afterlife continued...

I can't believe I forgot to tell the teacher part. If you haven't read the previous entry "afterlife," I don't know if this will make much sense, but if you have…as an absolute ton of you did surprisingly (and thank you for that by the way) it fills in a bit of the fuzzy part I got to after being up WAY too late philosophizing.

Okay, getting to the teacher part. So, let's just say you go through enough lifetimes where you continue to progress and move forward. At some point you can actually master a skill and get to be a teacher. Maybe teacher isn't the right word. Certainly most people in the world today who control a chalkboard or dry erase board (or whatever the hell they use now) would be grossly overestimated as "spiritual guides."

When you master a skill, you can hang out in the afterlife and speak to people through their dreams, intuition, gut feelings, "signs" or whatever else they call the part of themselves that guides them to a place. Conscience maybe? Conscience is not a bad word for that…sometimes I'm glad I took Latin in school. Anyway, you get to be a Guide.

When you master ALL the skills you get to come back as an Ultimate Guide (my temporary term) and be a Buddha or a Christ or an Allah figure. This is what I think.

However, my Dad totally cracked my head wide open a couple of years ago when he said that people like Hitler and Pol Pot were in the Ultimate Guide category as well. He put out the idea that there are just a few of these guys, and they play the human condition like a game of Risk or Cops and Robbers or something…and they take turns being the good guy and the bad guy!

And they're so above it all, it's just a thing, it's just a vehicle to guide. I was stunned practically speechless and couldn't stop talking at the same time. That was the most amazing thing I had EVER heard.

So, I'm not going to say that Christ could have come back as Hitler…not out loud…but it doesn't mean I don't wonder. That is some fascinating stuff right there.

And it made my whole "reason for tragedy" ideas turn into complete sense. I've always thought that tragedies were there for a lesson. When absolute horror is splashed right in front of you (and even on you sometimes) it is supposed to shake you up and make you change. It means you have been complacent for too long and need something catastrophic to wake you the fuck up for real. It changes you; it changes the world. And it was on purpose.

So, what does this mean for you? What is practical and applicable about all this in your life tomorrow? It means that you be less personally offended by the world. You take a step back and get some perspective that there's more to this than what you see with your blinders on.

Just ease up is all.

Know who people are and love them anyway.

Don't you wish people would do that with you?