One of you guys very astutely brought to my attention that I typed, “What” instead of “Why” in yesterday’s title. Oops. My mind isn’t what it used to be! Also, I have a brief announcement: I’m going to be out of town on a cruise (yay) from this Sunday until the following Saturday, so unless Michael has time to help out or unless we have some guest bloggers, there won’t be any posts for those five days. I won’t be able to answer emails or Facebook private messages, so please refrain from sending those. You’ll still be able to post comments, but if they’re directed to me in a way that requires me to answer them, wait until I return. I really appreciate this. It’s hard to come back from a relaxing vacation to a full inbox. 🙂

Enjoy the final part of this subject! Just to be clear, I’m not channeling Erik. Jamie is. I just don’t include her part of the conversation. This was intended to be a part of the book, and the publisher wanted to streamline the dialogue. Now, I’m going to be writing a completely different book, one that I’m very much excited about. Can’t tell you what it’s about yet, though!

Me: I remember you explained it with your brownie recipe. Can you go over that again with me?

Erik: Yeah. Here we know about love, but to fully understand it, you have to have that contrast. You can’t see a candle against the Sun, but you can see it really fucking great in the dark. You can’t understand the concept of hot without experiencing cold. So we come down there to act out roles against and with each other to get that contrast. Say you want to fully understand forgiveness, which is one of the many facets of love. To get it, you have to betrayed or harmed by some asshole.

I laugh. Erik and his mouth.

Erik: Now, about the brownie. You can get an idea of what a brownie is because you can see a picture of it and read the recipe, but to completely know what it is, you have to –let’s say Earth is your kitchen—you have to get into the kitchen, mix the ingredient and get batter all over your clothes. Then you pour them into a pan and put them in the oven. If it’s you, Mom, you’ll probably burn your fingers.

True. I’m about the klutziest person I know.

Erik: So, you bake them; take them out of the oven—

Round two of burning my fingers.

Erik: —cool them off, and take a bite. That’s when you really know what a fucking brownie is.

What? No icing?

Erik: You have complete free will, though. You jump into a body, and maybe you do half the shit you thought you wanted to do, and you’re like, “Fuck that. I’m done with this one lesson. I only needed one scoop. I didn’t need two.” Your eyes were bigger than your belly! So you stop. You change your path. There are so many facets of who you are. Think of it like this. The overall human experience is the canvas; free will is the paintbrush, the paint strokes are the different experiences and you are the painter exploring your inner world through your own creativity.

Me: Beautiful analogy, Erik! So you say you can change what your path?

Erik: Yeah! You can change your path. You orchestrate it with free will. Some people go Home when they get their “lesson.” Some people, like you, Mom, stick around to teach other people. You’re teaching people how to let go.

Sigh. I could use a substitute teacher about now.

Me: Do we have to suffer to get the most out of our human experience?

Erik: You say it like suffering is bad, Mother.

Well, I’m not a fan of it.

Me: Suppose it’s not. Do we still have to go through it?

Erik: Suffering is part of self-discovery. You have to discover what kind of brownie you are.

I laugh, but, for the record, double fudge with cream cheese icing.

Me: Under what circumstances is suffering not bad?

Erik: I don’t think it’s bad at all.

Me: Because?

Erik: Because it, energetically—

(Pause)

He has a ball, a baseball or maybe a crumbled up piece of paper, and he’s just throwing it from hand to hand. I’m guessing he’s going to use one of his great analogies to dumb it down for me.

(Pause)

Me: What are you doing, Erik?

Erik: I’m just playing.

I chuckle.

Erik: Suffering, if we look at it energetically, if we come into the life and we have memories, either from past lives, from Home or whatever, and it takes those memory patterns down so that we become neutral. But I think that when people are suffering, they feel like they’re being stripped; they feel naked, destroyed, broken and exposed. They’re not comfortable with that, so they want to protect themselves from it. They refuse to accept it. In protecting themselves, they’re missing the whole reason for why they’re suffering.

Me: So in protecting themselves, it’s basically them saying, “I don’t want this. I don’t want to suffer,” then it gives suffering as a whole a negative connotation.

Erik: Correct. What causes suffering is a resistance to a choice we’re being asked to make. The choice is always based on, “Do I continue to feel the way I feel?” First you have to ask yourself the question, “Do I like the way I’m feeling? Do I want to keep feeling this way?” If you’re asking the question, “How do I let go of being a victim?” then obviously you don’t like the way you fucking feel. Suffering is actually giving you the opportunity to be neutral. It’s stripping you down of whatever you’re suffering from—physical, mental or emotional pain—and in that neutral place, you’re open to learning a different concept, to broadening your perspective as you look at your life. That’s why some people, like alcoholics, are reborn after hitting rock bottom. You can rebuild yourself. You can redefine yourself. That’s when you can completely heal. If you don’t get to that place, your suffering persists. Like they say, “What you resist persists.” When what you call “suffering” approaches, you can embrace it. You can accept it. Then it’s no longer suffering from your past, and it doesn’t beat the shit out of you. The only reason it beats the shit out of you is because you’re trying to fight back.

Me: That’s the resistance you’re talking about.

Erik: Yeah, cuz you’re saying, (in a whiny voice) “Oh, I didn’t want this! I’m the victim. I’m this. I’m that! Hayulp me! Hayulp me!”

He sounds like a TV evangelist.

Erik: You’re fighting it and identifying it as suffering just for suffering’s sake. Then you come up with this idea that you’re getting shit on your plate that you never, ever wanted. Well, guess what? That’s what you signed up for. So embrace and accept suffering, and let it take you to that neutral place so you can see yourself and your life from a broader, more insightful perspective. You discover yourself, and you are love.