One of my blog readers from India recently asked, “Who is Ernest L. Norman?” I thought I’d share an expanded version of my reply here,…
Author
Tag: consciousness
Close your eyes and listen. Are you one of the fortunate few who hear only a peaceful silence? Or are you like most of us, constantly surrounded by the cacophony that is life in the 21st century? So we seek for silent places in the world when we can: the dark woods, out on the ocean, lost in a tomb-like room we might have created in our homes for “retreat.” You think by now I’m going to say that Joseph and I ventured off to a silent retreat, right? But the annual Subtle Energy Retreat held at Blue Sky Ranch in the San Diego foothills is anything but silent.
Ideas and conversations and presentations and excitement and exotic musical tones echo and reverberate for three days. It is a cacophony of the loveliest kind, where thoughts merge and hearts expand and ideas get born and refined. Motion and light converge with the ever reverberating movements of sun and dust and wind and stars and a full moon—and let’s never forget Ivan the Raven circling overhead, watching and guarding the presentation tent and the lunch patio.
Here’s how it happens:
The “Healer” opens her consciousness to the Infinite, the Universe, Source, God, with the intention of serving humanity. Or maybe just a single human. She fills herself with the Light energy that pours in. She is the empty vessel.
The Infinite overflows into her being, like water pouring out after a dam has broken. The Healer seeks this inflow as greedily as we seek water when thirsty, but the Infinite also requires the Healer. The Healer offers the negative pole in the electrical system, the deficit. The Infinite offers the positive pole, the surfeit. Energy, all up and down the frequency spectrum, from dimension to dimension, from pole to pole, from human to human, flows according to this pattern.
They connect, the Healer and Infinite Intelligence. The power flows, and the charge reverses.
I’m a word person. I write books. I used to be a newspaper journalist. Ever since a traumatic comparison of my coloring technique with that of my best friend in kindergarten, I’ve said, “I can’t draw; I can’t paint; I’m not an artist; I’m not a designer.” So naturally when I turned sixty last February, I set out to reconsider that assessment. I forced my Word Brain to try Art Brain. This slammed me straight back into those childhood traumas.
Tempers flared, decibels rose. “You agreed to pay 25% when you moved in!” I insisted. “But you use more electricity during the day than I do!” my roommate shouted back, this sweet-looking, perfectly-put-together woman who never showed this side of herself in public.
We’d been at this angry impasse for days. Finally, a thought came to me and I spat: “You know, if we don’t work this out now, we’ll have to come back as a man and woman, get married, and share a checkbook!”
At that point, the thought of marrying the other person was so abhorrent to us both that it worked like a splash of cold water. It didn’t hurt that we’d met in a past-life therapy class: we knew it could be true! After a stunned moment, we both broke out laughing.
What didn’t occur to me until long after she moved out and I went off to marry a really nice guy was that we’d probably already done the marriage routine, and left an imbalance we had to work out in our present lifetime, fighting over that stupid electric bill. Thankfully, we accomplished it, with laughter to shift the energy of the past and knowledge to pave the way.
If you’ve already read my article on Zazen Life: The Psychic Anatomy Concept of Life, then you know that nothing is lost in your personal universe. Everything you’ve done, said, thought, or felt remains with you, from life to life, as you experience your sequential incarnations. It’s not all active at the same time, however. Often things come around and go around and come back again according to circumstantial triggers in your life, and a few other cyclic, cosmic factors you’re not privy to. But one thing you can count on:
The important people in your life are very likely to have been people you’ve met before.
How can you tell?
First, you have to stop and consider it. That’s probably the hardest step. Once you realize this truth about your interactions with others, you’ll see it everywhere: former lovers, friends, enemies, family members. For a time, you might overdo it, imagining past-life connections that didn’t really happen. But some connections—the valid ones—ultimately prove themselves over and over again, if you pay attention.
Here are 12 ways to identify the hints of history that have drawn you back into each other’s orbits, for better or for worse. But always, with the opportunity to improve your relationship so that the next time you meet, things will be even better (especially in the case of former enemies)! And it’s likely you will meet again if you’ve got work left to do together. The principles of interdimensional science and your own personal design may mandate it. So it’s wise to do your best with each other now.
We’ll start with the easiest ways to recognize an old compatriot, your past life friends, lovers, and enemies: