OWNING AND SHIFTING YOUR BELIEFS:
THE POWER OF JOURNALING
As discussed in the Inner Guidance section of this website, our physical reality (day life) dream serves us as a loving mirror and a living picture of our inner reality -- our dominant thoughts, beliefs and emotional states. It is a dynamic picture that responds as we shift our inner reality. Beliefs are large bundles of thoughts that typically operate in the background of our lives, often at a subtle unconscious level. A single belief may influence hundreds or thousands of related thoughts. Gaining conscious awareness of our beliefs and shifting them in the direction of our preference is thus a powerful method for shifting the content of both our example (sleep state) dreams and our physical reality (day life) dream.
Journaling is my favorite tool for becoming more conscious of my beliefs. It is a core element of my lucid dream, dream yoga and reality shift practices. Over time, my journal has evolved into a very sturdy bridge between my physical reality (day life) dream and my example (sleep state) dreams, leading me to the knowledge that these seemingly separate areas of experience are part of a much vaster whole. Through journaling, I use the light of my consciousness to acknowledge or “own” a belief that was previously unconscious to me. Once I take ownership of a belief, I empower myself to shift both my belief and its related reality experience reflections.
Mohandas Gandhi expressed this idea very succinctly when he said: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." One of my metaphysical teachers elaborates the concept as follows:
"And when you know that physical reality is a mirror, a reflection, of your strongest beliefs, your strongest thoughts, what you believe is possible, most likely to occur, then you can use the outer mirror illusion reflection, as a guide line, a marker, a reminder, [of] what kind of thoughts you are having, what kind of definitions you are believing, what kind of concepts you are buying into. And you can use it as a feedback system to show you, whether or not you prefer to maintain those beliefs and those definitions. And if not, then to learn to change them and to see the outer reality reflection change along with the change within you." – Bashar (Darryl Anka), from workshop held in Las Vegas, NV, on August 1, 1998.
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While both my physical reality (day life) dream and my example (sleep state) dreams reflect my beliefs back to me, I’ve found that the journaling of my example (sleep state) dreams has been particularly helpful in assisting me to become consciously aware of beliefs that operate unconsciously during my day life. To provide some context for this metaphysical principle, below are discussions of four areas of belief shifting that have been very powerful for me.
Limited vs. Multi-Dimensional Beliefs About the Nature of Self
My example dreams have helped me to broaden my understanding of the nature of my true identity. I’ve used the term “Inner Self” throughout this website instead of “Soul”, in part because the phrase “Inner Self” is more suggestive of connectivity between the “physical” or “outer” me and the “nonphysical” or “inner” me. My Inner Self is not separate from me. It is just a broader, older, and wiser version of me. It is a collective version of perhaps the hundreds or thousands of personality expressions that make up my Inner Self. “Chris Cunniffe, living in South Carolina” is just one expression of this larger “me”.
My Inner Self (my broader identity), like your Inner Self, enjoys playing simultaneously within many parallel or alternative realities. This is hard to explain on an intellectual level, just like it is hard to explain to someone what a lemon tastes like if they have never tasted a lemon. But, through some of my example dreams, my Inner Self has given me a “taste” what it is like to simultaneously experience more than one reality. Here is a one of my favorite examples from my journal:
December 22, 2013
Dream 2 (7:07 AM). Dream within a dream scenario. In the first level dream, I'm in bed with Ann [my wife]. I'm experiencing a dream (second level) where I've been dating a guy. . . . There is the idea that he has been cheating on me. I have an awkward conversation with him in which I say that we need to “take a break” from dating. However, we both know that this really means that we are going to break up permanently. I feel like I needed to take this step. Otherwise, my sense is that he would have continued to just drift along without confronting the situation. While I'm having this conversation with the guy, I seem to have awareness that I'm also in bed with Ann. It does not feel like a lucid dream, however. Instead, I seem to have the perspective of someone who knowingly lives in both realities. As I'm talking with the guy in the second level dream, I wonder whether I'm waking up Ann beside me (in the level 1 dream). . . . At some point, the second level dream is over and I'm fully focused on the first level dream, with Ann beside me in bed. I tell Ann about my break-up conversation with the guy. Ann is interested in the details. Interestingly, however, I'm not describing this to her as a “dream”. Instead, it is like I'm describing an active part of my experience. It is as if the two realities are both ongoing and awareness crosses over between them. I then “wake up” from the first level dream and realize that my conversation with Ann was itself a dream. |
In Kenneth Kelzer’s autobiographical account, The Sun and The Shadow: My Experiment with Lucid Dreaming (1987), he describes an intense experience with six simultaneous lucid dreams:
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My modest experience of being simultaneously aware of two simultaneous dream/life experiences (three, if you include my current “waking life” experience) makes me more likely than most to accept Kelzer’s account as sincere and credible.
In many of my example dreams, I seem to be experiencing alternate versions of “Chris Cunniffe”. In other experiences, however, I am not “Chris Cunniffe” at all. I’ve had many dreams, for instance, where my dream-self is a woman. Finding a mirror in a dream can be very revealing! Here are two intriguing examples (both are non-lucid dreams):
August 20, 2012
Dream 1 (6:23 AM). . . . As I’m leaving the hotel, I walk in front of a mirror. I see my reflection. I have long dark hair and my facial features are Japanese. This shocks me at first. Then I seem to convince myself that I can actually recognize “myself” in the mirror. I seem to identify some of “my” facial features in the face I’m examining in the mirror. To justify the differences, I tell myself that I forgot that I had grown my hair long. |
March 2, 2013
Dream 5 (8:37 AM). . . . It feels like a college setting. I'm intending to send an email to a professor or advisor explaining why I've missed some classes. At one point, I look in a mirror. I see a younger guy. He is tall. His hair is very blonde. He has a hair style with bangs coming down over his forehead. Seeing “myself” with this appearance strikes me as odd, but I seem to accept that the person in the mirror is “me”. |
STRANGER IN THE MIRROR
The best movie depiction of this kind of “stranger in the mirror” experience that I’ve seen is from the reality-shaking movie Source Code (2011), staring Jake Gyllenhaal. Fast forward to 3:20 of this clip to jump ahead to the mirror scene.
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Just how broad is the scope of my Inner Self’s vast experiences and identities? Some of my example dreams suggest that my Inner Self has an expansive take on “foreign travel”. For example:
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Experiences like these also point toward what is really going on with the phenomenon that is typically referred to as “past lives”. Many of my metaphysical teachers, such as Seth (Jane Roberts) and Abraham (Esther Hicks), stress that the term “past lives” is a misnomer and that all of these lives actually occur simultaneously within the vast mind of the Inner Self. For the Inner Self, time is a highly malleable construct and all of these experiences take place simultaneously within the “spacious present” (to quote Seth). A life, with all of its many potential variations (thus validating the concept of “free will”), can be thought of as a “track of consciousness” (to use Kelzer’s term) that can be experienced in either a linear manner, as we experience our lives, or in a non-linear manner, as our lives are experienced by the Inner Self. I’m quite fond of the descriptive phrase that I picked up from Bashar (Darryl Anka) about the true nature of “past lives”. He calls them “simultaneous parallel incarnations” or “SPI”s.
I was once talking with my wife about this concept over dinner. We were sitting at a table in the middle of a sports pub. I suddenly realized an interesting element of synchronicity related to our discussion. I realized that the sports pub itself was a very good analogy for the perspective of the Inner Self. This sports pub probably had 25 TV screens and, scanning around the room, my physical brain could take in at least some content from all 25 TVs. Reflecting on this experience and my metaphysical studies, I realized that lucidity is infinitely scalable. The Inner Self can easily hold not just 2, 6 or 25, but hundreds or thousands of separate “tracks of consciousness” in its broad and lucid mind.
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Economic Beliefs: Surviving vs. Thriving
From the perspective of mass consciousness, there is tremendous collective momentum behind the belief that money is a limited resource and that a person must either “work hard” or “be lucky” in order to receive significant amounts of money. This is the case even though there are countless examples of people who effortlessly flow with money by following their excitement. A good example is depicted in the movie Straight Outta Compton (2015). One of the striking ideas that you come away with from the movie is just how quickly a bunch of young musicians shifted from being “poor” to being completely in the flow with money. There was certainly work involved with their financial success, but the flow of money became ridiculously out of proportion to the effort once they started expressing their excitement through their music.
From a “dream yoga” (life is a dream) perspective, money is just a symbolic reflection. Its symbolic meaning can vary from person to person. For most of us, it is a symbol of freedom. Money has no relation to effort or luck unless we buy into beliefs that say it is related to effort and luck. This raises an important general question to ask yourself about your beliefs:
Are you consciously choosing your beliefs?
Or, are you borrowing most of your beliefs from mass consciousness? |
I’ve come to understand from several of my metaphysical teachers that a shift in my beliefs needs to be grounded by a shift in my outward behavior. A few years ago, I identified one easy area where I could playfully shift my financial beliefs and behavior – the subject of tipping. If there is an infinite supply of money and it is only a dream symbol reflection, I reasoned, I should loosen my grip on it. Instead of carefully calculating a tip, I started to tip more frequently, more loosely, and more abundantly. One of the practices that I adopted was to always empty my pockets of loose money whenever I encountered tip jar or donation jar (for example, at a coffee shop or gas station). Early in this process, I had the following dream:
February 22, 2011 (Tuesday)
Dream 1. I am out with a group of people at a street with a collection of bars and restaurants. It is an urban area. I’m looking for some kind of special deal to get discounts up and down the street. I go into one restaurant. The hostess is busy and says they are not offering any discounts. I take a seat. Instead of food, I find myself munching on spare change I have in a cup. |
When I awoke and recalled this dream, I thought the scene where I was munching on spare change was absolutely hilarious. My Inner Self was having some fun with me! The message: “Your tipping practice is a good start, but why not think bigger.” This dream was pointing out that my routine shopping habits included using coupons, actively looking for discounts, and either delaying or accelerating purchases based upon whether the item was on sale or expected to become on sale in the future. These habits are, of course, quite common – so common, in fact, that I had not previously associated them as being part of any “belief system”. Upon reflection, however, I realized that these habits were borrowed from mass consciousness, as part of a belief in scarcity. I also realized that these borrowed beliefs and habits were inconsistent with the “money flow” vibration that I was seeking to foster. The dream was humorously encouraging me to think bigger about being in the flow of money, with my relatively minor change in tipping behavior being like “munching on spare change”. The dream caused me to think more broadly about my shopping habits in comparison to a very wealthy person. Does Bill Gates bring coupons to the supermarket? Does he accelerate or delay purchases based upon when items goes on sale? Does he pick a restaurant because it offers half-price appetizers during happy hour? Very likely not – the hassle would not be worth his time and he does not concern himself with saving small amounts of money.
FRANK SINATRA'S LEGENDARY TIP
Frank Sinatra was generally known as someone who tipped big. According to one legend (which may or may not be true), Sinatra was leaving a restaurant and asked the valet: “What’s the biggest tip that someone has ever given you?” The valet responds: “$100, Mr. Sinatra.” Not to be outdone, Sinatra hands the valet a $200 tip. He also asks: “Who tipped you $100?” The valet answers: “You did, Mr. Sinatra, last month.”
Several months later I had another example dream related to my financial life – this time more specifically about my real estate business. The dream featured one of my former law clients, a very wealthy real estate investor. For privacy reasons, I’ll call him “Andrew”. In physical reality, Andrew has a very calm and confident demeanor and I associate him with “thinking big”. He thinks thoughtfully and strategically about his large real estate investments. In the dream, however, he was depicted as running around frantically and getting very irritated and frustrated as he dealt with numerous small tasks. In one scene, for instance, he was changing the locks on a rental property after evicting a tenant (something that I had recently done myself in connection with my real estate business). He was shown as being so busy with minor tasks that he had to work from a truck, constantly moving around, instead of working from an office. He did not even have a stable home – instead, he lived in vacant rental properties and had to move every time he rented one.
This dream features two common dream elements that my Inner Self likes to employ: exaggeration and juxtaposition. In my physical reality life, I viewed Andrew as a role model of financial peace and abundance. But instead of vibrating and acting like him, I had been busying myself with small matters, just like the frantic version of Andrew portrayed in the dream. My behavior was not as extreme as the version of Andrew presented in the dream, but the dream got my attention by painting a cartoon-style exaggeration of my behavior. My journaling of this dream allowed me to become aware of what was previously an unconscious element of my belief system. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, I had “tightened my belt”, adopting from mass consciousness the belief that I needed to minimize expenditures on sign companies, property managers, bookkeepers, locksmiths etc. if I wanted my real estate business to “survive” through the economic recession that followed the financial crisis. After I “owned” this belief through conscious awareness, I decided to consciously shift it and to ground my new belief with changes in my behavior. I realized that I needed to start seeing myself as someone who thrives in real estate rather than someone who survives in real estate. To ground this shift in belief, I started delegating large numbers of minor tasks that I previously handled myself, giving me more time to focus on the projects that excited me the most which, eventually, came to include the writing of this website.
Political Beliefs: Strenuous Agitation vs. Inner Peace
My example dreams have also helped me to shift my beliefs about how my life is affected by political and governmental matters. During my early adult years, I was highly opinionated about political matters. As a college student, I published a weekly editorial about local and national issues in my college newspaper. I regarded myself as a libertarian oriented reformer. I perceived the political system in the United States as essentially broken due to its domination by “special interests”, resulting in widespread corruption and “government waste”. My ideas about political and economic reform constituted a major part of my self-identity.
As I moved into professional life, I had less time for politics, but my reform-minded political vibration was still quite active, even if in more of a background role. For many years I had framed portraits on my office wall of two of my political reform heroes – Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglass. Douglass, the former slave turned civil rights orator in the years leading up to and following the Civil War, was a lifelong advocate of political change and reform. A few weeks before his death in 1895, he was asked for the advice he would give to young reformers. He famously responded:
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As I began to adopt a “dream yoga” (life is a dream) perspective in my late 30s, however, I realized that I needed to revisit many of my vigorous opinions. My reasoning mind and my intuitive mind were reaching the same conclusion: if life is a dream, then our government and laws are merely a reflection of our individual and collective belief systems. If I vibrate out feelings of agitation, anger and disgust toward my government, then my personal interactions with the political system will “mirror back” to me more things to be agitated, angered and disgusted about. So, I started a process of softening the seriousness of my opinions. In private conversations, for example, I stopped trying to persuade others of my political views.
In addition to Paine and Douglass, one of my other prominent “reform” role models was Teddy Roosevelt. In an 1899 speech, one that once resonated strongly with me, Roosevelt famously advocated leading a “strenuous life”:
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If given the opportunity to rewrite these lines of Teddy Roosevelt’s speech today, I would offer something like this:
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of repetitious toil and effort, but the doctrine of the passionate life, the life of eagerness and enthusiasm, of excitement and synchronicity; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires the limited fruits of bitter labor, but to the man who does not shrink from examining his beliefs, from trusting his inner guidance, or from expressing the ecstatic joy of his Inner Self, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
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My example dreams started to reflect this shift in my vibration. In April of 2011, I dreamed about walking through a history museum that featured numerous pictures of Teddy Roosevelt (TR). The vibe of the dream was that of a dusty old museum that depicted things that were no longer relevant to me. This dream was easy for me to interpret. Whereas I previously resonated strongly with TR’s advocacy for leading a “strenuous life”, I now favored a life in which I followed my excitement and flowed confidently toward my goals and desires. Whereas I previously resonated strongly with TR’s hawkish and manipulative approach to foreign policy (“Speak softly but carry a big stick”), I now held a dovish or passive foreign policy perspective closer to Mohandas Gandhi (“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”) or perhaps Wayne Dyer (“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change”). Whereas I previously resonated strongly with TR’s “trust-busting” economic reform policies, I now perceived such assertive economic intervention as being rooted in a belief in economic scarcity. This was directly at odds with one of my new core beliefs – that every person is capable of shifting their inner reality toward beliefs and feelings of economic abundance, and that their outer reality has no choice but to reflect back the inner change.
My old political reform vibration has deep roots. This makes sense, given that political reform thoughts are very active in mass consciousness and they had been highly active in my vibration for about two decades. My example dreams will periodically show me a specific area where my old vibration continues to operate unconsciously – enabling me to make a further shift toward my preferred beliefs. The following dream is a good example:
September 17, 2011
Dream 1. I’m watching a Fox News broadcast. The story angle is that a man has abused a government benefit program. Then they have commentators reacting to the story. The first commentator is highly critical. . . . [Another commentator] is not judgmental about the person in the story – rather, he is nonchalant and seems to think it is no big deal. |
This dream painted a picture of two unreconciled aspects of my personality. The first commentator represented the part of me that continued to feel anger and disgust whenever I learned about someone who was “abusing the system”. This could be a person who knowingly files a false insurance claim or a person who steals someone else’s identity to apply for a government benefit program. The vibration of mass consciousness (represented in this dream by the news media) assumes that anger and disgust are appropriate responses to such abuses of the public trust. The second commentator represented my new belief that such incidents were merely dreamlike reflections of the public’s expectations and that such incidents should be expected to continue so long as the vibration of mass consciousness continued to include anger and disgust about such abuses. This dream assisted me in becoming more consciously aware of the fact that my old “political reform” vibration was still active within me – at least with respect to the “abuse of benefits” issue presented in the dream. After acknowledging or “owning” this conflict within me, I was then free to consciously shift further in the direction of my new, and preferred, beliefs.
Beliefs about Personal Safety and “Death”
Want to ruin a good cocktail party conversation? It’s easy – just start talking about “death”. It is an unpopular topic because the prevailing beliefs of mass consciousness include a deep fear of “death”. This is partly why I’ve saved “death” for the end of this discussion about beliefs. I didn’t want to lose you in the first paragraph! I frequently use the word “transition” in place of “death”, because I’ve come to know absolutely that “death” is an illusion. Once this is fully grasped, you can talk about the topic quite cheerfully. One of my teachers, Abraham (Esther Hicks), likes to use the playful term “croaking” as a further means of softening the heaviness of our mass consciousness perception of “death”. Whether we call it “death”, “transition”, or “croaking”, the topic is a fairly comfortable one for me, for a number of reasons:
• My father transitioned when I was thirteen and so I started contemplating the topic early in my life.
• Over the years, I’ve read countless books about mediumship, near-death experiences, and hypnosis recall of “past lives” (including “past” deaths). • In 2008, I experienced authentic communication with several of my own transitioned relatives through a medium (George Anderson) and I’ve personally witnessed many convincing demonstrations of the art of mediumship by other mediums. • I’ve had numerous conversations (some lucid and some non-lucid) with transitioned relatives and friends in my dreams. • My most insightful teachers are “dead” non-physical beings who deliver their teachings in the form of channeled wisdom. |
The fear of death is at the root of all other fears. If you are able to ease your fear of death, you simultaneously ease just above every other fear. When you ease fears, it becomes easier and easier to practice being in states of relaxed concentration and to more frequently experience lucid awareness.
Many people feel very anxious on airplanes, especially when turbulent air conditions are encountered. This relates, at least in part, to the fact that they do not feel like they are in “control” of the situation. Whereas statistics show that a person is much more likely to die in a car as compared to a plane, most people feel more in control of their personal safety when they are driving a car – perhaps because they have their hands directly on the physical steering wheel. When viewed from the life-as-dream perspective of the Inner Self, however, we always have access to the steering wheel of our physical reality dream– our dominant thoughts, beliefs and emotions. The more that we practice converting unconscious beliefs and emotions that we do not prefer into conscious beliefs and emotions that we do prefer, the greater our ability to steer our physical reality dream. From this higher perspective, we also know that this lifetime is just one of many hundreds or thousands of interesting and exciting “dream lives” that are part of our broader experience.
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My example dreams have served as fantastic tools for deepening my knowing that death is an illusion. If you want to fully enjoy your next hundred “dream life” experiences with less anxiety than your last hundred, it may serve you to get accustomed to “dying” – so you don’t let the fear of death ruin a good time living. I think this is why I’ve been giving good old “death” some practice runs.
A few years ago, I “died” in a plane crash. Afterwards, I took in a concert with some of my friends from the plane. Then I took some notes:
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November 21, 2013
Dream 3 (3:15 AM). I’m a passenger in a small plane. My seat is on the right side and I have a view out the window on the right side. The pilot is flying in a haphazard manner and low to the ground. I see a tree outside the window and it looks like the right wing of the plane is on course to strike the tree. I then watch as the wing strikes the tree. The plane lurches. The pilot manages to recover control but then starts to lose control again. I realize that we are going to crash and that I’m going to "die". However, I’m completely serene and confident that this death experience will only be a transition. I find myself feeling curious about what it will be like to experience this transition. I decide that I want to raise my vibration as I go through this transition so that I can be as fully aware as possible. I intentionally relax and put a huge smile on my face. My perspective shifts and I’m watching the plane from a good distance behind (maybe 50 to 100 yards) and from more or less ground level. I watch as the plane tumbles end over end. The plane looks something like a Concord plane. Based on the speed of the plane and the tumbling crash, I feel sure that everyone on the plane (myself included) will “die”. My visual screen then becomes filled with what looks like static interference. I hear a weird noise. It is sort of a voice but it is warped and not intelligible. I then suddenly find myself sitting in a concert hall. I’m there with three friends. There is one guy beside me (to my left) and then other two people sitting in the row right behind us. The guy sitting beside me was on the plane with me. I twist around to my left and backwards to pose a question. The three of them lean in to hear me. I’m keeping my voice down because the concert is in progress. I ask the guy sitting behind me if the guy sitting beside me and I were in a plane crash. He confirms that we were in a plane crash. The dream fades and I wake up. |
I also once “died” by means of an odd execution method similar to a firing squad. Afterwards, I hung out with my wife in a non-physical dimension. Then I took some notes:
November 4, 2012
Dream 1 (2:27 AM). Dream with out-of-body experiences. The setting is outdoors. There is the idea that a contest is being held to see if someone will receive a pardon. A winner is selected. I’m among two of us (at least) not granted a pardon. Things progress quickly and it is like we are being lined up for execution. I’m quite serene about this. I think that this will be a good opportunity to experience my survival of consciousness after “death”. There is a person who acts as the executioner. He turns into something of a spinning fireball and shoots off fireball bullets. As these start hitting me, I don’t feel any pain. I feel myself separate from my body. The scene shifts and I find myself with Ann [my wife] in a hotel room (or it feels like one). It is not clear if Ann was part of the “execution” scene or not, but I understand that her consciousness has left her body and that we are both “dead”. Although this is my understanding, the setting is not really different from physical reality (i.e. we are in what appears to be a hotel room). I can tell that Ann has forgotten that she is now non-physical. I remind her. She laughs heartily about how quickly she forgot – as if she got hypnotized back into a physical behavior pattern. The scene shifts and I’m outside of a building with some others. I’m standing by a window. I know that a friend of mine is inside the building, on the other side of the window. Although not fully “lucid”, I understand that I am out of my body. I decide to see if I can float through the window. I do this easily and find myself in the room. . . . When I get inside the room, my friend is able to see me floating above him. He smiles. Possibly he starts floating as well? Then someone else floats into the room from the outside. |
I’ve noticed an interesting, but unsurprising to me, pattern in the various accounts of “near death experiences” that I’ve read. The death experience is frequently described as being analogous to waking up from a dream. In her moving book, Dying to Be Me (2012), Anita Moorjani “died” after a long struggle with cancer and entered a non-physical realm. She describes:
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When neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, author of Proof of Heaven (2012), “died” from bacterial meningitis, he entered a similar realm, and later described it as follows:
It has been source of immense excitement for me to follow a path of becoming more acclimated to the ecstatic and multi-dimensional perspective of my Inner Self – including the deepening of my knowing that he/she (“me”) never dies!
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