Past-Life Connections with Depp

Over the years, I have found myself drawn to specific people, especially when it comes to my "career" (for lack of a better word). As crazy as it may sound, one person in particular that I've felt myself consistently drawn to has been the actor Johnny Depp. 

Back in the late 1990s, Depp immediately became my favorite actor as soon as I saw Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood for the first time. I couldn't believe how great he was in two roles that were completely opposite from each other. Shortly after, I saw movies like Dead Man and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Donnie Brasco. I was, again, completely amazed by how well he played all these roles that were so different from each other. He was the most versatile actor I had ever seen. 

While it was his movies and unique role-choices that initially drew my attention to Depp, the more I learned about him, the more interesting he became. I particularly admired his deep appreciation for literature and his close friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. I knew there was something very unique about this guy that set him apart from most movie stars. 

For a while, I thought I was simply just a Depp fan or an admirer of his work. However, as more years passed, I felt myself more and more drawn to him. I didn't know why I had this feeling, but it felt like something more than simply being a fan. I mean, at the time I was just about as big a fan of the Beastie Boys, yet I did not feel at all 'drawn' to them like I was to Depp. 

For whatever reason, I felt compelled to get Depp's attention, get my own work to him...my novels, scripts, poetry, movies etc. As insane as it may sound, I felt like Depp was the only person with influence out there who was going to 'get' me and 'get' my work and maybe the only person of his stature who would actually maybe HELP me.

Little did I know that there was possibly a very good explanation as to why I was so drawn to Depp...

Part of this explanation came about two years ago when I learned from a psychic medium named Micheal (the spelling h-e-a-l is correct) that Johnny and I may have had past lives together, which would explain why I felt so drawn to him. Here is an exact quote from an email Micheal sent me...

"While it's possible your connection to Johnny Depp is through his native lineage, it's more likely the connection is farther back, say French Huguenot. Your lives definitely intersect in a couple of places."

Micheal's insight was, indeed, intriguing and resonated as truth deep down in my gut, but it still felt very 'out there', not to mention a little vague. Besides, one medium saying I had past lives with Depp wasn't enough to convince me (or anyone else for that matter). I needed more insight from maybe another source unrelated to Micheal. 

Flash-forward two years. In late December 2014, I won a holiday writing contest (read the story I wrote HERE) and first prize was an hour-long reading with a well-respected psychic medium named Jill. It was with Jill that I received more convincing confirmation of my past-life connections with Johnny Depp. 

Jill said that I 'helped' Johnny in the past and that's why I'm seeking his help now in my current life. People often "switch roles", as Jill put it. I essentially assisted him in some way in the past. Now there was maybe the possibility of him offering me some assistance. Spirits sometimes go from incarnation to incarnation as a kind of tag-team, helping one another out.


Jill also said that my new friend Amanda (read about Amanda in my previous article) was close to Johnny in the past as well. In fact, Jill said that - although we were only friends in our current life - Amanda and I were "together" in a past life and all three of us (i.e. Amanda, myself and whoever Johnny was) were very close.

In my previous article, I wrote how Amanda and I discovered that Amanda had an (alleged) past life as Zelda Fitzgerald. In that article, I also wrote how - soon after the Zelda discovery - we discovered I had an (alleged) past life as her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's possible that the Fitzgerald life was the life Jill was referring to when she said Amanda and I were 'together' in the past. It's also possible that it was in the Fitzgerald life that Depp was close to us. In fact, when Jill said that "all three of us were close" in the past, I immediately started to think about the close relationship between the Fitzgerald's and the writer Ernest Hemingway (I talk more about the Fitzgerald/Hemingway relationship in my previous article). F. Scott was very close with Hemingway and helped him get his first novel - The Sun Also Rises - published at Scribner's. A recent article in literarytraveler.com explains this 'help' in better detail:

"Fitzgerald and Hemingway first met in April 1925. At the time, Hemingway, who had been working as a journalist, had only published a handful of stories and poems, a total of eighty-eight pages. Fitzgerald on the other hand was the author of three published novels, two short story collections and countless individual stories. The meeting between the writers led to a tumultuous friendship often characterized by insecurity and jealousy – a friendship that would affect not only the two men, but their writing as well.

As the senior writer, Fitzgerald’s commitment to Hemingway went far beyond friendship. In the coming months and years, Fitzgerald counseled Hemingway, served as his agent, ensured his association with Maxwell Perkins and Scribner’s, and acted as a buffer between Hemingway’s rough exterior and the outside world.

Perhaps the most significant thing Fitzgerald did for Hemingway was to edit a much less-publishable The Sun Also Rises, helping to pave the way for Hemingway’s prolific writing career."

Was the help that Fitzgerald provided Hemingway with the 'help' that Jill was referring to when she said I helped Johnny in the past? Did Johnny Depp have a past life as Ernest and I helped him when I was F. Scott? This could be possible because Hemingway died a few years before Depp was born. Depp's good friend Hunter Thompson never met Hemingway, but he wrote a National Observer article in 1964 where he visited Hemingway's Idaho home and investigated the reasons for the writer's suicide. Hunter was always very drawn to Hemingway in general - in fact, it's said that Hunter had a 'man-crush' on the writer. Could it be that Hunter and Depp were so drawn to each other because Depp was actually Hemingway in the past?

Depp, of course, doesn't really seem to resemble Ernest that much in his current life, so saying he had a past-life as Ernest seems like a stretch. It's possible that Depp was close to Amanda and I in a different life; after all, I've supposedly had about 30 past lives. As you will hear in the reading (below), Jill said that she saw Johnny and I in a place that looked like Rome. Maybe Amanda was in this Rome life, too. When you're dealing with 30 lives, there are many possibilities.

Whether Depp can be linked to the Fitzgerald life or some other life that Amanda and I shared, I may never know. However, one thing is definitely for sure: Depp can easily be linked to the Fitzgerald's via his close friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. The links are easy to follow: The Fitzgerald's were close with Hemingway; Hunter S. Thompson's two favorite writers and overall heroes were Fitzgerald and Hemingway; and Hunter, of course, was very close friends with Depp; oh, and both Hunter and Hemingway are 'with me' as spirit guides (as explained in the previous article). So even if Depp wasn't Hemingway or at all part of the Fitzgerald life, it's still very possible that Depp, Hemingway, Hunter and the Fitzgerald's are part of a close soul family that have been crossing paths off and on throughout several human incarnations.

Confusing, right? You bet it is! Past lives, soul families and spirit guides are all very complicated concepts that are probably not incredibly easy to digest all at once, especially if you aren't already familiar with these concepts. So, before I complicate things any further, I will bring this article to a close, but not before leaving off with an 8min audio clip from my reading with the psychic medium Jill. In the clip, she goes into further detail regarding my possible past-life connections with Johnny Depp.

A Past Life Healed: F. Scott Reunites with Zelda

NOTE FROM MATT BURNS:

The story below involves the spirits of several ex-writers from the 20th century, but this story never would have started had it not been for one spirit in particular: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. 

Over the years, various legitimate psychic mediums (unrelated to each other) have informed me that Hunter S. Thompson is “with me” as a spirit guide and he helps me with my writing. I have written about this discovery in a previous article entitled "Meeting Hunter S. Thompson and Nathanael West". In the article, I talk about how Hunter and West are part of a close team of writers on the 'other side' and they both have assisted me with various writing projects over the recent years. Yes, I realize this all sounds very unbelievable so far and you may be raising your eyebrows. But there’s actually more…

Hunter’s spirit has recently reconnected me with an old friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen in about 15 years. My friend Amanda (name changed) had been experiencing ‘paranormal’ activity in her house and I suggested that she see a medium in order to obtain an explanation as to what was going on. To make a long story short, she ended up having a reading with a Los-Angeles-based medium named Tracey (name changed) whom neither of us had ever met or associated with before. Not only did Tracey reconfirm that Hunter was with me as a spirit guide, but she also said that Ernest Hemingway was with me as well. Both writers were making their presence known and trying to bring Amanda and I together because we had a very important past life together. See, I was (allegedly) one of Hunter’s favorite writers/Hemingway's former writing buddy F. Scott Fitzgerald while Amanda was F. Scott’s wife: Zelda Fitzgerald.

I do realize this sounds like an extremely wild story and you’re more than likely skeptical (believe me: I would be, too). However, I encourage you to have an open mind and read all the details below. Please feel free to visit my Amazon author page and hopefully this will show that I am a rational, logical and grounded individual. I have volumes of writing material there. 


Without further ado, here is the story:

...

A Past Life Healed: F. Scott Reunites with Zelda
by matt burns

The following story may sound rather unbelievable and, to be honest, I don't blame anyone who finds it far-fetched. There is unfortunately no way to conclusively prove the discoveries that you will hear about below. I did my best documenting the events as accurately as possible, but it's up to the reader to decide whether they believe in any of it. My hope is that - if nothing else - the discoveries will at least provoke thought and discussion.

First off, let me give you the back-story...

About two months ago, I was out at a local bar and I ran into a friend I hadn't really seen in about 15 years. Amanda (name changed) is about ten years older than me and she helped run the backstage at a theater troupe I used to be involved with when I was a teenager – she was in her twenties at the time. We started chatting and realized we both had an interest in writing and seemed to get along quite well. The encounter felt really strange, but in a good way. We both agreed that it seemed serendipitous and "meant to be".

Amanda and I started hanging out more and more to talk about writing. During this time, she learned that I had an interest in the paranormal and she informed me that she was experiencing paranormal activity in her home. She was hearing voices, names whispered and also seeing shadows. One night she even saw the full-bodied apparition of a big, burly man at the bottom of her attic steps and the man said aloud, "You have to keep moving". The paranormal activity itself was strange enough, but what Amanda found even more strange was that the activity seemed to intensify after hanging out with me, as if it were somehow linked to me. She had no idea what was going on and she wanted some sort of explanation for it all.

I suggested that Amanda see a medium to help shed some light on what was going on. She agreed that it was a good idea and I, of course, had participated in my fair share of psychic readings over the years (read about my various readings HERE), but none of the mediums I had crossed paths with seemed like the right fit for Amanda. There were one or two people that I thought MAYBE might be able to help, but I didn’t feel too strongly about them. The timing still didn’t feel quite right. So we kind of sat tight for a while.

Meanwhile, the paranormal activity kept happening and Amanda was really starting to get concerned about what was going on and she was even more concerned about her psychological wellbeing. She really needed somebody to shed some light on what was happening in her house or at least tell her she wasn’t insane, but the question was “WHO?”

A week or so later, an LA-based actress by the name of Tracey (name changed) contacted me out of the blue saying she had read some of my writing on my website - particularly the paranormal stories - rather interesting. We chatted back and forth and added each other on Facebook and it didn't take me long to notice that she was experienced in psychic and Tarot readings. In my gut, I thought it may have been serendipitous that Tracey contacted me when she did, right around the time that Amanda was experiencing the paranormal activity and was looking for a medium who could help explain what was happening.

I told Amanda about Tracey and that she was a medium and did psychic readings. Amanda checked out her web page and felt that she should drop her a line to get more details. To make a long story short, Amanda liked what she heard and, about a week or two later, she set up a time for a reading with Tracey that would take place over the phone. 

Amanda felt strongly that I should be present during the reading and I agreed that it felt right, too. So we met at 2pm on a Tuesday (July 15, 2014) at a peaceful park, sat at a picnic table and did the reading with Tracey by phone (Tracey was in Los Angeles). Amanda had her phone on speaker and I brought two different devices that could record the audio of the session: a Sony digital audio recorder and my video camera.

Amanda had only paid for a 30 minute reading so Tracey didn't waste any time delving into what Amanda was most interested in: the paranormal activity she was experiencing in her house. Tracey could see that there was a man in the house and she said, almost right away, that this man was a famous writer. Both Amanda and I were surprised to hear this, but at the same time we weren't completely shocked. We had actually suspected that either one or two of my (alleged) spirit guides were making their presence known to her, particularly Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski. (I never confirmed that the latter writer was a guide but have always suspected he was around me, especially ever since I started writing poetry about a year and a half ago. You can read more about Hunter as my spirit guide HERE.)

Tracey went on to describe the writer in greater detail. She said that he was an alcoholic, had a very dark side to his personality, and struggled with depression. There was a lot of trauma in his life and he died young, somewhat tragically. In fact, he may have even committed suicide. He had brown hair, wore reading spectacles, was very tall and was around during the earlier part of the twentieth century because Tracey kept seeing images in black and white...

I listened to the description of the writer and none of my spirit guides seemed to fit, but I have to admit that for some reason a name kept popping into my mind: F. Scott Fitzgerald. I didn't say anything about it at the time, mainly because the name seemed too far-fetched and very out of left field; plus, I never knew Fitzgerald to be one of my guides. I kept quiet and listened for more clues...

Tracey explained that this writer was "with me" but I brought him to Amanda and Amanda had a past-life connection to this man. She thought that they were likely lovers - maybe even married - and that there was some unfinished business at the time of the man's premature death; words left unsaid or confusion as to what happened because they weren't together at the time. The man was also apologizing to Amanda for something…

Tracey went on to address some other issues in Amanda’s life, but by the end of the reading, I felt compelled to ask some of my own questions, particularly regarding the writer who was trying to connect with Amanda. I told Tracey that I (allegedly) had some famous writers with me as spirit guides and I thought one of them may be this man she was trying to describe. The first two names I threw her way were the only two guides that I knew were alive during the time period Tracey was describing: Henry James and Nathanael West. But Tracey said that, according to her psychic sources, it wasn’t either one of them. I then told her that Hunter S. Thompson was also with me and I also believed Charles Bukowski to be with me - at least to some extent - but it wouldn’t really make sense that this mystery spirit haunting Amanda was any of them because both Thompson and Bukowski died fairly recently (Bukowski in 1994 and Hunter committed suicide in 2005). Tracey asked about Bukowski and Thompson and, for some reason, came up with a 'yes' for both of them. However, this didn’t necessarily mean that either Thompson or Bukowski was the male spirit Tracey was seeing in her psychic visions, though it still seemed like the two writers were making their presence known. 

As I mentioned before, both Amanda and especially myself had suspected that Bukowski and Thompson were around us, though we were still surprised to obtain outside confirmation from a neutral third party. We had suspected that Thompson may have been around when, one day, Amanda happened to mention to me that her mind seemed unusually haunted by Hunter S. Thompson’s writing and this was before she even knew that he was supposedly with me as a spirit guide. Then, about a week or two later, Bukowski popped into my head and I started thinking he could have been the apparition Amanda saw in her house, so I mentioned that to her and she was shocked because she had been talking to her husband about Bukowski and his poetry earlier that day. Amanda started reading a bunch of Bukowski’s poems and I re-read a lot of them myself. We were both obsessed with the poet for a good 24 hours.

So, yes, it made sense that both Hunter and Bukowski were around and Tracey seemed to confirm our suspicions of this. But, like I said, these writers were pretty contemporary and it wouldn't make sense that Amanda would have had a past life with them because she was currently in her early 40s and Thompson/Bukowski were alive so recently that it just didn't seem to add up, especially seeing that Amanda was supposedly married to this mysterious male writer spirit. Tracey seemed to feel that the link was more with Hunter than with Bukowski, but she couldn't necessarily explain why. Maybe it was possible that they had a past-life connection two lifetimes ago and - although that may have been true - I felt like there was more to it than just that.

The session with Tracey eventually ended with these questions unanswered, but Amanda, myself and (I think) Tracey were all pretty blown away that some amazing writers were revealing their presence to us. We all went our separate ways and I went to grab an iced coffee at my favorite café - mainly to clear my head - but I eventually made it home, sat at my computer and opened some new emails that had just come in from Tracey. She reiterated that the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson was definitely around, making his presence known, and somehow connected to Amanda through past lives. This still didn't seem to make too much sense to me but then I thought about the connection more deeply and that was when I remembered a name that had popped into my mind earlier in the reading but dismissed as irrelevant:

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I remembered that Hunter S. Thompson idolized F. Scott Fitzgerald and he basically taught himself to write by copying out pages of The Great Gatsby, which was his favorite book. I looked up F. Scott Fitzgerald and all of a sudden everything started to come together. Almost on a telepathic level, I instantly realized that Fitzgerald really did sound a lot like the man Tracey was describing during her reading (brown hair, alcoholic, died young, tragic end to life) and then it immediately popped into my head that Amanda was Fitzgerald's wife: Zelda Fitzgerald. Yes, it just came to me, pretty quickly, like a spirit had telepathically implanted the information into my mind.

Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald had a very tumultuous marriage and Zelda didn't get to see her husband for the last year and a half of his life because he was in Hollywood writing movies, having affairs and drinking himself to death. During this time, Zelda had been committed to a mental institution and diagnosed (perhaps falsely) with schizophrenia. Zelda never had a chance to heal the damaged relationship she had with her husband because he had a fatal heart attack on December 21, 1940 in Hollywood while she was still a resident at a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina. Zelda had a tough life after her husband's death - she was in and out of the hospital, a recipient of shock therapy - and she died eight years later when the Asheville hospital burned to the ground.

Although the history books have always considered Zelda to have been schizophrenic, there are new revisionist perspectives that see her as – if anything – a bipolar writer/artist. These revisionists also claim that Fitzgerald treated her very poorly, mentally abused her in the form of gaslighting (read about gaslighting HERE), stole ideas from her and even sometimes outright plagiarized some of her stories (read more about what the revisionists say HERE). Tracey said that the man haunting Amanda was desperate to apologize for something. Perhaps the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to apologize to Zelda for treating her so poorly while he was alive? This was very possible.

So, yes, all the pieces were starting to fit, but, hell, it seemed REALLY far-fetched. I mean, F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most famous modern American novelists of all time who had written one of the greatest American novels of all time: The Great Gatsby. And my friend Amanda, whom I had recently re-connected with, was...well…quite possibly Zelda Fitzgerald in her past life? This sounded pretty insane, but on a gut level it resonated as being the truth. The troubled relationship between Zelda and F. Scott sounded very similar to the one Tracey was describing between Amanda and the man in her past life.

I ran my theory by Tracey and it wasn't long before she got back to me. She had Googled F. Scott Fitzgerald and got intense chills. Then she looked up Zelda Fitzgerald and got even more chills. Not only did all of this information match up with what she had been feeling during the reading (especially in regards to the relationship between Zelda and her husband), but Tracey also pointed out that Amanda uncannily resembled Zelda in physical appearance. Tracey agreed that it was extremely possible that Amanda may have been Zelda Fitzgerald in her past life and now F. Scott Fitzgerald's spirit was visiting her to heal their damaged past-life relationship.

As I mulled the incredible discoveries over in my head, I remembered how, at one point during her reading, Tracey said that she saw a male spirit hugging Amanda and telling her he loves her. Tracey also said that there was so much this spirit wanted to tell Amanda about what happened to him leading up to his death and that she needed to understand. Not only did he want to set the record straight to Amanda but he also wanted to set it straight for the entire world as well. 

But if this spirit was, indeed, F. Scott Fitzgerald, then what did the world not yet know about him? What misconceptions do we have about his life? Well, I had already uncovered that Fitzgerald potentially had a much darker side to him than the history books would indicate, but I wanted to dig a little deeper. And while I didn’t learn anything too groundbreaking about Fitzgerald, I did end up making another shocking discovery:

The night after the reading with Tracey and Amanda, I started watching a documentary about Fitzgerald, something pretty simple that the "Arts and Entertainment" channel produced back in the 90s. At one point, it talked about Fitzgerald’s time as an expatriate in France and how he met/started hanging out with the writer Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald and Hemingway were solid friends but supposedly Zelda and Hemingway didn't get along (Hemingway told Fitzgerald he thought Zelda was crazy and Zelda thought Hemingway to be a 'bogus' phony). The documentary showed some photographs of Hemingway and it suddenly struck me that the writer strongly resembled Amanda’s description of the apparition she saw in her house. I immediately messaged Amanda and told her to look up pictures of Ernest Hemingway. Her response came only minutes later:

“Holy shit!”

She had Googled photos of the big, burly, overly-masculine Ernest Hemingway and he looked almost EXACTLY like the apparition she saw in her house, the one that told her to “keep moving”. She was dumbfounded. Without a doubt, Ernest Hemingway was the man she saw...

Ernest Hemingway

The next day we both messaged Tracey who said a chill ran up her arm when she looked up Hemingway. He definitely resembled the spirit she saw in her visions, but – then again – so didn’t Hunter S. Thompson and Fitzgerald. “It’s like we’re dealing with a whole posse of writers here,” she said. “Very strange.” All three writers seemed to be making their presence known to all of us.

So, yes, I do think Amanda saw Hemingway that night in her house and it's very possible that - like Fitzgerald - Hemingway's spirit was also trying to apologize to Amanda. The more I researched Hemingway and Zelda, the more I realized that Hemingway wasn't nice to her either and kept trying to convince his friend Fitzgerald that she was crazy. Both spirits seemed to be trying to heal some rough past-life relations and they both seemed to feel sorry for calling Zelda crazy, mentally abusing her, gaslighting her and contributing to her tragic downfall in and out of mental institutions. 

Now, do I really feel that Amanda was F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda? It still sounds pretty crazy, but the connections all seem to make sense, so, yes, I strongly do believe it's a good possibility. But Fitzgerald wasn't the only spirit around Amanda; it turned out that there were a handful of writers making their presence known and they are all linked somehow - Hunter with Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald with Hemingway. In fact, upon doing a little more research, I was shocked to learn that Hunter considered Hemingway one of his literary heroes as well. Just like he did with Gatsby, Hunter copied Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms, word-for-word, when he was trying to teach himself the craft of writing novels. I feel like all three of the writers are a closely-knit soul group hanging with one another in the spirit world, perhaps with Bukowski, too. They were all alcoholics and all great American writers writing about very similar things (the hollowness of the American Dream, essentially). I think all of them were making their presence known but Fitzgerald was the one who had the major past-life connection with Amanda. I also believe all four of the writers have been with me, off and on, through the years, because I basically write about the same subject matter as they do (the hollowness of the American dream). So maybe I was the bridge to connect them (especially Fitzgerald) with Amanda and that’s why we so serendipitously crossed paths that one night at the bar. 

Timing is everything and I feel like it was time for Amanda to open her eyes to these spirits, learn about her past as Zelda Fitzgerald and think about how those past issues relate to certain issues in her current life. I feel like I dropped into Amanda's life when I did because I was needed to help her make sense of everything, connect her with Tracey and also help pick up where Tracey left off and put more of the pieces together after the reading. 

In fact, I think that this entire experience was meaningful for both Amanda and myself. For me, it was nice to get so much more confirmation that Hunter S. Thompson was with me in spirit and it was even more awesome to know that Fitzgerald, Hemingway and maybe even Bukowski were also with me, most likely helping out with my writing on varying levels. I think - more than anything else - this experience was about giving both Amanda and myself confidence. Amanda and I needed to know that these awesome people were around us so we, in turn, felt more awesome about ourselves and - for a lot of reasons that I won’t get into - it was important for both of us to gain this type of confidence at this point in our lives so we could "keep moving", as the apparition of Ernest Hemingway stated aloud to Amanda that one eerie night in her house.

…

A few days after discovering that Hunter S. Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were around, I was trying to document the whole experience while writing what you’ve read above. I printed out an early draft of what I had written so far and went onto my screened porch to go over it with a pen and make notes/changes. It wasn’t long before I looked down and saw a Boston Globe newspaper on the table with a headline looking up at me that said “Old Man and the Sea”. It took a moment to register in my brain, mainly because I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort, but then it hit me: 

“Wait! That’s the title of a Hemingway novel!”

This is the headline I saw...

Indeed, it WAS the title of a Hemingway novel…or novella, to be precise. It was the last significant piece of writing he published before his death in the early 1950s and it was this novella that heavily contributed to him winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Was it a coincidence that I saw this headline? No way. I didn’t think so. Hemingway seemed to be saying hello.

About an hour after seeing the Hemingway headline, I needed to go out and grab something at the Whole Foods supermarket a few towns away. There are actually two Whole Foods stores nearby - one in Dedham, MA. and one in Bellingham, MA. - but I felt something pulling me to go to the one in Bellingham because I knew there was a Newbury Comics record store in the same plaza as the Bellingham store and I had the urge to browse through some CDs and DVDs. So I went to get what I needed at Whole Foods and then proceeded to Newbury Comics as planned. As soon as I walked into the store, I found myself looking at a display right in the front-end of the store – immediately inside the entrance - and on this display there were copies of both THE GREAT GATSBY and FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS as well as other merchandise for each book and there was a TON of it. It was staring right at me, thrown in my face (see pictures below).

It was after my experience at Newbury Comics that there was no doubt in my mind. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Thompson…they were all saying hello and confirming that they were, indeed, with both Amanda and I in spirit. It wasn’t all in our imagination. It was all as real as can be.



THREE WEEKS LATER…

Yes, almost three weeks had passed since we had made the discovery that Amanda most likely had a past life as Zelda Fitzgerald. What we didn’t know was that there was one more shocking discovery we were going to make… 

It was early on a Friday morning that I got a message from Amanda saying that it sounded crazy, but she thought I might have possibly been F. Scott Fitzgerald in a past life. She said she was in bed the night before – trying to sleep – and the thought kept haunting her, almost as if a spirit were implanting the information into her head. F. Scott Fitzgerald was not a separate spirit guide helping us. I was F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Although I never thought too much about it, the idea of me having been Fitzgerald had definitely crossed my mind during the weeks following Tracey’s reading. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because Hemingway was the only spirit to make his presence known while Fitzgerald never really seemed to manifest himself. It always felt like Fitzgerald was reaching Amanda through me and, when I wasn’t around, he didn’t seem to be around her either. I always thought I was simply channeling him, but maybe there was more to it than just that…

I borrowed the recent Great Gatsby movie from the library (the one starring Leonardo DiCaprio) and also started reading the novel. I hadn’t read Gatsby since college and had forgotten much of what the story was about, but what struck me this time around was how familiar it seemed. Watching the movie was a very bizarre trip to say the least. I admit I was a little buzzed on beer while I was watching, but it wasn’t just the booze messing with my mind. I couldn’t believe the kind of stuff that was coming into my head and I felt compelled to write anything and everything down as it came to me. It wasn’t a thought or two – it was a FLOOD of thoughts and feelings. Either the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald was right there with me telling his story (sort of like how Gatsby does to Nick at one point in the story) or maybe I was tapping into a very deep part of my soul where past-life memories are stored. Either way, I was getting all these crazy thoughts and I wrote them all down. Here they all are. You will notice that they’re in the first person, as if I’m channeling Scott... 

I harbored some passive aggression towards Zelda.
She only likes me now that I’m successful.
She came back when I got my first novel published.
Otherwise she'd be with that other guy.
I have no respect for her.
I love her, but deep down I harbor disgust towards her.

Think Johnny Cruise (Note: at this point during the “channeling”, I wanted to take note of the parallels between The Great Gatsby and my first novel JOHNNY CRUISE. They were totally different novels with different characters and settings and time periods, but the theme/subtext/tragic characters were all eerily similar).

Johnny’s hang-up with Heather in JOHNNY CRUISE strongly resembles Gatsby’s hang-up with Daisy.

Johnny thinks Heather will only like him if he’s successful. This is what Gatsby thought about Daisy.

Heather haunts Johnny just like Daisy haunts Gatsby. Both characters are haunted by lost (potential) love. It’s the girl that drives them to create a life/persona for them that is hollow and phony.

Johnny/Fitzgerald harbor deep misogyny, a hatred towards the woman that only comes back after success.

I have deep disgust and hatred and disrespect for women who only like you when you have success, money and security. You take them and you have sex with them but you NEVER lose the disrespect and disgust and hatred towards them...

This MISOGYNY was Fitzgerald’s “dark side”...
Women like Zelda gravitate to the success...
You (Zelda) were a product of the times.
You lived for the world, not for yourself.
Easily swayed and tickled by the success devil.
Her downfall was her karma.
But I still feel guilt and I still feel sorry for what happened to her.

Part of me is also mad that I still feel sorry and guilty for something she brought on herself. But I can’t shake the guilt. Part of me knows I shouldn’t be guilty, but another part of me is haunted by the guilt. I’m mad that I’m guilty. My mind has been messed with. Maybe I was gaslighted and I gaslighted back. Maybe it was an endless cycle of gaslighting...

This is where I’m coming from. It doesn’t excuse any of my actions but it at least shows where I was coming from and where my head was at. Being mean or being an asshole sometimes has a complex foundation to it...

When Gatsby tanked you (Zelda) seemed to love me less, or maybe I thought that in my head because you only seemed to love me when my first book was published, so I assumed that once I became a failure, you wouldn’t love me anymore. (NOTE: The Gatsby novel was not successful when it was first published. It only became as popular as it is today well after Fitzgerald's death).

Your love for me was conditional, or that’s what I thought in my head.
I thought everybody’s love for me was conditional.

See BLOWTORTURE: the main theme is conditional love. (Note: BLOWTORTURE, my most recent novel, has parallels with Gatsby and also Fitzgerald’s life. The novel is very much concerned with the idea of conditional love in America, particularly Hollywood).

I never felt like I had unconditional love.
I felt like I needed to be a success in order to have love.
When Gatsby tanked, I felt I lost love.
I went to Hollywood to be a success again, thinking maybe I could win back love.

Hollywood was even worse. The town is America run through a film projector at triple-speed. The conditional love was three times as worse there than in general America. 
In Hollywood, they only love you if you are successful. If you’re a failure, the love disappears.

My drinking became three times worse in Hollywood.
And then I died.
In the end, who’s at fault? Who’s the victim here?
Nobody is to blame, nobody is at fault.
It’s just one big American tragedy.
Both of us put our priorities in the wrong place.
Both of us cared about the wrong things.

Both of us replaced our God with success - we worshiped the latter when we should have been more concerned with the former.

The world was our God. We lived for the world and not for God.
I need to release this from my soul.
This has been tormenting my soul.
The world needs to know this tragedy.
And this tragedy is in JOHNNY CRUISE.
I subconsciously expressed the tragedy in all the stuff I have written.
This isn’t just my karma, but Amanda's karma, too.
We’re currently both picking up the pieces of the aftermath to a tragedy.
Many pieces have been picked up, finally, just about every last one.
It’s time to move on.
Nobody is the victim here, nobody is the perpetrator.
Each of us are merely characters in one big tragedy.
Nobody is ever just a victim.
Nobody is ever just a perpetrator.

The world doesn’t need to know that Fitzgerald was bad guy and Zelda was an angel or vice versa.

We don’t need to know who’s crazy and who’s not crazy, who did the gaslighting and who didn't, who mentally abused who.

We need to know the tragedy.
That’s the truth that needs to be told.

This isn’t necessarily “karma”, but just something we both needed to go through to grow into a better soul. Zelda was no more a victim than Fitzgerald and no more a perpetrator. Both figures were equally a tragic character who made tragic errors. 

…

The night after I had all of the above revelations, I met up with Amanda at the bar and read aloud to her everything I had written down. She wasn’t upset or insulted or offended. In fact, she felt it was rather illuminating to listen to “Fitzgerald’s side of the story”. Up until then, she had mostly been viewing Zelda as the sole victim of a mentally abusive relationship. She never stopped to think that maybe Scott was a “victim” too, or maybe she was just as much of a “perpetrator” as Scott was. Maybe there was no good guy and bad guy– it wasn’t that black and white of a situation. Both Fitzgerald and Zelda were two tragic characters who each made certain tragic errors in their lives. In the great scheme of things, there is no victim and villain, just complex souls. We go through several different incarnations – some as the victim and some as the perpetrator – and, in the end, we’re all the more spiritually evolved because of it. Pointing fingers at each other isn’t important. But pinpointing certain tragic errors and learning from them IS important. That’s all that is worthwhile to do in life…

After I read Fitzgerald’s perspective to Amanda in the bar, I noticed how much lighter I seemed to feel, like something had been released from my soul that I’d been carrying around with me for a long time. Surprised by the noticeable catharsis, I really started to wonder whether I was, indeed, Fitzgerald in my recent past life. I realized it would be nice to have some definitive outside confirmation so I wasn't always wondering if it were true. While I didn’t want to bother Tracey about it because she had already done so much for Amanda and myself, after about a week of wondering, I felt compelled to bother her just one more time and ask the big question. Was I F. Scott Fitzgerald in a past life? Here is how she responded to the message I sent to her over Facebook:

“Well I asked the universe and record keepers if you were in fact the soul of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I got yes 3 times very strongly. So that feels right to me. And now I got other body sensation confirmations. Yup. I do believe you are him.”

So there it was. The last piece of the puzzle had potentially fallen into place. It looked like I was quite possibly F. Scott Fitzgerald and Amanda (formerly Zelda) and I had crossed paths at the bar that night in order to heal our troubled past-life relationship. Perhaps we both needed to expunge the negativity that was trapped deep in our souls because it was this negativity that was preventing us from “moving forward” (Hemingway’s words) with our current lives. 

Clearing My Past-Life Traumas

This article is the sixth installment of the ongoing story that deals with my past-life experiences. You may want to read my previous articles for the essential back-story, but I can give you a brief summary right here. Basically, in the later part of 2010, I learned that I had a recent past-life as a man in Poland and also a recent past-life as a woman in Hollywood (actress Carole Lombard). The two lives coexisted with each other, which is a phenomenon called a "parallel existence". Needless to say, it was a little weird discovering that my soul was in two bodies at the same time, not to mention the fact that one of these incarnations was as a woman. But the parallel existence and female incarnation were only the tip of the iceberg (so to speak). Recently, I discovered that the life in Poland and Hollywood were only two past lives...out of a whopping thirty-two. Yes, you heard me correctly: I have had 32 past lives!!!

Now, you may be wondering how I arrived at such a discovery. Well, last month I visited a palm reader named Jesse who suggested that I needed a "spiritual cleansing”. Jesse insisted that I had a "darkness in my aura" that resulted from past-life traumas. I consequently went home and tried to conduct the cleansing myself but I wasn't sure it had been completely effective. There was a feeling in my gut that I hadn't gotten all the "darkness" out of my system.

At first, I considered going back to Jesse, because she had said she could cleanse me if I wanted her to. But she charged a good amount of money for it ($150). Plus, the cleansing methods she described to me seemed a little strange (it involved carrying candles around with me or something along those lines). I'm sure whatever she did would have probably worked, but I didn't feel very comfortable with her. I didn't really want a stranger messing with my aura and energy field. What if she ended up opening up another hole and allowed more negative energy to get in? What if an entity or demon attached itself to me? Surely I didn't want that to happen. But if I didn't trust Jesse with the cleansing of my aura, who WAS I going to trust??? Well, it actually didn't take very long for me to come up with another person.

See, for more than ten years now, I have been a client of a woman named Samantha (name changed) who is essentially everything from a healer to a dietitian to an allergist to a homeopathic therapist to a Reiki master to a medium and a psychic. Over the years, Samantha has helped "clear" unwanted energies out of my system, including Lyme disease, drugs (mild ones like marijuana) and even allergies. I mean, before I knew Samantha I was extremely allergic to dairy products; whenever I ate a yogurt or drank milk I would get a mean strep throat that was always difficult to get rid of. But after Samantha cleared me of the allergy I could eat dairy without any problem at all. I never got any more strep throats. It was almost miraculous what she did for me.

Samantha has also been very successful in clearing more intangible negative energies from my system, such as feelings, fears, thought-patterns and even depressing worldviews. She once cleared feelings of rejection, for example. And also feelings of failure. One time Samantha even helped clear a feeling of hopelessness, that the world was doomed.

Anyway, I figured if Samantha could clear negative energies from my current life as Matt Burns then she was probably the woman to see if I wanted to clear energies from my past lives. So I gave Samantha a call, made an appointment with her, and found myself in her Boston office only a week later.

To my surprise, I found that it was easier to explain my situation to Samantha than I had initially thought. Basically, I just told her that I recently uncovered some past-life traumas and I thought it would be a good idea to cleanse myself of any negative energy I've carried over from previous lives.

"Are you able to do this kind of a thing?" I asked her.

"Sure."

"And do you think it's something I need to do?"

Samantha asked my (spirit) guides whether this was a good idea and they gave her a definite...

"YES. Definitely."

But they said they couldn't do it all in one cleansing. All my body could clear at one time was energy from 13 lives...out of a whopping 32! Yikes.

"I see you soldiering in some of them," Samantha added. "And in others there's a lot of residual anger...at people who killed you in the past."

Yes, apparently deep in my soul I was essentially still pissed off at the people who had wronged me in previous lives. And the more I thought about it, the more this all started to make sense...because throughout my entire life, I've always had rage inside of me. Honestly, I never knew why I had the rage. I didn't have a rotten childhood. I wasn't abused in any way. I wasn't bullied in school. I got everything I wanted for Christmas. But, still, there was always rage inside of me, from almost as early on as I can remember. And don't get me wrong: I rarely showed my rage to others. In fact, I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn I had a problem with anger. I've actually always been a very peaceful person when it came to associating with people and I've hardly ever gotten into a fight. But the rage has always been present, lingering in my chest like a snake in the grass.

So maybe the source of my rage - this whole entire time - has been from past lives. Honestly, it seems to be the most probable explanation. I mean, think about it: thirty-two-lives-worth of negative trauma is bound to leave some kind of a mark. According to Samantha, I was murdered in some of these lives. Killed in battles and burned in fires. Raped in Hollywood. Manipulated by the Nazis in Poland. Fucked over in various ways. Screwed. Victimized. Et cetera. Et cetera.

So, yes, with so much trauma under my belt, perhaps it's easy to understand why I've always had repressed rage, but I think the fact that I've even held onto so much anger is a sign that I've been a rather immature soul this whole time. I mean, who am I even angry at? The schmuck who killed me in life-number-three? Or the rapist in the Hollywood life? The Nazis in the Poland life? Honestly, if there's anybody to blame for my rage it's myself. As Samantha pointed out to me, we CHOOSE our various lives and we CHOOSE to be put into "traumatic" situations. Yes, talk to any meta-physicist anywhere (see list of books below) and they all seem to agree that we "chart" our lives before human incarnation. Every single minute detail of our lives is painstakingly planned, like who we are going to meet, what experiences we will go through...who we will work with...marry...divorce etc.

So if we actually choose our entire life, how can we ever consider ourselves a "victim" of anything? And if we are never a victim of anything, how can we ever be angry at anybody? The answer is we can't. Or we shouldn't. Anger is a complete waste of time and harboring such negative feelings for prolonged periods of time is a sign of immaturity. If only people started realizing this, the world would probably be a much more peaceful place. Maybe there would be less wars. Less murders. Corruption. Retribution. Revenge. Who knows?

Anyway, Samantha eventually had me lie on a table and she "cleared" me of all the negative energy I had accumulated during 13 of the 32 past lives. The way in which Samantha conducts the clearing is a little difficult to explain and would likely raise a lot of eyebrows, especially for the average layman. It's very Shaman-like, actually. She essentially sucks the bad energy out of your aura with her hands and then discards it back into the bowels of the earth. Yes, this sounds strange as anything, but you definitely feel a noticeable difference while she does it. The place where she touches you usually gets very warm - sometimes very hot. This heat is actually the energy being released from the body. And afterward, you feel much lighter. A lot more relaxed.

During my clearing, Samantha informed me that the negative energy from the past lives had been affecting me on a physical level, as well as on an emotional one. The energy was supposedly having an adverse effect on my muscles, intestines, pituitary gland, pancreas, liver, brain and other physical components of my physiology. Who would ever think that the cause of a physical ailment could have roots in a past-life trauma? Think about how many people out there have chronic physical problems that baffle doctors? It's kind of a shame that the medical world never thinks to look in the past for answers. Maybe they will as the human race becomes more spiritually evolved.

Anyway, I feel like the "cleansing" was what I needed all along. I think this was the main reason why I was so drawn to my past lives in the first place. What started out as sheer curiosity about reincarnation ended up leading me to uncover the cause of my repressed rage and mysterious physical issues. Hopefully the cleansing gradually makes me feel better as time goes forward. Of course, I still have to go back to see Samantha so I can have the other 19 lives cleared. But in the meantime I think I'm going to notice a big change in my overall temperament, not to mention my physical well-being.

Now, one thing you may be wondering about is why I didn't just clear the traumas while I was on the "other side", before I decided to become reincarnated in another body on earth. Why couldn't I have just gotten God or whoever to help me deal with the negativity while I was in spirit form and consciously aware of all that happened in the past? Well, the problem is that when we're on the "other side", the negativity doesn't affect us at all...mainly because negativity doesn't exist. According to renowned psychic Sylvia Browne in her book The Other Side and Back, it's not until we go back into another body that the fears, anger, victimization etc. terrorizes us again. We don't realize it on a conscious level, but our subconscious mind fears that as long as we're in a body again, there is the potential for more terrible things to happen to us. So the cleansing is something that needs to be done while we're in a body. In spirit form - where there is no fear and all energy is positive - a cleansing would be absolutely pointless.

So, anyway, hopefully the cleansing works for me. To be honest, I already feel a hell of a lot better. It's like I've been wallowing in tar my whole life and now I've finally been freed from its grips. We'll have to see if the feeling lasts....

For further reading about reincarnation and how we "chart" each of our lives:

Ghosts Among Us by James Van Praagh.

Life on the Other Side: A Psychic's Tour of the Afterlife by Sylvia Browne.

The Other Side and Back by Sylvia Browne.

Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss.

Your Soul's Plan by Robert Schwartz

My Past Life in Hollywood (Update #2)

This is a third update to my previous blog BEING CAROLE LOMBARD: MY PAST-LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD (click HERE to view). In my last update, I noted some progress I made in terms of finding out who raped me in my past life as actress Carole Lombard. Unfortunately, I have no new developments about the rape at this time. But I do have some other things.

This past Friday, I was driving down a street in Foxboro, MA., and I happened to pass a sign that said "Tarot Readings". I don't know what it was about that sign but I felt it was calling to me for some reason. I felt almost as though it was sucking me in, like it was a magnetic beam or gravitational field or something like that. I thought - hmmmm - maybe I should stop and get a reading. But to tell you the truth I was kind of tired of psychics and mediums and all that jazz. Plus, I didn't want to give out any more of my money to anyone if I didn't have to.

I drove about ten minutes beyond the Tarot place, but the "magnetic pull" became even more intense. I really felt that I needed to go back and get a reading. I didn't know why, but I felt as though I was meant to drive past that place. I don't mean to sound all melodramatic or anything, but it really felt like a serendipitous event.

Anyway, the pull became so intense at one point that I said, "fuck it", turned around and headed back towards the place where I saw the sign. As it turned out, the sign was actually located at the end of a normal-looking driveway. I pulled my car into the driveway and saw a place that basically looked no different than a house, only there was a neon sign on the outside that said "Ten-Dollar Palm Readings". The thought of getting my palm read sounded interesting to me. I never had something like that done before. Plus, ten dollars sounded like a pretty good deal. I decided I would go for it.

So I parked my car, walked into the house and was greeted by an (Eastern) Indian-looking woman named Jesse. She was supposedly a seventh-generation psychic, which sounded like she knew what she was doing, but I would have to wait and see if she was any good.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"Um...I guess I just want my palm read."

"OK, come with me."

She led me through a pair of open French doors and we sat in a comfy parlor with some couches and a glass case filled with crystals, figurines and metaphysical-type trinkets.

"Take a seat. Are you right handed or left-handed?"

"Right."

She took my right hand, had me say my name out loud and then had me voice one wish I hoped would come true. So I basically wished my writing endeavors would be successful or something like that, and - only within a couple seconds - Jesse started relaying information to me that (to my surprise) was very accurate. I mean, I always thought palm readings were things friends did to each other at slumber parties; I never thought it was actually a real, legitimate art.

Jesse drew my attention to various lines engraved into my palm that I'd never noticed before. One long, curved line supposedly meant I would live a long life, but at some point I would experience lower body pains (she didn't really elaborate on the nature of those pains). Then Jesse started talking about my career and how my name was going to grow and money would start rolling in, but then people would try to bring me down. She said that I needed to be in Los Angeles because I needed to "go after my dream". The only thing keeping me in the East was family and friends. She also said that California was where my heart was, anyway. "You're an ocean boy".

Jesse eventually flipped my hand over and immediately said something that scared the absolute shit out of me. Honestly, I had never been so freaking scared in my entire life.

"Who's pregnant?" she asked.

"What? Um, nobody, I don't think."

"You have a daughter and somebody's not telling you."

"What??? Uh...no I don't."

"Yeah you do, honey."

I literally started shaking in my chair. I didn't know what the hell this lady was talking about. My fear was that I had gotten somebody pregnant somewhere down the line or perhaps even very recently and I just didn't know about it. But I was pretty sure this wasn't the case. Everybody I had ever had....um...relations...with was still somebody who was in my life in one way or another, even the girls I'd had casual hook-ups with or one-night stands with. And I was pretty sure none of them ever had my child, or was pregnant with my child.

But then a question suddenly came to me, almost within a couple seconds after my initial panic. I don't know why it came into my head so fast or where the question even came from, but all I know is that it was there:

"Could the daughter have been from a past life?"

Jesse nodded her head. "Yeah, possibly." And I was a little relieved, but only a little.

I explained to Jesse that I had been "doing a lot of past-life stuff lately" and that I had discovered I was (supposedly) a famous actress in Old Hollywood.

"As to whether it's true...I have no idea."

Jesse looked me square in the eye and gave me a little smirk.

"It's true, honey."

All right, so there it was: pretty straight-forward confirmation of my Hollywood life from yet another medium, one who was completely unrelated to any other medium I had consulted with.

"OK, then. I guess it's true."

I then explained to Jesse that there was always a feeling in the way back of my mind that I had a daughter during the Hollywood life, but kept the daughter a secret for whatever reason. My 'feeling' mainly arose after I had read a book about Lombard entitled [title omitted], written by a woman named [name omitted] in 2008. The book is about how Carole Lombard secretly had a daughter when she was a teenager but gave it up to her aunt and uncle to raise before anybody other than a few close family members found out. According to [the author], the book is a "story of possibility" filled with content that is supposedly 95% non-fiction and 5% fiction/artistic liberty.

After I read the book, I was very intrigued by the story. I managed to get in touch with [the author] via email and she told me that - as far as I should be concerned - Carole didn't have any child; the plot-line of the illegitimate daughter was a figurative device she used to tell a compelling story. But [the author] also told me something really interesting that I can't repeat here because she wanted it off the record. Let's just say she had access to a 'source' that nobody else has ever had access to when it came to researching Carole's life. And this 'source' was an enormous influence in shaping her work of "fiction". In other words, there is no way to be certain that Carole Lombard ever had a child, but the "story of possibility" is certainly...well...possible.

Taking all of the above into consideration, you can probably see why Jesse's vision of a "secret daughter" lead me to seriously consider the possibility that Carole Lombard did, indeed, have an illegitimate child. I tried to get Jesse to provide more information about the daughter, but all she could say was that she saw the daughter "grown up" and she had my eyes. This was good news to me, because I was pretty sure that - if I did have a daughter in my current life - she wouldn't be very old yet. If anything, somebody may have been pregnant with my daughter (though I later checked with all recent partners and nobody was pregnant as far as they knew).

Anyway, Jesse eventually placed the whole secret-daughter-deal on the back burner and she started discussing my Hollywood life a little more. She said there was a lot of glamour and a lot of success and there were a lot of positive people around me much of the time.

"In fact, you weren't supposed to live your current life," she told me. "You were supposed to accomplish what you are doing now in the former life. But something went wrong. It was a choice you made...I don't know...things didn't unravel the way they were meant to unravel."

Needless to say, I was a little taken aback by what she was saying. "Come again? I wasn't supposed to live this life? That's a little weird to hear." But after a moment, I think I kind of understood what she was saying.

One possibility is that I died too early in the Lombard life (she died at age 33 in a plane crash). Maybe Jesse meant the crash wasn't supposed to happen. I heard that Carole's mother (who also died in the crash) warned Carole that she didn't have a good feeling about the flight and they should take a train instead. Maybe I made the wrong choice by boarding the plane despite my mother's warning. But, then again, how could you really say my death from a plane crash "wasn't meant to happen"? Just because I made a poor choice by boarding a doomed airplane I completely messed up my soul's path forever? I don't really know if that's something that can possibly happen. I mean, talk about the "butterfly effect".

But maybe Jesse was referring to my Poland life, which coincided with the Hollywood life, a phenomenon known as a "parallel existence" (read about this life HERE). In the Polish life, I was faced with a situation where I was essentially tricked - and then forced - into helping the Nazis massacre hundreds of Polish intellectuals. At a certain point during this experience, I was faced with a very tough decision: refuse to partake in the evil and die, or go along with it and live. Ultimately, I chose to go along with it (in fear of dying and being unable to support my nine children), but maybe I was "supposed" to die. Yes, maybe the Polish existence was supposed to end and the Lombard existence was supposed to go forward. But - for whatever reason - the Lombard existence had to be cut short because the Polish existence didn't unravel the way it was supposed to unravel. Maybe Lombard was destined to take her life in a completely different direction, but couldn't do it because of how things panned out in Poland.

I mean, one really has to wonder how two lives influence each other in the case of a parallel existence. Maybe what happens in one life simultaneously influences what happens in the other life. Maybe the Lombard life needed the Polish existence to end at a certain point so it could have more energy or rise to a higher spiritual level and do bigger and better things; but because that didn't happen it was better for Lombard's life to end abruptly and ultimately start up all over again in this current incarnation as Matt Burns (i.e. me). Maybe I am now where Lombard was supposed to be around 1942 when she died. Maybe she was supposed to be where I am now but couldn't be because of how the Polish existence panned out. Yes, I know this is probably confusing as hell for you right now. All I'm trying to do is raise some questions and explore some possibilities. I don't know if there is any truth to these theories.

The fact of the matter is that - according to the psychic Jesse - things didn't go according to plan in the past and I wasn't 'supposed' to live this current life as Matt Burns, but I AM living this life now and that's all I should really be concerned about. Jesse did add, however, that there was a "dark shadow" in my aura because of what went wrong in the past, and it was in my highest and best interest to get a spiritual cleansing before I moved forward with my life. She said this "dark shadow" had the potential of getting in the way of me connecting with positive people in the future. Positive people, she explained, can (subconsciously) sniff out people with negative energy in their auras and they'll keep their distance from them. In other words, the negative energy stuck in my aura could be very detrimental to me forming important relationships in both my professional and romantic life. If this sounds at all familiar, you may have read all about it in the popular book The Secret, which is all about the "law of attraction" (i.e. positive energy attracts positive energy and negative energy attracts negative energy).

Jesse said she had the ability to do a spiritual cleansing for me, but I told her I would sleep on it and get in touch with her later if I thought it was something I wanted to have her do. I actually already knew how to do some form of a cleansing and I wanted to avoid paying money for something I could conduct on my own. In fact, anybody out there has the ability to cleanse themselves if they want to - it's a good way to rid your aura of any negative energy, not just stuff that may have come from a past life. Basically, what you do is stand in front of your bathroom faucet, turn the faucet on with your left hand, let the water run and keep your hand gripped on the handle. Then, you hold a pendulum in your right hand and say the following words:

"I now ask that my high self and my helpers in the light please identify, disorganize and remove all energies within my aura that are not in my highest and best interest to have at this time."

In my case, I wanted to be a little more specific, so I added the following:

"Specifically remove all negative energies I have carried over from my past life in Hollywood and Poland."

If all goes right, the pendulum should start swinging clockwise and you basically just stand at the sink while you get cleared of all the negative energy. It may take several minutes - depending on how much energy is clearing - but you'll know that the process has completed when the pendulum stops swinging and comes to a complete stop. The theory behind this entire process is that all the negative energy from your energy field (i.e. aura) gets washed out of your field and down the drain, all the way into the bowels of the earth where it will no longer affect you. I know it all sounds wacky, but I personally find that I feel lighter and more positive after I do one of these cleanses. It's actually best to do it every couple of days so that any negative energy we pick up from the outside world doesn't accumulate and weigh us down.

But back to Jesse.

I left my "palm reading" on Friday feeling extremely overwhelmed. For one, I still wasn't sure about the mysterious daughter situation and I was still kind of freaking out that somebody was pregnant in my current life. Also, I was concerned about the 'dark shadow' that was in my aura...and whether I would ever get rid of it! And on top of everything else, I felt anxious about how Jesse said I needed to be in LA. Should I be there now? When should I go??? How am I going to make that work? Obviously I shouldn't just go to LA because Jesse said I needed to be there, but, hell, I KNOW I need to be there; I wasn't hearing anything I didn't know already.

As far as the daughter situation goes, right now I'm wondering why I even needed to know I had a secret, illegitimate daughter in the first place. I mean, I guess it's important to know, but it's not like I can try to find her and reunite with her...at least I don't think I can. First of all, it's very likely that the daughter is deceased already, though I suppose it's very possibly there is a granddaughter alive and possibly great-grandchildren. But I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them, and I think they would find me too weird anyway. I mean, what would I say to them? "Um, yes, my name is Matt Burns. I'm a 29-year-old man now, but I have reason to believe I am your grandmother from a past life." Yeah, that would really go over well.

I think the fact of the matter is that the past is the past and I can't really do much about it now. As the saying goes, you shouldn't look back unless you want to go that way. Hopefully a piece of my spirit is still with my daughter/grandchildren - watching over them - but that's as good as things can be right now. Perhaps, in the future, mankind will evolve to a point where we'll be able to reunite with our children from a past life without anybody finding it weird. But that time is not now. I can't really do much about the situation. At least I don't think I can.

Of course, I'll let you know if anything changes and whether there are any more developments in this story. Who knows what else could pop up from the Lombard life? Hopefully it's not any more bad stuff; I'm not sure I would be able to handle much more of that. I mean, to be honest with you, the whole illegitimate daughter thing gave me a feeling of sadness. I don't want to experience any more of those emotions if I don't have to. Then again, if experiencing these feelings is the only way to clear the darkness from my aura, then I guess I say bring it on.