To all of you who have lost loved ones, I’ve been thinking about you during the holidays. Even after four years, I look at the empty chair at our Thanksgiving table with a heavy heart. I find it hard to choke back the tears, but because this is a day of gratitude and no one wants it to be tainted with sobs, I do. It’s difficult to weigh the losses with the joys of having a loving family, my CE peeps, good health, and other blessings, but a balance must and can be reached. We still have holidays approaching, and I hope we can all wrap our arms around the joys and realize that, in the end, our loved ones are not really gone. They’ll be tossing back their own celestial glass of spiked eggnog along with us. 

***********************

Me: Some think it’s becoming easier to speak with those in the afterlife.

Erik: Yeah, that’s not because we’re getting bigger and better. We have the same equivalent knowledge, you know, inter-dimensional travel, all of that. Humans are finally getting back to the norm. We’ve had lights out for a long time.

Me: Yeah, well, material science and organized religion put us off the path a little bit.

Erik: Yeah, it took away your natural instinct for intuitive abilities.

Me: Is there anything we can do to facilitate that dialog?

Erik: That dialog with the afterlife?

Me: Yeah.

Erik: Yes. If you wanna facilitate it, you need to look at yourself as being an instrument.

Me: Okay.

Erik: And how do you fine-tune your instrument? The biggest fucking drum I can hit is don’t have any fucking beliefs. Don’t have an expectation that God’s voice is going to sound like booming lightening, you know.

Me: Really!

Erik: Because it might sound like a six year-old girl. Expectations will ruin your experience, and you find it true in life as well. For some people, for example, they have an expectation that something has to reach a certain timeframe. Humanly things that we do is we create an expectation so that if we achieve it, we’ll feel safe or we feel productive, like we’re in control. And if you feel the need to be in control—

(Pause)

Jamie (to Erik): I don’t understand that.

Erik: If you’re feeling the need to be in control, then you’re not understanding wholly that you are a part of a whole.

Me: Hmm. Interesting.

Erik: If you have this desire that you have to be in control—I’m not talking about fucking cleaning your house. That’s great. You OCD away. .

I wish he had OCDed a little bit when he was here. His room always looked like it was the place where a documentary on F-5 tornados might be filmed.

Erik: I’m not talking about being in control of the external world. That’s when you’ve fully signed on to the concept that you’re an individual and you’re apart from everything else and you must just be a badass because you have that special ability—to control the external world. That’s a crock of shit. You need to fine tune that instrument and realize you’re a part of a whole.

Me: Exactly. It’s hard not to have expectations. That’s like telling someone, “Don’t think of a pink elephant.”

Erik (in a monotone voice): PINK ELEPHANT.

Jamie and I laugh.

Jamie: He’s just repeating it.

Probably just trying to make me think only of a pink elephant for the next couple of hours. Great. Thanks, Erik.

Erik: You can spend a helluva lot of time talking about how to fine tune your instrument. There are so many people who really desire and want to communicate with the afterlife, but they don’t realize that their need can often snuff out the experience, you know, like we said, because of the expectations and because of the emotional quality of those expectations. Let’s, you know, if you were on a swing like one of those tree swings, and you’re swinging really high like a pendulum, and then somebody from the ground asked you, “Which way is the wind blowing?”

Me: Ah!

Erik: What are you going to fucking say? When you’re going one way, you’re going to say, “Against my back!” Then when you’re going the other way, you’re going to say, “No, it’s hitting my face! No, it’s hitting my back!”

Me: Great analogy! I like that.

Erik: You don’t have any awareness of really what it is. You have to—

Jamie: That was so brilliant, Erik!

Me: I know!

Erik: You have to get your tree swing to get centered and to get calm. You can’t be in total grief. You can’t even be in total joy. I’m not saying one is right and one is wrong. I’m saying you gotta get neutral. You gotta say on the fence. And then when it’s still and the person asks you, “Which way is the wind blowing?” you can say, “Oh, there is no wind now,” or “The wind is blowing east to west. So the way you position yourself can influence what you’re experiencing. People want to get at the truth, and to get to the truth you’ve gotta be a clear, free-flowing instrument.”

Me: That is so brilliant, Erik.

Jamie: I know! I want to give that a freaking standing ovation! Wow.

Me: Anything else about that?

Erik: No, they’ll get that. They’ll understand that, because it comes with a visual. You can talk about feeding yourself the good energy or the energy that your body needs. Just like the food your body needs, you gotta take care of it. Why do people think they can destroy themselves or ignore themselves and let themselves get sick but yet they think they have the right to experience everything, all of this. It’s like, “Really? You can’t walk the talk.

Me: Yup, but it’s pretty hard.

Erik: One of the most important things you have to do is shut off the logical part of your brain. Depend on the emotional, intuitive part to get centered. You can’t just go on with, “Am I doing this right? Am I talking to the afterlife?” and shit like that, letting your analytical mind take over is not going to let you get centered. You’re going to swing from one side to the other and not have any point of reference for which way the wind is blowing.

***********************

Tomorrow at 9:00 AM CST I’ll be appearing on Great Day Houston, a TV show hosted by the very talented and beautiful Debra Duncan. If you live in Houston, please tune into KHOU TV.

On December 5th, 12:00 PM CST, I’ll be a guest on the Jean Maurie Show. I hope you can join me! Please THIS on your calendar!

There’s one more spot for Jamie and Erik’s small group channeling call. If you want to talk to a loved one or ask questions about your life, please sign up HERE!

Last but not least, the “Best Orb Photo/Video” contest ends soon, so please submit your entry. The winner will get an autographed copy of my book, My Son and the Afterlife.