Growing up in the shadow of WWII, Part 3

Part 1 & Part 2

Something happens when you become more familiar with the strange things around you–more specifically when you’re not merely reacting to them anymore, but deciding first your “terms of engagement” and the tools at your disposal. I’d always been an information hound, and through 2011 till now, I found myself reading voraciously spiritual books that I would not have touched before: esoteric, non-Buddhist books. (I really did have to get out of being fundamentalist about Buddhism–lots of the challenges I faced 2009-2011 had been telling me I needed to go beyond what I’d understood so far.) I also attended workshops that drew my interest.

At the part-time job, I enjoyed giving historical tours as usual, but the inflexible scheduling and the draining of my energy under tough work conditions (tropical heat, haze, lack of sleep) meant I was ready to get out of it. Interestingly, I quit it around the same time my dreams and night-time experiences were getting very woo and intense–positive and not-so-positive beings were visiting and expanding my worldview (and my place in it) rapidly. I had a string of learning and “testing” experiences, many having to do with energy, integrity, healing, fear, and trust. The emotional ups and downs could be intense, and I learned that I really had to not push past my physical limits, else I needed 1-2 days to recover.

It’s also strange that it was only after quitting the tour job that I started having WWII dreams, that I’d never had in my life before. I once thought these were my own experience from past lives, until I realised their situations and number made them unlikely to be all my own (even though one story was experienced, in a dream, at a “past-life 3D-experience simulator” at an amusement park). These dreams were always vivid, with settings and situational details that I’d never known or could have thought of during waking moments, nor had I been watching WWII media. I’ve “been” a European refugee, getting visited in the night to be ripped from my husband’s side by soldiers; a British officer enjoying a party before setting off for his campaign in the Far East; a Japanese woman who was heroine to her countrymen during the war, because she knew how to call dragons from the mountains (?) during their ceremonies and battles of conquest.

In my latest dream from last week, I no longer needed to see another’s viewpoint by “being” them, but opened a bureaucratic-looking box to find a sepia-toned WWII Japanese army engineer folded inside–an earthbound spirit. He unfolded himself neatly (so very origami) and came out of the box. He was interested in communicating, and had to “grasp” me so that my dream body could feel what he was feeling. Though at first I was afraid, I only felt compassion as the sensations came through and I voiced aloud the aches and pains. There was a lot of mutual respect and interaction between this fellow and I. And after a time, I had a sense of completion between us, and woke up feeling accomplished!

My left brain tries to analyse and understand these experiences, but there’s only so much it can do. One of the “truths” I live by now is that all our interactions with others are real no matter if they’re flesh-and-blood or if we “create” those people (as skeptics may choose to argue with woo encounters). These interactions show the choices we make, and this is all we really get to carry with us as we pass from this life. (Let’s face it: posterity, or the idea of posterity, only benefits the ego while the being is still alive.) Buddhist texts often expound on everything having no inherent existence, frequently understood/misunderstood as nihilism. I will add this, nihilistic or not: Even to assert that everything is illusion and a dream, the consciousness we have is real. (Try to deny your consciousness right now. Go on! If you can accomplish this, then all I can suggest to you is a job in governance.) The choices we make with our consciousness have consequences. In a nutshell, the choices we make are real, even if nothing else is.

This is the current game, simplified, and whenever in doubt, one should choose love, in its highest, unconditional, and all-encompassing meaning, putting one in line with Source/Creator. All-encompassing love means love that includes oneself. (This was a tough lesson for me.) Loving oneself allows one to know and accept one’s current abilities and limits, and allows no harm to be done, nor tolerated. It allows sovereignty and choice.

This series of posts has allowed me to document my mediumistic learning experiences so far. It’s not something I want to do full-time, or so I keep saying; but I have journeyed from being completely averse to spirits to accepting their existence and their messages in both waking and dreaming time. The journey required me to unlearn a lot of societal programming to fear them and fear the afterlife. This societal programming (intended or not) disconnects us from self-empowerment and the recognition of our rights and abilities as both human and spiritual beings.

Living here means I am surrounded by beings (living and not) who still carry burdens experienced from war and exploitation, many likely unaware of those effects, their wounds, and still perpetuating fear-based cruelties upon themselves and others. But the light is growing, something I can confirm by the many teachers and fellow students I’ve found here and who seem to arriving all the time, or awakening all the time, if you will. Maybe I will see my childhood dream come true one day of seeing the traumas from war and exploitation healed from the land and beings here, forever.