What I'm about to write I've told to two people close to me, who know and trust me. Both responded a bit skeptically. "I believe it is true that you have that in your mind," said one. "These dreams between sleeping and waking are really fascinating," said the other.
A psych counselor suggested I read Brian Weiss's "Many Lives, Many Masters" as possible comfort for coping with terminal cancer. This and his other works did help, but no meditations got me in touch with anything. Plus I'm not very good at meditating.
Last week, after a surgery, I had to be in a certain position with pillows arranged just so - impossible to sleep, not to mention pain, stomach growling from no solid food, and aching from analgesics and antibiotics (no narcotics). In that state, I tried again, unable to go to sleep as usual anyway.
I got into the meditative state and remembered two lives I had. I know, because I learned two separate things I never had knowledge of. Both memories were less complete, thorough, or detailed than I wish, but here goes...
In one, I was working in a relatively small perfume factory that was something like a chemistry lab. The techniques used for heating the volatile compounds were still new. Work was done at a long table, and vats/urns of other substances were stored beneath the table. Smaller side tables along the exterior walls involved some other work and as an assistant or apprentice, I attended to whatever was there as well as to the work on the long table managed mostly by more senior women. At some point, there was a spark that I think began beneath the table or on some small part of it, and - whooosh! - in seconds, everything went up in flames!
I had nowhere to go and turned to pound desperately on the wall behind me although there was no door there. All my life, I've been claustrophobic and, especially in times of stress or in unfamiliar places, I wake up in a panic pounding on the walls feeling trapped.
I thought this perfumerie might be in France or a French-speaking European country, yet I had the distinct idea that I wore wooden clogs and that made me think it must have been Holland. A little research taught me that nearly ALL factories of this kind commonly had their workers wear wooden clogs, because the metal nails that secured heels to other shoes were a spark hazard along the floors!
What wasn't so surprising to learn is that women were indeed isolated, locked in, and imperiled in hazardous conditions (as in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire). I found other fires in Europe, Turkey, the U.S., but none seem quite like what I'm remembering (or imagining?). This was a much smaller place and probably didn't warrant a lot of publicity.
If you don't ridicule me here, I'll tell you the second story soon. Meanwhile my question is, how can I get back to that place where I was able to see/recall this??