rondele wrote on Sep 18th, 2012 at 11:51am:First reactions after reading her "book" are these:
Structural- Definitely needed better editing. Highly repetitive and some paragraphs are so convoluted I had to re-read them several times. And then not even sure I understood.
Ever have a phone conversation with someone who never stops talking except to take a breath, and then if you put the phone down for a minute or so, you can pick it up and you haven't missed a beat?
Same thing with this book, it's so repetitive that you can skip several pages and pick up where you left off with no loss of continuity.
But then if it were properly edited, it would not have enough pages to justify calling it a book.
Content- The book should have had a Subtitle called "Seth Speaks- A Sequel."
I am reasonably certain the author did a lot of reading in both ACIM and especially Seth before writing the book. Many of her insights and concepts are directly lifted from the Seth material. Even how she describes the concepts, she uses the same examples used by Seth.
One exception is how she describes the life review. Per Seth its purpose is to show us how our actions and our words affected others so that we may learn that our behavior has consequences. In other words, earth is a school.
But for Sudman, the life review is when we and others with whom we associated get together and, always with great entertainment and fun, we see how well our pre-birth plans were coordinated and turned out exactly as intended.
In other words, the fact that she was blown up in Iraq was all agreed to in advance with the person(s) who planted the IED.
No one is ever at fault for anything they may do. Yes, a serial killer or rapist or child molester did bad things, but when seen from a broader perspective after death, all parties to the killings/rapes etc sort of congratulate themselves for the lessons learned and obtain (I'm not kidding here) great amusement and fun from what they thought, while on earth, to be horrible and awful.
So I couldn't help but think of the holocaust, and how Hitler and all the incinerated Jews had such a fabulous time afterwards. They probably laughed themselves silly from such amusing scenes as the gas chamber and children being torn from the arms of weeping mothers.
Yes, there IS pain and suffering here on earth and no, she's not discounting that fact, but we need to realize that it's not as horrific as we might think.
Actually, we need to realize that "enjoyment of an experience is a central criterion for the value of a life."
We are "fundamentally good, holy, cooperative, creative and amazingly cool."
And here all along I thought, per Swedenborg, that our actions have consequences and we really are accountable for the bad things we do and that evil exists and evil people serve time in Hell. Little did I know that Hitler and Mother Teresa are equally holy. Silly me I guess.
She admits that she is craving for a white Porsche 911, and a dream house. But not because they are ends in themselves, no no no. Because they are tools to allow her to enjoy her exploration of the "creativity of experience played out on the physical stage."
You see, people who think that goals such as accumulating wealth and material goods does not represent the way we should live are really just stuck with old fashioned remnants of what their religion taught about pursing wealth and other cultural limitations. Once those notions are eroded, then we can get more things for ourselves with no guilt attached.
Conclusion- I have no doubt that this is a strong, courageous woman who suffered greatly from her injuries. And she probably did have some sort of paranormal experience after being blown up.
But for me, she veered way off the road somewhere along the way and is appropriating things she read in other books as if they were her own concepts or at least validated by her experiences.
Now we know why she's charging so much for her urns and other things. Porsche's are not cheap nor are dream homes. But for her, they are essential for her own amusement as she lives out the rest of her life.
R
ps- Don, if you want I'll send you my copy. There is much more that she said that you in particular would raise an eyebrow or two, such as "religion tells us that good things happen to good people."
Rondele,
I just reviewed Natalie's 2nd Youtube interview and 3 points struck me: (1) She struggles to find words for her NDE and seems highly influenced by the Sethian and Monroe jargon and perspective. (2) She labels her guides as aspects of her higher self or her "core" and implies that this higher self embraces past lives, which she prefers to reimage as parallel lives. It is my understanding that she did not display such a perspective in her book. Is that true? (3) Where is the common NDE experience of light brigher than the sun that does not hurt spirit eyes, the overwhelming sense of PUL, the common features of the Past Life Review: e. g. the participation in the hurt feelings of those harmed by our words and deeds, the feelings of remorse for selfish acts recalled, the support of a loving Being of Light that gives one the strength to endure these painful memories in an atmosphere of loving support? If this is a genuine NDE, I consider it an example of an NDE displaying low-level spiritual development, despite the obvious intellect of the percipient.
btw, I'm very wary of excliusivistic Christian NDEs in which Jesus supposedly condemns non-Christians to eternal damnation, regardless of their spiritual awareness and opportunities. The Jesus (Being of Light) in the NDEs of atheist Howard Storm and George Ritchie is far more inclusive. I suspect the line between lucid dreams and NDEs is often blurred and that those on the threshold of death often fall prey to the deceptive spirits about whom Swedenborg warns.
Don