I think I finally got to the bottom of this last night. I did a little meditation - just lay quietly and closed my eyes, relaxed and let it happen. I started with the tiny bit that I did have... the scene in the room all closed up and draped in black.
I noticed more details - the hangings on the windows of some 'gauzy' fabric may have been
crepe de chine, which darkened the room without blacking it out. I noticed these curtains had folds in them, as though they'd been stored in a box and recently pulled out and hung up. I thought how amazingly expensive that quantity of silk must have been. These people must have been very, very wealthy indeed (nobility of some sort presumably - silk merchants?). I had the impression that all this mourning stuff had only recently been hastily unpacked and put up perhaps just that morning (hence the creases in the curtains).
[Perhaps it was that same morning?
]
She was in the room all dressed in black. She was holding a large black fan (black beading - jet probably - on the handle) and made nervous small talk about how it was her grandmother's and quite out of style, but it was the only one she had at short notice, since she hadn't had time to order any new stuff ... She hadn't worn the dress in years and she thought it was a bit small and too tight across the shoulders. I remember being irritated by this frivolous rubbish she was talking, but at the same time touched (in present time) because X is still terribly conscious of his 'fashion image' and inclined to prattle on about trivialities, especially if nervous.
I decided to go into the 'heart center' and try to find out why this scene was significant and why it has been bothering me so much lately. There was a tangle of volcanic emotions all jumbled up. As I wrote above, I was very angry with her for 'ruining my life and my career' and felt that she was a silly shallow creature and it had really not been worth it. I felt very foolish on that account and disgusted with myself - similar to a feeling I've described above on the day of the duel - but even so the very sight of her gave me a strange pain and pleasure all at once (she was very, very beautiful -with golden hair and very fine features). I couldn't hate her, though I didn't know why.
The heart center: http://www.reincarnationforum.com/threads/the-heart-center.1048/
I believe I had either been sent or volunteered (or a bit of both) to go to the 'front' of the war after this little incident. I knew I'd had a serious dressing down from my commanding officer about it. There was no suggestion of what I'd done being illegal or being charged with murder or anything, but I was definitely in disgrace. I understood that the husband I'd killed had been a very wealthy benefactor of our war effort. Presumably nobility would invest in these sorts of things in the hopes of gaining more lands or at least favour with the King? Anyway the whole thing was just disastrous for my career and future prospects. I'd behaved very badly, let down the honour of the regiment, all that sort of stuff...
But, beneath all those feelings was 'heartbroken'. I actually felt a terrible ache, not just in my heart, but in my entire chest while this 'meditation' was going on. It's funny, but I could feel/remember what that felt like in my young, male chest as well as my own actual present day chest - hollow, empty, aching - sort of superimposed on my present body. I have had that sort of feeling before this life, but not since I was a kid when something-or-other seemed terribly, terribly upsetting as it only can when you're a little kid and you've had your heart set on something and then been bitterly disappointed. It feels like the end of the world and it felt like the 'end of the world' then too. As a little kid you can sob your heart out (and probably get a cuddle to make it better) but as a big, grown up soldier you couldn't do any of that, so it hurt all the more if that makes sense.
I told her I'd be going away and that we'd never see each other again. Even if I wasn't killed in action, I wouldn't be coming back to that town ever again. I just wouldn't have been possible socially, back in those days, for us to be together, so the best thing to do was to leave and never come back. She didn't seem too cut up about it, which made me feel so much worse of course. She was annoyed with me for killing her husband and causing her so much inconvenience really if anything, or so it seemed to me. Again, the shallowness and selfishness shocked and sickened me (reminding me of my recent disagreement with X in real life - since sort of, more or less, patched up).
I wondered (to myself) what the business about the piano music might all be about? Then I recalled a time when I saw her dancing with her husband and had felt a terrible rush of jealousy...
...It was kind of interesting to observe my own emotions which came suddenly fizzing up in my blood like lemonade though. Suddenly I came over all 'Poland' and felt a rush of blood to my cheeks. I cast my mind back to watching X at an event in Poland dancing with her husband. I felt exactly the same fizz of jealousy and I felt exactly the same way about the husband as I felt about K. Nice enough, nothing special...but what does he see in her compared with me? I really wasn't interested in the husband either, only in that she/he was in the way between X and me. It was very weird to remember having all those very arrogant, selfish and bitter thoughts. Of course I was younger then, and a hot headed and aggressive young man and now I am so much wiser of course, knowing where it all led... Then the moment passed and I 'snapped out of it'...
Lemoade:
http://www.reincarnationforum.com/threads/my-friend-x.1438/page-4#post-29691
There was a party in this same room some time previously and the contrast between that happy occasion and this one was very poignant. The room was certainly large enough to have dancing if you moved the furniture back against the walls. Maybe I'd heard her playing the piano on that occasion or heard a similarly hauntingly beautiful tune played at the time? Anyway, something like that rang true, which is probably why it feels so nostalgic to me now. People didn't hear that much music back then (before the invention of the radio) and only the wealthy even had pianos, so things like that would have had a powerful impact I'm guessing.
I had a brief flash of seeing her at the funeral a day or so later (which I also mentioned above). It was a sunny day (all this would have been in summer if there was ripe barley in the fields after all). Everyone was outdoors. She was a bit in the distance, in a black dress, standing on some steps (outside a church perhaps?). I got the feeling that although I went to the funeral (with the other officers one assumes) I didn't speak to her on that occasion. No doubt there had been quite enough scandal already without doing anything to make it worse, like making a scene with the widow at the funeral!
Anyway, that's it. It's not much, but I feel a bit lighter of heart today for some reason.
