Have you "broken on through to the other side?"

Have you broken on through to the other side?

  • Yes

    Votes: 10 55.6%
  • No

    Votes: 4 22.2%
  • I thought I did but now I'm not so sure.

    Votes: 3 16.7%
  • There is only Annihilation and the Ultimate Negation of Being. Get carnal pleasures while you can!

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • Total voters
    18
P

Philemon

After a pretty long dry spell in my spiritual life, which over the past many years has mostly consisted only of poring over tedious arguments for and against various spiritual worldviews, I began to wonder if maybe the climate has been friendlier to any other Skeptiko listeners out there. Have any of you been getting a good drenching?

At one time I found the simple intellectual engagement with psi research to be, in itself, pretty satisfying - but not so much anymore. In fact, the more I've become intellectually convinced of the reality of a spiritual dimension to existence, the more existentially dispirited I've become for lack of any meaningful personal engagement with it. Don't get me wrong - I've given it a shot. I've got a gazillion books on everything from New Age meditations to ritual magic(k) grimoires. Hemi-Sync. Holosync. Mindmachines. Medium readings. Reiki healings. Aura photos. Ongoing failures to spark a lucid dream or an OBE. Desperate prayers to beings on every level within the hierarchy of Heaven for consolation and guidance. Not a drop. The aridity within which my soul currently finds itself seems to be interminable. I'm getting to the point where it actually hurts to read any sort of spiritually related books or listen to any spiritually related podcasts because there is so much certitude and conviction in the hearts and guts of the authors while, for me, well... crickets.

Do we have any spiritual Babe Ruth's here in our community? Is there anyone making successful headway in their pilgrimage toward Knowing? For lack of a church community to turn to (being that a maverick spirituality has no roof under which to shelter itself) I thought I'd make a post on this matter and hopefully spark some discussion.

Thanks for sharing.
 
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My experiences taking classes in mediumship:

http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/psi_experience
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-is-it-like-to-communicate-with.html

How I communicate with spirits and experience other psychic modalities
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/natural_mediumship

Other methods of spirit communication
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-communicate-with-spirits.html

Spiritual practices and their effectiveness (based on my experiences):
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/03/spiritual-practices-and-their.html
(The easiest way to have some type of psychic experience is to keep a dream log, most people will notice precognitive dreams once they start really paying attention.)

In particular, I recommend this type of meditation:
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/meditation-1#meditation_serenity

As far as knowing, I knew from the evidence first:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-...-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_afterlife


Varieties of Mystical experiences (more of my own experiences)
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/mystical_experiences

Aura photos are outright fraud, they use an ordinary camera and sensors on your hand to calculate what the aura should look like and over lay that on a photograph of you. Hemi-sych is also a total rip off in my opinion/experience. If you want a real experience I think you have to take a class at the Monroe institute but I haven't done that. But even Robert Monroe himself did not perform well in controlled tests: http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/10/out-of-body-experiences-real-and-fake.html

Here's why you shouldn't believe the "skeptical" literature:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_misdirection
 
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Jim,

Thanks for your response. I'll take a look at your links this evening. Regarding the aura photos, I figured I'd give it a shot when I stopped by the Edgar Cayce A.R.E. center down in Virginia Beach about a month ago. My wife and I both had our "aura photos" taken and, yes, as you say - you put your hand down on some device while the camera takes your photo. I put down the cash for the both of us as I was excited about having this done. Well, only a few steps out the building I noticed that the interpretation of our auras were completely identical and that the photos were just dark, smudgy looking things, smeared over the photos of ourselves. The readouts purported to explain how energetic our various chakras were - but both my wife and I had identical levels of energy, according to the printouts. I went back in and said there must be some mistake. The guy behind the counter said that my wife and I must have very closely matching energy. Unconvinced, I said I'd like for my wife to have a new photo taken. They re-did the photo and the readout came out exactly the same again. We were given a complete refund, but I have to say I am rather disappointed in the experience and wondered if the last hundred people who passed through there had matching printouts!
 
Hi Philemon, I have had two clear experiences with reaching the other side. I am certainly no spiritual "Babe Ruth" but I can tell you what works for me. If you are interested in any type of contact with an intelligence that is beyond the physical no matter what consciousness then I can not help you since I am interested in only reaching what I believe to be mankind's teachers.

To reach to the higher spirits one must begin to raise their consciousness. This means letting go of the things that will block clear communication. It isn't easy and it isn't fast. I found that I needed to greatly reduce the energy of anger in my being, reduce pride and any inferiority complexes, let go of past hurts by forgiving, let go of competitiveness, open my mind and heart to new ways of thinking, reduce fear.

Still interested? As I say those things are difficult and it will take time and dedication. The book I can not recommend enough is "Master Keys to Personal Christhood". The turnoff for some will be that it claims to be a message from Jesus. It is not the Jesus of mainstream Christianity however. Is it the real "Jesus"? All I can say is that whatever the source the teachings are powerful and they work. There are 17 lessons and each one will take about an hour a day every day and each lesson lasts about a month so you finish in about a year and a half. If you put your all into the exercises you will make significant spiritual progress like letting go of anger, pride, fear etc. As you clear these spiritual poisons you will most likely also begin to experience intuitive insights. You may also be able to tune into mankind's spiritual teachers.

About 9 months into this course I was spoken to by "Mother Mary" (Jesus' mother). Was it the real Mother Mary? All I can say is that it was a spirit that spoke with a feminine voice and the love that emanated from her was immense.

I realize that teachings like this aren't for everyone especially in the modern materialistic society.
 
I've felt that I had my consciousness raised for a short period in my life. I remember my focus during that time was on others more and not my current situation. However, I feel it is almost impossible to stay at that state for very long because eventually the problems of this world catches up to you. When I began to focus on my career, bills, and yes ... even my family, I've noticed the peace I had felt during that short period had reduced greatly because my focus had switched.

Maybe that's the point. We can take moments to recognize the true actor that works in this elaborate movie we are all a part of. However, eventually we need to get back to the role your character is playing in. With that said ... I need to go pay some bills.
 
After a pretty long dry spell in my spiritual life, which over the past many years has mostly consisted only of poring over tedious arguments for and against various spiritual worldviews, I began to wonder if maybe the climate has been friendlier to any other Skeptiko listeners out there. Have any of you been getting a good drenching?

How about - there is no other side. Although it's a very common concept in describing the spiritual, it's a model rooted in physical-oriented concepts. That here is separate from there. And that a person is in one or the other.

How about - you are spirit now as you have always been and always will be. Sure your default attention is within one of the physical state presences that you are generating. And of course your awareness within that presence is configured to a default focus on the parameters of the physical state. But how about - you are still that (for want of a better term) larger self.

How about - the physical is a state within the spiritual.

That would mean one doesn't have to find the way to some there. That focusing on here/there may even be an obstacle to expanding. Like trying to get to the USA while being in Colorado One just has to find ways to become aware of more of who and what they are.
 
Yes I have found what I guess could be called the "other" side, like Saiko above I'm not quite sure "otherside" is quite an accurate description. This is not an easy thing. if it were easy there would be no debate about its existence because everyone would "know" it was there. I might suggest to focus less on the idea that there is some "it" there that somehow owes an obligation to us to prove it's existence and focus more on yourself. It is you who has to make the journey to discover the otherside. The book nor the guy in the store selling aura photos are making it for you. I don't know why some people spend their whole lives looking for proof of it and others have it smashed over their heads whether they want it or not.

I think Saiko has a valid point and its hard to understand.

Even if you take the argument or reincarnation for example. It is not you in the past, it is you in another place, they are all you. There is a you in your dreams, there is a you that you are here now, and there is a spiritual you, they are all part of the same. The thing you are looking for is not something else, it is yourself.
 
After a pretty long dry spell in my spiritual life, which over the past many years has mostly consisted only of poring over tedious arguments for and against various spiritual worldviews, I began to wonder if maybe the climate has been friendlier to any other Skeptiko listeners out there. Have any of you been getting a good drenching?

At one time I found the simple intellectual engagement with psi research to be, in itself, pretty satisfying - but not so much anymore. In fact, the more I've become intellectually convinced of the reality of a spiritual dimension to existence, the more existentially dispirited I've become for lack of any meaningful personal engagement with it. Don't get me wrong - I've given it a shot. I've got a gazillion books on everything from New Age meditations to ritual magic(k) grimoires. Hemi-Sync. Holosync. Mindmachines. Medium readings. Reiki healings. Aura photos. Ongoing failures to spark a lucid dream or an OBE. Desperate prayers to beings on every level within the hierarchy of Heaven for consolation and guidance. Not a drop. The aridity within which my soul currently finds itself seems to be interminable. I'm getting to the point where it actually hurts to read any sort of spiritually related books or listen to any spiritually related podcasts because there is so much certitude and conviction in the hearts and guts of the authors while, for me, well... crickets.

Do we have any spiritual Babe Ruth's here in our community? Is there anyone making successful headway in their pilgrimage toward Knowing? For lack of a church community to turn to (being that a maverick spirituality has no roof under which to shelter itself) I thought I'd make a post on this matter and hopefully spark some discussion.

Thanks for sharing.

There is a proverb that says, "A hope deferred makes the heart sick." I think I've experienced the dryness you're talking about before, albeit when I was more involved with Christianity. I believed that miraculous healings happened and the Bible promised them, and I wasn't getting mine. I read all kinds of books and heard all kinds of stories about people getting healed until it made me sick. I prayed for years for healing and didn't get it. Lyme disease destroyed the cartilage in my hips so by age 24 I could barely walk sometimes. This was hard to take since I had been so active and outdoorsy most of my life. I could have dealt with my condition much better had I not believed in miracles. I could have accepted my reality and moved on with a positive attitude were it not for that nagging hope constantly deferred that made me hopelessly depressed.

Eventually I was relieved of this spiritual oppression not by giving up on the belief that miracles happen, but rather that they happen the way my Christian dogma said they should happen. This longing caused by my suffering actually propelled me to investigate things that I might have otherwise been too timid to approach. But it took me a few years of pounding on the same wall and getting nowhere before I got the courage to simply walk around it.

Anyway.. The moral of my story is: if you feel dry or depressed take a look at what longing or hope is not being fulfilled. Ask yourself if you can or should let it go. If not, move forward through it, around it, over it into something new. But don't stay stuck doing and thinking the same things.

Also, it is good to balance the being with the doing. Presumably we are here having this linear story-like experience for some reason, and we can't fully engage this experience if we spend all our time wondering about it or wondering why we can't figure out the cheat codes. If we were too much intruded upon from the "other" realm, then it wouldn't be "other" and this experience would presumably lose some of its value.

So maybe try laying aside all things "spiritual" for a while. I think there is a rubber band effect... Go climb a mountain, spend a week in the wilderness, learn to identify wild edible plants, love your wife, get lost in a book of fiction, plant a garden, go protest the tyrannical government somewhere, ride a motorcycle, build something, create something, go do something crazy you haven't done, and immerse yourself in this raw reality for a while and I think you'll find that when you return to the spiritual seeking, that it doesn't seem dry. Conversely, I think the spiritual seeking makes the experience of reality more bold. I think it is good to oscillate between the two.

Maverick spirituality does have its downsides... Sometimes I miss the community of church and the worship. I played in the worship band and some of those worship songs had some kind of awesome power behind them. Although I think some dogmas of Christianity are off and a lot of churches are dead and dry, some still have some beautiful powerful energy in them.

Anyway, hope this is helpful. :)
 
Jim,

Thanks for your response. I'll take a look at your links this evening. Regarding the aura photos, I figured I'd give it a shot when I stopped by the Edgar Cayce A.R.E. center down in Virginia Beach about a month ago. My wife and I both had our "aura photos" taken and, yes, as you say - you put your hand down on some device while the camera takes your photo. I put down the cash for the both of us as I was excited about having this done. Well, only a few steps out the building I noticed that the interpretation of our auras were completely identical and that the photos were just dark, smudgy looking things, smeared over the photos of ourselves. The readouts purported to explain how energetic our various chakras were - but both my wife and I had identical levels of energy, according to the printouts. I went back in and said there must be some mistake. The guy behind the counter said that my wife and I must have very closely matching energy. Unconvinced, I said I'd like for my wife to have a new photo taken. They re-did the photo and the readout came out exactly the same again. We were given a complete refund, but I have to say I am rather disappointed in the experience and wondered if the last hundred people who passed through there had matching printouts!
Philemon,

Thanks for this thoughtful thread.

I am fairly convinced there is a non-physical (I prefer that expression to 'spiritual', which is too loaded for me), for a whole variety of reasons:

1) The inability to explain consciousness (IMHO) physically.

2) A variety of pretty robust psychic phenomena - NDE's, death bed experiences, the phenomenon of autistic savants, etc.

3) There seem to be too many people who report psychic phenomena, yet gain nothing from doing so.

4) A growing realisation that modern science is simply dishonest - so claims that this or that have been debunked are often junk.

I am sure that if you went back to the early days of conventional science, there would be a mass of quacks who would exploit the concept of science in innumerable spurious ways. I feel something similar goes on with psychic stuff. For that reason, I think that if you want to explore phenomena services, you have to bear this in mind. I know some people here visit a medium and tell them in advance that they are only going to divulge a minimum of information because they need to convince themselves that the information they receive is real. This sounds like a good approach in general.

Personally, I have become convinced that demanding certainty in these matters is a pointless goal. Most religions demand BELIEF and that sours the entire enterprise. Religions also obsess over a lot of trivia that varies between religions, and makes all religion seem implausible as a result. I was a Christian until approximately age 20, and I remember utterly fatuous discussions about whether those who had never heard of Jesus would go to Hell when they died, simply for not believing!

I have tried - possibly not with enough effort - to have a lucid dream (I had a brief one as a child), or an OBE but I am convinced these things are real. People vary so much, and I think people like us are just too rooted in the physical to feel the non-physical. Clearly if you have the need to feel the non-physical, you can probably obtain the experience by consuming an entheogen such as LSD or cannabis. Consuming cannabis in food has given me a couple of somewhat interesting experiences - which helps to confirm to me that the brain/mind can see things in a different way. I don't really feel those experiences are fundamentally inferior to those that others obtain by more 'natural' methods. I don't smoke, so the only way for me to take cannabis is by mouth, and in any case that method gives a longer, more interesting experience. I don't indulge regularly!

I think it is much better to know you don't know, then to pretend to yourself that you are certain. Having said that, I am pretty sure the simple materialist view of the world makes no sense.

David
 
Hey everyone,

Thank you all for your thoughtful posts. I've been meaning to come on here and respond in length to each one, but haven't had the right opportunity just yet. Nonetheless, just wanted to let you know I've read them all, thought about them all, and appreciate them all. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to repsond to some random guy on the internet! I look forward to saying more later.

Thanks again.
 
There is a proverb that says, "A hope deferred makes the heart sick." I think I've experienced the dryness you're talking about before, albeit when I was more involved with Christianity. I believed that miraculous healings happened and the Bible promised them, and I wasn't getting mine. I read all kinds of books and heard all kinds of stories about people getting healed until it made me sick. I prayed for years for healing and didn't get it. Lyme disease destroyed the cartilage in my hips so by age 24 I could barely walk sometimes. This was hard to take since I had been so active and outdoorsy most of my life. I could have dealt with my condition much better had I not believed in miracles. I could have accepted my reality and moved on with a positive attitude were it not for that nagging hope constantly deferred that made me hopelessly depressed.

Eventually I was relieved of this spiritual oppression not by giving up on the belief that miracles happen, but rather that they happen the way my Christian dogma said they should happen. This longing caused by my suffering actually propelled me to investigate things that I might have otherwise been too timid to approach. But it took me a few years of pounding on the same wall and getting nowhere before I got the courage to simply walk around it.

Anyway.. The moral of my story is: if you feel dry or depressed take a look at what longing or hope is not being fulfilled. Ask yourself if you can or should let it go. If not, move forward through it, around it, over it into something new. But don't stay stuck doing and thinking the same things.

Also, it is good to balance the being with the doing. Presumably we are here having this linear story-like experience for some reason, and we can't fully engage this experience if we spend all our time wondering about it or wondering why we can't figure out the cheat codes. If we were too much intruded upon from the "other" realm, then it wouldn't be "other" and this experience would presumably lose some of its value.

So maybe try laying aside all things "spiritual" for a while. I think there is a rubber band effect... Go climb a mountain, spend a week in the wilderness, learn to identify wild edible plants, love your wife, get lost in a book of fiction, plant a garden, go protest the tyrannical government somewhere, ride a motorcycle, build something, create something, go do something crazy you haven't done, and immerse yourself in this raw reality for a while and I think you'll find that when you return to the spiritual seeking, that it doesn't seem dry. Conversely, I think the spiritual seeking makes the experience of reality more bold. I think it is good to oscillate between the two.

Maverick spirituality does have its downsides... Sometimes I miss the community of church and the worship. I played in the worship band and some of those worship songs had some kind of awesome power behind them. Although I think some dogmas of Christianity are off and a lot of churches are dead and dry, some still have some beautiful powerful energy in them.

Anyway, hope this is helpful. :)

Really liked this post.

What type of instrument do you play ?
 
I played Bass before I had the stroke, now it is a major motivator in a way.

Sorry to hear about your stroke... Hope you are recovering from it okay. Music is a wonderful thing... I should play more... just hard to find the time!
 
I was wondering that too. I used to play drums in a church worship band when I was still an avid church goer.
Very cool... I think Christian worship music has made a lot of progress in the last decade or so. There are some who criticize the showiness of some of these churches with the lights and the fancy sound boards... some criticisms are probably valid in that people begin to focus too much on the performance aspect of things, but hey... I don't see any reason not to engage all the senses in a beautiful display of light and sound. I remember Eben Alexander said in his book that after his NDE he experienced church in a new way... he realized the music and stained glass and lights in churches were reflections of the beauty he experienced on the other side.
 
Very cool... I think Christian worship music has made a lot of progress in the last decade or so. There are some who criticize the showiness of some of these churches with the lights and the fancy sound boards... some criticisms are probably valid in that people begin to focus too much on the performance aspect of things, but hey... I don't see any reason not to engage all the senses in a beautiful display of light and sound. I remember Eben Alexander said in his book that after his NDE he experienced church in a new way... he realized the music and stained glass and lights in churches were reflections of the beauty he experienced on the other side.

Yeah. Sometimes I miss the church experience. I especially enjoyed getting involved with the music and drama. And I understand using all of your senses to enhance the experience. There were even times where I felt (spiritually?) connected with the other musicians I was playing with. But I also felt that same connection playing with a secular rock band as well. Anyway, I can't see myself in a typical Christian church as of late because of my evolving worldview and the apparent opening of my own mind. I can't deal with the church's literal dogma anymore. I believe, currently, I receive a more productive spiritual experience composing my own ambient music now or a simple walk in the woods ... alone. I guess that's where I'm at on my spiritual path right now, I reckon.
 
Thanks to both of you.

I have found myself in a similar place to Philemon, it's a journey, but as I've said before on the forum I've come to really see the stroke as a blessing.
 
After a pretty long dry spell in my spiritual life, which over the past many years has mostly consisted only of poring over tedious arguments for and against various spiritual worldviews, I began to wonder if maybe the climate has been friendlier to any other Skeptiko listeners out there. Have any of you been getting a good drenching?

At one time I found the simple intellectual engagement with psi research to be, in itself, pretty satisfying - but not so much anymore. In fact, the more I've become intellectually convinced of the reality of a spiritual dimension to existence, the more existentially dispirited I've become for lack of any meaningful personal engagement with it. Don't get me wrong - I've given it a shot. I've got a gazillion books on everything from New Age meditations to ritual magic(k) grimoires. Hemi-Sync. Holosync. Mindmachines. Medium readings. Reiki healings. Aura photos. Ongoing failures to spark a lucid dream or an OBE. Desperate prayers to beings on every level within the hierarchy of Heaven for consolation and guidance. Not a drop. The aridity within which my soul currently finds itself seems to be interminable. I'm getting to the point where it actually hurts to read any sort of spiritually related books or listen to any spiritually related podcasts because there is so much certitude and conviction in the hearts and guts of the authors while, for me, well... crickets.

Do we have any spiritual Babe Ruth's here in our community? Is there anyone making successful headway in their pilgrimage toward Knowing? For lack of a church community to turn to (being that a maverick spirituality has no roof under which to shelter itself) I thought I'd make a post on this matter and hopefully spark some discussion.

Thanks for sharing.

Hi Philemon,

I had a similar feeling a while back and to be honest its a continual thing with me, getting to a point of stagnation that is. My understanding is that we all can reach a point of stagnation, and it's somewhat like a crossroad but one road goes forward in personal growth and the other road goes sideways (or of course we can always go backwards too). We can stay on the sideways road for a very long time I reckon. We tend to stay there because it often feels that moving in some direction is progress but at a certain point, it just doesn't feel right. Well that's been my experience anyway.

For me, it happened strongly a few years back. I felt that I've just been looking at the same old material only said in various different ways and even though I felt like I'd learnt so much, I was still caught up in many of the same old dramas with people and with myself that preoccupied me since a teenager. I often wondered, why after having a variety of "supernatural" experiences and reading quite widely on spiritual literature would I be still caught up in the same old inconsequential problems. An analogy that comes to mind when I read in the book "A path with a heart" where the author having spent many years in a Buddhist monastery comes back to the "real world" and finds himself in some waiting room in an urban setting. While there, a group of young girls start sniggering at his funny monkish appearance, which brings up a wave of negative feelings about himself that he hadn't experienced in a long time. So even after accomplishing amazing mind-over-body techniques that would allow him to sustain his meditation non-stop for many hours on a cold hard floor, on that particular aspect of his self worth, nothing profound seemed really accomplished. So if he did move on that issue, it probably wasn't forward much though perhaps a great deal sideways.

In my opinion, I feel it comes down to facing those personal issues, perhaps the more mundane and off-putting they are, the more likely they're crucial to really moving forward. Getting immersed in esoteric, spiritual, parapsychological content etc. etc. can after a while turn into just exercising our intellect, while compromising pretty much everything else, as well as real growth. It can also be a good way to avoid facing the crucial personal hurdles, not unlike any other addiction really.

In terms of moving forward, I've come to see that real growth in myself isn't measured by what I know, isn't measured by what I can do even, it's measured by how I treat myself and treat others. Do I treat myself with kindness and compassion? Do I treat others with the same kindness and compassion? Is my kindness and compassion forced or is it from my heart? Another word for kindness and compassion is simply - love. So, is my condition more loving than before, the same or is it less? I feel that's what best indicates growth, at least that's what's felt the most real for me.

I remember having this rather abstract conversation with myself around that same time. I said to myself something like if the universe is simply an illusion, why can't I shift this illusion right now to one that's more favourable? Then being the know-it-all I was, I rebutted myself that perhaps this IS the most favourable illusion right now and part of my learning is actually coming to this realisation. I then re-rebutted myself again - that maybe I use those ideas to evade the fact that I really can't shift this illusion or holographic reality to something else and that I'm just deluding myself to avoid my incapacity and my unverifiable theories. Then I thought to myself that the incapacity is also just an illusion because the conditions of my present reality outside of myself that I experienced at each moment may very well be created by me which means I have had that capacity all along and this is precisely the reality I created. It went on and on and on like that for a while....

So that's a lot of movement sideways I'd say!

The thing is after all this philosophical pondering, I still felt I was missing something. I mean all the spiritual, uplifting, mind boggling experiences, content and material I'd received over my life to that point, didn't seem to shift me at the core. I might have got very good at convincing myself otherwise but truthfully I knew I was just kidding myself!

Throughout my life, most of the good books I came across would just literally fall into my lap and that happened again around this time. As I sat on an empty train seat I saw next to me the book: "What's so amazing about grace?" So a true believer in the power of synchronicity, I got to digesting it straightaway. What struck me at the time was the Christian concept of grace and forgiveness was actually one of the unique qualities of this Christian God that I had grown quite indifferent to over the years. I mean my concept of God wasn't so rigid I felt, my concept of God could cater for all religions and spiritual concepts, it was all-encompassing and empty at the same time, beyond duality, present and distant, inside me and outside me, being and non-being all at once. However there was something about this forgiveness and grace thing I wasn't shaking off. Of course it makes sense that forgiveness was a powerful tool to cut the cycles of suffering we humans excel at. Yet in terms of a God, there was something more palpable about forgiveness and grace coming from a personal God, an external-to-me being extending out this gift to me and everyone else. It's sort of hard to explain, but it planted a seed in me back then. Or maybe it was more like an opening to feeling a little bit of what this grace from God could be.

So did I become a born-again Christian you might be thinking? No, much much worse!

A friend of mine who I regarded highly from in a regular meet-up group interested in all things to do with raising consciousness and awareness, told me she had met Jesus and Mary. Not in an NDE or OOBE mind you, in the flesh!

"Emm Hmm... righto" I say to myself... She's either temporarily lost it or she's completely lost it was my thinking. As a good friend, I felt it was my duty to debunk these clearly fraudulent, likely deluded or certainly responsible for deluding others kind of people. I'd go through their material, listen to their stuff, apply logic and insight and come back to her showing these folks for what they really were. I was like a knight on a quest to save the distressed damsel on a my own battleground. I fancied my chances, so I certainly couldn't pass on that opportunity!

I developed a simple model to help me with such matters too, especially debunking spiritual "gurus", which I ranked myself quite good at. I called it "coherence" - basically I'd take the message and determine how well it aligned to a whole lot of other factors. For example - what the guru would say before and afterwards, what their body language and appearance shows, what their general feel is like, the directness and clarity of their words, how they deal with complex subjects so everyone understands, how grounded they are in this reality but how open they are to realities beyond... all that and more. I wanted to know how coherent these gurus were to themselves but importantly to what I expected from a real-deal spiritual developed subject. I know... a lot of arrogance there. Funny thing is, I never had that personal reflection back then.

So the verdict? Well not good (depending on your POV)... I didn't save the damsel, in fact perhaps the damsel didn't require my saving after-all.

Some of the Jesus and Mary stuff is found here in small chunks, if of interest: divinetruthfaq on YouTube

Anyhow the reason for that rather long-winded account was that I felt in a really stuck place back then, and coming across this material and being open enough to consider it, helped me personally shift my reality. BTW I still have no real proof for the claim of them being Jesus and Mary, I've also read plenty of convincing evidence to show that a historical Jesus is a myth created out of the Roman and Jewish religious figures, such as Julius Caesar (another JC), so who really knows? Perhaps it may be an interesting one to put through a scientific say OOBE or medium testing verification?
 
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