My old friend Ed Carter — Bob Monroe’s age, Bob Monroe’s friend before I met either man — was author of the remarkable novel Living is Forever, which we published, then partner in Hampton Roads Publishing Co., and friend, and mentor, and psychic co-conspirator. He died in December, 2006, after scarcely half a dozen years of friendship, and i thought it was far too soon. But as is evident here, he still has a surprise or two up his sleeve.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
F: 4:40 a.m. Ed Carter’s 100th birthday tomorrow.
[Unusually, I was very much aware that I should be careful not to structure our interaction by any particular question or comment.]
Ed, are you available for a Happy Birthday greeting? Seem s like a long time since we’ve chatted. I’d be glad to hear anything you have in mind.
Ed: Time moves along and carries you with it, and everything changes. I don’t know if it has occurred to you yet, but that means that every time you contact one of us on this side, the relationships are different. Even if we here were unchanged, we’re continually dealing with a progressively changing entity on your side. So in that way alone the relationship will have changed. It’s not like in life when you all change but you change at the same rate.
F: It’s very interesting, Ed, I take down your words and behind every phrase of every sentence I hear the possibilities for misinterpretation by anyone reading your words and taking them in one literal meaning. For instance, I know what you are meaning in what you just said; you mean that the 3D world moves continually under the ever-changing present moment and the non-3D world does not, and therefore you who may be unchanged by the passing of the years are then dealing with the same persons at different stages in their lives. And that is what you did say; and yet some might read “you change at the same rate” to mean – what you did not mean – that everyone here changes, develops, progresses, at the same rate.
Ed: It seems to be part of your life work to point out just such areas of slippage in the process, and if so, it won’t matter, ultimately, whether you reach many or only a few. Any one communication makes it easier for the same material to be communicated again, in other ways and other times through other people.
F: So you were saying –
Ed: My last sight of you was when you were 50. Now you are nearly 70, and it’s going to make a difference in what you can understand about my day-to-day life then.
F: Yes, I do see that.
Ed: Well, it is one more example of the special circumstances presented by any given moment. Even when you are talking to the dead, you are doing so from a moving platform. It isn’t like you are the unchanged and unchanging observer.
I always said genius is when somebody says something and it is immediately obvious but you never would have thought it. This is one example.
Ed: Now I want you to do one thing for me, and that is, say hello to our friend John Nelson.
F: Gladly. Any particular message?
Ed: Merely tell him this. Any emotional connection between individuals not only serves as a further link between them; it serves as a clue that there was something more there in the first place than one might have suspected.
F: I remember that when I announced to the Hampton Roads staff that I had the sad duty to tell them that you had died, John burst into tears and had to leave the room.
Ed: Well, that is just like our impulsive warm-hearted friend, is it not?
F: Yes it is – but you are saying, I take it, that it is also a sign that you and he were connected in ways perhaps unsuspected by any of us.
Ed: That’s exactly right – and John has been moving along with the years just like you, of course, and is nearly half again as old as he was then. Remembering who he was then will be of value to him.
F: Okay, I’ll tell him, by way of sending this. And — ?
Ed: And my friend Bob Monroe and I have continued to be friends here, or that’s one way to look at it, anyway, but the fact that I outlived him by nearly two years also changed our relationship slightly. Can you see that?
F: I’m willing to hear more.
Ed: Take you and your old friend David. He died when you were 24. Suppose you die today, one level of your new interactions will be that of a 69-year-old man with a 23 year old. You are old enough now to have been his grandfather then. It is a different relationship from the peer relationship of two schoolboys. This is something people don’t take into consideration when they think about reunions after death.
F: But you can choose to be whatever age you like best, can you not?
Ed: Yes – but you can’t, not while still being carried along in bodies.
F: This is slipping. I can feel that you are trying to get something across that is important, but I’m missing it.
[One thought that ran through my mind, that I remembered, typing this, was that “appearing to be” or even “choosing to be” a certain age is not the same as having experienced that age in 3D.]
Ed: Your father died at age 70. You were not yet 40. But next year you will have caught up with him. Does it not change the possibilities inherent in the relationship? Similarly, you are catching up with me. Every years you live adds possibilities of new relationship between us. Not that I am changing, necessarily, but that you change, necessarily.
Nor is that the end of it. Your friend David and you were connected by strands of yours and strands of his that had interacted long before, in a different kind of relationship, in which he was the elder instructor and you were the prized pupil. That relationship played out in your present life – it colored your interaction without either of you knowing it – and it was reciprocally affected by your new interaction – and is still being affected, and changed, as you continue to live your life and bring a changed perspective to it.
F: This, regardless of whether he and I are in contact?
Ed: Regardless whether you are aware of such contact. It continues all the time. Life is far more complex than you suspect even yet.
F: It’s a lot to try to grasp.
Ed: I know, and it will repay thought. So let me put it this way. Everybody on earth at any time is a window into the world for those who are no longer active. But just because we are no longer active – by which I mean, no longer moving through the years being carried by bodies – that doesn’t mean we are not actively participating in many relationships.
F: Your strands all continue to interact.
Ed: Not all at any one time necessarily. Those with connections to those people presently embodied. Not necessarily all, but, as you can imagine, quite a lot.
F: It makes my head spin. I have gotten used to the idea of us all remaining alive and available for interaction. It hadn’t occurred to me that of course this means that all the strands in all the people who ever lived are available for continual interaction with everybody they connect to. There’s no end to it. It is all one vast interconnected tapestry, and it changes all the time.
Ed: That’s right. But look at how many things you had to learn before you were ready for another turn of the kaleidoscope.
F: Wow. And I thought I was merely saying hello to an old friend on his non-quite birthday.
Ed: By now you must be used to being surprised by the difference between intent and what happens. That amounts to the difference between conscious awareness and all the rest of you.
F: So – well, enough for one day, I suppose. I was going to ask about your relations with your daughter but I get the sense that some things are too private for public display.
Ed: Not the way that sounds. It isn’t a cause for secrecy, and it isn’t even that she would necessarily object to being mentioned here. But that is between her and her mother and me, and this is going far and wide to people who didn’t know and won’t know any of us, and there’s no point. We’ve already said the essence of it, which is that continuing to live changes your relationship with those who have gone before you by adding layers of experience on the one side and therefore adding to your contribution to the relationship. And perhaps we should have mentioned that in any interaction, all ages of both sides may come into play, not merely the age that you happen to be observing from. Right now you are in 2015. That isn’t any more or less important than when you were in 2014 or 2000. Like those earlier dates, you will pass it, and it will be one more reference point, no more, no less.
F: My goodness. Well, Ed, see if I ever drop by again! A lot to chew on, and thank you.
Ed: You’re welcome and didn’t I tell you I had a feeling it would be worthwhile for us to do Lifeline together?
F: You certainly did, and if you had not paid my way I couldn’t have done it, and wouldn’t have met Rich and Joyce or gone down this particular path in this particular way.
Ed: Give my regards to Richard as well. Although he isn’t likely to realize it, I’ve been interacting with him over the years too, as our strands have held us in connection from other times.
F: I sure wish I were a better thinker or had different training. There is so much here to be deduced and elaborated!
Ed: You bring it across; others can systematically make sense of it.
F: “Whoever isn’t skinning can hold a leg,” as Mr. Lincoln said.
Ed: There’s enough work for everybody, and it is rewarding work.
F: I am loathe to let you go, but my hour is up and anyway I don’t know where I’d go next.
Ed: If I’m not going anywhere, why should you go somewhere? There’s always time; it’s just that every time is a different distinct opportunity. I’ll use your sign-off line: Be well.
F: And you. And Happy Birthday, tomorrow, and maybe we we’ll talk some more another time. Till then.
I have tears in my eyes, reading this. The affection between you and Ed shines through. New ideas are brought up here. Isn’t it interesting, to those of us who think we have thought of so much, that we can be surprised and delighted by a new thought?
My mother died at the age my son is now so I have more than passed her in 3D experience (in this lifetime, anyway). Yet the child in me sometimes wants her mother and the adult in me can view her life in a totally different perspective. The way I look at this currently, when thinking about connecting with friends and relatives who have passed from 3D, is that they are consciously part of a greater organism of consciousness (while I remain less than fully conscious of mine) and that I can relate to the various parts of their whole that resonate with me at my current place in time. Kind of like picking out a colored strand from a weave of strands – the one that appeals to me the most at the time. Of course, I still have my moments of thinking I am making it all up in my head. However, I have no doubt about you being a clear channel for the information that is choosing you to be its nozzle! Thank you Frank.
Eloquently and simply said. Thank you.
When reading the part in Muddy Tracks where Ed died, my lower lip dropped (I remember being surprised at my babyish action) and I cried big tears. I thought it was 1996? It was very moving, as is this post.
Yes, December 1996. The sixth, if i remember rightly.
I’m not sure why I find this strangely reassuring, but I do. Thanks.
Yesterday, Rita said: “What you have lived, you can know. Nothing else. That is not the limitation it may seem to be, however, as you all live much more than you will ever have time and awareness enough to explore.” It stuck with me as a statement that I hoped I would grow to understand more.
Then from Ed today: “Everybody on earth at any time is a window into the world for those who are no longer active. But just because we are no longer active – by which I mean, no longer moving through the years being carried by bodies – that doesn’t mean we are not actively participating in many relationships.
I can’t help but think Ed is shedding light on the statement that Rita made. At least it feels that way for me.
John
I hadn’t thought of it, but now that you mention is, it does sound that way.
It is beautiful Frank !
I came to recall Edgar Cayce once stated: “We have all had many relationships and families. Married a lot of times with different partners, and even “the partners” and friends has been your children, aunts,siblings and friends. You have changed roles all the time.”
Quite interesting. Not very peculiar of us to meet with “strangers” and instantly “know” we have “met” each others BEFORE (the deja-vu experiences).
Such as my friend Nanna (a Danish nurse) and I, once met within the Scandinavian Theosophical Society. We met for the very first time on a trip to Egypt back in the 1980s. By coincidence we met each others at the airport , and decided to sit down to have a chat with a cup of coffee before the flight from Copenhagen to Cairo.
We became inseparable during the whole trip (even with us traveling with two other friends). We soon found out that we had no need to share another word at all but only the glance upon each others face when we simply to KNEW what each other’s thoughts were–and all about us to see and view.
The most peculiar thing was the VERY SAME SENSE of HUMOUR (all the others about us just looking at us as nuts). Nanna and I kept the close contact all the way afterwards, until she died of breast cancer at the age of 48. BUT, before she died we did “a pact”–SHE promised “to come back” in “to show” that there is no death.
And she kept the promise: A week after the burial–SHE came!! Knocking three times at my door (that`s the way she used to do when visiting me out at the island and our cabin there). I was out at the cabin in the same summer (Nanna did visit me often out at the cabin when alive). The week after her burial, and I was thinking about her all the time afterwards, because “the loss” felt very deep (as one part of me was gone). I could not “SEE HER”, BUT her very particular way of knocking at the door three times, when she came back after walking about the island alone (she enjoyed the walking all alone sometimes out in nature there) And often for the fun of it knocking the morse-signal,which was unmistakably HERS, and I could “hear” her particular laughter as well. Without a doubt I could FEEL her presence, and also the smell of her particular perfume. The burden of sorrow disappearing as a miracle, the sorrow was replaced with joy.
And I have felt many a time of Nanna (the thread of hers) IS with me still because the bond of LOVE never change (not the way the humans thinking about “love,” because it is only a shadow of what love really is)…. Love is not “a person” it is the essence of ALL life.
I do believe it is of “vital importance” for us to learn about “other realities” and about death as a illusion once and for all (my own opinion of course).
B&B, Inger Lise.
Whenever you tell us a little more about yourself and your experiences, it becomes ever more clear what a lovely person you are.
I’m losing track of who is who! Following your encouragement, I was experimenting yesterday with ILC to communicate with biological father.
In the conversation I said, “I know that I am occasionally during this wondering how much is flowing from me, or from you; again the uncertainty and doubt as a relative newcomer to this process.”
From “Dad”: It’s natural to think of it that way. Information is flowing. Does it really matter where it’s coming from? A nozzle, or your father? The trouble is that you have in your head me as a physical unit, that father, with a certain kind of uniqueness. But even then, was what occurred between us (something which) started with and ended with our physical bodies? You know now the answer to that.
A mixture of Rita, my father, my guides? Along with the question, does it really matter?
I was then subsequently challenged as to how I wanted to continue to know my father, from a physical child’s point of view, or as a physical adult, or “now with greater understanding, are you willing to remember and retain those father-son and adult-adult relationships, but step beyond them to see that the relationship can be a lot greater than that, and ever-enriching?”
John
Offhand, i’d say you’re doing good work! Don’t stop now; follow your instincts, and try not to let yourself worry too much about who’s who. I began years ago by just calling the source “the guys upstairs” without making any effort to sort them out. With time and practice came the ability to discern a little better, sometimes. But the important things are (1) developing your skill and (2) the information itself. Sounds like you’re doing all right. 🙂
Interested in hearing more of your communications John. Are you posting them somewhere?
Gosh, no never thought about regular postings, other than occasionally here as commentary or on the TMI Explorer email group. I don’t feel anywhere close to being confident enough to do that. Every day seems like the movie “Groundhog Day” for me, where I have to work through my doubts about the veracity, my own self-consciousness, and then eventually work up enough courage to “put some of myself out there”.
Frank’s leadership and encouragement to go on this path, and that from the others on this site has been instrumental to say the least.
Thanks, John
Thanks for sharing this, Frank…as I mentioned y’day, you have a lot of “telephone lines” open (or is it hose nozzles?)!
I still feel like a “newbie” to a lot of this, and have often wondered if I am a “first” human “expression of my own TGU/Source Self. I’ve had hints, in dreams, that this isn’t the case (my “Leonard Levoissier” lifetime comes to mind). Most of my “family contact” has been in dreams (seeing my Dad in his auto repair shop, my maternal Grandmom in her comfy chair, watching television are a couple I’ve encountered).
This is why, “of late”, I’ve worked to establish/clear a channel to my Source Self/TGU/whathaveyou. Mainly for the “practical” reason of “contacting a Probable Self/Counterpart/threads, which have my current life-path interests and explorations, and has/have grown out of unnecessary fear and anxiety (for I no longer feel these are serving my intent–unless that’s my “unique window”, but oy vey, is it tiring!) But also, curiosity, finding out that I am indeed more than a physical being, all alone “down here”.
I have hopes for the upcoming NDE Intensive at TMI, but am trying not to “front-load” too many expectations on this chance to expand; I’m somewhat nervous, as well! Any road, it might be quite the adventure!
Again, thank you, Frank, Ed, Rita, and all the rest, for sharing your stories/experiences. Being able to process things w/ Susan, and you folks is helping me “formulate better questions”, as I work w/ the material…
Craig
Hello Craig.
Please tell us how the course went out for you when to participate with the NDE-Intensive at TMI in April ? It is not only out of curiosity of to ask but of keen interest !
I have received the third book by George McMullen(recommended by Frank), with the title:One White Crow….And I love the comment at the front-page of the same book.”If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, it is enough to prove that one single crow is white.”
George McMullen was was born with the ability in “to contact” the Akasha-records(THE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY-imprinted upon Time and Space), much in the same way as Edgar Cayce. And E.C., always pointed out that all of us are born with the same abilities,but it`ll be the effort/intent,by ourselves in to do it,AND each “effort” will be unique from all others.
Good Luck from Inger Lise.
P.S. BUT–I HAVE EXPERIENCED “The Shadow Side” of “THE UNSEEN” Reality, and I am 1oo% in agreement with you in to be CAREFUL(and caution).
Back in time when to move unto the particular house/-and property of the remote valley…I would NEVER,ever,to have expected(or ever to have dreamt of it),in what happened at the place and the area. NOTHING like it.NOT in my wildest imaginations!
—It is more between Heaven and Earth Horatio—than we`ll know of—
I for one, have learned:”It is not gold all that glimmers”.
Hello Inger Lise again!
We’ll have to add the Geo. McMullen books to our vast library (if we don’t already have them). Dr. Piero Parisetti, a Scottish-Italian Dr. who specializes in grief counseling, has a couple of books out; in one he uses a variation of the “white crow” analogy, but refers to it as the “white fly” (and thru the course of his book, “21 Days into the Afterlife”, he amasses a whole swarm of “white flies”!)
Akasha has been of interest to me as well. Jane Roberts wasn’t particularly “keen” on the idea of such a “place” (and not all “new age physicists” are on board w/ it, either, still apparently getting bogged down in wondering “where” such a “library” may “exist”), yet she encountered her own “library”, which she is documenting in “Psychic Politics”, which I’m currently reading. This is the book she also details the beginnings of the William James material (and C.G. Jung!), and was afraid she “had become another batty lady, (channeling) famous dead people”…
Yes, I will report on my experiences at TMI. Just a preliminary, I did the suggested introductory exercises, using “Hemisynch” (TMI sends out a CD to participants, so they can experience this technology before coming to their programs), and had an interesting encounter w/ a possible “life focus” of mine–a little girl w/ a doll named “Elsa”, crossing a road, and getting killed (not sure if it was a road or railroad, as I heard “train wreck” during the experience). I also was aware of getting the information that “this was three or four years before you”…More details later, perhaps.
Indeed, I will exercise due caution; part of the affirmation used at TMI for explorations involves asking for protection…
Finding my way…”I’m not awake as I can be; but my seein’s better…”–David Pomeranz (sp?) from “It’s in Every One of Us”…
Craig