Past Life Stories

It is fascinating to speculate about who we may have been in a past life. And in fact there is a lot of useful information to be mined by delving into our past-lives. Information which can often be extremely helpful in assisting us in understanding the causes of challenges we are currently experiencing.

In her book, The Green Lady, book II, my dearest friend, Lisa Picard, creates a fictional account of the other lives of the mysterious Green Lady, guardian of the forest. Although it is fiction, the book provides much insight into the concept of past-lives and how every thought, word and deed in this life, echoes throughout all of our lives and the lives of others. We are indeed all inter-connected!

Below is an excerpt from The Green Lady, book II, by Lisa Picard.

If you are interested in discovering more about YOUR OWN past-lives, please visit the Past-Life Work page on zingdad.com/plw for further information.

Chapter 1: Betrayal of the Other

 

"Already sleeping on the job, I see," a gently mocking voice disturbed my slumber and I jumped to my feet, finding myself face-to-face with my green muse.

"No... not at all... Just meditating and mentally preparing myself to start writing your story," I grinned, abashed to be discovered at such a disadvantage, but relieved that she had decided to appear after all.  With a graceful wave of her hand, the Green Lady indicated that I should sit down again and she took up position on the moss-covered log where she had sat the previous week.  I removed my notebook and pen from my small daypack and made myself comfortable as small, multi-coloured bubbles of excitement fizzed up my spine and popped in my brain.  This was it!  I was finally going to find out more about the mysterious Green Lady of the forest.  And she had picked me to tell her story!

The Green Lady smiled, and I knew that she was completely aware of the thoughts chasing each other and playing hopscotch through my mind.  She waited for several minutes, giving me time to compose myself, before saying, "So, Peter, let's start with a story about betrayal.  Betrayal of the worst possible kind.  Betrayal of the unity of family and of the community."

"Is this story about you?  About where you originated?" I asked, my inner-journalist needing to place the story in context.  "And is it a true story?"

"It seems we will be beginning with a philosophical discussion," she smiled.  "Peter, whether any story is true or not actually depends upon your perspective.  All stories are true from some perspectives and, equally, all stories are untrue from other perspectives.  All self-aware beings fictionalise their experiences and, indeed, their lives.  We create stories that make sense of what we have experienced and that allow us to find meaning and value that will form the foundations for future stories we will tell ourselves about ourselves.  This is how we progress in life, creating our reality as we go, story-by-story.  There is no ultimately, objectively, true story; all stories are subjective."

"But, wait just a minute there," I objected.  "Of course there is an objective reality.  Something is either true or false, surely?  Sure, I can understand that we create subjective stories to explain our experiences to ourselves in our minds, but there must be one, absolute, ultimate, objective truth about everything.  This is what my career as a journalist has been all about - finding the truth!"

"And this is exactly the mistake most people make; believing that there is only one truth and that they are the only ones who know what that truth is!  Peter, there is no objective truth.  All truth is subjective and a matter of your unique perspective.  

At any given moment, you are being bombarded with millions of pieces of information about your world, and your physical senses will only pick up a fraction of a percentage of the information available to you.  If you picked up all the available information, your brain would probably explode!  

And do you know what the filter is that will allow you to retain some information and discard other information, without even being aware of doing so?  It is your beliefs, Peter.  Your thoughts about yourself and your world will determine what you perceive in the world.  Your perception is a function of your perspective, which, in turn, is the result of your thoughts.  This means that you will only ever observe in your reality that which supports the thoughts and beliefs you already have about the world.  

You truly don't see the world as it is, but rather, you see the world the way you are!"

"But... but surely we must be able to objectively observe what happens in our world?  I mean, for example, scientific instruments can very accurately record data about physical processes.  Surely those measurements aren't subjective?"

"Scientific instruments can only record what they are designed to record.  They can only measure what you humans believe is there to be measured.  And they are also limited by the skill and knowledge of their designers and the technology available at any given time.

And it's not only about recording the information with instruments or with your senses.  It's also about the interpretation of the information, which happens in the mind.  In fact, you don't see or hear or smell through your eyes and ears and nose; you actually see and hear and smell inside your brain and you interpret these inputs in your mind.  You are, in fact, experiencing your entire reality inside your own mind.  Reality is not 'out there', but rather, 'in here'," the Green Lady tapped her forehead to illustrate her point.

"OK... I've encountered these kinds of ideas before; like in the story of the three blind men and the elephant.  To the man holding the tail, the elephant is a piece of rope; to the man feeling the ear, the elephant is a piece of leather and to the man holding onto the leg, the elephant is a tree-trunk.  And to the flea on the elephant's back, the elephant is the entire universe.  But the objective truth is that the elephant is a massive, land-based mammal, living on planet Earth!"

"To some, Peter, an elephant would be viewed as an integral part of a complex eco-system; to others the elephant would be a food source; on a molecular level the elephant is a complex system of inter-related biochemical processes; on the sub-atomic level, the elephant is composed of particles, popping in-and-out of existence in an unimaginably vast field of space and, on the level of energy, the elephant is a standing wave pattern in the zero-point energy field.  All of these ideas about the elephant are true from one perspective, and, equally, untrue from another.  So, what is the elephant actually, Peter? Do you see that there is no objective truth about the elephant that is eternally valid from all perspectives for all time?"  

I was silent for a moment as my mind stretched to accommodate this new thought.  Then a further objection arose, "Uh, OK, I do get that.  But then... this seems to undermine all certainty we might find in our world; in our experiences.  Everything starts to feel rather ambiguous and rather frightening!"

"And the death of certainty is the birth of magic, Peter!  The magic of finding your own authentic truth about yourself and about the reality you inhabit, from your own, unique perspective.  And this is the process that will lead you home.  But we will be covering all this in greater depth during the next few weeks.  For now, just accept that it's pointless asking whether a story is true or not.

The better question to ask is this: is it a useful story?  And, in that case, I can unambiguously state that, yes, the story I will be telling you today will be a very useful story, as it will give you and your readers a glimpse into how I became the Green Lady, guardian of the forest."  

"But, is it a story about a past-life of yours?" I asked, struggling to understand her.

"There are no such things as past-lives, Peter," she smiled.

"Oh...  So, this is it then?  So there's nothing else besides this life, here now?  But, what were you before you became the Green Lady then?  I'm totally confused!"  I rubbed my eyes, feeling completely out of my depth.

She smiled at me and said, "Peter, I have had many, many lives and many diverse experiences, as have you, and as have all of your readers.  They are just not past-lives, as most people think.  Time does not exist outside of this unique, time-bound reality that you currently inhabit - it is all NOW.  Which means that there are many lives... and that they are all happening now.  

I can illustrate this point by using the ancient Buddhist metaphor of Indra's jewelled web.  It is said that in the abode of the Goddess Indra, there is a wondrous net that stretches into infinity in every single direction.  At each node of the net there is a multi-faceted, precious jewel and, since the nodes are infinite, the jewels are infinite too.  In each individual jewel, the infinity of all other jewels are reflected and these reflections, in turn, reflect all other jewels and so on... into infinity.  When any jewel in the net is touched, all other jewels are affected, which tells us about the inter-connectivity and inter-dependence of all things.  

The metaphor of Indra's net originated in the third century Mahayana School, but in more modern times the metaphor of a hologram has been used to indicate that each point is a reflection of every other point.  

As you know, a hologram is a three-dimensional image of an object, which is produced by recording on photographic film the interference patterns formed by a split laser beam.  These patterns are then illuminated to produce the three-dimensional image with which you will be familiar.  

Now, you know that if you were to tear a normal photograph into pieces, you would end up with image confetti; each piece representing only a part of the whole image.  However, if you were to break a hologram into pieces, each piece would contain the entire image, only from a slightly different perspective.  So, you can see that the hologram is indeed a useful modern analogy for Indra's web.

Now, using again the ancient metaphor of Indra's net, you can see the different lives of a spirit being as represented by the jewels in the net.  Each life reflects all the other lives and each life is affected by all the other lives too.  This means that a change made in one life will change the other lives as well.  All is inter-connected.  So, a change that you make in your life here, in this moment of now, ripples out and affects all other lives in the same moment of now.  This is such a wonderful thought because it means that everything that you do has infinite consequences.  Each thought, word and deed; every intent, can make a massive difference in all of your lives; in fact, in the lives of all other beings."  

"I actually find that thought completely and utterly terrifying!" I exclaimed, as the impact of what she had just said hit me.

"Well, it means that you need to become very conscious of what you are creating with your thoughts.  And that, until you do, you will continue to experience a random mix of what you might perceive to be good and bad things.  

But, before we get carried away with any further theories, let's just agree that I will be telling you a series of stories that will provide some context for understanding how I became the Green Lady, what my reasons for being the Green Lady are and what my purpose is here on Earth?"

"I can agree to that," I said, happier now that things were moving in a more practical, down-to-earth direction.

"So, as I mentioned before, this first story is about betrayal..."

And, with that, the Green Lady began to tell a wondrous tale, both strange and intriguing.  She spoke in words of English and yet, as she spoke, images appeared in my mind's-eye allowing me to clearly see what she related.  Here is the story she told - the story of the betrayal of the One.