[Opinion] An Exercise About Afterwards

[Xenophon]

One of the subsidary problems with remanifestation involves orientation. I practice in a tradition that advises one that going "towards the light" after death is precisely what enslaves the spirit. That orientation in the between-state is a far knottier bit of business than what it says on the intersection out in the street, "Walk With Light." An annoying fellow-traveller advised me that, while one has time, he ought to write two documents. The one is an autobio of what one envisions his previous incarnation to have involved. (Extra credit for not having lived as Elias Levy, Madame Blavatsky, or Aleister Crowley.) The other is to write a similar account of what your next incarnation should be. (Do try to keep it real.) Any thoughts?

 

[silencewaits]

Between remanifestation and white lights, I'd rather take door number three.

 

[Xenophon]

Between remanifestation and white lights, I'd rather take door number three.

You win the set of bone-handled steak knives AND a styrene plastic Kwannon talisman! Here's Ed to tell you more about it...

Actually my point was simply that such exercise might be useful for afterlife orientation. (Heck, for this life orientation, too.) Whether one heads towards or away from light or aught else is a teensy bit nebenseitig. The point is to have an inkling of where one is coming from and whither he wishes to go in the next round.

 

[silencewaits]

I think if I were doing that myself I would have to spend time disciplining the... er, 'astral vehicle'... for lack of a better word. It would be like taking a road trip with the security of, "There is a map!" Without the actual map, or the faculties to recall and interpret it, there would be no point.

But of course, I am of the opinion that we are not intended to survive death. That it requires a little legwork on our part if that's something we want. So it's a nice idea, but I think if I were operating under the concept of cyclical reincarnation - I would employ some karmic ideals to guide myself along. The details don't really matter as long as you get the things beyond the appearances lined up, right? I'd use the past life autobiography like a bar tab and get settled before the next life.

 

[Xenophon]

I think if I were doing that myself I would have to spend time disciplining the... er, 'astral vehicle'... for lack of a better word. It would be like taking a road trip with the security of, "There is a map!" Without the actual map, or the faculties to recall and interpret it, there would be no point.

But of course, I am of the opinion that we are not intended to survive death. That it requires a little legwork on our part if that's something we want. So it's a nice idea, but I think if I were operating under the concept of cyclical reincarnation - I would employ some karmic ideals to guide myself along. The details don't really matter as long as you get the things beyond the appearances lined up, right? I'd use the past life autobiography like a bar tab and get settled before the next life.

Makes sense. One has to know how one gets there before planning activities in the new venue.

The model I'm working off of is actually anti-karmic. Gustavo Brondino's take on Felipe Luis Moya's cosmology. That all gets wordily complex, and is a bit aside from the post. In any case, the writing suggested by myself here was scarcely intended to be the whole of one's preparation. More a matter of what one angles to do after getting a map.

 

[8Lou1]

the last time i did look at my past lives i got me a chinese dude who was campleader at some camp in the east of china. a not so very nice one i have to say. looking back im still not sure if that was me cause my back then dude had a death granpa who was chinese. later i found its quite normal to enter a family like that. like here you have a broom, now make yourself useful. i did for years.

the looking forward was a decade ago or so and my decision back then was as future life id love to be an aboriginal deep in the australian desert where no human dares live.

i think the aboriginals didnt want me cause i survived an operationtable and woke up angry at god.

 

[Xenophon]

the last time i did look at my past lives i got me a chinese dude who was campleader at some camp in the east of china. a not so very nice one i have to say. looking back im still not sure if that was me cause my back then dude had a death granpa who was chinese. later i found its quite normal to enter a family like that. like here you have a broom, now make yourself useful. i did for years.

the looking forward was a decade ago or so and my decision back then was as future life id love to be an aboriginal deep in the australian desert where no human dares live.

i think the aboriginals didnt want me cause i survived an operationtable and woke up angry at god.

The outback hath attractions at the moment. Closest I came was drinking cheap tequila with Navajos* near Farmington, N.M. (Which is usually all it takes for a white dude in these times to start blogging away about how he was adopted into the tribe in a sweat lodge singalong and has discovered a forgotten navajo great-gramma, and how his secret war-name is Gila-gonads. You know, the whole Pretendian trip. Me, I'm too lazy to take that up.)

* Aborigines, Navajos, whatever: peoples of color are all interchangeable, right? That seems to be the NPR vibe in this century now.

 

[8Lou1]

on my side it got decided that white people are the aliens here. i have freaking roots from here to australia, but im the alien?!?!?! ok
i went to other tribes, some in usa, some in south america and some in africa. the latter where the nicest: they just kept their mouth shut and let me suffer. the rest wasnt amused with me wanting to help them by stating its our land like in we all live on earth. but no, they all said do that shit at home. so im listening to all those tribal original humans and am landing my good foot here in europe. makes me the evil witch from the west, but it is a requeste of my not peeps.

 

[Xenophon]

on my side it got decided that white people are the aliens here. i have freaking roots from here to australia, but im the alien?!?!?! ok
i went to other tribes, some in usa, some in south america and some in africa. the latter where the nicest: they just kept their mouth shut and let me suffer. the rest wasnt amused with me wanting to help them by stating its our land like in we all live on earth. but no, they all said do that shit at home. so im listening to all those tribal original humans and am landing my good foot here in europe. makes me the evil witch from the west, but it is a requeste of my not peeps.

Actually, I like their attitude. Folks who have a pretty clear sense of themselves plus an instinctive aversion to the swindle of ethical universalism. Because there be conundrums and mysteries that can't be solved by three rousing courses of "Cumbayah," much less that abomination 'L' Internationale."

 

[silencewaits]

Something I've been wondering: How does someone go about discovering their 'past life' in the first place? If I dream of plastic zebras, was I a zookeeper with an action figure collection?

 

[Xenophon]

Something I've been wondering: How does someone go about discovering their 'past life' in the first place? If I dream of plastic zebras, was I a zookeeper with an action figure colle

Something I've been wondering: How does someone go about discovering their 'past life' in the first place? If I dream of plastic zebras, was I a zookeeper with an action figure collection?

Yeah, the "problem of the criterion" haunts a lot of discussions.

Still and all, my Alzhammered self recalls a scene from dear old University of Montanny in my undergrad days. There was this big-ass black dude who had played defensive tackle for the Griz, failed a tryout with the Montreal Alouettes, and was then back in Missoula studying for an M.A. in philosophy and specializing in Marxism. He'd make a remark about, say, Rawls' "justice as fairness" and Doctor---call him, Professor Petulance would flutter his hands like a flock of pigeons about to poop on your Pontiac. "Wait, wait! How do you KNOW, Murray? What is your criterion? how do I know, for example, that the red patch of color I see on the table is your copy of the Communist Manifesto? How do I know this is even my hand in front of my face? Philosophy, as I keep telling you, is in the PRELIMINARY questions." At all of which, Marxist Murray would chuckle in toes like a sperm whale clearing its throat, shake his head and say, "Aw shit!" then proceed on with his melodious Kritik like he had started.

Me? I was and remain this crazy right-wing, cracker-a** but I always admired Marxist Murray's poise. In this case at hand, I am more interested in plotting...call it an aeonic trajectory, than I am in looking for cracks in an as-yet unpoured foundation. I mean look at it this way. Maybe, say, visualizations are the raw data of astral experiences, pregnant with cosmoic implications and dripping ashkasic import all over mundane affairs. Or maybe they are largely psychological phenomena. Either way, the material carries import for where I have been and where I want to go. Once THAT is fleshed out, I can start in with my self-cross examination.

 

[silencewaits]

Me? I was and remain this crazy right-wing, cracker-a** but I always admired Marxist Murray's poise. In this case at hand, I am more interested in plotting...call it an aeonic trajectory, than I am in looking for cracks in an as-yet unpoured foundation. I mean look at it this way. Maybe, say, visualizations are the raw data of astral experiences, pregnant with cosmoic implications and dripping ashkasic import all over mundane affairs. Or maybe they are largely psychological phenomena. Either way, the material carries import for where I have been and where I want to go. Once THAT is fleshed out, I can start in with my self-cross examination.

That sorta' consideration gave me headaches and a chosen one complex when I was starting out. I think people tend to view impersonal psychic energies through an egotistic lens. But that's a function of our consciousness, no? If I look too hard into the circumstances of my life and birth I can create all kind of fantasies. But working through those and seeing what's beyond them is a known process of initiation. Or well, it is if someone whose been through it gives you some pointers. I used to get this feeling I'm from the future, dreams and visions of an age unyet realized. With me having a unique place in it. Being one of those weird introverted precociously smart kids didn't help. Add some obsessions with Revelations and the Antichrist when I was still under that Baptist thumb and you get the picture.

Now I sort of think whatever energies exist beyond the world of phenomenal sense-feeling aren't bound by our linear, causal time. Meaning if I go through the process of "magical self-realization" in the future, that point of time where I reach terminal velocity and go beyond that time creates a sort of time loop and strings up the circumstances of my life and birth. Temporal determinism's a trip.

 

[Xenophon]

Being one of those cripplingly pedestrian little shites with a reality-proof superiority complex didn't help me, either. I gathered a preternatural ability to recognize geologic types of playground gravel by having my nose rubbed in the same every recess till Grade Five. (By then I was age 16 and getting bigger than the other kids.)

All that aside, what I'm looking to do is get an appreciation of whether my present agenda can be extended into the future. Believe me, I know the difference between pipe dream and "Mebbe it's worth a try."

 

[8Lou1]

i agree cumbaya isnt gonna do it, but my take on 'its our world' had nothing to do with that. either way i think that when you have a certain level of insight/expertise it becomes hard to believe 'i' took the train to the akashic records and decided to read a book there. still for most its a magickal thing, a dreamspace on a higher level.

i somehow take to my granddad, a stone mason, and go tell them where to put doors, how its better these days to label different, create new bookshelves, sitting corners, etc. hell ill create a city full of interesting buildings if need be. but seeing the holy in the akashic records: nah.

its a database that gets changed. and the group of readers changes as well, just like the level of clearance certain beings get. the fact that my name in chinese is fattyfatfat doesnt change that.