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Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming.. (Read 8546 times)
Lucy
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Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Aug 11th, 2010 at 1:27pm
 
Here's a new book from a Hospice nurse who is convinced life goes on after death. One thing that is interesting about it is that it is featured in a story in my local paper.

Miraculous Moments: True Stories Affirming Life Goes On

by Elissa Al-Chokhachy

She says "I know there is life after death because there are so many affirmations."

http://www.patriotledger.com/lifestyles/WoMYnZone/x721123030/Hospice-nurse-comfo...

There's a short audio clip here too.

I just think it is interesting that this made the local paper so prominently. And she is scheduled to speak at a conference at a major medical center in October. That she made it to the conference as a speaker is amazing.
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Lucy
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #1 - Aug 30th, 2010 at 10:04am
 
I had an opportunity to attend a book-signing for this book. It was an interesting experience. I am still putting some of my thoughts about this together.

One thing that was interesting was that the author started out by mentioning three types of experiences people have. There wasn't time to flash out all three and the conversation went towards the interest of the audience, but her is how she initially broke it down:

1-Nearing death awareness
2-communication from those who have passed. She called it something else and I just wrote "afterlife" in my little notes, but these were the things people report they got from the person who has just passed on.
3-near-death experiences.

Well she didn't mention retrievals, but I think that would have been too much for some audience members. ! Even those who reported very personal and deeply meaningful experiences of the #2 category.

I thought it was interesting that she broke it down to include "nearing death experiences" as a separate category, but apparently, as a hospice nurse, this is what she has seen a lot of. People who are days or less from death sometimes report seeing folks who have already moved to the other side.

She did mention something about this happening independently of whether the person was taking a lot of painkillers or not. In this discussion, we didn't get into a whole lot about arguments to answer skeptics, but I think she is well-versed in them. What can she say to convince a skeptic?

The topic of arguments for skeptics comes up here from time to time. It seems like there aren't any clear ones. But if you really want to open someone else to this possibility of life after death, what we have for arguments is collections of anecdotes.

I think there is a desire to find that definitive experiment that makes it possible to use deductive reasoning to prove the afterlife, and I don't think that is going to happen.

We have examples of personal experience and if we get to accepting the afterlife on a large scale culturally it will be through inductive processes. That's why all these books by responsible witnesses are important (if you want the culture to change in this way).
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betson
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #2 - Aug 30th, 2010 at 8:04pm
 
Bravo to that nurse, and to you, Lucy,
for spreading that afterlife information!

A collection of children's reincarnation memories by _  Stevenson (I think) has already done alot to open people to that topic, so I think we can agree that anecdotal evidence is evidence and it has an impact. Not that we should stop looking for the irrefutable afterlife situation. Actually many of us have already found one or more, but you never know what situation others will respond to.

Professional credentials must surely help and that nurse certainly has fine ones.

Bets
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Shakespeare
 
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recoverer
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #3 - Aug 31st, 2010 at 3:19pm
 
It's possible that for the most part people who go through a hospice program that takes a spiritually effective approach aren't in need of a retrievel after they die.
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Lucy
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #4 - Sep 8th, 2010 at 2:27am
 
recoverer
good point. Not sure we can use that as a reason for hospice! but ti probably works that way. At least I hope so. Isn't that why Tibetan Book ofthe Dead was written? Imean, to be a how-to manual to some extent? Probably to avoid ages in purgatory. I'm not sure about that, but I thought that was part of what that is about.

bets
hi, yeah I kinda had an attitutde when I went in of "what do we need thisbok for?" . Just a little attitude, though I am fascinatedby the stories. So Isort fo broached the subject both with her and with two other people who hung aound after. Iasked one of the two out right why was this so hard to talk about, and she told me a little story about someone who had gone to Confession with a little story having to do with a medical procedure she found medically necessary, and havinghad 7 kids she didn't think it mattered, but the priest shamed her. The point was, people get shamed for the darndest things, so if they think they have had an encounter with someone who died, they aren't about to talk about it. So they still keep these stories to themselves. The author does a great service by giving them permission to talk about this. I tend to forget that when I am here. I don't think we are "spoiled", but relative to some folks I guess we are.

She is a wonderfully warm and kind person. She drew out the audience. As I said, I think many in that group were there because the newspaper highlighted her hospice work, and maybe they had experience using hospice. She gave them permission to talk about their experiences.

So I also asked her why a book was needed (I hope I was polite in my approach!) She studied thanatology and she said it didn't matter, that there is still a great resistence within the medical community to talk about these things.

There was an article in the paper today about the official psychiatric definition of grief, in that in a proposed efinition, if it continues longer than two weeks it is a form of depression. I think that shows our inability to deal openly withissues of death. is grief really a major depressive disorder? or is it a part of living? If we don't talk about death, if we pretend it doesn't exist, will it go away?

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/09/08/a_m...

and if we don't talk about death, how can we talk about life after death?

So I guess there is still a need for books like Miraculous Moments.



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Justin
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #5 - Sep 9th, 2010 at 12:25am
 
recoverer wrote on Aug 31st, 2010 at 3:19pm:
It's possible that for the most part people who go through a hospice program that takes a spiritually effective approach aren't in need of a retrievel after they die.


I agree it probably reduces the odds on average and in general.   For awhile some years ago, i worked as an in home caretaker with folks usually quite elderly. 

One man i worked with, i will call him "Joe", seemed afraid of dying by the way he talked about it.  He told me that when he was younger, he thought about becoming a priest, but ended up becoming a very good figure skater instead. 

  Anyways, we would talk sometimes about God, the afterlife, and related issues. 

  Even then, i felt on some levels i was helping him to prepare for dying and not getting stuck. 

  But the point was driven home a bit later.  I had to quit that job because i was moving from MA to VA.  About 3 weeks later after moving down to VA, a former co-worker called me up and told me that Joe had just died.

  About a couple weeks or so after that while in meditation, all of a sudden a visual along with the personality "feel" of "Joe" popped strongly into my minds eye, and i felt a lot of love and gratitude/appreciation streaming from him to me.   It seems like he was able to bypass the stuck part for the most part in his transition and i get a sense that our previous talks had something to do with it despite that he wasn't specifically in a hospice program.

  So, i think hospice type work is very important.. it's kind of a retrieval preventative.  In some ways, "retrievals" that take place here, might be more important to partake in than in the less physical oriented, "inbetween" levels. 

  As a fellow pragmatic Cappy Sun wrote almost a few hundred years ago, "an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure." seems sage and apropos advice.
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #6 - Sep 12th, 2010 at 4:07pm
 
Thanks, Lucy.  I just sent the web connection out to my email addresses.  It sounds very interesting.  I will order the book very soon.

Love Carol Ann
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The three things you can never take back:
The spoken word.
The unkind thought.
The misused hour.
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Lucy
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #7 - Oct 22nd, 2010 at 11:52am
 
I'm reading the book now. It is a collection of personal accounts of things that made the person KNOW that they had received a communication from beyond. Nothing scientific, I'm going ot have to get von Limmel or whatever his name is for that.

One comment has left me contemplating the purpose of the life review people report when they come back from NDE's.  Brian made these comments about his life review:

"...I relived everything that had happened to me, from the moment I was born to the moment I died. I felt everything -good and bad - that I had ever done in my life.I relived every decision and every life choice I had made, especially as they had affected others.Once my emotions were fully re-experienced, they dissipated into the light. Finally all the bad feelings of the past were gone. All that remained was incredible, immeasurable love."

The part about "once me emotions were fully re-experienced, they dissipated..."

Does that imply that we have problems because we do not fully experience things? What does it mean to fully experience emotions? What can I do now so I don't have to do this again?

Comments?
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Lucy
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #8 - Oct 26th, 2010 at 6:46am
 
My concept of fully experiencing things has been jostled again.

I found this description of an NDE:

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation03.html

Thi sperson writes very clearly about wha he means to experience things from all viewpoints. If fully experiencing things turns out to mean experiencing things from all viewpoints, I think I will have trouble doing that unless I am in one of those NDE experiences. Or have just died. Smiley

So does this imply that any higher beings we meet in our "travels" experience events from all points of view as a matter of course? Maybe the only type of experience you have once you get to the other side permanently is this multivision.
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betson
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #9 - Oct 27th, 2010 at 8:25am
 
Thanks Lucy,

That's an intriguing report on his NDE!
I'll be going back to reread it a few times to get it clearer.

His experience is probably based on who he is. He went down the tunnel without resistance; it seemed familiar to him; some NDEs find it more amazing.  He was given a choice about coming back, whereas some are told they have to come back.

I'm not sure we can take his multi-viewpoint as a stage that everyone gets to right after this lifetime. Maybe we can only compare it to other NDEs to see what they have in common and then figure that we'll each get what we need.

Bets
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Lucy
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Re: Book: "Miraculous Moments:True Stories Affirming..
Reply #10 - Jan 7th, 2011 at 2:58am
 
I didn't give the link to her website:

http://www.miraculousmoments.com/

The next conference she will attend is in Canada; this organization looksinteresting:

http://www.iiihs.org/iiihs.htm

and the iands site is also interesting:

http://www.iands.org/
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