I was born in a town in the northern part of England in Victorian times. My father was a prominent Methodist minister. I had brothers and sisters and dogs. We lived a middle-class life in a gray stone house with a few servants. We were a close and happy family.
One day when I was about eight years old, I got too close to the fire in the fireplace. My clothes caught on fire, and I died as a result. When I was reunited with my family on the other side, we decided that I needed to return to this world to find and finish my mission. Either my mother or one of my sisters agreed to return with me to be my mother to keep me from being alone. It was also determined that we would be Americans this time, as most of our neighbors had emigrated. I was ultimately reborn in a mining and industrial town in Pennsylvania, and the rest is history.
This was revealed to me in a series of intense and lucid dreams over several years. I believe in the vision because it is the only plausible explanation for my personal eccentricities; no known experience in this life can account for them. I am terrified of fire to the point that I cannot light matches to this day. I am a passionate Anglophile frequently more comfortable in the UK than in my own country. I wear plain clothes and eat completely plain food. I follow rules, but only on my own terms; in other words, I obey authority while remaining skeptical of it. My mother looked nothing like her parents or any of her ancestors. And so on.
This is my experience, not yours. It’s OK for you to doubt it. Just don’t expect me to deny it, because I can’t. Its significance for my views on metaphysics will be discussed in future posts.