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"I give you process and you have to discover the answers. I am a guide, not a teacher. I may suggest some things that don't work for you, but that's ok.

"And let go. You keep trying too hard. You want it so bad you try too hard to get it right. But all you have to do is seek with who and what you are. Just like a body must heal itself even with the best drugs, you must heal yourself even with the best guidance. You know that but have forgotten in your pain. You think you want a simple answer but you know you must find your own." (10/15/95 - G#1)

"In times of joy a person needs to have an awareness of the pains of life. The balance of the two makes life whole. So, too, with grief. If one lives only in grief she is not really living. Living is a balancing act; life is in the middle. So you seek balance to be truly alive. The spirit heals by living, not by thinking. Try one new thing and see how it feels.

"The future is beyond your veil of tears, and you have to risk the tears to move through them and live again. So try living more expansively and see if the answers don't come. But more likely the questions will fade in the face of life. Now you talk." (10/16/95 - G#2)

"Dreams occur all the time, but we only pay attention when we sleep. But if we blot out some of them, we disturb the whole system. And remember, just because you avoid remembering dreams, that doesn't mean they stop, or stop affecting you. They just become an unrecognized force in your life--a force distorted in your life, things out of balance. You can avoid dealing with them, but you can't avoid them. You dream, you forget, but you are still affected. Forgetting serves conscious needs, but perverts--or subverts--other needs.

"It's all a package deal. People who avoid stairs and grumble about ramps never get to see from mountain tops. In avoiding pain you also diminish the capacity for joy. The range of emotions is smaller but you know you want more on one side. Hey sweetie, you can't have one without the other. So avoiding keeps you from feeling bad, but it also keeps you from feeling good--and that feels bad." (10/18/95 - G#3)

"It is true in life, people look the best who are spiritually fit and developed and whole. And everyone can be. It just takes a few more lives for some. Sometimes people miss the next lesson, and then also lose some of what they had. But generally it can be onward and upward.

"People who take their own lives lose all they've learned in that life, and more--except young people. They were not ready to learn yet, but fell through the web of meaning. They start over again soon. But those who had begun to learn lose that and more. Fear is the barrier to love and growth and cocreativity but despair is a wall around fear, even--so high one does not even see fears to be overcome.

"The person who despairs is beyond emotions of growth. In fact, if you can make a desperate person afraid, he or she will save him or herself. A desperate person in a house, about to take a bottle of pills, will run out and save themselves if that house catches fire." (11/19/95 - G#4)

"Let's just be thankful for life, memories, love, entity, the persistence of reality. Hold onto the permanent and mourn the transient and find a balance. There is nothing unilateral about life. At its best it is a rich mixture, and that has its own dimension. Learn to weave and see the tapestry, not the threads." (11/22/95 - G#5)

"I am guiding and training and learning... and dancing and partying. I am training other guides in certain areas of my vast expertise (humility). And insights into diversity issues--how to help people find their own identities... hard for mixed people, like me. I teach. And how to make people feel welcome.

"The future hangs on the ability to see diversity as good. The living have to learn this." (11/23/95 - G#6)

"I will be there for you, but you have to do the work. I only guide and help. Focus on it, not me, then I can be even clearer to you.

"Grief--that's your growing edge, the area where you will need to change if you are to grow and fulfill yourself. Transform the grief into action. I will be with you, but I can't do it for you." (12/7/95 - G#7)

"I am glad I went the way I did... POOF. I know you suffer, but at least you don't suffer over my suffering. In your sleep is best. Dreams become your new reality without seams. People who die like that arrive here not 'dazed and confused.' I got out before the bad parts, but remember how tired I was. People who die in their sleep often can go dancing or bowling or whatever the first night." (12/28/95 - G#8)

"We have our own losses here, in a way. When people move on, we miss them and grieve. They don't die, they live. And we know we can keep track of them, but some forget about us and stop being aware--so it feels like they are really gone. Saying 'hello' and 'goodbye' will be eternal until all souls tune into their immortality and continuity.

"People often picture afterlife as a time and place of continuity. But it can't be, unless life is seen as whole. You change your venue, but not your being. The being changes in all states; you can change while alive and dead. Death is not a fulfillment, just another setting for being. Think about that." (12/28/95 - G#9)

"We sort of like grieve, but only when we lose touch. One moment you are talking with a spirit, and the next they are a person who won't admit we all exist... pisser. That's the story of the afterlife. People learn and die, and seem to know. But when they go back, they often show they had not learned, only adapted--outward show, not inner knowledge. It takes many times for most people to get it. So, what we feel is loss and disappointment.

"When someone moves on with knowledge we rejoice, because we know we are now connected forever." (12/30/95 - G#10)

"Letting go is hard, but you have to do it if you want to progress and be whole. And if we talk about a relationship, it must be two-sided. Bonds must be loosened if I am to fulfill my future. We can't find our common future held together too tightly from the past." (2/2/96 - G#11)

"Memory serves both well and ill. When it contains life it is good, but when it restrains life it is not. Keep me alive in you, but don't let that keep you from living. You don't have to choose one or the other, but can have both. So think of things as part of a whole, not as separate elements that compete for your allegiance and love." (2/6/96 - G#12)

"I would rather that you found meaning through my death instead of emptiness. Don't hurt for what I went through, but be glad for what we share. I'm ok, but not if you aren't ok. Hey, entities rise to their collective well-being. So don't cry for me, Argentina.

"Why should treasures of the moment tarnish delights of the past. Some people spend their lives waiting for the future, and others spend their lives mourning for the past. But all we've got right now is right now, and focusing elsewhere diminishes now." (2/29/96 - G#13)

"Your life is different, and different in ways you would not choose, but it is now your reality and so you have to come to terms with it. You struggle with accepting it and, if that is true for you and me, then everything else is up for reassessment. Troubling thought so troubling dreams. But hey, just because one thing changes doesn't mean the rest do. Trust me on this. You still control your life.

"You're feeling out of control and 'what's next?' Waiting for the other shoes to drop, but they won't unless you focus on them. Let go of a lot, don't worry about tomorrow, read the Zorba quote, and trust that all will be well in the fullness of time.

"Try some intentional dreaming. Picture us as separate but spiritually united. How many different ways can you dream of? Find the new connection so you can let go of the old." (3/25/96 - G#14)

"It's A-ok with me if you forget me once in awhile. We will connect as we need to. Don't fashion your lives about remembering me but about living. Then you will remember me in everything you do.

"I will always be with you, but more as a gentle whisper of night and a dawn's first breath and the midday's hot power than as a picture captured in time, made yellow and faded with age. If I go away from you I am not gone from you, and if you go away from me you are not gone from me. For such is the nature of souls bound as an entity." (4/2/96 - G#15)

"You can't and shouldn't live without a past. If you give up things you'd rather forget, you also give up what you should remember.

"Just as it is not good to live only in the present, it is not good to be obsessed with the past. Balance. Live today, remembering yesterday, and dreaming of tomorrow. But don't live by yesterday's losses or tomorrow's promises. How can you learn and remember if you live like you forget. If your memories are just painful you have not yet learned. Do you want to throw out the past. No. Ok, then integrate it into life. Don't measure everything by what was, but also value what was. Ponder this." (4/14/96 - G#16)

"What do you think all those past lives are for. To learn and remember. When we move on in synthesis with our true entity, we carry all the past with us. The future can't be the future without a past. The present contains the future and the past. It is the living interface with past and future. It is momentary; it is instantaneous; it has no substance of its own. By the time you speak of the present it is already passed.

"If you were to truly live in the now, in the moment, you would have nothing to say, do, or feel. It would be like trying to stand at the border between two countries. Can you do that and not hang out into one or both. And if you could you would be like Dana's Man Without a Country--all dressed up and nowhere to be. So learn to balance.

"Grief is the recognition that we have to surrender to the past something we wish were in the present and future. When we find balance we can stop grieving because then we will lose no more. We keep grieving until we can do that.

"Let go of what belongs in the past and take on what will inform the future. For example, in my life with you there is a lot that belongs in memory and some that belongs in presence and some that belongs in visions. Getting them straight is the challenge. Then you can remember fondly but not sadly all those cute things I did, and you will keep alive the things of substance I was about, and you can share the dreams of the future I had. That's all.

"You still have those things if you put them in perspective. In fact if you don't, you don't have them; they have you, and you are stopped on your own journey... which, in this case, is our journey as well. So get with the program." (4/15/96 - G#17)

"Would I choose this, no. But it chose me, and you either accept and grow or fight and stop growing. But I do look back and wish." (4/22/96 - G#18)

"Sometimes we choose the eternal ache rather than endure the wrenching pain. We don't know our capacity for endurance so we choose a lower level of pain that lasts longer, allowing ourselves only so much because we fear dealing with more. It can be scary. That's why it is called 'the pit'... The Pit of Despair." (4/28/96 - G#19)

"Not everyone ends up here. Those who did not allow for this possibility may just spend a time between and then appear again as someone new, and they don't get the benefit of memories or this transition. You only get what you have faith in. We don't see many Hindus; they just like to reincarnate. And as for scientific atheists, well... zippo, zilch, nada, the big fat void. In other words not many surprises, except for first-timers. They believe everything." (5/12/96 - G#20)

"The way we get your messages here is not memos. We just know. The information becomes part of our reality. Like when you live guys say 'O, I just knew you had called.' Remember, before answering machines, you would call someone and they would think you were returning their call because they tried you earlier. It just is." (6/3/96 - G#21)

"I guide the quick and the dead. You are one of the quick. I thought I was dealing only with the dead but it slowly dawned on me otherwise. From where I sit... or stand... or whatever, I can't always differentiate at first--except for the tea lady.

"First-timers are always dead, but with long-timers life and death are not so definite. A spirit reaches out, remembering one of 10 or 20 lives, and who knows if it is lively. Who cares. What does it matter. So I guide as needed and wanted." (8/23/96 - G#22)

"If you focus on could-have-beens, that dishonors what I did do. If we count the losses we will miss out on all the opportunities for life. That's why I keep wanting to minimize details about my death. Every moment dealing with that shit is one moment less spent on what was valuable in my life. I just wish people would stop asking about the collision and start asking how I made so many friends in so many ethnic groups. Ask about how this nigger got to Yale. Find out how a UU without cash becomes infamous in Roslyn High School. And discover the secrets for getting free drinks. Just send $4.99 to: EBB, Judgment City, 00000.

"But seriously, here's a message for everybody: Focus on life. Death will take care of itself. You see, JC wasn't talking about salvation; he was talking about living without focusing on death. He was saying, 'If you live like I tell you, you will and can stop worrying about death.' Not because he could beat death or make death ok, but because living like that makes life the focus. Whew, enough." (9/13/96 - G#23)

"About my guiding the living, I guess they need or ask for help. I identify with Clarence. It's like a voice in one's psychic ear--inspiration. I plant the seed of ideas, but they have to cultivate them. Most wither in the mind; some grow later. Most people are too connected to their previous thoughts to open themselves to these. For you this felt like protection, for others it feels like genius or others like aha, and for many like duh.

"I try to draw big circles--show people the view over their walls. So that's what I do. Most words go unheard, but the few received make the world alive with potential. I have to tell you that the reception rate is less than 3%. But get this: At the next level of complexity it's 23%--what we call a quantum leap. We invented that term here and whispered to Ballisario (he wrote the show)." (9/16/96 - G#24)

"Our tasks in life do not have to do with finding our path, but rather with finding our way on our path. We are already there, but will we proceed. Many have been left behind when they stood still when the path moved on. 'And I chose neither, and both paths in the wood disappeared.' Bob forgot to write down that stanza." (12/20/96 - G#25)

"Get ready. I have lots to say, ha. First of all, here's some thoughts on immortality. There ain't none. People die. In fact, entities of greater and lesser complexity also die, so to speak. Immortality is an attempt to deny the essence of a vital, throbbing reality. To be immortal means one is not mortal, which means one does not live nor learn, and certainly does not remember. To stop the inevitable is unnatural... not to mention stupid. 'Go with the flow' would be a good slogan.

"So if you don't have immortality, then what. Then you focus on moving on, not staying put. You get focused on being and becoming yourself as fully as possible. To get caught worrying about being remembered is to miss the secret. So when we speak of stopping the ravages of time and death, we are really speaking of raping life. Awesome stuff, she said modestly." (2/28/97 - G#26)

"Spiritualists have a dogma, too. To them it's about getting beyond this realm, or your realm. Clarence wants to get his wings so he can move on, but sometimes we move on by staying around. If we ultimately move on through complex connection then why be so fixated on disconnection.

"Some of it is the basic human problem with ambiguity: is it real or Memorex; is she alive or dead. Life after death is not connected to life, they say. They say we bring people and spirits back from the dead. Ha. You gotta be gone to come back." (3/10/97 - G#27)

"Here's what I know. Things occur in sequence. If you don't learn and remember what you need, you don't go anywhere by being impatient. We have the dimensions all fucked up. When we are concerned about time we think about delays, etc.; but what we should be concerned with is depth of learning, not time. People waste 99% of their lives waiting for something while life itself is going by. So, when we are impatient it's almost like being blind and insensitive. We are caught in the wrong dimension. So says the Moo.

"More complex forms don't. Less complex forms only know present, but without the capacity for larger understandings. To know time is both a blessing and a curse. Without it no history, but with it so much focus on the future.

"You have stuff to do in this life; it's not just a waiting room to see me. But if you treat it that way you will end up with nada. You will miss this life and all its learnings, and you'll be that much further from our eventual entitisation. If you live this life fully you will get it and us, too (Babette's general). The future is very close. Stop worrying about it. It's the present that should absorb you. You saw the movie. The little details--all of life in Our Town. Hey, if you don't live when you are alive you'll really be dead when you're dead... not like moi. So yell at me and shout in frustration, but be alive and focused on life. Now for the Dead Tabernacle Choir: ahhhmen, hhhamen, alleluia." (3/29/97 - G#28)

"I am much more than any physical image of me. The 'me' of your vision and memory are not the 'me' of me now. Look, I've given up much of the physical world. I will, sooner or later, be back looking much different. I am moving towards that existence. I am not physical any longer... or not yet. In the chrysalis do you see worm or butterfly. Neither. Learn and remember.

"You see, this is the problem. If you think life is one go-around then everybody stays as they were; but at what age? And if we go around a lot (as we do) who are we physically--then, now, or later. The constantly changing and evolving constant in our lives is spiritual, not physical. So try to see me in your heart and soul, not your mind and eyes." (4/18/97 - G#29)

"People who believe in heaven find this is like heaven. But as we shed physical reality for spiritual, we stop seeing it as 'like' anything. And those who are more filled and filed, milled and molded, full and fulfilled, see this as like Earth and not like Earth. If you were hung up on similarities there'd be plenty. If you gave that up there wouldn't be any because that would not be the way of your perception. The old Eskimo story: Eskimos, not having visual training, could not see movies--but they had hundreds of names for snow. It's all perception. At first it seems more familiar, but then you stop looking for familiar.

"When I say 'dance' I mean I experience the same psychic feelings I did when I danced. It's a metaphor of huge proportions. Here's an image: go into a dark, quiet room and try to picture a great sunset or hear the birds sing. The best you will get is a feeling of sunset and birds." (4/24/97 - G#30)

"So now you will learn what is important about a life. Going through what is left behind helps identify what abides. When you have thrown 40% away you'll know 40%, etc., until at last you'll need nothing kept to have it all. Ponder that. The only person who truly cherishes money is one without any. A sick person knows health. But no, stupid people don't know wisdom.

"They are just things, but you don't feel that. So, someday you won't need or want them, and the feeling will still remain. Just a little big thought for the evening. Another of the tough lessons." (4/24/97 - G#31)

"Even if you do forget, you don't lose me. You'll keep the essence even if you forget the details. I'm not in the details, never was. Look, Commandment 1 and 2: 'Thou shalt have no one before me,' and 'Thou shalt not try to contain me in any physical form.' Not about Yahweh; about all of us. I'm not anyone else, and I'm not my stuff and stuffies. You may feel me there and over time those feelings may fade, but I don't. You can't have all of the present if you are stuck in the past." (5/3/97 - G#32)

"It's time to trade realities for memories. Closure is good; without it there will be no new openings. But if you can see through the tears and pain, and to let go of the past as detail, then the future becomes possible.

"I have promises to keep and miles to go before I'm complete. I can't get where I need to go stopping in places past; never was one to do so. Keep in touch with those I love as they are becoming, not as they were. Anything less keeps me and them from learning. What we need now is the future 'us's' and not the old ones... except as symbols of continuity.

"In an ultimate sense, when we look back to what was we move our spiritual evolution backwards; too much, and you've disassembled yourself... ugh. Hey guys, onward and forward." (5/24/97 - G#33)

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