Missing-in-Action: A Case Unresolved (Vietnam War)

landsend, you have a very valuable testimony there, and it's fascinating to read. I'm interested in the way you see it and describe what's in your vision. It's similar to my own way of seeing. But everything I have hasn't come from regression or meditation or similar. It's something that's just been there for a long time. I can choose to access it at any time. Inevitably, as I have no outside sources as yet to refer to, my memory is patchy.

What I'd like to know is how you go about your meditation where you find so much. What's the method? I'd very much like to try it, in the hope of recapturing more that might answer so many questions I have.

You've discovered so much. I feel your chances of finding what you want seem quite high. I really hope so.

I also identify with the bullying at school. I was 'different' and nobody likes that. I was called 'the dreamer' - both by my schoolmates and their parents. For the exact same reason as you, I never responded to the bullying, some of which was physical. I too felt I was being punished for something I'd done, and deserved whatever I got. Interestingly I met the bullies I'd disliked so much for years - we met as adults, and I still felt the same intense dislike, even though the bully had turned into an extremely good and kind person, and was pleasant to me!

 

Tanker,

Thanks for the message.

I use meditation as a means to focus my mind. Often it's simply a case of sitting in a quiet place with no distractions, closing my eyes, and letting whatever is there to come to the surface. However I have found, through trial and error, that I can sharpen and refine the process to get better answers. Obviously what works for me may not work for other people, but in general I've found the following formula to bring results. Also bearing in mind that if I'm not ready to see the full details of a memory, no amount of meditation will prise it out. And also my memories are a result of different methods, some through spontaneous recall, some through meditation, and others regression attempts. The major key is writing down all your memory fragments to start building a bigger picture.

For meditation -

- Prior to meditation write down or think about the intent of your meditation. It doesn't matter if there is no intent, just focus on the fact that you plan to meditate, maybe write down the time you start the meditation, and your general mood. Keep pen and paper ready.
- At this point, if you have a recording device, it might be the time to start recording. I have found that I forget things sometimes when I've come out of a meditation, so having a recording of me speaking about what I see aids me to recall.
- Solitude is necessary. Set aside 30-40 minutes of time with no distractions, no phones, (although if you plan to record your results, a phone may be useful as a recording device).
- Soft relaxing music -- this is helpful for me to quiet my mind, and just general relaxation. I play this during the meditation. I've always found binaural beats useful for getting into the zone [Link posted at the end]
Works best with headphones. I discovered the effects of this white noise by accident once whilst sitting near a generator at the seaside. The effects of the vibrational beat, plus the sea put me into a state of bliss, an instant trance.
- After closing my eyes, I focus on my breath and do a breathing exercise. Usually inhaling to a count, holding, exhaling to a count, holding, and repeat. Then focusing on my body, relaxing it. Ideally you want to get to a relaxed body asleep/mind awake state.
- At this point sometimes the memories start coming without doing anything else. If they do, I let them come. If I see nothing, I start to guide myself. I try to bring myself into a deeper relaxation by imagining myself go down a set of spiralling stairs, usually counting down from 10-1. At the bottom of the stairs is a door. The door leads me to where I need to go, and what I need to know. Again count down 5-1, imagining myself going to the door, opening it, and going through it, through the door is an enticing white light. Once I'm through it, I usually start seeing things related to my past life. You can use any sort of imagery you want, but I've found that anything that gives me the feeling of going 'down' in the subconscious helps, and a countdown works well too. I've used a mirror/pond imagery and slipping into my past self as I go 'down'. That works quite well, too.
- Once you've seen a enough, you may want to bring yourself out of the imagery. Around 15-20 minutes is a good time to aim for, anything longer can be draining. To bring yourself out of the imagery you can count upwards from 1-10. Or simply open your eyes, write down what you saw and go for a walk outside/do something mundane like a chore. That helps to bring you out of the imagery to the present.

Hope that helps,
Landsend

Theta wave binaural beats:

 

Also I highly recommend you buy/borrow the books of Jenny Cockell -- she too recalled most of her memories from childhood into adulthood, so her books may be very helpful to you. Currently I'm reading one her books, and the fact she managed to resolve her previous life memories through research is highly encouraging.

 

Sorry, landsend, don't know why my reply to your post came out in the wrong place. Must have done something wrong there.

 

Tanker,

What you describe sounds effectively what I see ninety percent of the time, small fragments such as that. Only very rarely have I had full blown flashbacks, replays which have not felt like memories, but actual post-traumatic stress flashbacks--these have more often than not been spontaneous too, and triggered by an external event. The fragmentary memories are more usual. Often I get impatient with the process, but it is how it is. If you look back on memories in your own current life it's much the same, in fact sometimes these meditations take me back to memories from my present life, ones of when I was a very small child and things I'd quite forgotten about.

I have found that the memories that keep repeating to me, however vague they may seem, often pertain to a real event. Take for instance one of the memories I was able to confirm via John's son. I repeatedly kept seeing for days on end a little boy holding his hand like he'd cut it. Finally whilst writing in my journal, I decided to document the event. I'd seen it about four times in different meditations by then. One of the aspects of the vision I could not understand was why his parents were not present, and also what on earth he was doing with his dad's knife. In fact I tried to fill the gap -- I imagined him playing outside with the knife in the dirt, I also imagined his parents arguing, hence why they were not watching the boy. I saw his sister was there with him, but not playing with the knife. I saw her crying, along with John's son as he held his hand. In fact when talking to John's son it turned out that he had been alone in the house at the time with his sister whilst his mom went out to pick up his dad from work. He found the knife in a cupboard, and had opened it (it was a switchblade) and then tried to close it but unfortunately grabbed it by the wrong end, resulting in a nasty cut. I tried to fill the gaps in the memory because I had not truly known where the kids were when they were playing with the knife, nor where he had gotten the knife from -- I had not seen it. I imagined he must have gotten the knife from a cupboard, but had no clue how he had gotten it still, considering dangerous objects were not stored within reach.

Such is the nature of memory. The events after that knife incident are a bit of a blur. There may have been an argument between John and his wife, lots of blaming I'm sure. That may have been what I had seen too. John's son doesn't recall what happened afterward.

That's why writing it all down is so important, whilst taking care not to fill in gaps. It helps in putting together the fragments to make a full picture.

 

Yes, landsend, I understand what you mean. The memories I have are almost all like snapshots, which I tried to join up through researching the timeline of our battles. For instance, this latest snapshot I remembered doesn't appear to be joined to anything. I'm frustrated by it as I don't know what the panic-stricken 'It's done!' might have meant as I have nothing to attach it to. I hear almost all my memories in English, for whatever reason, although there is the occasional German phrase or two, which although I don't understand, I seem to feel the meaning somehow. So we have the 'translation' problem.

However ... with this latest very vivid flash of memory I felt instinctively that the setting could have been Stalingrad, in which case it would have to be as we were escaping from the tank after being hit. The complete obscurity by what I called fog, but could have been smoke, of our surroundings looked very similar to what I remember of that terrible day. The colouring of both memories were the same - a kind of reddish tint to everything, but an inability to see anything beyond immediate surroundings. When I wrote the chapter in my memoir, I hadn't seen any of the rest of my crew and didn't know where they were. But I'm wondering, in this case, if the words might mean 'it's over'. He would have been yelling in German, so I've looked at the translation of 'es ist vorbei' and in the translation I found that is indeed 'it's done', as well as 'it's over.' That would certainly have explained his panic.

The feeling that flash memory has left me with is one that's familiar, and it's the same feeling I get when I try to force myself to think of Stalingrad. Anyway, this is one possible explanation that I don't suppose can ever by verified. You are very fortunate to have someone who can confirm your memory of the knife incident and solve your mystery. I'm resigned to living with mystery, unless someone from my own story happens to come back any time soon! We live in hope.

 

I find it interesting how certain memories come to the foreground and others not. So far I’ve realised that certain memories have come to me because they left a lasting impression on my psyche... the knife incident for instance would’ve have shook up John, having come back fairly recently from Vietnam and seeing his boy covered in blood. Things could have ended a lot worse... and just I suppose it bought back certain memories of the war. In Vietnam as in any war, children were more often than not the victims caught inbetween... or the ones holding the gun. To see his son that way would have been a hell of a trigger.

Hope you find answers there Tanker, you seem to have a clear picture building up. Interesting regarding how you hear the language, too. The translation makes sense since you understood German back then. I’ve experienced the same listening to Vietnamese/Russian in these memories, I just know at some level what is being said even if I can’t fully grasp the words.

 

Yes landsend, I fully understand how the knife incident would have been associated with trauma and would be a strong trigger. Children, alas, are always caught in the middle of the worst of things. You only have to look at pictures on the news. We never seem to learn lessons. Some of today's warmongers would do well to be reborn as a bereaved parent during a war they'd started. Have you ever had feelings of guilt about Vietnamese children?

Fascinating about the language subject. How is it we know at some level what is being said when we don't know the words? It's got to be something that's crossed the divide, surely. I wonder how many of us have that happen ... would be interesting to find out more. I know very few words of German, couldn't put a sentence together, but have a very strong emotional response to the sound of it. There's a familiarity about it, somehow. A smile crosses my face when I hear it spoken. It's comforting.

 

I'm not sure about my feelings about the Vietnam War, even now, to be honest. The feelings feel very mixed up and jumbled. There is some guilt there, but there is also a lot of anger. And fear. To deal with all the stuff that went on, I had to bury any feelings of sympathy. One incident stands out. John was patrolling with a group of Vietnamese/Americans, and we came across a small child's body. Instinct was to pick the child up, but something told me (as John) it was odd and out of place. One of my men actually went to pick the body up, but I told him to stop. Turns out the child's body had been wired up and booby trapped to some unexploded ordnance by the VC. Picking the child up could've killed or injured many men. The parents/village people were nearby, and crying. I guess they may have known.

As an officer, too much sympathy could have meant death to the men you were responsible for. The day by day stress of not really knowing who your enemy is really starts to take a psychological toll. You begin to take a stance of apathy. As bad as it sounds to my modern self, back then there was a dehumanisation of the Vietnamese/orientals, they were 'gooks', they were 'dinks'. It's not easy to talk about, but it's the truth, at least as I know it. You do what you can to survive mentally and physically.

Have you ever thought about learning German? I'm considering studying some Vietnamese. That would be a heck of a challenge, wouldn't it? I have in the back of my mind that I might visit Vietnam one day and I'd like to know some of the language to get around. I say that but the thought of 'going back' there scares the hell out of me.

 

Ah, landsend, I really know what you mean. I've heard of those sort of booby traps in the news. I think the VC must have been a terrible enemy to face, with ways so alien to our own. Those poor people in the villages, if it was their child. Must have been like killing it twice.

Alas, though, some of the SS had pretty cunning methods of trapping enemies, although I wasn't really aware of that side of things. My battles were fairly straightforward. I took orders, I drove where I was told, we fired, we usually hit the enemy. Not much to it, really, but that's a lie if you have feelings. I never did get to the apathy stage, although I can very well see how that became necessary to some people. I always reflected on the results of our actions, if there was time. War is unspeakable, brings out the best in people and the worst in people.

I'm surprised you'd contemplate going back to Vietnam, but perhaps it's something you need to do. You're braver than I am. I could never go back to Russia. Not under any circumstances. I don't want to hear about it, listen to its language, see its people. I know that's unfair and many Russians are good people, but as yet I have no method to forgive. Their ways were pretty alien, too. Not easy to forget.

I'm actually trying to learn German. It seems to come quite easily when I read it, but by the next day I've forgotten half of what I've read. I should think it's a lot easier than Vietnamese, though ... Good luck to you.

 

One of the most important but one of the more difficult lessons is forgiveness both of self and of others unconditionally, without it we only trap ourselves.

 

I agree entirely. How to do it successfully is another matter ... working on it.

 

"Working on it" may in a way be one of the tasks of a whole lifetime. Or perhaps a substantial part of a lifetime.

My journey in many ways doesn't have much in common with yours, I don't have any battles or conflicts in the military sense in my recent past lives. But I still found myself carrying a lot of tangled emotional webs, as well as aspects of personality which were not always constructive. These things were not acquired during my childhood or so-called formative years, they almost suddenly were unlocked and became part of who I was, as a young adult. Dealing with that mess has been an ongoing process. Some of the emotional stuff was dealt with first - not in a single day, but gradually over a period of weeks, reducing to a trickle in the next few years. But personality characteristics, not always positive ones, took much longer. One of the difficulties I found is that when something is effectively a part of who you are, those patterns can get repeated and even reinforced. Releasing oneself from that loop may not be easy - I'm no therapist, so I can't really help others, but for me it seems to take a combination of circumstances/situations, together with a conscious awareness or deliberate effort, to move in a direction one wants to go. For me, it's less about abstract thought, more about just living everyday life in a chosen way.

 

Ah yes... I’ve been reflecting on all this so how apt this has come up here. Actually just talking and opening about events that occurred to my past self in that life can send me into a downward spiral of depression.

Tanker I don’t want to go to Vietnam, I’d rather eat poisonous snakes alive (ironically something my past self did in captivity), but I feel I have to, to heal completely. I need to see myself how that country is now. I need to visit a few places with my modern eyes and I need to ultimately forgive.

Speedwell I relate totally to what you say as that has been my experience. Forgiveness is hard and often takes a lifetime or beyond... I hope one day I’ll look back and say I’ve forgiven. Living bitter and in fear of life and people is not how I want to spend all my existences. More than anything, I want to heal and move on but honor who I was then and forgive myself. Ultimately it comes down to that.

 

I do from time to time find references from other people (not ones I meet, but in the wider world), referring to my past-life identity in a variety of ways. I find it disheartening at times that so little attempt is made to view the world through the eyes of that person, instead it is dissected like a specimen in a laboratory, and most often revealing or declaring the shortcomings of the observer, while saying little of use about the subject in question. Thus I agree with you Landsend about "honor who I was then", it is important to do so. We are humans now, and consider we should treat one another with respect. So often that courtesy is not observed with regard to those who are no longer living. And so it falls to ourselves at least, to honour and respect the person we once were, as a fellow human-being. And then, if need be, forgive. There is in a way a difficulty in the way we view ourselves as separate from one another. When it comes to forgiveness, it may be something where we can forgive others, but not ourselves, perhaps. (Or maybe vice versa). But all are necessary parts of the process.

 

This reminds me of what I read just yesterday in Jenny Cockell’s book ‘Journeys Through Time’ - I’ve taken a screenshot of her words as she puts it better than I, ironically she was talking about men who had past lives during the Vietnam War but the same need for self forgiveness applies.



Pg. 262 - Journeys Through Time - Jenny Cockell

 

You're right, Speedwell - living everyday life in a chosen way is just what I do. I'm quietly getting on with helping as many people as I can in this life. It's only the smallest difference one can make, compared with all the killing one's done in the past, but every life made better here is some way towards redemption. My one Achilles' heel, forgiving the Russians, is the hard one to fix, and perhaps I'll never manage it, but at least I have no hatred in my heart.

 

Perhaps that's all one can ask.

As I get older, sometimes I become irritated by some little things, maybe more than I used to. But at the same time, I've tried to eliminate the word 'hate' from my being. Sometimes I hear the word tossed around casually, as when someone says they hate a certain type of food, or something else of the ordinary kind. But to me, it is not something to be used lightly. Occasionally (very rarely, fortunately) I've seen it in the eyes of strangers I pass in the street, and it seems to me no matter how one might try to justify it, ultimately self-destructive.

 

Yes, landsend, forgiving oneself is the hardest. I salute you, thinking of going back to Vietnam. Seeing it with modern eyes might not be easy, although I suppose meeting the people in a friendly context might help. I can't imagine what that dreadful place was like, and the completely different form of warfare you had there compared to my experience. I don't think I'd have lasted long if I'd been fighting there.

Only you know what's right for you to do, and if that will heal you, then go. Don't leave it too long.

I will never go back to Russia. That much I'm certain of. I think it would be the end of me, for the second time. Not so much the brutality of those people, but the sheer scale of the loss is what I can't face. If I stood on those places, all I would see would be heap upon heap of dead Kameraden, frozen in the snow, as far as the eye could see. No graves, no memorials. Thousands of needless corpses, young men at the height of their glory. Myself among them. Sometimes I think I might die just thinking of it.