Saturday, August 14, 2004 (6:50 AM)

Daily Quado:

“You could look upon your life as one of infinite choice, and all of the choices already exist right now.  And so a highly intricate and complex web, too many possibilities to even contemplate, lies laid out before you at any moment.”

A reader asks:

I had a dream vision where I was able to see into the outcomes of various destinies of my own life.  In one I was very afraid, an intruder had broken into my apartment and I was ready to fight for my life. Then my vision jumped to another ending, where I had succumbed to a drug addiction and it had destroyed my body; I watched my dead body dissolve into dust like a time-lapse film. In the next vision, I was a mature woman with three daughters, living a good life by the sea.   I awoke both horrified by what I saw but comforted with a sense of choice, the will to choose my own path.

My question for Quado is: do parallel lives exist? Are there alternate destinies that exist concurrently to the specific life we are living? Are there alternate roads in life that not only existed at signposts along the way, but continue on in their own reality?

A note from Carrie:   Click here to read about my own vision, which further expands on the concept of multiple layers of life Quado mentions below.

Quado responds:

There are many answers to your question, but I am limited, of course, to those you might have some chance of understanding, limited by this mode of expression and by the fact that you can only grasp metaphors, comparisons to things which have some basis in your life and experience.  But yet you are also a spiritual traveler and quester, and so you are also open to grasping that something is true even if it does not quite make rational sense, just by the fact that it feels right at some level, in some layer of your being.  And so, we shall say what we can say and hope that you will grasp what you can.

There are two ways I wish to approach this question.  The first is to answer your questions and the second is to discuss how this applies to your life and the way you might live now.

I would ask you to look at your life as existing in levels and to consider the soul self as on a level above this one, projecting down this life.  This life is full of the energy and direction of the soul self, who has chosen to have the experience of this life.  But, as you know, you have extensive free will within this lifetime to make of it what you will.  You are guided by a feeling inside of the right thing to do, what will lead you to what you wish to have happen, and lead you to what your life path and direction are, but you are also fully capable of undermining yourself, of taking any turns you wish to take, of inviting disaster upon yourself.  And, as we have also noted, there are other forces in the world, larger energy flows which also have an effect upon your life.

At the same time, your soul self may be projecting other lives down into physical space, although probably not exactly this space, but in other dimensions of what appear to be time and space here.  For the soul self does not exist within time and space.  The soul self is outside time and space, and is able to project down many different lives.  And the so-called past lives are, in a sense, all projected down at the same time.  And you also have future lives, the possible futures which are there which are of course all present at one time, since the soul self does not know time.

If you wanted to, you could look upon your life as one of infinite choice, and all of the choices already exist right now.  You are choosing, moment by moment, and each choice is taking you on a path which is laid out, but yet every moment on that path has another choice, multiple choices.  And so a highly intricate and complex web, too many possibilities to even contemplate, lies laid out before you at any moment.

And when people see the future, they are seeing the most likely path.  And as you know, predictions of the future do not always come true.  How could they?  There are so many choices, so many ways things might go.  And when you talk about the future of a large group of people all at once, and each of them is making choices, what is seen is the probability, the most likely outcome, but so much hangs in the balance; so much might and will change in any moment.

But this intricate web of past and future is all there, and you are walking through your life.  There are two paths within this intricate web.  There is the path which is most likely, given all that is happening in your life and that has happened, as well as the things which are happening around you.  And every time you take action, this path of the most likely outcome shifts and a different likelihood stretches out before you.  And when you are in the flow of seeing the future, you will be picking up this most likely path.  And when you are attuned to your psychic self, you may be directed strongly to go one way or another for your safety, if danger lies in the direction you are about to take.

Then there is another path, and this is the path which your soul self has laid out for you in her wisdom, which is a path of experiences which will bring you to a higher purpose.  And this path also shines out.  When you are attuned to your own soul self, you will know this path, in that you will be guided in your choices.  You will be guided to go this way and not that because it is the shortest distance toward the path which is shining for you, the path which will lead you to a greater spiritual attunement with yourself.  And if you walk this path, you will feel this connection.  When you have a choice, a difficult choice in which there is one direction which takes a good deal of courage to follow, but yet you simply know it is what you are meant to do, and you follow this, you will be rewarded by a feeling of great peace as you step upon that golden shining path which the soul self has laid out before you.  You will feel the flow, and as long as you continue to walk this path, you will stay in that flow.

But when you make other choices, perhaps deciding that this is too difficult, for often this golden shining path is very, very difficult and challenging, or more likely because you are turned away by fear, then you will feel the flow drop away and you are left to struggle with the decision and choice you have made until you can again regain the shining path of your wiser, truer self.

And along the way in any event is the path of the most likely, which is the path which you may see as the future, if you are attuned to it.  And both of these possibilities may come to you in visions and dreams as well as the other options, or they may not.  Each is directed by her own sensibilities and each has the gifts she has in finding her way.

And the other thing that happens is this.  At times you will feel the influence of some of the other, stronger possibilities, and at times you will feel the influence of lives which are occurring in  other time and space dimensions, on other planes.  When people do past life therapy, they are actually exploring alternative selves which exist now, but using the metaphor of the past life.  They exist now simply because the soul self does not have a past and a future, but exists only now, and so everything, including your own life, is but the blink of an eye, and all is happening at once and the same time, but just playing out in linear time here.

And so now, we must ask, is this information useful?  Does this matter?  The most important thing is that you are free to make your choices.  And of course, that there is guidance, there is a way which will lead you to a greater peace and centeredness, to less pain, to less despair.  And that it is the path of rightness which is within you, your own soul self.  Walk this path and you will be continually more connected, reaching up into your self more and more fully.  Walk this path and you will be living within the moment, right now, in the most centered way possible.

And of course, at another level, it really does not matter.  Straying from the golden shining path or not, walking the most likely path or not, sensing and feeling and knowing, or stumbling about in the darkness, in the end it does not really matter.  For you are a part of your soul self and your soul self is a part of the great all, and all exists only as it is, in this moment, as a great silence which simply is.  There is no right or wrong, no good or bad, just being.  You are and that is all.  And when you come close to the great peace which is at the heart of all things, when you step on your golden, shining path you may have just one moment, as your foot first steps upon that path, that you can feel it, that you can almost touch the edge of the great all, for one fraction of one second, and feel the connection which runs up through you , through your soul self, up and up and up to the place where all is love and all are one.  And at this moment you will understand the truth of the paradoxes and of your being, that while you struggle and despair, while you climb and strive, you simply are, and however you are, whatever you are, whatever you are doing or planning or have been, you are a piece of the perfection of being which simply is.

And all of the struggling and striving and trying so hard, all of the despair and anguish, is of no matter, for all you really can hope for is to touch that moment of peace, that moment of stillness, in which you know that you are, and you are perfect, and you are one with all.