Arran Journey: A Great Gift

(First published in the Northern Echo)

As the ferry draws towards it, the long, rising shape of Arran makes me think of a man lying on his side. The jutting shoulder is Goat Fell, which dominates the small community of Brodick.

My first stop is at the house of Mary Davies, (above the Estate Agents, beside the Bookshop and just down from the Chocolate Factory). Its big square windows overlook Goat Fell and the sea. From these windows, Mary monitors the regular ferries and observes the birds that hop and flutter along the shoreline. Here she sits at her desk and writes her novels. These good stories, which feature the island of Arran, are self published. They sell well. Mary can’t be bothered to wait on the whims of publishers as she only started writing fiction a few years ago at the age of eighty.

In an upstairs room, near the bookshelves, the convenient kettle and the tin of biscuits, Mary draws my attention to a flowery cardboard structure standing in the corner. ‘How do you like my coffin?’ she says cheerfully. Its lid is covered with collages of flowers and doves and twining leaves. It is a thing of beauty. ‘I had a party for all my friends,’ she says. ‘Everyone contributed to the design. I’ll be buried in the garden out there. It’s all arranged.’

Mary is very easy about death. In her view, it’s merely a stage in the evolutionary journey of the spirit. In her book, ‘The Journey’, she recounts her six past lives, as well as her present life. In this latter account, she casually alludes to her work for the eminent architectural historian, Niklaus Pevsner, and her work as a buildings evaluator for English Heritage.

When Mary was seventy, she came to Arran on a visit and fell in love with its spiritual, magical qualities. ‘I felt as though I was coming home,’ she says. She moved house, lock stock and barrel to Arran, and has been there the last fifteen years.

She is not alone. On this island, which has a population of four thousand, there are said to be four hundred resident artisans – jewellers, candle makers, designers, potters, painters, therapists. They are scattered round the island, mostly in the villages that are threaded onto the circular coastal road like beads on a necklace. 

I was tempted here by Mary’s own speciality: Past Regression Healing. As an historical novelist the past is my territory. In particular, I’m intrigued by the way that my researches of others’ past lives and scenes seep into my subconscious and transform into characters, actions and scenarios that are as real to me (and my readers) as true events. It has occurred to me now and then that I may be dipping into more than others’ past lives. What if I were dipping into my own past lives?

In her Saturday and Sunday workshops, Mary gently, but with some authority helps three of us to a state of deep relaxation. Then she takes us back in our own lives, down from four years, to three, to one. I suddenly remember snapping my fingers at birds in my pram. I’ve never remembered this before. 

Then Mary’s voice gently takes us gently right back right to our birth. I am in a small, cluttered room. I start to hear voices. ‘This is a very big head,’ says someone. And I feel my mother’s anger at having to go through a fourth birth in six years. She is weary. I feel my father’s guilt.  Afterwards Mary asks me about my mother’s eyes. ‘You looked into you mother’s eyes?’ she says. ‘That is very important, that bonding.’ I shake my head. There was no looking into eyes. 

She also asks why I chose these parents. It seems we all choose our parents. My answer is instant. ‘Because they had so much passion, so much passion for each other.’ This was something I’d never thought before, never known.

The next day we go through more deep relaxation and find our past selves. Mary says that it is healing to go through the life and the death of the past selves, to learn about our ultimate journey and understand ourselves more. She insists that we don’t need to believe in the reality of this for the process to be helpful. 

My first past self was a young man, sheltering under a cliff with his dead sister and his dying mother and his father. Mary asks me the date but I have no idea about dates. It is cold and wet. Marsh land. Afterwards I think of the Welsh marshes. We are fleeing invaders of some kind and have been left behind by our group. I – as the young man – am devastated to know I can’t protect these beloved people. Then I am thirty years old with another family. Then fifty. Then it is my death.

The thing I do recognise from this is the desire to protect and help, which – for good or ill - is ground deep into my character. 

In the afternoon, I visit another past life and death. I have to say none of this is frightening. It does feel like a process of understanding. As for believing in a concrete fashion that we can revisit our past lives, my problem is that since I was eight I have been spinning up scenarios and stories from my subconscious – stories which are as infused with emotional truth as that of the young man in the marsh. My story-spinning muscles are well developed. There was no way they would not come into play in this experience.

But as the ferry chugged away and the magical island faded in the mist I realised that just spending two days in Mary’s company was enough. Her presence and gentle questioning induces a peculiar combination of refreshment, stimulation and reassurance. And however many lives you live this is a powerful gift from one friend to another.