Hello
I am new to the board here.  My mom passed away in June of 2007.  Since this was such an incredible loss to me, I began researching and learning as much as I can on the afterlife.
I recently attended the survival of conscious conference in San Francisco. I thought this would bring some comfort or the answers I search for. 
My questions here
1) What do our departed loved ones do on the other side ?
2)There are so many varied beliefs in possible reincarnation.  Do we just keep cycling through over and over again without remembering our families ?  I suppose this reincarnation theory worries me the most.  I feel like I will never be with my mom again
3)why can some come back as apparitions and others cannot.
I know these are difficult questions, since we don't know for sure what  is ahead us or our departed loved ones.
But, I do appreciate any input
Thanks in advance
Holy

Hi Hol-
What the departed do is a really interesting question! I've had people come back from regressions where they described everything from living in a quiet little cottage and taking it easy, to having one heck of a party with all the cronies that had gone on before, to one woman who was upset at the devastation that her death by cancer had caused her husband. Her immediate response was, "Who's in charge here? I want to file a complaint!" - and she kicked up such a ruckus that eventually some of the wiser souls came to help her settle down. On that basis, it seems that the dead do pretty much anything they please, just as they do here.

The multiple beliefs are due to the multiple people who have them. If ten people go the Golden Gate Park, they will probably attent ten different activities, some at the museum, some boating, some at the Tea Garden etc. Then when you ask what it was like you'll get ten different answers.

This cycling again and again seems to be done in groups. We have a small intimate group that tends to change a bit, and then successively larger groups as we get less and less intimate.  My own meditation has led me to discover four basic levels of involvements, which I can account for on the basis of abstract theory - that we'll bypass here -  and which is confirmed by my wife who seems to live in all four at once. (I veritably boggles my mind!) We sort of walk through the possibilities of future experiences, very much as we select cowpaths across a meadow. (Watch where you step.) At one moment we find our path joined to one person, and then that path diverges to bring someone else into view, and so on. These paths crisscross, and we meet again and again. Then in the afterlife
we are together as well.

The process of learning is more orless automatic, and is guided by principles of cause and effect. These are usually summed up under the term "karma", but there's nothing mysterious happening. We experience unpleasant things and we stop going there in our next life. Very simple. Equally, we experience good things, and we go there a lot more.

All spirits can see us and to some degree they can get involved with us. (I find this idea somewhat embarrassing.) The mechanisms of access have to be appropriate to be to the rules of the spirit world as well as the rules of physical science. Spirits exist as patterns of information. This is true inside the body as well as outside it. The difference is that outside the body they have to rely on happenstance occurrences to give them the opportunity to shape what is happening.

I personally do not understand how the interface between spirit and matter occurs - Bruce has a neat approach which he calles his "silly little finger bending exercise" that brings this home as true mind over matter. So there's something about our spiritual creativity and willful intention involved, and it seems that those who tell us that ultimately we are all God are correct. We evidently have the ability to shape the world, even though our bodies have fallen off.

Two thoughts in this regard: healing by faith and prayer is a scientifically proven fact, which makes Christian Science and related ideas interesting to me personally. Also, in my rare OBE excursions, I find myself getting tangled up in power lines that hang over the road, so there's something electrical involved somehow.

Hope this is useful-
dave

HI Hol-
I do past life regressions professionally as part of a practice in hypno- analysis. The woman in this case had other issues, but there were a few loose ends with respect to a prior life in Barcelona. Her husband was devoted to her and had been grieving excessively, really badly shaken by his wife's death. Instead of seeing death as allowing her to escape and find peace, he viewed her death as the ultimate insult by a cruel world. She was very much in love and found it hard to accept his grief, and she wanted to DO SOMETHING! in a major way.  - After she squawked and complained a while a couple older and wiser spirits came to her and began to explain how things worked, and that it was all going to be OK. They kept her isolated for a while, and she finally calmed down.

The opposite was another woman who said that all her old friends welcomed her, and that they "had a hell of a party" in which there were welcoming signs and so on.

I also get a lot of entities (see my note in Announcements) - who are just like those Bruce writes about, except that mine are stuck on people, while his tend to be stuck in the works proper. I think that my job is easier.

Other things that are available in the spirit world are experts in virtually everything that people have done. Some people have used regressions to hire a spirit guide, or a cosmic chiropracter, or a witch doctor as an advisor, or whatever. I tend to have a few spooks who seem interested in what I do and who come through occasionally while I work on math and logic, usually making their presence known by changes of handwriting.

dave