Peter Lalor

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May 10, 2005

Lost in combat

On the 5th, I had an appointment with Yugi for a massage to sort out my back, but before I even got there it really became a mess and I spent the last hour staggering around crooked and in much pain. Obviously, I haven’t had a massage from Yugi in far too long, and as always he sorted it out well. After that, Gandhi picked me up and we talked at his house nearby for about an hour and then headed back to mine for lunch. On the way I told him a story that my mum told me recently, and that I have struggled to find a way to write ever since. And it was about to get even more strange very quickly…

A couple weeks ago, my mum celebrated her 60th birthday by doing a family constellation retreat. Immediately upon her return from her retreat she called me and told me of several events in it that she found momentous. A few days later she sent me an email detailing the session. I did not read it, feeling emotional and that I needed to be clear before I did so. As a backdrop, my birth was induced in the Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth, perhaps a week before my “due date�. She and I have shed many tears over this inducing over the years, and when my sister was born two years after me my mum changed everything and did the birth her way. During the retreat she discovered that my birth had been induced for a reason: to save my life.

One of my ancestors, Maurice, was a mining engineer born in New Zealand. He was killed at age 42 in France during World War I. He appeared to my mum in a vision during the retreat and told he what he was doing. She realized that he did not know he was dead. She explained his death to him and he turned and walked away into Light. When she could barely see him anymore he turned and waved at her. She realized that unborn male children had died in our family lineage to support Maurice ever since. Had I not been induced early I also would have died in the last week before birth. This is why my birth was induced early—to save my life.

Robert Maurice Stubbs
1876–1918

As I told Gandhi this story on our drive home I became very upset and began to cry. I have told this story to a few people before but had never become so emotional. So when we arrived at my house, instead of having lunch I immediately had Jennifer come with me to our bedroom, as I felt that she could help me discover what was coming up for me. We sat on our bed and I made myself comfortable. I then had a sharp pain in the right side of my chest, roughly between the centre and the nipple. Suddenly, I was in an airplane. It seemed to be a single-seat fighter plane, like a Spitfire or a Mustang. I was flying at night and it was quite dark. I could not see well out of any window, but I could see some of the cockpit. I think my right hand was on the joystick. The vision rapidly ended and I wondered aloud to Jennifer if I was Maurice reincarnated. She then suggested that we do a Gestalt Dialogue, something that I had never previously done but have heard of. She had me ask questions aloud and, without judgement, say whatever I heard. She was very helpful at guiding me as to questions to ask. Later, she noted the session:

Q: What/Who are you?
A: I am you. (lots of tears)
Q: Do you want to tell me something?
A: We are fine. (more tears and a bit surprised) (pain much dissipated by this point)
Q: Do you want or need anything from me?
A: No. Enjoy.

After that, I knew that I was ready to read my mum’s email about the event and then to journal this. I read the email and found that my mum had experienced the exact pain in the chest that I had, only she knew what it was. Maurice had been shot in the chest, killing him. When I tried to journal, I started to find some problems that I could not understand. I had thought that Maurice was a pilot in World War II, thereby explaining why I found myself in an aircraft earlier in the day. But she had noted World War I and his birth and death years in her message to me. So I called her that night and we discussed it all for almost an hour. Maurice was a foot soldier, not a pilot, and he did die in World War I, not II. I had him confused with someone else: Jack, my mum’s mother’s brother. Jack was a bomber pilot in World War II. He was shot down and killed over the ocean north of Africa on his first combat flight. At the time he was killed, his sister, my grandmother Dulce, was three months pregnant with her first child, my mother’s oldest sister Mary Lou. I always saw a picture of Jack at my grandmother’s house because she was so close to him. On the night—in Australia—that Jack died, his mother dreamed that she saw his plane on the ocean. Two men put out an inflatable boat and paddled away from the aircraft. No one else got out and the plane sank. She woke up crying in the middle of the night and told her husband that their son was dead. He tried to calm her and told her that everything was fine. Soon afterwards they received the notification that he had been killed in action. At the time, the very existence of inflatable boats was classified. After the war, two men visited them. They told them that they had been on their son’s plane when it was shot down and what had happened. It was precisely what she had seen.

But during my conversation with my mum I found that I had not earlier in the day been in his experience either. I had been in a fighter plane, but he had flown a bomber. And yet I had simultaneously experienced the pain of Maurice’s fatal wound from a war during which there were no air combat planes of the vintage of the one in which I had found myself. I still do not know with whom I spoke in the Gestalt Dialoue session beyond the direct answer that it was I.

Well, if you think this is weird stuff, wait until you hear about the session I had today. And you’ll have to wait, because I have to sleep.

Posted by Peter at May 10, 2005 12:20 AM

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