Rite of Resurrection… and Revelation

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This post makes reference to Council Rock Mountain, a place I have yet to introduce to my readers. I’ve sketched out six or seven blog topics to fully bring this magical location into my readers’ awareness when the time is right. I’ll say this much: it’s a Stonehenge built thousands of years ago and hidden away for centuries. It’s been my good fortune to find it, explore it, document, and commune with it. But it’s discovery, revelation and archaeological research are stories to be shared later. What I feel compelled to write about today is what happened inside of me while participating in a morning sunrise near this year’s Spring Equinox.

Monday, March 18, 2019. I chose this crisp and clear morning to take advantage of a perfect sky…. AND more importantly… to complete on a spiritual promise/agreement to commune with the mountain. Many important things have been happening with this place in the past few months, and Equinox sunrise was an opportunity to express gratitude and oneness. Both with the mountain, and with my spiritual self. This was the morning just past perfect alignment, and still two days off from our current Equinox.

It was such a perfectly clear sky that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. At 6:30 a.m. I rose from bed and prepared to leave my home. At 7:04 I leave and journey the short distance to my kin, my other family, my other home: the mountain on which the stones await.

By 7:30 I’ve arrived at the site and have begun the ceremony. I am also setting up a simple tripod to which I’ll attach my cellphone. I brought my gf Carla’s telescope tripod to use as a base and I use rubber bands to hold my phone in place. My goal is to record the full sunrise – start to finish. At 7:41, I hit the ‘record’ button and the filming begins. The camera ran for 51 minutes. The actual sunrise appeared at 7:48 to the left of the Altar Stone, and reappeared in the equinox opening from 8:22 to 8:24 a.m.

Once the camera was running on its own, I chose to wander off and experience the sacred sunrise from any location my heart was pulled toward. I first ventured toward what I call the Grandfather Stone. After briefly using my eyes to observe the sun from this stone, I closed my eyes and simply lost myself – my identity, melding into the Spirit of the Grandfather. Time passed. My senses passed. I became aware of an almost ‘nothingness”.

As I knelt at the far end facing the sacred site I could feel the Grandfather Stone’s heartbeat and breath. My ears heard a bird chirping a two-passage song repeatedly as he/she moved from one location to another around the place I knelt. He/she flitted from tree to tree and branch to branch clockwise around the space I knelt. Not too close, but not too far from me. I imagined that he too was aware of my “non-presence”. Though my ears heard him, my awareness was in a different place.

I noticed that I had disappeared. Ego had left by 99%, popping in only briefly from time to time as little fears knocked on my mind’s door. (What is this bird? Are there other animals approaching? Are there dangerous animals approaching, and should I open my eyes? Should I come back to presence? …) These type of thoughts flitted through my mind at a distance. Fear was trying to protect my body. Spirit knew this wasn’t necessary. Spirit won. But fear made a brief showing.

After some time passed, maybe about ten minutes, I got myself up (my body) and noted how it was capable of moving on its own – without my constant direction or awareness. I (my Spirit) could still “BE” as my body did its own thing on autopilot. We moved toward the larger rocks – the Cat Stone in particular – as I watched my body briefly lose the path and then correct itself, without need of my conscious direction.

Scientifically speaking, I know that my body is a community of cells, nerve endings and muscle fibers, organs and fluid pumps, as well as bacteria and micro-organisms along for the ride to process food and handle other tasks. We all function together as a unit. My brain coordinates it all (save for the bacteria and cooperative microbiomes). And my brain uses the sensory input derived from my eyes, ears, skin, etc., and then continuously filters all that input to pass through only the most pertinent information. But all this happens WITHOUT the need for my (my Spirit’s) input. A well-trained machine can run itself.

I wondered if the animals around me, the birds for instance, are aware of this human defect – to rely on our sensory awareness to the point of believing that we ARE our bodies? Is this the underlying human flaw??

Yes, we humans constantly use our thoughts and senses to control and manipulate every physical thing in our environment. We do! And we do it well. We’re physically changing the entire planet, for good or for bad.

But we’ve lost the connection to who we actually ARE. There’s a disconnect. Are we stragglers here on this planet? Are we using our environment, and our bodies, and our brains as just resources?? Is there a fundamental spiritual aspect that we’re largely avoiding? Do the animals of this planet have more awareness than we? Just because their bodies die under our crushing hands (guns, cars, encroachment and crowding out) doesn’t mean their spirits die forever.

We know better!! And still, we identify primarily with our body.

* * * * * *

All these thoughts and perceptions came to my awareness as I walked the thirty yards to the Cat Stone. “I” was present. My body carried me. It did so without any help from my awareness.

I took a brief look at the phone/camera, and then settled in to the seat on the west side of the Whale Stone. I noticed once again the transiting shadow of the Altar Stone across the south face of the Cat. Earlier, I had wondered what time it was, and how long it would be until the sun entered the upper triangle of the sighting mechanism. Now… I could simply watch the shadow as it moved slowly, purposefully across the Cat Stone’s face.

Still, “I” was lost in an altered state of awareness. A Bliss of some sort. Noticing the shadow took no more attention or effort than becoming aware of the bird at the Grandfather Stone.

Time passed. The earth spun on its axis. I felt it. I saw the result of this movement in the sliding shadow. We’re all manifested forms in a universe of energy. Condensed energy. Concretions. Even my body is just a condensation of energy into matter; a community of sub-organisms carrying my awareness around in a fleshy pouch. More like switching energetic charges on and off at the surface of electron shells so as to interact in agreement with all other electron shells orbiting around collections of protons and neutrons massed together. Energy packets – each of us – the large and the sub-microscopic.

I “saw” and “felt” all this as I sat in this ancient seat of Wisdom, Power, Status, and Responsibility. Those who sat here before me filled an important role, and they left an imprint in the stone that had my back today. My spine, and all the energy flowing through it in pulses too fast for a human mind to comprehend interacted with the imprints of previous energies from previous spines. We communicated. We communed.

All too much for my mind to handle, or to truly grasp. Yet my mind was content. It runs, operates, and manages the body that has formed to carry my spirit. We All Work Together!

As the shadow reached the opening, I shouted softly, “Aho!” “Aho Mitakuye Oyasin” – Yes, we are all related! Greetings – we are all family!

I stood up and walked between the Altar Stone and the Cat (and the camera behind it). I waved to the camera, then walked around to see the sunrise on its screen. I also bent my head around the side to see the sun in the viewer with my own eyes. I did this for my body and my ego. My Spirit was already present, IS already present with the Sunrise Ceremony. Spring is Here! I Am Here! I Am / We Are Reborn!

After allowing the recording to run its course, I take the camera off the tripod and pocket it in my leather coat. I return to the Whale Stone seat and take a few pictures from that vantage point. Then I settle in again to experience the spine(s) and the energy(ies) of all that have come before me. I return to Bliss.

At some point I curl my body up on the stone platform and lie down – absorbing the energy flow even more deeply. Time passes.

The phone rings. Carla is calling. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I speak with her briefly, and hike back to the car in an altered state of consciousness. In and out of my body as I hike back. Even the drive back to the house happens mostly on autopilot. Once home, I share of my experience with Carla. And I weep with joy.

This memory will stay with me. Aho!

* * * * * * * * *

After Death Contact – In the Service of Love – The Outcome

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”

― Rumi

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Part 2: Powerful Outcome to Listening and Completing a Request

(if you haven’t yet, please read Part 1 first)

After a very profound lesson in who we are and what we’re doing here, my spirit is now rooted in who I really am. I am no-one. I am everyone. There is no I, and yet there is. We are all the same. And Only Love is Real. “Only Love Is Real” is a phrase that has come to me and has been given to me as a reminder since the day I had this experience in 1996. Again, it’s so hard to say “I” after recalling the feelings.

There is one more part to the conversation I had with Michelle while keeping a somehow knowing eye on the ‘hallway’ journey of a young stranger. After grasping where Michelle ‘was’ while watching the two spirits interact before and after a human lifetime was lived by one of them, another profound perception shift happened. The spirits glided away, and without a thought or a moment passing I became aware of a ‘blackness’ blacker than anything I can physically describe. I was suddenly ‘nowhere’ and ‘everywhere’ at the same time. There’s a void. A void where nothing exists ‘yet’ and everything exists all at once and across all time. For a moment? I was there and could feel that I was everywhere all at once, and to be anywhere at any time would only require a thought. That is, I could be anywhere at anytime – and I mean ANYWHERE – not just on this tiny planet, but ANYWHERE at ANYTIME just by thinking it. Physically speaking, this experience was brief. Eternally speaking, it was profound, real, and no matter what I say I can’t in words describe it. I’ve journaled about it extensively as I journaled about all the events of this time period.

So now, I’m back in my seat in the second row of a funeral home a few seats to the left of an aisle at the center of which rests a closed casket. The casket holds the remains of a physical body of a person with whom I have just spoken extensively and timelessly. The young man she asked me to go out and meet is just about to enter the room. I turn back and look. The line still moves slowly, and he’s about the third person to enter as I’m watching. He’s indeed medium height and lanky. He’s about twenty or twenty-one, and his hair is brown. His eyes and cheeks are red from crying. And the bridge of his nose even looks red. “Aha!” I think to myself (in my mind’s perception). This is the young man who was driving the car in which my niece died! “Here comes trouble” means that when he gets to the front of the line there will be a fight as my brother-in-law and Michelle’s boyfriend confront him. I glance over my shoulder occasionally and nervously, waiting for the line to move up and for hell to break loose. But of course my mind doesn’t ‘know’, it only ‘thinks’. My heart is still open.

When this young man is about third back from the front of the line I ‘see’ a blueish-gray mist come from out of nowhere and wrap itself completely around him in total, complete, unmistakable Love. I ‘hear’ my niece say to me, “Unca Dave. I love him!”, “I love him SO much!”, “He’s SO special”, “He’s VERY special”. The mist is Michelle and she’s wrapped SO tightly around him! He makes his way to the casket and my brother-in-law stands up and touches his shoulder. As the young man turns I see fresh tears. This is NOT what my mind worried about. It’s Love. Love like I personally have never felt at this point in my life in 1996. Love that I wish I could feel. And yet here I was ‘feeling’ it. I was with her, with him, completely enveloped in nothing but pure love. It was SO Beautiful !!!! As he finished his visit to the casket and walked toward the right and away from where I was sitting I heard her say, “I Love Him!”, “I’ll be with him forever”, “Tell him I’ll always be with him!”.

I didn’t even know this man, and it wasn’t her ‘boyfriend’, Bob. I didn’t really know much of Michelle’s life or friends outside of one or two, and even those I knew little except for brief conversations once or twice a year. Who is this person? And what now? Why has this all happened? My mind scrambled for answers that my heart already knew. I can say now that it didn’t matter what my mind was thinking or fearing, or who would think I was a weirdo, or nuts. I know now that this was a pivotal moment in my life. A defining moment of who “I’ am, and who “I” am meant to be in this world. I’m a bridge, a connector, a diplomat, and a voice for the voiceless. I’m a sentry and a sentinel. A Healer. But a Healer only by my ability to connect another body with its inner spirit so that healing may happen on its own. I’ve felt the Divine, and I’ve felt my place in it – albeit briefly – that day on Friday September 6, 1996. My life would never again truly be the same. ‘My’ life would become the larger ‘my’ (our) life, and through my contact with this generous soul I knew as Michelle, I was given a moment access to all that is. A reminder of the real Reality. And in that moment in a funeral home in Wilkes Barre PA, I still had one foot in each dimension. The physical one still had control. And it took some time to take action on her request.

I watched this young stranger walk around the far side of the room and get lost amongst the people there. At this time I have to say that I was completely in awe of what had just happened. And yet I struggled. My heart and soul were completely along for the journey. My mind still wrestled. My heart and soul were winning and would never again be silent. But my mind still questioned. I asked Michelle with a thought, “What is his name?” My mind wanted proof and this was my mind’s own sneaky way to attach reality to what had just happened. The total ‘me’ knew that wasn’t appropriate, and Michelle responded, “That wouldn’t be fair’, “You just have to trust”. And so it was. My inner being jumped back and forth between my heart and my brain, and everyone else in the room seemed to disappear. I don’t really remember how I appeared to my wife or to anyone else. I just kept ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’, and trying to keep an eye on this young man. I spent too much time wresting inside and I lost sight of him. At some point I chose to leave the room and look outside, fearful that he had already left and I’d miss a chance to follow through.

I went outside and there he was, about fifty feet away talking with some others. One of my brothers-in-law then pulled me aside and started chatting about nothing important. I was nervous I’d lose the young man, and sure enough I did. I kept glancing all around but couldn’t see him. After five or ten minutes I gave up and went back for the door. As fate would have it, on the banister next to the entry door is where he sat, like it was meant to be. I wanted to speak, and yet I didn’t know what to say. I had the thought, “We’ve never even met”. His head was in his hands and all I could muster up was, “Excuse me”. He looked up and I asked if he was close to Michelle. He said, “Very close’, followed by “I don’t think we’ve met”. (The same phrase I was thinking, as though our minds were linked!). I struggled with how to bring up what I’d seen in the funeral home, and stumbled with my words. Basically all I could do was to say that I felt he and she were ‘close’. All I got from him was that he and Michelle had gone to the shore together recently and that his name was John B. I did the best I could as my mind still wrestled with my heart. Then I went back in.

The rest of the afternoon and most of the evening were a blur. I spent most of my time thinking about what had happened, and what I should do about it. I wondered if I would see this person again and follow through on what she’d asked of me. I spent a lot of time awake that night. And a lot of time trying to tell my wife about the strange ‘conversations’ with my niece. I worried that she too would think I was nuts. We’d already had several years of marital problems over changes occurring in me as I began to follow a more spiritual path. The only saving grace here was that it was her niece I was talking about and not some random stranger. She seemed open, almost anxiously so. Hopeful. And so I slept on the task I felt compelled to do – to share something incredibly profound, a message of the deepest Love, with a complete stranger (who was NOT the boyfriend I’d been introduced to).

It wasn’t until a day later I had the courage to speak. Luckily, John showed up at the funeral service. I didn’t see him right away, but as everyone was leaving the church I saw him standing by the door. I was one of Michelle’s six pall bearers, and as I helped carry the casket I had the opportunity to look him in the eye and say, “I need to speak with you later”. And that was it. I’d at least broken the ice and committed myself to talking. How I’d find the words to say I didn’t know. This was a total stranger and out of the hundred or so people I saw at her viewing, why him? I worried he might think I was crazy.

There was a beautiful service at the cemetery’s chapel, and a nice gravesite service as well. So much love displayed for this young woman, my niece. And in the role of pall bearer I didn’t have a good opportunity to speak to John. I let it slip by again, and I wondered once more if I’d missed the opportunity for good.

Afterward, the family held a luncheon at a nearby restaurant and invited everyone to attend. My wife and I and family gathered in tears and hugs and smiles over happy memories and sadness over the loss. We ate of the food provided and bonded as a family and friends should. At least fifty people were here if not more, but John was not one of them. I again felt like the opportunity was gone. Part of me felt relieved. For as powerful were the conversations of the day(s) before, to act on such a thing actually scared me. Seems foolish now. But I’m being honest. This was no joke, no imaginary fantasy. I’d just felt part of something WAY larger than me, and having to confront that against my rational, science-oriented mind took something. So yes, I felt relieved.

Then sure enough, about half an hour later John B walks in the door. I see him, he’s talking with some friends his age. I can’t let THIS chance slip by. I walk over and make my way through the people to say “Hi”. Our eyes meet, and I decide that I have to just go for it. I ask him if we can talk. He says, “Sure”.

So we take a few steps away from the others and I do my best to encapsulate everything that happened at the funeral home. I tell him that Michelle spoke to me when he arrived, let me know I should go out to meet him, and that when he got to the front of the casket she just wrapped herself around him like a misty-blue blanket and told me how much she loved him – how special he was to her. I just let it all out. Whether he thought I was nuts or not didn’t matter to me at that point. I finally did what Michelle asked of me. His eyes didn’t change much, and I thought I’d just made a world-class ass of myself. I just spilled my thirty-nine-year-old guts to some twenty-one-year-old guy I’d never met. But it was okay. I did what was asked. He nodded as if to say it was ok, and I walked away.

I went back to the table where my wife Carol, and sister-in-law Diane were sitting and took up a seat. I was nervous inside but knew it was now over. I could shake it off and go on with my life. Imagination got the best of me, and it’s okay. My niece just died. I make my way into their conversation and we start chatting about whatever it is that takes the pain of Diane’s loss away.

Less than five minutes later, I catch movement to my right. John comes over and takes a seat directly across from me. His eyes are beaming and he stares into my face exclaiming, “You have no idea what this means to me!”, “Thank you so much!” This guy’s face is on fire with emotion, he’s just beaming with happiness. It looks like he’s just felt the hug from heaven that I saw him get the day before. He’s beyond happy. We talk a little, and I try to keep it discrete. We don’t talk about what I told him in private. I think he got that I felt like I was crazy. There was also another aspect: in our funeral home conversations and afterward, Michelle had asked me that I not share this with her mom or dad. I knew and sensed the tension that had been there for twenty years between them. I honored that request of hers as well, and in talking with John at the table I didn’t let out anything that Diane could pick up on. Carol knew, and now John knew. And that was all that needed to be. He was BEAMING!!! The love I felt from Michelle the day before was incredible, something I’d never experienced. John’s expression here at the table was as close as a human being could get to that feeling. I’m in tears again as I type because I remember this experience like it was yesterday.

After enough talking and time passed that he ‘knew’ I was serious, and that this was all real, he stood up and we shook hands, then hugged. I think he needed some time to process between when I had spoken to him at the door, and when he came to the table. He also needed assurance that this was for real, and he got that as we spoke. Now completed with a handshake and a hug, I watched him walk away like he was on air. He moved through the room with his head high and a smile on his face that hadn’t been there at all in the couple of days that I’d seen him. Other people were still who they were in that moment, but this man’s heart had taken a 180.

And I STILL didn’t know who he was, other than his name. I went back to talking with my sister-in-law and wife. My sister-in-law looked puzzled at what she’d just witnessed, but she didn’t know any of the details. All she saw was one of her daughter’s friends come over and we talked and he seemed happy. Diane also knew that I’d befriended Michelle and had met a couple of her friends. She probably thought he was one of them I knew. Wrong. But okay. Everything had worked out perfectly.

One question I still had was, “Who is this guy John B?”. Why was he so ‘special’ to Michelle? And why was he so special to the point that she’d make an effort to communicate from beyond death on his behalf? I didn’t really need to know. My heart felt what it felt, and I saw and experienced the love firsthand. My mind wanted to know, but my mind could wait. After this funeral luncheon conversation and passing on of a very special message, I could be at peace personally.

It would be a month later before I would find out who John B was to my niece Michelle. I might save the details of that discovery for another post, for it was profound and complex as well. A completely new level of after-death-contact. So we’ll wait on that story, and I’ll just share what the answer is:

John B was Michelle’s childhood sweetheart. They had been best friends since at least their early teens if not younger. When Michelle moved out of her house, John was her guardian and later boyfriend. I get the feeling their connection runs deeper than a simple romantic one, and yet before she died they had been in a full-fledged romantic relationship. Michelle and John went to the shore together on vacation just a month before her death. And for whatever reason they split just about that time, and Michelle took up with Bob – who Diane said was a jerk. Michelle didn’t really like Bob, she was probably just using him (in her mother’s words). Michelle also intended to break up with Bob before it got too serious so that she could go back to John B. She never got the chance. **tears for me again as I write**

Now I know this whole story, this whole blog might sound crazy. But I lived it. I was there. I heard her voice on the day she died, I took her nudge to play golf? on such a difficult day, I heard her voice as I played golf and as I drove to and from the course. I heard her voice loud and clear and I had experiences of the afterlife, and of “All That Is” while sitting in a seat at a funeral home. I’d say this could be imagination, and believe me my mind wanted to convince me it was.

But what I can’t explain and what guarantees me, as a person, that it’s real, is how I heard a voice telling me there was someone in a parking lot that I couldn’t physically see – and I saw him. I somehow knew his every step in a long line at a funeral service, and when he would physically appear in the room – the same man I “saw” in my mind’s eye. And even at that point I had no idea of his role in anything. Yet moments later I saw my niece’s spirit wrap around him and express love like I’d never felt, ever! And I have to talk with this guy on faith alone, when for all I know Michelle is connected with some tall, good-looking type named Bob. And I find out a month later that the guy I “saw” without seeing, and the guy I knew who would be entering the room just before he did, and the guy I had to share all this with was my niece’s childhood sweetheart who’d she’d just broken up with and was making her way to getting back together with – just before she died.

Anyone can tell me that this stuff is bogus, but I know otherwise. I guess that’s my own mind still questioning from afar. The gift my niece Michelle shared with me can never be taken away or replaced. I’ve seen and felt LOVE at its most real and basic core. Love is truly all there is. Everything else, time and space included, are illusions.

Thanks for sharing in this early part of my journey. I so needed to let you know this ‘jump start’ that got this Merlin to be who he is.

You can find and read a detailed log of this whole experience which I submitted years ago to the site: nderf.org (Near Death Experiences Research Foundation). The link is below:

http://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1david_g_adc.html