Descriptions of the "afterlife"/5th Density

What an inspiring uplifting post! It gave me the feeling of "it's going to be OK" mixed with renewed commitment to do as much as possible in this life so I don't have regrets because of failing to do what I had planned before coming here. I guess I got myself into a bit of a hole recently by allowing myself to get into the loop of thinking that I can't even keep up with the recommended reading list and I've only now started reading Darwin's Black Box 🙈


23. There are three basic ways to progress in the afterworld: admitting defects in one’s character, service to others, and yearning for higher states. Service to others demands effort, work, sacrifice. Nowhere do the spirits describe a deity who requires us to flatter or glorify him with our prayers. That is not the way to progress.


It looks like Spirits do the Work in the afterlife. At least those that want to progress.


7. Most spirits mention some kind of Judgment. One spirit wrote that the Judgment “consists in being able to see ourselves as we are, and by no stretch of imagination being able to avoid seeing it. It is a Judgment of God on us [lesser selves] through our Higher Selves. No other person could be so just a Judge as we ourselves can be when facing the truth. For many it is a terrible hour.” None of these spirits speaks of an inquisitor deity sitting on a throne.


The above section reminded me of the First Initiation by Madame de Salzmann:


The first requirement, the first condition, the first test for one who wishes to work on himself is to change his appreciation of himself. He must not imagine, not simply believe or think, but see things in himself which he has never seen before, see them actually. His appreciation will never be able to change as long as he sees nothing in himself. And in order to see, he must learn to see; this is the first initiation of man into self-knowledge.

(...)

Today we have nothing but the illusion of what we are. We think too highly of ourselves. We do not respect ourselves. In order to respect myself, I have to recognize a part in myself which is above the other parts, and my attitude toward this part should bear witness to the respect that I have for it. In this way I shall respect myself. And my relations with others will be governed by the same respect.

(...)

You must understand that all the other measures - talent, education, culture, genius-are changing measures, measures of detail. The only exact measure, the only unchanging, objective real measure is the measure of inner vision. I see - I see myself - by this, you have measured. With one higher real part, you have measured another lower part, also real. And this measure, defining by itself the role of each part, will lead you to respect for yourself.


What an absolutely priceless gift it is to be able to see ourselves while we are still here on earth, and do the Work before we go back to 5D! And it seems to me that the Work done here helps the overall soul development more than the Work they do over there:


12. Spirits greatly respect time spent on earth. One says, “Your world is the hardest school of your round of experiences. Prizes won here are won for eternity. The very density of the material in which you work makes the overcoming of it a finer conquest. . . . Experience on your planet is a unique opportunity and a privilege. . . . Make the best of every opportunity. A strenuous life on earth is of immense value.”


16. Many spirits had ambitious plans for self-improvement before they descended into flesh, but the density of earth’s matter, including their own dense brain, caused them to forget what they came for. Subject to material concepts, they lost their way. They died only to discover to their disappointment that they mostly failed to accomplish the goal they had set for themselves. But for many of them it's ok, for there has been much growth in unpremeditated ways.


I really hope that when my time to transition comes, I will be able to say that I managed to achieve at least a good chunk of what I had planned for myself.


31. Spirits enjoy hobbies, knitting being one of them. “Do not be shocked. Did you fancy that a lifelong habit could be laid aside in a moment?” said one spirit. There is plenty of time in the astral. Boredom and even homesickness for earth are mentioned in these accounts. I have read only one account of spirits enjoying ball sports - probably because it would be too easy to control the flight of the ball with one’s mind, and there wouldn’t be much challenge.


It would be totally awesome to take my bookshelf and Kindle with me! ;-)


15. Spirits are not allowed to overreach in the astral. They cannot enter a vibration or cross a boundary they are not ready for. There is justice in where they end up at death. According to their character, they gravitate to their rightful place. They can move ahead only when they are changed enough to do so.


So I guess 4D souls go to different parts of the afterworld and don't mingle with 3D souls.

I do wonder, however, where souls that want to progress to 4D STS go? Point 23 said that it is service to other that helps souls progress but I guess that wouldn't apply to souls wanting to remain in the STS mode upon graduation?
 
This thread also reminds me of "Life Between Life" where Joel Whitton uses past life therapy as an instrument to study the spiritual dimensions of man. He says that all who return from the interlife, that moment between each incarnation, receive the same unrelenting message: "We are thoroughly responsible for who we are and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We are the ones who do the choosing." It is a learning experience that invests each thought, word, and deed with meaning and purpose. Having glimpsed how each incarnation is elected based on the past, those who visit the interlife return to this life with a heightened awareness of their responsibilities.
 
I think that in 3D, psi is already operating constantly. However, it is operating subliminally, on the subconscious level. Psi contributes to every conscious process by contributing information and subconsciously judging its relevance to the situation at hand, but the psi-derived information doesn't become explicitly conscious. Only its implicit expressions become conscious: in the form of hunches, urges, moods, dreams, spontaneous imagery, 'Freudian slips' etc. I'll be making a post sometime soon on the book "First Sight" by parapsychologist James Carpenter, who talks about this stuff - we'll also be doing a Truth Perspective on it in a couple weeks. (Spoiler: I've just started reading, but I have a hunch this book is very important!)

Thanks for bringing up ”Fist Sight”, looks like a very interesting and important book. I look forward to reading it and listening to the Truth Perspective -show!

The topic takes me back to being a kid and seeing ”The Empire Strikes Back” for the first time. I was fascinated with the abilities of the Jedi: they could sense the feelings of other people, send telepathic messages, be able to remote view, see the future and so on. And they could use psychokinesis to boot! (I remember that these abilities were shown in a discreet fashion, and not in a superhero kind of way.)
In hindsight, the Jedi also appeared to be aiming towards ”Jordan Peterson-esque” values. These abilities (and values) somehow always ”rang true” with me.

Later on, as I come across parapsychology related books, I realised that wait a minute - there really is something to it after all. Carpenter’s book appears to be a major expansion to how we view psi. :-)
 
Good Stuff Joe, thank you for sharing!
I'm going to read this book as well. I wonder what the world would be like if we taught this and the C's material in schools... It certainly helps you face the day with a better outlook! Kudos to you all for being here, especially at this time! My Sensei used to say "the hard way is the best way" and I know this to be true... May we all be the conduit to spread Truth and Love and help those who are searching and learning. 4D sounds like it could be a big shock for many...

Thank You All!
 
Its funny, I've been re-reading Life Beyond The Veil by Rev. George Vale Owen recently and in the process of unpacking a lot of information and questions I've had on the reality of 5D. But besides some of those concerns, and coming on the heels of so much we've been learning about Intelligent Design versus neo-Darwinism in particular - this subject could not be more timely or appropriate, I think. As has been stated here before, the materialist world view simply doesn't allow for the possibility of an 'afterlife', heaven, or 5D; a place that isn't 'biological', random or devoid of meaning in the ways that neo-Darwinian scientists and their ilk would have us believe the world is. In this way, their doctrine keeps their captive public at least two steps removed from considering the true implications of a 5D Reality. (Of course it doesn't necessarily follow that one will be open to this subject if a person recognizes the validity of ID, but at the very least it clears a good deal of the thought-gunk away, and leaves one more open to the possibility! A LOT more possibilities actually.)

In any case, here's something from the C's that had me wondering about a few things, and that was the cause of a few a-ha! moments of late:

A: [...] At least you should by now know that it is the soul that matters, not the body. Others have genetically, spiritually and psychically manipulated/engineered you to be bodycentric. Interesting, as despite all efforts by 4th through 6th density STO, this "veil remains unbroken."

Implied in the above are efforts - which have been and are being made - on the part of 5D inhabitants to help humanity tear through the veil of ignorance that has been woven between our level, higher ones, and an awareness of our own true natures. But aside from 5D being a kind of contemplation zone, and perhaps prayers going to JC (who may be responding according to need and sincerity), what does a person from 5D actually do down here, with us? What may the interaction be like actually?

Life Beyond The Veil gives us some clues, and mentions (straight from the horse's mouth) that individuals are given "hunches, urges, moods" etc. as AI suggested. But it seems that we need to be in a place with ourselves to hear the messages against the wall of noise that is also vying for our attention. And efforts towards self-improvement and working towards finding answers/solutions to one's own issues are of supreme value. Sound familiar? Further, LBVT suggests that there is A LOT of varied work occurring in the afterlife; the 'heavenly' part being filled with all kinds of learning centers and systems in place that are essentially in service of others - in 5D, here in 3D, and elsewhere. Reading of these institutions made it all the clearer to me how pervasive the STO way would really seem to be in more cosmic terms.
 
Reading of these institutions made it all the clearer to me how pervasive the STO way would really seem to be in more cosmic terms.

I've thought about this a few times before, and it seems like a bit of a 'no brainer' that STO would be the only truly viable way of life of the universe. As the Cs have said, with a little thought, anyone can see how STS is a pretty obvious dead end, and recognizing the value and rights of others and helping them to the best of one's ability is a far more satisfying endeavor than focusing only on yourself (and at the expense of others).

Another thing I've pondered from time to time is the quest for 'the truth'. Down here we've spent many years searching for and trying to spread the truth. But as we've done that, we've understood that the truth is increasingly elusive, at least, the truth as some objective, unchangeable 'thing'. With the ideas presented by the Cs that "everything is illusion" and "nothing would exist if someone didn't dream it up", I've imagined (momentarily) myself searching the universe(s) for the truth and, each time I thought I had "it", realizing that this is just one more example of something someone (or I) dreamed up, so it's not THE truth. At present, I'm thinking that the "objective truth" is that there is no such thing, and that each sentient being is tasked with being a creator (to one extent of another) and those 'creations' are ultimately defined as being of one orientation or another.

In another book on the topic (although part of the material that produced the list I started this topic with), called 'The road to immortality', which is the text of the transmissions of the Frederick Myers, the founder of the society of psychical research, as channeled by Geraldine Cummins, this point is made (by Myers as a dead dude):

Understand that however, [in the afterlife] you do not consciously create your surroundings through an act of thought. Your emotional desires, your deeper mind manufacture these without your being actually aware of the process.

I'll add a longer section here that I think is interesting to consider as an alleged example of the stages that are involved in the "after life" (he calls one of these stages "illusion land") and which expands a bit one some of the descriptions in the listed items in my first post. Remember, this is automatic righting by Myers (who died in 1901) at 'automatic writing' session during 1924-25, 1927 and 1931, with Geraldine Cummins as medium.

If I chose to describe the After-life from the point of view of Tom Jones who had been a lawyer's clerk and had lived in London all his life, his mind and spirit bounded by his law-work and his own little personality, I should very probably give you what would appear to be a trite and materialistic description of the Hereafter. For, as a rule, Tom Jones is only able to communicate with human beings while he is still in a very crude state of mental and spiritual development. Usually he is like a blind puppy after birth. He writes of what he cannot see. When perception comes to him, when sight is bestowed on the eyes of his soul, he does not, so far as I am aware, look towards the earth again. He feels his own mental impecuniosity [poverty]. He has not the power to express in words, which he must borrow from earth minds, the amazing character of life after death. So he is silenced, and no echo comes from behind the dark curtain which will even faintly convey the music of that other life, yield to man the strange rhythm of a universe within a universe, a life within a life, and all lying, as ships in harbour, within the infinite imagination of God.

Tom Jones represents many millions. He is the conventional worker, quite efficient in all matters connected with his particular profession, but limited by it and by his life of small amusements, by the lack of leisure which prevents him from ever considering the ultimate purpose of life. As a horse driven in harness and blinkers, so has he been driven from the cradle to the grave. His life has not been eventful. It contains a measure of sorrow and a measure of laughter. What becomes therefore of this symbol of the crowd? What becomes of Tom Jones, Mrs. Jones and Miss Jones? It is far better for us in this study of "the Many Mansions" of the Hereafter, first to consider the future of the ordinary man and woman. Are they transformed in the twinkling of an eye? Do they become great seers highly, developed both spiritually and mentally? Or do they follow out the law of evolution as it is known by men?

We must first answer these two questions. If Tom Jones is changed by death into a great seer or into a lofty spiritual genius he is no longer Tom Jones. He cannot, therefore, be said to survive death. However, I can assure you that he follows the slow path of evolution; he is born into the next world with all his limitations, with all his narrowness of outlook, with his affections and his dislikes. He is, in short, thoroughly human. For such a man a marvellous and lofty existence of a spiritual character is scarcely possible. He is still mentally in swaddling clothes. Therefore he must be treated as the baby is treated in your world. He must be carefully looked after and protected; he must meet with no sudden or violent change. For he is not of a sufficient spiritual and mental ripeness to be able to bear it.

He belongs to a great multitude who must, as we describe it over here, dream back in order that they may later on go forward, proceed towards the ultimate goal, towards a state of spiritual vision when they may enter the timeless state, may pass out of the great cosmic picture and enter within the mind of their Creator. But there is much to be done by Tom Jones before he can, if ever, attain to that condition. He is still an infant needing playthings like a child, and, therefore, requiring about him a world of appearances.

The more advanced souls--whom the Church may call the angels and whom I call "the Wise"--can exist in tenuous forms within vast vistas of space and lead within it an extraordinarily vivid existence. Tom Jones is quite incapable of facing such a strange and strenuous state of being.

So we, who are a little more advanced than he, watch by the gates of death, and we lead him and his comrades, after certain preparatory stages, to the dream which he will inhabit, living still, according to his belief, in earth time. He bears within him the capacity for recalling the whole of his earth life. Familiar surroundings are his desperate need. He does not want a jewelled city, or some monstrous vision of infinity. He craves only for the homely landscape he used to know. He will not find it here in the concrete sense, but he will find, if he so desires it, the illusion.

The Wise, as I call them, can draw from their memory and from the great super-conscious memory of the earth the images of houses and streets, of country as known to these wayfarers so recently come from the earth. The Wise Spirits think, and thereby make a creation which becomes visible to Tom Jones. So, in those early days after his passing, he is not cast into emptiness, into a void. After he has slept in dimness, rested as in a chrysalis while his etheric body is being shaped, he emerges as the butterfly, coming into a world formed for him by the concentrated thought of men of great spiritual discernment, for whom I can find no better term than "the Wise" or "the Creative Life."

An image is drawn from the young soul's memories. It is of a country considerably more beautiful than--but not unlike the country Tom Jones and his comrades have known. This country is not real. It is a dream.
But to Tom Jones it is as real as was his office desk and the alarum-clock that roused him in the morning, summoning him to his work. It undoubtedly presents a more attractive appearance than his little grey London world, but in essentials it is of the same familiar stuff from which his England is made.

Within this dream he will find his friends, some of his own people, and those two or three persons he really loved; that is, if they have already gone before him, been summoned by death at an earlier time.

Let us picture Tom Jones in surroundings that seem to him material and therefore do not, in any way, arouse his natural timidity. He is a simple soul and has led a clean, respectable life, satisfying his desires in moderation. He has spent seventy years of his life in a certain environment on earth. Why should he, after parting with his physical body, again occupy surroundings with which he is to a great extent familiar? Why should he face another existence of a similar character to the last?

In reality it is not similar. It is the period of a great and slow change for Tom Jones. His life in the world, dating, say, from 1850 to 1920, corresponds with the germinating life of a seed in the earth. When its first fresh green shoot presses upwards towards the light, then he reaches the end of his term of years, he is passing into another life. The gardener, who has charge of him and of many other little plants, places them, if they are suitable, in a forcing-house when, as I have described to you, he introduces them to a world of form similar in character to the one they had previously known.

These wayfarers find themselves in familiar surroundings amongst people of a similar mentality. But they find very frequently that their actual needs are not the same. They are not condemned to some mechanically performed task for the greater part of their existence, because their etheric bodies do not require food. They draw what is essential for their well-being from that all-pervading invisible substance. On earth men are slaves of the physical body, and, therefore, slaves of darkness. In the Hereafter we may truly say that, given certain conditions, they become servants of the light. As food, or its equivalent money, is not the principal object of their existence, they have at last time to serve the light. That is to say, they are in a position in which they can reflect at their leisure and begin to reach towards this strange and marvellous life of the mind.

Now, with the dissolution of the body, at least one desperate clamorous need has gone from us. We do not any longer require the three or four meals a day that were of such excessive importance. One primal factor in earth-life is eliminated, and that is hunger. But we have other factors of great importance to consider. After hunger there comes sex. Has this need also disappeared with the dissolution of the body?

I think my answer, in most cases, should be in the negative. It has not disappeared, but it is changed. And here we come face to face with one of the great problems in this period of transition.

First, it is necessary to attempt some definition of sexual desire. It takes many forms. Some of these are perverted. Let us deal with these perversions, and, in so doing, we shall deal with what man calls sin. Cruelty perhaps cuts more deeply into human nature than any other sex perversion. It marks the human soul, scars it more deeply than almost any other vice. The cruel man who has changed his natural craving for affection into a longing to give pain to others necessarily finds himself in a world here where he cannot satisfy this craving. He has pandered to it during all his earth life, and so it has become an integral part of his soul. In the new life he has not, for a time at any rate, the power to inflict pain on anything living. This means for him, with his greatly increased mental powers, a very terrible distress. He goes about seeking whom he may devour and finding naught. The misery of such an unsatisfied state is largely of a mental character. What use to him is a world of light and beauty while still this foul earth longing is unsatisfied? For him there is only one release from his mental purgatory. And until he can find a way of escape, until there is an actual change in his cold, cruel soul, he will remain in outer darkness.

Christ spoke of that outer darkness as being the lot of sinners. By this saying, He did not imply darkness as we know it--the darkness recognised by the senses. He meant a darkness of soul, a mental distress, a perverted desire that cannot find its satisfaction.

Eventually this individual faces up to his own misery, to his vice; and then the great change comes. He is put in touch with a portion of the Great Memory which Saint John has called the Book of Life. He becomes aware of all the emotions roused in his victims by his acts. He enters into a small part of the mighty Super-conscious Memory of his generation which hovers near the earth. No pain, no anguish he has caused has perished. All has been registered, has a kind of existence that makes him sensible of it once he has drifted into touch with the web of memory that clothed his life and the lives of those who came into contact with him on earth.

The history of the cruel man in the Hereafter would make a book which I am not permitted to write. I can only briefly add that his soul or mind becomes gradually purified through his identification with the sufferings of his victims.

I have wandered away from the theme of Tom Jones in order to explain what is meant by Christ's statement that the sinner is cast into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is a mental darkness into which the sinner plunges. His own perverted nature has drawn this suffering upon himself. He had free will, the power to choose, and, temporarily at any rate, he chose this mental darkness in the After-life.

Now, I would give you one more illustration. Let us take for example a man, or if you prefer a woman, who has led an immoral life on earth. Here I may borrow a saying of the angel who appeared to John: "He that is filthy let him be filthy still."* The man who comes into this life with a sex history of a reprehensible kind finds, when he enters the Kingdom of the Mind, that as his mental perceptions are sharpened so his predominant earth-desire is intensified, his mental power being far more considerable. He can, at will, summon to himself, those who will gratify this over-developed side of his nature. Others of his kind gravitate to him. And for a time these beings live in a sex paradise. But bear in mind that it is created by their mental "make-up," by their memories and their imagination. They yearn still for gross sensation, not for that finer life, which is the spirit of sexual love, that perfect comradeship without the gratification of the grosser feelings.

They obtain it in abundance, and there follows a horrible satiety. They come to loathe what they can obtain in excess and with ease; and then they find it extraordinarily difficult to escape from those who share these pleasures with them.

A murderer comes into the category of such men. It is a sudden perverted desire, a lust for cruelty which leads in many cases to murder.

The last state in Illusion-land might be termed the purgatorial state.' Obviously, it is extremely painful to realise the misery of satiety, to come to the end of the desired pleasure. There is one greater misfortune than the non-realisation of the heart's desire and that is its realisation. For human beings are so constituted that they are almost invariably seeking a false dream, a will-o'-the-wisp, and no permanent content can be obtained from its fulfilment.

It is, of course, impossible to lay down an iron rule. Each individual has a different experience from each other individual in Hades and Illusion-land. In certain cases he is not given the power to satisfy his desires. Actually, he is able to do so, but his own ego does not permit such satisfaction. For instance, the cold selfish man in Illusion-land may dwell in darkness, for it is not within the power of his ego to throw itself outwards, to express itself in the fantasy of fulfilled desires. He is thrown more than ever inwards by the shock of death. He believes he has lost everything. He loses contact with all except the sense of his own thinking existence. A nightmare of darkness prevails for a time, prevails as long as he lives within his morbid sense of loss, within his desire, which is merely to gratify himself without any regard for others. There may be only night in Illusion-land for the abnormally selfish man.

Nearly every soul lives for a time in the state of illusion. The large majority of human beings when they die are dominated by the conception that substance is reality, that their particular experience of substance is the only reality. They are not prepared for an immediate and complete change of outlook. They passionately yearn for familiar though idealised surroundings. Their will to live is merely to live, therefore, in the past.
So they enter that dream I call Illusion-land. For instance, Tom Jones, who represents the unthinking man in the street, will desire a glorified brick villa in a glorified Brighton. So he finds himself the proud possessor of that twentieth-century atrocity. He naturally gravitates towards his acquaintances, all those who were of a like mind. On earth he longed for a superior brand of cigar. He can have the experience ad nauseam of smoking this brand. He wanted to play golf, so he plays golf. But he is merely dreaming all the time or, rather, living within the fantasy created by his strongest desires on earth.

After a while this life of pleasure ceases to amuse and content him. Then he begins to think and long for the unknown, long for a new life. He is at last prepared to make the leap in evolution and this cloudy dream vanishes.
 
Nearly every soul lives for a time in the state of illusion. The large majority of human beings when they die are dominated by the conception that substance is reality, that their particular experience of substance is the only reality. They are not prepared for an immediate and complete change of outlook. They passionately yearn for familiar though idealised surroundings. Their will to live is merely to live, therefore, in the past. So they enter that dream I call Illusion-land.

I wonder if this is related to the C's saying of becoming a dream of the past.
 
What came to be revealing to me(which has to do with one s false perceptions) is that there is no stoppage to lessons and learning when you get there, that is it seems many learn much more there in 5D then here, there is no breaking of continuity, it is just like continuation of this life and living it with different conditions involved and veil is lifted for those who want it and 3D being fast lane approach for some.
 
Thank you for posting this Joe, lots to think about. It reminds me of what the Cs have said with regards to upcoming Earth changes & the Wave, that it’s not where you are that matters but WHO you are (paraphrasing here). I also think that it’s another reason why Jordan Peterson’s message about making yourself a better person, developing your character to the best of your ability to fulfil your inherent potential, resonates with so many.
 
19. There are hellish regions in the astral, and large populations that make their home there. What is sometimes referred to as the Shadow Lands is a vast world of many conditions. The landscapes vary from sordid city neighborhoods to parched, gray scrubland to dark, lifeless deserts. The vivid clarity of higher realms is missing. Instead there is a dull overcast. Temporarily lost or confused or stubbornly unrepentant souls populate these regions.

20. “Missionary spirits” minister to souls in the Shadow Lands. Residents can free themselves if they are willing to face up humbly to their errors and crimes and repent them. Some do; and most, perhaps all, will eventually. But many jeer at their would-be helpers and seem to prefer their dull or chaotic lives over the challenges of higher worlds they are frightened of.

21. No spirit is condemned forever to the dark regions. But God will never interfere with our free will. Acting through higher spirits seeking to lead the “stumblers” out of their self-imposed exile, God will invite tirelessly, but will never force. One gets the impression that, at least for the moment, many spirits actually prefer their dimmed-down world to the higher Light-filled worlds they were created for, and that someday they will choose to enter.


There have been many "evil" people on earth who have done horrendous things to others. Is this where the evil people might go? If people do not consider themselves evil and find nothing wrong with what they have done (psycopaths?), then how would that affect where they live in the astral plane, I wonder. Do they just naturally gravitate to the hellish regions?
 
A couple of Ibn Arabi quotes posted by Altair that seem fitting for this topic:
Man faces a predicament as real as himself, and he is forced by his own nature to choose between the straight path which leads to balance, harmony and felicity and the crooked path which lead to imbalance, disequilibrium, and wretchedness.
At root the creatures are immutable entities dwelling in nonexistence, which is evil. God in respect of His all-embracing mercy gives them existence in order to bring them from evil into good. Man hangs between good and evil...

"Evil" is failure to reach one's individual desire and what is agreeable to one's nature. It stems from the fact that the thing's possibility does not prevent it from becoming connected to to nonexistence. To this extent evil becomes manifest within the cosmos. Hence it only becomes manifest from the direction of the possible thing, not from the direction of God.

... human beings possess certain gifts which allow them to choose their own route of return (this is the "voluntary return," rujii' ikhtiydri). Man can follow the path laid down by this prophet {STO?} or that, or he can follow his own "caprice" (hawa) and whims {STS?}. Each way takes him back to God, but God has many faces, not all of them pleasant to meet
The attribute which rules over the return to the center is "Guidance" (hiddya), while the dispersive movement within the human sphere that prevents and precludes the return toward the Center is called "Misguidance" (idlal). The unitive movement finds its fullest human expression in the prophets and the friends of God, who are the loci of self-disclosure for the divine name the "Guide" (al-hddi). The dispersive movement finds its greatest representatives in Satan and his friends (awliya' al-shaytdn), who manifest the divine name "Misguidance" {General Law?} (al-mudill).
But few people are in fact human. Most people are what Ibn al-Arabi calls "animal man", that is animals in human form, since they have not actualized the divine form which would make them human. Our humanity remains but a potentiality until we have embarked on the straight path of "assuming the traits of divine names"...
 
Another thing I've pondered from time to time is the quest for 'the truth'. Down here we've spent many years searching for and trying to spread the truth. But as we've done that, we've understood that the truth is increasingly elusive, at least, the truth as some objective, unchangeable 'thing'.

The way I see it is that as we learn more, increase our awareness, gain knowledge etc, along with it the 'sphere of truth' is expanded and touches upon even more areas. However this ends up leading you towards even more that you don’t know! And so the ‘truth’ takes on a much larger dimension than one had originally might have guessed at. It will continue to remain elusive and rightly so since the price, so to speak, for ‘knowing’ more is to also ‘know’ that there is more you need to ‘know’.

As our knowledge and understanding grows, so do our definitions of the universe – thus what may have been an ‘objective truth’ at some point no longer is that once more data is added. As we continue on, it will be ever more elusive. Perhaps that makes it more of a motivation to those seeking it? I don't know. My guess is that the only time one could say that they’ve arrived at the objective truth is ‘union with one’ aka 7D. Outside of that, as long as there is the potential for duality, the ‘objective truth’ is subject to change, along with it a plurality of 'truths' - but then we couldn't really call it "The Truth" (that whole 'my truth' and 'your truth' thing).

That's one of the reasons why something like reincarnation makes so much sense to me. Our lives are so short and often wasted just getting our bearings here that those really searching for the truth couldn’t possibly do it in one lifetime! I know that even this time around I’m not even close but if get to take any progress I can make this life on to the next then that makes it worth the effort. ;-)
 
That's one of the reasons why something like reincarnation makes so much sense to me. Our lives are so short and often wasted just getting our bearings here that those really searching for the truth couldn’t possibly do it in one lifetime! I know that even this time around I’m not even close but if get to take any progress I can make this life on to the next then that makes it worth the effort. ;-)

:thup:
That's exactly what, for me, has always been a thought when I was thinking of reincarnation.
Also, when no one can prove that there is or no life after death, is it not better to think that life after death exists because if there - excellent, learning can continue, and if it is not, you will not find out anyway because consciousness will die with your body. Also, living all your life with conviction that there's no life after death is so painful.
 
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