The Lower World Delivers Stories from The Dead
Sometimes the Dead just want to share their memories
In a journey to the Lower World, the following scene came forward. It may be mine. It may be yours. It may simply be that the Dead love to tell their stories to anyone who will listen.
I'm climbing up a hillside with Crazy Woman beside me. If you need an image for Crazy Woman, think of Aughra from The Dark Crystal and add Coyote trotting by her side.
We are accompanied by a large white Hare hopping in front and racing to the back, running all over the place. At the top of the hillside, there are crows, tons of them swirling through the air; they are screeching and cawing loudly. Dead bodies are everywhere; smoke rises to the sky, groans of the dying and the wounded are deafening. Looming above the fray is a tall Celtic Warrior, well over 6 feet tall and muscular.
He wanders among the bodies taking jewelry and items of value. He is bloody and dirty; his hair is braided in multiple braids and black as the crows above. His beard is braided and woven with amulets and colored beads, and different yarns.
His dark eyes are flat and dead even though his body is still alive. He is a mercenary. He fights for those who pay the most, and he takes the spoils from the field, even from those he just fought beside. He is a hired gun from ancient times.
A Crow swoops through the air, and he shouts and ducks. It barely misses taking out his left eye. He, being a believer in the Gods, stops cold and freezes still. Seconds later, his body begins to shiver hard, shaking uncontrollably; he begins to keen loudly. He claws his chest and tears at his hair. He is unmade.
He melts down onto the ground. On his knees, he is frantically throwing all the items he has gathered onto the ground, out far into the field, heaving them across the bodies in a fury. He can't return them to the bodies because he didn't even pay that much attention to who he was taking from and what. He never looked at their faces.
Kneeling on the ground still, he throws up again and again even though there is nothing in his stomach but water and bile. His body still shaking and trembling, he strips naked he wants nothing that he has previously held. He stabs his sword into the ground, the pieces of his broken shield already left behind somewhere in the chaos.
His eyes are open.
His whole life has played out before him, money being his only motive. Goods, jewels, items of gold, anything that had monetary value, he would cut the throat of anyone for it. There was a fine line between him and the honor of a mercenary and the dirtiness of a street thief and cutthroat. Somewhere along his lifetime, he crossed that line.
All of the memories come crashing down on him, all of the awareness of his victim's final moments or the moments when they knew he had stolen from them and left them resourceless, hungry, and scared.
He had become cruel and saw himself as a predator, and those who got in his way were prey. It was their own blame to bear for having gotten in this way in the first place.
Silent now, he stands and picks up his clothing just enough to cover himself and walks away from the battlefield. He swears to the crows above he will never touch gold or coins again. Their shiny black eyes glitter, and they croak loudly at him.
The rest of his life is spent living off the land in the woods. He crosses the sea to live in the deep forests of Europe. Day after day, wandering and wandering. He does nothing to make amends, and the shame of his memories haunts him. He runs from the problem. He runs from himself. He is an empty husk wracked with guilt and sorrow.
In life, he believed this was appropriate punishment; however, after death, he realized it was cowardice. He never took responsibility. He never made things right in the places he could have. He didn't work and contribute to the community. He didn't pray and attempt to save his soul or find solace and forgiveness.
Instead, he set his eyes ahead of him and ran and ran until he died.
His legacy carried down in the DNA is the wound of shame and the pattern of avoidance. Until someone heals the pattern, the same cowardice, the same lack of responsibility, the same tendency to run rather than do the hard work of staying and making amends; repeats. Until there is devotion to doing good where there's good to be done for oneself and others, his legacy plays out the same.
Are you his descendant?
Are you running away from responsibilities and avoiding making amends?
When life gets tough, do you allow guilt and sadness to consume you and stop you from taking restorative actions?
Do you give Shame the power to derail your best intentions?
Is there a pattern like this in your family that nothing seems to shift?
The solution is simple. Ask to be shown if this is an ancient story running in your veins. Ask to be shown one small step you can take toward releasing the lineage from the chain of unresolved trauma. Ask for the resources and seek out help if needed.
From my book in progress, which doesn’t have a title that will stick to it yet!
XO,
LMW
P.S.
If you’d like a channeled reading, you can read about my Celestial Crystal Reports