chapter 2
Experiencing Restriction to
Understand Freedom
During pretalk, Valerie shares with me some of the health issues that had forced her to leave her job several years before. In addition, her boss, who had been an antagonist to her, had made her job situation even more difficult to deal with. Valerie wants to explore with SESR to gain more insight into this situation.
As we began the session, Valerie moves backward in time through a series of happy childhood memories to a time where she and her sisters are playing in their playpen. Wearing their pajamas, the girls climb, jump, and laugh together in their living room. The session continues back to the time before birth through her soul’s history to the year 1852. Valerie describes being dressed in an ornate silk kimono with a rich red, black, and green pattern overlaying a white background, and wearing black silk sandal-like shoes. Her face was painted white with accentuated lips and eyes, and her black hair was swept up into three buns made from her own hair and held together by adorned combs and sticks. She wore the formal dress of a geisha.
She was seventeen years old and her entire life to this point had been dedicated to training to become one of the honored geisha. As a maiko, a young apprentice, she had lived in a geisha house owned by her master, Chin-Yung. He frequently told the girls it was an honor to be learning the geisha tradition, which was known for service, music, and dance. He often reminded them how special it was to be called geisha because not every girl who trained would become one. She dutifully took pride in learning service without question, hoping she too could one day be one of these special women. She excelled at the art of making tea.
At last her dream was realized, and she became a geisha along with a select few others. It was then that she learned that in her master’s geisha house, as part of her servitude, she was expected to provide sexual favors for wealthy men who would be chosen by Chin-Yung. Upon discovering this, she felt a part of her rise, wanting to rebel, but years of training had taught her she could not. She wanted to warn the younger girls who looked up to her now, but there was no point. There was nowhere else to go, and this was the only life she had ever known. She realized how naive she had been to be enticed by the seeming beauty of these women, the way they moved and dressed, without looking deeper into all that it involved. The beautiful clothes, hair, and makeup made her feel special to be noticed by men. She had not truly understood what it meant to give men pleasure until she was forced to do it.
Just a few months prior to turning seventeen, she had been taken aboard a large boat by Chin-Yung, along with three other girls she had grown up with at the geisha house. They were told little about what lay ahead for them. The boat stank and there were smelly sailors who stared and pawed at them. The girls were instructed not to speak to anyone or one another and, as expected, they did as they were told.
The long boat ride took them to a foreign land with strangers who did not speak their language and customs they did not understand. They landed in America where men wore black pants with a jacket overtop a vest with a pocket watch secured by a chain. Chin-Yung quickly adapted to this style of dress and added a hat with a rounded brim to make him appear like the rich American bankers and other wealthy businessmen in town to whom he planned to peddle his wares—the girls.
The displaced girls were given their own rooms with rich fabric and traditional Japanese décor. These living quarters were located above a saloon in the heart of San Francisco, which was frequented by wealthy local businessmen. Chin-Yung had instructed the girls to not speak to one another as a means to control them, so they wouldn’t try to run away. They were locked in their rooms and only taken out one at a time. Meals and men were brought to them. They were given herbs to make special waters for cleanliness between servicing clients. Some, who paid more, stayed with the girls for an evening, while on other occasions they had several customers in one night. Because of her looks and especially her demeanor, Lo Ming [Valerie] considered herself lucky to be mostly reserved for wealthier men who could afford to stay longer. It was the lesser of two evils.
She had been called “slut” and “whore” so many times by her master that she had forgotten her given name. One of the regulars had gotten Chinese and Japanese mixed up, and came up with the name Lo Ming, which he called her, and which she now answered to. It was a sad existence for her. She felt betrayed thinking that being geisha was special, now coming to realize that here the title meant nothing more than being a glorified prostitute. She was locked in a room all day with no freedom and if she was lucky, she was given a meal and a basin of water to clean up with.
Although there was a window in her room that overlooked the streets of San Francisco down below, her training was deeply ingrained in her. She never called out or tried to escape because that was not acceptable and besides, even if she had, no one understood her language and she didn’t understand theirs.
She had experienced her master’s temper during times where he would grab her around the throat or shake her tiny body violently. For a moment she had the thought of fighting back, but then her training would kick in and she’d remember her place of servitude. Besides, if she did manage to get away, she had no personal belongings other than her kimono. She had no money and nowhere to go.
It was in this moment that soul recognition occurred and Valerie recognized her master Chin-Yung as the current life boss with the fiery temper who often tried to manipulate Valerie to do things that were unethical. When Valerie refused, she felt the brunt of her boss’s anger directed toward her in retaliation. Emotional—rather than physical—browbeating left Valerie feeling powerless to fight it, so she held it all in, recognizing this was her employer she was up against. It was during this intense time that her health began to decline significantly. Ultimately Valerie decided her only defense was to get away from the situation by leaving her job, which was something Lo Ming wasn’t able to do.
Lo Ming’s sad, long days were spent in this room watching people living their lives. She could see them walking along the boardwalk—some wealthy, some poor—kids running, and horses pulling up to the mercantile across the street. Her afternoons were spent preparing for clients, the rich men who she would service until the early hours of the morning. The next day only brought more of the same.
Time passed slowly for Lo Ming, seeming like an eternity as days turned to months and months to years. Now at just twenty years old, she found herself lying in bed locked in the same room that was all she had known these past three years in America. She was sick with fever and her stomach hurt, and she was there all alone. No one had checked in on her for days now. She began to realize that she was in labor, having a baby—but that something was going wrong.
Isolated in this place, she had no medicine and no other women who could even explain to her that she was even pregnant. Only the awareness from her higher self’s perspective revealed what was happening to her now. She had not known about such things because it was not discussed with the younger girls, and since becoming geisha, she had been in a foreign land and kept locked alone in a room. She hadn’t had access to the right ingredients that were native to her home in Japan for the special waters she had been instructed to use between clients to prevent pregnancy.
As the contractions continued, she screamed out, but no one came. No one cared. As her belly had swollen, she had still been required to service the men, especially the fat banker who had taken a liking to her. He paid her visits more than the other men and was most likely the father of this child. As she screamed her last scream, she felt a gushing sensation between her legs and then she died.
Lo Ming died immediately. “Poor little thing” was the final thought she had of the infant she was leaving behind; “free at last” as she thought of herself. As the soul leaves Lo Ming’s lifeless body, making her way home, she is joined by the soul of the baby girl who had died moments after Lo Ming. Their two souls return to their eternal home in unison, taking parallel tracks to the spirit world. They wave goodbye to one another upon entry into the spirit world knowing they will see one another some other time.
Upon being welcomed home, a guide appears, explaining that the baby’s soul had been brought in to help Lo Ming find her escape to freedom through death. Knowing it would not survive the birth, this soul agreed to come in with the sole purpose of getting Lo Ming out of that awful life. The two souls are in each other’s lives today and are very close.
After this initial meeting with her guide, Lo Ming’s soul is taken to a healing place to recover from the sadness and despair of the life she had just lived. Much of the session is actually spent here to release the sticky residue of that difficult and painful earthly life. She is guided through a soul recalibration process to restore her energy.
Afterward, during Soul Reflection, Valerie reviews the life with her guide, who helps her to understand that the primary purpose of that lifetime had been to experience a life of restriction and living under someone’s thumb, so that she could truly understand what it means to be free. The contrast of experiencing hardship and to also experience easier lives shows the difference between the two. “Every incarnation offers a gain; there is no loss,” she shares. “What we as humans think is difficult is not; it’s in our minds. Souls know this, but the human mind gets in the way.”
In choosing the life of a geisha, her soul experienced restriction, and in her job with her boss, she did too. Valerie overcame it in the end—once through death and once by leaving her job when the emotional distress became physically crippling.
Her guide adds that holding in negative emotions for prolonged periods forces them to find an outlet. They eventually manifest in the body as illness or pain. Tears are a way for the emotional body to pull up the stuck emotion from the body. Tears can be therapeutic and serve as a release for the emotional body and the physical body. It’s important to learn ways to manage one’s emotions. Emotional health is as important as physical health.
The session had a profound effect on Valerie. Working through the emotional life of that past life brought insight and resolution to her current life situation. Since the session, previous emotional restraints and physical symptoms have lessened tremendously. Insightful awareness gained with the aid of her guide has allowed her to release the pattern of being entangled in servitude. She recognizes how she can now help others to get what they want, but without having to give up her own needs or be forced to suffer in order to please others in the process. And she has a new perspective and appreciation for her life that have led her to a new career path helping others with what she’s learned through this experience.
_ Soul-Minded Exercise _
What areas of your life cause you to feel disconnected from your spirit or disempowered? Identify the heavy feelings you carry that cause you to feel restricted in your life. What has been on your mind that it’s time to let go of? What issues are you seeking resolution to?
Visualize a bag of special healing balloons in various colors.
Now imagine taking those disempowering feelings and breathing them out, into the healing balloons, filling as many balloons as necessary until you begin feeling a sense of peace and calm come over you. Imagine letting go of those feelings and thoughts as you fill these balloons. Notice the colors of your balloons. Do the colors hold significance?
Now taken a nice deep, cleansing breath and with each exhalation imagine releasing those balloons off into the horizon into the light to be transformed, no longer to be an issue for you. Notice how much better you feel letting those things go.
Now take those good feelings and allow them to fill the spaces where you once felt the hurt, sadness, or anxiety. Write down any insights you feel as a result of this.
Now that you’re feeling lighter and have lifted your vibration having let those negative things go, enjoy feeling more present and empowered in your life, making room for a deeper soulful connection to help from the other side.
_ Soul-Minded Exercise _
This exercise is for gaining clarity and strengthening the ability to find solutions more quickly and in alignment with the guidance that’s available to you. It’s to help you change the way you look at your life by developing a sense of appreciation for what you’ve got, as you move into future goals and desires.
1. Affirm what you have. Journal about the people, skills, relationships, and things that you appreciate in your life. The way in is through the heart and not the head. Don’t overthink it. Mean it when you say you appreciate it.
2. Ask for guidance from your soul/spiritual team on what you want help with. Get clear on what you’re asking for. Accept that help is available to improve the situation, and that it is possible. Recognize times in your past when you felt connected to the flow that created past desires you have already achieved.
If you have doubt or resistance, embrace it as a learning tool to explore where the root of this doubt or resistance stems from. Go back to the Healing Balloons exercise and release the doubt, replacing it with trust. Trust that help is available and be open to what’s possible.
3. Align with the solution as you allow it to unfold. Sit or take a walk as you actively envision having this come to you in the flow of divine timing. Let your imagination play with what it looks like and feels like to have these things happen. Allow it to come “through” you from your heart and soul (and not from your head/thinking mind). Be flexible with your vision, adjusting it as it unfolds. Imagine it as if it is occurring in the present moment. Repeat this often throughout your day.
4. Act on the guidance you are being shown, one step at a time. Look for signs, such as gentle nudges, number patterns (on clocks/odometers), or symbols with special meaning to you that cross your path. Notice chance meetings, opportunities, or experiences that cause you to light up and bring you joy.