Words Of Wisdom From Strong Women

"Take 'no' as the start of the negotiation, not the end." I am surprised by a sudden laugh at myself and a bit of happy self-recognition too...realizing that I learned this by the time I was six, on a farm in the Ozarks. Every time I ask my father if I could do something.­..anything­...he always said "No" at first. Somehow I knew even then that if I kept explaining what any why, he would change his mind and give me permission. I am seventy-seven now. Sometimes it takes many years to truly knw who our best teachers are, or have been!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER

 
October 17, 2009

I am re-reading a very interesting book recommended by my friend Jeff Kane. (Life as a Novice… http://www.amazon.com/Life-As-Novice-Jeffrey-Kane/dp/0913057428/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255794342&sr=1-1one)

I had to search rather deeply on the net for this book, and it is well worth the trouble it took to find it. Today, as I write, I notice that one can now find it on Amazon, so I have put the link in below. It’s The Bridge Over the River: Communications from the Life After Death of a Young Artist Who Died in World War I. Translated from the German by Joseph Wetzl. Anthroposophic Press, N.Y. ….”Published with the kind permission of the Heirs and Verlag die Kommenden”… http://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Over-River-Joseph-Wetzl/dp/0910142599/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1255795947&sr=1-2-fkmr0

Although the communications relayed took place in 1915, this book was published by The Anthroposophic Press in 1974. So much for time…or time warp…I find the time is always now…so immediate and engrossing are these conversations between the spirit of a young soldier/musician , Sigwart, and his sister, who misses him very much.

From the book:

Sigwart was intimately connected with one of his sisters during his lifetime, and it was with her that he tried to communicate immediately after his death. Finally, after almost two months striving, he was able to convince her of his identity. The sister experienced her brother’s initial attempts to reach her in the form of an inner unrest, which eventually culminated in the strong feeling that her brother Sigwart expected something of her, but she could not bear the thought of associating his memory with mediumistic or spiritistic practices. After some time, however, an inner awakening enabled her to establish contact with her brother in full consciousness.
She described the experience thus to another sister: “In the seclusion and quietness of these past days I have come to recognize what Sigwart expects of me, which is not to guide my hand and influence it externally; rather, I myself must open a door in my mind; then I shall hear the words I have to write down.” (Joseph Wetzel, p.vi)

Wetzel goes on to discuss for a bit the concept of the work of the medium and how it might differ from the kind of transmissions contained in this experience with Sigwart:
The difference between this kind of communication and those of mediums cannot be emphasized forcefully enough. This was confirmed by a message from Sigwart himself on July 28, 1916, almost a year later, which read in part: “You know well that my kind of communication can never be as perfect as a message written verbatim on paper via a medium. My kind of transmission, however, is far more sublime than that of automatic writing. For the latter any average medium has the ability, whereas here a certain degree of spiritual development is necessary, or else it would be impossible.” (ibid)

I conclude here no measurement or judgment of the level of spiritual development of the medium. It may be inferred that the medium is communicating with souls who are still earth-bound, separated by a thin veil from those still living on earth, whereas there is the implication that Sigwart is communicating from a higher spiritual dimension, so to speak.

For me the reflection is that, as our human evolution progresses, we become more porous, as it were, to the spiritual dimensions. The ‘veils’ thin as we, more and more begin to live “in the presence of the whole”—as Teilhard de Chardin was so fond of saying. The whole of consciousness is more than pragmatism might suggest.

From cosmic distances, across time and space, his words sounded timidly at first, then more distinctly, first in the heart of the sister who had been closest to him in life. He called on the souls who could receive his words in lucidity of spirit and in wakeful consciousness. (M. and L. in the Preface, ix)


So then, in Jeff Kane’s words:

There is nothing but love that binds us to those who have passed. Thoughts that come from that source only strengthen the bridge. As I read the new book, I never once felt it was about death, but about life that transcends death.

Much food for thought here…these books are not about dying, but rather they offer hints from the beyond for understanding at a deeper and broader level…this life on earth.

--Barbara Smith Stoff
www.thesoulwillout.blogspot.com

RESPONDING TO HUFFINGTON POST'S "GOOGLE IS GREAT FOR CLASSIC BOOKS"

Responding to Huffington Post- GOOGLE IS GREAT FOR CLASSIC BOOKS

Today at 10:00am |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/google-is-great-for-class_n_308777.html#comments

This is a topic front and center with me right now...more so everyday as I begin to read the discussions of the changing nature of online and print journalism...nytimes last sunday for instance... (Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? - NYTimes.com)...which is one of many deeply reflective articles I have seen lately...all this while I am on a personal learning curve with 'how to' on the web. (Also see "Why I Blog" in The Atlantic Monthly.)

Below (from my blog) is a story about a google search I did because our editor wanted a reference for a poem fragment...below is an excerpt from a book we recently published (The Western Book of Crossing Over: Conversations with the Other Side)..as I described this experience within the body of the book. Actually, the wonderful search experience I had through Google has been rather a 'life-changing event for me!

I am continuing to study this present phenomenon in publishing...it's as if I am seeing a mobius strip shimmering in the mind-currents..


http://drawingfromwithin.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

GOOGLE AND THE AKASHIC


http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUS422108559020090706

"Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover." I think we should be thankful to Google and Eric Schmidt, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.

Upon reading the above article "Google's Dark Day"...I just want to say that I appreciate what Google is doing with rare books. I actually see this effort as a way of making accessible the "akashic" if you will. Here is a story which illustrates what I mean, and how Google can work for us.

This story is from our recent work with "The Western Book of Crossing Over...." ...I will quote from pages 82-83 …Lorraine has transmitted from the other side the following fragment of a poem. Sheldon has written it down exactly as it was given to him and included it in his writing of the book. The fragment:

For see, there nothing is in all the world

But only love worth any strife or song or tear.

Ask me not then to sing or fashion songs

Other than this, my song of love to thee.

--From the Arabic, "The Camel Rider"

"As a brief aside, we share the following: When the copy editor set us searching for a source for this poem fragment, we were at first dismayed and then amazed at what we [Sheldon and Barbara] uncovered. Sheldon said, "Where to look? I have never heard of this poem, nor of any reference to it. This just came from Lorraine, and I wrote it down."

After I [Barbara] spent a couple of hours looking for the proverbial needle in that haystack we call the World Wide Web of information now stored in cyberspace, I did find the poem from which the lines are taken. I found By Thy Light I Live: The Poetry of Wilfrid Blunt, selected and arranged by W.E. Henley and George Wyndham. It was published in London by William Heinemann in 1898, and printed by Ballantyne, Hanson& Co. of London and Edinburgh. The lines are found on page 273, taken from the last stanza of "The Camel Rider." Looking further, I discovered that Wilfrid S. Blunt was born in 1840 and died in 1922. All this certainly leaves me with some deep thoughts about the memory bank in the Akashic Field.

It is not only remarkable that Sheldon was able to record this from Lorraine's transmission, but also that I was able to locate the source. This book is digitized by Google from its resting place in the Library of the University of Michigan. I found the Google commentary rather lovely and poetic in itself, and worthy of reproduction here:

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary from country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations, and other marginal"ia present in the original volume will appear in this file—a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. –Google


"Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover." I think we should be thankful to Google, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.
--BSS

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/google-is-great-for-class_n_308777.html

See Global Groups discussion on Facebook...THE WESTERN BOOK OF CROSSING OVER:CONVERSATIONS WITH THE OTHER SIDE