Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Double Life

I had a lot of fun in elementary school. Although I sometimes felt 'different' inside, I played a lot with my friends. At those times, I never had much 'trouble' with being 'different'; that usually started when I was alone and relaxed.

It was roller-skating time, and we put our roller skates on under our boots. We deliberately caused trouble in class with a group of friends to make sure we got detention and had to stay inside during recess. It was the custom that in good weather, the teachers would walk around the schoolyard during that quarter of an hour, so we had free play inside the school.
When the students and teachers went outside, we quickly put on our boots and rollerbladed across the granite floors throughout the entire school. You had to be careful to slow down in the two sharp hairpin turns. Unfortunately, Jannie braked a bit late and was speeding toward the wall, where the school bell was hanging right on the last bend. The only thing that could slow her down was the bell rope, which she naturally grabbed and pulled on as she was speeding. She rang the bell with full conviction. While all the astonished schoolchildren were wondering outside why recess only lasted five minutes and lining up in rows in front of the main entrance, we quickly made sure we got our boots back under the coat racks. I had to be helped out of my boots by my classmates because I would get the giggles terribly at moments like that, with tears running down my cheeks. Thank God I kept that gift my whole life, because my sense of humor has gotten me through plenty of difficulties.

Reliving past lives through images

From my life as a steward, I had started to see increasingly clear images. In those images, I saw men suddenly approaching us from the edge of the forest. My friend fell off his horse first, and then I fell forward over my horse's head after we were stabbed with a lance. Every time, I felt like I was falling meters down, and I was afraid of that every evening because after many previous experiences, I 'knew' it was going to happen again.
Until I understood that every time I fell, everything just kept going. Then my fear of falling lessened. The world didn't stop, I didn't stop, and I stayed. I didn't really die; I fell, but then I was still there. Realizing that, the videos and images stopped coming.

Reliving the images of a loved one
After a few months of rest, different images have now emerged. More videos and images, but also lucid dreams, about World War I appeared.
The unusual thing was that they weren't images of myself but of my soulmate from the group where I had felt so comfortable. The group from my vague memory, where I had lived before I was born.
Now I was experiencing his fear as a soldier in a trench. My connection with him was so close that I felt like it was happening to me. It was in Belgium. I heard screaming and explosions everyplace. Hand grenades were flying around my ears, and there was smoke everyplace. I was hit, and I fell to the side. The trench I had wanted to flee into collapsed, so mud got into my mouth, nose, and ears. I was slowly suffocating and became extremely panicked. The panic was the worst, the fear of suffocating.
I found the periods of him processing the images from his earlier life terrible. I also didn't quite understand why I was seeing his images. That made it harder for me, because until now I had been able to understand everything, but it became elusive.
Every evening before I went to sleep, I tried to imagine in my pillow what it must be like to suffocate. The fear of that was many times greater than the fear of falling with the horse. The images of the steward and my buddy in the trench would occasionally resurface later but eventually faded away during my childhood.

Separating my earthly life and my memories
Because I was living two lives—as a child with memories and connections to my soul group and in my daily life—I, like so many children, developed a fear of monsters and burglars. Every evening, I would look behind my bedroom door, under my bed, and in the closet to check if it was safe.
My three-year-older brother found that amusing and also took quite a bit of advantage of my fear by making scary noises when I came upstairs. He had the idea to hide in my closet.
However, when I opened the door and saw a figure sitting on the floor, I slammed the closet door shut with a raw scream and turned the key. I ran downstairs, where my father was watching a documentary on television with interest.
He said I should just go to bed and that there really weren't any burglars.
"He's really there," I told my father, "and I locked the door."
"Oh," my father thought, "if you locked the cupboard, nothing could happen, could it?"
I sat close beside him in my nightgown and got a filled cookie with a cup of hot chocolate.
From the corner of my right eye, I saw the man with the white beard.
With one eyebrow raised, he looked at me and told me to open my closet door because it was my brother who was inside, and he sternly mentioned to me that he was terrified.
For a brief moment, I reacted with surprise, only to pretend I didn't see him right after.
I deliberately nibbled slowly at pieces of my filled cookie to make my brother sweat a lot.
Shortly after that, I saw Jezebel again with a raised eyebrow.
"Sylvia?" he said curtly and sternly.
"Come on, Dad, come and watch now," I pleaded, trying to pull him up from his chair.
My father gave in and walked upstairs with me. He opened the closet door. My brother came rolling out of there. He was as white as a sheet, and sweat was dripping from his white, strained face. He shot to his bedroom like a hare. After that, I never had any trouble from my brother again.

Something is changing.
Something was 'off' with me. I had always been a cheerful child with big plans. I wanted to grow up quickly, and meanwhile, I had a lot of fun. Furthermore, I enjoyed my family, friends, the flowers, the beach, and the forest that was nearby.
But deep down, I was increasingly homesick for my old friends; it felt heartbreaking. It was a deep loneliness that I experienced. I didn't understand it myself anymore and tried to pick up where I left off and continue doing everything I always did.

Homesick for the Pentecost Garden
Until something happened at Pentecost that confused me. I was seven years old. After this first foray into the dimensions, I felt completely lost. I could still separate it from my earthly life, but I developed an extreme longing for life with my former friends...

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