Chasing after the past, as in past life

• West Nile Papyrus by The Dejunair Project

When it comes to a reincarnation story, I don’t have many to share, and some of you might have heard this one before. My mom told me this story when I was little. She was from Thailand, and didn’t move to Laos until she was in her late teens.  Back then she lived in a small village, and when she was little, people would barter rice or other items for food, sort of trade instead of buying, my grandmother had all kinds of stuff that people would come and trade, like rice, coconuts, and betel chewing.

Then one day, there was a 16 year old girl that came with her mom, they came to barter for rice at my grandmother’s house, and she saw my mom’s neighbors, 2 elderly ladies in their 60s and she started calling them by their names, using the term EE in front and that upset everyone because that’s very rude for a young person to do that, that’s like saying ‘Yo!.’  Then the young girl told them that she was their mother and asked for her items that they didn’t give her when she passed away, it was her Betel chewing basket.

She was able to tell everything about them in great detail, and had everyone convinced that she was really the reincarnation of their mother, which my mom had no doubt that it was really her.  They went back with her to her new family and she was happy that she got her Betel basket back.  My mom said that 3 days later, she got sick and passed away.  It was believed that she only came to get her basket. It was a sad story, happily reunited for only a brief moment, then parted again the second times around through death.

Of course, this is not very strange for the Thais and Lao as most are Buddhists and believe in reincarnation. But when I read about a Briton artist, Nileen Namita whom believed that she was the Queen Nefertiti in her past life, Queen of the Nile sort of left me speechless. In an interview with the Daily Mail, she began her transformation in 1987 after deciding that in a past life she had lived as Nefertiti.

She said: ‘Throughout my childhood and teen years I had constant vivid dreams of this ancient queen.

‘They were visions of incredible intensity – I could see where she lived, her servants, her rooms, even the food she ate – and although at first I found the dreams frightening, I began to research what they meant.

‘Aged 23 I underwent psychoanalysis with a counselor. Slowly I began to realize that I was having these dreams because I am a reincarnation of Nefertiti.

‘A few weeks later I saw a picture of Nefertiti for the first time and I was struck by how familiar it was.

‘I know some people will find it hard to understand why I have put myself through so much surgery, but by then the visions had become even more powerful, I decided to remodel my face so I looked like a modern version of Nefertiti.’ Read the rest of her interview here.

See for yourself, this picture was taken after numerous surgeries and on the right hand side was a bust of Queen Nefertiti, the true Beauty of the Nile.

At the age of  49, a mother of three has undergone eight nose jobs, three chin implants, one eyebrow lift, three facelifts, six mini facelifts, two lip surgeries, five eye surgeries and 20 other minor procedures. Wait, that’s not all, she feels that she still needs her lips to be made a little finer and plan to have some more surgery on her nose to even out her nostrils.

Nefertiti was an Egyptian queen, a chief wife of the Pharoah Akhenaten.  It is believed that Nefertiti was active in the religious and cultural changes initiated by her husband. She also had the position as a priest, and she was a devoted worshiper of the god Aten.

What Nefertiti now is remembered for is the painted limestone bust depicting her, one of the greatest works of art of the pre-modern world . This is exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Germany.

And what Nileen Namita is known for is that she thought she was the reincarnation of Queen Nefertiti, and since then she has spent more than $325,000 and undergone 51 cosmetic procedures to turn herself into a living replica of an ancient Egyptian sculpture of the famous queen. In my humble opinion, there are other ways to resemble the Egyptian queen, looks is not everything and I feel that she is wasting her life chasing after something that’s not there.  If those visions were true, I can’t say that she understood and interpreted them correctly, it might be a sign for her to follow the footstep of the great queen Nefertiti, to do greater things for humankind, but here she can’t get passed her looks and I’m afraid that time is not on her side.