Reincarnation
The Charcoal Woman
“Bobby! Why don’t you go out and play with the other kids? You’ve been looking at that picture and playing that record for hours.” my mother encouragingly said.
At the age of six, I already knew I had wonderful parents and could see the difference between them and my friend’s parents. So whenever they instructed me to do something, it always felt delivered with love. Even the spankings from my dad, while hurting, were done compassionately. As I grew older, I was never able to blame any of my drug use or issues in life on them, it was all on me, my pain was my own… “My Bad.”
Staring into the picture of a dark-haired woman from the album cover, my memory was transported beyond my little life. The comforting presence of my mother in the kitchen faded into oblivion as love and sorrow engulfed my 6 year old psyche.
Her face… known to me as absolute beauty. Her hair, distinctly charcoal, resembling burnt wood in a campfire. Her lips, the embrace comforting my soul, filling mine to completeness. Quietly, accompanying her gaze, the ever flowing sadness from the loss of love like an energy permeating my memory.
My mother, an amateur artist, began sketching with charcoal. I liked the textured paper. The brittleness of her charcoal pencils invited me to move them across the minute valleys and cliffs of the paper. My view was too close to recognize the figure until my mom, filled with exuberance at her possibly gifted son, let out a motherly noise.
There she was, the woman in my memory, beautifully drawn with the shavings left behind from the charcoal. I remembered the love of a man for a woman and could almost smell the aroma of burnt wood.
Excited I might be a talented artist, she put paint brushes in my hands and out popped a young man without artistic talent. Not only did her face not look like the woman, it was hardly discernible as a face. She was dismayed, but persistent. Learning techniques was to no avail.
Returning to charcoal, the beautiful woman flowed out of my heart onto sketch after sketch. Hundreds of the same drawings filled my sketch book over the years. As I entered the 9th grade, the hippie movement was in full swing and I was all in.
LSD fascinated me and ported my mind into the unfettered memory of her love, sketching her all night long. The sketch book was only ever seen by my mom and dad and was never shared with anyone else at that time. Leaving high-school, my drawing stopped.
During my separation with my wife in 1994, Ashtyn, Chris and I visited the large storage unit I rented to hold the remainder of belongings left over from our divorce. Ashtyn uncovered my sketch pad, opened it saying, “Did you draw this dad?” It was my last sketch book and I had forgotten I still had it.
Claire
In early 1995, while cooking chicken in a frying pan, I left the room and for a moment when the smoke alarm went off. Rushing back into the kitchen I smelled the smoke and heard the sizzling of flesh when searing pain ripped through my abdomen, dropping me to the floor, doubled over. Hearing the sound of burning food, I forced myself up to move the pan off the heat. The smoke smelled like wood instead of food and the alarm was sounding but I could not get up.
A dimension opened. The face of a dark hair, dark eyed woman looking out the window of a house being consumed by fire appeared. Feeling the horrible pain of the loss of love, I curled up in a ball, crying for 10 minutes.
Hours later, I came across my sketch book next to Ashtyn’s bed. There she was, the woman in my vision was the woman in the charcoal sketch.
Up to now, I was only attracted to dark-hair, dark-eyed women with some form of pain or melancholy sadness in them. Driven by forces beyond my ability to discern, the unconscious desire to heal their pain through love accompanied me in each relationship, even marriage. But, alas, it appears I was powerless. Their pain, beyond my reach, only reflected my own own pain. It too alluded my healing.
Shortly after this event in the kitchen, my attraction to dark-haired women changed to blondes. A desire to find a blonde, very positive woman led me to begin intending to manifest.
One day, I wrote a heart-felt letter to meet this type of woman. As I finished, the phone rang. A friend invited me the Italian restaurant and bar Coco Pazzo’s on Commercial Blvd. In Ft. Lauderdale. Food, music and dancing, I’m not really in the mood but I went anyway.
The place was packed. I turned around to leave when a woman looked at me with an electrifying gaze. There was only one open seat, the stool next to her at the sidewalk bar. Instantly enamored with each other, we danced into the night. She was the embodiment of my letter.
Next month, she invited me to a past-life regression session. Being well outside my wheelhouse of belief systems, I reluctantly joined her with expectations of hearing a bunch of emotionally driven and possibly delusional people puff themselves up. With a closed mind, I sat in a circle of seven people, ready to keep quiet in respect for Alese.
The session started with a short meditation. The host asked if anyone had something to say. My head filled with light as my consciousness faded into the background as if looking over my shoulder. Another consciousness, but still myself, replaced it. Seeing through my closed eyelids, everyone looked like energy in human shape.
Standing up, I said “I have something to say.” Keeping my eyes closed, I moved from one person to the next, kneeling on their left side, toughing just above their knee. Seeing a specific emotional pain, I spoke to each one in a way that helped them with their pain… Until I reached the last man.
Touching his leg, a dimension opened gripping me with the same pain from the kitchen. I buckled over, tears flowing while the distinct image of a man in a grey army uniform was bleeding out in my arms. We were ducking behind a big fallen tree with long rifles on the ground. There was green prairie grass and other soldiers in the background. Blood gushing from his chest looking up at me…
“Take care of Claire.” he gasped with his last breath.
Then my vision shifted to running down a long dirt path, similar to an old driveway, towards a burning house. The face of a woman slammed up against a window, looking right at me. Her hands touching the glass as she was engulfed in flames. I felt the pain rip through my stomach.
It was Claire, my best friend’s wife. We fell deeply in love and married. Love between a man and woman so deep, it was completely fulfilling, all I would ever need. Her presence completed me, until she died.
The vision ended and the man who’s leg I touched began to speak. He said while I was touching him, his mind had memories of the Civil War and a woman that were overwhelming, causing him to cry. Unusually enthralled by the Civil War, a model-size reenactment of a specific Civil War battle scene filled his basement, playing the battle over and over with no end in sight. He took a deep breath, leaned back into his chair and said “I’m done… It’s over.”
Two years later in 1997, the image of a woman with yellow hair and a pure heart appeared in my head. A powerful urge to paint her in full color sent me to buy canvas and paints the next day. Without any experience, I began painting until completed.
This image was imprinted on my mind, causing me to search the eyes of women, unconsciously waiting to recognize my painting. The memory of my painting slowly faded over the next 14 years.
Lilly (Claire)
Having met wonderful women through online dating in 2011, I changed my profile to LA prior to moving there. Browsing the profile of a beautiful woman, my first reaction what she was way to beautiful to want me so I did not contact her.
Two weeks later, in Pasadena, Chris and I were talking about the idea of meeting a women through spiritual intention rather than human effort. It is how I’ve been doing it for decades.
“Watch, I’ll show you. With all my spirit I am going to intend for a woman to appear in my life whom I can love. It may take a few weeks, but it will happened.” I said just before meditating for the next hour on my desire.
Getting up, I read my emails to find one from Lilly.
“I’m sorry you were not interested in my profile.” said the woman who I considered beyond being attracted to me. She eventually told me she had been waiting for me to message her, but after two weeks concluded I wasn’t interested.
I showed Chris and he said that she looked like the woman I painted fourteen years ago. I was stunned.
That night a vivid dream revealed she was the embodiment of Claire. I awoke accompanied by the powerful release of pain and an overwhelming love for her. It appears that my soul yearning, was not for a romantic interest, but wanting to know that her being was in peace, released from the pain of her death in a past life.
We spoke over the phone for the next week but powers beyond myself were not going to allow us to be together again in this lifetime. Every meditation intensified, reflecting the need for me to leave her to live this life without my presence. I fought it, wanting her love again. I was being energetically warned not to meet her face-to-face. My humanity kept exerting its will, pushing to meet her while the tension inside me grew.
Two days before we were to have dinner for the first time, she stopped responding to my calls and emails. I found myself reliving the pain of loosing her all over again while the resounding gong of let her go overwhelmed me. I broke. Relinquishing my desire, for her greater good, I wrote her a letter, filled with confusion and emotions, and I let her go, without being able to tell her the real story.
It all came out sideways and she was hurt. She told me she was in the hospital and I felt like such an idiot, blaming my stupid humanity for sabotaging our meeting face to face. But by that time I knew we were never suppose to meet and share our love in this lifetime.
I hated she never knew the full story. Like a sacrificed pawn, I resented the Divine whom I love, for a time, then my emotions settled and I was happy she was free from the pain of her tragic death.
The realization of being free from the unseen force of searching for Claire and the woman in my painting hit me one day in Starbucks. I saw women as their own beauty instead of a reflection of my pain and quest to find Claire.
The sketch pad of my charcoal sketches has mysteriously disappeared.
Komoto
2009 – Everything Must Go
“Yes, I’ve been helping people use hypnosis through Neuro Linguistic Programming. I know this is our first date, but based on what you’ve shared with me, it might allow you to get back in touch with with your near-death-like experience when you were young.” Mandy expressed right before taking a bite of salmon.
A few days later on my couch, we began a session. Sitting in my meditation pose, she began speaking short rhythmic phrases. With twenty years of meditating behind me, it only took a few minutes and I was at the precipice of a deep mediation.
“Give yourself permission to step aside… Now allow your higher-self to come forward…” she guided me.
The sensation of sinking focused my inner eyes downward. Watching the personification of myself slowly sink lower and lower until a surge of energy lifted me into my Taekwondo kneeling position…
“Thousands of years…” flowed through my wind pipe as one long drawn out exhale while moving my hands as if stretching a string.
Kneeling straight up, my arms stretched out into a free fall, just like my swan dive from the high platform at the Swimming Pool Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale. At the last minute, my hands moved beneath my body, catching myself by my fingers, my nose barely glancing the fibers of the rug.
Startled, Mandy jumped up, perching herself on the couch and started talking, but her words were a distant echo.
Then, with one deep breath, propelled by the trust of my arms, my body flew off the ground, coming to rest in my kneeling position back on the couch. A deep inhale followed by a long controlled exhale “Thousands of years…”
We both settled into a relaxed state, mine was like an altered state. It felt as if I was seeing through the eyes of my soul rather than my normal self. She began addressing me as my higher-self.
“What does Bob need right now” recomposing herself on the couch.
Pausing… “Forgiveness!”
With my eyes closed this entire time, my finger began drawing a line in mid-air from the top left at a 45 degree angle downward all the way until I touched the ground.
“1648, the year 1648”, I said.
Jumping up with my eyes still shut and shuffling backwards around the end of the couch, without stumbling. Turning away from Mandy and putting my hands over my face, a dark abyss appeared. Scared… Alone… The darkness of death… My heart began racing, warning me…
“You don’t want to go in there!… You don’t want to go in there!… You don’t want to go in there!…” I spoke.
“What do you see? What are you looking at? asking me to explain.
“Death!” slowly exhaled from my mouth.
Being pulled into the abyss, I transformed into a Japanese warrior leading soldiers towards the slaughter of villages. Hating myself for all I’ve done in obedience to the Emperor. Inside the abyss, I died and never returned. My soul was trapped in a place devoid of light and life but the real agony was the absence of love.
Returning back to Mandy, the personification of the Samurai remained as Mandy watched my body take the pose of a Samurai with a sword.
With my eyes still closed, a man appeared in front of me. I executed, with perfect form, two diagonal swings with my Samurai sword like an X, then one swift horizontal stroke to his neck.
Watching his head fall to the ground over my right shoulder, my right outstretched arm formed a perfect line from extended blade to planted foot. Breathing in and swiftly swiping the blade into alignment with my extended right leg, the blood jumped from the sword. The silver blade carrying remnants of blood, circled back into its sheath.
“Who are you?” Mandy said watching all my movements.
Unrecognizable symbols emerged from the darkness, transforming into English letters, appearing one at a time.
“Komoto… Komoto… Komoto…” I said repeating each one differently until it resonated with a Japanese accent until it brought sadness and compassion into my heart.
“What does Komoto want right now?” she said intuitively.
Looking down to the right, appeared the dark human figure of Komoto looking up at me in despair, yearning, helplessly desiring… “Forgiveness.”
Compassion welling up in my heart overflowed into eyes of tears. The dark form of Komoto transformed into speckles of light to form an oval array of white light. For a moment I felt the sweet burden of pain lifted from him as he dissolved into love.
Opening my eyes, no longer the Samurai, I returned to the couch. Still my higher-self personality, my earlier lower-self version who carried the name of Bob, appeared to my right as a shadow coming closer.
Penetrating me, it dissolved into white light and integrated with my entire being. Free from the life-long unconscious desire for forgiveness.
I’ve never felt that deep need for forgiveness again.