copyright © 2011 by macyafterlife

You’ve probably heard of archaeologists and forensic anthropologists who piece together a few bone fragments to get a pretty clear picture of the complete person who died long ago… most of the remains having been scattered and lost over time. That’s what I’m trying to do with the human puzzle… gather all the pieces I can find about our ancient heritage, our civilizations, our world, and our nature as human beings… and assemble it all into a reliable human story… who we are… where we came from… what we’re supposed to be doing here… where we’re heading… that sort of thing.

Since adolescence I’ve awakened at odd hours of the night with thoughts that begged to be put on paper. In my late 20s I began meditating with a cassette recorder on my chest, a transcriber’s foot pedal in hand. Nowadays I usually keep a small voice recorder within reach when sleeping or meditating. The ideas streaming through my mind over the years covered myriad subjects, but a thread was always winding its way through the churning information, gathering up pieces of the human puzzle. As I look back on 61 years of life, those ideas about the human puzzle are the only ones that really seem important to me.

In my 30s, between technical writing jobs, I spent months at a time isolated in cabins and cottages in beautiful places in cool climes (Klamath, California… Coeur d’Alene, Idaho…), places where I wouldn’t be distracted by lots of exposed, jiggling flesh. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… but I needed to keep my focus while assembling the puzzle. Matter of fact, I can look back on most of my life as a series of struggles between my life purpose and the Earth’s many dramas that distract me.

Before looking at the human puzzle I’ve been putting together, it might be interesting to look at some of the dramas that have distracted me over the years.

Those distractions

I suspect we all came to Earth for one purpose or another. And I’m pretty certain we’re all distracted from our purpose by the many dramas of this world. Our savage side revels in drama. Here are some of my distractions.

Investments. This is probably the only investment chat you’ll ever see on this blog, but since investing has been a part of my life as long as I’ve been married, it deserves a look. This isn’t advice, mind you, it’s just my experience with investing. Years ago we hired a safe, conservative investment counselor to handle most of our modest nest egg with mutual funds, bonds, and other conventional investments. The nest egg has been slowly shrinking in recent years as the economy falters… and so I invest some of our extra cash by myself to try to make up the difference. The best choices are made when I go within, to the heart, and feel a sense of calm. When gripped by fear or greed, I usually make bad investment choices. With the savage side at the helm, I’ve learned that bad things happen in the realm of investing. Indeed, greed among the US high-rollers on Wall Street, in banks, in Congress, in corporations, and elsewhere has put the US economy (and the world economy at large) on the threshold of the perfect storm today, even as I write this, so that stock markets probably (but not certainly) will take a nosedive, or a series of them, very soon. So I personally am not investing in any stocks or mutual funds at the moment… with one exception. I used some of our extra money to buy some shares of an “inverse ETF” called SKF (think “skiff”), as a sort of family hedge fund. It’s purchased like a regular stock through a broker, but it moves in the opposite direction from the stock market. If the market (DJIA) goes up, SKF goes way down. If the market goes down, SKF goes way up. I felt that buying it at below $80 a share would be a real bargain, especially if it’s purchased through a Roth IRA! With today’s volatile market, I know it’s going to be a roller coaster ride, and I’ll just sit it out calmly until the market hits a real low point. By that I mean the Dow (DJIA) will hit 10,000… or maybe 9,000… or maybe even 6,000… and at some point along the way I’ll sell the SKF for a profit. At least that’s the plan. If the tough times never come… all the better. Our nest egg will grow modestly. If I lose that extra money on SKF, it’s not a big deal. But if the market takes a big hit and our nest egg falters, my gains through SKF will probably make up for the losses. And like I said, it’s probably the only investment talk you’ll see here. Investing is something I do because I have to… one of those things that distract me from my real purpose. It involves keeping a pulse on the market and the economy and our family finances, a big part of this illusory world. A wise man (my son Aaron, actually) told me recently I might be better off taking ALL of our money out of the market and investing it in something safe like a certificate of deposit… and I’m stewing on that good advice as I write this. It would remove a major distraction!

Gambling. And this is probably the only gambling chatter I’ll ever write on this blog. Gambling is mostly a waste of time and money, but it helped me tame my savage side. Entering a casino used to stir up my fears in a big way. It wasn’t so much the clamor and eye-candy; it was people’s dispositions. Casino guests were either intense and driven or else sad and desperate. A few were jubilant, but most were frustrated. And it felt that EVERYone there would be happy to take my money however they could. A wild and scary place, a hothouse of greed… and mostly not a friendly place. To overcome my fears I decided to learn the game of craps. That’s the table in the casino where people are throwing dice and sometimes whooping and hollering. I figured out rules, bets and strategies in a free online craps game, but that was just the first grade in my craps education. I’ve learned many important rules, some of which apply to all aspects of life. My main rule is this: Again, don’t play craps when driven by fear or greed. Wait until you wake up in the morning feeling a peaceful oneness with God… and if you want to go to a casino, that’s the day to go. I realize that most religious people would call it blasphemy to associate God with gambling, but in truth, the god force runs through us in ALL situations, and the only time we block it is when our savage side is in charge. When fear and greed take over, God has left the building. And that can happen in the pulpit at church or at the craps table in a casino. (Although, granted, you’re much more likely to “find God” in a church or mosque where love is the rule, than in a casino where the rule is greed; you can bet on it.) Anyway, if you’re going to play craps, like anything else in life, be centered. Here are the main rules I’ve tried to follow in craps-playing once I learned the bets and strategies. 1) I never gamble with money that I (and definitely my wife and family) can’t afford to lose. 2) I only play when I’m at peace inside… I’m one with God. 3) I find a table where people aren’t glum—and gloomy moods prevail over more than half of the craps tables I’ve seen—so I look for happy tables; young couples enjoying themselves at the table are especially good. 4) I make conservative bets, and 5) I build up those bets quickly with my winnings, in case the table’s on a roll (in case it’s “a good run” for the dice thrower). I also like to be generous with the dealers and place good bets for them once the table’s on a roll… since these three or four guys and gals running the table don’t make much money. I enjoy the game only once in a while. If it gets to the point where I ever feel consumed by it, I’ll call Gambers Anonymous. The 12 steps of the various Anonymous programs are one of the best paths to God in the western world. In short, the main thing I learned from gambling is to be at peace with God when standing at the craps table… or in any other situation in life when I would normally feel anxious or scared.

Driving. I have a “type-A” personality, so I drive fast (but safely) and I’m impatient with slow, indecisive drivers, especially those who seem to enjoy leading a slow, frustrated convoy down a two-lane highway. I’ve taped a note to my dashboard: “Patience… Best we can.” It reminds me to be patient, since we’re all doing the best we can, and it’s helped me to relax and go with the flow more than I ever could before. I also find that driving is much more relaxing if I can stay in my heart when I’m behind the wheel. Still, driving remains a big, unavoidable distraction in my life.

Politics. Hoo, don’t get me started on American politics! It seems that God left that building long ago. If you read this blog, you know that I’m still distracted by politics… but I’m working on it. Another wise man (my nephew Adam, actually) once told me, “Relax, Uncle Mark, it’s just politics.” I’m still trying to take that to heart.

Romance. I still enjoy all the jiggling flesh in this western world, but I’m old enough now not to be too distracted by it. Meanwhile, I enjoy a romantic life with Regina, thank you very much. That’s one distraction that I hope I can always fit into my life.

In my experience, then, the best way to face life’s dramas and distractions is with inner calm… and that can be achieved over time through practiced meditation.

So let’s move past all the drama and start talking about the big issue.

The human puzzle

I became consumed by the human purpose in my agnostic 20s. I saw life as an endless chain of nested systems (cells within tissues and organs, within people, within families and companies and governments, within cities, within states or provinces, within countries and religions… all within the human species). I figured the living systems extended infinitely inward, getting ever smaller… and the human chain could, theoretically, continue outward in the future as humanity spread into the material universe, colonizing other worlds and galaxies. I defined “spirituality” as being a healthy, reliable link in that nested chain. Any living thing could be “spiritual,” as long as it did what was necessary to nurture healthy relationships within it and around it.

I developed an entire cosmology around that nested-chain idea and put it into a book. I borrowed money from my parents to self-publish it, and a few copies were sold through three bookstores… one of them (believe it or not) being the United Nations Bookstore in New York! I rarely mention that book, since it went the way of a whisper in the wilderness. Also, it was based on a faulty premise… as I was soon to learn.

In 1988 I got colon cancer, which knocked me onto a real spiritual path. I soon learned that all my talk about nested systems spreading human life out into the cosmos was little more than an illusory leaf in a vast forest… and humanity itself, or planet Earth, for that matter, was little more than a tree. The entire physical universe was just a small grove of trees in that immense forest. In the early 1990s I began to get a glimpse of the overall forest, because that’s when I was drawn into ITC, or instrumental transcommunication.

That’s when I learned that our material universe is just one of countless material and spiritual universes that are flourishing with life… and they’re not  “out there” somewhere, but right here, all around us, separated not by space or time, but by vibration… like radio signals.

There’s an order to this vast, inconceivably complex forest, as it all traces back to a single source or life force, what religions call God, Yahweh, Allah, Brahman, or the Tao. It emits light or consciousness that manifests everything at countless levels of existence, or universes. Our physical universe is out at the dense, dark fringes of this all-that-is omniverse… about as far as the light from the source can travel before degrading into pockets of darkness and chaos.

So as a physical human being, we have within us not only that chain of nested physical life that used to seem real important to me, but also (and this is all-important to everyone and everything) various levels of consciousness between our physical mind (the program running the brain) and our central mind, or soul. It’s the soul that’s essentially a piece of the source, or a ray of God. The soul is the real you and me. It’s our connection to God. Our human self is just a dense outer shell around that flourishing, infinitely wise spiritual self that is us.

With that knowledge, my life-long obsession with the human purpose took on infinitely larger proportions. Life is far more complex than I’d dreamed! And so you’d think that my big, over-riding questions—who we are as humans, how we fit into the big scheme of things, why we’re here, how we originated on Planet Earth, what’s happened since then, what’s in store for our future…—you’d think that all those questions would become infinitely more difficult to answer. Well, it’s exactly the opposite. Once you find that connection between your conscious mind and your central mind—once you remove the veil between your brain and soul—answers to questions like those start falling into place rather easily. That’s why if you see a mystic and a scientist together, the mystic seems simple but as an instrument of a boundless God can perform miracles, while a scientist seems extremely complex but confines his knowledge to the finite material world.

So, with my next post I’ll start telling, in very simple terms, the incredible human story, from our ancient heritage to our paradise destiny.

You may have already read parts of the story… on this blog or in my latest book, The Project, but now I’d like to tell it in a more cohesive way. Not all the puzzle pieces are assembled yet, so there will be some holes in the story, but I have enough gathered to paint a pretty compelling picture, I think.

Other posts in the “Human Story” series:
1 – From the Source of All-That-Is
2 – Physical Life and Spiritual Life
3 – An Ancient Timeline
4 – The Edenites and Their Descendants
5 – The Seven Ethereals
6 – The Afterlife Eden
7 – The Afterlife of Jules Verne
8 – The Afterlife of Arthur Moos
9 – The Afterlife of Sir Richard F Burton
10 – The Afterlife of Anne de Guigné
11 – Afterlife Wrap-Up
12 – Atlantis and the First Epoch
13 – Thoth the Atlantean
14 – Modern Civilization Sprouted from Ancient Pyramids
15 – Hands that Caress and Strangle the World
16 – End of Story, End of Times