Blast from the past--didja ever just...KNOW how to do something?

[MorningGlow]

Have you ever had an ability from a past life surface? It always surprises and pleases me when all of a sudden I just KNOW how to do something without ever having done it before.

Now, I'm no piano prodigy or anything, but I have small victories. Today I printed out MG Jr.'s Halloween/birthday party invitations on 8 1/2 x 11 paper. I don't have any small envelopes, so I was toying with the idea of folding them into little "students-passing-notes" type of self-contained origami. Of course I've forgotten how to do that, so I looked it up online and tried one, but that didn't feel quite right.

Then I just looked at one of the invitations, turned it sideways, and in a blink folded it so it looked like it was already in an envelope. Then it occurred to me that that's how people used to fold letters and close them with a wax seal in the 19th century.

Well hello dere, past life. :wow:

:rofl:

[kentauros]

1. Yes, though at first I thought you meant

some kind of real skill or marketable ability ;)

I know how to eat the pastry baklava without either bending the fork or making the confection explode as they will do it you just stick a fork (or worse, a spoon!) into it :P

The only other one I can think of is figuring out how to play a Shakuhachi flute (Japanese bamboo flute) in about 20 minutes. I could make sound, though it wasn't music. In case y'all don't know, playing any kind of flute takes a lot of 'wind' and effort with your mouth/lips or embouchure. I surprised myself at how quickly I learned it, though I've never owned a flute or played one. I was in the brass section in school, and that's a completely different kind of playing.

I may buy a Shakuhachi flute someday, but even the "student" versions are expensive, so I'd have to be committed to playing it.

[MorningGlow]

4. Oh heck no!

Then I'd be, you know, solvent or something! :P

Cool about the flute! You should totally get one sometime and see if more comes to you.

And now you have to share your secret for non-exploding baklava, please! :hi:

[kentauros]

When I said "expensive" for a beginner's flute,

I meant like $300! Before that happens, I'll be giving away my old Oster blender to whomever wants it (it makes a lot of noise) and replacing it with a Vita-Mix :) That and getting the first Gateway Voyage on CD (Monroe Institute stuff.)

Now as for how to eat baklava, I'm guessing you haven't gotten any further in my blog or you'd have read this already :P

Anyway, I'll re-create the technique for you and anyone else that's interested:

Most pieces of baklava I've ever had were either square, rectangular or triangular, and most often saturated with honey, so they can be quite gooey and messy. Sometimes, they are on the drier side, and where they can literally 'explode' all over the table and into your lap (and anyone with you ;)) So, you have to control this with both your fork and your knife.

Pick a corner and with your fork in your left hand and knife in your right (or whichever way you would have them for cutting into something tough), and touch the fork's tines to the top of the pastry.

Lay the knife flat on top, with the back (non-cutting edge) against the tines and hold the pastry firmly. Now you can plunge your fork in, and trust me, it likely won't do more than get embedded. You could let go of your fork and it would be stuck straight out of your dessert, and make everyone around you think you're just playing with your food (which you would be :P)

Now, still holding onto your fork, let go of the top of the baklava with your knife, and with the cutting edge against the back of the fork, cut down into the pastry, making a nice perfect-sized bite. Unless it's pretty dry, it should stick to your fork as anything loaded with honey will do. Now, if it is dry, it may still fall apart, but it won't end up in your lap.

Bon Appétit! :D

[Celebration]

2. for some reason

this really cracks me up :silly:

Sure you didn't do that in kindergarten? Because I think I did. Too many handmade Valentine cards here............

[MorningGlow]

5. I really didn't!

And this wasn't just folding up the sides and bottom--this was pretty intricate! I was so impressed with myself! :P
:rofl:

[BlueIris]

3. Yep. Some of those abilities include inexplicable drawing skills,

perception of astrology, and randomly understanding a bunch of Russian vocab/syntax that was a year or two beyond my level of comprehension at the time (college sophomore.)

Oh, and blast from the past! Go, Venus Retrograde!

[MorningGlow]

6. Ohhhhh Venus retrograde! I get it!

Wow, Russian--that's pretty tough stuff! (And, in my mind, so's astrology!) :applause:

[Kind of Blue]

7. Indeed! I remember it like it was yesterday.

When we first came here, I was in the 2nd grade. I don't remember ever using pencil and paper outside of school, nor any art classes. Well, my desk was next to another foreign student, Jose from Puerto Rico, I can see his cute face now - he arrived several months before me. During my first week, our teacher passed out drawing paper to everyone and just told us to draw. I had NO idea what she was talking about but Jose drew something that was so accurate, so lifelike that I thought I'd pass out just looking at it. I can't even remember what it was - though I can see my teacher, what she was wearing, the room, the leafless trees outside on that winter day right now.

I'm sure he thought I was crazy because I couldn't take my eyes off of how his hand flowed across the paper. He'd look up at me and smile. I was beyond overwhelmed by his skill. Went home and that night Prayed With All My Might that may I PLEASE be able to do that! Next morning, I started drawing everything before school. I Could Do it! It's beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jose literally flipped the art switch in my soul. I'll never forget his angelic freckled face and how he'd pull his little brother's cap over his ears and wrap the scarf around his neck before they'd head off home, and then I'd do the same with my younger siblings.

Drawing became synonymous with love. What a good kid and I hope he grew into a fine man.

[Celebration]

8. That is such a sweet story!

I love that. Yea Jose! I still remember stuff like that too..........random kids and events that influenced me a lot.

[Kind of Blue]

9. Yeah, it's funny how those early

days really informed us as to who we are with absolutely no effort. And now, at least for me, the quest to get back there. Interesting journey to come here with just about everything we need to Be.

[NJCher]

12. a couple more examples

I could see that happening as I read your post, Kind of Blue. What an amazing experience. Do you still draw?

MG, I absolutely think there are all kinds of things we carry through from previous lives. I think your envelope experience could be one of them.

I remember an experience with karate when I was a kid. I never had karate training. I must have been around eight. There was a very large kid who gave me a hard time about something in the school cafeteria. I leaned into him and flipped him over my shoulder. He went over my head and landed on the floor.

He was at least twice my size, if not three times my size. Turning around and seeing him spreadeagled on the floor, the breath knocked out of him, was a bigger surprise to me than anyone.

And you can believe nobody ever messed with me again! LOL.

Another experience I had as a high schooler was when I was in physics class. I was staring out of the window, daydreaming. The instructor could see I was paying no attention whatsoever, so he asked me a very complex question. Much to my astonishment, I was able to not only answer the question, but elaborate on it at length. I really have no idea where that answer came from.

If it wasn't something from a previous life coming through, maybe a guardian angel or someone from the other side who cared for me helped me out by putting words in my mouth?


Cher

[Kind of Blue]

14. Sure do!

My little avatar on the left is an example - my mermaid persona, now that I'm learning how to swim.

I agree, if not a knowledge from a past life then definitely in touch with the infinite where it all resides.

[MorningGlow]

18. Oh, that is KICKASS!

:wow:

LOL I wish something like that had come through with me when I was being bullied in elementary school!
:rofl:

And I LOVE your story of being able to answer a question you weren't focusing on! (I've been "caught out" like that many times myself--nothing like that kick in the gut when you realize you don't know the answer!) That one sounds like a guardian stepping in, but who knows? Could have been either (or both!)

I was thinking about my sudden envelope-folding skill, and I realized later that it was something I always envied--when I've watch period movies where someone folds up a letter like that, I have always stared at the action hungrily. Not surprising, really, as I identify with mid- to late-19th century England very strongly. (Another skill that surfaced in high school was an affinity for archery, but the genteel kind, not the hunting kind. I always love the scene in Emma when she's shooting and Mr. Knightley says "Don't kill my dogs." :rofl: ) I also have always gotten the feeling that if given half a chance, I'd be able to "remember how to" play the piano pretty easily. I think I'm probably the only person on the planet who, as a little kid, BEGGED for piano lessons instead of running from them. (My mom said no.)

[bigmonkey]

30. Maybe you should get a keyboard?

They're not that expensive, and you could try it out! They fold up for storage, unlike a real piano that needs its own room.

[NJCher]

32. yeah, it was cool!

I remember the question was about time and traveling to the moon. What we would see from where in the universe.

I couldn't even answer that question now and I'm a college teacher! But when I was asked that question then, the answer just rolled off my tongue.

I, too, think it was more a case of a guardian angel or loved one on the other side helping me out.


Cher

[OneGrassRoot]

15. That is so sweet!!!

I so love your stories. :)

Glad Jose flipped the switch of your Artist Within. I hope Jose is well....


:hug:

[Kind of Blue]

16. I wish him well too. It feels good to absolutely

love someone known for a short time from long ago and far away :hug:

[MorningGlow]

17. Wow, what a great memory!

Sounds like he really was one of your angels--you know, one of our soul brothers or sisters who appear in our lives for a short time, help us out or a little further toward a goal, and then we never see them again. That's happened to me several times in my life, and I still sincerely love those people (and am grateful for their influence) even though I haven't seen them in decades.

Here's to sweet little Jose! :toast:

[Kind of Blue]

26. I love your thread!

They always strike at the core of living and trying to live well :hug:

Here's to Jose! From all the well-wishes, I hope that wherever he is that all of a sudden an unknown jolt of goodness hits him :)

[I Have A Dream]

24. Oh, Blue, this brought tears to my eyes...

and made my heart ache a little bit in a good way. (Very weird about the latter part.)

I have a feeling that you've done the same thing for people in the past. :loveya:

[Kind of Blue]

27. Aww, I love good aches.

:hug:
You know what? I was going to say no way, I don't think I've done the same. But then I remembered that when I first moved here, I signed up with a temporary work agency. My agent was a sweetheart, around the same age but kind of melancholy girl. I remembered she'd initially asked me a lot of unnecessary personal questions. I worked with her for almost a year when all of a sudden, I happened to come in for more time cards, when she said she was moving.

I was shocked and asked why. She said, I've always wanted to live in Los Angeles and was afraid. It's only 2hours away and if you could move all the way here not knowing anybody, well, I think I can do it.

I'd never seen her so bright, just about bouncing with excitement just to move 2hours away! And she did it! Last email, she is happily married - met her husband on campus - and finishing up a degree. Life is a serious trip sometimes.

[I Have A Dream]

28. I can tell you without any reservation, Blue...

that you have impacted more people than you could ever know. Just as the man who was once that child doesn't know what impact he's had on you, you've done the same for many people. You are a willing instrument of the Universe, and your light shines very brightly; the Universe will definitely use someone with these characteristics and will consider that person to be a treasure.

You are definitely making a difference in the lives that you touch. It's so amazing how wonderfully organized the Universe really is.

[Kind of Blue]

29. Wow, that so moved me that I

had to bless this thread and everyone who reads it, that we continue to have positive impacts on each other and insights into the miracle that we all are :loveya:

[Digit]

10. I can vividly remember

sitting on my basement floor reading, actually READING books one day. I remember how delighted I was. I was maybe 5 at the time, but a young 5. They were adult books at that. (not to be confused with "adult" books, lol)
I knew I was not supposed to know how to read and knew it would not last.
Unfortunately, the next day I could not make heads or tails of the words.

I like to think of it as a remnant from a past life that disappeared as quickly as it appeared.

[MorningGlow]

19. Oh yes, reading!

That's a biggie, isn't it? I learned very young too--took to it quite readily--by the time I was 3, my mom says.

Such a shame that your ability to read adult stuff was there and then gone. I guess that's why they always say to talk to little kids about their past life memories before they dissipate. It seems the first four or five years are a sort of overlap period, when kids still remember their past lives, before present-life details take over.

[Digit]

33. My mother was from Germany originally so reading English did not come easy for her

Consequently, I was never read to when I was young.

Once I did learn to read (in this lifetime), I devoured books. I still love to read....but could really use some good reading glasses these days!

[Flying Dream Blues]

11. I'm not sure, really...

but I did have an amazing sense of deja vu when I went snow skiing the first time. I felt like I'd done it before. Don't get me wrong, as a 28 year old ski virgin I was no prodigy, but I felt an indescribable joy going down that mountain for the first time, and kept thinking, "this feels like a dream, it's so effortless."

[MorningGlow]

20. Oh, I think that counts--absolutely

"Effortless"--that's the feeling! :hi:

[FirstLight]

13. nothing as remarkable as you guys shared

but I think my ability to read was one of those...i taught myself before kindergarten, at 4.
I was reading my sister's second grade books, it just happened, she had been reading to me and my mom called her to set the table, when she returned to her room i was reading aloud...she ran to get my mom and they stood in the doorway staring at me. I have been devouring books ever since.

Also had a medical lifetime I'm sure... we had one of those huge medical books from the turn of the century, and i would spend hours pouring over it. The anatomy pics fascinated me, the layers of bone, muscle, nerve, etc... i can still remember looking at the latin words on the diagrams and feeling like it was coming home. even in high school and college, physiology was a snap...easy A

wish i could remember the lifetime where i was a rich entrepreneur! :rofl:

[MorningGlow]

21. You and me both, sistah!

Finances elude me. I think in some lives I was dirt poor, and in other lives I was so wealthy that others took care of my money for me! :P
:rofl:

Cool about the reading--guess you wouldn't be surprised if I said I was the same way! :D

Cheers to the medical stuff. Biology and chemistry darn near killed me in school (or at least darn near killed my grade point average).

[japple]

22. I play piano "by ear" and think that might have come from a previous

lifetime. I did take piano lessons in childhood, but was a terrible student because I always transposed the assigned pieces into my preferred key.

[Sanity Claws]

23. Different but related experience

My American History teacher in high school had me take the Advanced Placement test even though I hadn't taken the class for AP.
I somehow knew stuff in the American History and grasped the concepts before others. Another interesting thing, the day before the AP test I read up on the Federal Reserve Bank. I don't know why I did that but one of the essay questions concerned Wilson and FDR's relationship with the Bank. Looking back, I wonder whether I was lucky or whether a guide directed me to that reading.

[Celebration]

31. Awesome, and that reminds me of something similar

My daughter had to take an IQ test to get into a gifted program in first grade. She was definitely gifted verbally, but not spatially. So, if a kid was average spatially, it was almost impossible to score overall gifted, because that was half the test. However, they let her into the program because she answered twenty out of twenty questions correctly in the general knowledge category. And this was a test for adults! The night before the test, for some reason, her dad had a discussion with her on why we needed a legislature, instead of a direct democracy. (of all things!!) Guess what? That exact question was one of the general knowledge questions. Talk about synchronicity!

[I Have A Dream]

25. No, I've never had this happen.

I'm sure that the feeling of connection is wonderful.

This thread makes me happy. :)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

34. Reading and music.

I can't remember not knowing how to read. Mom said I read signs at 3 and books at 4.
She read to me.

The Ph.D. school principal who examined me when I was five said I could read better than any child he had ever seen in 30 years of elementary education. This was Dr. Dishron at Oak Forest Elementary in Houston.

My school district (town of 50K people) did not have school psychologists so they took me to Houston to be tested. I freaked 'em out. My uncle was one of their school psychologists. He tested me and didn't speak to me again for the next oh, twenty five years, because I was smarter than any of his four daughters. Not a great loss on my part. My sister was smarter than his kids too. She could work on cars.

They had to do something to get me in the first grade at five, since I was reading on a fourth or fifth grade level. They also said girls couldn't think spatially, in 3D. Well, I aced all the parts including the little flat cutout houses you visualized folding up. Also blew 3 standard deviations on a Stanford-Binet which is 145, one out of a thousand people. Yada yada...if I'm so smart how come I ain't rich?? Got the paper doctor and the impressive but not good for being employed education.

Also, we had my grandmother's piano at our house. She could play some by ear. Mom and Dad had NO musical talent. I started messing around on it and they gave me lessons. So I started reading music at age five as well. When I was about ten I figured out what people were asking when they said "Can you play by ear?". So in junior high I started playing songs off the radio.

Age ten, a violin dropped into my life out of the sky (I consider this one of the few miracles I've experienced). My dad was handling a woman's mother's estate as a probate lawyer. The woman had a friend who was a violinist with no living relatives. He had graduated from New England Conservatory or Curtis, one of the prestigious music schools.

They asked me if I wanted to learn violin and I said "Sure" since I could already read music. So we got it for $500 in legal fees on the woman's mother's estate. This was in 1965.

I was just the right age to start playing a full sized fiddle, although I remember my right arm being completely straight and having three or four inches of bow left, so I wasn't quite big enough. A violin is fourteen inches long.

I was also starting junior high and that's when they started the orchestra program.

And, it just so happened that my piano teacher was also a very good violinist. Those are two diff families of instruments. The mental and physical processes are quite different. I got very good as a violinist (I have small hands and I'm a small person) and people who play both of those are pretty rare.

So he gave me two lessons instead of one, until I graduated from high school. I kept up with orchestra and was obsessed with classical music for about fifteen years. It kept me sane. Then later I took singing lessons and found out I had a pretty good singing voice. Found my range and learned to sing in Italian, German and French, got into understanding the great stories in opera. Hint: They put the words up over the stage IN ENGLISH so you know what's going on!!

My piano teacher is now in the local accordion club, so maybe he's trying to become a public nuisance.

I could draw cartoons well when I was little, and still draw with a very free line. The teachers didn't like that. Tell me to color inside the lines and I grab the pen with a death grip and it turns into a scribble.

:grr: Fortunately I had one good art teacher in junior high so I wasn't turned off completely.

Art and music are easy for me but the parental units told me I couldn't get a job if I majored in those. I got a BA in biology and a law degree but those didn't get me jobs either!!

[Sanity Claws]

37. You are a Renaissance person

Can you do your art and music now? You followed the path your parents wanted. Now it's time to follow your own.
I know, easier said than done.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

39. Yeah. but no demand.

Except that I have not been able to sell my jewelry and silk pillows. Seems that super cheap stuff sells but mine doesn't. I use better quality stones and clasps than some others. I went to several boutiques in Houston to see if they would sell my stuff and nobody was interested. The market was glutted.

I even set up a shopping cart website with a domain name and sold one $12 pair of earrings in one year. I quit making stuff because I couldn't sell the stuff I have.

[Sanity Claws]

40. What about etsy?

or EBay?
I understand crafts people sell products through those sites, not through their own site.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

43. I just looked at Etsy.

My stuff has better quality materials, than a lot of this stuff, say $75 to $200.00 prices.

There are currently 1,635,394 items in jewelry. I can't figure out how anyone could find my stuff with that quantity of items.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Myrina]

38. Yes. I occasionally dream in German.

Granted, I took German in high school and 2 years in college, but never - EVER - studied for a test or an oral exam. Just knew it.
And got A's all the way through. In my late 20's I started dreaming in German. It's hard to explain but I would have almost lucid moments within the dream where it would dawn on me that everyone was 'speaking' (or telepathing) in German. Or when I'd wake up and review the dream for messages/details, it would strike me that the entire thing was 'in German'.

My maternal ancestors immigrated to WI from a small town just across the border of what's now the Czech Republic (I'm a TRUE Bohemian LOL) in 1874.

[I Have A Dream]

41. Wow, lucky you!

I'd love to be able to do that. :)

[Kind of Blue]

42. Interesting, my husband used to speak German

while dreaming. It didn't start until we met and stopped within that year. He's never been there, never taken the course - his people Belgian/Spanish, so if anything Spanish was spoken at home if ever. Whoever he was, was always shouting or barking orders but he never remembered a thing. Taped him once and had it translated - not nice at all. I think he was a Nazi or a very mean person. In real life, his brothers call him Nature Boy because of his gentle spirit - I imagine he's making up for a lot :rofl: