Picture of Karen Sherwood with AuthorTalk host, Ron Way, sitting on the wall of an Heiau (Hawaiian sacred place) hidden in the jungle near her home on the island of Kauai. Months later, this is where the past life experience took place.
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Karen Sherwood's Story
I am still. Yet there is such motion all around me. Birds flying, roosters crowing, waves crashing as I sit on ancient stones. I have had an experience that suggests time is not what it seems. I am sitting in silent meditation. As my breathing slows my mind feels free to float. In this floating state, I greet an energy I call the light-being. It feels like a familiar soft energy and it connects with me in physical form through a sensation of love. On this day, as I feel the loving approach, I see for the first time that I am opening to an aspect of me. This light-being is me living in another dimension or time, in the past…or the future. Time is seemingly a circle. Is the past… the future? As this connection is made I feel a heightened experience of the tactile world around me. I feel the touch of the breeze more completely. This being that has joined me in my physical form speaks gently in my mind. My heart is full and expanding. My sense of wellbeing increases as I sit in joy. Quietly I hear thoughts of gratitude. “This is an exchange,” it is whispered. My light-bodied other (self) is enjoying the sensation of wind, of sound, of touch and smell, and in return offering me a broader vision, the ability to understand mysteries, see past and future events, feel the life force of the tree, the heart of the stone. A lovely exchange. |
Suddenly my attention is drawn towards something. A vision is unfolding in front of my eyes. One so unexpected I cannot tear my consciousness from what I am witnessing. Behind my closed lids there are two children. I am looking down on them and they are in a dire circumstance. We are far back in time. These children are chained in a small dungeon. It is made of stone with a dirt floor. I am one of these children. I appear to be a young girl, maybe 6 or 7 with an older boy of about 10. There are rats scratching about and flea infested straw on the ground. It is cold and water is dripping from somewhere. It is very dark, only the smallest light from a torch attached to a wall, up a set of stone steps on a small landing.
As I watch what is unfolding, I can feel a sensation of terror. My throat is dry, my breath shallow. I hear heavy footsteps on the stone. A man appears with an older boy. He looks at me in a menacing way. The boy who is chained beside me is my brother. He shouts for them to leave me alone. I cower and watch horrified as the man attacks my brother. As my brother is trying to protect me, he is beaten severely. I am screaming. My brother is badly hurt and bleeding, but is still trying to distract these attackers away from me. Suddenly he is struck down. Killed by the angry man.
As I witness this I see something dark penetrate the girl. It flies off the evil man and straight into this child. It is a vibration of dark energy that translates to the belief, “You are not deserving. You are not worthy.”
At this same time, I see the dying boy. His soul is lifting out of his body. As he turns to go I see another dark form headed straight at him. It penetrates his soul body. It is the belief, “You failed to save the one you love. You are a failure.”
Is this how a story we work lifetimes to unravel gets inserted into our soul’s journey? Could these beliefs hold us in earth’s physicality to return again and again trying to resolve.
I’m pulled back to the scene. The child has been left alone with her dead brother. She weeps. Eventually I see she is drifting to sleep.
I feel I am her. I see her dreams. She is dreaming of a place that is warm and green. She sees stone upon stone, green moss, an ocean. She is dreaming of me sitting in the temple on a stone. We are looking into each other’s eyes across this veil of time. As she gazes upon me I feel the presence of the light-being. She sees this light-being and is overcome with peace. She believes she is seeing an angel of light.
The little girl begins to pray… and hope. I see her energy field. It was almost gone but now it is glowing.
As she wakes from this vision, I notice the brother. He is not dead. She whispers comfort to him saying the angel told her they will be rescued. I hear noises. Someone is coming.
The picture begins to fade. I am leaving this place. I know that this child does live. So does the brother. She goes on to live a long life. Will I ever see the end of this story I wonder?
As I slowly returned to my own body I began to hear the breeze again, to feel the stones under my legs, to awaken into my familiar world. How long had I been gone? I sat for a long time thinking about this, trying to make sense of it.
I was on a retreat with a small group of women, camping in the jungle. Something very interesting had been revealed to me about my life during this week. I saw how most of my behaviors and decision were organized around a belief I held about myself. One I held so closely I could not even see it without the reflection of these wise and awake women. It was a belief that I did not deserve many of the things that had come my way in life. As I began to understand this tendency it created a lot of emotional release. Could it be that I had just stepped into the life where that belief was born. Had that life shifted because of my new awareness in this life? Can we change the past by changing the now?
As I shared my story with the group, one of the women spoke up and said she knew the castle. She knew the dungeon. She knew the boy. She was the boy.
As I witness this I see something dark penetrate the girl. It flies off the evil man and straight into this child. It is a vibration of dark energy that translates to the belief, “You are not deserving. You are not worthy.”
At this same time, I see the dying boy. His soul is lifting out of his body. As he turns to go I see another dark form headed straight at him. It penetrates his soul body. It is the belief, “You failed to save the one you love. You are a failure.”
Is this how a story we work lifetimes to unravel gets inserted into our soul’s journey? Could these beliefs hold us in earth’s physicality to return again and again trying to resolve.
I’m pulled back to the scene. The child has been left alone with her dead brother. She weeps. Eventually I see she is drifting to sleep.
I feel I am her. I see her dreams. She is dreaming of a place that is warm and green. She sees stone upon stone, green moss, an ocean. She is dreaming of me sitting in the temple on a stone. We are looking into each other’s eyes across this veil of time. As she gazes upon me I feel the presence of the light-being. She sees this light-being and is overcome with peace. She believes she is seeing an angel of light.
The little girl begins to pray… and hope. I see her energy field. It was almost gone but now it is glowing.
As she wakes from this vision, I notice the brother. He is not dead. She whispers comfort to him saying the angel told her they will be rescued. I hear noises. Someone is coming.
The picture begins to fade. I am leaving this place. I know that this child does live. So does the brother. She goes on to live a long life. Will I ever see the end of this story I wonder?
As I slowly returned to my own body I began to hear the breeze again, to feel the stones under my legs, to awaken into my familiar world. How long had I been gone? I sat for a long time thinking about this, trying to make sense of it.
I was on a retreat with a small group of women, camping in the jungle. Something very interesting had been revealed to me about my life during this week. I saw how most of my behaviors and decision were organized around a belief I held about myself. One I held so closely I could not even see it without the reflection of these wise and awake women. It was a belief that I did not deserve many of the things that had come my way in life. As I began to understand this tendency it created a lot of emotional release. Could it be that I had just stepped into the life where that belief was born. Had that life shifted because of my new awareness in this life? Can we change the past by changing the now?
As I shared my story with the group, one of the women spoke up and said she knew the castle. She knew the dungeon. She knew the boy. She was the boy.
The castle was near her hometown in France and she had been terrified of it from childhood. She suggested we go and visit it in the Spring,
As I sat in meditation and looked back upon this experience I began to understand that when the angel came to the aid of the girl, she made a different choice in that life, the choice to live. The angel uplifted my being as that small frightened girl and gave me courage to live. In my current life, the significance of processing that undeserving belief, seeing it and releasing it, allowed for the possibility of a new trajectory for me. It allowed for the girl to make a different choice in medieval France as well.
As I had begun to change through the realizations I was having, of course my future would change, But so would my past!
My life did change quite rapidly after this experience. I quickly became aware of the situations in my life that were being created by my belief that I did not deserve. I witnessed many of those situations change as I stopped feeding them with the belief that ‘I am not deserving’. My mother, whom I had been caretaking, died. The bank that was threatening foreclosure renegotiated my mortgage. I travelled to France for a month.
When I made it to the castle it was a chilly overcast day. As we rounded a curve in the road we could see the chateau high upon a hilltop. It was formidable with the ghosts of many souls still clinging to the stones. We entered the dungeon on stone stairs down into the earth. Once there I felt the child and my light-being self, the angel. I sat in meditation and felt the reunification of the three aspects of myself, and everything began to make sense.
The little girl was the daughter of the lord of that castle. The castle was attacked on a cold winter night while the lord was away with his army. It was an important stronghold sitting at the juncture of two valleys and passage through the French Alps. She grew up safely in that castle and lived a long life of influence in the region.
The futures of all three changed, all one and the same soul consciousness experiencing different points in time. These points all unified in one tiny instant in a space where the veils are thin, time is malleable, and awareness can be multidimensional
As I sat in meditation and looked back upon this experience I began to understand that when the angel came to the aid of the girl, she made a different choice in that life, the choice to live. The angel uplifted my being as that small frightened girl and gave me courage to live. In my current life, the significance of processing that undeserving belief, seeing it and releasing it, allowed for the possibility of a new trajectory for me. It allowed for the girl to make a different choice in medieval France as well.
As I had begun to change through the realizations I was having, of course my future would change, But so would my past!
My life did change quite rapidly after this experience. I quickly became aware of the situations in my life that were being created by my belief that I did not deserve. I witnessed many of those situations change as I stopped feeding them with the belief that ‘I am not deserving’. My mother, whom I had been caretaking, died. The bank that was threatening foreclosure renegotiated my mortgage. I travelled to France for a month.
When I made it to the castle it was a chilly overcast day. As we rounded a curve in the road we could see the chateau high upon a hilltop. It was formidable with the ghosts of many souls still clinging to the stones. We entered the dungeon on stone stairs down into the earth. Once there I felt the child and my light-being self, the angel. I sat in meditation and felt the reunification of the three aspects of myself, and everything began to make sense.
The little girl was the daughter of the lord of that castle. The castle was attacked on a cold winter night while the lord was away with his army. It was an important stronghold sitting at the juncture of two valleys and passage through the French Alps. She grew up safely in that castle and lived a long life of influence in the region.
The futures of all three changed, all one and the same soul consciousness experiencing different points in time. These points all unified in one tiny instant in a space where the veils are thin, time is malleable, and awareness can be multidimensional
