Hello, sugar popses. It’s Saturday night, and I’ve just finished decorating the tree – it looks pretty – and now I’m posting (obviously) while Scott revisits the first season of Bones. I like the show too, so I don’t mind, and even better, I can do other stuff while it’s on without feeling that I’m missing anything vital. For dinner we had tortilla chips and baby carrots with dip, and homemade peanut butter/chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, which I made today. Needless to say, I feel kind of sick, another ‘obviously.’ Tomorrow I’d better revisit the grocery store for some real food.
I wrote the above a few hours ago; it’s now officially in the wees… Sunday morning, and I should be asleep if I want to function at all during the daylight hours. sigh. I just can’t get sleepy though, so I guess I’ll write a little more. The past couple mornings have been really nice… I’m reading a new book called Remarkable Healings, which focuses primarily on how people get sick (either emotionally, mentally, or physically – all the ‘ally’s) as a result of interference from what the author, who is a psychiatrist, calls earthbound spirits, demons, or traumas from past lives. She makes no claim of personal belief for any of it, and only points to the results, which come from the experiences her patients have while they’re in session with her. It feels a little like a step backward to me, in regard to her patients’ reports about possession, Satan, demons, and the like… but I’m keeping an open mind because it’s very compelling. Case after unrelated case reveal the same type of experience as she takes people through healing and past lives regression, and she seems honest, but proving her honesty doesn’t matter, since we can’t prove anything in the spiritual or metaphysical realm, no matter how hard we try. Someone will always try to reason it away. We can only believe for ourselves, and I’m just not sure yet. It feels a little too fear-based to accept as wholesale truth, the Truth that applies to everyone.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe so far, and now that I think about it, her claims do bear it out. I believe that there’s a collective reality, and then I believe that we create our own personal reality as well: i.e., if you believe that everyone hates you, then your thoughts and words will shape your actions and influence those around you so that most people will end up hating you, or will at the very least find you slightly repugnant, even if they don’t know why. So with that in mind, it makes sense that, according to the author, those who die angry at God or who feel guilty or believe they are destined for hell, any negative state, will experience that state at death. They’ll see the Light and won’t know what to do with it… and in that moment, will be susceptible to Satan and his demons, who will put them to work oppressing and possessing the living. Or they’ll be confused and get lost and end up accidentally stuck in somebody, even someone they love. This is the author’s conclusion after hearing the same thing over and over from many different patients over the years. Okay, it sounds crazy to me, but holy smokes, think about the claims of any religion and tell me they’re not crazy. In order to move anywhere past what we see only with our eyes, we have to have try to figure out what makes the best sense from a handful of intangibles. Yikes. Also, that neatly explains ghosts, which I’ve always wondered about.
Just a quick aside, regarding that handful of intangibles…. You know how you can ‘know’ a thing as a concept, but then suddenly it becomes solid and you really know it? This morning as I was praying I was moved to tears by the powerful realization that every religion is the same. It doesn’t matter which vessel of God you’ve been raised with or come to love; they’re all under the exact same umbrella, despite the differing details added by people over the years. We’re all going to be okay. Nobody’s wrong! Wow.
Anyway, despite some of my misgivings, I do absolutely love what the author says about God. God and the angels are there the nanosecond they’re called on, and there’s no judgment whatsoever from any of them, there’s only love. Even for the person who killed his whole family, for the one who committed suicide, for the chronic gambler, adulterer, child molester, whatever. Only cheering and loving embraces for everybody! Including the demons, which is even better. When I was little, I felt so bad for the demons that I used to pray that they would be able to go to heaven, too. According to the author, once they’re released and shown how they’ve been misled, that’s exactly what happens.
It’s funny… writing this all out for you is kind of embarrassing, and here I’ve been talking about past lives and turtle transformations and what have you. But these are my roots, and I think that’s why it feels strange to kind of play around in the midst of them again. I rejected them once and now, here we go… I don’t know. I don’t like believing in Satan and demons, but I think it’s possible that we can create them, meaning, that we will see what we expect to see; they can be a result of our personal reality, if not absolutely Collective Truth. We have the capacity for the most wild, imaginative creativity… If we expect bad things, bad things will most certainly come to us. Of course, the jury’s out on everything till the trial’s over, if it’s ever over, which I’m thinking it’s not. Hey, ask me about reincarnation and I’ll chatter away like a teenage girl on her latest celebrity crush … So I guess we believe what we choose to believe, or whatever comes to us to believe when the time is ripe to believe it. Or we don’t think about spiritual stuff at all, but as I’m a person who likes it, that’s no longer an option. And there’s your third ‘obviously.’ :) I hope you guys have a great Sunday. Love to you all! xo
The 133. Crowd 