Long ago, as a young girl, I was sitting at a small Chinese restaurant in New York, waiting for my take out, when strong smell of fried rice suddenly took me 3,000 years back to a market in ancient India, where I saw myself as a girl no older than 12. I was running around with a boy just slightly older than me, while my grandmother was selling fried rice at a stall near by.

The next picture that opened in my mind was me a bit older, with a baby in my arms. I did not know what to do with that baby. I knew though that if I were to keep it, there would be terrible repercussions for me: as an unmarried young mother, I would be sentenced to a life of a pariah and a begger.

I climbed up a grassy hill. There was a river below, where women were washing clothes. I aimed to throw the child into the river just left of them, so the current would carry it a short distance into their arms.

At that moment, a terrible feeling came over me that I was being watched.

The next picture in my mind was me being taken away by several men. They were taking me to the temple, where I was to be burned to death.

My take out was ready, and a smiling Chinese lady took me back to the 20th century.

Five years later, I’ve met a lady who offered me and a few other women to experience a group past life regression. This was to be my very first past life regression.

Immediately, I went back to the same short life in ancient India. The only difference this time around was that I was able to discern that the baby I gave birth to in that life was my husband now.

I could not have guessed it before, at the Chinese restaurant, when the memory came naturally to me, because I did not meet my husband yet.

Now I could clearly understand the karma behind our marriage: somehow, as an unwed 12 – 13 y.o. mother taken to my fiery death, I have understood that the right thing to do would have been staying with the soul that came into my life as a child no matter what misery it presented. At the same time, the soul of my then – child – now – husband obviously felt guilty for bringing me the threat of dire poverty.

During all our lives together ever since (and I certainly remember bits and pieces of one of our other marriages at the turn of the 20th century), his soul would bring material prosperity into my life, while I would be resolved to be miserable around him but loyal nonetheless.

My heart swelled with compassion and forgiveness for both of us.

No more than a few weeks later, as we were celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary at the Four Seasons, my husband informed me that he took a lucrative job with another company in Atlanta, so I should prepare to move there in a few months.

Immediately, with every cell in my body, I felt I should not follow him. No one could understand my refusal to move, not even me. Our marriage was not perfect (whose is?), but it was not bad either. I have recently opened my Manhattan Astrology School, but my income could not cover the rent. The country was in the middle of recession, so getting any job to support me was a dim prospect. I was so scared to stay in New York on my own, that I could not sleep at night. My husband, my mother-in-law, and everyone I knew urged me to follow my husband. Yet my feeling that I should stay put was stronger than any reasoning and even my own fears. So I stayed.

Somehow, everything turned out to be just fine. I found a cheaper  apartment, which I could afford on my own, my school was becoming more and more popular, and I went on to enjoy the best 9 years of my life (so far).

I realized that my karma with my husband dissolved the minute I have forgiven both of us.

All circumstances in our lives are held together by the thread of Karma. When the thread disappears, so must the circumstances it supports.

Interestingly though, my solar return for that year clearly showed my marriage going bust (Pluto right on the ascendant) and financial fears due to sudden confusion in my home and family matters (Neptune, as the ruler of the solar return chart’s fourth house, conjunct Uranus and north node in my second house of finances).

What came first, my spiritual experiences or astrological necessity?

About 2 years later, O.J. was arrested in connection with the murder of his wife, and my students wanted to delienate his natal chart.  I looked at it and saw that O.J. was to enjoy his golden years, which he was approaching fast. “He cannot be convicted”, I said.

All that year, as my students were studying future forecasting techniques and horary astrology, we were examining O.J.’s charts. That’s how we knew before anyone else that he was guilty, but he would go free, and when that would happen – and then we watched the process to unfold.

A year or 2 later, my students and I were analyzing the natal chart of Princess Diana. The chart clearly spelled that she was to die a sudden violent death because of her fame and status. A year or so later, she died just as her chart said she would.

Through the years, many of my first time clients wondered if I was psychic (which I am not) – so accurately I was describing their lives.

How could it be so pre-determined? When and where does our free will comes into the picture, or do we have free will at all? The more I learned astrology, the spookier it was becoming.

Then, not so long ago, there was an incident in my life that may have had shed light on this mystery:

My second husband asked me to accompany him on a short business trip to Brooklyn. The trip would have taken a few hours at the most. I agreed and asked my mother to look after our 3 y.o. son while we were out.

When my mother came over, I suddenly had a de-ja vu experience, accompanied by a vague premonition and a strong feeling that I should stay home. I voiced my wish to stay, but both, my husband and my mother insisted on me going to Brooklyn. So I did.

On the way back home, my husband and I found out that our son had a terrible  accident and lost the tip of his finger.

I am certain that if I listened to my feeling of needing to stay home, it would not have happened. I am also certain that somehow I knew before hand about possibility of this accident, and I recognized the circumstances leading to the accident: hence the de-ja vu experience. Somehow, somewhere my soul saw the future and knew it could be averted. In other words, there were 2 or more different futures to choose from!

While planetary transits showed that my son was in danger of an accident, there were no other strong astrological confirmations. Just as piling up sandbags on the bank of a rising river may prevent the flood, taking necessary precautions during bad astrological “weather” could have save us the grief. My only excuse for not doing my job as an astrologer for my own family is that with a young child on my hands and a business to take care of, I hardly had time to take a shower then, and astrological forecasting was the last on my mind.

Not all astrological occurences are temporary and avoidable. I came to the firm belief that somehow we all must live out the stories told by our astrological charts, even if we manage to dissolve some of our karmas. Now that I’ve learned Vedic astrology also, I know that the planetary positions at the time and place of my birth required for me to have 2 marriages in this life-time, so my first marriage had to dissolve somehow. Dissolving a karma with it was simply a blessing that came along.

If my son’s maiming was dictated by karma, his natal chart would have showed it, and his accident would not have been avoidable, so the feeling that I should stay home with him would have been useless and would not have come. But his chart does not show it, so his finger grew back and is now perfectly normal. We were simply caught in astrological “bad weather” without “an umbrella”.

So we can change our future, as long as the life story written in our natal chart does not change radically. We always have a number of possibilities within our life stories to choose from.

The possibilities are not limitless, however. Our life stories unfold according to the plot which is, literally, written in the stars. The picture of the sky above the place of birth at the time of birth is the plot. Not only it tells us what a particular life is about, it also contains the timing of major occurences, which can be read through astrological forecasting techniques.

Our personal Karma wrote the plot by choosing our parents and the time and place of birth, and then it filled the story line with major and supporting characters.

But we can change props, decorations and even whole scenes, as we play out our life stories. We can change the flavor of the life story into melodrama, comedy or tragedy, as we develop the central characters of our life stories – our selves.

So O.J. did not have to play Otello. He could have weathered the temporary storm of his life in some other way. He still would have spent a great deal of that year either in jail or in a hospital, his relationship problems of that time would have left him emotionally jarred, etc.. But he could have changed the main scene of his life story at its core.

On the other hand, Princess Di would still have died in a sudden violent manner, as her Pluto – Uranus – Mars – North Node conjunction  in the 8th house (the sudden explosion of violence brought on by other people) was opposing the Moon in the 2nd house (her body).  With Pluto being the ruler of her 11th house of recognition, fame would be the most likely culprit. But the circumstances of her death might have been different.

The scripts of our lives are not written word per word. They do not describe our actions. They only describe the general direction of where we are going and what we are most likely to see on the way, like a tourist guide.

In fact, we are like tourists in a country of life. We have our itineraries that we cannot easily change (but it is also possible – God creates the world anew each moment). We also have certain tourist attractions marked as “must see” on the tour. But we still may skip some of them and choose other “attractions” to visit instead. We cannot choose a different country (i.e. a life), once we subscribed for the tour, and we should not quit on a whim (i.e. commit suicide).

Over the years, as more of my other past lives were coming into the view of my present consciousness, I became a certified hypnotherapist and regressed many other people into their past lives. I have seen Karma in action, and that, coupled with my experience as an astrologer, gave me a good overview on Maya mechanics. One of the spiritual laws I have learned dictates that people who commit suicide are to have the following life much harsher than the one they quit.

So don’t be a quitter. If it rains astrologicals stones, find cover and work on your spiritual abilities to change the scene you dislike. In fact, there is no better time to turn on the Divine Light in your life then when the circumstances darken. As one of my clients once said to me, when I was predicting tough times ahead for her, “I love tough times. They are times of spiritual renewal.”

According to Swami Sri Yukteswar, the guru of much more famous Paramahansa Yogonanda, we are now living at the very dawn of Dwapara Yuga. In the next millenium, we are to acquire enough of spiritual light in our lives to banish the very idea of total darkeness. Meanwhile, however, we can still acquire “Grace credits” with the ease of “Kali Yuga residents”, as many of us were born right on the cusp of times.So we are very lucky “life tourists” indeed.

What that means is that the present life is crucial to our spiritual development, and we need to let as much of spiritual life into our lives as possible. This means that mankind may experience some astrological rain of stones, so we forced to turn on the Divine Light.

I believe that such rain is coming next year, with 2010 being the toughest, and I plan to explore this “rain of stones” in my next article.