Katie Couric's show today on Heaven

[Sapphire]

Slowly but surely the Message is getting out there! Media (though not always accurate) is a big way for many. I do agree with Mac that a personal experience really is a huge piece as well, but a show like this could open some eyes that were initially closed tight to the concept. I particularly liked the interview from the doctor who had the NDE. She was not very "religious" but her experience was amazing without what I would consider any "pre-influences". Her experience made her more "accepting" of her situation in being able to deal with the loss of a child . I will say, knowing what I know with what I have experienced does make it "soften" a bit. I know without a doubt I will see my son again! And I know he is in a wonderful place of love! It helps me to see a show like this. Gives me confirmation. I also loved the drawings the young girl did. How could a child so young draw so amazingly well? Artist from a previous life? Gives the hint of reincarnation a bit! Certainly she is getting the visions from somewhere too! Barbara Walters did a show recently about Heaven, but I felt this one had more impact.... at least for me!
All of this increases awareness which is good!
Carol

The girl's art was absolutely GORGEOUS. Her impression of Jesus is what I assume the most realistic I've ever seen (after all, Jesus was from the Middle East, and was not the Euro-Anglo-whatever that countless artists have portrayed). It was interesting how closely her work resembled the image on the Shroud of Turin. Her dad's reaction to his daughter's art was a bit amusing, but heartwarming. Tough to dismiss things like this.

I agree with RudeAwakening about the media's being a skewed and controlled behemoth (Illuminati / Cabal come to mind). It's a wonder anything of spiritual substance makes the cut.

When it does, people like us flock to it.

[Matty Mo]

And in terms of survival interest, folk will be interested in what interests them and even if the subject were well presented, you can lead a horse to water etc. When I read that someone is interested in an NDE account, I wonder if that's all they're interested in. It's a similar situation with physical mediumship where interest may be more in the phenomena than in the deeper significance....

Ive tried my best over several years to engage folk online but even in locations which, at least nominally, are about this specific subject, interest is usually limited and patchy. I always wonder if an early interest develops into anything more productive.

Along these lines, I've also noticed that shows, videos, podcasts, etc. attract either hardcore believers or hardcore skeptics. Peruse any message board surrounding one of these stories and you'll inevitably see comments from those that firmly believe in an afterlife or from skeptics who want to come on board to wax their pseudo intelligence and self righteous understanding of how things really work.

I think those on the fence either sanely sit it out or continue to form their own conclusions. I still find myself arguing way too much with skeptics but am slowly trying to just let it be, just so hard to do sometimes.

[Birki]

Ive tried my best over several years to engage folk online but even in locations which, at least nominally, are about this specific subject, interest is usually limited and patchy. I always wonder if an early interest develops into anything more productive.

Interesting you should post this, I normally avoid discussing these subjects in other forums, but somehow I let myself get sucked into one today in another forum (related to parenting, nothing to do with afterlife), on the nature of God. The woman is trying to explain God to her 6 year old, even though she is agnostic herself and wants to know how. She said to him "some people believe in a being that created world and everyone in it". I said that it fine to start with but she should also expose him to other concepts of God, and that religion does not equal God. Of course she and several other posters didn't get it at all. Not sure how far I will go, most people aren't ready to hear more.

[Carol and Mikey]

Yes, you are all so correct! The more open I have become the more things I see. But others are not so interested. Cannot talk about it to just anyone. I have certain family and friends who are huge into all of this, and some who have told me they "don't want to know what I am up to." Well, I am not "up to" anything. It is what has happened to me. Sally Baldwin always told me, "You can share with others what you know. Some will come back for more, others will not. " But don't let that bother you."
You know, we will all end up back Home anyway. I just feel life is easier to handle when you are able to grasp what is truly real and that we do live on!
Speaking of "Home", have you ever checked out the lyrics to the song "Home" by Phillip Phillips? This guy was last year's "American Idol" and this was the song he sang on the show. There is quite the message in this song. Hopefully people get it! The song "came" from somewhere! Again, slowly the message..............!
Carol

[Roberta Grimes]

Watching this knowledge begin to dawn upon the world is wonderful and amazing! Isn't it great that we have ringside seats?? I wish I had been taking notes during my decades of studying the afterlife evidence, but I never thought to do that so I can't give you citations. But here and there through all the literature - in communications from loved ones, from upper-level beings, from astral travelers, from OBE-ers - we find hints that there is a strategy behind it all. We develop the sense - I might almost say that we are actually told - a few specific things:

1) Keeping the truth from us while we are in bodies has made the earth an especially useful school. I question this, actually. Finally knowing the truth, I think that I take my earth-lessons more seriously. But the sense has been that for people really to learn all that they can spiritually, it has helped that we have not been sure that anything exists beyond this one lifetime.

2) There is a fear now that our benightedness is beginning to put the earth at risk. This worry seems to stem from our use of nuclear weapons during WWII. During the nearly seventy years since, we have apparently had intensive involvement here by both incarnate and disincarnate beings who have been working to retard our weapons development while they work to accelerate our spiritual growth.

3) For living human beings to come to understand the truth about our eternal nature is apparently central to this process of raising our spirituality and saving our planet. We talk about this in many threads here, and I hear about it wherever I go: there is a great spiritual awakening underway. The Mayans may have predicted it. That westerners are becoming "less religious and more spiritual" apparently is part of it, and our vastly increased awareness of phenomena from NDEs and OBEs through verifiable communications through mediums greatly contributes to it.

4) This is apparently meant to be a bottom-up rather than a top-down dawning of worldwide spiritual awareness. Think how easy it would be for upper-level beings to manifest in flashes of spiritual light above every major city all at once and say, "You are eternal beings! Seek and you shall find!" But that is not going to happen. No single book, no one expert, no religion and no scientific breakthrough seems to be meant to budge the needle by itself. Instead, what is happening is a steady sprinkling of new information here and there, just an each-one-teach-one gradual spreading of interest in various aspects of the afterlife evidence. We can speculate about why this approach is being used. My own notion is that for the truth to spread under the radar will make it impossible for organized Christianity and organized science to detect its spread in time to effectively squash it.

Especially in the U.S., Baby Boomers have been at the forefront of every cultural trend for the past sixty years. From the fifties postwar nesting in suburbia through the youthquake of the sixties and disco and the yuppie pursuit of money in the eighties and nineties, whatever the Boomers were interested in became the latest cultural craze. Now the oldest boomers are turning 66. And as they age into their seventies and eighies over the next couple of decades it is inevitable that death and the afterlife are going to become The Next Big Thing. As the Baby Boomers confront their own mortality, there will be waiting for them this tremendous body of evidence and an ever-growing cohort of people who already know the truth. I think it will be like sparks hitting tinder: the fire will seem to blaze up out of nothing. Of a sudden, it will seem that everybody knows the truth! At least, I think that is what is going to happen. It is going to be exciting to watch.

[Matty Mo]

Especially in the U.S., Baby Boomers have been at the forefront of every cultural trend for the past sixty years. From the fifties postwar nesting in suburbia through the youthquake of the sixties and disco and the yuppie pursuit of money in the eighties and nineties, whatever the Boomers were interested in became the latest cultural craze. Now the oldest boomers are turning 66. And as they age into their seventies and eighies over the next couple of decades it is inevitable that death and the afterlife are going to become The Next Big Thing. As the Baby Boomers confront their own mortality, there will be waiting for them this tremendous body of evidence and an ever-growing cohort of people who already know the truth. I think it will be like sparks hitting tinder: the fire will seem to blaze up out of nothing. Of a sudden, it will seem that everybody knows the truth! At least, I think that is what is going to happen. It is going to be exciting to watch.

I want to believe that you're right dear Roberta. However the cynical side of me sees so much hate in this world that I sometimes question if any earthbound spiritual upbringing is even possible? However, it seems that those that create the most havoc and hate in this world are either a highly vocal minority, religious extremists, or people in a position of power i.e. world leaders. Yet, even with this reality, my hope is that there are millions more spiritually enlightened individuals out there invoking positive feelings and that they can overshadow all of the fear, hate, and doubt in the world.

[mac]

"Now the oldest boomers are turning 66. And as they age into their seventies and eighies over the next couple of decades it is inevitable that death and the afterlife are going to become The Next Big Thing. As the Baby Boomers confront their own mortality, there will be waiting for them this tremendous body of evidence and an ever-growing cohort of people who already know the truth. I think it will be like sparks hitting tinder: the fire will seem to blaze up out of nothing. Of a sudden, it will seem that everybody knows the truth! At least, I think that is what is going to happen. It is going to be exciting to watch."

We'll see. I'd love you to be right. Just a couple of decades and it should be pretty clear if you are but I won't be holding my breath.

If you are right then perhaps all our forum work will have honed us to a fine cutting edge, one that can cut to the quick without wasting words as is so often the case at present!

[Truth seeker]

I shared the Akiane Kramarik Jesus painting on Facebook and a acquaintance of mine, posted that turned christian, mind you that before he got drunk very often did drugs,and many many things, got offended he posted exodus 20:3 you should not image of God.....I should answer him with the Luke 6:41-42:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

and there are many more passages that I could use, but it will be useless, and im not a confronting kind of person, so I will do like Chico Xavier and smile to those who think different say hurtful things to me because I love my neighbor and I respect the part of God tha resides on him

[Roberta Grimes]

"Now the oldest boomers are turning 66. And as they age into their seventies and eighies over the next couple of decades it is inevitable that death and the afterlife are going to become The Next Big Thing. As the Baby Boomers confront their own mortality, there will be waiting for them this tremendous body of evidence and an ever-growing cohort of people who already know the truth. I think it will be like sparks hitting tinder: the fire will seem to blaze up out of nothing. Of a sudden, it will seem that everybody knows the truth! At least, I think that is what is going to happen. It is going to be exciting to watch."

We'll see. I'd love you to be right. Just a couple of decades and it should be pretty clear if you are but I won't be holding my breath.

If you are right then perhaps all our forum work will have honed us to a fine cutting edge, one that can cut to the quick without wasting words as is so often the case at present!

Dear Mac, we cannot be sure about the timing, but it is becoming more and more obvious that something extraordinary is going on. You can see it building! In the two years since The Fun of Dying was published and I began to travel and talk about these matters, I have seen an awakening happening in the audiences that frankly astounds me - especially since generally I am talking with people who are already interested. In the early months the folks I met had a lot of fairly rudimentary questions. Lots of people were kind of skeptical-interested, hoping-against-hope sort of interested, and they seemed to seize on what I said as someone permanently starving would grab up crumbs: pleased to have found a hopeful tidbit, but unable to believe it would amount to much. That was maybe eighteen months ago. By six months ago I was getting much more interesting, sophisticated questions, and often other folks in the audiences would add a helpful word or two. In just that very brief period of time, I saw this amazing dawning happening! You can see it on these forums as well, if you go back eighteen months and read the earliest threads; now, granted, we were a much smaller community, but even so everyone was so much more tentative. So yes, dear wonderful Mac, not only does the afterlife-related literature say it's so, but also I can personally attest that something extraordinary is happening. And I agree that what we are doing here is part of it ;-).

[mac]

Dear Mac, we cannot be sure about the timing, but it is becoming more and more obvious that something extraordinary is going on. You can see it building! In the two years since The Fun of Dying was published and I began to travel and talk about these matters, I have seen an awakening happening in the audiences that frankly astounds me - especially since generally I am talking with people who are already interested. In the early months the folks I met had a lot of fairly rudimentary questions. Lots of people were kind of skeptical-interested, hoping-against-hope sort of interested, and they seemed to seize on what I said as someone permanently starving would grab up crumbs: pleased to have found a hopeful tidbit, but unable to believe it would amount to much. That was maybe eighteen months ago. By six months ago I was getting much more interesting, sophisticated questions, and often other folks in the audiences would add a helpful word or two. In just that very brief period of time, I saw this amazing dawning happening! You can see it on these forums as well, if you go back eighteen months and read the earliest threads; now, granted, we were a much smaller community, but even so everyone was so much more tentative. So yes, dear wonderful Mac, not only does the afterlife-related literature say it's so, but also I can personally attest that something extraordinary is happening. And I agree that what we are doing here is part of it ;-).

As I said earlier, Roberta, I'd love you to be right in your assessment of changing spiritual awareness. I can't lose as I'm happy for anyone, any group, any organisation, any body to spread more effectively the simple truth of continuous life. I'm a Modern Spiritualist on the surface but I actually run much deeper and although I'd love to see Spiritualism 'spreading the word' as once it used to, I've already declared in many forums that I think it's had its day and something new is needed. Not new truth because there's no such thing but a new presentation which will reach out and find those who need it.

Unfortunately, though, I've heard much the same thing for nearly thirty years since my 'awakening' and I'm still not confident I'm seeing anything concrete yet. It's always a problem, when somethings new is forecast, that human beings expect it to be in a time-frame to which they can relate. If the foretold event(s) aren't sufficiently evident within two or three more decades then folk our age (!) won't see 'em and if that's the case it may be many decades - or even centuries - before changes are seen.

By then I'll probably be back here and maybe I'll be commenting on such matters - again!