mistakes, I've made a few...

I know the song says regrets, not mistakes, but it's the mistakes we make that create the regrets, so I just cut to the chase.

My point is, anyway, what if there are no mistakes? What if there is only story. Only "what ifs" that follow various threads.

What if Earth is the stage, the classroom, the setting. The eternal I AM is each of us. We come to the classroom to learn things we think we need to know. Sometime we get what we need in one setting and we change the story next time. Sometimes we leave in the middle, and so, come back again to finish what we started last time.

Here, my mythology breaks down a little because I don't know if we are each  one self forever, growing up and evolving (and sometimes not) until we reach some stage of development that allows us to stay in spirit, having "been there" and "done that".  Some say this is so, and that then, we may choose to be "elevated beings" who choose (or not) to portray one ray of the All -- ie: Gods and Goddesses or Spirit Guides or Lightworkers or whatever.

OR -- We are all part of the One, a fragment of the whole group soul. We come into a new story as a completely new being made up of parts of the All, so that memory is there of things done by this one and by that one in different lifetimes. We are not evolving toward a place where one individual is finished with the story, but where we, the All (of us) enter in. And we don't get there until All gets there.

Because of past life memories, it seems to me we are each ourselves forever. But maybe we just remember the bits we liked the best or that made the deepest impression. Maybe in dreams, we visit the other bits. And maybe when we meet other people we seem to get on with, or don't get on with, we recognize them because we were once those bits, or those bits are part of the Character we are now.

Confused yet?

I used to listen to two of  my older brothers on a Sunday afternoon talking about this and that, and the why and how of things.  Most of the time, I agreed with what they had to say, even if they said two different things that canceled each other out completely. I could see both points of view.

But one day, one brother said, "See, I don't think we go anywhere from here. I think it's like this cigarette." (you could smoke inside the house in those days because no one read the warning on the label). "Once it's gone, it's gone," he said, and crushed out the bit that was left into the ashtray, while the smoke of what had been circled his head and became the murky coloring of the ceiling tiles.

I remember looking at him. I usually didn't interrupt their conversation or let them know anyone was listening. But this time, he saw that I heard. And I know my eyebrows were up on that one. I knew he'd got that one wrong. Dig, something changes form, but it doesn't go away. THERE IS NO AWAY.

Sorry, I didn't mean to yell. This year, cleaning up the old home place and finding such things as tiny buttons and lenses to glasses, finding old lightbulbs (fragile? 28 years under a burned out house, buried in dirt and they are still intact!). Even old tin cans from food we ate when I was, maybe ten or so, are still there. They're rusted and fragile and when I stomp them with my new Dingo boots (I wanted these as a kid), they break into rust-colored powder with only the rims more or less intact. They changed form. They are still here -- there -- down in the dirt that will, next year, grow flowers (a whole path of wild flowers is what I have in mind for the previous trash pile).

And there's this whole weird sense that the story we were living then is still going on now with this other story on top of that one. In that one,  I'm digging my garden out to the side of that house and I'm singing while I turn over the earth to plant that garden in a place that never grew vegetables until that year of  my eleventh Summer. I'm working this ground in March and the air is chilly, but the sun is shining and I'm singing. "Oh the sun shines bright on my West Viginia home..." And Mom cautions me from inside the house not to work-too-hard-you-know-what-the-doctor-said. And ever the smart aleck, I say, "I'm not working, I'm playing."

And I'm there now or was a month ago, digging an old boxspring out of the dirt where it is embedded deep under layers of leaves-turned-dirt that have covered it and tangled it among the roots of a locust tree that is growing where carrots grew. (Stubby little misshapen carrots that were the sweetest I ever tasted).

And digging that rusted frame and all those coils out of the dirt, I planned the herb garden I will begin in the springtime, and there was, in that thought, another thought of the old(er) woman I will be, coming out onto the front porch of a house that isn't there yet, and looking at the herbs I planted that summer long ago, where once there was a vegetable garden where an eleven year old pulled carrots out of the dirt, wiped them on her dress, and ate them.

In that same way, I think it may be possible, that we live here -- and we live there -- at the same time.

It's not important whether Otherworld is like I imagine (like Verna in the story  Of Missing Persons by  Jack Finney). I image we work there -- or play -- and that the place is Earth's double except clean and it stays that way because so are we -- we don't want 79 different kinds of cereal, or foods that are out of season, or the newest, brightest whatever that uses up the earth's gifts and feeds pollution; we don't throw away our perfectly good clothes because Judy at the office said they were out of style, and we don't feed some beings on the flesh of others, and no one goes hungry.

We may be just one being there. Or we are lots of beings who are still one. We see each other. No more of this "through a glass, darkly" kind of thing. We know as we are known. We don't judge anyone, ridicule anyone, or divide people up into categories. We're all family -- we're all of the same group soul.

Maybe there are other group souls in Ohterworld. We meet them at gatherings and they are friends we don't know yet but are thrilled to meet. Maybe we work out our new semester as Earth people with these folks as well as with our family folk. We decide who is going to teach what to whom.

Some of the ones from the same group soul come back together to live another chapter. Some will be friends on earth, some will be lovers or sisters or cousins or co-workers. Some of us will pass each other on a city street on a certain date at a specific time and not know each other -- and we, in Otherworld, laugh about that. "Won't know you from the proverbial Adam..." we'll say and we'll laugh and get such a kick out of that.

We might get a bit sober when someone volunteers to be the bad guy. We'll lock eyes and beam how much we love this person, hoping to give him enough love to sustain him through what he will become in the Earth story and what he'll do.

When someone leaves Otherworld, we'll give a birthday party first, and gifts. "I give you a sunny day when you are eleven and you'll have so much energy, you'll dig in the dirt to make a garden where there wasn't one and I'll tend your carrots for you that summer." And s/he'll say this with a bit of a grin.

As we each are leaving to take up the new role, the ones left behind in Otherwold will feel a little of what people here on Earth feel when one of ours passes on beyond the veil and returns to Otherworld. But not as much sorrow,  a lot more hope -- because we'll know they'll be back in a very short time, and because we know the story.