For a moment, forget all the ancient scriptures transferred orally, then written in archaic languages, then mistranslated and misunderstood for thousands of years. Forget the New Age shelf at the chain bookstore filled with channelled wisdom from archangels and spiritual helpers. Forget the human priests that have used religion as an excuse to charge Galileo with heresy, spark crusades, call for jihad, rob, rape, abuse, plunder, and exploit.

For a moment, look at the first-hand revelations from people who have died, conversed with the infinite, and returned.

Scientific Evidence of Soul Survival

Despite there being non-survival explanations for some Near Death Experiences (NDEs), there are many cases that, after applying Occam’s razor, suggest a person’s unique self-aware essense survives physical death.

Some of the best evidence comes from people who have NDEs while they are brain dead, people born blind who can see during an NDE, and the corroborating testimony of small children who have NDEs.

So what did the people who had these NDEs discover?

Life Facilitates Rapid Learning

The spirit world may be our classroom, but the physical world is our lab. Call it soul growth. Here, we can more clearly experience cause and effect and practice what we’ve learned.

It’s easy to express love instead of hate in the spirit world where all is known. However, feeling love for a teenager who just cut us off in traffic lets us practice what we’ve learned. Physical life gives us truth practice and experience.

Life Is an Adventure

For the same reason people love video games and roller coasters, souls love to incarnate in the physical world. It’s the perfect mix of entertainment and risk. Think of life like a novel. Some people prefer soap operas, some people prefer war stories, and others prefer Stephen King nightmares. Editors who know good stories know they always involve conflict, so…whichever life story a person chooses to live out, there will more than likely be conflict. Conflict makes a good story—and a good life adventure—exciting.

People Choose Their Journey

Another revelation NDE experiencers often discover is that, before they were born, they chose their overall life journey. With help from spiritual masters, their current lives were meticulously planned for the lessons that would best benefit their soul’s growth. The perfect parents, birthplace, accidents, relationships, triumphs, and disasters were chosen to facilitate these lessons.

Some have likened the chosen life journey to a river—although the course of the river is set, the path a drop of water takes down the river can vary wildly. It may spend more time than needed in a whirlpool, float along in the shade of a leaf, travel fast through the rapids, travel along the slimy bottom, or skim down the river in the sun near the surface. Although the major course is mapped out, a person’s attitude, reactions, and choices define the journey.

Time Only Exists in the Physical World

Past, present, and future all exist simultaneously outside the physical world. Again, it’s like a book. When you hold a book, you can hold the complete story in your hands. But when you dive in and start reading the book, you experience past and future. Even if you already knew the story, reading a good book is worthwhile. According to NDE experiencers, space and time are only part of the physical world, and were created for our learning and enjoyment. Without time, there’d be no learning patience, practicing perseverence, or reveling in anticipation of the future. After all, half the fun of celebrating Christmas is having to wait for it to get here!

Everyone and Everything Is God

The universe is God’s dream. God is light and energy. Light and energy make up every particle (E=mc²). Everything that is IS a subset of God, Yahweh, I AM. God is the largest superset of everything that is. A person’s individual experience is a subset of God’s experience. God is a superset of all experience, and all matter, and thereby contains all knowledge. At least, that’s what they say…

There are many more revelations from NDE experiences. Kevin Williams has done a great job of organizing more NDE information at his site here: Near-death Experiences.

Read More: NDE, God, religion, life, soul, survival, near-death experience

Hope (Visions of Whitefeather) is based on the ideas of Willy Whitefeather, a Cherokee storyteller, healer, and survivalist. The eight-minute film, directed by Catherine Margerin, combines animation with live action to take us on a transfixing journey through human existence, and offers a message of hope for the future.

Go to IMDB

Try watching it with your morning cup of coffee…great way to ease into the day.

Read More: war, friends, video, art, animation, Cherokee, Willy Whitefeather, Hope

A musical genius of Jay Greenberg’s caliber hasn’t made an appearance on the planet since before Edison invented the phonograph.

Sam Zyman, a teacher at Julliard for 19 years, says, “We are talking about a prodigy of the level of the greatest prodigies in history, when it comes to composition. “I am talking about the likes of Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Saint-Sa�ns. This is an absolute fact. This is objective. This is not a subjective opinion. “Jay could be sitting here, and he could be composing right now. He could finish a piano sonata before our eyes in probably 25 minutes. And it would be a great piece.”

In 1991, Jay Greenberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut. When he was two, without anyone’s knowledge of him ever having seen a cello, Jay started drawing pictures of the instrument.

He also started writing the word “cello” and asking for a cello by name (all the reincarnation enthusiasts, say “oooohhhhh” and “aaaahhhh” here… ;-) ) So, his mother took him to a music store. When confronted with the smallest cello they had in stock, Jay put the bow to the strings and began playing. “I was like, ‘How do you know how to do this?’” his mom remembers. Some readers may recall that at seven, Mozart picked up a violin and played it like a professional, even though he�d never had a lesson. (Other readers will recall that the title of this post is The Next Mozart. Pretty clever, huh? Hehehahaaa heehehahehahaa…) Anyway, by the age of eleven, Jay was at Juilliard studying music theory with third-year college students. By thirteen, he completed his fifth symphony—more than many excellent composers complete in a lifetime.

Jay’s hearing is more sensitive than the average human, and he says compositions flow into his head, fully written, playing like an orchestra.

Sometimes, three channels of music are playing in his head simultaneously…sort of like when Elvis watched three football games on three networks in the TV room at Graceland. Currently, 14-year-old Jay’s Symphony No. 5, recorded at Abbey Road Studios by the London Symphony Orchestra, is available on Sony BMG Masterworks CD.

Oh, and be sure to check out Jay’s description of this symphony as it relates to mathematics, perpetual motion, and “the three facets of the human psyche according to Freudian theory.” You can read it in the “note from Jay” section here: www.jaygreenbergmusic.com.

If you’re like me (just a so-so average run-of-the-mill genius :-P), after reading his note, you’ll swear you’re an idiot and you’ll go have a beer and watch South Park reruns.

Read More: Jay Greenberg, Julliard, Mozart, cello, symphony, composition, orchestra, Abbey Road, Elvis, Graceland, South Park

I’ve had this painting finished for some time. A local gallery put it on their wall for awhile, but I’m just now uploading an image to the online showcase. Nobody bought it, and I’m sort of glad; I don’t part with paintings easy.

I think if my output was higher, I wouldn’t miss a particular painting so much. But, I only paint about one canvas a year—usually on a frozen-puddle day between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, or on that first spring weekend that’s ripe for jacking up the windows and venting the house early with music, a pitcher of margaritas, and the reeking perfume of neighbors trimming yards and lighting grills. Sometimes I’m geared to paint an entire one-man show’s worth of work, but by the time that first one’s finished, it’s out of my system. I’m definitely in the Beethoven camp.

See, several years ago I started lumping artists into two categories: Beethovens or Mozarts. First a little history…

Mozart died short of 35, but he wrote a ton of works: operas, concertos, and a whopping 41 (actually, more…) symphonies. Little Wolfgang was banging the ivories at three, composing at four, and performing by five. When he was six years old, the little tyke could tear up the piano blindfolded with his hands crossed while whistling at the girls. At seven, he picked up a violin and played it like a professional, even though he’d never had a lesson.

Mozart’s music runs along playfully, like a happy stream, like a mountain brook that I guess was constantly running through his head, just waiting for the diminutive bastard to reach in and draw out a pailful of magic whenever he felt like it.

Beethoven, on the other hand, wrote a lot of smaller works and nine symphonies. Ludwig had talent, but he was in his teens before getting paid as a musician. By the time he was 28, he was going deaf. For a six-year stretch in his forties, he hardly wrote anything, and then he came out of a creative slump and wrote his greatest works without being able to hear the music.

His compositions reflect his work ethic: thousands of back-breaking, granite notes hoisted one-by-one into idyllic position, until slowly, by sheer will and faith, a colossal timeless monument emerges. Joyful joyful, we adore thee, indeed!

So, let’s compare: Mozart artists are prolific, they pull masterpieces out of their hats almost as afterthoughts–maybe even while watching TV or talking on the phone—they live and breathe genius. How many books has Stephen King written? How many albums has Prince put out, frequently playing all the instruments and singing all the harmonies himself? How man thousands of paintings, prints, sculptures and ceramics did Pablo Picasso create? These people—they got Mozart.

Beethoven artists have to grind it out with a lot of sweat and effort. They have to go off by themselves and concentrate and it may take years to get a work as perfect as the vision in their head that haunts them, and sometimes it drives them mad and makes them antisocial until they can fully express the dream that’s driving them. Take Harper Lee, who’s only published one book in her life, but To Kill a Mockingbird is on everybody’s 20th century Top 100 Novels list.

So, if you’re you’re a Beethoven, don’t envy the Mozarts, and if you’re a Mozart, don’t envy the Beethovens. Both were geniuses in their own way, and everybody’s a genius at something.

P.S. If you need a refresher to remember how Mozart’s 40th symphony goes (you’ll know it when you hear it…) just press play:

Read More: Mozart, Beethoven, art, creativity, 40th Symphony, Stephen King, Picasso, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Posted by HDotW’s spiritual contributor, Master Bubba Jin-Ho

When I was little boy in grade one, two brother live next to grandparent’s house, cross over and play Army. We imitate GI lingo jingo and place we see in WWII in John Wayne motion picture and dream the warfare.

Eighty acre grandfather own, perfect playground for Army. Like children in evil axis nation play kill the American persons, we made perfect our play to ambush and explode up German and Japanese peoples.

Our mission always go something like this: go silent across the stream and ascend the timber bluff. If without shot or capture we still living to top of bluff, we move secretly in surroundings of the cow pond to cross over bean field and reach woodland the two, where enemy ammunition storage is good and we executing the explosion.

The death was very much fun. It was great temptation getting shot by enemy while ascending the bluff, because then we slide and roll through leaves to the bottom, and bleed to the death and watch puffy white clouds sail far over the most high trembling leaf, and know the girl at school I hope loves me will sure feel terrible at funeral and sees how much guts I have (unless it was the closed casket…hand grenades and such…)

But death before too quick drew the anger too much, because there was not much of sympathy three person boys will be able to call up which the sympathy is limited for…uh…defunctness.

At most time, we every one buy the farm in the difficult sun beat the middle of bean field, our existence is detected, and stumble to the edge of the woodland, our each one body riddled with bullets, but only sufficient plasma in the vein to pull the pin and cast the grenade into the virtual ammunition dump of storage.

Like the Jesus, we love to die to save the world. We play it over and over, every time.

Raw Fish and Rice

After one great fun round of entirely obliteration, the more older brother said: If the United States will not had won the WWII, we will be eating all raw fish and the rice every one day. We agreed the whole: if the Japanese had win, everyday must eat the raw fish and the rice and horrible existence it might have was.

I grow up. In 1990s I discover the sushi. The nigirlzushi. The makizushi. The nori and the wasabi.

Today, I regard the raw fish and the rice the expectation make the mouth waters. Inside the city, not below ten the Asia restaurants major. The more have sushi buffet. Even the more grocery deli sell has the take-and-go sushi. Everywhere, the sushi.

This fate me thinks: American persons have been predestination to eat the raw fish and the rice, by win the WWII or by lose the WWII — no make matter which. We fated to eat the raw fish and the rice. Predestination.

The Map

Some things will be the definite to happen and you can put in bank. Pour a cup of water on the Missouri River, it takes the swing right at the Mississippi River, and the water chase the flow into the Gulf of the Mexico, but is even very interested to watch the travel and feel the vision how it goes there.

When we play Army, we boys the three predestination to go on mission, cross the stream, ascend the bluff, cross the bean field, and bought the barn. Like paradox, we take the plan journey with free will too, every step.

I think, before we get the born, we make the road map…our path of the life…we travel the predestination path, and free will choosing our emotion and reaction to twist and turn inside the full charting path, and free will choose what thing we learn from the trip. The equation no free will OR predestination, but free will AND predestination.

Peace, Love, Happy,
Master Bubba Jin-Ho