I know this may be a touchy subject but I`m gonna start it. It interests me out of numerious reasons, which all of you can figure out themselves.

In the afterlife - what do you believe will be the tolerence and acceptence level.
Thru NDE`s, medial contacts, mediums and even OBE`s I`ve read that when entering the realm of the afterlife, one feels, sees, hears, smells and LIVES. Some don`t even know that they are physically dead. Now thats pretty vivid to me okay. I love it!

However this means to me that there are also charachteristics of oppinions. In some NDE`s its also quoted that the souls look as they appeared on earth, only healthier.

Do the blacks hate the whites, the whites the blacks, the russians the americans, the americans the Irakie and so forth there too. If so then I`m not going there! ...lol...

Do they have ignorant leaders whom are suppose to be more intelligent, making choices for souls which will harm them in the long run? If so, I don`t wanna go there!

Are differences of oppinions handeled with love & understanding instead of with anger? If not I don`t want to go there!

I am asking clearly, what kind of afterlife are you personally really expecting, or awaiting to see? For if we can`t kick the "habits of racisim, hatred, egoism, brutality etc" while in this life, then we`re taking these charachteristics with us and living them out at least in the first stage directly after physical death"....

Bunches of love for all,
Nanner

Nanner, I will try to answer this for you, from my perspective. For me, I am less concerned with controlling what "persona" I carry with me into the afterlife, and what kind of "happy place" I can go spend eternity in...but more concerned with how I will be able to handle whatever "place" I do end up. In other words, how effective can I be...anywhere I am?

I am very interested in being able to be as free as possible, so that any "tasks" I may have here or there, as part of any community, may be as varied and interesting as possible. That is how we learn and grow and display our uniqueness.

I've been slightly confused about the concepts of different "levels" in the afterlife, probably because I'm just not all that interested in how they are specifically distinguished. I'm more interested in how the whole "big picture" operates.

I would assume, from all that I've read, that to keep in awareness the absolute freedom that exists in the mind of "God" could be the way to remain unstuck, and could be an ideal way to continue to evolve in any arena. That would have to be my ultimate goal.

with love, blink

I can't answer from experience Nanner (not that I can remember at least ) but as far as I know a Buddhist take on this is that ego is stripped away over a period in the bardo/afterlife and presumably  gets parked as karma - so that by the time we get to rebirth (in whatever realm we're headed for based on this karma) what we retain is some sort of set of tendencies but usually no specific memory.

The thinking is that the fact of having done a lot of harm in life may lumber us with less than ideal karma. Or vice versa. If we'd not in the life just completed learned the lessons needed to stop us doing the same again we'd presumably arrive in our next life with (a) a risk of out of ignorance falling into doing harm again, and (b) a bundle of karma (which wouldn't necessarily ripen in that life) which might also tend to make it even more likely that we would do this harm.

I guess the thinking is that this cycle of building and dropping ego goes on as we progress from life to life - or work our way between the various realms.

I'm personally not terribly inclined to think that the very earthlike afterlife realities described by Robert Monroe are anything more than temporary states, but I could of course be wrong. I find it equally difficult to figure out what the reality of our progression may be - do we experience thousands of lifetimes on earth, or do we fairly quickly descend to or move up to other realms. And if we do go to higher realms, is it the case as Buddhism teaches that these are actually not terribly effective as learning environments because they are not challenging enough.

There's lots of information reported on the nature of some of the afterlife realities (in both very specific descriptions, and others that are less so), but much less and very little that isn't possibly just theory as to the mechanisms that determine how we progress through lives within a reality and between them....

That's the million dollar question Nanner.

I tend towards the (I think) Buddhist view that a society gets the leadership it deserves - that what it does and where it goes reflects the consciousness of its members.

That it's not possible to compel people to behave morally. Force/violence breed more of the same, and it always tends to escalate. You can try it, but all it does is to trigger all sorts of resistance from the selfish vested and other interests. Step up the compulsion and suddenly you have a totalitarian dictatorship. Violent resistance leads to attacks on a fearful population, leading to further erosion of rights in the name of security. The leadership becomes more and more paranoid and extreme as they find that the populace don't see it through their lens (which anyway is a highly partial view) and far from being eternally grateful for being rescued start to plot against it because it's damaging their lives.

It kind of looks like maybe the only way of uplifting a society is by raising its consciousness. The bit I can't quite figure out is whether or not there exists some category of enlightened action which while forceful is at the same time wise and compassionate.

The Western world rather likes to think there is, but the record of it's 'helpful' interventions is not very good viewed through the eyes of those helped.

Perhaps though our attempts to 'help' have always amounted to actions mostly designed to protect economic and other selfish interests dressed up in humanitarian clothes - that there is a place for intervention if it's truly selfless. I need convincing of this though - if only because it's not possible unless the society sponsoring the intervention is both wise enough to identify the right course of action and selfless enough to make it possible - which kind of brings us back to raising societal consciousness again)

Quite how we're going to manage it I don't know. We seem to be caught in a race to determine  whether or not we can develop wisdom fast enough not to be destroyed by technology, population growth, climate change, ecological problems and heaven knows what else.

That wisdom is for me inextricably linked with spirituality and the raising of consciousness. Discursive or thinking mind cannot alone achieve this - it's ultimately an issue of intuition and higher knowing.

We've a real problem too I think with the direction our Western societal and political leadership structures have gone. Centuries upon centuries of misuse of religion as a means of power caused us for very good reason to separate church and state. But that's the best of a bad lot. We've ended up with a frighteningly amoral system that's driven by selfishness and mostly only achieves a balance of power between the vested interests living off those that produce. Even if we could arrange effective distribution of wealth many of the needy if supported will simply stop contributing and live of the largesse.

Our culture teaches rule of the fittest and winner takes all, and sanctions violent action - from kindergarten and early family onwards. Our values are screwed, and so far most of us can't seem to see this. We see no problem saturating kids with 'entertainment' that reinforces the error, we expect our leaders to be strong in this way.

Enlightened leadership must merge the spiritual and the secular - the Shambhala tradition of Tibetan Buddhism is one template. (try Rigden Kings in Google, it's interesting) But it's so easy for this to spill over into error driven by mistaken attempts to do good. Chances are Adolf Hitler for example thought he was doing right by the German people.

The leadership can only be a catalyst for the aforementioned stepping up of societal consciousness - it's power is quite limited. Meaning that the main task of it and everybody else with a higher view is probably to live by example and to help educate the rest.

The best template I've seen for how we should to live in the world is Chogyam Trungpa's 'Shambhala the Sacred Path of the Warrior'. We need bravery, but that the bravery to live from the heart and care for others, not the deluded version that considers it brave to force our will on others.

I think we need to concentrate all our efforts on producing the required shift in conciousness most especially in ourselves, but also in others where we can help. Care is needed though, no sooner can we walk than mixed ego and genuine compassion tends to lead us to try to teach others. Which is good in one way, but needs care. We must at all costs resist the urge to zealotry.

It's notable that none of the great teachers over the centuries (that I can think of anyway) have advocated direct action as a means of improving society.

My prayer is in the meantime that the acceleration of consciousness we all like to talk about and perhaps even the hoped for step up will occur in time.  But I think it's going to be a close run thing.......

A warm and loving welcome to the board REI. Its wonderful to gain new glimpes of wonderful perspectives, you might find us here a bit abnormally   too loving at times, but rest assured it`s contagious!  

Will be looking forward to your point of views.
Nanner

love this thread u started Nanner. u r good kid!! 

welcome here Rei. hope u enjoy it here and stay a long time. Personally, although I love intellectual stuff and throwing ideas around, what I like best is personal experience stories such as what Rei offered about the hornets and then Rei relates it to what he or she picked up from Christian Science, one of the newer religions on our Earth right now.

I belonged to The Church of Religious Science for awhile Rei and I think there are some similarities between the two doctrines. At any rate, no matter what religion one holds, prayer is a working dynamic there, related to meditation.

I don't claim to be with any religion right now, but see TMI affiliation and Monroe's and Moen's books as a kind of movement of consciousness. (doing service of retrievals and healings of the kind you mentioned, through prayer which is also like Reiki and like a thing some call absent healing.

Theres also a silent movement called the Church of Spiritual Humanism I joined, and just for the joy of it ordered my certificate of ordination, and just as you are a reader, so too we all become in our souls to say namaste, we all stand where god stands. all Im saying by this piece of paper is I am a human who is also divine and we are all together in it.
I think its so cool you do the readings, sounds like fun to me!

Rei said: CS teaches that we are in a dream right now.  We have a unique existence, but this isn't it.
The amazing ability of Christian Science Prayer, which is similar but unlike what most people think of as prayer, to change seeming physical reality, proves to me that this seeming existence is not as real as it seems.
_____

I agree with you. CS looks like ACIM, a Course in Miracles theosophy, as well Monroe of TMI supports ACIM. ACIM teaches the same as CS to say we are in a dream like world. the correlation to that statement with what comes from TMI, is we exist in C1, a limited perceptional world, with the attending supposition we begin to advance towards a more unlimited perspective during our individual developments and through our experiences that we use to prove to ourselves that what we are learning is true. we are more than just our bodies is another simpler phrase we use here, which I find so helpful.
I've found the dream is unique also and although while it possesses it's unreal quality (nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. ACIM quote)
it is not to say life here is not valuable because we then become so eager to find what it is that is real. In my case love is the only reality, a thing we call PUL here, which stands for pure unconditional love energy of a conscious state of process of being.

we used to say in Religious Science regarding prayer:
1) treat  (define what u want)
2) move your feet

thats about all I really got out of my church, and btw, we had 1,000's of members and 2 church services in Denver on a Sunday..place was rockin!

getting off topic, sorry. Nanner asked about acceptance of each other in the afterlife areas: my opinion is it's easier to love one another on the other side than it is here and that we live in our disc groups or small groups of souls who come into the earth planes together and aid each other in life reviews inbetween dives down here. I think or imagine I have 12; we all counsel each other or make suggestions but it's more fun than like being judged before a court, its family reunion time. I don't imagine even that the question of acceptance/rejection comes up on the other side that much, of other groups as each group is focused in attention on their own little turf, so to speak. (my pov) it is here that Ian mentions the challenge aspect of an earth life where acceptance/rejection becomes an issue and politics we have here, but not so much there. (unless theres a special bst for politicians? HAR!  bst means belief system territory.

I agree with Ian, I'll put in a plug for The Sacred Path of the Warrior. it goes along perfectly with spiritual humanism concepts, in that the warrior of light looks toward the rising sun rather than the descending sun and uses his errors as stepping stones to become more than he/she thought they were.

thanks again for that amazing miracle story of the hornets and how you were healed so fast. One definition of a miracle is #47 (this kicks!) the miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. it establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. in this sense it is timeless.

back in my late 20's I heard my inner voice say to "expect a miracle."

and you had your self a miracle my friend! I have been awaiting reports of miracles for 30 years, so I think I begin to see more of this kind of thing, as we look to the miracle and the changes I am calling the shift in consciousness.

thanks again the chance to talk here and all the fine contributions which give me thought and inspiration and a feeling of comradeship. love, alysia

Hi REI, I think we crossed there. Welcome to the board. I too am an engineer and have come from a technological background, although in truth I was always a little more out on the creative/intuitive wing.

I've never been a member of a church Alysia other than as an accident of birth, but as we've discussed before it's quite remarkable (if we can drop the nit picking on terminology and start looking for agreement) the alignment between all sorts of traditions regarding the nature of where we find ourselves, what we are and what is required of us. The big differences often reflect more differences in culture, consciousness and view than they do than they do stuff that requires getting hung up about. (it's pretty futile to get bogged down in argument over details about esoteric stuff when our understanding of the big picture I'm sure is so sketchy and perspective specific anyway)

You can take almost whatever spiritual tradition you like  - Christian mysticism, various shades of Shamanism and other native belief systems, the many many streams of Buddhism, Ayurveda/Vedanta, Hinduism, Sufism (mystical Islam), Taoism, ACIM, Urantia Book, Theosophy and now it seems Monroe, Moen, Christian Science and the many predecessors to these like some of the Egyptian, Mithraism and other Middle Eastern systems of belief there are amazing degrees of overlap.

Buddhism would have absolutely no trouble with you story about the hornets REI, and nor do I - it seems we need only decide and it happens. There's a famous story of one of the old Tibetan masters hurriedly riding up to his friend's house on his horse, and absent mindedly stabbing his whip in a rock to tether it for example. You don't have to go back in time to find examples of extra normal occurrence. 'With our minds we make the world' is another Buddhist saying.

Thanks for the kind words Nanner too, but don't forget that's just an opinion - and not even an original view at that. Perhaps the huge issue that follows from all of this is what is truly required of us? And if we can properly answer that question, can we convert the theoretical perspective into action?

I'm going to shift to your 'new way of life on earth' to offer a view on that....

My main point in describing the hornet encounter is to show what Christian Scientists do routinely.  Unfortunately today's Christian practice regards that sort of event as unusual, but when prayer from the proper basis is used. it is commonplace and expected, not a miracle.

If we are in a dream right now, a dream with an instructional purpose, and what seems to be death is a release from that dream, what does that mean.  What does it mean that we can demonstrate that the bad situations that seem fixed and concrete in this living dream can be changed instantly?

It took me some time after I began studying Christian Science to grasp the concept that "There is no matter", but as I actually demonstrated to myself the results of applying what I was learning, the results showed me that what I had always thought of as real was not, and that another reality of perfection and love was the actual reality.  I am still working on understanding what it all means.

The Christian Science Church doesn't have preachers, but elects Readers from the membership to conduct the services.  All offices are for a preset period and term limited. 

The church is led by Practitioners.  Those who can demonstrate healing of well diagnosed conditions may submit their healings to a board and be listed in the monthly Christian Science Journal.  To maintain the listing they must make their entire living from spiritual healing.  Most practitioners I know do very well, often with several dozen cases at a time for which they charge between $15 and $40 per day.  First call healings are common. 

Those who cannot make a living from healing either improve or drop out.  This free market approach removes questions of compensation of church leaders from committees and bases it totally on performance as measured by successful healing.  I just had a healing a few weeks ago of an absess in a molar.  The right side of my face became swollen and I was unable to get rid of it with my own prayer.  I asked a practitioner for help and the condition vanished in around half an hour. 

They are not miracles, but the routine replacement of problems with normalcy through the application of Divine Love.

As I said in my first post, I don't think my encountering this site was an accident.  I am about 2/3 through Ultimate Journey.  I hope to expand my understanding of our actual condition as I continue my study.  I feel a need to be able to use thjis knowledge to bring conditions on earth into line with God's desires, which I believe is the expression of unconditional love.

Human will is not Christian Science.  Seeking and listening are required to find the path.  One of my favorite CS texts is God's Law of Adjustment:  http://www.christianscience.org/GodsLaw.htm ;  I have been using it to deal with a longstanding problem in my extended family where a criminal group has been causing trouble and preying on other family members and the public for several generations.  It is a very practical method for handling complex problems involving several people.

Thanks for all your responses. 

The Sentinel Magazine puts out a weekly radio program where people describe their own healings and the elevation of thought and understanding that came from them.  It is inspiritional and I try to never miss it.   A station and time listing is here:  http://www.spirituality.com/sentinelradio/local_broadcasts.pdf;jsessionid=TL3RDG...; or just Google Sentinel Radio

I usually wake up around 3:00 or 4:00 AM and read and study.  After reading in Ultimate Journey about his going on his out of body trips around this time of day I wonder if there is more to this habit than I realized.