Tomorrow Is a Parallel World

Though I have other posts to get to putting up, today I have had two influences that lead me to want to add a follow up to the post last week about The Value of Now.

The first nudge is based on a wonderful quote by C.S. Lewis from Soul Gatherings, a blog I follow and love to read daily like a fortune cookie, by Theresa:

You can’t go back and change the beginning,

but you can start where you are and change the ending.

~ C.S. Lewis ~

Obviously C. S. Lewis was advocating for a practice of Better Endings.

Then today I happened upon a movie about the implications of parallel realities: Yesterday. This is a fun story about a fairly unsuccessful but well-motivated musician in England named Jack Malik who, after a bus accident caused by a global blackout, wakes up to find he is living in a reality where, among some other odd glitches, nobody has ever heard of The Beatles! So, Mark reintroduces Beatles songs as if he were the original songwriter/ singer, and he attains great success and fame for his apparent genius. 

I will not spoil the ending to Yesterday for you; this is a film well worth seeing.  But it led me to think about how, since Time as we think we know it is an illusion according to modern physicists as well as many spiritual philosophies, then past and present Moments can rightly be considered parallel realities.

If we consider the future, such as Tomorrow, to be a parallel reality to Now, then what are some implications for, again, the value of Today?

A better endings visualization: Imagine that tomorrow is a parallel reality to today.  Many aspects remain stable across these parallel worlds: you are still where and how you are living though a day older, most routines are intact, etcetera.  But creatively envision adding one TWEAK to your parallel reality of tomorrow.  What element(s) might you change as you shift upon waking tomorrow morning into a slightly more ideal or satisfactory reality sphere?  To be effective with this technique, you might consider only tweaking tomorrow slightly, to a reality it is quite feasible and possible for you to realize without too shocking of a reality shift.

images are from pixabay.com

You can extend this thought experiment to a future a bit further out to add some more meaningful or life-changing, reality bending tweaks. Six months from today what might your future look like from an ideal standpoint? Write it down, describe yourself living in a parallel reality six months from now that contains the sorts of changes you wish were possible.  Then consider, what steps can you take now, and in the near foreseeable future, to bring this new reality about?

Since the future IS a parallel reality to the present Moment, we CAN tweak those elements we would like to change, then carry forth in that direction.

Better Endings to All!

Parallel Lives?

 “Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” ― Zhuangzi

Since Life is but a Dream…

It presents a web of potentiality framed around themes you are focused upon Now. It constructs a seemingly coherent life history with the illusion of a consistent identity, a life story that you develop from infancy until your departure.

Yet you are by no means limited to this Reality. Daydreams, nightly dreams, and creative visualization provide many windows to open and avenues to explore that are not bound by your daily drama.

Have you ever wondered about parallel realities and how this notion might pertain to dreaming?  Have you had glimpses of what felt like parallel lives?

A few years ago I had a lucid inner experience just before waking. In this alternate reality, I was a female scientist returning home to her family after having been on a space voyage (routine travel in her reality). She is met at the door of her home by her husband, who welcomes her home. She knows he is her husband and that they have two young children. But beyond that, she suddenly realizes that she doesn’t remember anything else about her own life; she is experiencing a form of conscious amnesia in the moment. Her husband says some friends will be coming over that evening for dinner. She tells him, “I’m sorry but you are going to have to cover for me when they come. I am not remembering anything right now about my life!”

I then shifted consciousness back to my body and life in Colorado and opened my eyes ‘here.’ I felt immediately that I had been experiencing a “dual conscious” state of awareness. I understood that this was what was causing the partial amnesia in my alter-Self awareness. Because of the dual-conscious moment, some sort of overlap had occurred between two parallel realities, two of my own parallel identities.

This experience also reminds me of a Star Trek Next Generation episode where Captain Picard lives an entire alternate lifetime in 40 minutes. He has been affected by a probe from a planet that had been destroyed when its sun “went nova”; they had programmed the probe to reach one person who would learn this way about their lives and existence.

What stands out to me about the parallel life awareness is that this was something other than a normal archetypal “personal unconscious” dream event. It did not feel symbolic at all, but very lucid (I was aware somewhat of the dual consciousness state while it was happening), and it was simply very real.

What can we learn from this sort of glimpse into a parallel reality? Mainly, for me I suppose, that there is “so much more” to Life than what our limited minds can perceive. Also, it suggests to me that a true change in consciousness can allow us to alter anything about our current life dream “drama” that we deeply CHOOSE to change. This is by no means easy, because it requires a true change in our conscious construction of the life we are living. It is not simply a matter of having a strong intention so that a “law of attraction” can operate. It requires a fundamental shift in your awareness of what is possible, and then a conscious choice and decision to act on establishing appropriate changes in your life.

So, allow me to end this week’s pairing of the life metaphor Life is a Dream with the universal archetype of the Teacher with a self-development journaling technique I invite you to try for yourself:

In first person, present tense, simply establish an alternative identity. Maybe this identity would realize a wish you may have had about a life you might have lived if you were not ‘you’. Describe yourself in this alternative lifescape.  Be as detailed and as descriptive as you can be. Write until you feel like you are really experiencing this other lifetime clearly in your imagination.

 

When you finish this technique (which you can also do multiple times from several different alternative life perspectives), just take some time to reflect. At very least, this technique might help you to become aware of some unrealized but desired (or, not, depending on the alternate identity you have imagined!) potentials in this life.

I would love to hear your insights or stories from exercising this Better Endings practice!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Ere, I Was in Eire: Inner Travels for Better Endings

I have since high school days always held a special fondness for Ireland. I nearly memorized in 11^th-12^th grades the whole of a volume on The Selected Poetry of W.B. Yeats. In college as an undergraduate English major I took an entire year of courses including a graduate credit course on James Joyce, studying Ulysses “properly,” guided page by page by companion concordances and a topographical map of Dublin. My grandmother, Ada Kelley, was a living reminder to me that my family’s roots on my Dad’s side go back to Ireland in the mid-to-late 1700’s.

Some 6 years ago I had a lucid dream from a “past life” perspective that astounded me. I am a teenaged girl with a friend or a younger sister beside me, standing inside a stone church with a dirt floor and a large wooden door. We have come in just to explore.

Somehow I know there is some sort of religious ritual going on in the far end of the church that I cannot see. I ask my Inner Guide (already I have one), “What religion is this?” My Inner Guide answers, “Satanism”. I turn immediately for the door, to leave! But, the huge oak door is locked. Beside the door there is an opening to a tower, with a spiral staircase within it.  I decide we will try going up there, hoping for an opening to get out. We go up one flight, then another (with like storage areas on each level). Then I realize we are being followed, stage by stage, by the ritualists. We are being sent higher and higher, becoming prisoners of this group.

In the process of waking from this dream, I received awareness about further aspects of that life experience. I saw myself becoming a slave—even a sexual slave—to the leader of the religious group, a big man with long, light brown hair. I see myself thanking him for accepting some small gift I hand to him, years later. My friend I believe was sacrificed; she was not in the later scenarios.

I woke from this dream with a sense of its utter Reality. I could not shake it. Soon I met a friend, Jan, who was hoping to go to Scotland for a graduate program on Celtic history. We began frequenting an Irish pub/restaurant and we then started planning a trip to Ireland together. When I opened a book for tourists on Ireland, I nearly dropped the book when I saw that stone churches with spiral-staircase towers were nearly ubiquitous in medieval Irish history! I had not known of these at all before my dream.

(Me at Glendalough, Ireland, 2012)

So, we planned and organized a two-week drive from Dublin, up to New Grange, then South and to the West, all along the coast including an island stay at Achill, on to County Sligo to visit Yeats’ grave (I left a brown penny), and back across to Dublin passing through Caval during a major Celtic Music Fleaugh (Festival). As I approached the trip, I thought it would be in part to forgive what had transpired in that life of being held as a captive slave to a ‘religious’ leader.

During the middle of our two week stay, Jan and I stayed for 7 nights with a couple of other friends we had come over with—Diane and Bob—at a wonderful Irish cottage rental in Bunratty of County Shannon. The second night there, I had another lucid dream. This one made the earlier dream seem mild by comparison! It also was a “past life” (or parallel life, I prefer to think, since quantum physics has determined that Time is an illusion).

In this inner experience, I am in a lower area of some structure (like a boat or a castle, perhaps), with a lot of wood, and dark. I am there with my Inner Guide, who is showing me this place which feels very familiar.  I realize people died in here. Then –okay—I realize I was responsible! I say this to my Guide: “I was responsible that people died here! I am a murderer; many times over!” He said nothing, allowing me to absorb the grim reality. Then I turned and saw a group of people descending into this place from an upper region. A priest led the way, followed by a small group of people who looked like potato farmer sorts—salt of the earth Irish peasant people. The priest set up a small table, then he put a candle on the table and lit it, to establish a ceremonial setting.  A sister and her brother stepped forward as they saw me, and we approached one another.

I said to the young woman:  “I am so sorry for your loss!”

“I am sorry for all that you have had to endure because of this,” was the young woman’s reply.

I knew that she and her brother, and all of the people in this group, had suffered in grief for the loss either of their own lives or of loved ones, whose deaths I was responsible for.  I had not actually murdered them with my own hands, but somehow I had allowed them to die or be killed by some decision I made—whether it was a triage situation on a boat, allowing some to live while others died “below”, or perhaps as an officer I had closed off some common folk in the low section of a castle to protect my own class from a deadly castle attack.

As I woke from this lucid vision, I said three times out loud: “I can’t believe my life has been about this; I CANNOT BELIEVE MY LIFE HAS BEEN ABOUT THIS!”

Wow! I called my friend in New Mexico from Ireland right away (it was early morning her time).

“I’m a murderer!” I told her; “many times over!”

My friend helped me realize this was from another time, another life. I realized the experience was needed for an absolution of sorts; for a mutual forgiveness between myself as Soul and those begrieved peasants who had confronted me. I hope they found the peace needed to move on.

This second dream showed me that the earlier dream might actually have been part of my own karmic due (which came first or ‘later’ matters not.) I found myself wondering how many people visit Ireland because of their own karmic loads from difficult times. Ireland in general is a nation still closely attached to its often violent history as well as to its rich tapestries of culture.

So for this week about Travel in relation to Better Endings I share with you this story of how we sometimes need to travel inwardly—as well as outwardly—to confront our “past” and to resolve its lingering ghosts, in order to move forward into greater future potentials. Whether you accept reincarnation or prefer to interpret such inner experiences as these metaphorically and/or ‘only’ archetypally, your dreams and other visionary experiences carry messages to help you advance to Better Endings in your life.

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I am posting this story early this weekend to remain on the site through Sunday, because it has deep significance for me.

Do you have a parallel-life or other ‘deep’ dream or visionary experience that has helped you arrive at Better Endings in your life? I welcome all of your insights and stories!