I'd like to begin by thanking you all for your kind responses to my post yesterday. My grandmother was a very special woman...perhaps she was so wise because she was already a crone when I was born, but she was also a mother figure to me, someone who was always there for me when my own mother was too busy. I spent so much time at grandma's house, I can still close my eyes picture it today. And I can also remember the good times I had. Such wonderful childhood fun, but was this fun and the fantasies that went along with it just that? Or was there something more to it. Could I have been given a clue as to a past life?
I was obsessed with old west...cowboys, horses, the old saloons....everything about it...and it was all so vivid to me. As a child I spent hours and hours outdoors riding my trusty horse...Sowdy. Where the name came from, I do not know....and my Sowdy was really nothing more than my grandmother's old brown broom, but it was so special to me. I rode that horse broom all afternoon and when the rains came, I moved my play into the basement which became an old saloon. I played about the old west with both my paper dolls and my dolls. I rarely played anything else. I had a whole scenerio which I went over each night before I went to sleep, and once I fell asleep, the old west filtered in. It was never cowboys and Indians, though. It was just about a person and the life they lived, nothing more. And to me, it was real.
It may be nothing more than a lonely child's fantasy play, but the truth is, that many of the fantasies that we acted out in our childhood play were an outward expression about oneself. Could it be that some of our childhood play fantasies expressed an idea that came from a time before our birth? Can they really have their source in a previous life? The famous psychologist Carl Jung believed so. In his book "Memories, Dreams and Reflections" he writes that, as a boy, he recalled in great detail that he was once an old man in the 18th century. Great book, by the way. I love Jung and am so intrigued with his idea of the archetypes.
They also say that up until a certain age children can remember bits and pieces of former lives which possibly explains our invisible friends. But parents and other well-meaning figures in our lives determine that these are ideas we have to let go so as we grow up, our past life memories fade away. I am just wondering what your ideas are on this subject, and if you have any childhood play fantasies you would like to share.
My very first memory is asking my Mom where my toy car garage was. (I must have been about 3, I think). She said I had no such toy but I was insistent because I absolutely knew I did. She said I must have just dreamed it the night before, but I knew I did not. I made her go and look for it because I was so certain it existed. Now I wonder if it was a fragment of a memory from a recent past life -- perhaps of a child who had died young?
ReplyDeleteThe memories are strongest for those that come back quickly...and children who pass on usually do come back quickly.
ReplyDeleteMy younger neice insisted she was a boy from a very young age (too young to really understand the difference between girls and boys.) She may have even told us her name. I wish I had spent more time discussing this with her. That was 9 years ago though, and I was less enlightened back then! Now I realize that she was probably remembering peices of who she was.
ReplyDeleteOhhhhhhhh, how interesting. I had an invisible friend as a little girl. I think he was a boy, because that's the impression I remember and... His name was "Buzzuzz." Hardly a girly-sounding name. ,-) And he had kind-of-a-mop of dark hair. :-)
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should add Jung's "Memories, Dreams and Reflections" to my library list... Thank you for tapping into this memory, for me.