Future Lives, Connecting with Famous ‘Dead’ People, & the Importance of the Present
This post describes part of a session with The Council inspired by a question from Jose about how the past, present, and future all happen at the same time. Topics addressed include:
- Jose’s question: Why does The Council sometimes refer to ‘past’ lives when they say at other times the past, the present, and the future are all happening at the same time?
- Future lives
- The connection all human beings have to the creative genius of any human being who has ever lived, and your ability to access this creativity.
- The importance of your ability to choose
- The importance of the present moment
- Karma
Jan & Will’s Telepathic Communication
This post is inspired by a question from Jan about an important friendship with a former student named Will who became like a son to her when his mother passed away. Jan describes feeling a spiritual connection with Will and believes that as spirits before they were born into this lifetime they planned to be in each other’s human lives.
But as Will developed from a child with autism into a young adult he proceeded to withdraw from friends, family, and finally Jan, to the point where she hasn’t heard from him in over a year and hasn’t seen him in three years. After reading one of our blog posts describing The Council’s advice to a reader experiencing a similar separation from her biological twin brother of 70+ years, Jan asked The Council for their view of her friendship with Will.
You are Part of Your Biological Ancestors
What we seldom recognize at this time
is that we are part of our biological ancestors,
where in our family lines we,
at one time,
could have been our great-grandmother,
or an uncle,
or an aunt.
So that knowledge is also within.
You are part of your ancestors;
there is no separateness.
—The Council
Excerpted from a session on March 20, 2010
Career Council-ing
Jaqueline’s Questions – Part 2
This is the second of two posts to answer questions from a reader named Jaqueline. In the first post, Trusting You are Spirit in a Physical Body, The Council answers her question about how to connect with inner guidance and find inner peace “even when things seems to be so messed up.”
Jaqueline describes herself as being 23 years old and concerned she hasn’t decided about a career yet. She says, “I know I worry too much and think way too much, but I could really use some clue about what I’m supposed to do in this special lifetime, if I’m going in “the right direction”.
This post describes the portion of our July 24, 2012 conversation with The Council (non-physical spiritual guides) that addresses career and life-direction issues. We found this information personally very helpful and we believe it can also be helpful to others.
At the very end of this post we introduce some new guidance from The Council on the law of beliefs that came at the end of our session on Jaqueline’s questions.
Trusting You are Spirit in a Physical Body
Jaqueline’s Question
This is the first of two posts answering questions from Jaqueline, who asks The Council how to follow her inner guidance and find inner peace “even when things seem to be so messed up” in her life.
Jaqueline writes that she understands and sincerely believes in teachings like The Council’s and other teachers she’s familiar with who say, “We shouldn’t worry about anything ever because everything is gonna be just fine,” and, “We should enjoy life and think about whatever we want in our future in a positive vibration.” “But sometimes [it] is really hard to put this in practice.”
We like Jaqueline’s question because it frankly addresses a dilemma faced by many of us who are trying to follow teachings like The Council’s. In our saner moments these teaching make a lot of sense to us; they inspire us and lift our spirits. But sometimes, despite our best efforts, life can feel like an insurmountable challenge. When this happens it can feel equally challenging to remember and put in to practice these teachings about who we are as spiritual beings.
At the time Jaqueline wrote her questions for The Council she commented that, “All the time my head seems to be full of stressful thoughts about my future…about my present…if I’m going in the right direction…if I should do something…or nothing at all. Sometimes I get trapped in some drama and get very emotional about everything. Resuming, I have a hard time going with the flow.”
Stressful thoughts, feeling trapped, and feeling other unwanted emotions can be a challenge. When we feel this way and we also believe we’re not supposed to ever worry about anything and we should always be enjoying life, these expectations can sometimes add to the challenge of turning the situation around so we can ‘go with the flow’.
On July 24, 2012 we had a conversation with The Council (non-physical spiritual guides speaking through Cynthia) to get their advice on how to feel more in touch with well-being on a day-to-day basis when life seems to make this difficult.
This session contains many helpful insights, but for us the highlight is the reminder to meditate regularly on the idea that each of us is a spiritual being in a physical body. The Council advises that this type of regular meditation will help us feel more trusting that we really are spiritual beings, and this trust will help us through difficult times.
Interestingly, The Council says that as spiritual beings we actually look forward to these challenging human experiences because we view them as desirable opportunities to expand who we are as spirit into a physical reality.
This post relates the details of this session with The Council, and also includes some information on two meditation techniques they recommend. We plan to publish separate posts describing these meditations in more detail and eventually we plan to include audio recordings of these meditations as guided meditations.
This session also included The Council’s answer to Jaqueline’s question about whether she is going in the ‘right direction’ career-wise, and how career choices relate to experiences we have in other lifetimes. We feel this information is better suited to a separate post and we plan to publish that post in the near future also.
Reincarnation, Part 2 – Why We Incarnate in a Physical Body
This post is the second part of our response to two thought-provoking questions on reincarnation and past lives (one from Bari and one from Rachael) and an inspired second question (from Bari), about the impact our thoughts and feelings can have on other people’s experience.
In our most recent post, Reincarnation, Part 1: All Past Lives are Present Lives, we write about The Council’s response to Bari’s question on past life experiences and on the impact they have on our current lifetime. Here’s one of the more interesting things The Council had to say about the subject while answering Bari’s question:
“All of your lives are present lives. They are all going on at the same time. And you may wonder: how is this possible?
–The Council (similarly formatted text below indicates quotations from The Council)
A large portion of the Part 1 post is devoted to additional comments from The Council on this point. The information on reincarnation in Part 1 can also help with understanding the material that follows in this post.
Why Are We Here?
Rachael wants to know why we, as souls, repeatedly return to Earth, and specifically why she is here…again. She wants to know, “What is the purpose of being here?” And she wonders if learning lessons has anything to do with this purpose. The Council began answering Rachel’s questions with the following comments.
For Love and Expansion
“First of all, you would never be here if it was not your choice. So even though perhaps at the present moment you feel you don’t want to be here, we have to really tell you: yes you do. Otherwise this would not be going on. So it was your choice to come here.
Reincarnation, Part 1 – All Past Lives are Present Lives
This post is the first part of a response to two thought-provoking questions on reincarnation and past lives, one from Bari and one from Rachael, and an inspired second question from Bari about the impact our thoughts and feelings can have on other people’s lives.
Bari’s Question
Bari has heard the popular spirit guide, Abraham, say that past lives don’t impact our current life. Bari finds this unexpected and asks The Council’s views on this subject.
“We like that she believes in reincarnation because that at least let’s us know that you [Bari] know that you are not just here one time and your life is over, as many people do believe.”
“When you understand that you are truly spirit in a physical body that continues to take many different forms and there is no end to what you call life, then you are open to learning many new thoughts [and] many new beliefs about these many, many lives, and that you truly do never die.”
–The Council (similarly formatted text below indicates quotations from The Council)
I asked The Council if they think that people who believe in reincarnation and past lives will automatically also believe they are spirit in a physical body.
“We believe that they know that they are more than this body because: what is coming back in each additional life? And so when you know that this shell, this body, this vehicle that you travel around in – when that expires there is still you – and that is the part of you that we urge you to get in touch with.”
All of Your Lives are Present Lives
“All of your lives are present lives. They are all going on at the same time. And you may wonder: how is this possible?
July 3, 2011 Thought for the Day
We never return to lower forms of life.
That would go against the law of expansion.
—The Council
June 25, 2011 Thought for the Day
Do you know that you have created your own body;
The way you look,
Your shape,
The color of your hair and eyes?
This was all part of your joyous decision
To have a physical experience.
You knew you needed a body
To experience this physical plane,
So you began planning your creation before you came.
Your creating began with your choice to incarnate.
—The Council
April 7, 2011 Daily Thought
After each incarnation
You emerge
Alive,
More aware,
And transformed.
—The Council
February 27, 2011 Daily Thought
You choose to incarnate
Because incarnating
Brings you the joy
Of physical experience
And the joy
Of returning home
To spirit again.
—The Council
2011-02-13
After each incarnation
You add to the expansion of Oneness.
Everything is in the process of expansion,
Even Oneness.
—The Council
2011-01-24
Each incarnation is like a jigsaw puzzle:
You have many experiences,
Like you have many pieces of a puzzle.
As you go through this life
You will try to fit many of the pieces together.
Some will fit together perfectly
And create feelings of joy and satisfaction.
Others will not fit
And cause frustration and confusion.
But at the completion of this puzzle,
And completion of your life,
You can stand back and see
How beautiful the finished product is.
And then before you know it,
You have selected a new puzzle to play with.
—The Council
2011-01-16
The sum total of you
Is everyone you have ever been.
You are a work in progress.
—The Council
2010-12-29
When you return from your physical journey,
You are welcomed home with such love and fanfare.
It’s our equivalent of a ticker tape parade in your honor.
—The Council
2010-12-24
If you compare your many lifetimes to a subway map,
It doesn’t matter what your last stop was or what your next stop will be.
What matters is: there is no last stop.
You are an eternal being.
—The Council
What About This Idea There’s More Than One Reality?
This post is an introduction to the concepts of multiple realities and multiple dimensions — subjects that were briefly introduced to us a couple months ago in a session with The Council to answer a question from Diana about a relationship where two people seem to have opposing desires. Here are some of The Council’s comments that got us thinking quite a bit about multiple realities and dimensions, and their implications for improving the quality of our day-to-day experience.
“But if you go deeper into what many people are not understanding yet, in all of our realities that simultaneously exist, when you ask for this [experience] to be in your life and you line up with that vibration, it is experienced.”
–The Council“So you are always given what you ask for, but there are many dimensions. And not to make it too difficult, we try to get your focus to be on creating the feeling within you that you would have with this [experience] that you desire.”
–The Council“By making it as real as possible you will find the feeling within you. The joy [and] the happiness that you feel experiencing it as if it is already done – that feeling makes it real in another reality. It is happening. That happening in another reality brings it closer to coming into your existence.
“By just having the thoughts, it is created. But experiencing it as if it is already done makes it already done in a reality, in a dimension, that is closer to your human existence.
“And so each time this memory, this desire is experienced, the vibration of those thoughts and feelings gives the universe, so to speak, the power of creating this in your reality – to bring it in.”
–The Council
This is an introduction to this post. Click here to read the full post→
Is There a Difference Between Our Spirit and Our Soul?
This post is inspired by a question from Oksana, who observes that in our sessions with The Council there are many references to spirit, but not many references to soul. Oksana asks if The Council can provide information specific to the soul. She’s particularly interested in The Council’s point of view on whether it’s possible to do things that can be detrimental to our soul.
Our Soul is an Aspect or Part of Our Spirit
“The spirit, who we truly are, is the larger part of us. The soul – which some people understand is interchangeable with the word spirit – the soul is the smaller part [of spirit] that chooses to experience this life, and it is what we would consider your personality in each different life. It has the knowledge of what you are looking to experience. And so the soul is part of the spirit and part of the human. Is that understood?”
–The Council
Before Oksana asked her question, Cynthia and I were among those who thought the words ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ were more or less interchangeable. Prior to our session on this question, Cynthia was already getting information from The Council on this subject that started us thinking there might be more of a difference than we suspected. Their opening statement above makes it pretty clear they perceive the soul as a distinct aspect of spirit, not the same as spirit, but some of the other things they mentioned weren’t as obvious.
This is an introduction to this post. Click here to read the full post→
What is Karma and How Does it Work?
This post is inspired by a question from Oksana who was confused about the subject of karma and wanted to know what The Council has to say about it.
Council Comments on the Meaning of Karma
“We like this question very much – the subject of karma… how one’s thinking creates their own reality. For many centuries this idea of karma has been elusive. In the beginning it was thought that the deeds you do in this life, you would pay for in the afterlife, such as heaven if you did many good deeds, and hell if you did many bad, hurtful, horrible things – you would pay for it in the afterlife.
“And then it evolved that if you were truly bad enough in many of your lifetimes, you not only had to wait until you went back to non-physical, but you would begin to pay for it in the physical body.
“So again, you would experience many challenging situations in your life. And many people who, not understanding where this came from, would begin to think: This is my karma. I know I’m not a bad person now. I must be paying for it from another lifetime.
“And we can only tell you that you create your own reality. And by believing there is a judgmental God that will cast these horrible situations onto you – we are here to tell you this is not how it works.”
—The Council
This is an introduction to this post. Click here to read the full post→
A Broken Sacred Contract and How to Move On
This post is inspired by a question for The Council from Chris who asks how to move on when someone she feels she was meant to spend her life with broke a sacred contract by leaving. She also asks if it’s possible to find another partner under the circumstances.
Sacred Contracts
The Council observes that souls frequently agree to come into physical bodies during the same lifetime and help each other in their physical lives, but the Council isn’t inclined to understand these agreements as binding sacred contracts, as implied by Chris’s question. The Council believes the idea of an unchangeable binding sacred contract goes against one of the most important principles in all of creation: the free will that all humans, all souls, all spirit is given by our creator to choose, in any moment, from an infinite variety of possibilities. The Council’s idea of a sacred contract is the agreement each soul makes to unconditionally love the part of itself that comes to experience life in a physical body.
This is an introduction to this post. Click here to read the full post→
Meditation for Spiritual and Emotional Inspiration
This post is inspired by a question for The Council from Gayle. Gayle asks how she can have a deeper understanding and a better sense of the information she often experiences from her ancestors.
Who are Our Ancestors?
When Cynthia and I asked The Council Gayle’s question, they were careful to point out that it’s limiting to think of our ancestors as only people in our family bloodline. From The Council’s point of view, all human beings are eternal ever-lasting soul energies that experience many lifetimes, in many bodies, in many families.
From this reincarnational point of view, The Council encourages us to think of our ancestors as all the souls we’ve come to know and love through experiences we’ve shared in all our lifetimes (as well as between lifetimes). The Council believes this is a less limiting way of thinking about ancestors – a way of thinking that can make it easier to access spiritual and emotional inspiration and guidance.
Meditation to Improve Spiritual and Emotional Inspiration
The Council advises that prayer and meditation will help us develop the intuitive abilities Gayle desires. The Council particularly recommends working with the Crown chakra at the top of the head for spiritual intuition and the Heart chakra in the center of the chest for emotional intuition. They emphasize that working with these two energy centers together is a particularly powerful way to improve our perception of the ever-present inspiration and guidance available from spirit.
This is an introduction to this post. Click here to read the full post→
Welcome
Bob & Cynthia
Welcome to Ask The Council, a blog where you can ask a group of loving and wise spirit guides a question and get an answer, for free. You can also read the questions other readers have asked and the answers they’ve received. Other posts contain quotations from The Council that we hope you find inspiring, uplifting, and educational.
Ask The Council a Question
If there’s a question you’ve been thinking about and you’re curious how The Council might answer it, we encourage you to use the blog’s Comments feature to ask your question. You can click here to go to the ‘Leave a Reply’ section of this Welcome post and type your question there or you can type your question in the Leave a Reply section at the bottom of any post that inspires you to ask a question or leave a comment.
Since the blog is currently a project we do in our spare time it can take a while for us to do a session with The Council on a question and then publish a post on the session. Depending on the question and the session it can sometimes take weeks after a question is asked to publish a post with The Council’s answer. Please be patient.
The Council
Cynthia is able to communicate with a group of five non-physical spirit guides in a manner similar to the way Esther Hicks communicates with and speaks for the spirit guides, Abraham, and Jane Roberts communicated and spoke for the spirit guide, Seth. I (Bob) basically interview The Council as they speak through Cynthia during what we refer to as a session. Sessions generally last 30-60 minutes and are usually audio recorded. During the session Cynthia is aware of what The Council is saying and she also receives visual impressions and other types of telepathic communication from them.
After a session we often type up a transcript to help us remember and understand better what The Council said and to make it easier to include quotes from The Council in blog posts. From our impressions during and after the session, the recording, and the transcript we write the posts found in this blog.
The Council’s Basic Guidance
Since we began these sessions with The Council around 2009 they consistently emphasize a few basic ideas that we attempt to summarize here:
1) You are an eternal spiritual being in a physical body.
You are the energy and vibration of continuously expanding love, intelligence, and joy.
Your physical experience in your physical body and your psychological experience of your personality is a small part of the totality of who you truly are.
Let yourself imagine from time to time what it might feel like to experience more of the wondrous totality of who you really are, and don’t be surprised if you are able to experience this more often.
2) You are the creator of all that you experience.
As you open to the possibility your true nature is greater than you ordinarily perceive, it becomes easier to consider the possibility that this expanded you is truly the creator of everything that you experience.
If we’re used to thinking of ourselves in a more limited sense, the idea that we are the creator of our experience can be difficult to accept.
Our post, What About This Idea That We Create Whatever We Desire, offers insights into this idea and the next one.
3) Manifesting your desires is what it’s all about
Every experience of something you don’t want is instantly recognized by the larger part of you as a desire for something more preferable, and the unconditional love you are as a vibrational being instantly manifests this desire in a vibrational reality.
Your attention in your physical experience to your vibrational creations is what allows these vibrational creations to eventually manifest in your physical experience. You chose to experience this physical reality for the desires it inspires and the opportunities to expand your unconditional love into it.
4) Expansion is a given.
Every experience, whether you consider it positive or negative, brings with it your expansion and the expansion of all that is.
Finding Your Way Around the Blog
Home Page
The left-hand column on the Home page contain a long chronological series of posts with the most recent on top. Each post begins with a title. Clicking on a post title will take you to a blog page dedicated to that particular post. The Thought for the Day posts use the post publication date as its title. Following each post is a thumbs up/down rating system where you can indicate to us and other readers whether you like or dislike the post.
The footer section of each post identifies the date the post was published, the Categories the post has been assigned to, the keyword/keyphrase Tags assigned to the post, and a Comment link. If readers comments on a post, the Comments link will indicate the number of comments. If a post has no comments yet, the Comment link text appears as “Leave a Comment”.
Clicking on the Comments link takes you to a Comment text box on a post page dedicated to that post. Here you can type a comment in the text box and click the Post Comment button to have your comment displayed just below the text box. If you are replying to someone else’s comment, your comment will appear indented underneath the comment you are replying to.
At the bottom of the left column on the Home page is a ‘Previous Entries’ link that will take you to a page with a list of earlier posts.
Thought for the Day
In addition to answering readers’ questions, The Council began sharing Thoughts for the Day in December 2010. These brief inspirational sayings offer a daily spiritual point of view that can help you:
- Remember that you are divine spirit, a part of which is experiencing physical existence from the point of view of your physical body.
- Remember why you chose to experience life in a physical body.
- Remember how to manifest the life you desire.
Longer Posts
Longer posts that answer readers’ questions offer a similar spiritual point of view and an opportunity to consider specific issues in more depth. Using the ‘Questions & Answers’ link in the navigation bar (top right of the Home page) is an easy way to display a list of introductions to just our longer posts. Clicking on the post title will take you to the post page where you can read the rest of the post.
Blog Features
The right-hand column of most blog pages contains this Welcome message. Below the Welcome message in the right-hand column are some useful features:
Email Subscription: Use this to subscribe to blog posts. You will receive an email notification with a link back to the blog each time a new post is published.
Search: Type a keyword or phrase and click the Search button to get a list of posts in the left column that contain the keyword or phrase.
Archives: The Archives list indicates the number of posts for each month listed. Clicking on the link for a month will display in the left column of the page a list of the posts published that month.
Categories: This is a list of keywords used to categorize posts. Posts can be included in more than one category, if applicable. Clicking on a category link will display in the left column a list of posts assigned to the category you selected.
Navigation Bar
The Navigation Bar at the top of each page contains a link to the blog Home page and links to the following additional pages:
Welcome: A link that displays this Welcome message in the left column (and the right column). At the bottom of the Welcome message is a Comment box where you can post a general comment about the blog or ask The Council a question.
Questions & Answers: Use this link to display a list of introductions to our longer posts, most of which are responses to reader questions. This is an easy way to check out these more in-depth posts. They are listed in chronological order with the most recent post on top. Clicking on the post title will take you to the page where you can read the complete post.
Contact Us: The Contact Us page contains a contact form similar to the Comment form mentioned above. The difference between the Contact Us form and the Comment forms is that the Contact Us form is a private message to us (Cynthia and Bob). It is not posted on the blog. Comments appear on the post page where the comment is posted. The Contact Us form can be used for communicating with us about private sessions or other private matters you think aren’t appropriate for posting in a public Comment.
Bob & Cynthia
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