Seeing: how we choose to see
As a bonus, I know that many people believe that we choose and create our own reality.
To the second argument, my response is that I don't believe we have any powers to choose and create our own reality, beyond our limited abilities to influence our environment with our hands, our feet, our eyes, our ears, our mouths, and our (strictly physical) brains. (I don't believe in karma either, by the way. Nor reincarnation, nor any kind of afterlife.)
The Hitler thing for me came during a trip. We were discussing good and evil (I had just revisited the bible thinking it said don't eat from the tree of life and learned it said don't eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil.) but WTF I am the guy who mixed up Mo and Cheshire Kitty.
Someone said, "well we can all agree that Hitler was evil."
A girl said, "what if that isn't true?"
We had been discussing karma, which most held to be true, but they held it like a bank with debits and credits. I held it to be more in the lessons-transcendence category. I was in the how to deal with the dual, yet seemingly paradoxical Fate vs Free will, philosophical pondering in my life.
I've worked with a number of people interested in past lives. I generally hold these people in contempt, because I've met about 20 reincarnations of Cleopatra. Same with folks who have "acid trip flashbacks." People desperate for attention.
However, in my work I do hypnosis. I am working in This Lifetime and regressing a person to look for a source incident related to back pain.
One woman I was working with had gone back to two years old and no incident had revealed itself. Generally, we do not remember things before that, but I just said, "OK go back earlier."
Suddenly her voice changed. She was having an intense experience of being tied to a wheel with the hub of the wheel pressing into her back at the exact point of her discomfort in her present life.
I stayed with her and kept asking about what was going on. She described everything. I asked her her name and she gave it. This went on for nearly forty minutes before I brought her back to the present. I had detailed notes and a recording of the session.
I did not reveal to her what had happened. But said I felt we might need to have another session and see what we could find. This woman had worked with me for more than a year, very level-headed and trusted me.
We had another session I regressed her more slowly figuring we had somehow just missed the incident.
The same thing happened during the second session and I gathered more detail. Father's name. Mother's name I do not want to go into too much of this but it was weird to say the least.
After the second session, I asked her if she had any odd sexual fantasies and she said, one where she would be tied to a wheel and whipped.
OK, coincidence? maybe. I was not willing to believe at this point this was anything more than some part of her fantasy-imagination generated out of her present life.
About a year later, I met a historian from Oxford who dealt with the British Empire. Over drinks I mentioned this and asked him if there was anyway this woman could have read about this, paper, book anything. He and I met at my office and I gave him the past life woman's name, father mother and the location of the incident plus approximate time frame (a decade). A rough outline of what she described.
About six months later he called me from England. He had been in the archives of the government's colonial documents. He had looked everywhere for this woman, and found her, indeed father's name correct, same for mother. Father had been posted. He said these things were public, but by no mean common information. Nothing that would be in a book, history or newspaper etc, but he said not impossible.
"The Incident" he had found in that country's "cases" this particular case was sealed and not supposed to be open for another 20 or so years, but he broke the seal.
Her abduction, whipping, wheel, sexual relationship with her captor, his capture, her rescue and his execution were all recorded in detail and completely suppressed. She returned to England, a "virgin" married and had children.
He later flew to America with copies of some of the documents (he did not let us keep them for obvious reasons) but met with both me and her.
I had let her listen to her sessions, which she said sounded just like her fantasy.
The three of us met, read everything and discussed it. For me it was a stunning confirmation that indeed we had crossed to a different lifetime to a real incident that had been effectively covered up and not something she could have stumbled upon and generated into her own present day incident.
She agreed to be put under again, in his presence and regressed again to the incident. He was able to question he with very open ended questions, which she responded to with incredible detail, many of which were not in what he had showed us.
After that, I processed her the way I normally do with these events and her back pain and any reoccurance eliminated, but it left the three of us faced with a deep WTF!
I have had two other incidents of this nature. None of the people recalled were ever famous, written about and I was never able to verify. But that one incident was to me a shift in how I SEE things.
I even arranged for that woman to be tied to a wheel and whipped which she found both moving sexually and deeply cathartic.
The second life altering incident was my wife's death and her jumping into my body. I described it briefly before. This happened to ME! and I am skeptical. I could easily explain it as caregiver's remorse-guilt all of which I feel, but it was not some one off incident, it has been on going though much less in some 8 or more years. It has shifted me from "believing" in past life, that we have a spirit, soul, consciousness that extends beyond the physical- chemical reactions in our brains.
Back to Hilter. This discussion went on for hours. It was passionate, and far ranging. At some point someone mentioned how the Nazis or a small group were doing some very weird research and experiements in the mystic realms (the whole Indiana Jones and the Lost Arc is actually based in part on real stuff)
I threw out, what if Hilter and his group are avenging angels, that the brutal tortures were some way of balancing karmic debt.
The whole room stopped dead and my brain went off in its crazy paths. It was a mind fuck. When I add the woman's incident and its confirmation, it doubles the mindfuck and my wife takes it even further.
Do I think God is up there saying Oh that Runway Jones did a nice genuflect in the end zone I am giving this game to Dallas, but Bob in Las Vegas said Mother fucking Jesus Christ, so I am not covering the point spread! No.
Do I think if I am nice that when I die I get to go into the sky and eat some pie?
No.
That whole pie in the sky the current religions are selling, 72 heavens and 47 virgins or whatever, sounds like a con to me.
But at one point everyone poo poo old Louis Pasteur. The word Malaria means bad air, we used to cut folks and bleed them to let out the bad humors (as opposed to these Good Humors in the truck).
Atoms? I have never seen one, but I trust the people who think they exist. I do not think we are anywhere close to Grokking how the entire universe works. If I could put us on a spectrum, we've got wall phones, but with the short cords.
Do I think God wrote the Bible? Qu'ran? No. Do I think they have truths inside them? Yes. Do I think they are pure and holy? No. I think they are used to do more horrible things than good. When I see some guy hold out his empty hand, standing butt naked and see a book appear in his hand, I'd probably still think, more likely there is a Scotty up there who beamed it down. But would be more inclined to think it possible a God wrote That book.
To me if there is a "Book" written by God. It is the creation itself.
Please go read Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution.
It talks about how RNA got formed out of Not Living Things. And RNA makes DNA.
Little old guy sitting in a mud puddle cranking out different kinds of chicken pigs and goats, then moving onto man? Not a terribly all powerful God to me.
One who could create a universe where life rises up out of not life and evolves and transmutes into millions of life forms. That's got some fucking real potential for being a fucking interesting "being".
I do find when I divide shit up into good and evil in my own life, I am fucked.
Seeing? She's fucking batshit crazy!
Or
What did I do to trigger the button which is making her act like this right now?
I have said things to people who then went, "You fucking asshole! I fucking hate you I am never going to talk to you again! Not Ever!"
Five years later, called me up (and that means hunting me down) saying, "Wow, thank you. I got it. I couldn't see it then. I didn't realize what a loving thing you said to me."
Shift in Seeing.