The Conquest of Darkness: how I released the Three Knots of my past-lives that affected my present life

by Natalie Dekel, MPhil.

People seem to carry heavy emotional luggage, some of which has been handed down to them from previous life times, or even inherited from their families. I was fortunate to go through a healing process which taught me how to release negative experiences of the past that I was locked on. Before the healing process, I was attracting events and people that ‘allowed’ these previous negative experiences to echo and ricochet in my current life again and again. I believe you can learn from my experience how to heal yourself and release your own blockages.

Coming to recognise the Three Knots

On Tuesday night, 2 August 2011, I was meditating, ‘going’ down into my lower abdomen. For a while now (since my mother has passed over) I had pain and pressure in the lower abdomen, so I meditated now with the intention of imagining it as a room full of clatter that needs clearing. As I was planning to throw away all unwanted emotional rubbish, I had to stop. Right there, where my lower abdomen is, I saw a huge abyss of darkness. I saw a blackness being all-encompassing, and terror was swirling up into the darkness. It was so scary that I forgot to breathe for a few moments.

Catching my breath I glanced down again, uncertain of what to do next. I decided to try and bring down the light from above into me. I was weak from tiredness and feeling unwell for a while now, and I could hear the sounds of the mounting terror growing. I could smell it coming from the darkness below, and so my light was too feeble to even have a tiny glow to be carried inside. As much as I tried, I could not illuminate the darkness.

I tried to draw upon the light that I always use in Reiki healing; the healing light that brings relief if not release. A huge shaft of light was speeding down from above, but it just disappeared into the abyss; swallowed into it, with no sign of either illuminating the darkness or reducing it. The light that always dispelled the darkness came and gone as if it was never there, and the darkness was so chillingly intense, a cold boiling darkness inside. I had to let it be, as it was late at night and I had to get some sleep.

The next day, as I was walking home after work, I was thinking how to tackle the darkness. I asked my mother for help. Mom passed over a year and a half ago, but she still ‘keeps’ in touch, wherever she may be, and so she now came to help me. Funny enough, after all my tremendous efforts yesterday to illuminate the light, and all the panic that was fed by my fears, my mother just flipped the darkness away to one side with one quick hand movement, as if it was a solid object that can easily shift. I think she did so to demonstrate how easy it was. She was acting once again as a nurse that demonstrates something in the hospital theatre, as she used to do once she was on this side of life.

Mom showed me three knots with which this darkness was tied on to me. The darkness inside my abdomen looked like a shape of a giant bowl that was more oval and flattish than deep and circly. I then asked mom: ‘well, if you see these three knots can you not just untie them for me?’ She said: ‘I can help you with their names but you must go in and sort it out yourself. No one can heal you on your behalf. You have to take charge of your wellbeing, and heal yourself as much as you have un-healed yourself. It is all in your hands. And if anyone else ‘heals’ you, you may un-heal yourself once again. So, you must first truly want to heal, and then agree to be healed.’

Mom said that the three knots were – Hatred, Forgiveness and Holding On.

I thought that Hatred is not really on par with Forgiveness and Holding On. Forgiveness and Holding On come from the same world, they are connected, they are positive and balanced when we think of them. Hatred did not seem to me equal part of the issue. I guess my mind was influencing me here, as I was now thinking as an academic person who brainstorms her ideas before she puts them down on paper that will make a draft for a thesis… ‘Well,’ mom said ‘that is how you decided it would be and it was up to you to experience your life in that way.’

Hatred

I touched the first knot – Hatred. I tried to untie it but it did not budge, so I asked my inner-self when did it happen before? when did I first feel this Hatred? The answer was: 12^th century in the events of a massacre of Jews in York city, England. The answer did not come to me as a sentence of words; rather it felt as if I was suddenly plunged back in time to that massacre and observed it as a participant.

I was transported to York (the knowledge of where I was – was inherent in the experience, it was not something I thought about or assumed; it was something that my body recognised and just Knew). I saw a medieval-looking young woman, maybe in her early twenties, wearing a headwear. She was in panic, holding a prayer book close to her chest with one hand. She was me, in one of my previous lives. Somehow I knew that her family has been rounded up by some soldiers, maybe Romans. She was desperately worried but she did not move away from that spot on the top of the bridge where she waited to meet someone. It was someone whom she loved and trusted and who would help release her family. She made an arrangement with him, but I got the sense that he betrayed her and never arrived. He sold some information to the Romans, leading to her and her family’s capture.

Her feelings of love to him were transformed to hatred amidst the despair, chaos and terror as she was captured. A soldier slapped her hard enough to draw blood from her lip, and dragged her to her death. This lady and her family were well off, and all their possessions were given to those who betrayed them.

Her faith in God has also shifted into hatred as she was unable to comprehend such end for a devout and loving family who wanted only to worship God and live peacefully.

Her emotions were so overwhelming that I had to raise my hand to stop this energy flow, and the scene then froze in time. I waved my hand in front of her just to make sure she cannot see me, and that the scene stopped. I did see her tears continue flowing down silently like rivers with no end – bitter, scared, desperate, searching a path of comfort on her cheeks. She was like a child but with no joy; only with pain facing her own death and the death of her family. Her pride in her secret plan to save her family was now ashes burning her down.

I opened my heart wide as if my chest was a cabinet with doors to open, and I transferred my experience and knowledge of this life time in 2011 into her; into her heart. Purple energy twirled around us. My tears flowing with hers. My voice in her voice.

I saw her eyes widening with vision of the knowledge that came into her; the knowledge of her future history – the later years to come. The holocaust and horrors of the Second World War, the coming to life of the state of Israel, and my personal experiences… She absorbed it all and then broke out from her frozen state and looked straight into my eyes. Our past and present merged into one. The eyes of the past and eyes of the present. Her eyes were similar to mine today – hazel green, and I could see in them a twirling sparks of hope. ‘These eyes must now see with Love, not Hatred,’ I thought ‘I must see through my power to stand up for myself’, and then she thought the same back at me.

I do not know if this silent conversation lasted a single moment or few hours. It was timeless. When we concluded, I saw the Roman soldier again; he was still dragging her along a road to her death. But suddenly there was a commotion in the street. In front of us appeared another soldier, running towards us with a young man. Reality has now changed. The young man explained something to the soldiers and showed some documents. The girl was then roughly shoved into the young man’s arms (apparently he said they were married and that she is definitely not Jewish). Her initial plan to save her family by paying someone and give away their estate did not work, but fate had another plan for her which worked better than her own. This young man was not the one who betrayed her, but a man who used to work for the family. He was not paid to help them, he simply wanted to help. She and her family were released.

The family all huddled together bedraggled and tired. Mental exhaustion and physical extortion were pressing on them. They had prayers of thanks in their eyes as their minds were trying to realise that they are indeed alive; that they have somehow managed to escape death. Around them, in the background I could still hear screams and pleadings of dozens other people and children being burned alive in Clifford’s Tower, up the hill of the town (which you can still visit today).

The girl now seemed stronger, more confident and powerful. As I was thinking these words of her new strength, she turned around and looked me straight in the eye, and waved her hand with thanks.

I was looking inside my body – the darkness has receded and was smaller. I was asking my mom to flip the darkness away again, to check if only two knots are now left. And she said ‘yes’. Hatred released, and now Forgiveness followed.

Forgiveness

As I touched the darkness again, all I could see was a huge presence of a female Goddess, who apparently was Mary. She exudes a sense of Motherhood, looking down as if from distance at her ‘sons’ or followers (all of which were male, for some reason). They were praying fervently, on their knees before her, only to then go and commit the same horrific crimes that bring them back to pray for her forgiveness. Again and again. The whole scene looked medieval, in the style of 15^th century Italian paintings.

I asked Mary ‘why Forgiveness?…’ What forgiveness do you need to have, or give to these people that behave like animals and then come back to her, expecting her to redeem them from their own sins. She smiled sadly at me and said: ‘These are my children. I love them. Just as you cannot help but forgive a naughty child, because he is your child, and you would do anything for those who are part of you with Love. So you forgive them with Love too.’

‘What all this has to do with me,’ I asked? I looked down into the abyss which was so deep down into me, like a well of despair. I reached down my hand and it elongated enough to touch the darkness swirling at the bottom. As my fingers touched the darkness, an image came of a man behind bars, waiting for my pardon and forgiveness. Apparently I was the judge and the executioner in his trial. His face now sad, unshaved. I did not recognise this man. I reached down again to touch the darkness – and this time I saw faces of people that I knew from this lifetime now, from my childhood. The faces of all those who upset me at one time or another; their faces barely remembered, shapeless they were all behind some bars. I reached into the blackness again – and this time I saw faces that I remember very clearly. Faces of people close to me, people I know well, all enclosed in little cells of sorts in this emotional jail. All waiting for my decision. They are prisoners forever, until I forgive them into freedom.

Taking a deep breath I breathed out, slowly, and with it I asked the angels and guides of the spirits of the highest light to open the gates of those cells and release all prisoners into the light. I asked that the keys be thrown away, forever. I did not hear the keys touching the darkness nor did I hear the clinking sounds – they just disappeared.

Light then broke out from high above me – and suddenly powerful rain of light was pouring down to the praying men, and the men in the jail soon followed in prayers – all souls are being awashed in that purifying light. The light of Love cleansing souls.

I then saw an angel holding the book of Life, standing at the top of the heights above me. The angel nodded at me in acknowledgement of my decision, and scribbled something down in her book. She then turned and left, and more light poured from above – light of compassion, intelligence, love, and forgiveness… washing away everything; washing my whole being from within outside, pounding lighting torrential rain down into the receding darkness. I did not need to know when or where I met all these people. I only needed to release them, and forgive.

Suddenly I heard sobbing. Not understanding how can anyone cry in this amazing light of Grace I looked back and saw a woman crying her heart out. Bending over to her I tried to see her face and ask what is wrong, but she just cried and cried. So the only way to help her was to offer comfort by hugging her and gently rocking her to and fro, allowing her to feel my energy and my calmness and love pouring to her; allowing her to become aware of my heartbeat. When she calmed down enough to look back at me, I realised that she was me… The heartbreak from all the negative emotions that I held through the years was too intense, and needed a release. It was release and love and reassurances that I kept pouring into her just as the rain of light and cleansing was pouring from above into us, and everywhere around us until there was nothing but light. The other men then dissolved into my heart with peace.

Now when I looked at the darkness (asking my mom to check how many knots are left) – the darkness flopped on one side on one knot only: the knot of Holding On.

Holding On

The next day as I was on my way home from work, I once again asked mom to help me work on the third knot. Just as I finished that thought, I met a friend who was also walking home after work. She is a lovely person that I have not seen for over a year now. We had a chat and I discovered that her mother has also died in a similar way to mine, some 6 months after my mother died. Both mothers died in a painful process in hospitals, with us, their daughters beside their bed at the time of passing. While we exchanged our experiences and emotional shocks at finding ourselves facing a life that includes death, I realised that perhaps this exchange of energies and experiences is part of the healing process that prepares me for the release of the third knot.

Soon after, I touched the last knot under the blackness with both hands. It felt meaty and slippery like an umbilical cord that was not cut off. It felt organic and almost raw, suspended between life and death.

I felt despair rising up within me from that cord, but strangely enough it was as if I was touching my own umbilical cord between myself and my mother. This is the despair of loosing that which gave me life – my physical source of life – Mother. It was my Holding On to what I saw as the cord of life. But my mother has died. It was so overwhelming, and tears silently roared down my face. My throat burned with what storm I cannot release. I allowed despair to overflow my whole body, so that I can face it in whole, and release it. I asked when it was that I first felt like this before. The image that came to my mind was that of a Native American woman who either by decision or force had to abort her own child from her womb.

The pain and the loss were overwhelming on both the mother’s side and the child’s. The pattern of sorrows echoing through tunnels of time back to me, reverberating through the cord that I held and back to that poor woman and child.

I received more images of those repetitive losses to which I am somehow connected throughout my lives. All loses were leading me to my childhood memories in this life time, of waking up in terror one day as a child at being left alone, torn away from my loved ones, from my source of life.

I let go of the cord and picked up that baby that was aborted by the Native American woman. Holding that baby in my hands, close to my heart, I sent healing energy from above through me into that child-soul and all those who suffered unduly. And as I chanted something in a language I am not sure of (my body knows this language), I saw how peace and a bluish tranquillity light settled in. The pale blue light washed us, calming us, cutting away any negativity, and leaving instead peace and wholeness. I am safe now. I am Love and Light. I am whole and complete. I am Life.

And so once everything and all-there-is have turned into this amazing light, the all-embracing energy of love, this light overflowed and now seeped through me into the last knot, into the cord I realised I still held with my other hands.

Holding On is based on fear, and it holds us from giving. Charity is about giving out freely, with love. Holding on to fears and negativity stops the light and flow of love. By letting go, we embrace charity and becoming loving of ourselves.

The light was gently going up, changing the cord into a flow of light, and the energy dissolves blotches of darkness and despair on its way. It cleansed all and transformed the knot into a flower stem, and the darkness was now slowly transforming into a flower bud tightly closed. As more and more light flew in, slowly the flower regenerated into life. The darkness receded, giving way to green petals that opened up to reveal a dark purple lotus. It was not just one colour but many colours fleeting across the surfaces of the petals. As the light continued to flow, the flower started to emit sounds that emanated outwards into my stomach and on their way broke the darkness and other spikes left over from the terror.

I see the faces of the Native American mother and the babies and others smiling, with peaceful and content as they dissolve into the light.

The healing continues

My throat still hurts from the silent scream and tears, and my tummy feels now raw as if there was a war there just now, but I KNOW that the process of healing will continue. This healing will happen on its own accord because now I let it be. It will happen with each heartbeat, with each breath I take. It will grow naturally, allowing my body to release what it no longer needs and embrace the wholeness again.

I allow the healing light to flow through me. I am the Light. In the Light and Love there is no room for darkness.

I Am.

Amen, and so it shall be. Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh.

xxx

› For advice from Natalie, click here

14 Aug 2011.
© Natalie Dekel. Images © Gil Dekel.