The unfolding of these lives happened over about a two year period. Then I found the book, “The Life Everlasting” by Marie Corelli and it became one of my all-time favorites. One more:
I lived in Cuba and, though very young, was married to an older man, the commandant of the settlement where we lived. It was sometime ago. I was standing outside in a long dark dress; other people were milling about. A young soldier walked by and I could tell we were in love though we had never spoken. Nothing improper had ever happened but my husband was very jealous of him.
My husband had been out for some days with a company of men and was returning. I stood there and watched them ride in on horseback. The scene shifted. I was lying across a bed, naked and tied to the bed. He was standing beside the bed, picking up objects and hitting me with them. He wasn’t using great force, just enough to break my bones, but not too quickly. I looked through her eyes as he systematically broke every bone in my body, but felt none of the pain this time.
At first I kept thinking the young soldier would come and help me but as time passed I realized it wasn’t possible. I understood that some of my husband’s men were killing him. There was no help for either of us. All the other people in the settlement were in their homes letting it happen. As this sick man moved upon the bed toward me to make rape his final act of possession and contempt, I backed away inside myself, into darkness. My young life ended there as a body of broken bones. As I watched him I recognized him — he was my husband in this life. I had married him again.
Thinking of this past life led me to look more closely at my present life, with the same man. Whatever started back then wasn’t finished. I had already uncovered some of the mystery, enough to know he had an agenda and I was to be used to bring it about. It was completed and put in place before I realized what he was doing.
If there is something you treasure within you but want to hide it from yourself and others, you can build another personality right on top of it. It’s a psychological maneuver that has as part of it’s machinations, the probable destruction of another person, in order to cover the part of yourself that you feel is vulnerable. The person attempting it may be deadly. What I saw and finally understood was that he was a man with a web. I walked right into it and got stuck. He drained me of my essence on a daily basis while I fought for my life without fully realizing the enormity of the situation. Then he walked away whistling while I stood there in my bare bones. He used everyone and everything.
His cohorts helped him. They found laughter in the pain and anguish they caused. When he died I thought it would end. They were having too much fun to stop, finding entertainment in their antics. Hiding what they were doing just as he did. So adept at deception, all the while playing the victim themselves. At the time I didn’t know about the victim/victimizer personality.
It was a most complex situation that had to be seen and unraveled. As I was thinking about this early one morning, suddenly my dead husband appeared. I was struck by his eyes. He was a different man from the one who had died a few years earlier. He knew that I had uncovered what he had done; he may even have been waiting for it. What I found shocking was what was in his eyes this time. He was begging for forgiveness for what he had done. There seemed to be a close-up of his eyes and I could see the pain and sorrow his actions have caused him. He was imploring me to set him free. He needs to be forgiven; he won’t find peace until then. Whatever you do to others you have done to yourself. You are stuck with what you’ve done.
I wrote earlier that I saw I had to forgive him. I saw not only that I had to forgive him, but that I could. But I didn’t know how. Also, I didn’t see the situation fully at that time. Now I see that forgiveness is the only way to end two lifetimes of overwhelming antagonism.
A dam was opened and the tears flowed. Two days later it’s still happening. I have no more animosity toward him; it’s been washed away. The tears are like a cleansing. Writing about it is another step in the process.
Ojai22: Lessons Learned 