4 Questions For My Readers

I usually play the role of an educator (haha) here at Yes to Me, but today, I want to switch roles.  I have some serious questions about life, this world, and myself and I’m hoping my wise readers can help me.  (Photo by Sailing)

1. Why are people afraid of death?

There seems to be a consensus that the longer a person lives, the better.  I hear people say something like, “If I’m really lucky, I’d live to 100 . . .”  And when someone dies young, whether that is 80 years old or 60 years old or 40 years old or as a minor, that is considered bad and shameful.  Or in the case of children’s death, they blame God or the doctors or something.

Like (this is just one example of many, nothing personal here), Tim Brownson commented in Zen Habits regarding the Law of Attraction, “. . .my introduction to manifesting was The 28 Laws of Attraction by Thomas Leonard that originally came out (I think) about 6 or 7 years ago. Thomas Leonard then died at the age of 48, so his manifesting ability as an expert seems questionable at best ”

But then, most older people I see don’t seem to be particularly happy. Why?  If living long life is the ultimate goal of life (or at least one of them) and everyone wants it, they are the winners, right?

I don’t get it.  I don’t mind leaving here on Earth this afternoon (except that I have several weeks worth of waiting list for my service – hope someone would refund them after I’m gone).  Not that I want to die.  Well, honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of all the mess in the world, but I still enjoy my life and I don’t mind continuing to live and do some service work in the meantime.  But I don’t think it’s a bad thing to die.  Just spare me with excessive pain and drama.  (So don’t send me paper bomb, okay?)

But maybe I’m missing something?  Can someone give me a few reasons why living long is the ultimate goal?

2. Why do people want more money than they can spend?

I do understand that we live in a monetary system and money comes handy to get the products and services I want.  That is why I have my business and charge a heck of money ^_^  (I raised my rate three times in less than a year.)  But I don’t understand wanting more money than I need.

Let’s just say I make a comfortable living with 100K a year.  And let’s also say I achieve this goal.  (Not quite there yet, and I probably don’t need this much, but hey, it’s fun to think.  And I’m not good with numbers so I don’t want to work out the real numbers.)  There are three choices I can make at this point:

1. Keep working hard and make even more money
2. Work less, enjoy life more
3. Keep working hard but in a different way, including some work that may not produce income

I’d choose either 2 or 3.  But many people seem to choose 1.  Why?

For rainy days?  Again, I do understand the benefit of having some buffers.  Life is full of ups and downs.  But really, isn’t it a bit obsessive to think the more the better?  Or are there other reasons I have not noticed?

3. Why are some people so passionately against same sex marriage and other stuffs they are not involved?

I do understand that if you are homosexual and want to get married, you are passionate about legalizing same sex marriage.  It’s your issue. I don’t necessarily think legal marriage is particularly a wonderful institution, but if you want it, you want it, and that is fine.

But if you are heterosexual, what do you care about same sex marriage?  It has nothing to do with you.  I’m straight, and I simply don’t have much to say about homosexualism.  For me, they are just people like me or anyone else.

However, I do have something to say about love and marriage in general regardless of the participants’ gender.

And that is: love is good.  If you are gay and really hate being gay, that may be an issue, like a sugar addict hating sugar cravings.  But as long as you are happy with yourself, I don’t think any form of love is “wrong”.  (Oooops, I forgot the possibilities of extremes like incest.  There are people who want to argue using the fake logic of extremes.)

Some argue same sex marriage weakens marriage.  BS.  Marriage has been weakened by people getting married for wrong reasons like for money, security, or validation, and also weakened by married people who are cheating.  Two  adults getting married for mutual love and care cannot damage the institution of marriage whatever their gender may be.

I don’t understand the whole homophobia stuff, either.  Why is it bad for a man to sxxx another man’s penis while it is fine for a woman to do the same?  And why do you care about what other people do in their privacy?  It’s not like they are dumping lead paint off the drain, contaminating our Earth.

4. What is my image or brand?

The dignified, outspoken, and secretly sensitive James Chartland (the last one is tricky.  Apparently sensitive is not the image he likes to cast on himself, so he works hard to impress his readers with his manliness.  But I bet he is sensitive)  wrote an interesting post about branding.  In that article, he points out how Frank Kern utilizes the laid-back, every man image as his brand to sell his expensive info product.

I’m intrigued.  While I think I know myself pretty well, I also know it is extremely hard to know oneself.  So will you please help me?  Describe Akemi as you know her with three (or more) words, like I did for James and write them in the comment.  You can be honest ^_^

Thank you and a big smile!

Review: Journey Of Souls By Michael Newton

What happens when we die?  Where do our souls go?  What do we do before we come back?

Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives explores the fascinating world where our souls go in between physical incarnations.  Dr. Michael Newton is one of the authorities in the past life regression hypnotherapy and he compiled this book from multiple cases of his clients.  Unlike Dr. Brain Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters, which was written about one specific client, this book attempts to describe the spiritual world common to all of us.

Fear of death cripples many people.  Understanding that our souls live beyond the physical body’s death can help you overcome this fear and live more fully. So I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is afraid of death or people who may have lost their loved ones recently.

The sou’s life between lives

The book describes the process of in-between life in the spiritual world in the following chapters:

1. Death and Departure
2. Gateway to the Spirit World
3. Homecoming
4. Orientation
5. Transition
6. Placement
7. Life Selection
8. Choosing a New Body
9. Preparation and Embarkation
10. Rebirth

(the above numbers don’t relate to the book’s chapter numbers because there are several other chapters that discuss related issues.)

As Akashic Record Reading specialist, I have working knowledge about this process, but it was so interesting to hear the detailed accounts of each process.

The first part of going into the spirit world is often discussed in the near-death or out-of-body experiences as well.  As soon as the soul is released from the body, there is no pain nor fear any more.  The soul may feel a bit disoriented because of the sudden big change, but very soon it accepts what has happened and actually is delighted to come back to its real home world.

What Michael Newton calls Orientation is more about review of the life that just ended.  We review if we have learned the life lessons we ourselves planned to learn in that life.  There are special function Spirits who help us do this.  My understanding is this is not about judgment – we review our progress against our own plan.

It’s also interesting that souls belong to a small cluster group.  The members of this group are tightly knit together and help each other learn – kind of peer support group.

And isn’t it amazing that, although the spirit world is a wonderful place to be, souls eventually decide to take the challenge of incarnation again!  This physical world is a beautiful world with all its problems.

Soul’s age and development level

These two critical concepts can be quite confusing so I want to share my understanding.  In Journey of Souls, Michael Newton makes references to what I believe to be the accurate account, but sometimes the points are unclear or seemingly inconsistent.

In my practice, I make clear distinction between the soul’s age and its development level.  In my definition, the soul’s age is the number of lifetimes the soul has incarnated in the physical body on Earth.  Some of my clients are old souls who have incarnated more than a hundred times, and some are relatively new souls who has had only a few lifetimes on Earth.

The soul’s development level is another story. A new soul who has had only a few physical lifetimes may be a very advanced soul while an older soul may be behind in the development level.

The reason is one, souls don’t start at the same development level, and two, souls develop at varying pace.

Just like any school at Earth.  Even in kindergarten, each kids start at different level with different personalities and learning styles.  Treating them as if they are all at the same level is a fake equalitarian approach.

Large part of the reason why some souls start at higher level of development right from the start is because they are star travelers (sometimes called starseeds).  They had lives elsewhere.  I only count physical lifetimes on this Earth.  (Michael Newton discuss about souls coming from other worlds in the chapter about advanced souls.)

And of course, we develop at different speeds.  Otherwise, what is the point of making effort for personal and spiritual growth?  If you develop at the same pace with the couch potato who just pass their time watching TV and drinking beer, why would you work on your development and read this blog?

The time between each incarnation can differ greatly, too, among souls, which further complicates the issue of soul “age”.  Some souls come back within a few years, some take several hundred years.  Sometime, I get clients whose last lifetime was millennium ago  — it’s like the soul didn’t intend to incarnate again but changed its mind for some reason.  So this is a very old soul in terms of historical time span, but with only a few physical incarnations, and it may be a very advanced soul.

My simple question about the methodology of this book

I just couldn’t help wondering one thing as I read Journey Of Souls.  So Michael Newton gathered this amazing information about life between lives by conducting hypnotherapy to many people.  He keeps saying like, “My case reports . . .” “Many clients support this view of . . .”  Nice and objective approach, I guess.

But.  If he is so enthusiastic about uncovering the mystery of in-between life of souls, why doesn’t he go there himself?  He can certainly do this by having his trusted assistant therapist work on him.  Doesn’t he want to go see it himself?  Isn’t that a quick way to clarify some of the challenging questions?  Is there a reason he doesn’t want to do this?  Or did he do it but doesn’t want to disclose it?

When I read Dr Brian Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters, I felt his sincere compassion.  This book by Dr Michael Newton felt very different to me.

Do you have questions about life between lives?  Please share in the comments.

Ideal Death And More On Life And Death

So many people are indeed afraid of death, I guess. I lost 20 subscribers when I published part 1 of this Life and Death series last week. Well. Sorry for those who are so scared even to read about death, but we cool people go ahead and think more about death.  Not that we like morbid topics. But because facing our mortality and freeing ourselves from the fear of death is the critical step to living a truly fulfilling life.

I get to see various death scenes in the Akashic Records. Are some ways of death more preferable than others? What would be the ideal way to die? Although we don’t get to choose how we die, this is an interesting topic to ponder.

Do we get to know when our time is up?

I guess that is possible. Wild animals seem to be able to do so. So if someone is at peace with the idea of their upcoming death, they might get to know. They may not tell their loved ones, however, because they don’t want to surprise them.

I still remember a story I read years ago. It was about the writer’s friend’s father-in-law. He was in his mid eighties and had been living with his son’s family since his wife passed away. The essay described him to be in good health – he could take care of himself in the day to day life. When he wanted to go to town, however, someone accompanied him just in case.

One day, he wanted to have haircut. So his daughter-in-law went out with him. After that, he suggested they’d get some coffee and sweets. They went to one of those nice bakeries where fresh house-made cakes and tarts are served. He thanked her saying, “You are not my birth family, yet you’ve been taking care of me the most.” She thought it was so nice of him to say that, but didn’t think much about it.

When they were checking out, she saw him buying more than a dozen cakes to take home. She asked, “There are only three of us at home. Who is going to eat all these cakes?” (With fresh cream, etc, they only last for a day or so.) He just smiled. She thought it was strange, but she let him do what pleased him. He went to bed early that evening.

Next morning, the family found he passed away during the night.

So they called the relatives, who came in immediately, and – they found themselves eating those cakes!

“This is so strange. It’s as if he knew and wanted to look nice to see his wife again.” “He was like that always – very considerate to everyone around him.” “It’s good he passed away at his home. These days, most people die at hospitals, and it’s kind of impersonal.” The conversation continued in his memory, who passed so peacefully.

Preparing for death

That’s one of the most beautiful story of death I know. I wish I could pass like that. I guess the ideal way to die is to die in old age when the physical body weakens and naturally lets the soul go. That would be least painful, and you get to have some time mentally and emotionally preparing for the upcoming death. It would be easier for the family to accept, too.

The second best would be to die due to some kind of disease – this would come with a bit of pain (hopefully not too much) but you still get some time to prepare for the death. I mean, if you can accept it is coming.

Really sad cases of death

I don’t want to say some deaths are “bad” — in the long, long run, we all end up in the same place (I think – that is my current understanding). However, certain death are indeed more traumatic and damaging. Like death by violence (murder, war, persecution, accidents). These involve so much physical and emotional pains, and usually don’t give enough time to be prepared. When I do reading for souls who went through these deaths, it’s really sad. Sometimes, the pain and the damage carry over many following lifetimes.

By the way, I’m not “afraid” of death, but I don’t particularly like seeing dead bodies. Please don’t send me gross pictures just because I challenged you in the beginning of this article. That is un-cool.

How about death to young children? The way I see it is it really depends. Just because someone is physically young doesn’t mean they are immature spiritually. They may actually know what is happening and in peace, more so than the adults around. I’m compassionate when it happens to the young (as well to the older), but I also think age is quite relative. Of course, there are children with young spirit and don’t really understand nor accept their death.

Suicide and the soul

I’m still studying how suicide may affect the life of a soul. Some says it is definitely no good, others like Michael Newton (authority in past life regression therapy and the author of Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives – I will be writing the book review of this soon) says it depends on the age and situation.

I personally haven’t seen souls who have caused major issues due to their suicide in past lives – I don’t know if this means souls who have committed suicide don’t come to spiritual healing like mine or if they have problem with reincarnation. So this is part 2 of my Life and Death series. I found the comments to part 1 very interesting and illuminating. What do you think about death, and life after death? Do you believe in reincarnation? Let me know by writing your comment! (Photo by aeioux)

« Previous Page — Next Page »