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241 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 8, 2017
I liked the book. But to be quite frank the feeling it gave me wasn't as powerful as the one of Communion. And by this I am definitely not meaning their love and relationship, I admire theirs truly, to a degree it also became one of the reasons why I gave it 3 stars instead of 4/5.... But I did like the book.
Imagine your spouse just passed away and you need to prove it to people that she still exists in some way (no scientific devises could prove that) and she was probably the only one in this world who can give you that strength and belief. I understand that and I respect it. It must be really hard.
And that's why I would treat this book with solemnness and I will be true to my own feelings. I was SO looking forward to reading this book and I guess my expectation gave it too much of a boost. In Communion Whitley was stating so many more facts than just laying out rhetorical quoted statements with fancy terms, mystifying the whole concept. When you're trying to convince people who are not ready to believe, I was expecting this book to be much clearer and more scientific.
For example:
she said, “they live within reality. You’re on the surface.” I then asked, “Are they with you in your reality?” She replied, “There’s only one reality. Different ways of relating to it.” (8%)
First, this energy—conscious energy—surely makes its own decisions about whether or not it is to be detected by instruments. (9%)
They are not unseen versions of us, but rather are living by different laws. Anne has said, “I’m not Anne anymore, I’m me. But I’ll always be Anne for you, Whitley.” (11%)
“We are an infinity of dreams.” But don’t be deceived. Those dreams are living presences and they are waiting for us across the bridge between our worlds. She also says, “I am the part of me that’s part of you.” (11%)
We are much more nonphysical beings than we are physical. These journeys through time that we take by entering bodies are valuable but brief. Most of our experience is not physical at all. (12%)
Our modern shamen—walkers between the worlds—are the growing legion of people like Anne, the near-death experiencers. (25%)
This new god is so much like us that he she and it might be us. Man in god. Man as god. (32%)
Me: “Who is god?” Anne: “We are.” Me: “Then who are we?” She would smile, looking inward, and say no more.(32%)
I ask, “So what happens now? Where are they taking us?” “Higher and higher into ecstasy, as you’ve always said.” “But terrible things happen and are going to happen. That doesn’t seem to me like a journey into ecstasy.” “Pain forms a foundation of strength. Remember your story.” (47%)
“We will still have a physical presence, but not nearly as large a one as we do now. So souls will need to be more efficient. They will have to enter bodies to accomplish specific tasks of self-discovery. It cannot be random anymore, not if everybody is going to get all the chances they need.” (47%)
Instinct, emotion and mind are working together objectively, without identification with desires, fears and needs. Objective love is the fourth beast, the eagle, who soars above life and sees it from the distance that the dead experience, a distance that lends objectivity. (51%)
This book also tends to glorify random signs, which I didn't appreciate (maybe I'm still not open enough for such phenomena). As much as I love their idea for Anne to avoid contacting Whitley directly whoever pass away first (that was really clever), I did feel like sometimes Whitley over-exaggerates the signs he saw or experienced...
For example:
She had been unconscious for about four hours when one of our caregivers suddenly said, “She just told me she wants to die in red pajamas!” The woman was so absolutely certain that this request had really come from Anne that she instantly leaped up and ran out to a department store and got some. the moth sign at the end of the book. (18%)
The three of us were in the dining area when I heard Anne say in my mind, “Whitty, I’m dying right now.” I leaped up and rushed into the bedroom and lay beside her. (18%)
After she died, I lay beside her with my hand still on her chest. I was unable to move. I fought for breath. Then I heard her say, “Get up, go on.”(18%)
I was sitting alone, bereft, and asking her if she still existed, and if so, would she somehow contact me. I was asking her with carefully structured intensity in my inner voice. A moment later, my phone rang. It was another dear friend, Belle Fuller, saying that she’d just that moment had a message from Anne to call me. I was so grateful and surprised that I almost couldn’t reply. It was a lovely moment. She’d had no idea that Anne had just died.(20%)
As it turned out, that mist was the first manifestation of something that is known to happen when certain souls pass from this life.(20%)
I spoke in my mind to Anne, asking once again for some sort of sign that she still existed. Within seconds, my cellphone rang. Although I was in a pretty isolated area, it turned out that cell coverage was more or less normal. I answered it to find a good friend from Nashville on the other end. This was Clare Henry, the wife of author William Henry. She said, “Whitley I just had a message from Anne. She said to call you and tell you she was all right.”(22%)
Whitley claims that "I knew that Anne wanted me beside her. I could feel it very clearly and strongly."(27%),
And yet, my innate scepticism persists with its questions. If they are as real as they now seem to me to be, then why can’t they tell us what the president is doing, what planets harbour alien species, when we’ll die? Anne responds , “you see the world through a slit.”(38%)
This reader wrote that he had heard Anne say that she was returning to Earth by “going from blue to unguent blue.” (39%)
Anne was saying that she was in the higher vibration of light blue but moving to the darker, denser vibration of our world, explaining how the free souls move to contact those of us who are enclosed in physical bodies. (39%)
There was a large congregation, and her coffin rested in the aisle of the church. I was in a pew just behind it when, to my surprise, I saw six large, softly glowing balls of light come sliding gracefully in through the ceiling and array themselves around the coffin. (44%)
We are inside the images the girl wore, moving through life as if along a path. In the higher world, we don’t live our lives, we wear them. And that’s what it means to rise above life on the wings of objective love. That’s where she was. (64%)
When we realized that the shroud really did tell the story of the resurrection, it changed us both profoundly. It freed Anne and delighted her. She would say, “the resurrection didn’t just happen at a certain time. It happened outside of time. It’s always happening. You can feel it.” (80%)
“I have perfect vision of this past life and a sense of others stretching back—a flavor of me that is my essential identity. But as to the dinosaur era and so forth, I didn’t exist then.” (83%)
And the reviews from other readers are right, you can't really tell whether it was just Whitley talking or it was really Anne. And that blur really let down a lot of the credibility here. If Whitley and Anna really want to bring this revolution, they really should have been more straightforward and concise about it. It would be a whole different story if Anne tells Whitley afterwards "by the way that was me". And sadly there was really no such confirmation/justification thorough the book. And I understand sometimes you can't really control your "focus" that well. Much less the fact that sometimes it wasn't even yours to control.
This book does have a lot of contemplation and questions which are quite interesting to read.
For example:
Why are we dense in the first place? Wouldn’t we be better off if there was no physical side of our species at all?(39%)
Unless physical life is some sort of prison, there can be only one logical reason for our being in such a condition: we need it like this. But why would we? I don’t want to stumble through life as I do. I want to know my fate. I want to know how to avoid danger and tragedy.(39%)
This limiting of vision is what gives life its impact. It causes us to act spontaneously, and therefore to look into the reasons for our behaviors and come to understand ourselves.(39%)
“Enlightenment is what happens when there is nothing left of us but love.”(49%)
“Accepting yourself is the key. Enjoying yourself.”(50%)
“Why did those people come to just me? Why not thousands of people? Millions?” “People don’t notice.” “Why not?” “Ego filters out what it fears, and what it fears most of all is death.”(52%)
But why? What’s so funny? (54%)
The more conscious you become, the more playful you feel.(54%)
Seeing her terror, the figure added, “Why do you fear us?” She said, “Because you’re so ugly!” Whereupon it laid a gloved hand on her wrist and said, “One day, my dear, you will look just like us.”(59%)
A few things can at least be inferred. The first is that, whatever these creatures are, they are intimately involved with us. They are interested in our offspring. They gather groups of people together for unknown reasons, and protect these gatherings by utilizing distractions. They have told at least one person that, in the future, she will be one of them. (60%)
Go as far back as you can into your own childhood, remember how it felt then to be alive. That’s how to start opening your expectations. To be truly awake is to have none.”(77%)
When they started calling him Christ, that was the darkness within us trying to put out his light. He was just a guy, Whitley, who had surrendered completely to the light. That’s why it shone through him so brightly.”(80%)
Looking at the precision of all this, it’s easy to think of the Earth-Moon system as something designed, a life building machine carefully constructed to shield its inhabitants from as much of the random destructiveness of the cosmos as possible.(81%)
Even if design is part of the picture, there is no reason to take a step farther and claim that a biblical god, ancient aliens, or some other known or imagined factor is responsible. If it’s true, something must be responsible but what remains an open question.(81%)
This remarkable change effectively made this god immortal. As he cannot be seen he cannot be finally identified and understood, which is why he has remained relevant for so long. His nature evolves with our idea of him, which can never be fixed into any specific form.(82%)
These and other incidents of light have injected very pure ideas into our world, but so far we have not been able to handle their energy, and have consistently turned them into cruel and confused systems of belief that have nothing to do with strengthening souls or making the physical and nonphysical sides of our species into a coherent whole. (82%)
There is something happening here on a very large scale that does suggest design and intention. In some ways it cradles and protects life, but it also has a habit of upending everything with truly exceptional violence.(83%)
You don’t die into a state of total knowledge. You die into the knowledge that you bring with you.”(83%)
Started a hundred and twenty thousand years ago, we were naked, living in small family groups and practicing primitive forms of hunting and gathering. As the climate grew colder, we learned to clothe ourselves. When game became more scarce, we improved our weapon making and hunting skills.(86%)
It would appear that the supernova created us, or better said, was used as a tool in that process.(87%).
“I can’t tell you exact dates, Whitley, but I can tell you that there is survival. The end of a species’ life is not death any more than the end of an individual. Extinction is a another aspect of evolution, just like grief is another form of love.”(88%)
I think that the reason for this happening is that there has been an investment of real love. I put love into Coe, and he loved me, and that love now has an independent life.(95%)
Maybe it wasn't even Coe there, really. Maybe he found the path long ago, and is far down it now. But the love was left behind, waiting for me until I needed it. (95%)
This book also put a lot of emphasis on the soul tool ("objective love", humility, compassion), stages of life, the sensing exercise (meditation), intangibility of the soul and its light form, the idea of living Earth (gaia), ego blindness (identification), happiness (pure and laughter) and how the focus/concentration could summon this second body. And from the description it feels like it’s an ability that a person can grasp or train before deceased. Not after. And certainly not together with your loved ones.