Who am I? Well, in this current life I am Raymond Lewis Haggard (born May 2, 1932, in Needles, CA), father to two children, husband to their mother, Dolores Brigham, and then husband to my second wife, Maureen McNelly Doyle. I say my current life because I have become convinced by extensive evidence that reincarnation is a fact of our existence. We exist as conscious, spiritual entities separate from our physical bodies. I know this for certain because I left my body for a short time when I was knocked unconscious in a motor scooter accident in 1957, looking down at my inert body from a few feet above. I later read about several other similar incidents experienced by many other people.
Where are we? We know for sure what city we are in, what state we live in, and what country that state is a part of. We also know we are on a planet called Earth, which is part of a solar system, where this planet orbits around a minor star at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy in a Universe which contains billions of such galaxies! Earth is a globe which is eight thousand miles in diameter and takes one year to orbit the star (Sun) that is ninety-three million miles away. If that isn't enough to boggle your mind, consider this: The nearest star in our galaxy is four light years (distance light travels in four years at 186,000 miles per second) away from our Sun. The last part of this knowledge has been available to us humans for only a few hundred years.
When am I writing this post? It is now the middle of the year 2014 (82 years since I started this lifetime). I am old enough now to know that my opinions and philosophies do not fit in with other people's; nor do I expect them to. I simply put them forth in the next couple of paragraphs to help my progeny better understand me.
What is this universe? How did it come to be? How did we come to be? Many people still believe that the Bible, specifically a book in the Bible (which contains 66 separate books), namely, Genesis, contains all we need to know about all that. I do not believe any book in the Bible was written by anyone but inspired men who wrote from ancient perspectives. At the time that Genesis was written it was believed that Earth was the center of everything; and the sky was an inverted bowl over the earth upon which various "lights" circled the earth from horizon to horizon. God was viewed as simply a very powerful being. Even though I reject this simplistic view of God, I do not reject the idea that whatever created this universe and us did so in ways that are infinitely more complex than even modern man can fathom. This Creator is a spirit (invisible in the physical world) which has consciousness and whose essence is eternal all-pervasive Love.
What, then, is our essence in this universe? We are also spirit beings whose purpose is to unify with the creative Spirit that originally brought us into existence. In order to accomplish this purpose we must first manifest in the physical universe. This physical existence is only an illusion in which we pass through a series of "ego-centered" lifetimes to tune our consciousness to the Creator's consciousness--also known as the "Holy Spirit" or "Christ-Consciousness". Prayer and meditation are key to reaching the "Kingdom of Heaven," which you will find that Jesus taught is "within you." He also taught, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven; and all these things shall be added to you." And, finally, I definitely do not believe in a Supreme Being who sentences all but a very select few to eternal fiery punishment. This terrible idea originated with ego-centered humans who used various versions of dogma-centered religion to gain power over the masses. Humans create their own personal "hell" by their own ego (self-gratifying) behavior.
Unfortunately, one lifetime is usually not enough to "get it right." That is why we have reincarnation.
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