Seth Events: Information Clusters, Telepathy and Precognition
by Samantha Standish

I have a special love of the Seth material. A lot of wonderful things have happened to me because of Jane Roberts’ work. But let me go back first.

Change happens in unlikely ways. After I had a personal meltdown and stopped working as a lawyer, I asked myself a lot of questions. I have a healthy regard for life and I wanted to know what it was all about, why I was here, and how to put myself on track. At the time, my husband had gone back to school at CSUMB (he already had a degree in biology, but was looking to learn some things he’d missed the first time around). We were living in student housing on the old Fort Ord military base. The student housing consisted of little concrete echo chambers built on sand. I’m not complaining; they had washer/dryers in each unit and a thermostat, and in comparison to where we’d been livng previously, this was the high life as far as amenities are concerned.

So I was home schooling and enjoying the magic of doing laundry whenever I wanted and asking a lot of questions about life. Then, one day, when my inlaws were visiting, my mother-in-law bought my husband a tiny book by Ernest Holmes called, “Creative Mind & Success.” I read the book, and it was like a spark that ignited a wildfire. Something about what Holmes was saying rang a long dormant feeling within me. In no time, I went from being intrigued to obsessed. My curiosity burned. I checked out Holmes’ book, “The Science of Mind,” from the library, and read it cover to cover. Then I bought my own copy and read it seven times through, marking it up and writing questions in the margins. At length, I had to throw it out, because I’d thumbed through it so many times that the binding came apart. Eventually, I bought another copy and began the process of wearing that one out.

Holmes’ thesis was pretty basic: mind is matter. But regardless of the number of times I read the book, I still didn’t know what “mind” was. It seems like a simple question. What is mind? But I didn’t get it. No matter how many words I read: intelligence, energy, awareness, god, etc. I still didn’t understand what mind was.

Then we moved to Pacific Grove, and I went through what I call “my library phase,” searching for the answer to the question: What is mind? I first read through the religious section of the library. I checked out every religious book I could get my hands on--the Bible, the Koran, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic Gospels, the I-Ching, Christian Science books, Scientology books, books on the Kabbalah, books on Buddhism, books on mystics, and on and on. During this time period, which lasted about three years, it was not uncommon for me to read two books a day. I was easily reading ten hours a day, seven days a week. After the religious books, I did self-help, then philosophy, then psychology, then spiritualism, the psychic phenomena and then physics. But the day that will always stand out in my mind was the day I was perusing the shelves and this old, mustard yellow hard-bound book caught my attention. It visually popped off the shelf. The binding said, “Seth Speaks.”

I have a pretty keen legal mind. I can tell you in two seconds flat the underlying agenda in any piece of writing. As I was going through my reading phase, I looked for the substance beneath the rheoric. I was like a miner who sifts through mountains of rubble to find a gold nugget. I had to read a lot of garbage to find the precious bits. Until “Seth Speaks.” Reading that book was heaven. It was like finding a book filled with nothing but gold.

”Seth Speaks” was distorted, but the distortions were so slight as to be almost imperceptible. I couldn’t compare it to anything else I’d ever read because it was not on the same playing field. Not even what we consider to be the most brilliant minds in history could compare to the quality of this material. For a person such as myself, it was pure, unadultered joy.

Information Clusters

I went through all of the Seth books pretty quickly, and re-read them a number of times. Unlike my previous explorations, however, this was not passive learning. Very quickly, it instigated experiences with what I call information clusters. I started to get what could be thought of as prepackaged concepts. I’d be thinking about an idea, and then I’d get a concept related to that idea, but it would come all at once.

Normally, you get an idea, and new related ideas come to you that add to the original idea. With an information cluster, the process happens in the reverse. With an information cluster, all the information is already all there. You can almost feel an information cluster. There’s a density, as if the concept itself holds mass, and you can explore that mass by pulling it apart like you do when you pull the string on a ball of yarn.

I’m well equipped to deal with information clusters now. However, at the time I first started receiving them, I was appalled by some of the information. It completely upset my concept of reality and how it’s put together. Some of the information clusters were easier to take than others, the ones that were kind of vague. You know when you think you’re going to sneeze, but you can’t? Well, some of these information clusters were like that. I couldn’t quite get them all the way. These were safer for me because my understanding wasn’t completely engaged. I remember having one about the nature of time and the expression of an object in time. The idea was that the object already exists, and that, in a way, moments have to catch up to the object. That was vague. That I could handle.

What I couldn’t handle was what I call “the CD incident.” It sounds innocuous. My husband had been helping muscisians record their music at CSUMB. One day, he was in a chipper mood and decided to go to the post office and check our PO box. He came back with a CD that one of the musicians had sent him. My husband was credited with the sound production work. While he was telling me this, I had an information cluster. All at once, I knew that the reason he’d received the CD was because he’d been in a chipper mood when he’d gone to the post office. I knew that if he’d been in a cranky mood, the CD would not have been there because it would not have been sent. Whether he received the CD or not had nothing to do with the action or lack of action of another person, but rather by the state of mind of my husband at that particular moment. Because the event itself already existed in both forms: the form where the musician sent it, and the form where the musician did not send it.

That is, what I knew instantly was that events come pre-packaged with their own past and future. We trigger events by our attitudes, moods, expectations, beliefs and ideas. This all should have been intriguing, but I found it quite threatening because this information wasn’t like a whispy notion. It felt like fact and, at the time, I held very strong ideas about personal responsibility. With this new concept I was overwhelmed by the idea that I was personally responsible for everything that happened around me, and quite frankly it freaked me out. I couldn’t imagine being in a chipper mood all the time, and yet what I’d just tapped into suggested that it was my responsibility to be just that. That is, my ideas concerning personal responsibility (i.e. being a good person) obligated me, in my estimation, to be in a good mood all that time, and yet I knew that to be an impossibility. I couldn’t imagine living with the guilt of knowing that by not being in a chipper mood, I was effecting events around me in a way that I considered negative. As lame as this sounds, the whole idea was too much for me, and instead of acknowledging it and exploring it, I just shut it all down. I put up a big mental barrier, and I didn’t have any more information clusters for years.

Telepathy

But that wasn’t the end of it. Weird things started happening after I began to really get into the Seth material, chief amongst them was an increased awareness of telepathy. It started when I would be reading about a certain theme in the Seth material, and my husband would come home and tell me what he’d been thinking about that day, and it would be the same theme in a different guise. What was so extraordinary was that these themes were not things we’d ever talked about. They were things that I was just now reading. To my husband, they were new ideas that came to him during the day.

The first couple of times this happened, I tried to write it off with a, “That’s funny. What a weird coincidence.” But then it was clear, after a while, that it was a pattern, and it kept happening with more frequency. It wasn’t limited to concepts. I’d think of a type of food during the day, and my husband would come home with it. I’d think of a line from a movie, and my husband would play that particular movie later that night. This type of thing began to happen with my son too. Over time, it got to the point that I’d know things at a distance. Sometimes quite annoyingly, I would know if my husband was having a good day or a bad day or what my business partners were thinking about the business we owned. One night, my son went to an all-night outing. The all-night event started with a movie in San Jose and ended in a building located a few blocks away. I sensed that my son was nearby around 2:00 a.m., yet I had been told that they were supposed to get back at 4:00 a.m. I wondered why I was feeling like he was back already. The timing was later confirmed; they’d arrived back in town at 2:00 a.m. Things like this became more and more frequent.

These seemingly trivial events began to add up until the fact that we are mentally connected became fact to us. These days, it’s common for my son or my husband to say out loud exactly what I’m thinking or visa versa. It has gotten to the point that jokes pass between us without words and sometimes without even looking at one another. This is a whole new level of living. And I’m excited to see how it developes further.

Precognition

This has not been the extent of the impact of the Seth material. One of the areas that really opened up for me in a big way through the Seth material was the dream world. My dreams used to scare the pants off me. I didn’t remember them much, and when I did, I tried to forget them. I knew nothing about symbolic interpretation of dream imagery. A few literature classes with some tedious professors had me avoiding the word “symbolic” for most of my adult life. But then I read in the Seth material about becoming a “dream art scientist” and about the art of “inner physics,” and I was hooked. I knew I had to explore these things in a big way.

First, I taught myself to remember my dreams. If I woke up in the middle of the night (as I do quite frequently), I’d memorize the pieces of my dreams that were most clear by repeating them over and over and over again. I got good at it, and it became habit. It’s normal for me to remember, on average, three to eight dreams a night. Eventually, I learned to tell the difference between my own dream imagery and interactions with different individuals and/or states. Dreams lost their scariness, and I saw them for what they were: extremely useful tools, and an enjoyable way to spend some time (or non-time, however you want to look at it).

I think one of the things that continues to fascinate me most about the dream state is when I have precognitive dreams. I usually get them about financial issues for some reason. The one that was most startling to me was when I had a dream that I was talking to my mom about some loans that my stepfather would be dealing with (he was a loan officer). A few days later, I found myself on the phone saying, word for word, what I’d said in the dream, telling her in detail about the loans, and she spoke back to me the same words I heard her say in the dream. Not surprisingly, their experience with the loans in waking life matched the dream I’d had.

I have turned mental summersaults trying to figure out how this is possible. How could I know something before it happened? It’s not enough to hear or read the words, “all time is simultaneous.” What does that mean? How does it work? How can I use it? Because there seems to be quite a bit of validity to that statement that all time is simultaneous. My experience is such that I know for a fact that you can know something “before” it happens. So this leaves me asking, what is an event, and how is it triggered? I find after all this time that I still haven’t answered my original inquiry: What is mind? And I really don’t think I’m close to the answer yet.

But I think I’m learning that it’s not so much the shinning prize before me that I’m after. I think I’m addicted to the pursuit. I enjoy the questions. What’s out there? Or in there? I don’t know much yet, and the more I learn, the more I seem to not know. What other experience lay before me? So far, it has been a road full of things I never imagined possible. How many more unimaginable things must be in store? You never know what’s going to be the catalyst for those new experiences. It could be something as simple as printed words on a page.

About Samantha
Samantha Standish is a writer and a former intellectual property and corporate law lawyer. She received her B.A. in history with honors, and her B.A. in Spanish with honors, in 1989 from the University of California, Santa Barbara and went on to get her law degree Cum Laude from the University of Maine School of Law. In her legal career, Samantha worked in government and the private sector, most notably in the financial planning and software industry. In her personal life, she’s been married for twenty years and has a fifteen year-old home schooled son. Samantha resigned from the bar in 2005 and has devoted herself to bridge writing (making complex ideas about space/time easy to understand for the average reader) ever since, focusing mostly on self-help articles for artists and writing bridge books on the side. In her words, “The first forty years of my life were fact finding; the next forty years are about applying, expanding and exploring what I’ve learned.” Her books can be found at samanthastandish.com. Samantha’s NWV blog is titled The Magical Life.

My Gift
by Nardine Neilson

I want to write
I want to share
I want to give
and show I care
my gift is special
and truly unique
and comes in words
with which I speak
to begin to tell you
of my tale
will lead me over
hill and dale
you see my message
is so simple
yet takes us inside
so many people
for inside is where
our journey begins
and as you’ll see
‘tis where it ends

A Dream, a Question, and a Promise
Chapter 1
by Pamela Gibson
copyright 2008

“The place is haunted,” the fireman said. “Hey, no joke, Pam.”

I transferred out of my dispatcher job at Hennessee Fire Department in 1992, but I stopped by now and then to “talk stories” with the old-timers. This was one such occasion, and the talk turned to the voices coming from Vic’s old bunkroom.

“Remember the wooden plaque that said, ‘In Memory of Victor E. Lazzarini’ that was nailed underneath those Wyland pictures Vic’s family donated to the station?” The fireman pointed to two large glass-covered, koa-framed whale and dolphin prints on the wall above the large-screen color TV. “Just before the inspection last November, somebody ripped the lamp off the wall in Vic’s bunkroom, above his old bunk, leaving some live wires sticking out of the wall.”

The firemen slept in four-man bunkrooms. Vic had slept in the first bed on the left; he insisted on it, so no one could block his way out of the door. Instantly awake from a dead sleep and faster than flames devouring kindling, Vic was a top notch firefighter. Seconds after I hit the buttons that turned on the bunkroom lights and toned out one wailing signal for an airfield emergency, Vic, already bunkered out in his silver suit, slammed the door of his ramp truck as he screech-wheeled it out of the station.

“That’s true,” another fireman piped in. “It was right before an inspection so there wasn’t time to install a new lamp. The station captain got the bright idea to cover the exposed wires with Vic’s plaque. Ever since, men swear they hear voices in the middle of the night. Cadman here refuses to sleep there anymore.”

“Got that right,” Cadman said, “I’m a Christian, and I never believed in ghosts before. But I was alone in the bunkroom when a voice woke me up saying, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ My skin crawled and I had this eerie feeling that the words came from someone right beside me. It happened again the next shift. Hey, somebody ought to come and bless this place.”

“Vic’s not at peace,” I thought. “It’s my fault.”

Vic was free spirited, courageous, funny, and handsome, with a heart as warm as glowing embers. He was patient, building up his strong, well-defined muscles using small weights and lots of reps; taping hundreds of record albums (he loved music) onto reel-to-reel tapes, many of which I still possess today. He was optimistic, looking on the “up” side of life, thinking he could tell his friend Jaaku the truth and be heard.

Sometime in the last six months of the three and a half years we worked together, I fell in love with Vic. I didn’t think he felt the same way. I didn’t dare tell him how I felt, because he hated being chased, because I was afraid of chasing him away, and because I was shy.

I kissed him once; on the cheek when I visited him in the hospital after he had nose surgery. He touched me once, on the morning before his death. He’d “moseyed on in”, as he was fond of saying, to the alarm room. “I heard someone looks mighty pretty today,” he said, crossing his arms across his blue fireman’s shirt. My heart pounded like a big brass drum. “I see it’s true.”

His energy was so high that morning, and we had a blast talking, laughing and joking. I was teasing him when his mood suddenly changed and he growled, “Look at the size of these hands.” Then he gently wrapped them around my neck, as if to choke me.

“Oh, Vic,” I said, flirting, happy to feel his warm touch. “You sent chills up and down my spine.” It wasn’t until months later that I understood what he was trying to tell me.

“Oh, stop it,” he said, gazing through the tiny back window of the alarm room at the crowded parking lot. Without another word, he strode out of the room, leaving me to wonder at his moodiness. I never saw him alive again.

He was my real-life hero. After his death in 1984, I made him a promise I didn’t keep until now, although All That Is knows I’d tried. First I wrote a novel (and rewrote it umpteen times) then a screenplay, neither of them good enough to be published. I was learning to write better (now I’m a professional freelancer) and I kept trying. I had to; I’d promised his spirit that I would not only tell the story about the triangle between him, me, and Jaaku, but would also get it published so that the world would know the truth.

This narrative is that promise fulfilled. Thank you, thank you, SNJ and All That Is, for making this possible. I was heavily into Seth in those days; the firemen used to tease me about reading Seth books instead of watching TV during slow times in the alarm room. When I told them that Seth was an energy essence no longer focused in physical form, it blew most of them right out the door.

Seth’s wisdom helped me navigate through these, the most treacherous waters of my life. This is a true story; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. This is Vic’s story, and mine.

On Valentine’s Day, 1984, after a heated argument, firefighter Jaaku Cordoza shot Vic Lazzarini dead. Four close-range shots from Jaaku’s .357 magnum blasted into Vic’s heavily-muscled body, caused Vic to fall backwards as he clutched at the ragged wound in his chest. Jaaku, probably shaking with rage and high on speed, continued shooting. The two remaining bullets missed Vic and shattered the concrete floor of Jaaku’s garage. Jaaku told the police he shot Vic in self-defense after Vic came at him with a gun.

Vic and Jaaku and I worked at the fire department on Hennessee Air Force Base, all of us civilians, me a dispatcher, them firefighters and best friends. We rented cheap apartments in Makiki, a run-down, crime-ridden district in the dry hills above Honolulu. I’d been to Vic’s studio twice. He’d played jazz and folk music on his reel-to-reel for me, cooked me hamburger helper goulash, beat me in checkers, and showed me his shoe box full of medals from Vietnam and work

Vic had champagne taste and the few possessions he possessed were of high quality. I admired his chandelier strung with tiny white shells and his ceramic, hanging aquarium shaped like a porthole. I wished he had equally fine taste in his male friends, and wondered what he saw in his spooky friend Jaaku.

Although the three of us lived within a couple of blocks of each other I didn’t know where Jaaku lived, only that his fourplex was somewhere on Thurston Avenue, up Ward Avenue and around the corner from me. I avoided his street; the risk of him spotting me and flagging me down was too great.

The day of the murder I showed up at the scene, ran there with Red, a fireman friend of Vic’s and mine. Red had been driving east on Thurston Avenue to his girlfriend Annie’s place when he spotted the police cordon surrounding Jaaku’s garage. A U-turn and a couple of blocks later Red was pounding on my door, rousing me out of the sleep I’d fallen into after working the midnight shift.

“Jaaku’s place is crawling with cops,” he said. The skin of his freckle-speckled face turned pasty white. “Vic’s truck’s inside the cordon. I didn’t want to go over there by myself.”

We ran, me thinking it must be a drug bust since Jaaku was such a druggie, always high or low on something, always trying to unload poor quality pot for primo prices at the fire station. A crowd bunched together underneath the shade of the monkey pod tree across the street from the cordoned-off garage and strained to see what the cops were doing in Jaaku’s garage. We ran to where a police lieutenant stood streetside of Vic’s truck.

The cop eyed us suspiciously when we told him we worked with Jaaku and Vic. Finally he told us there’d been an argument and one of them was shot dead.

“Which one?” I whispered, and tried to strangle the voice inside my head that already knew.

He didn’t answer.

Red asked, “Is it the man who drove the red truck?”

The cop nodded. “The other one claimed it was self defense, said the man came at him with a gun.”

“They were friends, Lieutenant,” Red said. “They hung out together.”

“It’s too bad that friends will fight, isn’t it?” the lieutenant said. “Would you two be willing to make a statement?”

“Vic’s dead,” I whispered. “Dead. Can he really be dead?”

I think I forgot to breath. I felt cold and numb and faint. Red wrapped a warm arm around my shoulder. “Oh God, Pam,” he said.

I tried to speak but only a whisper squeezed through my lips, “I’m scared of Jaaku, did you know?”

Red nodded, full of his own thoughts. I told the lieutenant, “Jaaku gets even with people if he thinks they’ve crossed him. Is he still around? Will he read what I write?”

“No, he’s in police custody, Ma’am.” He left to find a detective to take our statements.

I wrote about what a liar Jaaku was, and a thief and a thug. ”Don’t believe a word he says. Vic was a good man, free-spirited, honest and brave. I can’t believe he had a gun.” Red wrote something brief. Ambulance sirens wailed in the distance, first softly, then screaming.

“Coming for Vic’s body,” Red said.

We split, not wanting to be there when they scraped Vic’s body off the concrete. I hadn’t thought about his body, invisible to us inside the cordon, probably outlined in chalk. “Only his body, though,” I told Red, as we headed back to my apartment. My legs felt like granite. “His spirit’s probably hovering around, wondering, ‘What the hell happened?’ Oh, Red, our Vic is dead.”

“He liked you a lot, Pam,” Red said. “He told me so.”

I took comfort in Red’s words. He phoned the fire chief from my place and offered to stay for awhile but I told him no, go pick up Annie. He hugged me, said, “Get some sleep,” and then shot out the door. My tiny apartment felt as cold and hollow as Carlsbad cavern.

With deep desire and longing I prayed, “All That Is, You know Jaaku murdered Vic. Oh, please tell me what the argument was about.” I hoped for a dream, one of those magical mindscapes I’ve trained myself to remember by forcing myself awake so I can scribble them down before they vanish like morning mist in sunlight. I woo my dreams like a suitor his sweetheart because they sometimes cast light on things to come or propel me into expanded states of awareness beyond my halting words to describe. I plopped down on my futon and immediately fell into a dreamless sleep.

When I woke up it was night and nearly as black as Jaaku’s heart, the darkness alleviated only by a dim yellow light from a bulb dangling above the outside walkway. My fingertips felt numb as I pulled myself onto the couch where I sat as still as a statue in the dark. Sudden loud footsteps on the concrete stairs leading up to my second story apartment and tall shadows on the drawn curtains beside my front door made me freeze. I waited silently, terrified, and hoped the shadows would go away. They didn’t. Jaaku’s criminal connections? How did they find out what I’d said so quickly? Except for my hammer heart, the silence dragged on. Somehow I summoned the courage to say, “Is somebody there?”

“Police!” said an authoritative voice.

I opened the door to two men in black suits. A tall, lean detective shook my hand. “Jeff Yamaguchi,” he said. “And this is Andy Ledbetter. Call us Jeff and Andy.” Andy was short and fat and I thought, Mutt and Jeff. They squeezed past me and their big bodies filled my closet of a living room. For the moment, I felt safe because The Man was here.

I answered Andy’s questions about why I showed up at the scene and watched Jeff’s gray eyes scan my statement. “Four shots to the body at close range,” Jeff hissed. “I’ve never seen anything like it! With that kind of rage, the man’s a menace.”

“Spooky, I know,” I shivered. “I’ve been afraid for three and a half years.”

“Isn’t that long enough to be afraid, Pam?” Jeff said. “You can’t live like that.”

But I have been living like that, I thought. Fear and Jaaku went hand in hand, but I knew how to handle him. Watch your back. Pay close attention to his tall tales and sadistic stories, act like you’re impressed and believe every word. Otherwise he’ll think you’re an enemy trying to “cross” him and he’ll get “even” in nasty ways. Yeah, I thought I had Jaaku under control.

Jeff asked me if Vic or Jaaku had girlfriends or dated anyone at the station. I said I didn’t know about Jaaku, though I couldn’t imagine that anyone would like him, but that Vic and I went out on a double date. I told Jeff I’d been over to Vic’s place twice, once when we’d met there for our date—Vic and I, Red and Annie. And once when I brought him a potted plant I’d given him as a present in the hospital after his nose surgery.

“Cool plant, Snake,” he’d said. “Snake” was his nickname for me, because he said I slithered like a snake, so limber was I from the yoga I taught and practiced. “But I rode my bike here…would you mind dropping it by my pad in a couple of weeks?” I told him “sure” and smiled inwardly at the thought of having an excuse to drop by his pad without seeming like I was chasing him.

“You and Vic were just friends, then? Not boyfriend, girlfriend?” Jeff asked.

“Just friends,” I said. I’d hoped for more after my boyfriend Abe split the prior summer, in July 1983. It was a hard breakup for me. I was in denial that Abe’s and my relationship of eight years was in its death throes months before he moved to the Big Island to get in touch, he said, with his Hawaiian roots. At first I told only close women friends about our breakup, but a few months later, after swearing him to secrecy, I confided in Vic that Abe was gone for good.

To explain Abe’s absence from fire department get-togethers, I’d put out the story that he was temporarily working on the Big Island, in construction, to make money to bring home to me. Spreading the lie was partly a way to avoid having to spar with the guys at work who thought a single woman without a man was fair game. Mostly, though, it was a way to protect myself from Jaaku, who’d met Abe and knew he would kick Jaaku’s ass if he bothered me.

Over the course of three and a half years of working together, Vic and I became close friends. I felt flattered that he’d seek me out to talk to when he needed to unwind after a particularly gruesome emergency, and I enjoyed swapping jokes and life stories with him into the wee hours of the night. His positive attitude, high energy and generous nature absolutely enchanted me, and I often wished Abe was less morose and more like Vic. But then again, I’d remind myself, Abe doesn’t have a spooky friend like Jaaku. I felt grateful for that.

Vic was also my bulwark against the male chauvinism I occasionally butted my head against in our all-male workplace. It was rare for a macho fireman to get overly rude or suggestive with me because the guys knew muscular, six foot three inch Vic and I were tight and he looked out for me.

Vic cracked me up with his droll, slow humor, jokes and funny faces (which I hoped he practiced for me.) Inside Vic the big body builder lived a boy who loved to play, and I adored man and boy and counted the hours before work on the days Vic worked. That I couldn’t tolerate his buddy Jaaku was no secret to Vic. After all, we were confidants who talked about anything and everything except the mountain-sized crush I developed on him after Abe and I split up.

Vic and Jaaku—so different, yet they were friends. I’ll never understand why. Perhaps Vic simply didn’t recognize the sinister side of his so-called friend because Jaaku’s backstabbing nature was foreign to straight-ahead Vic. Late at night while the firemen slept, Jaaku prowled around the station under cover of darkness, stealing money from wallets left in pockets and unlocked lockers. He ripped off every thing he could get his stubby fingers on. One night he and some low-lifers he knew ripped off the station TV and VCR from the training room and loaded the goods into a brown VW van which, Jaaku claimed, belonged to his Mafia hoodlum pals.

Certainly Vic wasn’t afraid of Jaaku physically, since he was so much bigger and stronger. Sometimes the two friends would fight, once over a defective camera Jaaku sold Vic. They argued in the station garage, Vic demanding his money back, Jaaku losing his short-fused temper and throwing blows. Vic held him at arms’ length, out of hitting distance, and bystanders remarked that Jaaku looked like a fat-bellied clown, punching and missing.

Later Jaaku swore to his bunkmate Boats, “Vic’s a big guy but one day I gonna cut him down to size. You watch. One day.”

Boats, terrified though he was of Jaaku and his bad-ass friends, said, “Don’t say that, man. Don’t even think it. Vic’s your friend.”

Jaaku, ever the liar, said, “Yeah, you right, man. I sorry, eh? I never mean no’ting.”

I imagine Vic thought Jaaku’s tall tales and threats were funny rather than dangerous, lies rather than truth. Perhaps shy Vic enjoyed the way extroverted Jaaku drew a crowd with his bravado and exaggerated pantomimes. Jaaku acted out episodes from his ‘Nam days, such heroic acts as single-handedly squelching fires by whipping an enormous hose back and forth across the deck of a Navy aircraft carrier while water spewed from the hose with a loud “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!” sound. He’d act out ducking enemy bombs raining on the deck and exploding “Boosh! Boosh! Boosh!” the impact knocking him down for a brief moment before he sprang to his feet and resumed saving the day. Later I found out he’d never even been to Vietnam.

Jaaku, with his blatant “fuck you” attitude toward authority, probably appealed to the outlaw in independent Vic. Unlike most of us who only imagine retaliating against a supervisor who’s messed with us, Jaaku didn’t hesitate to take action as long as he could do it behind someone’s back. Since he refused to take responsibility for his actions and blamed others for his failures, Jaaku was continually figuring out ways to “get even” with offenders.

One night when Jaaku and Vic and I “talked story” in the alarm room, Jaaku acted out cutting the brake lines of Assistant Chief Henderson who’d nixed his promotion. Later, when I confided in Henderson that Jaaku was the culprit, he shook his head.

“Naah, it was my stepson Maurice,” Henderson said, “when he was hooked on ice and angry with me for making him go to drug counseling.”

Like most of us at the station, Henderson knew Jaaku was a liar and attention hound. No wonder he thought Jaaku was claiming responsibility just to grab the limelight.

Be sure to check out next month's Sethnet Journal for Chapter 2 of A Dream, a Question, and a Promise.

About Pamela:
Pam, a former English major and present civil servant, has lived in Hawai'i since 1973. She started out writing fiction, and had three short stories and six poems published. Dubbed "The Poet Laureate" by coworkers, she's scribed dozens of personalized verses for special occasions for them, for friends, and for family. A part-time freelance writer of non-fiction freelance articles since 1990, she's written well over 100 articles for small local magazines. Last year, she set her sights on bigger markets, and two regional magazines, Honolulu and Island Scene, published her articles "Bullied" and "Hawai'i Parents Speak Out About Healthy Food Choices." She is also a lyricist; five of her songs are published on CDs (check out her songwriting website at www.SongU.com/members/pgibson ) Pam welcomes feedback about "A Dream, A Question, and A Promise." Please email her at lyricpam1@yahoo.com.

The Garden of Life
by Barbara Zielger

The moonlight dances upon my skin
Reaching a place I have never been
My toes clinging to the damp felt grass
The tunnel of memories ceases to pass.

All time is now…and so life is but still
Connected to all…hear the joyful trill
With quiet peace and soft tranquility
Hums a song charged with electricity.

The world forever endlessly changing
Many sown seeds found newly germinating
Enter the passage of life’s fullest blooming
Ending their cycles with a contented withering.

While others still find they can only hide
Not far from those fallen by the wayside
A place of fertile ground they sadly bide
Awaiting the wash of a more bountiful tide.

Their promise of potential they never do meet
Never flowering…placing their roots as defeat
Basking in countless worries of dread and lament
Remaining unable to be happy…content.

We must help to replant those who never did sprout
How to be a flower in the sun with no doubt
Nor worrying when the rain will fall from above
Watering their spirits with kindness and love.

Barbara Ziegler
April 30, 2006

The Contrary Self Part 3: The Contrary Self and the Shadow Self
a Rose Channeling by Joanne Helfrich

Excerpted from Session 118, August 12, 2007 (click here for PDF version)

This is a continuation of the series… see also:

The Contrary Self Part 1: Wonderful, Wondering Ways… and Wolves!
The Contrary Self Part 2: Dialog with Your Most Loving, Intimate Self

The contrary self, while allowing a sense of purpose to your lives, would also be considered a many faceted spirit guide, as would your essences, and the contrary self would be considered essence in many ways. But the contrary self is often suppressed in ways that would be considered unhealthy to the point of finding a great disastrous way. For your contrary self needs expression, and without that, you will find your shadow.

The Shadow

Take your Nazi Germany example for a moment. As we have expressed, the way your contrary self would have forestalled an event such as the Holocaust would have involved the enlightenment of individuals with regard to their truest expressions of the contrary self. But when the contrary expressions were denied fulfillment, the shadow began to be projected upon themselves as well as others in ways that were increasingly detrimental to the health of the country. Indeed, the country itself began to project its shadow on the world.

We would like to explain a bit more about the shadow in terms of the negative effects that the shadow will allow in order to examine the truth of your own selves, for when the shadow goes unchecked, disastrous things occur. There are many forms of disastrous events, including events that would be considered saccharine to the extreme, for shadow will use both sides of the coin of duplicity in order to allow expressions of unintentionality.

The way you would think of unintentionality is that some expressions will be more intentional than others, intentional in your sense of alignment in your natural ways of communicating with essence. In this, you would do well to become most intentional beings, and you would consider some things you do as unintentional when you don’t follow your way of spirit: in the way you summon your strength in situations that will request that you be contrary, of inviting intuition, in many ways, in being your whole self. When you are unintentional, you do the opposite and only find suffering. In this, unintentionality would be considered a contradiction, and you’ll do well to embrace contradiction, for while there is no harm in believing that some things will not beautifully create themselves in your image of godhood, in many respects that’s what we suggest you do when you don’t follow your way of spirit: you create your reality intentionally unintentionally, and you’ll find this is both the best and worst you have to offer. In unintentionality, you can understand how we suggest you might do both, as all things are intentional in some respects, but in unintentionality you will find that you could do better.

When you intentionally allow your expressions to freely express themselves—intentionally allowing the contrary self’s incitement of expressions to flourish—then intentional acts are brought into being. When the contrary self is stifled, the shadow will always find other ways to express itself, and does so in ways that would be considered evil, for there would indeed be more suitable means for expression. By evil, we will suggest that Elias’ definition is what we’ll use: the absence of compassion. Evil, in other words, doesn’t exist in an absolute sense, but the evil you fear in your human beings is the evil you sense in yourselves. In this, you’d do well to find your compassion, therefore, in order to project only the best you have to offer. In this, you’ll find your compassion will prove to be a most beautiful thing.

The way your shadows project themselves onto the world intentionally allows for expressions that would be considered unintentional and therefore submoral in many ways, some ways more than others. The many indications of shadow projections include the Holocaust in the way that the shadow was projected onto individuals who only wanted to express their own ways. In the way the Nazi party came to power, there were many opportunities, as we said, to intentionally only allow healthy expressions of power, but the projections onto the Jewish people were a misrepresentation of the projection of goodness that would have occurred if the contrary selves were adequately intervening on the behalf of right, moral projections of goodness. By “goodness,” we will use Elias’s definition of evil as a basis: goodness is compassion, and compassion is the love of the universe translated in human ways and means, and indicative of the ways of All-That-Is. The way that you can think of compassion is as a gift of All-That-Is, always. It is the way the world translates absolute love into things it can use. In this, compassion is the best form of love, indeed, in the world.

In the terms of your Holocaust, the shadow projections, when carried through, inducted a massive exercise in shadow projection that took on an element of self-propelled intentionality that was intentional only in the respect that it began as a moral expression that needed a place in the world. In other words, while the Holocaust was a moral interest in other ways—in the German peoples’ desire to do the right things they would need to in order to exist in the world as productive citizens—the thing itself was indeed immoral, as we suggested, and was the result of an interplay of both the shadow of internal strife and shadow hugging, as the shadows that projected themselves onto the Jewish individuals were both those that wanted to indeed allow for the Jewish people’s demise and those that wanted to be the same, in some ways, as the Jewish people. We will explain.

The way the shadow would intentionally allow an act such as the Holocaust would be intentional, in some respects, as there was a corrective action required. When your Hitler rose to power, the way of spirit was squelched in fear, for Germany was in a state of grief over the results of World War I. The war was justified in many ways, but the German people were in many ways producing only grief and loss, for their ways would forever be changed. They would not find another means, whenever they had conflict, to solve the conflict in productive ways, as their legitimate realizations of productive reasoning were finding deaf ears in terms of political world leaders.

The German people, therefore, as a whole felt that they only had themselves, which was in some respects true, but instead of reaching out to other countries, they turned inward and only allowed themselves to count on themselves. The turning in, in many ways, created the multitudinous projection of “their culture only” into the world, for they would not finish what they started, in some ways, by reaching into their hearts in order to find themselves interacting in the world in productive and valuable ways.

The contrary selves—wherever the way of spirit was intuited—told them to trust the outside world again, but was indeed not always listened to or heeded, and therefore they did not follow, in many respects, as a whole. There were individuals who spoke for justice and reason, so there were individuals who did allow their contrary expressions, but on the whole, Germany did not. We suggest that when the German people finally got a leader like Hitler, their shadows were sufficiently stifled in order to project onto him the isolation that their contrary selves tried to produce otherwise, but no one listened. The shadows were therefore projected onto whoever it was that they could project upon, including Hitler himself, as a means to project the self that they imagined they were, but in reality were not.

This shadow hugging was another wayward projection of the German people. When a person hardly knows themselves internally, and would therefore find whatever many splendored means to build themselves up in ways that make them feel good, then you have shadow hugging. Shadow hugging was indeed very much at work in Hitler’s Germany, and was intentional in some respects, as the hugging would order the world in ways that needed to happen. So while the individual projections of shadow hugging proceeding in this way produced realities such as Hitler’s that would indeed wreak havoc on the world, there are also ways in which the attention would serve, in some respects, the world. So we are not saying that the internal proceedings of the individuals or Hitler were healthy at all, we are saying that in many ways what happened was indeed intentional in ways that we would interest you in at another time. For now we will say that the intentionality of the projection was intentional as well as unintentional. We will explain.

The unintentionality was a result of the proceedings in which a Hitler is created: in the stifling of individual expressions of goodness. When your Hitlers produce holocausts, there would be ways to stop them internally in their cultures; however, there will be so much shadow of internal strife and shadow hugging projections that the wolf contrary selves will be in danger when they speak up. When you are an oppressed people, the way of spirit finds other ways to care for itself. The shadow projections proceed with vigor, so there would be a culture of shadow projections in every soldier in every regime.

We wanted to comment first on the reality of the shadow hugging, as it is as potentially harmful as your shadow of internal strife. The contrary self would indeed make the world a better place, therefore, with either, but we want to stress that shadow hugging would interest you more, for you would see that the shadow hugging is just as insidious as the shadow of internal strife.

Trust in the contrary self

The shadow of internal strife was created by your Dream Walkers to allow you a means to intuit the way you find yourself in any given situation. The internal strife that you feel will always, and we would like to underline the word always, find a means to project the internal strife onto another individual. We suggest that entire nations project their internal strife onto other nations, as you’ve read in the portion about Germany that we have discussed already. The way your internal strife projections occur will not seem interesting to you, but you will notice the way you do this is constantly. We would like to underline your word constantly as well, for your internal strife will indeed always find interesting ways to make itself known, interesting ways of making the ways of spirit interest others, for your shadow self will allow you projections of internal strife any way you’d like for them to occur.

When you want to call attention to your internal strife, simply allow yourself a means to project onto someone what you’re thinking. When you allow yourself to be mean for no reason, when you shout at the television, when you are allowing a many splendored rant, we suggest that your shadow of internal strife will indeed be telling you that you have something to attend to. When you have a means to allow yourself a break, when you have a chance to find a quiet place to meditate, we will interest you in finding the reason for your displeasure with others, for all your displeasure of the many individuals—and other animals, and other nations, and the many reasons you have for really letting loose on someone—the way you would indeed find satisfaction is in looking at your shadow projections. When you want to find solitude, the contrary self will assist, for the contrary self, as we said, will beautifully help you to notice and accept your flaws. The shadow will be your way of finding your contrary self in need of assisting you, for your contrary self will take you by the hand and assist in your removal or lessening of your shadow.

Your contrary self has been around since before you were born, and when you would find a means to connect, we suggest you would find this to be true. For your contrary self is intentional in the respect that the contrary self was created to remind you of your intention in life, and would interest you in ways to allow your excellent intentions to flourish. The contrary self therefore wants to assist you, so we trust you will avail yourself in this brief exercise.

Take a moment to grant a most forgiving way of being to yourself and others. The way you might go about the way of forgiving would be to forgive yourself of something. Weaning yourself of your need to be any certain way would be a great place to start, for you have so many expectations for yourselves, some productive and some not productive with regard to following your intent. We suggest that you let go of your expectations of how you’re supposed to be at any given time and see what happens, for your forgiveness of yourself for your perceived shortcomings will always be the best shadow practice. We suggest that your contrary self heartily agrees, for remember, the contrary self wants only your happiness.

Imagine a friend in the contrary self, there to point out the many foibles of your human existence—your fumblings, your pimples, your forgetfulness, your many realizations of silliness—for that’s the human experience, not existing on a mountaintop with the sum of the world’s wisdom. The experiences you have will indeed always be fraught with the silliest, most ridiculous things in life, so trust that these are intentional—these are the stuff of life—and allow your spirit to thrive in the knowledge that you are loved no matter how ridiculous your life may seem. We trust that you will allow yourself a good laugh with your contrary self from time to time, and trust the way of spirit, for the contrary self knows. For when you decline the services of your contrary self, you would do well to pay attention to the projections of shadow we suggest will be forthcoming.

Which shadow is which?

The way you would know what shadow projection you are partaking in would be to imagine a place of beauty. We suggest that into the place of beauty walks an individual. Who will this be? Who will walk into your most perfect world? How will you respond? Will you respond with loving words? Will you respond with hating words? We suggest that the individual that lives in your perfect world would indeed tell you much about your shadow, so trust that your response will indicate whether you are shadow hugging or projecting your shadow of internal strife, for your shadows will indicate a need in you that needs to be addressed.

For example, when your president of your United States walks into your world, what would you say to him? We suggest that the way you would indicate to yourself what shadow you’re projecting has to do with your contrary self and the need to listen. If you are finding words of loving kindness, then your contrary self would be indeed doing his job. We suggest that your words might be introducing your personal views of how he could do better, and the way you would do this would be through your intuition on how to approach a subject like this in ways that were both loving and constructive. The way you would know that you are projecting your shadow of internal strife would indeed be simple: are you allowing yourself to treat him with disrespect and resentment? If so, why would you treat another individual like this? We suggest that there are ways to express resentment, but not in hateful ways, for the way of spirit will not be hateful. The way of spirit would always trust itself to say the right things, not interest itself in saying the wrong things. So why would you spit hatred at this individual? We suggest that your contrary self will allow you to address the things that make you project your inner strife, so trust that your contrary self will often point things like this out to you in the effort to help you realize where you need to trust and love yourself more.

When you would be hugging the president in an act of shadow hugging, you would be hanging on every word, allowing yourself to distrust what you would have to say, allowing yourself to not speak up on a variety of important issues that we suggest you’d want to speak up about, and allowing yourself to generally bask in the glow of this individual. We suggest that you would think that his shit doesn’t stink as well, so you’re familiar with the ridiculousness of this idea, and we suggest that the president's shit does indeed stink, so watch out, he may fart in your general direction so as to prove the point. And what would you say? Oh, dear president, how lovely your gas smells today?

We trust you would share a good laugh about it, and that would exactly be the contrary self at work in productive ways, trusting you to realize the fullest expression of your humanity, allowing for the warts and wars and all to express, in your terms, the most reality you can stand at any time, for what else would you do in this situation? We suggest that your ways of spirit would allow you a good laugh at all times, for your ways of spirit would interest even the most serious of individuals in ways that are good for you. So trust that your laughter would indeed be the music of the gods, and trust yourself to laugh more, for that’s a wonderful way to express your innermost spirituality.

The way of spirit, therefore, would always be your way if indeed you were able to allow a righteous way in the world: righteous in the respect that you have a right to exist, you have a right to express yourself in ways that are aligned with your beautiful intents, you have a right to express your points of view no matter how interested or right your other individuals think they are. We suggest that your righteousness extends to even the most indicative of reality ways that your fearless leaders interest themselves in, so you can trust that your leaders also need a good swat on the behind sometimes. We suggest that any situation in which you would find yourself fearful is a good indicator of how your contrary self would be trying to impress upon you your interest in your expressions of contrariness, so trust that your contrary self will indeed point the way if you would only listen. We trust you will.

Love,
Rose

Free Above the Fields
by Patrice Raplee

I dreamed that I was a white bird flying free above the fields.
I could see in any direction; there was no past, there was no future, there was only the spacious present in which I existed.
Gliding on the currents, I felt the change of my destiny rise and fall below me, neither bad nor good,
a tapestry of creation like the landscape I soared.

I sensed myself a part of all there is; I sensed my unique place within it.
I knew that I would never be lost in but would always be a part of all that is.
My joy in the knowledge filled me with a peace so complete that I radiated my love to all that is, and all that has been and ever will be.
I heard someone gently call my name, I flew toward the voice,
I flew toward home.

Announcements, Links and Shopping

Online Energy Games

Join Dale Evans each Tuesday 4-5 p.m. (Eastern) on Yahoo Instant Messenger for Group Energy Games. Connect with IntuitiveFacilitator on Yahoo IM for an hour of energy fun and games.
Free and open to the public.

Dale Evans is an Intuitive & Psychic Coach and Energy Worker who has been studying, teaching, and exploring metaphysical phenomena for over 40 years. Her teachings incorporate direct personal experience in order to foster and nurture self-acceptance and trust in one's natural abilities. Dale is also a published poet, newspaper reporter, and freelance journalist whose work is seen in print and on various websites, e-zines and online journals. Visit her website at www.ItAllBeginsNow.com.

Explore the works of Visionary Artist Shirley Hadley!

The photographs you see below were created by Shirley in her studio, and not through electronic manipulation. Each photo is available in 5x7 or 8x10 and includes a poem that goes with the photo.

Entrance to Awareness
The journey of the self is
to see without using your eyes
to hear but not with your ears.
Listen to your inner voice, it will lead you
to an awareness of new ways to view your
selves and the world you live in.

New from Sharon Hackleman, author of Marion the Magnet



MIND TIME CARDS

"Mind Time Cards are a deck of 31 inspiring positive daily affirmations created by Sharon Hackleman and illustrated by Jessica Glickman. The SOUL purpose of creating the Mind Time Cards is to teach teens about the magical powers of positive thought and the importance of feeling good about themselves-
Spirit, Mind, and Body!

$9.95
FREE SHIPPING
when ordered on mindtimecards.com

"We are all connected...intertwined...by a universal energy so divine." - Sharon Hackleman

Sethworld - A board game based on the Seth Material

Explore your beliefs! Stretch your imagination! Delve into your dreams! Challenge your creativity!

Seven years in the making, I am so pleased to be able to offer you SethWorld - The Game of All That Is! SethWorld is a totally unique game, the first metaphysical board game based on the Seth material - maybe the first metaphysical board game, ever! It is designed to explore and uncover beliefs while having fun. There are no winners, no losers, and NO RULES! A 24-page pamphlet included with the game gives a probable framework for play, 6 sample "moves," and a glossary of 61 concepts.

SethWorld -- You've never played anything like it!

WHAT A COINCIDENCE Understanding Synchronicity In Everyday Life
by Susan M Watkins

Overview:

What if all those seemingly insignificant little What a coincidence! moments you've experienced were actually connected, were part of a larger, more complex coincidence story?

What if they were hinting at something very personal and important about yourself—and about the workings of human consciousness?

Would you listen?

Susan Watkins does. For more than 35 years she's been documenting and studying the coincidences that have happened in her life. What she's discovered is that seemingly simple coincidences—thinking of an old friend and their calling seconds later, for example—are often pieces of larger, more complex and meaningful "coincidence clusters."

A former newspaper reporter and the author of five books, Watkins has always been intrigued by coincidences—what they mean in our everyday lives, and in the grander scheme of things. What, she asks, do these coincidence clusters say about human consciousness and human connection? In What a Coincidence! she presents coincidence clusters that are utterly astounding. What they reveal is life- altering.

What a Coincidence! is an exciting, groundbreaking journey. Along the way Watkins offers profound insights as well as practical pointers on how to become aware of the coincidence clusters in our own lives. She also shows us how to document coincidences so that we, too, can reap their valuable rewards. We'll never brush off those What a Coincidence! moments again.

Conscious Creation Links – Conscious Creation Publishers, Book Stores, Websites, Journals, Newsletters, Mailing Lists, Message Boards, and more.

The Elias forum - website by Paul & Joanne Helfrich contains an expansion of many of the conscious creation concepts introduced by Seth/Jane Roberts, channeled by Mary Ennis.

What if the Seth material was a foundation to be expanded later by other channeled sources? Can any perennial source ever be considered complete AND infallible?

Seth readers will want to check out:
Introduction & Overview
A Seth, Elias Comparative Overview (Updated!)
Digest: Seth, Jane Roberts

In The Rose Garden - a blog by Joanne Helfrich who channels the essence of Rose as mentioned in the Elias forum.

The Kris Chronicles - an expansion of many of the conscious creation concepts introduced by Seth/Jane Roberts, channeled by Serge Grandbois.

A Kris, Seth, Elias Comparative Overview (Updated!) - a preliminary comparison of core concepts in the Seth material, information offered by Elias, and Kris Chronicles

Otherfocus.com the personal website of Donald R. Johnson

Explore the creative worlds of John McNally and Kristen Fox Cofounders of the Conscious Creation Website and Email group John and Kristen share interests in writing, art, photography and cooking which they explore on a variety of websites:

John and Kristen's new Green blog: It Should Be Easy Being Green
Intuitive Astrology site: Psychic Weather
Writing: Mind Altering Fiction
Photography: Telepathicfrog
Cooking: Food Follies
Shop: Telepathic Frog Designs
Shop Powered By Tshirts

Kristen's weblog: FoxVox
Art & Photo Gallery: Art of FoxVox
Art & Photo Prints: Deviant Art
T Shirt Reviews Tshirt Casserole