Saturday, November 17, 2007

Pets in the Afterlife

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Don't forget to do some of your Christmas shopping on my website at www.pmhatwater.com. For the first time, I now have an Online Bookstore and can fill the orders of wonderful people such as yourself, worldwide. It is set up for credit card purchases, too, through PayPal. Check in from time to time on my website, as I soon will be able to offer several DVDs done of talks I have given during 2007. If you haven't signed up to be on the mailing list for announcements from the website, please do. You can do that right from the site at the end of the Home Page.

Thanksgiving is soon upon us followed by Christmas and New Year's Eve. These celebrations are holy and sacred to most of us, and bring us together in special ways. Perhaps the tight money markets and challenging financial picture we are now faced with is a good thing. I mean that in the sense that this year few will have the funds to buy as before. Small gifts will have more meaning. We will all have to cut back some, many of us quite a bit. The days of deficit spending are coming to a close. What we are experiencing this fall is only a taste of what may be headed our way by next November, 2008. The good part is we can at last spend more time with each other, visit, play, cuddle up as we remember good memories and share precious moments. When was the last time you spoke of your own spiritual path or the concerns of your heart with friends and family? How about lively discussions as per certain videos or books or DVDs that offer us a new and better view, solutions instead of serial murders and mayhem. I don't know about you, but I've found a derth of good movies in 2007. Too much violence, even on television. I won't go to such movies, nor will I view them in my living room. An exception was the movie "Amazing Grace." If you missed it, hunt around. The movie is a true story that is unusually uplifting and may spark a lot of conversation and comments.

I am as busy as most of us are. So I am taking this moment in time to send you all good wishes and many blessings for the coming tide of wonder. When I remember my 70th birthday spent high in the sky aboard a hot-air balloon, I am filled with joy - the joy of living each moment as fully as I can. It is this joy I send you for the holidays. I know it will bring a smile to your face and lighten your steps. Happy Holidays! PMH


QUESTION:

"I am so confused. I really feel that I have all the signs that the afterlife is real; I feel that I was becoming very close to my true beliefs. Then my mother tells me, because I believe in Christ, that I should know that talking with the dead, and any other beliefs other than what is written in the Bible is not going to get me to heaven.

"She feels that articles and books of the spiritual realm and veil, are the devil's way of enticing me away from God and into evil.

"I have other friends tell me that I am looney, and need psychiatric help. Other friends tell me that I am believing in a fantasy, that thinking that we can travel through space and reach other dimensions and we will see the people we loved who have died, is just nonsense - that they thought I was smarter than that. They say that I am letting my imagination run away from me. I think my mother feels that I am doomed to hell. My friends say that faith is just for people to believe in something when someone they love dies, to give them hope. Nothing else. When we die, we are ashes to the wind.

"I am starting to question my own believing. They think because I want to see my dog Isabelle when I die that I am going nuts. I hired an animal communicator, and they had a big laugh over that, and said she was talking to me.

"Do you think animal communicators are real? Will I see my lost pets in the afterlife? I worry about them, especially Isabelle whom I miss horribly, and cry over every day. I wish she was with me at night, come and visit me. It was so unfair for her to die, and unfair that I prayed and prayed, and God didn't answer my prayers and took Isabelle from me. I feel that I am being punished.

"Please help."....Carolyn.

ANSWER:

No one can say for certain that you will see your pets after you die. Research on near-death states, however, suggests that you will because so many reports claim such to be true.

And, no one can tell you that one way of believing is better than another. Over 250 Christian sects exist - thus there is no single authority on what constitutes the Christian message, not even the Bible with its multiple translations, as some of them are still subject to question because of the Dead Sea Scrolls and additional Gospels now coming to light. The only true Christianity is the experience of God in your own heart and the reality of faith offered by the model our brother Jesus gave with the teachings of his life and how he lived it. You and you alone can decide what is right for you. There are wonderful books and CDs available now that will assist you in growing in faith and finding God within. Do not rely on others to do your work for you. Faith is an inside job.

If you have questions, pull out your M.A.P. --
  • M - meditation
  • A - affirmations
  • P - prayer

If you have a problem, are troubled or confused, use your M.A.P. The guidance you receive may amaze you.

God is as close as your next breath. Visit various churches. Study different creeds and traditions. A powerful truth runs through all of them - the power of love, and of forgiveness and joy and grace and gratitude. God doesn't limit us. Why would you believe others who do?

Blessings always, PMH

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Spiritual Experience or NDE? - A Call to Grow

QUESTION:

"Some years ago, I experienced 'sudden death' - my heart went into ventricular fibrillation. This happened, fortunately, in the presence of a nurse who had had her CPR refresher recently and several doctors who aided her until the EMS people came and took me to the hospital.

"I have been asked many times since whether I had a 'near-death experience,' and have always said no. In fact, two young doctors asked me this while I was still hospitalized, and when I said I had no memory of such an experience, attributed this to the fact that I had been being worked on by the nurse within 30 seconds of collapsing, and had not lost oxygen to the brain. Although I had no such experience to my memory, I do know that since that time, I have developed very strong spiritual leanings (not religious - spiritual), done much reading in related areas, and have developed a strong sense that I was spared for a purpose that has nothing to do with what I had done and still do for a living. The purpose, as near as I can tell, has something to do with learning what I can about things like near-death experience, reincarnation, and so on, and passing on what I know to others. The best way I can describe the feeling I have is to say that, on reflection, it was as if my soul had had a booster of some sort. "Just now, reading a book called 'Forbidden Religion,' I encountered a few pages by you about understanding the near-death experience. In this article, you mention that a drug used by hospitals may cause amnesia in patients with respect to such experiences. While I did not have surgery, I am wondering if I might have had the drug you mention but do not name in 1992 (was it in use then?) as a by-product of the emergency room trying to keep me alive (which, obviously, they succeeded in doing).

"I have read that many people may 'die' two or three times during their lives without remembering this, and are asked after life review if they want to stay or go back, and choose to go back. I had one experience several years before the one in question above, where I miraculously survived a car accident and 'woke up' with my car basically unharmed other than a minor fender dent, no memory of how this had happened, in a slightly different position than when it was hit, and after dealing with the police, drove off unharmed. In recent years, I have assumed that both these experiences might have involved such a life-review and choice to come back, although I have no such memories. However, your comment about the drug amnesia raises yet another possibility, at least with respect to the ventricular filbrillation.

"I have tried to keep this as brief as I can and still be cogent, knowing that you must be very busy. I would welcome any comment you might have, however brief, about whether that drug you mentioned might, at least in theory, hold a possible alternate explanation of my experience (or lack of it). Thank you in advance for any information you might wish to provide.".....Bob

ANSWER:

Certainly the drug that causes amnesia could have been used on you. Although I do not know the technical name of this drug, most physicians would if you ask any of them. Considering what you wrote about your case, though, I doubt that such a drug was administered - as there would have been no need to.

My research of near-death states shows that the pattern of aftereffects is what validates the experience. The pattern of aftereffects addresses both psychological and physiological changes that the experiencer exhibits. This pattern continues lifelong with the vast majority, even increasing with the passing of years, instead of decreasing. Your sense of altered reality, of a goal, a desire to live life differently, is part of the aftereffects; yet the pattern is far more dynamic and involved than that. I encourage you to read some of my books, perhaps "Beyond the Light" or "The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences." The Big Book is the latest and it consists of 496 pages, covering every aspect of the phenomenon, positive/negative, and from 360 degrees, with easy-to-read passages, sidebars, cartoons, drawings, and charts. You name it and it's in the Big Book.

In your case, however, I am suspicious that what you had was a "spiritual experience" rather than a near-death episode. I say this because of how both of your incidents affected you. Spiritual experiences are usually an introduction to other realities, an opportunity to experience life from another vantage point that is so impactual, it catches your attention and swings you around in what you thought was once true, and causes you to rethink things. You could also call these "growth events." Growth events come in all shapes and sizes - losing when we thought we would win, winning when we thought we would lose; being challenged by life events in such a manner that it seems as if we are dying - dying unto the self. This can occur because of an accident, a health reversal, a divorce, a fire, losing in life to such a degree that the sense of loss becomes overwhelming. Growth events eventually lead to spiritual ones, even "peak" experiences of the Divine or of Deity. There is a rich tradition throughout the world of spiritually transforming experiences and how they affect people.

Every religion began from such relevation, an experience of the numinous. That wellspring of wisdom within us is available to each and all - the challenge is: most of us are not aware of this, what exists within us. What I have noticed throughout my many years of research and experience, is that if we are going along in life on a certain path and haven't grown, matured as a spiritual being as well as a human being, something will happen to jumpstart that process. That's what I think has happened to you - you have been jumpstarted, and several times. Seems like it's time for the "message" to sink in and take root - time to begin your spiritual journey.

I cover this "call to grow" in most of my books, especially "Beyond the Light," "Future Memory," and "We Live Forever." Oh, point of caution: "Future Memory" is the only book I have written that is mathematically calculated on the format of a labyrinth. Every sentence, every paragraph, every page is part of the math. In other words, the book is a real labyrinth. And that means, once you start reading it (entering the labyrinth), you must stay on the path in order for the book to make sense (no skipping around - the book's text enfolds on you just as the pathways in a site labyrinth). If you skip read, little will make sense and you'll wonder why I ever wrote such a dumb book. The purpose of "Future Memory" is to bring your consciousness up to the next highest level possible for you at that time. It is a brain changer. Yes, the book's about the innerworkings of creation and consciousness, yet it's really about each one of us and what we think reality is.

Begin the inner journey. There are many good healthy ways to do this. And, there are lots of ideas on how in the Resource Section of my various books. Many blessings, PMH

Elder's Meditation


"Peace... comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the Universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us." --Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) OGLALA SIOUX

If we are to know peace we must look within ourselves. In order to do this, we must learn to be still. We must quiet the mind. We must learn to meditate. Meditation helps us locate and find the center that is within ourselves. The center is where the Great One resides. When we start to look for peace, we need to realize where it is within ourselves. When we experience conflict we need to pause for a moment and ask the Power within ourselves, "How do you want me to handle this? What would you suggest I do in this situation?" By asking the Higher Power for help we find peace.


Creator, help me to find peace.