THE 5TH LIFE

I am currently 30 years old. I have come to conclude, by leaning on my own understanding, that I am living my 5th life as a human on earth.

This is contrary to everything I was taught by my Christian culture, my parents, my school – I was raised to believe that God made me for this one life alone, and that when I died, if I was a good person and repentant of my mistakes, I would be rewarded with eternity alongside God.

And I was content to believe that.

I had no evidence to the contrary, besides the scientific-atheist argument drummed into me at school. Believing in a life after death, and that bad people would be punished at some point for their wrongdoings, was more interesting and beautiful to believe than just accepting a pointless, single, physical existence with no real consequences at all. I was taught to rely on faith in God's plan outlined in the Bible, and to not question that faith due to outside worldly influences.

But then, in high school, at about age 16, I had a “dream.”

And that dream was so disturbing to me, that when I woke up, I rushed to write it down, afraid I would forget it quickly like so many others. Oddly enough, I remembered it in vivid detail, and still do, to this day years later.

What disturbed me was that when I awoke, I had the distinct feeling that this “dream” was not a dream. I felt like I had been forced to see something real. Something important.

And I would like to share with you that “dream.”

As I slept, I was definitely in a pointless, REM-sleep typical dream, to start off.

I was in a black colored car with my high school friend, driving on a dirt road during the daytime. Then, the car slipped on the gravel and slid to the side, becoming stuck. We stepped out of the car to assess the damage. My friend knelt to look at the tire while I stood on the side of the road in the grass, hands in my coat pockets for warmth.

As I stood there, patiently waiting for her assessment, I was distracted by a young boy, who suddenly walked up to us from the field at the bottom of the embankment.

This is where the “dream” became heavy. And there was a feeling that this was unusual and not a part of my head’s plan for the evening.

He was half my height, and I judged him to be about 10 years old. He had dark short hair, and dark eyes, but rather pale skin, and he struck me as rather serious and not prone to smiling. He wore trousers and a shirt under a button-down vest. I thought to myself that he dressed like someone in early industrial Europe who wasn’t doing anything fancy for the day and had no need to dress up to impress. Yet he still dressed and carried himself in a very haughty and polished way, making me think he definitely wasn’t a lower-class individual.

He walked up to me, looking me in the eyes very seriously, and introduced himself. I introduced myself, to which he nodded. He said to me, in a rather grown-up way for a 10-year-old, “I need to show you something. Follow me.” He turned about, and began to walk back down the hill into the grass. I hesitated briefly, afraid to leave my friend and the car, but as he was just a boy and I was much older than him, I soon let curiosity take over and began to walk after him.

I followed the boy through a field of green grass. It was foggy, and I do not recall there being a distinct background to the field. But the young boy led me straight to a small mound in the center of the field, with an open door and some crumbling steps leading down into the earth. He entered first, and I followed him without hesitation. I felt no fear of the situation, oddly. Only trust.

The stairs were short. At the bottom, we found ourselves underground in a small chamber. The chamber had a low ceiling just a foot above our heads, with roots of plants growing their way through its' many cracks. The chamber walls were crumbling and the paint was peeling – it looked like a forgotten ancient room that once had been quite bright and cheerful.

In the main center of the chamber was a pool of water, only a few feet deep. And inside the pool of water, a young woman’s body floated, face down, hair spread in the water. Dead. Drowned.

I stood on the edge of the pool staring at her floating body, horrified, and oddly sad. The boy stood next to me. He looked at her dead body with an almost stern acceptance. I felt that he too was sad at her drowning, but not nearly as shocked as me. I turned to him, asking, “Who is she?”

He turned to face me, meeting my gaze frankly. “She is you.”

I didn’t understand.

He pointed to her. “She is me.”

I still didn’t understand.

He pointed at himself. “I am you.”

I think my mouth was hanging open. I still didn’t understand, but I felt like I was starting to, and it frightened me even in my dream.

As we stood there, staring at each other, the dead woman floating in the water next to us, a tall-yet-thin man in a black suit came into the chamber from a small alcove that had been hidden until now. The tall man came up behind the young boy, bowing slightly. “Master - , it is time to go now.”

The young boy who had led me here sighed audibly, as if he was annoyed at the interruption to our conversation. “I have to leave. You can return to the car,” he told me, very calmly. He turned and began to follow the manservant into the alcove, disappearing into the wall.

I stared at where they had gone for a few moments, before I did as I was bid and left the chamber, walking across the field to the hill, climbing it to the waiting black car.

In my absence, my friend had called a tow-truck, and they were pulling it out of the gravel hole it had fallen into. “Where did you go?” She questioned me when I returned to her side. I told her I had followed the boy. She hadn’t seen him, or seen me leave. I told her his name. She raised her eyebrows. “Isn’t that the name of that famous author?” She quipped to me.

And here is where my “dream” – as I remembered it – ended.

I may have fallen back into REM-sleep at this point and dreamed pointless, forgettable dribble. If so, I can’t remember that. All I can remember is meeting the boy, the chamber, and the girl floating in the water.

When I awoke, I rushed to find paper and pen, to write down the young boy’s name. I had hoped to research the name in real life, to see if he really had been an “author” and if I could find a picture that would match the appearance I had seen in my dream. Alas, the specific name was the only thing that slipped from my head like sand between fingers. Perhaps it wasn’t important for me to know his name.

After this, whenever my brain had a moment to itself in the coming months, I obsessed over this “dream.” A dream I felt like wasn’t a dream at all, but a message, a lesson, an important understanding that God wanted me to understand about myself for my future development.

What I concluded from this dream was this:

I have lived several lives on earth already.

I once lived as the drowned girl. I don’t know much about her, other than how she died. I don’t know if her drowning was suicide, murder, or accidental, although that pool of water was only a few feet deep. She had red hair, and I sensed she may have been in her later 20’s or early 30’s when she died. I’m guessing, due to the masonry of the pool of water, that she lived in a more ancient culture without electricity. I’m not sure if the chamber was a bathing room or a drinking water cistern, but it could have been either.

Oddly enough, I had a terrible fear of drowning when I was very little. I remember feeling viscerally afraid of the water scenes in the TITANIC movie and could never keep watching once the ship started sinking. I had a panic attack as a child at a water theme park when I was briefly stuck under an inner-tube. I wonder if this innate fear of drowning is tied to a soul-remembrance of her drowning.

I once lived as the young boy. I have described him for you already, so I won’t say much more. I do not know how he died – I get the sense that he lived to be an adult, and would have had to, if he truly did write a book or two that had any prominence. I also had the impression that he was very intelligent, more so than myself currently.

Two lives, introduced to me in a “dream” that I didn’t seek to have.

After I awoke, I felt like I knew them, and I felt sad for having remembered them. For knowing that shattered by carefully placed foundations of who I thought I was and who I thought I was supposed to be. It forced me to question my family, my church, and therefore question what was God. I had to come to the conclusion that my life now, in the 21st century of the United States of America as a female, is merely my latest one. And there is a good chance it doesn’t have to be my last.

I have over the years come in contact with many people who have the same sense of having past lives, and have read of philosophies and religions that believe in some form of reincarnation. There are even variations in the scientific community who believe in alternate realities and that this world may be a simulation.

I think all of these opinions are different ways of viewing the truth of what many are instinctively feeling. Or, being led to believe by a higher consciousness. I love to read and listen to other individual's experiences, as many are different and sometimes similar to my own.

We are infinite, and we are here, on this physical plane called the Universe, to learn, to create, to experience. The question is, why? Who started this? What’s the point or the goal for this cycle of rebirth and death? Who showed me this?

Besides this dream, I have had other experiences take place in my so-far 30 years of life that have led me to believe that there is more to this world than meets the physical eye. I plan to write about them as well, in future posts here on Vocal. I have never felt like there was anywhere to share my experiences before outside of close friends, until now.

If you are keeping tally, I have only told you about 2 of my past lives, which were revealed to me in my teens in this one dream.

The other 2 past lives that I am aware of demand their own posts.

Stay tuned, for “The General” and “The Red-Coat Shot Me.”

Thank you! - Ruth H. Curry