In a Mirror
~ a ramble that begins with this morning and goes back and back and back...
This morning, my son experienced his second car accident. The first was just after receiving his full driving license when he hit a snow patch and rolled our CRV twice before it landed on its side. Miraculously, he was unhurt. He was also not hurt today when he hit black ice only feet away from that first accident and fishtailed into the guard rail. The unscathed aspect of these events reminds me of his birth. After forty-eight hours of labour, he quit. Having been stuck sideways in the birth canal, it took suction to pull his limp body out. And then he cried. For his entire life, he’s been strong and healthy. Quite a different arc than his mother who’s often been hospitalized for various ailments and diseases.
We persist despite.
When he was young, my son made me promise that if I died I’d come back to visit. Of course, I said, touching his small hand.
But you can’t come back in a mirror, he said. That would be too scary for me.
Perhaps I could send a text? phone him? Carolyn Myss tells the story of receiving a call from David Chethlahe who she found out later had died three days before the call. He’d had a request for her to help write his autobiography, which she thought odd but agreed because he was her friend.
In 1991, during a four-day residential intensive in India, we did an exercise with mirrors. The group took place in the top room of a newly built black granite pyramid. All around the edge of the vast darkened room, we each sat in front of a mirror, a candle on either side. We were to gaze with unfocussed eyes at our reflections. The exercise may have been called, “Your Original Face.”
In that mirror, as the two candles flickered their pale orange light, I watched my face soften and blur. My eyes creased and turned down at the edges, and my cheeks sagged. I was an old woman, possibly middle-eastern. Her image pixilated to be replaced by the face of a young boy with bright flashing eyes. The boy faded. In his place a dark-eyed woman with a long face and narrow chin over a slender neck. A tall hat or headdress and then she was gone. The images flickered, clouded, and cleared, old men, young women, some faces ugly and desperate-looking, and so startling I had to tell my shoulders to drop and focus on my breathing. Until there was nothing. Nothing in that glass—not a face, not an image of any sort, just the fluttering yellow-orange of two candles at the edges. I gasped, jumping back, my heart in my mouth.
When I’d caught my breath, I came back to the mirror in that darkened room, only vaguely aware of all the undulating flames, the faceless friends watching their own images shift and change. I came back with hard eyes to find myself there—long brown hair, startled grey-green eyes, open mouth, a string of wooden beads over a maroon robe. I was safe. Still there. Intact.
In 1982, during one of my first experiential therapy meditation groups, we were instructed to form two circles; one inward facing, and one outward to face the outside circle. The first part of the exercise was simply to observe each other with soft eyes, allowing whatever presented itself to be felt without commentary. Those of us in the inner circle then moved one to the right so that we now had another being to witness. This time we let ourselves be touched by whatever emotion we perceived from the other, again without sharing. After moving again to the right, our instruction was to see if we could perceive past lives from this new person. The woman across from me had sleepy eyes, straight blonde hair to her shoulders, and an alert posture. As I watched, her face seemed to blur but I wondered if that was on account of my lack of focus. I worried that I wasn’t doing it right and considered making something up. A life of royalty, perhaps. Or maybe a witch who’d been burned? Someone famous—Jean d’Arc? But then her face seemed to melt, its features rearranging. Her puffy eyes narrowed, grew pearlescent and dark as hematite. Her sweater turned to silk with embroidered birds at the neckline. Out of my mouth came these words: “You were not a concubine but a valued asset. There were many others also beautiful and skilled, but men travelled from far away to be with you. To hear you play and sing. Your conversation was illuminating but you never overshadowed those adoring men.” This knowing poured from me, while in another part of my mind I thought, This is insane. How do I know these things? I’m just making this shit up. But I could see her shimmering black hair in elaborate swirls adorned with jade and ivory. “You were owned but you were also free in that place. You were proud of your station. And then he came.” A swell of sorrow and outrage rose in me. “He bought you. Your… contract?” My eyes stung. “It didn’t go well.”
The group leader said, “Take a moment now to let the other respond before moving on to the next.”
I shook my hands free from where they clutched my pant legs and blinked several times until she was once again a lovely blonde, blue-eyed young woman wearing a woven cotton sweater in beige and moss green.
She gave me a warm, assuring smile. “I know about this life,” she said. “And you are correct—it did not end well. I was a lousy concubine.”
Dazed, I slid to my right.
Two years before, I’d gone to the psychic, John Deere (Yes, of the John Deere family but that’s another story and I’ve sidetracked enough already). He foretold with accuracy several things, including a description of a new lover I’d have and an odd offer of marriage. He spoke about my furniture and jewellery (I wasn’t wearing any but he nailed all of the above). When he looked into his little crystal ball (Yes, a crystal ball), he said, “In ancient Egypt, you were a person of some nobility. You were stabbed during a ceremony intended to honour you.” And then he went on to talk about my current toxic boyfriend.
When he turned over my palm, John Deere looked up at me and asked if I’d been stabbed in this life. “Oh,” I said, touching my belly. “You could say that. I have a long abdominal scar from a surgery.” He nodded as if I’d confirmed what he already knew. “Is that related?” I wanted to know. His arthritic hand still holding mine, he said, “Of course. Our lives are layered. Things get repeated until they’re cleared. Seems you’ve cleared it.”
“Because I’m still alive.”
“Yes,” he’d said as if it was the most ordinary piece of information.
Now the woman who sat across from me leaned in, flush-faced and eager. “I see you dancing. I see you in the mountains…”
Oh good grief, I thought. Sure, I’d danced for several years, but everyone dances. And yes, I’d lived in the Kootenay Mountains, but really?
Her expression sobered, her shine diminished. “I see you in a great hall,” she said. “Many have gathered to honour you. I think it’s Egypt.”
Now, she had my interest.
“It’s all about you. You’re very important, but I have such a bad feeling. Something awful happens. They invited you. You’re like a ruler, but…”
I wanted to tell her about John Deere, to ask for details, but we were only to listen.
“It’s a wide room with many people all around the sides witnessing. You are coming across the floor, wearing robes and a tall hat, like a headdress. But…”
The time was up. I said, “I was stabbed.”
She doubled over, clutching her belly. “That’s right,” she said. “Yes.”
The hologram of me goes back further. Come, let’s look at an encounter in 1974. While visiting my brother in Nanaimo I went to a shop that sold sandalwood carvings, Indian bedspreads, divination decks, and wooden wind chimes. The owner took my hand and put her palm over mine. “You think you’re a failure because you don’t finish. You can’t stick with any one place or job or school or lover.” At this, tears threatened. I’d been exposed. “But it’s because you’ve lived many lives. You’ve experienced so much that in this life there’s no need to follow through to the end—you’ve done it all before.” I was only twenty-one. How could that be true?
Let’s fast-forward to that pyramid in India where I disappeared in a mirror. It makes sense now, doesn’t it?
I can reassure my son that I will definitely not come to visit him in a mirror after this body dies. For whatever reason, we both seem to be skirting a time when either of us will need to come back for a visit.
We’ll just have to wait.
Captivating. ❤️
Mesmerizing!