Fireside Chat II - Writing by Moonlight

 

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

                      Hath had elsewhere its setting,

                         And cometh from afar:

                      Not in entire forgetfulness,

                      And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

                      From God, who is our home:"

Those words are, of course, by William Wordsworth, from his great poem "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," and I would stress these:

"But trailing clouds of glory do we come"

I have had many "intimations of immortality" in the form of flashes of remembrance. I'll not dwell on the details here, since I've written about them elsewhere. The result, though, is that, although I accept the inevitability of physical death, I know that there is no death of the spirit.

I remember my taking on of this body in the womb. I have knowledge, including medical knowledge and languages, that I would not be expected to have, based only on the  experiences of this lifetime. I can remember other experiences in Polynesia, China, Japan, and both Western and Central Europe.

I have an affinity to both Polynesian and Jewish culture, though these could hardly be more different, and especially to the latter.

I do not think that my rather small amount of physical Jewish ancestry is sufficient to explain the deep resonance with Judaism that I feel. In other words, this is something that I believe I brought into this life from previous lives.

The same is true of the Polynesian influence, which perhaps manifests in my aversion to clothing.

A corollary of all this is that I believe in the spirit world, and spirit communication. Nor does it stop with believing: I put the belief into practice. I have communicated with many who have passed, including my mother, my uncle Charles, former girlfriends, and several old friends who have gone on. I have also done this with others, and with relatives of others. In most cases, the communications involved, at some point, details that I could not otherwise have known.

For this and other reasons, I frequently find myself writing in the dark at night, in a notebook that I keep beside the bed. The writing usually happens between 1am and 5am, centering perhaps on 3am. I am left-handed, and although I try to write in level lines, they always slant or curve steeply downward.

These forays onto the astral plane and other sources of inspiration do cause me to lose some sleep. Sometimes, though, there are things more important than sleep.

(series to be continued)

Text and image Copyright © 2023 by Donald C. Traxler.