Elle Magazine article about a medium and a woman who heard from her husband on the Flipside

Here's some interesting reading... a pal asked me if I'd seen this article, I'm excerpting it here for those who might be interested.  Basically, a writer finds solace in speaking to her husband via a medium.  I don't know any of the players involved, but if you're familiar with my work, it dovetails other stories I've reported.


Reprinted from Elle. All rights reserved to Elle Magazine.

Losing My Husband―and Finding Him Again Through a Medium
The medium delivered the message that eased her unrelenting grief. Then the doubt set in. Lisa Chase went searching for the truth and found life and death merging and converging in ways unforeseen.

Author Lisa Chase and Medium Lisa Kay Photo: KATHERINE WOLKOFF

BY LISA CHASE
OCT 5, 2015 

..... (excerpted) My dreams were invaded regularly by Peter in the first months after his death, with an insistence that woke me at four in the morning almost daily. Frankly, that's how he was in life. If he called me and I didn't pick up the phone, he'd call again. And again. And again. And again. He didn't really care what I was doing that might be keeping me from calling him back; when he wanted to talk, he wanted to talk. Davey, then nine, was dreaming of him, too. One morning, he said, "Last night Daddy and I had fun."

"What'd you do in the dream?"

"We went to Game 7 of the Yankees–Red Sox World Series," Davey said.

"Who won, Boo-boo?"

"The Yankees."

"What was the score?"

"Eight hundred and three to zero."

It was Peter's sense of humor…and his idea of heaven. There's a pretty obscure film clip of him at 23, having talked himself and his younger brother, Rob, into the Yankees locker room after they won Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. Peter stands there, pretending to take notes, but he's really just gazing prettily into the camera—he was a beautiful boy—pleased for the world to see that he's in the red-hot center. In these days, Davey was sure he was communicating with his father. On New Year's Eve, as we walked down our silent suburban block, coming home from a friend's, he said, "This is the gateway to next year, Mommy. Next year at this time, we'll still be sad, but maybe we won't have the crazy thoughts in our heads."

Then he said, "Daddy is with us now. He says he wants you to hold his hand."

Peter, Davey, and the author in 2006.

ROBERT KAPLAN

I was holding Davey's hand in my right, with my keys in my left—an old habit from living in the city: When walking home late at night, have your keys out. Again, Davey asked me to do it, and so I put the keys in my coat pocket and held out my left hand in the cold air.

You may be wondering what this has to do with the para- and the meta-, and I'm getting to it right about now. Because at this point, the coincidences began to occur. You may be able to explain some of them away, but not all, I'll wager. It started on Christmas Eve, when we flew to Seattle to see Peter's brother Rob. The car in front of us on the way to the airport was the same color, make, and model as Peter's, and the license plate was nearly identical to his—off by one number. The flight attendants were pouring out Aquarius water. A few weeks later, Peter's daughter Caroline got her first big break as an actor on a new TV show called Proof, about a group of people trying to determine definitively whether there's life after death. Around this time, Davey, his friend, and I were waiting in the high school hallway for baseball tryouts. Davey and the other boy were talking about what year their dads graduated from college. He asked me about Peter as he was bending down to pick up a couple of pennies he'd spotted on the floor. 

"Well, Dad was supposed to graduate in 1976, but he actually graduated in '77," I said. The dates on the pennies were 1976 and 1977. On the evening of February 10, 2014, which would have been Peter's sixtieth birthday, I went out to dinner with the kids and two good friends. Because I was with everyone I wanted to talk to, I left my cell phone in my bag. Three weeks later I discovered a text, sent from my phone number to my phone number, dated February 10, 8:18 P.M.: "Lisa I cannot believe I'm funny I sent you the message love you see I." 

....In the first three to four months after he'd died, I couldn't escape the feeling that Peter was calling, calling, calling, until I picked up. I had two friends who'd faced unspeakably horrible deaths: One lost her fiancé in the war in Afghanistan. The other lost a child. Both had called a medium named Lisa Kay, and I'd known of their remarkable conversations. So on a Saturday morning in March 2014, I dialed her number and left a message: "Hi, my name is Lisa Chase. I'm a friend of X and Y, and I know you've worked with them. My husband died, and I'd like to make an appointment to talk to you."

I hung up and then walked next door to my neighbor's to borrow some sugar; when I got back, there was a missed call from a Manhattan number on my phone. I called it, and Lisa Kay answered. "I don't usually work on Saturdays," she said, "but I felt compelled to call you back now." I also knew, from others who've called her, that she usually makes a phone appointment for a couple of weeks out and then asks you to send her a check.

But on the line with me now, Lisa all of a sudden sounded a little peeved and said, "I don't like to do it this way."

"What do you mean, 'I don't do it this way'?" I was confused.

"He's here," she said. "He wants to talk now." Then, as if she were talking to someone else: "I like to get paid first." Then, addressing me, "Can you even do this now? Are you free?" Terrified and exhilarated, I said yes. This is how it began:

Lisa Kay: Who's David? Who's David? He has grown. He says, "He has grown." Testing, trial control. He's talking about goldfish. And marzipan. He doesn't like it.

Lisa Chase: I have no idea what that means….

LK: Acknowledging James. He's acknowledging someone named James. Are you writing this down? You should write this all down. Even if it doesn't make sense now, it will later.

James, of course, was Peter's brother. I was running around my house, looking for scraps of paper to write on. I found a bill from a local stationery store, forms sent home from Davey's school, a confirmation for a flight to Atlanta. I was frantically scribbling on the backs of all of them, grateful I knew how to take shorthand notes from my years as a reporter, because she was talking so fast, her melodic voice—she once thought about pursuing a career as a singer—stopping and starting, darting from subject to subject.

LK: He's talking about a ball. He says, 'Find the signed ball in the bag and give it to David.'

While Peter was in the hospital, a good friend, knowing he loved the Yankees and particularly Joe Torre, their longtime manager, got Torre to sign a baseball—a talisman. But the day I brought it in, Peter shook his head. "I can't," he said. "Put it away." I didn't know why it upset him, but I put the ball in his closet, in a canvas bag that I'd packed with his clothes and toiletries to bring to the hospital.

LK: He's showing me blood. Did he die of a blood clot? Something about blood. I'm seeing the word 'genetic.' She said it in an almost staccato fashion: Ge-net-ic.

LC: He died of a blood cancer. And his doctors told us it was probably related to the lymphoma his father died from.

LK: The reason—David will not get it. That's what he's telling me. Good for you, Peter! I like this guy. [In a different voice]: 'You can call me Pete!'

He says, 'Go ahead. You can have the red wine.'

I began to laugh. For the first time, I felt some relief from the cruelty of the way he died. This call had begun to do for me what the best antianxiety medicine and therapy had not been able to, which was pull me out of the whirlpool and see the beginning of a way out of my sadness.

Lisa would be talking to me directly, then talking to…Peter? And sometimes it was if she were Peter, talking to us both. Channeling would probably be the best verb. Sometimes she said things that made no sense to me. Maybe a third of what she said could apply to anyone who'd lost a spouse; things like, "I want you to marry again," and "It's okay that you cried in front of me." But there were many more specific things she said that she couldn't have known or Googled, as several people have suggested to me.

Anyway, try Googling the name of a person you know nothing about. It takes a lot more than five minutes to navigate to the page with the right information and absorb it all—the names and details and events.

LK: He says he controlled too much. He says, 'Take the good with the bad. I had my faults.' He's learning to be better at not criticizing.

Then she said something that shocked me.

LK: 'I'm a lucky guoy. I got the better end of the deal.'

What was amazing about this was the way Lisa pronounced it: "guoy," not "guy." It was precisely the way Peter said it, with an exaggerated Brooklyn accent. He'd use that expression when we were making up after a fight: I'm a lucky guoy…to have you. At this point I began speaking directly to him; I couldn't help myself.

LC: Peter, you weren't lucky! You died!

LK: I hear a dog barking. There's a dog with him. Did you have a dog?

LC: Yes, we did. Gracie was our dog. She died of Lyme disease. Peter felt super guilty about it—

LK: [In a grouchy tone] 'It was our dog, but it was MY dog.'

Was he social? Because people are calling out to him over there. Someone's yelling 'Pete! Peter!' I gotta calm him down.

He says, 'I was lucky to have someone so pretty and young.'

LC: I was lucky to have someone so handsome.

LK: 'That's true.'

Even in the afterlife, I was competing with others for his time. But I was weirdly comforted by the joking and grouchiness and grandiosity. It felt like my husband.

Lisa's cell phone started to die, so she gave me her home number, and I called her back. We'd been on the phone for about 45 minutes.

LK: Who met you?

LC: What?

LK: I'm asking Peter; who met you? Mom. He says mom. But he was clearly met by his father. He was starting his transition that last week.

'Did you touch my face? I wasn't in my body when you did.'

Until that last week, I hadn't been able to touch Peter's skin with my fingers or lips for three months; I wore rubber gloves and kissed him from behind a mask. A stem-cell transplant takes a patient down to zero immunity; a kiss from a wife with even a nascent cold sore can be deadly. But once we knew he was not going to survive, I took off the mask and gloves, climbed into the bed with him—he was in a morphine sleep by this time—and I did touch his face. After he died, I kissed his face and tried to close his eyes.

LK: He says, 'You did what you knew was right. I am well here.'

LC: Do you swear, Peter?

LK: 'No. But you do.'

A joke! It's true; I swear like a sailor. He hardly ever did.

LK: Who's Boo-boo?

At this I shrieked loudly enough that Davey ran into the room to make sure I was okay. Then I told Lisa that Boo-boo was Peter's baby name for Davey.

LK: He was a seal-the-deal kind of guy. He says, 'XOXO.'

LC: He didn't do that! I did that. I do that.

LK: He said, 'That's one for you.'

We'd been on the phone for a little over an hour. I thanked her and took down her address to mail a check for her $350 fee. I asked her if people ever called for another reading, and she said yes, but that she didn't encourage it. She didn't want people to become dependent; they had to move through their grief and maybe learn to recognize the signs themselves. We were hanging up when she said suddenly, "Who's Paul? Who's Paul? 'Give a hug to Paul.'"

Wherever Peter was—and let's say for the sake of argument that he was—the dog was barking, and his sense of humor was intact, as was his self-regard, and I was still trying to get his attention. The picture of life, or death, or whatever state it might be that Lisa was depicting, felt incredibly familiar. It was funny. It was almost earthy, not profound, not woo-woo. I could not shake the notion that after we hung up, he was off to a gathering with his friends Eric and Sarah, and Lem and Clay, his dad and mom. Abraham Lincoln? George and Ira Gershwin? Ava Gardner? Peter loved history, and he loved meeting famous people, and it occurred to me that the ranks of the dead could make up the best cocktail party ever. In the immediate aftermath of the call, I was filled with euphoria and flooded with an intense wave of love for him.

I began to tell people about the reading. "Wait, he's still learning not to criticize?" my friend Shonna said. "Don't you think it's weird to think of him still learning?" I called psychotherapists to try to get some kind of plausible explanation—something rooted in psychology rather than parapsychology—for why this call made me immediately feel so much better. Sameet M. Kumar, PhD, who counsels dying patients and then, afterward, their families (this is brilliant; why don't more therapists work with both the dying and their families?), and who wrote a wondrous little book called Grieving Mindfully, listened to me cast around for reasons that didn't involve spirits in an afterlife and then gently said, "Are you trying to get me to tell you that I don't believe in this? Because I do…. I've heard hundreds of these stories over the years." Another, a very respected psychiatrist, confided (though not for attribution) that he'd had his own experience talking to his father via a medium.

Peter and I had become friendly with a young physician's assistant on the lymphoma service at New York-Presbyterian. I wrote her and asked if she or anyone there had an opinion about life after death. I half expected to never hear from her again. But the next morning, this was in my inbox: "I love that you asked this question. At risk of possibly sounding 'out there' or 'psychedelic,' I absolutely believe in some form of afterlife and/or spirit activity. I think I believed in it before I started working here, but over the past 2 years, my awareness has only become heightened, as I deal with more and more life-to-death transitions. I asked some of my colleagues too and they all agreed—there is definitely something after death, but no one is sure exactly what. Some spirits of my patients are more 'active' than others, I've noticed. Not quite sure why that is either."

......................
Lisa Kay works only over the phone, she says, in part to keep the reading "more pure," to avoid the "distractions" of an in-person reading. But precisely because I'm a left brainer, because I've spent my professional life as a journalist, I became determined to meet her, to report her out, to use one of my profession's terms of art. I was convinced that if I observed her body language, looked her in the eye, that if I grilled her about her job and how it works, I'd know if what had happened between us was real. I wanted to demystify the mystery.

I called her and invited her to lunch. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed.

We met in an Upper East Side Manhattan restaurant Lisa picked; I told her what kind of bag I'd be carrying and she spotted me first. She was not the New Agey lady I was expecting. She was attractive, well-coiffed, and beautifully turned out in pink cashmere, black pants, and flats. I'm guessing that she's a few years older than I, but her age remains a state secret.

"I knew you'd call again," she said as we sat down among all the ladies who lunch and ordered a salad Niçoise and a frittata. How did she know?

"Well, I'm a medium." She giggled.

I began to ask her about how it works, the mechanics of reading, of seeing spirits.

"First," she said, "I don't talk to dead people. I don't see dead people. I hate that." It drives her nuts. "Spirits are energy—energy can't be destroyed, just read the quantum physicists. Max Planck. They're just on a higher vibrational frequency, and I have to tune in to that."

What did she do to prepare? "I meditate. I quiet my mind. I connect to my heart, set an intention to read. I make sure I'm well hydrated. I leave my problems at the door, making myself completely available to be a receiver." What happens when the signs, or "hits," as she calls them, start to come? "Sometimes it's a little movie. Sometimes a picture. A symbol. Sometimes it's just one sign—a smell." Or a sharp, fleeting pain in her head if, say, the deceased had a brain tumor.

She says she gets some of her best hits in the shower: "Water conducts energy." And at Bloomingdale's! She's quite funny. "I'm joking, but truthfully, I will go to Bloomingdale's when it's empty and walk around, and I get some of the biggest hits that way."

.............But I was getting to know Lisa. One day it occurred to me that she was more or less in the same cycle of grief as I. Because 11 weeks before Peter died, her brother Patrick had died suddenly. "I'm human, too," she's said more than once. "Sometimes people say to me, 'Oh, you can just talk to Patrick anytime you want.' It doesn't work that way."

I decided to report out Patrick. I felt sneaky and deceitful. But it seemed to me that if there were any untruths in that story, it would cast doubt over everything. One day I gingerly asked Lisa, "What record company did he run?" Gotham Records, she said. Another time, "What was his last name again?" I asked her how old he was when he died: 41. Then I Googled him.

What emerged from the Internet—and this took a lot longer than five minutes—were images of a young man with wire-rimmed glasses, a gregarious smile, and close-cropped sandy hair, his strong arms wrapped affectionately around the other people in the pictures.

Patrick Arn was the founder and president of Gotham Records and Vital Music. I listened to a podcast interview with him about his innovations at his label; he was figuring out ways to place his artists' music in video games, movies, commercials—a creative business model in a time of iTunes and Spotify disruptions. He sounded smart, scrappy, principled, vibrant. He died, at the age of 41, on September 7, 2013, from a seizure in his sleep. I found his death notice in the New York Times, and read, "Beloved son…adored brother…an inestimable, crushing loss."

Everything Lisa had said about him and her family was true. But there was something about the last phrase, in the tiny agate type of the Times, that put an end to my questioning. Lisa lost her kid brother. She says she feels some guilt that she couldn't prevent it. What a terrible burden that must be.

"Peter brought us together," Lisa says, and she means it literally. But I think that it was our shared grief, that most terrestrial of emotions, that kept us connected.

Last April her number popped up on my cell while I was grocery shopping one Saturday morning. She said, "I'm calling you because I got a sign from Peter." It was the only time she'd done this in our yearlong acquaintance. "He keeps saying the word wife. Very emphatically. Does that make sense?"

I'd always referred to Peter as my husband. What I hadn't told her was that he and I were together 17 years but only married the last 11 months of his life. He'd resisted getting married a second time. He liked calling me his girlfriend. He thought it was sexier. But I always wondered, and worried, if part of him just wanted the out. We got married, in the end, out of hope, when we thought he was at last cancer free. Not that some of the old ambivalence wasn't in effect: He was 45 minutes late to the ceremony.

"He says, 'Wife. Wife. Wife.' He wants you to know you were his wife," Lisa said.

In our early days of grieving, my son said something that I've often thought about since. We were sitting at our kitchen table, and he was heartbreakingly sad. "I wish we lived in a magic world," he said, "where science wasn't the answer to everything."

He was thinking about miracles and medicine and death. But from this distance, I think it's a lovely theory of everything.

This piece originally appeared in the October 2015 issue of ELLE.

A Flipside email via Vegas

Got an unusual "Flipside" email recently... and it involves my pals Jennifer Medlyn Shaffer and Prashant Solomon.  Jennifer was in Colorado recently where a group was honoring her for her pro bono work with law enforcement cases using mediumship, and one of the parents she helped wrote the following: 

Jennifer Shaffer and Scott De Tamble

"Hi Rich. Something happened last night that I wanted you to know.  It is a validation of something Jennifer told me over the weekend while we in Denver, CO. She asked me "What important thing is happening on October 6th?"  I told her nothing that I'm aware of.  She said she was getting that it was important. (It DID!)  

My son's girlfriend overheard me asking my husband about that date when I returned from Denver. Then on the 6th she was at a casino (in Las Vegas) and heard a man behind her talking about “the Flipside.” She started asking him questions.  He told her about this man 🙂 Rich Martini, how he had met him and was going to publish his book "Flipside." He gave her a copy of the book and said, “I don’t know if this book is meant for you or someone you know, but I know I am supposed to give it to you.”  

My daughter told him that I knew a medium named Jennifer and Jennifer had told me the 6th was an important date.  She didn’t tell him Jennifer's last name and had no idea about her connection to you or that my husband & I had met you (in Jennifer's office in Manhattan Beach). When I told my daughter that I knew you and your book, she was doubly shocked -- said she believes this was a sign -- she will read the book and so will my son.  Can you believe it!!!?"  

Prashant Solomon

And here is Prashant's reply:



Prashant Solomon Rich this is so amazing! Yes I did meet a young lady at the Encore in Vegas on October 6 and there was this immediate resonance between us. We got to chatting over a drink and we're talking about spirituality, the afterlife and how everything that happens was meant to be and not just meant to be, but meant to happen at a particular time and place. 

We talked about our spiritual missions and she told me that she had been told by somebody with mediumistic abilities that something would happen on October 6. She would meet somebody who would change her life forever. 

The moment she said this, I knew from the depths of my soul that apart from this wonderful conversation we were having I had to give her a copy of Flipside, which I am so honoured and humbled at the same time to be the publisher of. 

To add another interesting detail, I was supposed to meet another old friend of mine in Vegas and give him the copy of Flipside, but somehow we didn't meet up and instantly I knew and told the young lady that that this book was brought by me to give to her, written in the stars from the time of creation.. What an amazing and wonderful chain of events! 

Rich Martini, you and me and our friendship, spiritual siblinghood and unconditional love for each other is a testament that the universe moves us where we are meant to go, to meet who we are meant to meet and do what we are meant to do. It is also proof that miracles do happen!

Cool!

Well, actually, I do. I no longer believe in coincidence and in this case, since there's only one person on the planet who's publishing my book (in India). Prashant Solomon is from New Delhi, writes for the Times of India, and we met for a 4 hour coffee in Santa Monica, where he told me some amazing stories about his life, and that he wanted to publish the book in India. Prashant appears in "Hacking the Afterlife" (as does Jennifer) - the idea that he would run into Jennifer's friend's daughter and feel compelled to give her a copy of the book... well, that's about as normal as my life gets these days. 

Visitors from the planet and a near death experiencer.

Hello. Ciao. Ni Hao. Gutentag. Bonjour. Selamat. Dobree Den. Goededag. Buenos Dias. G'day mate.

This month my blog has had visitors from the following locales:








United States Canada Germany China France United Kingdom Indonesia Ukraine Netherlands Australia

The operating systems include: Windows Macintosh iPhone Android iPad Linux Other Unix Unix iPod BlackBerry

I can tell you the browsers are Chrome Internet Explorer Firefox Safari Opera Mobile Safari OS;FBSV (iphone) Apple-PubSub SamsungBrowser Mobile

Who's coming by for a visit? Why are they visiting this page?  

First I must allow it's random - because they're looking for something else and stumbled here.  
Second, it could be that my page is listed online, where spambots seek out places to put spam and stumble upon it. (Likely answer for those countries above where English isn't a predominant language.)  

There's a third possibility, which is that for some reason someone on the flipside pointed someone to this material, or this blog.  

I would argue that a percentage of the people who've visited this page - it may be high, it may be low - I have no way of knowing, came here because someone else told them to.  Perhaps someone no longer on the planet.  

But ignoring the first two options ("Hello my friends in China, yes, I've been to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Lhasa.  I recommend everyone visit China, it's about as varied as a rainbow.  And as paranoid as they get. I've been to Moscow, St. Pete's, everywhere else but Indonesia, which I'd love to visit some day") let's focus on the third possibility.

The reason you're reading this page is both a conscious and a not conscious one.  In other words, one possibility is that you've read my work, or heard me talk on the radio about my research, or you're wondering what's the latest from MartiniVille.  Maybe you searched for someone mentioned in the post (Michael Newton, Prince, Robin Williams, Edgar Cayce, etc) and my page popped up.

That's the most likely and most logical option.  But wait... we haven't exhausted all possibilities.  And the odd one is that your higher self sent you here, or one of your spirit guides did.

Wait, what?

Today, I attended an IANDS session where Barbara Bartolome' - director of the IANDS group in Santa Barbara - spoke of her near death experience as well as some unique points in her life where "messages" came through that saved her life.  "Messages" from someone else, somewhere else, literally shouted in her ear "Slow down! Accident ahead!" just prior to an unforseen car accident ahead. She had a number of these "voice activated" reactions in her life, and she shared some with the group.


Gary Schwartz PhD tells the story of how as a student at Harvard someone "shouted" at him to put on his seat belt, and he did for him and his wife, and their lives were saved from a near fatal accident.  He's spent his life's work understanding how voices could come from the flipside, and his work is extensive and profound.

There are a number of these cases, that I report in "Flipside."  Voices that can be literally "heard" by someone over here, and the message is one that is life saving.  But who the heck is talking to us?

Is it God? Is it a spirit guide? Or is it ourselves?

These 3 folks are no longer on the planet, but when they "show up"
I pay attention to what they're trying to tell me.

According to the research only about a third of our soul energy (or call it something else, etheric system perhaps, energetic construct if you will) comes here to our incarnation. And two thirds are doing something else.  Could be that we're "back home" with our soul group - we could even be incarnated somewhere else, and as one spirit guide said during a deep hypnosis session "do the math."

Then we have our spirit guides.  From what I've learned about the flipside is that we can't or don't interfere with a person's path.  It's something that people agree to do. (Otherwise we'd all be winning lotteries all the time.)  We sign up for lifetimes and come here and work them out to the best of our ability, and by interfering with our path, or having them interfere with our path would be screwing up the paradigm.

Tunnel of light. With loved ones on the other side.

Except for those who argue that talking about this research in the first place screws up the paradigm. That once you open a door to the flipside, whether it be unconsciously (through dreams, a near death experience, out of body experience, hallucination, or some other method of consciousness alteration that we aren't aware of why it's happening) or consciously - as in the case with meditation or hypnotherapy done in a particular fashion of "deep hypnosis" as pioneered by Michael Newton - once you open the door, it stays open. But "why" is the door being opened? 

Hey look, it's our pal down below. Let's shout at him.

When we examine these cases, we do find occasionally some form of "well, things weren't going as we had planned them, so we stepped in and gave you a message that you should go and visit a hypnotherapist to change what was happening."  And while a person is under deep hypnosis, they get this message from their spirit guides that they're on THE WRONG PATH or they've screwed up, and the purpose of having them do a session was to ALTER THEIR PATH or get them BACK ON THE RIGHT PATH.

I've filmed 35 sessions.  In nearly all of them, I've heard the same message when a person gets to meet spirit guides or understand "how they are doing on the planet."  And they're told "You're doing pretty much what you signed up for and you should be congratulated for getting this far."

Per Lachaise Cemetery Paris. Nobody's here, except humans
who want to connect to people on the flipside. So they do.

But the research also shows an occasional "course correction." And maybe that's why you're here.  You're looking for a course correction.

It's possible.  So the question is - if you're not familiar with my books or writing or youtube videos - (MartiniProds has about 20 book talks) check 'em out. I'm not trying to sell you on this idea - if people are interested in the books that's great, if they're just interested in the topic that's great too - I try to warn people NOT to purchase these books if it's going to upset their family dinners or some other part of their world - don't look into it.

But I'm not selling a philosophy, a religion, an opinion - I'm filming people under deep hypnosis, or interviewing people who've had near death experiences, or speaking with mediums who appear to have access to the flipside - and comparing their accounts.

A lot of folks over there still have stuff to tell us back here.

They could secretly be meeting somewhere without my knowledge and coming up with a consistent plan that includes convincing me they're talking to the flipside.
  
Doesn't seem likely.

But I'm here to report that these flipside reports are consistent and replicable.  What does that mean? That means that if you're going to look at them as data - what science requires is consistent reports (all the same questions asked to people across the planet) and that the results can be repeated (and they can be no matter who is doing the questioning or who is doing the answering, or the accounts of the flipside from a near death experience all seem to reach the same point when re-examined) - then we have enough data to draw conclusions from.  And if one takes the time to examine Michael Newton's accounts, and Dr. Wambach's - as I have done - there are some pretty startling and consistent reports.

So here's the point (of this blog, anyway):  nothing in your life that has happened in the past is gone or lost or forgotten. It may have been locked in a different filing cabinet, it may have been put somewhere you can't access it consciously, but it's still there, and with work you can access every moment of this lifetime.  And further, you can eventually examine any moment of ANY LIFETIME.

Cool, huh?

Anyways, just a post Thanksgiving thought for the evening to digest.

Gaia TV interview is live and a message from my cousin on the Flipside

Link is below for this video with George Noory

"Tearing up the charts! Read all about it!  Get your Hacking the Afterlife right here!"

#6 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks.... 

https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Afterlife-Practical-Advice-Flipside-ebook/dp/B01J63P3R6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=












Meanwhile...

My sweet departed cousin Mary Vey reached across from the flipside today. I was going to toast her (in present tense) today, when my cousin John Paul called. He is at her place and found a letter addressed to "My cousin Rich "Dickens" Martini." He's forwarding it, says that it's sweet profound sayings she wanted me to have. Thank you MV. (posted on Thanksgiving... then:)

My cousin Vey Martini, female Jockey, lover of animals

Just spoke to my cousin JP, who said it was 1 of about 300 books, nondescript, but for some reason he picked it up while cleaning out her home after her passing. It was addressed to me 2 years ago, with quotes and sayings from old movies. Its not the content of the book thats so moving, but the idea he'd pick up this one tome, with a nondescript cover, inside a personal message to me. 

It won't prove the afterlife to anyone else, it's too private for others to see as a message from the Flipside, and anyone could argue its meaningless. 

But when you get a message in this way, filled with mathematical impossibility, knowing the personas involved, the history of all involved, it serves as proof only to those who experience it. Allows everyone to retain their pov.

AND IN OTHER NEWS....

The show that I did on Gaia TV with George Noory is available at Gaia TV.  Here's the link:

INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE NOORY ON HACKING THE AFTERLIFE

Click on Link Above to watch (.99 for the rest of the year)

Classrooms in the Afterlife

I got an email from a friend on Facebook who wanted me to meet a friend of who is a nurse, who told her about experiencing "classrooms in the afterlife"  Since I cover that topic pretty extensively in "Flipside" when her friend mentioned them she thought of me, and suggested we chat about what she may or may not have experienced.

I wrote to her the other day about my research, and basically asked her to recall whatever it was she knew about classrooms on the Flipside PRIOR to reading any of my work on the topic. She is a nurse who also happens to be a medium, but she was not aware of my research into the flipside, or my documentary about Michael Newton where I first heard of a description of classrooms in the afterlife that was similar to what my dying friend Luana Anders had described as her "recurring dream" prior to her passing in 1996.

I'm going to offer my correspondence with her like a chapter in one of my books.  I've just finished "Hacking the Afterlife" and it will likely be awhile before I start on the next one, but I felt this information was important to get out into the world, as it relates to all of my research.

Here is verbatim my outgoing email to Donna Natalie-Velocci (who said it was okay to use her name in this post. Normally I don't use people's names to avoid any possible concept that they are trying to promote or "sell" their experiences in any fashion.  But in this case, if you're in Long Island and are looking for a medium, she's someone you might consider reaching out to.)

RM: 

"Hi Donna. Our mutual friend said you'd seen something that had to do with classrooms?  Tell all please! :)"


Donna Natalie-Velocci

"Hi Rich ... yes I have had multiple dreams of being in a classroom with my spirit guide. Actually 2 of my 3 guides. It's definitely lucid because I'm 100% aware I'm dreaming. I'm being instructed on spirituality. Oneness " being " , how to heal myself and others. 

Not to demand understanding or knowledge .. just receive and be " one " with the info. I plead with them to let me sleep because I need to rest. They explain I  am resting my physical body and this is nourishment for the spirit. It's like being downloaded with info. 

But I seem to fight it somewhat because I feel exhausted in the dream ! I know other ascended masters are present. I am often awestruck in the dreams and see they are teaching / instructing others but I can't see the others. I will wake usually around 3-4 am and fall right back into the sane classroom dream. I will wake feeling drained , somewhat foggy. But just " know " certain things. 

My guide will be very present around me all day. I have had this exact dream perhaps 3-4 times in the past year. I have always connected with the spirit world in dreams since childhood. I know my past lives because of recurring dreams I had that began at age 3-4...

I'm a medium ... not psychic. I'm also a reiki healer and have some training in South American shamanism .. curandero. My job .. a nurse 🤕"

RM:

"Very cool! Thank you for sharing Donna. Well, the reason our mutual friend connected us is because those dreams are what my past four books have been about.  She wanted to make sure that you hadn't seen or read them prior to this conversation - so it's open and not clogged up with concepts... but let me ask you a few questions if you don't mind.  And I would ask them to respond as well... so do me a favor and go to the last time you had this experience.  

Look around the room. How many people are there?  Look at your guides, is there a main one? Male or female?  Is there a name associated with them? (the answers don't have to come, but something to think about. Write them down, or put them in an email.)  

Then look behind you and around the room some more. Describe this room.  How many people are here in this class? Do you recognize anyone?  Doesn't matter who that would be, but the first person that comes to mind.  Is it someone you know from here or from the classroom only?  If you turn to another student, can you ask him or her a few questions?  

First, make sure it's okay to interrupt this moment to ask a question. Then ask the other student to describe in detail what you are learning in this class. what's a one, two, three description of what the class teaches?  Then try to focus your mind on the point of view of your guides.  

Look at yourself. What do you look like? Same age you are now? Any color associated with how you look? Don't judge any of these answers, just let them appear in your mind. Then let's ask the guides - what's the purpose of allowing you to consciously remember these classes? 

Is there a goal in mind for allowing that to happen? Then you can ask this question - "Can you take me to a place of healing or relaxing so that I can feel rejuvenated?" 

If so, allow that to come to your mind. What's the place look like? Is it outside or inside? And what is happening to you?  It's also a way of relaxing while you're doing this kind of work - you may feel tired, but it may just be your conscious mind struggling to keep up with this information that is coming to you - which can be exhausting because it's broadcasting at a different frequency.  

But just allow that whatever comes to mind should come to mind.  Now focus a bit on the instruction - is there some kind of technique that you're learning over there? If so, describe it as best you can? How do you connect your energy to your patient or the person near you? How does this kind of healing occur?  

Is there an alignment of sorts that happens?  If so, where is the source of this healing energy? does it come from the student, the teacher or somewhere else? And if it's somewhere else, to give you a concept or visual or idea of where that energy comes from.

The cool thing is that we can ask these questions while fully conscious. I don't know where you're located but I work with Scott De Tamble in Claremont who is an expert at taking people into these areas, where classrooms can be seen. If you want to read up on the topic I can point you in the right direction - but before you do that, perhaps just meditate a little bit on these classes.  

The point is, what I've learned in my work is that you don't necessarily have to be under hypnosis to access them - it helps, and helps you focus, but just by shifting your energy a bit, you can actually walk into the classroom while fully awake.  And perhaps ask some questions of your own.

Thanks in advance for any answers you come up with!  And later I'll send you some links to my work (film link, etc) when you want to check it out.
Best, Rich"

Donna's reply:

"Wow, fascinating ! I had no idea people study this topic ! I can tell you right off the top of my head some very specific answers . My guide is a Native American man. I call him White Owl .. because he first appeared to me with a mask of white owl feathers allowed me to see through the eyes of the owl. Often when I meditate I see through birds eyes .. almost always raptors. 

White owl is a tall quiet man. He hid his facial features from me for quite a long time. I could hear him . See his clothing but not his face . I can sense him very strongly around me. When I meditate he often is in the background of my inner vision. I can often sense him without seeing him. I have another  very elderly Native American gentleman who is a teacher of shamanistic healing methods." 

(NOTE: As  Donna will see in "Flipside," the book that I've sent her, White Owl fits the description of a "spirit guide." We all have a primary one, we may have more than one, but everyone has at least one.  They aren't necessarily associated with any group, though fans of my books will note how many - it's about a third - of my cases have backgrounds in Native American culture.  Is that because I have a memory of a past life as a Native American? I don't know.  Pete Smith, President of the Newton Institute tells me that about 30% of their cases now involve people who've had "off planet" experiences, meaning they've incarnated in other places than Earth. That's up from Michael Newton's initial report of about "ten percent" of the cases he examined.  Is that because more of them are coming here? Or is it because those who are here seek out hypnotherapy?  No idea.)

"He does not ever speak to me nor does he ever seem impatient with me. I understand him through thoughts. I sit with him .. and it's a transfer of thoughts... memories of healing gifts from past lives. He has explained to me that my hands are healing gifts. His job is to make my heart and mind remember my abilities. Slowly I am. 

He told me his name is Wise Walker. ( ironic that the only place he walks through is my mind) he is always sitting on the dirt. Never standing. Always wearing earth colored clothing .. almost robe like. With long white hair. White Owl is very stoic , quiet .. but severely protective over me and gets impatient with me when I "demand to know things sooner then later" .. many of the lessons taught to me have been that my ego demands book learning .. parameters or scores or something to delineate a clear beginning and end." 

(NOTE: As reported in the books, when it comes to names on the flipside, people generally gives us an approximation of what their name might be.  It's not a sacrosanct thing, as many of the names appear like "musical notes" rather than actual names.  Interesting that these names are like the Native American names of lore and legend.  In my case I remembered being called "Watanka" which I thought was a mispronunciation of the world "Tatanka" which I had learned in the film "Dances with Wolves" meant Buffalo.  It was some months later, that I learned from a Lakota historian that Watanka was a common derivation of "Wakan Tanka" (the great spirit) and he described the outfit that I told him I had seen (buckskin with two feathers entwined in my hair) as "common outfit for someone who was a medicine man."  He told me other details that verified what I had seen - details I didn't know, could not find on line, but turned out to be absolutely correct.)

"A time frame in which to complete learning. He has made it very clear to me that I don't dictate what lessons I will absorb .. when I am ready the lesson will come to me. When we demand we are ego. He explains ego has no place in my healing world. Ok classroom.. well lit .. long light bulb fixtures above me. I look around and see other students. None are anyone I recognize. 

What I do notice is we are from different eras or time periods. We are different races and ethnicities. There are males and females. There are 3 ascended masters (spirit guides) off to the side watching us .. they look like they are discussing us and having a coffee break , so to speak. I seem unable to communicate with other students in the group. 

My guide . .  My main teacher is White owl. I know exactly what he looks like. Long dark hair. Serious expression. He emanates green from his clothing that are deer skin. He wears face paint always. He never shows his face without masks or paint. I ask him why... 

He responds "If I do not know . .. it is not for me to ask .." he is teaching me to feel answers. Not ask. FEEL .. which will equal knowing. Which for an empirical mind like mine!!! That proved extremely difficult. Yet I have made great progress. He's basically telling me .. it's not my business what other people's lessons are until i master my own ..as if to say .. healer heal thyself then heal others. Nor do the other students interact with one another or seem aware of each other. 

I can see them all but none interact with one another. It's like some collective conscious classroom. I have asked why I remember these downloads of lessons. I am instructed That my body only sleeps and this is the highest level of learning I have yet experienced. My first classes were about .. accepting my gifts. I am a lover of knowledge and when I first started really tapping into all this .. I wanted to learn everything under the sun . 

I was shown a teacher that I had been attending groups with and saw my reiki instructor and was told .. they will both serve major purposes they also both deeply disappoint you. The learning is in the disappointment. I didn't believe my male teacher would disappointment me. I was unsure of the female. Sure enough both did and the male one basically abandoned me because he said my gift had surpassed his and he had no where left to go with me. I felt abandoned and alone. White owl proved me wrong by putting me back in the classroom. 

This lesson was my most recent class .. that of realizing instead of waiting for spirit to present itself to me .. I could focus on someone's energy and tap into their energy field. To not stress or strain when tapping into energy ..just receive. The thought transmits .  My guide white owl is the operator for connecting as a medium. I connect to him first. I ask him to protect my energy and the persons I am reading. He is like the operator who connects the call. 

I have advanced enough with my abilities that I don't need to call him in ..  he is always intertwined with my spirit. The other guides as odd as it sounds I know I saw a Buddha looking figure. But I love Buddhist teachings and read it a lot. So I took it to reflect components of my inner healing medicine bag. What I blend. I have literally begged my teachers to let me sleep , to let me dream not be a student and learn. 

Yet I have come to realize ..I am being downloaded with such extremely important information. My last classroom session I woke at just prior to 4 am. When I woke I was extremely aware of a very dense , heavy energy in my room with me. I knew it was white owl. There was a visible hazyness on my room. I knew he was going to take me right back into the class. Which he did. Back in I go .. back to being taught how to tap into someone's energy field. I was instructed to teach a meditation class. 

Which I now do. I am myself in these classes. I can see my self as I am now. Yet when I meditate I am frequently me .. but don't look like me. I have seen myself with the old sitting man wise Walker .. sitting across from him as a child .. learning quietly .. listening. It's very clear he isn't supposed to be teaching me .. a female child in his tribe .. gifts only men were allowed to practice. 

He instructs me to hide my hands as that's where my power lies. Oddly enough I frequently sit on my hands. He has made me understand it's a habit from a past life as a Native American healing child. I have seen myself in Native American clothing. I have understood Lakota yet can't speak it. 

I know how I feel in that Native American grown woman's body. Yet it's the not the same body as the child's. it's my soul being in different physical dwellings. I have seen myself in a forest .. like Robin Hood times. Long flowing maiden gown running through the forest carefree and happy. Yet in the classrooms I am me as I appear now. 

There are even chalkboards in the classrooms. My relaxation and place .. there's 2. One is a beautiful very old temple. With Moroccan appearing walls with a beautiful turquoise body of water within the walls. The water looks like crystals sparkle in it. The other place is in nature. I am by a river. I look down at my feet and see fitted short fringe boots.

It's my adult female Native self. Eagles soaring .. in this place I feel sleepy ., I rest there and wake feeling fresh.   If the person I am working on is resistant to healing .. they divert the healing pathway. They will feel some relief or some healing. But will continue to suffer or struggle. If I am reading someone and they become negative it literally causes interference in the connection. I as the medium and them as the person receiving the message are both conduits. 

When one is not properly receiving .. full healing doesn't take place. White owl has taught me .. not to expect miracles .. not to try and cure someone. My role is to deliver a message of love , healing and guidance.   I have dreaded these classes when I experience because the aftermath is always profound. I can hear , see, feel , taste , smell spirit messages. And just " know ". 

After each class I have Become more balanced with my energy. I have a calmness within my being. I know I have been given this gift to help heal others as well as myself. ( I have a very rare auto immune disorder. 4.5 years ago , ironically I was blind in both eyes , I have vision back in my right eye. Left eye I am blind .. interesting lesson to have to go blind to learn how to truly see ) .. I am definately going to try and interact with the students next time. I can speak to my spirit guide 24/7..."

(NOTE: How unusual is this?  Someone I don't know reaches out to me through the internet, and it turns out she's having the identical experience with spirit guides and classrooms that everyone else is having.  I share it with you unedited to show how similar we all are,and how prevalent this research turns out to be. My two cents.)

How lucky am i?

Check out @JMShaffer's Tweet: https://twitter.com/JMShaffer/status/801180324793200640?s=09

With renowned Intuitive and Medium Jennifer Shaffer. (JenniferShaffer.com)

Amelia Earhart, Thanksgiving Toasts and the Flipside

Jennifer Shaffer and I were conspiring the other day on how we can turn our unusual lunchtime chats into a larger venue.  We came upon doing some kind of weekly event, where we chat up people on the Flipside while having our normal out of this world conversation.

Jennifer Shaffer

For fans of "Hacking the Afterlife" you'll know Jennifer from the extensive interviews I did between her and Amelia Earhart which are transcribed in the book.  I know how unusual that sentence is - but if you'll read the book, you'll see there's no other way to describe what that event was like.  She is the third medium who I have spoken to "Amelia" with.  So just as a data subset, I've asked the same questions with three different mediums. And the answers have been consistent and verifiable.

Many of the questions are not public knowledge because I've been researching her story for 30 years.  (Like one question to a medium was "who was the love of your life and was it a painter?" was correctly answered by all three.)  I knew that she had a relationship with a woman painter, and I knew it was part of her open relationship with her husband George.  I didn't know the exact identity of that painter, and during the second session, she offered that she would share that information with me in a "private session" - meaning one that wasn't being filmed.

Fred Noonan and Amelia

Not only was I able to track down that special friend of hers, but was able to verify a number of other profound details about her life, her disappearance, her death.  I won't go into detail here - it's in detail in the book, and clips can be found at EarhartOnSaipan.com - but suffice to say, Jennifer was the third person confirming the same details, and further offered "new information" that wasn't part of the public record, or any of my research over the past 30 years.

Imagine my chagrin when I verified that these details were accurate - meaning a detail that only Amelia would know about, because no one else on the planet was aware of it, and I was able to verify its accuracy. 

But last night I was at a friend's house, and inevitably the conversation drifted in the Flipside direction.  One of the people at the table had met with Jennifer at my suggestion, and proceeded to tell how Jennifer connected to this woman's brother who passed earlier this year.  The story could only have come from her brother, because it happened years ago in another country in their home kitchen.  

A party my grandparents went to in London 1933

As the story unfolded, this woman's brother showed Jennifer a scene that occurred in this woman's youth - ("He's showing me something that happened in your kitchen a long time ago...") a scene my friend had forgotten, had never shared with anyone, except her mother.  And later, she called her mother and told her what Jennifer had said, and the mother recalled the name of the person in the scene. "Oh you're talking about so and so. I remember that!"  My friend couldn't remember the girl's name, but her mother did. It was new information coming from someone no longer on the planet.

As I pointed out - this story would not convince, could not convince anyone else at the table that there was a Flipside, or that our loved ones are still around.  It would only be "beyond a shadow of doubt" to one person at the table - and that was my friend telling the story. Since no one reading this knows this friend of mine - then just my saying "it's accurate" does no good at proving or disproving anything.  

And if you spend enough time going through all the possible permutations of an excuse - all of it comes up empty.  Either it happened or it didn't. People can make up their own minds how that could have happened. All I can say is that it's consistent with ALL of my research.  People on the Flipside remind us of stories that only they would know - on one hand to tease us about them, on the other hand to prove to us that they're actually communicating with us.

In this case I know it happened, and I've seen and filmed it happen many, many times.

But as someone else at the table said "Well, I think it's great that the Flipside exists, but I like it here, I like being alive, I'm in no hurry to go anywhere else, so what's the point of examining that?"  And I said "Here's the point.  You honor your loved ones by acknowledging that they still exist.  They don't love you any less from over there, in fact they love you unconditionally from their perspective.  So if it's possible to love someone unconditionally who isn't on the planet, how hard can it be to start loving people unconditionally who are on the planet?"

So as an experiment - and based on Jennifer and my "conversation" with Michael Newton the previous week, I suggested this.  I poured a toast into the glasses of the people sitting near me and said "I want you to think of one person who is no longer on the planet that you'd like to make a toast to.  Only I want you to make the toast to them in present tense, as if they were still here, as if they were literally in front of you when you make the toast."  

One woman picked her grandmother, who brought tears to her eyes, because she felt so connected to her. When she started speaking of her in past tense, I asked her to change it, how sweet she is, how incredibly generous she was, became "how generous she is."  And this woman's face brightened as she spoke. As if the simple act of putting the memory of her grandmother into the present tense allowed her to let go of the sadness surrounding her passing.

Vatican connected light

Another fellow called upon his 104 year old grandfather, who had been strongly influential in his life. And as he spoke of him in the present tense; you could hear the pride he had in how this person lived his life up until he passed. 

How influential he still is in his life. And my friend spoke of her brother, who made/makes everyone laugh, and what a bright light he was/is in his family.  As she got used to speaking of him in present tense, toasting his humor, his family, his spirit, it really did feel as if he was in the room.

It was an odd moment.  Everyone expressed a joy doing that. And then a few minutes later, a woman who had claimed skepticism of the topic ("I don't believe in any of all that") said - "I've never told anyone this before, but when I was 22 I had this out of body experience, I didn't believe it at the time, but I was standing there in front of a campfire, and suddenly I lost sense of time until someone shook me."  

I said "Well, let's try to go back to the moment just prior to someone shaking you. What do you see or experience?" At first she said "I don't remember." And I said "Every moment is recorded, we don't have a delete key, so the memory is somewhere if you just allow it to come forward."   She quietly looked off in the distance.  "Okay. Well... I had this feeling of connectedness to everyone.. and to all things. I could see the connections to everyone, its like the invisible strings that connect everyone that we can't see. They look like lines of light, light that exists between objects... and they have color, like red and white."  

I pointed out that I'd heard reports like this before - seeing a "spider web" of light that connects everyone and everything. I asked if she had any emotion with this vision.  She said that she had a sense of love... "overwhelming unconditional love." 

I asked if anyone was around in spirit form when she experienced this moment 15 years ago. She said "Yes." I asked if it was male, female or both. She said, feels like both, but predominantly male. I asked if she could see him, she said "No, he just seems like a bright light." I asked about the content of the conversation and she said "He is telling me how things work. How the universe works. But it's not a linear story. It's like he's downloading all that information into me at the same time."  I asked if any emotion was associated with this information. She said "That everything is going to be okay."

I noted that it's not the first time I've heard about this apotheosis. That Mario Beauregard PhD talked about his experience at 12, when he was in a forest behind his home and "saw how connected to everyone and everything we all are" and had spent his life and career examining that as a neuroscientist. There are other cases, and I mention them in "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" where people suddenly feel "connected to everyone and all things."

I guess it's not that unusual I would meet someone at a dinner party who had the same experience.

I offered that we honor those who are no longer on the planet when we listen to them, especially when they bring along such a profound experience.  She took 15 years to share that message, and now I get the chance to share it as well. 

"Everything and everyone is connected. And everything is going to be okay."

No hypnosis.  No philosophy.  No belief. No religion. I'm just reporting as best I can what I heard at a dinner table at a friend's house, simply asking some questions that anyone could ask. Just a group of people sitting at a noisy dinner party, having a casual conversation, with me slipping in questions about the architecture of what they experienced.  

And now it's out into the planet.  How cool is that?

Sting and the Flipside

Sting and the Flipside....


Something caught my ear in this interview the other night.

Sting (Gordon Sumner) talks about how much it moves him that people come up to him and tell him how his music has been a theme in their lives, or his music changed their lives, or had a profound effect, whether they got married, fell in love to it, etc.

And he joked "I just got into it to find women."

Well, of course, he found Trudy.  And has had a gaggle of kids while finding her.  But I digress.

In the research behind "Flipside: A Tourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife," and now "Hacking the Afterlife" I've filmed people under deep hypnosis talking about their "life planning sessions."

I've reported my own five different between life sessions, but it was in my first session when I asked my guides the question: "So why did I choose my life?" and the answer was "Every thought, action, word or deed contains your energy.  So if you write a poem, sing a song, write a book, paint a painting - every talk show you do - some part of your energy, who you are as a soul, your heart - goes into that work.  Whether you work in a bank, or move digits around on a board, some of your energy goes into that as well - but if you're doing that work with your heart, then it can be a healing energy."

I said that I chose a lifetime in film because I felt that combining words, visuals and music I could help heal people.  And then I said "I just wish I'd chosen someone more successful at it."  Which elicited a laugh from my spirit guides and the hypnotherapist doing the session - the only time I've gotten laughs on both sides of the veil.

But Sting did the same. When he signed up for this lifetime he wanted to help heal people with music.  He's an amazing singer, gifted musician, and has explored a variety of different styles.  But at his core, it's not about the content of each lyric, it's about the intent and heart that he brings to his work - and that is attached to the music and lyrics and stylings - which directly affects people on the planet.

And they come up and say it to him; aloud.  "You changed my life.  Thank you."

There's no greater honor then to sacrifice your life for others.  There's no greater gift that you can give then to give your heart to others.  

Yes, he's had a great journey and path, and yes, he's had pain and sorrow and suffering too.  It's written in his face.  But when someone comes up to you and says "Your music helped form who I am as a person" you need to see that was what he signed up to do.  It's healing. It's helping. It's why he's on the planet.

Some years ago, I reviewed Sting's show at the Wiltern when I was writing for Variety.  After the show, I got to meet him backstage, and then for some odd reason, I was on a plane the next day to go to Italy.  And when I got off the plane in London, and went to the passport agent, Sting was standing in line behind me.  And I turned and introduced myself. "Hi, I'm Rich, I met you at your show the other night."

And he nodded, used to fans and fandom.  I added "I write for Variety."  The look on his face reminded me of when I was sitting next to Van Morrison and said the same sentence.  Van said "I don't talk to the media" and got up from the table.  "But I'm not The Media" I said.  (And I had my film "You Can't Hurry Love" pay him $30K for the use of "Wild Night" in a clip, but I forgot to mention that part.)

Anyways, he seemed chagrined that a "critic" was in the same line as him.  Moments later, I was going to the kiosk to catch the British Air flight to Rome, and he was there too. He waved me over and introduced me to his wife Trudy. "This is Rich Martini, he wrote the Variety review."

She brightened, and he said it as if it was something he'd actually read.  I thought "Wow, polite guy."  I tried to not hover or talk too much other than to say I was a fan.  On the plane, I sat in steerage, but as I left, passing through first class, I saw the sweater that Trudy had been wearing sitting on the floor.  So I grabbed it and when we got to customs I shouted out "Oh, Missus Sting! You forgot your sweater!"

It was worth the laugh.  "Mrs Sting" couldn't have been more appreciative.

But wait. There's more.  About six months later, I was talking to someone on his staff, and they said "He's coming into town. I'm sure he'd want you to have a ticket."  I wasn't reviewing the show, was reluctant to call, but I did.  When his personal assistant said "Why are you calling?" I said "Well, I saved Trudy's sweater on the plane."  And his assistant said, "Do you realize how many people call me every day to get free tickets to his shows? And you're calling because you saved her sweater?"

I mumbled, "Well, it was a long story, but it was because I write for Variety..." and the assistant interrupted me.  "You wrote the Variety review?"  I paused. Uh-oh.  Maybe they didn't like it. Gulp. "Yes."  

She said, "That was the best review I've read. (She may say that to all reviewers, what do I know?)  It covered his life, his journey, his writer's block, and talked about finding his voice when he went back to his father's hometown..."  I blushed... over the phone.  She said "What night do you want tickets for?"  So I went to see him again, sat in the seat like any other fan.  He's great.

Some years later, I ran into him at an art gallery.  I said "Hi, you don't remember me but..." He interrupted me: "Rich Martini" he said. Shook my hand. "Thanks for saving my wife's sweater."

This guy is something else this Sting.

So I know he's going to read this post. He's that kind of a guy.  Checks stuff out, remembers it, soaks it in, turns it into a song. If not him, then his assistant, or someone out there in the ether will pass it along.

He will read this blog, this memory down life's lane.  And I'm here to tell him that the story he told on Colbert is the essence of why he chose to be on the planet.  How do I know that? Because in the 35 cases I've filmed, the 7000 I've examined from Michael Newton, and the 2000 from Dr. Helen Wambach - they all say the same thing. 

We choose to come here. And we choose to do the work that we're going to do so we can help other people. 

I print transcripts of these filmed sessions in the book "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" and "Hacking the Afterlife." And the film "Flipside" is actual footage of people saying these things. Consistently. Over and over and over again. Under hypnosis. And in the latest book - not under anything at all.

So Gordon chose this life - chose this name, which is not only associated with bees, but is a musical term, like a cymbal being smacked - a "sting" - On behalf of all those  people on the planet that you chose to change their lives; thanks dude.