Recently I met my beloved friend Gerda in Munich. Gerda is Bavarian; she and her husband Mark, a retired American army field officer, had offered to help me with research for the WW2 novel I’m working on.
Gerda is an extraordinary person: she’s present and conscious with an open heart. Always. I’ve been her friend for seventeen years and I’ve never seen her falter. Amazing. When she gives me advice, I follow it. Just before I got on the S-bahn heading to the airport, she gave me homework. She noted that it was, indeed, practicum to which she expected me to commit.
“Be soft and be happy, Traci,” she said, with her quirky smile. I engraved her words on my heart.
Her assignment goes to the core of an ache I carry with me. I’ve lived a life filled with karma both astoundingly fortunate and excruciatingly challenging. In the latter category fall attacks I’ve endured from intimates. Worse, the people who come after me, since they are close to me, know my vulnerabilities. They know how to twist everything to magnify my faults and to minimize my positive attributes. They know how to make it all my fault (whatever it is). The pattern is that they don’t take ownership of their own aggression.
This speaks to another of Gerda’s constant reminders to me: “Trust yourself, Traci. When people come after you, it’s their stuff.”
So it is with this personal liet-motif in mind that I read MIRACLES HAPPEN: The Transformational Power of Past-Life Memories. It’s a rich, beautiful book full of anecdotes about miraculous shifts in consciousness, shifts that deeply, profoundly, alter lives for the better. In concrete, practical, lasting ways.
The springboard for these shifts is past-life regression therapy. Dr. Weiss and his daughter Amy Weiss explain the process in lucid detail. They weave together the divers stories with gentle explication of spiritual learnings. Love is what matters. Our growth, our lessons, take infinite paths and forms, but the end point is the same: loving consciousness. We go through loss and humiliation and suffering, victory and grace and transformation, and we all get there, eventually. To a feeling-being-place informed by limitless love.
We are spiritual beings traveling in precious physical bodies, in companionship with our beloveds. The worldly obstacles and prizes on which we spend ourselves matter not at all, ultimately. They’re picayune when compared to the agency of the immortal soul. “Be soft and be happy,” indeed.
This book eases the ache. It helps me balance the immediacy of it all with the long view. The things that weigh on my heart wash out and leave behind the miracle of this heart, now, traveling through forever, finding beloveds along the way. This book leaves me grateful. I think it will ease the ache for anyone who reads it. We all carry our own ache.
I recommend the book softly and happily. It’s a spark of grace for anyone who opens to its light.
Bookworm Brandee really got THE LOVE OF MY (OTHER) LIFE. After she talked to Brian and Tessa, Bookworm Brandee wrote, “Wow! This was such a fun read!”
