old soul

months ago, KD told me of her visit to a medical intuitive/healer her mom asked her to go see. she was skeptical and felt the whole new-age, aura cleansing, chakra-aligning movement was a sham, at best. but her mom believed in it so she went to appease her. she was amazed at what happened to her.

she told me about the procedure - the mimed-movements that meant he was ridding her body of past things that were preventing her from moving forward - and i laughed at the absurdity of it. but then she told me the things he said to her - how he asked her questions about events and people that she didn't tell him about. he didn't name names but he wasn't taking a blind stab at things either, hoping that he at least got one thing right. while i don't think she bought into everything he had to say, by the end of the session, she definitely believed there was something to him.

and of course, that made me curious. so i made an appointment to see him. this was at the end of march and my appointment finally came yesterday.

my first e-mails to him increased my skepticism - he had a full-time job working at the airport as a branch manager for a parts company so he only healed on saturdays. a bit sketchy, don't you think? but i went anyway because, if anything, i could at least say i tried it.

the appointment was an hour and a half long. the first 45 minutes, i'd say, were just spent talking. he told me about himself and how he got into healing and then he asked me questions about me, starting with census-type questions (birthday, where do you live, what do you do for a living), then hobbies (reading, writing, music) and then he asked me about what kind of work and personal stress i was feeling. for work, i told him that the only stress i had was that i was no longer sure i had chosen the right career path. he suggested i look into something that aligned more with my interests, like writing. specifically, he suggested i look into technical writing as a career - and as you know, i looked into that months ago. coincidence.

i didn't really know what to answer when he asked me about personal stress. i don't really have any. so i said, "the only thing i am stressed about personally these days is that i'm getting older!" as i expected, he rolled his eyes and laughed. but i then explained why i was stressed about getting old: that subconsciously, i've always seen myself as someone who had always existed. i don't remember much of my childhood so it felt as if it never happened. i live in the present and try hard to look to the future, but it's difficult because i feel as though the future is my present (that makes no sense to you but i understand it in my own head). my stress lies in the fact that, as i am getting older, it is really starting to sink in that i am alive - that i'm a living, breathing person that is going to get old and die one day. a few years ago, i never truly believed that. it felt like i was a character in a movie and on TV that ceased to exist when other people were not around. i know, that's really weird, but i never really saw myself as anything else.

i was frustrated because i couldn't explain it better to him, but he nodded wisely, picked up this necklace-looking thing, held his hand up, closed his eyes, and let the necklace-thing swing freely from his hand. a moment later, he nodded his head, opened his eyes, put the necklace-thing back on the table and said, "you're an old soul, level 7."

i laughed because i've been described as a old soul for most of my adult life. but i said to him, "what exactly does that mean?" he went on to explain the different types of souls (infant, baby, mature, old) and that each soul-type has seven levels. he then showed me a book that i could read if i wanted to learn more about it. but he said that basically, an old soul level 7 (that's me!) has lived upwards of probably 300 past lives and once you get to the level that i am apparently on, life and everything about it seems very ho-hum - like i've lived it all before and why do i need to go out and experience it again? and i laughed again because that's how i feel about most things. he then said to me, rather matter-of-factly, "you've had a pretty easy life, haven't you? haven't had to work too hard for things and haven't had to suffer too much compared to some other people?" and i laughed again and agreed. he said that old souls always come back as something easier because why would they want to live a hard life when they've already lived several dozen lives already? he said i probably had a few karmic issues to deal with in this life (that's why i came back) and then, at the end of my life now, i will either choose to descend to a higher plain (my words, not his) or find yet another life to live. he said that old souls like me are just here on this earth to have some fun, because we've already lived life and experience hardships in previous incarnations. maybe i should start having fun more often!

okay, so maybe he's just good at reading people. maybe he could tell by the way i spoke and carried myself that i'm an old soul. but then, the healing portion began. i didn't tell him anything about me physically. and at one point, he was holding his hands on either side of my stomach and said, "did you have kidney problems in the past? kidney disease or tumours maybe?" i laughed and said, "i only have one." he nodded. he then moved both hands over my left side and said, "but there's a mass of scar tissue surrounding the area where it was supposed to be." at this point, my skepticism melted away. i told him, "well, it's still there but it shriveled up." he said it's still functioning, although obviously not as well as the other one. he also diagnosed my iron deficiency. he didn't see my uterine problems, which i thought was funny, but maybe it's because they were busy working at the time. i am still skeptical, of course, but how on earth could he have known that: a) i had a kidney issues; b) that it was on my left side; c) that it was actually still there but just shriveled up. there's a way to play the odds and make educated guesses but this one was just too weird.

he then told me about a couple of my past lives (which is what i was mostly interested in). i was a balloonist in the first world war and my balloon was shot down by an enemy plane and i fell to the earth in a ball of flames and died on impact. hence, he says, my apprehension of heights and the fear that my house is going to catch fire (doesn't everyone have that fear though?). another life was that of a starving child in Africa. i died in childhoold. he said that was probably why i always made sure i was never hungry (was that a crack at my ever-increasing waistline?!?). i want to know more about my past lives. regardless of whether or not it's true, i think it will help me understand why i am the way i am - all those weird, funny things that i do.

i also had a crying moment where he guessed about something i had suffered in my past. he said that i still had a lot of anger and blame at myself so he was going to "get rid of it" for me so that i could finally open up myself to love and be loved again. an "ah-ha" moment, as harpO would say.

at the end of the session, his disclaimer was simple: the healing process involved a little bit of him, a little bit of a Higher Power, and a whole lot of me. in essence, like any counselling i receive, whether it be from a therapist or self-help book or a healer like him, ultimately it's me that has to do something about it.