…and nothing but the truth

Yesterday my bestie loaned me a book that her grandpa recommended: Proof of Heaven by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander. It was a fascinating story chronicling  his decline into a week-long brain-dead coma caused by bacterial meningitis, where he has a near death experience. There was even an adoption theme woven throughout (where the guardian he meets in ‘heaven’ turns out later to be his biological sister that had died right before he reunited with his biological family. It was fascinating to read such a skeptical doctor, with such a great knowledge of medicine and the brain, write about this very personal and beautiful near death experience where he became enlightened spiritually. Super cool.

Except it is all bullshit.

Well, maybe not all, but I gobbled the book up in a few hours the afternoon sunshine, and was so excited that I googled the book. And found a link to an article debunking the whole thing. Well, maybe not debunking the actuality of the experience on the other side, but certainly debunking all the medical aspects of the story. Like how the doctor didn’t have the most rarest form of bacterial meningitis, that according to the doctor (who treated him) it was a medically induced coma and that he was actually conscious during that week, though in a very hallucinatory state.

Ouch.

Of course this back and forth ‘is it true, is it not true?’ thoughts come on the week of Zen pen where were are exploring writing from our soul. To be honest, my soul feels so torn by all of the spiritual mumbo jumbo about. I want to believe…in something…anything. No, I don’t want to believe in something, I want something to be true. I want to have confidence in something. I sometimes even want to believe in the Christian stories that  I was taught as a kid/teenager/young adult. Something. I feel like  I’m floating in the abyss of unbelief, a hungry ghost of a soul, wailing and looking for truth that doesn’t exist.

Except, at one time, that truth existed for me. While not a coma-induced near death experience, I once, at such a low point that I thought of death as an option, had a vision/hallucination/psychotic break(?) where I saw Jesus (at least that’s who I perceived him to be, it was a glowing white robed shining figure) who picked me up in his hand, out of a dark hole, and put me on a grassy field. I wasn’t depressed after that for almost 2 years. It was because of that experience that I was baptized as a Christian and started to attend church regularly. While I’m not proud of my fundie evangelical years, that experience was beautiful and authentic and clearly what I needed in that moment of time.

But here I am now, 12 years later, and not even sure God exists, let alone the whole religion based off some dude who lived a bunch of years ago. It feels like a ‘dark night of the soul,’ if I were to couch it in religious terms, though at this point…what’s a soul anyway?

I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I’m tired of feeling lied to, tricked, hoodwinked, duped, and confused.

 

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Clearly being rebellious runs in the family…

 

“From how you’re talking, it’s like you’re in that place, where people just run away and you don’t hear from them for like 5 years, and they’re living in the woods somewhere. Or they have a new identity, or a new family. That’s what it sounds like.“-Boof

Yeah, that’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s what it feels like. The pressure on all sides feels like it is closing in and, like a trapped coyote, I just might chew my leg off and run. Though I clarified with Boof that I had no intention of leaving him, or Potamus, that right now they are my only tiny floating safe spot in this crazy ocean of frozen emotion (think Titanic proportion ice-burgs).

The overwhelm didn’t begin yesterday, but it was certainly heightened, as I spent the afternoon with my natural family, mostly my little sisters. They were disappointed that I didn’t bring Potamus, and my biological dad seemed annoyed at some parts. I realized that I have been in reunion for 5 years, and while the times have been mostly honeymoon phase, I am starting to grow weary of having to navigate all the shifting dynamics of reunion. When I met my little sisters they were 4 and 9, now they are 10 and 14. It’s crazy. They are young women and I am getting to know them just as they are figuring out how to navigate this young-auntie role. I am both daughter, and therefore in the ‘young one’ role, but also friend, especially to my “step-mom,” as we giggled and had inside jokes that the other girls didn’t quite understand yet. I’m in this caught-between-world of adoption that feels both wonderful, as it’s a reunion I could only have dreamed of, and awful, like an after-school-special where everything seems going great until a zombie or werewolf or chainsaw murderer shows up.

The pressure I feel to be the glue to hold all of my families together is too much. The constant second-guessing that my emotions are going to cause friction or panic-stricken martyrdom and bending-over-backwards actions to try and accommodate my shifting moods.  Normals rarely get it…they talk about families with step-parents or in-laws and I just don’t think they understand…I met my family when I was 25. And not only do I navigate my own reunion, but how do I relate to my siblings reunions, too?  I now have to navigate this ridiculous amount of families, from vast different experiences…upper middle class highly educated…middle class educated…lower middle class uneducated…working class uneducated, and the vast array of political and religious beliefs, not to mention the very different life experiences that have made up each and every individual. I feel stuck in the votex of all these families and it is drowning me.

I have this runaway fantasy, where it is just Boof, Potamus and I on a desert island. Yes, I’d even leave Scrummy the dog behind. And we’d be stranded so we wouldn’t have the guilt and pressure to perform or navigate or save people’s feelings from getting hurt. We wouldn’t have to have conversations like this:

“I know you’re cousins are having their barbecue next Sunday, but I guess my biological grandma’s sister (my great-aunt) is coming to town for the last time next Sunday and we’ve been invited. I can’t say no. Can we make the timing all work?”

As I slid down the water slides with my biological family, I had all the overwhelm of nostalgia, the face-to-face of what could have been and I both liked it and wanted to puke. I compared it to my own upbringing and wondered why I’m surrounded by bigoted and racist men. Am I karmically supposed to be learning from all of this? And, if I believe in reincarnation, or life between lives, as I think I do, I wonder…if there is a lesson in all of this…am I missing the point? Will I know what the point is? Have I known these souls before? Did we actually choose this complicated story to enact for some good-to-come reason? Or, is it a punishment for some arrogance I must have had in a previous life? Why does it have to be so damn complicated?

The emotions are frozen inside and coming out in nervous tics and insomnia. My mind will not stop chattering and I’ve played approximately 768 games of bejeweled on my phone. If I were to even allow myself 5 minutes of meditation I fear I would burst into tears and never stop. In fact, I had to come out of camel pose in my last yoga class because the heart opener was just too much…I almost did cry. I just don’t know what to do, because running away is clearly not an option.

 

Living your own Cloud Atlas?

I took this photo of performers when I was living in Jaipur, Rajasthan India.

So, on the recommendation of a friend, last week I indulged in the 2 hour 52 minute movie, Cloud Atlas. If you’re not familiar, the basic premise of Cloud Atlas is that souls are eternal, and are born into different bodies in different times and interact with other souls. This particular movie shows quite a few love connections across the ages, with souls somehow finding and interacting with one anther…really showing the meaning of SOULmate!

The idea of reincarnation was foreign and forbidden just a few years ago, but lately, I’ve begin to wonder….what if? There are quite a few interesting reads out there in book form, or on the internet, trying to prove that reincarnation exists. In some sense, it makes practical sense, since, if we believe that souls are eternal, what are they doing before we are born, and after we die, as we (in the Christian tradition) are sitting around waiting for the final judgment and re-establishment of paradise. It seems a lot to have an eternal soul that only gets to be in an Earthly body for max 100 years (and many, for much much shorter times).

One interesting story I came across, was that of Anne Frank/Barbro Karlen. Apparently, very young children, often ‘remember’ having past lives, and in some cases, these ‘lives’ are able to be figured out to be actual people. I watched a documentary once where a kid remembered being a pilot in war, and the details added up to be a real dude. So, in this case, Barbro was a young girl born in Sweden 10 years after Anne Frank died in Bergen Belsen, the story goes on to say:

hen she was less than three years old, Barbro told her parents that her name was not Barbro, but Anne Frank. Barbro’s parents had no idea of who Anne Frank was, as the book, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank, had not yet been translated or published in Swedish.

I can’t imagine having this happen to me, in such a detailed and difficult way. Barbro wrote about how hard it was for her as a young girl telling people who she really was, and feeling like she was a different person (having trouble calling her parents her parents), because people didn’t seem to believe her. And then discovering, at age 10, that her diary had been published and that she was really a famous person. Mind tripping!

But…less drastic than that, are those deja vu or other experiences people have where they report, “we had an instant connection,” or, “it was like I had been there before!” Has that ever happened to you? Other people say that if you have a particularly strong affinity for a certain location in the world, or particular time periods (like WWII or ancient Egypt).

Which makes me wonder, about some of my own affinities. Like, my obsession with India, and how I would confess to my close friends, that I am “brown on the inside,” meaning, that I actually felt Indian on the inside…which is a strange thing for a white girl to say, you know? And then I had a dream where I was seeing India from my own eyes, which sparked a trip there. Other things I feel an affinity for are ancient Egypt, WWII, and indigenous people in North America (either/both PacNW or plains). But, when I listen to the rational part of my brain, I just wonder if I feel an affinity toward those places is because I learned about them in school. Also, how can by interest in mermaids be explained? Ha! I’ve also had experiences where I’ve met someone and we instantly click…could that be meeting a soul I’ve known before? Perhaps?

So, what are your thoughts on the possibility of reincarnation? Any experiences where you were like “whoa, I’ve been here before,” or instantly connect with someone where you just feel like you’ve known them before? Do share!