Nirvana in the Garden of Eden: The Quantum Leap and Evolution of 2012

D. CRAWFORD

AuthorHouse™

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© 2012 by D. Crawford. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/27/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3327-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3328-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012911833

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Contents

Chapter 1 Let There Be A Book

Chapter 2 Wake Up, There’s An E-Mail From The Universe

Chapter 3 Open Heart, Open Mind

Chapter 4 Evolution Of A Species

Chapter 5 The Millenium Birthday

Chapter 6 Steps For A More Civilized Society

Chapter 7 The Year Before 2012

Chapter 8 Ways To Conserve Positive Energy And

Stay Healthy

Chapter 9 The 100Th Monkey

Chapter 10 Ancient Predictions

Chapter 11 Current Predictions

Chapter 12 The Ten Truths Of The Universe

Chapter 13 Out Of The Darkness, Into The Light

Chapter 14 Epiphany

Chapter 15 Nirvana

Chapter 16 Follow My Journey Before Nirvana

Chapter 17 Religion

Chapter 18 Religion Again

Chapter 19 Return Of The Hildren Of Light

Chapter 20 The Secret Of Quantum Physics

Chapter 21 Clearing A Path To Realize Your Dreams

Chapter 22 Rising Above Ego

Chapter 23 Revelation

Chapter 24 Some Examples

Chapter 25 Words Of Wisdom

Chapter 26 Because I Can

Chapter 27 It Is The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius…

Chapter 28 The Aging Process

Chapter 29 Melting Pot

Chapter 30 Philosophy

Chapter 31 In Summary; 2012

Epilogue

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About The Author

CHAPTER 1

LET THERE BE

A BOOK

First there was a paragraph. And it was good.

Then a page came into being.

I finally surrendered and said Let there be a book and so it came to pass that a Book was created.

I did not choose to write this book. I did not organize or arrange it in any sense of the word. It chose me and created itself.

The Bible story of Jonah and the whale comes to mind. It is a story of a man who was chosen to relay a message to humanity and to go in a direction that he refused to follow. He did everything he could to avoid the task that was asked of him and was eventually led (forced?) to complete the mission.

Author and neuroscientist, David Eagleman, states that there is another source that supplies the thoughts in our head that are beyond our conscious control. The following is an excerpt from his book, Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Human Brain:

On his deathbed, Scottish mathematician James Maxwell coughed up a strange sort of confession, declaring that something within him" had discovered his famous mathematical equations, not he. He admitted he had no idea how ideas actually came to him-they just did. William Blake related a similar experience, reporting of this long narrative poem Milton: I have written this poem from immediate dictation twelve or sometimes twenty lines at a time without premeditation and even against my will. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed to have written his novella The Sorrows of Young Werther with practically no conscious input, as though he were holding a pen that moved on its own".

Even Einstein would say that he would take long meditating walks to know the thoughts of God, indicating that he realized they were not his own.

Harvard graduate, Gary Zukav brings to light something very interesting in his best-selling book, The Seat of the Soul. He says, Each soul takes upon itself a particular task. It may be the task of raising a family, or communicating ideas through writing or transforming the consciousness of a community. It may be the task of… contributing directly to the evolution of consciousness on a global level. Whatever the task that your soul has agreed to, whatever its contract with the Universe, all of the experiences of your life serve to awaken within you the memory of that contract, and to prepare you to fulfill it. He goes on to say, Take your hands off the steering wheel. Be able to say to the Universe, Thy will be done, and to know it within your intentions. Spend time in this thought. Thy will be done, and allow your life to go into the hands of the Universe completely. The final piece of reaching for authentic power is releasing your own (free will) to a higher form of wisdom.

The instant I read this passage, I immediately understood why I was being propelled down the road to write this particular book. I had unknowingly made a contract that I was bound to keep, regardless of my free will to turn away and dismiss it. It mattered not that I was exhausted and busy with my daily life of raising three children and working part-time or that I barely knew how to operate a computer. The very thought of writing a book overwhelmed and intimidated me. Who did I think I was with such an undertaking? How delusional had I become to even entertain such a thought? It was almost as if I did not have a choice in the matter, the same way Jonah did not have a choice in doing God’s bidding in the Bible story. Perhaps we were both being held to our own individual contracts between the soul and the universe, unbeknownst to our conscious mind.

For whatever reason, I kept getting these subtle, subconscious messages to try writing a book. I kept getting distracted from my chores and became extremely unfocused in trying to accomplish the many daily tasks that had to be done. My mind would wander aimlessly and return with more snippets of ideas that desperately wanted to be put down on paper.

Random, persistent thoughts battered me no matter what I did. Thoughts poked and chipped away at my mind whenever I cleaned the house, took a shower or walked the dog. It was a relentless attack on my brain that pounded away at me every minute of every day. I felt like I was being assaulted from within. Most people would say that idle time is the devil’s playground or too much time on your hands makes you a little spacey. Yogis and gurus, who have infinite time, are on a higher mission in life than just putting food on the table and surviving the economy.

I figured out that if I put all these thoughts down on paper and buried it in the basement like a rotting, distasteful corpse; I could again have my mind and subsequently, my life back. I simply wanted a clear head, free from any distractions, so that I could focus on every day activities. I needed to exorcise those demon thoughts right out of my mind and be liberated from them once and for all. My thought processing felt like something was jamming the frequency on an otherwise clear reception. I felt as if I were the hard drive on my computer with too much junk in my brain, which was making me work slower and less efficiently. I wanted to purge and recycle some of those files and throw them out to trash by transferring them onto a real computer.

I contemplated a mental disorder, but this did not seem quite right. I could no longer function coherently until I unloaded all these thoughts, cleared my mind and returned to my normal life. I finally surrendered my own free will to something that had a will much greater than my own and went in the direction which I was being led. Like Jonah, I was being forced down a path that I struggled not to go down, and five grueling years later, a book came to pass. "Thy" will be done.

It all started with a Chinese fortune cookie. To this day, I still carry that fortune around in my wallet. It says You are a lover of words, someday you should write a book Lucky numbers 42, 12, 17, 33, 28. I actually hide it behind my driver’s license lest one of my prying kids starts questioning me about it. A few weeks after that, I opened another fortune cookie that said We write our own destiny. We become what we do." I could not get the seed that had now been planted in my psyche, out of my head.

I didn’t even know that I had a desire to write. The suggestion from that telltale fortune cookie had stuck and lodged itself deep into my subconscious. In fact, the idea of writing came to me from a completely subliminal place and began to overtake me. This was not a conscious decision in any sense of the word. It felt like there was an alter ego somewhere inside of me that had its own agenda. I did not have the creativity and talent to write fiction, and non-fiction was for pretentious egomaniacs that loved hearing themselves preach.

I quickly began to realize that I actually loved writing. How did I not know this before? It’s true that whenever I have a fight with my husband, I write him a scathing letter. To this day, my poor husband shudders whenever he sees a page ripped from a memo pad with my frantic scrawling, tearing across the page. He thinks he has somehow done something to piss me off and now must receive one of my cutting letters dutiful telling him that communication is imperative in any healthy marriage.

It’s true that I have a passion and penchant for words, and that I excelled in writing in school, but what monetary value could that produce in the real world? It is a hobby, a whimsical self-gratifying indulgence. It is the stuff of poets and song-writers, which is not my persona. The word narcissist keeps coming to mind. This folly could not possibly result in anything viable.

I will confess, however, that it is exhilarating, addictive and empowering to write. The energy and spirit flow right through me onto the screen, and I can create images that tantalize or incite. As a child, I thought the dictionary was the most fascinating book I had ever read. I memorized and caressed each word, understanding, even at such a young age, that every word had a nuance and an individual personality. I recognized the subtle connotation that graced each word with unique, descriptive flavor. This same realization was lost on students who sprinkled adjectives into their writing assignments as if it were a spice, trying to make their assignment more palatable. I was more like a chef that did not need to follow recipes. I just created images using words the way one would use ingredients in a gourmet dish. However, in my practical mind, only rich people can afford luxuries like being a writer. The rest of the free world must survive and earn their keep at a real J-O-B.

It seems every religion in the world speaks of an inner light or flame that one must listen to because it is somehow the voice of God. I tried to listen carefully, and once again received only a bunch of static.

One morning, I just sat down at the computer and began typing a story. It was a story that, on occasion, had been rattling around in my brain. I took to this task like a homework assignment from Creative Writing Class 101. After several hours of laboriously pounding away at the keyboard, I read my masterpiece, and I hated it. In fact, it sucked big time. It felt wrong and forced, like I was trying too hard. It felt like I was trying to push a mountain. Buddhists believe that if you feel this way, then stop, because you are going about it the wrong way. Try another less forced and natural path.

Then, I remembered two things. I once had a college professor who had a maudlin attachment to the phrase KISS, which means Keep It Simple, Stupid. I have used this phrase to simplify every aspect of my life ever since that class. The second thing is the oldest credo of writing, which is write about what you know. I do not have a talent for writing lyrics or poems or stories, but I realized I had an aptitude for journaling my own life. I had previously recorded my travels throughout Europe and also kept several years’ worth of journals describing the baby years of my children. I decided to follow what I love and what I knew.

I tried again. I sat down at the computer, and this time I turned off my conscious mind and just listened to my heart and soul. I literally shrugged my shoulders, which was the physical equivalent of my spirit surrendering to something that had a presence all of its own. I truly understand what it means to sob with relief as my fingers began flying over the keyboard as if they were possessed. Time had simply stood still, and after several hours, I felt like I had run a marathon. I was completely exhausted and spent. Slowly, all the energy that was pent up inside of me just seeped away. I began to read the words that were on the screen. I felt satisfied and absolved of my sins. It was the beginning of my exorcism. Some of the endless thoughts and ideas that plagued my inner being like demons had begun their exodus. I began to administer their last rites and planned their burial in my basement.

It was going to be a long road out of perdition.

CHAPTER 2

WAKE UP, THERE’S

AN E-MAIL FROM THE

UNIVERSE

This is a story about a woman’s ascent out of her own personal hell and how this desire to write began with a simple fortune cookie, which I presumed was a message from the universe.

I was eating at PF Changs in NJ with one of my dearest friends. It was August and my friend Connie was taking me out to celebrate my 44th birthday. As I looked at her, I realized that we all have two sets of friends in life. There are the ones that keep us grounded in life by always being completely honest with us, even if it was hard to swallow. Then, there are the ones that are ever supportive and nurturing, no matter what you do or how insane your ideas seemed. Connie was definitely my yes man.

After dinner, the waiter began to serve us our dessert. As I broke open my cookie, I glanced down and read the telltale fortune. I smiled and secretly stowed the thin, tiny piece of paper in my pocketbook. It was like a horn blast from the universe summoning my inner subconscious to come forth and reveal itself. Of course, this is where I had the free will to simply roll the fortune into a ball and forget it forever, but I decided against it.

In the fall, when my kids went back to school, I became a closet writer. I was so deep in the closet that I hid all evidence of writing from my family. At times I felt as if I were having some clandestine affair. Sometimes I felt like an ex-smoker, sneaking cigarettes, or an alcoholic, taking swigs out of a vodka bottle. I would grab a pen and pad and lock myself in the bathroom, writing frantically whenever ideas came into my head. I would open the window and flush the toilet before exiting because there was always one of my wily children around, looking at me suspiciously. My husband would ask me what I did on my two days off every week. He asked me this as he glanced at the dust accumulating in every nook and cranny of the house. I think he was concerned about my mental stability. After all, I wasn’t supposed to have crazy aspirations like writing. I was simply mom and the housekeeper and that is how my family liked it. I offhandedly told my husband that I was practicing the computer so that I could become proficient at it. I added that I was doing my exercise DVD to lose some weight and get fit. Now, if I actually practiced the computer and exercised as much as I said I did, I would resemble Bill Gates with an Abercrombie body. My family assumed that I was reading magazines, talking on the telephone or watching television all day. As long as they did not delve too deeply into my extra-curricular activity, I was safe.

Being middle-aged and constantly wrestling with my memory meant that everywhere I traveled and at any given moment, I must jot down notes and record my thoughts or they would be forgotten. If I was in church, I would grab one of the donation envelopes in the pew and the tiny three-inch pencil that was stationed right next to it. I would scribble on the Sunday Service bulletin while the pastor quizzically looked my way as he preached. If I were in the car, I would grab one of the Atlas maps in the glove compartment and write on it. Once I even tried writing on a paper towel. Bits of cards, mail, post-it notes and construction drawing paper were all being jammed into a manila envelope with scribbled ranting and ravings. I felt as if I might go mad, but every time I got a little bit more off my chest and out of mind, I became extremely lucid. I just wanted this addiction to be over and done with once and for all. This was the state of affairs in my life prior to my attempt at writing.

The actual journey from hell that I previously mentioned all began from a simple wish. I wished that I could move out of New York. Millions of people move from one city to another every day. No problem, right? Well, when you throw in three children and a husband who do not, unfortunately, share that same desire, then you have a problem.

Now, concerning many families in the good old USA, the philosophy of when momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, usually prevails. This was the case in my home and my family life. I doggedly began researching homes and an everyday life in a beautiful area called Bucks County, PA. There was an area in Bucks County, close to the border of NJ, where my husband could commute to NYC. The trip would take almost the same amount of time as his commute from Long Island. I would somehow need to convince my husband and three kids, two of them teenagers, (I know, right, moving teenagers, good luck with that one), that this would be a better quality of life for us. Well, I researched schools and train schedules and taxes and moving costs. I could have easily done a Madison Avenue presentation using graphs and charts with the amount of information I amassed.

Now, the problem was my guilt. Here I was, forcing my entire family to move and change the only life they had ever known. I felt like the villain in the movie of my own life. I was the only one seeing the subtle signs of a neighborhood going downhill fast. They were accustomed to the litter on the front lawn, the noise at night, the congestion, the relentless traffic and the endless lines of people wherever we went. I wanted and needed a better quality of life for myself and especially for them.

You must understand that guilt is a powerful emotion, emitting enormous amounts of negative energy. I then began worrying, which is the twin sibling to guilt. I worried that my kids would hate the school, not make any friends, and miss their old life. I worried that the commute would be even harder and more exhausting for my husband. I worried that the money it would take to make this move would deplete our bank account. I felt like the children’s book, Wimberley Worried and Worried and Worried. My scariest fears began to manifest themselves into actual episodes in my head. What if something really bad happened in PA after we moved, like a horrific car accident? Would I ever forgive myself? Would I keep blaming myself because I was the one who wanted to move? Maybe this would have never happened if we stayed in NY. What if one of my daughters met a boy in our new neighborhood who was a terrible influence with drugs and alcohol and would even beat her senseless? The scenarios in my head got scarier and more elaborate. I began to ask God for a sign that this was the right move; BIG mistake; COLOSSAL mistake. Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it, was an understatement in this particular instance.

With guilt and worry in tow every minute of every day, I arranged a meeting that winter with a real estate agent to see a house in Bucks County. That very same week, I had an accident. A simple slip and fall on the ice right in front of my own house. I cannot tell you how many old people have told me afterwards that it takes just a second to fall and months or years to recuperate. I don’t even remember falling, but I am quite certain that my emotions at the time were an overabundance of fear and guilt concerning the move. If it was a minor accident, I would have never given it a second thought and proceeded on the same tormented course to PA. The universe literally had to knock me on my head with abundant force for me to realize that it was trying to tell me something.

Spiritual people always talked about a near-death experience or a life-changing occurrence that altered the way you lived the rest of your life. I will try to describe this fall and experience as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I was in the process of getting my three children into the van to take them to school on the iciest day in the history of Nassau County. We all began to walk down the path from my house, which had a slight slope towards the street. I remember telling one of my daughters that her shoelaces were untied and to be very careful walking. Almost instantaneously, I was lying on the ground staring at the clear blue sky and going into immediate shock. The back of my skull took the full impact and weight of my entire body as I fell back at warp speed onto brick, covered with thick ice. I remember being on the ground in disbelief, reaching back slowly and feeling the blood gushing from my head and into my hand. I remember looking up at my daughters and slowly, painstakingly, mouthing the words, c a l l 911, before I went into complete shock. I began to realize that the bleeding could easily be seeping into my brain. Now the only thing I could think of, lying there on the ice and looking up at the clear, blue sky was, Dear God, please don’t let me die in such a ridiculous manner. My children need me. Please let me live and come out of this just fine for my children’s sake. I need to guide them and teach them so much more in life.

I was told later that I was immobile on the icy, cold ground for 45 minutes. In retrospect, I think the cold kept my body temperature so low, it kept the flow of blood at a minimum from bleeding into my brain. There was also a good reason why it took so long for the ambulance to arrive. There was an inordinate amount of accidents that day because all of Long Island was a colossal ice-skating rink. The ambulance workers were slipping and falling over the gurney and themselves just trying to get to me. A nurse asked me later if I had fallen from a second-story window or hit my head on the corner of a brick. She was very surprised to find out that the accident was just a simple slip and fall on flat ice.

Fast forward to recuperation. After sloshing my brains around in my skull from head trauma and injuring my back, I had to live on pain-killers and use a walker for months. I could not tolerate noise or light so I shuffled around the house with dark sunglasses and earplugs. I could not sit due to back pain, and lying down made my head spin. I could not watch TV or even speak because my brain would just be screaming in pain. I was, in fact, a walking zombie.

After undergoing MRI’s and cat-scans of both my head and back, the doctors always said the same thing. There was no bleeding into the brain or any slipped discs. There was no real sustained damaged. Only a lengthy rest was needed, and I would be as good as new, or at least as good as a 43-year old woman can possibly be. I thanked God for this miracle every time I