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I'm Over All That and Other Confessions - Shirley MacLaine

I learned of the Catholic ecumenical meetings held in Constantinople in AD 553 where the teachings of physical reembodiment (reincarnation) were struck from the New Testament on orders from Empress Theodora of Byzantium.

She single-handedly erased our spiritual history.

I had a past-life experience as a harem girl in the home of a pasha in Turkey and became physically nauseous with the memory of my confinement and lack of freedom. I learned how the major religions intersect and witnessed Coptic Christians living peacefully side by side with Muslims.

At Isfahan I had another past-life experience where I had entertained a large audience at the theater outside under the stars. I remembered how good the acoustics were and felt the warmth of the summer night.

I can never pinpoint the actual dates of my past-life memories, only the environment . . . that is, except for the memories I recalled when I walked across Spain doing the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage. That was an experience that altered my life because of the solitude of the walk. I walked ten hours a day for one month, slept in refugios (shelters), and begged for food. It helped me put my place in the world into proper perspective. My grandest lesson from that journey has been that of allow and surrender. Yes, I am an over-achiever with a sometimes bulldog-like work ethic, but when I walked across Spain by myself, begging for food and sleeping in shelters, I soon learned the art of surrender and allowance.

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The Camino was lonely when I was walking it in the present, but it was also peopled with memories of many incarnational experiences from the past.

I remembered being a Muslim Gypsy girl who had migrated from Morocco and was living with the Coptic Christians in the hills of Spain. I remembered a cross I wore, which, when I presented it, protected me from the Muslims and the Christians alike. At one point in my present day walk, I was guided to a jewelry store in a small village along the Camino. I looked in the window and saw the cross I remembered from several hundred years before. I went in and questioned the proprietor.

He gave me the same information I remembered from the past-life memory; it had belonged to a Gypsy girl (me) from Morocco and she had used it for protection. I bought the cross (my only purchase on the trek) and always take it with me when I leave home.