I've found that my dreams pretty much represent my conscience and values as they are. If we experience something that seems to vary, perhaps there is an aspect of mind that we aren't acknowledging. Through a dream our higher self lets us know about this aspect so we will deal with it.

When it comes to free will, I believe we always have it, it is just that people sometimes get so bogged down in their psychological conditioning that they don't use their free will in a wise and loving way. The more they realize that they are limited by their psychological conditioning and seek to gain freedom from it, the more they will do so.

The part of themselves that is always free is what allows them to notice their psychological conditioning and become unhappy about it.

On numerous occasions I made the point of inwardly noticing that despite my psychological conditioning, the decision making part of myself is always free. It is a matter of how I choose.

For example, the other day a road crew set up construction right by where a freeway entrance is. This made it so drivers had to come to a complete stop right by where they entered the freeway. A very dangerous situation. As I drove by the road crew I honked my horn with hope of pointing out the situation they created. One of the road crew members flipped me off.

I could've followed the pattern of my mind that wanted to be angry with him, but instead I chose to have love and understanding for him. Therefore, instead of using my mind in a negative way, I used it in a positive way.

It could be argued that I made a positive choice because I had the spiritual background to make such a choice. A person who hadn't spiritually developed himself might not have easy access to the same positive choice. This is true.

However, this doesn't mean that he doesn't have free will. It just means that he hasn't gained the wisdom to use his free will in a wise way.

As a way of comparision, a person with a strong aptitude for math (free will) doesn't become a person with a weak aptitude for math simply because he doesn't have all of the variables he needs in order to complete the equation he is working on. 

A part of allowing the beings you create to have free will is allowing them the time to learn to use it in a wise and loving way.


PauliEffectt wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2012 at 11:05am:

[Paul Effectt: ]When Christians pass over they have some sort of likelyhood to end up stuck in Focus 25.
I wonder how Christians on this site tackles that aspect of the Monroe view?

I think you are distorting Monroe's view.  As evangelist Billy Sunday used to say, "Being in a church don't make you a Christian any more than being in a garage makes you a car."  BSTs seem to be regions with limited developed towards agape love.  Many Christians live lives that often express pure unconditional love within a context of the corporate Body of Christ, within which the whole is far more effective than the individual parts.  Those Christians, in my view, inhabit postmortem realms beyond so-called Focus 27, realms that, from my reading, neither Robert Monroe nor Robert Bruce has ever visited, though Robert Bruce claims to have glimpsed this from afar.  Christian NDEs depiet these higher realms as realms which are brighter than the sun, realms in which the grass, water, flowers, etc. each emanate unearthly music that harmonizes in an ecstatic whole.

That said, there is an interesting harmony between Monroe's focus model and the Bible.  The Bible locates the standard entry point for Christians as Paradise (= Park) which is located in the 3rd heaven (Focus 27?)Substandard Christians can be confined to the first or 2nd heavens, which may correspond to Focus 25 and 26 in the Monroe model.  Christians conceive of Paradise as the starting point for the journey "higher." 

Don

Paul, so you don't think Focus levels (and the biblical heavens) work according to the principle that like attracts like (atheists attract atheists with similar core desires, etc.)?

I was a child born into a strict Jehovah's Witness family but instead I made the choice not to believe in God. So it doesn't matter what family you are born into. Your personal belief system is just that, your own.

Berserk2 wrote on Jun 4^th, 2012 at 7:56pm:

I don't think so, because atheists are not the same, they have a tendency
to vary greatly, so the risk of them getting stuck in F 25 is much less, than
the risk is for Christians.

Also, atheists have less prejudice about the afterlife, which further lowers
the risk of getting stuck in a BST.

Even more, atheists seldom have any preconceptions about what others _must_
believe in to come to "Heaven", which also reduces the risk of getting stuck in
F 25, hollow heaven or hell.

There are, to be sure, varying levels of atheism.  I have seen descriptions of atheists who were so zealous about their belief in the scientific method that they assured all people they taught or met that death was a long sleep and there was nothing more (and there was no God).  Those atheists will be closed minded and may truly find death to be a "nothingness,"  possibly accounting for the frozen-type "soul statues" which have been seen by Bruce and others. 

So yes, if atheism is not a strict zealous dogmatic belief, and the atheist is open to the possibility of an afterlife, then he/she could have a rather easy time of it.  But he were so set in his belief system, he might be "asleep" a long time.

M

Paul, my stetement "Atheists attract atheists with similar core desires" already assumes that there are different kinds of atheists.  So I don't understand your comment about atheistic diversity.  Matthew's comment about independent astral reports of '"soul statues" presents one postmortem danger for athieists.   Another danger is their separation from an God consciousness and thus from any significant experience of Pure Unconiditonal Love that might lead to awareness of universal higher intelligence (God).

Don