SEE YOU NEXT LIFETIME ~ Past Lives and Reincarnation

SEE YOU NEXT LIFETIME ~ Past Lives and Reincarnation

 Aloha MM’s! J  

I always include a past life in my romance stories. Why?  

Because they’re important to me. A writer friend of mine once commented on the ‘paranormal elements’ in my work. I was a wee bit startled. I thought…what paranormal elements? To me, paranormal covers werewolves, shape shifters, vampires and zombies. So I had to stop and think a minute about what he was talking about. I realized he meant the intuitive things my characters use and their past lives that crop up.  

Oh? LOL. To me, they’re everyday, normal things.  

I remember reading Ian Stevenson’s past life accounts as a teenager and it completely resonated with me. Later I went on to read Brian Weiss's excellent work on the subject and used past life regression with people in my own work. Even too this day, I’ll read just about anything on past lives. They fascinate me. Not so much for the ‘hero’ factor, but because they contain so much information that relates to present day. 

Some people scoff and say, “Oh, everyone reckons they were Mary, Queen of Scots.” 

But to honest, I’ve never met anyone who’s ever claimed to be anyone THAT famous. I’ve come across one person who I think WAS someone famous, but more on that in a minute. I found a minor royalty figure in a court. And I met a baker for Marie Antoinette’s household, but that’s about as famous as it gets. People on the whole see fairly ‘ordinary’ lives.  

I’ve had the most excruciatingly boring past lives at times. It makes me wonder if that’s why I can’t STAND to live an ordinary life now. The thought of living an everyday existence with a white picket fence, a minivan and 2.5 children makes me want to slit my wrists.  

Last lifetime, I flew planes in WWII. I wasn’t a bomber or fighter pilot. I was a woman pilot in the ATA. The Air Transport Auxiliary in England. We ferried aircraft all over the British Isles for the RAF and American forces. There were approximately 1300 odd pilots that flew for the ATA. Of those, 166 were women pilots. And until fairly recently, not a very well known fact. They didn’t get a lot of recognition and still, not much has been written about them.  

When I first ran across this lifetime, I didn’t have any information. I’d always been interested in planes. I loved to fly, even back in New Zealand in the sixties when our airlines were relatively new and flying wasn’t an everyday occurrence. I just loved it. I wanted to be a flight attendant growing up. Though, I probably should have been a pilot. But back then in New Zealand, it just didn’t cross my mind that a woman could train and fly an aircraft, especially a ‘big heavy’ as the bigger transport planes are known.  

And nowadays, there are still only about 6% of women who are pilots. The ratio is low. I’m not sure why. I’ve spoken to other pilots and none of us have a good answer. I suspect it’s still not on ‘the list’ of what females want to be when they grow up. You do have to have the ‘spatial awareness’ to fly an aircraft and map reading skills etc, and because of the brain wiring, many women don’t have these abilities. There’s a masculinity to it that possibly doesn’t appeal as well. All the women pilots I know, just about all like fast cars too. LOL. They almost seem to go hand in hand. I’m a fan of the writer Deborah Buell Coonts, who writes a great series out of Vegas. She’s an accomplished pilot and instructor. She’s also a fan of big V8’s like I am. J 

Where did we get this predilection from? What attracted us to planes? Fast cars? Speed?  

Pieces for me have come in at different times in my life. I collected a piece there, a piece here.  

From the age of 5, I lived near the Wigram Airforce Base in Christchurch, New Zealand. We used to be able to go over there to swim in the big pool and occasionally they’d have a movie day for us kids. I loved being on base. I felt completely at home and that’s still a rare thing for me to feel. It makes me feel completely safe and like I belonged. When I later went out with airforce guys, I again felt utterly safe and at home.

When I was a teenager and finding my own style, I dressed in ‘military’ style clothing. I wore pencil slim skirts, just below the knee, court shoes, seamed stockings. I matched it with a tailored belted jacket or blazer, over a dress shirt and tie. I topped these ensembles off with ‘lemon squeezer’ hats and sometimes a pillbox hat. I didn’t realize for a long time that I was emulating the forties wartime style. I just felt comfortable in it. I had all my clothing made in this style. There was a huge wool ‘great coat’ I always wore, and leather gloves. Handbags from that era grab me.  

When I was about 20, I got a cab home one day and said to the taxi driver, “I don’t think anyone’s romantic anymore.” I was fed up with dating and things in general. He was chatty and we connected with each other. He offered to show me a romantic time. He was attractive and just ‘had something,’ so I said yes.

Neil picked me up on Saturday night and drove me over to the bays. We parked in a quiet spot. He had wine and glasses, it was very romantic, but the thing that really dug into my soul was that he also had music. He slipped a Glenn Miller tape into the tape deck and music took me away into another time and place. I wrote it into a story Saint Nicholas coming out in Christmas this year.  

“Romantic enough, for you?” he asked me quietly, with his dark intense Romani eyes. 

Very!   

War time music is so soothing to me. I’m completely at home with it. I went out with Neil for a while. We remained friends over the years, sometimes seeing a lot of each other, sometimes nothing for years. We finally figured out we’d known each other from the French Resistance. He’d been a Frenchman in the movement. 

When I was 21, I got involved in a spiritual group and we used to read for each other. One night, someone saw me standing there in a military uniform. A women’s uniform. They told me I used to fly in WWII in England. I thought they were a bit off, because as far as I knew, women hadn’t flown in the war. But the uniform felt right. I dismissed the flying part though to some degree. Remember too, at that time, there was no internet. You couldn’t go and look it up like you can now. And I was too young and self involved to go to the library and do any research.  

I went out with a guy that I was attracted to—over the phone! It was the most bizarre thing. I just had to be with him. There was no rhyme nor reason to it. He didn’t look like anyone I’d usually be attracted to. But his soul called me to him. When I met him, I loved him instantly.  

As things went along, we found bits and pieces from the past. It used to be terrible when he left to go home, just across the other side of town. I would be utterly bereft. I literally felt like my heart was breaking, that I'd never see him again. It was a ghastly feeling. It wasn’t until we stumbled on the WWII past life with both of us in it, that we understood what was going on.  

He’d been a B-17 pilot with the American Eighth. His name was Rick. And every time they went out, you never knew whether they were coming back. You’d stand and see them coming in, do the plane count. The tension was ghastly. You’d be coaxing in every aircraft. Come on, one more, come on. Please.  

You’d hear a crippled or injured B-17 coming in… 

Praying they were all okay. 

Watching in horror sometimes when they landed, carved up beyond belief. 

Sometimes they didn’t make it… 

Sometimes they never came back. 

Rick disappeared over a bombing mission in Germany. Never made it back. 

Even now, writing about it, provokes the most intense emotions in me. I write Rick’s lifetime in Henry and Isolde. A small piece in Saint Nicholas. It’s my strongest lifetime. I have the most memories from there.  

That was Peter Daly, he was Rick. So, when he went to go home, I was a mess. I really felt I’d never see him again. When we realized it was from that lifetime, it got a wee bit easier. But it was such a visceral intense reaction. But we knew then why I was reacting the way I was.  

Was he a soulmate? No. Was he someone I knew on a soul level? Yes.  

We eventually parted and both moved on.  

But other things would crop up from that lifetime. I went through a time where it seemed that everyone I met was from that lifetime. I’d look at them and think, I know you. Then I’d get the flash of WWII and realize where from. I ran across a lot of people in the French Resistance movement. I had a stint there after flying with the ATA. I think it was after Rick died and I later, died in France.  

When I went to France for the first time, I knew it. I was at home there. That surprised me at the time. I hadn’t been that interested in going to France. But going back there, I felt like I’d come home.   

What was interesting about the French Resistance people, is that often I wouldn’t say anything. Other people would say to me, ‘out of the blue.’ "I know you from WWII, we were in the Resistance together." When I went to the American War Memorial in France, and saw the memorial to the Resistance workers, I burst into tears when I saw one of the photos and names. It was a picture of Violette Szabo, who was captured and tortured. I knew her. My soul remembered her.

I've just realized what I've done too. I've named my character in Saint Nicholas after her, making her Violet. And in The Chi Circle, the second book of the Troika Love Series trilogy, I named Charlie's past life character in France as Etienne. Which is odd, because all the other names have correlations between them, Galena/Elena/Leena etc. But Etienne was always odd and I've often wondered how I came up with that name. I just went to check Violette's spelling of her last name because I couldn't remember it. She was married to Etienne Szabo. There's my answer. And I've just read more on her and realize how I would have gotten to know her through training in the SOE.

Violette Szabo

There are so many things that have come up over time that fit with that lifetime.  

I didn’t learn to fly until my early forties in this lifetime.

I still had my love of my planes, but I’d never trained as a flight attendant.  

I think I was a better pilot last lifetime, than this one. LOL. It wasn’t as second nature as I would have liked. There were things I did that drove my flight instructor and I up the wall.  

This is from The Mystic Manifestor:  

I flew in England during WWII as a woman ferry pilot and some of that had stayed with me. When I kept making the same odd mistakes, or weird things tripped me up, I tapped into my subconscious to see if I could find out why. I had trouble doing a wingover and nearly passed out each time. I went looking for the incident and found it. I’d brought an aircraft in to land and done a wing over, crashing. I wasn't hurt, but it was scary. Once I reset the pattern with NLP, I never had a problem again in present day.  

            I also had this maddening habit of pulling the throttle out the wrong way. My instructor and I kept saying, "Why am I doing that??" It was dangerous. He'd never had a student do it and I was mystified too. 

            I thought, there’s no way, they would have manufactured an aircraft with a reverse throttle. But it was becoming a problem flying. I went and researched it and sure enough...the French had ordered aircraft with this reverse throttles. They and some other European countries had the ‘reverse throttle’ until everyone came into line with the standard positioning now. And we delivered them. :-) Oh. For whatever reason, those aircraft stayed with me. Once, I'd reset it, I never had a problem with it again.

I saw myself in past life regressions flying an Avro. When the therapist asked me what kind of aircraft, I said, “Four engined, it says Arvo.” I could see it in the cockpit. She probed further and said, “It’s a Lanc.” It wasn’t until I did some research later, that I realized it was an Avro Lancaster Bomber. We flew them in the ATA.  

Lancaster Bomber Crew of 7

I’d often automatically reach my hands above me for switches that weren’t there. I remembered dropping out of a forward hatch. All these pieces make up my experience of WWII.  

My love has always been the slow flight of an open cock-pit bi-plane…because I trained in them initially in the thirties. A lot of ‘modern’ pilots find them way too slow. Aaron thought they were slightly frightening. I'm happiest in an open cock-pit, the gentle waft into the air from a grass strip. Heaven. And the sound of a radial engine  starting up, oooh, heavenly, my whole soul vibrates with pleasure when I hear it.  

I was probably in my late twenties before I ran across the information that women DID fly in wartime England as ferry pilots. Good lord, I thought, so it’s true.  

Later, I found out there were American flyers as well, but this relatively obscure piece on women flyers in England during the war was where I’d been.  

I always had trouble with the control pedals and fashioned two squarish cushions into a padding for me, which later I realized where like the parachutes we used to sit on. LOL.  

All these tiny pieces that make up that lifetime for me. But they make up the mosaic of a life I lived there. I was petite and had black wavy/curly hair. I’ve felt myself walking across an airstrip in uniform and a great coat. It’s very here and now, very visceral. Someone once thought my name was Sally Greenway. But I’ve never found that name on the flyers list. So, I’m unsure what that goes with.  

No doubt, one day it will come to light, as other things have done over the years.  

But it’s a strong lifetime for me. There’s too many things from it for me to say, it’s just imagination. And the evidence for past lives is too numerous now anyway. It’s still one of my favorite subjects though. 

And getting back to the one famous person I think I might know about…sort of…LOL. 

I’ve been in various groups over the years. Something compelled me to get a book out of the library on Al Capone one day. I had no idea why at the time. When I flipped through it, I could identify people. I thought, I know you, you. I’d flip through a few more, identify a few more people that were familiar to me in the photos. It was uncanny. When I went back and read about the people, they’d all connected with each other (the ones I’d identified.) I also looked at Dion O’Banion, who was a nemesis of Al Capone and thought, oh god, I know you. I showed it to my spiritual friend Linda and we both agreed it was Greg, her ex from this lifetime. The amount of similarities was uncanny.  

Dion O'Banion

Greg was involved in a project with the ‘Henry’ boys. I say the ‘Henry’ boys, because I went out with either one or both of them and can’t remember who was who. They had VERY strange energy. I cannot tell you to this day, who I went out with. It feels like a cloak was put over me. I’ve never experienced it before. There was Bryan and another brother, who’s name I can’t remember. He and Bryan were both involved with Greg in a project in New Zealand. And when Linda and I looked at it, it correlated to the Capone/Banion Chicago lifetime. The same energy and patterns had emerged. It was a really odd setup. Really peculiar stuff.  

Anyway, in the end, it all fell apart, ‘Bryan’ or one of the Henry’s went to the States to live. We heard he’d gotten himself involved with a Mafia family. Back to his old haunts. We think he was Al Capone. Look, someone HAS to have been Al Capone. And I might have thought we were fantasizing until this happened. Yet there were some eerie things that matched and all the information isn’t there for me now. Lots of real odd ‘evil’ energy with it. I don’t usually get into that ‘evil’ stuff, but this was downright weird.  

Al Capone

So fast forward a few years... 

I ran into Neil (yes, he of the Romantic Romani man days) and we hadn’t seen each other for a few years. Nor did we move in the same circles at all. We’d gone in completely different ways. I think I’d been overseas. We both had spiritual practices, but they didn’t match at all. In short, we had no contact, shared experiences, etc over the years.  

We talked about various things during the day. I went back to his place for coffee and I don’t know how we got onto the subject, but he said, “I know who Al Capone was in this lifetime.”  

I did a double take and said, “Oh, okay, I think I do too. Who’s yours?” 

“A guy called Bryan Henry,” he said.  

My mouth dropped open.  

“Oh my God, that’s who I was going to say.”  

Now, it was his turn to have his mouth drop open.  

We went through all our info and we had no connector points anywhere along the way. There was nothing. We’d both gotten this info from completely independent different sources.  

So, that’s my one famous person, but like I said…I can’t actually remember him. I went out with him several times too. And he was interesting, charismatic. I remember that. But I still can’t tell you which brother was which. I don’t know which one I went out with at which time. I can’t tell you what they looked like. Dark, tall, handsome... It was like a veil had been thrown over me. It was really odd.  

When I told Neil about this, he said, yes, stay away from them if you ever run across them again. They’re really bad news. My experience of not knowing which brother I’d gone out with and odd details missing, was also other people’s experiences with the Henry brothers. One brother was nicer than the other. But the one that slipped back into the Mafia family here in the States was the baddie. Al Capone, still up to his old tricks.  

So, until we meet again… 

Have a mystically manifesting week. Thanks and aloha Meg J