Reflections from Throughout
*From pages 350-351
“Prove to me we have a soul,” someone once asked of
me. “Prove to me that we have not.” I answered back. We can’t weigh it, smell it, or touch
it. So what makes it real?
“Are you married?”
I asked that same person.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I am,” he responded.
“Prove to me, using the same science of logic that you
want me to, that you love your wife.”
“Well…. I can’t really.”
The man fumbled. “Not in any
scientific fashion, I mean. I just know
I do. I can feel it.”
“Bingo!” I
exclaimed. “It’s like walking into a
blast of heat, isn’t it? You know that your
whole heart is now being ruled over by this internal force because of the
enveloping effect it has on you. You can’t
hold it, see it, or even taste the feeling on your tongue; but how you do know
it when your senses come in contact with love! The emergence of this source of being is not
unlike the expressions of our every actions, poetry, and art, for example. *They
are all mirror reflections-turned-tangible.
(Reference to the poem “Four” featured at the end of this section.) Now, prove to me,” I questioned one step
further, “that the table your coffee cup is resting on is there. Better still…. Prove to me that this same
four legged, wooden and glass structure is even called a table.”
“Come now, Leedee, don’t be silly!” My companion erupted impatiently, crossing
his arms over his chest. “You’re not
blind and senseless…. You can see it’s
there. And you know it’s a table because
that’s what mankind determines is the definition for all four-legged structures
with a flat top we rest things on.”
“So, knowledge, recognition, and experience are the keys
which help us determine what this thing here is to be called and valued as?” I
asked mischievously, patting my hand on the table.
“Sure it is,” he answered me.
“I think you’re lying….”
I pushed on with a smile on my face. “In another country it’s called by a different
sounding name. And in other parts of the
world, yet, it doesn’t even look the same…. They’re all constructed
differently. Can you answer for that?”
“You got me!” My coffee companion smiled back. “Alright, we all have a soul…. But what value
should I assess this wondrous part of us, if no one can agree about it?”
“Look at the table….
Look to your heart….” I answered
him quietly. “What difference does it
make to split any hair about the two in an attempt to disprove the genuine
existence each brings into your life, when all we have to do is admit to one
another that we both agree we are experiencing the sensations of the same
thing?”
The Day My Soul Stood Still
*From 352-353
What gives me the backbone to advise anyone about the
topic of spirituality and how it relates straight back to the everyday matters
of our lives? I am only 46 years old
after all, not 86. I don’t hold a PhD
from any University. I haven’t studied
under any guru, priest, or other practitioner of philosophy, nor can I boast
years spent unraveling the mysteries of ancient texts. So why should I be believed and taken
seriously without some form of validation to support me? Because my interpretation isn’t based on any
written matter, past or present, which some third party has steered my brain
into regurgitating back on the behalf of some mystic sect or religious
movement… Person, church, or diploma, my
credentials are not dependent on these.
I’ve already met the highest criteria there is for a Spiritualist: First-hand
knowledge of having sampled death and how it changes all perspectives as one of
its survivors.
Life after (near) death is the hardest concept to figure
out and make sense of, but once you do, your eyes will never see people and the
world in the same light, or focus, again.
It truly is that deep and mind altering, I kid you not. As far as two eyes can see over any horizon,
my interior sight can now see deeper into any human expanse without the
slightest mental struggle.
When I said earlier on, “Furthering knowledge poured in my psyche” - I wasn’t overstating
the truth. It really did. Maybe these next pages will help to answer
the most common questions I’m repeatedly asked when people find out about my
childhood jaunt into the unknown. … In
closing this chapter of my life, I will try my best to lift as much of the
mystique surrounding what a passing-on feels like, along with a little more
clarification into what is termed as the human soul, inner-self, and Higher
Power.
It’s not that I was chosen, because I wasn’t. Anyone can go through what I did. Near death isn’t limited to a select few, age, color, race, or religious denomination. I daresay at twelve I was not yet much of anything, so I don’t feel favored by any stretch of the imagination. What I felt and became is within the reach of any person who chooses to embrace and believe in the precepts I’ve described. All it takes is an open mind, willing heart, and the capacity to reach out and absorb into your self all those treasure troves of self-fruition that life makes available to every precious being on this earth. … My goal is to separate myth from reality. What people lead themselves to believe sometimes isn’t always necessarily so.
* From pages 355-356
Ever so gently and slowly, so as not to frighten the timid
creature, I carefully moved my hand toward the bear’s snout so he could smell
me first before I touched him. Poor
thing, I didn’t want to add fear to his misery, after all. Still very much a child, I was just too
tender-hearted at that stage to think myself in any danger or be fearful; only
the poor frightened state of the animal weighed through.
He liked me! He
licked my fingers and let me scratch him behind his ears and neck, in the same
way household cats and dogs do with humans.
He felt fuzzy and warm and I liked him, too. My girl friend was of a different mind-set;
she couldn’t overcome her aversion to the “smelly” creature and wouldn’t stand
within 15 feet of him. On I went to
indulge myself until she called my name in an effort to get me away from the
enclosure and help her locate that very sought after male gerbil… Without thinking, I drew my arm out too fast
and impetuously, as I simultaneously turned my body around to go. Clank!
My elbow smacked into one of the cage bars. … Before
I had the time to register what had even happened, the next sensation and
sounds my mental state was alarmed to were the hot,
searing bolts of pain shooting up through my arm all the way to my shoulder,
and the pitches of my own screams.
The bear, out of fear and confusion, had lunged forward
and grabbed my lower forearm and hand in his razor-sharp jaws. Within the span of just split seconds, my
life would take a dramatic turn.
Whatever fate I would have had now took an opposite path and my life
would never be same again. To no
surprise, my little girl’s body went into deep traumatic shock as my brain went
numb with the sudden, immediateness of it all.
That bear’s attack had swirled my thoughts into such a fury of confused
helplessness, that all I could think to do was to scream at the top of my lungs
for someone to help me. With what seemed
to follow on an eternal round of my own hellish echoes, one by one, my little
girl hopes for escape completely vanished away from me as the moments swirled
past me in an absolute nightmare.
My psyche completely becoming oblivious to the outside
world now, turned into itself deeper, and began to take notice of what was
happening to my body from the savagery.
With what little reserve I had left, my little girl nerves tried to
desperately escape the black swirls of realization that were rapidly consuming
my every emotion, but the hold on my senses was too great. My blood felt as if it had turned boiling
from my fingertips to my neck. The
sounds of bones cracking reverberated within the chambers of my mind along with
the companion sounds of tearing flesh. I
was being ripped apart alive… and knew it.
Blood spattered everywhere as the bear’s massive teeth
crushed my wrist, severing my arteries and veins. Similar to a geyser, my life’s blood was
being pumped out in a rush with every adrenaline-fueled cardiac contraction for
the crowd to witness. The faster my
heart pumped to keep up with the loss of blood, the faster that very blood was
spilt in loss. I remember looking
distinctly down at the floor of the cage in confusion over where all the blood
was coming from until it dawned on me that the tide-pool of red was that of my
own making. From someplace deep within
and foreign, an alien being seemed to yell in retaliation at the horror of it
all in a voice I didn’t recognize as my own.
“Who on earth is screaming that way? Can’t someone make her stop?” As soon as my brain spoke the words, I
realized the screaming child was me. I
felt stupefied. “What would my brothers
think of me if they were here?” I
chastised myself.
I felt icy and sick to my stomach at one point and
wondered about it. “Why do I seem so
cold?” I remember thinking.
“Hey, I can see right above these people’s heads.” Drawn to the scene myself, I began to look
down. …
The line of demarcation between life and death, it would seem, is not as
distinct a boundary as we would like to think or been brought up to believe.
*From pages 358-359
Then in a rush of suddenness, the world came to a
standstill and seemed to freeze into stone…. The yelling stopped, the pain
stopped, even the air ceased to move. In
just one shake of an hourglass, the wind in the trees stirred no more and in
wonderment all things became still.
Flashes, sounds,
sensations of smell, taste, and touch all came flooding through the last
vestiges of what was my conscious reason.
Places I’d been and places I’d go reeled through my mind with
fast-forward, lightning speed. Past,
present, and future seem to fuse into one another; their lines of distinction
merging into one single, endless loop, and thread of continuity. Faces appeared, with some familiar and dear,
while others were not. Life scenes of a
time-ago past replayed themselves in haunting memory and distinction with no
detail spared my youth or level of innocence.
One of the most memorable scenes my mind recalls
experiencing was how my spirit seemed to be slingshot back in time to a day
when the contours of a younger earth must have been like before modern man
changed its landscape and natural world forever. There wasn’t a building or road in sight. I could see flocks of birds swirling past me
in the air to whatever destination their migratory instincts silently pointed
them to go, without there being a single thing to stop them or smog or plane to
deviate their path. It was the loveliest
sensation in the world to know that their routes were clear. These winged creatures had not the burdens of
man. They knew their destiny. There wasn’t an ounce of friction, doubt,
question, or confusion in any form to impede their inquisitiveness and the
heights they could reach. And my spirit
rejoiced with them. For in that moment
neither did I anymore.
It wasn’t our minds that could bring us peace. It was through our instincts and the
listening to the fates of our bodies that mankind could acquire that state of
being. I couldn’t entertain a more
beautiful release from the troubles of the human race knowing that. I was to be mistaken. What I would behold next and below me, was a
sight even more spectacular and breathtaking to captivate my senses.
As if to tell me a story of her own, the earth suddenly
began to tremor and shake as a thundering mass of hooves moving in unison in a
shadowy wave across the face of a prairie, rich with the greenery of field
grasses was humming the same life tune. … Matter was no longer matter, and sight and
sound no longer stood apart. From any
angle of focus, their energy fields could be seen everywhere with no bands of
color or variety exactly alike as far as I could tell. My level of awareness couldn’t grasp the
concept at first. What had they in
common? But then off fell another layer
of me and, instead of realizing less, my senses began to see more….
*From pages 363-367-5, 367
To what level or far outside ring my soul traveled to, I
cannot tell you, as no one ever comes back from the furthest point! I can only relate the facts as I draw them
forward from the core memories of my past and from within the experience level
itself. Just as we begin at our moment
of conception as nothing greater than a single cell and nucleonic mass, so do
we revert to at time of death. We hold everything that is we, yet are nothing. We are, yet we are not. A grain, a seed, a speck; which within its
confines lies all the material blueprints for the creation of a complete
physical body to house our soul and spirit.
The most accurate description I can give is simply this: What we
are born to be, and become on earth, is merely a transitional state before
reverting to the inert vacuum of after life - and life after.
This awareness that there is such a force of presence to
which we can internally look to within the expanses of our universal galaxies,
is a knowledge that I have drawn from and lived by, ever since. It did not throw out a hand and introduce
itself as being God, mind you.
Did I nevertheless define it as a Higher Power? Well, let me put it this way, it sure was higher, more divine, and grander than me…!
My sojourn into the pockets of spiritual bliss would not
last as it were. No sooner had I grown
accustomed to my new state of being would I be slowly dragged back into the
heavier and heavier layers of becoming a physical being again. It was as though an invisible hand was
forcibly pushing me down into the direction of my body again. As in the first leg of my journey outward
into the beyond, my consciousness was again flooded with more staccato scenes,
sounds, and insight in this phase of re-entry.
Thu-thump, Thu-thump….
You guessed it; my Eagle’s heartbeat welcoming me back
home to the land of the living. Sounds
which could be no other than a human heart beat, wrapped itself
around images of a person that is he.
The song of his living heart the serenade that would beckon my soul to
stay the traveler, not give up, and to stop my struggle from rejoining myself. I knew then the two of us would not meet
until a much later junction in life. No,
a million sentences could never do justice to what my spirit went through and
the gratitude for life acquired since; only in my verses do I come close.
* From pages 378-380
I know there will be people who will feel I’m some kind of
lunatic or spiritual quack. What else is
new? From the onset of time, people have
always held the tendency to resist a new body of knowledge that suggests there
is more to our universe and species than what meets the eye or that they have
heard about. Ask Galileo, constructer of
the first astronomical telescope and discover of the Milky Way and planet
Jupiter. My task is a cake walk compared
to his. Now, there’s a man who had a
tough class of people to enlighten beyond anything I’ll ever face. His world turned on him! Faced with the science-killing mentality of
the Inquisition of Rome in 1633, he was forced to recant his beliefs and
findings or be labeled a heretic. Do you
know what they did to heretics back then…?
(Ugh!!) I’m a lucky woman, indeed. Whatever controversy I will face doesn’t
matter. When the Science of Truth and Honesty is behind every word, you know it’s
only a matter of time before people make the same discovery.
Now that I seem to have weathered the worst of my fates, I
can distance myself enough to realize that all I was shown, and since have
lived with, was not meant to torment me.
If anything, the effects always bolstered me when I fell, healed me when
I felt lost and frayed, and gave something to look forward to when all hope
seemed lost. Skeptics forever ask me why
my memories do not include a heavy dwelling on my past, as is the norm. What collective past had I to reflect upon in
the time allowed before death as merely a child…? I might have been naughty, a little bit on
the wild side and stubborn, but as my mother would tell you with a twinkle in
her eye, these are not grievous enough acts for anyone to be contrite
about…. But take the lesson to heart
won’t you? So too, will your own deeds
and conscience determine the degree of peace and serenity to be had (or not),
when you realize your final moments in the narrowing window of your life.
Death is not an instantaneous event where one minute you
are completely aware, and the next second you aren’t and eliminated to an
absolute nothing. There is a
transitional stage our existence goes through where both our higher
consciousness and our moral conscience are subjected to looking upon themselves
in the stripped-down form of only ourselves.
So here I am all of 34, years later finding my soul flying
free once more with the sharing of all these chapters. And if I’m ever asked if all the harrowing
trials along my journey and second pass at life have been worth it all, I will
with humble, grateful joy reply: “Yes – In the process of living through all
those fire pits of mankind’s destructive, thoughtless ways, so did I discover
the powers of thought, soul, and sincere emotion within my physical body. Out of chaos, there came my stillness and
reason to smile.”
But my wings grow weary now and I wish to land, and simply
find a nice rock to sit on while I contemplate the name of the shadowed form
rounding the corner of my day. He’s
there, and perhaps even has a more profound odyssey to tell than mine on how he
got to the same spot. I look forward to
listening. There’s so much to learn
within the spaces of our words and from within the corridors of our silences…. Won’t you try it, too?
Four
(Heart, Body, Mind, and Soul)
I’ve walked, I’ve ran, I’ve fallen upon
I’ve
lived through the storms my whole life has held
I’ve jumped and faced, and been
driven down
And tasted the tears my own soul has bled
But I’ve lived a life filled with
moments of light
Not a mystery unsolved or experience wasted
And there the reasons why I still
will my heart
To keep on listening to the truths it believes in
I’ve sung, I’ve written, I’ve spoken out loud
I’ve screamed in defiance from the depths of myself
I’ve climbed and soared, only to
be shot down
And mourned the losses my mother’s body made
But I’ve absorbed as well, with
wonder and awe
The miracles of love my arms have been graced
Teaching me more than ever
required back
That these sacrifices were my growth, enrichment and privilege
I’ve had, I’ve lost, possessions I’ve owned
Yet twice upon endings, stripped clean from my hands
I’ve joined in unions, only to be
let down
And know the facelessness of owning no name
But I’ve evolved on crests only
marriage can bring
That deepest of experiences that teaches the most
For the greatest possessions and
wisdom I’ve earned
Are the depths I’ve acquired from commitments fulfilled
I’ve listened, observed, I’ve read the profound
I’ve shuddered in terror as my blood spilled in death
I’ve been battered, betrayed, and
shamefully held down
And questioned in confusion why forced to exist
But so has there been goodness
along with the pain
And seen mankind’s wonders and nature’s creations
The totality of my experiences and
all yet I pray
Why with the fire of hope…
My
soul keeps on singing
By Leedee M.
Thank
you for all of your time spent reading these excerpts from my book “Flights…” - I hope you have
enjoyed my work and that in its small way it enriched your day. The last two poems featured in this section
represent not only the ending of the manuscript but mark the end of this site,
as well. Please see: Contact Leedee
for any correspondence or manuscript request.
And Purchase Works for either E-book.
If you would like to get more acquainted with me
see: About the Author.
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