Beyond Time Book

Okay this will be a point of deprture for a subject that is usully the stuff of movies in which crazy, screaming, frightened faces blanket the screen.  This is about possession, that’s right, about a disembodied entity invading the space of a living, breathing person.  I bring it up because movies on the subject and on the paranormal tend to emphasize demonic spirits and evil overlay.  However, there are instances of possession that are much much more gentle.  Hypnotists often bump into these presences while working with a client.  It’s rare though at least in my experience.  Those that ave shown up are conversed with not used as punching bags.  Only one spirit is to be contained within a person.  Those who are not welcome or supposed to be there, are told in a more compassionate way than I understand The Catholic Church sends them on their way, that they must leave, and find their own light.

I bring all this up because if Beyond Time is positing that we have multiple lifetimes, then it isn’t that much of a stretch to claim that when people die, sometimes they are afraid to go to the light because of behaviors and acts done while in body.  I recall the case of a young high schooler from Northern Virginia who soaked himself in drugs on a regular basis resulting in a hellish life, going from one engagement with the law to the next all the while his parents trying to get help from a bunch of agencies.  His end came when he smashed in his father’s gun cabinet and grabbed a bunch of them, using them to kill the police officers at a precinct he had been arrested at many times.

The most significant part of this story is that during all his travails he kept insisting he was “possessed”.  And this is the reason I have made possession my topic of today’s blog.  Do not doubt for a minute that if you engage rather heavily in drugs including alcohol, you are quite susceptible to possession.  You are not in charge of your life, you will succumb easily to corruption.  And you will need help.  One of the most riveting accounts of how possession happens read “Return from Tomorrow” by George Ritchie who was clocked dead for nine minutes and shown by a figure of light a scenario in a bar in a Navy town.

I don’t intend any more on this unless incited to do further dialogue.  The point I want to make is to break down your denial that if something isn’t visible, it doesn’t exist.  And that drugs are really stupid.

“Now our whole life, from birth unto death, with all its dreams, is it not in its turn also a dream which we take as real life, the reality of which we do not doubt only beause we do not know of the other more real life?  The dreams of our present life are the environment in which we work out the impressions, thoughts, feelings of a former life.  As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other, more real life…and then return after death.  Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the life of God.  I wish you would understand me; I am not playing, not inventing this:  I believe it, I see it without doubt.”

ASIDE:  The book, A Course in Miracles, an international bestseller and basis for student groups all over the world echoes that our lives which seem so achingly real is but a dream.  The Course teaches that the “goal is…to help us escape from the dream world….. by showing those who are open to this concept how to reverse our thinking and unlearn our mistakes.”  In the Course’s frame of reference that means to recognize the truth of who we are, namely not a body and that our mistakes, usually referred to as “sins” are mistakes to be undone by forgiveness.”

I have resisted reading another book on writing until I was forced to unearth numerous paper bags of books languishing in the attic for the past five years. 

There I discovered a book I had also resisted because of its’ strange title, bird by bird  by Anne Lamott.  That title was the sage advice given by her writer-father to her 10 year old brother languishing the last minute over a writing assignment he had known about for over a month.  (Sound familiar?)

Every writer needs this book.  It’s worth any price you pay just for the first 27 pages.  In it the writer talks on a problem with just about every writer is familiar:  the voices.  Lamott, in a very down to earth, sometimes off color humor and potty terms, names a couple of hers including the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady who pinces her nose and remarks,  “Well that’s not very interesting, is it?” There’s the emaciated “German male who wries Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes, William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as articulate as a houseplant.”  And then there are the dogs, the ones in their pen who if you ever stop writing will “surely hurtle and snarl their way out because writing is ……..the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed…..containing the crazy ravenous dogs,” keeping them at bay from tearing the writer apart.

These voices were quelled when one day the writer had sessions with a hypnotist who gave her the suggestion and resulting exercises to perform that required her to imagine each critic, each voice the personification of a mouse.  She would take the mouse by the tail and drop into a mason jar.  She did this with each whining, critical voice in her head.  Then she was to put the lid on and watch as all these mice clawed at the glass jabbering away, “trying to make you feel like shit because you don’t do what they want.”

The hypnotist further advised Lamott to  imagine the jar having a volume control button which she could calibrate and watch as every mouse clawed at the glass trying to get to her.  At that moment she would turn away and could “get back to her shitty draft.” 

Except for the right ending I think I’ve got my book.  Now for the hard part:  editing and particularly sequencing.  What to leave out, what to leave in, where to place scenes and chapters.  Taking odious, long passages, clarifying, compressing, deleting .  Oh lordie, let me take remedial algebra again!  Even before I give it over to friends to apprise, so much work, so much work ahead. 

Can I do it I ask myself.  Stay tuned.  I’m aiming for entering it in a contest in January.  Phew…

During Viktor Frankl’s interviews at Dachau Nazi prison camp he became curious as to how one young woman who knowing of her impending death continued her cheerfulness. She surprised the author of  “Man’s Search for Meaning” saying , “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard for in my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.

A demonstration of it is not what we experience that determines our attitude, but our interpretation of it.  

Probably not.  However, all the current 2009 town meeting furor concerning the current and chaotic efforts to create a common sense health bill and the claim that inherent in the legislation would be “death panels” which would decide who gets to live and who we consign to die is just plain silly.  However, if it brings up dialogue on how the terminally ill should be treated, it is apt.

Rabbi Jack Spiro, who holds the chair and spearheads the department of Judaic Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University, is one of the few to shed light on the subject which he brings from his experiences as a hospice volunteer. 

Rabbi Spiro noted that mostly we are in denial about death even though along with taxes it’s the most sure thing about life. 

It’s the kind of denial that has families calling on extraordinary measures in the forms of medicine and machines to keep one who is terminally ill alive.  Many have watched this protracted transition from life to death beholding the sorry, sad picture of a barely alive loved one with all sorts of tubes and devices protruding out of every orifice.  It’s a disloyalty to our lives to die in such a fashion. In some cultures, there is celebration when someone dies because it means the end of pain that life often brings. 

Rabbi Spiro said too often families take their dying loved ones to a hospice too late, that an earlier admission would’ve brought their loved ones into palliative care, a more gentle, kinder transition to the next stop in their journey.  

Hospices can offer an opportunity to get out of denial about death and allow the dying to talk about their fears, their regrets. It’s also a place where loved ones give permission for the dying to leave which sometimes all it takes to pass on. And think how much easier it is to get a much needed hug without all those tubes.

Whether we live many lifetimes isn’t the issue here.   Those who do believe we do can view the dying process as a place and time we can forgive ourselves for our transgressions and celebrate the idea that what lessons we learned, what compassion, kindness and integrity we formed this lifetime are not lost; merely taken with us into the next stop in the journey. 

Perhaps, if we can really forgive ourselves for “missing the mark” with help of loved ones we could use our dying as a time to view our defeats as perhaps our greatest victories in moving forward in learning those tough life lessons. 

Then we wouldn’t mourn death so egregiously as we do when we view it as the end and spend phenomenal amounts on caskets and flowers and headstones to honor the dead which all end up in the ground.

For those who love the writing and books of Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides, Beach Music, The Great Santini, Lords of Discipline etc) rejoice!  On August 11th, his greatly awaited book titled ”South of Broad”  will hit the bookshelves.

For those who love character development and believable characters drawn from life (author’s own dysfunctional family) with whom one can relate, Conroy’s the master.  Such characters are believable because we not only know them in our own lives but disdain or walk away from them.  Not Conroy. For him they are grist for his fabulous literary mill as he celebrates their dysfunction in broad, dramatic, juicy strokes. 

The language and metaphors used take one’s breath away; Conroy’s a master of stating undeniable psychological truths and presenting characters that demonstrate that particular dysfunction. Likewise he’s not afraid to reveal through them the melancholia of his own psyche - nor ashamed of crying, bleeding or whining for all the world to witness, thus affording the rest of us the opportunity of arrogance to deem our psychological health much more superior. 

A few examples of Pat Conroy’s language and metaphors:

“I could bear the memory but could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.”  Beach Music

“She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.”  Prince of Tides

“She understood the nature of sin and knew that its’ most volatile form was the kind that did not recognize itself.” (said of Tolitha, the grandmother in Prince of Tides)

For writers they may wonder why I talk little about my writing and more about my subject.  Anybody out there have knowledge on what endings should do beside put closure on all questions raised and make sure it’s a happy ending.  Hmmm, nothing’s changed since Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood.  But Shakespeare?  He examined human passions as they really are - some days are good, some are bad, and many times the ending is unsatisfactory to everyone involved. 

In Beyond Time I am conflicted about a happy ending because I’m not sure it’s honest.  However, as I wind down - before serious rewrite hell - I am working mostly in a sort of subconscious state which is always honest.  Working from there one accesses one’s higher self, and has a little guidance from some big guns.  “Make your endings satisfactory to the reader I am urged.  But life doesn’t work that way.  But the other voice says, but the reader stuck with you till the end, you can’t disappoint.  Well I believe there’s wisdom to be learned in disappointment and failure.  That’s real life.  Perhaps thought that’s why we read fiction.

A reader asked if I was going to comment on Michael Jackson’s passing.  It puzzled me as to why I would given the outpouring of comments,  testimonies and opinions already out there. 

Trying to mindread why this blog should address his death I came to the conclusion if I needed a reason it was because Beyond Time is about the question whether we really do die. 

Given the media’s propensity for dramatic headlines, one opined about the King of Pop that “it was a life cut short.”  

Is that true?  Whose to say his life, an incredible journey of entertaining multi-millions all over the globe since the age of five that there was anything of note left to do.  How many of us have accomplished as much as he did in grabbing hold of the public’s fervor with his awesome talent whose music made us feel better. Maybe as close as we come in feeling joy.

In preparing for his London series he told his handlers he wanted a personal physician 24/7, giving the reasoning, “I am the machine that makes this whole thing work.  You have to keep the machine fit.”   

Did he really consider himself a machine, did he really reduce himself to a series of working parts.

Maybe he did feel like a machine, lost his heart.  Heart disease does result often for that very reason.

“The Heart Goes On” sang Celine Dion, another incredible talent.  Michael’s heart which he poured into his music with no doubt, heart and soul,  will go on through his vast inventory of albums and videos.

Now he is at peace and we can still feel amped listening to his music without the media casting aspersions.  Media collectively reminds me of cackling hens, some more vicious and judgmental than others. 

What about the rest of us?  Will our hearts go on when its our time?  Asking ourselves the question of what will our legacy be is all we need to be concerned about.    Grieving can be shortened for Michael Jackson and others who die young when they leave the legacy he left.  You can’t listen to his music without feeling more alive.   So let’s just say “thank you” as he passes onto the next juncture of his journey.

And watch for cloud formations; you just might see one in the shape of a shiny glove. 

Whether it’s as a writer, a painter, an inventor, a computer programmer, an artisan or a file clerk, one is amazed when one takes time to focus and allow the subconscious mind, the creative mind instead of the intellect to take first position. 

When I do write and allow the focus, a state of trance akin to hypnosis and resembling being in the zone, an unseen hand and mind do the writing.  When this happens the writing flows. As a hypnotherapist I recognize this as emanating from the subconscious (referred to as the unconscious by psychiatrists).  It is the mind that Einstein referred to as the brilliant mind, gently chastising, a bit obliquely, that we think too much of the intellect, which is a mere compendium of learned facts and data usually acquired second-hand and often referred to as education.

Recent research and study at the University of British Columbia is now coming around to the idea that daydreaming is a good thing, that despite the bad rap daydreaming usually gets, letting the mind wander [elementary school teachers to the contrary opinion] activates the brain’s “executive network” usually reserved for high level thinking and solving complex problems.

Daydreaming nurtures our creativity - hotwires our imagination; the result is often magic in the form of books, inventions etc. I wonder how much daydreaming  J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter series did before she created her characters.  Perhaps we can get a clue In her address to a Harvard graduating class a few years ago.  In the stunning speech she crowned and elevated imagination as the zenith of man’s activities, calling it a “wondrous ability to envision that which is not and the fount of all invention and innovation.”  

Pretty good, huh.  Best thing about it is we all have an imagination.  So go for your zenith, why don’t you.

So go ahead daydream, turn such dross into spun gold.  Your future awaits you as your own personal alchemist.