Retrieving Power from Past Life
A Journey with Rowland Barkley
by Bonnie
February 23, 1990

We sat quietly in the waning light as the sage smoke which had filled the room cleansed the energies in the spacious living room, wafted up the chimney, encircled the piano, cleansed our energies.

Find where in your body there is a blockage, he said.

My shoulders, I replied. Specifically, a point on each side of the spine about 5 inches down from the nape of the neck, inside the shoulder blades.

Take the right one, he said. Focus on that point. What impressions come? Rowland knows that "seeing" as such is not my forte. Impressions, thoughts, stories, yes. But not clear sight at this time.

There is a knife or arrow, I said. It is deep inside.

How did it get there? What is the story? 

I began seeing a camp of plains Indians, tepees circled, being attacked by cavalry and Indians. I saw myself first mounted, then later, seated, taking the arrow at point blank range in the back. Sitting there stoically, waiting for death. Feeling the tip go in, feeling it had to come out, I insisted that it be pulled out, despite the fact that it tore bone, ligament.

The clack of bone fragments, the pain beyond pain, my blood watering the earth. The arrow was gone yet it was still there. It been coated with something, so that its physical removal did not fully remove it from my body. It burned. It burns. I bled to death or died from strangulation as my right lung filled with blood from the wound. I saw my body as dust, not needing disposition by the survivors, simply becoming dust indistinguishable from other dust on the sacred ground. I had returned to the mother. I was safe.

He asked me to look at the event through my own eyes again and again. It seemed the attack was unprovoked and uncalled for. I was non-combatant, perhaps an old man or old woman. Sitting, resigned. He asked me to play it from the eyes of the man who had killed me. I saw the accidental discovery of the camp by the Indian guide of the cavalry troop, the lying about who we were and our intentions in being there, the hot blood of the young soldiers spoiling for a fight, the camp of women, children and the old, with the men mostly gone for hunting. Did I need to be silenced to protect the cavalry captain from learning we were only there for the hunting? It seemed so.

Rowland asked me to look at the event from the viewpoint of Mother Earth. Blood, energies feed the mother. We are all children of the mother. But dishonesty is no part of the mother.
The mother is hurt by the neglect of her, the failure to honor her ways, the dishonesty. Look at it from the point of view of your essence -- that part of your spirit that is above and beyond time.

Aha. This was a different view. I had known of the approaching cavalry. I was wise, a visionary. And I failed to warn the camp. Why? I had seen terrible visions of the future. The future would be so bad, I knew from my visions, there was no point in living. Better to die now. Yet this was not my decision, though I arrogated it to myself. A pattern? Yes. A pattern from the deep past, from lifetimes and lifetimes. And from one lifetime thousands of years ago.

Go to that lifetime, he said. The energy in the room, circling around me, grew thick.

I saw myself as an old prophet, once again foreseeing disaster, this time a volcanic eruption. People were dying, the land was burning, disappearing before my eyes. Death was everywhere. I watched. I burned with the guilt of again not warning the people of the impending disaster I knew would come. Yet as I watched, I could see that nothing I could have said would have made a difference.

How had I arrogated to myself the power of God? My guilt was nothing more nor less than a product of my arrogance -- taking responsibility for things I could not change. There I stood, a broken old man.

What part of you has left, Rowland asked?

I saw then a beautiful young man with clear eyes that could see forever, a man waiting peacefully in a clear space beyond time. The young man was ready to return and always had been. It was the old man who was fearful of accepting the gift of prophecy. The young man was clear, so clear, that we have a duty to the Creator to use our gifts. He could not live in a life where the gifts were not used, where the power was shut down. He could not walk in a way that is not sacred.

Bring the soul part in to the prophet, Rowland said. The old man trembled. Fear gripped him/me. Accept the gift of prophecy? It seemed unthinkable, after so long, so very long, believing the gift was a curse. Slowly, the young man came up to the old man. Standing close, not moving. Looking into the old man's eyes with those clear, blue eyes. Smiling, peaceful, gentle.
The young man touched the old man, first on the arm, then the shoulder. He stood closer, moved to the side, the back. It was like a courtship, so exquisite so gentle, so respectful. Soon it seemed the young man was all around the old man. Glowing, larger than life, all around him. The old man began to glow and soon the young man was looking out of the eyes of the old man. The old man breathed deeply, slowly, and was no longer so old, but ageless. We rested.

Leave the soul part with the prophet, Rowland said, and bring the power, the gift of prophecy forward, not through time, but up to the point of no time and then down into present time. Fear gripped me. The gift of prophecy? For me? Now? Who wants it, I thought. Especially now with such suffering on the planet and in the heart of the earth itself, in this great, living organism of which we are a part. And more, much more of the same to come.

But remember the gifts. Remember the parable of the 10 talents. We are given powers and gifts not to bury them, but to use them. It is our God-given duty to use them. I let go the resistance and waited. Rowland watched. Then he said: from the space you are in now--the point of no time, it seemed to me--bring in the gift of prophecy. Slowly I could feel it enter my body, moving down slowly cell by cell to each part, until finally from head to toe I was buzzing with this energy. The energy pulsed and swirled around me.

Now open your eyes, slowly, and see this place from the place where you are now. Gradually over several minutes, hours it seemed, I opened my eyes to slits. I noticed the patterns of light and shadow in the room, the candle light, yet it seemed as though time had stopped. Nothing seemed changed from when I had gone into trance yet everything had changed. The perception was new. But time had stopped.

I've never seen this before, said Rowland. When there is this much energy around, I am not usually able to see people, yet I can see your face clearly in the energy and it is radiant and beautiful.

I felt utterly clear, like a flawless crystal, so aligned, so filled with light. My body began to tremble, but in such a high frequency it was like a buzzing, yet it was trembling. Slowly, slowly, I returned to the room in conscious awareness. A sip of tea.

When Rowland’s gaze touches me, I want to cry. Tears come to my eyes. The feeling is overwhelming. my body hummed, shook, quietly, invisibly.

I had been saying to myself. I accept the gift of prophecy. I accept the gift of prophecy. I accept the gift of prophecy. Over and over again. until it became real.

I looked at Rowland. I saw him differently, a past? A future? A present? The same sensitivity, yet more enthralled with the physical, adventurous, brimming with the love of life, going forth with confident step on life's great adventure--the young Francis of Assisi, before revelation? The young John of the Cross? The young Rowland Barkley?

You will have a deep, religious experience soon, I said to Rowland. What do you think I'm having now, he said?

Later we talked. The picture began to fill in and I told him more of what I saw. The mental and spiritual aspects are already brimming with power. The creative is expressed in the shamanic work and in Rowland's soaring piano creations. He makes his living as a piano tuner, he tells me. Sure. This man whose fingers fly over the keyboard, weaving ancient and modern themes, at once familiar and strange, yet powerful, lyrical, moving.

Do we hide from power for fear we will abuse it and create bad karma? How many people I know who do this, cruising, throttled back, keeping their heads down. Loving the attention that comes with standing out. Fearing it utterly.

For Rowland, there is much more to be done with the creative side. But first, the physical and emotional aspects need attention. I tried to describe the image of him I had seen: a young buccaneer, a Douglas Fairbanks. Loving life physically, with his body. Angry exuberantly in one moment, then exploding into laughter at the ridiculousness of it all. This is what awaits him.

He can see it coming.

We talked about the gift of prophecy. Why would anyone want to be a prophet in these times, I asked? Prophecies are notoriously faulty in troubled times. Prophets may confuse events in non-ordinary reality with those in ordinary reality, he said. That is why some of the predictions of physical events fail to pan out. But also, once people know what is looming on the horizon, their awareness can change the events. What would have happened had people not been aware, doesn't happen for the very reason they are aware.

The trick, then, is not to be a prophet in merely the physical, but in the spiritual. Letting people know that what the Earth will be going through is a cleansing, a purification, for the Earth's own sweet rejuvenation. No cause for despair. Death is not death. We are all divine, fashioned in the image of God and of the stuff of God. Changeless, immortal, imprisoned only by our own concepts of our limitations.

When we leave these bodies, we leave only the form. We can still remain trapped by our thought-forms after passing over, but we need not. Like the dwarves in the stable whom C.S. Lewis describes seated in darkness and fear in the middle of a sunwashed field of flowers, watched with Love by the great Aslan, the lion, the Creator, who asks us again and again to be all that we can be. A "no" comes from fear. A "yes" signals another step in the letting go of that fear.