WTF Just Happened?! Post 1
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Who am I and Why Would You Ever Follow Me?
Meet me and learn about my crazy exploration to see if it’s possible for life to continue after death. To summarize how this journey has been so far, the best quote I can come up with is by Dr. Ian Stevenson (he will be mentioned a lot in future posts or go ahead and google him!) “I am not saying it’s true, I am just saying it happened.” I also promise to never again have a strong opinion on something until I have researched it with an open mind.
I assume most of us WANT (very badly in fact) to believe that consciousness can continue after bodily death. But wanting to believe something and even truly believing something with all of your heart does not make it true. So faith is out of the question for someone like myself. I am looking to see if there is enough evidence that a reasonable person could take survival of consciousness seriously as a real possibility and hopefully probability. I do not think we will get enough evidence in this lifetime to prove it 100% one way or another, but I will settle for strong probability. (Although if evidence turns another direction I won’t lie to myself.)
Before I started this research (about 6 months ago) I thought that the odds of life continuing after death was about 5% or less. At this point I now put it somewhere between a possibility and a probability. I plan to write a series of posts from the past 6 months and then continue with what I am learning from today on, so maybe in my later posts my opinion will change one way or the other. (Again I promise to remain skeptical but open and do my best to not let my desires cloud my judgment.)
If you are an atheist or skeptic like myself who has suffered a personal loss I hope this helps you have some form of hope in a possibility of life after death. I also hope if you are like me and need to “see for yourself” I can show you how I am doing just that. That is who I am gearing this site to, since I think people like us are the ones that need this the most. We can’t turn to faith or religion in times of grief. For anyone who doesn’t fit the above but might be curious, I hope you enjoy!
Firstly, a bit about how I will conduct privacy and my identity on this site, and how I will respect the privacy of the mediums and anyone else I encounter along the way. Secondly, I explain a bit about who I am and try to address all the key areas I think people use to judge whether or not they would value someone’s opinion.
MY PRIVACY:
I am keeping my personal identity hidden for the following reasons.
1- This is about the death of a person very close to me and I want to respect their privacy and the rest of their loved ones privacy.
2- I am a very private person about anything not related to my business or career. My multiple Instagrams are of my cat, my company and another showing photos and quotes I love around the web (never myself). I have a Snapchat only to follow my friends and I rarely post. My Facebook feed is funny memes, my cats, and articles I like (once again never me) - I know not very “millennial” of me, but I’m not gonna change that.
3- I want others to be helped by this blog and I plan to continue my exploration. Part of this exploration involves going on appointments with mediums. I take a lot of precautions before each session that they don’t know who I am and can’t find me on google. (using false names etc)Being open here would compromise that, even if I do initially give them false names.
IDENTITY OF THE MEDIUMS:
I will NOT reveal the identity of any of the mediums that I have had private sessions with in my posts. I have respect for the work that they do and the intimacy of the sessions. I will do a post about where I found mediums in general if you are interested as to how to find one that I would consider trustworthy. (I also purposely go to some that I would consider untrustworthy so I can compare.)
As you can probably assume from this policy, this means I don’t find all mediums to be frauds. I don’t anymore. (This doesn’t mean I fully believe consciousness continues after death — I have found it all a lot more complicated than that, which I will explain in future posts). If I had found them to be frauds, I still wouldn’t have exposed them. I would have moved on to other methods of coping with my loss and not written about them at all. The only time I will post who they are is if they do a public group event I attend and then I will ask their permission first. Otherwise I will still write about the event but hide their identity.
ABOUT ME:
Now a bit about me to see if I am the kind of person you would trust. If there is anything anyone feels I left out and wants to know — ask me! You can see that I am a rational person, not swept up or prone to believe gurus and new age bullshit. I also think that people with the below beliefs (matching mine) tend (although not always) to not believe in either a God or afterlife. I am sharing the below, not to be preachy about any of my values or knock someone else’s, but I want to show those who think like me that they can come to the conclusion that survival of consciousness is possible (I didn’t say definite!!) by doing some research.
EDUCATION: Liberal East Coast Prep School for High School. Bachelors of Science in Communications from a large American State University. No grad school.
POLITICS: Fairly Liberal - I was torn between Bernie and Hillary for different reasons. I think a certain Orange Pseudo-politician would be a devastation to the country. And yes global warming is real.
GENDER IDENTITY: Female born and very female identified. Obsessed with beauty products, clothes and everything “girlie”. Balanced with feminist values. Highly career ambitious and not afraid to “Lean In”. When I start a family I expect my boyfriend or husband and I to take equal share in raising the kids and to both ambitiously pursue our careers. I don’t care if he makes a lot of money or not as long as he is doing what he is passionate about and I expect the same support from him. (ugh isn’t it a bit sad we still have to include stuff like that about money and career when talking about gender identity).
RELIGION: Culturally Jewish but more of the Larry David variety than the Moses variety. I never gave God much thought and it was never part of my daily dialogue. At best I viewed belief in God as a beautiful (albeit false) belief that caused people to be kind and loving. And at its worst, a brainwashed cult resulting in homophobia, sexual shaming, and anti-women’s rights.
CAREER: Startups and Social Media
HEALTH (this seems to be the biggest area lately where people decide if they think a person is prone to new agey gurus so I will spend a little extra time on it): I do eat organic but I’m not crazy. It doesn’t have to be legally certified but I like real foods in their natural form without additives and preservatives. I get my food mostly from the farmers market and co-ops. I minimize sugar intake but do not think I need to cut it out 100% and yes I eat gluten. I have tried a (as in one time) juice cleanse out of curiosity, but I don’t think it’s the answer to ridding your body of deadly toxins.
I do eat meat. I hate that animals die for it, I really love animals, but I tried being vegetarian and got very sick. (and yes I ate beans and other proteins). When I eat meat I do try to make sure it comes from a humane farm — grass-fed, grass finished, small farm and I don’t eat baby animals. I am open to seeing where 3D printed meat goes.
GMOs - I believe in labeling since I think people have a right to know what they are eating. I really can’t see any problem with them. I used to be anti GMO but after some research I think they seem safe and actually like a wonderful step towards helping feed the world.
I do get acupuncture but I also get vaccines- and plan to vaccinate my kids one day.
I do yoga, but more so I’ll have a hot body than any other reason and mostly when the teacher asks us to dedicate our practice to something I do it to flat abs and a cellulite free butt!(hmmm not the most spiritual I guess) But I do meditate. I try for daily but usually end up doing it a few times a week. I do think superfoods and healthy food will help prevent aging and make for dewy skin, but it’s not a miracle and I also do botox for prevention. I trust botox won’t kill me because I trust science and medicine. And yes I would do chemo (not drink juice and stuff coffee up my butt) if I got cancer.
WHO WOULD I MOST LISTEN TO FOR THE BIG ANSWERS TO THE BIG QUESTIONS:
For what’s going on in the world it is the New York Times, Trevor Noah, Rachel Maddow, Colbert etc. For my health, mainly traditional medical doctors.
For the “Secrets of the Universe” - life and death etc..it has always been Stephen Hawking, Einstein, Lisa Randall, Neil deGrasse Tyson .. continues with name dropping every “normal” scientist so you can see I am sane. I also had believed skeptics such as Michael Shermer when they have dismissed any claims of paranormal or mediumship as crazy or fraud. (A lot more on the culture of skeptics later in this blog and why I don’t think many of them are as much skeptics as dedicated debunkers.) I haven’t stopped turning to those people for answers, I just no longer think they alone are the ones to turn to.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: I am NOT a scientist. I have however gotten to this point by reading many books by a variety of scientists both known and unknown. I have tried to take a scientific approach to my research, but nowhere near as well as actual scientists who are studying this have. If you will only be able to believe what actual scientists would think then read on, because you are just like me. I can share with you what I have read, done and experienced so far so you can do the same. Maybe you will choose to do what I have done and come up with completely different conclusions than I have. I have no vested interest — either financially or emotionally in you thinking as I do. Nor do I hold some belief I am saving you from burning in an eternal pit-fire if I can only change your mind. I also promise to be honest with all of you and myself (as well as anyone can be) that if everything I am studying takes me in a different direction than it has so far and ends up pointing in the direction of no survival of consciousness I will say it.
However, so far I have been mind-blown and what I have experienced and learned does not fit in with the way I believed the universe worked less than a year ago. I have a lot of hope that it is all so much better than I had ever thought.
