This is why I am constantly going from one past life to the other these days. Sometimes I feel like in the Cold War, due to the feeling of fear, the existence of spying neighbours and the police halting me everywhere to control my movements. Other times I go to the Second World War, due to that uncomfortable feeling that, once more, I am being robbed my future and the chance to, simply, live and be happy. I wish they would let me do it at least once. Please.
I can’t stop thinking about the songs in "Stationary Traveller" by Camel, as they describe so well the situation we are living now. What started with surprise and stupor, with the incredulity we had to live through this in XXI century, such restriction of personal freedom, is gradually transforming in an anxious normality mildly accepted by everyone.
Well, I was up to this, when I decided to meditate one of those days. And I went right to the time I was a nursing student in Prague, an innocent youth no older than 15 or 16, still dreaming of working in something interesting that would give me the economic independence I needed. Though I always doubt a lot about the accuracy of dates, this time the year 1936 came to me very strongly. Soon after, Czechoslovakia was occupied by the German. I suppose war would paralyze everything, the same way the alarm state paralyzes everything now, and I saw with amazement how everything around me started to change. I was not the owner of my future anymore. My hopes and dreams would be seized by the men who make war and decide who must die and who must live. I had no other option than keep on living and adapt to the new circumstances. And, like now, there were people who encouraged me, while I was beginning to see it all black and without knowing started to fall into the claws of the worst of depressions.
Soon after the German Army entered Prague, crowds line the street as a parade of German Panzerkampfwagen II light tanks passes. The salute is taken by General Freiherr Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, Commander of 3rd Tank Division of the German Army. Note the Nazi flags flying from the buildings. (Original print held in AWM Archive Store).
Source: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C298334
But, as I have never talked about that period in my blog, first I am going to go back and at the end I will describe the most recent of these regressions. I have so much material that I am forced to divide this entry in three parts. And as I have focused on the hospital, I am going to leave aside other events, quite traumatic, that occurred during the war.
One of my first memories of the hospital, quite fuzzy, was this:
«I saw myself as a nurse again, walking up to a quite solemn building, which I think is the military hospital. But this time I didn’t feel it was my first day of work, I was still studying. Herr Yuriev (if that’s his name) could be one of my teachers, with whom I end up working. Besides the typical nurse uniform, I am carrying a bag that reminds me of the shoulder bag I used in my faculty days, and a doctor bag on my left hand, and a dark cloak that goes down to my knees, more or less. I wonder if it is normal I wear a uniform if I am just a student. And in a given moment I know I wear an armband on my right arm (not exactly in that moment, but we use to wear it when we are working), detail I also “felt” in the first regression and associated it to the possibility of being Jewish, but now I think it is the Nazis’ swastika (though I have also thought it could be the red cross of sanitary personnel, like the one we carry in the jeep). It comes to my mind that the hospital/faculty/school is in Prague. My rational part then thinks that we are in Czechoslovakia (Austria also comes to me at some point)… though another part of me insists no, it is Czech Republic. I don’t know if this is because it is so currently, or because back then it had not really joined with Slovakia yet. In any case I think we are allied with the Nazis (German), I belong to some kind of Army Corps of Nurses, and that is why my fiancé or future fiancé somehow ended up in this hospital.»
(Regression 18-3-2012.)
«I suddenly found myself walking on a paved highway, I’m going on the right side and I see trees faraway. It is as if it is a street that leaves the city and goes to the outskirts. I had no idea what I was doing there. I tried to advance a little but I failed, so I tried to leave the scene… but I suddenly saw the highway again, and at the end, in a curve to the right, a military truck that has just appeared and comes towards me: not too big, with a long nose, greenish colour… and I get scared. I know something is going wrong. Now I know I’m heading to the hospital, but I don’t understand what’s going on. The truck passes by my side, in the back of the truck there go a few soldiers, looking backwards, with their weapons in hand (I don’t see them very clearly, but certainly they are not carbines... they look more like short machine-guns, black colour). Greyish-greenish uniforms, helmet. One of them stares at me when they pass, but they say nothing. I lower my head and walk on, wondering what’s going on. I fail to understand.
At that point I think I have got blocked, as when you know something bad happens and you don’t want to see it. My heart raced and it was very hard for me to relax again. Single and somewhat fuzzy scenes started coming to me, but all tinted with a grey and dark colour, full of fear and sadness. I am in the city (supposedly Prague, year 1939), I see a very clear image of a street with a poodle between sidewalk and driveway. I see kneeling men with their hands on their head, staring at the wall, with soldiers at their backs aiming at them. One of them stares at me too, as if waiting for me to go away so that he can finish his task. I see crowds of normal people, working people, being cornered by the soldiers that charge against them, I see a tank in the middle of the street… During all this time I wonder why I am not a part of all of it, why the soldiers don’t do anything to me. The only thing I turn up with is that I am uniformed and identified somehow, and they know I am not going to revolt (?)… This reminds me I have also seen myself pushed against a wall and searching my handbag for an ID card or something similar.
As at that point I already know I am part of that “Nurse Corps” (the word "Korpsse" or similar comes to mind), and somehow I “feel” as quite rigid, as if I was a real military woman (though I don’t know to which extent I have received military instruction, I don’t know f I can handle weapons), more than a nurse and that’s all.
I’m back at the hospital. Things have changed. I know some of our soldiers have died and now we are at the service of other soldiers, that are German. We have to cure their injured soldiers. I think there are some high-ranking men that watch us closely and treat us quite rudely… I suspect they have hurt Dr. Yuriev (if that’s his name). Working here is now like Hell… and having to cure soldiers that have invaded us creates a certain inner conflict.
Anyway, the situation was still somewhat confusing. I tried to relax a bit more, but I was about to quit when the most impressive and emotional (and surprising) scene came. I was working, filled with sadness and tension, as it is not easy to work being constantly watched… and filled with hatred too. Then I see myself treating the wounds of a youth that is sitting on a bed. He must be between 20 and 25 years old, I’d say closer to 20. His right arm is in a sling, and a few stitches have been put on his low back. I am sitting behind him, with a metallic tray near with the instruments. I doubt whether he’s wearing a T-shirt or not, or if he has put it up a bit. Here the feeling is of absolute indifference, he is just a patient. I rub him with a sponge (I think with more strength than necessary, with resentment and no remorse). He complains. I tell him it’s necessary to clean it well, and keep on rubbing. Then I move to the front side, I don’t know if it’s to check the arm. I barely look at his eyes. Then I don’t know what happens exactly: maybe he takes my hand and makes me stop, or maybe he takes my chin, or he simply calls my attention somehow, and I look at him. I think he says something about my eyes or perhaps something about me smiling, so he will heal more quickly. But it is then, when I stare at his eyes, that that undeniable and powerful recognition takes place, and I know it is H again… And unable to control myself, I start crying again here and now, my lips trembling, exactly as the first time he turned up in the regressions, it is as if all that sadness Katrina felt at that moment disappears and she could only see, at a spiritual level, that someone very dear has turned up in her life again. This is very hard to explain, as it occurs at two levels: on one side, Katrina. Obviously she has no memories of previous lives (most likely), and she doesn’t know who this boy is in reality. She only knows there is something special in those eyes and that glance. Of course, this boy doesn’t look like Jan: he’s blonde (but it’s a different blonde, not as blonde and not with such a fine hair as Jan’s), hair shaven on the back, and fringe, a longer face, and blue eyes. But it is as if there is some kind of superposition with Jan and some of the expressions are common. But, above all, it is through the eyes that this recognition takes place. And, at a higher level, my higher self, what my subconscious knows at that moment, it is I have met my soulmate again, as it was planned. And this boy will be important in my life as Katrina.
Of course, all this, in Katrina’s life, takes place in just a second. I think he makes me smile slightly, and I think he is such a handsome boy. But he is a German soldier. I tell him he has to rest and I am as cold as I can with him… at least for now. I keep working as if nothing has happened. And I couldn’t go on because I couldn’t stop weeping, half because of the emotion, half because of the joy. Because life is really magical if it is true we can go and come back from the afterlife and again meet the ones we most care about, sharing all kind of lives and feelings together.»
(Regression 30-3-2012.)