Persistent Thoughts, Deja Vu, and More -- Reincarnation

"Airport Clouds" ©Mary Montague Sikes

When I was a young child--four or five years old, I would lie in the grass and study the sky. Clouds were strange and amazing, I thought. They were beautiful and whimsical, and I wondered from where they came. What did they hide? What lay behind them in the far reaches of space?

I was an inquisitive and imaginative child and, strange as it might seem, I believed I once lived as the famous artist, Mary Cassatt. Where or why I developed such a belief, I do not know. After all, my mother was horrified by the mention of reincarnation. For her, it went against her Christian faith and background.

As a child, I don't recall anyone I knew who believed as I did. I don't even know where I first heard the word, "reincarnation".

Growing up, I put all those thoughts behind me. Then, the summer before my senior year in college, I traveled to Europe for a Methodist work camp project. While there, the group went from our Linz, Austria base to spend several days in Vienna. From the moment we reached those ancient city streets, I felt at home. It was as if I had strolled those avenues before and had entered the beautiful old buildings at another time. Years later, when I returned to Vienna, I experienced the same deja vu feelings.

Although it horrified several family members, I have always been fascinated by reincarnation and have wanted to hear every story that I can that relates to the subject. "It is not more surprising to be born twice than once," French writer and philosopher Voltaire said long ago.

Henry David Thoreau, an author I have admired from the first moment I read his words, said, "As far back as I can remember I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence."

He, too, heard the sounds of "a different drummer". I have forever loved the drummer quote.

So many great writers and personalities of the past are quoted with thoughts of reincarnation. Henry Ford is another. "Genius is experience," he said. "Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives."

I suppose my interest in reincarnation had to come out somewhere in my writing. In the 1980s and 90s, we traveled many times to Jamaica. On several occasions, we toured Rose Hall Plantation and the Rose Hall area. The story of the "white witch" intrigued me and inspired the writing of my reincarnation novel, Hearts Across Forever. This is the book of my heart, and it will be re-released soon.

Persistent thoughts, deja vu, and more. I'll be writing new reflections on this subject and my books in the next several weeks. I hope you will follow my thoughts.

"Airport Clouds, Jan. 2019" ©Mary Montague Sikes