Posted by Roberta Grimes • March 28, 2020 • 54 Comments
Book News, The Teachings of Jesus, Understanding Reality
“If you hold to My teaching,
you are really My disciples.
Then you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.”
– Jesus, from the Bible’s Gospels (JN 8:31-32)
You may be surprised to see me fighting so hard to safeguard the evidence-based truth about death and the afterlife from efforts to “augment” it with NDE information. But the stakes in this could not be higher! As we said last week, near-death experiences (NDEs) have nothing to do with actual death. But they are such extraordinary personal experiences that of late more and more experiencers are claiming that they actually “died and came back to life,” which is flat impossible. They are then telling their aberrant stories of what they think happened during their NDEs as if they are giving us evidence of what happens at and after a genuine death.
This determination on the part of a few NDE-ers to muddy the truth with their own ideas is a direct existential threat to the dawning enlightenment of humankind. For the first time in our history, soon after the start of this century we at last amassed sufficient consistent and reliable evidence of what happens at and after death to be able to demonstrate the certainty of universal human survival! For the first time we had a vast store of truth about what actually is going on that fits together and makes sense.
We had already had to fight long and hard to protect more than a century’s worth of truth as it was being assembled. Even as recently as the first decade of this century, there still were occasional direct assaults by professional skeptics on anyone claiming to have real afterlife knowledge; and the brunt of those attacks fell on two intrepid Australian researchers, Victor and Wendy Zammit. Victor and Wendy are long-
term fighters for the truth in the field of afterlife education. At one point they even posted a million-dollar challenge to anyone who could refute the evidence in their book, A Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife. By 2010, the Zammits had won for us the last of the battles we ever will need to fight against the fading advocates of atheistic materialism. They deserve a world of thanks!
So by the start of this century’s second decade, we had at last assembled a pristine pool of information in the field of human survival that is consistent, sufficient, and irrefutable. The truth turns out to be eternal life and perfect love beyond our greatest imaginings! And just as we were able to begin to broadly share this glorious truth and all the evidence that supports it, a few NDE-ers began to dump their random and aberrant experiences into what had been an amazingly consistent pool of evidence-based information. These experiencers’ understanding is so limited that their contributions have begun to act on the truth like acid on a pearl of great price (MT 13:45). Unless we can soon find a bright-line way to insulate the truth about death and the afterlife from all these NDE falsehoods, NDEs will soon have muddied what we now know to the point where our present clarity will sink back into becoming again just conflicting opinions in a sea of confusion.
Oh, some people still will care about maintaining and sharing the literal truth. Books like the Zammits’, the work of people like Michael Tymn, Stafford Betty, Mikey Morgan, and Sandra Champlain, and my own books will remain immune to obfuscation. But far too many well-meaning people are going to assume that the lies are true and spread them even more; and in doing so, they risk sharply setting back humankind’s spiritual progress. So now, while it still is possible to protect the truth that has been so hard-won, let’s peek ahead and speculate about what human life on earth will be like when most of us at last have managed to know and love and live the truth.
Helping to bring the kingdom of God on earth is everybody’s main task now!
The consciousness vibrations of this planet’s inhabitants have sunk so deep into negativity that unless we can turn things around pretty soon, we risk witnessing the earth’s destruction in the fear- and hatred-based swamp of pain that already is causing us so much harm!
And the easiest way for anyone to raise his or her consciousness vibrations and grow spiritually is simply to apply the Gospel teachings of Jesus. No need to learn to meditate, do yoga, chant, or even really pray; just follow three simple steps as you go on living your life:
shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven” (MT 18:21-23). Jesus also said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and it will be given to you … For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return” (LK 6:37-38). Forgiving only after you have already suffered a wrong is so hard! But reprogramming your mind to forgive everything that ever might happen for the rest of your life actually is pretty easy. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so wisely said, “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.” So this program to raise our consciousness vibrations that is based in the teachings of Jesus is a straightforward process. It can be completed within a few years at most, and it works amazingly well. But defeating the fear of death is its essential first step, and becoming sufficiently certain about universal human survival that you altogether lose your fear of death is so hard! It isn’t enough to believe in an afterlife. Hoping for the best doesn’t work at all. No, what you need is the kind if certainty that your mind will survive your death that you feel about the rising of the sun each morning. You also need the same easy familiarity with what the afterlife is like that you have with the landmarks of London or New York. Even with an abundance of consistent afterlife information now so available, it takes real work for each of us to altogether vanquish our fear of death!
By the late nineties I had spent decades researching whole reams of amazingly consistent communications from the dead received before 1940, enough to be able to construct a believable model for what the afterlife is like. I had begun as a skeptic, but by then I believed that life does continue after physical death; but I was seeing, too, 
that even a deep and sincere belief still is nothing like knowing! Belief just gets you through the night and to another day of trying to know for sure. When people at last become certain that their lives will indeed go on after death – and even before they have mastered forgiveness, or focused on learning how to love – they begin to live and think in an eternal frame. I am such a skeptic that I wasn’t really able to give up all my doubts until the end of the nineties, when I discovered in the midst of a religious crisis that those that we used to think were dead were confirming what Jesus had said in the Gospels, even in minute detail. That was the day and hour when I became certain at last that human life is eternal. And my mind began to live in that moment as part of a timeless forevermore!
My reaction to becoming certain that I never will die was just what seems to happen to most people. I fell in love with Spirit! The God I found in the Gospels was reinforcing what I had learned from studying communications from the dead, and I knew for certain that God is perfect love. I knew that Jesus is an aspect of the Godhead. That was when I started to live my life with an open prayer-line, and I cleaned up my spiritual living room. Within a decade, in a bout of joy I gave the rest of my life to God, and the first fruit of that was a craving to share what I knew was true about death. So then I wrote The Fun of Dying. I developed a hunger for growing spiritually, and I turned to the Jesus of the Gospels for help so within another year I had figured out forgiveness. Within two more years I had discovered that the process of spiritual growth outlined above seems to work for anyone, provided that those applying it have first mastered a certainty about life after death.
So the linchpin of humankind’s entire future is our need to maintain the purity of the evidence for life after death. And this is true because only when we are so certain about humankind’s immortality that we begin to live in an eternal frame are we able to materially raise our consciousness vibrations away from fear and toward perfect love. When we are certain that we will survive our deaths, our vibrations begin to rise naturally!
It will be fun to begin to explore how a general certainty about life after death in only ten or twenty percent of the human population is going to transform our lives as we now live them on earth. But our thinking about that will need to wait until after we have spent a couple of weeks considering the Easter season. Easter turns out to have been the Lord’s great effort to teach us about immortality. And it is time now for us to move past the fear-based nonsense that is Christianity and listen to what Jesus actually 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.”
– Jesus, from the Bible’s Gospels (MT 7:7-8)
Dear Roberta,
Yes, knowing life after death is not a hope but to know beyond all imagination and also hold that truth close to your heart is really life changing.
I know many people come to study afterlife or reach out to mediums in search of answers for why their loved ones passed in such a horrific manner or so young, and seek reassurance that they are in a “Good Place”.
For me, even loved ones who have been gone for decades feel so near to me now.
But, when you leave fear of death out of your daily experiences, you truly open your eyes and spirit to a greater world of complete wonder, love and peace.
Have a Great Day.
Dear Timothy, I am so glad that you are having this experience! It is astonishingly transformative in every possible way, to be able to live with eternal life as an ever-present, comforting, empowering fact. I think now that I never was completely happy until I was living in an eternal frame; in truth, I can no longer really remember what my life was like before.
Roberta,
I have a question about prevenient forgiveness. A literal reading seems to imply that we need to forgive an act before it happens. That seems hard to manage. In some cases, though it might actually happen.
Where I live there is a certain intersection with Dean st. and Route 1. Dean St is marked off in four lanes, only one of which allows you to go straight across to upper Dean St. Yet on several occasions, I have looked at the vehicle to my right, which is supposed to proceed northbound on Rte. 1 and sort of “knew” that it was going to cut me off and proceed up Dean St.
I don’t know how I sort of knew. The last time it happened I even managed to ask forgiveness for the other driver. Is this a usual manner for the workings of prevenient forgiveness? The right interpretation of prevenient forgiveness?
Yours,
Cookie
Dear Cookie, apparently you include mind-reading in your bag of tricks!
Prevenient forgiveness is simply the process of training your mind never to be bothered by anything or anyone, so if you are cut off in traffic or if someone does something else that bothers you then you won’t be troubled by it. We have taught our minds in ego-based ways to become upset; and it turns out to be pretty easy to reverse that process! My book, The Fun of Growing Forever, details how to do it.
I should add – and this surprises me very much – that the process is remarkably self-reinforcing. Once you have fully retrained your mind, it seems to “get” the notion that nothing is supposed to upset you and so nothing really does, and just the loss of most negative emotions from your life makes your spiritual growth feel immensely easier!
When my marriage to an extremely verbally abusive wife ended, I came across an article that talked about gratitude, and when I applied gratitude especially for all the negative things in my life, they started to one by one melt away.
I have always had a very forgiving heart. But forgiveness doesn’t always mean that the pain goes away, but gratitude is the ointment that heals those wounds.
I am totally free of any negativity towards her, and for that reason, towards anyone. I still judge people a little bit, but even that is lessening a lot over the past few years. I will be free of it soon, I’m sure.
I remember when I was around 11 or so there was a construction foreman of a house nearby being built who I judged as a really mean and fearsome guy, but when he warned me not to play at the construction site, he was so kind and friendly, and it taught me the valuable lesson not to judge book by its cover.
Anyone can do this (forgive and be grateful). As one person once wisely said: “if you find yourself in [your] hell, just keep walking…”
Following Jesus and God is actually very simple; it’s not rocket science whatsoever; you also get a lot of assistance from the spirit world once you’re on that road. But you have to remember that this road may look a bit different than the one you imagined, and that even sometimes you will be guided to a side road for a short while for a reason before you are on the main road again. God is wise and life on earth is place for learning.
I totally agree that dogmatisms based on NDEs doesn’t paint the whole picture. That too became clear after I had read many NDEs.
Thanks for this excellent post today!
Dear Adri, you make such a wonderful point! Gratitude is a core spiritual talent that makes spiritual growth much easier, and pairing it with forgiveness really opens your heart to grace!
I especially advocate for making gratitude the core of our prayer life, and praying in gratitude affirmations even in the direst circumstances. Doing that lets you claim not the lack, but the gift! “Thank You God for healing my mother’s illness.” “Thank You God for the perfect job You have chosen for me.” And so on. Not only does doing this make our prayers more powerful, but it makes for a more peaceful and basically a happier mind. And you’ve given me a blog-post idea….
Dear Roberta,
Thank you for this wonderful and clearly written post. The truths expressed in it resonate with the things I am experiencing and learning.
I look forward to reading your weekly posts. Thank you so much for writing them.
Warmly,
Keith
Dear Keith, I am so glad you find them helpful! Thank you for saying so, since they do take time and effort and it’s wonderful to know that you find them worthwhile!
Interestingly, it was reading and listening about NDEs that started giving me a certainty about life after death. I admit that their far ranging reports were confusing to me, but weren’t confusing enough to take away my growing certainty.
I was led to your Fun of Dying book which led me to Mikey Morgan’s book and then to Monsignor Benson’s books. It was good to be able to lay aside the NDEs variability and hold on to the more consistent reports.
I have reread all the above books and my faith in the afterlife is growing. It is a comfort as I am now feeling closer to death than to birth these days. It has motivated me to clean up my thinking, spirituality, and life. I have wanted to deal with some “messes” that I have created so my precious wife doesn’t have to do so should I die sooner than later.
I have pondered my life’s “mistakes” and have drawn strength from never wanting to repeat those behaviors. I sure hope that my lesson-learning is sufficient to progress as I am very reluctant (after feeling very poorly these days) to try another life again to get it perfect. I see my long life as a gift and from a whole new perspective.
Thank you, Roberta, again for your efforts at sharing your research and insights.
Your friend, David D.
David: I have read and re-read the very same books you mentioned plus many others, and when I realized how consistent they were (unlike NDS’s), I knew that couldn’t be a coincidence. I was particularly struck by the need of Hugh Benson in “Life in the World Unseen” to get the truth out, as he spent his life preaching about fear based Christianity and felt that he had to retract the statements he had made during his life as a Monsignor. It pays to read books more than once. I always found that reading them again offers a new perspective
Oh dear David, I am closer to death than to birth as well, and I understand feeling weary of life and not wanting to come back! But the glorious truth is that when we transition we will be again young and full of energy, so this too shall pass 🙂
And what NDEs do show, and abundantly, is two very important things that make believing that life is eternal so much easier:
1) NDEs demonstrate that our minds can easily function apart from our bodies, and even when our bodies are briefly non-functional; and
2) Most NDEs happen in a glorious, love-filled place, which strongly suggests that what comes after death must be wonderful.
For a long time, NDE-ers were focused primarily on sharing those two points, so their contributions were a gift to us all. It is only when they try to link NDEs to actual death that they begin to do harm!
Hello Roberta! I have loved watching your interviews and your clear thoughts about The teachings of Christ. This is the first email I have received since subscribing to your blog.
I was quite surprise to find your Rather forceful declaration that people don’t need to do anything (don’t bother to meditate etc) but just read the gospels and that’s all you need. How odd that you of all people would think you can decide for the rest of us what “works” as our path to divine knowledge.
I for one was so turned off by all the people pushing Jesus and other holy people during the 60s that I avoided all of them (including what could have given me solace) for decades.
Keep your light and love pure and attract to your message those who match that purity in their seeking. Allow us to find our paths in our own ways. They all lead to the same source of love in exactly the right divine timing. God doesn’t make mistakes.
Dear Barbara, I’m sorry if I have offended you! I find that to some extent this goes with the territory now: the more people who find me, the more I disappoint them. If you had been reading my blog for awhile, you would know that I am not saying that following the Lord’s teaching is the only, or arguably even the best way to raise your personal consciousness vibration, and I certainly never have said that all you have to do is “just read the Gospels and that’s all you need.” No, but the Gospel teachings can be used to rapidly raise your vibrations in as little as just a few months, provided they are properly applied. My book, The Fun of Growing Forever, shows how it is done. And most of the readers here know that, so for them I can build on what they already know and not spend much of this post reiterating it but instead I can just build on their knowledge this time.
You are right to remind me that some who are reading here are here for the first time. For you, and for them, I will simply add that Jesus Himself said that there are many pathways to God, and many ways to raise our vibrations (He didn’t speak in those terms, of course). The particular ministry to which I am being called is to disaffected Christians, the ranks of which are being swelled now to an amazing extent! I hear from many of them every day at this point. And they all are desperate for a closer walk with Jesus, and still steeped in the fear that lies at the heart of Christianity. For them, in particular, using the familiar teachings of Jesus to raise their personal vibrations feels safe and welcoming. For them, in particular, Eastern religious practices still seem scary, so for me to suggest that they meditate and do yoga would only reinforce their fears. If you are willing to give me another chance, please just forevermore assume that it is for them alone that I recommend that the teachings of Jesus can serve as a basis for considerable spiritual growth, and perhaps be glad that someone is helping them while you are already free of fear and you can proceed to do other things?
Dear Roberta,
It is in the context of what you have written above that I add this suggestion: that people who still have a hard time with their fear get to recognize the ways in which their spirit guides work. Spirit guides are personally working with us, by contract if you will, to help us find our way through the morass of earthly experience we perceive as incarnation. It is true that in the realm of God—which is around us, within us, and serves us now—there are no mistakes; however, these beings, who have known us forever, are already helping us and are begging to show us more clearly how to get to where we want to go. We have had many a discussion here about how spirit guides are focused on ourvreaching our very personal objectives.
Dear Mike, I have wanted to advocate more for opening our relationships with our spirit guides and using them to teach others how to do the same, but my own Thomas is reticent about it. So thank you for giving us this reminder!
Indeed, every person on earth has a loving friend who is more spiritually advanced and is always right there and eager to help. And most of us have more than one such friend. Every person on the street is a walking crowd! If living on earth is elementary school, then these spirit guides have graduated to high school so they no longer need to incarnate. Instead, by helping someone on earth to grow spiritually they continue to advance their own spiritual growth as well.
I would just like to stress that our guides love doing this work, and they love us, but each of them is as individual as you and I are! You can see that here just in the few things that Mike and I have shared about our own guides. Mike’s Arrow is an open and quite spiritual-seeming being who is happy to talk to us through him, while my Thomas will have none of that. He is the most intensely all-business guy that I have ever known! He is on a mission, and he expects me to be similarly focused on the mission. He won’t speak through me because he doesn’t want your attention on him, and he emphatically doesn’t want to talk about his recent famous lifetime. He wants to save the world, and nothing else much matters to him now.
(And now he’s telling me that I’m making him seem too serious. He insists that he does enjoy our work. He just wants to get it done! And yes, there are times when he does smile a little. Like now.)
Thank you, Roberta! I am given to realize that our guides complement our missions here perfectly. As you point out, they have a stake in what we are accomplishing. Arrow can be both mystical and practical, and she also sends me on scavenger hunts for answers because she knows that I will respond to that. Our guides are the most help we can imagine. And again, as you say, they are doing out of love and in some cases sacrifice. What a divine gift. Why not access that power?
Dear Roberta,
I occasionally view videos about NDEs. It has been becoming quite a movement as of late. After learning from you, it makes total sense to me that NDEs aren’t the same as never returning. I have viewed a few of your recent blog articles, so I’m sorry if I may have missed it, but I’d like to know what the false information is that the NDE people are passing along that is detrimental to the truth you want to spread about the afterlife. I’m very curious about the reasons, other than the more obvious reason that they believe they are actually in the afterlife instead of a temporary meeting place. Thank you.
I just thought of one reason after I posted that… the NDE groups are claiming that the afterlife is basically the same as heaven – everything is sunshine and roses until you have to come back here again. Whereas you know there are many levels of vibration in the afterlife and that some of these dead people will really end up in the lower to mid levels where there are some limitations.
Dear Francine, my previous blog post – Near-Death is Not Real Death – lists the ten primary distinctions between NDEs and actual death. And The Happy Process of Natural Death talks about the actual death process. How will anyone ever understand death if all the things that randomly happen in NDE experiences are just mushed in with the very specific and consistent events of the genuine death process?
In order for us to raise the consciousness vibrations of this planet, it will be essential for us to overcome the fear of death! So beyond the simple fact that truth is truth and nonsense is nonsense – which should by itself be reason enough to trumpet from the rooftops the fact that NDEs have nothing to do with death! – I have these further specific concerns:
1) When people first leave their bodies, they are as clueless as it is possible to be. That is why deathbed visitors are so important: they show up to rescue us and take us home. Even with their help, the fact that we don’t know what is going on or what to do or where to go means that apparently some 20% of those who die still go off-track for a time and need to be rescued. So I want every person on earth to know the process that begins when we first leave our bodies! No tunnel. No light. No floating around in the astral and having adventures. Just Mom coming and taking our hand and leading us home to a beautiful reality that exists right where we are now, but at a higher vibration.
2) NDEs scare a lot of people. About one in seven NDEs is hellish, and I now actually get outraged emails from people who insist that since hell appears in some NDEs, of course it must exist and I’ve got to stop saying it doesn’t! And this, even though that fiery hell was just a figment of imagination pulled from some experiencer’s mind. There is no physical God, no judgment by anyone but ourselves, and no reason for anyone to be afraid!
3) The “lessons learned” in some NDEs feel important to the experiencers, and often make them feel self-important; and for any of us to feel like God’s Chosen Messenger is not helpful to the world. To be given a message to share can make you feel like Moses coming down from the mountain! And believe me, I get that. Look at my life – two experiences of light and being chosen to channel Jesus, for heaven’s sake? And being given all this knowledge, having the gift of being able to really help so many people, all day and every day? But my dear, wise Thomas has beaten me up repeatedly, whenever I have ever for a moment thought that any of this was about me. He tells me I’m just a kindergarten teacher – or maybe elementary school – which is important, but it doesn’t make me Einstein! But since NDEs are random and largely pulled from the experiencer’s mind, most of those sharing their NDE revelations don’t have the gift of a Thomas to keep their feet on the ground, which again muddies the plain afterlife truths.
… I could go on, but you get the picture. The bottom line fact is that truth matters! And when we are trying to banish the fear of death in order to begin the process of raising the consciousness vibrations of this planet, truth may matter more in this particular situation than it ever has mattered before.
Hi Roberta!
Hope you are keeping well during these times. Thanks for your article. As always, it resonates! I can tick the three boxes… most of the time anyway.
A quick question that has always puzzled me about the ‘seventy-times-seven’ forgiveness thing: When we have a toxic person in our life who lowers our vibration whenever we have contact and continually disappoints us, would Jesus be okay with us loving and forgiving them, but cutting them out of our lives as much as possible to limit the damage they cause?
I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this, Roberta.
Take care,
Kristian
Hello dear Kristian! Oh yes indeed, you are perfectly justified in lovingly removing yourself from the presence of toxic people. The mantra we use when teaching our minds to stop reacting to things that used to make us angry or otherwise upset us is, “I love you. I bless you. I forgive. And I release.” Simply use your hands to gather up the toxic person and every aspect of that toxic person in your life and form an imaginary ball, then repeat the mantra as you push away that ball with both hands. Gone!
And for those who have been lucky enough not to gather toxic people, and those who just haven’t given the matter much thought, a toxic person is anyone who makes you react negatively. So gossips, angry people, people always having a bad day, people who make you feel guilty, and anyone else who makes you frown and not smile is toxic to you. It may not be their fault that they have this effect on you, but dealing with these people makes it harder for you to raise your personal consciousness vibration so of course you can release them with love. If they keep coming back, you can be too busy to see them, or not notice their email, but never react with anger or impatience. Never be negative to them! Just calmly and sweetly reclaim control of your peace.
Thank you for your response and your wonderful advice, Roberta!
Blessings, K
While activities like meditating or practicing yoga may not be absolutely necessary, they certainly have the potential to improve one’s mental and/or physical health. In this sense they are like stepping stones which put us in a better position to raise our vibrations.
Oh yes, dear Tom – thank you for this reminder! I know people who are meditation stars, and people who swear by yoga. Apparently they both help a lot!
My husband has been meditating daily for going on 40 years now, and he swears by it. I learned to do it at the same time he did, but I am a complete flunk-out at meditation and I never could get into caring about yoga. I realize now that my ineptitude at every more exotic spiritual practice was all my dear Thomas’s doing, so I could teach spiritual practices to recovering Christians from purely a non-meditation, non-yoga perspective. These practices (and others) have done wonders for so many people, and I recommend that everyone who feels at all attracted to meditation, yoga, chanting, or anything else please give them a try. Try everything! You will find what resonates with you. And if you find that what you want is to keep it simple and make it just another part of your day, know that I am here and I have your back 😉
Dear Roberta — Am I ever happy for a late-evening YouTube rabbit hole dive! (The first I’ve indulged myself in since the pandemic began) I went from Byron Katie to NDE sharings to your interviews. And I am captivated — am thrilled, enthralled, and grateful — to have you outline SO many things I’ve thought, felt, and believed. I am a member of the Baha’i Faith, and the eternal truths you understand are so very similar to the ones I also hold about the afterlife, the Source of all life, this world as a spiritual workout gym, all Great Teachers leading us to the same Light, and our having this magnificent opportunity to live in a life that offers friction and push-back and thus extraordinary spiritual growth. Thank you so much for your clear voice and purposeful being! I can’t WAIT to share your thinking with my 83 year old mom who is also a Baha’i and great proponent that quantum physics has opened doors of understanding for spirituality that she had waited for for so long! With gratitude.
Dear Johanna, thank you for sharing such a sweet comment here! As you point out, there is just one truth, but so many roads lead to that truth! Please give your dear mother a hug from me, and if you or she ever have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask them of me through the green contact block on this website ;-).
Dear Roberta and friends, this is an amplification of our commentary above about tapping the support and help of guides to deal with residual fear or guilt about “abandoning” religion. My beloved Arrow, like your Thomas, does not much want to share information about her own experiences in earthly guise. She has shown me only enough to point me in directions I need to go.
Apparently she has not experienced earth as an incarnation in 1,000 years or more (earth time). She is a very advanced being who, I am shown, was also “recently” promoted, so her perspective is now coming from very high up with the zeal, she admits, of a convert. (I don’t think I get any credit for the “promotion.”)
When here in an earth experience, Arrow was either a shaman (women could be shaman in her group) or shaman’s wife, possibly in the Dane-Zaa band of Athabaskan people in northern Canada. The name I use for her is an English translation of the Dane-zaa word. Shaman in that group were known as Dreamers, and this is where her revelation of all of that to me became relevant. Dreamers traveled the astral plane and brought back information to the Dane-Zara that was important for their survival and growth as a people. Not all Dane-Zaa were Dreamers, it’s true, but all went on vision quests as rites of passage, and the vision quest provided each quester with a “secret power.”
These vision quests were close experiences to NDE. In another kind of culture, we modern Western people would probably be more like the Dane-Zaa and other indigenous peoples who took their shamanic experiences for granted as a mode of learning deep truths.
Arrow just wanted me to share this for what it’s worth!😃 Get to know your guides for they have much support to offer.
Mike: What an interesting story about your guide. It sounds very much like the Aboriginal people of Australia who also traveled the astral planes and called it their “dream time.” I am just curious as to how she became your guide and how you found out about her. For instance, did she come to you because she knew you would acknowledge her? It is sad that these people must have had so much knowledge to share with us, but were for the most part ignored because their views didn’t support the Western Christian religions.
Lola, I have only sketchy details because, of course, while we are having this experience we perceive as incarnation, we don’t remember much by agreement. But through dream work I have realized that apparently she and I have a mentoring relationship that goes back aeons. I think for this now, she recruited me when I was most reluctant (not relevant why, I suppose, so I don’t know); in short, I didn’t ask to be born—I was drafted!😉
PS- to your point about the aboriginal population in Australia, I learned about the astonishing similarity and even terminology from Efrem who, as you know, is Australian and has his own story to relate, should he so choose.
Hi Mike and Lola!
It was not without a little delight that I’ve read your comments referring to the Australian Aboriginal people. They are close to my heart and I can perhaps mention some points of interest. (Though there is so much abundant, cultural richness that cannot be relayed adequately here.)
The Australian Aboriginal people are the oldest continuous culture in the world, comprised of several hundred nations with hundreds of distinct languages between them. Archaeologists have evidenced their presence in Australia to 60,000 years ago and counting. The oral lore is most expansive and the Aboriginal perception of terrestrial existence, is that this earth is derived from a vast eternal reality called ‘the Dreaming’.
The Dreaming is beyond time. It is an existent reality that is at once past, present and future and it can be visited by any Aboriginal dreamer, who brings back experience and knowledge while the body sleeps at night. This ‘bringing back’ is considered an act of ‘creation.’ It is real. The Dreaming is actually ongoing creation, and this earth was fashioned out of that eternal, creative reality.
The creation stories vary across the Island Continent, but there is a core of common agreement throughout the different Aboriginal nations:
Basically, Aboriginal Divinity is a collective of creative spirits who took the form of animals and human godlike figures to create our world out of the Dreaming. The terrestrial landscape is described by these Spirits (in giant animal form) moving across the earth and shaping mountains, hills, valleys, rivers, seas et al. Then smaller earthly animals and people were made in their image. Aboriginals have ‘Songlines’ that cross cross the whole continent, and celebrate the movement of each Spirit Animal as they shaped the landscape.
The Aboriginal people see themselves as one with nature and the Dreaming (which is their true home). There is no distinction between rocks, earth, humans, plants and animals. They are part of the whole. Creation is conscious Divinity itself, and people are integrated within this Divine wholeness.
In short this is the vast, profound perspective could not be understood by the British colonizers of Australia. Even the English word ‘Dreamtime’ is inaccurate because time is not a factor in the greater reality. So in modern Australia we now use the word ‘Dreaming’ which gives at least a sense of the enduring, instead of the time bound. (The term Dreamtime is only used these days to refer to the creation era within the Dreaming.)
Sorry to say, that our English word ‘Dreaming’ is also grossly inaccurate, according to Aboriginals, who say that this term is only a rough and sketchy approximation of the true nature of things.
To Aboriginal people, a life here is a kind of dream; a kind of quest after which we return to the vastness of the Dreaming; reality itself. Human life exists so that people can learn and go home enriched.
For anyone who is interested in Australian Aboriginal perception of greater reality, please don’t hold back from looking into it. It’s awesome! 🌄🌅🎇
Dear Efrem,
Thanks for this insightful description of Australian Aboriginal spirituality. You put it into a context that makes it more relatable and approachable in relationship to the metaphyisical ideas we discuss here, such as the the non-dual consciusness or “dreamtime” that we came from (and maybe visit nightly as we sleep), and the collective nature of our co-creation of this world as a training ground, evolving it as we evolve ourselves. More often their tradition is portrayed as childish nonsense. I really enjoyed your take on it. I’m curious. There is much talk recently that the Aboriginal elders in Australia (as well as other parts of the world,) believe there is some sort of “Event” or “Shift” in consciousness about to happen. Some are reportedly heading back to the bush to prepare. With all that is going on globally, it certainly seems like something significant is happening. Being closer to the action there in Australia, have you heard anything about what the Aboriginal people think along these lines?
Efrem: I am amazed at how closely their beliefs are to many of the Native American people – since it isn’t possible that these cultures ever crossed paths, you have to wonder who or what inspired these beliefs. Both go back so far that it will not likely ever be known. The Aboriginis were though of as primitive and superstitious when, in fact, I think their beliefs are very profound.
I have a true story about an Aborininal guide who was hired by a British explorer to accompany him into the “bush.” After a time, they realized they had become lost, but the guide went into some type of trance for a while (and the British explorer freaked out as he thought he was with a crazy person). A crow like bird appeared near them, and the guide (now out of his trance) indicated that they should follow the bird and all would be ok. With no other alternative, the British explorer agreed to it. The bird flew off to the left, and the guide and explorer followed it. The bird appeared again as if it had been waiting for them. It flew off in a different direction, and they followed it only to see that it had stopped again. It then flew off. This went on for probably what seemed like forever, and the poor explorer was freaking out. Eventually, though, they came upon a small village where they found the help they needed. The British explorer was astonished by the “coincidences” but the guide acted like this was perfectly normal, as he said he “summoned” the bird for help. This coincides with their belief that everything is of one consciousness. To the guide, this was no different than if we stopped a policeman and asked for directions. It is so sad that these people and their beliefs have been almost totally ignored. I had forgotten about this over the years, but was reminded due to the conversation here. Have you ever heard of similar stories regarding the Aboriginal people?
I was drafted too, dear Mike. I suspect that many people who are now in bodies were recruited by their guides to come into lifetimes now and do our small part to advance the elevation of the consciousness of this planet. I assume you don’t mind? I can’t imagine what I would be doing with my life at this point if my wonderful friend Thomas were not in charge of it!
Hi Roberta! I don’t mind at all. And in fact I had a wonderful interaction just last night with my wonderful mystical shamanic guide Arrow that did me a world of good! I do recall being hesitant—although not why-/at the outset, but I get the mission now.
Wow. I didn’t know your relationship went back that far. How interesting. I know they teach their children about dream time at an early age, and by the time they become adults, they travel to the astral plane as easily as going to the local supermarket.
dear roberta feeling down latlycant wait to join my dear wife i was wondering if you could have a word with god to help me on my way been out couple times in this c virus not a sneeze only joking keep yourself well you have much to do come across phalm 91 seems to fit this desease all my love terryxx
Dearest Roberta,
I’ve looked into many NDEs just before I was ‘guided’ to look into your work, after finding some of your interviews on YouTube. In other words, my own spirit guide ‘nudged’ me to move from looking at NDEs to your work with a very strong, inner ‘push.’ I do now understand why:
The NDE anecdotes I encountered became circular and instead of giving a clear picture of the Afterlife, raised questions to the contrary. ‘How could such accounts contradict each other and really be true?’ I thought. So they gave me a sense of a belief in an Afterlife that was quickly undermined by conflicting accounts. For example, some people suggested the existence of hell and others flatly denied this. Some NDEs were oozing with religious characterization and some were free of religious figures and just portrayed pure light and love. Some NDEs were love affirming and others were scattered, occurring in fearful dark settings.
Then to cap it all off, the NDE-rs were frequently told (during the experience) that they couldn’t go any farther into the actual Afterlife, because they needed to go back into their bodies and continue with their earth life. So NDE-rs didn’t get to the genuine Afterlife at all!
Hence Roberta, by taking my guide’s suggestion I found your books and your teaching of ‘The Way,’ the actual teaching of Jesus. Now this has provided real and ongoing spiritual growth; changes I’ve felt as deeply fulfilling and joy giving.
In short, the proof of the pudding is found in the eating of it. The tree is known by the fruit it produces. Therefore I suggest to anyone who wishes to raise their vibrations and grow spiritually, to try your suggestions and see the positive difference for themselves. Thank you my dear, for your decades of work that has enabled you to clarify simply, the things that enable us to grow.
🙏🏼❣️🌅
Roberta you’re sounding somewhat shrill about the NDE thing. It was the intense study of NDEs and actually talking to NDErs that has gotten me past several periods of extreme fear of death that included anxiety and panic attacks where I was barely functional. Of course we have to realize that a persons psychological make up can feed into the experience for a time but by studying enough NDEs you can get a comforting assurance about what is to come. As far as death, if you define it as a state from which one never returns then obviously you’ll never get information from a physical person about it. If you define it as the point at which a body becomes non-functional, no heart beat or even EEG then some NDErs have definitely died and returned as their doctors have attested,
Oh dear Tom, if I sound only “somewhat shrill” then I have sadly missed the mark. In fact, NDEs have absolutely nothing to do with physical death! As I said in my previous post – which I assume that you haven’t read – death is ALWAYS a one-way trip! Yes, doctors can define death in various ways that will allow people to “come back,” but doctors themselves don’t have a consistent definition of death. In objective fact, there IS a consistent definition, which is the breaking of the “silver cord” – the energy cord that attaches our minds to our physical bodies. And no one with the silver cord still attached can EVER just visit where the dead are. The cord breaks at that point, and then they cannot return to their physical bodies. If someone lies for days or weeks in suspended animation – frozen, perhaps – with no heart beat or even EEG, and then is revived, we know for certain that person never went to the place where the dead are, and nothing he reports, however wonderful it might be, is of any help at all if we wish to understand actual death and the genuine afterlife.
Tom, all these NDEs happen in the gigantic astral plane, of which the afterlife area is a tiny part. If you have read a lot of NDEs, you know that in some of the more extensive ones the experiencer comes to a place where he is told that he is about to enter the genuine afterlife, and if he does that then he cannot return to life. Haven’t you ever wondered about that at all?
There is in fact a genuine consistent death process, and it doesn’t include a tunnel with a light at the end of it. There is a gigantic and amazing genuine afterlife! But no NDE-er can tell us the least thing about it. I have nothing whatsoever against NDEs – as you point out, they help people to begin to lose their fear of death. But everything that happens in them is pulled from the experiencer’s own mind, and some are actively hellish even though there is no fiery hell; some are dark; some include a physical God, even though God never appears physically. To be blunt, they are no more evidentiary of anything than are the dreams you may have had last night. And after I have spent a half-century painstakingly coming to understand and then to teach the genuine truth about death and the afterlife, you had better believe that I will fight these recent attempts to muddle the truth with nonsense. With everything that is in me! And if that makes me sound shrill, then so be it.
Hey Scott,
Sorry that this reply to you is out of sequence, but your comment was in that blog section where there is no direct reply tag.
Your comment about Australian Aboriginal tradition being seen by some people as ‘childish’ is true. The Western mind has often taken Aboriginal stories out of context because it could not see that they are threads in the fabric of a much larger understanding. I wonder, is Aboriginal lore ‘childish’ or does it reflect that the people themselves are ‘childlike’?
I know that traditionally Aboriginals are people of ‘being’ in that they are in the present, amidst the cycle of the seasons of the earth, within the wonder of timeless Creation. They are not ‘acquisitors’ or people of ambition. They did not strive for increase and build ever more complex societies where artifice, cunning and manipulation came to the fore. Hence, they took what they needed from nature, while being mindful ‘custodians’ of the land. The population was in balance and they remained more childlike in the positive, innocent sense. I’m glad Scott, that you raised this point.
Also, I am interested in your idea of earth people’s preparing for a major ‘shift’ in consciousness that is to happen. To be open Scott, I don’t know what Aboriginal people are doing concerning this shift. I am going to look into it now. Thanks for the tip off. (I do seem to remember hearing something about it though. Something about Elders gathering at Uluru. I need to find out more.)
I hope you can find out more about it too!
Lastly, please know that I didn’t ‘bend’ or ‘alter’ anything that I’ve written above, to be more in line with what we understand as universal consciousness. It is the Aboriginal people themselves that describe their perception of reality exactly this way. They were describing things thus, thousands of years ago. (Granted, not in English. 🙂)
🙏🏼🌅🌄
Hi Efrem,
I look forward to whatever you may find out. What I heard about it, at least the Australian side of it, was from a few interviews by one of your compatriots there down under, Barry Eaton, and I think he was among those gathering at Uluru at the beginning of the year. 🙃
Efrem: Looks like they are at Urulu to have a series of talks with the Australian gov’t concerning racial discrimination and the revision of some laws etc. They want a better relationship with the Australian government and some more recognition, but there is nothing about a “shift” of consciousness or anything like that. There are pictures of them participating in a kind of dance to prepare themselves for these talks. This is nearly identical to the Native Americans here in the United States.
Hey Lola,
There have been a few really key meetings of the Aboriginal Elders with Australian Government leaders at different times over different decades. (The most significant one being the handing back of ‘Ayer’s Rock,’ now called by its original name ‘Uluru,’ to the Aboriginal people in the mid 1970s.) However there are other meetings between the Elders of the Aboriginal nations that are not publicized, as they are considered sacred and private. These meetings are a good start for researching a forthcoming shift in consciousness, as they discuss spiritual matters. Some information about them is eventually made public so I’m going to look into these gatherings.
Lola, you are right when you say that there are core similarities between Native American and Australian Aboriginal spirituality. I also hold the Native Americans close to my heart, and I too found many similarities in their spiritual perspectives of eternity and the spirit world. One that springs to mind is the ability of some individuals to walk both in this world and in the spirit world simultaneously. The sense that nothing is truly separate is a prevalent theme among both peoples.
So it begs the question, as you implied: Is there a Greater Reality that these two distinct, far distanced peoples actually saw and experienced? Else how could peoples at opposite ends of the earth see the same thing?
I love these ideas Lola. Thanks for bringing them up. Perhaps the native peoples attained an understanding of higher dimensions, and access to them via dreamers, while our formalized religions did not. Fascinating.
And I really enjoyed your anecdote of the British explorer and the Aboriginal guide. Tremendous story and yes, I have heard many other stories like it about the mystical relationship of Aboriginal people and animals. Oftentimes the British and Irish settlers were astonished by such uncanny events as those you describe.
Did you know that Aboriginals were proficient at astral travel? Even some of their traditional dot matrix landscape art is unintelligible, until you realize that the artist’s perspective was from high above the scene (birds eye view). Then the whole landscape and people and animals moving about on it falls into place. This could well be an astral representation, some of us think.
🙏🏼🌅🎇
Despite working for an Aboriginal organisation in South Australia, I don’t claim to have any superior knowledge of the Australian Aboriginal people. However, I recently had an amazing conversation with my boss, an Aboriginal man, on this very topic.
He said that he regularly astral travels but cannot remember anything when he wakes. One night he was aware he had to deliver a message to a being on the astral plane but could not remember if he had done so when he woke. That morning, he spoke to a Ngangkari (spiritual and traditional Aboriginal healer) from the tribal lands in our state’s north and asked if the healer had seen him deliver the message. The healer said ‘yes’!
Amazing story!
Kristian, that is an amazing story. It seems to confirm other things I’ve heard about our Aboriginal people’s astral proficiency. (Though I am no authority on these matters at all).
Wonderful to hear this account.
👍🌅
Efrem: Oh my God! I don’t know how else to explain any of this except to say that they have to be traveling into the astral planes. Obviously, the white colonists thought of this as “superstitious nonsense” and declared them a primitive race. If only they weren’t so biased, they could have learned so much from them! Concerning the British explorer, I forgot to add that when they reached the village, the bird no longer made an appearance. When he mentioned this to the guide, he told him it was because the bird was no longer needed. I agree that this points to separatism being an illusion, but was the bird real? I think so, as the unbelieving explorer saw it also, but how did the bird “know” that his mission was to guide them to where help was available? Was the bird sent by someone else or did he come on his own. Unfortunately, the explorer chalked this all up to a “lucky coincidence” and didn’t ask any questions. Perhaps he thought it was too fantastic to believe.
My dear friends, part of the fun for me in doing these weekly blog posts is that so often our friends here will riff on the topic and then take it in a new – and wonderful – direction! I love what you all have done with this discussion of Australian Aborigines and other indigenous peoples, and yes I do agree that these great spiritual experiences are adventures into the astral. Thank you all for such a beautiful set of meditations on this very important subject!
It very well could be an artist’s version seen from someone’s astral body, but could it also possibly be what aboriginal people saw in the astral planes? The reality the “artist” was in could have been very similar to ours.
👍🙏🏼🌅
Roberta, I have a pathway similar to your, I’m in my 60’s, a professional(dentist]) and have had lifelong daily studies of the Bible, and have been searching to expand my beliefs for the past 10 years beyond the Bible. I know that you have most likely touched on” LIfe Guides” many times but perhaps you could tell me how one finds one. If you tell me how you came across yours that would be great or if you don’t want to repeat your blog, point me to one of your videos or books about it and I would be most greatful. it.Thank you in advance. David
Hello David! If you will search on Spirit Guides in the bar on the upper right of each page of robertagrimes.com, you will find some blog posts that I’ve written about spirit guides; but essentially, every one of us has at least one guide for life. Most of us have that primary guide plus other specialized guides besides! (You likely have at least one dental expert and a Biblical expert, for example.) Your primary guide has been with you since you and he or she first planned this lifetime, and you meet with your primary guide on many nights while your body sleeps. I didn’t meet mine in the daytime until I was in my late sixties, but I learned then that just about every significant decision I had made in my life was at my primary guide’s behest. You have no better friend, dear David – this is the most wonderful relationship there ever could be!
David, if you haven’t already, scroll up in these comments and you will read a little about some of our personal encounters with our guides. Your guide has found you and is already helping with whatever it is you are trying to learn by having this experience we perceive as incarnation. It’s been underway since before you were born. The key is to pay attention to signs that may have meaning only to you. We are all here to learn something different. Your guide and, as Roberta pointed out, the rest of their team, is eager to be recognized!
DEAR EVERYONE, David Wright tells us how his guide has helped him do dental work for desperately poor people in the comment he made at https://robertagrimes.com/human-nature/working-with-your-primary-spirit-guide-part-ii#comment-6044. I urge you to read that comment, too!