A lot of blog members were quite hurt by Erik’s pointing out the selfish side to grief. Here’s an example from John Joseph:

Hey this one’s for Erik:

Spirit or not, you’re being a dick telling people they’re “selfish” when they miss someone they love more than you will ever imagine, no matter how many fucking realms of light you move in.

It DOES NOT HELP to try to guilt people trapped on earth out of their FEELINGS. If you’re really spiritual and loving, you’d know that FEELINGS don’t have a a moral compass attached, they just ARE.

You can actually know someone is fine and still MISS them. Get a clue about real feeling beings with feelings, loves and histories. And don’t give me that new age clap trap that is. just. so. hollow.

My reply to John:

I think Erik meant to create just this kind of reaction. One facet of it for SOME is selfish, but not for all. He made that clear (I think), but you’re right, grief is a touchy subject, very personal and raw. Remember, Erik is Erik. I’m not sure if he meant to say these things for some greater purpose or if he just did so because he’s just a young boy, but it is what it is. Sorry if he hurt your feelings.

I suppose I should have added that lashing back at Erik doesn’t help. It’s like fighting fire with fire. Erik is just a young boy without a body. He’s not been in the afterlife very long, so we can’t expect him to behave like some highly enlightened celestial being. Did he mess up with his crass wording, or did he mean to incite this reaction to get us to think? I don’t know. I wish I did. If he did mess up, cut him some slack. After all, the earthly plane doesn’t hold a monopoly on mistakes.

The entire grief experience is complex. Like Candis says, it does have a mind of its own. That’s the part of it we can’t expect to control, nor would we want to. I guess all we can look at is that part that we can at least try to control, and that is to consider the perspective of the loved one we have lost. After all, it must hurt our loved ones so much to feel our grief day in and day out, especially in cases like Erik’s where they know they’re responsible for that grief. We must grieve, but we need to remember to temper that by sending them thoughts of love. Take a look at Love. We could easily say we seek it because of our own selfish needs, but it’s much more complex than that. Our relationship with grief and love are quite intricate, multi-tiered and personal.

Channeling Transcript

Me: What about advice to those who feel confused and stuck? So many people say they feel like they’re in an elevator sort of stuck between floors. They don’t know what direction to take, like their paralyzed in life.

Erik: You mean how to move forward on evolving, or—

Me: I don’t know. They just feel stuck, like they’re going nowhere.

Erik (teasing): Well, that’s just the happy-go-lucky energy on earth. It really has a way of putting you in a slow-moving whirlpool, so that you just do the same damn thing again and again and again. Usually, the best thing is for them to get out of their environment whether it’s to get away from their job, whether it’s to get away from their house, whether it’s to move away from family—just get out of the environment where those ruts are. That’s usually what’s holding you in a whirlpool pattern. Of course everyone has their own unique circumstance and path and stuff, but a lot of times, the frustration people have over that stuck feeling is cuz they’re about to enter a new chapter in their life.

Me: Ah, okay.

Erik: And if they’re totally afraid to move, tell them to go take two weeks out of their environment. Go do Outward Bound. Go do something that’s completely out of your structure, out of your thoughts. Do something totally out of character or outside your comfort zone. Like if you’re working in a safe little cubicle, go to Africa and help build irrigation systems, whatever. You know what I’m saying. That right there—going to the opposite extreme—that’ll wake ‘em up.

Me: Yeah, so many of us have blinders on, and that narrows our focus so much that we don’t even see those opportunities at our feet that propel us forward in our evolution.

Erik: Yes, and the best medicine is sometimes to get out of your own shit to really see what things look like.

Me: Yeah, sure. And also, what about—I was just thinking about this as you were talking—what about past life regression to the between lives part so they can find out what spiritual blueprint they made for themselves. They can regress to that point and think, “Wow, THAT’S what I’m here to do!” Maybe they can find out what contracts they agreed to or—

Erik: If they’re strong enough where they really wanna research, past life regression is the best.

Me: Okay.

Erik: Because it’s not like you’re going to some doctor and the doctor is saying, “Here’s the answer. This is what you need to do.” When you do hypnotherapy, when you regress, the information is on your own shoulders. You discover it for yourself. You’re finding it; you’re getting it, so you own it for yourself.

Me: Yeah, that’s true. You assimilate information the best when you are the one who discovers it. So why do we forget our past live and our between lives period? I think we’ve talked about this before, but—

Erik: Well, if you remembered them, you wouldn’t be who you are. That amnesia is a safety net for us to experience a newness in life. If not, everything would be old hat.

Me: Okay, that makes sense.

Jamie: He kind of puts it into a vision of when you’re at one job, and you’ve done it for 25 years and you’re over it and you want to do something new; you go to a completely new job that relies on different tasks, different memory, different information, different effort, different everything.

Erik: You want that clean-cut cuz you wanted to be complete and finished with that old job. You don’t want to drag parts of it into the new one. If our amnesia doesn’t kick in, and we’re continuously carrying over the old job, pretty soon, we’re going to find there’s not a new job to do.

Me: Interesting.

Erik: Personally, I’d like it if we came in with SOME memory.

Me: Ah, I guess some people probably do, huh?

Erik: More now than ever.

Me: So, why do you think that would be good, Erik?

Erik: Well, just that little piece of information, that would make us feel so secure, there’d be less fear in the world, knowing that we came from somewhere else and that the cycle of life is not about death.

Me: Yeah.

Jamie: “The cycle of life is not about death.” I like that. I like that a lot.

Me: Yeah, just knowing that life on the earthly plane always has a happy ending no matter what you go through, everything ends up just fine. One of the perks of being an eternal soul. People really need to have something to look forward to, you know?

Erik: Yes, they do.

Me: But I guess some fear is important, because it gives us that duality tool.

Erik: Only if the fear doesn’t paralyze someone. Unfortunately, that’s often the fucking case. What’s the point of life there on earth if fear is like this massive stun gun that paralyzes you so you don’t move forward?

Me: True. Too true.