Question on the Afterlife

I was recently asked this question: What are your thoughts on using the afterlife as a fix for problems occurring in the present life?

I decide to speak to this because it raises some interesting points from a unique perspective. Most spiritual questions I get come from clearly defined camps, each with their own tropes. This question doesn’t fit any of those tropes, and it requires some effort to come up with a thoughtful response, so I’m not surprised that only one trollish type threw out a dismissive answer. 

This question seemed very confusing to me at first, then I realized that it’s coming from a materialist point of view, that the whole concept of an afterlife was invented to make people more content with their lot in life, especially if it’s not a good one. There’s a ton of information on all of this on the web, so if you’re truly curious, you need to spend some serious time with Google. I’m just going to skim the surface, starting with the easy part first: Religion and politics.

Religion and politics have been joined at the hip, basically, forever, with religion being used and shaped for political purposes. You don’t have to squint too hard to see Christianity as instrument of white, European culture, actively used to justify eradication indigenous cultures, and teaching the people who survived to “turn the other cheek,” be humble, pious, be thankful for your lot, and get your reward in heaven. This led to the creation, in the nineteenth century, of a particularly heinous form of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. deep south that put whites on top and black people in chains, in a hierarchy ordained by God, and which survives to this day:

“Whereas an earlier generation of evangelical preachers had opposed slavery in the South during the early nineteenth century, Protestant clergymen began to defend the institution, invoking a Christian hierarchy in which slaves were bound to obey their masters. For many slaveholders, this outlook not only made evangelical Christianity more palatable, but also provided a strong argument for converting slaves and establishing biracial churches.” 

-The Slave Experience: Religion 

That said, there’s a deeper question: Was the very concept of an afterlife inventedat all, or has it always existed? In one sense, every concept was “invented” at some point: Food, water, birth, death, alone, together, language. Every human goes from not having any of these concepts to knowing them, as they grow, and somebody must have been the very first, among the whole species, to do so. But, of course, the afterlife is an abstract concept that doesn’t exist in the real world…or does it? Philosophers and theologians have been arguing this point for thousands of years, but now, through science, we’re beginning to see that the mind is not the brain, that the brain does not create the mind, and that information and/or personality somehow can exist outside of the physical/temporal framework we call physical reality.

What science? The five decades of research by the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine:

“Through their careful study, the DOPS researchers objectively document and analyze the empirical data collected regarding human experiences suggestive of post-mortem survival of consciousness. Rigorous evaluation of considerable empirical evidence collected over fifty years of research, suggests that consciousness may indeed survive bodily death and that mind and brain appear to be distinct and separable.”

There’s the studies supported and collected by IANDS (International Association for Near Death Studies), which also  suggests there is much more going on in NDEs (Near Death Experiences) than just illusion, delusion, hallucination or fraud. I could go on, for there is much more scientifically validated information out there, but, if you are interested, there is Google, if you’re not, then nothing I say will matter.

Nothing known to date proves the existence of an afterlife, but it does make clear that there is a lot more going on in the world than a materialist viewpoint can explain. Neither does the evidence prove 

the existence of any god or gods or any particular religion. But it does suggest a basis for some of the foundational commonalities of all religions. In the end, it probably won’t make much difference in your life, so you pays your money, takes your choice, and believe what you want. 

One closing note: There are people on Wall street using paranormal techniques to make money. They have exactly zero interest in telling or convincing anyone that what they do, works. Why? Because less interest means less competition and less competition means more profit.

Take care.

A Question on Reincarnation

A question I was asked:

In regards to reincarnation, if something becomes something else (i.e. a different personality as a different person), then in what way is it the same? If it’s still in some manner what it used to be, how is this reincarnation (coming back as another)?

I don’t usually answer questions about reincarnation, but I am moved to address this one. Reading through the existing answers, I see ones that are enlightened, judgmental, esoteric and angry, in about equal measure. I know that those reading them will pick the ones that fit their worldview and dismiss the rest. In my years with this subject, I thought I had seen it all, but one answer contains a clever bit of arrogant judgmentalism that I haven’t seen before! Human beings are nothing if not endlessly creative!

I lean toward the actor analogy: That the “you” that you are now is a part you are playing, and that there is a greater and more fundamental “you” that is the actor playing the part of “you” in this lifetime.

Most of the questions and misconceptions in the idea of reincarnation come from human centrism, the idea the humans are the measure of all things. That each person’s personal experience of being at the center of the universe extends to all things, material and spiritual. That whatever your experience, whatever you believe, that is the one and only way to experience and believe. Flat Earthers are a perfect example of this. While it is easy to find things in the physical world that can be explained by the idea “the world is a sphere,” they choose to come up with complex and often nonsensical explanations of why the world looks round, but isn’t. The key point here is we choose to believe something, then tailor our perceptions to match that belief. This goes for culture, religion, hobbies, pretty much any endeavor that humans engage in.

This question assumes that the personality that you have now, with all its personality, memories and quirks, is the only real, authentic, “you,” and if you remove any of those elements, you would not be “you” anymore. Also, that who you are now is the most important you, and must be preserved for “you” to continue on. But, what if there was a “you” independent of all that? What if you were more than just a collection of memories and feelings? What was the “you” that existed before you were born, in the womb? Before you had memories? Ideas? Thoughts? A personality? Are you your thoughts, your memories, your personality? Or are they just something you have?

There are more versions of reincarnation than you can shake a stick at. The one that I find most consistent with the research at University of Virginia, the work of Dr. Brian Weiss and the recall of people who have Near Death Experiences, to site a few sources, is that there is a greater “you” that exists outside of time and space, as we commonly know them, that extends itself into our reality to become a soul of a child and experience life as a human in our 3-D reality. This soul forms the basis of your personality and your ethics, and sometimes exposes memories of other lifetimes and other realities. These souls come here of their own free will, with agendas that have little to do human values and religions, especially those that teach exclusion, hate and fear.

You will, of course, take from this what you will. Jesus said to let those with eyes, see, and ears, hear; you will take from this what you are ready for. Good luck and take care.

Herculaneum - A Tail

As many of you know, I volunteer at a local museum, and I’ve been working a Pompeii exhibit since it opened. It’s a great exhibit. I like to wander around, studying the artifacts and thinking about the people who made them and used them.

I’ve worked almost every job in the exhibit, but one of the most boring jobs is the VIP door: You’re there to help people who need to use the elevator to get to the second floor of the exhibit. Hours can pass where no one needs help. There’s a photo op nearby and I try and pass the time offering to take people’s pictures, but time still drags.

I pass the time reading up on Pompeii, the history, the last days, anything I can find that can be read on my phone. I’ve learned a lot about everything from volcanos, to water supplies in ancient times, to proper care of archeological sites once they’ve been uncovered. My excuse is that I want to be prepared when people ask me questions, which does happen from time to time. <Wink>

Herculaneum is/was a city, like Pompeii, that was also covered in the same eruption that buried Pompeii. It’s not so famous because it’s buried a lot deeper and there’s a modern city on top of it. Herculaneum is interesting for several reasons, perhaps more interesting than Pompeii. First, it apparently was a much wealthier city, with more elaborate art and treasure, and because it was buried deeper, many building are intact through the second story and above, unlike in Pompeii where only the first floors survived, for the most part.

One of the wealthy villas they have found is called the Villa of the Scrolls, because it contains a huge library of scrolls, many of which have been read, and many more are waiting for the technology that will allow us to read them. This villa was apparently owned by the uncle of the emperor Augustus. What’s exciting about these scrolls is that they are not records, but literary works of all kinds. What’s really cool is that some of the works are known to have existed, from references by other writers of the period, but no other copies had ever been found. For scholars, it’s really exciting to get your hands on an original version, not one handed down over the centuries, copied, re-copied, translated, and copied again.

My tail begins with a pain in my shoulder. It first showed up as not a big deal, but over time it got worse and worse and spread to include a stiff neck as well. At first I dismissed it, thinking that it was caused by holding and reading my phone for too long. But I do the same thing at at other positions in the exhibit without any problems. It wasn’t until last week that I connected all the dots and realized that I only got the pain when I was working in that precise place, the VIP door, and I when was reading about Herculaneum. Being who I am, I came to the conclusion that there was a connection. With enough digging, I came up with the following story.

I was a young boy in Herculaneum on that last day, August 24th, 79 CE. I had an older sister and parents. Our parents had not left with everyone else, I don’t know why, maybe they were worried about thieves. In any case, they had left earlier in the day, and had never come back. I was badly scared and wanted to leave, but my sister wouldn’t go and I couldn’t bring myself to leave on my own. I’ve sure we fought about it, but she was stubborn, a “Mom and Dad said wait here!” kind of thing. Later that night, well after dark, though with the clouds and ash, it was difficult to tell how late it was, things got seriously bad, and the part of the house I was in collapsed. A beam from the second floor hit me on the right shoulder, broke the bone and I was buried under the rubble of the second floor and roof. I have no idea where my sister was, somewhere else in our villa, I suppose. Fortunately I didn’t have to suffocate or suffer a lingering death from thirst, one of the pyroclastic flows of super heated air finished me off fairly quickly. I suppose that’s good, yes?

I can surmise that my family was pretty well off, from the fact that we had a large house, and my clothes seemed pretty nice, but a ten-year-old generally doesn’t pick up on these things. Especially when you’re a child in a society where you tend to stay with people of your own rank and station. You tend to take everything for granted without thinking about it too much. My feeling is that were servants, but they had fled early on, leaving the parents with no one to help them get their valuables out. So they went out looking or, perhaps, abandoned their children to their fate. I don’t know why they would do that, but families were probably just as “complicated” back then as they are now. I lean toward the abandon theory because, if they intended to return, the mother probably would have stayed with the kids. Just a guess. Anyway, since the vast majority of Herculaneum has not be excavated, it’s possible that my remains are still there. Interesting to speculate on, but I’m sure I’ll never know for sure.

That’s my story, accept it or not, as you like. This could explain why I’m so interested in the artifacts, the people who used them, and how they were made and used. I have no trouble imagining what it must have been like, living in those houses, and the hustle and bustle of the streets outside, and the smell! God the smell of the refuse in the streets on a hot, still summer’s day! They must have prayed for rain as much to wash the streets as for the water. There’s a reason why the wealthy people had their houses upwind of the heart of the city!

If you have time, you might want to check out the exhibit, or delve more into the history of both Pompeii and Herculaneum. There’s a cautionary tail there, as Vesuvius is still a active volcano, and millions of people now live in it’s shadow.

Karma Is Dead, Long Live Karma!

Back around 2012, there was a big hullabaloo about the End of Karma. That all seems forgotten now, but it was a big deal at the time. What does that mean to say there’s no Karma? Well, first I’ll define Karma, for there’s lots of different views of it out there. In essence, Karma is the reincarnationist’s version of sin and blessings, a metaphysical system of credits and debits that you accumulate throughout your life, which then are cashed in, for happiness, or suffering, in your next life. The main difference between sin and karma is that with sin, you get one chance to get it right, then you are judged and sentenced for eternity, but karma gives you multiple chances.

Another difference is that, with sin, God or some god, is your judge, where with karma, either you judge yourself or it’s like a cosmic computer program where all your actions are fed in, and out spits a life, outfitted with the proper amount of suffering and reward for to your particular case. This is really just an outline, there are more variations than you can shake a stick at, but you get the idea: In both cases, of sin and karma, we are told to behave ourselves because of a cosmic system of rewards and punishments.

The main problems with both of these systems is that what is sin, what is “good” or “bad,” is highly dependent on where your are born, who raised you, what religion you belong to, and current events. You could easily say that sin has be so overused in our cutler that it’s become meaningless. Depending on who you talk to, drinking the wrong drink, wearing the wrong clothes, being born with the wrong genes, or even thinking the wrong thought, are grievous sins requiring eternal punishment. This makes it a bit difficult to know exactly what values are “good” across all cultures. Heck, the notion of what is a sin, varies hugely among Christians in the United States alone, how’s anybody supposed to know what to do? Especially when we’re not talking about one culture, in one time, but across all eternity.

Could we do without this whole system? The argument against is “What prevents atheists from stealing and murdering to their heart’s content?” When I hear this, I can’t help but wonder about how good and moral someone is, if the only thing that prevents them from committing all kinds of amoral acts is a threat of eternal punishment? And, since you don’t have to look don’t have to look any further than the daily newspaper to find any number of sinful acts, including mass murder, committed by professed Christians, it seems that the system doesn’t seem to work all that well. And, maybe the reason it doesn’t is that the entire thing was made up by people to control people. I suppose you could say they had good intensions, but things have gotten way out of hand, driven by those, on one side, who want loopholes to allow them to do what they want, and those on the other who want a rule for everything.

In the end, it all boils down to one rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If we all followed that, in our behavior and in our justice system, we’d definitely have a different world. And, the thing is, in the light of eternity, what else really matters? Many religious are convinced that following arbitrary rules makes the closer to God. That’s all well and good, until the rules are hateful, hurtful and result in emotional, financial and physical harm to others. You know that vigorous proponents of racial and economic segregation would be incensed at the idea that they couldn’t live where they want, work where they want, have their children go to the schools they want. Perhaps the best justice system would be to treat people as they treat others, and that, in my view, is how karma is supposed to work. If you discriminate, you will be discriminated against, if you steal, what you have will be stolen, if you rape, you will be raped (regardless of sex), if you abuse, you will be abused.

But I don’t think that is how the cosmic system works, it’s not a balance-the-scales, the-good-get-rewarded-and-the-bad-punished kind of thing. Kama is “dead” because karma never existed, and neither does sin. Both are human inventions. I find that reincarnation, as a way to gain experience in all aspects of being human, fits the world much better than other philosophies. It answers the question “Why does a good God allow so much suffering in the world?” with the answer that God has nothing to do with it, we create the world we want, with the result that we have to then live in it. Near death experiences and past life regressions both show that we are not judged, ever. We decide what kind of life we intend to have, not God or anyone or anything else. We even decide if we are going to incarnate at all.

Some souls choose to be the Hitlers, Stalins, religious zealots, abusers and mass murders of the world for their own reasons. Perhaps to create opportunities for suffering, for acts of heroism and self sacrifice. Perhaps to gain an understanding of what it’s like to be that kind of person. Who knows? But it only takes a short look at the world to see that we all live by our own moral codes, sin and karma not withstanding, so it’s best to clean up your own “karmic” house before you set out to judge and set rules for others to live by.

It just seems to me that the way to a peaceful life is to treat others as you want to be treated and to have compassion for those who don’t, and are victims of those who don’t. This makes things simple and avoids a lot of convoluted mental and moral juggling to aline your ideals with what is actually out in the world, and in your head. Take a moment to recognize how you really wish to be treated and put that out in the world every day. It will come back to you in ways small and large.

The Next Demotion

Poor mankind! Poor humans! We keep getting knocked down off our perch, our place in the grand scheme of things just keeps getting smaller and smaller! Once upon a time, in the good old days, we were the center of the universe and everything revolved around us. We, (especially white males) were the epitome of creation, those were the days!

But then Galileo had the bad taste to look up in the sky and see that something revolving around another heavenly body, how impolite was that? For that gross breach of etiquette he was place under house arrest for the rest of his life. Not so long, in his case. How foolish was he for actually seeing something that contradicted what everybody knew what true?

Not long after that, Kepler came along and showed that we weren’t the center of our solar system. In his case, he made sure he was dead before his ideas were published. Smart man! 

It took a long time for that idea to really be accepted, but, since then, in the last two centuries, the our demotions, in the physical world have come faster and faster. We’re not the center of our solar system. Now our sun is one among countless other stars, in no way better or special, at the outskirts of our galaxy, again, not unusual or special in any way, among countless other galaxies, in a universe so vast, with numbers so large, that the mind simply can’t comprehend how insignificant we humans actually are.

If that wasn’t enough. For a long time, it was figured that we had one of the rare, of not the only habitual planet. Turns out that planets are a common as dirt, with at least as many planets as stars, and the number of habitual planets is, again, so large as to be boggle the mind.

Next we find that life isn’t limited to existing in the relatively narrow band of environments we were familiar with. We have found simple life forms living in space, in the deep oceans, and far underground, miles underground, far from any sunlight, in environments so hostile and toxic, in temperatures and pressures so extreme, that anything we’re familiar with would be destroyed in a matter of moments. This tells us that life could exist in many different places in our solar system alone, not to mention the rest of the universe. Things are not looking good for our civilization! Though many still want to cling to the belief that we are the most intelligent and advanced thing out there, that is looking less and less likely every day. It’s probably only a matter of time until we find proof that we are not alone. What a blow to our ego!

If that wasn’t enough, a more subtle revolution is also going on. It’s funny, in a way, because it’s been going on for centuries, but most people haven’t noticed. You would think that the major world religions would be fighting this new view, but they generally have nothing to say about it. I believe the reason are that they, for the most part, don’t recognize it as a threat. Most of the faithful accept their human-centered theology so thoroughly that they can’t conceive and any other point of view. Religious leaders are so confident in their singular point of view that they only worry about threats from other religions, like them.

In my view, the limitations of Christian theology become more and more obvious, the more you look into it, and the attempts to resolve these problems end up going down one of two paths: In one, they double- and triple-down on the basic premise of one universe and one afterlife, where you go to heaven to hell, depending on a fairly arbitrary set of rules, and where the justifications and explanations of this structure and these rules are so Byzantine in their complexity that they freely admit that no one understands them. “It’s Gods’ will,” they say with a shrug. In a way, this resembles the bizarrely complicated schemes that medieval astronomers came up with to explain the moments of the heavenly bodies, necessitated by the assumption that everything had to revolve around the earth.

One the second path, theologians start to deviate from the simplistic assumption that our human experience is the only experience there is. One can’t step too far down this path and still be acceptable to the Church, or any religion. It seems that, at it’s heart, every religion, no matter what it says, can’t quite let go of the idea that they are the “best” or “only” way to….what, be “saved,” “enlightened?” That, I suppose, is part of human nature, to assume that whatever makes sense to you is the best and only sensible option. Despite this assumption of followers of every religion that theirs is the “best so far,” a sea-change is in the works.

The first first sign on this change is noticing that every religion and faith is just one among many. Not first or best, just but one among many possible faiths. And that there is no objective measure, or reason of any kind, to promote one over any other, other than “This is what I believe.” This is just as hard for the faithful to swallow as the idea that the earth revolved around the sun was for medieval europeans. As I said, the battle isn’t really on yet, for most people don’t see it coming. Most people think that there is a “war” between the sacred and the secular, but that’s an illusion. What’s really going on is a blending of materialism and spirituality, resulting in a new worldview that is putting the squeeze in the millennia-old dogmatism of western religions.

What we are starting to see, derived from research into reincarnation and NDEs, (Near Death Experiences) our human experience is just one tiny part of a much large tapestry. Far from there being one “reality” and one “afterlife,” there are an uncounted number possible realities we could be born into, and what we call “the afterlife” is much larger, richer and more varied than we are capable of imagining. Just like in the physical universe, where we have been demoted to just a single species, on a insignificant planet, drifting on the outskirts of an unremarkable galaxy, floating among uncounted billions of other galaxies, our human experience is just one among countless experiences a soul can, and does, have, and is no more important to the grand scheme of things than the life of a bacterium to the cosmos.

That’s not to say we are unimportant, we are, just not in the ego-driven, human-centered way we want to believe. We are part of something so much greater than we can imagine, and we each contribute to this whole in our own special way. Like a small child who doesn’t understand the contribution she will one day make as President, we do not comprehend our ultimate power and destiny, once we mature. In the meantime, we would be best served by learning the lessons beyond the material, the promote the best of us, elevate the worse of us, and contribute to all those around us.

Between Life and Death

“Is there a state between life and death where spirits hang out?”

I was asked this question recently. My first reaction was that it almost seems a bit silly, then I realized that it’s a reasonable question, given that our culture doesn’t officially recognize any sort of life after death, outside of religion. I suppose there’s a whole book to be written about the way people invoke God, Jesus and a Higher Power in one breath and distain for the supernatural in the next, but that’s not for today. I should just accept that most people are either completely ignorant when it comes to spiritual matter, or have aa very simplistic, childlike conception that hasn’t been thought about since they were six.

Short answer about life after death: There appears to be another place where souls go after death. Some call it heaven, others like to objectify it as another “plane of existence” or “energy level.” Whatever it is, the transition is often described as a journey through a tunnel to a white light. However, not all spirits make that transition, and they end up hanging around with us, unseen and unheard, for the most part.

Souls can stay for many reasons. Common ones are, fear of punishment/judgment from a religious upbringing, addiction or drugs, power or sex, unfinished business, and, perhaps the saddest cases, souls simply don’t know they’re dead. This can be because they died suddenly, or while unconscious, and, because they believed that death was nothingness, conclude that they must be still alive.

I know that seems odd, I mean, how could you not know you’re dead? Aren’t there lots of clues that *something* is different? The problem is that souls need a physical body to function properly in this reality. Without it, the tend to lose track of time and space, and even memory gets tricky. Without a body that keeps track of time through its needs and process, awareness tends to live in a perpetual “Now.” With, perhaps, only a dim awareness that they’ve repeated the same actions and asked the same questions, over and over again. Physical bodies seem to also play a role in forming the new memories that allow a conscious to draw conclusions, make deductions and “move on.” Souls appear to be more or less stuck in the attitudes and state of mind they had when they died. Souls usually can only be reasoned with on a basic, emotional, immediate fashion. Childlike, in a way, you can reason with what’s right in front of them, part of their current reality, but if you try and get too complicated or abstract and you will lose them.

I’m sure that, right now, people with extensive experience with the “other side” are probably giving me a hard time right about now. They have had contacts with spirits that were highly intelligent and helpful, or otherwise don’t fit the description I just gave, and I agree. The reason is, there’s a distinction between “souls” and “spirits.” Souls are the departed that have not yet returned to the light, and Spirits are entities that either have gone to the light and returned or have never incarnated in the first place. There is a process of reintegration that all souls must go through to be able to function effectively in a discarnate form. You can look to Sylvia Brown’s books, Answers About the Afterlife or many other places for descriptions about what that’s like. The point here is that I’m talking about Souls that have not yet gone back to the light, not Spirits, that have returned.

Could you say that souls, stuck in transition, so to speak, are between life and death? In a way, I suppose, but I wouldn’t say that. Their bodies are most definitely dead, no question there, but their souls have not completed the incarnation cycle, so perhaps. It occurs to me while writing this that immortals would also be “stuck” and unable to complete the cycle. I have no personal interest in living forever. I think eternal life is overrated. Without the periodic refreshing of viewpoint, knowledge and enthusiasm that comes from each incarnation, existence would devolve into a increasingly meaningless succession of days and events that would blur together into utter blandness.

As a final note, I want to add that I feel that the “supernatural” is much more complicated than anyone seems to think. It’s as rich in variety and life and experience as our “natural” world, perhaps even more so. We only see a small portion though our very limited lens, and one of the reasons it seems so confusing is we only see disconnected parts of it. Like the Blind Men and the Elephant story, where each man touches a small portion of the animal and concludes that the whole animal is like the tail, the foot, the trunk or the ear, we each get our own piece of the “other side” and we draw our own conclusions, which are distorted further by our own limitations and beliefs. All in all, it’s not surprising that people from different cultures and different backgrounds paint very different pictures about what they perceive.

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.

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.

What's the "Truth" about Ghosts?

Someone posted a question on a web site asking about the "Truth about Ghosts." I wrote this reply.

Ah, what is "truth?" First of all, "spirits" of all kinds seem to exist in the stories of every culture, as far back as we can tell. And in every culture they take on their own, unique, characteristics, which generally reflect those of their culture. People have been having Spiritual experiences, well, forever, as far as anyone can tell.

Today, in the U.S. alone, surveys show that millions of people admit to having spiritual, paranormal or unexplained experiences, many of them on a daily basis. Yet the culture as a whole insists that these are all just stories, that there is no evidence that any of these phenomena exist. Well, that is true, if you ignore the testimonies of millions of people, and all the research over the past 100 years.

Consider this: Scientists have been looking for Dark Matter for about 100 years. They say that it makes up 96% of the universe. That includes you and me. So far, they've found exactly nothing. Zero, nada, zippity-do-da, nothing. Yet it's perfectly acceptable in scientific circles to talk as though it exists and spend millions to dollars looking for it. Yet those same people will go out of their way to ignore and discredit anything that might show evidence of something psychic, on the basis that there is no evidence.

It's understandable, I suppose. On one side, you have the materialists who blindly insist "there aint no such thing," and on the other, you have a gazillion religious and spiritual groups who all put their own particular spin on spirituality and the paranormal. Often these groups are at odds with each other, each insisting that their interpretation is the only correct one. So, even though most of the people in the world pretty much agree that there is Something Going On Here, in regard to spirits and the paranormal, the is no concusses on even the basic characteristics of what that Something might be. The poor researchers in this field have to take fire from every quarter: Not only from the materialists, but also from the religious/spiritual types who are afraid that the researchers will find something that contradicts their beliefs or might take some of the "mystery" out of their faith.

To be purely objective, there is plenty of empirical evidence that "ghosts" (or paranormal phenomena) exist, but we all know that almost nobody is completely objective around this subject. Do your own research: There is plenty to read about Near Death Experiences and all the phenomena around them, which, together with the reincarnation research of Ian Stevenson, strongly suggest that there is more the afterlife than "Science" currently wants to admit. Remember, science, by it's own admission, can only explain 4% of the universe, what's going on in the other 96% is completely unknown.

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And now for something completely different: I am going through some extremely difficult times right now, emotionally and financially. I don't know where I will be six months from now, in a lot of different ways. If anyone would like to meet, talk, visit, share a cup of coffee, that would be really nice as I really need to get out of my head. Thanks.

The Seth Material

I  reading The Seth Material by Jane Roberts. I'm  a little surprised that it's as readable as it is. I suppose that I assumed that it would be dry and esoteric, but Jane makes it quite pleasant. It actually draws you in. I also thought that it would be a bit dated, and it would just be a rehash (to me, anyway)  of ideas and concepts that I was already familiar with. Turns out that I was wrong.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The field of, what do you call it, metaphysics? Is sort of an underground movement, largely unrecognized by any of our media, which means that there is much less standardization and cross fertilization of ideas between different groups than might otherwise happen. So, despite the fact that this material has been out there for about 40 years, large chunks of it have not wended their way out into the larger community. 

On the other hand, the field is fairly new, in many ways, and still evolving. You could say that it's only been a relatively few decades since the grip of the Big Three religions has loosened to the point where competing ideas can be openly discussed without significant social, legal or religious backlash, so the field is still a bit of a Wild West with lots of ideas striving for recognition and dominance. There are a lot of contradictory, or at least confusing ideas, battling for recognition and dominance. It's also stumbling a bit while trying to find it's roots in ancient traditions. For some, it really is dominance, rather than consensus, that they're after. I would really prefer that we figure out what's really going on, as best we can, rather than set up yet another religion/belief system, but that's just me. Some people like the mystery and exclusiveness of their beliefs too much to contribute to expanding our understanding of what seems to be a greater reality.

In my own explorations, I have discovered a great similarity behind many different belief systems. It's almost like I can see how the same basic ideas were adopted and then morphed to fit in with the pre-existing beliefs. I suppose that always happens, but, to the outside, it makes it appear that there's a confusing pltethora of competing ideas, when it's really variations on a theme. It's like Christen sects that supposedly believe in the same thing, but can be very passionate about differences that, to outsiders, can very subtle and seem unimportant to the overall message.

It doesn't help that the ideas themselves are difficult to wrap you head around, like, for example, reincarnation. On the surface, this seems such a simple idea: You die and are born again. But very quickly the questions start coming: Why do you come back? What is the point? What determines what kind of life you are going to have? Is it wrong to switch sexes? Does it go on forever? If not, how do you get off the merry-go-round? If there's no judgment, no God, no threat of punishment, what incentive do people have to be good? Why is there evil? Why do we remember past lives, doesn't that mess with the plan? Why do past lives "bleed through" in memories, birth defects, phobias and other health issues? Google "Reincarnation" and you will find a whole lot more questions and discussions, from many points of view, that serve to muddy the water still further.

I don't have answers for all of these, just opinions, but I have always felt that the reason it seems so confusing is that there's a bigger picture we just not seeing. This book has given me a glimpse of that bigger picture. It's also reminded me that I still have many prejudices and basic assumptions that make these concepts very difficult to wrap head around.

In the part I'm reading now, Seth says that we all create our own reality. He specifically states that that doesn't mean we create the universe, just our personal reality. He also makes it clear that he's not talking about subjective experience, but creating physical reality. Exactly how that works, with many people interacting with the same objects, is not clear to me. Seth talks about it, that's one of the parts I can't get head around. Maybe in time it will become clearer.

I have no trouble with the idea that how reality appears and how it actually is, can be very different, but really getting it, is something else. Sort of like the idea that the moon and sun appear to go around us, when it's actually the other way around, I'm trying to come up with some kind of framework I can use put all the pieces into, that makes sense to me. No luck so far. I think I have too many hidden assumptions getting on the way, but, by holding to the possibility that it could make sense, I'm allowing for the kind of breakthrough that could change my life.

Thoughts About Ethics and Reincarnation

I was reading the textbook for the next class in my hypnosis training. It’s about ethics.

In reading the first chapter, I found it difficult to keep my attention on the page. Not because it was hard to understand or boring, but because practically every sentence took my mind off on a tangent. I would think about examples or the implications of what I had just read. I read each sentence more times than I can count, each time I kept thinking of more connections. My mind wandered so far I frequently forgot what paragraph I was reading.

In this country, people protest abortion, yet don’t lift a finger to save a child dying of hunger, neglect or lack of medical care. We send people off to war to kill others, to die, or worse, come back injured and requiring expensive medical care that we balk at giving them. Even though we promised to take care of them. The same parties that insist that every unborn child has a right to live, are strangely silent when the children they “save” are gunned down in a elementary school.

We consider it reasonable, even necessary, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend the life of a critically ill patient a few weeks or months, when that same money, spent to help poor rural children in, say, West Virginia, would have a much bigger impact on the lives of the children, their community and the state as a whole. It’s hard to look at all this and not think that people are extremely selfish, self-centered and morally blind to anyone and anything outside their small circle.

Consider our views of death. Google “Child death inspires” and see how many laws, programs and life changes there are that would never have happened but for the death of a child. Often it took a death to get anyone to act on a problem that many people knew about, but did nothing about. Children in this country die literally every day, practically every hour. Why does it take one of our own to wake us up?

What would happen if, somehow, we had prevented all these deaths. All those law and a programs would never have happened. Then what? A cynical person would say that everything around us would steadily more dangerous. Food, cars, houses, transportation, medicine, appliances, everything would get worse and worse as companies and individuals cut corners, and continued to cut corners until, finally, someone died and they had to stop.

If you want proof, just look around you: The google search you just did shows you lots of child deaths, more than half of them were preventable. Even with all the laws and safeguards we already have in place, thousands of children die each year from reasons that are well known, and they would not have happened, if laws, regulation and guidelines had been followed. So why do they happen? Why do parents leave their children in hot cars until they die, despite warning and laws. I can’t help but wonder how many mothers attending anti-abortion rallies have left their children, unattended, in their cars. Why is it so easy to point the finger at someone else, rather than in the mirror?

I keep thinking about a case I heard about, probably some years ago, where a mother had a child that had some congenital defect and died around the age of four or five. The child was such a light, such a loving and happy child, despite his condition, that he inspired his mother to dedicate the rest of her life helping other children. What would have happened if science found a way to keep the child alive? Would the mother have spent the rest of her life caring for him alone? What would of happened to all the other children that the mother would have helped? Would they have been left to suffer, fail and die, due to lack of support? But we can’t exchange one life for another, or even many others. Can we? But, don’t we do that all the time, when we send soldiers off to war?

If reincarnation was accepted as possible, how would that change the equation? Would that be a good or a bad thing? For instance, what if the mother above knew that her child volunteered to be born with that disability and short lifespan in order to inspire the resulting expanding ripple of love and support for others. Would that have changed things? Would she have felt manipulated? Decided not to help others?

Would society fall apart if we all knew that death wasn’t “the end?” Look around you, at Ads. You see them everywhere. Take a minute, look, and think: How many of them are about making you afraid of something? Something that the advertised product just happens to be the cure or solution to. Afraid you’re not good looking enough? Makeup, clothes, hair products, skin care products. Worried about your health: Diets, pill, health food, organics, supplements. Afraid you don’t know what’s going on: Magazines, “Best sellers,” Oprah, talk shows, pundits, Twitter, Instagram, etc.. Of being alone: Facebook, dating sights, chat rooms. Of getting old, of being too young, of not having enough money, of too much money, Of being too fat, too thin, too young, too old, being too smart, not smart enough, being too busy, not having anything to do. There’s an old advertising adage: “Create a need and fill it.“ We are so far past real needs that most of us have never known anything but artificial needs created by advertisers to sell products.

What happens to the economy when there is no deadline to “get it now, before it’s too late?” When “You only go around once in life,” is completely false, why should you endanger your health and life for a little excitement? On the other hand, if we all believed that we all have as many chances as we need and we play (and have played) all the parts: rich/poor, smart/dumb, oppressor/oppressed, king/serf, man/woman, black/white, passionate/lazy, inspired/board? What would that do to the lessons we are here to learn?

You could make a case that telling someone about their past could sabotage their current life. They are here to experience something and telling them it’s all a game would ruin it. I don’t buy that. My experience and everything I’ve read points to one inescapable fact in this world: people will only believe what they want to believe. If you’re not ready to deal with reincarnation, if would interfere with your life-plan, then you won’t believe it. You may not even notice it. That’s the ultimate irony of the attempts of leaders to protect their “faith” by shielding followers from “wrong” ideas: If your faith is true, incompatible idea will have absolutely no effect on you. On the other hand, if you find you are open to new ideas, if doubts and alternatives hang out in the back of your mind, then your “faith” is nothing more that dogma with no grounding in any kind of spiritual truth.

That’s my thoughts for today.

The Woman and the City

Last nigh was triply, to say the least. I went to bed somewhat earlier than I usually do. Before I went to sleep I watched this World's Earliest Civilization Documentary on the World's First Civilizations in Iraq on YouTube. Maybe that was a mistake, or perhaps it just shook something lose. But in any case, my head and dreams were full of images of ancient cities and the people who lived there. By 1:30 is was clear that I wasn’t going to sleep until I got everything out of my head by writing it down. This is what I got. A reincarnation love story?

The Woman in the City

Ancient image. A young woman. Though one could hardly tell, wrapped in arab robes so that nothing can be seen but a patch a brown skin and startling blue eyes. She walks between the weathered walls of what was once the first city of the world, oldest and mightiest of all. Under her shoes is the dust of millennia, containing the crumbled facades of palaces who’s magnificence is the stuff of legend. Bricks that still glow with the verdant glaze of forgotten vanity are ground into anonymous gravel beside the humble fragment of ordinary mud brick. Bricks fashioned so long ago, by hands that are so long dead that the very memory of their entire way of life has faded to the merest whisper. Drifting like a specter across the blasted landscape they once tamed, assuming their dominion would last forever.

Alas, my love, you have passed beyond
I have seen you before
So many times
That, in my memory,
Your face has become a kaleidoscope of impressions
Personalities passing across your skin
Like the shadows across the ground
As the sun completes it’s task

One after another
The lives pass
Hue upon hue, eyes liquid
Changing shape and color with each passing day
With each dawn and new face
A new form, a new color, a new personality
Different, but each containing the spark of the original
Each tailored for the lesson it must learn
Each engraved with failures
But infused with joy
From goodness gained and love restored

You come to me down the years
We have passed so many times through the night
Each time to say goodbye
Yet to return, again and agin
Fresh as the dewed flower
Ready to begin again
Each time richer than the last
Souls marbled with knowledge beyond speaking
Gained through experience and pain.

You cannot find me this time round
We are separated by years, by place
by obligations by deeds
Parallel, we must remain apart
To complete whatever plan
Each has in place
Til time passes
the world turns
And we are together again.

So much time has passed
Since we walked those ancient streets
In a world as new and fresh as we
We’ve loved and lost
Fought and gained
Cherished and murdered
Played all the roles, from dusk til dawn
Yet still there seems to be more to come
Before this cosmic script plays out
Then we will be one
Intertwined
Like smoke in a crowded room
One so like the other
there is no longer two

How many times must my heart break
How many times must I be torn asunder
My heartstring ripped from my body
Each one snapping
Individually
Pain upon grief
Til loss leaves me an empty shell
Ready to collapse in upon itself
At the slightest touch

Future becomes past
The wheel of life turns
New spokes are added as others fall away
Our spokes have come near
And, perhaps, will stay for a time
Before the inevitable forces
Twist us apart again

Do you remember
I expect not
The memory has settled deep
This time
We set ourselves obstacles
That may be too high
We were too confident
That love could cut through
Anything

But this time
I fear we were wrong
Memories surfaced too late
And maybe not at all
Though that is still to see

How do I ask
How do you recall
Memories so throughly locked away
So diligently sealed against discovery
Walled up in the most secure tomb
Never yet uncovered

So I speak to your spirit
In the netherworld
We can’t touch
But share a space

Would it be better to forget
Be vaguely longing for
I know not what
Rather than knowing what was
Is not

Outside of the funhouse

Every time I think my life couldn't get any stranger, it does. Maybe, at some point, down the road, none of what I'm going to say will be particularly unusual, but for now it's taking a little getting used to.

Tonight I re-aquainted myself with some people I hadn't seen in a while, and I noticed some connections which were beyond my reach the last time I saw them. (My, how much rings have changed.) One, who I've know for, maybe, eight years, and have always had some affection for, was clearly my sister in a previous life. We were both sisters, and she was the youngest. Although she's older than me, this time around, and I've always thought her a bit, well, odd, I've always felt a noticeable affection and a bit of protectiveness towards her.

Ok, no big deal at this point. I've been seeing connections a lot lately, so what's one more? Well, one thing I forgot to mention when I wrote up my life as a shaman, was that my "father" in that life was also someone knew from before. He's not here, in this life, but we've worked together before and probably will again, just not this time. So, now I have connections from other lives to this life, and other lives to other lives, what else is there? I'm getting to that.

The other person I reconnected with also had some kind of connection with me, but it manifested in a different way: It seemed to me that something about her that didn't seem right. I don't mean that there was something wrong, but that something just didn't seem to the way is should be.

She's considerably younger than I am and pretty and nice enough, but I alway had that nagging sense.  I could never put my finger on what was out of place. Today it clicked: she had the wrong face. Ah, so we've lived together before? No, we haven't. But that didn't make any sense, how could I know her if I've never known her? What gives? There was definitely a strong connection here but where could it have come from if we've never known each other? Things got more puzzling when I realized that she was connected to two other people who I had shared lives with. Just a friend of a friend? I don't know, maybe. But there seemed more to it than that.

It took me a while to draw the obvious conclusion, and once I saw it, I don't see how I could have missed it. All four of us were buddies in, what? the afterlife? A higher plane? Wherever is is that you want to call the place were we hang out before we are born and return to when we die, that's where all four of us hang between lives out and, apparently, have some long-standing partnership or working relationship.

I never occurred to me before to consider relationships on that level, relationships that span, perhaps, thousands of years? More? If that doesn't stretch your mind, I don't know what will. Now, I suppose, I'll be looking more deeply onto all the connections I sense in people I meet, for the universe is a lot richer than I'd realized. I have read about stuff like this, but it all just seemed, you know, kind of abstract, and it didn't really have anything to do with my life. On the other hand, I'm constantly asking to be shown more stuff and be given more understanding, so I really shouldn't be surprised at how odd things are getting. Now that I get this, I better brace myself, for something still odder is probably coming down the pike pretty soon.

And you know what? Bring it on! It seems reasonable that at some point I'll reach my limit, but, until then, Show me more, I dare you! I've never been more unsatisfied with this limited existence than I am now, even though I'm probably happier than I've ever been. I'm living a life that's pretty damm cool. It has it's ups and downs, and I don't know where I'm going, but I'm discovering mind-blowing stuff first hand, and that's as amazing as it gets.

The most significant down is dealing with the blindness and negativity that permeates my culture. But I'm beginning to think that it's not a pervasive as I've always believed. because I've lived my entire life inside the funhouse mirrors of denial, I don't really have any idea how far it actually goes. The reflections seem to go on forever, but I know they don't, so it's clearly time to find my way out of the funhouse and see what the world is really like.