Afterlife Connections that are selfguided and free of charge

ditto.

Also, I want to thank you mac for leading me to the Spiritualist Church, which I had never been familiar or knew existed. I love it. I don't know how different they are in the UK, this one has a meditation and healing service along with mini readings for everyone attending. A validation from my deceased father came thru for me which I posted on another thread, "Share your poetry or mind....

 

It is quite an amazing post. It should be a sticky, I agree.

 

I'm not sure why the Spiritualist Church is not more well known, while not "Christianity" it is more realistic to me and likely to others searching for truth thru validated communications from the deceased. This was my mini reading last nite:

My father is with me and playing his harmonica. She said he is also playing it in the Senior living home! (where my mom is) What a validation... he played it everyday until he couldn't and it was on his bedside table until he died. I was blown away... got chills all over.
While visiting my mom with alzheimers on Sunday, my daughter asked her if grampa is visiting her and she nodded yes.

 

Oh, bluebird, I'm not strong at all, I'm just a guy who's lost and trying to get Home.

The truth is, I pray because that's really all I have in my arsenal. I dont have the patience right now to sit through an hour long meditation, or the courage to find a like-minded group in the real world. Prayer's the first and best resort I got, if for nothing else than to organize my thoughts. I don't know if God hears me, I just talk, hoping someone up there's listening. I like to think that God is a personal, albeit universe-sized, being, who knows what's going on, because then I can cry and scream at Him all I want, and He can take it. I try to think of life through His eyes, think of swirling planets and binary stars, alien oceans and ominous deserts, the lonely, yawning gap between galaxies, and the lonely, yawning gap between atoms, all at once, in multiple dimensions. I dont do it often, but our relationship makes a teeny bit of sense for a moment when I do.

I think a lot about the girl I loved. My spirituality has been touch-and-go all my life, but I always knew that if I had a purpose here, it was to love others, full stop. Saving the planet, building a financial empire; whatever. My priority was to love others, especially if I found a woman; I was to love her as though I loved the whole of humanity. And, after some years, I found her. A more remarkable woman I am surely not to meet, save grace. Top of her class, spoke multiple languages, warm personality, musically gifted... she was all I wanted in a life partner, and more. I dreamed often about her while were dating (heh, there's a sign for you)... hard to believe that was four years ago. A whole lifetime ago. Now... well, she's alive, out there in the world, but highly likely to think of me, and prefer me, as dead. It's painful, to say the least. But you know what, she brought out my best, and worst, passions and expressions, and brought me closer to understanding unconditional love than any other person. My best life memory is still of the kiss I gave her on our first date. I have to thank her for being part of that special, tender moment.

I'm sorry, it's late here, and I didnt really address what you said.

 

Dear beloved Types With Fingers, you have just made every bit of the energy and effort that I have put into this website over the past four years entirely worthwhile. Thank you! Oh wonderful friend, please understand that you are infinitely loved by perfect eternal Mind - or God, if you prefer - and you are treasured by your friends here, including especially your Admin. The afterlife evidence overwhelmingly indicates that we plan our lives' difficulties, and so that likely is in your case as well, so even though the reasons might not now be clear, there are indeed reasons. All will be well! If you are actively seeking your life's purpose, then the best way that I know of to do that is to do what I did nearly six year ago, and give your life to God. I began to pray daily - and still do pray daily - "Thank You for giving me work to do. Thank You for showing me how to do it." Easy! But powerful. In my life, the rest has been history....

I send you the biggest possible hug, darling friend! Would you mind if I stickied this post? Do you have a preference as to a title for it?

 

Thank you, Roberta, I'm quite humbled by all your words, I don't really know what to do with them. Please, if you want to sticky what I wrote, go ahead, give it whatever title you see fit. If it helps steer someone away from the unspeakable, then my life has been worth at least that much. I don't like to see people hurt.

To be honest, I was never mad at God for my friend's death, or the bad experiences I had before. The people in my life freely made their choices. That I was wounded was on their heads and mine, I can't fault God for that. I thought if I endured, I'd be led to a better, positive life. So it's hurt me to my core that after all that, in this dark hour of my life, when I've asked for comfort and direction, God has held His tongue. I've asked my guardian angel and spirit guides to let me know they were with me so I wouldn't feel alone, but they've stayed hidden. I've asked the heavens to grant me a transformative experience, so that I would KNOW myself that this is all happening for a grand purpose, but the heavens have remained closed. No, I don't ask for it everyday, but anyone up there knows I haven't stopped thinking about it for a second. No, I'm not in the proper emotional state to receive anything, but if I was, I wouldn't be hoping for a miracle.

I use the term God because that's the term with which Im most comfortable. I like to think that God is a personal being who knows exactly what it would take to get me where He wants me to be, and in fact I've staked my entire spiritual quest on that thought. If He wont tell me where Im going, fine, tell me how to get there. If He wont tell me how to get there, then tell me where Im going. But if I don't know either, Im not going anywhere; that's a fact, I've seen me do it.

You might find this funny, but I fantasize about meeting my spirit team. I imagine that one night I wake up suddenly to find myself in a board room, sitting at the end of a long table, with my guardian angel, spirit guides, and a few deceased relatives sitting on either side, in professional business suits. Naturally, my guardian angel is in the chair next to me, and she hands me a large stack of files. I open the first folder, and it's their assessment of my past and present, my strengths, weaknesses, etc. But the discussion's really about the other folders, because inside each one is a report on a particular life path I can take over the next five years, what the short-term and long-term benefits would be, the costs, etc., and we'd argue over their recommendations for a while, until I finally settle on the option I like best. Then I'd spend some time asking them all sorts of questions, before we'd finally nod in agreement, shake hands, pass hugs, and my guardian angel would tell me that whenever I feel like consulting with them in the future, just ASK. Then Id wake up in my bed, be in awe over what happened, wonder if it was real, then roll onto my side, with my nose suddenly itching from the soft feather upon which it landed; a feather which could not have possibly been there before.

Sigh. If only it was that easy...

We've created a mad world, Roberta. I dearly miss being a child.

 

Oh, good question. The short answer is both.

This is the long answer:

I was raised Catholic growing up. I always fell asleep during mass, so in college I got lazy and stopped going. I was like that for another few years, neither atheist or theist, but lazy.

I had a mentor who was an evangelical Christian. Incredible man, truly, and like a good evangelical he periodically tried to convert me. It didn't work... for a while.

Over two years ago, I suffered a severe panic attack. For the previous few months, I'd get these sporadic bouts of dread, which quickly went away, and I attributed it to me struggling as a young adult. Not that night. I was in bed, I started to think about death, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be dead, and when all I pictured was a silent blackness, BAM! Panic attack. Why nothingness? Is this all there is? What happens to me when I die? It was my first time experiencing the fear of death, and I didn't take it well.

Somehow I went to sleep, but the next morning I was crying and whimpering as I got ready for work. I didn't think my parents had the answers I sought, so I went to my mentor. My mentor explained that I was going through a "transformation," and brought his wife over, and together they calmed me down, heard me out, and invited me to church with them. Sunday came several days later, it was raining, and we all went to their church. It was pretty neat, the pastor was a nice man, not the fire-and-brimstone type I was expecting, and the whole time was spent talking about science and Christianity, and how most of the founders of our fields of science were Christians. I thought it was a neat presentation, but it wasn't the booming voice in the sky I expected.

After the service, my mentor met me outside, and he said, "[Types], I have to tell you, I've gone to this church for the past twelve years, and that man has never talked about science." That got my full attention; I was converted. I spent the next few months getting myself acquainted with the evangelical literature and going to that church. I liked it there.

The first time I heard about NDEs was during this period, when Eben Alexander's first book came out. As an evangelical, I rejected it because the doctor was told we can do no wrong, and I interpreted that to mean that he thought we could do whatever we wanted without punishment. So I thought nothing more of it for another six months.

At that time, I was on my tablet, looking for stuff to read on Jesus, and I remembered the term "near-death experience" from the article on Dr. Alexander I had read before. I decided to google "Jesus and near death experience" to see if there were other experiences aside from Dr. Alexander, and if so, did they meet Jesus, and if so, what did Jesus tell them? The first link to pop up was Kevin William's near-death.com website, and wow! What a truckload of stuff on NDEs! I went through that database like a vacuum cleaner. That's how I first became familiar with the terminology we use here.

Then my memory gets a bit fuzzy. Somehow, the topics of Howard Storm, angels, Dr. Alexander, and Stanton Friedman led me to the Skeptiko web site. By the time I found the site, I not only felt sure NDEs were real, I felt they didn't interfere with what I was learning from my mentor, or at the Catholic church I still went to sometimes, and begin to apply what I was learning from the NDE literature in my life.

Unfortunately, this being 2013, my life was on the decline again, and outside events that year made it impractical to go to either church, as well as made me lose touch with staying up-to-date with Skeptiko or the rest of the literature. It stayed like that for nearly a year, until early 2014, when it looked like things were picking up. Then, in the middle of the year, my friend died, and I went back to the Skeptiko website and joined their forum, thinking I might find answers there. After a few weeks, I discovered one of the users there was a member here, and that's how I found this site.

Phew. Does that make sense to you?

 

Types With Fingers,

I think you're at least somewhat stronger than I am, since you still want to live despite all the crap you've been through, whereas I do not. Either way, though, I do hope you are able to find some peace and happiness and good people in your life.

If praying helps you at all, then continue to do it. I hope there is a loving god that hears you. I have always preferred/hoped that there was a loving, sentient god, and quite honestly while I don't believe a god exists, if one does then I still hope (and tend to think) that it is a sentient being. To me, no other type of god makes sense as god -- that is, if there is only "Mind" or some kind of "love force" or "life force" or similar, then that is not god, or at least is not what I would consider to be god. To me, one of the defining factors of god is that it be a sentient, self-aware being of some kind. Regardless, however you think of god, i'm glad it helps you at least a little bit.

I'm sorry the relationship with the girl you love didn't work out. It's good that you are still able to have some good memories of that relationship, and that you can value it for what it was in your life. Even though it didn't last, it is still essential to you.