After talking about what she does, about past lives, and about hypnosis, the instructor began to lead us on the experiential portion of the evening. She started us out at a place of safety, and thus I found myself lying in the back of my family's RV, which was my favorite place to be when we took family camping trips to various parts of the country when I was a kid. I have never felt as safe as I did in the back of the camper, all wrapped up in a cozy sleeping bag, the open window above my head blowing full on my face as I watched the ever flowing dance of car lights and darkness on the ceiling while my dad drove through the night toward our destination, the muffled voices of he and my mom up front mingled with Chet Atkins' guitar licks from the eight-track player. My blood pressure drops just thinking of that.
From that point she had us meet and merge with a self of ours from our future, in this lifetime, who has knowledge and experience doing this work. Then as that self we walked down a hallway with a row of doors on either side, eventually being directed to choose a door. The door I was drawn to was wooden and round, like a hobbit door, which easily swung open with a gentle push, and I stepped through.
Instantly I found myself outside, surrounded by a coniferous forest. I looked around, throwing a glance behind me to see if the door was still there. It was and I smiled when I saw it hanging open from the trunk of a huge tree. I faced forward again, and through the trees I saw a stone house in a clearing. It wasn't my house and, though I wasn't afraid, I knew I needed to avoid it, so I backed away while simultaneously nocking an arrow, just in case... "OH WOW!" I thought, "I have a bow and arrows!" My excitement swelled until I realized that Sherwood Forest was probably more deciduous than this. But still... Bow and arrows!! I looked down at my feet and saw soft leather moccasin boots. I'm Native American, and the house was that of a settler and, though I had no ill will toward them, I couldn't be sure of the same from them. I continued backing away, amazed and almost alarmed at how silent I was in executing my retreat. There was no crunching through the underbrush that I'm so familiar with this present lifetime, but 'back then' not even a snapping twig belied my presence.
With gentle prompting, I moved to a little later in the day where I found myself deeper in the forest at night, lounging against a log in front of a fire where the game I'd shot earlier, possibly a boar, was roasting. Then, as our guide ushers us forward again to the next morning, I find myself at a small river where I drank from cupped hands before dowsing my face and hair with water.
Then moving to a significant point in that life, I find myself in a teepee, looking into the eyes of my beloved as my heart swells with love and joy. Our backstory is instantly deposited into my mind. I know that I left my own tribe to be with her and that she is the daughter of a chief, which means it was extra challenging to prove my worthiness for her. Apparently presenting him with 10 buffalo hides that I'd personally hunted and prepared was proof enough of my worth.
With that thought I flashed back to another point in that lifetime where I saw a huge buffalo not too far away from where I'd snuck up on it at the edge of some trees. It turned and started walking slightly away from me, and when its stride revealed the patch of skin behind the elbow, with sudden certainty I knew that that was the spot where a single arrow could take down the great animal.
My focus returned to life with my beloved, and a scene unfolded of children surrounding me, laughing and playing and wrestling around. As it turns out, we had no children of our own, but, just as I find myself in my present life, I was the adopted favorite uncle to all the children of the tribe. I was the Storyteller and my purpose was to tell of the old ways, to keep them alive in the hearts of the youth who would one day lead the tribe.
Again we were guided ahead to a significant moment, and l find myself an old man, embracing my beloved beneath a buffalo hide as we stand watching the tepees of the village being taken down and prepped for travel. It's cold, a trace of snow on the ground, and we are being forced to move to a reservation. I am disheartened, as well as concerned for my beloved, uncertain she can survive the trip. I consider staying behind with her, finding a secluded place in the forest where the whites won't find us, but our family talks me out of such an idea, and I see the wisdom of staying with the group.
One more time we are prompted ahead, though I don't remember if it was to another significant point or if it were specifically to our passing. Regardless, my death in that lifetime was the next significant event. I was even older, and I believe alone now, having lost my wife years before. One afternoon, out of the blue, I just felt this strange sense of completeness, like a gentle bell going off inside. I stood up and walked into the woods. I had been with others at the time but there were no goodbyes, or words of any kind to anyone there. I just got up and walked away, as if someone had knocked on the door and I'd gone to answer it. I found a spot under a tree with a slight concave to the trunk so as to cradle and hold my old body comfortably, and there I sat watching the beautiful rays of the sun setting for the last time through the branches and leaves, feeling an exhilaration and expansion as my life seeped out of my body and into all the teeming life that surrounded me.
Shortly thereafter our guide called us back to the future. As I immediately began to think about my trip into the past, there was a quality -- a solidity -- to the experience that I recognized from all the shamanic journeying I've done, which, along with that sense of it having a life of its own with the unexpected surprises and insights I received, added credence to the whole thing. This was not simply whispy daydreams and imaginings. This was an experience.
Of course the mind likes to have its own validation as well, so I googled a few things when I got home. I discovered that the place on the buffalo I'd denoted as the most vulnerable was indeed the best spot for a kill, the heart beating directly behind it. Later, as further validation, When telling a friend about this, she said that an arrow, especially prior to modern hunting tips, may not pierce deep enough for a kill, but that when an animal is injured like that, they always lie on the ground for the earth energy to heal the wound, and in this case the great weight of the buffalo would drive the shaft completely into the heart for an instant death. It took me a minute to pick my jaw up off the floor after that.
The other thing I researched online had to do with the fact that at some point our guide asked us when and where we were, and instantly "Wyoming, 1832" flashed into my head. Well, in the 1800s, 'Wyoming' encompassed a much larger territory than today, and there were multiple tribes in and passing through that area during that time period. The interesting thing is that the significant thing that happened specifically in 1832 was that the Cheyenne tribe split into a Northern and a Southern contingent. I don't know if I were North or South, but this leads me to believe I was Cheyenne, whose tradition it was, interestingly enough, for the man to leave his tribe and family to join that of his wife.
So, for a relatively short and generalized group session, I'm very pleased with the volume of information and experience I've been able to glean from it. Plus I know it's just the tip of the iceberg, and now that I have the initial foothold into this new area of self exploration, I'll be making many more expeditions into this new 'undiscovered country' of mine. Who knows? Maybe next time I'll find Sherwood!
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