Guatemala, early 17th century: Zoa, the leader who carried everyone

Three hundred years later I returned to the same land, this time as a man. My name was Zoa. I was the leader of my people, and I was also their shaman, priest and healer. Everyone came to me with their troubles, and I took my responsibility with complete seriousness. I worked closely with Mother Earth, and I held ceremonies for my people to keep peace, health and harmony among us.

At my side was my wife. She was the one who carried the greatest strength, quietly, from behind the scenes. I held the outward, masculine power to lead and to act. She held the nurturing, embracing and healing power, and in many ways she guided the tribe through me. Her soul is with me again in this life, as my daughter, and she carries the same wisdom.

What weighed on me most in that life was how much energy went into small dramas and needless conflict, and how easily people blamed others for what they did not want to look at in themselves.

I carried so much responsibility that I suppressed myself. I longed to rest, to play, to let the child in me live, but there was no room for that. I held ceremonies for everyone else, but rarely for myself. This is why balance matters so much to me now. I am learning to honor every part of who I am, and to know that the ceremony also lives within me.

Zoa showed me something more. What I did then was the same as what Jesus did: helping humanity. The Christ archetype has lived in every age and culture, in shamans, healers and wise ones whose names were never written down.

Wales, late 19th century: The child who held the light

I remember the house. It stood on its own by the sea, in the countryside, a little apart from everyone else. I can still feel the salt in the air and smell the sea and the damp earth around the house. I can see the light over the water and hear the waves. From the outside, everything was perfect. It was quiet, rural and idyllic, the kind of place you would think nothing could go wrong.

But inside the house lived a grief that filled every room. My mother and father lived in a deep state of victimhood. They could not find their own light. They carried enormous layers of sorrow, and their greatest longing was for children. My mother was pregnant somewhere between fifteen and twenty times. Some of the children died at birth, some lived a few months, and some lived a few years. I was the one who lived the longest, until I was thirteen.

The children died because the pain in that family was so great that it lived in our bodies. When we carry loss, grief and violation for a long time, a deep separation forms within us, and that separation closes us off from the light of God. These were karmic patterns we had chosen ourselves, so that we could learn to transform them.

I was a healer for my parents in that life. My soul had chosen to bring light into a home where the hearts were closed. But they were not able to receive what I, or any of my brothers and sisters, came to give. An open heart in a family of closed hearts is experienced as a slow death, a slow extinguishing of one’s inner light, and my body could only bear it for thirteen years.

Both of my parents from that life are with me again in this one. My father was my son Aleksander. We have both carried many layers of grief, through more than one life. My mother from Wales I have met again in this life, and she will return once more within my family.

Across three lives, I practiced carrying deep grief, and all three are connected to the life I live today. Now we are learning to transform it.