It's a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures into the Flipside Volume Two

It’s a Wonderful Afterlife

Volume 2

Further Adventures into the Flipside

By

Richard Martini

It’s a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures into the Flipside by Richard Martini

Volume Two

Copyright © 2014 by Richard Martini

(Photo taken of Mt. Kailash while filming Journey Into Tibet with Robert Thurman)

All Rights Reserved. World Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and review without prior written permission of the publisher.

Photos by Richard Martini. All rights reserved. Copyright 2014.

Cover Art: by Doug Martin

www.DouglasBrianMartin.net

Author Photo: Russ Titelman

Smashwords Edition

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Galen Stoller

Introduction: Behind Door #3

Chapter One: Chaplain Savarna Wiley – The Reality Store

Chapter Two: Going Out With a Bang – A Shaman’s LBL

Chapter Three: The Soul Phone – Gary Schwartz Ph.D.

Chapter Four: Infinitely Infinite - An NDE explored via LBL

Chapter Five: Robert Thurman In Tibet: The Death of Death

Chapter Six: Wisdom of the Ages

Chapter Seven: Pete Smith Interview - President of the Newton Institute

Chapter Eight: Exceeding all Expectations

Chapter Nine: Interview with Jean Charles Chabot

Chapter Ten: Interviews in the Afterlife: Billy and Galen

Chapter Eleven: All is Love

Chapter Twelve: Interview with An Attorney – I Can Help You

Chapter Thirteen: Silliest Group of Souls Ever

Chapter Fourteen: Open Your Heart - Journeys Out of Body

Chapter Fifteen: God is All of Us

Chapter Sixteen: Interview with the Alpha and Omega

Chapter Seventeen: Luana’s In My Pocket

Chapter Eighteen: Where the Gold Is

Epilogue: The Martini Shot

Afterword: Think of Me, I’ll Be There

Foreword by Galen Stoller

"Remember to live your life and live it beautifully – do not be afraid."

I am honored that Mr. Martini wanted to have me contribute to his book with this foreword, because it is a wonderful afterlife.

It is a wonderful life beforehand too; part of the experience that creates the wonderful in a wonderful afterlife, is recognizing that one is having a wonderful life on Earth. It’s not that if one lived a miserable, fearful, unaware and terrible life on Earth and then when they transition, suddenly (they) wake up, feel happy and everything is wonderful. Truly, the life you live on Earth does guide the life you live in the afterlife.

The Teachers¹ talk constantly about how the only reason we are born is to create experience for the soul. So the experience you create in your life is the experience you bring over and will own when you cross over. It is a lot easier to learn (over here) when you have some level of joy that you are bringing over with you.

Mr. Martini asked me to address the topic of soul groups and if I’ve met members of my own group.

I have met many members of my soul group (here), because they are attracted to the same areas and places that I am attracted to be part of. It is all about physics where certain energies are attracted to similar energies.

On one level it is like a big family reunion. One gift I’ve learned is that your soul group can be comprised of members that don’t just belong to the human race.

A soul group comes together to give a greater emphasis to that circle of energy that continually keeps building and building.

And you really begin to understand how rich we are when you have met your soul group and experience the incredible beauty that comes from an experience which is not limited to the transitional life of Earth, but which happens every day when we connect to others. Being able to invite others in, to welcome them and open up and have conversations with them – to see their hearts and souls – that’s also what soul groups are about and you become incredibly rich when you understand this and make the effort to make these connections.

Mr. Martini wanted me to say something about the classes taught here.² I no longer attend classes as I am very focused on helping others as they come in (or transition) to understand themselves and learn the opportunities they have available to them, and how to utilize the experiences we all bring with us. So, in a way, rather than going to class, I’m teaching.

It’s interesting that some individuals come through with identities and memories and some don’t. Many people come in with a fear of this transition. That fear absolutely removes their connections for a little while until the energy (of this dimension) settles into their form, in which case I just sit with them. I do for them what was done for me³ – I just sit with them and quietly hold a space.

For others, I (try to) make a connection in teaching, explaining and understanding. The most common statement is, Am I dead? Yet, that is balanced with their amazement and comments about how wonderful they feel – the love they feel all around them. It is often said together, Am I dead, and I feel wonderful!

Sometimes they say, What happened? Sometimes it is just, Who are you? I can tell who to joke with and who not to joke with, because I can see the experiences they bring with them and the personality they have been working with. A question that comes through (often is) Where am I?

You can tell when someone has settled in because they will say, Well, everything looks so normal as if they were expecting something different than just this representation of what was familiar to them.

Soon they learn they can manipulate and move energy around here, which we do on Earth, but on Earth we are not as aware, nor do we recognize the experiences that are created from it.

For the most part I am able to use humor, because it is one’s belief system that actually places people at the dimensional station they find themselves, so for the most part, individuals who like the surprise of being here and get the cosmic joke, also have a sense of curiosity and wonderment, and these are the ones I am meeting.

But there are a few who don’t get it and I try not to shock them. I am gentle and open with them. The truth is, everything here is very similar to what Earth was like, but with a lot more freedom of movement and with a little more understanding of how the energy moves around us. But that is what school is for.

It may seem like one’s life on Earth and one’s afterlife are two very separate experiences, but they are not different experiences at all. It is just one has a different set of physics than the other; that really is all it is. The gifts that you have, the talents that you bring, and the life that you lived is all part of this next step – all part of your learning, processing and being able to really understand how to be a human being.

Being a human being is about being creative and aligned to the information that comes from Source - that comes from the Universe. It is a wonderful afterlife, but it begins with living a wonderful life, and then it continues with a wonderful (next) life. As you finish up your afterlife, you return for another scoop of experience for the soul, and that next scoop is piled on the last scoop just like building a wonderful big ice cream cone. The truth is, you have to eat it all and bring it all in, and experience it without fear, bitterness, sadness and limitation.

Everything in the Universe has intelligence. Everything in the Universe has a plan. Be big enough to step back to see that plan, so you can understand it as you move forward again, back into another life.

Remember to live your life and live it beautifully. Do not be afraid. Let go of the fear. Be full, rich, aligned, intelligent and clever. Don’t get caught in the details, because none of that matters when you come to the other side.

Galen Stoller

_____________________

Galen passed over in 2007 in a car accident at the age of 16. I met Galen’s father Ken a few years ago, when I read My Life After Life: A Posthumous Memoir. (Dream Trader Press, 2011) From his new residence in the afterlife, Galen contacted his father, Dr. Ken Stoller, a successful pediatrician in Arizona, a number of times, and suggested his father help him write a book about what he was experiencing in the afterlife.

With the assistance of a lifelong family friend who is a medium, Ken edited a book written in Galen’s voice describing what he was experiencing after his passing. What caught my attention was Galen’s description of classrooms in the afterlife, just as my friend Luana Anders claimed prior to her passing she had been visiting on a regular basis.

I contacted Ken to see if he or Galen had ever heard of Michael Newton’s work (Journey of Souls) where he describes classrooms in the afterlife; Ken says neither he nor his son was aware of Newton’s research or books. Further, he shared with me a pretty amazing series of emails from a woman in St. Louis whose husband had died recently. Through the help of a friend who was a medium, she spoke to her husband of 50 some years. He told her that There’s a boy over here who has written a book, his name is Galen, the name of the book is My Life After Life, he’s wearing a red shirt on the cover, and everyone over here is talking about his book, because it describes fairly accurately what my experience has been in the afterlife.

It’s not every day that you get a letter from someone who says that everyone on the flipside is reading a particular book. I’m happy to hear that our literary efforts are appreciated on both sides of the veil. I asked Ken if it was possible for Galen to write the Foreword to this book.

I am pretty certain this is the first foreword written by someone who is no longer on the planet.

A sincere thanks to Ken and to Galen, whose series of books can be found online. The first one is My Life after Life; I highly recommend it. Recently, Ken told me that his son had run into Luana over where he is. I asked if they spoke and Galen replied:

"It was like she came here already a teacher. She spends a great deal of her time beaming love everywhere and to the Earth."

Welcome to the Flipside.

"I have this recurring dream where I’m in another dimension in a room full of spiritual beings, all dressed in white, and a teacher is speaking to me in a language I’ve never heard before, but I absolutely understand everything he is saying… - I think I’m on my way to another galaxy."

Luana Anders, actress/writer, just prior to her passing in July 1996.

Introduction – Behind Door #3

"In David’s final request he asked that one hundred dollars in small bills be placed in his left sock, as he put it Just in case tipping is recommended where I’m going. Comedian and Late Night talk show host David Brenner’s relatives on his funeral arrangements. (Photo: Upon arrival in India these boys put a snake over my head. I didn’t see the cobra in front of me until this very moment.)

My first book in this series, Flipside: A Tourist’s Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife, was about deep hypnosis, a form of hypnotherapy pioneered by Dr. Michael Newton. He granted me his last interview on the subject (he’s alive and well, just retired) and I filmed over a dozen sessions of people under deep hypnosis and interviewed hypnotherapists, some trained in his method, others that were not but who had similar results.

It’s a Wonderful Afterlife Volumes One and Two expand the scope of this research, examining the latest reports on near death experiences from a variety of sources, and new reports from between-life sessions. I’ve continued to film people under deep hypnosis over the past five years and they consistently say the same things about past lives and trips in-between-lives. The results have been remarkably consistent as we’ll see.

So what makes the afterlife so wonderful?

Well, the good news is - we don’t die.

But the bad news is… also that we don’t die. Meaning, this is just one of many lifetimes we’ll lead; there’s a lot more where the last one came from. There are still many lessons to be learned, and many rooms in the afterlife mansion to be explored.

Recently someone made a comment on my web page: I don’t believe your idea we choose lifetimes and come down here to suffer as we do: nor do I believe that there are classrooms in the afterlife.

I wrote back that it’s not a belief or philosophy; I’m merely reporting on thousands of cases where the results are repeated over and over again under a variety of clinical and non-clinical situations. These reports claim our life’s path is based on our own personal choice, and no one in the research has said they were forced to take a particular life. Actually, the opposite has been reported, that people often turn down various choices of lifetimes they don’t want any part of. It’s reported no one can or will force us to take a class, or a life.

But our spiritual teachers appear to have time on their side; the afterlife can wait for us longer than we might expect. (Literally, "Heaven Can Wait.) It’s consistently reported there’s no judgment or ill will towards anyone back there, no matter what their choice turns out to be. If we want to sit outside the class and throw stones at the windows, we’re welcome to.

To which the writer replied: You’re an a**hole.

Like I say, this research is not for everyone.

So Caveat Emptor. If you’re convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that there is no afterlife, then I humbly recommend putting this book down, back on the shelf, return it to its kindle file and breathe a sigh of relief. I’m not here to rock your boat.

Some have said Knowing the meaning of your life can hamper natural progression. I would argue the planet doesn’t have time for the rest of the world to figure out that we reincarnate, that we come back here – even if it might be the case - it’s imperative we leave behind clean air, water and soil so our reincarnating souls have a decent place to return to.

But then how did I come to this conclusion?

To recap, a few years ago I began a documentary about the kind of hypnosis pioneered by Dr. Michael Newton, a Los Angeles psychologist who was skeptical of past life regressions and avoiding doing them altogether until one of his clients spontaneously remembered a past life where he was a soldier in the British Army, and recalled his death in a trench. Newton didn’t believe him, so he contacted the British War office, gave them the details the man had recounted, and indeed, it turned out this fellow did exist and had died in 1916. From there, the psychologist expanded his practice to help clients examine past lives.

Some years later, another client spontaneously went into the between-lives realm, and it was there she found the reasons for choosing her current lifetime. Her session unnerved Dr. Newton, who spent some time contemplating what he’d just heard.

Afterwards, he closed his public practice and spent the next 30 years methodically cataloguing the cases of people who claimed they could remember not only previous lifetimes, but this vast between-lives realm where we reportedly connect with our soul groups, meet with spirit guides, are counseled on future life choices, and choose who we’re going to be next. He published his first book Journey of Souls in 1994 with details from his over 7000 cases.

I began to research this form of hypnosis, and came across the same research conducted by Dr. Helen Wambach, a psychologist who in the 1980’s had done similar research, similar methodology, with identical results. Her patients also claimed they chose their parents, chose their lifetimes, and came here for reasons that were spiritual in nature.

I’m a filmmaker, have written and/or directed a handful of films, and I’ve even been asked to testify as an expert witness in a criminal case that hinged on how to interpret what a camera saw. When I started my documentary on the Flipside, I began filming people under deep hypnosis to see for myself whether or not this research could be true. To date I’ve filmed a couple of dozen people.⁴

I’ve chosen my subjects based on my knowledge of their life stories, or because they were skeptics; despite that, all of them have had the same basic experiences as Newton’s subjects. My process eliminates one of the major problems in hypnosis research – the people I’ve chosen have not come to me with a problem to solve, and the therapist is not aiming to cure that problem. I’ve chosen people for their skepticism, either because they don’t believe in an afterlife, or don’t believe they can be put under hypnosis.

Important to note that being under hypnosis is misleading. Anyone who’s done this form of hypnosis feels fully conscious during the session; the only caveat the therapist asks is for the client to say whatever it is they’re experiencing. As Colleen Joy Page mentioned in Flipside, normally the conscious mind acts like a bouncer to prevent the subconscious from stepping forward, but during these sessions, people are able to speak about places and lives their conscious mind is not aware of.

And once the subconscious is allowed to speak, the answers are fairly consistent; we all have a spirit guide, people refer to the between-lives realm as home, there are what appear to be libraries in these locations where we can examine previous lifetimes, there are soul groups where we discover a number of individuals that have been incarnating with us for eons, there are councils where people are given the opportunity to access all of their actions, good or bad during a previous lifetime and why they may have occurred.

Some years ago, the Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz was murdered by a member of the prominent du Pont family, John Du Pont (the film Foxcatcher details the story). I noticed in the eulogy for his son, Dave’s father Phillip revealed when Dave was a toddler, he walked him behind the house and said he wanted to tell his dad a secret.

"Schultz told how David at age 4 predicted he would die young. David told his dad that before he was born, he was one of 12 members standing around in a circle in the clouds. David was told by one of the men that he was going to be tested on Earth.

He said I would pass the test, but I wouldn't be here very long,'' David recounted to his dad. Phillip Schultz had forgotten the conversation until his son’s tragic early death.⁵

Would this information have helped Dave’s father at the time? Knowing about these reports that we all have a council (number of council members varies from person to person – from six to twelve normally) who help us understand our life’s goals and achievements? I don’t know. In my case, I would have been sick with worry every time my son stepped outside the door. Perhaps there is logic to having the veil of forgetfulness operating during our lifetime. But as we’ll see, that veil appears to be thinning.

As I’ve written previously, my journey to this research came via my pal Luana Anders when she came back to visit me after her death. There was a profound moment when it felt as if she’d taken me to another galaxy. It was a journey that felt real, as if I was traveled through space, into another universe where she is currently a resident.

I haven’t stopped taking these journeys. Like a good tour guide, I try to keep up on the latest developments in the faraway places I’ve been to visit – and I’ve continued filming life between-life sessions. But one incident reveals why I’ve continued to do this research.

While I was speaking to the International Association of Near Death Studies (IANDS) in Tustin, California, a woman came into the room and sat down. Later, she told me that she was on her way to her incest survivors group, and had come on the wrong day – and mistakenly wandered into my talk.

I was speaking about Dr. Newton’s research, how over 30 years of practice, thousands said basically the same things about the afterlife and our journey to and from there. I spoke of how people claimed the pain and suffering we’ve experience during our lives may have been agreed upon before we made our journey here. And how realizing our trials and tribulations may have been agreed upon prior to our coming here, can be a liberating experience.

During the break this woman came up to me, quite distraught. She put her finger in my face and said How dare you? How dare you tell me I agreed to suffer through the experience of having my daughter brutally murdered so she or I could learn something from it? It’s one thing to repeat what people say while under hypnosis, and another thing to try to console someone who has lost a child. I was startled by her question, and at the same time aware I only had a few minutes to try to give her any kind of consolation.

We sat down. I told her I was sorry to hear of her loss. But I asked if I could speak frankly. She said she’d appreciate it. I pointed out Your daughter would be proud of you. Not everyone could go through what you’ve gone through and still remain on the planet. I asked if her daughter was a happy person. She said she was the happiest person she knew. I asked the mother to consider for a moment that she might still be nearby, keeping an eye on her mom. Would she have wanted her mother to be so sad and angry and go through the rest of her life suffering because of this tragedy? She said she would probably not.

I asked if she’d ever felt her daughter’s presence around her. She said often. I asked her to consider for a moment how difficult it might be for her daughter to be able to do that, to make her presence known. That by appearing around her mother, the daughter was trying to prove to her that she hadn’t gone anywhere; she’s still here. I asked if it was likely she would want her beloved mother to go through the rest of her life suffering. She looked me in the eye and said Perhaps not. I hugged her and thanked her for coming.

A month or so later, I was giving a talk at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica and saw the same woman sitting in the back of the room. After the talk I went over to her. She had a copy of Flipside with her and there were little post-it notes on each page where she’d made observations that were helpful. She held up my book and said; I just wanted to come and thank you personally for saving my life.

It took my breath away – and does so as I write this sentence. I pointed out that her transformation wasn’t my doing; I’m just reporting what people say about the afterlife. It takes courage for people to open up their hearts to be able to hear that.

And finally, about a month later, she showed up at another book talk. She was smiling, and after the talk said I wanted to come down and tell you some news. I’ve joined a comedy improv class. She said she had come so far in her journey, she felt confident enough to get up on stage and try to make others laugh.

The good news is that we don’t lose our connection to our loved ones when they pass; even though they may not be able to physically hold our hands, we can hold them forever in our hearts and minds.

In the iconic TV show Let’s Make a Deal! people would wager on whatever was behind a door before knowing what it was. Host Monty Hall, like some kind of Merlin, would try to influence their choice with gifts and suggestive phrases. But how about door #3? he’d say. Would you give up everything I’ve just offered you for what’s behind door #3?⁶ The crowd would cheer to try and influence the choice. In this research we find that people normally think they have two doors waiting for them; heaven or hell. But there’s a third door, which leads to a much different version of the afterlife than what we’ve been led to believe.

In this volume we’re going to continue the exploration of life after death as reported by a number of folks; people who’ve had a near death experiences, people under deep hypnosis, scientists and doctors who talk about the latest breakthroughs in what can only be called the science of the afterlife.

The research shows that the afterlife isn’t the frightening place as been depicted; it’s often reported to be a place with quite a few laughs. Turns out that fellow hiding under the grim reaper’s hood might actually be a Monty Hall; But wait, if you choose to go through this other door, you will find laughter, love and everyone you ever cared about waiting for your return. Care to join me behind door number three?

Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God. Maya Angelou’s last post on her twitter account

Chapter One - The Reality Store

Chaplain Savarna Wiley

"My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there." ― Rumi (Photo: Mt. Kailash in Western Tibet)

Savarna Wiley has 14 years of experience working as a Hospice Chaplain. She says that being on the ethics board for end of life issues and providing spiritual support to people of diverse backgrounds has been a great teaching for her about death and life. ⁷

In her role as a Hospice Chaplain, Savarna has helped many people transition out of this physical life. She has stepped away from the death bed ministry and now focuses on helping people live life more fully by connecting with their soul self.

She also points out that Learning from this work, as well as from time spent with hundreds of hospice patients and families has helped her develop a keen interest in the potential for how the collective experience of LBLs, NDEs and afterlife encounters may affect the attitudes, practices and cultural perceptions of death in positive ways.

She spoke recently at the Afterlife Convention in Santa Monica about her path to becoming a Chaplain and her work with the Michael Newton method of Life between Lives hypnotherapy.⁸

Chaplain Savarna Wiley

"When we gather in a conference of this kind where science and spirituality are both represented, we are paving the way for others to come after us, to be able to swim in these waters more easily, more naturally.

Do you remember years back when babies were born and they used to pull them up by their feet and smack them? What a terrible way to begin an incarnation! How about having a non-violent birth? How about a gentle welcoming into this life? This idea was introduced in the West in a big way by Frederick Leboyer and there was change. ⁹

I think, too, the hospice movement sought to bring another perspective to death and dying, to show that death doesn’t have to be a medical failure or even a medical event. There was an invitation to open up to the potential for creating a sacred space for death, ultimately to see that death is a part of living. Like these two movements, it seems that as a culture, we are ready for another paradigm shift.

Here at this Afterlife Convention, we come together to consider that consciousness can and does continue. Consciousness can and does connect and it can and does communicate. There are a lot of examples of outer manifestations of conscious communicating as in the film clip we just saw. ¹⁰ LBL hypnosis is one of the ways to have this knowing from the inside out… from our own direct experience.

Paul David’s film, The Life After Death Project, though it was reporting factual events, was shown on the Sci-Fi Channel. I think in the future, this kind of thing would not need to be called Science Fiction or Paranormal – it would just be normal, it would just be news. In seriously considering these things that have been thought of as fringe ideas, we are playing a part in changing our understanding of consciousness, of who and what we identify as self.

To begin I’d like to invite you to relax... close your eyes if you like... and suppose some things with me.

What if we are more than this body, this mind, this particular history and story? What if beyond the egoic drives of fear and gain, that we are in essence, really beings of love? What if this experience that we call life, is really just a semester of Earth school? And that in between these semesters of Earth school, there’s a realm that we can go to… a realm that is of great beauty, creativity, connection ... a realm with humor, of learning... a realm of great peace and love? What if beyond the costumes of this life there is another and a larger story of who we are?

Take a moment. Sometimes we hear these ideas, but we need a moment to lean into them... to feel them. What would it be like to live our lives from a soul perspective, from that larger story perspective? Breathing into this idea you may touch into the knowing that there is much more splendor to who we really are.... that we are much more vast than what is apparent in this little life experience. There are so many ways to tap into that larger story.

Today I’d like to share a little bit about how LBL hypnotherapy can open that door and about the path that lead me to this work.

Life Between-lives Hypnotherapy was developed by Dr. Michael Newton, a skeptic but a meticulous researcher. He found, much to his surprise, that people of many different traditions and beliefs, without being briefed, kept having the same kinds of experiences during their long hypnotic regression sessions. They were going into these places and stations of healing and learning.

Dr. Newton found that there was a pattern to what occurred in the interlife realm and that when a person dipped into the experience and learnings they found there, they would often experience a fundamental change in their perspective, and this would bring concrete and positive change into their life. He investigated the consciousness that is before birth and after death for over 35 years. He explored, with curiosity and rigor, a realm that he initially never believed in, a realm that some people call the spirit world and a lot of people call home.¹¹

It is in this sense of ‘home’ that my draw to this work rests.

Where Am I?

The truth is, I am usually a private person – I usually don’t speak out in this way but life is calling me to share. So I’ll begin with a story from the Jewish tradition – it gives an explanation about why we have this little indention in our upper lip. The story goes like this; before we’re born, we are with our pals who know us and love us the most, and we start to talk about what our next incarnation is going to be like.

We get to lay it out, get an overview, and we do this in a place of great love and acceptance. But before we’re born there’s this thing that happens… (she puts her finger to her lips and covers the indentation of her lip) Shhh. And a veil of forgetfulness comes down, and we forget all the planning because we want to have our lessons fresh. We want to not know the outcome… we want to have the opportunity to make our own choices.

So the seeds of why I came to this work really started at birth, because it seems that the veil of forgetfulness did not come down so completely with me. I came in remembering – and I think if there was a theme in my coming to this work, it would be memory, nostalgia, longing, and finally acceptance.

When I look at my baby pictures it seems like I am either really pissed off or stoic or just sad. I realize I was bereft during this time; I was trying to figure it out. I had a loving family but they didn’t feel like my family. We were in a safe place, but I didn’t feel safe - the world seemed very harsh and inundating to me.

I felt like I got dropped off at the wrong nest. And as I grew up I began to contrast what I felt - my memories of the spirit world - and what I was experiencing here in what seemed to be a thick place. I called what I remembered The Before. I knew I really liked The Before and I felt I had been in it a lot longer than in this thick place that I found myself in.

Like many kids, I had a sense of what people were thinking and saw that there was a difference between what people were thinking and what they were saying. To me, it was like a very strange game that people all agreed to act on what was said, rather than what was thought.

One day as a young child, I did an experiment. I sat really close to my mom and purposefully thought bad thoughts. I watched her face carefully and realized, She has no idea! I was amazed. I had a private world of thought! At first it was kind of fun, then it felt tremendously lonely and isolating.

I think the spirit world is transparent, there’s no judgment, only unconditional love there, so there is no hiding... no misrepresentation. As opposed to what it was like back home I began to see that this Earth is a place where people, in my kid language -- lied.

Also, I was convinced I could fly – I was absolutely convinced; and this belief persisted beyond the time magical thinking usually stops. I’d jump off things... many things… even the roof. I was fully expecting to float on out. Often I was limping to school because I sprained my ankle in my experiments.

Ok, I thought. "People lie and you can’t fly. Where am I?"

My family was Catholic, but not religious. But we did go to church for mass which was in Latin. I really liked it - we would stand up, sit down, kneel and listen to the lovely Latin words. I did not go to Catechism and was, thankfully, without doctrine and so I was free to just feel into the atmosphere. I had an innocent and loving connection with Jesus and Mary that was really beautiful.

One day I asked my mom, What happens when you die? She said You get to be with Jesus. I remember my little jaw dropping and thinking "Then what are we doing here? Your choice is Jesus or this and you are choosing this!?"