In an earlier post I alluded to the notion of mediumship as being a relationship between the medium and the deceased. I thought a bit more about that concept of relationship and came upon a profound realization: Relationships are really what we’re all about.
We have often heard the saying that when we die, there’s nothing we can take with us. In the sense of physical belongings, this is true. However, we do take our connections to friends and family. That is, our ties with everyone we had any type of relationship with remains within us, and it is those bonds that define us, and ultimately inspires the act of communicating across the void.
When we look back on our lives and consider the ramifications of our actions, the ultimate declaration is how it affected others in combination with ourselves. Again, this points to our relationships, and not something physically tangible. Reports of the “life review” from those who have returned from near death experiences reveal that the process places the newly deceased within the shoes of those who they affected; they get to feel the emotions – happiness, sadness, turmoil – that enveloped the people who they shared experiences with. This showcase of becoming the other person highlights that our relationships are the primal force behind our lives. It doesn’t matter how much money someone makes; it doesn’t matter how many or how few “toys” one accumulates. No, what matters is how we bond with one another and affect one another.
Stories of reincarnation further cement this notion. We always hear of people who come back together, sharing lives and balancing “karmic debt” amongst one another, revealing that our current environment is really nothing more than a contextual stage of which to address things of much greater relevance: our relationships. That these encounters can sometimes last for decades highlights that it is our bonds which really drive the course of our lives. When we think about success, we envision being surrounded by adoring friends and family, praising us and congratulating our efforts. Conversely, when we think of failure, we often think of being ridiculed or abandoned. This shows we view our outcomes in what we feel as being in relationship to others. Either those relationships are positive, pointing to our success, or negative, revealing our failures.
Relationships cross the void of life and death. Everything else physically comes to an end when we die. Likewise, we also leave things behind from the spiritual realms when we incarnate into a body. In either case, our relationships – our bonds to people – remain. They don’t change. And it’s what we continue enjoying and working to improve throughout our histories, whether we are on earth or on the Other Side.
What I came to realize this week is that the meaning of life … may be the meaning of our relationships. Earlier, I would have said it’s about becoming the most magnificent soul you can be – uncovering and harnessing all your abilities. That may still be true in a certain sense, but in the grand scheme, who you become will still have an effect on others, pointing to the realization that the concept of relationship is really what it’s all about. How does your change and growth not only affect you, but also others? This will be the marker for which you measure the success of your existence. It’s still what will be played back to you at the time of your life review.
What really makes our lives is the quality of our relationships. They can be good, bad, or indifferent. Much of what we feel inside is wrapped up with our bonds and cannot be stripped away. The nature of our relationships, in fact, is the real currency in our experience. For those whom we share nurturing and caring bonds, scientific studies have shown amplified effects when it comes to producing results with random number generators and intentioned healing in comparison to single individuals or strangers that get paired up without any history together. ESP studies also show better results when it comes to sending and receiving information if tested with bonded pairs.
The one thing that carries with us no matter whether we are on earth or on the Other Side are our relationships. When you strip all else away, our bonds remain. Our connections to people continue. It is what we engage in constantly. It is our eternal natures and provides the ultimate meaning for our lives.
This provides another reason why we must learn to love one another, for we cannot escape that it is our bonds that make our lives – and hence the quality of our existence and our universe.
Consider the wars. Consider the celebrations. Consider the little tiffs or a gentle smile. Either way, they are about bonding, our relationships, those things which give our moments meaning. And now that I think about it, they give our moments the greatest meaning possible.
It’s all about our relationships.
Til next time …
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The Path of Illness
It’s not often that I get really really really sick, but when I do it knocks me for a wide curve. The week of May 9 was meant to be a big week – I had scheduled sittings (one for data research for my next book), was prepared to give a small eulogy, and then take a trip to Bellingham for a 1-on-1 group series that took a few months to coordinate. All that came crashing down when I woke up at 1 a.m. Tuesday the 10th with a splitting headache, which then morphed into a high fever and all kinds of bodily aches and skirmishes.
When I get ill, I lose all sense of the world around me. It’s as if a wall comes crashing down that remains a barrier between my natural senses and the environment. In this case, not only could I not connect with my environment, but my head hurt so bad that I also had no sense of balance and could only walk at a snail’s pace, lest I wished to be overcome with nausea and go tumbling to the floor. I had no sense of connection to the world and knew only of my immediate inner awareness of being confined to the experiences of sight and sound only; my cognitive functions simply weren’t up to the challenge of doing anything more.
Two days into this dilemma, my visit to the doctor yielded the usual results: “It’s a virus. Just let it take its course.” Unfortunately, two days later and a continued fever of nearly 102 forced a more direct examination. By this time, my voice was being ravaged and my body had symptoms I have never experienced before (I woke up Thursday and felt like I was “buzzing” – I could amazingly hear the HUM of the energetic frequency my body was vibrating at). Two chest X-Rays revealed I was borderline pneumonia and was immediately given antibiotics to assist with recovery. Since all things are connected and valid, I was left with the difficult task of clearing my calendar and pondering the agony of “why”? All the readings I had to cancel … The eulogy … If all things are connected and I am the master of my fate, why would I have done this to myself?
Well, it’s a week later and I am still not fully 100% recovered. But in this time a few things have come to light in answering my question. Indeed, up to the week of the illness I had been working incredibly hard – traveling, scheduling and doing sittings, book presentations … always feeling like I was up against a clock and a stack of work needing to get done, with more on the way. Of course, I accepted that challenge and equally accepted that I was responsible for creating it.
But then I also started to notice friends and family quickly getting pushed to the backburner. Every night was spent “working” and not an evening was set aside to spend time with my wife – just to connect and share our experiences. The impetus to “do more” and “be more” had become all-consuming and any time not spent in promoting, working, or further developing myself and “doing more” made me feel like I was wasting time and slacking off. I would never have considered giving myself any free time – and quite honestly, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Go out and “play”? What’s that?
We spend so much of our lives chasing goals and dreams that we oftentimes lose sight of the very magic and splendor that already exists around us. When we begin to detach from our loved ones in order to push the train faster and more rigorously down the tracks to our wanted future, we run the risk of not only losing our loved ones, but also our own sense of self and those “intangibles” that make life so worth living. We are hardwired for having fun, enjoying life, and more importantly, doing it with a sense of balance.
Sickness comes as a result of imbalances. All things being connected and valid, when the body gets sick, it’s a combination of the greater portions of our Self and the relationship of that Self to circumstances and environment trying to bring a corrective measurement back into conscious practice. In other words – life is out of balance and sickness forces the Self to get back into harmony.
Yes, it was extremely difficult to cancel all my appointments. And yes, I will be rescheduling them for a later date. All things being connected, those who did not receive their readings were also not meant to have them at the time, for whatever reason. I came to discover one of my clients got sick the evening before we were scheduled to get together anyway. Another client had been feeling overworked and was somewhat relieved the sitting got pushed out. In the end, we may not fully understand the intricacies of why things turned out the way they did – each person’s experience may be uniquely his/her own with any number of reasons why a reading would not have been fortuitous, hence my inability to properly conduct one.
However, in the meantime, since I have had no choice but to take it easy and work on mending my battered state, I’ve come to once again understand the joy and pleasure of BEING STILL. It’s not even meditative. Just being PRESENT, without concern for the future or the past. Just BEING. I have come to appreciate more where I am in the NOW moment as opposed to ignoring it and pushing and stressing myself in working to achieve what I hope will be a better future. Yes, I know I will have to work hard to create my desired future, but it’s vitally important to do it with a sense of balance.
Don’t crowd up the calendar and never be home.
Don’t lose touch with those you love and who love you.
Don’t lose your sense of self that delights in spontaneity and unstructured creativity.
There is no clock you are punching in the act of life, other than the one in your own head. Sometimes it’s good to break that clock and bust apart the mold you’ve been living in. Illness presents that opportunity and forces us to re-examine the strides we’re taking on our path. Are we trying to move too quickly? Are we trying to FORCE things? Is it really what you’re here to do or what you think you should be doing, when it’s really not? These are all valid questions and illness creates the framework to examine at them.
In my quest to do more and become more with this work, I have neglected some of life’s simple pleasures. One must not always be in “work mode.” Expanding consciousness and further expanding psychic abilities to be more valuable to other people is incredibly important, but not at the expense of the other portions of my conscious experience which are equally as valid. How do you know if you are growing and evolving if you don’t even take the time to relax and reflect?
Sometimes we just push ourselves because we feel we have to. We feel society demands it of us or that we must demand it of ourselves. If we want to achieve certain levels of success, we must endure sacrifice.
I think getting incredibly ill may be the universe’s way of saying “I think you’ve got it wrong.” Try again from another angle.
I am still recovering, and I’m not quite sure where this will all lead, but it’s definitely stirred something in my consciousness …
‘Til next time!
When I get ill, I lose all sense of the world around me. It’s as if a wall comes crashing down that remains a barrier between my natural senses and the environment. In this case, not only could I not connect with my environment, but my head hurt so bad that I also had no sense of balance and could only walk at a snail’s pace, lest I wished to be overcome with nausea and go tumbling to the floor. I had no sense of connection to the world and knew only of my immediate inner awareness of being confined to the experiences of sight and sound only; my cognitive functions simply weren’t up to the challenge of doing anything more.
Two days into this dilemma, my visit to the doctor yielded the usual results: “It’s a virus. Just let it take its course.” Unfortunately, two days later and a continued fever of nearly 102 forced a more direct examination. By this time, my voice was being ravaged and my body had symptoms I have never experienced before (I woke up Thursday and felt like I was “buzzing” – I could amazingly hear the HUM of the energetic frequency my body was vibrating at). Two chest X-Rays revealed I was borderline pneumonia and was immediately given antibiotics to assist with recovery. Since all things are connected and valid, I was left with the difficult task of clearing my calendar and pondering the agony of “why”? All the readings I had to cancel … The eulogy … If all things are connected and I am the master of my fate, why would I have done this to myself?
Well, it’s a week later and I am still not fully 100% recovered. But in this time a few things have come to light in answering my question. Indeed, up to the week of the illness I had been working incredibly hard – traveling, scheduling and doing sittings, book presentations … always feeling like I was up against a clock and a stack of work needing to get done, with more on the way. Of course, I accepted that challenge and equally accepted that I was responsible for creating it.
But then I also started to notice friends and family quickly getting pushed to the backburner. Every night was spent “working” and not an evening was set aside to spend time with my wife – just to connect and share our experiences. The impetus to “do more” and “be more” had become all-consuming and any time not spent in promoting, working, or further developing myself and “doing more” made me feel like I was wasting time and slacking off. I would never have considered giving myself any free time – and quite honestly, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Go out and “play”? What’s that?
We spend so much of our lives chasing goals and dreams that we oftentimes lose sight of the very magic and splendor that already exists around us. When we begin to detach from our loved ones in order to push the train faster and more rigorously down the tracks to our wanted future, we run the risk of not only losing our loved ones, but also our own sense of self and those “intangibles” that make life so worth living. We are hardwired for having fun, enjoying life, and more importantly, doing it with a sense of balance.
Sickness comes as a result of imbalances. All things being connected and valid, when the body gets sick, it’s a combination of the greater portions of our Self and the relationship of that Self to circumstances and environment trying to bring a corrective measurement back into conscious practice. In other words – life is out of balance and sickness forces the Self to get back into harmony.
Yes, it was extremely difficult to cancel all my appointments. And yes, I will be rescheduling them for a later date. All things being connected, those who did not receive their readings were also not meant to have them at the time, for whatever reason. I came to discover one of my clients got sick the evening before we were scheduled to get together anyway. Another client had been feeling overworked and was somewhat relieved the sitting got pushed out. In the end, we may not fully understand the intricacies of why things turned out the way they did – each person’s experience may be uniquely his/her own with any number of reasons why a reading would not have been fortuitous, hence my inability to properly conduct one.
However, in the meantime, since I have had no choice but to take it easy and work on mending my battered state, I’ve come to once again understand the joy and pleasure of BEING STILL. It’s not even meditative. Just being PRESENT, without concern for the future or the past. Just BEING. I have come to appreciate more where I am in the NOW moment as opposed to ignoring it and pushing and stressing myself in working to achieve what I hope will be a better future. Yes, I know I will have to work hard to create my desired future, but it’s vitally important to do it with a sense of balance.
Don’t crowd up the calendar and never be home.
Don’t lose touch with those you love and who love you.
Don’t lose your sense of self that delights in spontaneity and unstructured creativity.
There is no clock you are punching in the act of life, other than the one in your own head. Sometimes it’s good to break that clock and bust apart the mold you’ve been living in. Illness presents that opportunity and forces us to re-examine the strides we’re taking on our path. Are we trying to move too quickly? Are we trying to FORCE things? Is it really what you’re here to do or what you think you should be doing, when it’s really not? These are all valid questions and illness creates the framework to examine at them.
In my quest to do more and become more with this work, I have neglected some of life’s simple pleasures. One must not always be in “work mode.” Expanding consciousness and further expanding psychic abilities to be more valuable to other people is incredibly important, but not at the expense of the other portions of my conscious experience which are equally as valid. How do you know if you are growing and evolving if you don’t even take the time to relax and reflect?
Sometimes we just push ourselves because we feel we have to. We feel society demands it of us or that we must demand it of ourselves. If we want to achieve certain levels of success, we must endure sacrifice.
I think getting incredibly ill may be the universe’s way of saying “I think you’ve got it wrong.” Try again from another angle.
I am still recovering, and I’m not quite sure where this will all lead, but it’s definitely stirred something in my consciousness …
‘Til next time!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)