Tag: spiritual

Are you Dead Yet? 

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“Are you dead yet?” 

“No.” 

“Isn’t this great?” 

“No.” 

How many of us know a “No” character? How many of us know someone who scrunches up a face and says, “You like life? What the heck is wrong with you?”  

No one says that, of course, but they’re dark. They’re so dark, it’s almost as if they’re obsessed with death, and I’m not just talking about goth customers of Fantas Magoria either. I’m talking about relatively normal people living normal lives who focus so much on what they consider the big circumstantial matter that they fail to put enough focus on the little, tiny stuff that could make their little lives more circumstantial.

Those of us who enjoy life, often find ourselves at odds with “No” types.

“I want a happy death.” I would advise you to make the most out of life you can before you die. That might lead to a happier death. “I just put a bundle down on a sound-proof, fully insulated casket on a plot that is as far removed from traffic as I could find. I had to put up with the sounds of traffic in life. I don’t want that in death.” They talk about death as if it’s sleep, as if the sounds of traffic might prove so annoying that it will intermittently wake them from a peaceful death. Nobody knows anything about death, except that it is a final punctuation mark. Once you’re gone, you’re gone.  

We shouldn’t care how this “No” character chose to live his life. Even though we needed him, we shouldn’t care that he wanted it over. He didn’t care that we needed him so much, and he didn’t really want to be remembered. He just wanted it over, for about thirty years he wanted his life over. He chose to live those thirty years in a manner that he thought should be rewarded, but he didn’t really pursue the idea that he should make the most of the gift of life. He just didn’t think that way, but he was a good man. Should we really care how or why he became a good man?  

What if this man wanted to hurry up and get his life over with, so he could join his beloved wife on the other side of pearly gates? What if he never found his life particularly rewarding, and he wanted hurry up and get his reward for living a good and virtuous life? What if there is no afterlife? What if his whole reason for living the life he lived turned out to be untrue? Is it untrue? We don’t know, but it seems like such a waste of life.

They told us there was an afterlife, but who were they? They were writers inspired by God. What does that mean? All writers are inspired by another author, especially at the beginning of their career, but how much does an author inspire what another writer writes? At what point does the writer take over and leave their inspirations behind? The only facts we know with 100% certitude, at this point in history, is that life exists on Earth, and it will end at some point. This might prove disappointing to many, but this could be it for us. 

We’re not supposed to question Them. Why? Why were we created with such intellect if we weren’t supposed to question them, Him, or the teachings inspired by Him? If our creator was so narcissistic that He didn’t want us questioning him, why didn’t he give us the intellect of the chimpanzee? Did He make it a sin to question Him, or did His inspired writers write that questioning them was a sin?   

“I’m not taking any chances. I’m living my life right, just in case.” Again, nothing wrong with that, but even if your quality of life was diminished by her death, you still have something she doesn’t, life. You are here now, and we need you. Why not live the life you have left here on Earth and let matters take care of themselves? Death will come soon enough, and once it does, whatever happens, you’ll likely be banished from Earth.    

If there is an afterlife, will we look down, up, around, or back on our life on Earth with regret? Will we wish we would’ve lived better or different? Even if Heaven, Summerland, Nirvana Celtic Otherworld, or Valhalla are the paradise we’ve been promised, will we be as happy as we’ve ever been, or will they provide us a moment to look back on our life on Earth? If they do, will we finally see how substantial and special life was?  

Life is not a minor inconvenience on the path to something greater, as far as we know. Or, if it is, we should not focus on that idea so much that it begins to impede on our life on Earth. What if the guardians at the gate inform us that life was the reward or gift? 

If we don’t enjoy life for what it is, because of the poor choices we’ve made, we should consider changing it. Some might require a complete overhaul, but most only need a few subtle tweaks. If we’re so unhappy in life that we begin looking forward to death it might be time for a change, before it’s too late, because once you’re gone, you’re gone.  

The fundamental, overriding philosophy of his life was that life is but a comma. I couldn’t articulate a proper response to this at the time, but if were granted enough time to ask him another soul-searching question, I would’ve loved to ask him, “If we’re looking for punctuation marks to define the life we lived, wouldn’t we love it if our loved ones applied an exclamation point at the end of our sentence? You suggest that you don’t want to take any chances that there isn’t an afterlife, and I appreciate that, but what if you applied the same rationale to the beforedeath? My guess is, if there is an afterlife, you’re going to find that the only punctuation marks are question marks, and the final answer to those questions will be that you focused too much of your life on death.”  

What happens at the moment of death? Some say it’s the unceremonious end of a life. There’s nothing more. There’s no soul and no afterlife, and if there’s anything to the idea of rebirth, it can only be found in the manner weeds and worms use our carcass for nourishment. We will die one day, as the ground squirrel, the clover, and the elephant will? Life doesn’t last forever, and it’s our job to do the best we can with the 73.77 years we’ve been granted. 

Some believe our state of being doesn’t end, it changes. Some believe that the afterlife involves a literal transformation into something else. They call it reincarnation. They also believe that their souls have been reincarnated hundreds of times already, and they always trace the path of their soul through someone noteworthy and glorious. Most people were Julius Caesar during the height of his rule in a previous life. No one looks back to see themselves as a vulgar peasant who was forced to commit atrocities to survive. What if, as a result of the life we lived as a human, we come back as a grub, or a dung beetle? Will we have any consciousness of the life we lived before? Will we know that this is our reward/punishment for the life we lived, or will our consciousness of life be as minimal as the dung beetle’s?    

Various religions believe life on earth is but as stage, as opposed to the stage. These religions teach us that this is not all there is, and some of us take great comfort in knowing this. That comfort bothers others, because some are always bothered by comfortable people. They suggest that most religious doctrine almost seems centered around a marketing strategy to attract the angry, sad, and uncomfortable people who need hope.   

We all know the Christian version of Heaven and Hell, but the various Pagan religions have Summerland, the Celtic Otherworld, or Valhalla. They also have their own versions of the Christian purgatory, in that the unsettled soul moves from being to being until it learns what it needs to know to enter the promised land. Most religions share the view that this life on Earth can’t be it. 73.77 years on earth, and we’re done? It can’t be. We’re human beings. We’re the top of the food chain. We have emotions and intellect that should be utilized by a greater force. If the controlling force(s) allow us to dissolve to dust, it just seems like such a waste of life.  

Some other philosophers suggest that it’s possible that through our psychic energy that we’ve created a promised land, through the rational if God doesn’t exist, there might be a need to create Him. We created the internet through our collective intellect, and the metaverse, and the omniverse, who’s to say we couldn’t create our own afterverse composed of dead souls congregating for the rest of eternity? We created this reward for ourselves, because we’re too important to the universe. There’s got to be more than this. What if there isn’t? What if this is it?  

My aunt passed away, or she thought she did. She looked up and saw a bright light. It moved her to tears, until her daughter informed her that it was the examination room light. The sweet smile on her face diminished, and she felt dumb when we giggled. The doctor arrived in the room minutes later, diagnosed her, and they treated her for the next week. She was released from the hospital, and she lived the rest of her remaining years disappointed. One might think that such a near-death experience might wake a person up and lead them to live a better life than the one they lived before the experience. She didn’t. She experienced what she thought was glory, and she lived a life of disappointment and routine in the aftermath.  

What if we had such a spiritually moving experience? Researchers suggest we continue to live 2-20 seconds after death. They say that we experience a surge of electricity in our brain in this brief time span. Other research suggests that dreams can last 50 seconds, but that the average dream only lasts about 15. With both of those theories in mind, we can guess that this surge of electricity in our brains can make an after-death dream feel like one of the most powerfully surreal dreams we’ve ever had. We might feel more alive than we ever have after our death. We might even call it an afterlife experience.    

We should hold no grudges or superiority over intellects who focus on the afterlife. Better minds than ours believe in the phenomenon, and dumber ones believe that we become nothing more than worm food … if we don’t purchase the proper casket with the best insulation technology has to offer. Some label the former superstitious, others mystical, but whatever we call it, it’s not an indicator of intellect. 

I don’t know if there is evidence that could end this debate, but what if we received concrete, irrefutable evidence that the afterlife did or did not exist? Would this lead us to live better lives, or would a sense of hopelessness increase? Would we enjoy our lives more in the aftermath? If there is no afterlife, we’ll never regret how we lived. If there is an afterlife, we might regret how we lived. What difference does that make to you now though, I ask these “No” characters.  

He believed in a deity. He believed in the Christian God. “Why do you think he placed you here, on Earth? What’s your purpose? I doubt He put you here, or any of us here, to live for the promised land.” A literal interpretation is that the promised land is a promise He made to those who make the most of life on earth. Obsessing over that promise almost seems to me a violation of the contract. My guess is God loses patience with those who obsess over death and an afterlife. My guess, if God chose to bring this debate to a close, is that he’d say, “Do everything you can with the greatest gift I ever gave you, life. Death comes soon enough for everyone and everything, and when it does, you’ll know what happens.”   

Indigo Children: The Next Step in Human Evolution

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Is your child special? Have you ever looked deep into their eyes and walked away thinking that there was something special about them? Really special? Do they exhibit traits that you consider so beautiful they might be otherworldly special? Do they express a degree of intelligence that you consider unfathomable? Are your children different and special? Do they do things that are different and abnormal? Do they have problems getting along with children their age? Have you ever considered the idea that you may have an Indigo Child?

Indigo Children learn that they are different at a young age, and most of them believe it with enough persuasion. Some Indigo Children claim to have invisible friends, they say that they see dead people, and they have inter-spatial relationships with inanimate objects like products from their Great Grandmothers, teddy bears, and rubber duckies.

Experts in this field suggest that Indigo Children have a different aura about them, a special, blue aura. Experts claim that Indigo Children see the auras of other kids and adults who surround them. Indigos struggle with the belief that they are normal, because they have experiences that appear to be normal, but they aren’t, and they know it, because their parents, teachers, and psychotherapists tell them so.

Indigo Children, we are informed, are the next step in human evolution, and they came into being, according to CNN reporter Gary Tuchman, following the great Harmonic Convergence of 1978{1}. This Great Harmonic Convergence was an important and celebrated New Age event that many link to the completion of our sun’s 26,000-year orbital cycle around the Pleiades star system and the alignment of our winter solstice with the Galactic Center/Hunab Ku. Many also suggest that this transitional period is reflected in the shift of astrological ages from Pisces to Aquarius.

As is the case with any story of this nature, a little fact checking is necessary. The second entry in a Google search performed on the term “Harmonic Convergence” shows that this “first, great synchronized, global meditation”, announced by Jose Arguelles, occurred between August 16th and 17th in 1987. There appears to be a discrepancy in the dates between this Harmonic Convergence and the next step in human evolution we call Indigo, but this discrepancy is explained by a “crop circle” bridge. Either Gary Tuchman didn’t know of the first reported appearance of a crop circle that occurred in 1978, and the manner in which it bridged the gap between the great Harmonic Convergence and the Indigo evolution, or he didn’t report it. Whatever the case, it appears that the first reported “Consciousness Crop Circles of the New Earth” bridged the progressive gap from The Great Convergence to the Indigo evolution, as referenced in archived data provided by the good people at Crop Circle Connector. {2}

Crop circles have become a joke in some quarters, as most of the crop circles that appeared in the past decades were later declared man-made, but others are of unknown origins. Many believe that the non-man-made crop circles are being impressed upon earth’s grain fields by extraterrestrial, or inter-dimensional intelligences, for the sole purpose of activating dormant sections of human DNA to catalyze the spiritual evolution of the species we call Indigo.{3}

Any who doubt there was a progression from the first reported “Consciousness Crop Circles of the New Earth” to the “Great Harmonic Convergence” and Indigo Children, need look to the numbers. Between the first, reported crop circles in 1978 to the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, there were only forty-nine crop circles reported, for a low average of near ten a year. Following the Great Harmonic Convergence to the last reported crop circle on CropCircleConnector.com, in 2010, there were 3,281 crop circles cited, for an average of 149 reports a year. So while Gary Tuchman’s report on the actual date of The Great Harmonic Convergence may be a little off, it all ties in together with the escalation of crop circle reports, and the emergence, and progression, of the next step in human evolution, otherwise known as Indigo Children.

Another parallel theory on Indigo Children, states that the Indigo Children theory was based on concepts developed in the 1970s by Nancy Ann Tappe, and further developed by Jan Tober and Lee Carroll. The concepts involved in this theory gained popular interest with the publication of a series of books in the late 1990s and the release of several films in the following decade. The interpretations of these beliefs range from Indigoes being the next stage in human evolution, in some cases possessing paranormal abilities such as telepathy, to the belief that they may be evolved creatures that are more empathetic and creative than their peer group.

Indigo Children are said to be children with blessed with higher I.Q.s, in some quarters, that have a heightened intuition, psychic powers, and an ability to see dead people. Some also say they are hard-wired into a sort of supernatural highway. Indigos tend to be rebellious children who may be hypersensitive, but they have been known to display a generosity that allows them to share their special gifts with others. There are even some psychotherapists, like Julie Rosenshine, who have chosen to specialize in specific dealings with the special needs of Indigo Children.

Indigo children display indigo colored energy fields, or auras, about them that some state they can capture in photographs with an aura sensitive camera. Aura camera specialist Nancy Stevens says she can capture such auras on her aura sensitive camera. She says that the auras captured by her camera locate “your physical energy, your emotional energy, and perhaps most important your spiritual energy in photographs.” Manufacturers did not create Aura sensitive cameras with the specific intention of detecting Indigo Children, however, as they also have the ability to give those struggling with their identity insight into whom they are. They can detail for you any strengths or weaknesses you may have, and they can capture some of the challenges you may go through in life.

Such cameras have been able to capture auras of Indigo Children in their natural state, and this has led numerous children to finding out that they are an Indigo Child. This, in turn, has led to less depression in some, to doing better in school, and to performing better in social arenas in areas where they may have felt disoriented about their placement. It has also led them to being more comfortable with their identity, in that they no longer feel like outsiders in life, cursed with the feelings of being different.

Skeptics have said that these children may, in fact, be suffering from an overactive imagination, and that they may also be victims of an ADD, ADHD, or any number of operational defiant disorders. Labeling them as Indigo Children, these skeptics further may assist these kids in having a stronger ego and better self-esteem with such positive, spiritual, and unique labels attached to them, but it may also mask a disorder that requires treatment, through counseling or pharmaceuticals.

Skeptics have also stated that promotion of the idea of Indigo Children might provide unqualified people a way to make money from credulous parents through the sales of related products and services. Mental health experts are concerned that labeling a disruptive child an “Indigo” may delay proper diagnosis and treatment that could help the child. Others have stated that many of the traits of Indigo Children are open to interpretation that provides a more prosaic climate as simple unruliness and alertness. {4} One gastroenterologist has even claimed that the sensitivity that these Indigo Children have may be because of heightened food sensitivities. Parents disavow all such attempts to mislabel their children on the basis that they’ve “seen too many things.”

Some have speculated that a mere 3% of the world’s population may be Indigo Children, but that that 3% are advanced beyond their years, and that they are hyper-sensitive to things in their environment. Indigo Children tend to have a higher I.Q. than most children do, but it isn’t clear whether the evidence for this is anecdotal. Indigo Children do not lay claim to the idea that they know more about concretized facts in History, Math, the Sciences, or any other quantifiable precepts of human knowledge, but that they are smarter about that aspect of the human experience that occurs between the lines, or on the supernatural highway. Those who make such claims declare that Indigos are able to tune into something different and in some cases higher realm of thought patterns that are out of the realm of normal thought patterns.

The unquantifiable intelligence they use to see another’s aura allows them to predict the future, or learn things about you that you might not otherwise want known. Parents of these unique children use the words paranormal intelligence to describe their children’s gifts. They are special children, but they don’t enjoy the term abnormal. They want to play, and run, and build sand castles just like any child, so please don’t ask them to predict the outcome of boxing matches or the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Industrial rate.

Are your children Indigo Children? If you’re curious, you can seek out a number of sources on the net that define Indigo Children. At last check, there were 4,920,000 results on the Google.com search engine. The one qualifier that the curious should take into account before pursuing this information, however, is an observation called the Forer Effect.

The Forer Effect (also called the Barnum Effect after P.T. Barnum’s observation that “we’ve got something for everyone”) is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions tailored to their personality, but are in fact vague and general enough to be assigned to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests. {5}

Descriptions of Indigo Children from the net include:

  • the belief that they (Indigo Children) are empathetic, curious, strong-willed, independent, and often perceived by friends and family as being strange;
  • they possess a clear sense of self-definition and purpose;
  • they exhibit a strong innate sub-conscious spirituality from early childhood (which, however, does not necessarily imply a direct interest in spiritual or religious areas);
  • they have a strong feeling of entitlement, or “deserving to be here.”

Other alleged traits include:

  • a high intelligence quotient (I.Q.), an inherent intuitive ability; and
  • a resistance to rigid, control-based paradigms of authority*.

According to Tober and Carroll, Indigo Children may not function well in conventional schools due to their rejection of rigid authority*, being smarter (or of a more spiritual mature) than their teachers, and a lack of response to guilt-, fear- or manipulation-based discipline.

*We list the idea that Indigo Children reject rigid authority with an asterisk to provide the explanation: “Presumed to be related to the fact that their parents’ reject the rigid authority figures that might categorize their children as normal, under-achieving young ones that may otherwise provide consternation to their parents.”

As a future parent, I can attest to the fact that I, too, want to have a perfect child. I want my child to soar high above the levels kids his age achieve in every category designed by men and women that rate my child’s various abilities, and when he doesn’t I don’t want to blame myself for insufficient parenting. I also don’t want to blame my child, in an unnecessary way, for being lazy, rebellious, head strong, or so smart that the schools I send him to dumb down their learning exercises for the dumbest kids in the class to a point that my kid gets bored and acts out.

I’ll also want to tell any that challenge my ability to raise my child, that they cannot hold my child to normal standards, because he’s different. He suffers from a clinical case of ADD, ADHD, that he is an Indigo Child, or that he has had some sort of paranormal experience that has hampered his ability to learn at the same rate theirs has. I will also tell these detractors that my child’s difficulties have nothing to do with me, because I am one heck of a good guy. I’ll know that I’ve tried my damndest, even if I haven’t. Even if some teacher, or parent, tells me that it might be possible that I may have made some mistake, somewhere along the line, I’ll reject that, because (again) I’ll know that I’m one heck of a good guy. I’ll also know that there is always going to be some sort of scientist out there, somewhere that can explain to me why my child is having some sort of difficulty. As I run out of money trying to find explanations for it, I know I’ll run into some guy, some doctor, or some pseudoscientist or psychotherapist that has some sort of Forer Effect to explain it, since it cannot be “explained” to me to my satisfaction by “normal” measures.

We love our kids so much, and they’re so cute and funny, that we cannot accept the fact that there’s something wrong with them, even if there isn’t, and if our kids just aren’t able to meet our expectations in the manner we require. We give tangible love to our kids by doing something to help them, even if they don’t need anything. We want to do that something that someone should’ve done for us to put us on an equal level with our peer group, and to assist them through life, but some of the times the best course of action to take is to do nothing. It may go against every parental instinct we have, but it might be the best thing we ever did for our children.

***

In his book: Late Talkers: What to do if your child isn’t Talking Yet, Thomas Sowell states that there are some children that need to be tested. “Silence may be a sign of a hearing loss or a neurological disorder, and that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.” He also adds, “There can be negative consequences to endless evaluations and needless testing.” As a father of a late-talker Sowell notes that some parents may want to adopt a “wait and see”, approach for not all late-talkers occur because of a lack of intelligence. This, he states, is best displayed by the fact that one of the greatest minds of all time, Albert Einstein, did not speak until he was three years old.{6}

Most parents are frustrated that their children haven’t escalated to the top of the class soon enough; they are frustrated that their kids haven’t displayed the athletic prowess that they believed their children would; and they tend to grow frustrated that their offspring hasn’t yet developed the ability to stand out in the manner their friends’ have. We vie for some sort of validation, vindication, or explanation regarding why their children aren’t regarded as special in the quantifiable manner that they believe they should be. Is there some sort of frontal lobe damage that they’ve attained from the swing set accident they had when they were three? Was there damage done to them in the birthing process, or the inoculations they received from the hospital before dismissal? Are they Indigo Children, or do they have ADD, ADHD, or some other operational defiant disorder? We need something that relieves us of the guilt of having a child we define as insufficient, strange, or in all other ways difficult. We need a diagnosis, so we can begin treatment, and in some cases we don’t care how bizarre that diagnosis is, because nothing the doctor, the teacher, or the theories of our fellow parents have worked yet. There is help out there, and if the internet has proven nothing else it has shown that it can provide “something for everyone”.

{1} http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8B3EhxnoFE

{2} http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/interface2005.htm

{3} http://causeyourlife.com/2011/02/harmonic-convergence-and-crop-circles/

{4} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_children

{5} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

{6}http://books.google.com/books?id=9aIS36Ls1BUC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=slow+homas+homas+sowell&source=bl&ots=nZ-seJyK1F&sig=GnalTbnTctoQj6yT9N3P1oMOoTs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uHHLULXYFuqc2QwfkYCICQ&ved=0CG0Q6AewCA#v=onepage&q=slow%20talkers%20thomas%20sowell&f=false