Do you sometimes smack out of the blue have distinct
impressions of being visited by those who have 'died'?
Sometimes you may know this quite clearly. But unless
you just 'have the knack' like a John Edwards, a Sylvia
Brown, or a James Van Praagh, maybe many's the time you just
get left scratching your head, like me!
Below are a few such encounters that
have blessed me. I bring them up because, in spite of
the fact I have just no idea of their genuineness or not,
still, I would be more surprised if our days and nights were
not sprinkled, however lightly, with actual attempts to
touch base, so to speak, from the Other Side.
If as I believe we are indeed Awakening into a greater
supersensory capability as a species, surely this would not
be an unusual feature. I also want to make the point
that whether these are actual events or something totally
out of my imagination, even if I knew they were mostly
untrue, let's say, I would / will persist in keeping open to
the possibility that we are capable of being visited by such
truths. I figure that only as we err on the side of
staying true to this expanding sensory horizon, we ourselves
remain "true" to being ever more likely enabled
toward this very happening. If I continue to insist
they are figments of my imagination -- and of course I
usually can't prove them even to myself -- I close myself
off even more tightly from having genuine experiences, or
for that matter, even recognizing them when I do -- and
letting them touch me, move me, carry me to who-knows-what
glorious new insight. So I choose to err with
determination on the side of practiced persistence toward an
open mind. With joy and anticipation!
Like Rhea White, I have chosen meaning over proof.
This adds enormously to one's quality of life! I do
not suffer any analytical ambivalence, hand-ringing self
doubt, possible guilt if I'm wrong -- wondering what I might
innocently be perpetrating here on my web visitors!
Not to mention what I may thus be missing within the Moment
of, let's call it encounter. It's like being witness
to a precious moment of .. Something .. I can become
deeply still and simply flow with this felt
experience. Just be as present as
possible. At the very least that is one more beautiful
consciously sacred moment in my day -- there are so few of those in any
case!
So, all that said, see what memories these stir within
you. Are these just passing daydreams or fantasies and
night-dream encounters, or are they indeed something
other and closer to what they purport to be? I honestly
don't know. Maybe I will know better in the future
and maybe not. I don't know if these are part of my
Sleeping or part of my Waking. I bring them here because
maybe others will find them relevant to their own Mystery
"visitations," whatever their true nature.
My best hope for you is that they invite you to indulge more
willingly in letting the meaningful nuances of the
Unexpected! play more fully into your daily life.
Because these were so spontaneous and there was a
"Something More" about them in their fitting in so
perfectly to what could be construed as our ongoing
relationship with and observations of each other, the
so-called dead among the so-called living, and they seemed to depict something about
possible current states for the individuals who appeared to
visit me, I can't help but wonder if they do reflect to me
something REAL about these people. Maybe they will bring
to mind your own such experiences like these that seem 'more
than real'. I hope to set it up for a fuller discussion
where you can be active in the conversation in a blog or on
a special page if there's enough interest.
~~THE VIGNETTES~~
1
He had entered soft and silent and solemn as windless snow
falling unobserved on a night's dream. So it felt.
It was as if this
presence simply stepped into my dream. I was
walking out the door of my office in a
nondescript university / medical setting. There was a
felt sense of a "hirstory" of a busy and rewarding
day with clients / collaborators. There was a built-in
dark-paneled strip of wooden bench, immediately to the right
of the door where I stepped through it to leave. The
long dark hall at the end of the day was empty, except for the
unexpected, brooding young man on the bench, Uncle T.
He looked surprisingly young, almost like a youth again,
although when his body died not many years ago, he must have
been nearly 80. He seemed to live beyond the use of
words. His eyes, large, beautiful, held a
wordless question, more like a hunger or a state of immersion
for his soul. He was wrapped as if in the carelessly
familiar clothing of an austere loneliness too large for one
person to bear.
On wakening, feeling stricken by his hauntingly sad
presence, I instantly determined to include him every time,
nearly every night, I would do something Rudolf Steiner
insists is so important, which is to read to the dead,*
and just to continue relating to them as familiarly as
before they left us. Steiner is one among many, many
who perceives that the dead are constantly with us in a very
natural, beautiful way.
When a great Hindu saint, Sri Ramakrishna passed away in the
late 1800s, his wife, also cherished as a great living
saint, Sarada Devi, cried out to him as if he had indeed
gone away. He was instantly beside her and said,
"Where would I go?" as if to say, I'm always
right here. He told her it was merely as if he had stepped from one room, through the open door, into
another.
Uncle T, you are now firmly in my heart and daily
thoughts and I will not forget or forsake you.
May that Peace that Passeth Understanding lead you into the
light of your own glorious healing and joyous community!
2
Another dream: I saw Dad sitting across the
way. He looked much younger, content, welcoming but with
no expectations, no instant wordless messages.
Content. I went over and gave him my familiar kiss on
the cheek. I was happy to see him and to see him looking
so much better and himself in good spirits.
3
I have for over a year now been fairly consistent with
Rudolf Steiner's practice of "reading to the dead"
something of a spiritual nature, usually in fact some of his
writings, hoping it is of help to those I invite to listen
each night. But at one point for maybe a couple of
weeks, I had begun reading another author than
Steiner. One of my loved ones I consciously read to is
"Janet," who had passed only a few months previous
to this incident. Imagine the archetype of an
apple-cheeked grandmother with gorgeous twinkling eyes whose
true mission in life was to love as many people as she could
and who was cherished by the hundreds of people privileged
to call her a dear friend. She and her beloved John
had initiated a Steiner group decades before, so naturally,
Rudolf Steiner was the reading of choice she would want to
hear. I feel absolutely guilty if I don't read some
Steiner for her!
I had been doing this reading, having honestly no idea if I
was speaking to the empty air or what, of course, but I
persisted, and I felt like at the very least if anyone
showed up, whether I knew them or not, maybe it helped..
? I've noticed there has grown a slight sense of
"presence" that has to do with the same people I
lovingly cater to each night, hoping they come and find
something useful, which I may also be making up. If
nothing else the loving intentions, and for me the daily
remembrance and inspiration they continue to give me make
this more than worthwhile.
So this one night I crawled under the covers and after a
breath, chose to reach for a Steiner book, almost not even
consciously thinking the words, Janet, this is for
you! A much loved and missed, grandmotherly voice 'in
my head' instantly cracked with her best southern drawl,
"Welll, it's abouut time!"
4
I
had been reminiscing about Mom in a familiar way out of our
shared memories of being mother and daughter. Suddenly
there was this intrusive inner flash of an image of her
floating upright in midair in front of and a bit above me,
like a living, impersonal Grecian statue in midstep. It
was normal daylight. She was unapproachably, inwardly
attuned to something, or even as if held in stasis within a
deeply Holy Encounter. Across her face, forehead to
chin, hung a thin, nearly opaque and pearl-laced veil.
As if .. she was then [at that moment] no longer the
mother I had known. I wondered if this was the felt end
of that relationship as we had known it or just a very strange
vision. This is seven years after her passing.
It
awed and humbled me to imagine the mystery of her life now,
freed from the mundane existence she knew with a family that
she had unstintingly and immeasurably given all her loving and
creative genius while she was among us. Who and what is
this magnificent Mystery Being, now, I once took for granted as my
mother?
5
Late
night, me over the computer, tired. A good tired.
For weeks now I've been methodically going through the
roughly 1000 pages in this web project, hunting down all the
little editorial flotsam to be corrected, here and there a
few gaping holes to patch, and 3-4 pages still fraught with
challenges. In this very instant I am perhaps for the
first time fully realizing just how close I am to
finishing this years-long leg of the journey. It
has been a most worthwhile, even privileged [I felt], yet
sometimes arduous pathmaking to this time of near-completion
of this initial creation phase. A few times I had all
but given up this could happen.
Mulling passing thoughts of this nature, winding down for
the evening, suddenly I saw within a familiar presence, a
warm-fuzzy image of Jimmy, the brother who had 'died' in
1985. It was not like this was "my thought"
-- more almost like a near-visitation! I just hadn't
been thinking about Jimmy. In fact I ceased years ago
to think of him as still "dead," which begs a bit
of explanation.
Like so many things we can but guess or imagine, I take full
responsibility for likely making all this up, but another
brother ["C"] with whom Jimmy had been very close
eventually married, and in 2000, they had twin boys.
The couple had decided whichever looked more like our
deceased brother/their would-be uncle, they would give that
twin his namesake. Funny now, that C and I so fully
and innocently just "knew" one of them
would. Sure enough, one of the boys had the neonate
strawberry-red hair, and that face! This one, like the
other twin, was truly his own unique self. Yet in
everyone's mind, the name Jim or Jimmy fit like an old
glove. And the similarities in behavior -- antics is
closer to the mark! I can't begin to remember how many
times C and I would just look at each other with "that
look" when we overheard Jimmy say or do
something. I had so fully come to believe this was a
new incarnation for Jimmy, that in all honesty, he had all
but ceased to come to mind altogether--for all these years
since!
So I was totally taken by surprise, then wonderment.
The image I saw was not static, by the way, but like looking
into the face of someone with whom you are chatting. I
had forgotten the exact coloring of his eyes, now so
livingly before me. Jimmy looked to be a teenager, but with a
wisdom and maturity that goes well beyond what I might have
even imagined for him now, had he never passed over!
That wisdom encompassed a World-Beyond, to which he was so
accustomed these twenty-plus years later. He had become my elder brother,
this one who had been a gaping 14 years younger than me when
he had passed.
What a warm delight, as if he had come to acknowledge this
who-couda'-known project his own [and his best friend's]
leave-taking had so abruptly jump-started -- for all their
21 years, each, at the time of their physical demise. Wishing you eternally
blessings-beyond-measure, my deeply wise Spirit
Brother! I can't begin to imagine how to say THANK YOU
for the journey you set me on.
--
*
Rudolf Steiner gave many, many talks and wrote at least one
book about this, which is a treasure to me, called Staying
Connected: How to Continue Your Relationships with Those
Who Have Died.
