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| O'Hare International Airport |
One sultry August afternoon in 2002, my travel companion and
I were annoyed passengers stuck at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. We were awaiting our delayed connecting flight back home from a vacation in New Orleans.
While there were no pyrotechnics, gunshots, microphones or cameras associated
with it, nor a naked man streaking up and down the aisles as I had witnessed at
New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport years before, this layover
was different than any in my experience. In fact, then as now, it is a
completely unique event in any setting in my life, and is one of my most
indelible memories.
Among the sizeable group of my fellow
irritated passengers, I sat with book in hand and tried to pass the time by
losing myself in the story, normally a reliable escape for me under almost any
circumstance. But there was something strange in the air that distracted me, a
weird feeling, a sort of prickly awareness not unlike the sense that sweeps
across my consciousness and skin when someone is staring at me. I looked up
through my eyelashes and in the section across the aisle from ours, one for a
different flight, a man and an adolescent girl sat, and indeed, both of them
were looking at me intently. I recognized them instantly. I couldn’t have
stated how, or why, or under what circumstances I knew them, nor did I know
their names, but know them, I certainly did so. I noticed that not only were
those two individuals staring at me, but all of the many people milling around
or sitting near them also gazed at me relentlessly, with total recognition of
me in their eyes. And as with the man and girl, I knew all of them in return—they
were as familiar to me as members of my own family.
If I were Oprah Winfrey or Angelina
Jolie, my outsized fame would account for the O’Hare crowd’s recognition of me,
but I am “private citizen Linda Lee Greene,” even less known then than I am
now, for I was yet to join the throng of Internet users. It was a decade down
the road before I began to develop a serious social media presence, on the
occasion of publishing my second book. However, even if I had been a celebrity,
what is the explanation of my recognition of them?
Perplexed by then, I revisited every
possible setting in my mind in which I might have met the O’Hare crowd before
then. I thought perhaps they were a delegation of some sort, and since there
were a few other children among them, maybe they were a church or sports group
I had encountered somewhere in New Orleans, or in my home city of Columbus,
Ohio. But their incoming flight was not New Orleans or Columbus, and the
outgoing flight was to a city to which I had never visited. To this day, I have
been unable to identify any prior situation in which I came in contact with
those people.
One of the other strange things about
the incident is that there were no discernible responses on the faces or in the
bodies of any of them once eye contact was accomplished among us. Not one of
them smiled or nodded or made any physical gesture whatsoever in acknowledgement
of me, not even a twitch of an eyelid, or a tiny flick of a finger. They merely
held my eyes steadily, and I swear to goodness that I began to think they were
communicating a message to me, telepathically, but not of a soothsaying nature.
There seemed to be no warning of impending misfortune or fortune. It didn’t
cause me to feel uncomfortable or creepy—it simply felt like a gentle
affirmation of kinship with me. As a matter of fact, the exchange settled me
somehow—my spirit relaxed, my irritation over the delay lost its edge, and I
felt friendlier toward my companion, a royal pain in the rump during our trip
together.
Back in my college days, I wrote a paper about
reincarnation, and I recall that one of its tenets is that we travel through
time with a pack of spiritual soulmates appearing in dissimilar guises at
different times. For instance, my mother in my current life might have been my
brother or sister or husband in lives past. Both major and minor characters
appear in the sequential acts of our spiritual journeys, like the headliners
and bit players of a Broadway show. Both types are essential to the full
performance and disclosure of the story, a conjoined cast of pliable energy
stores materializing when needed and providing continuity through which to work
out ones spiritual lessons over time.
In literature as well as in the
historical, scientific, and religious records, accounts of past-life experiences
abound. Across the board, or nearly so, researchers discount them as so much
smoke and mirrors, labeling them as fantasies, delusions, playacting, or a type
of confabulation, a fancy word for lying without knowing one is lying. Within
their quiver of rationales, even alcoholism can trigger false past-life
memories.
Whether or not reincarnation will
ever be observational, and as a result accepted as chapters in the script of
life, isn’t about to be settled any time soon, if ever, as far as I can see.
But there was something about the chemistry of my O’Hare Airport encounter that
has kept it vibrant in my memory. It has remained a curiosity to me. It seems
to refuse to allow me any sense of closure pertaining to it. I admit that I
can’t help but wonder if those people are members of my spiritual family. And
when I do fess up to that possibility rattling around inside me, it feels
right. It rests flawlessly in my spirit. It doesn’t rest quite as well in my
brain, however.
In any event, reincarnation as a subject is
titillating fodder for writers, me among them, as is the case in CRADLE OF THE
SERPENT, my latest novel. The following is a synopsis of the story:
Fearful that her husband Jacob is
embroiled in an extramarital affair, archaeologist Lily Light turns to
psychotherapy, astounding consultations in which Lily often takes on the
persona of a young maiden named White Flower, a member of the clan of long-ago
American Indian builders of Ohio’s Great Serpent Mound.
When a
gunman’s bullets leave Jacob permanently paralyzed from his shoulders down and
a woman identified as Jacob’s mistress dead, Lily’s world is shattered. Through
the example of her own life a thousand or more years before, White Flower
reveals to Lily the unexpected path to her salvation.
Given
5 Stars by Readers’ Favorite, CRADLE OF THE SERPENT brims with “enthralling”
journeys into the human psyche, romantic love, archaeology, American Indian
history, spinal cord injury, its consequences, and its contemporary treatments,
as well as “amazing” sequences of past-life regression, and unimaginable twists
and turns in a long-term marriage. It is available in paperback and eBook at
Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple, Google, BooksaMillion, and other
booksellers.- Linda Lee Greene
Best-selling author, award-winning artist,
blogger, and interior designer Linda Lee Greene is on social media at the
following:
Twitter: @LLGreeneAuthor
Also
look for her at LinkedIn and Google+
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