"Refusing to Give In to Death"

     Chris, I am having a bit of difficulty with depression right now.  It’s about a half hour before noon.  I bathed, wrote, read, meditated, had a small breakfast, meditated more.  The Shabd was bright and clear and audible.  But I was unable to let go of memories of you, because I was afraid I might abandon you in the process.  I know, it is not good reasoning.  But that is where my head was.
     The meditation helped, though itching and hives weakened it by sapping my attention, making me scratch.  I just couldn't find a balance between “non-I-ness” and “just enough I-ness” to hold onto you in my consciousness and yet let go of everything else.  I don’t want to abandon you, Honey Bun.  I kept some few physical memories alive to keep a tether connecting us across the unknown, the unsure, the deep void of ignorance, the chasm between life and death.  But this very tether of memory might be the very thing that is separating us right now.
     But these memories associated with my physical brain expressed themselves as grief-stricken kicks to my chest, or as a vice grip of painful emotions crushing my physical heart.  The feeling of loss is horrible and very physical.  Any other loss is at least endurable.  But the loss of you is unbearable beyond description.  And that, at least in a way is a sign that our love has real eternal tenacity, a tenacity bridging my life to yours.  I think so.  I hope so.
     I went for a walk.  Pacing briskly back and forth around the drive and out to the highway, going not far but back and forth many times.  I had no where to go.  Geographically, there is no place to be.  All places are the same.  Where I need to go is to another place in spirit, to where you are.
     And in comes doubt right at this point.  Am I fooling myself?
     If I could have held you those last few minutes.  But I was exhausted, sick from fatigue, nauseated.  I passed out beside your bed.  You had whispered to me earlier, “Stay with me a little while.”  I fell asleep next to you.  I woke up, looked at you, thought you were sleeping peacefully and healing in a restful peace.  I went to the kitchen to wash dishes and start coffee.
     Twenty… thirty minutes I was in there then looked back in on you and you had lightly flung your arm over and rolled onto your back.  I checked closely.  Shook you lightly.  Then more firmly.  And more firmly still.  You were not breathing.  You were leaving me forever!
     God this hurts!  I wish I could have held you at the end!
     Honey Bun.  This feeling, almost two years later, is still unbearable.  But I must live with it.  I must understand it.  I do not believe that a pain as severe as this love-grief is an illusion.  It may slip in through the cracks of ignorance and illusion.  But the emotional pain is real.  So I must face it, understand it.
     I do not want you to feel this pain!  But I thank God that it is I who must suffer this pain alone by myself in this physical world, instead of you!  I would hate to think of you alone in this world, suffering this emotional pain of deep loss, without me or anyone else to hold you and comfort you.  I want you to be okay, to be happy, joyful, feel bliss and be loved, and assured by infinite wisdom that I am real and I am really coming to your side, returning to you, my dear wife, Christel.  Even if I myself am an illusion, I will make myself real, for you.  I am coming home to you if I have to recreate the entire universe to do so.  If that takes a trillion trillion years or more, a trillion infinities, I will stick it out and do it!  Do not worry yourself over this.  I will find a way!  I believe there is a way.  I believe there are infinite ways to do infinite things in this infinite universe!
     If I could feel… or, let me put it this way, “when” I do feel that you are happy and at peace, I am happy and at peace, too.  But sometimes doubts creep in… and it makes my faith tremble.  I just care infinitely for your well being.  I care.  I love.  This world has nothing to give me.  Only our love is essential.
     I love you, Honey Bun.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll keep at it.  The Hindu gurus might say I am working off karmic debts with my personal suffering, with my unrelenting search and the devastating power of my love longing for you, with the piercing pain of my broken heart, this may be my karmic debt for reuniting with you, which is a good thing.  So never you worry about me.  The light at the end of my tunnel is you, Darling, the brightest light in all my universe.
     So you be at peace.  I'm okay.  And I'm on my way.  See you soon, my beloved wife, Chris.

"Wordless Communication"

     I was bent over inspecting a tiny rock, turning it over in my hand.  I needed something to wrap it in.  A tall slender man who was a complete stranger walking by happened to glance at what I was doing.  I glanced back into his eyes.  He understood my tiny need, fished out a piece of paper and handed it to me.  I took it from his hand and finished the process of wrapping the rock as he continued on his way.  Not a word, not a nod or wink, passed between us.  Only the understanding of the need to complete a simple process.  It was a seamless experience.  We were all in the moment with the understanding of its context.  We played our parts without effort of any kind.

"Haecceity and Duns Scotus"

     I love you, Honey Bun.  Good morning.
     I had plenty of dreams but only one cohesive scene made it through the transition from the astral to physical dimensions.  In this short scene, my younger sister, R., appeared to be the young girl she had been long ago, at twelve years old or so (she is around 60 now at the moment of this writing).
     In the strange physics of dreams, I was still in my so-called senior tears.
     My sister was telling me how much she liked my friend who had just walked away from us.  This was a tall slender woman with long, straight, ashen hair and a relaxed, stately manner about her.  (It may have been an astral version of you, Chris, which would account for the deep love I felt for this woman).
     "Yea,” I responded to my sister, “She is pleasant, isn't she?  I haven't told anybody this yet, but we are going to be married."
     When I said this, my voice caught in my throat for a moment with strong emotion.  I blinked sudden tears from my eyes.  I’m not sure why I felt this way about this woman because those precise feelings I had only associated with you before.
     "Oh, that is wonderful!" my sister exclaimed.
     "Yes.  It is."
     That was the dream world experience.  I remember it as a little island of cohesion in an ocean of scattered qualia and fragments of astral people and places.  But I did retain the impression of there having been many more cohesive experiences during the night, which did not make it through to concrete memory upon awakening.
     Perhaps the reason this particular segment came through strongly intact was my own puzzlement over feeling such strong emotions for someone other than you, Honey Bun.  Was this tall, stately woman you, yourself, in another guise?  In another form?  How many forms and guises can we wear in the astral world?
     There is a word, “haecceity” (pronounced “hak ‘see uh tee”) coined by Duns Scotus (c. 1266 to November 1308) who was an important philosopher-theologian of the higher Middle Ages.  The meaning of the term “haecceity” comes from Latin “haecceitas” meaning “thisness”.
     What I am about to say in this particular paragraph is a little off the present topic but I must squeeze it in exactly here because it seems so very relevant to our interdimensional communications and the overall subject of this letter I am writing today.  What I am saying is this: Duns Scotus was a Scottish scholastic theologian.  Scottish!  Duns Scotus!  It is difficult to think that only blind accident led me to the thoughts of this particular philosopher-theologian.  I mean, just yesterday I mentioned in my morning letter to you, Chris, that I brought back clear memories of the dream experience we shared the previous night in which you wrapped sticky “scotch” tape around my hand!  Do you remember?  Of course you do!  Now look at the connections!  Scottish and Scotus!  “Scotch” tape!  And what follows this paragraph will bring more light onto the importance of this philosopher, his ideas, and how they relate to you and me!
     Duns Scotus used the term “haecceity” (thisness) to indicate what he considered to be the ultimate unity exclusive to a unique individual, as opposed to the common features shared by a group of any number of individuals.
     I need more time to express details of this important observation from Duns Scotus but the unique “thisness” of you, Honey Bun, is what I think I saw in the ashen haired woman whom I spoke about in my dream with my sister last night.  I recognized this essential soul quality, the “you-ness” of you, in that female person.  That’s why I felt this unaccountable love for her.  It was you I loved.  She was you.
     I have suspected for a long time that we souls often change forms, bodies, and even personalities in the astral and other spiritual regions but remain our true selves regardless of what form and personality we dress ourselves in.  It is a higher dimension after all, allowing many added kinds of opportunities in which to express ourselves.  In the physical world it is clothes and buzzwords.  In the higher dimensions, it is bodies and minds and perhaps groups of bodies and minds, yet all very personal to each one of us individual souls.
     Hence, the choking on words in my throat and the tears welling in my eyes when I told my sister about this ashen haired woman, these feelings that were so tuned to only you, Christel, are now explained.  She was you.  But I want to study these thoughts and ideas of Duns Scotus in much more depth now after having learned about their existence.
     I love you, Honey Bun.  Thanks for the Scotch!  Cheers to us!

Are not such presentations part of the vocabulary of God?

“Eternal Infinite Soul”

    The pendulum swings to an extreme of activity, bearing fruits of every kind.  And then it swings back downward through the center of the arc and up into utter silence and stillness, where even the self is left behind.  This swinging continues back and forth through time immemorial.  Where am I in this continuous existence, this yin and yang of aspects?  No, not dead center only.  But the ends of the arc as well.  And Beyond.  Where no human terms can reveal.  And thus we have Eternal Infinite Soul.

"Forever Alive"

     We cross the borders of life and death as gradually as the seasons change.  Many of us do not even notice it happen.

"Feeling Embarrassed?"

When I feel embarrassed, I instantly realize this is an opportunity to study my ego. For this is the creature who is embarrassed. I jump right on the opportunity, in the moment. Who really is this ego? I observe the thoughts that build it up. I watch qualities of it pass like clouds and wisps and sensations through my mind. This not only increases my mastery over my ego but develops a habit of the call to attention to the now. Whenever the ego pops up, it is the call. It amounts to dynamic transcendental meditation that can be practiced everywhere, not just sitting cross legged in a silent room (though I definitely do practice that, as well).

"Above Time"

     When you stand on the corner of a busy intersection and look east, you see the busy street stretch out into the distance before you in one direction.  Then you turn around into the opposite direction and see the same street continue into the distance in that direction.
     Next, you turn south and see the other road of the intersection stretch away southward in that direction.  And finally looking behind you, you see this same street continue into the distance of the north direction.
     By twisting and turning, squinting and peering around people and over objects, you piece together a view of the intersection and the surrounding city.  This is how we perceive our world in linear time.
     To see all things and directions of the intersection at once, simultaneously, one must rise 90 degrees above the intersection, vertically, as if carried up in an elevator to the roof of a high building above it all, and then look down.  Now we have a perpendicular view of all the streets, and all the directions, and all the people in the busy intersection.
     In this way, by rising higher in consciousness, we obtain a similar perpendicular view of time, where the past and the future are one simultaneous event, and the "now moment" contains all the activity.

Spiritual Insight from Vincent Van Gogh

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.” ― Vincent van Gogh

A Void Filling a Dream

     Good morning, Honey Bun.  I love you.  Ah!  Shabd sounds richly in my ears as I begin this letter to you!
     I dreamed during the night but the only fragment I retain now has only me in it, with a brief appearance of one of my current neighbors whom you never met while you were in the flesh.  I was telling this fellow about something that was helpful to me and free to anybody, which could be gotten from the community room.  This room was small and almost completely empty.  Even the walls beyond the door did not show up in the dream.  The only purpose this room served in the dream was to be a place where this free item, that I was telling the neighbor about, could easily be found on a single small table.  Only the portion of the surface of this table which was nearest the door was actually visible.  The free thing, or stack of these things, on it was something like a clear plastic bag.  I have forgotten exactly what they were and in what way they were useful.  But they were a symbol for something which was a convenience of some kind.  As I write this, I think that precisely what they were is unimportant but the fact that they were useful and I wanted to share this knowledge with somebody was.
     I went to the little room to get it and bring it back to the neighbor.  But I discovered all of it had disappeared, even the room I think, or at least access to the room for I did encounter a locked door.
     The same neighbor reappeared briefly one more time in the dream to give me some old mail which had been lost in forwarding from an old address.  I believe this old address was our Huger Street address, my dear Christel.
     As I gradually woke up, uncommonly slowly and steadily, it was almost with the same slow change one sees the dawn push the night away from view.  As I was waking, I wondered where this mail had been and realized that I did not know many details of where I currently was or even where I was now getting my current mail.  That is, I did not know where I was or even where I lived now.  I realized my mind was filled with an area of fuzzy though comfortable blankness about two thirds the volume of my cranium and expanding in area.  All awareness of details of my life were disappearing and a kind of peaceful cloudy light was filling the void.  Then I was awake.
     I love you, Honey Bun.