Donya's Blog About Spritzies and Phyzzies
Spritzies in the Morning
Julia Assante has convinced me (and a lot of other people) that talking to dead people can be good for you to the point of being therapeutic. I'm not sure this story applies but it seems related. I wake up most mornings feeling a combination of sad, anxious, and depressed with a touch of dread and foreboding mixed in. No wonder I hate mornings. Now I know I pick up other peoples's feelings in crowds and groups and I avoid them except for rare brief occasions. I didn't realize until recently that there are probably all sorts of crowds of people around me that I can't see even when I'm not in a visible crowd. This morning about five seconds after I realized I was conscious I felt the familiar sinking feeling. Only this time I said indignantly, "Who is doing that? What do you want?" I didn't get an answer but the awful feeling stopped. Abruptly. STOPPED. It often takes me until mid-afternoon with a truckload of caffeine to shake that feeling, but this happened instantly. As I was drifting back to sleep I heard a voice saying Morning Pages, Morning Pages, Morning Pages. When I woke up about half an hour later, feeling remarkably cheerful, I realized it has been a long time since I have written morning pages and I remembered all the beneficial side effects they used to have. So I picked up a pen and notebook and started writing in longhand before even turning my computer on.
While I was writing I asked who was bumming me out and making me feel afraid and someone named Billy (?) said I have too many plastic grocery bags in my house. He said I should put them in the recycle bin. I said I would do that. And I did. My first attempt at morning pages was not a blazing success. I was distracted by my sister talking on her cell phone outside my window. Even so, in addition to the little boy, I did hear from someone, apparently a woman, who thinks I should move to San Francisco. I told her I would be happy to do that when I can afford it. She said when I get the winning lottery ticket I can. I agreed to do that The purpose of Morning Pages is not to talk to spooks. The idea was introduced by Julia Cameron In her book, The Artist's Way, which I read back in the 1990s. The purpose of starting every morning by freewriting three pages of anything is to clear your head and get all the cluttery thoughts out so you can focus on your proper creative writing or painting or whatever. I've also found MPs to be a good preparation for meditation. And sometimes a source of inspiration for new creative projects or new approaches to old problems. However if other people's thoughts are what is cluttering up my mind, I guess getting them cleared out is a legitimate part of the process. After two mornings I realized that I am happier if I listen to the disembodied people who want to talk to me than if I try to ignore them. But not before I'm ready. 11:00 is reasonable. 5: 00 am is not. At this point I would much rather talk/listen to dead people than let them hang around creating unfocused anxiety. I'm getting the idea that we all have dead people hanging around all the time. And some of them want our attention for various reasons. I'm willing to give them that if they will observe some boundaries. And rules. No one is allowed to bum me out. Anyone who wants my attention must wait for morning pages. After the San Francisco woman left, the grocery bag boy came back. He says is name is "Silly." "I like to be Silly." He says he is six years old. He said he was waiting for his mom. I got Ben to check up on his mom and I think she came and took him home. B: I'm Ben. I got the little boy's mother to come and get him. She was killed on her way home and he waited for her. He knew he wasn't supposed to leave until she got home. What was he doing in my house? B: He isn't in your house in his way of thinking. He is where someone can see him. Is he okay now? B: He's in the TSP with his mom and his brother and his dad. Why did he die? He was only six years old. B: He was playing with plastic grocery bags. The boy and his brother put something to eat in the bags and put the bags over their faces. Like horses' feed bags? B: Yeah. Like that. They were clowning around and choked and suffocated. I am so glad that I decided to ask who was causing my morning bummed-out feeling and let him talk to me. The most amazing thing about the little boy named "Silly" is that he became perfectly calm and pleasant after I talked to him. (And got rid of an arm-load of plastic grocery bags.) When I took a nap later in the afternoon I woke up feeling his presence,but he felt happy and serene. At one point I felt a huge burst of glowing love of the sort that only a six year old boy can deliver. While I was sleeping I thought I felt him patting my face. I wish I could have taken some more time to get his whole story but I was in kind of a hurry. I recall that he said he was waiting for his mom. When I asked if he wanted help finding her he fell silent. I realized he had probably received no instructions about finding her, only to wait. So I asked if he wanted Ben to find his mother for him and he brightened up again. It was just a matter of seconds before Ben reported that he had found Silly's mother and she had taken him home. I was amazed at what an effective remedy I had discovered for my miserable mornings. I've told this story to a number of people and they encourage caution, setting limits and boundaries and employing various types of protection. Some have even suggested I tell these disembodied visitors to go away and leave me alone. That's the one thing I won't do. I don't really have any reason to tell anyone to go away. No one has hurt me. (No one dead anyway.) I wanted to stop feeling like crap in the morning and the best thing I could have done was to listen Silly instead of ignoring him. Not for worlds would I have missed meeting that sweet, loving, little red-headed soul. I've been holding Morning Pages for visitors for a couple of weeks now. I've met an amazing collection of spirits who, for one reason or another, wanted me to hear them. I'll be writing about them in future blogs an in my Wake-up Pages/wake-up-pages-aug-sept-2014.html. DW 
By far my favorite book on whether or not there is life after death and what to do about it is The Last Frontier, by Julia Assante http://www.juliaassante.com
I enjoyed the other speakers too, but Julia is the reason I attended the Afterlife Awareness Conference in Portland OR and I was delighted by the opportunity not only to meet her and hear her presentation but also to enjoy a little one-on-one conversation with her. The last afternoon of the conference we both took the excursion up the Columbia River Gorge to Multnomah Falls. After the rest of her groupies had scattered, Julia and I decided to walk up the trail to the bridge that crosses the falls. On the way we talked about the conference and how her presentation had gone over. We agreed it contained material that a lot of people weren't ready for. However I reminded her of the small but passionate group that had gathered after her speech for impromptu Q and A in the lobby cafe. The energy generated by those enthusiasts testified that her work was providing inspiration for seekers who were looking for something beyond white lights, tunnels and Karmic paybacks. As we walked I told Julia about some of the conversations I've been having with Ben and she said I should be doing more: I should be talking to other dead people besides Ben. She is a college professor and this felt like an assignment. It seemed appropriate as she knew that I was trying to learn all I could about what I was experiencing since Ben had started communicating with me. But I felt out of my depth. I finally confessed that I didn't know how to talk to anyone but Ben. He had contacted me first and he did all the work. I didn't have to meditate or burn incense or anything. He was just there. On the way down the trail to the restaurant Julia engaged in a little scholarly grousing about how narrowly focused contemporary research is and how many important people are left out or ignored or intentionally erased from the records. Women, of course, but not just women. Then she started talking about King Akhenaten and I was beating my brain like a pinata trying to remember what I knew about that mysterious Pharoah. I remember referring to him briefly in an English essay on an entirely different subject. Julia explained that Akhenaten had been intentionally and thoroughly erased from history. He would stay disappeared until he was rediscovered in the 19th century, long after his attempts at religious reforms had been thoroughly undone. Suddenly Julia stopped walking and pulled me off to the side of the trail so the herds of Sunday strollers could stroll past us. "Look at me," she says. "Okay, now close your eyes. What do you see?" "Uh nothing." "What do you feel in your body?" "Uh. I feel something in my chest." (No surprise there. I had been struggling with an allergy related cough for days.) "What does it feel like?" To my surprise I felt something new. "It feels like something pushing." It felt like a tennis ball pressing against my sternum. "Okay," says Julia, "now what do you see?" "I see uh a bird." "No, try again." "It's a book. It's a man holding a book." She told me to describe the man, old young, dark light. It was weird that as I started to describe what I was seeing it became more and more clear. I could see a youngish man in what seemed to me to be an Egyptian temple, holding what appeared to me to be a medieval sacred text. Julia told me to ask him why he was here. I started to say that I can't hear dead people unless I'm writing but I obediently listened. It was like I was seeing subtitles in a movie. "I am here because I appreciate your interest in me. I am bringing you the wisdom in this book," I quoted. Julia started telling me how I would have to ask more questions to find out if he is really Akhenaton and why he has a book instead a more era-appropriate scroll. As if a spell had broken I started to feel dubious. I said, "I was probably imagining I saw him because you were just talking about him." And Julia said, "And maybe our talking about him gave him a reason to show up." I said, "You mean he's here." And she said, like she couldn't believe she was being forced to state the obvious, "Yes. He's right beside you. That's why I pulled you over." Suddenly I am having an Ah-ha moment. I'm not only understanding what just happened, I'm also understanding images I have seen a zillion times in the past for no apparent reason. Julia explained to me about asking for information. She says the experienced mediums, the ones who do TV shows and pubic performances, do it so fast they probably don't even realize they are doing it any more. She talked about maintaining momentum in order to keep from losing the connection and other things that mediums know and don't know. I realized she was giving me a great deal of information in a short amount of time. It wasn't until much later that I realized people probably pay a lot of money for this kind of experience in her classes and workshops and I had received an amazing gift. Since that conversation at the waterfall I have practiced seeing as well as writing and I have encountered a number of interesting characters. Something I have learned is to pay attention to sudden emotions that seem to have nothing to do with my circumstances. The idea that strong emotions I feel could belong to someone other than me led me to question why, for most of my life, I have had to fight my way through feelings of fear, anger and sadness just to get out of bed in the morning. The solution just might be found in my resurrecting the tradition of Wake-up Pages. DCW 
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Westboro Baptist Church
- On March 19, 2014 Fred Phelps, the founder of the Westboro Baptist died. I honestly cannot say that I felt any sorrow at his passing. I know other people felt much more than absence of sorrow. I was impressed not only by his cruelty but his lack of logic. To picket the funerals of service men for participating in unjust, illegal wars might make a certain kind of sense. But to picket the funerals of people who had died in battle and to claim that their deaths were caused by homosexuality in America made no sense. He wasn't even accusing his targets of being homosexual themselves, just saying that their deaths were God's punishment for homosexuality. Unfortunately I'm sure that the lack of rational thinking practiced by Phelps and his congregation afforded no comfort to the grieving families he tormented.
- D: Ben, do you have anything to say about Mr. Phelps?
- B: I want to say that Mr. Phelps is fine. I saw him in the TSP*.
- D: Of course everyone wants to know if he is trapped or punished or being surrounded by gay saints who want to spank him with canoe paddles.
- B: Har har. No he's in the TSP being welcomed home. His soul team is happy to see him and think he did a great job. Lots of villains have gathered round to tell him how hard his job was and how they admire him as only other villains can.
- D: He was so messed up, I thought he would be tortured by visions of hell, even if they were only thought forms.
- B: Oddly enough the real villains, the Hitlers, Stalins, Idi Amins and the like are usually very clear when they cross over. They know what they did and at some level even know why. They may need to do a little work detaching from the memories of people whose deaths they caused and other damage they did but it is quickly all put into perspective and they can help to analyze what was accomplished in their 3D lifetime. Of course many people in 3D are already aware of how Phelps helped to push the gay rights movement forward through his appallingly hateful behavior. His main concern when he got back to the TSP was that maybe he had been too over-the-top and that he might have come across as a caricature or a buffoon.
- He was assured that he had to be extreme in order to stand out in an environment where crazy extremists are common.
- The people who are the most confused when they cross over are generally not the leaders of evil causes. It's the followers who get caught up and find themselves doing things against their own consciences or better judgement. The ones who act out of loyalty to someone they feel is wiser than they are often regret what they have done when they find out their hero had feet of clay, so to speak, or a heart of coal.
- D: Do you want to say something else?
- B: I want to say that Mr. Phelps helped to bring about important changes in the way we think about people and causes and wars and homosexuality and churches and other features of life in the 3D world. People go along accepting things that are not quite right for a long time as long as it makes some sort of sense. A lot of times people don't really question the way things are until somebody creates a cognitive dissonance that can't be ignored. Phelps created events that were so wrong in so many ways they couldn't be ignored. And then people had to ask each other exactly what was wrong with what he was doing. And then they had to ponder what would be righter than that. And they had to ask if there has ever been a time when these problems were addressed in a way that made rational and moral sense. And if not, what would such a time be like. In his way Mr. Phelps flipped the world over so we could examine it from a different point of view. In order to do that he had to sacrifice any hope he had of being perceived as a decent human being. Well done, thou good and faithful asshole. Love ya, Fred. xo Ben
- And Donya
*TSP. Timeless Spaceless Place.