On Heaven, Hell, Demons, and Us . . .

Paranormal investigators can become obsessed with the existence of demons and the location of Hell. All along, I have advocated for the reality of the demonic, having experienced it myself on three investigations over the last ten years. My view recently, however, is that Hell is right here on Earth, and Heaven is here, as well. Hell is the circumstances created by negative, ego-driven consciousness; Heaven is a radical change in perception that can be accomplished now.

The longer I investigate such mysteries, the more I am convinced that our dividing lines are false and arbitrary. The line between life and death concerns purely physical processes, and has nothing to do with identity, personality, and spirit/soul. Our massive, cultural fear of death is based on a false premise, and yet it drives everything that we do, from consumerism to youth obsession to entertainment. Somewhere in this fear of death lies the notion of Hell. What I find so ironic is that so many of us believe that Hell is ‘located’ anywhere but here on Earth.

If you watch or listen to the news, it should be clear that the worst pain and punishment is right here, right now. The recent massacre at a Sufi temple in Egypt is simply one example. The mass shootings here in the United States happen so often that we have started to build up an internal resistance to them and barely register shock or horror anymore. We are the devils, the demons, the horror show itself; but we are also God, the angels, and all that is beautiful in the world. When we act in the world based on fear, vengeance, anger, greed, and a host of other deadly sins, we create Hell; when we act on generosity, faith, love, compassion, and empathy, we live in Heaven.

The problem, of course, is that to avoid creating Hell on earth, we have to be fully conscious of how we are bringing about destruction and pain; most of the time, it seems that we are not aware of how our actions, beliefs, and assumptions create Hell for us and others. If you ask members of ISIS if they believe their cause is holy and sacred, of course they will respond that it is. Sacrifice, in their view, is necessary to save the world from the evils of capitalism and American-style popular culture. We are the Great Satan for a sizable percentage of the population on this planet. They are utterly unaware of the evil nature of their actions; but I am also aware that many Americans perpetuate evil and injustice thinking that their Christian values support such a thing (and lest you forget, I am a Christian). I could provide abundant examples of how our ‘values’ support racism, poverty, and prejudice, but it’s not necessary. If you have read this far, I’m sure you understand how this works.

The preconditions for Hell exist right here, right now; all it really takes is for us to convince ourselves of a certain version of reality that makes us feel right and safe, and voila! We are on the road to perdition. While we are busy destroying the lives of others through apathy, indifference, or a warped ‘value’ system, we fail to realize the Hell that we are building for ourselves. That Hell looks like depression, addiction, anxiety, rage, illness, and anything else that causes suffering in us. We don’t have to worry that Hell is ‘waiting’ for us. It’s already here. When you wake up consumed with fear, anxiety, and feelings of doom, you are in Hell. Here’s the awful part: we created the conditions for it. That means we can escape from it, too.

I’m not here to tell people how to escape their personal Hells. I can’t write a prescription or provide a recipe. It requires a fearless act of self evaluation and examination of conscience. What I do know is that the original nature of the world is divine and beautiful; if you were to see the world as it was created, you would know that we live in Heaven, that it’s our home, our purpose, the core of our being. Whether you believe in one God or many, whether you are a pantheist, a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Wiccan, or ascribe to any organized belief on the nature of reality that includes a Universal Consciousness, one tenet is the same: the original creation, the nature of everything, is holy and sacred.

In other words, Heaven is the matrix in which we exist. It is our home, and it’s here, now. We create Hell from this perfection in a million ways. We contain the demons and the angels. If we were to face the demons in us and dissolve them, we could spend much more time in Paradise. Most of us, however, are far too afraid to confront the ways in which we destroy ourselves and others. It’s a miserably difficult process to face yourself and see the darkness that we created through false beliefs and ego desires. We cling to the very things that eat at our souls and keep us from God. Somehow, for some reason, what kills us is what we are the most loathe to give up. I find that eternally strange and confusing.
I know that it’s possible to live in Heaven before you die; dying is just another way the Universe gives you a second chance. I believe our second chances are infinite—it depends on how long you are willing to suffer. There is no afterlife, no separate place called Hell or Heaven; there is just life, periodically recycled, presenting endless opportunities to figure out our true nature.

All of the above makes it appear that I have all the answers. Let me assure you, I do not. I have theories that seem true for all of us, but I admit that I could be wrong. For example: I have come across examples of the demonic that seem to have a life of their own, that appear to be independent of us and feeding on the vulnerable. I don’t know how that could happen based on what I stated above. I am also starting to think that entities such as elementals, fairies, gnomes, elves, shadow people, black-eyed children, nature spirits, and extraterrestrials are names for independent beings whose relationship to God is unclear. The multiplicity in the spirit world confuses me and makes me wonder if sometimes we are led astray by something outside of us that has intentions and motivations that we do not understand. That would derail some of what I believe and said earlier.

The quest continues, and my faith and confidence that we can figure it all out has lessened dramatically. The worlds we live in continue to be very, very, mysterious.

With love,
Kirsten

Read Full Post »

Do We Choose Suffering?

My dear friend wanted me to address a question; I say ‘address’, because there is no way to fully answer it. Do people choose their next incarnation, and if so, why would they willingly opt for a lifetime filled with suffering?

Instead of discussing this with vague generalities, I will make this personal, since my experiences and observations are the only valid foundation I have for this discussion. There are books written about this topic where other people share their stories about life between lives, and anything written by Brian L. Weiss, MD should help those seeking more information.

As I have written about before on this blog, I remember being Mary, a child of the 1960s who died from a heroin overdose administered by someone she thought was her boyfriend (he was more like a pimp and a murderer). I remembered her death quite vividly on June 25th, which kicked off what the Internet calls a ‘spiritual awakening’ involving something like rising Kundalini energy and a whole lot of other concepts that I hadn’t heard of before. I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster and experienced new realities that have left me humbled and overwhelmed. Clearly, Mary’s story involved a great deal of trauma; she was homeless after she left foster care, she spend a great deal of time on the streets or sleeping in parks, she was addicted to various substances (mostly pot and alcohol), and men took advantage of her. She had to steal to survive, and ultimately, a man she trusted decided that she was too much trouble to keep around, and he killed her. As a side note, this is not the post where I ‘prove’ that Mary existed and was me; if you want to know more about the evidence for Mary, please refer to previous entries where I discuss this further.

Why would I ‘choose’ a life like Mary’s? If I were interesting in inventing a cool reincarnation story, her life would emphatically NOT been the one I would have picked. Was Mary given a choice regarding who she would be next? Did Mary choose Kirsten? If so, why this set of circumstances? I do not remember the choice or the discussion, if there was one. I have no awareness of making a decision in either incarnation or personality. I had a revelation that God took me off the streets and back ‘home’, because God could no longer watch me suffer and wanted it to end, knowing that as Mary, I was not going to be able to turn my life around.

After thinking about this a long time, I believe that Mary chose Kirsten because she wanted to ‘do it right’ this time; she didn’t wait long with God or the Cosmic Consciousness and rushed back into a life as my as soon as she could. It seems that my constant, bizarre need to please everyone and follow all the rules that society and family consciously or unconsciously promote has something to do with this feeling of failure and inferiority that Mary carries around. Because Mary was impatient, she didn’t fully heal her karmic wounds and they became my wounds. Her choice not to heal but to start over as soon as possible has had repercussions in my life for decades. Much of my trauma as Kirsten seems directly or indirectly related to Mary. That does not mean that I don’t ‘own’ my own issues; I most definitely do. It simply means that healing from two lives (and probably many more of which I am unaware) has been a challenge, and differentiating between the current self and the past self is very difficult.

The only choice that I see Mary had or made was how fast to come back, and she might have wanted similar circumstances so that she could make different choices. She had no control over how much suffering Kirsten would endure and had no idea that I would have serious medical problems and multiple surgeries. That just happened; I don’t know why. So I suppose that our ability to choose is limited. We can hang out in the bosom of the Universe for awhile and heal our pain, or we can jump back into the cycle and hope for the best. It seems that our ‘new’ circumstances are not far removed from the previous ones, as we see in the multiple cases in India and other countries where reincarnation is not laughed at or ridiculed. Ian Stevenson himself noticed this commonality.

Do we, then, choose to suffer? Not in my case. I chose to come back fast and ‘get it right’. In retrospect, that was not the best idea. I had work to do before returning, but I didn’t want to do it. I was only 15 when I died last time, so my impatience might have had something to do with my age. It also may be the case that Mary didn’t have much to say about what happened next. I’m not at all sure that we determine anything but the ‘when’. The ‘how’ might be up to God or the Universe. We have little control over the evolution of our souls. We can be open and willing, but the rest doesn’t appear to be up to us.
Kirsten does the best she can to navigate her life. I try to heal what requires healing, be kind to all, make a positive difference for anyone that listens or cares, and care for the Earth. What happens is often not a result of anything I did or did not do. Tragedy has befallen me as it befalls most; did I orchestrate that tragedy? Do I create the pain that I feel, both physical and emotional? Maybe on some level, I do; but that pain was presented to me as a challenge from God, and it’s my job to either give in and die or do something with it that will transform my soul.

Maybe the question is not ‘why did I choose to suffer’, but ‘what will I do with the suffering God presented me with’. Nobody deserves or wants to suffer. It’s a challenge and a necessity that we inherit from the Divine principle. Nobody truly achieves closeness to God without navigating and overcoming pain and tragedy. We label and judge what happens to us as good, bad, terrible, unfair, excruciating, awesome, and so on. I can get stuck in the truly horrific things that happened to me in the past, or in the pain I experience now; or, I can decide to take my pain and reach out to others who also suffer and transmute that pain into community, love, kindness, and support.

I can’t justify by human standards the murder of a fifteen year old girl. I can’t sit here and write that I am just fine with what happened to me. But on some level, it was simply an event, a circumstance, something belonging to humans and our depravity and sin, if you will. On another level, I was always with God, and I would return to God, and nothing that happens on Earth matters as much as we think it does. I have experienced what people would label as ‘horrific’, in both this and the previous life. However, I no longer see any of it as monstrous or horrific, simply as a consequence of my human lives. Shit happens.

That doesn’t negate God, or bliss, or the ultimate perfection of it all.
No matter how miserable our lives can become, part of us—what truly matters in the end—is with God at every, single moment. The tragedy is that we don’t realize that. We forget who we are. It’s that forgetting, that disconnection from the Divine, that is true suffering. Everything else is a consequence of our alienation from the Source. The more you hurt, the harder you need to look for the eternal within you.

With much love,
Kirsten

Read Full Post »

No Ghosts, No Afterlife: How Trauma Creates Hauntings

I used to know things. I read a lot of books. I fancied myself a well-trained academic with a great pedigree; I was proud of what I thought I understood about the world and the people in it. People used to think I was arrogant; I was. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time. I would never have defined myself that way. People misunderstood me; that was all. If everyone around me would simply listen to me and follow my lead, everything would be just fine. Deep down, I truly believed that I was smarter than most other people.

The last 4.5 months have taught me that I know almost nothing. I have some ideas and theories, but in terms of what I KNOW, I can’t say much anymore. When you suddenly and vividly recall how you died in a past life and who you used to be, nothing makes much sense anymore. My emotions have bounced from one extreme to the other, as the Universe or God is clearing out my dramas, traumas, preconceptions, habitual thought patterns, destructive behaviors, stereotypes, prejudices, you name it, if it doesn’t serve me or others, it’s disappearing.

What I have realized, however, is just how much we depend on negative behaviors, addictions, presuppositions, and cultural stereotypes to define ourselves. Our culture promotes a kind of group think that divides people into categories and encourages competition, victimization, outrage, false values, and glaring, painful, insecurities. So many people I know and come across at work or in social circles don’t feel at all good about themselves. They all carry around this sense that they’re missing something, they’re incomplete, and they don’t and can’t measure up to an ideal that they see promoted everywhere in the media and in their social/family circles.

Strangely enough, if you have the epiphany that ‘you’ are just the latest version of something eternal, all of the above starts falling away. Once you know on a visceral, emotional, level that you are the most current incarnation of a you that has lived multiple lives, the sense of you as a separate being falls away, and you see yourself as part of a large and complex plan that you understand only parts of, but that relieves you of the burden of ‘yourself’ with all your stories, pain, and dramas. When you see yourself as living along an endless continuum of lives and identities, the craziness of the current moment is less and less overwhelming; it frees you to ‘do the work’ in order to safeguard the planet for future generations, but that work can now be accomplished without misery and hopelessness.

That’s the ideal. However, the crumbling of your false identities can take your breath away in its intensity. It hurts a great deal. If you have lifetimes of trauma to clear out, it feels like you’re going to die from the emotional pain. I end up on the floor a lot, curled up and crying, asking for help from God. And God, whatever that name means now, intervenes and helps me manage it. There is nothing specific in my current life that creates this purging of trauma; this is about eradicating everything in your past that led you to make false and damaging assumptions about who you are and who others might be. You also have to let go of the previous lives, and that in itself is hard. You can no longer blame or even be influenced by the person you used to be. Her circumstances are over; it’s your responsibility to move forward on your own.

This has, of course, radically altered my views on the ‘afterlife’, death, and ghosts. I no longer believe in the concept of ‘after’ life at all. It’s all one, conscious creation. We have multiple lives, all of us, and there is a period of time when we are with God (or whatever name you prefer for the cosmic, divine, consciousness) healing and making decisions. Part of us is with God all of the time; parts of us might still be living out other lives. There can be fragmentation or multiplicity in our identities. There is a ‘me’ living as Kirsten, another ‘me’ living out another life simultaneously, and a ‘me’ that is currently with God. Since time has no meaning outside of our material lives, all of these selves are operating at once. There is also a ‘me’ living out some moment in the past, which is present for the ‘me’ that is aware of it.

So . . . a ghost is a version of the self that we have called into existence who is living some version of its past life in a dimension that we have tapped into. It is the present moment for the ‘ghost’ or the self that is living it. It is ‘reality’ for the person who is experiencing it. What is a ghost NOT? A ghost is NOT:

• Dead. There is no death in the universe, simply transitions to other modes of existence.
• A ‘spirit’. We are always fully real and realized. We always have some sort of body which we perceive as material.

Here’s the rub, though: Trauma, such as I discuss above, creates false identities that can split off from the true self and take on a life of their own. The trauma identity, after the true self has moved on to another incarnation, STAYS BEHIND. A trauma identity is going to have certain characteristics.

• Repetitive behavior. Your ‘trauma self’ will go through the same motions again and again, as it is stuck in an event or series of events that scarred it.
• Nonsensical interactions. You can’t get the ‘trauma self’ to explain itself or ‘move on,’ since trauma creates a self that plays out pain endlessly with no solutions or illuminations.

The “residual” hauntings are selves trapped in thought and emotion loops. They can’t and don’t ‘leave’ or resolve themselves because they are not whole, true selves. They are fragments of consciousness that split off from the soul that reincarnates. All of the attempts we make to ‘send’ them to the Light might be useless if ‘they’ are not fully formed souls. We are dealing with aftereffects, not true, God-identified selves.

The process I am undergoing feels like an exorcism of the ghosts that reside in me now. The traumatized selves that still remain in my heart and mind must leave my soul. I wonder where they go. Will I end up haunting the locations where I was most hurt? I think that is entirely possible. A ‘ghost hunter’ could find my trauma-self in various places, now that it’s leaving my current body. All of us have some sort of split off ‘pain body’ that is hovering in the places it most identifies as the ‘scene of the crime’. You do not have to be materially ‘dead’ to haunt people or places. We have so many versions of us in various dimensions that we could actually be picking up on our OWN spirits during investigations.

That’s more than my brain can handle on a Wednesday morning, so I will leave it at that. Please write to me. I need to hear from anyone for whom this resonates on some level.

Much love,
Kirsten

Read Full Post »