I wanted to go the forest in the first place – awaited me in the center of the forest on top of a steep hill. My camera ready, I excitedly climbed the hill and walked up to the fire tower. I was genuinely surprised at what happened next.

When I walked up to the tower’s steps, I hesitated. I allowed others to go before me. It was not what I expected, but I did not understand the apprehension I was feeling. I climbed the first set of steps, about a dozen. Simple deer fencing was all that covered the outside of the tower from the base of the steps up to the railing on each set of steps all the way up the 80 foot tower. I’ve climbed the Statue of Liberty’s narrow steps, only feeling slight vertigo. But, this was different. Once I got to the landing before climbing the next set of steps, I froze. Hesitatingly, I began to climb the next set of steps to the landing with tears in my eyes. I started up again and again backed down turned around on the landing and went down the first set of stairs and once down on the ground, looked up at the tower, my fear beginning to grow.

I had started repeating “I can’t, I can’t” over and over which was turning into a self fulfilling prophecy. Someone I was with said to me, “What are you afraid of?” In that moment I knew my fear was a metaphor. What I was afraid of was beginning to become clear. And, suddenly I became frustrated with myself for not trying harder. I had waited so long to come here, climb the tower and take breathtaking photographs of the view from the top.

Where does fear come from? Are we taught to fear? Or do we create our own fear? And is there something else at play here? Fear is paralyzing, it stops us in our tracks inhibiting us from moving forward. It doesn’t matter what you are afraid of or what event triggers the fear. Why we fear is personal. All humans are not afraid of the same thing. Most people fear spiders, others do not; some fear other people or situations while it doesn’t bother other people; many people fear death and others enjoy living. I believe some fears go way back, not only in this life time, but further back, to a past life. We are all working out karma from another life or lifetimes. If we don’t work it out in one life time, we carry that karma with us to the next life and so on. I believe that while I was on the fire tower the karma clock was ticking.

With a fear to conquer I decided that the third time was the charm. I began again. The first set of steps. The second set of steps, half way up, backed down, sobbing from fear. I knew what my fear was and it wasn’t the tower’s steps. The fear I felt inside about moving forward – financial security, stability, taking the next step – was manifesting on the outside. As within so without.

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Determined to get up the tower and take pictures, I looked up, not down or ahead, as was suggested by someone else and I prayed to be kept safe as I moved upward. I breathed, counted the steps and finally made it up the fourth set of steps (about half of the tower –the rest will have to wait until fall when I go back). The view of the Hudson River and the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge was amazing. It was more amazing because I had chosen to move forward. In the end what helped was counting steps…one at a time.