Updates

Someone wrote me recently about one of the prior "updates" in this section, so I suppose people actually read these...

This one is going to be more on the "blog" side, since nothing is going on with this project but everything seems to be going on with my personal life.

Martha, my girlfriend of six years, stopped by out of the blue Friday evening and ended our relationship. Turns out she hadn't been feeling the romantic chemistry but kept hoping it would develop and was afraid of hurting me.* I think she also enjoyed the friendship part of the relationship and the emotional support. She's apologized and seems to feel terrible about it and I've forgiven her, but it's still a shock. I've told her I can imagine what it would feel like to be in that dilemma, and now that I know what was going on, it explains quite a few former enigmas.

I generally go into a tailspin after a relatonship breakup. This one may not be so bad because I don't feel screwed over, but it's still not the easiest thing in the world. Someday if I can afford it I want to explore this in past-life therapy. I understand the pattern, but I don't know where it comes from specifically.

Eventually, one comes to the conclusion that if one is not looking for love from God, then, by definition, one is looking for it in all the wrong places. This is one of the hardest lessons in life.

On other fronts--and not entirely unrelated--work in my business (video production) has been very slow so far this year. I am frighteningly close to being flat broke--I always run close to the margin anyway--and I'm having to figure out where to best put my energy during the time remaining. (Obviously, this was not the ideal time to be faced with a relationship breakup--I'm sure it accelerated the breakup by making me look less attractive, and it's making it really interesting to try to salvage my business when I can't sleep or think clearly.) Teetering on the brink is a condition that my Guru, Meher Baba, apparently likes to put his followers in. Meher Baba has been without his physical body since 1969, but ask any of his devotees, it appears to be no hinderance to him whatsoever in terms of implementing his training methods. It is all very natural--Martha, who was cynical of my spiritual endeavors, said it's "just life"--I told her, "just life, with bells on." Life accelerated; karma flushed to the surface and untangled as only a real Master can do it. All with very little show. Maybe an increase in synchronicity, occasionally to what one might call a miraculous degree, but Meher Baba said he did not do miracles. I thought about that recently. Suppose you could invite someone from 300 years ago into your home. You turn on the TV; you heat up a plate in the microwave; you call someone on your cell phone, and check your e-mail. Are you performing miracles? If you told the visitor, "I don't perform any miracles," are you telling the truth, or aren't you? When he went back to the past, and told them what he saw, he might say, "And this guy insists he doesn't do miracles." Both would be right. Meher Baba said that it was his followers' faith that caused miracles when they occurred, and this is right in line with what Jesus said about moving mountains ("faith as a grain of mustard seed," isn't it?). Anyway, Baba disliked this atmosphere of making much of the miraculous, and so this "path" is most natural. In fact, if you have the privilege of meeting his original, direct followers, what you find is that they seem quite ordinary--until you realize, slowly, that they are actually quite extraordinary, but they are most natural. If you watch "In Another Life" you will see this for yourself in the interview with Don Stevens.

As for this project, I became aware that people routinely "Google" people's names and company names before considering doing business with them. I realized that if people are doing this with me, they are immediately running into this website. No wonder people express interest and then don't follow through, I thought. At least, it's a concern I needed to take seriously. So a week or so ago, I shut this website down completely. What I found was that the links remain, of course. So I abbreviated my personal name and company name everywhere they appear in this website, and re-posted it. I got all the links for the company name except one stubborn one that is "cached". I found a page on Google where you can request that caches be eliminated. Unfortuantely, this is an "https" page created back when I was selling "In Another Life" on the site and taking credit cards. When I tried to submit the URL for cache elimination, the form spit back, "we do not support https at this time". Great. You cache it, but you don't support it... Red tape, sheesh.

So all that work and this one stubborn cached URL is killing me. This is probably Meher Baba's humor. You get so you can recognize it.

So, man proposes and God disposes. If I actually do run out of money, I may not be able to maintain this website. If it goes down again, that's probably the reason.

Recently I've added a couple things. You will see a new article on the top of the Articles page. I've added a list of questions and answers from subject Bruce Kelly of the "James the Submarine Man" case on the review for that book (see the Books page). And, I've added a segment of an interview with Dr. Robert Almeder, which wasn't used in "In Another Life" but which is really quite good.

Meher Baba is like the mother who scrubs the child with a washcloth. He scrubs with one hand while supporting with the other. If one sticks to him faithfully, one finds out that however solid you think human love is, the love of the true spiritual Master is greater. I don't know if he gets anything done with this website or not. If I thought that he wanted me to take it down, I would take it down on a moment's notice. I know that some followers consider it too close to the occult, which Baba warned against getting involved in. It is true that some of his original followers came from occult and mystical studies, and he allowed some of them (i.e., astrologers, in at least one case I know of) to continue their practice and livelihood in that field. It wasn't a judgemental thing at all, it's just dangerous because of human foibles, and ultimately it can be a side-track from the true purpose of life. I feel that the story of reincarnation must be told as part of the deeper and broader story of spiritual truth.

One must be ready to quit anything at a moment's notice in the service of the Master. This is not always so easy, as when you lose a close relationship or it suddenly gets redefined.

Enjoy this website while you can, as I don't know for sure how much longer I'll be able to keep it available.

3/14/07
I'm going to tack this on rather than create a new page, because it's just an insight I had relating to the above. What occurred to me is that one of the subtle effects of eliminating reincarnation from our world view, is that we expect people to "get it"--to learn their lessons of wisdom--within the span of this one life. Christianity (i.e., the Paulism that has stood in for Christianity for hundreds of years) has further confused this issue with its concepts of eternal heaven or hell. The reality, as I understand it, is that many of the long-standing, recalcitrant issues people have are not "designed" to be really grasped by them in this life. "Getting it," when it comes to these sorts of deeply-ingrained habits, only occurs in the life review in the bardo. I am talking about people who have not yet embarked on their journey of deliberate spiritual self-discovery. Those people begin to encorporate life-review-type work into this very physical incarnation.

These types of issues are the ones based on deep assumptions (see my "Knots" article). They are philosophies of life that once "worked" at a certain stage, but aren't working now. They used to represent progress, but they are now holding the person back. When they recapitulate in childhood, you can see it clearly enough. But if you really want to understand it, you have to go back to the past lives where these things originated--both the environmental and social circumstances a child is born into, and the style they adopt to cope with it.

I have some idea of how these patterns unfold, and have written about them in the early 1980's, in a book that was never published. But my understanding of it is imperfect, and you know that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." So it may be just as well. What I do know is that there are certain types of personality patterns that you cannot expect someone to change, unless they find the motivation within themselves. They may, if they suffer deeply enough and if the timing is right. But quite possibly, it is in the life review where the real change in perception, the real learning, will have to take place. And this is a normal part of the process of reincarnation.

Sometime back I had an insight about people being angry with God. Have you ever heard of that joke about the fellow who had fallen off a cliff and said "God will help me?" Someone came with a rope--he refused it, saying "God will help me." Some men made a human chain and reached a hand to him where he was clinging with one hand to a bush, but he refused, saying, "God will help me." Finally, a helicopter was flown in, but as the ladder was being lowered down, the man waved it away and fell to his death, and you could hear him saying as he fell, "God will help me." Well, when he approached the pearly gates, he asked St. Peter, "Why didn't God help me?" St. Peter said, "What do you mean, God sent you a rope, a human chain of volunteers and a helicopter!"

So my insight is that God is constantly giving us opportunities to learn our lessons and face them, rather than have to go through this very unpleasant experience of facing what we refused to face in life, in the life review, or having to go through intense suffering here on earth, or both. We refuse them, and God keeps on trying every conceivable method to reach us.

One reason we refuse them is that we cling to our weaknesses, interpreting them as strengths. As said, in past lives they may have represented progress, but now it is time to grow out of them and grow up to a new level, and we are still attached to them. Weaknesses that we have repackaged as being strengths are the hardest things to face. This comes from the teachings of Meher Baba's "Discourses", it's not my own ideas.

So, that's it. One more area where an understanding of reincarnation would help us, and where the idea of one life only is distorting our perceptions.

*As of 4/6/07, having been able to catch my breath and more or less stand up again, this explanation doesn't hold water. I think I understand what was really going on, but wouldn't share those kinds of things on a public website. Just in case you are wondering, though, "Wouldn't she know how she felt before six years?" well, yes, that occurred to me and the other people I ran this version by. What you're reading above is me still in shock, and still seeing the "Official Version of Everything," with only a bit of ineffectual questioning. It occurs to me that the paradigm shift that I experienced in the weeks following, to get from "point A" to "point B", is probably a bit like what some people would have to go through in order to accept reincarnation.

As of 9/26/07, I have largely gone through the paradigm shift. Intellectually it was no more difficult than many of the software and computer problems I've had to troubleshoot. Emotionally, however, it has been one of the toughest things I've ever had to go through--and one of my sons was murdered many years ago, so I know about tough times. When someone you've loved deeply and trusted deeply plays you false, for whatever combination of selfishness and personal problems, the emotional self must, apparently, plough through it. This has certainly left me more sympathetic to people who cannot assimilate reincarnation into their beliefs because of the difficulty in restructuring their deep assumptions.

Music opening this page: "Thief in the Night," Eric Johnson (Venus Isle album)
All I can say is, if you have a chance to see Eric in concert, don't pass it up...
sell the car and hitch to the concert if you have to.