Читать книгу Mindwalking - Nancy Eubel - Страница 16

Dean always talked about being a mountain man, and when he saw the movie Jeremiah Johnson, he knew he had lived a similar life. [Jeremiah Johnson tells the story of a trapper in the mid-1800’s who lived a solitary existence in the mountains of the western United States.] Dean’s wife Samantha gave him a gift of a past-life regression with a well-known regressionist to explore this feeling that was so strong for him.

After the regression, he said this was a “trip of a lifetime.” Here are some of his own words which he recorded immediately after this episodic experience.

My parents are leaving in a covered wagon with all of their belongings, except their children! I have an older brother and sister and a younger sibling. We are being left in the care of a couple roughly the same age as our parents. There are other people leaving with my parents, but no children. It seems that they are going someplace that is too dangerous for children and will return for us at a later date.

I must be eight or nine. The man caring for us is a bit of a tyrant. The land is quite rocky, and my brother and I are trying to remove rocks from the fields with picks and shovels. There is no respite from the chores to be done; he works us very hard.

My brother has finally had it and runs away. I try to talk him into taking me with him. However, he feels I am too small and leaves without me, presumably following the trail of our parents. Now I have to do his work as well as mine, and it is not a pleasant situation. Our “surrogate father” is quite mean to me.

My dilemma is soon resolved, because my “father” trades me to a group of Native Americans for something in exchange. The Native American community is very well organized with straight streets and well-cleared areas between houses. The houses are cylindrical in shape with round roofs and are constructed of adobe or similar earthen material. There is a school in the community to which I am allowed to go. There are two male teachers, one Native American and one white. I am initially pleased with the schooling but later become restless, wanting to leave and find my brother and parents.

My feeling of being alone and unwanted is very heavy. The sense of not belonging to anyone is extremely powerful. While I am initially relieved and pleased to be going to this group of Native Americans, it is quickly apparent that they don’t want me either. I feel absolutely unwanted by anyone. These second surrogate parents are very unemotional, and the rest of the Native Americans couldn’t care less. I am extremely unhappy.

One day several soldiers in blue uniforms come with the word that we must evacuate. No one seems to mind, at least I’m not aware of any resistance, and we are herded out the gate on to a road. The small, weak, or ill are allowed to ride inside huge military freight wagons, while the healthy are told to walk. After a period of time, we arrive at a military fort. I am removed from the evacuee train (possibly because I’m not Native American) and adopted by a military family at the fort. The military family that takes me in is strict.

Ultimately, I become a flag bearer. I am too young to bear arms. I think my age must be around twelve. My best friend is a young soldier, who is in actuality my friend in this life [although they do not look the same]. He is only three or four years older than I, but he is a real soldier and carries a rifle and bayonet.

The entire troop is ordered out of the fort to march somewhere. We finally engage the enemies in a large swampy area. We are overrun by enemy soldiers. I see that it is a bad situation. I drop my flag and pick up a rifle with a bayonet on it and start hand-to-hand fighting with the enemy soldiers. I am stabbed in the abdominal area with a long knife and lose consciousness. The next image I have is looking up into the face of an army doctor and an orderly as I am being bandaged. I am carried outside the hospital tent and laid down on a blanket. It is very muddy around me, and I roll over and see a pile of human bodies, all dead soldiers. I am horrified to see my best friend among them, and my grief is incredible. (I revisited this scene several times during the regression and was in tears on each occasion.)

I am disgusted with the killing, carnage, and the military, in general. I leave the army. I board a large river boat and head upstream, finally arriving at a sizeable town. It is very early in the morning as I walk ashore, and at this point a tremendous earthquake strikes. I run to a small ridge and watch the destruction take place. A man with a foreign accent runs up to me and grabs my arm, pulling me along with him, telling me that we must help. We clear some of the debris away with the help of others, then go to his store and start cleaning it. He offers me a job on the spot, and I accept. He calls me “boy.”

He buys furs and trades goods with the trappers. I make friends with three of them—two are white and the other is a Native American. I want to go West with them, but the storekeeper refuses to let me go at first. Finally when I am eighteen or nineteen, with the blessing of the storekeeper, I leave with them in two large canoes.

Then I see myself alone, paddling a canoe loaded with furs through a narrow canyon. The canyon gradually widens out into a valley with tall trees along the river and mountains in the distance. Soon I see a Native American village on my left, and I turn in toward it. It is home. I get stuck on a sand bar, and several men and women (Native Americans) wade out to free me and to drag the canoe to the shore. Once there, the young men unload the bundles of furs. My mate (my current wife, Samantha, although there is no physical resemblance) feeds me and listens to my adventures. There are some children about, but none are ours.

Sometime after that, my mate and I are walking along a high mountain pass. We are leading our horses and stop to admire the view, which is really spectacular. This is a special moment. The peace and feelings of love for one another and for nature is incredible. I see an eagle soaring toward us and remark that to fly like an eagle must be a special thing. My mate removes some eagle feathers from her dress and gives them to me, and behold, I become an eagle and am soaring down the canyon. Soon I return to my mate. She is a “shape-changer.” The good feelings I have are indescribable.

Later, while walking side-by-side, possibly hunting, my faithful old rifle discharges accidentally and kills my mate. My grief is overwhelming. (I revisited this sequence also, and the grief was again instantaneous.) We are far from the village so I cremate her body. The villagers are incensed and ban me from their lands forever. There is obviously much more to my mate’s accidental death than I am aware of. I don’t really understand the Native Americans’ sudden hostility.

Next, I am beaching a canoe and am attacked by a brave from our village. He runs a spear through me. He cuts off my left ear, then my special pouch, and stabs me again, killing me. Following my death, I arrive as a shapeless entity in an area of light blue coloring, and I become part of the color. It is here that the spirit goes for comfort and healing. It is very soothing and calming.

The regressionist asked if there is anything I would like to leave behind or eliminate from my mind. I suggested that the ill feelings I had toward several people should be left behind—the hatred toward my parents for abandoning me, the “surrogate parents” with whom I was left, the initial group of Native Americans, the army, the enemy soldiers, and, in fact, nearly everyone with whom I had contact. She guided me to concentrate this hatred into one spot in my body, and I selected my head. She and I next “channeled” this element out of my body by using a breathing technique, which was similar to hyperventilating one’s self. The process was, then, complete.

Dean also wrote in his notes that when not reliving his past existence during this session, he was drifting around in a “soup” of atomic matter and the sights were unlike anything he had heretofore experienced. The shapes were incredible! Other times he felt as though he were soaring above a layer of clouds. He could climb and dive. Once he even rolled, inverted, and remained so for quite a while. That was what he was doing as the regressionist was asking him to descend into a human body form, and it occurred immediately prior to finding himself in the canyon with the canoe. He actually sensed that he was floating above the stream for quite a while prior to “landing” on a small gravel beach that had a cave containing his canoe.

When I asked Dean about the significance of this regression and if he had gained any benefits from it, he told me that prior to the regression he had an ever-present, foreboding fear of dying. That disappeared. He also recognized three important people in this life who had played similar roles in that one—his wife Samantha, his older brother, and his best friend—and their personality traits were similar to the ones in the pioneer life. As a result, he expects to meet this cast of characters again.