Author: Roberta Grimes

Creating God in Man’s Image

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

One of the creepiest things I have read in awhile is an article about someone who intends to create a powerful artificial intelligence and build a new religion around it. Good grief, what would be the point of that? It’s as if science has at last achieved a religious singularity! The fact that human religions create their own gods – and it never happens the other way around – is now being not only acknowledged, but celebrated.

Of course, this foolishness is just a logical extension of a current scientific pursuit. The search for ways to make human beings physically immortal is The Next Big Thing! Although it’s hard to see why anyone would want to be immortal now, when before long every human being is going to be a slave to conscious killer robots. It turns out, too, that even what seems to you and me to be genuine love is just a matter-based illusion that human beings evolved to experience because it enhances reproductive success. And perhaps worst of all, this scientific obsession with believing that the brain must generate consciousness is tying people in knots with the fear that advances in artificial intelligence are drawing us closer to the day when a machine configured to mimic a human being inevitably will develop consciousness, and soon thereafter our species will end at the hands of a smarter and stronger robot army.

Every one of these scenarios is nonsense. The human brain does not generate consciousness. Instead, consciousness is the source of all matter, including what makes up your physical brain! This obvious truth seems at last to be dawning on a few more open-minded scientists, but their problem is that a century’s research has been based on the absolute certainty that the brain must somehow generate consciousness. By now, scientists are trying hard not to discover the truth about consciousness, since sadly that truth might threaten their careers. They are hoping not to rock the scientific boat until at least the day their own kids finish college.

So since the scientific stonewalling continues, it is time for us to say this bluntly. Mainstream science has allowed its materialist dogma to destroy whatever was left of the whole field of scientific inquiry. Not a single major scientific discovery will be possible, ever again, until the scientific community accepts two facts:

  • Any discipline that is based on a “dogma” is really just one more religion. It is no longer the pursuit of any kind of truth.
  • The scientific insistence that consciousness cannot exist apart from the brain is an idiocy that by now has distorted every aspect of scientific inquiry.

That second insight is a gift from one of the best living scientific minds, the irrepressible Alex Tsakiris of Skeptiko.com. Alex is something of a legend in the field of consciousness research. He is a free-thinker who has spent the past decade in an open-minded search for the truth, interviewing eminent scientists and NDE experiencers and pretty much everyone in between. Like me, Alex began with a broader quest to understand what actually is going on, and his research has led him to where mine has led me: to the realization that Max Planck was right. Alex’s book, Why Science is Wrong… About Almost Everything, nails it!

Dr. Planck, the winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize in physics and the revered father of quantum mechanics, left us with the gigantic insight that consciousness underlies everything. He said in 1931, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

But as Alex and I have independently realized, the core problem with mainstream science is that it is stuck with the fallacious notion that reality is only material. It is as if for the entire past century we have been telling scientists that they can investigate the riddle of how this water-puddle keeps reappearing on the floor. Have at it! Study the floor and the walls, but it is against protocols for you to look at the ceiling.

This need to avoid understanding consciousness while assuming it must be generated by the brain has by now built major false assumptions into every aspect of scientific inquiry. As Alex Tsakiris says in his groundbreaking book, “the problem science has with consciousness has an impact on every aspect of science-as-we-know-it.”

           And Alex shares with us a gigantic insight that seems to be dawning on scientists now, too – the fact that the whole notion of achieving scientific proof of anything is in itself a myth. All that we ever can find is evidence that this or that theory is on the right track, but even the theory of gravity has to be seen to be still just a theory. The authors of the article linked above point out that “No matter how good our measurements and observations are, there’s a limit to how good they are. We also can’t observe or measure everything. Even if the Universe weren’t subject to the fundamental quantum rules that govern it, along with all its inherent uncertainty, it wouldn’t be possible to measure every state of every particle under every condition all the time.” And of course, the added fact that consciousness is fundamental adds a factor of uncertainty to the results of every bit of scientific research, since the basic consciousness that Dr. Planck discovered really can at any time alter anything. So in fact, scientists are about to discover that no definitive measurements are possible! Even worse, Dr. Planck tweaked the stubborn materialist scientists of his day by adding that “We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.” You can almost hear him chortling as he wrote those words!

The problem with modern mainstream science is that it is sadly in its death-throes. Its adherence to materialism keeps it even now from realizing that the scientific method is going to need a complete redesign if further progress is ever to be made. Oddly, scientists seem to feel to this day that they are battling just religious dogmas, when in fact modern mainstream religions are as much in the clueless weeds as is mainstream science. Tragically, all that mainstream science is battling in the twenty-first century is humanity’s need to stop clinging to dogmas and begin to seek and find some objective truths.

Rearing Spiritually Healthy Children

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

After a supernatural experience at the age of eight I have spent most of my leisure time in two parallel pursuits: exhaustively studying the afterlife evidence, and reading the Christian Bible repeatedly. This is such an odd combination of interests that I may be the only person on earth with the knowledge and experience to compare what the dead have to say about God, reality, death, the afterlife, and the meaning and purpose of human life with the actual Gospel words of Jesus.

And the greatest discovery of my life has been the fact that the dead agree with Jesus! In amazing detail. How wonderful is that? We can demonstrate now that Jesus is real, and that He must have come directly from God because He knew things two thousand years ago that He never could have known otherwise. Wow.

Those that we used to think were dead have a lot to say about Christianity too, and here the news is not supportive. These are some of the many things that we learn from people now in a position to know:

  • There is no anthropomorphic God. In fact, the only thing that actually exists is what you and I experience as consciousness, which is what Jesus called the Holy Spirit. This genuine God never takes human form, and it has no human failings of the sort that Christians feel the need to ascribe to their God.
  • There is no Satan. What we are coming to understand about the physics of consciousness is that the less loving a being is, the weaker it is. So if a deeply evil being existed in opposition to God, it would have no power at all.
  • There is no judgment by God. Jesus in the Gospels says this plainly! The only judge that we face after death is ourselves, which is another thing that Jesus tells us.
  • The death of Jesus on the cross has never made an afterlife difference for a single human being. It was only when I knew the dead were sure about this that it dawned on me that if God is loving, then of course it cannot be otherwise! What kind of a petty and barbaric God would refuse to forgive our human failings unless he first gets to enjoy the murder of his beloved Son? That many Christians still see this core Christian belief as speaking well of their God now confounds me. The genuine God is perfect love!

So Jesus is real, but Christianity is not. In fact, modern Christianity is nothing more than a first-century Jewish sect, with its fear-based Old Testament teachings hardly tempered at all by the Lord’s Gospel words. I have never known a devout Christian in all my years of Christian worship who sought to follow the teachings of Jesus first of all, above the dictates of religion, but that is precisely what the Lord commands! He says, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (JN 8:31-32) And He tells us repeatedly in various ways not to package his teachings in Judaism, but rather to keep them separate (His followers called His teachings “the Way”). He says, “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” (MK 2:22)

The Gospel teachings of Jesus are the surest route to rapid spiritual growth. That certainly has been true for me, and I am convinced now these teachings work for everyone as I hear from more and more delighted people!

But the fact that Christianity as it is practiced has nothing to do with the genuine Jesus presents a problem for those of us who want to teach the Lord’s truths to our children and grandchildren. I have been learning from readers of Liberating Jesus that every children’s book about Jesus they can find is full of fear-based religious teachings. So then we’ll just have to write our own books! The Fun of Meeting Jesus is the first in a series of read-aloud and early-reader picture-books based exclusively in the genuine Gospels. It was published just in time for Christmas, and early reports are that children love it. Parents are enjoying it too! There is a section for parents, so these books can be used to teach children the simple steps toward healthy spiritual growth devoid of fear that are what Jesus came to give us.

He said, “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (LK 11: 9-10) The greatest gift we can give to our children is a comfortable relationship with the genuine Jesus. Following those simple Gospel lessons is the key to comfortable spiritual growth that truly can make their whole lives joyous!

We’ll Share the Love Again Next Year!

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

Many people have asked me how AREI’s Symposium went in Scottsdale, Arizona. Simply put, it was a lovefest! So many people came from all over the world that they overwhelmed the hotel where we have been holding these events: we tried to cap attendance at 500, the capacity of the hotel’s ballroom, but even with trying to cap registrations we wound up with attendance well above that number.

Who was there? Many people joined us all the way from Europe and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Asia, and Brazil as well as from Canada, Mexico, and all over the United States. And what was most striking about all these people was how happy and warm-spirited they all were! We had some frustrations – the restaurant was too small for such a group, and there wasn’t enough parking – but still, everyone was cheerful and joyous. I never heard even one complaint!

There was a lighthearted atmosphere of love and merriment throughout the hotel that astonished some people. One man blurted to me, “What? Did you clone yourself?” (I thought that was nice!) Another drew me aside and said that he attends lots of events, and even what should be spiritual conferences tend to have issues with factions and drama. But there was none of that here: no egos at all. He wanted to know our secret! I told him that we all are happy living in the joyous love of Spirit, but actually there is a simpler answer. We five members of the AREI Board – including Craig Hogan, Susanne Wilson, and Victor and Wendy Zammit – are so deep into loving and supporting one another that our shared closeness seemed to make everyone there feel as if we all were part of one loving family. It was beautiful!

There were many there who were not now in bodies. People were getting amazing private readings with mediums, and spirit orbs were everywhere! As you may know, the easiest way for people without bodies to be with us is as glowing orbs of light that a few people can see (although most cannot), and that can be photographed with a digital camera. The nearby photo was taken during George Noory’s panel with the experts, who were (left to right) Mark Pitstick (behind George), Sandra Champlain, Craig Hogan, Susanne Wilson, Mark Anthony, and yours truly. You can see next to me two large, bright orbs, their size and brightness indicating that they were very advanced beings indeed. Susanne tells me that the huge one is Master Jesus and the smaller one is my own guide, Thomas, but who’s to know? If you look closely, you can see at least four more orbs in this photo that were beloved family members. They were everywhere!

We are already deep into planning our 2018 AREI Symposium. Since we have clearly outgrown the wonderful Scottsdale Embassy Suites, we are moving next year to the Doubletree Scottsdale Resort, where we can grow to 900 attendees in luxury. What a beautiful place! Our new home can accommodate more demonstrations and dinners in a gigantic and elegant ballroom space; more vendors in a beautiful dedicated lobby; special-interest meetings in smaller nearby rooms; and probably even a physical séance. We are working now to lure some keynote speakers that we hope will knock your socks off!

Those who attended in 2017 can join us in 2018 for just $150 if they register before the middle of next month. Prices will go up after that date, but we are determined to keep them as low as we can because we know that transportation and your hotel room are going to be part of your cost to join us. And speaking of hotel rooms, we have negotiated a steeply discounted room rate for the first few hundred who make their reservations, so don’t wait!

We really hope you will join us next year. Go to AfterlifeSymposium.org and check it out! We know we are going to have to stretch to top what we did last month, and so far 2018 looks as if it will put our 2017 lovefest in the shade. With your lovely spirit added to the joy of all the other attendees, next September’s event is going to be amazing!

Believing is Not Seeing

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

(I had hoped to do a blog post now about the 2017 AREI Symposium, but I’d like to include a link for 2018 and that website isn’t quite ready. Please watch this space!!)

Many of those who contact me will ask me what I “believe” about this or that. Some of those wrestling with the message of Jesus will talk about maintaining their “Christian faith,” as if having faith were a positive thing. For years I have thought most people were going to outgrow such a lazy way of thinking, but I guess it’s time to say this plainly.

Beliefs are intellectual and spiritual nonsense. We are better off without them!  

The fact that humankind is so prone to accepting beliefs as sufficient explanations probably began as a survival tool. Back when it was impossible to know where the rain came from or what happened after death, we thought up comforting beliefs that allayed our fears and made us feel sufficiently powerful to live at peace in this material world. But the problem is that the nimbleness with which we develop our beliefs and cling to them beyond all reason has become an active barrier to our ever really knowing anything.

We can see this problem most easily with religions. People who adhere to a preferred religion are fond of calling themselves “people of faith,” but faith is not a virtue! It’s a cop-out. It is the frank equivalent of saying “I don’t really know what’s going on, but I’m scared that it might be something bad so instead of trying to learn the truth I am going to cling to this happy story.” For Christians such a posture is inexcusable, since it flies in the face of the words of Jesus! He said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (MT 7:7-8). And “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (JN 8:31-32) Free from what? Why, free from merely believing! But Christians seldom listen to Jesus.

And I was reminded again of how badly holding to old beliefs has led mainstream science off course when I came across two more articles about the notion in scientific vogue right now that something like human immortality can be achieved electronically. This sort of thing is the inevitable end-state of scientists clinging to old beliefs and refusing to consider evidence that refutes them.

The false belief so badly distorting mainstream scientists’ ability to come to terms with reality is the notion that solid matter exists, when in fact the core discovery of quantum mechanics – now a full century into the past – is that in fact everything is energy. As no less a light than Nikola Tesla said, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.” And Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, said way back in 1931, ”I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” By 1944 he was concluding that “There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”

These scientific geniuses were exactly right! And even despite their insights, to this day scientists have little ability even to understand what consciousness might be.  But despite their bumbling, it is now generally understood that even the smallest subatomic particle is merely a vortex of energy. So for mainstream scientists to cling to the belief that consciousness is generated by our material brains is the exact equivalent of believing that your television generates the evening news! Your brain is a receiver and transmitter of your consciousness, and nothing more. But scientists have made an old, nonsensical belief in the solidity of matter the very foundation of modern science, so they also must cling to the erroneous belief that your meat-brain generates who you are. It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry!

Unless we can free ourselves from our ancient attachment to forming and retaining beliefs, humankind is going to remain stuck in this nonsensical acceptance of fictional shortcuts. In perfect fact, believing anything is useless in an age when it is possible to know!

Finding God

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

I often see Internet arguments about whether God exists and what God is, as if life’s most important questions were matters of taste to be debated. In fact, we do know a great deal now about the core creative force, and it is indeed extraordinary; but the more we learn, the more we see that both theists and atheists are missing the point. You might perhaps say they both are right; but also they both are profoundly wrong.

The judgmental Big Guy with the beard and thunderbolts that many people envision when they think of God does not exist. There is no evidence whatsoever for an anthropomorphic God that is anything like the Christian God. And believe me, we have looked for it!

On the other hand, the only thing that exists is the creative force that continuously manifests what we experience as this universe, and every single human mind is indivisibly part of that creative force. Therefore the atheists’ bet is wrong, too. We know now that all that exists is God!

We shouldn’t be surprised to discover that what was believed about God years and centuries ago is wrong. People have become more sophisticated in every other way, so why should our understanding of God be an exception? Actually, what is interesting to me is the fact that Jesus in the Gospels told the primitive people of his day things that have proven in the face of modern evidence to be amazingly accurate.

With humble awareness that our limited earth-minds cannot grasp in detail the objective truth, let’s look at what the evidence suggests is genuinely true about God:

  • God is infinitely powerful and infinitely loving Spirit, or Mind. Jesus said, “God is spirit.” (JN 4:24). “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (JN 6:63). We read his words about the nature of God with a profound sense of relief! The vision of God as a cranky old man that Christian teachings put into our heads makes us feel as if we are spiritual children, while Jesus’s vision of God as Spirit gives us vistas of meaning. God is eternal, and God is forever new!
  • Each of our minds is indivisibly part of that one Mind. On this Jesus said, “the Spirit of truth… abides with you and will be in you” (JN 14:17). He also said, “the kingdom of God is within you” (LK 17:21). The realization that each human mind is inextricably part of the Mind of God has been the greatest discovery of my life! Mikey Morgan, the sixth-level discarnate author of Flying High in Spirit, says that “God is the unity of pure love and all that exists.” More and more I am coming to realize how accurate his insight is.
  • Our minds therefore have tremendous power, if only we will believe we have that power. As Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted to him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted to you” (MK 11:22-24). It was when I first grasped the implications of this teaching that I began to pray in gratitude affirmations. I say “Thank you” for the gift of whatever I want, and affirm that indeed I already have it, so now my mind works smoothly with the Mind of God of which it is an integral part!
  • There is no post-death judge but ourselves. Jesus tells us this flat-out, so it is amazing that Christians still insist that God judges us. Jesus says, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (JN 5:22-23). And then, “If anyone hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him.” (JN 12:47). And finally, “In the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you” (MT 7:2). So Jesus accurately tells us that each of us will be our own judge. When we accept the abundant testimony of the dead and the Gospel affirmation of Jesus that there is no post-death judge but ourselves, we put an end to the fear-based Christian tradition of sacrificial redemption. Jesus did not die for our sins. From the viewpoint of eternal Mind, we are forever sinless! We are as powerful, as loving, as eternal, and as perfect as the Godhead of which we are integrally part, if only we can claim that truth.

It is possible to come to know the genuine God! During all the decades when I was a zealous Christian, reading the Bible daily, praying on my knees, and living with the thought that God was a stern paterfamilias that I had to find a way to please, I realize now that I never felt close to God. No matter how I tried to get further into it, everything about religion felt external to me in the same way that all human institutions feel external. Religion is laws the way government is laws. You miss church on Sunday and you feel guilty.

It was only when I trusted Jesus enough to leave Christianity and follow Him that I was able to begin to find and know God. I am astonished to tell you that religious ideas about God actually prevent our finding God! They put a false and scary God into our minds that keeps us from coming to know the genuine God at the core of each of us. God is who we really are.

It is difficult to adequately express the joy of coming to know at last the genuine God. I’ve been trying to think of how to help you see the way that finding God feels to me after a lifetime of earnest searching. In fact, this utter joy is ineffable: there really are not sufficient words. Perhaps it feels like home and safety and the certainty of being perfectly loved, very much as a little child must feel before the outside world intrudes. It feels like power beyond imagining, so I know that every least thing that happens works for good in some way that we are too small to see; and it feels like joy so deep and love so complete that you cannot even remember how it felt to know fear.

Two Biblical passages express this feeling well. Philippians 4:7 is how Paul says it: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” But perhaps the ancient words of Deuteronomy 33:27 say it best of all: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Finding God means finding those arms and realizing they have been there all along. Even though our understanding while we are in bodies is necessarily limited, we are in the presence at last of a Godhead Who loves us so perfectly that God’s very love becomes our greatest challenge! To better understand that love, and to grow to meet it, becomes the beating heart of life and everything that matters to us. That seminal tune from the rock musical, Godspell, says it well: “Day by day, day by day, oh dear Lord three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly. Day by day….”

Dealing with Grief

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

I hear from grieving people almost daily now. Their pain is often so raw that it is nearly unbearable to read their messages, and I realize that since I cannot feel grief myself I am handicapped in my attempts to help them. But I try!

Grief is a process. It is composed of a number of elements: the loss of old habits, fear for the loved one, loneliness, nostalgia, anger, guilt, self-pity, and more. All are very low-vibration emotions, so each of them is painful; and in combination, they can be unbearable! It is in the nature of grief that it will lessen over time – it should be a lot less painful beyond the first year – but you can help it along by trying to understand what the particular mix of negative emotions is in your own case. I suggest to most people the following steps:

1) Pamper yourself. Especially when the grief is fresh, listen hard for your own feelings and wishes and try to do exactly what you want to do from minute to minute of every day. Your mind knows what it needs to do to heal! Don’t be around people who make you feel worse: it is important that you be ruthless about that. Treat yourself as the emotional invalid that you are. Certainly don’t spend time with anyone who tells you that you have got to get over it!

2) Learn all that you can about where your loved one is now. Depending on how you process information, there are lots of books that you might read; and I urge you strongly to subscribe to the Zammits’ weekly newsletter (go to victorzammit.com). My The Fun of Dying is a quick summary, and it includes an annotated bibliography that can help you find lots of additional books. But the news is all good! And the more you learn, the more you should begin to feel more comfortable about your loved one’s present situation.

3) Learn about the signs that our loved ones give to us. It is generally true that your grief has to lessen before your newly-dead loved one can get through to you with signs, which is another reason why it is important that you work on managing your grief.

4) Let go of all negativity, especially anger and guilt. The most intractable form of grief is guilt-based, anger-based, or a combination of the two; so if as you examine your feelings you find that you feel guilty or angry about anything, then it will be important that you work on forgiving yourself and forgiving all your anger. The guilt and anger generally won’t lessen otherwise, and people typically feel that they are still actively grieving even many years later when what they really mostly are feeling at that point is guilt or rage.

5) Learn to accept and live with your grief. It seems to be true for many people that grief never completely goes away; but if you manage it well, it can be tempered to a kind of wistfulness that ideally will be enlivened by occasional signs and messages. Your loved ones are young again, beautiful and healthy, and are having fun in a place without time! They can be close to you whenever they like, so there isn’t the sense of separation for them that there is for you. And the love is stronger than ever!

Believe it or not, it is possible to lose someone close to you and hardly grieve at all. When you are certain about what is going on, you find that you are clueless about other people’s grief: my impulse is always to say how happy I am for the person who at last has gone home, but grieving people don’t want to hear that so instead I express my sympathy for the living. When each of my parents died, despite the fact that I was close to them I felt only glad for them that at last they were free of their useless old bodies. Human life is eternal! When you are certain of that – really certain of it – then seeing people grieve at a death will no longer make sense to you, either.

 

photo credit: Aramisse <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/13989429@N00/35700149095″>Woman with an urn</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

photo credit: 2bmolar <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/12463666@N03/35354665303″>Dried Tears</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

This is Personal

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

           There is a theory that if you pick up a calf at its birth and then every day thereafter, eventually you can pick up a bull. It’s a nice idea, but I can personally testify that it is not true. I cannot believe that I haven’t found time to write a new blog post in the past two months! But I realize now that while the calf was growing and I have been struggling with it daily, more and more of my former life was slipping away.

Becoming modestly known is such an odd phenomenon that I wish more people could experience it. As with picking up that growing bull, the weight of it creeps up gradually, so it’s hard for me to pinpoint now precisely when my personal life disappeared, when my legal career shrank to almost nothing, and when my next FUN book was put aside. Apparently my blogging stopped in May, and by now even my podcasting is taking a beating as I have less time to prepare for interviews. What has largely taken over my life is a combination of correspondences with readers and listeners – sometimes responding takes most of my day – and lots of work on a project related to The Fun of Living Together that has captured my heart. But I’m coming up for air a bit now. Perhaps I’ll never be able to pick up that bull, but I seem at last to be learning to ride it!

And yesterday was the Fourth of July, which once again has me thinking about the young man who took up his quill in the heat of a Philadelphia June long ago and wrote what became our nation’s creed.

Thomas Jefferson hated slavery. It was a highly personal issue for him, since before he was thirty-one he inherited almost three hundred human beings. He couldn’t legally free them in the Colony of Virginia, but he didn’t want lifelong responsibility for them. He thought at first that he might persuade the Virginia House of Burgesses to allow slaveholders to free their slaves, but he learned when he arrived at the Continental Congress in June of 1775 that freeing slaves who looked so different from their masters was going to be a difficult trick.

Slavery may be the oldest human institution. It has existed over millennia, everywhere on earth, but nearly always the slaves have resembled their masters. It has therefore generally been easy to free them and let them blend into the larger society. But black slaves were already being freed in the north, and what Jefferson found in Philadelphia was a desperate underclass of newly-freed slaves, hungry and despised and clinging to the edge of the larger white society without hope of ever entering it. He was horrified! He realized then that the worst British sin had been the introduction to this continent of an aberrant form of slavery where masters and slaves looked so different from one another that we might never be able to end it. He was so upset about this discovery that the first draft of our Declaration of Independence was full of what John Adams wryly referred to as “Jefferson’s philippic against the slave trade.”

It is difficult for us to imagine now what was in the mind of a 33-year-old about to risk his life and his family’s lives by provoking a war with the world’s greatest power over the principle of personal freedom. Reading his letters at the time, you never see him waver; but you do see how much the slavery problem troubled him. He thought that for his countrymen to be claiming their own freedom while giving no thought to the slaves among them was almost to render absurd their claim, so part of that original philippic – and almost all of what remains of it now – lies right there near the top of the document. Delegates to the Congress may not have understood the full import of what they were signing, but in fact it was a heartfelt cry that no matter what the cost and no matter what effort might be required, the only possible outcome of this struggle must be a continent where slaves, too, were free.

Let’s look at the import of Jefferson’s words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident,

(He wrote at first that these truths are “sacred and undeniable,” but this was one Congressional edit that improved the document.)

that all men are created equal,

(“All men” included slaves, and of course it also included women. But how radical this thought was at a time when most people believed that the upper classes were born to dominate those with lower status!)

that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,

(The concept of rights given by God was not new, but “the divine right of kings” to rule was usually the most important of these rights. That individual rights might come first was a revolutionary concept.)

that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

(The universal usage at that time was “life, liberty, and property.” But Jefferson clearly meant to deny slaveholders the right to claim people as their property, and instead he decreed that slaves, too, have an equal right to freedom and a chance at happiness.)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

These were the breathtakingly radical words of a young man who never in the end was able to perfect the world that he inherited, but at least he could envision that more perfect world. His dream in turn became Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. It still beckons to us today.

 

photo credit: iki-photos <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/22229390@N06/2669305164″>même pas peur</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

The 2017 AREI Symposium

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

It astonishes me now to realize that I met Craig Hogan just in 2009, and Susanne Wilson and the Zammits in 2014. For decades my obsessive hobby of investigating the afterlife was a lonely slog, with no colleagues and with no one in my life who even cared about what I was learning. I had known about Victor Zammit since the nineties, but he lived in Australia. Before the Internet, how useful was that?

It turns out, though, that during my decades of immersion in doing afterlife research, many others also felt called to do this work. They also labored on their own. But in the past few years we have found one another, connecting at conferences and on the Internet, and confirming (this should surprise no one) that all of us have reached the same conclusions. In particular, I have deeply connected with Craig Hogan, Susanne Wilson, and Victor and Wendy Zammit, and a year ago we formed an organization that is dedicated to sharing these truths.

The entire purpose of The Afterlife Research and Education Institute, Inc.  is worldwide afterlife-related research and education! As we gear up, we are making plans to raise money for electronic communications research, for an online university, and for outreach and support to local groups that share our interests. And on the weekend of September 15th we are excited to be holding our first annual Symposium! We hope you will be eager to join the five of us and two-dozen other experts in the broad field of afterlife studies. Together we’ll explore not just the standard afterlife topics but also cutting-edge afterlife communications practices; the best methods for achieving rapid spiritual growth; new thinking about how best to manage the transition that is not really death; and what the dead tell us is the purpose of human life. All in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona.

This will be the world’s largest and most comprehensive afterlife symposium! We have arranged special rates for two-room suites at the Embassy Suites for our attendees, as well as optional “bucket-list” experiences including a tour to Sedona, tours of Old Phoenix, and hot air balloon rides. This Symposium will be the third time that I have worked with Craig in putting on a large event, and I think it’s going to be our best one yet. Early-bird pricing ends on May 15th. Click HERE for more details. This is going to be fun!

Thinking From Love

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

SunrisePeople have been asking me to do more videos. I have a great face for radio, so being filmed while talking is not my idea of fun! But to help you enjoy my most recent books, I did three new videos. Here they are.

The Fun of Growing Forever details the amazing fact that the teachings of Jesus as they are given in the Gospels are the best short-course in rapid spiritual growth that we have ever discovered. Spiritual growth is the whole point of our lives, and giving us a place to grow spiritually seems to be the reason why the universe exists. Until now, Western religious and philosophical teachings have not focused specifically on spiritual growth, so the most effective methods of which we have been aware have all come out of Eastern traditions. And few Westerners have the interest or the patience to engage in some of the more complicated practices that Eastern teachings require! The program outlined in the Gospels, however, is simple. It requires neither meditation nor yoga – no chanting or gurus – and it can begin to be effective within weeks. I urge you to try it! Elevating your personal vibration has the power to make you the happiest that you can be.

The Fun of Living Together explains the source of America’s longstanding racial problems and details how we can end them and achieve racial harmony in one generation. I wrote about this book in my last blog post, so I will add here only that I am amazed that when this problem is so disruptive and so damaging to our national fabric there seems to have been no one who has examined history enough to try to find its cause. I can only think that most of us have been assuming on some level that there really is a difference between the races, that racism is a natural human condition, and that therefore racial divisions are innate and there really is no way to solve them. I am delighted to report that these assumptions are wrong! Racial differences based on physical characteristics are superficial. All the races are identical. And despite some studies that suggest otherwise, racism is a learned and not a natural condition. If we will take the right steps now, we can at last live up to the true meaning of our creed and make Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream come true!

Fixing America’s Problems is going to require the spiritual focus of the first video and the practical tack of the second. The reason why we are in such a mess in America now, on every level, is that in attempting to fix our problems we are always thinking from fear and negativity, which is the lowest spiritual vibration. What a difference it makes when we think from love! Once enough of us raise our spiritual vibrations to the point where love is where we live, then all the anger and strife for the sake strife, all the contention over trivial things and the violent rhetoric that makes our public life so bitter will dissipate as fog is cleared by the sun. Every problem that America faces has a set of commonsense solutions that can be tailored to benefit everyone, if only we can approach them from love!

If you like these videos, then perhaps you might enjoy subscribing to my YouTube channel. I do hope to start to do them more regularly!

A new day is coming soon, in America and in the world. Those at the highest levels of reality have been working for decades now through thousands of people all over the world to elevate the spiritual vibration of this planet away from fear and toward perfect love. Already we can see it happening, and each of us is a part of this effort. Every human mind is part of the eternal Mind that continuously manifests this universe, so effectively all of our minds are one. When enough of us have undertaken the task of raising our own vibrations and making ourselves us as happy as we can be, then the spiritual vibration of this planet will naturally rise like a bubble in water, and peace and universal understanding are going to overspread this weary earth. It will be a new day forevermore!    

The Fun of Living Together

Posted on by Roberta Grimes

FOLT Front CoverThe point of figuring out what happens after death is that you finally learn how to live. You start thinking on an eternal scale! Far from losing interest in the things of this world, you care so much more about all of humanity; and when you are thinking spiritually, you can see the world’s problems in a clearer light.

So it is that I am now proposing a fresh approach to solving our racial problems. It is clear that nothing we have tried has worked! Although there are more black people now who have entered the American mainstream, the vast majority of slavery’s descendants still lead debased and hopeless lives. Fully half of young black American children live in poverty. Two-thirds of those children are fatherless! America’s schools are more segregated than ever before, so nearly all black children receive poor educations. And incredibly, although they are just thirteen percent of our population, black people make up half of America’s murder victims. Nearly all their murderers are black as well. An amazing forty percent of black men will spend time in prison during their lifetimes!

But, why?

I hate to say this, but many Americans have come to take it as a given that there is something about having darker skin that makes people less able to cope. So we give them welfare and affirmative action, we allow the black areas of our cities to deteriorate, we turn a blind eye to young black delinquents, and we call people racist who have the nerve to point out that any of this is disturbing. But it is disturbing. And it’s time that we did something about it that really works!

Kelley Glover and I have been friends for a decade without much talking Roberta & Kelley Close - 3.17about race. We’d just go out to lunch for a couple of hours to talk and laugh and enjoy one another. It was only when one day I was thinking about this and I brought the topic up that she began to teach me what it is like to be black in America today. And I shared with her what I thought was wrong.

The result is The Fun of Living Together – “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools” (MLK, Jr.). We wrote it as a Fun book and in my voice because that was what my publisher wanted, but the whole book is our joint effort. This is the first book I’ve ever written with a living person. And despite the seriousness of its topic and the intensity of our emotions surrounding it, the fact that Kelley and I can be silly together under any circumstance has helped a lot!

So, why are we still having racial problems a hundred and fifty years after the Civil War? There is only one explanation left at this point. We botched emancipation.

We could have freed the slaves in an orderly process that included educating them to live as free Americans and encouraging their fellow citizens to accept them. But instead, we destroyed a large part of this nation in a devastating Civil War, after which we abandoned the newly-freed slaves to survive surrounded by outraged folks who had just lost everything. What did we think was going to happen? Nearly all of America’s freed slaves and their descendants lived debased and hopeless lives in the Jim Crow South for the next hundred years.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the greatest American of the twentieth century. The more perspective we gain, the more certain that becomes. He brought an end to the Jim Crow South using only his pen and his loving example, and now his life and his words give a shape to the better America that is yet to come.

Slaves WorkingOur popular conception is that slavery was bad because it was violent and the slaves worked for free. But it turns out that what lingers of slavery over many generations is its effects on the mind. The slaves’ sense of being inferior, of being hopeless and beaten down and less is something that we have never addressed. So Kelley and I make a case in The Fun of Living Together that most of the descendants of American slavery still live in a kind of slavery-lite. We have thrown everything we can think of at trying to fix a few of the symptoms of their problem, but because we haven’t understood the cause, we have only made things worse.

Kelley and I now propose a solution that can end our racial problems in one generation and at little cost. Since we have by now tried every other idea and spent more money than our national debt, it is time to go back to emancipation and heal this nation where the rift began.

A friend told me a story yesterday that sums up the place where we are now. She feels shame in knowing that her ancestors owned eight slaves in an obscure town in Alabama and freed them when the Civil War began, after which they moved to Texas. One day a new client told her she had grown up in that same obscure town, so naturally my friend shared her shameful story. Her client burst into tears. She said that her own great-grandparents had been owned by a family that had freed them at the start of the Civil War and then moved to Texas.

They cried together that day. And so do we all cry! There is nothing we can do to changeSpirit Guide Team the past, but the time has come for us to fix a problem that should have been addressed when the Civil War ended. Then at last all Americans can come together in the perfect love and brotherhood that Dr. King was able to see lying waiting for us beyond the top of that mountain.

If not us, who? If not now, when?  

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