Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. ~Mark Twain, American author and Humorist
Here is an interesting thing that occurred recently. It only lasted about eight minutes, but it seemed like several days…
I was lying in bed, just getting to what I call the twilight place. It is that place between sleep and awake where you begin to have very surreal thoughts and scenes pass through your mind, but you are also aware of your “self” and thus technically still awake. (This is the place that astral travelers and people who practice lucid dreaming are able to maintain.)
Anyways, I became aware of an open field, or clearing, in which I was standing with a muddy garden and a small run-down hut off to my right. It was just about sunset in this clearing. There was a woman crying off to the edge of the clearing and she was looking down at the ground. I approached her and gazed down to try and see what was upsetting her so much.
When I did, I was looking into a deep hole and gazing straight into the blank, open eyes of a man who was stone cold dead. I got freaked (as one does) and just about lost my connection to the scene and this woman.
But I reminded myself of something that Erin Pavlina said to me when we had talked on the phone, “Allow yourself to be startled by what you are shown, but do not allow yourself to become frightened by it.”
I slowly calmed myself and pulled myself back into the scene. I mean, I was being shown this for a reason and I had to stay present long enough to figure out what that reason was.
I came back to the place and looked down into the grave hole again.
The man was clothed in a ripped and worn woolen tunic and leather breeches. There was also a very cheap and tarnished bit of chain mail in the hole beside him.
His eyes were wide open, staring blankly up into the cascading tree canopy that leaned over the edge of the clearing.
In those eyes I could see shock and pain, but not the normal confusion of the recently deceased.
The woman, whom I took to be this man’s wife, said to me, “He is lost. He is bound and cannot be free. I fear for his soul.”
She followed this up with, “He has suffered enough. Can not you help him?”
At this point, I became aware of this man’s spirit watching us from just inside the forest a few yards away. I stepped a bit closer to him and asked him, “Why aren’t you able to move on?” Suddenly, it was just myself and this spirit, and the clearing seemed to have gone dark, like the sun had set.
The spirit raised his arm slowly and pointed to a place just the other side of his grave and pronounced wistfully, “HE won’t let me .”
As I turned, there appeared another spirit, that of a very burly, muscular man in leather and metal armor. He was standing with his feet spread wide and his arms crossed, as if guarding a doorway. He looked to be stubborn and was clearly quite angry.
I looked back and forth at the two of them several times. It was obvious that there was a strong relationship here, but that it was not due to family relation or friendship at all.
Finally, I walked closer to the burly spirit and the other spirit followed me, allowing me to be the one standing between the two of them. “Why are you preventing him from passing the veil?” I asked the second spirit. He answered quite snidely, “Because he did this to me.”
“He killed you?” I asked. “Yes. He shall never know peace.” He replied.
The first spirit explained to me, “It was in battle.”
Instantly, I received a vision of what had happened between the two men on the battlefield:
The burly man was part of an invading party (I think that they were Viking or something similar) and the other man was one of a smaller group of defending locals. I believe he would be considered Saxon.
When the invaders ran at the the line of the local men, assembled on one side of the battlefield, the line broke chaotically. Some men ran forward into the fray with their weapons drawn. Some ran forward blindly with their eyes shut. Some men turned and ran back away from the battle and others simply stumbled backwards, falling all over each other.
It was a bit like Braveheart with Vikings, but with much less choreography and less obvious valor.
The burly Viking was not in a position of weakness, but the Saxon man was. He was encircled and surrounded by five or six foes. Like the bottle in a game of Spin the Bottle… he just kept spinning in circles, pointing his weapon outward and striking anything that he could.
The Viking was several yards away, further in the fray, dominating his enemies quickly and continuing to move on to the next. Suddenly, he pushed into the circle surrounding the Saxon.
In a flash, this smaller Saxon man ran the Viking straight through with his sword. The Saxon was equally as surprised as the Viking that he had run him through. It all happened so quickly and without any other focus or intent on the part of that Saxon than protection and survival.
The Saxon was immediately aware of what had happened and, while saddened at not having had the chance to face the man eye-to-eye when he killed him, this Saxon man was relieved when he realized what happened. For, looking at the size and the fierceness of this Viking, he knew that if he hadn’t gotten lucky then he would be the one dead.
After seeing this vision, I instantly returned to the scene in the now dark field with me standing between the spirits of these two warriors.
The Saxon man explained, rather demurely, “I was in the right.”
While he said this, I saw flashes of the life that he had lived since this battle. It had been about fifteen years or so since he had killed the Viking and in that time he had suffered sadness and illness. This Saxon, through his own memories and through the influence of this Viking’s energy around him, had been tortured. He had simply gone quiet, become uninvolved in life and withered away.
The Viking said, “My children have had no Father and my wife no Lover. And he is to blame.”
I replied, “There is no blame in the heat of battle. What transpires simply is.”
I asked the Viking, “Did you want to fight?”
“I was made to fight. My chief said it was necessary to feed our people.” came his reply.
Then I turned to the Saxon and asked him, “Did you want to fight?”
“Of course not,” came his remarks. “I had to fight. We had to protect our homes and our families.”
“So who was in the wrong?” I asked them both.
Neither articulated an answer.
“You both chose to go to battle,” I continued. “And you both chose it for what you believed were good reasons.”
“Is that fair to say?” I asked turning to look at both of them separately.
The Viking replied in a low voice with, “Yes,” while he looked at the ground.
Then the Saxon said, “I concede that.”
Now I knew that I could get these two spirits to reconcile so that they could both move on.
I knew the Vikings’ concerns, so I turned to him first. “Your brethren have ensured that your family was well provided for, haven’t they?” (I only asked this because I already knew it to be true.) “Yes, they are good men,” he stated.
“They have acted as fathers and mentors to your children?” I asked. The Viking shook his head in a yes motion.
“And your wife is not alone. Is she?” I asked him.
“Not entirely, no.” He replied.
I took another moment to explain to the Viking that by remaining Earthbound, just to seek revenge upon this other man, he had actually weakened his own spirit and disturbed his own progress. “Would your loved one’s want your valor to be wasting away and your soul lingering in unhappiness?”
“Perhaps not.” he said thoughtfully.
Turning back to the Saxon I inquired, “Did you feel sorry for killing him in the battle?”
He nodded his head “Yes”. “After the battle, when I returned home, I thought of the many that I had wounded and the few that I had killed.” He explained. “It was to the passion in this man’s eyes that my mind always returned.”
“How have you suffered?” I asked him.
“My passion has gone from me, my energy slowly faltered and left me here in this grave. I knew it was him. For stealing his passion, mine was lost as well.” he said.
“Do you worry now for your wife and children?” I queried.
“Yes,” he said. “Especially my wife. She makes herself unwell with fret for me and for food to keep them all fed.”
Turning once again to the Viking I stated, “He has suffered as well. Can’t you see how you are no different? That you are ONE and the SAME?”
I continued, “What does this grudge serve now that he has joined you on the paths of the dead? What do you hope to achieve by holding you both here?”
Then an amazing thing happened…
I saw this formerly bitter man send his energy into that of the other man via the location of the heart chakra. I saw him accept this man as an equal and as his brother.
His energy eventually came back to its own and then the Saxon did the same with his energy, accepting this would-be conqueror as a simple man and father just like himself.
After this, both of their energies became lighter and brighter.
I looked at them both with a somewhat wry smile and said, “Now that you have relinquished your physical hurts, you are free to move into the spiritual realms. When you are ready.”
It may sound cheesy to some (although it was actually quite beautiful), but these two spirits then stood shoulder to shoulder, at peace and unfettered by human emotion.
They turned and walked into the fog just beyond the line of trees that lined the field behind the hut. They had passed the physical realms as ONE.
Almost immediately, I was drawn back to the woman standing, at twilight, over the grave of her beloved and beleaguered husband.
She allowed one more tear to fall, raised her head slowly up to look at me, and asked, “Has he found joy again at last?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Yes, he has.”
