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Blessings,
Rod Whitehouse
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
As You Believe, So Shall It Be
I listened to this video by Alon Anava, in which he describes how a profound near death experience (NDE) forced him to completely change his life from a totally secular to ultra-orthodox Jew. His story is interesting and entertaining, and he has a lot to say. His experience seems much longer than most, which I attribute to his upbringing. Most people who have NDEs don’t change their lives to the extend that Alon did, but I believe that his story illustrates the principle of As You Believe, So Shall It Be.
What I mean by that is the “afterlife,” for you, will be what you believe it to be. This can be bad news because we often are not really aware of what we really believe, what’s ingrained, deep down, from our earliest teachings. You may deny it now, you may swear up and down that you’ve completely given up all the crap that they drilled into you in Sunday school, but it very well could still be there. And it will determine what you experience after you die, at least for a while. In eternity, nothing lasts forever.
The good news is that it’s not all as bad and arbitrary as it sounds. You chose a mission in this life, you have a goal and a purpose. Your upbringing was a part of that purpose, more or less. Not that everything that happened and happens to you is part of some grand plan. We all have free will and you, and others, can go wildly off track, if you choose. That’s probably what happened in Alon’s case, but I say “probably” because you can’t really know that the arc of his life wasn’t part of his plan from the get-go. Truly, his message is much more powerful, and he reaches a lot more people, because of his struggles, but there’s really no way to know.
There simply is no question, even among skeptics, that NDEs change a persons’ life, in significant ways, and permanently. Perhaps the amount of change depends on how far they had deviated from their life’s plan. Or, perhaps, they needed to present a message to the world in as powerful way as possible. Everyone who experiences an NDE accepts, without question, that they have seen the afterlife, or at least the interlife, that stage where souls still retain their human personality and outlook. I guess skeptics like to reduce NDEs to hallucination or delusion because it allows them to reduce all religious experiences to mechanistic processes, which, by extension, reduces all human experience to mechanistic, and meaningless, processes. I question the sincerity of these skeptics. I have never met or heard of anyone who truly believed that their life was completely meaningless and pointless, that wasn’t suicidal. Many, many people profess a strict materialist and mechanistic philosophy, and brook no compromise is discussion, but still get up every morning, go to work, date, marry, have kids, and plan for the future, with no hint that it’s all a pointless, meaningless exercise. That’s because, deep down, they have hope, they are just too busy being right to admit it.
You are in no way a slave to what you may have been taught or some, unknown, “life plan,” you are free to do what you want, be what you want. But, the thing is, most of us have trouble in this life because of external things like society and expectations, the beliefs taught to us as children, and the “rules” we think we need to obey. Some of us are taught ideas that align with who we are, and we find we need to return to them as adults, while others, not so much. They need to break away from childhood teachings, in a profound way, to live a fulfilled life.
In a way, an NDE makes things easy. You now have a first-person, unshakable understanding of “what it’s really all about.” The rest of us have to struggle to understand what it’s all about and what’s best for us. There is no one path or belief or truth that is absolutely right and perfect for everyone. So we have to find our own, we are the final judge in implementer of our fate.
The funny thing is, NDEs show that atheists generally have it much better than the religious, they enter with no preconceived notions and thus have a pleasant experience. The religious like to think that they have the shortcut to heaven, but their beliefs of trials, judgment, and hell can very well be played out, as they expect, requiring them to work through it all, and let it go, before they will be able to “reach the pearly gates,” so to speak. This is not something imposed on them from above, but by their own beliefs. They create their own reality, for good or ill. The good news is that we all get there, sooner or later, it’s just a matter of how long it takes each person to shed their ego-based conceits, biases and prejudices, and see what is actually there.
The point of the journey to enlightenment is that your beginning that process early, so you’ll have less to deal with, when the time comes, and, as a bonus, you get a happier, more fulfilled life.
What I mean by that is the “afterlife,” for you, will be what you believe it to be. This can be bad news because we often are not really aware of what we really believe, what’s ingrained, deep down, from our earliest teachings. You may deny it now, you may swear up and down that you’ve completely given up all the crap that they drilled into you in Sunday school, but it very well could still be there. And it will determine what you experience after you die, at least for a while. In eternity, nothing lasts forever.
The good news is that it’s not all as bad and arbitrary as it sounds. You chose a mission in this life, you have a goal and a purpose. Your upbringing was a part of that purpose, more or less. Not that everything that happened and happens to you is part of some grand plan. We all have free will and you, and others, can go wildly off track, if you choose. That’s probably what happened in Alon’s case, but I say “probably” because you can’t really know that the arc of his life wasn’t part of his plan from the get-go. Truly, his message is much more powerful, and he reaches a lot more people, because of his struggles, but there’s really no way to know.
There simply is no question, even among skeptics, that NDEs change a persons’ life, in significant ways, and permanently. Perhaps the amount of change depends on how far they had deviated from their life’s plan. Or, perhaps, they needed to present a message to the world in as powerful way as possible. Everyone who experiences an NDE accepts, without question, that they have seen the afterlife, or at least the interlife, that stage where souls still retain their human personality and outlook. I guess skeptics like to reduce NDEs to hallucination or delusion because it allows them to reduce all religious experiences to mechanistic processes, which, by extension, reduces all human experience to mechanistic, and meaningless, processes. I question the sincerity of these skeptics. I have never met or heard of anyone who truly believed that their life was completely meaningless and pointless, that wasn’t suicidal. Many, many people profess a strict materialist and mechanistic philosophy, and brook no compromise is discussion, but still get up every morning, go to work, date, marry, have kids, and plan for the future, with no hint that it’s all a pointless, meaningless exercise. That’s because, deep down, they have hope, they are just too busy being right to admit it.
You are in no way a slave to what you may have been taught or some, unknown, “life plan,” you are free to do what you want, be what you want. But, the thing is, most of us have trouble in this life because of external things like society and expectations, the beliefs taught to us as children, and the “rules” we think we need to obey. Some of us are taught ideas that align with who we are, and we find we need to return to them as adults, while others, not so much. They need to break away from childhood teachings, in a profound way, to live a fulfilled life.
In a way, an NDE makes things easy. You now have a first-person, unshakable understanding of “what it’s really all about.” The rest of us have to struggle to understand what it’s all about and what’s best for us. There is no one path or belief or truth that is absolutely right and perfect for everyone. So we have to find our own, we are the final judge in implementer of our fate.
The funny thing is, NDEs show that atheists generally have it much better than the religious, they enter with no preconceived notions and thus have a pleasant experience. The religious like to think that they have the shortcut to heaven, but their beliefs of trials, judgment, and hell can very well be played out, as they expect, requiring them to work through it all, and let it go, before they will be able to “reach the pearly gates,” so to speak. This is not something imposed on them from above, but by their own beliefs. They create their own reality, for good or ill. The good news is that we all get there, sooner or later, it’s just a matter of how long it takes each person to shed their ego-based conceits, biases and prejudices, and see what is actually there.
The point of the journey to enlightenment is that your beginning that process early, so you’ll have less to deal with, when the time comes, and, as a bonus, you get a happier, more fulfilled life.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Stop Pretending
Last night I went to a past-life regression MeetUp. I didn’t intend to, I thought it was a hypnotherapists reunion at my old school, but once I was there it seemed like a good idea, so I went with it.
I met some new people, and ran into a client, even though it was a town 40 miles away. Things like that happen, I suppose. We live in a relatively small spiritual community. Funny how it is, this valley has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other people, but the number that are interested and actively inquiring into the mind, consciousness and spirituality is pretty small. I tend to run into the same people, even in different towns. Maybe that means that my group of friends and acquaintances is finally growing.
My experience was a bit confused and scattered, but I think I got something useful out of it. The leader tasked us to find an intension for the evening. What immediately came to mind was finding a place to live, where should I go? And the one word that summed it up was “home.” So, that’s what I went with.
After the induction, my first impression was of black boots. Clean black boots with no cuts or scrapes. That evolved into a female, tall and strong, and not human: sort of a cat hybrid. She was mostly human looking, but her face had cat-like proportions. She was standing, alone, in a field of thigh-high dried grass, golden in color, surrounded by dark trees. The sky was cloudless, the ground was hard and dry, and the sun was bright and hot. She was doing some kind of ritual dance or practicing some form of martial arts. Her movements were smooth, precise and controlled: “Arm here, hand there, and foot just so.”
I really couldn’t tell what she was wearing. It seemed like there were fringes and flowing stuff, but it seemed transparent. There was something tied around her calfs, like a fringe with some kind of metal parts the jingled slightly as she moved. She might have been carrying some kind of stick, but I’m not sure. “Mr. black boots” was somehow meshed into this picture. He was dressed all in black, with a hat, like an old West gunfighter. He wasn’t there, but perhaps he was in her thoughts, someone she wanted to impress or was worried about.
Moving forward, I found myself on the ground, laying on my side in the grass, and I was now a black panther, well, a big cat, anyway. I got up, started running, and quickly found myself in a heavy forest or jungle, running up a branch of a large tree. It was really cool because I had claws and didn’t have to worry about slipping. I just dug them in and ran on up. I soon reached the center of the tree and a nest, of sorts. The place seemed warm and brighter than the surrounding area, and there was another cat there. She was just an impression: she seemed smaller and kept her distance.
Right about then I got the impression of glass, big glass windows. Then the camera zoomed back and I could see that the cats in the tree were being watched by the cat-people. They were sitting in a futuristic room with large windows or screens, in chairs the were large and comfortable. Me, the cat, was getting confused at this point, I knew I was being watched, but I was also getting a lot of impressions and feelings that I couldn’t sort out and make sense out of.
I met some new people, and ran into a client, even though it was a town 40 miles away. Things like that happen, I suppose. We live in a relatively small spiritual community. Funny how it is, this valley has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other people, but the number that are interested and actively inquiring into the mind, consciousness and spirituality is pretty small. I tend to run into the same people, even in different towns. Maybe that means that my group of friends and acquaintances is finally growing.
My experience was a bit confused and scattered, but I think I got something useful out of it. The leader tasked us to find an intension for the evening. What immediately came to mind was finding a place to live, where should I go? And the one word that summed it up was “home.” So, that’s what I went with.
After the induction, my first impression was of black boots. Clean black boots with no cuts or scrapes. That evolved into a female, tall and strong, and not human: sort of a cat hybrid. She was mostly human looking, but her face had cat-like proportions. She was standing, alone, in a field of thigh-high dried grass, golden in color, surrounded by dark trees. The sky was cloudless, the ground was hard and dry, and the sun was bright and hot. She was doing some kind of ritual dance or practicing some form of martial arts. Her movements were smooth, precise and controlled: “Arm here, hand there, and foot just so.”
I really couldn’t tell what she was wearing. It seemed like there were fringes and flowing stuff, but it seemed transparent. There was something tied around her calfs, like a fringe with some kind of metal parts the jingled slightly as she moved. She might have been carrying some kind of stick, but I’m not sure. “Mr. black boots” was somehow meshed into this picture. He was dressed all in black, with a hat, like an old West gunfighter. He wasn’t there, but perhaps he was in her thoughts, someone she wanted to impress or was worried about.
Moving forward, I found myself on the ground, laying on my side in the grass, and I was now a black panther, well, a big cat, anyway. I got up, started running, and quickly found myself in a heavy forest or jungle, running up a branch of a large tree. It was really cool because I had claws and didn’t have to worry about slipping. I just dug them in and ran on up. I soon reached the center of the tree and a nest, of sorts. The place seemed warm and brighter than the surrounding area, and there was another cat there. She was just an impression: she seemed smaller and kept her distance.
Right about then I got the impression of glass, big glass windows. Then the camera zoomed back and I could see that the cats in the tree were being watched by the cat-people. They were sitting in a futuristic room with large windows or screens, in chairs the were large and comfortable. Me, the cat, was getting confused at this point, I knew I was being watched, but I was also getting a lot of impressions and feelings that I couldn’t sort out and make sense out of.
In the next scene, I was or watched, (it’s really not clear) the same, or another black cat climbing up. He climbed up into the clouds, higher and higher until he could sit down and watch the cat in the tree and the cat-people in their viewing room. Soon he was joined by a being. This being was all white and could hardly be distinguished from the white-cloud background. They proceeded to have an animated conversation where they discussed what was happening below, in a very dispassionate manor. I have no idea what they said, but the cat had very human mannerisms.
When it came time for the death scene, I saw the cat-woman, lying on her back in a bed, in the same viewing room where the watcher had been before. The chairs were gone. The bed was angled up so she could see out the windows. The room was otherwise empty, but there were people in an adjacent room that I could see through an open door. The cat and the being were still watching from above. When the cat woman died, her spirit rose up and tried to reach the clouds, but couldn’t quite make it, like she hit a flexible barrier. But she was actually held down by the things she couldn’t let go of: hate, mostly. She hated perfection. The perfection she hunted all her life, the perfection she could never achieve. That obsession tied her to this plane and she was drawn back down to incarnate again. This time, hopefully, to learn her lesson.
When I asked about the meaning or purpose of what I saw, I got “Stop pretending to not know. Stop pretending to be stupid. Stop pretending to not remember. Stop pretending to not understand.”
I’m still pondering what this all means to me. Still sorting out my impressions from the experience, and the things that I couldn’t make sense of at the time. And I’m going to meditate, a lot, on “pretending to be stupid and not understand.” I don’t know what I’ll find, but it’s nice to have a new direction.
When it came time for the death scene, I saw the cat-woman, lying on her back in a bed, in the same viewing room where the watcher had been before. The chairs were gone. The bed was angled up so she could see out the windows. The room was otherwise empty, but there were people in an adjacent room that I could see through an open door. The cat and the being were still watching from above. When the cat woman died, her spirit rose up and tried to reach the clouds, but couldn’t quite make it, like she hit a flexible barrier. But she was actually held down by the things she couldn’t let go of: hate, mostly. She hated perfection. The perfection she hunted all her life, the perfection she could never achieve. That obsession tied her to this plane and she was drawn back down to incarnate again. This time, hopefully, to learn her lesson.
When I asked about the meaning or purpose of what I saw, I got “Stop pretending to not know. Stop pretending to be stupid. Stop pretending to not remember. Stop pretending to not understand.”
I’m still pondering what this all means to me. Still sorting out my impressions from the experience, and the things that I couldn’t make sense of at the time. And I’m going to meditate, a lot, on “pretending to be stupid and not understand.” I don’t know what I’ll find, but it’s nice to have a new direction.
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