Of lives and dreaming
May. 20th, 2020 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootA post from a friend on the subject of reincarnation: https://www.facebook.com/caitlinmatthews.author/posts/10158427535538967
I don't know what to make of this subject; recovered memory can't always be trusted, regression is questionable, and god knows how much inadequacy is covered with wannabe past life celebrities. None the less strange memories that are not memories arise. I tend to treat my dreams as a land of Other, a hidden country... The sunken cathedral, the old city, the yellow castle... But some places feel different within that paradigm, the place where the water runs uphill, now associated in my mind with somewhere real in Germany. The land behind the Alhambra that doesn't exist in the form I see it. Real places and times overlayed with dweomers of the mind.
One day in the 90s I found myself staying overnight at Moscow airport. Getting off the plane (Aeroflot; an adventure in itself) I heard a voice say 'welcome home.' The place was poor, it stank of urine, tanks were said to be on the streets and the rubel was worth nothing outside the country, but for all that I found myself wanting to stay rather than go on to Kathmandu in the morning. I liked the place, with no particular sense of its history or culture.
I dismissed the comment heard as the kind of batty experience that makes up so much of my life, and did not stay, for all my regrets about it. 20 years later I learn of a connection via DNA to these lands, and while fascinated, don't forget that our DNA traces an endless story that wanders the whole Earth. A similar experience occurred when I landed in California, and dismissed that as my internal anthropomorphism (is that a word?) of a warm bright day bathed in the optimism of a different country, deep as thunder, bright as the sun. Having said that, years later, a (the!) robustly skeptical boyfriend had a very odd experience. I knew of it because I was woken by a half-yelp half-scream, and there he was staring at me.
He told me he had woken up and turned over to see me watching him.
'But it wasn't you,' he said, 'it looked like some, I don't know, some Native American woman.' He shook his head. ' Your eyes were open, it was so...Freaky. Freaky dream. But I was awake.'
We talked it away as a freaky dream, because what else could it be? But he was very shaken in the way that only a stern rationalist can be when faced with something that makes no sense. And it really doesn't. To everyone's relief I didn't take this as a sign to go invest in sage sticks and dreamcatchers.
I get a lot of strange experiences in my head and beyond. Told my aunt and my mother about them in case I was becoming mentally ill. They laughed their heads off.
'When the voices start telling you to do things, especially when those things are bad or make no sense, you come tell us,' they said. 'This is just a little girl's imagination.' But long before my mother's symptoms became acute, Dad was teasing her about the little faces she saw in the cracks of wood, in the folds of curtains.
'Fairies?' she said, 'I do not know why you are so obsessed with them. Ugly little things, ignore them.'
I don't know what to make of this subject; recovered memory can't always be trusted, regression is questionable, and god knows how much inadequacy is covered with wannabe past life celebrities. None the less strange memories that are not memories arise. I tend to treat my dreams as a land of Other, a hidden country... The sunken cathedral, the old city, the yellow castle... But some places feel different within that paradigm, the place where the water runs uphill, now associated in my mind with somewhere real in Germany. The land behind the Alhambra that doesn't exist in the form I see it. Real places and times overlayed with dweomers of the mind.
One day in the 90s I found myself staying overnight at Moscow airport. Getting off the plane (Aeroflot; an adventure in itself) I heard a voice say 'welcome home.' The place was poor, it stank of urine, tanks were said to be on the streets and the rubel was worth nothing outside the country, but for all that I found myself wanting to stay rather than go on to Kathmandu in the morning. I liked the place, with no particular sense of its history or culture.
I dismissed the comment heard as the kind of batty experience that makes up so much of my life, and did not stay, for all my regrets about it. 20 years later I learn of a connection via DNA to these lands, and while fascinated, don't forget that our DNA traces an endless story that wanders the whole Earth. A similar experience occurred when I landed in California, and dismissed that as my internal anthropomorphism (is that a word?) of a warm bright day bathed in the optimism of a different country, deep as thunder, bright as the sun. Having said that, years later, a (the!) robustly skeptical boyfriend had a very odd experience. I knew of it because I was woken by a half-yelp half-scream, and there he was staring at me.
He told me he had woken up and turned over to see me watching him.
'But it wasn't you,' he said, 'it looked like some, I don't know, some Native American woman.' He shook his head. ' Your eyes were open, it was so...Freaky. Freaky dream. But I was awake.'
We talked it away as a freaky dream, because what else could it be? But he was very shaken in the way that only a stern rationalist can be when faced with something that makes no sense. And it really doesn't. To everyone's relief I didn't take this as a sign to go invest in sage sticks and dreamcatchers.
I get a lot of strange experiences in my head and beyond. Told my aunt and my mother about them in case I was becoming mentally ill. They laughed their heads off.
'When the voices start telling you to do things, especially when those things are bad or make no sense, you come tell us,' they said. 'This is just a little girl's imagination.' But long before my mother's symptoms became acute, Dad was teasing her about the little faces she saw in the cracks of wood, in the folds of curtains.
'Fairies?' she said, 'I do not know why you are so obsessed with them. Ugly little things, ignore them.'
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no subject
Date: 2020-05-20 11:57 am (UTC)First of all, I totally believe in reincarnation because I was one of those kids who was born with a complete set of memories of being someone else. The memories all faded by the time I was three, so that I all I have left is the memory of remembering and a sense that there is much, much more to my consciousness than the circumscriptions of this time/place.
A little bit of research has been done into this: https://uvamagazine.org/articles/the_science_of_reincarnation
No doubt, Tucker has been debunked by someone. 😀 But this isn't "science" to me; it's like looking up at the sky and seeing that it's blue: I know what I know.
Second, I know a few people who've been hearing voices all their lives, a symptom of course of schizophrenia. These people are extremely well adjusted and successful, and tell me that they ignore the voices. I'm not sure that they necessarily think the voices are hallucinations, but whatever they think about them, they understand that whatever counsel the voices preach is not particularly helpful.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-21 10:26 am (UTC)My aunt told me that if I ever received any kind of instruction from any voices I heard, I was not to follow it but to come find her straight away.
But I never had anything like that. Because of schizophrenia's potential for being inherited, I keep a close eye on the antics of my subconscious. If I walk into a building and I hear my name called, or hear something saying 'hello,' I follow it and observe what it is and what it isn't to the best of my ability. So far, it's been benign or neutral, and remains quite an uncommon occurrence.
As to reincarnation, thanks for the article, very interesting! I like the idea of a consciousness that flows throughout events, though am confused by the idea that a phenomenon changes when observed. How would we know what is happening when we do not observe?
But there is something about the base idea that is engaging. I have so many memories seemingly never lived! Are they all patchworks of books read, films seen, and too much cheese before bedtime?
no subject
Date: 2020-05-21 12:18 pm (UTC)Are they all patchworks of books read, films seen, and too much cheese before bedtime?
Probably. 😀
I suppose there may be some people who keep memories from other lives into adulthood. I think they're rare, though. One of the reasons I liked that particular article—confirmation bias alert!😀—is because that's how it happened with me. I don't know any other scientist who's studied reincarnation as a phenomenon, and I'm wary of the woo-woo factor.
The person I knew best who heard voices and ignored them was my very dear friend Barbara's husband. As you can imagine, I was fascinated, and we had a couple of in-depth conversations about it. He had a kind of odd affect, rather abrupt, and was a bit of a loner, but very successful! Started out as a nurse (like Barbara and me), invested all his money and now has a small real estate fortune in the SF Bay Area, which had always been his goal because he grew up very poor.
He said he started hearing voices in his late teens but never had any particular problems ignoring them. He's not a particularly introspective guy. Maybe that helped.
If you don't mind my asking, how old was your mother at the onset of her illness? And was their a triggering event?
no subject
Date: 2020-05-22 07:17 am (UTC)I have no memories of being someone else really, just a glimpse or two of another view or another place. One really bizarre one was at some festival decades ago, where I seemed to feel my own/someone else's laughing astonishment at the price of oysters at a stall. The person was very sanguine, enjoying the sunshine, but I didn't get what was so hilarious about the oysters. It was only later I read about oysters being the food of the poor prior to the 20th century. But even so, if this was a memory from another time, another place, why would the price of oysters be considered more remarkable than, say, the presence of cars?
My answer to this was that I must have read about the oysters as peasant food prior to the experience and forgotten it.
It has been many years since things like that happened to me. What I do get are strong senses of recognising a place, or a very powerful sense of having been here before or having had a skill before. And yes, that article makes a lot of sense in those terms. I am going to read it a few more times.
Your friend sounds like a very interesting person!
no subject
Date: 2020-05-22 03:27 pm (UTC)I think, yes. The memories no longer exist as discrete quanta (if that makes any sense at all! 😀) except for the very young and maybe a handful of really exceptional older folk.
But the connections exist. For example: The way that you and R and I instantly bonded made me think that we had all three had had a closer connection in a previous existence.
Your friend sounds like a very interesting person!
Michael's a character! Rather unapologetically idiocyncratic, which caused frictions, as you may imagine, in his marriage to my beloved Barbara.
He has an amazing ability to compartmentalize, and I suspect that's what's allowed him to deal with his voices.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-23 06:22 am (UTC)It certainly felt very easy, warm, with none of the awkwardness one might expect from people meeting for the first time. Something extremely special in that connection!