“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” ~ Albert Einstein
So, you guys, this is a video that I saw on my Facebook homepage ONCE. One time, (if you can believe that, because when does THAT ever happen?), a few months back and it moved me so much I wanted to tell you guys about it.
I wanted to tell you the story of Chloe, but, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, when I looked at my notes I couldn’t make out the name I had scribbled while I watched. I tried everything. But it didn’t look like Chloe AT ALL! Curtis, Caitlin, Cody, none of those were right and without the name, well, I was screwed because the name plays such a huge role in this story. So, not only was I unable to write about this amazing story, I couldn’t find the video either!
BECAUSE IT’S CALLED CHLOE!
Then lo and behold, this past Sunday, Oprah ran it on Super Soul Sunday because it’s that good. Hallelujah! Mystery solved and here it is.
I’m showing you this on the weekend so you’ll have plenty of time to watch it. Really, you must watch it.
Okay, maybe not.
But…how about this? Maybe if, and only if, you’ve gotten tired of waiting for something you wanted with your whole heart.
Or, if you’ve questioned or even cursed God/Universe/The Lord/Bob, whoever, because it was looking like the thing you desired most in the world was being withheld from you.
Or, have you ever felt that horrible feeling that washes over you on those days when you lose your faith and you think “Yeah, this thing ain’t gonna happen. Never in a million years. What a complete and total FOOL I’ve been!”
Have you felt any of these? I have. All of them. You need to watch this.
*Hi You guys,
You may have already seen this, its been around for a couple of years, but it’s new to me. It’s right up my/our alley. Thought provoking musings about life, death and God—with a dash of humor.
As always, take what you like and leave the rest. Oh, and tell me what you think.
Oh, oh, and read Andy’s novel The Martian. I finished it in two days.
I guess that’s it.
Carry on,
xox
You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me.
“What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God.
I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe.
More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.” You followed along as we strode through the void.
“Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are.
It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.” “So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.” “Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back. “I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.
Unable to be touched or grasped; not having physical presence.
“God seems so intangible”
synonyms:impalpable, untouchable, incorporeal, discarnate, abstract
Settling for the believable.
What?
Why?
No fucking way!
I learned this week that the TED talks want you to have documented proof and data to support your talk.
Fuck. That just makes me mad (no TED talk for me) and worse than that it makes TED a very dull boy.
What about the intangible?
I was reminded this week about certain properties of quantum physics. The fact that everything at the sub-atomic level is made up mostly of …empty space.
Including you and me. And the chair you’re sitting in while you read this.
Yet, we’ve all agreed to see things as solid.
What about the fact that particles make up atoms and yet those atoms contain properties NOT found in particles.
Then atoms gather together and make up molecules yet those molecules contain properties that are NOT present in atoms.
Molecules make up cells and…you guessed it, same thing.
So… we are made up of those cells with all of that unexplainable stuff inside.
Huh.
So far the intangible is waaaaaay more interesting to me than the easily believable. The stuff that adds up. The stuff that makes sense (yawn).
Talk to me more about the abstract, the impalpable; the divine.
“I don’t believe in things that can’t be proven,” said the little shit with the pocket protector.
Oh really Pointdexter? What about dark matter, string theory and the Higgs Boson Particle? Huh?
What about babies?
An egg and sperm collide (and that’s no easy task) and instantly cells start dividing. And somehow contained in those cells are an eyebrow, a penis and a heart that beats. Not only that, the whole thing mysteriously knows how to arrange itself. The penis does’t show up on your face and your heart at the bottom of your foot.
IT KNOWS WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO DO.
At a cellular level.
It doesn’t arrange itself in a random pattern and become a turnip.
No woman I know of has given birth to a turnip.
Neither has any ape, elephant, cat or chicken.
What plays a role in that? Something intangible?
Where does love come from?
Alaska? Italy? (well, maybe Italy).
Can you order it on Amazon?
Where does it originate?
What about a great idea?
Inspiration? Work of art or piece of music?
I know they are received by the mind, but where do they come from?
Is there a documented storehouse for that?
“Um, hello, yes, I’d like to order two great ideas and if I could get those by Friday that would be great. What? That’s extra?
Fine, put it on my Visa.”
I will not settle for the believable. And neither should you.
Remember we’re all looking for wonder and wonder isn’t even in the same zip code as the believable, the mundane or predictable.
Go ahead TED —ask for data.
You know that white board the study is written on is made up of empty space, right?
With all of the cosmic shenanigans happening around us as I write this, portal openings, alignments, energy shifts and new potentialities –– this is true now more than at any other time…the edges of what is real are blurring and boundaries are being dissolved.
Chew on THAT today!
“We are Ontological Engineers: hacking reality and constructing worlds” – Diana Slattery
Sound too far out and fantastical?
Fine, go back to your old boring way of thinking.
I’ve never really defined the soul on these pages.
Not to be confused with God. Or is it?…
The soul is God’s wingman (duh, everybody know that) but like God, Soul can be an emotionally charged word, and I get scared that you’ll get all “no you didn’t” on me, and slam the door on our friendship.
Soooo…I really like this interpretation by Iyanla Vanzant.
I find it insightful and clever.
“The soul I believe is the fingerprint of God that becomes a physical body.”
I know what I believe, (I’ll tell you later) but just for shits and giggles, I wanted to see what was out there in the popular landscape.
So here goes:
The top, number one definition in the Urban Dictionary is:
SOUL
Currency to trade with the devil.
WTF? Seriously? Yup. “I just made a deal with the devil – I sold my soul for a brand new television.”
Let’s all take a moment…Hmmmmmm…Okay.
The second one is more comprehensive, I guess. Well except for number 9, number 9 is a cop-out.
SOUL
The existence of the soul is heavily debated in the first place, and its definition varies greatly from party to party, though everyone believes that everyone else’s definitions are wrong. It is generally agreed to be something possessed by every person, and that’s about all. Therefore, the soul may or may not be any of the following:
1. The human mind, that is, that thinking thing lodged behind your eyes;
2. The essence of humanity;
3. The essence of that which makes a person good and decent;
4. The quality of sentience or human intelligence;
5. All of someone’s personality or what makes them unique;
6. Some mystical version of a person that lives on after the body dies;
7. A spiritual concept, created by God (or the gods if you prefer) or a part of him;
8. The quality of being alive;
9. Anything else you can think of along these lines.
Note that it is also up for debate whether or not non-human animals, or for that matter, plants, have souls; feel free to adjust these answers accordingly.
Strangely, no one seems to suggest that animals have souls and humans lack them.
This third one is the gospel truth. Just kidding, but I love it.
SOUL
The Godson of James Brown and Princess of Aretha Franklin. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul / Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul.
Number four is pretty deep. It appeals to all the angst-ridden artists, writers and philosophers among us – and contemplators of belly button lint.
SOUL
The only part of you that really matters. You can give it to anyone you want, but its hard to ever get back.
“Until you know that life is interesting – and find it so – you haven’t found your soul.”~ Geoffrey Fisher
“How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.” ~ Oscar Wilde
“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways – by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.” ~ Plato
Finally, the one I believe, number five.
SOUL
The energy of life existing in all beings. Exists both inside and outside of the beings physical shell as both a fuel for the physical realm and a connection to the universal life force.
The force of mind/body/spirit that has always existed and will always exist.
“While life slipped from my body with each breath, my soul emerged, strong and vital and ready for the next part of the journey.”
But wait! There are more! I especially like number thirty-two.
SOUL
A place that exists for the single purpose of hosting a bird house for the blue canary in the outlet by the light switch to live in. Also, the part of your body that lives on after you die.
“Make a little bird house in your soul…”
I was wondering what that bird house for the blue canary in the outlet by the lights switch was!
(Palm slap to the forehead).
But seriously, the soul can be defined these days in whichever way makes you feel the best, which has become abundantly obvious.
Thank you Urban Dictionary. But I like that. I like that there’s no set-in-stone, my-way-or-the-highway definition.
So, are we still friends?
“A love so big it cannot be contained.” came to me while I was writing this. I probably read that somewhere and can’t remember who said it. But I kinda love that too.
Oh wait; maybe that’s a Soul Mate.
Jeez. Carry on.
You want to share your definition of Soul? Now that you’ve seen all these choices, which one resonates with you?
Turn to her when you’ve exhausted every other option.
When science and medicine can’t find the cure.
When all YOUR best efforts have hit the skids.
When you’re struggling with addiction, depression or grief.
Why is it, that when all else fails we say: Well, NOW it’s in God’s hands.
Maybe… it could have been handed over in the first place.
At the start.
I’m guessing that the Energy that creates worlds and David Beckham, can help us with our dilemmas.
How about you?
BTW: She’s not laughing AT us, She just thinks we’re a hoot.
Big Hugs,
*I also wanted to give a shout out and express my deepest gratitude to all the countries who have become part of my tribe.
This is a snapshot of the global reach this simple blog has had for the week so far.
Isn’t that CRAZY!?
If you ask yourself, I’m only one person, what can one person do? Here’s your answer.
Thank you Mauritania, Kuwait and Algeria, you’re new viewers this week. Welcome.
I LOVE you all SO MUCH! Thank you!
xox
United States 1,358
Philippines 95
United Kingdom 45
Australia 25
Canada 23
Sri Lanka 10
France 9
Brazil 8
Ireland 7
Kuwait 7
Saudi Arabia 7
Bangladesh 5
Pakistan 5
Germany 5
United Arab Emirates 5
Russian Federation 4
South Africa 4
Guatemala 4
Mauritania 3
India 3
Portugal 2
Italy 2
Algeria 2
Greece 2
Mexico 2
Poland 2
Switzerland 1
Sweden 1
Luxembourg 1
Norway 1
Netherlands 1
Iceland 1
Indonesia 1
Venezuela 1
Turkey 1
Romania 1
Japan 1
Colombia 1
Liberia 1
Morocco 1
Kenya 1
Malaysia 1
Austria 1
