Mi-Shell, my goodness. Even if you hadn't been born into a shamanic lineage, you would belong to shamanism after those experiences. Even without the accompanying NDEs, I should think.
The thing is that after such an NDE, it takes month to regroup, regenerate feelings, because all became "unimportant and trivial" compared to "the bigger picture of expanded consciousness”
All every day concerns were small and petty and not worth to get into a huff about. Feelings of sympathy - or antipathy to people that I had before were gone!! And still are. Everything became "level and wide open and detached.” On the other hand I since then can see illness as either blue or red dots and patches in peoples bodies and "hear feelings" Those are "gifts" I had to incorporate into my shamanic practice.
Two things strike me. One what you say about "after such an NDE, it takes month to regroup, regenerate feelings"... the wording reminded me of being told similar about brain damage. Which of course is an enormous "attack" on the system. I had a stroke (or two or three!) and I know people who've had head injuries. They told me that even though the damage is in one specific area which may be very small, the whole brain needs to "re-jig" - I think "re-wire" - and that takes about six months. Another friend lost an eye to cancer and was told it takes the brain about six months to adjust, not only learning a new habit, but the less conscious learning, I think.
The other thing your words made me think of was that I had this feeling after Owen died; I'd been very shy as a child and had never got rid of self-consciousness, but I was no longer self-conscious even in the situations that made me conspicuous. the little stuff like what people thought just didn't matter.
In those days I read a lot of psychology and more or less dismissed all this spiritual stuff. It was vaguely interesting that accounts of NDEs have things in common, for instance, but I didn't think any of it could be true. (That was back then!) Anyway I like the fact that every label given by psychology can be equally validly labelled spiritually. I mean, PTSD or soul loss - that kind of equivalence. I don't dismiss the "orthodox science" view of things now; I believe these are all ways of describing the same phenomena. It doesn't matter whether you call something schizophrenia or possession by spirits, since as far as I know from reading around, treatments from either tradition will have the same effect no matter which tradition you buy into.
... If I'm being clear!
I'd not heard of these two ladies, I'll have to check them out, thanks for sharing
I found Sandra Ingerman much more accessible (maybe because my copy of Robert Moss has small, faint text!). Manda Scott doesn't have a high opinion of Ingerman, saying she claims it's all easy and pretty, Disney-esque and downplays the dark side, the dangers of journeying. But Ingerman does very firmly tell the reader to beware and not to be led by hubris, etc, so maybe Scott's objection is based more on writing style!
It's strange, in the seven years since my dad died I only had one dream that he featured in briefly. Since my NDE I can't seem to get to him to stay away!
I do dream quite often of my mum, who died 4 years ago. But still never of Owen, or even a dream in which I had lost Owen. Thank you for the candle.
Oh, talking of the parallel/overlap/conflict(?) between soul loss and the mind protecting itself from trauma - many victims of abuse share a sense of compartmentalising their minds (or their Selves, I suppose), having a room or a box into which they can step during the abuse so as to be not present. That's in the psych. literature!
Why is it that we have this disinterested view, is it becsuse in a higher state we are not so trapped by the illusion of the physical world or is there some more mysterious process here? Why when we return do we have this feeling of detachment and an inability to empathise with the concerns of others over things which suddenly have become so petty and small to us?
Maybe emotions really are more rooted in the physical than I like to think. The physical including hormones (pheromones, adrenaline), synapses, that kind of thing.
I've been trying to catch up
Firstly, thanks to all for your compassion. It is true, it was a terrible experience. I am ok, though!
Secondly, wow, well...June and MandMaud, sorry about your lost little souls...
as a mother, I can imagine how heartbreaking that was!
I don't quite understand why souls would come just to go through pregnancy...
With my mind I can theorise: we have a quota of time here, which is spread over x lifetimes, and there's a few months or days left over... or (as many, many bereaved parents say), they were too perfect for this world in the first place... or (the most believable to me) something goes wrong at the very beginning, when the soul joins to the body, and the connection isn't completely made so it only lasts a certain length of life (wantonly using terms I don't have definitions for) - hence all the miscarriages that are just "one of those things". This is all intellect-thinking though. My intuition has nothing to say on the question.
Another thing I've just remembered. My grandmother was in hospital and nursing home for the last five months, having done pretty well up to breaking a rib in a fall that would have broken anyone's rib (she was pretty hard to floor
). In there, esp. in the hospital, she saw all sorts of things. My mum visited every day and heard most of it, but believed my gran wasn't talking about the unpleasant ones. We originally put it down to the morphine but she was only on that for the first three weeks and we had no other explanation. She saw, for example, a man painting the wall opposite her bed - which was actually a row of lockers - and another time, a very beautifully-patterned silk scarf, predominantly peacock blue but it had lots of colours. Once when I got there with my then husband, we and my mum were at one side of the bed and the curtain was closed the other side, and my gran kept turning to the other side where she had a visitor, an elderly lady, and Granny kept introducing us: "This is my daughter Sue, and my granddaughter and her husband..." - then turning back to us and saying, "There's no one there, is there?" but then turning and speaking to that other lady again. It creeped my mum out but it didn't scare my gran, and hence didn't bother me, but it was interesting!
No idea if this is part of the same kind of thing. I don't think being in the hospital was a huge shock as she'd spent a lot of time in hospitals over the years, but I do know breaking a rib is very traumatic in many cases. She also, come to think of it, had a "dulling" of emotional connection: her favourite younger brother died during the time she was there, but when told she barely reacted, like "Oh, ok," and that was it.
She was prone all her life to odd visions and "fancies" that no one took seriously.
