My son, Lukas, and I are engaging in a big project, all his idea. (I’m just the slave.) He built a big raised garden bed, and, in it, he’s planting all sorts of vegetables like spinach, beans, tomatoes (yuck), potatoes, onions, garlic, poblano peppers, bell peppers, etc. He already has pots of various herbs that I ransack when I cook. Today, the soil gets delivered by dump truck. That means we actually have to shovel wheelbarrows full of it to the bed and dump it in. That’s about 5 cubic yards. I think we’re talking 75-100 wheelbarrow’s full. He’s going to do the lion’s share but still… But there are few things that connect the soul to the beyond more than nurturing nature like tending to a garden. Here’s a photo of the bed:

We’re ready for our next contest. First one who answers it wins a signed copy of my book. Just email your answer to emedhus@gmail.com, but know that I will only answer the winner because answering them all is too exhausting and time-consuming. The question: What was Erik’s favorite sport? (other than teasing his sibs.) Hint: It required his truck.

Just a reminder, be sure to follow me on Twitter @drmedhus, and join the Channeling Erik Facebook Group!

Okay, Erik. You’re up.

Me: Why can’t we just evolve in the spiritual realm? It would sure make it easy!

Erik: Seriously? You wanna make it easy? Make it easy by surrendering to the human life you’ve chosen! Hello? You’re waking up in a human body. Obviously there’s something you need to be doing. If you wanted to make it easy, you wouldn’t have even done the extreme sports by getting into a body in the first place. So, if you didn’t need to have this life that you’re in, that you make feel extremely happy about or extremely trapped in, if you weren’t supposed to have this, then you’d be waking up in the afterlife where I’m chilln’.

Jamie and I giggle.

Jamie: I love it when he picks and pulls on the shoulder of his t-shirt. God, it cuts me up sometimes where I can’t even think about the train of conversation.

Me: I bet not!

Erik: So, if you’re waking up human, there’s something that you should be doing. There’s really no easy or hard part about it, Mom. If we’re looking at it to be one way or another, then we’re carrying about some assumption that easier is better, and we’re still carrying around some kind of judgment that we shouldn’t be placing on what we’re doing or what we’re not doing. Really, we have to learn or (air quotes) remember in our human lives how to pull out, extract expectations and judgments. If we can live honestly that way, emotionally honest that way, all these kind of trivial experiences that we’re going through and these questions we seek the answers to are going to arrive. We’re really getting in our own way.

(Pause)

Erik: Correction. You are getting in your own way.

Jamie: He takes himself out of the game! He’s pointing at you!

Me: Oh thanks.

Erik: You all. You “humans”, you emotional beings are getting in your own way. Some of ‘em, you know, they got it down, but a lot of you have this belief that if you’re going to have a lifestyle of no expectations and no judgments, then you have no fucking backbone. That’s totally fucking untrue. You can have a backbone. You can still have opinion and direction and boundaries and shape while having no expectation for what situation you’re in, who’s coming at you, what’s about to occur, and still be able to be you. You know, I really think we could go down this rabbit hole for a long time. What else do you want to talk about?

Me: Well, is it like we’re coming down for this school play, playing these roles? Is that what it’s sort of like? Is this whole thing an illusion of some sort?

Erik: An illusion of some sort.

Jamie: When you mentioned “school play,” he goes, “I’d always end up being the fucking tree. No lines.”

Jamie and I giggle. So true.

Erik: I’d just be standing still on the stage because I’d fuck everything up!

Me: Or you’d be the little sidekick, the funny sidekick. The expendable sidekick.

Erik: Life should know that if it’s giving me lines in a play, I’m going to take over. Okay. Enough about the play. What was the original question?

Me: Well, the way I see it is that we split off from God Source so that we can experience duality. You can’t know hot without cold. You can’t understand forgiveness unless you’ve been betrayed, that sort of thing. So we have to act out these roles in order to learn forgiveness, etc.

Erik: “Remember.”

Me: Okay Remember. Sorry!

Erik: “Remember” because we have all this shit before we even come into this life. You come in already like a baby bird. You know everything. You know how to fly; you know how to nest; you know how to eat; you know how to take care of yourself, all that shit.

Huh? I’m not sure about that!

Erik: But, we have this thing called—

Jamie listens, then bursts out laughing.

Jamie: I’d love to imitate him, but I’ll never get it right! (Jamie puts her hands near both sides of her head and says, in a low and ominous voice, “The brain.”)

We both chuckle.

Erik: The brain is getting in our way of connecting with True Source, the true soul and all that intense information that we carry with us. Our perceptions and our belief patterns are actually shaping our ability to “know” and our ability to react honestly because we get into our head so much. So we come back, yes, to learn duality, the extremes on either end, but remember, it’s not learning the duality so that we can take it and have an expectation or judge somebody else’s experience or let somebody else judge us. So many of us, because of this marketing bullshit that’s being done throughout the while world—we watch what’s on TV and say, “Fuck! I should be looking like that! I should be doing that!” That’s totally bullshit. You’re the only one who knows what you should be doing. You have the best compass, the best inner guidance, but somewhere along the line, well, you gave it away for whatever reason. So, you’re coming back to this life, like I said, not just to learn from duality, but to learn what’s best for you, for your health, for your wellness, for your honesty in that extreme, in the pendulum swing. (Jamie uses her index finger to illustrate the swing of a pendulum, probably mimicking him.)

Erik: Is it here? Is it here? Is it over there? (Jamie points that finger at different spots in the air.) Who knows where it is?

We both laugh because as he says this, he does the whole jazz fingers thing and speaks in a voice of mystery.)

Jamie (grinning): He’s like roughing his hair up.

By the way. What the hell? How come he can say learning instead of remembering?

Erik: But that’s the fun of it. You come here to push (hands on chest) yourself. You’re not here to push anyone else. Those people who do that, they’re missing the point. Unfortunately, there are people who push and there are people who allow themselves to be pushed. But, you know, that’s probably what you came here to figure out.

Me: So it’s almost like we know, conceptually, what a brownie is [by looking at its picture and reading the recipe], but then we need to come down to Earth to mix the ingredients, get batter all over our clothes, burn our fingers on the oven, etc., but then we can actually bite into that brownie and taste how delicious it is. There’s a difference between “knowing” a brownie conceptually and tasting or experiencing it. Is that what you’re saying? Is that what it’s like?

Erik: Yes.

Me: Okay.

Erik: I love me some fucking brownies!

Me: I’m just wondering what brownies he’s talking about. I know what kind of brownies you like, Erik!

Jamie (laughing): I know!

I remember when all of my children were small, I loved baking them my homemade frosted brownies and serving them hot on top of vanilla ice cream. Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies were a close second, sometimes served with ice cream between them, making them into ice cream sandwiches. I don’t know why they’re all rail thin.

Me: So, basically, is it an illusion?

Erik: No. Are you really here? Yeah. You’re really here. Part of your soul is really, really here in these dimensions. You’re really having this experience. There’s not some core part of you asleep somewhere having many, many lives or experiences at once. You’re really, really here. The illusion that we all like to talk about is what you’re brain is putting on it. The humanness is taking over when really, like I said before, humanness doesn’t need to be a part of it. The emotional body needs to be a part of it. We’re emotional beings.

Erik has discussed many times that we have four bodies: the mental body, the physical body, the energetic body (where the energy is essentially emotions) and the spiritual body.

Erik: You can take the humanness out of it, and, all of a sudden, this inclusion shit that everybody talks about, it can’t stick. That shit don’t stick to the wall.

Jamie and I laugh. Typical.

Me: Is separation an illusion, then, us being separate from the whole?

Erik: From the Whole. From God Source, from the person next to you, from the tree out in your yard, from the worm in your garden, all of it.

I just threw up a little. Not a bug person, especially the squishy ones.

Erik (to Jamie): Man, that sounds so fucked up when I listen to you say it.

Jamie: Well, you said it first!

Erik: But it’s true, though! Everything that has a life force in it, everything that has a soul that can live independently on its own has energy, has a consciousness to it, has a way to telepathically communicate. You know what’s so fucking sweet, Mom, is that science is figuring this out. Science is now saying, “Whoa shit!”

Jamie laughs.

Jamie: I’m trying to [imitate] him. His voice went much higher.

She tries it again, and giggles at her defeat.

Erik: They’re like, “These plants are talking to each other! This plant’s responding to music! This plant is responding to something else like smell.” You know, it’s like, “Everybody has fucking senses here!” You have a life force energy? You got senses. Just, you know, humans, you’re just trying to get out of your heads a little bit. There’s a whole bunch of shit that’s going to be discovered. It’s going to be a killer.

Me: All right! So the separation illusion is really necessary because you can’t have some big ol’ God Source baking that brownie! We have to be separate so that we can play the parts against and with each other to create that duality like I referred to before. In order to learn forgiveness (sorry, “remember”), which is an aspect of love, you have to ask somebody to make a spiritual contract to betray you.  Is that the case? Is separation the illusion that creates duality?

Erik: Yep. There are many ways to experience that conflict. It doesn’t have to be one person you’ve met before that’s going to play that contract out for you. You can see it in a movie and learn it.

Ahem. Remember.

Me: Sure, that’s a lot easier!

Erik: Hell yeah.

Netflix, here I come!

Erik: But, listen, whenever you hear the word, “separation,” why don’t you think of it like a paddleball where you’re the ball at the end and there’s this think elastic that can move everywhere, never breaks. We’ve talked about this before.

Jamie: Must be a good paddleball.

Erik: And [the elastic] goes all the way back to the paddle. Yeah, you’re separate, but there’s a fine, fine substance that connects the two of you. So, I’m hoping that whoever is listening doesn’t just hear the word, “separation” and think immediately that it’s just cut—completely two separate things. I swear to God, that doesn’t even exist in this realm! In these dimensions? No, no.

Me: So, life is a paddleball game.

I hope I play this one better than the ones they make in China.

Me: And we’re balls.

Jamie flings herself back into her chair, claps her hands and laughs.

Jamie (blushing): Do I have to say what he said?

Me: Yes, you do!

Jamie just shakes her head back and forth in quick, nervous movements.

Me: So, you’re not going to say it?

She shakes her head again.

God, what did that boy say?

Me: Okay. That’s fine.

Jamie: But you know what it relates to.

Me: Oh, I can only imagine. I see you blushing.

This is a good place to stop.