By Ann von Dehsen, October 29, 2020 — Many years ago, my sister-in-law invited me to a class in Philadelphia entitled ‘Uncovering Your Past Lives.’ I wasn’t sure I believed in past lives but agreed to go. The leader put us into a semi-hypnotic state while telling us softly to imagine ourselves floating above the earth and looking down onto the world. He told us to just relax and go with it until we began to see images of a certain place or time period and imagine floating down into that time or place.
At first, I felt and saw absolutely nothing. [I remember] thinking “This is really dumb,” but eventually I saw some disjointed images, long-ago scenes of New York City with horse-drawn carts, crowded streets, and peddlers hawking their wares. I also saw a very large man, walking up a long flight of indoor stairs. About then, the leader of the class was gently guiding us out of our trip, telling us to sit up when ready. When I did this, I felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Now, some participants were now sharing their journey excitedly.
“Wow, I saw myself dancing the waltz in a palace!”
“I was on a ship with the Vikings!”
I could feel tears welling up in me and I quickly ran into the bathroom where I sobbed and sobbed until the end of the class. Pulling myself together, I went to my sister-in-law and told her what happened. I told her I did not want to attend the second and final week of the class. I was really freaked out because it was so unknown to me. It was a feeling of grief.
So time went on, and I tried to put it mostly out of my mind, but still occasionally wondered what event could’ve caused such sadness. Fast forward to a few years later and I worked with a woman who told me she had some psychic abilities and did general readings as well as past life readings. I told her I had attended that short-lived course but that I didn’t really come up with anything, and I also did not tell her about the images I saw or my overwhelming sadness, so I took her up on her offer of a free past life reading. She saw two past lives, and the first was something about a peasant girl and something about a large family somewhere out in France that really made no sense and the details were sketchy. But then she said she saw a second past life that was extremely sad and asked me if I was okay hearing about it and I said, “Yes, please.”
Basically, she told me I was a young mother living in New York City in the late 1800s with two young sons and we lived in a tenement housing building on the top floor. My husband was very large and treated me and my children roughly. Life was very difficult. One day my husband and I had a bad fight that emptied out into the hallway. He was very angry and he pushed me and I fell down the stairs, broke my neck, and died. So, you could take that for what it is, but I need to tell you that all my life, even as a kid, I have had a problem with my neck and to this day, I cannot go down the escalator unless someone I know is standing in front of me.
