As a young child, Kim had a recurring nightmare. She was on an ocean liner leaving New York harbor waving good-bye. As she looked at the wake of the ship and the receding New York skyline, she knew that the ship would never return.
When Kim was 6 years old, she sat in front of the TV watching the sinking of the Andrea Doria. This haunted her and she didn’t know why. Kim grew up in the Great Lakes and loved being on boats, even large lake ferries. She would take the ferry across Lake Michigan to visit her relatives. But when it came to ocean liners, she had an unreasonable, terrifying fear.
When Kim was in high school, her mother took a North Atlantic voyage to France on board the QE2. Her mother got violently ill and had to turn around and come back. Her mother had never had any problem with being on a boat before.
Over the years, Kim wondered about her fear of ocean liners. She could not watch the movie Titanic when it was so popular in the 1990’s. A series of synchronous events and information followed. On several occasions, she was led to internet sites about sinkings of ocean liners. An intuitive told her that she and her mother had died in an ocean liner sinking near Ireland. They had made a contract to be together this lifetime as mother and daughter. In our counseling sessions, I confirmed that Kim had emigrated in 1909 from the Midlands of England for an arranged marriage. She lived in the Jewish Hester Street neighborhood of New York. Now she understood why she loved New York City and felt at home there. She also had many Jewish friends from New York who mistook her for “one of the tribe.” She is not Jewish this lifetime.
She was passionate about reuniting with a lover in England who volunteered to serve in WWI. When she heard the news, she immediately booked passage home to see him. She ignored warnings about how dangerous it might be to cross the Atlantic in the spring of 1915. At sea, she received a telegram notifying her that her lover had died in France. The image she saw was of a Valentine heart-shaped box turning black. She sank into despair.
In 1986, Kim went to Switzerland for a conference. On the first day, she heard a calliope playing early 20th century music in her head and had the sense that she was going to meet someone significant at the conference. One night, she was upset and went for a walk alone after dark on a trail in the mountains above the conference center. She started to sob and then heard a voice say, “Stop crying. I am here.” There was instant recognition. Her reincarnated past life lover was standing in front of her. They had another chance to meet in Europe.
A year later, they took a trip together on a ferry to England. Upon arriving, she got down on her knees and kissed the ground, thankful that she had arrived safely. A few weeks later, she took a ferry alone across the Irish Sea from Wales to Dublin. While in a berth below decks, she had a past life flashback of being in her cabin while a ship was sinking.
Finally, one day in May, she walked into a Barnes and Noble and saw a book featured on a table. She became ice cold as she walked up to it. The book was about the sinking of the Lusitania in May, 1915. She recognized photos of the ship’s dining room and cabins. She read about what had happened to the survivors and where the dead had been buried in Ireland. She remembered facts that were confirmed in the book.
Several years later, after the international financial crisis of 2008, Kim “hit a bottom” in her life. The date was May 7, 2009. Several weeks later, she discovered that the actual date of the sinking of the Lusitania was at 2:10 pm on May 7, 1915. It sank rapidly to the bottom in 18 minutes. There was little time for survivors to get off the ship, especially if they were in their cabins after lunch.
Then she read a lot of historical books and articles about the Lusitania and its little-known place in history. It was torpedoed by a German U-boat because it was carrying munitions from the US to England. It was the fastest ocean liner at the time and people thought it could outrun any boat. Unfortunately, a combination of factors, including fog and an order to reduce speed, created an optimal opportunity for a U-boat to sink it off the Irish coast, one day out from its destination in Liverpool. Winston Churchill turned down requests to escort it. He and Woodrow Wilson denied allegations of the munitions on board. After the sinking, Avenge the Lusitania became a rallying cry in England. Two years later, after much uproar in the US about the 128 Americans killed on board, Wilson responded by entering the US into WWI. The passengers were likely used as pawns in a larger collective historical event. The British and US passengers were betrayed by their own countries.
Kim has lived with a sense of being impacted personally by larger collective events. She has also strongly identified with Jews in the Holocaust. She has had a lifelong pattern of passionately rushing into dangerous situations without heeding warnings, especially for love.
Spiritual counseling has enabled Kim to move past the karmic consequences of this collective event. She is no longer passionately willing to risk “going down with the ship”. She has a better understanding of her relationship with her mother and the basis of the contract they made under duress for this lifetime.
Erik Larsen’s book, Dead Wake was released to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 2015. He brings to light the historical role this event had. I believe that he has also provided an opportunity for individuals now alive, descendants and the reincarnated who were impacted by the sinking, to resolve karma and let go. Kim has found the book to be very useful. She has learned that the U-boat commander was quite admirable and has let go of her anger towards him. She no longer feels so set up and betrayed by people or organizations that she trusts. She is no longer willing to risk anything and everything for love or for anything else she is passionate about. And she is having an experience of being uplifted in her life rather than being pulled down towards a bottom.
I invite you to read the book and to participate in an historical collective healing event. I also invite you to comment on Kim’s story and on the way big historical events and their karma can impact us.
Dead Wake, The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Erik Larson, Random House, 2015.
Leave A Comment