Posted by Roberta Grimes • February 15, 2020 • 49 Comments
Human Nature, Jesus, Understanding Reality
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
– W.B. Yeats (1845-1939) from “The Second Coming”
Many people have an increasing sense that Western civilization is falling apart. Some of us trace this awful collapse back to the youth-quake of the Sixties, which was a decade so full of political assassinations and racial strife and so riven by a pointless war that it seemed to some to be the end of the world. Others trace our civilizational chaos to the polarization now being fostered by isolated pockets of conflicting information; and there even are those who put the blame on rhetoric coming from the U.S. President. But whatever reasons we might propose for the current collapse of order and basic decency in the Western world, I suggest to you that every one of these apparent causes is only a symptom. Our central problem is that human civilization was plunged so deeply into fear and negativity during the war- and strife-filled past century that it is now in an existential crisis. It has lost any sense of how to rise from here.
Please try to internalize how this works. If we cannot thoroughly grasp it ourselves, we can never help others to understand and address what has always been the central human problem! The only thing that exists is the creative energy-like potentiality that we experience as consciousness. All our minds are part of that potentiality,
so effectively we all are part of one Mind. Like other forms of energy, consciousness vibrates, and its range runs from fear at the lowest and slowest end of the spectrum to love at the highest. We have said this here so many times that to see me recite it again has you rolling your eyes! But until you have so completely internalized this core fact of human existence that you stop seeing reality in any other way, you will not be able to get free of the illusion that you think you see around you. Everything is either love-based or fear-based.
Fear is not just a bogeymen thing, and love is a lot more than hearts and roses! You can take every bad or good thing and trace it back to the fear or love at its base:
more you inspire love in others, and so the cycle builds. Throughout history, even those who have begun this cycle and followed it to sainthood have never understood why it works! But we understand it now. And we know now that everything we think of as in any way positive can be traced to the love that is its source.This set of truths is the root of the Gospel teachings of Jesus, and in fact it lies at the base of most of what later became our fear-based religions. If you don’t like the thought of consciousness vibrating and having to raise your personal vibration, I’ll share with you a Native American story that is an especially beautiful way to approach the core of all human wisdom!
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.” The grandson thought about this for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.”
This decision about which wolf to feed, the choice between loving or dominating others, the dilemma of whether to seek money and power on earth or the eternal greater wealth of Spirit: giving us a place where we can learn in an infinite number of ways to always feed the good wolf is the reason why this material universe exists.
Just a casual review of human history will show you that for the most part, humanity has 
sadly preferred to feed the evil, fear-based wolf. We seldom even notice his love-based brother lurking nearby, only bones and skin and by now desperate for us to throw him even a scrap! Every one of our institutions, and especially including our religions, is based in fear and not in love. And what may be worse, both science and religions are fostering in modern Western cultures an appalling level of fear-based ignorance! Religions instill in people fear of the wrath of their imaginary gods, since feeding our fears and then offering safety is the way all religions stay in business. Mainstream science also fosters fear, but it does that primarily by advocating for the three spurious propositions that reality is matter-based, that consciousness is produced by our brains, and that at death we will blink out like a light. Since fear of death is the core human fear, these ignorant dogmas that govern what is supposed to be an open-minded search for the truth are just as effective as religions are at cranking up all our ambient fears!
Every human evil is the result of people making fear-based choices. You can never think from fear and produce anything but greater harm! But our problem now is that while we finally understand why evil exists, few people on earth as yet are ready to hear this simple and logical explanation. Say to someone stuck in Christian terrors that Jesus came to do away with religious fears and teach us to relate individually to a love-based God, and he will be blindsided and horrified. Say to someone cowering 
behind locked doors that all the thugs outside were born as sparks of love, so once every child is properly reared we will do away with locks forevermore, and the poor soul may well reach for his gun.
Building love-based institutions in a fear-based world will need to be a stealth process. We cannot at first mention love or fear without being ridiculed for spouting woo-woo nonsense, but what we can do now is to advocate for the simple fact that love-based institutions work so much better. We can talk about the proven evils of our present institutions and suggest that we learn from these mistakes how to build institutions that really work:
works better for everyone.A love-based institution is full of feedback loops. It insists on being accountable. It treats every human being, no matter how currently debased, as capable of fundamental goodness and unlimited spiritual growth.
But there is one thing we really will have to kill if we ever hope to make much love-based progress. What it is may surprise you, and perhaps seeing the
harm that it causes will surprise you more. During the long pull of humankind through millennia during which we lived steeped in fears and we had no way to access the truths that would have helped us to address our fears, we relied on our faith. Humankind’s touching ability to believe in what we could not see was the only respite we ever had from the fears that otherwise would have overwhelmed us. But as our new era of certainty dawns, it turns out that our ability to believe without evidence, and our eagerness to put skepticism aside, will have to be vanquished. We’ll address this next week.
If you hear the song I sing, You will understand.
You hold the key to love and fear All in your trembling hand.
Just one key unlocks them both. It’s there at your command.
– Chet Powers (1937-1994) from “Get Together” by The Youngbloods
Hi Roberta, I have heard it said that hindsight is 20/20 and looking back at my past I have come to the conclusion that I and many other suffer from narcissistic abuse. During my youth I had no idea what was going on with the people around me and I actually thought it was normal, until I moved away and seen the forest for the tress. I really had to work very hard to escape this disorder and in fact am still working on it. This was modeled to me and I was very troubled by it. I have found that my true nature is, I am more of an empath. My mother told me long ago when I was very young that the reason people hate you is that you see through them. You know instantly if they are being real or not, and they don’t like that!!
I believe that the worst enemy of a narcissist is an empath for they fear being exposed. They fear me like no other, even though I have said nothing in malice, nor have I acted in malice either. I have always been nice and considerate, ready and willing to resolve any issues. Plus, I don’t hold grudges, I am ready to forgive and just be right with one another. They just don’t like that which is puzzling to me. The fears they have are false, and they have built their own prison out of their false fears.
Here is how I see the whole picture, my struggle is not against flesh and blood, What they have and a great many people have is. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, so I don’t hold anything against them, for it is a mental condition that can only be helped from within. Some things only God can do and this is one of them. I have heard the Native American story, I like it and use it a lot my self only I heard it said as a white dog and a black dog to where the white dog stands for love and the right things in life, and the black dog stands for hate, fear and anger and the bad things in life. They are at war with each other… I heard another story you may like. A father had a son who was having anger problems, and took the boy outside to an old fence post. He said to the boy when you feel angry I want you to go and pound a nail half way into this post, well the boy did as the father asked, and in some time he took the boy to the fence post and said now I want you to pull the nails out of the post, again the boy did as the father asked. When he was done the father said to the boy, do you see what your anger did to the post. The boy said yes it is full of holes and it looks ugly and marred. The father said to the boy, this is what happens to our lives when we do not get control of our anger.
em·path
/ˈempaTH/
noun
(chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual.
Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and the severity of symptoms vary. People with the disorder can:
.Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance
.Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration
.Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
.Exaggerate achievements and talents
.Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
.Believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
.Monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior
.Expect special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
.Take advantage of others to get what they want
.Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
.Be envious of others and believe others envy them
.Behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious
.Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office
.At the same time, people with narcissistic personality disorder have trouble handling anything they perceive as criticism, and they can:
.Become impatient or angry when they don’t receive special treatment
.Have significant interpersonal problems and easily feel slighted
.React with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make themselves appear superior
.Have difficulty regulating emotions and behavior
.Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change
.Feel depressed and moody because they fall short of perfection
.Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation
Dear Rockey, we should have collaborated and made your comment a guest-post! What you describe does indeed have a scientific description, but in fact it is only a more extreme version of the fear-based debasement into hopelessness which characterizes so many people’s lives.
If you trace each of the negative characteristics that you describe to its opposite, you can see that each is just a desperate ego-based search for love! Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance is in fact a fear-based reaction to feeling insignificant; a sense of entitlement and requiring excessive admiration is the ego’s desperate reaction to feeling worthless; and so on.
No one who is vibrating more toward love ever suffers any of these ego-driven, fear-based needs. Reading your comment again and thinking about the people I know who are more advanced spiritually, I can tell you that is universally true. The awful, fear-drenched hollowness that overcomes people who are vibrating too low is the reason for every one of the pathologies that blighted your childhood. And furthermore, your reaction to it makes it clear that you were vibrating considerably higher than they were! I love it. What a superb illustration of precisely what spiritual growth is and how it works! I wish I had thought of it myself. Let me think about this and play with it, and perhaps we really can write about it together!
Meanwhile, everyone, I understand that what Rockey has written here is so long and perhaps seemingly off-point that it seems to have shut off commenting here – I hope just temporarily. But it is a very accurate summary of how low-vibrating individuals look to a much-higher-vibrating child! I am stunned by it.
I am trying to get to the root of the fear based world we or I live in. I am on the front lines here, and have deal with it every day. I look at it like this if a person is going to help the Lord change things to what they are supposed to be. A person needs know what is going on and be prepared.
I have learned that Narcissistic behavior is something that we all have to deal with in our own lives. When I first started reading about it, I had to wonder, well who isn’t one, and how do I escape from being one? From what I see it is everything I see in the flesh and not the spirit.
I will post later on how I overcame this with Gods help. I had to change from within, and with Gods help I have come a long ways. I am thankful for that too. It makes for a much better life here and after.
I was also raised by a narcissist and my father was sick too (pedophile tendencies). They were also heavy drinkers. I had no lifelines at all when growing up. I was the family delegated black sheep, invisible, listening post and doormat. Since my mother died 10 years ago I began researching about my childhood and narcissism and have come a long way in my understanding and recovery. I have realized I’m an HSP (highly sensitive person) and Empath and that this was the primary reason why I was chosen to be the black sheep. I also know that my adverse childhood also strengthened my empathy. I’m 66 now. I have a stubborn streak and find it hard to completely let go of what happened to me. If it was just the parents, it would be easier since they are both deceased, but I also began to realize that my one sibling was subtly abusing me so I had to process all that and then do limited contact which turned into no contact. (I wrote him that I needed to reduce contact to heal, that our mother had NPD and haven’t heard from him since.) So that is my story.
I would like to see more articles etc talking about these problems from a spiritual viewpoint. I feel I am supposed to arrive at ‘radical forgiveness’ but it so hard to do because my life would have been so much better if I had been loved. Even now I go through intervals of feeling profoundly sad and angry about it.
There are some beliefs found in the Robert Schulz and Bob Olsen websites and various other sources that rub me the wrong way. The suggestion that our deceased relatives hang around us is unsettling to those who grew up in an abusive family. Various mediums etc seem to only focus on the people from normal loving families. And when they do talk about this issue they don’t seem to me on the mark.
Example: in the afterlife we belong to soul groups which include our family. That we do play acting together. I actually read on the Bob Olsen site a scenario where in the afterlife a father and daughter were talking about how he was going to rape her in this upcoming life and how how the roles would be reversed in the following life. Not only that, they were talking joyfully as if the rape would be a huge way of developing spiritually. That just struck me as plain wrong and that the person writing it had never experienced that abuse.
Oh dear Francine, you have given yourself such an extraordinary forgiveness lesson! And fortunately, you can indeed learn radical forgiveness, and when you establish it as your habit you are going to be so much happier.
It is important to remember that this is not real life. This is a tough day in school, and no more than that! Even if you don’t attain perfect happiness in this lifetime, you will know it eternally; and the rougher your lessons are here, the more ambitious you are for personal growth and the happier you are going to be. To address some points:
1) All the evidence suggests that the only beings not in bodies who will be around you are the ones that you attract. So it is unlikely that there are people around you now that you don’t want to have close to you, and once you have forgiven your family members there will be nothing further to attract them to you.
2) The Bob Olson story is peculiar. I know of one instance where friends planned for one to murder the other – and such life-plans generally must be specially approved, which would likely also be true of the mutual rape scenario – and when they carried out this plan, it set back the murderer so much spiritually that he ended up in what amounted to post-death intensive care. I find it extremely unlikely that the negative details of any lifetime would be planned out this way, since we live our lives in process and if we have planned some negative tendencies, then – as you saw in your childhood – the negative events will roll out naturally.
Dear Francine, if you will send me a contact through the green block and remind me of who you are, I will be happy to send you a PDF of The Fun of Growing Forever and help you learn to forgive, once and for all!
I believe that Giambattista Vico, an 18th-century Italian philosopher, hit the nail squarely on the head when he wrote that men first feel necessity, then look for utility, followed by comfort, then pleasure, and finally luxury, after which they finally go mad – when “each man is thinking of his own private interests.” In that pursuit of pleasure and luxury, there is, according to Vico, a certain social disconnection, which involves moral, intellectual, and spiritual decline.
And that is where we now seem to be. Vico’s “madness” is really despair or hopelessness that results from a void in our spiritual lives. In effect, in striving for greater pleasure and luxury, we become philistines – man striving to be one with his toys, while increasingly indifferent to matters of the spirit.
“Philistinism tranquilizes itself in the trivial, being equally in despair whether things go well or ill,” the existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explained it, going on to say that many philistines don’t actually realize they are in despair, or if they do realize it they don’t understand what they are in despair about. Neither do their psychiatrists, the politicians, or the journalists.
Dear Michael, this is beautifully said! It is Rockey’s point from an adult perspective. An ego-based person is vibrating in fear, and then feeds that fear by seeking the safety of yet more possessions and wealth that can do nothing to address the fear underlying and driving it all. That way lies only madness! And I love the Kierkegaard quotation (not to mention the fact that I envy your knowing how to spell his first name with the correct “o”). Perfectly said! In the hollowness that is a fear-based life (he called it a “philistine” life) being lived in a culture whose most trusted institutions actually teach and enforce fear, there is no recourse even to professionals and experts. Literally no one has even a basis for understanding what underlies it all! Thank you for making this point better than I could.
– Dear friends, Michael Tymn is a leading expert on many of the things that we talk about here. Dear Michael, to see you joining us always makes me smile!
It is a great honor to have him stop by!😀
Indeed it is! I urge everyone who wants a good read in our field of interest to read Michael Tymn’s books, and his blog. Michael’s command of the field of what the dead have told us is unparalleled!
Oh my gosh. Having Michael Tymn here is like having a celebrity show up at a family picnic! Everything that has been said here so far is true. I’ve never known anyone who can say that accumulating more and more material items has made them genuinely happy. In fact, it often causes much more serious problems such as addiction, stress, broken relationships, and a worsening depression. Yes, most of these people are narcissistic but I wonder if this isn’t caused by an even bigger problem, which is our culture. We are taught to define ourselves from infancy by what we own and to constantly strive to “get ahead” with the implication being that it is the only way to live. When that doesn’t work (and it almost always doesn’t), a person feels they have hit a brick wall and there is no way out because no one ever tells them that the void they feel can only be filled by a sense of identity with what we call God, and that our earth lives are only a tiny part of who we are. .
Good point, once a person finds their true identity it changes everything. It did for me. It is way better to see yourself the way God see you.
Dear Lola and everyone, the cost of allowing our society to remain so mired in fear is an almost insuperable cultural depression. I hear often now from people who complain that they are trying to be more positive, but they can’t shake this or that problem in their lives. Or they even are terribly upset about some situation in the world! When we are personally vibrating at a deeply negative rate, we tend to see everything rather hopelessly through that same depressive lens. My own goal now is to help as many people as possible to see and understand how consciousness works, and to help them use just the simplest of tools in the midst of their daily lives to begin to elevate their own spiritual vibrations. Quite literally, we have a world to save!
This is very important. There is no matter as such. Everything is vibrating energy, all of creation, including the “consensus creation” we experience as incarnation. We can and do participate as energy. How we do is part of what our free will is for. With one another’s help, we can do it.
Dear Mike, “There is no matter as such” is a famous quotation from Max Planck. He said, “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles 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.” He used quantum mechanics to find God. And how beautiful is that?
I think the extent to which we ourselves are energy is something that few people on earth can imagine, but there is a sea-change coming in human perception… and as we as a species move into thinking more in an eternal frame, so many of what are terrible social and cultural problems now will quite literally melt into nothing!
What a beautiful quote from Max Planck. Thanks for posting it. It’s amazing that he could get his point across and still stay within the paradigm of science. Sir James Jeans, a famous astronomer from the UK said that the universe seemed to him more like a “great mind” rather than the nuts and bolts explanation that was popular in his day. These great men knew the truth but were limited as to what they could say publicly.
I have come to a conclusion that I am looking at this from a wrong perspective.
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Genesis 50:20
I see now that there is a deeper purpose in my life and I have to stop looking back and go forward and work on a higher vibration, I know God loves me and I love God.
I think that this says it plan enough. 2 Timothy 3:1-8. 3 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.
All I can do is be ready to help when needed. I will do the right thing no matter what. I am a soldier for Christ waiting for a command form my Leader.
Dear Rockey, you are on fire! Of course, references to the “last days” have generally been taken as references to end-times or Armageddon, which became a fad notion during the first few centuries after the Lord’s transition home. That was a time of great persecution, when of course those being persecuted wanted Jesus to come back and fight for them! But those that we used to think were dead tell us now that there never will be an end-times, which makes sense since for Jesus to come back and fight a great war would debase the consciousness vibration of this planet, and would therefore negate everything that He came to do. But perhaps the reference here is to the times just before the enlightenment of all of humankind really begins…?
Good point, Roberta. For Jesus to return to participate in some kind of “war” would be entirely against what he spent so much time teaching, but if we think of the “end times” as the end of the type of paradigm we are living in rather than a physical end times, then it makes sense.
Just a note: I have been told by a medium that the reason, that all this nonsense that is going on in my life is because of envy.
Thank you Rocky for sharing so much here, something very brave to do. I can definitely see that you are an empath, which can be a hard “path” to follow. I imagine it must be difficult to maintain your balance when being constantly hit with everyone else’s “stuff”. I’m glad you’re finding peace through the spiritual path.
It’s funny how I’m feeling inspired by the irony of life’s duality right now. Despite all of its imperfection, I feel this world is actually total perfection, since it is meant to be our perfect mirror, not our master. It must reflect all the light and all the dark back to us to truly teach us, and ironically, when we learn to fully release the world and all of its attachments, we have actually fully gained the world. We have gained the freedom to appreciate and learn from every thing and every moment without being ensnared by them. We are in the world but not of it. As Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and his rightousness, and all these things will be added to you.” It looks like that is where you’re at now, and I’m sure God will find work for you.
Oh dear Scott, how beautifully said! We are told by those not in bodies that of all the many places in this material universe where people can come to push against negativity and thereby ever better learn and grow spiritually, this planet is the toughest but also the most effective place for us to grow, perhaps not perfect but in its very imperfections extremely efficient in its results for many of us. Very well said.
It is no coincidence that accounts of visits from angels in the Bible often began with a request to put aside fears. One great leader summed it up by the famous quote “there is nothing to fear but fear itself.”
How ironic that visits from angels started out with instructions not to have fear when the whole religion of early Christianity was entirely based and built on fear.
Dear Tom, when you read the Old Testament from a viewpoint of modern knowledge of what is really going on, you can see with amusement and fascination the ways in which the very limitations put on humankind when we come here – the limitation of our minds, the amnesia about our true home – will repeatedly get in the way of our understanding. So, for example, angelic beings that are a commonplace of life in the astral are objects of superstition and terror to Iron Age primitives on earth. When the whole point of our being here is efficient spiritual growth, this is quite a complication!
Dearest Roberta,
You indicated above that to talk of love and fear would result in people seeing this as “woo-woo” behavior; therefore the growing of love based consciousness would have to be a stealth process. Hence you espouse the transformation of our institutions into love based ones instead of the existing fear based fixtures that we know too well.
May we not work on, say, three fronts? The first being love based lives, the second being love based relationships and the third being love based institutions. Would a troika of love transformation not work? This first gives the sense of inner change (via our own lives) that expresses in outer change (relationships and institutions). In truth, real transformation does take place within and then manifests external change. To change one’s inner life is eventually to change one’s relationships with others and then, as a group consequence, to change all our civic and political institutions. (I just imagine a single pebble dropped into a still pool that forms fluid, concentric, expanding waves.)
As you rightly say faith, believing in what you cannot see and the suspension of skepticism is not enough for modern, savvy human beings. Moderns will need something more evident in this uncertain, information clogged, fear and strife based world. People could initially be shown the effectiveness of changing their mental-emotional mindset to expel fear and express love. The personally liberating experience of this transformation (and its observable results) would be all the evidence needed. No leap of faith would be necessary.
As individuals move to become beings of love, relationships would be enriched greatly and many solutions to long standing impasses would be found. (Of course, some toxic relationships may have to end, perhaps more peacefully though.) Everything from family and friends to the work environment and more would become increasingly more loving, gradually dissolving fear and insecurity. Again the resulting relationship change would be undeniable evidence that this ‘love transformation stuff’ works.
Out of the former two comes the movement to transform our public institutions et al. Once those who are transforming establish bonds of love, they could be a powerful force in reshaping institutions. As a collective for love based, radical change, such a force would be very caring, focused, dynamic and effective.
Just a thought my dear. It’s a three pronged approach that could be employed via new media, courses, local meeting groups and a larger love based movement. Certainly, this new movement would be unlike the shrill, aggressive, pugnacious and partisan, alarmist, vitriolic ‘social justice warriors’ of today.
🙏🏼❣️😊
Dear Efrem, this is indeed one way to look at the potential solution, and it may well be the most productive way – you may well be describing how this will actually happen. Thomas is telling me, however, what he so often tells me when I try to think about tackling larger problems in complex ways: that is not my role. I am a kindergarten teacher, a grade-school teacher, someone here to teach broadly and in the simplest terms, to build the base of understanding and spiritual development on which those who come after me will be able to build the great solutions.
This is not the first time I have heard this from him! But he is having to say it less often now, and just as a gentle reminder. I recall that just after The Fun of Dying was published, and it was getting great reviews and there was interest in me as a speaker, I started thinkin’ I was pretty hot stuff. I’m an afterlife expert! So then one morning I woke up realizing that I had just been taken to the woodshed, and of course this was years before I had met Thomas – I knew only that it was my spirit guide talking. He had said to me, and loudly, “You are not an expert! That is not your role! You are to teach on the most basic possible level! And be humble!” Oy, even now the memory of what he said ten years ago can make my cheeks burn 😉
dear roberta when we pass to the after life do we have achoice of reincarnation or staying with our loved ones?
Hi Terry,
Roberta and others may have a clearer picture than I, but I think I can shed some light based on what I have been shown by my beloved spirit guide. Everything we do is our choice. Reincarnation is a funny thing because from the “other side” it looks and feels very different from the experience we perceive in this realm. We are eternally with our loved ones. Our choices on how to grow spiritually may even be made with their input. The choices may be played out on earth, or in another spiritual way. How we pursue our growth is never formulated alone, but we are always the choosers. So, in short, my guide has shown me that we can choose to be with our loved ones as long as it suits us.
Hello Terry! I started an answer to you, but was called away before I could complete it. And fortunately, our wonderful Mike and Arrow were on duty!
I would just add two things:
1) There is no time beyond this level of reality, so we can spend what might feel to us like forever in the period right after leaving a lifetime. Freedom from time is the greatest freedom there is!
2) When we and/or our loved ones start to hanker for the additional spiritual growth that can come from another lifetime on earth, often we will plan this next lifetime together. Some may switch genders or birth order or roles in each other’s lives, but often we will repeat incarnations with people we already love.
Roberta and everybody:
This blog entry is not about reincarnation, and also, Terry, I very much understand where your concern is, so this comment is not meant to build on my initial answer to you. Rather is sort of elucidates what Roberta has written above, as a example of a group of loved ones making plans to incarnate together. (Incidentally we — that is, my spirit guide and the rest of the team — don’t like the word “reincarnate” because it’s an earthbound perspective and therefore confusing.) I have been shown that my spirit guide herself has probably not had the experience we perceive as incarnation in about 1,000 years from a timeline perspective, and yet she has kept her hand in through other means. She and I have been, we’ll say “associated” perhaps forever, and she, as a higher level being, has been a mentor to me in many ways, not all of them having to do with incarnation. So we grow spiritually in whatever way makes sense to whatever it is we choose to do “next.” I have been shown that for this particular experience I am perceiving as incarnation, it was a “hard sell.” She recruited me to work on something (unfortunately, I have to also discover what that something is now because I only have the vaguest of memories through dream work of this recruitment effort. But, in short, I didn’t ask to be born! I have reason to believe that my (now) wife was recruited with me. Ultimately, yes, we did agree, but I do remember my last “hug” with my spirit guide before I “left” and I remember that there was still some reluctance on my part about my ability to “do the job.”
So, for what it’s worth, incarnation has been shown to me to be a very deliberate process, definitely purposeful, our own choice, but part of a larger objective that involves many people. Our guides aren’t just guides, they are experienced project leaders who have chosen us (perhaps in some cases having to argue us out of our petty, insecure objections). It’s an interesting planning process and at any point, I believe, I could have finally said no. But she knows me SO well and is SO persuasive, how could I not finally agree??? 😉
Maybe there will be a future opportunity, here or elsewhere, to explore this deliberative process!
thank you mike for my answer terry
Oy Vey dearest Roberta! Thomas doesn’t mince words, does he?!
The point is clear though; to keep humble and grounded is truly the beautiful path of transformation.
So you are the teacher and the builder of the base of understanding. That’s quite a role, my dear. To me you are the quickener; the channel of the Highest to speed up and actualize growth.
As to myself, sometimes I feel like a boy inside who never grew up. So I’m interested in how things work and in helping, of course. (Like the kid who opens up the clock to see how the cogs and springs work. 😉)
And I am nudged to realize that deeper than the boy inside is my timeless Self with a message for my conscious self:
“When you lose all sense of self
the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish
Lose yourself completely
Return to the root of the root of your own soul.” – Rumi
❣️🙏🏼🙂
Dear Efrem, indeed, Thomas doesn’t mince words with me! Our relationship is probably unusual, but we are used to it and it works for us.
He and I have shared 17 lifetimes as male comrades, generally with me as the junior and more conservative one and him as a leader, and often as a rebel. In his old age as Jefferson, I was apparently his young protege, Richard Rush (I have been told this by more than one medium, and I even have a probable memory from that lifetime, but Richard Rush was a big shot in his own right so I would need more proof to outright make this claim).
So Thomas is used to bossing me around. And he is somewhat uncomfortable with my gender, much as you would be if you were working with an old friend who suddenly switched genders on you, even though we had decided together that I might encounter less opposition as a female. Spirit guides are supposed to be deferential to us, to help and serve us, but in our case Thomas’s longtime sidekick agreed to come in and be his avatar to help him complete some things that he hadn’t completed in his Jefferson lifetime. He agreed to guide me through a few things that I wanted to improve on in myself, provided that I would do what he wanted to get done. Deal.
But since I have no memory of our history, I am more independent than he would like, and a lot more female. He has on occasion exploded at me and let me remember that exchange; for example, I woke up one morning a few years back and knew that he had just called me an “obsessive nutcase.” Good grief. (My husband agrees with that assessment.)
Thomas won’t communicate with me through mediums anymore because he refuses to answer questions about our prior lives together, and right now he is irritated that I am even talking about this. But I see my job as teaching primarily, and if I am living this kind of avatar-lifetime, then others likely are as well.
That’s an incredible relationship that you and Thomas Who Was Thomas Jefferson share. I have a sense of something ongoing in that timeless place, that both supersedes and progresses through different lifetimes. (If this relationship doesn’t bespeak our eternal nature, I don’t know what does!)
And ..um.. I know in my own way how it feels when certain good friends (both female and male in my case) have fallen in love with me. It’s uniquely, squeamishly uncomfortable. I can’t go there.. Somehow a friend is a friend and by inner/essential definition, not a lover. I can’t and don’t make the jump across to ‘partner love.’ So I kinda get Thomas’ discomfort with your female gender in this lifetime. (Dare I say it ? There is possible humor when thinking how Thomas felt when you were ‘crushing on him’ one time. 😉)
And my dearest Roberta, I feel honored that you have shared such personal details with me and our blog family (even if it makes Thomas a little irritated).
Thank you. 🙏🏼
PS: You see your relationship with your Guide feels very real to me. As I have bonded with my own Guide I can somewhat relate. (She has her own style; being both pushy and encouraging at once. Then she leaves signs around just to let me know she’s taking care of me.)
Dear Efrem,
See my comment above for my (added) perspective on relationships with guides and the experiences we perceive as incarnation. From the POV of our guides while we are in the earthly realm, there is a whole “project” going on and we are vital to its success. This time, I am convinced it’s a project toward a grand transformation of cosmic proportions.
I was born into a fear based family, attended a fear based school and a fear based church, and was sent out into the world to get a fear based job. Even now, years later, I still have a certain feeling of unworthiness because everything I was associated with was fear based. Therefore, any meaningful change to a love based life has to begin in childhood, as that is when impressions are formed. These people can then pass on their love based thoughts to their children, and so on down the line until it becomes a way of life and will replace the fear based lives. As it is now, we have been immersed for such a long time in fear that we probably are no longer aware of what we are actually fearful of, as it has become such an every day part of our lives, and is the only way we know how to live. Childhood is where to begin, and as Efrem mentioned above, this will start with individuals and eventually extend to institutions, organizations and governments.
Dear Lola. I’m with you. If only the spiritual education (truly spiritual, not religious dogmatism) could start with the children, the young ones. Then there would be so much less negative programming and trauma going in that would have to be cleaned out later. If only schools taught the most important subject – how to live. With any luck, this generation coming in will be the first to see nuts and bolts demonstration of the afterlife, through instrumenal transcommunication and similar technologies, and maybe some of those spiritual principles will be coming through along with the messages from loved ones. Maybe then, the way children are educated will start to change, and the other institutions as well.
Dear Lola, I tend to think that you are right about fear, so much of which settles deep within; so deep that the sense of fear is beyond any conscious reason for it. I guess it pervades the human world so much that we don’t even see it anymore.
And how much fear occurs because we don’t really feel loved?
Where better to begin a loved based awareness than in childhood. I reckon that you are correct when you foresee how this will strengthen down the line. I guess each generation brought up in a loved base life will expand and enrich such an understanding. It’s an amazing vision, is it not? 😉❣️🙏🏼
You’re right, Efrem. We are rarely conscious of having fear any more than we are conscious of having white blood cells for instance. However, not being conscious of something doesn’t stop it from working for or against us. I think Scott’s suggestion of teaching this is schools is an excellent one – in fact, I think it is imperative and should be taught to children as soon as they are in first grade – just like they are taught to read and do simple math. Like you said, each generation will accept more and more the teachings of a love based life to the extent that it will become so common that no one will question it, This is what happened with the fear based reality that we are now living in. Most people don’t question it – it’s “just the way things are.” .
Lola & Scott, I loved both your ideas. In fact if you put them together you’d have a great launch pad for the growth of love based living as the new human culture.
To focus on children and to teach ‘how to live’ as an actual school subject, would change society from its foundation. Real love based, spiritual education would be something kids would take to like a duck to water. Their innocent and essentially loving nature would respond beautifully.
Although the approach and subject material should be designed carefully, considering various non loving family homes that many kids would return to after school each day. The ‘mismatch’ with a difficult home environment would need to be considered, I think.
And Scott, if and when we have proof of the afterlife (or the Always Life, as Mike J-R has named it) can you imagine how ground shifting it would be!? An actual audio/visual device would change human perception even more than scientific confirmation of the existence of sentient aliens. 👽 And I believe their are people working on such devices right now. 👍🙏🏼🎇
They are working on at least one device that I know of called “the soul phone.” This is under the direction of Dr. Gary Schwartz who has a top level job at the University of Arizona. Its goal is to create a line of communication from the living to the dead and vice versa, although, its name is a misnomer. It will consist of stations that people will go to in major cities and through a series of computer generated programs, a line of communication will be formed between the living and those in spirit. It sounds ridiculous, but they predict this will be ready to try out in about 3 years and possibly less. See the website http://www.Soulphone.com for further details.
Dear Scott, Efrem, Lola, and everyone, I love the way you are embracing these ideas, and I agree with you complerely!
Dear Lola, I agree completely with what you say in your original post above, and this is why I wrote that prior post explaining that children are born as love-based beings before we confuse and distress them with fear-based ideas. Just imagine the kinds of people our children might so easily become if only we could avoid teaching them to have any fears at all!
Where the idea of reliable electronic communication with the dead is concerned, there actually are several teams working in this field, and it may amuse you to know that all of those in bodies are the lab assistants. The real researchers – and there are many – are scientists who are not now in bodies!
I know, Roberta. These people (like Mark Pitstick and Gary Schwartz) casually mention that they are working along side Nicola Tesla etc. Frankly, I don’t think the “live” researchers could make any progress without them. Isn’t it great that Gary and Mark acknowledge this. Not too long ago, they would have been thought of as crazy if they even mentioned such a thing as working with dead scientists in order to communicate with loved ones who have passed on. I think this will be the next step in our evolution and, to me, it is the most important step of all. It will completely eliminate the fear based religions. .
Dear Lola, many of us have our fingers crossed about this! When anyone can just use an Ap to phone up dead Aunt Mildred and get her secret recipe, then the whole scientific/materialist house of cards will collapse. We can’t wait!!
I love the comment thread here. I previously believed that I “needed” my Christian upbringing to be a good and moral citizen. However, it is enlightening to finally understand that I didn’t “need” that at all. I could have been just as loving and perhaps more able to love, without all that fear based baggage. I also think children need that unconditional love from their parents but they get confused when parents challenge that love with rules and provisions. I am thankful for my dogs who show love and loyalty everyday. Animals have healing powers for humans. Some people may think they are just stupid animals, but they show the secret in so many ways to joyful living.
Hey Timothy !
I too had a similar realization; I thought that I needed my Jewish moral upbringing to be a good person. To really feel whole I had/have to ditch the guilt; the sin and virtue polarity. Your point about not needing this stuff is clear, brother. Goodness is our very core.
Imagine growing up without guilt and fear. Wouldn’t this have been so amazing!?
Thankfully I had the most loving parents who taught me at a deep level that I was loved just for being me. (Various rejections and those who believed otherwise about me came later.)
And now I live in the Harbor City, in an inner city residence with my tall whippet ‘Divo’. And as you say, he loves me without reservation. Dogs’ loyalty is constant and for the duration of their lives, quite timeless. They do heal us and open our hearts, don’t they? 🙏🏼🌅😉
Dear Timothy and Efrem, all so true! And dogs, especially, are a wonderful example of perfect, entirely selfless love. They are such a gift, and a powerful lesson to us all!
Efrem and Tim:. I have had dogs all my life and could tell some amazing stories about them. Some dogs seem to be more “in tune” than others. The death of my most recent dog completely devastated me and still does even though he died of cancer on New Years Eve of 2011. Two weeks ago, I listened to an animal communicator on a talk show, and she insisted that their souls were able to communicate with us after death, just like human beings could. She said we just have to ask for a sign from them and they would be able to give us one. Frankly, I thought she was nuts, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. My dog’s name was Cody, and his favorite foods were French fries and beef jerky. I told him how much I missed him and asked for a sign. Nothing happened then, of course, but I had to go to a local market – something I hate doing. While I was standing in the checkout line, I was bored and started looking around. I noticed a rack with various food items on it, and I was completely blown away when I saw a new item I never saw before (I had been to this place dozens of times). It was called “Cody’s original beef jerky.” Maybe it was just a coincidence, but after asking for a sign just an hour before seeing this, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was actually a sign from him. Maybe it wasn’t a sign directly from him, but could have been from a spirit guide or something. If so, then someone heard me ask for a sign. Of course, it could all be a coincidence, but I never saw anything like that in the store that I go to constantly. Since it was a food he loved (beef jerky) and his name, I thought it was really strange