Past lives

Last night at the Rebbe's, I asked Rebbe Nachman about past lives. I was curious about how to discover my past lives as I've never been aware of them. He took me on a very peculiar journey.

The visualization was traveling into a vagina, and then feeling the warm amniotic waters surround me. At this point, I could repeat the process to go further back, or feel the energy around me and know what it felt like to be in that lifetime. I don't know what my immediate prior life was, but the first life I felt was around 1919 or so. I was a Hasid on my way to see my rebbe. The next one I saw was 1853, and I was a peasant on a hunt. I was being careful as I was poaching from a lord's land.

At this point, I asked him if there was life that had something to teach me that I could use in this life. One of the reasons I've never really pursued past lives was that I didn't see much point. We are living in the present life, so all of our issues and problems can be dealt with here. But recently, I've been bumping into Karmic issues in my life, that is, issues that I was born with and have no clear cause in this lifetime. When I would go looking for patterns of actions to understand what and why I was doing certain things, there wasn't one. So that's why I decided to look in the past lives to see if they could help shed light on the current issues.

One thing I've seen John do is jump back through a client's lifetimes to find the genesis of an issue. When the genesis is dealt with, then the person is able to deal with the issue in the current lifetime. That was what I was trying to do with myself.

At that point, I jumped to a much earlier life where I was being killed. The only thing I could see in that lifetime was the moment of death. After going through the moment of death several times, I was able to see the person who was killing me. I realized that I had known and loved that person, and now they were killing me. As I sat with it longer, I was able to forgive that person. We were both warriors, and he had been my teacher, but when the political situation shifted, he had followed the rules of his side and fought against me. We had valued the political allegiances over the connections of the heart and he had killed me for it.

As I embraced him, I felt myself heal. I'm not sure exactly how yet, but we'll see how it goes. But in this lifetime, I know that I try to value the connections of the heart over political allegiances and rules that exist outside of myself.

Worlds in the letters

I was at the rebbe's last night and had a vision of Reb Nachman. I met him, as usual, in a forest. We traveled for a little bit and I asked him how I could learn to see better in the spirit world. He said to follow him. We went through lots of twists and turns and I realized we were walking through a navy ship - up metal stairways, through doors, and down narrow passages. We emerged into blackness, I continued to follow him through nothingness. In front of us appeared a podium, the only lighted thing I could see, and on it was a table with a Torah laid open upon it.

I looked down into it and he told me to look at the letters, at every stroke, even at the crowns upon the letters. As I did, each one drew me in and opened into an entire world. It was like I was going through the letter into an entirely different place. When I pulled myself out and back to the podium, I looked again at a word and the word became translucent and I was drawn in and through it.

Reb Nachman told me to practice this technique. Start with a letter and see where it takes me and what it feels like. Then focus on the entire word, then on a sentence. Then start again at a new letter, even at a stroke or a crown, and see what it feels like and where it takes me. He said that if I practice this, then it will help me see.

On the way home, I told my friend about it and he mentioned that this is one of the Ba'al Shem Tov's fundamental ideas: that each letter of Torah is an entire world. So it makes sense that the BSh"T's grandson would send me there.

Cleaning out the basement

I went to Morgenstern's last week. I got there early and the rebbe had not arrived yet, so people were sitting around talking or studying. I found a place at the table and next to me was a copy of Likutei Moharan, the teaching of Reb Nachman of Bretslev. I opened up to a page at random and scanned my fingers over the text to feel what text I was supposed to read. I landed on a passage about how a person's love for God is through the heart and the love is connected to Ayn Sof (a name for God meaning "without end"). The passage continues that a person must constrict one's heart slightly to make room in it to do God's work. Much as God needed to constrict himself to leave room for the created within him. To me, I realized that the love that is in my heart is Ayn Sof, without end.

When the rebbe came in, I sang the nigunim and fell into the half-trance of the place. I was with Reb Nachman in the woods. He was screaming to God and I was with him. When he began to speak, it intensified. Nachman led me to my spiritual beit midrash, but instead of going through the entrance, we went into the basement. I didn't even know there was a basement. The way in was through a small pipe. I squeezed through and found myself in a dark room where the darkness was almost palatable. There were many small tables, and across each, two people were studying. But the entire place was studying. Nachman was nowhere to be seen.

I walked through the room until I came to one table which seemed to have more light than the others. I understood that I was supposed to study with them. I sat down, but they did not want me there. One of them finally got up so we could study. I asked what book, but got a stern look back and finger to lip told me to be quiet. The eyes were what stood out for me: small, beady, and full of rage. He stared at me and handed me a book. I opened it and saw the letter kuf (ק) drawn large in the center of the page, and surrounding it were words made from small black, fiery letters. The only word I could read was Kadosh, holy.

I tried to match his intensity, but couldn't. Every time I tried to speak, he told me to be quiet. I didn't know what to do. So I finally tried to connect to him with love. I reached out my heart and felt like I was going through many layers of heavy, worn-out clothing. As I was doing this, I noticed that many of the others in the basement had stopped studying and were gathering silently around our table.

I finally reached inside of him, and found a beautiful light that came forth from him. I felt my keter (crown) open and a tunnel open above me that leads up to the higher worlds. His bright soul left and went up the tunnel. As soon as he was gone, another sat in his place and wanted the same thing. The second was much easier, and soon they were all shedding their clothing and going upward. I had the sense that they were trapped tzaddikim and I was letting them go to do their work. As the last ones went upward, I felt myself carried upward with them.

I went up the tunnel to the cloud realm - a place I've been before and there was Nachman. When he turned, across him body was the letter Kuf (ק). The top of the letter went across his shoulders and the rest was drawn down his torso, with the long line down dropping to his legs. He came to me, embraced me, and I was back in the room with Morgenstern.