KS&L 413 How do Religions Affect the Dead? by Tina Erwin

 

Did you ever wonder how what you believe in mortal life affects you when you are dead?

         I bet you’re thinking to yourself, “Why would I care? I’m alive and busy? What does it matter? Why would anyone actually care about this?”

         Weird concept? Absolutely. Really, when you think about it, there is so much other really important stuff to think about that why would anyone spend any time on this?

         Bet you’re also thinking that this is way too morbid a topic for anyone to discuss, but hey, it’s Halloween and right now (whether or not it’s Halloween), being ‘dead’ is ‘in.’ After all, All Hallows Eve, is that exceedingly popular time of the year when discussing the dead, ghosts, method of death, myth and legend is absolutely a cool thing to do. Whatever would ghost hunters do without all those dead people walking around, creating orb fests for their cameras?

         But this entire season begs the question: would we have as many ghosts as we surely have if religions treated living and dying completely differently?

         This persistent question demands an answer. Perhaps the best answer comes from the ghosts themselves. Ghosts, when people actually take the time to talk to them, will actually tell you that they have absolutely no idea what to do when they leave their body.

         One woman from the early 1700’s told me that she was angry that the Bible didn’t tell her what to do now that she is dead. Nothing was as she anticipated it. She asked me why her Christian faith was so silent on this critically important point.

         A man who committed suicide         had no idea that living, yes, living in the ‘afterlife’ was pretty much as miserable for him as living in the life he had just exited. He was pretty sure that God wouldn’t welcome him, so he had absolutely no idea what to do next.

         Another woman in the 1600’s had no way of accurately discerning that she had in fact died. She complained that her preacher did not warn her what it would be like. In deference to her minister from that time, the truth is that he didn’t know either what death feels like. Really, who does?

         Children, who have approached those of us who cross the dead over to the Heaven World, have told us that they had no idea that they were dead, much less what they were supposed to do next. They begged us to help them.

         Christian, Jewish, Muslim and all of the plethora of belief systems that populate the cities and countries all over the world simply do not address the steps to take once any person leaves his or her body and instantly ceases being ‘a person’ and immediately becomes ‘a soul’ or ‘a ghost.’

         It would be so helpful if people could actually understand how to determine if they have died. You wouldn’t think this is such a difficult question, but it is perhaps the most critical question. Dead people continue to speak to the living, continue to want that drink of alcohol, that heroin fix, that piece of chocolate cake. They continue to grieve a lost loved one, or a lost life, their own or someone else’s. Who you are does not cease when the last mortal breath is taken. Who you are continues, simply in a different dimension.

         Religions, most of them, fill people with visions of fire and brimstone, a great image for Halloween, but not so great for children, for adults who have led good and honest lives, who have loved, learned and yearned for a peaceful place upon death. Laying someone to rest may help the living but it doesn’t do a thing for the dead.

         If you have been told all of your mortal life that you were born in sin and that you will die in sin, why in heaven’s name would you know what to do at death?

         If you were told that Christ, that divine being eternally hanging on all those tortured crosses all over the world, died for your sins, how can anyone ever be worthy of his love after that horrific a sacrifice? How can you, a measly, muddled mortal ever compete for entrance into that divine club in the 5^th dimension when you are just full of sin?

         No church ever tells you that you will be forgiven if you simply ask for help, that angels, those concierge guides of the Heaven World, are standing by to escort you to a better place. Yes, angels will help you into the Heaven World no matter how you died, who you were in life, what you have done or who you harmed. You have only to ask for help.

         Maybe that’s the rub. Maybe religions have a hard time fully appreciating that God will embrace us all: the good, the bad, the murderous and the mostly innocent among us.

         Maybe religions would be horrified to realize that there is no religion in the after, there is only the Heaven World wherein reside God, Christ, Buddha, and all of the other astounding beings who have tried with marginal success rates to help us find our way home.

         Ironically, it is only the Tibetans who help their believers know what to do to transition from the mortal body to the etheric body. They even guide you in the correct position to take at death, if you know that death is coming. They help you to know that love awaits you so that you do not need to enter that 4^th dimensional land of the unknown without remembering that it is temporary and that the light will be there. They fill their people with hope, not fear. What a concept! They keep it simple and like the message of Christ, remind people that death is that entrance into life everlasting, not death everlasting.

         Several years ago I went to a restaurant in San Juan Capistrano, with my daughter. While sitting there, I kept getting the sense that there was a teenage ghost standing by asking for help. Finally I put my colorfully delicious turkey/cranberry sandwich down and spoke to him. I asked him if he was the person everyone was speaking about in the front part of the restaurant. Apparently there was a luncheon in the bistro to honor this young man’s life. He told me that he kept trying to tell them that he was right there! He didn’t go anywhere! He kept asking me why they couldn’t see him. He even tried to ‘connect’ with his minister who was leading a prayer before the meal. I reminded him that he probably couldn’t see ghosts of loved ones past either when he was alive. He nodded sadly and looked down where his feet would have been.  I quickly brought in an angel to guide him to the Heaven World.

         Most people in the religious hierarchy, and I do not call them leaders, because leaders actually lead you somewhere, rather than to a dead end, have no idea themselves what to do at death. It’s easy to point the finger, to cast blame, but the truth is, no one told them either what happens next.

         Can you imagine the paradigm shift if people knew what to do when that last breath leaves us?

          

 Photography by Tina Erwin

KS&L 412: Why Do Clothes Make the Man or Woman? by Tina Erwin

    Why do clothes make the man or woman? Why does what any of us wear matter at all? Why aren’t mini skirts appropriate for the Board Room and why aren’t denim overalls acceptable for sales calls? What is it about style, cut, color, fit, and texture that determine how people perceive us?

       Perhaps the answer lies in the cliché that notes that a picture is worth a thousand words. Whatever we happen to be wearing acts like a motion picture for the person meeting or greeting us. Without realizing it, we are communicating a great deal about ourselves to the person in front of us. The more perceptive the person, the more they can learn about us in even a split second of time.

       Everything we wear acts like a visual clue to who we are, what we believe in and how we perceive ourselves. We live in a world of symbols and we know that we are acutely affected by specific symbols. Every piece of jewelry, cuff link, shirt and shoe is a quiet testimony to who we are.

       Add to this array of symbols, an added facet of expectation. We each have an expectation of what we expect a person in a specific role to look like and actually wear. For example, we may be able to accept that our physician is wearing denim, but only if the denim is below the waist in the form of jeans. We would not have confidence in the man if he walks in wearing bib overalls and a straw hat. Our expectation has to marry what we see for us to begin to trust the person in front of us.

       Excessive makeup, micro-mini skirts, skin-tight sweaters and heavy jewelry would be utterly incongruous for a United States Senator. No one would vote for the woman because she is sending a message that no voter would accept. She is seeking to represent ‘the people’ and that representative, regardless of party, has to be seen as dressing in a discrete, professional manner, one that will engender respect.

       Military uniforms are only about symbols. They are all specifically designed to command respect from everyone up and down the entire chain of command. When one military person even glances at another they can instantly tell if this person is an officer or is enlisted, how long they have been in the military by the strips and/or insignia they are wearing and their branch of service. They can also tell what level of respect to provide based entirely on that person’s uniform, regardless of whether they are male or female. When military salutes are rendered and returned, each military person is reminded that they are only saluting the uniform, not a person specifically. This is most helpful in cases where you have a distinct dislike for a superior. Literally, a military uniform is virtually a personal storyboard.

       Jewelry alone tells us a tremendous amount. Some rings tell us marital status while others reveal how outlandish our personality is. Wearing a Star of David, Christian Cross or Crescent Moon? Obviously you want everyone to know and respect your particular faith. One female former Secretary of State wore specific lapel pins to communicate her level of power and the unspoken messages she deliberately intended to convey. Too much jewelry is a distraction and too little jewelry is austere. Ultimately any item of clothing or accessory worn becomes a question of balance.

       We also need to remember to dress for the job we expect to have. If you ever want to be chairman of the board, CEO, dress the part. Eventually you will see yourself in that position. Command respect by what you wear.

       We would all be wise to consider the very specific, yet subtle messages we are sending when we dress each morning. Our job necessitates what we wear and the messages we are supposed to be sending out [which is why some companies have a very specific dress code]. Our personality determines how we will send that message. Our sense of balance and mood will determine the fine details of our clothing for this or any other particular day. Ultimately, it really is the outer symbol of clothing that portrays who we are on the inside.

KS&L 410 Shape Shifting by Tina Erwin

There are all kinds of sophisticated on-line games, numerous movies about magic, sorcery, vampires and wizards out there that directly discuss the mystical elements of shape shifting. In these scary and challenging games, some magician is turning some hapless human into something else. Some wizards turn themselves into wolves. The point of the concept of game shape shifting is that we become something else. We don’t become someone else we become something else. 

Native American lore is replete with shape shifting, especially the wolf legends. A person changes their shape into that of a wolf, to disguise himself to gain access to ancient knowledge, understand the animal kingdom or to use spiritual stealth technology. So one would wonder if shape shifting is real beyond the games and legends.

Shape shifting is going on all the time, all around us and within us. All thought is energy. What we think, we create. We shift the energy of thought into shape. Sometimes we do not like what we have created and change that shape into something else. Consider that clay is the ultimate material to use to shift shape. The potter takes a humble lump of clay, adds the energy of thought and water and then molds it into a pot, urn, human sculpture or abstract form. At any moment he or she can shift that shape with the shifting of his or her own thoughts.

A peach shifts its shape from a gorgeous flower, to a green piece of fruit to a ripe piece of fruit, to rotten fruit to merely a seed. Then the seed shifts again into a new plant to become a tree to then create more flowers to perpetuate the shifting of shapes for the perpetuation of life itself in the world of peaches.

We are all shape shifters, shifting our shape from the moment of conception from a separate egg and separate sperm into an embryo. That embryo becomes a neonate, which then shifts into a fetus, which shifts over time into a living, breathing baby. At some point along the way, the soul enters the energetic mass of cells and becomes a personality. The newborn becomes a toddler who becomes a child, teen and finally an adult. Adults are constantly changing their bodies in so many ways until the body begins to shift its shape into the posture of eventual death.

Souls take many shapes. In some lives we are male, some female. Souls, like energy [which is neither created nor destroyed] are eternal: souls just change shape for the pure delight of the experience of all types of different lives. We are still the same soul, just shifting our shape to accommodate a new experience. Some lives we shift into what will become a deformed body, or a dwarf body. In some lives we take on giant shapes.

We even shape shift our experiences. Some lives we are wealthy, lose it all and shift into the experience of poverty. Some lives, we shift out of poverty into varying levels of wealth. Some lives we keep our basic physical shape and some lives we gain huge amounts of weight and have the experience of either dying from it or losing it and regaining our physical and emotional sense of balance.

We shift our shapes emotionally as well. Some lives we are immature all of our life, endlessly a child in an adult body. Some lives we are the parent to our parents, even as we are children. We shift our roles in life as well, constantly changing.

Perhaps the concept of shape shifting is a profound reminder that the only constant in life is change. Sometimes that change within us is a slow stagnation as we fiercely resist change of any sort. Sometimes it is magical in its utter transformation. Truly, some people go through a metamorphic process whereby they change from a mundane caterpillar personality into a magnificent butterfly. There are even those souls who do transform from a caterpillar into a night dwelling moth, occupying the darker aspects of life.

We are all shape shifters and so is life around us. Perhaps this is a unique way to observe and possibly accept change.

KS&L Chapter 409: A Lesson in Frequency Part 3: Curse or Karma? by Tina Erwin

        Some crystals cannot be owned. Sometimes, the Earth wants to hold on to her treasures or at least make sure that the spiritual nature of the frequency stays in a spiritual location. Perhaps when we go back to the very beginning of the origins of the Hope Diamond we begin to get a clue as to why the stone appears to be cursed.

        What if no stone is cursed and all stones are merely a function of frequency? If you are not at the correct frequency level, you cannot own the stone. But there is more to it than that. What if the stone starts out in a gloriously high frequency simply by its very nature and how it is handled and by whom determine what happens to those who seek to own that which probably should not be owned by mortal people.

        There all kinds of stories about the Hope Diamond. Some say that it was stolen from the forehead of a statue of the Hindu goddess Sita. If the stone was used for religious purposes, the positive energy of the stone would have been magnified by the energy of the prayers around it. So if a stone that is vibrating with the powerful energy of prayer is stolen, what would that karma be for the thief?

        If someone purchases the stone from the thief, they are then buying into the karma of the situation, which is not going to be a happy thing. When you purchase anything used, you buy into the attached karma of the object.

        Imagine if you bought a gorgeous dagger set with fabulous gem stones, but the dagger as used to murder people, what is the karma attached to the dagger?

        Perhaps there is no such thing as a curse for any object. Perhaps there is only the karma attached to the object based on how and where it was originally used or abused. This is the Russian Roulette of buying any piece of antique jewelry. Powerful stones come with powerful energy and these stones will magnify the karma of what happened to them.

        Some objects carry so much powerful karma that you cannot readily clear them with traditional methods of washing, simple prayer, or charging them. Karma cannot be cleared that easily. Sometimes, it is wiser to step away than to own something that will rocket your own personal karma to the surface. Perhaps that is what Harry Winston did when he eventually purchased the Hope Diamond. He wisely donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958 to be the main attraction of a new gem collection. There it currently resides.

 

 Perhaps that is also the case with the Bahia emerald, it will never be owned by anyone because the frequency is too high for anyone to personally own it.