June 16, 2004

• “…more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…”

  Will seemed wise beyond his years, back then, but of course that was
  because he’d been around more than a few lifetimes before that. 
  That kind of experience confers some wisdom, and often other traits
  such as creative genius, courage, humor, and either great humility or
  massive arrogance, depending on the nature of the experience.  In
  some ways old souls can be very much alike, and yet each of us is as
  individual as his experience.

  Some people seem a lot more naive than one might expect for the age
  they’ve attained in their current lifetime.  The reasons for that could be a personal choice
  to hide out behind a disingenuous mask, or maybe an accident of birth
  or an injury at some point in their life that either wiped out
  experience or prevented it from being absorbed and integrated into
  their minds–or maybe they’re just baby souls.  Lots of things can
  account for stupidity and ignorance, and/or the illusory appearance of
  one or the other of them, but what else is there besides experience
  that breeds wisdom?

  Among my associates are some reincarnational name droppers, who make it known that they knew, or that they were,
  someone famous.  I see nothing wrong with that.  It may be
  gauche, infra dig, but it’s fun, sometimes, as well.  If I had a
  lot of famous names to drop, I’d drop them.  I have only very few
  famous names that I can drop, and not one of them was my own.  Henri de
  Toulouse-Lautrec used to stand in the wings at the Ballet de Paris to
  watch me dance, but I was a nobody in the corps de ballet, who died
  young and unknown.  

  The squalid neighborhood that housed Will Shakespeare’s Globe Theater
  also housed people who have become some of my closest associates in
  this lifetime, and myself as well,  None of us was famous; every
  one of that circle of friends, in fact, was obscure and some were
  disreputable back then and none of us has achieved great fame yet in this
  lifetime, either.

  In other lifetimes besides that one in Elizabethan England, I was on
  the fringes of royalty or fame:  concubine to a Chinese
  emperor,  attendant to a high priest in Teotihuacan.  Some of
  my associates from those times have attained fame this time
  around, and my path this time has crossed with some of theirs. 
  Meeting them, being sometimes on the receiving end of karmic goodies or
  simple largesse–that’s enjoyable, satisfying.

  It has been fun sometimes, when conversation with new friends turns to
  past-life memories, and one of them says, delightedly, “Oh, you knew
  him, too?!”  Four Xangans that I know of knew Shakespeare, but
  I’ve yet, in this lifetime, to run into anyone else who remembers
  little Henri.  Most of the people I know this time around who
  remember me from a past life remember me from more than one of them,
  and some of the ones who remember me remember each other, too. 
  Such clustered interpersonal associations that transcend death and rebirth through
  life after life are what Edgar Cayce called a soul group. 
  There are big soul groups with momentous planetary purposes for coming
  back together, and little soul groups like families with just personal
  purposes.

  After all this time–a decade and a half or so now, since my own
  past-life memories started to surface, and with all the other people
  who have discussed reincarnation with me and shared their experiences,
  it now comes as somewhat of a shock when I encounter someone who laughs
  or scoffs at me for “believing in” these past lives I recall.  I
  need, in such times, to remind myself:  when you know, you know
  you know, but when you don’t know, you don’t know you don’t know. 
  If I were to forget that, and forget that I’m enlightened, and fail to
  moderate my responses, I could impair my ability to fulfill my soul
  group’s purpose.  But just in case I do forget, and react
  violently when someone pushes that “calling-me-a-liar” button of mine,
  it might be a good idea just to stay out of my way.
  

  • 11:29 pm
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