A Reason and Time for Every Matter Under Heaven… Even for a Samurai Warrior

A Reason and Time for Every Matter Under Heaven… Even for a Samurai Warrior

#10… This is my tenth article on life, death, grief, and signs.  To make sense of the journey I propose for you, I recommend that you, please, step through my articles in order.  They may be found at https://thegrieftoolbox.com/users/jamiepaulwesseler    I make this recommendation only because it is the journey this non-believer made to arrive where I am today in my faith as to what happens to us when we die. 

Thank you for making the journey with me.

Three weeks have passed as I have struggled to find my way through this tenth message.  I am not sure why.  Most likely, it is because I am writing about discoveries of others I have not personally experienced.  To be authoritative and assured, that archaeologist in me must be satisfied with the personal experiences of the facts.  However, I do not want to fail to advise you of the exciting possibilities before I have concluded my personal research. 

While sorting through items I brought with me on our move from Indiana to North Carolina, I got a nudge from our deceased son, Patrick, when I found a note in his handwriting scribbled on the back of a draft page of my novel, Where The Birds Go When It Rains.  His message provides me instruction on how to resolve some computer problem we were having at the time.  The content is unimportant; it is his handwriting… knowing he spent time writing it…. a reminder we participated together in this life that makes me hold on to that message yet today… probably until the day I die.

But maybe on the back side of the note comes the impetus from this event, possibly from Patrick, which got me motivated to write this tenth entry.  My first drafts of the novel contained subtitles of quotes for each chapter -- a plan that was scrapped by my trusted editor and me as being a distraction from the novel’s tale if I left the verses in the final version.

I have confessed that I am not a religious man… I wish I were.  I envy those of you who are.  But a lady I worked with many years ago brought me a memorial pamphlet from a funeral of a child that so resonated with me… one I’m sure you have read and heard many times.  To my religion anemic soul, I latched onto it for that vanquished subtitle:

“For everything there is a reason and time for every matter under Heaven:  a time to be born and a time to die.”                                                                                 Ecclesiastes 3:13

Again, this was on the scrapped piece of paper containing the note from my son.  The message fits perfectly with the topic of this writing.

Brian L. Weiss, M.D., got my attention with his book, Many Lives, Many Masters.  (Thank goodness, Susan, my wife, read it first to “prepare” me for its subject matter.  As I have stated in previous blogs, Susan and her mother, Jackie, are instrumental in my spiritual growth, which their presence and influence as teachers in my life fundamental elements of our topic.)  Dr. Weiss was led to his unexpected and personally challenging life “classroom” through a patient of his.  Having not responded to traditional methods of psychological treatment, the Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mound Sinai Medical Center in Miami tried hypnosis for his patient, Catherine.  Nothing in his background had prepared him for the journey he was to make throughout her treatment and therapy.  Catherine spoke of past-life experiences with exceptional detail and became a conduit for messages to a surprised Brian Weiss from “highly evolved spirit entities.”  (This amateur archaeologist will need to hear the tapes Dr. Weiss has of these sessions for my proof, which he and others testify of their existence.  Plus, Dr. Weiss has gone on to replicate this phenomenon with other patients… so too, I will need to investigate.)

Catherine lived through… 28 lifetimes, if I remember the number correctly.  With detail, she recalled being both male and female, rich and poor, young and old, of many races, living and going through the process of dying (near death experiences) for each and every life… and many times she “rested” in a sort of soul recovery room from the life experiences she had learned in that last lived life.  At those moments, Dr. Weiss reported and recorded the messages of the Masters spoken through Catherine’s soul to him.  I will share some of those messages from the Masters with you here:

“Patience and timing…everything comes when it must come.  A life cannot be rushed, cannot be worked on a schedule as many people want it to be.  We must accept what comes to us at a given time, and not ask for more.  But life is endless, so we never die; we were never really born.  We just pass through different phases.  There is no end.  Humans have many dimensions.  But time is not as we see time, but rather in lessons that are learned.”

“Our task is to learn, to become God-like through knowledge.  We know so little… By knowledge we approach God, and then we can rest.  Then we come back to teach and help others.”

“Yes, we choose when we will come into our physical state and when we will leave.  We know when we have accomplished what we were sent down here to accomplish.  We know when the time is up, and you will accept your death.  For you know that you can get nothing more out of this lifetime.  When you have time, when you have had the time to rest and re-energize your soul, you are allowed to choose your re-entry back into the physical state.  Those people who hesitate, who are not sure of their return here, they might lose the chance that was given them, a chance to fulfill what they must when they’re in physical state.’

“Everybody’s path is basically the same.  We all must learn certain attitudes while we’re in physical state.  Some of us are quicker to accept them than others.  Charity, hope, faith, love…we must all know these things and know them well.  It’s not just one hope and one faith and one love – so many things feed into each one of these.  There are so many ways to demonstrate them.  And yet we’ve only tapped into a little bit of each one…’

“People of the religious orders have come closer than any of us have because they’ve taken these vows of chastity (of being pure, not of the sexual sense, or so it is assessed in meaning) and obedience.  They’ve given up so much without asking for anything in return.  The rest of us continue to ask for rewards – rewards and justifications for our behavior… when there are no rewards, rewards that we want.  The reward is in doing, but doing without expecting anything… doing unselfishly … you will be guided in time.  You will be guided… in time.  When you accomplish what you have been sent here to accomplish, then your life will be ended.  But, not before then.  You have much before then.  You have much time ahead of you… much time.  (The last few sentences were in response to Dr. Weiss asking one of the Masters what and how he was to go forward with the messages and teachings he was receiving through his patient when she “rested” between lives and became the instrument through which the Masters delivered their messages.)

Dear Reader…  I cannot testify to what this man has to tell us, but because of my life experiences so far, including what I will share with you about my experience and divine life opportunity in my next entry, I am compelled to say that we are blessed to have Dr. Brian Weiss as a messenger.  If you have done as I have asked and read about near death experiences, taken what I have shared with you about my personal experiences with those who have gone through an NDE and believed my butterfly signs, then I ask that you read and assess the works of Brian Weiss, M.D., with equal opportunity for learning and acceptance.  If we fail to take heed of these messages/signs, we may miss out on “the time (our time) for every matter under Heaven.” 

In closing, did you take note of, “Then we come back to teach and help others”?  During these past three weeks of indecision on how to write this article, I had one of my “Patrick” dreams.  Please understand, while I absolutely love (and loved) our son, I had a lot of struggles accepting his lessons in life.  The man with a huge heart (and his family) fought his alcoholism, which brought its challenges to his life (our lives) – his erratic behavior, lack of a consistent job, lack of money, lack of responsibility, lack of acknowledgement and the desire to overcome the disease.  I held on to an idealized view of the world … that my life, my family, my life’s destiny was exceptional and such a challenge as alcoholism was some sort of controllable ripple in the fabric of my life… in Patrick’s life, and somehow, I had screwed up in raising him… in doing something that brought the alcohol curse onto him.

But, there was something different about Patrick’s soul.  He seemed to be “an old soul.”  You’ve heard the term… of someone who has lived before and brought with them previous life knowledge and experience… maybe something from which the rest of us are to take note… something where, as the Masters have told Dr. Weiss that, “then we come back to teach and help others.”… And I shed a tear at such thoughts when I think of my son.

The week before Patrick had his fatal accident, I had come to a realization of our son as I had hoped for; he, too, seemed to sense that I had acquired a new level of life understanding… and that he was my teacher.  I had never felt more hope, more direction in our relationship:  If alcoholism was to be our life challenge, he and I had more advanced lessons to learn from it and we were on-board with one another to “go there.”  A week later he died… 

I sensed then (as I believe I do have a gift for some eternal senses, but I so hate to admit that), as I do now, that Patrick, my Teacher, had accomplished his mission for the growth of my soul – we had truly arrived at a most incredible understanding… or rather I had.  And knowing of what I had read from the Masters’ messages, I can tell you that I had a warped sense of sick/sad anticipation that we, Patrick and I, would not live out together those next levels of my personal growth…  I had this eerie premonition he was about to die, but I wrote it off as being my overactive imagination and chastised myself for even letting that feeling, that sense of knowledge present itself.  The Teacher had done what he was to do here:  “When you accomplish what you have been sent here to accomplish, then your life will be ended. “

Many Lives, Many Masters will tell you that we often times travel in packs as spirits throughout all of our learning lifetimes… that we are one another’s teachers.  When Patrick comes to me in dreams, he does so in a meeting environment… where I never really get to chat with him face-to-face… but rather as if he is instructing me on some life happening from within the room, but I never really get to see him… although I know he is there.  He seems to be a member of some supreme council….  I know… it sounds as if I am crazy.  No proof exists that I am not.

Patrick did not “fit in” in this lifetime… or so it seemed – marching to the beat of “his own drummer” as described by an elementary school teacher… as noted by most everyone who knew him… an old soul... a soul treading water, passing time in this river of life... having returned to live a rougher than normal life to teach me (and others, if they were aware or even took note) that we are not in control…  that we may believe we are, but the lesson is to be learned that are here to help others, to expand our capabilities to love, and to find acceptance of others.  Big man, big heart, big interests… in the unordinary (swords, Samurai warriors, eastern philosophies)… a bored spirit, possibly having lived a life as one of those warriors or eastern philosophers in lives past… with a mission he had committed to complete for the benefit of many… of which I was one.

Maybe I’m to go on and help others come to the realization I had come to with a better understanding of alcoholism and the souls it impacts…  Maybe I’m to write about life and death… this thing none of us can escape, by gathering together the clues uncovered by many and putting them together in a manner useful to others.  Maybe I am here to give you, my fellow soul mates, what I have that is mine to share as I will do in next week’s article.

And what is Brian L. Weiss, M.D., to do with the crazy situation he has found himself in:  A very educated, respected man of his field subjected to what he knew could ruin his reputation and career as a stick-to-the-facts professional…. unless, of course, you are handed new, additional facts, and only you have been given the message to be shared?

Patrick, thank you.  I love you.  Never knew I could love a Samurai warrior, an ancient eastern philosopher.  I just wish your “time to die” exceeded mine… this time around… but maybe that is to be one of my life lessons, as I imagine hearing Patrick say:  “Some things you just aren’t in control of, Dad.  Live with it, accept it… because, ‘For everything there is a reason and time for every matter under Heaven:  a time to be born and a time to die’ regardless of your plan… our plans.  We’ll do this again someday.”

Count me in, Son.  Count me in.