Kathy:

I don't get it. When I speak against something such as ACIM with good intentions you speak as if I'm some kind of jerk, but when Don says things like new age ghetto and dense it's A ok. I think you're being inconsistent.

I agree there are new age sources of information that are very questionable, but on the other hand I went to the New Living Expo in San Francisco this past weekend, an event that is attended by many new age people, and I believe these people are a big part of what is going to change this world for the better.

Don on the other hand seems to think that new age people are a bunch of quacks that don't have anything significant to add to this world.

Perhaps Don's claims about communicating with the spirit world would be taken more seriously if he had significant conscious contact with it. When you communicate with a spirit being it doesn't matter whether you do so with an OBE, lucid dream, regular dream, or while awake. Regular, actual and significant contact makes this point clear.


Lights of Love wrote on May 4^th, 2010 at 10:39am:

Well, I agree with the initial post. Scientifically we cannot trust any OBE experience as more than a mental make believe land, unless we can put it to a true test making people float over and read off numbers, pictures, etc.

Other than that, it is technically something the person has "faith" in unless they have personally experienced an OBE.

Let us say that you are put under for an operation and you are "dead" for seconds or a few minutes. After the operation you recall an amazing NDE "dream"

Does this automatically make you a believer? Not necessarily!! Let's face it, as an intelligent human being which relies on science... you need testable verifiable information.

Now let's say during your NDE you are told when you wake up you will hear some terrible news cause someone close to you died, and that the lamp on the table will be red, and that the moment you wake up the stupid telivision will be on and your children will be watching spongebob with your wife.

And ALL OF this happens.
Sure, then you WILL believe. 

Sadly, information this accurate is NOT given to most of us.... ever.

I have seen a lot of people who past on,and all were friends of mine.so I do not care what don says.I have the provef I need.

Don says:  << One must always strive to develop criteria for distinguishing the real from the counterfeit....failure to take this seriously exposes the sad truth that posters on this site have rarely, if ever, experienced genuine astral realms or genuine contact with discarnate humans.  Proof be dam-ned!  Stop ducking the real issues.>>

Suppose that very stringent criteria to identify genuine OBEs were developed and applied.

And suppose further, at some point, that even the scientific community and hard-line skeptics agreed that some people actually are able to travel out of body, into astral realms.  And that they are able to have genuine contact with discarnate humans.

I'm not speaking for Don (and he may not agree), but I can understand the benefits from having such a rigorous study.

For one thing, we can eliminate all of the ego-driven arguments that currently insist that their experiences represent objective reality.  After all, no one wants to admit that maybe....just maybe....there are other explanations to account for their own experiences.

Second, we would then be able to put together a coherent body of work that would begin to answer so many of the heretofore unanswerable questions.

For instance, is reincarnation real?  Do we really belong to a soul family or "disk" as Bruce calls it?  Is karma real, and how does it work?  Do we really choose our parents and the type of life we will lead?  Does intelligent life exist on other planets?

And on and on.

The point is, we lack such a body of work.  It doesn't exist.  Or at best, it exists in bits and pieces here and there but often, those bits and pieces contradict each other.

So, if we can put own egos aside, I think we can agree with the value that would derive from Don's proposal.

Or at least I would hope so.

R

I would  say that people who have made contact with their disk are in a better position to comment about it than people who haven't.

A person can't confirm that he (or she)  made contact simply by obtaining information he can verify, because it is possible that he received the information that is verified from a misleading being.

On the other hand, if a person finds that he makes contact with a being or beings that clearly live according to qualities such as love and respect, he'll know that he isn't going to be misled.

A person can determine if he has made contact with a being (or beings) who live according to love, by how it feels to be in contact with them. He will feel what contact is like with his heart; this is a much more certain way of confirmation than any amount of intellectual acrobactics. It is the only true way to know.

There is also the matter of the results that are obtained by being in contact. If a person finds that he grows in a very positive way, then he knows that the contact he makes is well worth while.

It is hard to believe that an unfriendly being would help a person grow spiritually. It is hard to believe that it would know how to do so. This becomes especially clear when the knowledge that is shared represents a level of love, humility, integrity, and devotion to that which is divine that an unfriendly being wouldn't understand and know about.

If my imagination is responsible for some of the experiences I had rather than the assistance of spirit guidance, well then, I bow to my imagination, because it understands about things that my world based mind doesn't know about.

It is possible to become certain that you communicate with spirit beings, just as you can become certain that you communicate with other people. In fact, in some ways,  spirit communication can be more certain. Especially since telepathy becomes a part of the communication.

When you communicate with a spirit being, you can often feel its presence in a way where it is hard to believe that your imagination is responsible.

Therefore, if you reached the point where you know you can trust the being (s) you communicate with, verifications in the manner Don speaks of become secondary at best.

Rondele,

"For one thing, we can eliminate all of the ego-driven arguments that currently insist that their experiences represent objective reality.  After all, no one wants to admit that maybe....just maybe....there are other explanations to account for their own experiences."

..confronting a fear of being wrong about what could be the most important element in one's life. Taking stock without getting stuck in the seeming importance of the matter. Confronting a structure built one brick/experience/belief at a time, putting your heart or desire into it, a structure becoming gradually harder to rearrange as it grows bigger and more solid. It's perfect just the way it is, right. Though I like experience, it could be equally wrong as a belief. Someone experiencing a hard life, and a truth could be that life is hard, which it subjective. As subjective as life is good. Life is, for better or worse. Though objective can be pedestalized, it's an agreement about something. Objective in a town could be that shop a is the best one. Little would I care if I preferred shop b. Generally people I meet are very wrapped up in mundane physical events, and little do I care about that objective focus. But I do care if I'm building a house for myself that could become so much more, even if that meant changing parts or redoing the whole arrangement of planks and miscellaneous stuff. Like holding on to a rock before the tip of a waterfall, easier said than done to let go, or look at the same object from different angles.

And as Lakeman pointed out, this doesn't only apply to this topic. So one thinks one's child is what the world evolves around, but it could be that the daughter is well on her way to become a major league asshole. Save the niceties for her funeral. Jeez, that's so offensive. No other explanation for it. I think I'm spot on, but it could be I'm expanding the concept of being wrong. And god and jesus aren't just comfortable concepts to avoid taking responsibility for one's life, it's THE way and truth, while OBE is New Age Disengage. No wishful thinking in either. Because love is all there is and in the beginning there was zzzzzZZZZZZ.

Btw, the argument that their experiences might not represent objective reality may be.. just maybe.. as ego-driven as any word on the board.

george stone wrote on May 5^th, 2010 at 12:06am:


Bravo!