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Possible Parallel Lives / Alternative Reality?

Thank you for your absorbing post Avalon.

A number of points spring to mind.

Firstly,I am a Brit too and my image of Australia is that of a sunkissed land where life is somehow more uncomplicated, In short, Australia is a likely location for any kind of escapist fantasy.

Secondly, your mother had dreamt once of going to New Zealand - not Australia. It is not pedantic to make clear that these are different countries. They are in the same general area, yes - but separated by some distance (indeed, many Aussies have never been to New Zealand and vice versa). So it's a bit of a stretch to introduce this into the mix as evidence for anything.

Thirdly, if your mother had married a blonde Aussie in her alternate life then any offspring that she had would be made up of both her and her husband's DNA - and this would not include the you as you are now, nor anything recognisable as being you.

Fourthly, some of your visions seem to include a boyfriend from this life. So how did he get in there too?

My life's a bit crap and I quite often have daydreams about being interviewed about my `latest novel`( instead of being a blogger who no-one reads) or being a professor at a University (instead of a two-bit language tutor). If life got bad enough I believe that the vividness (and they are already quite vivid) of them would increase.

I hope I am not being too logically analytical about a post that maybe was just calling for empathy. I enjoyed it and you have made a good constructive self-help step by reaching out to new people with it.
 
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Zeke Newbold said:
Thank you for your absorbing post Avalon.

A number of points spring to mind.

Firstly,I am a Brit too and my image of Australia is that of a sunkissed land where life is somehow more uncomplicated, In short, Australia is a likely location for any kind of escapist fantasy.

Secondly, your mother had dreamt once of going to New Zealand - not Australia. It is not pedantic to make clear that these are different countries. They are in the same general area, yes - but separated by some distance (indeed, many Aussies have never been to New Zealand and vice versa). So it's a bit of a stretch to introduce this into the mix as evidence for anything.

Thirdly, if your mother had married a blonde Aussie in her alternate life then any offspring that she had would be made up of both her and her husband's DNA - and this would not include the you as you are now, nor anything recognisable as being you.

Fourthly, some of your visions seem to include a boyfriend from this life. So how did he get in there too?

My life's a bit crap and I quite often have daydreams about being interviewed about my `latest novel`( instead of being a blogger who no-one reads) or being a professor at a University (instead of a two-bit language tutor). If life got bad enough I believe that the vividness (and they are already quite vivid) of them would increase.

I hope I am not being too logically analytical about a post that maybe was just calling for empathy. I enjoyed it and you have made a good constructive self-help step by reaching out to new people with it.
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You may be right, I've often thought that maybe I'm just mad, have an overactive imagination, need an escape from a miserable life or something. I never really thought about how that boyfriend would have ended up there too. It's just that I've had loads of fantasies of alternate lives (like I'm a famous novelist, a caveperson or living in another century), throughout my whole life and they always just felt like nothing but imagination. But for some reason this Australian one felt real and stuck with me. And all of my other fantasies were always based off something I'd read or seen, like a novel or TV show, whereas the Australian ones weren't. And with the other ones I would just sit there and imagine them, I'd choose the storyline and I'd make the effort to come up with it. And I'm not a mentally visual person, so those imaginings are always just feelings and storylines rather than images. But the Australian ones, they just organically inserted themselves into my mind based on nothing, I was always engrossed in activities when they happened, I wasn't trying to imagine anything, and they were very very visual, which is unusual for me. Also in all of my fantasies my mental background noise/feeling is the same as it is in reality, but in the Australian ones my mental background noise was different, like in this life my mental background noise is depressing, the culmination of all the events of a difficult life. The Australians background noise was uplifting, the culmination of a lifetime of happiness. They just felt different.
 
Just caught up on this thread--wishing you good energy, good support and improving health as you go through this time in your life, Priestess of Avalon!
 
PriestessOfAvalon said:
I'm British (and dark haired, relevant later), but I've always felt drawn to Australia even though I've never been there and don't know any Aussies. From the age of 18, for approximately 4 years, I went through a period of having visions of me living an alternate life in Australia. I can't remember all of them now (as they finished in around 2005) but I remember a couple.

The first time I was about 18. I was walking my dogs through a local forest and started jogging. Suddenly and powerfully, like being struck by lightning, I got this incredibly intense and vivid image of myself as a blonde Australian girl jogging/running through some type of Australian wilderness. Weirdly, I had two perspectives at the same time. I had the perspective of actually being this Australian girl, seeing through her eyes and feeling her emotions, and I had a third party perspective where I was watching her at the same time. I could feel her emotions and they were wonderful. In real life I've struggled with depression, hopelessness and bleakness most of my life (that's my permanent "background noise", if you will), but this girl had none of that. Her background noise was hope, excitement and joy at being alive. I also very strongly got the sense that the Australian girl at that moment of jogging was in the 80s, I felt most likely 1987, whereas for me that walking through the woods was around 2002.

Another instance I remember was when I was around 21. I was with some friends, including my boyfriend at the time, and one was playing electric guitar while listening to it through headphones attached to the amp. He handed the headphones to my boyfriend who put them on and suddenly I had another intense vision. It was of the two of us as Australians, in a very small plane that my boyfriend was about to pilot. He was putting on the pilot headphones and again I felt that that was happening in the 80s, although for me it was about 2004/2005.

These visions always seemed to happen whenever I was doing something similar to something the Aussie Me had done. As if me doing things she'd done, or seeing things she'd seen, triggered something that briefly connected her experience to my similar experience, in my mind.

It's been so long I don't remember any other instances as I didn't write any of them down but these two in particular made such a strong impression on me that I still remember them. At first I wondered if they were visions of a past life but I had to quickly discount that idea, as I felt the Australian visions were from the late 80s and in this life I was born in 1983. Then I wondered, maybe a parallel life?

I never told anyone about these visions as I didn't want to sound crazy or like an idiot, and then some time after the visions stopped, my mum told me something I'd never known. She said that when she was a child (around the late 1950s/early 1960s), her parents decided to relocate to New Zealand. It was all organised, they had their tickets and everything. But at the last minute, my great grandfather talked them out of it as he didn't want them to go. So they cancelled everything and stayed in the UK. This made me wonder if some alternate reality branched off from that decision. I wondered if in that reality, they moved to NZ, and eventually on to Australia. My mum might have met a blonde Australian man and I might haven been a blonde Australian girl. In this reality my mum was 35 years old when she had me in 1983. if her life had been different she could easily have given birth to me at the age of around 21 instead, then the timelines would match up with my visions and I'd have been around 18 in 1987.

I wonder if this is a parallel life, are she and I meant to be experiencing two different ends of the happiness spectrum? I'm living depression and hopelessness, poverty and ill health and she's living joy and abundance and great health. Maybe I'm just bonkers but I honestly do feel cheated out of the Australian life tI hat should have been mine. Has anyone else ever had anything like this?
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Hi, A few years ago Id had a discussion with my Mother asking if they had ever thought about going to Australia, but she mentioned to me that she had found out that both my Mothers parents and my Fathers parent both toyed with the idea of moving to the same small town in OZ, when they where both very young( way before they met), she believed that she and my Father where always destined to meet. so you never know.
 
Interesting- my dad had bought a caravan and located it in Shropshire on a caravan site. I visited a few times, and as soon as I stepped out of the car the very first time, in a nearby village It felt like "home". Which was unusual as I'd been to Shropshire before but never that particular area some 4 miles have outside Ludlow. I didn't get any "visions" though. I'm hoping that your visions give you hope and some healing. It's a fascinating story. Good luck for your future.
 
Slightly weird thing this morning. Got up, travelled to work. Changed buses in Stockport and sat in my bus in the bus station, waiting for the driver to move out. Another stationary bus was parked in front immediately in front with its rear end filling the whole of the view in front via the driver's cab. The service number 203 was clearly visible on the illuminated panel on the rear. For me, my brain was in neutral and I was trying to read a poster on the inside of the bus (starved of stimulus)

Maybe in straining to read an advertising poster about fifteen feet away, my eyes might have dis-focused into "Magic Eye" mode. Just for an instant, as I turned my head around and my visual field changed, and I was scanning the parked bus in front through the front windscreen.... for an instant there wasn't just one no 203 bus there. there were at least six, in line, overlapping each other, with that illuminated "203" repeated along a horizontal line. I had a feeling the line would stretch as far as I could see in both directions, and I was only seeing, or sensing, a part of it.

Then the sensation died, my vision snapped back to normal, and there was only one 203 bus in front.

I wondered about this. Was I seeing, just for a moment, an infinity of possibilities, all the 203 buses that were going to set off for Manchester Piccadilly via Reddish, Gorton and Belle Vue, in quite a few parellel universes? Little Egerton Street in Stockport had become a nexus of parellel possibilities?

Or is it just that damn number 23 playing tricks again?
 
AgProv said:
Slightly weird thing this morning. Got up, travelled to work. Changed buses in Stockport and sat in my bus in the bus station, waiting for the driver to move out. Another stationary bus was parked in front immediately in front with its rear end filling the whole of the view in front via the driver's cab. The service number 203 was clearly visible on the illuminated panel on the rear. For me, my brain was in neutral and I was trying to read a poster on the inside of the bus (starved of stimulus)

Maybe in straining to read an advertising poster about fifteen feet away, my eyes might have dis-focused into "Magic Eye" mode. Just for an instant, as I turned my head around and my visual field changed, and I was scanning the parked bus in front through the front windscreen.... for an instant there wasn't just one no 203 bus there. there were at least six, in line, overlapping each other, with that illuminated "203" repeated along a horizontal line. I had a feeling the line would stretch as far as I could see in both directions, and I was only seeing, or sensing, a part of it.

Then the sensation died, my vision snapped back to normal, and there was only one 203 bus in front.

I wondered about this. Was I seeing, just for a moment, an infinity of possibilities, all the 203 buses that were going to set off for Manchester Piccadilly via Reddish, Gorton and Belle Vue, in quite a few parellel universes? Little Egerton Street in Stockport had become a nexus of parellel possibilities?

Or is it just that damn number 23 playing tricks again?
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The problem would be knowing which one to board haha!
 
Zeke Newbold said:
My life's a bit crap and I quite often have daydreams about being interviewed about my `latest novel`( instead of being a blogger who no-one reads) or being a professor at a University (instead of a two-bit language tutor). If life got bad enough I believe that the vividness (and they are already quite vivid) of them would increase.
Click to expand...
I wish I was a language teacher!
 
AgProv said:
Slightly weird thing this morning. Got up, travelled to work. Changed buses in Stockport and sat in my bus in the bus station, waiting for the driver to move out. Another stationary bus was parked in front immediately in front with its rear end filling the whole of the view in front via the driver's cab. The service number 203 was clearly visible on the illuminated panel on the rear. For me, my brain was in neutral and I was trying to read a poster on the inside of the bus (starved of stimulus)

Maybe in straining to read an advertising poster about fifteen feet away, my eyes might have dis-focused into "Magic Eye" mode. Just for an instant, as I turned my head around and my visual field changed, and I was scanning the parked bus in front through the front windscreen.... for an instant there wasn't just one no 203 bus there. there were at least six, in line, overlapping each other, with that illuminated "203" repeated along a horizontal line. I had a feeling the line would stretch as far as I could see in both directions, and I was only seeing, or sensing, a part of it.

Then the sensation died, my vision snapped back to normal, and there was only one 203 bus in front.

I wondered about this. Was I seeing, just for a moment, an infinity of possibilities, all the 203 buses that were going to set off for Manchester Piccadilly via Reddish, Gorton and Belle Vue, in quite a few parellel universes? Little Egerton Street in Stockport had become a nexus of parellel possibilities?

Or is it just that damn number 23 playing tricks again?
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Happened again this morning, but I reckon I've figured out how it's happening. The two buses have to be close, nose-to-tail. The light conditions have to be right - it was fairly gloomy twilight, not quite full daylight. Where two large buses are in close proximity you are going to get lots of internal reflections. Not just from the large back window of the one in front to the large front window of the one behind: there's also the glass panel in the driver's cab, his side window, the perspex covid screen and the side windows of the bus. Lots of big sheets of glass or perspex at various angles to each other, and not all on the vertical plane, acting like semi-silvered mirrors in the right sort of low light..

It's a Pepper's Ghost sort of thing: internal reflections, and reflections of reflections, from a variety of angles. And of course a reflection of a reflection means the "203" destination number, the strongest light source, comes out right way round and in multiple places. If I moved my head so my field of vision isn't quite in the right place, the illusion faded. I suspect my choice of seat on board may also be optimal for seeing this. (Creature of habit: always two seats back on the left downstairs)

Of course, this could also be a cunning way of making people aware of the multiple worlds crossing at this point... .

that's the "how" of it, anyway
 
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Zeke Newbold said:
I quite often have daydreams about being interviewed about my `latest novel`( instead of being a blogger who no-one reads)
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And again, this isn't all it's cracked up to be. Writing novels means never having any spare time, constant emails about deadlines, covers, what marketing you intend to do, what marketing you're actually doing, reading endless Facebook posts from other novelists, all of whom are doing far far better than you are, etc etc.
Unless, presumably, you are an actual, top of the tree, NYT Best Seller earning squillions, novel writing is pretty much a job like any other. Except you can do it in your pyjamas.
 
PriestessOfAvalon said:
I'm British (and dark haired, relevant later), but I've always felt drawn to Australia even though I've never been there and don't know any Aussies. From the age of 18, for approximately 4 years, I went through a period of having visions of me living an alternate life in Australia. I can't remember all of them now (as they finished in around 2005) but I remember a couple.

The first time I was about 18. I was walking my dogs through a local forest and started jogging. Suddenly and powerfully, like being struck by lightning, I got this incredibly intense and vivid image of myself as a blonde Australian girl jogging/running through some type of Australian wilderness. Weirdly, I had two perspectives at the same time. I had the perspective of actually being this Australian girl, seeing through her eyes and feeling her emotions, and I had a third party perspective where I was watching her at the same time. I could feel her emotions and they were wonderful. In real life I've struggled with depression, hopelessness and bleakness most of my life (that's my permanent "background noise", if you will), but this girl had none of that. Her background noise was hope, excitement and joy at being alive. I also very strongly got the sense that the Australian girl at that moment of jogging was in the 80s, I felt most likely 1987, whereas for me that walking through the woods was around 2002.

Another instance I remember was when I was around 21. I was with some friends, including my boyfriend at the time, and one was playing electric guitar while listening to it through headphones attached to the amp. He handed the headphones to my boyfriend who put them on and suddenly I had another intense vision. It was of the two of us as Australians, in a very small plane that my boyfriend was about to pilot. He was putting on the pilot headphones and again I felt that that was happening in the 80s, although for me it was about 2004/2005.

These visions always seemed to happen whenever I was doing something similar to something the Aussie Me had done. As if me doing things she'd done, or seeing things she'd seen, triggered something that briefly connected her experience to my similar experience, in my mind.

It's been so long I don't remember any other instances as I didn't write any of them down but these two in particular made such a strong impression on me that I still remember them. At first I wondered if they were visions of a past life but I had to quickly discount that idea, as I felt the Australian visions were from the late 80s and in this life I was born in 1983. Then I wondered, maybe a parallel life?

I never told anyone about these visions as I didn't want to sound crazy or like an idiot, and then some time after the visions stopped, my mum told me something I'd never known. She said that when she was a child (around the late 1950s/early 1960s), her parents decided to relocate to New Zealand. It was all organised, they had their tickets and everything. But at the last minute, my great grandfather talked them out of it as he didn't want them to go. So they cancelled everything and stayed in the UK. This made me wonder if some alternate reality branched off from that decision. I wondered if in that reality, they moved to NZ, and eventually on to Australia. My mum might have met a blonde Australian man and I might haven been a blonde Australian girl. In this reality my mum was 35 years old when she had me in 1983. if her life had been different she could easily have given birth to me at the age of around 21 instead, then the timelines would match up with my visions and I'd have been around 18 in 1987.

I wonder if this is a parallel life, are she and I meant to be experiencing two different ends of the happiness spectrum? I'm living depression and hopelessness, poverty and ill health and she's living joy and abundance and great health. Maybe I'm just bonkers but I honestly do feel cheated out of the Australian life that should have been mine. Has anyone else ever had anything like this?
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This is a fascinating post. I wonder how frequent that those with depression ('background noise' is a fantastic way of describing it) have these kind of 'alternative lives'. Having had depression (for want of a better word) most of my life, certainly since my teenage years (I'm nearly 50 now) I've had experiences similar too - though not as powerful as yours. Often they seem wish fulfillment, at others, indications of a deeper reality - the dream after a dream. I remember reading somewhere - I cant remember where - that all these alternate lives come together some point and we experience all those other lives as our own. I like this idea. Maybe its the depressive mind trying to counteract the darkness - perhaps they are intimations of a deeper reality. Most of my alternate lives seem to revolve around late spring / summery places - fields under sun and a clump of trees - almost Arcadian seeming - in the middle of a field. Their quality as a kind of memory is almost overpowering but they seem like memories of another life rather than this one.
Similar but different are the visions I had when an old friend died a few years ago. I'd only seen him once in 20+ years, shortly before he died. This vision was very detailed - and consisted of me walking through the empty streets of the west London suburb where we spent our teenage years. There is a feeling I have just arrived. Late springtime, when spring starts to feel like summer - and as I walk to the shops I see that my friend is waiting for me outside a cafe. I can picture him perfectly - his expression, the way he is sitting, the coffee on the table in front of him. There is a great peace about everything and he is waiting for me to join him. I know this 'time' is in the early years of our friendship though he is his adult self.
That's it really. The grieving mind processing the death of a friend? - perhaps, but it feels more like a memory that is yet to be.
 
Frideswide said:
@PriestessOfAvalon thank you for your account. Very interesting.

About the feeling cheated - if you do feel that then you do. Your feelings are valid. But (you could tell there was a but coming huh? ;) ) there's a bit in a Terry Pratchett when her childhood sweetheart says "wouldn't it have been wonderful?". They had both gone off to do Magic.

Her response is that one only ever thinks about the good alternatives. Not Leukemia at3015, a house fire that maims your children, a transport crash that kills your partner and leaves you needing 24 hour care.

OK, that's extreme. Find a middle ground! :oldm:
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A bit like how in one alternative reality I'm GordonRutter and in another I'm Trevp?
 
Seasidepagan said:
I’m not an expert by any means but that’s what I would do, sit quietly, think about her and see what happens. What have you got to lose? Let us know how you get on !
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At least once I've created a character for fiction and invested time into making her as "real" as possible . Then a month or two later... Somebody pops up and that person is in some vital set of respects the character I've invented. Don't know what it is I' m tapping into or attracting but this is rather interesting.
 
Anyway, I suspect that if Princess of Avalon were to try to recover, or inwardly build, her blonde Aussie in as much detail as she can, maybe build a narrative around her.... Who knows? She may turn up in some surprising way.
 
AgProv said:
At least once I've created a character for fiction and invested time into making her as "real" as possible . Then a month or two later... Somebody pops up and that person is in some vital set of respects the character I've invented. Don't know what it is I' m tapping into or attracting but this is rather interesting.
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The nature of the “vital set of respects” of these female fantasies might give enquiring minds some clues.

maximus otter
 
AgProv said:
At least once I've created a character for fiction and invested time into making her as "real" as possible . Then a month or two later... Somebody pops up and that person is in some vital set of respects the character I've invented. Don't know what it is I' m tapping into or attracting but this is rather interesting.
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I think it's called 'making people real'. If you conceive a fictional character and you have done your work properly, then they will have a coherent set of characteristics which are BOUND to be replicated in real life. There are not that many 'types' of people, so you are almost bound to meet someone who fits at least the archetype that you have created.
 
In a terraced house in Bath, Somerset, UK, a retired watchmaker created a healing device that also had the additional capability of being used as a time machine. Does anyone know of this case? it was featured on Controversial TV [ Freesat channel] back in 2013.. I have included this case in my book Threads of Time...
 
Hi Princess Of Avalon. Just read your posts and have in boxed you.

Take care xxx
 
DerelictManchester said:
In a terraced house in Bath, Somerset, UK, a retired watchmaker created a healing device that also had the additional capability of being used as a time machine. Does anyone know of this case? it was featured on Controversial TV [ Freesat channel] back in 2013.. I have included this case in my book Threads of Time...
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Hi DM

I've just located your book via a websearch - sounds interesting! But I have to say it wasn't easy at all to find as there are at least two other books of the same name - these monopolised the search results and I had to go a long way in before finding yours. Not sure what you can do about this but it might be worth mentioning to your publishers or whoever's responsible for marketing. Best wishes.

EDIT - funny how these things work out - one of the other books called "Threads of Time" is the autobiog of theatre director Peter Brook, and guess who he became mates with back in the day and gets a chapter to himself.. Aleistar Crowley.... the other book(s) called Threads of Time are about the history and sociology of stitching, seamstressing and embroidery.
 
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Ag Prov, coincidentally the second book you mention about history of seamstresses etc has just been recommended to me by a friend but they could not recall the title or author. Apparently its really good.
 
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