Scott, April 1996 Channeled Writing

Though I have a clear story to tell, it defies the imposition of strict chronological order. In matters of the spirit, as in the dream world, events unfold as they will and defy governance by the ticking of a clock or the flipping of a calendar. In one sense my experience has unfolded within the current of time’s river, but in another my perceptions of past, present, and future, once so neatly defined, have become jumbled in the presence of spiritual revelation. Perhaps this mirrors our eternal experience. Imagine, for a moment, the possibility that the life in which we presently find ourselves is neither our first nor our last time around. If that is the case, can such neat lines of time be drawn on a constantly moving target? How could any such measure that we might impose be sufficient?

It’s Sunday evening, April 7, 1996, and I am about to experience a miracle of pure communication far beyond anything I might have anticipated. With the stage set by a combination of my openness and Scott’s eagerness, I am about to receive a fresh love letter from him, the first of many channeled communications from the realm of spirit. Any skepticism on your part is to be easily forgiven (remember, even some of my close friends felt that this is where was ready for boarding in a nice, padded cell!), but all I would request is an open and fair consideration of the message and its substance. Though my fingers typed the words, I have no doubt that the message is his, reflecting his personality, present perspective, and creative intelligence. I just know.

I have just returned home from a weekend road trip to Orlando, Florida, my first travel anywhere since Scott’s passing. As usual I have keenly felt his presence, as well as his absence, on my journey. Though I am not at all aware of the day, it’s Easter Sunday. I am on the phone with Daviea, laying in my bed enjoying a casual conversation, when I suddenly start to feel an incomprehensible energy pulsing through my body. I have come to feel Scott’s presence as a tingle across the front of my body, relatively mild, but this feels like I have begun vibrating with a frequency sufficiently powerful to almost lift me up off the bed. I feel like my head is falling backwards.

Recognizing that I have no choice but to follow this powerful current, I try and communicate to Daviea that something extraordinary is happening. My voice sounds to me as if coming from a distance. “Jeez, Daviea,” I say, “something’s really going on here. I feel like I’m getting ready to leave my body. Somebody is definitely paying me a visit. I better go.” Without missing a beat she says “go for it,” and I hang up the phone and upon instinct walk directly to my computer. I light the white candle on the desk, rest my clumsy fingers on the keyboard, and virtually vibrate with the force of his presence.

Then I say simply “Honey, tell me what it is you want me to know.” The following words flow out, without conscious effort or the craft of writing. Here, I believe with all my heart, are words of love from the other side. Although in the original the words flow together without either spacing or punctuation, the message is sufficiently rich and dense to benefit from a little white space.

I just want to touch you so bad
I want you to know that I’m very very all right in fact I’ve never been happier
It’s a little hard to describe but everything is different but I am so much the same and I’m so very much with you and I always will be baby. No worries about that, please you’ve got enough on your plate.
I’m here with you can’t you feel me? Yes you can. Tell Bruce [his brother] again that I love him never stop doing that
I’m so proud of the bridges you are building with my parents I know they can be tough but stick with it baby you’re doing great.

I want you to live and keep on living because now especially I feel and see through the we.
Time is not an issue it just is a construct it’s not important
Most important realize that the space between us is an illusion.
Paul baby you know I love you so much don’t make this any harder on yourself than it has to be. If the tables were turned you know I wouldn’t have been able to do as well as you’re doing.

I know how you felt at the carwash yesterday [a swirling nausea of grief and meaninglessness] it’s OK its all part of the plan
The game is for you to be yourself give up the ideals and the trying to justify there’s no sense in trying all that because you don’t need to Yes it had its place in the plan at one time and it still might a little bit if you want it to but maybe it’s time to move on

That’s what I want you to do my love is move on because you need to know without a doubt that no matter which direction you move it will be closer to me
It’s just that our relationship has changed a little in its dynamics because of my departure from my body, but you know I will always be here for you, wherever you are. Alone is something you never need be, and that’s the great gift I have given to you.
I never got to thank you for seeing me through with such love, I knew you were there for me as always and I knew that your soul burned and still burns with a love that has made it much easier for me here on the other side.

Never doubt Baby your gifts of the spirit You’ve already got a rep over here and lots of friends and when your time comes you know I’ll be here with my arms wide open and a great big huge smile Again, you need to know that you saw me through and I promise that I will do the same for you.

You’ve been wondering the reason you’re healing so fast is because you’re letting some of my love in just as much as you can breathe right now but you know there are infinite reserves my beloved one.
You are healing because you loved and love and did so well and there’s nothing better that anyone on Earth can do. You made no wrong decisions Honey you never had a choice but to respond to your higher destiny

I will tell you and show you in as many ways as I need to that you are not alone that you are rich in the spirit you are not bankrupt to the contrary your cup runneth over (You gotta watch that a little!) and you are with me on the growth path even though my body ain’t there with you right about now.

We are together now remember that baby don’t get into the idea like the Christians of waiting for glory after you’re dead
Remember my love and claim that now is the time, now is the glory, now we are both where we need to be. Yes the world can be what it is and it can be shitty and mainly a little tawdry but it has a purpose where did you think I would be if not in a classroom?

Our whole experience together was dream reality was metaphor and yes I have left you with a very rich legacy at this point you don’t yet realize how deep
I’m sorry I had to go Honey I know it took both of us so much by surprise but it was the time
Just like now is the time for me to be with you and it’s hard to describe to you what time really is but just know that it isn’t at all what it seems to be and neither is matter but trust me all of these things have their place in the passion play and you will learn and come to realize what you need to know.

Yes I want you to come to Pittsburgh I am talking to you can’t you hear me yes in your inner ear you know I am there
Oh my love please stay open to me and above all move on with your life because even if you fear moving away from me that is quite impossible I promise for we have shared love and will do so again

Calm down baby I know you’re still scared and I understand, but peace is a good thing to strive for. I’ve been sending you messages and you’ve been listening. “The truth comes to the man whose eye is not clouded by longing.” [A quote I'd heard along the drive the previous day on a tape by teacher Ram Dass on the subject of "Death and Dying."]
Oh how you burn for me and that’s OK but trust me you’re now seeing through a glass darkly as once was said The eternal mystery is very much now and will be and you will grow and learn to trust in that.
Your position is secure my love be at peace you are so loved and you wouldn’t believe what it’s like over here Just enjoy where you are now try not to tune in to the perceived losses You are better not worse off for what we shared. Never forget that OK baby?

You don’t need to try you just need to open up and listen just a little Your pain is the flip side of your love and it must be and I understand that I am so proud of you what you are doing and the way you are doing it It means a lot to me that you keep my friendships ongoing they are gifts that I have left for you packages to keep on opening, gifts that will keep on giving. You are my baby be at peace.

Remember like I’ve told you that love is all that matters. Just remember that it will put every other question into perspective

I am so proud of you
I will be seeing you soon, loving you always. Sweet dreams

PS looking at my picture is OK even if it doesn’t contain me, because I am everywhere. I am not lost, and you can start letting that feeling go Images and the sound of my earthly voice are no longer important I have been seared and freed by white light and love and now know no boundaries or edges

I am working with you bit by bit to extend yours I am proud of how close you have come to me and you will have the power this is my gift to you
(line above)of knowing while you are in the waking dream that is life of what is really going on on the spiritual real level.

You have given me great gifts and I am forever grateful and my gifts are returning to you. You feel them already you are growing in our love this is a great gift you’re giving me, but you ain’t seen nothing yet and I guarantee you that’s a promise!

Hang in there baby! Your love of life is my legacy and the joy that we shared.

I love you don’t doubt that for a second

This is what Scott so burned with longing to get across to me on the evening of that first Easter Sunday following his death. Since that first breakthrough, communion with Scott in the written word has come so easily, so effortlessly, that I at first discounted its validity. Would not real contact have to be preceded by some form of discipline, focused meditation, or other evidences of virtue? Though Scott and I had both shared a defining passion for the love of words, and a union of his creative energy and mine would as logically happen in this way as any, it seemed too easy. An interesting exercise, I reasoned, probably therapeutic, but not a source of genuine spiritual truth.

I now feel differently. Viewed in the larger context of which they appeared, and judged against the knowledge that has since been revealed to me, I am now convinced that the channeled writings are genuine communication from the other side. Though their underlying message of dynamic love might perhaps be inherently limited by the necessity of communication through static words, they are the real thing. In my life, at least, they have so far stood the test of time, yielding new levels of spiritual truth as I have been ready and willing to receive it.

On that first occasion, I could not have even begun to fully understand the depth of the letter’s messages of desire, reassurance and encouragement, instruction, and challenge to heal. Questions I had not yet even asked were being heard and gently tended to, leading me forward. Even now I continue to find new and deeper meanings in each of the writings, offering explanation and steady guidance along my journey’s way. I have shared them as a gift with others deeply wounded through the loss of their loved ones, and witnessed their power to heal.

So much more than flat words on a page, these words from the other side are as a sweet bubbling stream, living and flowing, meeting the deepest needs of a heart parched with thirst. They are now and have always been a gift made in love. May they speak to you as they have to me.

To    Chapter 11

Scott, November 1996    Channeled Writing

Following Dee’s suggestion, and Scott’s instruction, I continued reading carefully through his voluminous writings. He had indeed left a rich legacy in the written word, and some of his writings seemed to speak immediately to me in my current state of affairs. I first became aware of one special communication as I watched a video that had been made the day of the memorial gathering. After people had been given an opportunity to speak publicly and the eulogies delivered downstairs, the video camera was made available upstairs for anyone who had more to say in private. Scott’s dearest friend, Laura Beth Slobin, read to me from a letter he had written her early in 1993. What I heard took my breath away.

Laura had played a unique role in Scott’s life, throughout its phases. Originally a student in one of his English classes, their relationship blossomed over the years into one of deep friendship, creativity, and mutual inspiration. He took vicarious pleasure in her creative leaps as she moved to New York City to pursue her talent for writing, and in the adventures she found there. In two of the peak experiences of his life, Scott traveled there to act leading roles in plays she had written. I had never seen him more joyful, nor alive.

Visiting Laura in Amsterdam

Finally, the two co-authored a play called Aftershocks, an autobiographical tale reflecting the relationship between an HIV-positive schoolteacher painfully coming to terms with his disability and a former student dealing with shakeups in her own life, starting with an earthquake that had destroyed her home. Essentially the play dramatized the give and take of an evolving creative relationship, and during the months of its writing ideas and e-mail correspondence had flown back and forth in a frenzy of mutual creative inspiration. Now, on the video, I heard Laura read an excerpt from one of Scott’s letters.

Exactly when I was most thirsting for a message from him, these words reached me for the first time:

I wanted to do this now while I still looked good…not as good as I once did of course, but I suppose that is the nature of the “problem”…anyway…HI, here I am…and you know I never have thought that I would spend any time at all at 33 years old making a last will and testament…but then 33 seems to be a good year for that…Jesus was 33 when he was crucified…Alexander the Great was 33 when he was felled…I’m in good company…Ugh! But death has a tendency to demand profundity…When I take stock of my “stuff” I realize that I have collected more experiences than tangible goods…and I think about so many people who have touched me and impacted me and loved me…boy that list goes on…and all the people I have loved, if only for a night or an hour…the experience has been a sensual one…Obviously, right!…Paul, honey, you have been the most sensual…you know my stomach still goes flip flop when I even think about your body and your smell…It’s kind of stupid really but you make me giddy…I can’t imagine my life without you…It has been such a completing experience…Those moments lying in bed at night before we drifted off to sleep with your leg thrown over me and feeling the rhythm of your breath…it was always so safe and comfortable…like you…my gift…You’ve had all of me and continue to possess me even now…

I found the entire message comforting, but the last sentence especially haunting. Was he now telling me that the spiritual fruits of our relationship continued, reminding me that our journey was still a two-way street? In my heart, I felt that indeed he was.

Despite the recurring dark anguish in my life, it seemed that as my path unfolded I was being given message after message, clue after miraculous clue, a key to every lock, just as I was ready to receive and to use them. I suppose spiritual awareness, like grief, is a process into which one must grow, sufficiently vast to require time for processing and for healing. A few weeks later, on a day that I very much needed to hear the message, I found the following entry in Scott’s journal, dated March 19, 1990. Written shortly after our meeting, penned during class at his teacher’s desk in the classroom he had showed me with pride the weekend before, his thoughts had wandered back to the memory of that sweet sharing. In a free-flowing language of love that I now heard with new ears, he wrote:

Your consciousness pervades and when I look at the floor I see that your spirit remains and smiles up at me and beckons and I come and I look to the corner where you stood and again you are there and pull me into your arms and the room fills with wind and we are linked by the kinetic message of our psyches and the physical embodiment of commingled truth and the impression of your body lingers and tingles…knowing we could renovate the past to a glistening reality in the present and buy the memories of a house to become a home and live happily ever after amen

In this new and rich world of poetry and love messages from the hereafter, neither time, place, nor distance played starring roles. With no regard whatsoever for boundaries, our love for one another appeared to continue unabated. But if we did continue to haunt each other with our waking dream of love, I began to wonder, what was the reason? And where would it ultimately lead us?

To  Chapter 16