one-soul practice
sometimes i imagine that i will be (or have been) someone else. i focus on a real person: someone i see when i'm out walking, or in the market, or someone i talk to, or a family member, or someone i see on the news. i will live that life. i will experience that moment.
i practice this. i really let it sink in.
time mixes with space. every being, every moment, every experience. we are all beads on a great string strung through time and space. we think we are the beads, but we're also the string. one big soul.
i am an individual. i am the entire universe.
what fear is there of death?
i will live countless lives.
what need is there for envy? for theft?
i will get to be the person who has what i want.
how can i harm someone else?
i am only harming myself.
what do i lose by giving to someone else?
nothing. i am creating a better world.
what is this life of mine? a drop in the ocean.
so what is special about me? i am completely unique.
i have to take stock of what the universe has given me,
and work from there.
speaking with the dead
i can imagine my grandma. i can imagine a conversation with her. you might say, "that isn't real. it's just your imagination," but i knew her my entire life. i heard stories about her and i interacted with her many times. i have a thing in my mind which is a reflection of her personality. that's a real connection. it's not the same as talking to her when she was alive, but it's not wholly disconnected from that either. if i say to my family, "grandma spoke to me on my walk today," and i tell them what she said, and they say, "that sure sounds like her," then what has happened? am i a mimic? a channeler? i'm not pretending. i used my imagination. there is some of her which is not gone, and it's in all of us.
there is a part of us that is pure information, which is not bound by our body, or by our lifespan. it is not whole, like an object, but gaseous like a cloud, wet with the blood of life, easy to see but difficult to nail down. it's the soul.
the afterlife
the "afterlife" is what happens to someone after they die. it is the way in which their life continues after death.
i think the afterlife is the ripples of difference in the world which are there because of our lives. these ripples don't have to make sense to us; we may not even be able to discern them. the universe is under no obligation to make sense to us, nor to make everything visible to us. but the universe is always working; nothing is ever lost.
the afterlife isn't a conscious experience, at least not in the ordinary sense of "conscious".