In the early 90’s, living in New York City, I attended NYU for my masters degree. One day, while settling down with a hot pretzel for lunch, outside my classroom , a psychic sat down next to me and began to speak.
“I believe you have massive scars on your back.”
I looked at her, I looked at my dress, which fully covered my back, and I looked at her again.
“Hundreds of years ago, in your first lifetime on earth as a human, you were a male living in Africa. As a rites of passage requirement, you were to kill a lion. While stalking your lion, it lay in wait for you in the bush, sprang on you, mauled you, and killed you. You carry the mark of that attack forever. Every lifetime from then and into the future, you will wear scars on your back.”
I looked at her in silence.
“The good news is that lions are your totem. In many of your lives you have been an artist and a spiritual teacher. As an artist, you create lions, always. You visited one of these lions, that you sculpted in Germany, as a girl. As a spiritual teacher, you have lions at your side. In this life you have an attraction to golden retrievers. Your lions.”
Then she stood up and walked away.
My hot pretzel was not hot or soft any more.
I flashed on the fact that as a girl, returning from India, my family visited a garden where there was a sculpture of a wounded lion. I decided to skip my afternoon class and go home to snuggle with my golden retriever.