I quote from Betty Eadie's description of her NDE: “At the time of death, we are given the choice to remain on this earth until our bodies are buried or to move on, as I did to the level to which our spirit had grown (“Embraced by the Light,” 83).”
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COMMENTS: I suspect that Betty is mistaken in limiting the duration of this choice to the burial ceremony.  50% of Americans and 48% of the British report ADCs within the first year of a loved one’s death.  

Obviously, many souls are so enthralled by the anticipation of their heavenly abode that they pass up the gloomier opportunity to linger “below” and tune in to the ghastly fate of their corpse and the depressing grief of their earthly loved ones.  Of those who decide to linger behind, many might not have the knowledge, skill, or temperament to contact surviving loved ones in a convincing fashion. The availability and quality of spirit guides may vary greatly depending on the spiritual development of the newly deceased.  Spirit guides may be assigned on the basis the compatibility of their own belief system with that of the newly deceased.

As a minister, I held Carol’s hand as she passed into eternity.  I had alerted her friends on the death watch to the possibilities of an ADC.  To my knowledge, only her boyfriend Chad received such a contact.  The day after the funeral, he heard a woman’s voice shouting his name, while he was alone in his house.  Apparently, a discarnate Carol was trying different types of contact without success and a powerful mental “yell” was the only form of contact that worked for her.  I would have expected her best friend Cathy to receive an ADC from Carol.  Cathy had quit her job to take care of a dying Carol for two months.  But Cathy was more skeptical than Chad and only Chad had prior psychic experiences.  I suspect that Chad was the only “receiver” adequately attuned to Carol to receive a modest ADC.

[Emanuel Swedenborg (ES) was perhaps the most gifted astral explorer who ever lived.  I will quote extensively from his magisterial book "Neaven and Hell:"]“There are some who protect new spirits, just arrived from the world from the attacks of evil spirits (HH 194-95).”
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COMMENTS: Preliminary hellish experiences are a rather common and terrifying variation of NDEs.  According to ES, only a few discarnate spirits accept the assignment of protecting new arrivals from such attacks.  Vulnerability to such attacks may be an important factor in limiting ADC contact. Spirit guides may vary in their attitudes to the safety and desirability of ADCs and in their capacity to effectively diffuse such attacks.

[ES:] “In the spiritual world, one person is present to another only if that presence is intensely desired.  Conversely, one person moves away from another to the extent that there is any sense of reluctance.”
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These principles operate in the absence of spatial reality in the afterlife and apply to social interactions in the heavens.  But the same principles probably apply to the newly dead who want to contact their bereaved earthly loved ones. In the fear and confusion of the initial disembodied state, the requisite focus or intense desire for contact with the living may be sabotaged.  Also, the right type of psychic attunement is essential for ADCs.  Any “reluctance” on the part of one party can prevent such ADCs from occurring or from being recognized as ADCs.  This reluctance might have many causes.  The earthly loved ones may be skeptical about postmortem survival, or at least, about the possibility of ADCs.   Newly discarnate souls may be torn between a desire to reassure loved ones and a longing to discover their future abode and fate.  This ambivalence might subtly undermine the intensity of the focused attention needed for ADCs.  Many fundamentalist loved ones might be reluctant out of fear that ADCs are forms of spirit impersonation from demonic entities.

[ES:] “There can be many people appearing together in one place as long as they agree, but as soon as they disagree, they vanish.”
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COMMENT: Many ADCs between spouses may be prevented by subtle disagreements about what is possible and desirable.  The requisite “agreements” may include subtle psychic attunement and compatibility that presently elude precise specification.  At least one party may not be psychically gifted or open enough to discern such a postmortem contact.  

[ES:] “There are some who attend to people in the lower earth (HH 391)."
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COMMENT: The role of guardian angel is merely one of many roles that those in the Heavens can play and apparently discarnate spirits play just one vocational role at a time.  There are well-defined roles for which we receive training in Heaven.  According, to ES, only a few are well suited for the role of guardian angel and volunteer for this vocation.

Don

Actually, most ADCs don't address the reality of Hell at all.  Cardiologist Maurice Rawlings has interviewed many, many patients immediately after their NDEs.  About 50% of their experiences are reportedly hellish.  Rawlings tellingly anticipates the objection that most other NDEs are very positive.  He points out: (1) Most NDEs are voluntarily reported.  People are understandably reluctant to report hellish NDEs for fear of casting aspersions on their own character.  (2) In most cases, the patients who report hellish NDEs immediately suppress the memory of them because they are too painful to recall.  Yet during their clinical death, they describe these negative NDEs in chilling detail.  Dr. Sabom is also both a cardiologist and NDE researcher and doesn't confirm Rawlings' percentage.  True, 50% may not be an accurate percentage, but the frequency and reality of hellish experiences should not be doubted.  Besides, there is widespread agreement among astral adepts of contradictory ideologies that hellish experiences and realms do exist: e. g. the Bible, Swedenborg, Bruce Moen, Robert Monroe, Robert Bruce.  The visions of hell seem relatively coherent in their references to a tragic realm in which souls are attracted on the basis of the principle like attracts like.  Of course, there is disagreement on how the hellish planes fit into the grand scheme of postmortem survival and progress.

Don

Don-

First and foremost, WELCOME BACK!  Great to see you here again, why the long absence?

Re your post-

[ES:] “In the spiritual world, one person is present to another only if that presence is intensely desired.  Conversely, one person moves away from another to the extent that there is any sense of reluctance.”

If true, this doesn't bode well for Bruce's phone device to the afterlife.

R

Don is back!  Awesome.  I for one will stick around to be reading what he has to say.

Greetings,

Aren't all these' attunement issues', the 'reluctances', and 'subtle disagreements' just descriptions of a lack of PUL?   Wouldn't they be solved when enough PUL is generat--emanated?
Our host Bruce Moen has provided the answer, but it doesn't seem to get much acknowledgement.

Or if PUL is too sentimental, when we visualize these predicaments as energy patterns, we see the reluctance is holding back energy, disagreement is conflicting energies, etc.  Attunement is the only other emanating energy and it adds a sense of harmonizing which is good.

Just trying to put it all into context.

Bets

Roger,

As you know, the ADCs of Telly Savalas and my parishioner, Leonard, are as spectacular as any ADCs in history.  I assume that both cases met certain conditions, some of which we can grasp and others which we cannot.  For example, Leonard told me about earlier spectacular psychic experiences that were impressive in their supernatural character., but he never shared the details with me.   He was apparently psychically gifted, and so, might have been uniquely attuned to his deceased son's " vibration."  You seem to assume that Telly was an unlikely candidate for his ghostly encounter.  But is it not possible that Telly, like Leonard,  was uniquely gifted psychically?  Also, two Greek guys (Savalas and Agannis) might have been uniquely attuned for ethnic and cultural reasons as well as for spiritual compatibility.  Note also that both were outdoors when they were coping with an emotionally difficult situation--the unexpected death of a son and a car out of gas in an torrential rainstorm.  Certain types of emotional shock can stop the mind from censuring possibilities and generate an unconscious longing for a romantic escape from discomfort and anxiety.  Such speculation cannot explain uniquely bizarre paranormal events.  But beneficiaries of such ADCs should be examined more closely for clues to unknown conditions that they unwittingly satisified to  enhance their role as psychic "receivers."  

For example, when I am about to have a powerfully clairvoyant experience, I notice subtle alterations in my state of mind.  Such experiences almost always "sneak up on me" and take me by surprise.  They never happen when I intensely desire them and unwittingly try to make them happen.  Wishful thinking is the enemy of psychic power.  On the other hand, it seems essential to be immersed in the right kind of meditation on a problem crying out for resolution.  

For example, I was walking down Oak St., unconsciously musing over a pastoral problem.  Seniors from nursing homes were supposedly being denied food and medication simply because they attended my church and showed up late for lunch at the nursing home.  Suddenly, I felt a gentle urge to walk back and enter a Christian book store that held no interest for me.  I did so, and found myself unintentionally explaining my problem to the salesman.  It turned out that his wife was in charge of feeding nursing home patients and providing their medications.  My problem was quickly solved.  I had no reasons to share my problem with the book salesman and no reason to imagine that he wuold care or be in a position to help me.              

This experience is very typical of how I receive divine guidance.  Though I have prayed about the problem, I am not consciously engaged with the problem in an anxiety-producing, intense manner.  I am not currently TRYING to solve the problem.  Rather, the problem is "on the backburner" of my mind and I am unusually open to inrrational impulses.  I am willing to feel foolish by acting on these impulses.  That 's the state of mind I find conducive to divine intervention.  There are many other elusive distinctions between wishful thinking and the quiet confidence of mountain-moving faith, distinctions that I am currently unable to articulate.  But when I'm in a psi-conducive state, I think, "Oh yeah, so that's what it's like!  I'll try to tune in the subtle affective shades that make the decisive difference."  Wanting it too badly can guarantee that you never have the experience!

Don

Bets,

Here's another example.  Jasmine and her husband Ed are a very poor couple.  Jasmine has serious health issues--a pre-cancerous condition that requires major surgery and a heart defect that causes her to faint almost daily.  In fact, she recently passed out and fell down 3 flights of stairs, badly bruising her whole body, and later fainted and fell off her porch on to her concrete driveway. More painful bruises!  I visited her and laid hands on her for healing. I wanted to help so badly but felt only a sense of hopelessness after my prayer.  Then I learned that she could not get a ride to her doctor in Spokane.  In her despair, she was contemplating suicide.  When she finally did get a ride to her doctor, he informed her that her heart condition was incurable and that she would just have to live with it.  He gave her a cane to blunt her falls.  This was obviously of very little help.  So I visited her again to lay hands on her.  This time my wishful thinking was blunted by the prior ineffectiveness of my prayer and the hopeless medical prognosis.  So I just relaxed and surrendered to whatever might happen.  When I prayed for Jasmine this time, I was oddly relaxed and unfettered by any expectations.  Paradoxicallly, I sensed an unexpected confidence that that this prayer was more effective.  6 weeks later, Jasmine has not passed out since that prayer!  Clearly, I was less ego-invested and anxious during that prayer.   But I'm also acutely aware that I am incapable of adequately articulating the imparted quiet confidence that took me by surprise as I laid hands on her this second time.

Don

P.S. I have changed her name to protect her privacy.

The spirits I communicate with on a regular basis, are spirits I didn't know as humans. Going by their knowledge level and what they are capable of, they haven't been human for some time.

I'm in touch with these spirits all the time, even though I don't communicate with them all the time.  Here's an example that Don's book store experience reminds me of, even though the issue at had wasn't as important. Yesterday I was walking in my office. A stop sign was shown to me. This caused me to slow down. Right then a lady came walking realy quick around the corner. If I hadn't of slown down, we would of crashed into each other. Despite how this lady walks quickly, she has a bad back. It probably wouldn't had been good if we crashed into each other.

Here's another example. My spirit guidance uses Volkswagens (VWs) as a symbol for volition/willpower. One day I was driving home from work and wondering how I could overcome a limiting mental tendency. I heard a thought/voice say, "look behind you." I looked in my rearview mirror and there was a VW.  I don't look in my rearview mirror very often, and had no idea the VW was there.

This is how the VW thing started. One day my guidance showed me a bright green car and a little bright yellow volkswagon. The volkswagon drove head on into the larger green car, merged completely without any damage taking place, and right after doing so the green car took off and drove way. I understood that the yellow car stood for willpower because this is the color of our third willpower chakra, and I understood that the green car stood for love, because green is the color of our heart chakra. Hence, if I merge my willpower with love, I'll take off.

Here's a message that relates to helping people. I was speaking to a patient at a hospital. He used to be a drug addict, and he said he changed after he gave his life to Christ. I heard him say some things that sounded really fundamentalist. Even though I had made a pact to myself to not try to change what patients I visit believe, I started to do so with this man. Right away the left side of my face became fuzzy. Christ lets me know of his presence in this way. I got the clear message that Christ is taking care of this man in a way that suits him, and it is better that I don't intefere with this. The best thing I could do is simply share love with him.