From Wikepedia:
A ghetto is an area where people from a specific racial or ethnic background are united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. The word historically referred specifically to the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, where Jews were required to live. It was later applied to neighborhoods in other cities where Jews were required to live. The corresponding German term was Judengasse; in Moroccan Arabic ghettos were called mellah. The term came into popular, world-wide use during World War 2, in reference to Nazi ghettos (see below).
The term now commonly labels any poverty-stricken urban area. In the U.S. the news media created terms like rural ghetto to describe mobile home parks, farm labor housing tracts and Indian reservations to indicate that the poorest areas in the U.S. aren't within major cities. In the United States, urban neighborhoods where Hispanic immigrants settled in the late 20th century (called barrios) are said to be comparable to ghettos, because most immigrants form a culturally isolated enclave and may choose to remain there or associate with their own group.
"Ghetto" is also used figuratively to indicate geographic areas with a concentration of any type of person, with or without poverty (e.g. gay ghetto) or for non-geographic categories (e.g. "sci fi ghetto" [1]). The term is also used to describe an item or an action as cheap or flimsy. Some consider this use of language to be an offensive misapplication[2].
Some people in the U.S. and Europe strongly dislike the term ghetto, believing it to have racist, elitist and culturally insensitive overtones, and the mention of such a word to describe a working-class ethnic community is considered a generalization or an insult. Many social workers and community leaders suggest alternative words to describe these areas like economically disadvantaged areas as the location of the areas are often isolated from its outer worlds.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Don,

I see you as a very sensitive fellow. Why would such a person use such language as "ghetto" to describe his friends?

Just to rile us up, which you do occasionally succeed in doing.

Of course, there is little difference between that and some of the verbal activities of others among us.

We like to rile each other up and ruffle each other's feathers sometimes.

I suppose it is too much to expect people in this world to be kind 24/7.

We must all have something deeply in common with each other to be here on this forum together, and that is a need for fellowship, community, and the quest for experience and knowledge.

I hear Don's plea that something be done to create verifications which will be convincing to scientists, scholars and the like.

However, it is true that in this world any position one might take can be refuted or minimized, no matter what evidence is there.

Notice how the debate on earth climate changes continues to rage among scientists and politicians....

Notice how the poor are still poor and the weak still persecuted.

I simply feel that Real Love has no boundaries. If you want to have verifications, Don, then you must let go of all of us and let go of your mind and let go of your past and your future.  You must let go of everything that holds you to this earth, even your memories of your loved ones, and simply let Love tell you what it is that you need to know.

Love never fails.

blink

So augoeiDon

You too think we should all be waisting are lives away reading some half-nonsense piece of 2000 year old literature? Disgusting. Oh yea, Don is being very polite by insulting most of the members of this board and the forum itself.. real polite.  I'm not saying I take offense to what Don says.. just that you are totally wrong in your assumption that this is polite. I believe Don wants to be close to god, like you say, so he constantly tries to prove other people wrong about their thinking, only to further confirm to himself that his beliefs are true.  This is not the path to discovering god, however.

I think the way to prove retrievals are real is to prove it to oneself by pursuing the act of doing them, and through the heart. The way to prove them is not by tearing down someone's belief, but by aiding them to construct belief.
I don't think my post was picking on Don and neither is anyone else. we are merely expressing our unique viewpoints of which there are many.

I for one have given up trying to figure out Don's purpose on this board other than he really does think we are all deluded and possibly hell bound. He actually sits on Bruce's board and attempts to ursurp Bruce's position in his absence, by every chance finding fault with either Monroe's or Bruce's experiences. Tell me one thing good about the books Don, and I'll change my mind about what you are doing here.

back to retrievals..they are based on extending understanding, compassion, to those temporarily stuck in a belief system, which belief system is like a sticky goo on the astral body, thats why I say we do retrievals right here on Earth, not just in the astral. We do it through our communications to each other. there is nothing mysterious about helping others out. We have nothing to prove. You have to prove it to yourself by wishing to be of service to life as a basis point.

Love, PUL, is like a fine china shop. The universe is a beautiful place to live in and explore, unless you are a bull in a china shop Don, breaking everything that is beautiful in our souls, we are ALL divine and sacred beings and we must believe in each other in order to advance into these profoundly healing areas of retrievals.

You can start believing in others and yourself by respecting what the intentions of this board was in the beginning set up by Bruce and Rosalie, a place to explore without judgment, without censorship retrievals, obes and the like.

you could if you wanted, let us "rescue" you instead of you rescuing us. thats the true value of retrievals.
Picking on Don...yea, right. give me a break. I've been here too long, thats for sure.

The exciting thing is that no one has come out against the idea of trying to get more cases of spiritual contact verified in the physical world.  We have all said that having no verification does not mean it did not happen.  Don is playing the devil's advocate in saying that without any verification, he must assume that contact with the deceased was bogus.  Don, you know exactly what you are doing.  I do believe that avoiding a smear on individual seekers as being part of a herd/ghetto is essential in continuing to flesh out your ideas and continue a dialogue here, on this Afterlife knowledge board. 

If Don had stated his belief that further verifications were essential to exclude wishful thinking from real spiritual experiences, and left it at that, people would have loved it (I think).  But then the provocative banter comes in, "ghetto," yada yada yada, and feathers are ruffled.  We are above all that. 

I thnk there shoud be a subcategory of this AK forum entitled Verifications of co afterlife contact.  It would make a fascinating section, and allow an energetic individual to compare several verifications and what they al had (or didn't have) in common. 


M

Don's attitude has been pointed out to him before, to no avail. The practical, diplomatic and ethical importance of not causing unnecessary offense when trying to convince someone is often lost on him.

Rob

It seems as if it's difficult, maybe impossible, to push for solid verifications of retrievals without it being interpreted as somehow disrespecting Bruce and the work that he does.

I can only speak for myself, but in no way am I trying to discredit Bruce.  And frankly I don't think others are either.  We all have one big thing in common.....we want to know for a certainty that the afterlife does exist and that our loved ones survive death.

The difference is, some of us are satisfied with things as reported by others, while some of us want concrete evidence.  Unless Bruce has changed his mind since his northern VA workshop, he also emphasizes the importance of verification.

I have read many retrieval accounts, and I have to say that none of them present what I consider to be conclusive evidence that contact with a deceased person took place.

So part of the problem is the definition of what constitutes verification.  Bruce used to have that definition on this website, but it seems to have disappeared along with a group of retrievals that were identified as conforming with Bruce's criteria for verification.  I wish they were still around somewhere.

Since I can no longer find these retrievals, most of what I can say is based on memory (except for the 9/11 retrieval). 

Anyway, the essence of these verified retrievals was that *a person does a retrieval *the person is told something that the person was not aware of and/or had no way of knowing *afterwards, the person finds out that what he was told during the retrieval was in fact true.  And from this sequence, the conclusion was reached that the retrieval was verified to be real.  In other words, genuine contact was made with a deceased individual.

Ok, this is a good start and could possibly mean that the retrieval was genuine.  My problem is, we have no way of knowing whether or not the information gained during the retrieval was unknown to the retriever or not.  For example, I do a retrieval and I'm told by my deceased father that I can find his will in the bottom drawer of an old desk in the basement.  I go in the basement and sure enough, I find the will.  Does this mean, therefore, my retrieval was verified?

It sure is convincing, but it's also possible that long before his death, I perhaps overheard a conversation between he and my mom wherein he told her where he was putting his will.  Maybe I was just a young kid and I had long since stored that bit of information in my subconscious.  And, since I had gone into a state of meditation in order to do the retrieval, my subconscious was freed up and the channel to that long-forgotten piece of memory was open.  And I mistakenly thought that I received it from my dad instead.

The above scenario pretty much captures, by example, those cases where verifications were claimed.  Maybe it's very unlikely that I overheard such a conversation, but it's POSSIBLE. 

What we have to do, in my opinion, is to eliminate such possible explanations before we conclude that a retrieval account is in fact verified.

So now the question is, how can we know for sure that information gained during a retrieval was not information that we ourselves already knew but had forgotten?

One way is to first attempt a retrieval that does not involve a member of our family.  It really has to involve a person we never knew and furthermore (unlike the 9/11 retrieval) not even involve a friend of a friend.

Preferably it would involve retrieving someone who died a long time ago (not someone whose death was widely reported in the papers, like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross or Spalding Gray) and someone with no ties to our family or circle of friends.  If this person gives a piece of personal information.....maybe his serial number when he was killed during a specific battle during WWII.....and then we do the research and find yes, there was a soldier who died during that battle and yes, that was his serial #.  And the soldier was totally unrelated to us or to any of our friends.

For me that would be verification.  And I have to say, if cases like this exist, I have yet to find them.

I just think we have to be diligent and rigorous if we really want to be able to say that the retrieval we did was real.  Notice that I said the "retrieval" and not retrievals in general.  Because I DO believe there is such a thing as retrievals.  I am in no way refuting the concept.  I do believe retrievals exist, and have existed for many centuries.  I just think it's important to possess documentation before claiming a specific retrieval was genuine.

Thanks Blink, but just to clarify, I'm not asking that personal information actually be posted.  It would be sufficient, in the example I gave, that the person simply said that they retrieved a WWII soldier who gave his Serial #, and that the # proved out after doing the research.

Obviously we would have to take the person's word for that.  I wouldn't expect that names or personal information be actually posted.

(The only caveat being that, for instance, if an independent researcher were conducting research for a book, he or she should have access to such information in order to be sure it's authentic.)

"Like how this entire well researched topic started by Don has been lost on you?"

My post was about his attitude.

with love,
Rob