the other side

Where I live, with winter comes long nights, days where it's often too cold outside for more than what is necessary. Winter is the time for fires in the fireplace, lots of candles, but also for reading, thinking, planning-- okay holidays too but because of the nature of those holidays (Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Christmas, New Years, Epiphany, Imbolc, Kwanzaa), it is a prime time to contemplate spiritual truths.

If we look toward religions for our answer to the other side, to what life is all about, most of them will tell us. They teach what we must do to assure rewards or safety. They give rules intended to protect us from consequences. Different religions, however, do not agree on what any of this is.

My personal belief is that we can only know spiritual truth through our own experience. If we depend on others, it will be their truth and second-hand. Whether someone had a near death experience, whether they received a vision, whether they studied their entire life, they are in the flesh and telling only what they know. Why trust them for this when we can experience the supernatural for ourselves?

This is one of the tasks that I believe can beneficially be part of the winter season of our lives. Those of us fortunate enough to live to our last third or fourth of a full lifespan (depending on genetic inheritance) have the time and are more open to doing it than at any time before. Children are raised, often we are retired, some of the physical activities that may have encompassed earlier years are not so easy to do.

Spiritual exploration is one of the pluses to old age. We can do this many ways, but I don't believe substituting someone else's experiences for our own will make us strong, will empower us, will make us confident when it comes our time to face death. That comes from building up our own set of personal experiences with using the power and strength that comes through spiritual connection.

From the time I was a child, I have felt the other side and believed that to be god. This was not due to church as I was not raised in any religion. I just felt the presence-- not as in voices or messages but just felt it with me-- always with me.

When I was a small child, my parents were concerned because I had an imaginary playmate who I had named. Since I grew up in the country, on a hill at the end of a road, I had a lot of time by myself, sitting up in trees, exploring the nearby woods. It was a fairly solitary life without physical friends living nearby. Today, I don't remember that invisible playmate; so can't say what it was; but I don't doubt I saw something or someone and that eventually I learned I should not and quit seeing them.

We are a culture of pew sitting, listening to sermons, working in soup kitchens, going to potlucks as our interpretation of what spirituality means. The kind of power that came to an Apache youth who would run through the desert barefoot, with a mouthful of water that he was not to swallow, the kind of power that comes from sweat lodges, from fasting, from spirit quests, it isn't nearly as common in our culture. It could have been. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert to come into his power. Where did we lose the idea that we have to do anything ourselves to connect to the other side-- which by the way may well be inside us, but the inside us where we don't listen or trust.

Trying to understand what is, to incorporate what it was I felt with what it was I should do, I have done a lot of exploring religions. I have studied most of the major ones except Islam, some in more depth than others, and lived many years as a practicing Catholic and then Evangelical.

Fortunately for the woman I am now, I didn't have the view that something had to be true or not and have been open all my life to what might be. I am willing to discard a system of belief when I come to believe it does not fit. Frankly I consider that to be one of my best qualities-- being open and able to take on new beliefs when I see something doesn't work (okay--with a few exceptions).

When I was still in that evangelical church, which was becoming more and more fundamentalist, I began to question what was spiritual power and can we connect to the other side more directly-- perhaps as I did as a child and then lost. A free-wheeling quest did not fit with that particular church and was a factor in leaving it. For many churches, the pastor is the sole authority; and if we do not stay under him (in that church, no woman could be a pastor), we should go.

When I began my own questioning years, it was by first opening myself to fully feeling, something I had protectively closed down for years. That led to dreaming intense, very symbolic dreams where later the meaning of the images and events would become clear. When you dream a dream, and it takes on your own life meaning, it is a gift because it's not something you can make happen-- other than by being open and giving yourself time in the mornings to see if you received anything new.

I also did meditative regressions (retrieving past life memories) to see if I had past lives and to figure out what my soul history was, to understand something I was going through. Whether those stories were historic events or allegorical, my regressions were reinforced by later actual experiences.

What came along, with all of that, were times of synchronicity or serendipity-- people, events, books, music, or experiences coming when I most needed them. Just as we build trust in human relationship, through time with someone, through experiences, so too does the spiritual world work. Then, when we get doubts, which are human nature, we have those repeated experiences to hold onto, to remember. They build on each other. They are what push the doubts aside-- eventually to disappear.

All of that has let me know for myself that there is something on the other side with which we can connect. I have things I cannot possibly explain any other way. I do not try label what that is, nor do I believe there is only one way to find it, but I have confidence it is there for me to help, guide, direct, encourage, and sometimes turn me around.

As you read this, you cannot know any of what I just said is true. For that, you need to have your own experiences. If you already have, and they match mine, you and I will believe we are both on the right path, if maybe at different places along it. If you have not, you might think I am nuts-- at one time might have suggested, as a heretic, that burning at the stake was the right course of action. Fortunately we are past that time... for now anyway.

After mentioning Tarot in an earlier blog, I decided to select a card as an example of how synchronicity can work in Tarot. I shuffled, cut and told myself to have faith I would get one card to illustrate what I have been hoping to share in this essay. Except as I began to shuffle, I had one card select itself. By select, I mean it slid out of place. From experience with such things, I set it aside and chose another in the method I had planned.

When I turned them both over, I saw that the self-selected card was the Ace of Wands which means gift from the Universe. It means a divine gift bestowed through human hands and indicates a facet of the universe sympathetic to the human condition. It represents the beginning of everything, the spark of life, the gift of inspiration, of action, passion, courage. This illumination from the heavens is the start of all our ideas and projects. This card represents connection to the higher planes. Can you imagine a card more apropos?

And the card I drew, the one I planned-- I have gotten it several times recently; so it's for me, all right. The Queen of Wands holds her wand calmly in a protective fashion in front of the pillar. She is not only ready for action, but actively scanning the horizon.

It means the person's passion is contained but ready to burst out at any minute and seeking an outlet for their energy. Oh yeah, and watch out for ego getting the best of you and thinking you can do it all.

Since I have an ironic sense of humor, I see that as humorous-- like don't plan these things too much as somebody else is at work on what will happen. In my life, I set my plans in motion but am always open to the card that might be slipped into the mix. In this case, it illustrated my point.

I believe Tarot works because our soul is not our brain. Our higher soul is helping us as are spirit guides, and perhaps even those loved ones who have gone across already. Exercises, like Tarot, prayer, meditation, etc., help us see this isn't all there is. This is not a biological world alone.

We, even without a guru, psychic or clergyman, can connect with the other side-- when we put in the time and are not afraid of what we might find. There is nothing wrong with having earthly teachers and mentors. They can help in warning us of pitfalls, in explaining what they have experienced; but in terms of building confidence on what is over there, they are no substitute for our own experiences.

I don't know what happens to us after death. It is not because I haven't put in the time to try and figure it out, but I simply haven't been able to know it. I have some theories. What I do know is it's not just us in this.

Perhaps we get information when we need it. Recently, with the planets (Mars in particular) combining to put out so much antagonistic stress, it's the daily help I have needed most anyway, boy do I!