November 2008

New Movie for What the Bleep Fans

I have been a big fan of the What the Bleep Do We Know movies and now it looks like there is a new one coming out. It is called Leap! and here is a URL to some trailers. Leap! Movie Trailers

This was sent to me by a friend, thanks Mars, and I find it interesting that it arrived shortly after my blog about Harsha's realization regarding shifting awareness to alternate realities or areas of consciousness. We create our reality, perhaps by virtue of what we chose to focus our attention within this thing called Consciousness.

Bruce

A Good Book & Areas of Consciousness

Florida is a little cooler this time of year than Puerto Rico. We walked the Rincon beach nearly every day in bathing suits throughout the winter there last year. I remember reveling in an ocean swim on Christmas day last year with Caribbean water temperatures in the mid to high 80s. After 30 years in Colorado's winter time ice, snow and cold even Florida's weather with its daytime air temps in the 70s and 80s is a treat. So, my recent trip to give a workshop in Alberta, Canada, a nearly three hour drive north of Edmonton was flash (freeze) to the past.

My hosts for the workshop, Jim and Ann, put on a great event that drew folks who drove from as far away as Thunder Bay. And, Jim gifted me a book I'd not seen before, "The Stars Still Shine, An Afterlife Journey," by Robert Murray. Murray is a psychic whose son-in-law, Michael (Mike) died a sudden, unexpected death. The book recounts Murray's contact with Mike over a period of almost a year after his death. The story gives a wonderful picture of the afterlife experience of a new arrival who carries the beliefs and, probably, typical limited understanding of our afterlife into his experience there. Mike's day-to-day account of his activities for the first year gives sharp insight into the structure and goings-on of a pretty average human being. I highly recommend the book.

Shifting gears . . .

The experience of one of the participants during one of the very early workshop exercises gave me cause to say, at the time, "Couldn't have said it better myself." Harsha, a bright-minded, intelligent, university professor had just finished one of the Energy Gathering exercises, an exercise intended to charge up or intensify awareness. In the debriefing after the exercise Harsha described that he had found himself looking upwards into a deep blue sky with a few puffy white clouds floating by in the daytime sun. It was an experience that was full color, 3D, holographic, moving imagery pretty much indistinguishable from how one would typically perceive the physical world with one's physical sense of sight. While he was admiring the blue sky and clouds Harsha suddenly remembered he was sitting on a chair doing the exercise, in a room, in a house with a ceiling and a roof. He mentally said to himself that he could not be seeing the blue sky and clouds because he would have to be seeing them through the ceiling and the roof, and that was clearly not possible. With that thought, Harsha remarked, the image went away and he found him self again sitting in the chair staring into the darkness of his closed eyes.

Harsha then said something like . . .

Since we began this workshop you (Bruce) have been telling us that exploring our afterlife or any other nonphysical reality is a simple matter of understanding the concept of shifting one's focus of attention from one area of consciousness to another, or I might say one reality to another. Then, after making such a shift we just use what you are calling our nonphysical senses to perceive within this alternate reality, or other area of consciousness, to know more about what is within this environment and to interact with whomever or whatever we find there.

After this last exercise I think I understand that what you are really telling us is that we are always, continuously, within all of these alternate realities, and that you are just teaching us how to become aware of, or through the self that is already there. And, that we are all, continuously making choices to be focused within the reality or area of consciousness we are habitually focused in. For some reason during this last exercise I chose to reject as fantasy or unreal the blue sky and clouds reality I was perceiving in favor of the reality I call the physical world, the real world, in which I am sitting in a chair in a room with a ceiling above me that blocks the view of the blue sky and clouds. Maybe the reality "I" am in is just a matter of the choices I make, moment to moment, about which of these realities is the "real one" or which reality I belong in.

At that point I remember looking at Harsha's smiling face and saying, "Harsha, I couldn't have said it better myself."

Bruce

A Difficult Death

Caryl's brother-in-law was in a Hospice facility in a town about two hours drive from Safety Harbor, I'll call him Mike. Mike had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and as the end approached it appeared that it could be one of those long, slow processes. Then, while in Hospice Mike had a stroke and his transition looked to be approaching fast. Family members arrived, including Caryl, to support Mike in his transition and each other.

Caryl is what is called an Eleventh Hour hospice volunteer and in that role she has attended a number of deaths. As a psychic she is well suited to the role of assisting those in the process of dying. Her phone call came early in the morning, while I was still asleep, so Pharon woke me with the message. Things were not going well.

Often, once a dying person is no longer conscious they seem to relax into a calm, slow breathing pattern. Over time the breath gets progressively shallower until there is barely any discernible breathing. Sometimes there will short periods of a gasping pattern, then slow breathing that just gradually stops. But, for more than six hours before she called me Mike had been yelling and thrashing, seemingly having a very difficult time getting out of his no longer usable body for the last time. Caryl described it as the worse death she had ever witnessed. Caryl's message to me ask me to see if there was anything I could do to relieve Mike's suffering. After Pharon gave me that message I immediately laid back down, closed my eyes and placed intent to contact Mike and observe the situation.

In the blackness, in barely discernible fuzzy black and white imagery I sensed Caryl off to my left. I felt more than saw that she was standing, facing the side of a bed about six feet away, and that the person in the bed had his head to her left. I also sensed a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular male, standing off to her right. He seemed to be focusing his attention on the person in the bed, who I assumed to be Mike. The tall male seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

I could feel the emotional energies, people's feelings, in the room and everything felt calm and supportive. Mike appeared to be resting comfortably and calm. Then suddenly the feeling in the room shifted to fear and horror, and Mike started groaning and moving, then yelling and thrashing in the bed. Everyone in the room reacted to this with feelings that were a mix of horror, sadness, fear and helplessness. I immediately called on every nonphysical friend I have who is good at sending Love. Many were immediately there and I felt them open channels of Love energy and it began pouring into the room. I felt some of it begin flowing through me and I beamed it all directly at Mike. This went on for quite a while. The fear and horror felt by those physically in the room began to subside. In a little while Mike began to calm down and relax, then he was resting quietly again. I observed two more of these horror cycles and during the last one I suddenly became aware of Carolene, standing on me right. I realized Caryl had problem phone her too with the same request.

I had the feeling Carolene had arrived before I did and had been observing the situation for a bit longer than I had. We talked about what we had both observed since our arrivals and both agreed that the problem was with the people surrounding Mike in the room. Some were in such a state of terror over Mike's death and his dying process that they were blasting Mike and everyone else in the room with those feelings. Some of them were having strong, difficult feelings that they were physical vocalizing. That got everyone else, especially Mike, stirred up and a near frenzy. As she was leaving the scene Carolene remarked that until those people settled down or left the scene there wasn't much we could do. I hung around a bit longer, but my assessment was the same as Carolene's, and so I did what I could to imagine and add to the thick, white, cotton-candy-like-cocoon of light already surrounding Mike. Then I left.

After getting up and dressed I came out to the living room and shared the experience with Pharon. Then, as I stood up, feeling a little helpless to have unable to intervene in the cycle Mike was trapped in, I heard someone say in my thoughts Now all we can to is cocoon him to protect him from strong outside influences. I was heading for my computer to check email. Within a couple of minutes after I sat down the phone rang. It was Caryl letting me know that Mike had just left.

Days later when I spoke with Caryl she explained that some people had been having a very difficult time with the fact that Mike was dying. Some sort of unfinished business they would feel powerless to complete, perhaps, after his death. Mike's dying process would be proceeding calmly, he would settle into the progressively shallower breathing pattern, and one of those people would lose it. They were wailing and crying imploring Mike not to die and all the agitation on their part would rile him, dragging him back and leading to his thrashing and yelling. Once that person was spent and calmed down or left the room Mike would slowly begin to calm down and relax. But then at some point before Mike could leave another one of those people would start in with their emotionally charged displays and drag Mike back. It was an awful experience for Mike. Hopefully it is a lesson to us.

Get things right and keep things right with those who are in our lives. Try to minimize the list of important unfinished business with others. And if you find yourself attending the death of someone you didn't do that with, have the decency and respect for that person's dying process to not to loudly, vocally interfere as that person is in the last stages of living. There is a time and a place for clearing up such things and those final moments are neither the time nor the place.

Bruce

Living amongst psychics

Not long after our move from Puerto Rico, back in April, we settled into a rented condo in the Tampa Bay area of Florida in a little town called Safety Harbor. On the third Friday of every month Safety Harbor blocks off Main Street to auto traffic so sidewalk vendors can open their little portable shops to locals and tourists. The town brings in live music with various bands playing at "The Gazebo" to attentive crowds of listeners whose favorite tunes come out of the 60s and 70s. It was on our first trek to a Third Friday event that we met Caryl, a popular local psychic who had a little spot on the street where she advertised readings. Through Caryl we met Carolene, a retired RN with a genuine psychic gift who practices regression and spirit releasement therapies, among others.

Early one afternoon I received a phone call from Carolene that started with a question. How soon after a person dies are you able to get in touch with them? she asked. When I explained that I could be in contact anytime between just before death, through the event and immediately afterward she asked if I would help her with a close friend who had just very recently died. I will call him Paul. He had died about twelve hours earlier and perhaps due to her closeness to Paul she couldn't seem to get in touch with him. But something felt terribly wrong. I asked for his full name and told Carolene I would check on him and phone her back.

I later was told that since early childhood Paul had lived with his parents and siblings, Carolene's next door neighbors, and through the years of his growing up she had become a sort of second mom. Grown now and in his twenties, Paul had moved to Arizona where he and his wife were raising their two children. After both arriving home from work, the night before Carolene called me, Paul had insisted to his wife that he would be the one to go, by himself, to pick up the kids at daycare. He left after dark and died before he made it to the daycare center.

Construction on the freeway Paul drove to the daycare center that night had caused those portable concrete barriers to be put in place to divert nighttime traffic to alternate lanes. Evidently there wasn't much signage and no extra lighting was set up warning of the sudden lane change ahead. As I tuned in to Paul, intending to join his experience at a point just before his death, it felt like I was moving forward through blackness at high speed. There was a sudden sense of panic and that something in front of me didn't belong there. I felt an instinctive reaction to swerve to avoid hitting whatever was in front of me, and then an immediate feeling that this snap decision had been a big mistake. I felt I would've been better off to hit whatever it was that I first sensed was in front of me. I hit something solid and felt myself being lifted up, in an uncontrollable slide, and then flipped over. I felt disoriented and a sense of heat. At that point I decided to withdraw from Paul's experience to get an outside perspective.

I sensed the car had landed resting on its top and as I reached out to sense the situation the passenger area of the car was engulfed in flame. I felt certain Paul was still in the car and I got down on my hands and knees looking inside the car and called out his name several times. There was no response. I began moving around the car, down low, calling his name more loudly. Still no response. I sensed that he had been pinned in the car after it landed and had been conscious as it caught fire and began burning his body. He struggle to get free but it was useless. He was stuck in the pain and terror of that moment. I reached inside with both hands, groping around until I found him, and was yelling his name, trying to pull his attention away from the situation, as I pulled him clear through the driver's side window. His body was badly burned and he was incoherent. I dragged him off to a flat area where he was lying on his back. I was talking to him, explaining who I was and telling him that Carolene had sent me. At that point I felt her presence, she moved in close and took control. From there on out just observed.

As Caroline starting working on him and talking to Paul the burning car and the rest of that scene faded into the blackness and I found myself standing in a room in Carolene's house. Paul was lying on his back, a small table, and she was talking to him. As I continued observing he was retrieved.

When I called her to pass along what I found Carolene confirmed that Paul had died in a fiery car crash on the freeway in Arizona. She also confirmed that she had found me at he scene of the accident with Paul, moved in to take over, and then taken him to the therapy run in her home. The next day the family members in Arizona drove the route Paul had been on and confirmed the poorly marked traffic lane diversion at the scene of the accident. Several days after Paul's retrieval his young children began receiving visits from him which they described their mother. Last I heard these visits continue in Paul is doing much better.

Life amongst the psychics and healers in our new life here in Florida is like coming home. I am thoroughly enjoying interaction with people whose everyday lives have events like described above as pretty ordinary events. In the Spring we plan to start looking at homes with an eye toward purchasing a place of our own. It's nice to feel at home.

Bruce

First Test Blog Post

Welcome to my blog. I am just catching up to the blogging generation and hope to give a more informal view of the events in an old author's life by keeping this up to date. Gives me a chance to share some of the silly and not so silly happenings that go on in my world. I'll start by picking up a few loose threads from the recent past, and then add events as they move forward.

Bruce