The Collective us

An excerpt from the start of Chapter 30 in The Collective Us

I put some time away the following day to carry on with this gratitude work.

However, rather than calling up my former lives, as I expected would happen, I found the people I once was, stepped forward one by one. I saw that once again we were gathered in the same shamanic circle I had seen when I had received my acknowledgement a week or two earlier.

Soon enough, I also realised that the two lives I had worked on the day before needed more work. It wasn’t enough to be thanked by just me, they needed to be thanked by the collective group.

I let them come forward and once again acknowledged their strengths and gifts, this time in front of the others, and then watched as the group applauded, just as it had done for me. 

Next up was the North American Indian, Chief White Cloud. I had always thought of him as my main guide and the former life that has had the most influence on my current life. I talked about him extensively in Who Is Me? I always believed it was Chief White Cloud who prompted me to write that first book. I did mention the issues I worked on briefly, in the introduction, but will mention them again as he played a significant role in my life. Chief White Cloud and his tribe had their land taken from them, which included their hunting grounds, their morning sun, and many of their sacred spaces. But worse than that, the entire tribe was massacred after White Cloud was falsely blamed for killing a group of settlers who were making their homes on his former land. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when White Cloud was hunted down a short while later and killed, all the knowledge that had been entrusted with him was lost. Generations of passed-down knowledge had gone with his passing.

Now Chief White Cloud was standing in front of the group and me and all his qualities and gifts were as plain and evident as if they had actually been written in pen over him.

I saw that he had immense wisdom, humility and leadership skills. As I looked at him, I became aware that each of us has within ourselves these same qualities as the people we once were, though in many cases the gifts are unrealised. I thought about myself. I had never considered myself a leader, but I saw at that moment that as the mother of my five children and afterwards as the sole provider for these five children, I had very much been the leader.