The Universe is made of stories, not atoms. These stories are composed out of words, and in speaking our words – either internally or with others – our worlds come into existence and may be shared. Our deepest, personal stories recognize that while our mortal bodies are but specks of dust on a galactic rock, we still do not succumb to the illusion of being mere, small creations. We deeply know that we arise from – and shall return to – something that is vast and powerful. The measure of the universal story of a soul is only limited by the scope of our minds and the elegance of our imaginations. The power to direct the force of our minds is what we cherish and call our free will, and the record of this free will is inscribed on the soul’s frequency.

We therefore present this story of the soul as:

The Perennial Dialogue

“We live in a universe that has neither past nor future. A strange world in which we are alive and dead in the same instant. In this eternal present, our sense of the passage of time is nothing more than a giant cosmic illusion…. Time as such does not exist. There is no invisible river of time. But there are things that you could call instants of time, or 'Nows'. As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows, and the question is, what are they? They are arrangements of everything in the universe relative to each other in any moment, for example, now.” (Julian Barbour, British physicist)

Since stories demand beginnings, boundaries and meaning, let us stage the soul’s beginning within the undifferentiated sea of spirit which itself fills the whole plenum of space-time. Spirit contained within itself ALL, and ALL was stable, pacific and self-aware, a leviathan in reverie and at peace within its own eternal meditation.

A portion of the leviathan moved, and having moved, saw itself as discrete and differentiated. Within that still-internal shard of ALL, a mind stirred, sensed its individuality, and awoke. Thus a portion of ALL individualized, and concurrently yearned for meaning – yet to acquire meaning would necessitate having a vehicle whereon meaning could be impressed, that is to say … a soul. In turn, acquisition of soul would require the experience of life, hence the necessity of acquiring bodily experience through involvement in a vast bundle of life’s bounties and sufferings. Existence as a sentient creature, whether blade of grass, tree, gnat, whale or human is a trial requiring the capacity for learning (information integration and self-direction) and that has to be accomplished within a finite time frame. A perilous journey, only to be engaged by a shard of ALL that aspires to be, to learn and to return.

Soul making is perilous, yet the nascent soul would not be alone on the adventure of its life. It would:

· be accorded a multi-generational, tested genetic endowment; for instance, a singular frequency-matrix consciousness underlies all of the reality that we can individually sense, and our brains have evolved over countless generations to support minds that can collapse wave-functions and decode relevant matrix frequencies;

· be accompanied by an invisible, internal companion with whom to converse as an active, co-participant;

· possess a unique PIN frequency by which it would be able to identify itself during the days and dreams of its current journey: this frequency was akin to that held by the entity as it had traversed former lives, in manifold life-forms.

The number of sentient life-form frequencies is infinite, and one’s individual self-referential frequency kicks in on awakening each day, out of the void of deep, healing sleep, and one always finds oneself in one’s own bodily vehicle, with one’s own mind and own memories. In like manner when the entity awakens after its restorative rest within the bosom of ALL, it knows itself by its frequency, and then – if so willing – it readies itself for the next chapter in its long arc of perennial existence; and

· it would carry within itself (but so deeply hidden as to be most often forgotten) a recollection of its own primal source, its own mission, and its ultimate home at the end of its current mortal adventure.

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So let us begin our story. The yet-unnamed discrete portion of ALL knew little, having been washed of the baggage of its previous journey. [Individual journeys are essentially similar and in themselves boring aside from the possible inner transformation of the traveler]. Yet the nascent entity had already incorporated within itself the key element for life engagement, the desire to become, so as to be. This desire to be is branded upon the entity as its sense of mission. In our story, the nascent entity communicated to ALL that this time its mission would target the field of human life to proclaim Love as the essential soil out of which all life flowers throughout all realms of ALL. And so, with the blessing of ALL, the differentiation commenced and, in the words of Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet:

“A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.

A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

In simple terms, the cycle comprises: drop the old body, return home for restoration, then pick up a new body and carry on, eternally…. The return of the soul to ALL is the return of the image to that which imagined it, and the essential consciousness of the individual is its perennial record, written on its frequency, which could not be destroyed without destroying part of ALL Itself. When a soul returns to ALL, it is aware of itself not only as a part of ALL, but as a part of every other soul, and everything that is.

To stage the current phase of the entity’s evolution, some time may pass before a suitable man’s love of his suitable mate brings about the gathering of “dust and foam for another body”, and still additional time needs to lapse to bring the product of the couple’s union to term. Eventually, all things pass and a physical vehicle is born, allowing the entity to inscribe a new chapter on its frequency across its long arc.

Further time is absorbed by the entity in phases of physical growth and cultural conditioning, and perhaps in engaging in the traditional biological imperative on its own – procreating and nurturing new vehicles for further differentiated shards of ALL. Eventually the evolving soul may remember itself and its primal aspiration, and perhaps in that time of awareness it may see how it has frequently ‘spoken with itself’ as it had thought its thoughts and planned its life so as to optimize its unique experiential itinerary out of which insights and realizations could be derived. The entity may come to realize that at critical points it has often engaged in a deep colloquium with its invisible companion, the internal friend with whom the entity could trust with its deepest secrets, fears and aspirations. It may see that – while giving necessary coin to the dictates and inductions of the society within which it is embedded – the entity can consult with its internal friend and thereby honour all of its ALL-given cognitive reasoning faculties, and thereby determine for itself what reality really is, as opposed to being unduly caught up in fabricated, worldly-serving group-think, propaganda and manipulation.

The distinction between subjective past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. In the subjective time that platforms one’s personal existence – and depending on available mind bandwidth and imagination – one can engage in a Perennial Dialogue with one’s other frequency counterparts across vast reaches of time, simultaneously in the here and now. One’s present existence is tethered to those other levels of selfhood, and the effects of the Perennial Dialogue extend both into the past and the future, since embodied life is always experienced in the eternal NOW. One’s current life is that of a fulcrum, with the potential to affect all lives of the same frequency, past and future. Each co-participant is discrete from its counterparts, yet the input of each is important in the context of each other’s NOW across the long arc of their co-being. Each dialogue confrere lives within its own illusory chronological time, yet each is subject to the challenges of the same human condition and therefore the perspectives of each are invaluable to its counterparts as each charts its own path.

[Listen… can you hear your own dialogue? I most certainly can and to be perfectly honest I always could. I just didn’t fully understand what it was that I was listening to, since the ability to honour my subjective truth had nearly been driven out of me decades ago. At that time I’d almost succumbed to the pressure to be ‘normal’, being encouraged by manipulative controllers and ‘helpers’ to recognize my inferiority and surrender my inner power.

Farm Boy had parked himself on a bench outside the new, young psychiatrist’s office, awaiting his appointment. It was mid-winter 1959 and the halls were drafty in the 70 year old institution, but the 21 year old lad wasn’t cold, as his mother had ensured he’d taken lots of warm clothes, although Farm Boy still wondered why she’d been weeping as she’d sewn his nametags on all his pieces of clothing. This time he had been institutionalized going on three months, but all-in-all this experience had been much better than that of his prior stay during the previous winter; this time there’d been no ECT nor insulin shock therapy, and he’d been granted an unsupervised grounds pass and even permission to take the bus into the city alone to see the sights if he so desired.

As he waited, Farm Boy recalled having a couple months back befriended an old inmate who, it had turned out, was a retired doctor who’d had the means to pay double the ward rate ($1 per day) for a private room. Farm Boy could see that such a room was much better than his own four man ward, where he was kept awake half the night by the wails and moans of the others on the ward until such time as they’d been put under with heavy sedation. The old doctor’s medical diplomas had been put up on his wall, and Farm Boy was particularly taken with the old gentleman’s impressive medical library, and he’d spent many hours studying the books and asking questions. On a visit there one afternoon, a nurse had knocked on the door and doled out the usual little cups of pills to them, and after she’d left the old doctor had observed to him that – unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life under institutional care – he should refrain from ingesting the dispensed pills, and he’d instructed Farm Boy as to how swallowing could be feigned. This suggestion had been taken, and daily Farm Boy had found himself becoming progressively less stupefied. In this manner the winter months had passed pleasantly.

When the psychiatrist called him in and enquired as to how he was making out, Farm Boy replied that everything was pretty good, but that he was starting to feel restless and occasionally even wondered about asking for discharge since perhaps he could still do something with his life. The psychiatrist consulted his file and pointedly enquired “Are you still hearing voices?”

Farm Boy hesitated … after all he didn’t want to say something that would prove himself totally mad … then he looked directly at his keeper and blurted “You know, I’ve been wondering about that, Doc … just between you and me, I don’t believe that there ever were VOICES talking at me. I believe it was just me talking inside to myself, and back then when I’d tried to explain to others where I’d came up with my ideas, I’d passed it off by saying a ‘voice’ had told me … why, Doc, if I’d told my family that I’d been talking to myself I’d have been locked up a year ago. Oh, wait… they had gotten me locked up anyways, hadn’t they? And Doc, what about all those treatments that erased most of my memories. What a bummer … all along it’d just been me, thinking … you know, Doc … thinking ... Like wondering about something and posing myself a question and then waiting for another part of me to answer. Hey, just like a conversation. So Doc, isn’t that how you think?”

The psychiatrist stared silently at the inmate for a looong time, then reviewed his file for another long spell … then said “Hey now, it’s me that asks such questions, not you. What I am going to do, though, is get you out of here”.

The next day Farm Boy’s father showed up unexpectedly in the ward and challenged him “So, now what the hell have you been up to? Some shrink telephoned me yesterday and told me to get right in here”. Farm Boy said he hadn’t a clue as to what the doctor’s call was all about. The father was only in the psychiatrist’s office about 10 minutes and then came storming out all ashen and looking as though he’d been pole-axed. Farm Boy said “You OK, Dad?” and his father’d said “Go pack your duffel; I’m getting you outta this ^#x** looney bin right now. … ^#x** crazy shrink!!”

Well, as you might imagine, Gentle Reader, there’d been quite a kafuffle back on the farm. Farm Boy’s older brothers came down from the city and passed judgment that the hospital shrink must be a quack, so a specialist should be found to administer some more ECT to help their poor wacky brother. [Living Better Electrically was the big buzz in those days]. Farm Boy observed that – amongst those present – he alone now had a piece of paper certifying his sanity, and in future he’d pay more attention to his own counsel rather than let others control his fate. Sometime the following week Farm Boy had told his father that he’d dropped his meds, to which his father had given him the ultimatum that either he took his meds or he’d see him back in the institution.

Farm Boy had just laughed and told his father what to do with the stinking meds, left the bush lot where they’d been cutting stove wood, gassed up his old Pontiac and disappeared from the family radar for six months. He headed off to the provincial capital and dropped in to see a personnel officer at the head office of the bank where he’d earlier been employed. Luckily, he’d once worked in a branch then managed by that very same personnel officer, and for several months he’d even boarded with the officer’s own family, so Ex-Farm Boy’s work ethos was not in question. It had been easy to get back on the career train once he’d pledged to never, ever leave the firm again to help out his father down on the farm.

The idea that one can actually perceive the truth independently of any external authority is anathema to social systems of control, and is sensed as a challenge by authority. The voice of inner truth or knowing is silenced young in many people, and replaced by the expectations of others. Although badly damaged psychically, I was still in possession of will, legs and a small cache of savings, and prudently honoured my inner guide and walked away from others’ normalization ‘help’ to begin my solitary search for meaning and connection.

From whence came that redemptive inner guide?? Some spiritual forebear from the past, warning of imminent mortal danger?? Or perhaps the voices of Providence and future Destiny calling?? At that time and five decades later, I’m convinced that the agency of my freedom was not any so-called gut feeling, instinct, sixth sense or faith-based diety. It was just Past Me and Future Me finally getting through to Present Me that it was high time to wake up and get the hell out of Dodge. One’s deepest Truths are evoked not because of one’s beliefs, nor is their emergence subject to petition or command; rather, Truths whisper to us between the gaps of life when we're silent and receptive. When others’ agendas bring one to the brink of chaos, one needs to look into their silence in order to find the answers. As Victor Hugo wrote:

“Solitude produces to some extent a divine bewilderment. It is the smoke of the burning bush”

So, Gentle Reader, open your mind and listen closely now … tilt your ear to the soft breeze, close your eyes and settle your mind… initially the voices might be faint and even a bit blurred, but still very understandable should you dare to listen. Soon – if you so will – you’ll hear the voices distinctly assuring you that your own voice is essential in the collective Perennial Dialogue. Look … and observe that a seat has been awaiting you in the conference room… you can feel the welcome as your counterparts from past and future stir and point to your prepared place. Now the dialogue gets underway, and one soon feels quite at home conversing with the voices of the great spirits past and future, all speaking their truths into each other’s subjective life.

Caution: Once you engage the Perennial Dialogue there is no turning back, and all initiates understand this as irrefutable fact. Once recognized, we can no longer deny our inner knowing.]

Through the internal dialogue one may come to appreciate that – while one is necessarily in this world, there is the possibility of seeing oneself as not wholly of this world. After one has deliberately engaged oneself, one can see that there is an important distinction between the things associated with the ways of the world, and the valuable insights drawn from those experiences relative to one’s mission in life. An observer can often see this dialogue commencing naturally in young children, yet by the age of eight or so the child has often been progressively absorbed into the realities of others – family, teachers and church, perhaps because the child feels that all things necessary to its existence have already been thought through and hence are beyond challenge, even quietly with the still small voice within.

Fortunate is the person who later remembers himself, who deliberately re-engages the internal dialogue, and honours the invisible friend in his inner theater of imagination, say in co-thinking through the meaning of this current chapter of the long journey. As one talks with one or more aspects of oneself, and examines and tests the quality of those internal conversations, it is quite possible to become more crystallized within oneself, and more congruent in persona, thought, word, and action. This often occurs through pondering on key events in one’s life, critically examining outcomes wherein one had acted upon the prompting of others without consulting the friend within, or – despite being nudged by one’s internal friend – had overridden the nudge and ended immersed in others’ agendas. The examined life often reveals patterns of engagement leading to results taking much effort to reverse. One may realize that these problematic patterns will continue to affect future actions unless one slows down and converses within, and sees the patterns for what they are – an almost mechanical process of self-reflex [Sam is Sam, and this is what Sam does, without even having to think – Sam is ever Sam]. However if one can see one’s patterns, one can bit-by-bit fine-tune one’s self-referential frequency, and thereby benefit not only in one’s current life, but also after future awakenings.

Self-remembering may occur late in one’s current life-chapter as a consequence of intense experiences, or because of focused contemplative processes, meditation, reverie, or self-induction – all of which involve one in the dialogue with oneself. The in-life awakening may also occur through a personal influence upon oneself by an already-realized person; or as a result of some shock – for instance a repetitive “calling” dream; or a spiritual breakthrough in the form of a formal message received through an unsolicited, one-time brush with automatic writing which preceded a flood of deep insights and life changing consequences; or one’s deep prayer wherein one offers one’s personal life in exchange for that of a beloved experiencing a life-threatening crisis; or the repeated emergence of a facial stigmata signaling the spiritual presence and love of another (already physically passed over) who was trying to awaken one to a real but unrecognized danger.

In the fullness of time, one may become bored with the external conversations of the world, preferring rather to spend more of one’s dwindling time in comparing notes with the friend(s) within. Others may prefer the ways of the world, the inductions of media talking heads and society’s leaders and pundits, on the premise that all that is necessary for one’s purposes is offered up in pre-thought, pre-digested and pre-packaged portions, so why swim against the stream in forming and possibly expressing one’s own perspectives to others? Many people are merely repeaters of what they have been fed and uncritically assimilated. In the fullness of time, one may become jaded with the same-old/ same-old games, seeing that they do little to advance one’s essence or hone one’s internal tools of mind so as to better discern substance from static.

One may come to prefer one’s own counsel and the cultivation of inner stillness within so that one may gradually fine-tune one’s self-referential frequency, else without such adjustment the next life will surely comprise a rinse-and-repeat sameness with the current one. Increasingly one senses that it is only within sentient life – where an impressionable, open soul is present – that one’s ID frequency can be altered – not whilst recuperating within ALL’s bosom. On the primal awakening from ALL, one may well aspire to do things differently this time, but under the heat of one’s days under the sun of existential incarnation, those earlier lofty aspirations may quickly evaporate if one is not in frequent communication within. Communication is truly the essential creative art form.

‘Tis a wondrous world, my friends. As the Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg wrote:

“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little bit above the level of a farce and gives it some of the grace of a tragedy.”

And so it is…

Posted as of October 7^th, 2011, and dedicated to my Alpha and my Omega – the two most influential women in my life

· My Mother: Mabel Theresa Elliott – born December 17^th, 1896 – departed 33 years ago today

· My Life Companion and Best Friend: Marnie – we shared our first date together 52 years ago today

Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site

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