Do you ever think you’re someone else once in a while, but can’t quite remember who you are? Or maybe you dream about events that seem to be happening to someone else, yet you resonate completely with them–as if they are happening to you?
Parallel Lives by Gloria Chadwick is based on a past life in Egypt and the parallels to experiences in the present. But this book goes beyond reincarnation; it explores the concept that we’re living all our lives at the same time in different dimensions of energy and shows how all our experiences affect and alter one another… at the same time. It also covers parallel selves–the unity of our physical self with our spiritual self.
Told in story form, it invites you on a mystical journey to parallel places within your soul. I’d like to introduce you to three of the main characters: Amanda, Lavender, and Rainbow.
Amanda is a free spirit who somehow manages to get herself stuck in the energy vibration of a physical body. Of course she did it on purpose; nothing happens by accident. She’s a little embarrassed to find herself on earth again and wonders how she ended up here when she vowed she’d never reincarnate again. Her most down-to-earth task is to see through the misty illusions of things for herself and to remember her spiritual nature. In the course of events, she gets sidetracked by what everyone says is real life. But she’s not sure what’s real anymore.
Lavender is trying to remember something she’s forgotten about her spiritual nature so she registers for school in the universe and begins classes in Time and Space, Energy and Matter, and Reality Awareness. She’s a little concerned about the whole idea of synchronicity and the simultaneous time-space concept; she’s not sure if she can handle everything at once. Her destiny is to unearth the mysteries of the universe and to find the Scroll of Knowledge she wrote in Egypt. But she’s reluctant to remember her experiences and has turned off her spiritual awareness.
Rainbow appears to be a universal light-being. She’s also Amanda’s higher self and Lavender’s teacher who tries to help them both see the light within themselves. But Rainbow is really more than she appears to be at first, or even second, glance.
- 308 pages. ISBN: 978-1-883717-32-2. Available on Amazon: $17.95
Browse the Book…
We’re offering an excerpt of Chapter Three ~ A Lavender Sphere of Light. In this chapter Lavender is reflecting on her past life and preparing for another lifetime on earth, but she has a few doubts about her upcoming reincarnation…
Lavender stretched and shimmered in her sphere of light, watching highlights of her earthly experiences flash through her thoughts. “It was only a dream,” she said. “It wasn’t real.”
Floating through time and space within the multidimensional realms of her experiences, she focused her thoughts into her spiritual evolvement. Visions of wisdom not yet acquired, and experiences not yet understood and balanced, were reflected in karmic destinies to be explored. She woke with a shock, realizing she’d have to return to earth. It was an awful thought. Of all the places she could go, earth was the last place she wanted to be.
She sighed with despair. It seemed like only yesterday she’d left there and now today, it looked like tomorrow she’d be right back where she started. Opening the images of almost-forgotten memories, she saw that the pictures of her two previous lifetimes were shrouded in a cloudy mist. Africa drew muddy images and Egypt inspired shadowy shapes of fear. She didn’t know what she was afraid of, but the thought of experiencing another incarnation on earth made her shiver deep inside her soul.
Dreary thoughts began to crowd her mind. Earth is too limiting; it seems there’s never enough time to do everything. Gravity drags you down, energy vibrates too slowly, and there’s not enough space to move around in. Things—real, tangible things—get in the way and matter up your thoughts. You have to abide by the rules of illusion and the question of what’s real keeps coming up. Worst of all, you’re stuck in a physical body; you’re not a free spirit anymore.
An image of a butterfly soaring somewhere over a rainbow into the universe fluttered into her thoughts. She wanted to be that butterfly, free in spirit and form, flying through the clouds into the sunlight.
Despite her reluctance to reincarnate, thoughts of exploring new vistas and expanding her horizons flowed into her mind. She wavered ambivalently. Although living on earth—actually being there in person—wasn’t something she was looking forward to, she remembered that some of her experiences had been wonderfully exciting and illuminating. Wondering what to do with her life and what experiences to create, she saw part of a page from a book appear in her mind.
A soul can choose to experience the earth environment in a spiritual vibration to gain knowledge; that same soul can choose to be inside the physical energies of his/her experiences to acquire understanding. To evolve into enlightenment, a soul must harmonize spiritual knowledge with physical understanding.
Earth is like a school where you learn how to master the energies of all your experiences. If you do it right, you advance into higher vibrations of knowledge. If you do it wrong, part of your essence and the energies of your experiences are left hanging in the balance; you must return to see the truth within yourself and to put your experiences in their proper places. If a soul views all his/her experiences in a clear and positive way, life can be enjoyed as a wonderful adventure and a magical, mystical journey into awareness and light. Life on earth can be freeing and empowering, as well as fun and rewarding.
Yeah, like hell, she thought darkly. Life can be disastrous if a soul applies negative energy into her thoughts or misunderstands the meanings within her experiences. Too many souls get lost in earth energies because they don’t remember who they really are.
Wavering images of her soon-to-be life on earth began to focus blurrily in her mind. The scenes fluctuated and fragmented in an ever-changing flow of energy. Trying to look at all the expressions of her possible experiences, she couldn’t clearly see what they were or what they might become. Not that it mattered right now, though she did want to know how the images would probably take shape and form in her life.
Not knowing what to expect, she began to worry. What if the spiritual signposts that showed the way to wisdom and enlightenment, or the inner images that would guide her on her journey home, were hidden or safeguarded in the light of the universe and she couldn’t remember how to read the images or recognize the signs?
The more she tried to see through the cloudy images in her mind, the more she became aware that—for some unknown reason—she couldn’t tune into the images properly.
Shifting her focus, she watched abstract idea/pictures float through her mind. Earth could be a masterpiece of colors drawn on your thoughts or a mosaic of fragmented images. It could be a magical world of imagination or a mystifying land of illusion. It could be a golden sunrise or a majestic sunset. The colors could be clear or clouded. It was always your choice, as a creator, of how you wanted to paint and color the images of your life. You decided how to focus your feelings and how to shape and sculpt your thoughts and their forms into expressions of energy.
When you imbued your images with your essence, they came to life. When you were in the energy of your experiences, you could change their vibrations to create new images and expressions. You could put finishing touches on interrelated situations and scenes you’d created in other time/spaces. You could enhance and enrich all your experiences with flairs of previously-acquired learning and talents, and add flourishes of universal light and sparkles of spiritual insights.
You could introduce a touch of drama or humor to the events and experiences you’d envisioned if you got bored with the way the picture was playing out or if you wanted to create more excitement and variety in your life. It was as easy as changing your mind and as quick as rearranging the energy of your thoughts and their images.
You always had free will to do anything you chose to do with your creations and circumstances, but you had to accept the consequences for your attitudes and actions in all your experiences. On earth, it was known as Creating Your Own Reality. In spiritual realms, it was referred to as Balancing Your Karma. Some souls misunderstood the concept, not recognizing they were working with universal power.
Lavender laughed in spite of her dilemma about how she wanted to shape and color her earth experiences. In a previous lifetime as a teacher she’d learned from one of her students that creating your own reality was, in real life, playing with the images of your illusions.
Floating on a cloud between the earth and the universe, and centering her energies into the present, she saw a misty image of a rainbow holding an open book. Looking at the blank pages, she began to pencil in phrases and magical metaphors as she watched sketchy shapes of future events and shadowy images of past experiences loom in her mind.
Looking into a nearly-forgotten lifetime where she knew she’d acquired a vast amount of spiritual enlightenment and mystical knowledge, she saw that she’d either lost or misplaced those experiences. The missing memories have to be somewhere; they couldn’t vanish into nowhere, she thought to herself.
Two things were clear: She wouldn’t be able to bring her spiritual knowledge with her into this lifetime because she simply couldn’t remember it, and if she wanted to find her knowledge, she’d have to look into the shadowy images that moved silently through her thoughts.
Bravely focusing her awareness into the shadowy images, her throat began to hurt. You’re not supposed to feel pain unless you’re physical, she thought, wondering how that had happened. An image of an old, bearded man holding something in his hand emerged from the shadows and she heard an echo of a voice that was strangely familiar. “To be a free spirit on earth—really free—you have to remember who you are.”
“It’s so difficult to remember who you are when you’re there,” she said. “Once you’re burdened with a body, you’re subject to earthly laws of energy. You tend to forget you’re truly a spiritual being and life turns into a game of illusion because you think you’re only a physical being.”
The image began to fade and float away. It seemed he had nothing more to say. The dark, menacing shadows began to surround her and she felt an almost-overwhelming sense of fear.
Quickly she brushed the shadowy thought/images and feelings aside, replacing them with the energy of universal light. She felt better immediately and saw that she was now traveling through a bright, warm ray of sunshine. Everything was clear and shimmery, luminous and transparent all at once and she knew her soul was vibrating in harmony with the light.
“Words can’t describe the light; to really see and understand the light, it has to be experienced,” she whispered, wishing everyone could experience the joy of knowing and feeling and being in the light. If you knew that universal light was a reflection of the light within yourself, you could recognize your soul.
A thought sparkled into her mind. It would be a novel idea to create a magical world of images drawn from words. Looking into the thought, she saw an image of a scroll and read the opening words. From the pictures in your mind come words… She heard an echo of a silent voice say, “Share the secrets of spiritual knowledge with words.” Her throat began to hurt again.
A cloud obscured the light, drifting into her thoughts and weaving through her images. Sinking into the clouds and bouncing through turbulent air in the earth’s atmosphere, she sensed she’d lost touch with herself and was now out of sync with her spiritual energies.
She noticed the sky was changing and that she was beginning to wander through her thoughts about living on earth as images of experiences began to take shape and form into vibrations of solid matter. This is getting real, she thought.
A rainbow shimmered in a misty ray of sunlight. “I want to remember my spiritual knowledge and harmonize the energy vibrations of my soul with universal light,” she said, feeling as if she was in two separate worlds at the same time. Trying to rise above the ethereal mist over the rainbow, she saw she’d been falling through time and space, and was now entering the energies of earth.
“It must be later than I thought,” she said to herself. “This is not a good way to begin a new incarnation,” she added. Entering a physical life without clearly knowing what she was going to do or how she was going to do it, and with only a glimpse of why, she felt like crying.
“Are you ready to be born?” Rainbow asked.
“No, not yet,” Lavender replied. “I have some serious doubts and second thoughts about my upcoming earth experiences,” she said, feeling very frightened by the shadows that surrounded her.
“I’d feel more spiritual if I could bring my knowledge with me,” she whispered. An image of a golden key flashed through her mind. “This time, I’ll remember who I am,” she promised herself, wishing with all her heart she knew who she’d been before.
Copyright 2010 by Gloria Chadwick.
