“Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we know it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we have not known.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
“She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn’t believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it damn well did. If nothing terrible happened to him soon maybe she’d do it herself. Now there was an idea.” “She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn’t believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it damn well did. If nothing terrible happened to him soon maybe she’d do it herself. Now there was an idea.” ~ Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Enough drama for ya yet? I spend a good part of my time seeing it all as drama . . . drama-drama, non-drama, pending drama, needed drama. Yeh, some of it is needed. My best guess is that I found this perspective when I returned to this material world after my NDE journey, back in ’84. Many NDE experiencers found that same thing upon return. Many of those other experiencers were fortunate enough to have that perspective active, full time, over the years. Respectable researchers determined that 774 experiences occur in the US every day. Please note that I have come to the practice of using underlining only to signify a link, a “click on this” sorta thing – any underlined word or phrase is a link. Hopefully relevant or even compelling. A couple of years ago a young woman read my book about my NDE, and shortly afterwards she asked me, “Jesus, Ken, what did you bring back with you? I just got a chill!”. Hmmmm. I consciously chose to not tell her that any spirit, dark or light, will likely raise a chill that scampers across your skin. It kinda sorta goes with the territory. Other people have suggested that I brought a dark spirit back with me on that fateful day back in ’84. I cruelly even believed it myself, on and off through the years. Such a perspective is adverse to the very essence of NDEs. Yes, some people report dark, devilish experiences on the Other Side. I wonder about that. My experience was scary through and through, and I had both dark and light phases over there, but I have come to feel, in my heart, that the dark spirit that stalks me most every day was here to greet me upon my return. What brought this to mind is that the dark spirit came upon yesterday evening, and it scared me, as it usually does. But I could feel the difference between the visit from the dark spirit and a depressive bipolar event. Bipolar disorder is a neurological phenomenon, whereas a spirit is simply a spirit. The two phenomena are incongruous, and for me, I can feel the difference. This explains, in my view, why a piece of music came into my mind yesterday afternoon, when I drove up to the convenience store and parked. At first I couldn’t recollect the composition from which the melody came. It’s a haunting melody, deeply compelling and equally beautiful. Finally it came to me: Fantasia on Greensleeves, by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a British composer. It was one of my mother’s favorite pieces of music. The presence of this visit from her made me feel connected, protected. But why the need for protection? It was the visit from the dark spirit a few hours later. Mom and I forged a close connection during the final 35 days of her life, through hours of conversation. It is hard if not impossible to explain what I felt and why it drew the dark spirit to me, and how it also helped me to push it away before going to bed. The spirit was here briefly again this morning. But the melody came back to me when I felt that shady visitor arrive once again. That spirit is trying to keep me away of a potentially valuable experience in my life, a change in life that I would welcome in both wonder and gratitude. That experience may never come to be, but I’ll be damned if I let it be because of that friggin spirit.
Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.
Eyeyotee 