I figure we've got lots of time...if I feel like hanging out in a body for a few lifetimes, or making myself one in the hereafter, I've got plenty of time to play with that before I move on to another level.

Hi V,

Regarding "having a physical attraction isn't a long lasting glue."
I agree,
and to be clear these soul melds aren't really a physical attraction as there's nothing very physical there. Someone posted that they sensed an egg-like form during soul melds. If she was talking about the lightbodies, I agree with her that they're oval and have edges or boundaries that can be merged. But it's not a partnering or pairing---more a sense of partaking in a great force that is More than either individual.
I want you to know, Volu, that there is More. We are All  able to access this More.
Your descriptions of flapping etc are very dramatic but they avoid the truth of the stronger force that can be experienced while in a less physical body.

By the time a person actually experiences the Disk Family they have discarded about three layers of body, so gender gets thrown out also. While with the Disk they can make plans to meet physically in gender-specific bodies, so they don't forget gender while they're there in their Disk.

V., you suggest: ' A simple way is to will the dream canvas away when lucid dreaming and then go on exploring.'  That sounds intriguing!  Is that a hypothetical idea or have you tried it yet?
Yet something within (soul?) finds these afterlife concepts so attractive that it so enthusiastically returns to the same themes / archetypes  again and again without prompting.  Can I really take that away from it now that it has found something so apparently important to it? ( For example, lost loved ones, the Park, the Reception Center, the shore of 'the Sea of Forgetting. )

Bets

There is a beautiful merging, emerging, consolidating, reflecting advancing and retracting of both like souls and unlike souls, the afterlife is not a boring heaven, but a place of learning meaning and purpose

Hi

Various peoples' experiences in the afterlife so often seem to include some of the same activities and sights, for example, soul melding, lost loved ones, the Park, the Reception Center, the shore of 'the Sea of Forgetting.'
Am not sure where that term 'the Sea of Forgetting' comes from but it refers to the misty sea in front of the Reception Center that so many of us see while we're in route to the afterlife. While passing over it we seem to lose the disbelief and pain that are so heavy during physical life.
I've tried to clear my mind of earthly concerns before seeking a session in the afterlife but apparently I'm not good Buddhist material because I always slip into a retrieval or some other non-physical visit. How does one avoid such archetypes or interruptions?

Betson

Bets,

"[...] I've tried to clear my mind of earthly concerns before seeking a session in the afterlife but apparently I'm not good Buddhist material because I always slip into a retrieval or some other non-physical visit. How does one avoid such archetypes or interruptions?"

Ok. Thanks for explaining about the shore. I guess there are many nuances to this, and certainly more than I can dive into being an extension. If retrievals are what you enjoy, then why avoid it? If you see it as an interruption, and want to add other explorations, not excluding retrievals from the mix; my sense is that discs operating the extensions are far from helpless, but at the same that time that for some of their extensions experiences with retrieving (and being retreived) are part of their path/purpose. - Maybe some sort of feeling of obligation? Do you feel less good if you also want to add time to care for your self?