Valentine’s Day—an inspiration for all of us to ponder the depth with which we love friends, family and acquaintances—even life itself. And how do we show our appreciation?

Last evening, CBS News carried a sad report on the great number of Army personnel who have committed suicide, both in the US and overseas, during the last month. The figure was in the mid-20s (25?) which exceeded the number of combat deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan. What makes these battle-hardened soldiers take their own lives?  Why can they see no other way out? Why do so many (even the non-suicides) suffer from PTSD when they return to their homes?

Maybe it is that people, though often tempted to do so, are not psychologically or spiritually designed to take the life of other people, or even other creatures, no matter what the flawed governments of men yell.

Again, this item drawn from the daily news seems to hint at the everlasting consciousness of each person on earth. Yes, those of us who fought and died in countless previous lifetimes enter life with some “ghosts” within our thought patterns and memories that need to be exorcised. Why do some folks incline to confrontation and anger, even from the youngest age? In my own case, when under regression hypnosis, I recalled my death as a Confederate captain (likely from Missouri) sometime and somewhere during the Civil War. From above, I saw the lifeless body of a man stretched on the ground, his right abdomen blown away…right in the spot where I suffered bowel cancer (and a hemi-colectomy when I was 33 in this life). Was that by chance? I also have had to be aware of conflicts and how to carefully handle them. I guess this soul of mine is done with fighting and killing, as is my hero Dennis, in my novel, The Highest Mountain: Death & Life in the Adirondacks.

I wonder how many months or years I hovered around that as-yet-unidentified (so maybe place is vastly un-important) battlefield. How long did I spend trying to make it all up to my fiancée, Rachel, back in Missouri. And did she bear the scars of grief well into her next life? Someday, I’ll write about how we met again.

Life is not about depriving others of their chance at spiritual growth. I don’t believe the manner or place or time in which a soul departs is without meaning to the soul in its quest for “balancing” and further experiences.So much of it seems to be a “re-play” or “remembering.” Consider the terrible burdens carried by so many soldiers (and Marines) who took the lives of women and children (even inadvertently) during the almost six years in which the Iraq war has so far progressed. Then, what happens if that serviceman or woman discovers that so much of the grand patriotic fervor for chasing Saddam was a sham, with ulterior motives on the politicians’ part? What happens to that person who surely has seen buddies blown apart, then to discover that there never was an altruistic purpose for the war, whose purposes kept changing with the Bush administration’s impromptu explanations?  How can a man or woman continue to live a lie, once they discover it?  What do you know about the unconscious mind and the manner in which it processes experience? How many tours of duty must take place before the individual is reduced to just soul, a level of existence where it somehow knows that these individuals should not have been deprived of their lives? Even strangers and foreigners are our brothers and sisters; or don’t you believe that?

Re-read my last posting and see what such individuals bring to the afterworld in their mind and spirit. How can they (at first, anyway) find rest? Where and how long will they need to roam before forgiving themselves?

Nevertheless, if you believe in the efficacy of prayer, do send these suffering souls from Iraq and Afghanistan your words of hope, your energies of life. Urge them to find and enter the White Light.  We the still-living must still help those we call “dead.”

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Today I watched the Sec. of Treasury, Mr. Geithner, explaining the underlying conditions that fomented the present economic crisis. We Americans have gotten ourselves into a pickle. So, why should I concern you ghost seekers with this matter? Isn't the economy an entirely  separate issue? To this, I answer, "No." I'd like to to try (and it is a very difficult and painful process for me, I know) and consider Einstein's precept that there is no time and there is essentially no separation of ingredients in the universe we know.

After 40 years of trying to comprehend the issue of ghosts (how they are formed and for how long, and why they exist, etc.) I think the entire matter resolves into our failure to understand the underlying one-ness of all that is. We live, as the Asian teachers often instruct, in a world of appearance, where nothing that we see is real in any universal sense.

On a street, you and I will walk past one another and, by looking at one another, are sure that we are individuals. You walk your way and I walk mine; we go to different destinations and do different things there. Isn't that enough proof of individuality and separation? We take all these "true experiences" into our mind and thus make many decisions each day based on that "reality."

For instance, if I am indeed separate from you, then I should be able to do anything I wish to you, and as long as nobody witnesses my act. I seem able to escape any penalty for even the most horrible of actions: I may steal your money, your mate or even your life, and no one else is the wiser. But what if there exists a mystery that some call "the all-seeing eye," or, as I call it, "The Witness." Look at the back of your One Dollar bill. Isn't that eye above the pyramid just a cute smbolic thing, though surely not real?

When I've interviewed many (but not all) near-death survivors, they have told me of seeing themselves (in the period where all one's actions of the "just past life" flow past one's vision) from a distance, as if the real person that they are is witnessing the behaviors and emotions of another (less-real) being. When Tom Sawyer (see "What Tom Sawyer Learned From Dying," by Sydney Sailor Farr, Hampton Roads Publishing, now out of print but available in good/used condition on line) died, he witnessed his own actions from throughout the ended life, but also experientially lived in the other individuals with whom or to whom he acted. Still, set apart from all those activities was what I'll call "the witness self," which seemed to integrate all the experience of our selves and others in life. And, in that state of being, he often felt severely chastened; somehow divorced from the eternal reality. From that shame, he decided to do better and, when returned to physical life, he entirely revamped his behaviors and outlook on life.

Our current economic crisis seems to issue from this issue: the illusion of separateness. Mr. Banker is crafty, perhaps borderline ethical, or maybe not, in making loans and doing repossessions. Mr. Investor is anxious to "make a killing," by winning when others apparently lose. In assigning blame for the present crisis, government officials have called this mania "greed," but its roots come from believing we can act or refrain from acting in certain situations and get away with unethical behaviors. At the root of the situation then, is the desire to get something for nothing and do so at the expense of beings whom we don't even know. If they suffer--tough! But, you see, this seems to be a cosmic lie.

And it is these issues that MUST confront the newly-dead indivduals. After an adjustment period, we will all have to witness what we have done (if we are to return to our Source) and why, as well as what others did to us. The Witness seems to have a One-ness consciousness, instantly spotting our hypocrisy or, conversely, our lovingness, which is a form of one-ness. It knows us as we are. And, at that  point, none of us retain our ego (our false-self, which seemed to get us through everything in life). Within The Witness is a consciousness template that holds our actions up to the Truth, which is that all beings are One. this One-ness may be the equivalent of God. Personally, though I try to be "good," I don't relish that eventuality that lies in wait for me! Ever have a dream in which you see yourself totally naked? And (maybe like me) in Times Square? Wow. That is how we'll be when we are ready to face our ture self after death. I guess that is what many of the clergy try to say to us, though few get the point across well.

I think that, at that point of self-condemnation (the real Last Judgement) we become unable to move upward for that moment in universal consciousness. We feel trapped, guilty or whatever. We roam the old homes we've lived in, our old work places, we seek out still-living beings whom we've mistreated, perhaps asking (as did Scrooge) for forgiveness, so we can move onward and upward. We can linger for what seems to be centuries, waiting and hoping, re-enacting our crimes and misdeeds endlessly--until Peace comes. And that Peace comes when we can willingly enter The Light and do so unafraid. That, my friends, is why I think so many souls are, at least for the while, earth-bound. That is why there are ghosts. Most of us will be ghosts, you know. Or don't you?We take all THIS as real, then find out that all we accumulated was shadows.