Hello, Jaimie.
I have had a recurring pattern in my past lives as well. I am not certain if this is a lesson that I am supposed to learn or a behavior I am supposed to break. It could simply be that, with the way that my personality is and the similar sorts of lifetimes I have had in the past, similar situations are bound to occur.
My pattern is a tendency to get myself killed off. Usually by those I trust.
In past lives, I have often been in or near to positions of power. This could be anything from a minor aristocrat to a well-known general, but it often meant that I was to some degree within the political sphere. However, I have never had the correct type of personality to thrive for long in such an environment. When I would speak to someone, I would say what I thought. Wherever I was, I would act how I wished. I did not care much for social expectations. As long as I was doing my job properly, people would just have to deal with my actual personality instead of some stuffy facade like they all used themselves. There were times when I would go through the social rituals, to put on a good face, but it was generally known that this was not always the case. This can be refreshing to some people, or incredibly annoying to others. And it leaves no expectation that I was holding onto information that I could use to leverage in the political game. I was also incredibly trusting. I have never seen a reason to manipulate others, and thus expected that when people told me something, it was the truth. And because of this, I would often trust those I worked with/for wholeheartedly. I was naive. These two factors led to a certain sort of weakness in those positions. When my usefulness had run its course, people would often try to get rid of me. They thought they could manage it because I would never see it coming. And they could replace me with someone who had a less abrasive attitude that would not complain about being used. Thus, I have experienced assassins, arrest warrants, exiles, maroonings, and murders. And every death I have relived, I would look back and wish that I had kept a lower profile, that I had lived a quiet life where I stayed out of the limelight and just had a quiet family somewhere.
So what I have learned through my past lives is that I have made one of two mistakes: either I have been too honest with people and should not expect honesty in return, or I have not spent enough time dodging the spotlight. That is why in this life I stay out of the public eye, choose to have the quiet life my past selves regret missing, then any caustic bits of my personality will only result in fallings out, not a tragic downfall. This is also why I mind what I say to people and occasionally trip over myself to make sure I have not caused offense: a few off-comments have cost me much. So far, I have only had people who do not have the resources or moxie to do away with me decide they have had enough of me in this life. I am not aware of any lifetimes where I did not trust the wrong person and pay dearly for it, so I am hoping that this will be the first.
Whether this was a change that I was supposed to go through or just a byproduct of my experiences, it has taken millennia to arrive at this realization, so I might as well see if things change from here.
