Christian Sundberg - From Pre-Birth to Human_ The Expansion of Love Through the Earthly Experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56rHrK2QKgA

All right, everybody. What a great pleasure it is to see everyone. I hope everybody's getting ready for the big Thanksgiving holiday that's coming up. I know I'm certainly not ready for it. Time's going by way too quickly. But before I introduce our guest of honor today, I just want to point out a couple of quick housekeeping things.

If you're joining us on Meetup, part of our value proposition is that you get to ask our guest speaker a question in real time. If you want to remain anonymous, you can protect your privacy by essentially just writing your question in the chat. Or if you'd like to just ask the question directly, you can raise your hand. Those of you who are joining us here in person today, there are a couple of places where you can ask a question. You can write it out, you can bring it to me, or you can actually come to the mic and ask Christian directly.

So I just wanted to point those things out. We are recording this, and so without further ado, I would love to introduce our guest today. We are going to be speaking with Christian Sundberg. I had the great pleasure of meeting Christian at the IANDS 2023 conference last year in the Washington DC area, which is in our backyard. His experience, his testimony, is mind-blowing. It's different from many NDEs, and there's a tremendous amount of value to be gained from it. So I am thrilled that he agreed to speak with us today.

Christian had pre-birth memories, and that's what he's going to be talking to us about today. However, those pre-birth memories seemed to sort of leave his consciousness during early adulthood, but they came back about 13 years ago. I think it's since then that he's really started to talk in public about the experience. He's written a wonderful book called "A Walk in the Physical," which attempts to describe the larger spiritual context in which we exist and the importance of love on our own human journey.

So he'll be talking with us for up to an hour, hour and a half, as long as he wants, and then the last 30 minutes or so we will invite the audience to ask questions. I hope you will avail yourself of that opportunity because it doesn't happen very often. So without further ado, it's my very, very great pleasure to introduce Christian this afternoon to us all. So take it away, Christian. Welcome.

Thank you so much, Angie. It's great seeing you again. Several familiar faces. It's beautiful. Good. So thank you for the opportunity. As Angie said, I'll share my story again. I like that you said it's not really a story; it's an experience. Well, I was just talking to my group here a few moments ago, and it is—I didn't want to say story because somehow that diminishes what you went through. It's an experience, but it's also your own personal testimony. Yes, lived, right? Yes, definitely. And yes, so I'm happy to try to share that. I'll jump right in.

But before I do, I just have to disclaim, as I do every time I try to share this, that language just can't possibly do this justice. You know, because our true nature transcends the world of form. It's bigger than all of this context. It transcends linear time and discrete location and all these things that seem to be so fundamentally real for us. It's actually deeper than that. So our language is just vastly not sufficient. In fact, when I first really had this memory return and was having out-of-body experiences, I felt, "Oh my gosh, I really want to communicate this." But I also wondered, "Can I? Should I even try?" Because like writing one sentence, no matter what words you use, it's just wrong. It's just like blasphemy or something to try to put language on this. So I just have to say that first. I'm going to, of course, use language; that's what we have. But it's very difficult to articulate this.

Okay, so my body is 44 years old right now. When I was a young child, up until the age of five or six, I had some pre-birth memory. So I remember choosing this life and incarnating. I assumed everybody knew we weren't from here, but nobody else talked about it, so I didn't talk about it either. And then that memory left me completely by the age of five or six, and I had no memory of it at all until the age of 30.

I took up a long-term meditation practice, and after several months, I began to have out-of-body experiences that were extremely eye-opening—not subtle, very, very paradigm-challenging experiences. And at that same time, pre-birth memory began to return. It wasn't like a big epiphany; it was just like, there it was. It was so obvious. It was obvious that I'm not the human; I'm just experiencing this, playing through the character, so to speak.

So, you know, at first when that came back, I didn't share it for a while. In fact, I didn't share it at all for about eight years because I've been a working professional, and it's the kind of thing you don't talk about. You know, I'm a normal person, I'm down to earth, I'm a pretty logical person, and you know, this is the kind of thing that you get some flak for sharing. But about six years ago, I just really felt intuitively that the ground was just fertile enough, so to speak, in consciousness space here on Earth, that sharing could be helpful. And also, I was receiving these intuitive chunks of—I don't know how to describe this—but like chunks of information that I knew were to be eventually a book. And so that book is now out and available.

So, you know, I have shared now, and I'm happy to share again. I don't think that my personal testimony is the most important thing to share, so I will share it because I've been told it provides valuable context for why I'm saying what I say. I understand that, but what's far more important than my own testimony is like, what are we all of us? What are we really doing here? What is the human experience? You know, that's what I'm passionate about. And why is love so important? And why do we have nothing to fear? You know, those are the really important themes, I think. So I'm going to come back to that in just a moment.

So okay, I know this sounds strange. I'm going to dive right in, and I know this sounds wild, but I remember before I had ever physically incarnated, coming across a being who had—okay, so in the higher systems, communication is not words; it's telepathic. There's an exchange, sharing of knowing because while we are individuated, we are also a part of each other, a part of the whole. We're connected. And so I felt from him this incredible love and power and freedom, and it was so amazing. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, how? And I asked him telepathically, "How did you do this? How are you this? How do you feel as much freedom and joy and love and power as I feel that you feel?" And he shared with me many things, but chief among them that he had lived a physical life, and in the physical life, he had a long-term pain, a health condition that lasted with him for many years. And that pain, the way that he chose to meet it, allowed a certain refinement or deepening of his being. You know, there was like his essence was deeper because he knew that and he experienced it and did not reject it and really chose love even in and through that context. There was this incredible deepening of the experience.

And I was so inspired, and I was like, "I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to do that." You know, and he at first shared something like—and this is not negative—something like, "Yeah, that's what they all say," like not blowing me off, but it's just like, "You just don't know. You just don't know what you're asking for. It's harder than what you could even understand right now." And I said, "No, I mean it. I want to do it." And he said, "Okay, we'll go talk to your guides."

Okay, so I don't have right after that the major—but the I found him later after I had lived many times. He was encouraging to me, but the majority of my pre-birth memories are of a time somewhat immediately preceding this life and the life just before this. Actually, I was in this waiting area. Okay, how do I describe this? So first, I was in like a realm of what I can only describe as living golden light, where I could move anywhere at a whim with an intention, and I was connected to all things. And this guide was coming to me over and over and asking me, "Are you ready to go back yet?" Like every once in a while, "Are you ready to go back yet? Are you ready to go back yet?" And saying, "No, I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet." Not pestering me, but just like reminding me of my own intention, like I was on this journey, and I was just like taking it—felt like taking a long break, you know, or being on a very long, very long weekend or something. You know, it felt very long.

And eventually, when he came to me saying, "Okay, I'm ready," you know, and then I reviewed with him what I can only describe as my state—like who I am, who I've been, what I knew, what I understood. This is so hard to describe too, but metaphorically, just as a metaphor, it was like if you looked at a graph with hundreds and hundreds of lines or something, I could see this one line was really, really low, and I could—it was so obvious. I mean, it's not literally like that; it's energetic. It's an energetic review of the being, the qualities of being, and what you understood and who you are. And I could see this one area, this very specific low vibration fear that had bested me in a previous experience. So in a previous life, this fear had overcome me, and fear gives rise to ego, you know, which is very damaging, painful for oneself and others. And so in that life, I had become an egoic monster, and I'd hurt many other people. And so I could see, "Oh man, it was obvious that that would be the most useful, like that would be the most helpful and powerful if I could integrate that fear, really heal it, really process it." But I could see it was so low vibration, like it was so, so, so extremely low that I remember asking, "Can it even be done? You know, has any being in creation ever processed a fear that's this low in this specific way?" And I was told, "Yes, and you have all of time available to you to do so. There's no hurry." And so I just knew—this sounds strange to me now as a human, but at the time, I just knew like, "Well, if it can be done, I will do it. Like if it's possible, I will do it." Like I was—I just because I knew what we are, what I am, like I knew I was a very powerful, immortal being. Like I knew, "Oh, if it's possible, I'll do it. I'll do it."

So they brought me a life that was appropriate for that intention, and it wasn't this life. It was a life—basically, time is strange to articulate, but it was basically immediately preceding this life. And I reviewed that life in great detail, and I remember accepting that life. And then I remember accepting the veil. Okay, so the veil is just a term we use for the constraints that we wear in consciousness on and in consciousness in order to have the very defined, limited human experience. And so, in simple terms, the way we could put that is the veil is a forgetting. You know, that's a part of it. We forget all the rest of what we are, but it's not just a forgetting. It also feels like you're disconnected from everything else because one thing that makes our reality very unique is it is a very high degree of separation. The experience of separation is profound here. We really feel separate from each other here. That's a very unique and alien context, actually.

So when I accepted the veil, I remember that my—this plummet of vibration, the vibration of my being from being connected to all things, down, down, down, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. And then it felt like when you're at the bottom, you think you can get out, it goes lower, and then it goes lower more, and then it goes lower, lower, lower, and then more low. It was ridiculous. It was so, so low. It was like jumping out of an airplane or something. I don't know, but you never hit the ground; you just keep falling. And then being finally arriving in the womb, I was in the fetus of the body that was to be mine, and I was like, "I am not doing this. There is no freaking way." Like I had so much fear rise up in me because it was so dark, it was so dense, it was so constraining. I'm like, "There is no way I'm going to tolerate this for a lifetime." So I summoned my might, my strength. I knew what the strength that I had, that we have, and I fought the veil. I fought my way back out, and I was successful in doing that because I returned to the other side. But I saw I had a life review, and I could see that I had killed the fetus that was to be my body. So just like a life review described by your death experiencers, I could see from—so the mother was the primary because I had heaped grief on the mother by causing a miscarriage. But then because the mother's journey was more difficult because now she had all this grief, I could see hundreds of other people whose journeys would all be made more difficult because of my fear.

So, you know, and from that—this is hard to talk about because from that point of view, you know, like it's okay, like you can't really fail, there's nothing really wrong, you know. But I could see very objectively like, "Oh man, I have a lot of fear. Like I got to do something about this." You know, so I actually spent some time in a place that I call—and I know this sounds crazy—but I actually have heard one other person call it the same, and she told me she's experienced the same place, and she gave me details that I've never shared, and I was like, "It's super cool." But what I called it is like a veil acceptance simulator. So I went to a place in the non-physical where you can practice surrendering your control to a veil and not fighting it. And so it was like being in a dark pool, like a huge dark swimming pool, and they dunk you under the water, and then they keep you under the water, and then it's all like a low vibration, but it's an artificial low vibration. And then you can cry uncle, you know, they'll let you out. You can be like, "I've had enough," you know, and they'd let you out just to practice. And I can tell you that the real veil is a lot harder; it's a lot more vibrationally extreme.

Anyway, eventually, they brought me this life because I still had this intention, and so I remember reviewing this life in incredible detail. And it was like if you take a tree and lay it on its side and you start at the thick part and work your way out to the branches, I could see and feel and experience millions and millions and millions and millions of possibilities of what this life might be, all at once, all in like a second. And it wasn't just actions and events; it was more like, "What would it be like to be me?" You know, like, "What would it feel like to be Christian?" You know, and I could see that in my early 20s, it would—because I knew this biology has limitations that other biologies don't, and it would make day-to-day experience very challenging. And I could see that in my early 20s, it would be likely that I would be crushed by a health trauma. And that did happen when I was 22.

I was in Chongqing, China. I had studied in Beijing in college. I tried to move to China after college. This is just the physical manifestation of it. And I was teaching English in Chongqing, China. I had a heat stroke. I was in a Chinese hospital for four days. They gave me bag after bag after bag of potassium, and something about that burned out my nervous system. And I experienced neurological pain that would not go away for months. It was absolutely horrible. It was agony, just pain, just constant pain that I could not escape. And my body didn't sweat for a year. And I would just get sick anytime my temperature rose. I would just get terribly sick. So I was stuck in a Chinese hotel room where the power was going off. And this—it was 110 degrees in this hotel in this city. And so when the air conditioning went off, the temperature would rise, and so my room would start getting really hot, and I would just get sick. And so I had no control over it. You know, it was just a week of heat, you know, getting exposed to heat, getting exposed to heat, getting exposed to heat after already having been in the hospital for four days. And I just knew after four days like something they were giving me was making me a lot worse, so I did not want to go back.

Anyway, I had some post-traumatic stress from that. I ended up blotting out that whole experience, and in my 20s, I had no memory of it. And actually, no memory of up until the age of 22. I had only a little bit of memory of it, not full memory of it, because it was so painful to think back on. And I went through years of EMDR therapy—it's a type of psychotherapy—to process that fear. And I did. It took like hundreds of sessions actually to get down through all the ego layers and really find there was a moment in a hospital bed in Chongqing, China, where I perceived—because this is what fear is about, buying into a perception that's not the truth—I perceived, "I am absolutely powerless to escape agony." And it was such a low vibration that I—it was the fear, you know, it was a manifestation of this fear that I came to process, which now I know. At the time, I did not know that. And it took a heck of a lot of emotional work to really allow and feel all these layers of fear all the way down to this root and to really process it.

Anyway, so that's a bit of the story. You know, after, of course, I was born, but pre-life, I could see that it was likely that a health event would happen and that I would probably be crushed, and it would give me the chance to re-experience this fear. See, not so—that sounds like masochism or something, right? But it's not. You know, I could because I was actually super, super excited at the opportunity, even though like I knew this was going to be harder in a way than I had ever done before. I also could see the absolutely incredible opportunity. This is the thing I really want to lift up about the contrast that we sign up for as humans. It is so preciously powerful. It's like winning the lottery. In fact, I felt like I had been given a winning lottery ticket just to be given the chance to play a human. It really felt like all that is could see—and these words are poor, okay, but like it could see that it would be profitable, so to speak, for me to play this human. Like, "Wow, you know, what an honor."

Anyway, so I reviewed this life in incredible detail. I asked lots of questions about it, mostly in terms of like things I wanted to experience or not, but primarily it was like traits. Like I knew that I wanted to be intelligent again because I had been intelligent in previous experiences, and I preferred that. And they said, "Yes, that's okay. You'll be—you can be intelligent." And I asked to have a small, tiny bit of memory. I said, "I don't want to forget everything this time." And they said, "You can do that, but it will make the journey more difficult." And I knew why. I could feel because the level of contrast would be even higher because having some awareness of home provokes an incredibly painful homesickness. You know, it's like near-death experiencers often describe, like once they come back, they do not want to be here anymore. Like, "Why do I—why would I want to be here when that is so wonderful? Like why?" It's like that, you know.

Okay, so then I remember there being a moment to say yes, and I don't remember that moment, but I do remember being in this like waiting area place where this guide suddenly came and grabbed my attention like, "Go now." And then I'm being like, "Okay, now." And then being in this room—the words are so bad. I mean, I say it's a room, but it was like a—it looked like a station almost above the Earth, like a mechanic shop maybe above the Earth, and below me was the Earth. And there was a shaft in the floor, and I could see the Earth, and there were these beings in this room that I can only describe as veil application technicians. So like they're very technical in nature, and they are extremely skilled at matching the veil to the soul. You know, because each individual soul is so unique and so powerful in so many ways, and each life has its own energetic thing going on. The body has its own energetic thing going on. The culture, the world—you know, Earth is not the only place we can incarnate. So it's like all that together is like an energetic picture, and they do this like meshing so to prepare the veil and to make it effective, you know, to as effective as possible.

And they asked me one last time, "Are you sure?" And I said, "Yes." And I knew that once I said yes here, it was like getting strapped into the roller coaster. You know, there's like no way to get off once you get in. So then I felt the plummet in my vibration again, down, down, down, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, more. Like I cannot stress the ridiculous drop in vibration down into the cold, dense, dark, separated state of being in the womb, physical, and feeling like all of my knowledge had disappeared and all of my connectedness had disappeared, and I felt like I had lost all that I am. That's how it felt.

And I sent one message back to the technicians, "Did it take? You know, did the veil take?" And they sent one message back, "Yes." And actually, I felt accomplished at that moment because I knew that even making it to the physical was a huge accomplishment because it's such a vibrational step to come down here. So then I was there for a little while, and I was like, "I'm not doing this. This is not happening. There's just no way." Like and once again, I was like, "I'm not doing a life of this. This is not happening. This is ridiculous. Like I'm just—there's no way I'm doing a life of this." So once again, I began to summon my might to fight my way out.

And when I did that, the most holy moment of my entire human life happened. This is very—this is impossible to describe. I felt my being being expanded back out all the way, and I felt all of the universe within me, and I felt the sun of Earth within me, and it was churning with bliss. And God said to me—God, the Great I Am of all things that I was a part of—said to me, "This is still what you are. You can never not be this." Oh, sorry. I try to not get choked up every time I tell this story, but it's like so personal. Pretty choked up myself, actually. It feels like every time I tell this, it feels like I just pulled down my pants. Like that's—I'm serious. Like that's how this feels. This is like the most personal moment in my whole journey. Like it is holy. It is holy. It's very, very powerful. It's holy.

And oh my gosh, yeah. But the thing is for us to know that that while we're here, you know, that's powerful. So we got to remind each other. Anyway, so I stopped fighting because I knew, "Oh, if that's what I am, and I haven't lost everything I am, I don't need to be afraid. I don't need to fight." Okay, oh, that's wonderful, you know. So I let go and returned to being in the womb, and I felt like I was there for a long time.

And then I remember the day I was born. I remember the sight and the sound and the touching and the cold and the pain. I remember being cut—circumcision. I remember looking at the nurses and being like, "Who are these beings? What is happening?" Like I had no idea what was happening. I just knew something really intense was happening, and it was just really intense, and I was super curious. And it's funny because later when I told this to my father, he said, "You had the most curious look on your face I've ever seen the moment you were born." He said, "You were just staring at everything with the most intense curiosity I've ever seen." I remember that. I remember being so curious like, "What is happening?" And I didn't know any—I didn't understand anything at all. I understood nothing. I just knew that there were these beings, and they were somehow doing something to me, for me. I felt love for the nurses. I felt love for my mother. I felt love for the doctor. I felt—I just felt so much love. It was just normal because love is what we are. Like yeah, of course.

Anyway, so and then later in my life, I drew the room from my memory because I know that they say babies can't see, so I don't know how I saw this. Maybe it was a non-physical sight or something. I don't know, but I could see the room, the layout, and I drew it for her later. This is where the bed was. This is where the heating grate was. This is where the doctor was standing, you know. And she confirmed, at least you know, for me that that was true. That was correct.

So then as I aged, you know, I used to draw upon the flowchart memory and try to like cheat a little bit, like just to try to see like what's going to happen. Like I remember like just when you're a little kid, like just simple things like, "Is anyone going to come over to the house tomorrow?" And then I would just look and see, you know, and I would just be curious. But I also assumed that certain aspects of the higher realities would be true here. Like for instance, I assumed we would be able to feel each other's emotions here because in higher systems, we telepathically share all that we are all the time. We feel what each other is feeling. There's no shame in it. You just feel what we feel each other all the time. It's just the most—it's so normal.

And this one time, I remember dancing to a record. I was in my diapers. I remember being in diapers, standing at the edge of the couch at this original house where I grew up, and there was this neighbor friend over. And I remember telling her, "Watch me dance," and then standing there listening to this record player, this music, and shaking my little butt, and she just walked away unimpressed. And I realized, "She can't feel what I'm feeling. What the heck is this place?" Like I remember that being the moment when it dawned on me like, "Where the heck am I?"

Anyway, like so I feel like I've never really fully come to terms with the strangeness of Earth. You know, like another assumption I had was people in positions of authority or leadership would be loving and wise because love and wisdom is the authoritative power, you know. But on Earth, we—that's not always the case.

Okay, so that's a quick sharing of my experience. So what I want—what was more important though is like what are we, and what are we doing here? You know, okay, there's no good language for this, but I'm just going to jump right in because I like getting to the root. There's so many layers of stuff that we build on top of the root, you know, but the root is the most important.

Okay, so what are we? First of all, we are consciousness itself, spirit itself. So we are not the form. So that means we're not the objects; we're not the body; we're not the thoughts. So in my case, during my awakening, it wasn't that this knowing that I just shared came back as some new set of forms. It was more that I went and got in touch without any expectation at all with what I really am, which is awareness itself beneath thought. I went and I looked very deeply at my own consciousness beneath thought, and as I did that, other parts of myself just rose up because I was no longer staring at the movie screen—that's a metaphor of the human life. I was no longer staring at my story of Christian and Christian's problems and Christian's job and all the things that I think I thought were me. I really investigated what I really am, which is awareness itself. So that's what we are. We are awareness itself, consciousness itself. That consciousness itself can't be named actually because it is the stuff that transcends all form. So all form arises within it; all form is made of it. But the closest words we have is it is love and peace and freedom and joy endlessly, forever, amen. Like that is our nature. That is what we are. We're made of the stuff where love and peace and freedom and joy are the closest words we have for what that stuff is. We are the knowing quality of that which knows things, you know.

And so we are individuated souls but also one with the whole. So what I mean is we are both individuated people, individuated souls, beings—that means you're you, but you're also one with the whole. And those two things are not mutually exclusive. That's something we really get confused about on Earth. We think, "Well, if I'm separate, if I'm not—we think if I'm not separate, I must lose my individuation. I must lose who I am." No, no. You are you. You are precious. You are it. It's just that precious you is also one with the ocean. So I love the Rumi quote, "You are not just a drop in the ocean; you are the mighty ocean in the drop." I love that. And Wayne Dyer says something similar to that, like, "You are not—trying to think of the exact phrase—I have it in my book—something like, 'You are a piece of God, and you are all together God, and God is you.'" This is not blasphemy; this is your identity. Of course, because in Christian theological terms, that's like the heresy of saying that you're God. I don't mean you are God the whole; I mean you are a precious piece of the whole, and you're a drop in the ocean, and you're irreplaceable.

Okay, so as individuated drops of the ocean, we have the opportunity to make free will choices, you know. And we might choose to engage contrast sets, experience sets of limitation, physical systems. Okay, so the physical universe is like a very dense, very high constraint simulation that is built for the purposes of the expansion of what we are, the deepening of what we are. Okay, so I know that sounds like—how does that work? So I'm going to try to describe that. There's really two primary things we're doing here in the physical to fulfill its purpose.

Okay, one is we are integrating experience. So what I mean is we have experience, and then we go, "Huh, wow, I get that now. I now know what it's like to be hungry or to be cold or to be happy or to be a mother, to be a human, to look at the sky, to appreciate sunset and post-sunset." You know, we come to experience all of what's offered on Earth, not just the objects and the sensory experience of the Earth but our perspectives of it and the meaning that we put on it. So if we decide, "This sucks," then we experience this sucks, and then we have to integrate that. You see, we learn by—it's a learning of the being by being something. So because people often say, "Well, what's the point if we forget every time? What's the point of learning if we forget?" This is not intellectual learning. I mean, intellectual learning happens, and it's valuable, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a learning of the being by being something, by actually going and being it. Actually, like if you want to know what it's like to be human, you got to be human. You can't be the whole, you know. If you're the whole, you're the whole. You know, if you feel the sun in you, you feel the sun in you. But if you want to wake up and have a headache and figure out how do I go to work, pay the bills, and you know, pull through the drive-thru and order my coffee or whatever, then that's what you are, you know. So the veil just permits us for that deep immersion so that we integrate an experience of this depth.

Okay, so that's the first thing: integration of experience, meaning we constantly process it and bring it into kind of what we are. And it's not just this lifetime; it's all the experiences we've had because, by the way, other lifetimes is not other people; it's you. It's just you doing one thing and then doing another thing and then doing another thing and then doing another thing. And you learn by being this and then by being this and then by being this and then by being that.

Okay, and the second main thing we're here to do is to wield a loving intention rather than a fear-based, egoic intention. So to wield a high quality of intention through our choice-making, that means to make choices that are in alignment with love and not fear—fear being based in negative perceptions that are actually not even true because fear is, "Oh, I perceive I'm powerless." But look, the ego comes to the rescue and says, "You're not powerless because look, you can—I don't know—hurt the person next to you. Don't you feel powerful now for five seconds or five minutes or five years?" That doesn't work. It may temporarily seem like it's an itch that's been scratched, but the ego's solutions don't actually work. They're based in fear. So can we choose love and peace and freedom and joy rather than the ego patterns and the fear? Can we face our fear? You know, can we face our rejection?

When we choose love here, we allow our true nature to shine more brightly into this very dense place, and then there's an expansion of love through us, in us, of us, and in this place. And that is beautiful. So both of those things serve the expansion of love because beingness is what we are, and beingness is love. So when beingness integrates experience, it ends up being a deepening of what is possible. And when beingness chooses love over fear and processes out fear, heals it, really evolves the quality of its intention towards love, then love has expanded through that in that.

Okay, so I know those are like—they may sound a little abstract, but I try to make it a little more specific. Okay, so this refinement of being that I'm trying to describe—what is it a refinement of? So okay, so first of all, let's say that you've never known—ever—that you've never known what it's like to be cold, ever. Like you've never been cold. Let's say you start in a place that there's no such thing as cold. Well, how do you know what cold is or what warmth is unless you actually come and experience it? You have to become something you're not in order to deepen the depths of what you truly are because there's nothing like—you could say duality itself is like a cave that has been carved out into which beingness can then process and learn and grow through its experience and through its integration.

So as a simple—another example, maybe not simple, but a specific example, let's say that you know, like in my case, the fear I've been here to—I'm here to process is like a powerlessness, like I'm powerless to escape pain. Okay, so I have deeply, deeply, deeply experienced the perception of powerlessness. But how much deeper can I know—can we know forever—what it's like to truly be free and powerful and expanded than to know it and then really integrate it? You see, it creates a space into which now I know what freedom truly is and how free I truly am.

Okay, so duality itself isn't even fundamentally real. It's like a tool; it's like a creative tool, you know. Okay, so as the substance of beingness refines, it's a refinement in what it knows, so what it understands, and it's an expansion in what it can feel because now you can feel things that maybe even before you weren't even capable of feeling. And it's an expansion of what you can do. So for the last one, what do you mean an expansion of what I can do? Okay, most realities are thought-responsive, which means they respond to the intention and the thought form of the individual. So here on Earth, if you're doing something super hard or maybe you're having a super rough week, and if someone flicks you off on the street, you know, and you could be angry or you can choose to allow the egoic rise that says, "You're powerless. This makes me mad." You know, if you can really—how do you deal with that in that day when you have a headache or you have no money today or something, and you're not in a great mood or something? You know, like how, under those constraints, how do you respond? What quality of intention do you bring forth? When we can bring forth a high quality of intention when the constraints are high, which on Earth they often are through illness or persistent circumstance or whatever, if we can do that here, then when we go to a thought-responsive reality, we can wield intention that is so strong because we've done it with the weight on us that's much heavier. So metaphorically, it's like if you lift 500 pounds even if you push it up only a few inches, man, you know, and you do that for a few decades, then you go to a thought-responsive reality where someone hands you one pound, you can chuck that thing down the street. It's nothing to you because you lifted 500. And then they say, "Oh my gosh, how did you do that?" And you're like, "Dude, this is nothing. This is nothing. You should see it on Earth where like this density is in your face. It's persistent; it doesn't let up." See, because through it, so it's to what refines is our ability to—you could say wield virtue. Even—I'm careful to use the word virtue, but to make it specific, like wield bravery, choose bravery, and wield bravery, or choose freedom even when you don't see freedom, you know, or choose love even when it's not easy, you know. That allows a deepening of what we can do in those higher systems, and then we get to keep that. You know, so when the life ends, you don't keep your money; you don't keep your body; you don't keep your declining eyesight, you know. You don't keep any of that. That's not you; it's just a form you wore. It's like taking off a costume when you get off stage on a high school play. You're not worried about taking off your costume. You get off, and you're back to being your fuller self, but now you know what it's like to have been in the play. And here, now we get to keep that quality of intention, and we get to keep that refinement that we underwent. You could say the substance of spirit itself has refined through how it responded to the circumstances of life.

Okay, so now a few metaphors for that—just three metaphors. The first is a simple metaphor of refining gold. So you know, when gold is just mined, it's just full of imperfection. So Tom Campbell talks about that in terms of what he calls entropy, which just means lack of order or yet unevolved. I like to use the word fear as synonymous with yet unevolved, you know, where we have fear, it's just because in that level of constraint, we just haven't evolved enough yet to not respond in an egoic way. That's okay, but that's—you know, Earth is hard, you know. But through the application into this circumstance set, we have to make—we're forced to make choices under this constraint, and that being forced to have to make choices is like a refining of the substance of spirit. And then when the constraints are lifted, the refinement remains. Okay, so it's like refining gold. That's the first one.

The second one is like exercise—a simple example. Like I've used this metaphor many times. People say, "Well, why would I ever leave the bliss of the higher realms to come out here to this hellhole? Why would I ever do that? You know, that doesn't make any sense. Screw that. I don't like this world." Okay, so metaphorically, if you're on your couch and you're watching TV, and you got all access to the snacks and the food, and you feel great, and everything's comfortable, let's say you can do that as much as you want forever, you know, forever. Why would you ever get off the couch, get up off the couch, and go for a run? Like why would you ever do that? Like why would you put yourself under stress and pain because the run can hurt, especially when you haven't run in a while? You know, that hurts. It doesn't feel good at you know, but it allows a vibrancy. It's a deepening of what your body can—it's like using the counter-pressure of the run to deepen your health. And then when you come back to the couch, even after a few days when your body has adjusted, and you're like, "Wow, I'm stronger now," you can actually appreciate the couch in a way that you never could before. You know, like then when you sit down and watch the TV, it actually is more enjoyable because now, "Oh, okay, I've been for a run," and your body is stronger, and you're—you know what I mean? So incarnating is kind of like that. It's like signing up for something that can be incredibly challenging at the time, but it can be so potent in the growth that's possible.

Okay, and the last metaphor—and I used this during the last IANDS conference briefly, and I don't know if this stuck, and this is really specific, so if this doesn't help, I apologize, but I'm just going to try because I've been trying for years trying to think of metaphors that can describe this—but imagine if you take a rubber band and you stretch it out like really wide, and then you lock it into that position. So now it's in a really unnatural stretched-out state, right? It doesn't like it because it's all stretched out. But while the rubber band is stretched out, now take a pen and draw on the rubber band like draw an image like trees or mountains or something or letters—say you're writing some words on the rubber band. When you let go of the rubber band and return it to its original position, you have now created a refinement of writing that was only possible because you did it while it was stretched out. Do you know what I mean? Like if you put it back to its original size, now you got these perfect tiny little letters and these perfect tiny little trees or whatever. They're perfect. You could not have drawn them if you hadn't stretched it out. You couldn't have done it. But now that you return it back to its original shape, now the rubber band gets to keep that. Yeah, I mean, I know that's kind of a crude metaphor, but I can't think of better ways to try to articulate this.

Okay, so now how do we as humans cooperate? Like how do we participate in a way that helps facilitate what we're doing here? Now, that's a very personal question, and it's unique for each individual. And I will never try to say, "Oh, just do this," or "This is what you have to do." You know, you know more than anybody external can say to you. Your own intuition knows; your own soul knows. You know, like trust yourself. Your intuition knows the best way that you might be called in this life to live or what to do or who to be, you know, or what challenge to face. But I'll just lift up three like kind of broad themes that seem to be reoccurring, and they're very important.

Okay, the first is to seek to wield a genuine intention that is aligned with love rather than fear. And love means a lot of things, but fear can mean a lot of things too. So you notice I didn't say do this action and not that action. No, because the qualities of love and fear, they precede a given action, and they shine through a given action. They even shine through a given thought. Okay, they precede—like in the physical, we tend to think this action is good; this action is bad. Now, it's simple; I get it. But the thing is, what's important is the real why you're doing what you're doing—the real why, not what necessarily your ego is telling you. Can you genuinely choose compassion, kindness, understanding, peace genuinely, whatever that means? And also, it's not about the size; it's not about the scope of like you know, like you have to affect a thousand people today. No, it's about quality—quality over quantity. You could be by yourself in your house, no one, you don't see anybody, but if you face your own fear, that's—that's the next one. If you face your own fear even in the quiet of your bedroom, you are helping the entire collective consciousness of humanity.

So that's the second one: face your fear and own your crap. Like we all have some crap going on, you know, ego crap, and you know, all the stuff we run from and all the ways we don't want to own our own place in the world. Try to own it. Try to choose to own it and face your fear. When you feel afraid, it's okay, man. It's okay if you're afraid. The first step to processing is to acknowledge, "I am terrified of this certain thing, this certain outcome, this certain whatever, this certain perception." You know, like I've heard people say, "I'm terrified of public speaking." I don't personally have that fear. Once you know who you truly are, how can talking—how—no, no one's—this isn't me anyway. Someone's going to judge my face or my words; it doesn't affect me. But if you think my identity, "I will be seen. I could be seen in a way that will make me look foolish," that might trigger the fear, "Oh, I actually feel foolish," or "I actually feel shameful, unworthy of love." That's one of the really big themes that's running around on Earth right now. So that's why you don't want to public speak, you know, because you don't want the situation to trigger or prove to you that negative fear that's down there. Okay, acknowledge, "I am afraid of that." That's okay to see it and look at it clearly.

Now, we often can't do that in a given moment all the way to the root because the ego is super good at covering up our deepest fears with hundreds of layers of crap. But what we can do is meet this present moment. And what I mean is like find out what in your body—where is something negative occurring in your body right now? Or where is there an idea that keeps coming up today that's bothering you? Okay, go look at it. Why? Well, because this thing is proving to me that I don't have power. Okay, okay, go look at it. Go feel into it. Explore it. Don't reject it automatically. You're actually applying the meaning to that by the way, but I'm not even pointing at that right now. I'm just saying be willing to face the fear. And then when the fear arises, it's okay if you feel afraid. What choice do you make then? You know, I remember before one of the surgeries I had, I remember being in an anesthesiologist's office, and there was a sign there that said, "Courage is not not being afraid; courage is moving forward anyway." Absolutely. Absolutely. It's okay if you're afraid. What do you do then? That's how you see—that's how you—that's what matters.

I love the phrase from Bashar, "Circumstances don't matter; only state of being matters." That's so powerful. Okay, and then the third general suggestion is be authentic. Okay, so why—why does authenticity—how does authenticity align with integrating experience and choosing love over fear and being a loving person? Because your true nature is love underneath all the crap. You can't fool spirit; you can't fool God. You are loved and loving being. You are absolutely adored. You are unconditionally celebrated and loved, and your nature is love. Your nature is freedom. Your nature is peace. Your nature is that. So if you can be more like the real you with whatever you're experiencing, you tend to step back towards that because you tend to end up questioning these boundaries that got put on you by conditioning or that you put on yourself, you know. And then when you choose that authentic you, you automatically align with your power, and also you end up feeling wonderful—not because you're trying to, but because it's when you align with your true nature, you will feel good. Like aligning with love, peace, freedom, and joy feels good. You know, it's like true freedom, you know.

Okay, and then so those are the three general things I would lift up, but I'll also lift up one specific thing like an action even though it's not actually an action, and that is meditation. I highly recommend meditation because—okay, so a long-term meditation practice changes the way that you relate to form—all form—not because you're trying to, but because you're going and investigating what you really are—consciousness itself. And as you grow in awareness of what you really are—consciousness itself, awareness itself—you change the form momentum, and you create this ledge to stand on where that peace and that love and that freedom and that joy—even if it's one billionth of your true nature—if even a little bit of that rises up and you become empowered, it makes the interfacing with the physical more palatable and more empowered because now you're doing it more from the space of the truth of who you are, even if it's only a little bit.

So like in meditation, you might meditate for months and not really experience anything, and then all of a sudden one day—or maybe you're not even during meditation—maybe you meditate—I recommend 40 minutes a day every day without any expectation. 40 minutes, 40 minutes, 40 minutes—just do it every day. Don't worry if you get up and say, "Did that work? Did I do it? Did I succeed?" Don't worry about that. Just do it anyway. You might be three months later standing in your kitchen, and all of a sudden you just feel this peace—like real peace, not the fake peace—like I'm saying like you suddenly taste the peace, and all of a sudden you just know—really know, not just as an idea—you feel it that wow, you are a powerful being, and you have nothing to fear, and love is your true nature. Even just a little bit. Now, the ego will immediately grab it. That's what I've been looking for, and it grabs onto it, and it's like, "What did I do to get that? Tell me the process. I want to do it again." You know, that's not how it works. You can't do that, you know, but it's okay because as you consistently do that, it widens a path.

I love there's a Seth quote. He says something like, "Physical reality is like a bright point of light that you never look away from, but you can." Now, that may sound really mystical and crazy, but let me just put this in a metaphor. If someone were to say to you like, let's say you're in a movie theater, and you're watching a movie, and you're in the middle of the movie, so you now feel like you're in the movie. You know, if somebody in the movie said to you, "How do you return to being in the seat at the movie theater?" Do you have to go anywhere? No, you never were in the movie. The only thing you have to do is look back towards the being in the seat.

So now, I'm not saying it's simple in practical terms because in the physical, the sensory data that we're engaging is extremely stimulating, and the thoughts are extremely loud, and you know, I know practically speaking, many people will meditate for hours and just say, "Screw this; this is not helping." That's fine. Yet, in choosing to focus first on something neutral in your mind and just control your focus at first and just like basically reclaim your focus, even just doing that is like taking one step away from being lost and staring at the movie screen. And eventually, it's not that you go to being the person in the movie theater; it's just that all of a sudden, it is there. I think that's how I experienced it at least. Like all of a sudden, I was like having an out-of-body experience, and I realized, "Oh, I was already here," and I was seeing a reality more real than this, more colorful than this, and I'm like, "What the—this is crazy. This is so real," like you know. But it's not like I had to go; it was just just another movie that my soul was engaged in, you know.

Anyway, so I highly recommend meditation, and without—and it's important not to have any expectation. I know that I that sounded pretty stimulating what I just said, but it's important not to have any expectation. And the way I like to recommend meditation is as a form of investigation. So what I mean is just go look. Don't make up anything. Don't make up anything. Don't make up any thoughts, any stories. Don't go look for something specific. Just go see what is my awareness beneath thought. Go look. Be a scientist. Be very objective about it. And then thoughts will come. You know, you'll start in half a second, "Am I experiencing this?" and you'll think some thought. That's okay. Let that go. And then another thought will come. That's okay. Let that go. It's fine. You know, you just look, and don't settle for thoughts. You see, don't settle for a story.

And as we do that experientially, the larger parts of our self can rise up all on their own. That's very powerful. Okay, and then Angie mentioned two things she wanted me to include in my talk today that I'll just kind of call out specifically, and then I'm going to open it up to Q&A because I think Q&A is more important. She said, first of all, based on those experiences and your philosophy of life today, what principles guide your married life, your life with your children, and your work? I would say I try to choose authenticity and love wherever I can, no matter what is going on. I just try to be me, you know. And that might mean I feel angry sometimes or something. That's okay. And then I try to see why, you know, oh, because usually if there's a negative feeling, it means I bought into some perception that isn't actually true. So I try to locate that. So I try to face my own fear when it arises, and I try to say yes to life. You know, fear is basically saying no to something. Well, love is an opening. It's a yes. You know, vulnerability is a wide road to love is one of the sentences I wrote in my book because if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, even with ourselves or with the person next to you, with your loved one, do you know how powerful that is? Like they see it; they feel it.

So you know, I'm not saying I'm always able to do that, but that's okay that I'm not always able to do that. The question is how can we better wield an intention that is in alignment with our love and peace and freedom and joy now? And I try to think of that rather than like principles as specific things because the soul is wise. You know, so when we really align with love, we usually can feel intuitively what should be done, you know. And then the other thing Angie asked was why do I believe I was given the gift of recalling these memories, you know, and what is the purpose of that remembrance? So first of all, I'm not special. This is not like I'm some special person, and so I was given these memories. No, no, that's not how it works. We all have done something similar. It's just very common not to remember. That's fine. That's part of the name of the game here. Like I said, I did ask for some pre-birth memory, pre-life, but it doesn't matter actually because basically, we all are what we all are. Like you can't not be what you are. That—I mean, that was the main message that I was shown in my pre-birth experience. You can't not be that. You know, you can't not be the whole; you can't not be spirit.

So why don't we remember though? Because our form association is deep. What I mean is we have become so associated with the thoughts, we become so associated with the body, we become so associated with the story, we've become so associated with the pain or so associated with the negative self-perceptions that we think life proved to us. "I was abused when I was a child, so I felt shame my whole life. I'm just a shameful person." No, you're not, but you may be associating with that deeply, you know. When so when I was a small child, I had some of this pre-birth memory in part because I was not deeply associated into the form yet, and that's why young children are—you know, they're able to come and go. They have out-of-body experiences quite commonly because they're not so deeply focused on the movie yet. But by the time your parents tell you a few times, "This is your name; this is what you do; this is how you talk; treat your sister a certain way; time to go to school," you know, as that happens, we cement our focus into the physical.

Are we ever truly stuck here? No, never, never, never, never. It's just that the physical is a very, very, very dense set of forms that is arising on and in your consciousness. So the way then to knowing our true selves is to just put that down and to align more closely with the love and the peace and the freedom and the joy of our true nature. Okay, that's it. I hit the hour pretty close. Thank you so much. You did very well. So and thank you for addressing the questions that I asked you some time ago. So do you believe that part of your purpose then in this particular lifetime is not only to remember those pre-birth memories but also to bring them forward and share the message to give people hope and a sense of there being something beyond so they don't live in such despair? I mean, I'm assuming that that's the natural sort of evolution of all of this. Do you—what do you say to that?

Well, I don't mean to sound mystical here, but I actually have some awareness around that that I felt called not to share—nudged not to share. I will at least simply say that I'm excited to be a part of the awakening that's taking place on Earth, as we all are. Like this is the moment of awakening. Awakening is just the term for the shift in consciousness that's taking place in the human race right now. You know, in my pre-birth experience, I could see it was like the beginning was like the early act of that. It was the early part of that act of the play, you know, the awakening act. And being a part of the awakening act on Earth—this is a heck of an experiment we got going on here on Earth to see if we can really process all this fear for all these thousands of years of history, you know, and really like grow up, really evolve. To be a part of that, even in a small part—oh, that is the coolest. So I can at least say that I'm passionate about at least if because if even one other person feels more empowered and actually goes and touches the deeper part of them, then that's awesome, you know, because that's it. I mean, I so I don't have any sense of scope or anything like that. I mean, the scope has happened. I can't deny that, like the book has done very well, and I've met so many amazing people. I've met 50 other pre-birth experiencers by now probably, so this has created kind of a community even though I don't consider myself a community builder. That's not my calling. My calling is more this type of thing where I'm called to share information and frame it in a concise way. That's kind of my thing, and that's all I know. Yeah, and so I just want to align with that, and whatever happens is fine, like you know. I don't have any expectation around it either.

I'd like to encourage people to please ask questions, and those of you here as well to come forward. Interesting that you had the experience at the very beginning when you were telling us about all of this with that other being on the other side that you seemed to admire. You perceived that he or she—it had had some very special experiences here and sort of earned some brownie points as a result. Um, and sorry—I wouldn't say brownie points. I don't know how to—yeah, okay, just admiration if you will, interest, curiosity from other beings such as yourself. He had earned it—had earned some respect perhaps by having gone undergone the experiences that it did undergo in a particular lifetime on Earth. Is that very much very much so? Yes, very, very much so.

That suggests to me that on the other side, you were there of an innocent soul perhaps or hadn't had that depth of experience among beings that had had a great deal of experience. So it's kind of—is—are all the beings in one particular pool? I would have thought that perhaps that being would have been so evolved that perhaps they would have been in a different pool from—yes, that's a great question. Yeah, that's a great question. Okay, so first of all, there's not just like—when we say the other side, we tend to think it's one—there's like Earth and there's the other side, and that's it. No, no, no, there's like a multiverse of many reality systems. Okay, so it is true that there is such a thing as what I like to call vibrational geography. So what I mean is you tend to go where you resonate, you know. So you know, if you are a certain type of being, you tend to go to a place or be with other beings that are like that. It—you know, I mean, that's where you resonate, so you go there because intention produces an immediate effect. So Earth is a place where you could shove two people in a room that aren't the same, and you got to be stuck with them, kind of thing. You know, you got to deal with them. You know, that's part of the value of Earth actually.

But anyway, higher evolved beings—there is such a thing as reality systems that only very evolved beings can access because the refinement is so freaking high. But that doesn't mean that higher beings can't visit quote-unquote lower—I hate putting this in duality terms—but lower realms. And in that experience that I just shared, I remember being with a group of probably hundreds of other beings, and there was this landscape of light, and we were moving along the landscape in a group doing some energetic work. And from what I remember, all that one being was very unique. Most of us were not like that being, but for some reason, this was interesting to him. I mean, that's all it takes is interest, you know. Like what you know, like for instance, if you were an Olympic tennis player, there's no reason you couldn't go down to the local high school and play a game of tennis for fun. There's no reason you couldn't do that. Why not? Now, they couldn't come up to the Olympics and participate because they're not that skilled. Me too. I understand. Yeah, maybe he came down to your level, and I hate to put it that way as well, but perhaps to inspire some of you to try out some of these bigger challenges. I wonder.

Well, I certainly can't speak for him, and this felt like millions of years ago to me. I can at least say I knew that he was doing the same energetic work we were doing, so he had a shared interest with us. I can't say anything else for him. I will say that like—so I shared this about six years ago, and a couple—maybe two or three years ago—I heard a Bob Monroe—he's in the out-of-body explorer—comment where he said that many of us initially agree to incarnate because we become inspired by seeing a being who is godlike by comparison because they have processed this experience. That is—I mean, I maybe wouldn't use those exact words, but that is very much what I experienced, you know. I came across this incredibly powerful, wise, loving being, and it was like, "Oh my gosh, like you, I want to do that." You know, it was just like, "I will do it," and it was like, "I don't care if it takes a thousand lifetimes." I mean, that's the feeling when you see this depth of joy, you know.

It sounds as though you encountered him—and again, time is not linear there, so it's difficult to talk in—but it sounds as though you encountered him early on as it were, and then you had some lifetimes, and then you encountered him again. Yeah, put a timeline on it. So can speak to that the difference before and after? Why? What was the intention? The intention? So souls are kind of—okay, I don't mean—I really don't like to pigeonhole things down in language, but I'll just make a broad statement. Our true nature is very childlike and joyful. So the way that I was approaching him was almost like a child saying, "Hey, look, I made this neat thing. I'm doing this thing." Okay, but I had already lived many times, so I was not the same. I had done—I had played some tennis, you know. You wanted to go back, and then I went back to the Olympics and said, "Hey, you inspired me to play tennis," yeah, and I'm like, "I'm playing some tennis. I'm not in the Olympics yet, but see, I'm playing some tennis." Something like that.

Gotcha. Very nice. We have a question from Matt: What styles of meditation do you enjoy the most? So I mean, this question—we like to think in terms of form type, you know. So this type of meditation does this, and that type of meditation does that, but it's not that simple. This is actually about intention. So each individual may appreciate a different form of meditation. For myself, I appreciate a form that is close to transcendental meditation, I guess you call it TM. I describe that meditation exercise in part four of my book, which is available to be read online for free. So anybody who would like to see that meditation exercise, it's in towards the end. Yeah, I mean, I so I don't—I'm hesitant to put like a word on it and make it sound like this process is the one that works. Now, certain processes may resonate more or less for certain individuals.

Yeah, well, when you were describing meditation as one of your themes, if you will, that's what I was sort of jotting it down as. What is for you the intention? It sounds as though a quieting of the mind is certainly part of it, but is it actually getting in touch with your absolute essence? Is that the goal? So yeah, that's a good question. I'm okay. So yeah, this is another good example of like kind of a physical question like, "What is the product you're trying to achieve?" You know, because that's how we think in the physical like, "What are you—what's the output?" We tend to think a lot of product outcome. Okay, but for me, it's more like, "Why would I not want to touch the other ocean of love and peace and joy and freedom? It is the most blissful freaking thing. Why would I not want to be empowered by my true nature? Why would instead—why would I choose to constantly focus on the painful movie?" Now, sometimes I do, and I go to work all week and be super busy and not meditate for a few days, and suddenly I start getting you know more stressed, and I feel that, you know. I feel it doesn't feel good like being lost in the dream of thought is actually not satisfying. Whereas true satisfaction—your question is a little bit like asking like, "Why would you go get true satisfaction?" Something like that.

Well, I—this is a crude analogy, but I'm just thinking of you know a college student that goes off and has a happy family life and gets a little homesick as much as they enjoy the challenge of being at university. It's just nice to go home and sort of just eat pie and be with your family and then recharge and then you can go out and face the world again. Is that—yes, that metaphor means to me is even a much more full return to the non-physical. So while I've had out-of-body experiences that do feel like that, I would not say I've ever really fully returned home and eaten the pie. I yearn for that actually. Okay, I desperately yearn for that, but I also know that while I'm out here in the wilderness, there's a lot of possibility like this is a valuable opportunity, so I might as well do the work. Like I'm not at the end of the school year yet, you know, metaphorically. I can't go home yet. It's a long drive.

Yeah, while you were talking, some of the things that came to mind—I mean, I think it was a splendid presentation by the way—but some of the things that came to mind with your metaphors were sort of enduring with grace, courage, intrinsic motivation, some of these kind of adjectives and nouns sort of came to my mind because it sounds as though you know we buy into this reality, and it is darn difficult a lot of the time, but I think your message if you will, what you've touched is that in spite of it all, you know, it is there for a purpose, for a reason. If you can step up and endure and do it with love and grace and be in it for the ride and know that it's only skin deep, you know, it's a simulation that we're buying into for the here and now, and we will be rewarded. We will grow exponentially and inform the collective as a result if we can be those courageous individual beings to have that journey with fearlessness and love. That's kind of where it's at. That's what I think I'm hearing.

Yeah, I agree with that except I wouldn't say it's rewarded, and I wouldn't say that rewarding—perhaps yeah, rewarding. Okay, so yes, I mean, I agree with yes, it is about that grace. It is about how we choose to respond. So let's take a metaphor. Let's say that you have—there's a scorpion in your hand, all right? You're holding a scorpion, and it's scary, and it pokes you with its little feet, and it could sting you. The question is not whether or not there's a scorpion in your hand. So in this, what that means is the question is not whether or not you're sick. It's not whether or not you're old. It's not whether or not you have no money. It's not whether or not somebody said something mean to you or you are seen or not seen. It's not whether or not you can jump 100 feet in the air or you can barely walk. You know, even if the thing you're holding is pokey, how are you holding it? What is the quality with which you hold it? Okay, so now I'll actually—this reminds me of a simple short story. When I was a kid, I had hermit crabs, and the hermit crabs—I love my hermit crabs. I had so much love for them. I was probably—I don't know—12, maybe 10. I don't know, and I wanted to give them a bath, which is not a good idea, but I didn't know that. So I put these hermit crabs on my hand, and I put them under the kitchen faucet, and I ran water over them, and the crabs immediately grabbed under my hand, the flesh of my hand, with their big claws as hard as they could because this water is threatening to blow them away. So I start screaming and crying because I have—I think it was three crabs if I remember correctly—grabbing a hold in my hand, and it hurts so bad, and I'm screaming, and my father comes running, and I'm trying to shake him off because I got crab stuck on my hand. My father very calmly he says, "Put your hand—put the back of your hand down on the counter and don't move." And I listen to him, and he's like, and I did that, and at first they didn't let go, and I was still like kind of screaming, and he said, "Just wait. Just hold your hand." He said, "Use your willpower and just hold your hand. Don't fight them." They let go, and they walked away after a few seconds because I changed my behavior, not because you know the crabs were just holding on, you know, but I needed to choose peace, and I needed to say yes and not fight the pain. Now, that's just a simple example, but I think it's not a terrible example for like we hold circumstances in our lives a certain way. Do we hold them in fear, or do we choose love? Or do we choose to acknowledge the meaning that we're putting on the circumstances? Like we always have a quality of choice. It's the quality that matters. I love that Bashar quote, "Circumstances don't matter; only state of being matters." And I want to lift up you can always choose your state of being. And someone says, "What?" Like so I've experienced bipolar lows, depression that's so freaking painful that I understand why people would kill themselves. I mean, I laugh because I know in the greater context it's nothing, but in the moment, it hurts so bad that you can't feel good. It's only pain. It's only sheer pain. When that arises, that is the crab in the hand. That is the scorpion in like what I mean is like how do I respond to that? Do I allow it? Do I fight it? Do I choose the best love, peace, joy, freedom that I can even right now? What if peace means I can't do anything but go take a two-hour nap? Then I'll go take a two-hour nap. What if peace means like I want to go paint my models? I sometimes I paint little miniatures for fun. Maybe I'll go paint. Maybe I don't feel good, but I'll paint anyway, and I'll focus on that good thing. How am I holding the pain even if it's extreme? Now, ironically, interestingly, as we shift towards acceptance, the physical changes. The body changes. Healing happens, not because we're trying to get rid of it, but because we stop putting energy into the no into the fear. You know, we started saying yes to life, and when we say yes to life, no matter what has arisen, life says yes back. It's beautiful. So we don't do it because we're trying to change the circumstances. We do it because we trust life, or we trust our own body. We trust ourselves anyway.

Yeah, go ahead. That's okay. I think what I'm hearing is that life is full of challenges. That's a given. Okay, that's part of the nature of the existence. It's really how you handle it. It's how you handle each challenge, perceive it, and you have a choice. You can be fear-filled, or you can be confident that there's a greater purpose and that this too shall pass. Is that sort of what I'm hearing you say essentially? Yes, so two things. So first of all, the only thing that's assured here is limitation. Okay, not even necessarily challenge because a super evolved being could have a headache and not have any problem with it. It's not a challenge. Fair enough. So you know, but practically speaking, for the vast, vast majority of us, absolutely challenge is going to happen in life. Pain is going to happen, and usually that equates to suffering, which is the negative meaning we put on it because we haven't processed all this limitation yet. That practically speaking, yes, of course, that's that's true.

Patience. Okay, so the what was the other thing you said about the quality of—well, how we handle it essentially the crux. So you said something about choosing courage. So it's not even like you look at your fear, and you go, "Oh, I'm not supposed to be afraid. The right thing to do is to be courageous." This is actually about acknowledging even the fear. Like this is about saying yes to so everything so much that you even see where you feel fear, and you acknowledge how you feel, and you own how you feel, and you let yourself see it and feel it. And in your life, you see, "How is my behavior affecting the person next to me? How could I actually choose more compassion and love?" Oh, but my—you know, the ego will say, "My stupid partner, it's their thing because they're always mad or whatever," you know. Okay, well, there are times when the wise choice is to draw a line in the sand and step away from an unhealthy situation. Of course, but do that from a place of peace and freedom and genuine discernment, not egoic, you know. Rather, can you bring love to them and understanding to them? Like people tend to see that. They tend to feel it because we all want that. We all want that real connection, that real love. So if you really arrive to somebody in that and like make that choice, that has an effect. Yeah, so it's like what is the quality of the choice, the quality of the intention?

Yeah, you talk a lot about intention, and of course, intention is everything. I mean, even just take something as 3D as the legal system in the country. Okay, the ultimate result can be the same, but you know, somebody can end up dead, but the perpetrator's intention will have a huge impact on whether they're sentenced or whether they're let off—manslaughter versus meditated murder. These are just basic examples. So even in our system here, intention is everything. Yeah, as a simple example, like let's say you know in the physical we tend to think, "Well, what type of action did you take? What was the action?" And so like let's say like giving money to charity, you know, there's maybe two people who gave money to charity. The first one gave money to charity because now I get to brag that I gave money to charity, or maybe my church members saw me give money to charity, or maybe I don't really care, but I'm just going to do this because this person said I should, you know, whatever, versus the second person who quietly and just because they want to give, they give. They give. Maybe it wasn't even easy for them. It's like that parable when Jesus says the woman who gave one coin or two coins or something—it's all she had, and she gave it for the church, and he said, "Truly I say to you, this woman gave more than all of you who have given all this money because her quality of intention was in the right place." You see, intention indeed.

We have lots of questions, so Linda is asking regarding the pre-born contract. You know, you will have an agreement, a contract. Does meditation help you know what your plan is when you're on Earth? Well, I can at least say that meditation will over time tend to reconnect you with your deeper self. That's that's the only thing I can really say. However, yes, the deeper self knows what the contract is, so it may be useful to know it, but it may often not be useful to know it, and that's okay.

Okay, what are your thoughts on Hemi-Sync sound meditation from Cara? I just came back from the Monroe Institute. It was very helpful for me. What silent versus guided meditation do you prefer? One over the other? So I know many people who swear by Hemi-Sync or other you know type of technology that helps them meditate. I personally can't stand it. Just just personally for me, it is I feel like I'm being something's being forced on me, and I don't like that. So I prefer silent meditation myself. I've never I never do guided meditation for me. There just just for me like you know for for someone who's very form-focused and needs to hear direction, that may be very useful. I know there are many people who that's what benefits them, but for me, I typically would start by I picture a shape in my mind like a square or a diamond or a triangle, and I will simply visualize it in my mind and draw my attention along it as focus, and then I'll be thinking about lunch, and then I'll bring my attention back to the shape, and I will do that and feel a slowing of the momentum of thought in the mind and in the body, and eventually, if I'm able to keep a very clear focus, I might drop the shape and look purely towards awareness itself, and there's so much there. So that is definitely silent. You know, for me, that's not like it wouldn't be helpful for me if somebody was telling me you know do this or picture this. That's that's not necessary.

What about if someone basically wants to get in touch with their guides or get in touch with their higher self? Do you believe that meditation is a way to do that? Yes, yes, in simple terms, yes, because meditation again is like starting to look away from the movie. So in the movie theater analogy, picture that you are staring at the screen sitting in the movie theater, and there's people on either side of you who are trying to help you. That's kind of how it is, and they're kind of like ready to whisper in your ear or give you a nudge, you know. So how can you be more aware of their presence? Well, as you return to being aware that you are the person in the movie theater, their presence may be made known to you, or maybe even not just maybe not their presence, maybe just their guidance. I have had non-physical interaction with others both those who are physically alive like I've interacted at the higher self level and confirmed it a few times. I've had four probably five times I think now consider that last one where I've confirmed that I've had that interaction. So I just know that like there is that possibility to have interaction both with people who we physically know and those who are non-physical, and yes, that is more readily it's much easier to do when we're not so form-associated. Form association is like a big old distraction. It's like a big block. It's like you can't see past you can't see past thoughts are loud. Put it that way like the thoughts that we have here on Earth they're very slow they're very dense by comparison to the very quick refined level of vibration that guides might be able to interact with us in consciousness.

Okay, if we're part of the unity of God, a unit of God, if our perspective of God is all-knowing, why would we have to learn and experience a need to expand? Yeah, there's no need. It's not about need. It's a choice. The only way to actually grow and to actually expand is to actually experience. That's a simple way to put that. So if we choose to expand, that's not have to. There's no need. You don't have to incarnate if you don't want to. You don't have to. There's no need placed on you. You don't need to do anything. Like, you actually need to do absolutely nothing. Even while we're talking about all this quality of intention stuff, at the same time, there is nothing required of you. Like, you are so free. You can just be, and that is more than enough. That's true, and that's true on the other side as well, where you don't have to choose something.

Okay, but if you want to lift weights, that means you got to lay on the weight bench and you have to push the weight. It's not automatically done. It'd be like somebody saying, "Well, how do you grow? Why would we have to lift weights to grow strong?" Well, it's because precisely the counter pressure of the weight is the thing that helps you grow. So if you want to actually experience duality and all of the alternate perspectives that are possible, as I described earlier in the conversation, then you actually need to experience it. And that's not a need like you must do it. It's a need because that's just what it means if you want to know something. You have to be something you're not.

Well, let's take your example. When you first started talking about seeing this being on the other side, as it were, being curious and somewhat in awe of the experience that being had, and you're wanting to be like that experience because you valued it in some way, right? You didn't have to do that. I assume you chose to do that. Yeah, it would be like, "Would you like joy times a thousand?" Yeah, wow. Okay, you can feel that much joy. You can know that much freedom, but you already have joy. You just want to have more. Yes, well, yes.

Okay, so this is where duality gets in the way of us conversing about this successfully because now we start to think of joy as a quantity, whereas the beingness itself is already perfect. It's already joy. It's already love. It's already peace. It's already freedom. It doesn't have to do anything. It's already just it. It'd be like saying the water wanted to be more wet. Water's just wet. It's just wet.

But it's not just the individual who grows from that experience. You take it back to the collective, do you not? Yes, because all the drops in the ocean are of one ocean. And then within the ocean, there are ponds, like smaller groups of consciousness. So the entire human race actually is like a pond, a collective consciousness of everyone who's participating. And when you shift your consciousness, when you integrate something, you actually are communicating with every single other player in the game. You may not be able to see it, but you are. So when you choose love over fear, when you process your own crap, you're like a candle that's getting brighter in the cave of the pond. And then everyone else sees it and feels it and knows it, and you're helping them. Does that inform the collective? And so everybody's becoming, I don't know, wiser, more evolved, smarter.

One other thing popped in. This might sound super strange, but I remember knowing after one of my meditations that if you could even have one thought that had never occurred before—and what I mean is by a thought not just like a named thought but like a type of thought within a certain context, from a certain perspective—even one entirely unique thought for your entire lifetime, that would be a contribution. Your entire lifetime would have been worth it. That would have been an amazing contribution because all that is the ocean. It then knows it too. You are it. You are it. So you added something.

So you could say that we become something we're not. We become blind so that we can be on the frontier of creation, so that we can experience novelty, so that we can add novelty and newness. That is a creative service. We're performing a service from a human limited perspective, a 3D perspective.

When we think about the afterlife, when we think about source, the creator, the universe, I think we automatically imbue that with all the qualities of everything. It's omnipresent, omniscient, it is. And that's a fair thing to do. Contradictory to think that we need to have these experiences to inform the collective because the collective already has it anyway. Okay, so this confusion, yes, so this is a fair point, but it's only a paradox from our side. Because from our side, it's either A or B. Sure, that's what duality means. Are we perfect or are we not? Are we adding something or are we not? It can't be both. Which one is it? That's the nature of duality. That's the very way we think about reality from here.

But the thing is, our true nature, I don't know how to describe this. It already—oh, we're getting beyond what language can say. Let me say this: God is perfect but is also ever refining and ever growing too. And we're participating and helping with that. Those two things are simultaneously true, and they're not contradictory. And part of that is because all the sequence is taking place in the one now. It's only one big now, the now with a capital N. So it's not like nothing can be added to all that is because all that is is already all. We are reaching the boundaries.

I try to speak a little bit to this in the book, but it's very difficult to say from a duality perspective because it's based in an assumption that it's either or and can't be both. And over there, it's both. We tend to want it to be either or. Correct. Yeah, that's what it sounds like.

Okay, when we decide to incarnate, is there a plan for our earthly experience or a goal for our time on this plane? If so, do we design that plan or goal, or is it crafted for us? Yes, there is. Now, I can't speak for any individual person because every one of us is unique. And I think that beings who have less experience tend to have less specific interaction or intentions, goals for a life. And as we gain experience, we refine and get more and more specific and more and more detailed in what we're trying to refine. At the beginning, basically, when you have low experience, you just want to get in, just have experience.

Do we craft that? Yes, but with the help of very wise guides. Guide is such a weak word. It means beings who are very loving and wise and have a lot of experience doing this. And if there's something specific we're trying to integrate, a guide who is very loving and involved in that way might be involved with helping us craft it. Like a master of that. So let's say you wanted to learn compassion in a new way—learn not meaning learning in an intellectual sense, but you wanted to understand compassion because compassion is an aspect of love. And let's say you wanted to know compassion from within a very specific type of constraint. There may be a being who gets that really well, really understands that, a master. And that being might help. They might say, "Okay, I understand that. I can help you with this." It'd be like the Olympic tennis player coming and saying, "Okay, you're learning tennis. Let me give you some recommendations on how you can play tennis well, what kind of course you can sign up for."

But we are absolutely involved because it's our skin in the game, you could say. It's us as individuals who are actually walking the walk.

Okay, here's another question. You mentioned that now is the time of human awakening and also that the scope of what we do—for example, individual versus great scale—doesn't matter. Is there—I'm not saying it doesn't matter, I'm saying it's not of primary importance. Is there an important reality to the challenges of life, for example, poverty, war, climate change, etc., but only in the sense that it helps us individually or collectively evolve? Could you read that second part of that question again? Yeah, is there an important reality to the challenges of life, for example, poverty, war, climate change, or only in the sense that it helps us individually or collectively evolve?

Okay, so the important nature of the reality of those things is that we do not want other parts of ourselves to suffer. Love doesn't want anyone to suffer. Suffering is not great. It's not optimal. The reason I say that first is because really what's happening is not specifically poverty and specifically war. Those things just mean it's very likely that many brothers and sisters, other parts of our self, are going through great challenge. And love is a call to solve those things. It's a call to heal the world. It's a call to heal our brothers and sisters and to help them be strong and to meet their needs. That is what love is about.

Now, I'm saying it that way because I don't want to imbue a given circumstance with some fundamental meaning. Actually, even poverty doesn't have a fundamental meaning. It's just a limitation. It's a context that is actually neutral too. It's just how are the players doing with it? And it's harder to do things when you don't have money, and it's more painful. Life becomes more constrained. Love is about trying to help the other. And again, from this 3D perspective, it's so full of contradictions. So I'm coming from that perspective, but it is very complicated because supposedly—and I believe this—we come here for a purpose. We come here to be challenged, to face limitations. Maybe some of those limitations do involve a great deal of pain and suffering. Yet we don't want to suffer, and we don't want our loved ones to suffer or our fellow beings to suffer. Yet the experience of life is full of suffering. So isn't that a paradox in and of itself?

Okay, so let me put it this way. When we sign up for life pre-life, our goal is not to cause suffering, but our goal is not to avoid suffering. If we wanted to avoid suffering, there would be no physical universe. We would not create this. That's a very interesting perspective. I've never heard it that way. All I mean is that the suffering we see is possible, but suffering is never guaranteed. This is really important because love and peace and freedom and joy are the truth. They are the truth. They have the power. But the thing is, fear is hell. Honestly, the ego, fear is hell. Ego is hell. Rejection is hell. And so suffering happens because the limitations are so high, and we're not evolved enough yet. So it's just that we are given the opportunity to engage very high constraints, and we seek to do our best to shine love into these levels of constraints and to heal ourselves and others and to actually bring joy and live a joyful life even in the constraints.

Could you repeat what you said before about where something along the lines of when not to cause suffering? Well, our intention is not to cause suffering, but that doesn't mean that we don't experience suffering. Well, the second part of my statement was our goal is not to avoid suffering when we come into the physical because we know that that might happen. Okay, it's not that we're ignorant. We know from the pre-life state that we see that fearlessness is the truth. So we don't see it the same way as we do when we're here. When we're here, it hurts in a way that is not seen pre-life. It's just that the deeper truth is seen very clearly pre-life. Like, it's just seen. We are immortal beings. There's nothing to fear.

So in my case, with this life that I signed up for, I knew that I might be crushed in a way that would push me far past anything I'd ever been able to tolerate before. Yeah, that's and so then a human might say, "Well, that sounds like masochism. You just signed up to be hurt." No, no. I signed up to lift 827 pounds, whatever it is. I'm just making a metaphor now. I signed up to see, can I heal that? Can I grow that much love? Can I accept that level of depth in my being, in my body, the body of my spirit? Can the body of my spirit process it? It's not about the physical because the thing is that the physical is going to fall away anyway. We see it's temporary. In the context of the soul, human life is quite short, a short little thing. So it's not that we're ignorant to the pain, but it's also like one lifetime is so short. We know it's temporary. We know we can't actually be harmed. We know we can't actually fail. And so in that, we may choose to come to a place where pain might happen. Pain is just part of the simulation.

I'm sorry, I'm just looking at some of the questions that are coming in. Pain being different from suffering, real quick. Sorry, when I say pain is part of the simulation, pain is, but suffering is not necessarily. The reason I'm differentiating that is the physical will have pain in it. The body is going to have moments of pain, just physical as well as emotional as well as psychological. I won't simplify it, but in general, yes. But some of that falls into the second category, which is the suffering piece. Suffering is the meaning we put on it. Suffering is the negative we buy into. Suffering is the fear we reject. There's a lot of that, and the vast majority of the negative on earth is that, not the pain.

I love that distinction between pain and suffering. I haven't really thought about it from that perspective before. I think I have to agree with you. The pain is going to be there, but it's what we make of it that determines whether we make it suffering or not, based on our perspective of how we accept it, how we handle it. And that, by the way, the difference between pain that is just pain and that is accepted versus pain that is rejected and throws us into a tizzy, the difference between those two is like the being that I saw on the other side chose the first one. He accepted it. He chose fortitude, and he chose to hang in there, and he chose to be love anyway, and he chose peace anyway, and whatever that meant for him, he chose to focus on the good anyway. But it takes a lot to be able to do that. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. Very deep to be able to find that in yourself. Not everybody has that. Not everybody has that sort of faith that anchors them to that.

This is important. Okay, so when you say not everyone has that, I'm just going to use a super crude metaphor here because I don't like putting people on a scale because this is not how souls are. It's more like different colors than they are on a scale of strength. It's more like grapevines and oak trees. Like, which one's better? They're just different. One produces sweet grapes, and the other one's firm and strong and tall. But for a second, let's say that each individual is at a point of evolution where they can lift a certain weight successfully before they get crushed under it. Maybe person A can lift 10 pounds, and person B can lift 80, and person C can lift 190. I mean, I hate putting it in this limited of terms, but let's just do that for a second. So your question is, you said not everybody has the ability to lift the weight. Well, if earth has a weight that's between 70 and 140 pounds, it's not true to say that there are beings who can't meet that circumstance without fear. It takes a certain level of soul proficiency to be able to meet those challenges if you will. But someone who has a great deal of faith, someone who perhaps has had prior experiences that are relative, it's easier to endure. There are some people who are further along on that journey and can accept it better than others. Wouldn't you say it takes experience to be able to take adversity? Perhaps, yes. It takes some evolution to be able to meet a certain constraint set with love.

But the guides are really wise. So when we sign up for a lifetime, we tend to shoot for an optimal level of challenge. Actually, I know it may seem super hard and extreme, but we want to—we as souls are the ones that choose to push the envelope. The guides are often the ones that are like, "No, no, no, back off a little. That's too much. You're biting off too much sandwich. That sandwich is too big. You're not going to be able to swallow that sandwich." And we're like, "But I want to do it all at once. I want to eat all the sandwich because I see all the juicy opportunity that is possible." We're the ones often that do that, and it's the guides who help us kind of choose an optimal level of challenge.

Okay, here's a question. Can our souls become damaged by being on earth with all the suffering that we're going through in this world? Not in a true way, no. They can be temporarily all mucked up, temporarily squashed, but the soul can't actually be damaged. In fact, when I met that being on the other side, I asked him, "Were you healed?" Because I saw this incredible wound that he had, not just in the body but emotionally. This wound, oh my gosh, it's so beautiful. Just feeling into it, it's powerful. And it was like, yes, that entire thing was like a cavern that had been dug out that now love could fill. It was like excavating a shape in the earth. All that negative, all that pain, now that it had been dug out, that much could be filled with the concrete of love, something like that, or the water of love—better than concrete. The water of love could fill that shape now because it had been so. So we are always healed, and that soul truly, at the truest level, can't be damaged. The beingness can't be damaged. It would be like saying, can the movie harm the movie screen? What if we put really scary stuff on it? What if we flash really bright light at the movie screen? Can we hurt it? No. Your awareness itself is your awareness itself. It can't truly be harmed.

So those two comments help put that in context. So let me ask you then, for people who are going through great hardships here in the times that we're living in—for example, parents who've lost children, or loved ones in general, people who have been sexually abused as children, people who are dealing with addictions, people who are thinking about committing suicide—what would your message be, given your perspective? Well, I felt a nudge come through in spirit to simply say, "Love is the answer." But I want to put some color to that because that doesn't sound sufficient when you're ready to commit suicide.

First of all, the answer to that question is unique for each individual. There's not one answer because each one of us deals with form in our own way. So each individual will need something different. But in general, what I would lift up is find the fear, find the pain, and don't be afraid of it anymore. Like, there's nothing to do this way. I know this is a tall statement when you're really suffering. I know it. I know this following thing is a tall statement, but life is not your enemy. The physical universe is not your enemy. Your body is not your enemy. Your circumstances are not your enemy. So are you brave enough and bold enough to identify where you made them an enemy? Let's say you suffered terrible loss. It's okay if you suffer. It's okay if you have that pain. You don't have to say no to it. You can mourn, but can you mourn in a way that is loving, accepting, pure, and non-rejecting? How do you hold the scorpion of pain, of sorrow? What's the quality with which you hold it?

Or if it's child abuse, maybe you were deeply shown you are powerless, you are shameful, you're not worthy of love. I have known people very close to me—I'm thinking of one in particular that I very deeply loved and love—who experienced this. I've seen the damage. It's absolutely terrible. But how do we now face that pain and heal? What do we do with the now? That's the only thing we have to worry about. It's not about all the history. It's about what do we choose now? Now that all that has happened, what can you do in this now to face it and process it and to choose love and peace and joy and freedom in your own way? The person that I knew that went through this, she ended up writing a letter to her abuser, and she read it to him. It took her years to build up the courage to do that, to draw a line in the sand and to take back her own power, which wasn't just egoic. It was like, "No, I claim that I'm valuable, and what you did to me was wrong." And she read him a letter to that effect. Gosh, how powerful is that?

So I'm simply saying that each of us has a way in the deeper parts of ourselves. Listen to your intuition. Listen to that call, that call of love, for whatever it means for you to take the first step. Don't worry about all 700 steps. Your intuition will guide you in the path towards the truth of love and freedom and peace and joy.

Okay, so one other thing there about the reason I highlighted the word truth. I know it doesn't appear this way, but anytime there's something that terrifying that's going on and we are in terrible suffering, the fear that we have—there's some negative self-perception at the root that we think life proved to us, and it's not true. This is the key. Like, when I was laying in a hospital bed in Chongqing, and I thought I was dying, and my whole body was convulsing, and I felt this terrible pain in my nervous system before they even gave me potassium, and I thought, "I'm dying, and I'm unable to escape this agony." That is not the truth. The truth is I am awareness itself. I am consciousness itself. That substance is free. It is powerful. It is worthy. You are worthy. Like, if you could even grasp one millionth of that of the truth of that and feel one billionth of the unconditional love that source has for you, it would blast all that fear crap aside in a second.

So how does our intuition help guide us back to that? We have another question here in the context of not causing any suffering. In examples of extreme evil, for example, mass murderers and what have you, what does the pre-birth soul get from choosing that kind of life other than just having the experience? How does this life add to the refinement of the individuated soul of the collective? Okay, well, first of all, I try to speak to this in my book too, but this is a—I have to be very careful about this because it's not like we sit down and say, "Alright, I'm going to be evil now. I'm going to be evil, and I'm going to do all this damage. Isn't that great?" No, evil is not good. And by the way, when I use evil, I don't mean evil as some fundamental substance. There's no such thing as a fundamental substance called evil. There's only consciousness itself, beingness itself, which is love. And it has fear, and fear is insane, and it will cause all sorts of damage to the self and the other because it's rooted in something that's untrue, negative, running from negative self-perceptions that aren't even true. And the whole world gets full of pain and murder potentially.

But pre-life, it's the context we sign up for, not a guaranteed outcome. Now, that context—I have to say this carefully—it may mean that we sign up to provide some useful counter pressure to somebody in a way that's helpful for them. We might actually sign up for that, but if we do that, it's from a place of love, not because we're going to hurt them. Like, if there's some way that someone might need to learn something from us, and we want to fill some role in their life, and they actually end up learning and growing from it, they might ask us, "Please do that for me. Play that role for me." And we do that out of love.

The human ego does not like that. The human ego says, "No, I'm suffering, and that's it. I'm pissed, and that's it. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear that there's a larger perspective here." But the soul is very powerful and very creative and very willing to dive in and get its hands dirty, and that's what we're doing here.

Now, so to someone like, you know, the Hitler of the world or something, I don't put them in a different category. We all have fear, and fear is always insane. The question is, in the pre-life plan, are they signing up to murder millions of people? Oh my god. We sign up for a context, and we know that we might make fear-based choices, but we seek to bring love into it. Love is always at the root, the intentionality. It's just that we can't understand that from within duality, where we're being smacked in the face and where we see others and we say, "That's terrible. I reject that." I understand from the human level that may be how it appears, but we cannot see clearly. And at the soul level, there may be some opportunity that the soul is attempting to fulfill that maybe it couldn't. Maybe fear really took over, and a choice—see, this is a free-willed system. We may make choices that are suboptimal. That's going to happen. And when that happens, we may choose something that hurts somebody else, and then they have to deal with it. That's part of the simulation. But we don't go in trying to do that. It's just we go in with love. We go in to grow, and then we may end up aligning with the fear because we're not evolved enough yet to, within whatever context was presented to us, choose love.

See, hurt people hurt people. So we go in to stop the chain of hurt, even knowing that we might get kind of sucked up into it. So our plans go awry essentially because we buy into the separation, into the 3D experience so fully. I wouldn't even say awry. It's just it's not even awry because that would imply that we failed. There's no failure. There's no failure. It's just that we know that might happen. We might choose that. If I have the freedom to choose to do A and not B, then that means the system has to be able to then someone's got to live with A and not B.

You mentioned in your talk also about the metaphor of the tree. I think you said sort of laying it down as it were, going from the trunk to the branches, and that you experienced a myriad of different possibilities. Almost if I remember as though you experienced the myriads of ways that your particular lifetime could actually go. Yes. Okay, so does that mean then that because everything is decision-based, you know, we're at constant crossroads, and we go this way opposite to that way, does that mean that there might be myriads of parallel universes where there's a Christian that took a different turn in the road that's living out that existence?

So, okay, so the way that I understand it is that there is one actualized thread, and there are many, many trillions and trillions and trillions of unactualized threads because the system retains all the unactualized outcomes for review because it's useful. We call that the Akashic records. And so it's possible to go into the Akashic records and pull out, like, "Show me what would have happened if I made this choice," or "Show me what happened if this person made this choice," and then we get a result. And when we review it, it's like a full-body experience. It's all the data. So you can see it, you can smell it, you can hear it, you can touch it. It looks like a full-blown reality, but it's not actually a full-blown reality. It's a recording of a potential outcome. And it may seem like there are actually truly infinite numbers of those, but there's not. It's just a really, really, really huge, practically infinite number.

Now, that being said, that's for one given universe. It is possible there might be other universes that have their own tons of unactualized threads. I don't know. I can only speak to what I do know, which is that in this life, I know of an actualized thread and many trillions of unactualized threads. And I know that the system has a lot of power and flexibility, and I know that there are other reality systems too. So within that, I wouldn't put it like there are other Christians, but I would say that we are all kind of shifting along the timelines at a very high rate of speed—you know, billions of times per second. Tom Campbell says it's 10 to the 23rd power units of time per second. That's a lot of units of time. So I don't know how frequently it is, but yeah, that's how I would probably put that.

So is it possible that there might be another reality? Like, Tom Campbell will say, "The system can take one shot of the whole system and say, 'This is very interesting. Let's reload this whole universe from this moment, and we get all new players, and we change some variables, and then we hit go, and we see now what happens.'" So Tom Campbell talks about that being possible. I just don't have any personal knowledge of that.

Okay, we have two more questions. We are often taught that we cannot change others; however, our compassion wants to lift people from their suffering. When someone has negative thought patterns, is it possible to help change the being's perspective to move into a more positive frequency, or are they entitled to their own experience and learning, and that we should accept their choice? Those are both true in general. Okay, so what we can do is offer something up. That's it. Like, it's because we're talking about free-willed beings here. You too, you're a sovereign free-willed being. Do you have the ability to choose what to ingest or not, whether in your mind or in your body or whatever else? Do you have the ability to choose what you believe? Yes. Does that mean the person next to you does as well? Yes. Do you have the ability to offer something to them? Yes. Do they have the right to choose what to do with it? Yes. It's not your job to change them. Your job is to love. Put it very simply, our job is to love. It's to offer compassion and kindness and understanding. And part of the understanding thing is what inspires me. I want to share perspective because I think that's empowering. Everyone who's listening today is my brother or sister in consciousness. I want to share with them. It's like sharing with my own self, another part of myself. I love that. But I don't have any business whether or not you pick up what I say and do anything with it. Not at all. That's your business. Yeah, the individual has free will to whether to accept your advice or to reject it. Sure, yeah.

And now the question is, do I lose my peace if they don't accept it? No. Like, what I mean is because that's a part of wisdom too, is that we are able to see and then still not lose our peace. Is it helpful if you lose your peace and now you get grumpy because someone's not listening to your advice? Not really. You're not really adding joy to the world if you lose your peace because they didn't take something you said. Although I have to say, it's a temperament difference as well because there are some temperaments that will offer advice, and they don't really mind if the other person takes it or believes it. There are temperaments that are very invested in somebody taking their advice because they sort of need that recognition for themselves. So temperament is an expression of everything we've talked about. It's not a fundamental thing. It's just another expression. It could be an ego expression. It could be an aspect of the soul in its journey that it has certain qualities it tends to manifest, a certain personality. It could be a soul-level personality that it expresses. So be it. It's not like the temperament itself is a thing. It's that it all still boils down to consciousness and the intention that it wields. A high quality of intention, even in a person who has a temperament where they're like a bull in a china shop, if they bring up a high quality of intention in themselves, they may see, "Oh, I'm a bit of a bull in a china shop. Yeah, okay."

I don't want to go too much over the hour, but we have two more questions. Are there specific 3D things that we can contract to do in our lifetimes, or is it more general, as in leading with intentions of love? Yeah, no, it could be very specific physical 3D things. It could be anything from processing a certain emotion, experiencing a certain perspective, being in a certain relationship with somebody. It could be one conversation you're going to have one time in your life that you really wanted to contract that in. The thing is, soul contracts are not just one thing either. It's usually like the main primary goal, but yeah, we may have a primary goal of, "Hey, I'm going to be your friend in high school when you have a really tough time. I'm going to have a conversation with you, and it's going to help you." That could be like a primary goal. It's difficult for us as humans to get our arms around that because is the thing. It's about quality again, not necessarily quantity. Love is about purity. It's not about size necessarily. It doesn't need a size. Love doesn't demand an outcome. So we might come for something that might seem very small.

Like, for instance, just a super brief personal story because I know we're over time, but I had a three-year-old half-brother who died of brain cancer when I was in my mid-20s. And I had several people say to me, "Well, you know, how can that happen? He didn't accomplish anything." I disagree. You think he didn't accomplish anything? He was here three years. He brought together so many people. There was so much love that got to be expressed to him and from him to us. There was so much learning that took place. There was so much experience he had in his three years. How can we say three years is unsuccessful and 80 is successful? That's not the way love thinks. So I'm just putting in that perspective because when we sign up for things pre-life, it may not make a whole lot of sense to the human portion of us if we're thinking from duality metric terms.

This last question is actually getting into the sort of paranormal, as far as possession is concerned. So if we find that someone is possessed with a negative entity, can anything be done to help that soul—the soul who is possessed and the soul who has taken possession of someone's body? So I'm going to purposefully put the word possession down and away, kick it over to the side, and instead use the word associated with energies that are low vibration. Okay, because there's no such thing as the soul being possessed. The soul is the soul, and the body is something that is just form within the soul. So channeling is possible. Consciousness can do creative things with form, including how a body is used. But possession of a body—okay, what we really think the way I interpret the question is really are there lower vibrational forms that can interact with someone? And I would put them in two categories. I know we're short on time, so I'll try to be succinct.

The first category I'll call thought form, and the second category we call actual free-willed beings that are just low vibration and have a lot of fear and ego. Most of the time, it's the first one that we're talking about when we ask questions about demons or possession or that kind of thing. What I mean is thought form has a mass to it. It has a density to it in the astral. So if there has been an act of incredible anger or hatred or whatever, that can be a thought form. It has a density to it, and then if we resonate into that somehow, it might quote-unquote attach, which is more just like it's resonating into your field because you resonate with it. And the other alternative is a free-willed being. We can deal with fear-based intentionality here in the physical. Someone might walk up and punch you in the face, and then you have to deal with it. It is possible for a non-physical interaction with a free-willed being that is of fear. But in both cases, this is the key: love is the power. It's the true power because the substance of your being and the substance of its being and the substance of the thought form, whatever it is, is the same stuff. And that stuff is unconditional love, peace, freedom, and joy underneath all the fear and all the twists and all the—yeah, we may have condensed it down and twisted it up, but underneath it all, it's love. So you can choose love. You can choose fearlessness even on behalf of that person. We might call that prayer, focused prayer, genuine love—not like, "I want to change you and fix you and I need to fix you and something's wrong with you and I got to—" No, I'm talking like, "I love you, and I send this love and this healing to you, and that's it." Because love is so powerful. It's so high vibration. Genuine, true love—nothing fear-based can resonate with it. It can't. It'd be like saying you could have darkness in a room full of light. You just can't because darkness is only the absence of light. It doesn't exist. It's not a thing. Like, if somebody said, "How many pounds of darkness do you have?" There's no dark. You can't weigh darkness. You can't hand someone a box. It doesn't exist. It only happens when light has been obscured. You see, and in this case, the light of awareness, the light of consciousness, the light of spirit is the truth. It is the power. So the answer is we simply need to bring light back the best we can and encourage them to choose their own light the best they can.

Like, I've heard of soul retrieval work. I know we're over time, but beings who may be temporarily focused into a low vibration astral realm where there's a lot of negative stuff going on because they themselves are associated into it—and a soul retriever, they don't go in and try to manhandle them and slap them. They go in and say, "Focus up." I mean, in some way, like, basically, instead of looking into the muck, look up towards the light. Find the love in yourself. Find the caring. The moment we shift focus, the vibration changes because intention is the primary action of consciousness, both in the physical and in the non-physical. So we just shift our intention back towards love and peace and freedom and joy. Yeah, and that is very, very powerful.

I have one very final question that I just have to ask you, and that is as far as the ego is concerned, which is the kind of perpetrator or the beginning of all the fear-based emotions that we have. I think it's the result of fear, not the perpetrator. I mean, it perpetrates, but it starts in fear first. But just like our worst nemesis maybe on this planet, when we get to the other side and we take these costumes off, we can sort of shake hands and hug each other and say, "Yes, tough role that you played, but thank you for doing that because it helped me do X, Y, and Z." Would you say that the ego is really, even though it's something that we should really try to temper and try to control in some way, is actually a great ally, not an adversary, because it allows us to have this duality and this experience? Absolutely. There is no adversary. Your own ego is not even an adversary. If you thought it was, that would be ego. You see, it's like there is no adversary. You have no enemies. You have no enemies. Like, no, but I have this enemy because I have this person that did this thing to me. It's okay if you choose to believe that, but underneath it all, you are connected. They are love. You are love, and you are a part of the one ocean. And they're just lost in fear, just like you get lost in fear. It's okay. Do your best to see through the enemy thing. So yes, we can put down the costume when we get to the other side. We just love each other.

I'm reminded of a—I won't go into depth on this for time, but early in my awakening, at the time, I was not a fan of my wife's ex-boyfriend. And I had an out-of-body experience where I interacted with his soul. I put this in the book, and I felt who he is and who he was, and I saw the absolutely incredible journey he's on in the physical, and I was like, "Holy crap." And I called him the next day, and I'm like, "Look, I just have to tell you, I think I saw your soul last night," and went on for 45 minutes about his amazing qualities and who he is. And when I was done, he said, "I have to say, if I was going to tell someone who I really am, that's I would say everything you just said." And to this day, I love the man. He's close to our family. He's our friend, and when he comes into the house, I want to kneel to the guy. It was so dumb. It was so silly that I had an egoic thing about him. It didn't make any sense. I just didn't know. I didn't see him for who he was. And when we see each other for who we really are, oh my gosh, it's love. It's all that can be left because we have so much respect. We see with clarity. "Oh, you were hurt, and you were trying to do your best within that pain. I see. I'm sorry." Well, I think we see who you really are, and you're an absolute splendid soul. And thank you so very, very, very much for sharing your experience and your testimony with us. It's been absolutely inspiring.

Well, how can people find your book? How can people reach out to you if they want to? Sure, so my website is awalkinthephysical.com. The book, yeah, A Walk in the Physical. The book is available at the third link down on the book page to be read online for free. It's also on Amazon as an ebook or audiobook. I recommend the audiobook. Those are not free, though. You'd have to pay for those. But it's not about money. I just want to share it. I just want to get it out there. The website also has a talks and interviews page. I've shared many talks on there, and I post talks as I share them. So I'm sure I'll post this on the site as well. I do try to answer emails, but I can't promise anything because I get a lot of emails. So it's awalkinthephysical@gmail.com. I'm happy to try to help anybody I can. Yeah, and eventually, I'm going to hopefully move more into this work. I don't know how because I've never charged money for anything, but somehow I'm going to do more of this because this is really important. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's very inspiring and very therapeutic actually on many levels. Thank you, everybody, who's joined us. We really appreciate it. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Thank you again, Christian. It's been absolutely amazing. Thank you very much. Take care. Thanks. Thank you, everybody. Have a great day. Bye. Thank you. Bye.