The Other Side…
What is “the other side”? It’s where we go after we die. But fortunately for us, a great many ordinary people died and yet returned from death, so that they are able to tell us their experiences in this amazing and beautiful place, a place full to the brim with God and joy, and boundless love. No two NDEs are exactly alike, everyone has a different experience,
Yet even though all NDEs are different, there are many commonalities among them. For instance, one very common experience, is that of the feeling of being surrounded by absolutely enormous, boundless unconditional love, and being nourished in every part of one’s being by this flood of love. Other common experiences are seeing or meeting and talking with a being of light, which is experienced as God or Jesus, sometimes as a spiritual guide. Another common experience is what is called a “life review.” Those experiencing this life review, generally report that they saw a “movie” of their life, which contained every single thing they did or said in their entire life. The experiencer is also able to feel the emotions of those impacted by their actions or words, so they know what effect their behavior had on others.
Anyone who has a life review on the other side, also reports that there is no judgment at all by those helping them review their life, and that if there is any judgment, it’s their own judgment of themselves. They are surrounded with love as they view their life review. Depending upon how they’ve acted in life, some people experience difficulty or shame, seeing some selfish acts, or pain or harm they caused others. And yet the purpose of the review is never to shame us, but rather to help us learn, and to see how small acts of kindness or love can go a long way towards helping others, and making the world better. Many NDErs also report that their NDE experience helped them realize that what we do (as well as what we do not do) in our lives matters quite a bit, and motivated them to be more loving to everyone in their lives. They felt that this is what God wants most from us.
Yet whenever we talk about loving others, being kind to others, I think it’s important to point out that we need to first feel loved ourselves, before we can truly love others. That love that we show to others has to come from somewhere: and it comes from God. So, we always need to love ourselves first, and this isn’t selfish, it’s necessary. If we think about it, what does it mean to love ourselves? It doesn’t mean that we egotistically always make ourselves first. No, loving ourselves simply means allowing ourselves to feel God’s love for us, and to let this wash over and through us. As is said in 1 John 4:19, “We love each other, because God loved us first.” So, we first need to have plenty of experience of feeling God’s own love for us in this way, and this then helps us love others.
Now to get back to the subject of the life review.
Every time I read an NDE story which includes a life review, I find myself thinking that it it’s too bad only those who got to experience an NDE are benefitted by the life review experience. As it would really benefit all of us to be able to live our lives with the awareness that God sees everything we do in every second — all our actions, all our thoughts, everything — and to use this not to condemn ourselves, but to inspire ourselves to be the best we can be here below. That said, one doesn’t necessarily have to even believe in God to see the value of a life review. My hope would be that everyone come to believe in God, as it’s painful for me to think about people having been given this amazing gift of life that we have, from God, but completely failing to recognize this as a gift, or know who gave it to you, with so very much love. Yet, for those who don’t believe in God, many still feel a desire to be the best they can be — I will tell you a secret. You may not believe it. But this desire you feel to be kind and loving to others, comes from God!!
So, anyhow….I thought to myself, why not try to do my own life review, before I “cross over” to the other side, and see what I can find there that might help me both understand myself better (and be compassionate and kind and forgiving to myself for where I made mistakes, as I was learning) as well as to hopefully be more kind and loving.
Considerations Before Doing a Life Review
To begin with, for many people it can feel immediately crippling and stifling, oppressive even, just to think about analyzing much or most of what one can remember, about what one has said or done in life that either showed kindness and love for others, or unkindness or, er, a “not so great” attitude. One may immediately sense the Superego close by, ready to strike with a knockout blow, sending you sprawling across the room, for being a “not so great” person who made many mistakes and f-ups.
For this reason, I believe that one of the requirements for people to do such a life review, is that they need to have a lot of kindness and compassion for themselves. They need to feel God’s love for them, and be able to forgive themselves for being unkind at times, not treating people or other beings so well at times. If you don’t have this, IMO you will have a real hard time doing an honest life review, and it may not be valuable for you or meant for you at this time. Keep in mind that on the other side where people are shown their life review movie, they are surrounded with boundless, overwhelming unconditional love as they experience this. We don’t get to have an experience of quite that much love here. We can however find some degree of it, to bring to ourselves.
Second, we are not going to be able to remember absolutely everything that we ever did or said in life, at least not until we cross over to the other side. So we just do our best and remember what we can. Or, if reviewing one’s entire life seems too much, too burdensome, try just focusing on one section of your life, such as the last 10 years, or the last 5 years or 1 year. Or even just the last month or week. Actually it could be a good daily habit to review each day in this manner, at the end of each day, which is a practice that some have.
Third, use a lot of discernment regarding who if anyone you decide to share with about your life review. I recommend not sharing it with friends or family, actually. The problem you could easily have in trying to share, is that the person you share with, is triggered and/or judgmental about some of the things you’ve said or done in your life. I’ve had a case where one friend totally ended her friendship with me over what I viewed as not particularly skilled actions on my part, but not really horrible ones either. And it would be quite detrimental, and wholly opposed to the purpose of the life review, to have anyone looking in on it and judging you about it.
Fourth, keep in mind that the reason you want to do a life review, if you do, is so you can learn and try to improve. The point isn’t to make a list of your errors or “sins”, but to actually better yourself, to become more loving. So, with every action that you feel was unskillful or unkind, you want to spend some time thinking about why you did or said what you did, really try to deeply understand why (not just the surface reasons, the deeper ones) and try to come up with some alternative actions. Other ways you could have said or done something.
Fifth, at the same time as recognizing one’s less skillful actions, I believe it’s important to be heartened and feel good about (to even feel joy about) the occasions when you were able to be kind and loving towards others. Recognizing these things is very encouraging to us and can be very motivating, and increase our ability to feel loved by God, to love ourselves, as well as motivating us to do more of the same. In fact, for some, it might be of more value to just focus on many of your kind and loving actions, and feel inspired to do more of those, and not spend much time analyzing your unskilled actions, particularly if you feel you have indeed already learned from those.
Sixth, I think it can be helpful to try to imagine how your less skillful actions affected others. Once on the other side, we will be able to feel exactly what these other people (or beings, they could have been animals) felt when we were less than kind. But on this side, we won’t know exactly what they felt, but if we try to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine, we may get a good idea. We do however need to be willing to put ourselves firmly in others’ shoes, and this can be very difficult for some people to do. And yet, the more we can do this, the more we will find ourselves naturally loving others, effortlessly, because we will have developed the habit of basically seeing everyone as ourself, eg “I am Thou” is a constant experience.
Themes and Realizations From My Life Review
I will not be sharing an detailed life review “list”, but rather the themes and awareness and points of learning that result from an exploration of some my actions towards others, and other’s actions towards me, and what I have discovered through my life and what some of my work or learning here seems to be about, in this particular incarnation, as I examine these patterns. In this way, what I write here will be a bit meandering, as it’s more of a journey of discovery initiated through the intent of doing a “life review”, and is not a simplistic assessment of a list of actions, divorced from context and life themes.
Overall in my life, what I am aware of, is that it’s rather uncommon that I’ve been unkind or hurtful to others, which I think is a result of my being very sensitive by nature, as well as having been often hurt by others myself, knowing what that feels like, and not wanting to cause others to feel that way. I don’t say this to brag — it’s just the truth as I see it. And there is an important element of learning associated with this. And, I have certainly done some less skillful or hurtful things which I will mention along the way.
For instance, I cannot recall a single instance in middle school or high school where I was overtly unkind to others, except for one situation in my own family where I said something unkind and hurtful to one of my brothers. Looking back on that situation, I believe I did that, because I felt angry and hurt that I was being left out of the fun that my brother was having bicycling around the neighborhood with his friends. This was at a difficult time in life, because it was a juncture where I went from being friends with several boys in the neighborhood, to suddenly being rejected by them, because I was a girl, and they were of an age where boys no longer play with girls. This was very hurtful, as I was quite the tomboy, and did not fit in at all with the girls. So when the boys rejected me, I had no friends, and remained friendless throughout middle school and high school.
Yet I also feel that at that age — I was 11 or 12 years old at most — and in my particular family — where no one ever talked openly about painful feelings or hurt they experienced — there were few good options for how I might have acted differently. I actually think it was quite an achievement that this was the only time I can recall saying anything explicitly unkind to either of my brothers.
In high school, as in much of my adult life, I was far more often hurt by others, than I was unkind to or hurt anyone else. This was true both in my family, and in the world at large. I was fortunate that my parents were both people who were generally happy, enthusiastic, had vitality and enjoyed being out in nature, but it caused me difficulty that both were people who were unable to comfort their children when we struggled with emotional pain of any type. My parents also caused me pain because, like so many people, they were emotionally wounded, and did not know how to process their own pain, so this meant they acted it out onto others.
There were several very painful, disturbing incidents in my family, caused by my parents, which left lasting scars upon me. I didn’t realize what to “do” about these things, within myself, until much later in life. I will mention a few main incidents so that readers get the idea about what I experienced as a child, and later as an adult in my family, so they can begin to understand as I discuss how I view God’s purpose and my challenge in these difficulties.
In one case, my father threw out one of my favorite toys, a precious toy that I played with every day, because he was angry that I left it in the wrong place. In another instance, my father traveled to Europe and brought home two beautiful carved knives, and gave one to me and one to my brother. We wore these proudly on our belt when we went hiking, something we did regularly in our family. But my father became angry that we tried to cut ice with the knives, which dulled them, and one day just went into our bedrooms and took the knives away from us, never saying anything about this to us. In another instance, I had a pet rabbit, which I loved, and one day my father insisted on letting it out in the yard, which I thought was a bad idea as I thought it would run away. It did “run” away somewhat, hiding somewhere in the yard. This apparently made my father angry. He went out in the yard to find the rabbit, and came inside shortly thereafter, announcing to all of us “the rabbit is dead.”
As one can imagine, this heartless and despicable behavior by my father — it was obvious to me that he either inadvertently killed the rabbit as he was trying to capture it, or perhaps killed it out of anger that it would not let itself be readily caught and returned to its cage — was devastatingly hurtful to me as a child. My father had a vicious temper like this: at one time he’d smashed a rattlesnake to death in front of me on the trail as we hiked along, not because it attacked us or was any danger to us — it wasn’t — but simply because it was there. Another time, when we were younger, we were hiking in a city park, and a couple little boys threw rocks at my brother. This was basically harmless and typical of little boys, but my father flew into a rage. He went over to the boys, flung them on the ground and hit them, then demanded that they get in our car with us and he would drive them home and tell their parents what they did. Today, this would be called assault and battery and kidnapping. But in those days, he got away with this. These incidents showed me how he could become violently angry.
After my father killed my pet rabbit, it was all the more horrible that I had no one to talk to about this, no one to comfort me. In my family, my father was very dominant, and a tyrant. No one dared talk back to him. So my mother said nothing when this happened, but just stared and basically shrugged her shoulders and went on making dinner. My brothers said nothing. I had to go to my room and cry alone.
We attempted to have 2 other pets, but with my parents, it didn’t work out. We had a pet dog for about 2 weeks, until my parents decided that we didn’t know how to care for a dog, and took it back to the place they got it. They did not know that kids cannot be expected to magically know how to care for animals, but that the PARENTS are the ones who have to teach them this. Same thing happened with a cat we got later. They didn’t teach us how to care for it, my brother did something wrong, and then the cat was gone, taken back to the pet store. I had some hamsters at one point…that seemed to work better. Except when some of them got loose and then…as before with the rabbit…somehow with my Dad involved, they never came back alive. I was spared the details about their conclusion. And then I had fish in an aquarium which worked out well for awhile, and I do not recall a sudden sad end to those, so perhaps my father stayed away from them.
Other things that happened during my teens — my two brothers had friends and spent a lot of time going surfing, riding mountain bikes, and riding a motorcycle (dirt bike) that they were given. They seemed to always be out having fun. For my part, I had no friends at all from about age 11 until I left for college, so I wasn’t able to be out away from home all the time having a good time. I did go on walks alone, but not that often. Either because I was home a lot, or perhaps because my parents felt it was a girl’s task to do the housework while the boys had fun and played, I was forced to do housework while they played, and a couple times when my parents became angry that I wasn’t doing the work with a big smile on my face, my father became very angry and yelled at me, scaring me.
My father touched me inappropriately when I began to develop breasts, and this experience led to a serious rift in my family later on, because I later spoke about this to one of my brothers, who didn’t believe me: the unfortunate experience of all too many child victims of sexual abuse. Speaking the truth leads to the victim being demonized by the dysfunctional family as it seeks to protect the perpetrator.
I became very depressed at age 16, and my parents didn’t know how to help me or comfort me. They were not sufficiently emotionally mature to be able to do that.
At one time when I was 15 or 16, my mother pointed a knife at me and said “I should cut you!”, out of anger for something that I couldn’t understand. Why was she angry at me? In retrospect, I believe that I was the lightning rod in the family, the person who, because I didn’t just ignore and deny the family dysfunction, the way my mother and brothers did, but reacted emotionally to it, in that sense forced a certain degree of awareness of the dysfunction onto my parents, which they did not want to have to deal with. So they thus saw me as causing difficulties for the family: in the same way that anyone who tells the inconvenient truth, or points out the shadow or the elephant in the room, can readily end up blamed and scapegoated for “causing” the problems that actually the others are causing by the dysfunction they are oblivious to.
My parents had difficulties between themselves, because like many of their generation, they suppressed their emotions and did not have the skills to talk things out, and because they inhabited stereotypical and limited gender roles which resulted in each of them lacking a lot of psychological development. My father never developed much of his emotional nature, and did not learn to be vulnerable and cope with painful emotions. He always just repressed these. My mother remained very dependent and childlike, unable to even imagine how people did a whole range of very ordinary things, such as go for a road trip, go camping, use a computer, set up a website, make a video, do research on a subject online, learn a new skill such as how to fix a faucet or sticky door, or many other things. One result of this lack of development was that my father would become furious with my mother because her very great dependency led her into what to him seemed like a completely witness and oblivious stupidity. He would then berate and harshly criticize her in front of us, and this created a lot of stress and tension in the family. For her part, my mother would scold my father over trivial housekeeping matters. I recall many family dinner experiences so full of tension it seemed it could be cut with a knife. Often, the stress between my parents was like random weapons fire, it would zing around the dinner table or room and hit innocent bystanders. All of us had to be careful because you never knew who would end up knocked down by it.
As with all the other family dysfunction, I was the only one who really consciously registered this and seemed to have an emotional reaction. My brothers simply “checked out” and to this day they do not seem to be consciously aware that there were problems in my family. They write various situations off with humor and view what were actually harmful actions, as idiosyncrasies.
Yet my parents were not bad people, they were mostly good. I could easily assess each of them as a good person and caring, responsible parent. Even though I emerged from childhood with some lifelong scars, I think many of us do. The painful incidents with them were relatively few in number. Mostly they were happy, vital people of routine who occupied themselves with work and enjoyment of the outdoors, walks and hikes, and for my father, bicycling and skiing. They took care of all our material needs, paid for my college education (as well as my brothers’), my master’s degree education, bought me my first car, and gave me a down payment for my house. At one point, before I left for college, my father gave me his camera, which at the time was an advanced film camera, a Canon A-1. He realized he was not good at photography and I was, so this was a valuable gift, and led me to a lifelong love of photography and videography, which has actually become one of my most important creative avenues.
So my parents were quite helpful and generous in this way, which I will always be grateful for. By taking care of all their children (and grandchildren) in this way, they showed their love for us all. Even though they had no social skills to speak of, and thus I emerged from childhood without having learned any of these, there was an advantage actually to this. Which was that I was essentially allowed to “run wild” and do anything I wanted as a child, in my play. I could get the toys I asked for, even though they were “boy’s toys”, (eg toy rifle, GI Joes) I was able to do an insect collection, I could occupy myself with what I liked, without interference or commentary.
Yet my parents were both very conventional, extremely materialistic people, who were unable to understand someone like me who is an artist, as well as who values things that are not materialistic but spiritual. They mostly had no use for anything aesthetic, much less for anything spiritual. My father was angrily atheistic: I say angrily, because he seemed to be angry at the idea that there could be a God, with all the evil he’d seen in WWII in East Prussia, where he and his whole family lost everything they had and had to flee with the clothes on their backs.
A Gift Can Be A Burden
I am very fortunate and grateful, that I was given an incredible gift as a child: the ability to sense God’s presence around me in nature, his beauty in the world, his majesty in music and to see magnificence in humanity. However, it becomes very difficult when as a child you can see so much beauty and God around you in the world, but no one in your family sees this, and you have no one to talk to about this, and you become depressed because it seems like barely anyone in the world sees all this. I had one high school teacher who I knew could see these things. I could find kindred souls who wrote books, I knew they saw it also. But other than this, it seemed like the whole world was deaf, dumb and blind to the incredible beauty of the world. This is quite a painful thing to experience: being given what seems like the best treasure in the world, but feeling like no one cares about it at all. The world begins to seem quite insane and upside down when you see this: and it can make you depressed or sad, or very angry.
Starting in my early 20s, I experienced a great deal of anger bubbling up, both about my parents and family, where I felt I’d been treated unfairly and scapegoated, and as I began to deeply resent the “conventional people” who I regarded as massively blind, and viewed as causing so much pain and difficulty in the world for more aware and awake and sensitive, creative people like myself. This anger did eventually lead to some unkind and/or unskilled actions.
When one of my brothers announced he was getting married, I became angry, because I was a lesbian, and at that time (1987) could not have gotten married if I’d wanted to, and no one in my family seemed to care about this. They barely could talk about me being gay after I came out to them all. I felt very angry that there was so much more attention and energy directed by my parents towards my “conventional” brothers, than towards me. There was just very little about me or anything in my life that anyone in my family could understand or appreciate, or talk about, and I could forsee that the way things were going, was an unacceptable trajectory of me being ignored and left out, essentially sidelined and marginalized, while my brothers and their wives and lives and children were celebrated, and talked about all the time.
Discovering Creative Ways to Find Healing
As a result of this anger, I became rather sharply satirical, engaging in some bitingly satirical writings which I mostly just shared with other gay friends. This way that I came upon (or, which God guided me towards) of channeling my anger, through creative writing (and a lot later in my life, through creative films) was very good for me in several ways. First, it was healthy, as it allowed me to work through a painful experience, release anger and find catharsis and healing. I could express my anger with creative and witty essays, fictional stories, humorous anecdotes, and find release. Repressed anger is very bad for our health…something I would later discover when my writing didn’t avail me of a cure. Second, it allowed me to develop a valuable skill, that of learning to write well, which I would continue to develop through my whole life. Even though this was never a skill that had anything to do with how I earned a living, I regard it as one of my primary vocations in life, meaning, things that I feel God called me to do.
One may say “Well gee, it’s unfortunate that you couldn’t earn a living through something you so love to do”. However, I also realized fairly early on, that while I was quite naturally skilled in both writing and photography, I would not have wanted to earn an income through either of these, because I was an artist, and these were arts, and artists want to be totally free and independent to do what they feel pulled to do, and not have anyone else’s influences or goals contaminating our process. The making of art into any type of business, can interfere with the artistic process. This doesn’t happen for everyone, but I innately felt a repulsion at the idea of my art being influenced in any way by others. I just knew I had to allow it all to develop organically.
Quite ironically, one of my brothers became a graphic artist, and while they did not view me as an artist, (perhaps because what I do is so “free”?), he was referred to as an artist by others in my family. Yet I do not see him as an artist at all, because all he does is create advertisements, brochures and other printed material for various businesses. I would not say this to him, because I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, but that is NOT art.
I will say that both my parents did appreciate my nature photography. This was the only form of my art I shared with them (until much later in life when my mother was in her twilight years) because I intuitively realized that it was the only art I did that they could understand and appreciate.
Getting back to my enumeration of the value of my satirical writing, which led me into other types of explorative and reflective writing: a third reason this was valuable, was because it allowed me to speak the truth in a creative way, that was engaging and entertaining, and which appealed to some, even if it didn’t appeal to everyone and couldn’t be understood by everyone. It could entertain others, and it could also educate others and help them become more aware of some issue or pattern or situation in life. And thus I began to find my role as an educator and teacher, through my writings, early on.
This led into a fourth reason why my creative writing process was valuable. I discovered, through my writing, that I had a fairly uncommon skill: which was that I was able to think through all manner of things with the application of an organized and detailed, extensive creative analysis. I turned out to have an ability to balance the application of left brained and right brained skills to any situation. From the left brain side, I could analyze things well — my parents valued science, and I had excelled in science in high school and college, and early on thought I would be a scientist. I was intuitive and intelligent and could readily analyze things with a “big picture” perspective that, because it came so naturally and easily for me, I was surprised to discover was rather uncommon among all my peers, my entire life long.
But then from the right brain side, I was able to think creatively, and imaginatively, rather than only in conventional ways. Too many people, I would discover, can’t really think through things, because they are unable to think creatively and imaginatively. They can’t think of additional “options” or ideas, other than the conventional ones. The result of this is that their thinking stays confined to well-traveled “grooves” that have already been trod by many, and they are basically just shifting around from one stereotype or “box” category to another “box” category. They tend to put everything in life in boxes, don’t have any new ideas of their own, but simply latch on to a sequence of ideas presented by others, and have no idea how to get out of this highly conformist, highly conventional and unimaginative way of thinking about everything.
A psychotherapist I worked with for many years, who helped me tremendously with my family wounds, told me that I was the most creative person she’d ever met. To be such is very liberating and exhilarating, but it can also be challenging, because when you are so very imaginatively and creatively free, and experience this as the “normal” state of being human, while most all of the rest of humanity is so very limited creatively, again this is an experience of having a very valuable treasure, that much of the world cannot even see.
Finally, a fifth reason that creative writing was valuable for working through painful situations, was that this availed me of a way to find healing and processing, that allowed expression of anger and venting of other emotions, without harming anyone else whatsoever. Much of what I wrote, was personal, such as my journaling, so no one but myself read it. Other things I wrote in letters to friends, so it was only they and I reading this. A few pieces of writing I circulated in a small community of friends. It was only quite a bit later, when I was about 50 years old, that I began to set up websites and write articles that the general public could find and read.
Back To An Assessment of Some Of My Less Skilled Actions
At times, my satirical writing extended into what I called “street theatre”. I ended up doing some “acting out” in relation to my brother’s wedding, which was not terribly harmful, but was disrespectful and could certainly have been viewed as a kind of mockery. I went with a friend to the wedding and we dressed inappropriately. I wore a black shirt and pants, a black cape and a skull necklace, and my friend dyed his hair orange and wore a very gay outfit. We also brought along 2 Barbie dolls which we held and danced together, entertaining ourselves with an “in joke” that they were getting married, at the same time as my brother and his wife got married. For me this was a creative way of using satire to express my anger at being left out, while simultaneously finding a way to NOT be left out (eg making our presence known, and making it clear that we were going to be ourselves and NOT be forced to be conventional). My friend and I really did have a fun story going, which was inspired by the wedding. After attending my brother’s wedding with the 2 Barbies, he and I went to the desert on a short vacation with the 2 mini “gay gals,” where we took photos of the 2 Barbies while creating a story that they had gotten married and were on their honeymoon. This whole “Barbies get married and go on honeymoon” adventure was really the most fun I’ve ever had with a friend in my entire life. I laughed so much that my face hurt from laughing. Everyone should be so fortunate as to have at least one time in their life like this. My brother and his wife had no idea how much humor and creativity and rollicking good fun and laughter both of us had, all ironically inspired by their wedding and my combination angry, zany, creative, satirical, street-theatre response to it.
At the time, my brother was not offended, since he seemed to understand that I was reacting to, in fact, being left out to some extent. However his wife was upset about all of this, and has retained a grudge about this for now over 35 years, even though I’ve since apologized to her for attending her wedding in this manner.
I went on to do more “street theatre” — in a place of employment on Halloween (I was fired for that, even though it was on Halloween when I came in with my costume on) and at my 10th high school reunion (again attended in costume). I do not regard those situations as incidents where anyone was treated unkindly or hurt. I was simply having fun, doing social commentary and satire, which was however not appreciated by everyone in attendance.
Regarding my behavior at the wedding: I do not know just how God would see this, as it’s not one of those readily categorizable kind vs unkind sorts of things. Yes, it was inappropriate to go to someone’s wedding dressed like I was, and carrying Barbies as I was. It did show disrespect. One alternative was that my friend and I could have done our satire of the marriage in private, without imposing it upon my brother and his wife at their celebration.
However, how much hurt was actually caused? I do not know and will not know until either they speak honestly with me at some point, if that ever happens, or I find out from God in my life review, when I get to the other side. I believe that what may have actually happened, was that my sister in law “decided” to use this situation to justify herself developing a grudge against me which she would hold for the rest of her life. If that is so, then this is dishonest of her, and not something that actually is a result of my action.
Ripple Effects: Distinguishing Causal Events from NonCausal Ones
One of the reasons for us seeing our life review on the other side, is apparently to understand the “ripple effect” that small actions, of good or ill, can have. I do feel that it would be so helpful if we could understand more of this ripple effect while we are still in our lives here on Earth, and not have to wait until our lives are over to find all this out.
Yet in analyzing the “ripple effect” consequences from various actions, I believe that what matters are those ripple effects which can reasonably be seen to flow from certain actions, and not those which are not reasonable reactions. This is where we need to be able to learn to distinguish causation from mere connection in time. This issue pertains to the logical fallacy called the “Post Hoc Ergo Proper Hoc” fallacy, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/post_hoc# . The fallacy or logical failing that some people make in their thinking, is assuming that because one thing takes place after another, that the first caused the second. But this is bad thinking: often things happen near each other in time, and that cannot be taken to mean that one caused the other. The example given for that fallacy, is that a dog barks, and then the power goes out, which I think most of us can see, should NOT be taken to mean that the dog’s bark CAUSED the power to go out.
In terms of doing a life review, it may often happen that an action we took took seemed to cause some other action or event, but if we think carefully about it, we will realize that our action did not actually cause the following action or event, but may have “triggered” something in someone who was vulnerable to being triggered in a certain manner.
For instance, I think every reasonable person can agree that we would not blame a child for causing her parents to assault her, if she asks them to buy her a toy, and the parents respond with senseless violence to this innocent request. The fact that the child asking for the toy led to the parents going insanely berserk and hitting the child, would never be blamed on the child, as some “ripple effect” of the child’s request.
Similarly for any situation between adults. Some people respond in ways that are totally inappropriate, or completely disproportionate, to someone else’s action. This may be because they are “triggered” and are psychologically projecting upon that person, things that are untrue. For instance if someone running a business has certain workplace policies in place, and an employee is violating one of those, and when the employer confronts them, the employee becomes outraged and begins threatening the employer. This behavior is not “caused” by the boss, and would not, in God’s eyes, be laid to him for blame.
So I say this to clarify that just because someone responds in a certain way to our action or behavior, doesn’t mean that we are responsible for that in any way at all, or that we shouldn’t have said or done what we said or did.
I do believe that whenever people are triggered by some innocent action or event, this is a ripple effect, but it’s not a ripple effect issuing from the innocent or relatively mild action or event. It is rather a ripple effect from some far more serious situation that likely occurred in that person’s childhood or early years. For instance, the parent who reacts violently to a child asking for a toy, may themselves have been beaten violently when young, when they asked for a toy. And if they never processed this, then as Carl Jung has wisely said “that which is relegated to the unconscious, comes to us as fate.” Meaning we are fated to unskillfully “act out” everything that we are not able to consciously work through. Hence the enormous value of all of us doing work on ourselves in our lives.
Thus, when I look at my actions with regard to my brother and his wife, I can see that I did something disrespectful, I may have caused hurt, but I did apologize. I did not cause a lifetime of hurt and a need to increasingly distance themselves for 35 years, and demonstrate a desire to ignore me and essentially disown me. No, such reactions are disproportionate and inappropriate, and those cannot be reasonably seen as “ripple effects” from my actions. Those actions are on my brother, more so on his wife, as their own meanness and efforts to hurt someone, and are theirs to account for.
My second brother not only didn’t invite me to his wedding, but I never knew he had been married until I visited my mother and saw the wedding photo on the mantel. While I’ve spent the last 9 years attempting to build bridges with my elderly parents in their last years, my brothers and their wives have seemed to be spending this time tearing apart any remaining bridges between themselves and I, and communication has atrophied. I have realized that part of my siblings’ distancing from me, involved me having referred to my father’s inappropriate behavior, and them not being able or willing to believe me. But instead feeling motivated to vilify and demonize me in order to protect the perpetrator, and to maintain the illusion of a basically good family, which my experience in several ways, threatened to reveal the truth to the family, that it was not always so.
So for my brothers and their wives, I imagine that part of their learning will be: “How have I harmed others, in order to protect myself from knowing the painful truth? What’s been the cost to others, of my denial?” It is very sad to me that human beings can have so very much difficulty acknowledging what is right in front of them, and are so highly motivated to fall into denial. If we reflect upon this theme, I think we may realize that there is an absolutely enormous amount of pain and hurt caused to humanity, because of people’s inability to accept the truth that is really right in front of them. Not truth that has to be reasoned through, and found by lots of analysis, but truth which is almost immediately perceptible, such as witnessing one person abusing another.
When I consider this lesson my siblings and their wives have spend so many decades not learning, I realize I would much rather be the one who’s been wronged, than the one who has hurt someone else. While it’s painful to be hurt and wronged by others — and with some kinds of harm, the pain can be almost unbearable — God is there to comfort and help us, and eventually time heals all wounds and we find peace. I believe that those who have no one else to turn to for help and comfort, may be the ones most likely to find God’s comfort. We who have the most need, are most motivated to turn to God.
But for those who have harmed others in a misguided effort to maintain an illusion or lies, until you face what you have done, you have to be always running from the truth. And when you’re running away from the truth in your life, you can never really feel deep peace.
Learning Projects On My Life Path
On of the major things I had to learn in life — and it took quite a long time to learn — was to accept conventional people as they were, with their limitations, their psychological denial, to learn to love them as they were, even though I had felt for quite awhile that their collective blindness and conventional conformity was not only causing me so much pain, but also causing so many problems, hardship, suffering and evil in the world. If only people could wake up and see the astonishing beauty of the world right in front of their faces!! I would think so often. If only they could know God!! Everything would be different.
So, I had to learn to accept them as they were, and also forgive those who caused me pain out of their own ignorance or lack of maturity. It took me a long time to see this, but I realized that if one of our projects here on earth is to learn to forgive people, as my project did seem to be, then this will imply that we will have to have people hurt or harm us, in our lives, in order for there to be anything to forgive. One doesn’t learn a meaningful level of forgiveness over minor matters like a partner getting angry and yelling at you, before reconciling. Or a friend ending up damaging or losing something valuable she borrows from you, and apologizing. The greater and more painful the hurt or harm, the more powerful the forgiveness that can be found as a result of this experience. I feel fortunate that I have not suffered any worse than I have.
I also had other very painful experiences later in life, that were caused not by family members, but people I was related to through business. I ended up victimized by some unscrupulous people pairing up with slimy attorneys, who made up allegations and sued me when I had not done anything wrong…as a means of retaliation, because they were angry at me. This was very painful, and traumatizing, because given the way the Cabal-run “injustice system” works in our nation, there was a possibility that I could have lost my house as a result of the lawsuit. I haven’t yet been able to forgive these people, the way I’ve been able to forgive those in my family, but perhaps I will some day.
Young Souls and Older Souls
It’s been helpful to me to try to understand those who I perceive as quite limited, conventional and “unevolved” or spiritually immature, as “young souls.” This helps me be patient with these and realize that we were all, at one time, young souls who were relatively immature and could not be expected to take up hard challenges in life. They are just not ready for it. Only those older souls who’ve “been around” in more incarnations, may be ready for the greater challenges. So, I perceive that one of my challenges has indeed been to develop patience for the younger souls, which unfortunately it often seems much of humanity is composed of, and who also unfortunately seem to often be like kindergarteners taking it upon themselves to lecture wise old men. They are the least mature among us, but too often, they behave as though they are smarter and know more than all the others and should be the ones giving advice to others. They have it entirely backwards but do not realize this, which makes for significant tragedy in life.
Yet the existence of so many young and relatively immature souls, also creates a challenge and learning project for older souls who may find themselves demeaned or sidelined by the younger “majority”. It took me some time to be able to accept and love people whose lives seem, on the surface, exceptionally conventional. Many of these as I saw it, weren’t doing any work on themselves, were not developing new skills and having their worldview expanded, were not growing psychologically or spiritually, were not thinking for themselves, but simply behaving as sheep and following the herd. Because of how conventional they were, it was very easy for them to fit into their milieu. So much just goes more smoothly for relatively “ordinary” people as opposed to us quirky artist eccentrics.
Early on, I felt like they weren’t really trying, and that to simply go to college, get a job, get married and have kids & raise them, was so easy to do, & that most anyone could do it while sleepwalking through life. I did not see that there was any challenge or accomplishment in this. My brothers have been good fathers, their wives appear to have been good mothers, and my brothers and their wives have been caring for my parents in their elder years. and into their infirmity. However, apart from the need to devote time and energy towards caring for others, what real life challenge was there in this? My sentiments on those who spent their lives merely carrying out familial duties, reflected the words of Jesus himself, who in Luke 6:32 said:
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”
Yet within those very words that I might use to criticize the “conventional” souls, for seemingly not accomplishing very much to simply be loving to their own family, but not particularly to those outside the family (or even a “black sheep” member of their own family) lay a criticism of me as well. If I expected the conventional to transcend their small circle of family and show some care for strangers or unconventional people, then I too had to be able to transcend my limitations, and be able to love the conventional souls. In fact, I eventually perceived, I was being tasked by God to love those family members, as well as, perhaps, some strangers, who treated me poorly. This was a greater challenge in love than to just love one’s family or friends: was I up to it? Eventually I would find that I was, though this took a lot of time and support from friends and a therapist, in order to attain to.
Some other Lessons on Kindness
In terms of kindnesses I’ve done or not done for other people through my life, examining my life to look for those: one issue is that because I’m highly introverted, I don’t actually have much interaction with people. Running my own businesses, I’ve sought to be fair, and feel good about my actions in this area. I’ve not been perfect, but have treated others as I’d like to be treated. One of the struggles I’ve had in work is that none of the paid work I’ve done in my life, has fit me very well. Like many creative people and artists, what I really love most to do, and what I’m most skilled at and in some areas strongly excel at, I do not earn any income from whatsoever. While on the other hand, what I do earn income from, I’m only moderately skilled with, and have never thoroughly enjoyed. I regard this situation as a serious defect in our world, not intended by God, likely caused by the Cabal, because I believe the world can and should be set up in a way that no one has to pay to exist on Earth, and where we can all do what brings us joy and satisfaction, and what we do best and love most.
As a result of having to do work that I do not really love, and at times have quite disliked, I can only tolerate putting a certain amount of effort in, and beyond that, I can no longer tolerate it and feel just not capable of doing more. I do not feel I am being unkind, unloving or unfair to others when I do all that I can, even if it is not completely what they want or expect. I will say that I feel others are being unkind and not loving towards me, when they seek ways to retaliate or punish me, such as by trying to find some authority who will help them bully me, because I have done all I can humanly do at the present, and they feel that I should do more. The experience of finding myself subject to retaliatory or punitive actions or efforts by others, because I am not more perfect in the work that I do, has led me to be a lot more patient and kind with other people when they are not perfect in their work. So, this is a way that I have ended up becoming better as a result of unkind or intolerant people seeking to harm me.
I generally will help anyone who I see that needs help, of a kind of help I’m capable of providing, as long as the situation doesn’t seem to pose any danger to me, and as long as I do not feel that the person is disempowering themselves by seeking help. Some people are dysfunctional in that they seem to want to remain helpless and to retain the view that they can’t do all kinds of things. Those people, it is not so good to be helping all the time. You do better for them if you refuse to help them and insist they empower themselves. This is an example of where discernment and wisdom are needed: as with so many things, we need to understand the context in order to understand what is appropriate.
I want to mention a way that I make an effort to love people, which likely has no effect at all upon them, and goes totally unnoticed, but it does affect me. This is that I will often times intentionally look at people and “look for the child in them”, as I call it, where I try to see the precious little innocent child. To do this, helps me love random people, as I pass them in the street or at the store. I’m not interacting with them in any way — often these are people who aren’t even looking at me and I don’t say anything to them, nor do they speak to me. I feel like my intention to see the child in them and love that child, helps me be more loving, and it’s a way that I have of loving people, someone like myself who doesn’t have much cause or inclination to interact much with people.
What Actions Do I Most Regret?
I think it can be helpful to look over our lives and consider what we most regret doing or saying. This may point to areas where we either feel we most need learning, or already have done the learning, or perhaps, where we need to apply the most compassion and forgiveness to ourselves.
I feel very fortunate indeed, that there is not much I regret doing or saying in life. I have always been quite averse to doing or saying anything that might hurt others. There have been a very few times when I absolutely exploded in anger at someone else, but what I realized as these outbursts occurred, was that I actually needed to be “totally sloppy and wrong” with my expression of anger, at the start, after MANY years of suppressing my anger in a way that damaged myself. I knew intuitively that I could not go from totally suppressing my anger, to expressing anger in a totally appropriate way at the right times and places. No, there absolutely had to be some sloppiness to it, some instances of “doing it all wrong, the wrong way, directed at the wrong people” and unfortunately that is just part of the whole human experience.
I recall one point where someone bumped intentionally into my cart at Home Depot, scolding me for a minor issue that I seemed to be blocking the aisle, and I let loose with an exceptionally fluid torrent of insults, which were quite disproportionate to the “wrong” he had done. I knew intuitively as I was in the midst of this volcano of anger, that this was not really “right”, but I also knew it was very healing and had to happen, and so I was not sorry and did not apologize. I knew as well that I was so “out of line” (I literally caused onlookers to gasp in amazement at how “off the rails” I went), that I would not actually hurt this man, because my anger was so very disproportionate, that I looked like a clown show. So I have absolutely no regrets over this outburst, or guilt.
What do I most regret…
This may sound quite silly to some people, but the “wrong” action I most regret, that for some reason sticks in my mind the most, was one that occurred very early in my life, when I was a young child, and it wasn’t one that hurt anyone. At least not directly. It was something that many people would not think twice about as it was seemingly “innocent”. I will describe the context and explain what I think may be involved, that causes me to feel badly about this, so very many years later.
I was a child of about 5 or 6, and my parents had taken me to some type of country fair, in New York State, where we lived at that time. I recall a picnic we had on a hillside, and how I felt the presence of God in the beauty of that landscape, that we looked out upon, and the stillness and quiet there. Then, we went to a part of the fair where there was an activity for children involving small toys hidden in a straw bale. The woman overseeing this part of the fair, gave me instructions: I was to reach into the straw bale and move my hand around until I found a toy, and then could take that out and keep it, but I was only to take one toy, not more than one.
Well, I reached around in that straw bale, and came into contact with one toy, but I didn’t do as instructed, and take my hand out when I found the one toy. Instead I kept moving my hand around inside the bale, until I found another one, and then I took out both, and kept both.
And this dishonesty and small instance of childish greed has caused me heartache for over 50 years since that happened.
I’m sure many people would not even remember such an incident, let alone be bothered by this, and I realize many people, likely most people, have things they did that are far more harmful to others than this was. But I feel so much guilt about this, even after talking about this with my psychotherapist and having her brush it off as typical behavior of children.
Why is this? I believe my level of guilt or shame about this, has to do with the extent to which I was given the gift of the ability to sense God’s presence, as a young child. I went from feeling the exhilaration and joy of God’s presence in the beauty of the hills where we had a picnic, to then feeling aware of my own dishonesty and greed, immediately in juxtaposition to experiencing God’s bounty and goodness. To me, in retrospect, this incident seems to represent a loss of innocence, and a turning against God in a manner that strikes me as particularly sad and poignant, more powerfully than any other experience in my life to date. It’s quite possible I find this incident so sad, because it was the first memory I have of doing “wrong”, and also it happened just at a time when it seemed God was so close to me.
There were many things I did in life that, viewed from the surface, would seem worse than this. I have been sarcastic and mocked people. I said inappropriate and hurtful things to some people. I have had to kill small mammal pests at my house, who were only doing what nature designed them to do. I’ve been dishonest with people. I have even engaged in a small act of theft a couple times. But none of those actions, taken as an adult, bother me as much as this one action taken as a small child. I think it’s because it seems somehow less “wrong” to me, when we do “wrong” things to others, in response to what we perceive as a wrong done to us, or in a way that we feel has no effect because it isn’t noticed. For instance, someone treated me very badly at work, (a male dominated workplace) called me names and engaged in sexist taunting. So when I noticed something he left behind at the workplace when he went home, I stole it. I did not regret doing this, as I felt like I was “helping” justice happen, when the universe seemed to be unfairly and wrongly allowing bad people to do bad things with impunity.
I realize this is not good thinking, and that we are not supposed to be “helping” justice happen by the “eye for an eye” method. But this is how it felt to me at that time. I feel differently today though.
Summary
I think in all things, we need to give ourselves credit for how far we’ve come, based on where we started, and what we started with. Some people who grew up in healthy loving families where they were treated very well, learned social skills from their parents, seen and loved for who they were…it would not be as hard for them to be kind to others, as people who were treated badly, abused, who struggled to love themselves, who didn’t learn social skills from their parents. In this sense as in so many others, we really all have our very own unique “projects” before us, and we should avoid judging others, because we may not know much about where they started and how much they have endured or suffered, to see how much they have accomplished since starting out in life.
The process of writing I think naturally leads people into some degree of “life review”, as we tend to be reflective when writing and journaling. It’s my hope that readers will be inspired to take on some aspect of the life review process, while they are still living, so they can learn from their experiences while also being compassionate and loving to themselves.
Homeless Zombie Apocalypse 
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