Corbie’s Wayback Machine: Choosing Lifepaths Over and Over
I am unable to resolve choosing to continue a lifestyle with my husband (Doug) of structure and established expectations and norms, or to have a different lifestyle with a man I also love (Marcus) which would consist of unstructure, and less defined stability but I feel it could be more in touch with my spirit self. I have always lived a very responsible, structured life doing as society norms expect.
About five years ago an old friend, Marcus, came back into my life after 30 years, who lives the virtual opposite of my lifestyle. He has no children, never been married, traveled everywhere, no responsibility or job or steady money. Outdoorsman who thrives on nature and being self sufficient. I separated from my husband five years ago, and thereafter began a relationship with Marcus.
I have not divorced Doug. We continue to see each other and get along well. He wants to reunite, I’m not sure. I feel a very strong ‘spiritual’ connection to Marcus. I have had that with a few others in my life. I have not ever felt that with Doug. I can’t resolve the confusion about these two completely opposite ends of a spectrum of a life choice.
Corinne
Corinne, even before I got into the past lives, your numerology reports made crystalline sense. For one thing, it’s no surprise this is the year you need to make a decision; you and Doug are at a crossroads, based on your one-off personal year cycles. Additionally, you and Doug are TOO much alike as evidenced in…so many of your numbers being identical. At the same time, you are extraordinarily compatible with Marcus, and the two of you support each other’s best qualities. Your numbers are supportive and complementary, not identical.
Your grand cycles have always been, shall we say, elliptical. You and Doug are working partners, and when the object of a life is to be steadfast in the community, create something within the typical parameters, there is no one better for you. In those times, Marcus usually comes in as a son or brother, allowing you to live vicariously through his adventures. There have been some lives where he tries to settle down without you, but it never works.
I connected with twelve lives with the three of you in connection, but received four in detail:
Taiwan/Formosa, prechristian era: Here you and Doug were members of a small village. You farmed and raised the children; he was a potter and tanner. Doug was someone whose world had always been bounded by family and tradition. He was quiet, soft-mannered, and gentle. He came alive when he had something in his hands to fix, to create, or to soothe (he was very good with the children and ducks). You were the stronger in the relationship, and you were recognized as the mediator in your village, despite being female. Yet at the same time, you were like a well-oiled machine; as you had known each other since childhood, you knew what each other would say, how each would think, and there was very little argument in your household.
You had six children, three of which lived past infancy, and Marcus was the middle child. He was easily distracted (today we might say he had ADD), fascinated by how close he could come to disaster (trying to climb down wells, taunting dogs, climbing dangerous hills and valleys). Whereas the other two (older boy, younger girl) were biddable children, you often thought that Marcus was “punishment by some god that we neglected to placate).
Eventually, someone else in the village with a much stronger hand and a marriageable daughter for your older son took him on and taught him how to be a fisherman. This was much more to his liking, because on the sea anything could happen – “you get up, you did in the dirt, you go to sleep, what kind of a life is that?” Because of his daring, he and his mentor went out farther in more questionable weather to wherever the good fishing grounds were.
He married, but not “well” – the only girl you could get for him had one blind eye. There was superstition around that (“she will never see the demons coming”) but it didn’t bother Marcus. Because she knew she wasn’t a “catch” she put up with his wanderings and the fact that he was NO help in their home because he was busy at the sea or being with other men.
The entire family except Marcus was lost in one of the earthquakes for which Formosa was known. This was one directly under the island, as opposed to an offshore temblor. He was at sea when it struck. He came home to find the village half buried and burned. His family was buried under a landslide, while you and Doug had fallen into one of the crevasses and crushed. Out of the eighty that were part of the village, only thirteen remained. Marcus helped pick up the pieces, but as his mentor was one of the dead, and the only one who kept him “on target,” he left to wander the coast on his own, living off what he could catch, and basically turning into something of a Wildman.
On all of you meeting in a post-life discussion, it was noted that Marcus could have learned steadfastness from you, and therefore it was agreed that there would be a series of lives together. Marcus wanted to learn emotional independence that did not contradict partnership. You and Doug were well settled on a path of mutual cooperation and community building.
Early 13th century Italy. Here you and Marcus were brother and sister. You were upper class in the city-state of Pisa, nothing remarkable for the time. Your parents were connected with the Visconti family, and your father maintained close ties with the Pisan outposts abroad, as a secretary for a member of the family who was high in Church rank.
You, of course, were not educated beyond what it took to be a good wife and mother. Your husband (again Doug) was chosen for you from a lesser branch of the Visconti family, and you dutifully married. Your brother, however, was restless and never wanted to marry, but had a strongly religious bent. The Visconti felt that he would be very useful in the Church and therefore sponsored him into the priesthood, but he was woefully undisciplined in terms of being able to see religion cozying up with politics. Rather than being content to be in the church, praying and plotting, he was someone who felt better simply doing what was considered menial work, to the great embarrassment of his patron and your family. Still, they plugged away, hoping to turn him around.
You were encouraged to spend time with your brother, extolling to him the joys of obedience and how much his family wanted him to succeed at his newfound career. He loved you and would listen to you, but then start telling you about what he saw in the streets that so contrasted with what he saw in his church surroundings. He was more and more unhappy, but you did not see the point of bemoaning what God had set for you. After all, what more could one want than to be part of the family and know one’s place in the world?
When, after several years of unhappy existence, a member of the Order of St. Francis approached him about a venture to England, he immediately accepted. Throwing away all family ties, and severing his relationship with the Visconti members of the church, he gave the family only a few days’ notice. He turned his back on everything he knew and set out for England, where he was one of the founding members of the Greyfriars. He spent his life tending animals, speaking to angels when alone, and doing everything he could to find a way to Heaven while still in the body.
You dictated a few letters to him, hoping he would come to his senses, but he would only respond with sermons. It wasn’t until your father died and your mother was ill and under your care that your brother came back to Italy for a visit. You were struck by how healthy and happy he looked, whereas your life had been dull, your body worn out with rearing nine children and caring for your husband’s mother and now your own. You were forty and looked sixty-five; he was forty-three and had the energy of a man twenty years younger. This is where you began questioning, albeit subconsciously, whether a path of obedience or a path of passion was the better road.
Yukon Territories in the 19th century. You and Marcus were members of the Crow clan of the Tagish, while Doug was a member of the Tlingit Wolf Clan. You and Marcus had grown up together and your families had strong ties. This was the first life where there was a possibility of romance between you and Marcus. However, tradition had it that one married outside the clan for political reasons. You understood this, but Marcus did not accept it, and never gave up hope that somehow it would be permitted for the two of you to marry.
When you were of age, Doug dutifully wed you according to tradition. It was respect and fondness, but no passion. Marcus, meanwhile, resented Doug and did what he could in subtle ways to belittle him and best him at whatever they were both working on. Doug was a fine boat-builder and hunter, bridging both land and sea. Marcus, on the other hand, could “sing the fish” and when the salmon were spawning no one caught more; it was as if they purposefully leapt into his net. He was also a fine carver, making beautiful stone and bone jewelry. Even though all the other women in the tribe sought his work, Doug forbade you to wear anything of Marcus’s making; he understood that Marcus was a rival on some level and would not tolerate his being an interloper.
Marcus married because he had to, but was a fitful husband; he left his wife to shift for herself, and only father one child, a girl. While she had other children, it was because she slept with other men of the tribe. Marcus’s neglect of her left her angry and unsatisfied.
The one thing that Marcus slipped you successfully was a bone ring, with two crows chasing each other, that you took and buried under a certain tree. It was a tree that was very old and solid, so you assumed it would always be there, marking “what cannot be here.”
The white men were encroaching on the territories. Some First Nations people saw it as advantageous, like Doug; others felt they boded ill, like Marcus. One morning, while you were out foraging with your little girl, Marcus followed you and begged you to come away; he still loved you, and had a foreboding that the whites would harm the village soon. Marcus’s wife, meanwhile, had followed him, heard everything he said, and went to the village elders about it.
It was a huge blow up. Doug accused you of encouraging things, which you had not. Marcus’s wife accused him of sorcery, which was taken more seriously. Marcus was exiled from the village and all the jewelry he had ever made for anybody was gathered up, burned and ground into dust for the wind to scatter. The only piece of jewelry left was the ring you’d buried.
Sure enough, Marcus was right. The whites that came to your part of the Yukon were interested in furs, religion and what they could take (this was before the gold rush). There was huge disruption in the village, with alcohol making the rounds for the first time and doing much to destroy the community. Doug, who had never quite forgiven you for considering Marcus, was one of the worst offenders and started beating you, but was careful that it was where nothing would show when you wore clothes.
Eventually you dug up the ring and went to find Marcus, but never did. You died within six miles of each other, however, because you were unable to care for yourself in the harsh winters, and Marcus had misjudged a moose he was stalking and was fatally attacked. You each died wondering what kind of life you would have had if you had braved the tribe together.
New Mexico, 1920s-1930s: The most recent life I was given for the two of you had you again on opposite sides of the racial line. You were white, Doug was English, and Marcus was Latino.
Your father was a physician, and both parents were members of the local church and all upstanding committees. You were educated to eighth grade in school, though your father undertook to educate your further. You were something of a bookworm; you loved learning, which is how you ended up meeting Doug, who was one of the team pulled together by Rockefeller to found the Laboratory of Anthropology. It was a three-year courtship, according to the traditions of the time, but you married Doug when you were twenty-two (considered rather old, but he was a head-in-his-paperwork type). Because his family was distantly connected with English nobility (VERY distant), this was thought to be a special match. You settled into a house about a half mile from your parents, and set up your own domestic queendom. You were, however, unable to have children. Still, because Doug came from a very large family, there was no worry about inheritance; anything he left would return to England after he died.
Doug was never very demonstrative emotionally, which was difficult in the beginning but as you settled into being another Pillar of the Community you simply decided that it must be what marriage is like. All went well until you were in your mid-thirties, when Marcus came to town when the US went into the Second World War. Any of the able-bodied men went off to fight. Your husband was too old, but was found very useful by the War Office because of his anthropological background, he was one of those who developed the idea of Navaho code-talkers. However, he was away from home a great deal of the time. As a result, there was an influx of Mexicans who came in to do migrant and itinerant work.
Marcus was one of those workers, fluent in both English and Spanish, and very intelligent, though not well educated. He was one of those who was taken on by the entire small town and effectively passed from hand to hand for work. He recognized a kindred spirit in you, and what started as casual talk when you would bring him a sandwich when working on your property to other things, and eventually to an emotional connection. Marcus said he had never married, because he didn’t want to be tied down to “one woman and one way of thinking.” He said all the right things and made all the right moves and you were thisclose to running away with him. However, that is when Doug came home very ill; he had somehow contracted polio and was bedridden for the rest of his life. While this meant even more restriction and less affection for you, you simply could not bring yourself to abandoning him, and so you turned Marcus away and stayed. Marcus was heartbroken, and quickly became an alcoholic, dying in a drunken brawl within two years.
Clearly, you have reached another crux point in your lives together. It is now up to you to decide which way to go — toward stability and that which you know, or that which your soul seems to crave but will cause upheaval. Whichever road you decide to tread, I wish you the best.
Past lives can bring us important information about the life we’re living now, and Corbie was instrumental in bringing this type of information forward for Robert Schwartz’s subjects in both YOUR SOUL’S PLAN and YOUR SOUL’S GIFT.
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